some creations

These are some of my more recent creations. I love key lime pie so much that made another batch of them and stored them in the freezer so that I could have one whenever my heart desired. This time I hand crushed the graham crackers for the crust so it came out more coarse but still held together beautifully. HOW CUTE IS THIS TINY BUNDLE OF JOY???

Here is a semi-failed baking product, and I haven't baked since... I saw a recipe for baked avocado donuts. I LOVE AVOCADOS. They are probably in my Top 5 favorite things to eat. Of course I was gonna give this recipe a shot, plus I had about 5 ripe avocados sitting in the fridge. Since I don't own a donut pan, I decided to convert into muffins and did not make any frosting. While these muffins tasted quite nice and I loved the way they looked - what a vibrant green color! - the butter + oil that the recipe called for made these muffins quite oily. Avocados, by nature, contain a lot of fat. In these muffins, I feel like next time I will opt to leave out the butter -- 1 cup is really too much.

I know that school is over for most people by now, but here are the last 2 lunches that I made to bring to school this spring semester.

At the time that I made this, the weather was really starting to warm up so I was in the mood for a cold noodle salad. Soba noodles it was! I had a bunch of cilantro stems left over from a previous guacamole feast, so I decided to make a vinaigrette with them. So into the VitaMix went the cilantro stems, olive oil, soy sauce, sugar and balsamic vinegar. Everything was eyeballed until I achieved the tasted that I liked. Other than soba noodles, you can basically add whatever veggies you have on hand. I had carrots, cucumbers and green onions. This would be awesome with some pieces of chicken or tofu as well. This noodle salad was great after refrigeration, so it was perfect to bring to school.

This pasta was created because I had a lot of arugula that I got tired of eating in a salad with. Therefore - pasta! I took a can of tuna and pan fried it in some olive oil and a lot of red chili pepper flakes. This created kind of a paste that was full of flavor. Then I added a 14.5 oz can of fire roasted diced tomatoes (+ juices) and let that simmer down to a sauce. After the pasta was boiled, I added it to the pan with a bit of pasta water and added the arugula. That's when I turned off the heat. The arugula wilted and added a nice spiciness to the pasta. This was very filling lunch for sure.

-J