I have been cooking during the week however! I’ll blog soon about some of the great recipes I’ve made from the Vegetarian Times Cookbook soon, this post however is all my entry for the Peanut Butter Boy’s new Peanut Butter Exhibition: Fruits and veggies. We let me tell ya this is right up my alley. Almost everyday I eat peanut butter with fruit and veggies, peanut butter and banana oatmeal, or vanilla yogurt mixed with peanut butter and frozen raspberries, peanut butter and celery, you get the gist. I knew I had to really get creative for this though. Lately Mark has been requesting pie, one of his favorite things in life, that got me thinking about using peanut butter and fruit in a pie. I had decided to make veggie burgers and grilled corn on the cob for dinner one night when it the perfect ending to a summery meal hit me: s’,mores pie of course, but not any s’mores pie, a layered s’ mores pie made with my special s’ mores ingredient, peanut butter!!

For as long as I can remember I have loved to add a smear of peanut butter to my graham cracker along with the chocolate and marshmallow, and in more recent years I have been making my s’ mores with dark chocolate, the combination is pretty much perfection. I think we had dark chocolate peanut butter s’ mores for dessert for a couple weeks straight right after we got married when it was still freezing in Oklahoma. To incorporate the fruit element of this pie was easy, I had about 5 very ripe bananas begging to be used up in something and I remembered seeing recipes for banana s’ mores before ( in fact, check out this delish looking recipe it looks like it would be so fun to make if you have company over to grill out) so I set to work. The pie turned out better than I even imagined! Super yummy and Mark loved it as well, in fact I think in his current rankings in only falls below his grandmother’s famous chocolate pie and I just dont think I can compete with those childhood memories

Recipe:

One homemade or store bought graham cracker pie crust. I made my own by just googling “graham cracker pie crust recipe” and making one that got good ratings on allrecipes.com.

Over a double broiler melt 1 cup of dark chocolate chips, I added about a tablespoon on milk to these and stirred constantly. Pour the dark chocolate into the bottom of the crust, spreading evenly to the edges.

Next,

combine 1 cup of natural peanut butter,

5 bananas that have been previously peeled and frozen ( you could probably skip the freezing if you are short on time because the whole pie goes in the freezer, but the consistency may not be as good),

1/2 liquid sweetener, I used brown rice syrup but honey, maple syrup or agave would probably work great as well.

1/2 block mori-nu firm tofu, this just helps out with that silky pie texture but I bet you could sub another banana for it if you aren’t into tofu like me haha. Also, adding some cream cheese would instead would give it a fun cheese-cakey element.

Process the peanut butter, bananas, sweetener, and tofu if using, in the food processor until smooth. Pour this filling on top on the dark chocolate layer. Cover the pie with foil and freeze for two hours. Take pie out of the freezer and let thaw 15 minutes. Smooth a layer of marshmallow fluff over the pie. I really love Suzanne’s Ricemellow Creme, its so yummy and vegan to boot! Turn the oven’s broiler on to low and place the pie under it for about 4 minutes. Take out and there you have it, melty s’ mores perfection with an incredible peanut butter banana filling! This pie tastes pretty sinful, but is actually pretty good for you, the ripe bananas really are magic when it comes to sweetening baked goods and pies without adding too much sugar.

Sweet summery s’ mores success!! Like that alliteration? Haha, I can’t wait to see/ make some of the other entries! Check em’ all out in a couple weeks to see what other food bloggers came up with at The Peanut Butter Boy’s blog.

The weekends will continue to be jam packed with weddings and vacations, but my weekdays will be gloriously care free. My last free summer! This time next year I will be studying for that pesky little test called the bar exam So given that I have the time and the will I’ve decided that this summer I’m going to cook my way though The Complete Vegetarian Times Cookbook. This cookbook is one I have had in my collection for the past year or so and it is really a great one. Yet, I have this problem where when I am thinking about what I want to make for dinner or whatever I look to blogs or online recipe sites like RecipeZar or AllRecipes instead of using my beloved cookbook collection, and a pretty large collection it is, I love them! Recently though, I have made several online recipes that just didn’t turn out and I think it is because it is easier for people when publishing online to omit steps or ingredients or instructions or cater them to their ovens quarks. Not that I haven’t found wonderful recipes online, I have found and saved many that I love, but its time for me to get back to basics and cook the tried and true cookbook recipes. So…..that long-winded lead up leads me to my point: I’ll be cooking my way through my cookbook collection, starting with the complete vegetarian times.

