Happy Belated St. Patrick's Day!

Phew! It has been quite a while since I've posted anything! The past month or so I have had a hard time feeling positive, after coming to the realization that I am not at a place that I thought I'd be at 26. It is hard to handle the thought that, if 23 year old me knew where I was at career-wise and the monetary struggles I've had lately, she'd freak out. But she'd also probably be excited about the fact that I have great friends, an amazing man in my life and have abandoned a lot of the self-destructive behavior that used to be part of my every day life. But it's been hard to think about those positive things when I have been feeling so disappointed in myself. Struggles make us stronger, right? Well, if I encounter too many more, I'll probably turn in to a world-champion body-builder.Things are looking up though.

It is certainly good to have goals for yourself, but sometimes we need to take a step back and realize that just because things aren't how you wanted them to look, doesn't mean they're not beautiful. And now, in addition to the great family, friends, pets and boyfriend that I have, I a new job and am starting to make more responsible decisions. That's all I can really ask of myself, right?

Moving on to more fun things, I regret that I did not get to post about my St. Patrick's Day earlier, as it was a GRAND one. I am pure-blooded Irish American, so this holiday has always been a big deal to me. My parents raised me to be very proud of my heritage, which led me to take Irish dancing, Gaelic classes, and I've already been to Ireland twice. This year Tom and I decided to throw a big bash with all of our friends and some live music. 

Over the several hour party, roughly 100 guests passed through my apartment. The highlight of the night was definitely our friends Le Tour and Secret XYZ playing in my basement. Tall people had to hunch over, everyone got over the moldy smell, and the sound was great!

Patrick of LeTour making tunes off of the ceiling pipes.

Sexret XYZ, with this protagonist's own leading man on the left

More highlights of the weekend included making amazing vegetarian Irish stew, seeing local Irish-rock dudes, The Tossers, and spending St. Paddy's Day morning in downtown Chicago with the green river and parade (in 75 degree weather, no less!).

But let me tell you about this stew!! It seriously blew my mind. After sifting through several Irish stew recipes online, I decided to go with my gut.

Vegetarian Irish/Guinness Stew
3/4 package Gardein beefless tips
2 cans vegetable broth
1 1/2 cup Guinness
1 cup red wine (I used a cheap pinot noir)
5 cloves garlic, minced
3 medium-sized potatoes, cubed
1 large onion, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
3 spoonfuls tomato sauce
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp dried thyme
1 Tbsp dried parsley
2 bay leaves


With a nice coating of olive oil, I heated up the beefless tips in a large pan, making sure all sides got a nice dark brown color. Once they looked nicely cooked through, I added the garlic and let it simmer for about two minutes. Then I added the Guinness, red wine, tomato sauce, sugar, thyme, parsley and bay leaves. After bringing that mixture to a boil, I reduced the heat, covered and let simmer for a little over an hour.

While that was heating up, I sauteed the carrots, potatoes and onions with some butter for about 25 minutes.

After letting the main mixture simmer for the previously mentioned time, I added the vegetables and let the whole thing simmer uncovered for about 30 minutes. Before serving I removed the bay leaves and then, ENJOYED.

This stew was extremely flavorful in all the right ways. It wasn't too thick, but there also wasn't a lot of broth remaining in my bowl after I devoured the "meat" and veggies. I promise that this dish will impress even meat-lovers. And if it doesn't well, then I'm sorry for the blarney!

Of course I enjoyed it with a side of Guinness! 

Valentine's day and amazing home-made pizza sauce!

Valentine's Day: The one holiday you really want to say "whatever, it's just a Hallmark holiday, no big deal" but secretly hope that your significant other does something really special. Disappointment ensues. I blame my mother. She still sends me Valentine's Day gifts.

Boyfriend took me to dinner over the weekend and actually volunteered to go see The Vow (I kinda loved it, not gonna lie), But I decided to make the plans for actual V-day this year and picked something a little weird unique: Church bingo!! I didn't tell Tom where we were going, just picked him up, parked in front of a church, and walked in to the school gym. We were surrounded by very passionate seniors, who had their lucky daubers lined up in a row and about 20 bingo boards in front of them. After purchasing one packet of boards for each of us (with only 6 boards per game, such amateurs), we figured out the rules (with a little help from people around us), and conquered that Bingo Night. Ok, so we only won $5 in a raffle, but we were SO close to getting Bingo many, many times. With the game, making art with the daubers and the treats I brought, we had an awesome time.

