Empanadas (sort of...)

OK- another theme you may have noticed on this blog is some sort of butter pastry wrapped savory filling. This is another one - spicy empanadas! The blogger also made a cilantro cream, but for the sake of our waistlines and fellow beach-goers I left that out. The dough is weird though - only 4 tablespoons of butter. How am I supposed to work with that???? It's predictably less buttery/flakey and more bread-like. It also rolled out much thicker... not sure if I like that- I could not crimp the sides into pretty little braids like the blogger. It's ugly, but still tasty.


Also I changed the filling. I don't need any more bacon in my life right now so I switched to ground turkey. And some potatoes because I had them lying around. So I don't know if this really counts as an "empanada" anymore, but it was good. I use a LOT of cilantro- an entire bag full.

Buttermilk Biscuits

Why doesn't any grocery store sell small containers of buttermilk? It always goes bad before I can use it all. Sadly that was the case again this week, but at least I made some biscuits! They were strangely not overly-buttery and somewhere inbetween savory and sweet. As in you could eat this for dinner or dessert. I don't have as many fluffy layers as the blogger, but I went and got some biscuit cutters the other day so I won't smash all the layers together when I'm cutting biscuits out with cups.

Chocolate Banana Cream Pie

Oh man this was such a fail I don't even want to post it, but this recipe is so good I'll share it anyways. It all started with a crazy craving for banana cream pie and lo and behold I had a few brown bananas. It was looking good until I made the pastry cream. It looked thick enough in the pan, but it was just messing with me. It was a runny mess. I hoped it would firm up in the fridge - nope! And I made some whipped cream.... which un-whipped itself. And a fat layer of chocolate. But the crust was delicious.

So when I cut the first slice, the cream slid down and so did the whipped cream.... and then the chocolate sort of melted into it. The pie plate was a funky mess of brown, white and pie crust. It still tasted good, but it was the ugliest pie I have ever made/eaten.

Sourdough Bread

I am a potato and bread fiend. I especially love sourdough bread, but was always intimidated by the recipes I found online. You have to make your own little colony of happy bacteria that will make your bread all nice and sour (and also help it rise). I was really turned off by most of the recipes I saw which involved specific proportions of pineapple juice and water. But I found this recipe and I figured I would give it a try. It only takes water and flour and it has specific steps for each day.


I was still sort of scared I might kill someone with my funky bread, but the comments on the daily pages helped sort out what a "bad" starter looked like. It takes a few days, but you can make your own starter too! I made 3 batches of bread, but only the 3rd one really tasted like sourdough. The holes weren't quite there yet and then..... I killed my starter. I killed it so bad I couldn't bring it back to life (which you can usually do quite easily- another reason to make your own starter). It grew mold. It got funky. I threw it away.


I'll have to save this for another time when I have time to bake bread more than once a month and can feed a starter more often. Poor thing, it only lived for a few weeks!

Shrimp Quesadillas and Mango Salsa

(please excuse the bite marks, I was hungry)

Ok I'm addicted to shrimp and making tortillas. It's an addiction and I can't stop. This variation is easy I'm sure you've had it before. It's easy peasy corn tortillas + shrimp and a really great mango jalapeno salsa. The salsa is sweet, salty, smoky and spicy. It was a pain to slice the mango - am I doing it wrong? But I gotta say I'm getting better at making tortillas without a press- instead of using my hands and/or a rolling pin I've been using a pot.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ok... sorry again I'm not done with the peanut butter - I had to use almost a whole jar. This might be my new favorite cookie. They're chewy and slightly crunchy and I loovveeee oats. (They look weird in my photo because I flattened them out right when they came out of the oven.)

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Brownies

Sorry peanut allergists, I really love peanut butter. I was tasked with getting rid of the "gross" peanut butter, which isn't even "gross" it's just the natural type where the oil separates from the rest of the peanut butter. So I had to make these brownies and I'm really glad I did. It takes the brownie to another level. There's only a slight peanut-ness to them. Delicious and not too sweet.