There are 600 recipes in this cookbook, but I’ll only be making the ones that Mark and I think sound good. I’m really excited to step outside my comfort zone of looking up recipes that I want to make and start letting the cookbook authors lead me! My venture began last night with one of the risotto recipes from the book, it turned out sooooo great, i loved the addition of the leaks into the risotto. As and I can’t resist healthy-izing everything I make by just a bit if I can I used half arborio rice (risotto rice) and half short grain brown rice to get us some whole grain in. We really couldn’t tell the difference at all, it was super creamy and delish.

Risotto with garlic, onions, leeks and mushrooms.

I also made banana chocolate chip bread and served it warm with ice cream for dessert, but we ate it too fast to remember a photo, oops!

My Friends Tati and David are taking a trip to Boston in the near future and I wanted to put up some pictures from some of the wonderful places Mark and I went to eat while we were there. The East Coast has such fabulous seafood, it was incredible and as my Dad likes to sometimes say about great food while we are traveling “not available in Oklahoma” haha.

The first place I have to rave about is Oleana in Cambridge. This place was awesome from start to finish. We shared three Meze plates, one entree and each got dessert, woah! Hopefully the pictures of the food will help explain how good this food was!

Whipped Feta with sweet and hot peppers served with some of the best focaccia bread we have ever tasted.

Fried halloumi cheese with fried kalamata olives atop a bed of spinach.

Our favorite dish of the night: Spinach Falafel with Tahini, Yogurt, Beets & Cress.

The shared main course: Wild Salmon with Mustard Labne, Crushed Peas, Walnuts & Quinoa

My incredible dessert: Sicilian Almond Cremolata & Warm Chocolate Panino. This is actually a non-dairy ice cream but you would never know it, I would highly recommend it to Tati, my little lactose intolerant friend The Chocolate panini it came with had melted nutella inside and it was incredible dipped in the almond ice cream.

Mark got the Frozen Meyer Lemon Soufflé & Pistachio Katmer with Pistachio Milk Glacé & Hibiscus Syrup, but my picture of it turned out really crappy so I wont post it to belittle how good it was!

Our other favorite restaurant of the trip was Neptune Oyster, it was so fun to just sit up at the bar, have a beer and order some seafood. They give you a little slip of paper with the descriptions of all the oysters and you mark down how many of each kind you want, kind of like at a sushi restaurant. This was our first experience with oysters and they were actually pretty good! We just didn’t enjoy the really salty ones as much, ick.

The other joke of this trip was how much lobster Mark ate, I believe he had two or three lobster rolls, and we even split these awesome lobster deviled eggs at one lunch spot! I believe the following picture was his lobster roll from Stephanie’s on Newbury, a great shopping break, although he said the best lobster from the trip was his roll from Neptune Oyster.

Well thats all I’ve got for now, wish me luck in my cookbook endeavors, and Tati if you want to know more about what we did in Boston besides eat give me a call, it really is such a fun city!

How much do you love that bow and the little heel?!! These you be perfect with jeans or a dress on a dreary day. I think I would love them too much to go sloshing through any mud puddles in them though

So I have a confession. I like bananas. If you know me, you know this is a bold statement, because I hate admitting when I am wrong, but for the sake of delciousness I will. I have had a lifetime hatred of bananas, the texture of them really made me want to gag and I forsaked anything that included them as an ingredient. Thats right, no banana bread, smoothies with bananas in them, no PB & banana sandwiches…etc. In fact when my best friend Michelle reads this blog entry we may no longer be bffs because we shared in this passionate hatred of bananas together and I can only hope she can accept this new banana tolerating ( and in some recipes banana loving) Allison.

My life changed when I married Mark, the banana lover. They started going on the grocery list. I have been reading for a while about the “whipped banana” method on several of my fave blogs for a while now and while making breakfast for Mark on morning I thought I would try it out for him. In to the oatmeal pot went 1/2 a sliced up banana. The pot boiled, I reduced heat, I stirred like crazy….and like magic the banana melts into the oatmeal giving it a wonderful creamy consistency! From here I added in the best of all PB, a heaping spoonful of PB & Co.’s Dark Chocolate dreams. It looked great. It smelled great. I didn’t want to taste it because of the nasty banana, but I am in the habit of never giving someone something to eat unless I have tried it first to see if it is edible. OK, OK so maybe I actually did want to try it. I did. It was a revelation! Sooooooo good!!

