/cooking

Guest recipe by Gina Macy

Ingredients needed:

• 1 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup baking cocoa
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• About ¾ package of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Soften the butter or margarine (Margarine is way cheaper than butter and makes the cookies not spread out as much when baking) either by letting it sit out or putting it in the microwave. I melt the butter in the microwave so my mixer doesn’t die trying to mix everything, but if you have a badass KitchenAid mixer or something you just need to soften it a little. Mix the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each one, then beat in the vanilla.

In a medium bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Be careful with the baking cocoa because it’s super powdery and messy and gets all over everything. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture gradually (about a cup at a time), mixing well each time. After it’s all mixed together, add about half or ¾ of the bag of chocolate chips and mix with a big spoon. If you add too much there’s gonna be a bunch left over that won’t mix into the dough.

Refrigerate for about 30 minutes or until the dough is easy to handle, otherwise it’s super messy and hard to roll. Depending on how much you melted the butter, you may have to refrigerate it for more or less time. After it’s done refrigerating, start pre-heating the oven to 350 degrees. Take the dough and roll it into one inch balls. This will help the cookies to keep more of a round shape when they cook instead of turning into globs.

Place them about 1 cookie width apart from each other on ungreased cookie sheets and bake for 8-11 minutes. Makes about 40-45 cookies.

Guest recipe by Stephen Glasgow

Ingredients needed:

• 1 16-19 oz. package of tofu
• Flour
• 1 Yellow Onion
• Five Spice (Can be found at Asian markets)
• 1 Bell pepper (You can also add mushrooms and other vegetables or jalapenos to make it spicy)
• Canola Oil (or any oil good at high temperatures, no extra virgin olive oil)
• Sriracha or Garlic chili sauce
• Stir Fry Sauce (I use Hoison or Kun Pao)
• Soy Sauce (optional)

Tofu falls apart easily so be careful while handling. Firm tofu is the easiest to handle but is still fairly soft. Cut the tofu into large strips or sections and place it  on a paper towel or cloth. The cloth is the better choice.

Fold the tofu inside it and place a small amount of weight (like a book) on it to squeeze the remaining water out. Leave sitting for twenty to thirty minutes. Next, cut up the vegetables to your liking and cut the tofu up into smaller pieces. You can make 1″ cubes or triangles or whatever.

Fill a bowl with 1/2 cup of flour and 1-2 teaspoons of five spice, more if you prefer. Place the tofu in the flour mixture and lightly coat them.

In one pan put a tablespoon oil to fry the vegetables. In a separate pan, place a larger amount of oil to fry the tofu. Cook the vegetables to taste. The longer you cook them the less crunchy they’ll be. After pan frying the vegetables add the stir fry sauce of your choice (along with a few spoons of garlic chili sauce and soy sauce, if you like). Cook the tofu, flipping it until it’s browned on both sides as pictured.

Mix the tofu with the vegetables, avoiding the transfer of the oil. Serve over rice or vermicelli.

Ingredients needed:

• 1 package of manicotti shells
• 1 (15 oz) package of ricotta cheese
• 1 1/2 (1 lb 10 oz) jars of spaghetti sauce
• 8 oz of chopped baby bella mushrooms
• 6 oz of fresh, chopped spinach
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/4  cup of minced onion (optional)
• 2 teaspoons of basil
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

First, cook up those mushrooms up on the stove and chop them up after. Preheat that oven of yours to 350 degrees.

Next mix the spaghetti sauce, the ricotta cheese, the chopped up, cooked mushrooms, the chopped spinach, the egg, pepper, 1 cup of the mozzarella, 1/4 cup of the Parmesan, the minced onion (if you decided to use that), the basil, garlic powder and pepper together in a large mixing bowl. It’s not a bad idea to add maybe 1/4-1/2 cup of water at this point. Mix.

Spread about a cup and a half of the mix across the bottom of your baking dish. Then more of the stuff into the uncooked manicotti shells. The easiest way to do this is to just get your (clean) hands in there with the shells – emerge ‘em and just stuff the hell out of them. Place the stuffed shells onto the thin layer of the mixture you already laid. Once they’re all in there, cover the tops of the shells with the remaining (or as much as you want of it) sauce mixture. Top it off with the rest of your Parmesan and mozzarella cheese.

Bake in the oven for about 50 minutes, or until the noodles are nice and soft. Let it cool a bit, then get to the mastication.

Ingredients needed:

• 3 eggs
• 2 slices of bread (toasted)
• 2 slices of bacon,
• Lettuce, cheese, other toppings of choice.
• A dash of milk and butter

It’s not quite an omelette, but it’s also not exactly scrambled eggs. It’s a nomlette, and it’s an easy, tasty breakfast food. Start out by chopping up some lettuce, a few pieces of cooked bacon, and some cheese. Adding diced onions, mushrooms, or bell peppers here is good too. Mix them into something kind of resembling a salad.

Beat three eggs with a little bit of milk in a bowl. Over medium heat in a skillet that’s been greased with melted butter, pour the eggs and let them cook a little. Add your radically unhealthy “salad,” as pictured.

Fold the egg on top of itself, sandwiching the innards. Chop it up with the spatula into squares and finish cooking the eggs. Serve on top of toast with additional cheese and spices as desired. Makes two servings.

Ingredients needed:

• 2 cans of vegetable soup of your choice
• Additional vegetables of your choice
• 4 cups mashed potatoes
• Cheddar cheese

This one’s real easy and can be served as a main dish or a side. Personally I like it too much to eat it as a side, but it’s nice to have the option. It can also very easily be made with meat, although I think it gets a little to heavy when you do.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Start out with two cans of a vegetable soup of your choice. The thicker cut the veggies, the better. If you’re feeling cheap you can use something as low quality as alphabet soup, but to me it’s worth it to spend a few extra bucks and get the good stuff. Strain almost all the juices out of the cans of soup (you can leave a little if you like, but make sure you get rid of most of it), empty the veggies from the soup into a baking dish and spread them around. At this point you can add a pound or two of cooked ground beef, but seeing as how we’re going vegetarian today I’ll add a can of corn instead. This can be substituted with any veggie, really. Peas, green beans, or a mixture. Whatever you want more of, add here.

Next evenly coat the veggies with about four cups of mashed potatoes. Of course, mashed potatoes taste best when you prepare them from scratch, but if you do make the instant kind I find it best to get two packages (2 cups each), each seasoned differently (i.e. one pack of garlic flavored and one cheese flavored) and mix them together. Make sure the potatoes are somewhat thick – make them to runny and the whole dish will end up a mushy disaster. After the vegetables are coated with the potatoes, liberally sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese on top. Mild or sharp both taste good here, so pick whichever you prefer.

Put the dish in the oven and let it cook for about 30 minutes. If you like, near the end of that time you can crank up the heat to broil to brown the cheese. Only do this for a few minutes, if you decide to do it at all.

Remove the dish from the heat and let it cool. As a main dish you can feed about four, as a side even more.

I like cooking. It’s fun, satisfying, and you get to eat the end product. It’s a hobby that’s actually useful, and stays useful no matter where you live, what you do professionally, or who you hang around. My personal skill level is fairly average, which means that I wont blow you away with confusing/stupid terminology. But just in case I do, I’ve included a handy link to commonly used terms over on the right.

My average skill level also means that if I can make it, any numskull can. So if you’ve only ever cooked toast on your own, quit being a loser and try something out. Take it from a single guy – the ladies will love you for it.

Clearly, there’s not much here yet. Keep checking back – there will be soon.