Awesome Easy Brownies

Thanks to Linda on allrecipes.com for this excellent recipe, whoever and whereever you are!

Easy But Excellent Brownies:
-3/4 c butter
-4 oz unsweetened chocolate squares (4 squares at 1 oz each) or more to taste*
*I added a few spoonfuls of unsweetened cocoa powder
-3 eggs
-2 c sugar or more to taste
-2 tsp vanilla extract
-1 c flour
-pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Grease and flour a 9x13 baking pan
3. melt butter in a double boiler or microwave
4. Add chocolate, let sit for thirty seconds or so until it's melty and then whisk until smooth
5. In another bowl, whisk the eggs with a fork
5. Add the chocolate/butter, sugar, vanilla, salt, flour and mix until combines
6. Taste and add more sugar or cocoa powder as needed
7. Spread into the pan, sprinkle chocolate chips on if you are cool like that
8. Bake for 25-30 min, depending on how hot your oven runs (mine runs hot and took a little less than 25 min)
9. Do not make these at 6 pm before you've had dinner. Woops!

Another Sandwich

Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm really into sandwiches. Anyway, this is a variation on a grilled sandwich and I'm very pleased.

Another Sandwich:
-bread
-yummy cheese (I used a lovely cheddar that I got from Vermont) (grated)
-olive oil
-mustard
-honey
-tomatoes (sliced)
-white onion (roughly chopped)
-turkey/ham/whatever lunch meat you like
-garlic (a chunk of it)

-Heat a nonstick pan
-brush/rub the outside of bread with olive oil
-put one piece in the pan, oiled side down
-spead mustard on the upward facing side
-meanwhile add the onions to the pan and let them soften up
-add the cheese on top of the bread
-add the tomatoes
-add the lunch meat
-let cook until the cheese is melty and the outside of the bread gets toasty
-spread mustard and honey on other piece of bread and add that on top of the rest of the sandwich
-brush olive oil on the outside of the other piece of bread
-flip the whole sandwich over and press it down
-once the other piece of bread is toasty, take it off the pan
-rub the garlic on the outside of both sides of the bread
-eat with a nice salad and some wine

Apple Desserts

This time you get a two-for-one deal!
I made this fantastic dish: [http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/10/mollys-apple-tarte-tatin/] which was delicious. I've never had or made a tarte tatin, but it's now one of my top favorite desserts without question. I did have two issues, however: the crust was a little doughy (but that was likely me since I think I added too much water and tried to fix it) and I had about twice the amount of apples needed. Now maybe this was a result of my pan, but I don't think so because the dough fit on top nicely. I've had this problem several times from Smitten Kitchen where I'll end up with too much frosting or more batter, etc, etc, so who knows.

Meanwhile, I had read a recipe for a pear tarte tatin with a red wine caramel sauce that looked fabulous. I was more in the mood for apples, however, but I figured I could still incorporate the red wine caramel sauce into the above recipe. I started making the red wine syrup (red wine simmering with a cinnamon stick in it) but I soon realized that my pan was too shallow to add more liquid that I already had in it. Since the wine was already infusing, I just went ahead and tossed in some more spices and decided to make it into a sort of mulled wine so it wouldn't go to waste, heh. Once I realized I had way too many apples, I decided to chop them up a bit more and see what happened if I cooked them in the wine and spices. Well, this was one of my better ideas because they turned out fantastically. I conveniently also had a spare frozen pie crust in my freezer so I got that out to thaw. I added some sugar to the wine and turned up the heat and cooked the apples down until the wine was syrupy and the apples were soft. I then added them into the pastry and baked them

Red Wine Apple Pastries:

-3-4 peeled and cored apples—brayburn/whatever—anything you’d use in a pie

-half a cinnamon stick

-half a bottle of red wine

-a shake of ground ginger

-shake of cardamom

-shake of nutmeg

-shake of cloves

-few shakes of pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon sugar

-half a cup or so of white sugar

-tablespoon of butter

-brown sugar for end

-frozen pie crust (1 crust), thawed

-heat red wine and cinnamon stick over med. heat until bubbling and cook it for a bit to reduce it

-add all spices

-drink some to taste it (add honey when drinking it and pretend it's mulled wine)

-add apples and sugar

-cook it for a while over med high heat until the wine turns syrup-y and reduces a lot

-remove from heat

-cut pie dough into little circles

-fill will a small spoonful of apple mix plus a pinch of brown sugar

-crimp edges and cut slits in top

-bake at 400 degrees for 10-15 min

How To Make A My Little Pony Costume From Scratch

Halloween is tied with Christmas for my favorite holiday. I mean seriously, how can you not love a holiday where you get to wander around in costume and get free candy from strangers?! This year, thanks to a fantastic suggestion by Quinn, I decided to be a My Little Pony. I have a very large collection of My Little Ponies...yes, I still have it...from when I was little and have kind of always been a fan.