Wine in a water bottle, straight class.

In addition to wine in a water bottle, my other treat for Bingo was a home-made version of Red Lobster's Cheddar Bay Biscuit. Tom and I have discussed going to Red Lobster lately, mainly because of these biscuits, and one day the recipe from The Girl Who Ate Everything randomly popped up on my Pinterest. Well these ended up being DIVINE. They taste just like the restaurant's biscuits but without the embarrassment of telling your friends that you drove 15 miles to go to Red Lobster. I suggest attempting this recipe. My note would be that they are pretty hard to mix, and even after mixing for a while, the batter doesn't look right, but it is! The recipe warns against over-mixing, so even though I was worried about their look, I put them in the oven anyway and they turned out great! The dozen that came out of the batch is already gone.

After Bingo I took Tom back to my place, where I made him a heart-shaped pizza, as I have previously revealed his addiction/obsession. It turned out very good and the best part was this home-made sauce that I want to tell you about.

After deciding the plan for Feb 14th about a week ago, I searched the internet for the "best" home-made pizza sauce recipe. Well, there sure is a lot of different advice floating around out there. I told my friend Sam about my quest and, being an Italian New Yorker with a father who knows what's what with pizza, she told me to ignore everything I had read thus far and follow her families extremely simple recipe. It called for little more than tomato sauce, olive oil and italian seasoning. 

"No fennel seeds?" I asked her. "There are a few recipes that insisted that you use fennel seeds."

"Those things are gross," she snorted. 

"But every recipe I've looked at either calls for sugar or honey."

"These are exactly the type of things Americans like to add to their sauce that my family laughs at them for."

"Fine."

 So respecting her advice, I basically followed her family recipe, with a few embellishments that I thought would help. And they really really did. Also, the most important part of this sauce turning out so well was storing it overnight, It made the sauce flavorful and rich, but not over-powering. Here's a run down:

2 8oz cans tomato sauce (I tend to buy store-brand stuff, but this time I spent a little more on nicer tomatoes and I think it paid off)

1 tsp Italian Seasoning

1 tsp Oregano

1tsp Basil

1 tsp Garlic Powder

1 tsp Onion Powder

Sprinkling of Red Pepper Flakes (per your spicy preference)

1 Tbsp Parmesan cheese

1Tbsp white wine (I used Savignon Blanc)

1Tbsp olive oil

You simply toss all of those ingredients in to a tupperwear container, shake, and throw in the fridge for 24 hours.

After arriving home from bingo, I just rolled out the pizza dough (using my usual garlic and herb crust from Trader Joe's), carefully placed it in my greased heart-shaped pan, brushed some olive oil over the whole crust and popped it in the oven for about 8 minutes. The next tip Sam's dad gave me was, before putting down the sauce, toss some mozzarella around that pizza. I complied. I also got a little fancy and included some goat cheese along with the standard mozzarella.

After baking this bad boy for about 10 minutes, we then took it out of the pan and placed it directly on the rack, to ensure the crust cooked fully. And then we ate our hearts out (Ehoh!)!

Tom may have grabbed a piece and taken a bite before I could yell "NO! I have to take a picture!"

This was a great valentines day meal! What's your favorite go-to pizza sauce recipe?

Fake Chicken Alfredo Pizza

I believe I've explained the addiction to pizza that boyfriend suffers with, and I have become one of those innocent loved ones affected by by his "disease." He IS getting better, eating pizza less often, besides the fact that we ate at Piece on Thursday, then got a frozen pizza after the bar on Friday, and made this pizza on Monday, but I digress. So when thinking of what to make for dinner on Monday, he, of course, suggested an alfredo chicken pizza, I suggest adding broccoli, and we went from there.

We rolled out the garlic pizza dough from Trader Joes on a greased cooking sheet and put it in the 400 degree pre-heated oven for about 7 minutes. While that was in the oven, we fried up the broccoli and fake chicken with about 3 cloves of garlic, minced, and just a little bit of olive oil in a frying pan until the chicken was slightly crispy. Then we realized we had some fake bacon in the freezer, so we fried that up with some vegetable oil and cut it up in to small bits. I then grated the cheese, but blast me, I can't remember the name of it. I was a harder mozzerella from Trader Joes and it was perfect on this pizza.