My love affair with my little yellow friend didn’t end with oatmeal cookies though. Oh no. There’s banana chocolate chip cookies, and strawberry banana smoothies, and frozen banana bites with PB. Notice however that all of these new loves require the banana changing from its original state into a new consistency. I guess what I really hated all along was that mushy texture and not the taste. So my dear Michelle I hope that you will still love me and I wont be demoted from MOH in you wedding this summer. In fact, perhaps you would like to join me on the dark side? Maybe this will persuade you:

Banana Oatmeal Pancakes topped with Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Syrup and strawberries.

Whenever I make something  that Mark really likes I know that it is a supper success if he says “I would eat this everyday.” He says it without realizing that it is his highest compliment, but I know it is because he is so seriously enjoying his food and excited about it. I pointed this out to him during our fun little breakfast for dinner tonight, that I know something isn’t really great unless he gives me the “could eat it everyday” line. He went on to say that a new level of praise was obviously needed, the “I would eat these twice a day” ranking, which these pancakes fell under

So enjoy all you banana loving friends. Who knows maybe someday I’ll even make something Mark could eat three times a day.

Pancakes:

What’s on the wish list today? Anthropologie’s “Leading Role” Dress. I love the color and the ruffles, perfect for summer nights out!

We are adding on a master suite, so we meet with the architect and contractor tomorrow afternoon, I can’t wait to get started and really make it perfect for us!

I made us a yummy celebratory homeowners dinner tonight. Tofu Piccata with grilled asparagus and roasted red potatoes. One of my favorite meals when I was growing up (before I stopped eating red meat) was veal piccata. My brother and I always wanted my Mom to make that with fettucini alfredo, so it was really fun to make this and think of y happy childhood It also got good reviews from Mark so I would for sure make it again. I’m already thinking about other yummy dishes using this breaded tofu method!

The recipe is based on this one from the blog Eat Me Delicious. What I did differently was to use two eggs work of egg replacer instead of the tahini to coat the tofu, then dipped them into seasoned brown rice bread crumbs from there. I used the sauce recipe but added more lemon because I take after my Mother and I’m a lemon fiend!

What else fun did we eat this weekend?

I made Bethenny Frankel’s “Naturally Thin” Banana Oatmeal Cookies as a reward for Mark when he came home on Friday from finishing up the hardest test block yet! I also gave a few to my parents for breakfast because they are healthy enough to stand in for a granola bar. The recipe is on the GMA website here.

I have also been making a lot of smoothie “ice cream” lately, which pretty much means I just done add as much liquid to the blender with the frozen fruit and only blend until it is the consistency of soft serve and then eat it with a spoon, so refreshing, yum!

In fact, I think I may have to go make one for dessert right about now!!

After putting in a good deal of thought into what I wanted to make (peanut butter and cheddar? Peanut butter and eggs in a souflee form? peanut butter and apple pie?) Mark pished-poshed these ideas and told me to keep thinking. Last Saturday night I finally came up with a scrumptious little creation: Peanut Butter and PIZZA! Yes, indeed peanut butter and pizza are a match made in culinary heaven.

Hereeeeeee it is, a fabulous thai pizza featuring peanut butter.  I find a lot of Asian peanut sauces to be not quite peanutty enough a lot of the time. Well I fixed that problem right up. Here’s what I did:

Spicy Thai Peanut Butter Pizza

1 pizza dough ( I made my own whole wheat dough in my bread machine)

1/2 cup of the peanut sauce (recipe follows, use what is left over for dipping the pizza crust into of course)

1/2  chopped spinach leaves

2 shredded or finely chopped carrots

1/2 cup  bean sprouts

2 chopped green onions

1/2 cup to 1 cup of grated mozzarella cheese (you don’t want to add a ton of cheese because it will start to cover up the great exotic flavors)

1/2 chopped cilantro

Here’s what to do:

1. Spread the peanut sauce onto the dough like you would marinara sauce on a normal pizza.

2. Sprinkle the spinach, carrot, bean sprouts, green onions, and cheese  onto the pizza.

3. Bake in a preheated 450F oven until golden brown on top, about 10-14 minutes.

4. Sprinkle the cilantro on top of the pizza.

Spicy Peanut Sauce

1/4 cup agave nectar or honey

1/4 cup smooth peanut butter

2 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon sesame oil

2 or 3 teaspoons minced fresh garlic

1 teaspoon powdered ginger

3 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes ( We like it spicy! Feel free to tone this down to 1 tsp.)