I got really excited about dressing up as one, but then I realized it might be a little trickier than I had expected. I went through my closet and noticed that I had a light blue long-sleeved shirt and light blue leg warmers, light pink tights, and lavender leggings. When I think of MLP (My Little Pony), I think of pastels, glitter, and rainbows, so I figured I should just pick whatever pastel I had the most of and go with it. That left me with the blue shirt and leg warmers since I figured leg warmers would work as a nice fat pony calf. From there I figured I could do black "hoofs" (black socks and shoes, black gloves) with things I already had, and all I'd really need to stress about would be the mane and tail. I must admit I got a liiiiittle too into my costume (no surprise there), and decided that I needed a rainbow mane and tail. I actually googled images of MLP and there really is a light blue pony with a rainbow mane and tail called "Rainbow Dash." I started my quest for a rainbow mane and tail by checking out ebay for rainbow wigs, figuring there would be a ton of them. Well, not the case. There were several David Bowie-esque rainbow wigs that just would not work and other than that, the cheapest one I could find was about $30. I'm having to be pretty cheap these days since I only have a part-time job (BUT I HAVE A PART TIME JOB!!!) so $30 for only one wig (and I'd need two--mane AND tail, remember) plus shipping/handling is so not worth it. Not finding real wigs made me a little bummed, but I figured I could check out the Bins and Goodwills and maybe find something to work.

At the Bins (for those who don't know, it's a huge HUGE Goodwill in se Portland where you buy most things by weight) I found this weird light blue cropped joacket with sparkly sleeves (hellooooo pony!) but not much else. I checked out the Goodwill Superstore on SE 6th as well and there's where my costume really came together. I got cute little light blue shorts and then I found the wig jackpot. I already had a long hot pink wig and at that Goodwill I found a weird wavy green one with a curly mullet top, a curly orange one, a red with red glitter wig, silver and purple wig, and some little wigs attached to combs. I got them all and probably, total, spent about about $20 (including Bins things). I figured I could cut the wigs up and make them into a rainbow.

I puff painted rainbows onto the hip/butt of my little shorts and then began chopping up the wigs to make the mane and tail. Cutting the wigs was a lot messier than expected since the hair gets all over the place, so I grabbed a trash bag and cut on top of that to make cleaning up easier. I cut the wigs first in half, and then in half again. Once I had them all broken down a bit, I layered them together to find the best-looking way to arrange them. I wasn't totally sure how to best attach them since I didn't really think glue would be that successful and I don't have a sewing machine. I decided to just try to stitch it by hand. It worked surprisingly well. After quite a bit less time than expected, I had my tail and only had to attach it to something! As my neighbor pointed out, people will probably pull your tail on halloween, so I decided not to attach it to my shorts. I found a weird belt made up of connected metal pink circles and just stitched the tail around the circle really tightly. I'm sorry the belt wasn't blue, but pale pink is enough of a pony color to work.

As for the mane, I had already planned to put my hair in a row of pony tails down my head. I tried this out and then stuck one of the wig-combs into my hair between the pony tails and it worked fantastically. I then went out and grabbed some combs at Fred Meyer (who knew they even sold combs there?!) and super glued wigs to the combs. Once those were dry, I stitched them down and it worked really well.

By this point, my costume was just about complete. I was only missing clue tights or leggings. I looked all over and really couldn't find the right color, so I just grabbed some fishnets and worse sheer stockings underneath (I've done this for a bunch of halloweens when I wanted fishnets but I didn't want to freeze). For make up I did glittery eyes with a ton of mascara, blush, and pink lipstick. I wore a little MLP on a string around my neck that I got from McDonalds and I wore these clear plastic star earings that lit up, and a big light blue ring. I finished it off with a ton of glitter hair spray in my wig and I looked pretty fantastic, if I do say so myself.