After we let the crust bake for a little in the oven, we took it out and added the alfredo sauce. In order to keep the pizza from being too heavy in our bellies, I went with Ragu's Cheesy Light Parmesan Alfredo sauce, and it only took half of the jar to cover the pizza. I then placed 4 slices of provolone cheese around the pizza, spread out the chicken, broccoli and facon, and sprinkled Italian seasoning over everything. We topped it off with the shredded moz, and 4 more cloves of minced garlic.

It was in the oven for about 25 minutes when the crust nicely browned and the cheese looked like this

BOY was it delicious. And Surprisingly, after 4 pieces, I wasn't stuffed! So, in summary, here's a list of the ingredients:

1/2 package fake chicken
4 strips fake bacon
1-2 cups chopped broccoli (we used the frozen variety)
3 cloves, then 4 cloves garlic, minced
4 slices provolone cheese
1/2 jar light alfredo sauce
2 cups shredded mozzerella
1 pizza crust
2 Tbsp Italian seasoning

This only took about 45 minutes total to make, the ingredients weren't more than $15 and the pie was a real mouth-pleaser. I highly suggest making it!

Crecent roll, egg and facon cups

As you've probably figured out by now, I do my experiements cooking exclusively on the weekends. Well, this past weekend was my roommate's birthday, so I wanted to make him a special breakfast.  I was inspired by this recipe, but knew some changes could make it more interesting. And after you check out what I made below, take a look at the cupcakes I made that got RAVE reviews.

For my (delicious) breakfast recipe, I replaced regular bread with crescent rolls and bacon with the fake stuff. I also thought the addition of onions, green peppers and cheese couldn't hurt.

I preheated the oven to 375 then heavily greased a muffin tray and rolled out one crescent roll per cup. I then fried up the facon, onion and green peps in a frying pan before adding them over top of the crescent rolls

I then simply cracked an egg over each cup, sprinkled some cheese on top and covered each cup with any extra dough that was hanging over the side,

After about 25 minutes in the oven they looked like this:

And tasted AMAZING. The egg yellows were cooked through, but the rolls didn't burn. Good dipping sauces for these would be hot sauce, ranch or worchester sauce.

Roommate and boyfriend loved these and, while two per person was the perfect-sized meal, we were all left wanting more.

Pizza Pot Pie: Party in your mouth

So I don't want to say that this is the best meal I've ever made, but I WILL admit that I've never thought so much about a meal after eating it. Since Friday night, anyone who has been around me has heard about this creation and seen the look of longing in my eye...*siiigh* AHEM

A certain Chicago restaurant made pizza pot pies famous, and I've been craving to go back there for a while, but seeing as I'm on a tight budget, Tom and I decided to try and make our own. I have to be honest, these were better than the restaurant's popular pie.

Since I'm not a real adult yet I haven't quite finished my collection of necessary kitchen supplies, I didn't have any ramekins to make these in. Instead of opting to make one big pot pie in a baking dish (which I can imagine still tastes great), we found these soup mugs for pretty cheap at target. They worked perfectly! Tom's instincts told him that we should use vodka sauce instead of pizza or marinara and I do believe this inclusion made this in to the glorious meal experience that I am now bragging about. These are the ingredients we ended up with

1/2 jar of vodka sauce
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
Handful of cherry tomatoes, chopped
1/2 package fake beef tips/strips (This was the first time I've ever tried Gardein's Beefless Tips, and I was very impressed.)
1/2 package shredded Mozzarella and Parmesan (we opted for a combo package, but one or the other would do)
1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
1 bag garlic pizza dough from Trader Joe's

We preheated the oven to 400 degrees, then combined the onion, cherry tomatoes, and garlic in to a sauce pan. We let those items sizzle for a while, then added our fake beef tips, which I thawed in the microwave for about a minute before throwing them in the pot.

We then threw in the 1/2 jar of vodka sauce and about a tablespoon of Italian seasoning, and stirred until everything was well mixed. I rolled out the pizza dough using a wine bottle since I still don't have a rolling pin and cut the top of our pies by simply placing the upside down soup mug on the rolled-out dough, and cutting around the mug, about one inch out from the rim.

We started packing our pies by beginning with a layer of our cheese, then a quarter of the sauce mixture, per pie, another layer of cheese, the rest of the sauce and topped it with more cheese (I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I'm quite the cheese fanatic). Your ingredients don't need to be at the very top of the cup, but they should be close to the top.