Making this pizza was so much fun. I love love making up new recipes. I hope that it will be creative enough to win the fabulous prize from The PB & Co. but I’m also so excited to see what other bloggers came up with! Please go check out the PBB’s blog, I promise you will leave your laptop headed to your pantry with a spoon looking for your good old friend PB

Mark finishes up another set of med school tests tomorrow and I’m so excited to have my husband back, I have felt like a single lady all week because he has been locked up studying all week. Looking forward to a good celebration dinner out with my parents tomorrow night!

1) I got married on New Years Eve to the love of my life! Here is us kissing at midnight under the fall of flutterfetti

2. We went on a fabulous honeymoon to Maui!

3. We are in the process of buying a house! We close on April 12 and I’m so excited for the decorating process to begin. Photos to come soon!

So, now the we are generally all caught up, the time for blogging has returned. I have really really loved cooking for Mark and I, it is so much fun to have another person to try recipes out on. I make dinner for us pretty much every week night and look forward to it every day. It is just so relaxing at the end of a busy day to come home and spend some time in the kitchen. Yesterday’s CEiMB was my pick and I decided on Miso Cod. Here is the link to food Network to see Ellie’s recipe .  There is a wonderful Japanese restaurant named Nobu, my family has been to the one in Dallas several times and really enjoy it. One of their signature dishes in the Miso Cod and my younger brother Logan and I are big fans of it so I thought this recipe would be a great one to try. However, being the huge lover of salmon that I am, I decided to cheat on the recipe and sub wild salmon for the cod because I like it better. I’m so glad I did this. It turned out great! Logan, Mark and I all really liked it and I would make it again.

Next time I make this I would alter what Ellie did just a little bit and bake the fish for 4-5 mintues first and then finish it under the broiler on low for around 5 minutes to give it more of that wonderful crunchy top that we love on the cod at Nobu. The flavor of the miso was very good though. I also have been rolling my own sushi lately and last night made us veggie rolls and asian sauteed spinach for the side dishes. I forgot to get a picture of the sushi! Boo! Logan did have a really good idea though, he thought that some extra miso sauce would taste really good as a dipping sauce for the sushi and I agree that it would be great!

I’m hoping to have a productive school weekend as there are only 4 weeks left until law school finals. Ugh I feel like I just took finals!! However, I am soooooo excited for this summer that I say bring it on

As Mark also has to study for his Med School tests that start next week we have decided to spend Easter here instead of going to visit family. That leaves the Easter celebrating to me and I’m excited to whip us up our own little holiday lunch after church on Sunday. I already have the menu planned out but I wont post about it until everything have been made/tasted. Hope everyone has a great, hopefully springy weather, weekend!

As far as Ellie’s Chili goes, I though it was really good! Thank you to the blog I’ll Eat You for hosting this week, go over and check her blog out!  I am a recent fan of cumin and loved it in this recipe! I subbed out veggie crumbles for the meat and l love a chili with lots of beans in it. My secret awesome addition to the recipe was to serve it with a big dollop of garlic hummus on top instead of sour cream…yum!! I cant believe I have never done this before…now I’m going to be putting hummus on top of all sorts of soups and chili! Hope everyone is getting ready for a wonderful holiday season Its pretty cold here today in Oklahoma, Stay Warm Everyone!!

Hopefully I’ll get this worked out soon and be able to catch up although law school finals and my wedding are quickly approaching leaving me with not much spare time to blog. I am still avidly reading all my favorite blogs even though I haven’t had time to comment, just know that I’ll be back blogging in full force with pictures as soon as I can! Oh and congrats to all the bloggers that won FoodBuzz awards! You guys are such an inspiration and I hope that someday I can be there myself!!