FOOD.

I have been cooking as much as I can considering my moving (and lack of real house for a few weeks) and the heat, so I thought I'd share. Most noteworthy are the scones I made for my orals (Yes, at my school, not only do you have to finish and turn in a thesis, oh no, then you have to be quizzed on it for 2 hours by 4 professors. Fun. Then you get to edit all the grammar mistakes they have found and then finally take it to the print shop and get it bound and beautiful. Also, you have to bring food to your orals. Mine were at 10 am so I brought OJ, water, blueberry scones, and fruit salad), eggs in hell, peanut butter brownies, turnovers for our housewarming, lemon-mint granita (thank you smitten kitchen), and the hash browns and scramble I made for breakfast today. My two more unique recipes are the eggs in hell and turnovers. Eggs in Hell is a recipe I got from my dad who got it somewhere else and it's basically just eggs poached in spicy tomato sauce. I made it for brunch one time when staying at a house full of people because this recipe feeds quite a few. And I remembered to take pictures! Here it is:
-4 Tbl olive oil
-1 med. Onion, coarsely chopped
-6 cloves garlic; thinly sliced
-4 Jalapeno peppers, seeded and cut into ½ inch dice (depending on the size of your peppers--mine were huge and I'm not super into spicy foods, so I did less)
-1 tsp hot chili flakes
-3 cups basic tomato sauce (a little less than 3 cans)
-8 large eggs
-½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or pecorino cheese

-Heat cast iron skillet and add olive oil until just smoking
-Add onion, garlic, peppers, chili flakes
-Cook until veggies are softened & light brown (7 min.)
-Add tomato sauce
-Bring to boil
-Immediately lower heat until mixture simmers
-Carefully crack eggs into sauce. I started at the edges working my way to the center to make sure there was enough space for all of the eggs
-Cook 5-6 min or when whites are `set'--or longer as was my case--more like 10 but the sauce probably wasn't hot enough to begin with
-Remove from heat
-Sprinkle on cheese
*Serve with crusty bread and maybe fry up some sausages or bacon if you're feeling wild.
**I found that this serves more like 8 than 4 if you serve it with bread but I suppose it depends on who you're feeding

As for the turnovers for lack of a better word: I made this up earlier this year when I was going to a cocktail party and wanted to bring something classier than chips and dip. I had frozen pie crust on hand as well as ham for breakfast sandwiches and it blossomed from there:
-1 package of frozen pie crust (contains 2 pie crusts)
-filling ingredients: ham and Swiss or cheddar, feta and caramelized onions (my fave), mushrooms cooked down with mushroom soup--messy but good if you like mushrooms. I also would suggest but have not tried: spinach and feta, tomato and cheddar, tomato and mozzarella and basil, turkey and cheddar, apples and cinnamon sugar, berries and sugar, etc

-preheat the oven/look on the box to see what temperature to use
-make the filling or get the filling ready. I like doing two different ones and doing one kind for one of the pie crusts and one in the other pie crust (maybe one set with meat and one without?)
-Defrost the pie crust (follow directions on box) and unroll it quickly because it sticks on some kind of floured surface
-cut little circles out of the crust. I used a wide-mouthed cup but if you happen to have a biscuit cutter, like I do, this also works and I use both for little and big ones for variety
-move the circles to a greased cookie sheet. Maybe you can use ungreased, check the directions on the box, I tend to grease with Pam just in case
-fill the circles slightly less than half full with the filling. Seriously. It won't look like much, but really do a little less than half or you won't be able to close them
-fold the not-filled half over the other half and press the ends down with a fork--it seals the little pies and makes it look really cute and way fancy
-bake them according to directions. Like 12-15 min I think?
-Eat them.
*These are great for a party because they're pretty fast and easy, they look fancy, and they're unusual so people get excited. I got lots of compliments on them at my housewarming party.