I gently placed the dough on top, we cut it to vent, and sprinkled some more Italian seasoning over the top. After placing them on a baking sheet, we popped them in the oven!

They were in the oven for about 30 minutes, and we knew they were ready to be consumed when they looked like this:

Some recipes call for you to turn these upside down and empty them on to a plate before eating, but we just dove in with a fork. These pot pies, with a side of Yuengling and a serving of Friday the 13th part 7, made for an excellent Friday evening!

Slow-cooker Vegetarian Tortilla soup

My weekend was great! It included a midnight showing of Wayne's World at one of my favorite places in Chicago, the Music Box, seeing an amazing local punk band, the Lawrence Arms, and having a bunch of my friends over for a friendly round of quarters.

But after the heart-breaking football game on Sunday, I'm very glad me and Tom had prepared a delicious soup to rekindle my cold, angry heart. While the Steeler's game left a horrible taste in my mouth, this stuff turned out to be QUITE delicious.

While preparing the shopping list for the weekend, the boyfriend insisted on another crock-pot experiment. After perusing the web and Pinterest for vegetarian slow-cooker recipes, we hadn't found anything too interesting. However, a recipe for Chicken Tortilla soup popped up. Being raised in a meat-and-potatoes household, I had never even discovered tortilla soup until after I had ceased with the meat, so we decided to try improvising a Caitlin-friendly recipe, taking some direction from recipes online, but also adding our own ingredients as we saw fit. This is what we ended up with:

2 cans vegetable broth
1 package fake chicken
1 can corn
1 can black beans
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 can enchilada sauce
1 can crushed tomatoes
2-3 cloves garlic minced
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1 bay leaf (i'm not really familiar with what this adds to a dish, but since one of the recipes called for it and I had it on my spice rack shelf, I threw it in)

After cooking up the fake chicken in a pan with some oil to add cripsyness, we combined all of these ingredients in a crock-pot. At the last minute, Tom decided to also throw in a can of chili beans that we had lying around (and I'm very glad he did).

 We let that simmer on low for about 6 1/2 hours. When we returned from watching the travesty Steelers game, I preheated the oven to 350, cut 6 corn tortillas in to strips and baked them for about 8 minutes.

 When they were crispy enough, we doled out the soup, and topped it with the tortilla strips and a handful of shredded cheese.

The soup ended up being great! The fake chicken was juicy, the beans offered a nice, fuller texture and the after-taste was awesome. I can't handle spicy things well, but if you are a heat-lover, adding chile peppers to the mix would have offered a nice kick. I can not wait to eat the leftovers for lunch!!

Mexican Casserole Love

So I guess now is the time to admit the love affair I've been having for the past four years...with burritos. Growing up in Pittsburgh did not provide a lot of opportunities for genuine Mexican food. My main exposure was through Taco Bell and Chi Chi's, which I loved, of course, but when I moved to Chicago and found a burrito joint on every corner, my passion for this tortilla-rolled delicacy really took flight. I could eat one almost any day of the year, however I restrict myself to about once every other week, due to that whole "extremely fattening" thing. 2 Amigos is my current favorite joint, and at a whole 4 doors down from my boyfriend's place, has become quite the temptress.

Anyhow, after seeing a recipe for Mexican Casserole, I knew I had to make my own version. All the recipes I perused called for different ingredients, so I just combined all of my favorites in to this absolutely delicious (albeit, not very healthy) dish.

The oven was preheated to 350 degrees. In a pan I heated together a can of refried beans, half a package of fake ground beef, 2 cloves garlic, minced, half a green pepper, chopped, 1/2 an onion, chopped, and about half a can of corn. I didn't sautee anything, just heated up so the beans were softer and everything was nicely mixed together. Doesn't that mixture look just plain scrumptious?

 In a casserole dish I placed a large flour tortilla on the bottom, then layered about half the bean dip on it and topped it off with a healthy dose of shredded cheddar cheese.

 Then came another tortilla, topped by the rest of the bean mix. Instead of cheese on top of this part, I sprinkled a decent serving of roasted red pepper seasoning, then topped the whole casserole off with another tortilla and a LOT of shredded cheddar.

It baked in the oven for about 40 minutes, and we just kept an eye on it until it looked like this. Then consumed the crap out of it (with a bunch of sour cream, of course)!

