Cookish: What's for lunch?

Continuing with lunches to take to work or school, here's a dish that can be eaten hot or cold.

Peanut/Sesame Noodles
Ingredients
2 tbs peanut butter
1 tbs tahini
2 tbs soy sauce
1/4 tsp chili garlic sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1 tbs rice vinegar
1 tbs honey
1/2 pkg whole wheat spaghetti
up to 1 cup pasta cooking water
1-1 1/2 cups shredded chicken
1 pkg broccoli slaw
sesame seeds

Mix the first 9 ingredients together for the sauce. Boil the noodles, setting aside 1 cup of the boiling water before draining. Toss the pasta, chicken, and broccoli slaw together. Add enough water to the sauce to make it the consistency of heavy cream. Toss with the other ingredients. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and eat, or refrigerate for lunch the next day.

Cookish: What's for Lunch?

Well, I am back in school now, so I have been looking for things to make for lunch that are good to eat cold or room temperature (access to a microwave is now limited for me!). One of the first things I went to was pasta salad: easy to put together and eat for a week. Here is the latest incarnation:

Ingredients

2 ears of corn, roasted my favorite way, kernels cut off the cob

1 large, ripe tomato, chopped

1 can black beans, rinsed

sliced carrots

1/2 box rotini pasta, cooked & cooled

tomatillo salsa, to taste (1/4-1/2 cup)

salt & pepper

Toss all of the ingredients together and there you go! You can certainly add onions if you are a fan. I don't even really like tomatoes, but since I was going for a quasi-Mexican dish, I figured they were appropriate, and they really were delicious.

Cookish: What's for dessert?

Oh yes, these happened. I call these SugarBomb Cupcakes. These are the Chocolate, Peanut Butter Cookie Dough, Toasted Marshmallow Cupcakes from Joy the Baker. Her photos are much better than mine--go check them out. Also, I had an issue with the frosting. You'll see that hers stays in a nice swirl. Mine started in a swirl, but quickly collapsed. Once you toast them, they form a crust on top, so they don't drip anymore, but it was impossible to frost them and get them in the oven before the swirl collapsed. I'm not sure why. I don't have an electric stand mixer, so I put the whisk attachment on my hand mixer, and it took much longer than 5 minutes, and maybe I should have beaten it even more. The whisk is definitely smaller than the one on a stand mixer, so maybe it didn't incorporate the air as quickly? They were still delicious, but I wanted them to look like Joy's! And they are a LOT of sugar. Next time, I think I will do the cupcakes with the frosting and leave out the cookie dough. And beat the frosting longer, maybe with the regular hand mixer beaters and not the whisk attachment. The cupcakes are awesomely decadent and impressive, though. Highly recommended!

Bookish Review: A Storm of Swords

A Storm of Swords is the 3rd book in George RR Martin's Series. I must warn you, this one is very infuriating at times. Martin kills off some beloved characters in really terrible ways and gets other embroiled in terrible situations. A lot of it is tough to read. There are triumphs as well, of course. Dany, the dragon queen, gains a lot of strength in this one. Another exciting addition to the series.

Bookish Review: A Clash of Kings

A Clash of Kings is the sequel to A Game of Thrones. In this book, the king is dead, as is his Hand, who was labelled a traitor for exposing the truth--that the queen cuckholded her husband with her own brother, so the king's supposed children are not legitimate heirs to the throne. The kings brothers are battling to take over, lords of the other kingdoms are declaring themselves king and/or dividing their loyalties among the contenders. The last remaining heir of the original ruling family has rediscovered how to awaken dragons and magic is reawakening in the kingdoms. In short, all hell is breaking loose and more characters are going to die along the way.

Martin introduced even more characters to keep track of, but this one is another page turner, for sure.

Cookish: What's for dinner?

Thai Noodle Bowl with Shrimp

*adapted from Rachael Ray Magazine

Ingredients

• 4 oz. rice noodles
• 1 can (13.5 oz.) coconut milk
• 1 tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 tbsp. thai green curry paste
• 1 lb. peeled, deveined medium shrimp, cut in half
• 1 pkg of stir-fry veggies*
  hot sauce to taste
• Salt and pepper
• Cilantro and lime wedges for garnish

DIRECTIONS:

1. Cook noodles; drain. In same pot, bring 1 cup water, coconut milk, soy sauce and curry paste to a simmer. Add veggies and shrimp and cook until shrimp are opaque and veggies are crisp-tender. I cut the shrimp in half to make them cook faster and make it seem like there are more shrimp! (but you can leave them whole if you prefer.) Season with salt and pepper and hot sauce. Divide noodles among bowls and ladle soup on top. Garnish with cilantro and lime wedges.

   *I used a package from the refrigerated section that contained broccoli slaw, sugar snap peas, carrots, and broccoli. But you can use any veggies you like.

Bookish Review: Why We Broke Up

I picked up an ARC of this book at a conference. Let me say this: they put some money into this project. The book is quite heavy for its size, which means they used really nice paper. They've also got this awesome marketing campaign: http://whywebrokeupproject.tumblr.com/

The book is the story of a girl returning to her ex-boyfriend all of the mementos of the relationship, explaining to him why she saved each one and why they broke up. Towards the end, when you discover the main reasons they broke up, the book lost a bit of its satisfaction for me because the reversal seemed to come out of nowhere. Given that the entire story is told by the girl, however, and that she was completely blindsided by what happened, I suppose it makes sense for the reader to be blindsided as well--except that the whole story is her looking back, and you would think she'd point out a few more things that should have been red flags (she does point out some, but most are minor). Still, it was an interesting read, though I think I find the tumblr page more intriguing than the book itself.