This is pretty much all about food.

Hi, everyone. I fell off the blogging wagon again. But this is fine, because here I am! I may or may not rock you like a hurricane. Here’s what’s good:

I made new and improved oatmeal pancakes.

My biggest issues with last week’s pancakes were that they were kind of dry and not really sweet enough for me, but I thought I could solve both of these problems by using applesauce instead of a chopped apple. I found this recipe online, and they were SO MUCH BETTER. In addition to using applesauce, the recipe calls for the oats to be ground into powder (which is really easy to do in the blender). I also added a scoop of protein powder and an extra tablespoon of egg whites (bring it up to a total of 9 T, or 3 egg whites). The recipe made 3 pretty large pancakes, which I was perfectly happy to eat all by myself (Kevin got real pancakes, so he wasn’t jealous). I topped them with PB2 powder mixed with water:

If I hadn’t been limiting my sugar intake I might have mixed the PB2 with some maple syrup or honey, but the pancakes were really fine without it. They were a lot softer and lighter, and more evenly sweet thanks to the applesauce. Next weekend I think I may make a huge batch so I can have leftovers for breakfast during the week.


I had tomato soup for breakfast on Tuesday.

I’m usually pretty strict about having breakfast items for breakfast so it’s weird that I chose this, but I really couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to have (other than oatmeal pancakes, but I didn’t have time to make them). I added some Laughing Cow cheese wedges to it, mainly for the protein, but it made it extra good. I also had a slice of toast with ricotta cheese for extra protein.  Then, today I had a turkey and mozzarella quesadilla for breakfast.

Madness.



There were crazy awesome burgers for dinner.

Okay, lemme break it down for you. As you can see, there is cheese on top of the burgers (chopped up string cheese, but that’s fine). But, I’ll just have you know that there is ADDITIONAL cheese inside the burger:

This looks like it's a tiny burger, but in reality I had just eaten most of it.

That is literally double the cheese, my friends.

Also. Let’s take a closer look at this ketchup bottle, shall we?

It would not be exaggeration to say that this is by far the fanciest ketchup I’ve ever had. I mean, look at that gent (Sir Kensington, I presume)! He’s got a monocle! Packaging aside, the ketchup itself is less sweet and more tomatoey than normal American ketchup (but also less vinegary than I remember Irish ketchup tasting). It also has a texture that seems closer to tomato sauce than to what I normally associate with ketchup. I thought it was really good and completely worthy of its place upon my crazy awesome burger.


I jumped into microwave cake.

I forgot to take a picture of mine, but it looked sort of like this. (Source).

Microwave cake is a phenomenon that I have been actively avoiding for quite some time.  I mean, come on, really?  Cake in the microwave?  That's like eggs in the microwave.  With the exception of vegetables, I pretty much feel like the microwave is for heating up already cooked things, not for cooking raw things.  But, I was in the mood to make something on Monday night, and without an oven my options are limited.  Kevin was intrigued by the idea of microwave cake, so I decided to give it a shot.  After Googling a bit I finally decided on this recipe for 5-minute chocolate cake, mainly because I had all of the ingredients.  I made it for Kevin, but I had a bite and it actually wasn't bad.  I also made a quick chocolate sauce out of cream and chocolate chips (basically a loose ganache) to go on top.

Tonight, moved mainly by a desire to use up the last little bit of ricotta cheese in the fridge, I tried to adapt the chocolate cake recipe into a lemon-ricotta cake recipe.  I basically kept the recipe the same except for leaving out the cocoa powder and chocolate chips, reducing the amount of milk, and adding the ricotta cheese and lemon juice.  For this one I made a lemon glaze out of lemon juice and sugar:

This one was fine, but not as good as the chocolate one.  I felt like the lemon flavor was not enough to cover up the taste of the vegetable oil in the batter.  The texture was also a little off, slightly sticky.  Overall, though, these cakes weren't bad, and I'm kind of glad I started trying out microwave cakes.  This doesn't mean I'll start trying microwave eggs, though.  I'll never believe those are good.