This ended up being the perfect meal for a night in with a movie. I'll probably make this in a bigger casserole dish for my next party. What are your favorite burrito ingredients that you'd include in your own Mexican casserole?

Dang, now I want a burrito...

Vegetarian Chicken Cheese Soup

As I am in my early days of actually enjoying cooking, I just discovered how wonderful Crockpots are! After making amazing vegetarian chili, I searched around for some more good crock recipes. Since cheese is one of my major food groups, this vegetable cheese soup recipe sounded delish, but changes improvements were necessary. So two weekends ago (posting on time during the holidays is just impossible), my household hunkered down  to make some cheese soup and record some songs.

As an Irish gal, I scoffed at the recipe calling for only a cup of potatoes, and cut up 3 medium sized spuds. It's difficult to have too much onion, so I included a 1 large onion (chopped). I then chopped up the cup of carrots and gathered the ingredients together for crockpot time!

It was then time to combine the 2 cans of vegetable broth, 1 can of creamed corn, potatoes, carrots, onions, 1 tsp celery seed, and a little bit of pepper. After careful consideration (see: I had a "duh!" momement), I added two cloves of minced garlic to the mix. 

The original recipe instructs us to cook this mixture on low for 8 hours, however I majorly overslept had a very busy morning, so I turned it up to high for 4.5 hours, after which time I added a 15oz jar of processed cheese sauce and about a cup of shredded cheddar.

My love of fake meat is unwavering and the meat-eating men in my life tend to prefer when I make things that include this delicious faux-animal carcass, so it only made sense to add fake chicken strips to the mix, after letting the cheese-saturated soup cook for about 45 minutes. Next time I make this, I'll probably fry the chicken strips first, to give them a little bit of crispyness. Also at this time, I was feeling that the soup looked quite runny, so I ended up adding about a cup of flour, which did help slightly. If you have any thoughts on how to not make it so watery, please let me know!

After letting all of that cook for a final hour, it was time to enjoy! So me and three boys put the music aside, grabbed a beer and turned on America's Funniest Home Videos on Netflix (trust me, it's funnier than you remember). They gave me RAVE reviews and I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it myself. I will definitely be making this again. See a summary of the ingredients below, and make this soul-warming dish ASAP!

2 cans vegetable broth

3 medium sized potatoes

About 1 cup chopped carrots

1 onion, chopped

1 can creamed corn

1 tsp celery seed

2 cloves garlic (minced)

Pepper - as much as you desire (I tend to use less pepper than others)

1 jar processed cheese (can be found in the chip aisle)

1 cup shredded cheddar (or whatever cheese you prefer)

1 package fake chicken strips (I used chicken-less strips from Trader Joe's but I also love Morning Star Farm's fake chicken strips)

If you have any suggestions on how to make this recipe better for the next time around, please leave a comment!

Gnocchi, spinach and pine nuts: Easy and AWESOME

A friend of mine recently told me about this recipe that I immediately wanted to try. I love a well-done Gnocchi dish, but I also hate complicated recipes, so this one was perfect for me. I fed it to my (male) roommate and boyfriend and they both told me it was the best thing I’ve ever made, and they’ve tried my pierogi pizza (stay tuned…).

I promise to start including pictures, but for now, here are the deets:

Prep/cook time: about 15 minutes

Serves: 2 

1 16 oz pkg gnocchi
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp pine nuts
2 minced garlic cloves (or if you date someone like my boyfriend, way more)
1 10 oz pkg spinach (or however little/much you’d like, but more is better because it really melts down)
salt and pepper to season
1/4 c (or more if you’re me) shredded Parm cheese (Motz would probably work well here too)

cook the gnocchi til it floats, drain and set aside
throw butter, garlic and pine nuts in a skillet/wok, cook about 3 to 4 minutes over medium heat until the nuts are lightly browned, add gnocchi and spinach about 1-2 minutes, then add salt and pepper and cheese. 

gnocchi should brown a little on the outside and the cheese should melt and spinach should wilt.

Now, I doubled this recipe because there were three of us eating. It still turned out good, but because of the amount of gnocchi, it was hard to put in all the spinach, as the wok was just too full. If I ever double the ingredients again, I’ll probably cook the first half separately, as to make sure everything gets coated well and I get in my desired amount of spinach.