Celebrations!

Photo stolen from my sister.


Folks! I have a few reasons for celebrating:

1. I'm done with finals! And guess what? I'm not taking summer school!
2. Summer is here! The temperature in San Francisco is above 68 degrees.
3. My allergies aren't bad at all this year.
4. I feel great!

What to do with all this free time and good weather? I actually have a long long long list of all the things I want to do. So what do I want to do first? I'll tell you via a proposal.

Proposal:
I avoided a lot of friends and people during the time that I was taking classes. Now that classes are done, I'm crawling out into the sunlight with my great white pasty skin, saying "Friends? Where have you all gone?" In an effort to look for old friends and new ones, I want to bake cookies.

If anyone who reads this blog would post a comment on some of your plans for this summer, I'll use a random generator to pick 3 people. Then I'll bake each of the "chosen ones" a dozen of chocolate chip cookies and mail them to the "chosen ones." Just to be clear, that will be a total of 36 cookies (12 x 3), not a total of 12 cookies (4 x 3).

So, what are your summer plans? Be it something huge like "I'm going to buy an island and make myself king" or something tiny like "I'll learn to bake bread," just tell me!

The TL;DR version:

1. Comment about your summer plan
2. 3 comment monkeys will get chosen randomly
3. Each chosen comment monkey gets 12 chocolate chip cookies
4. END DATE for commenting: TUESDAY, 5/15/12 AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT!!!

Hack 1: Be the only one commenting, that way you'll get all 36 cookies.
Hack 2: Live in the Bay Area. I'll deliver it to you in person and we can have an awkward conversation.


I repeat myself a lot.

Velvet Pork Stir Fry

My boyfriend asked me if know how to velvet meat. The answer to that question was "No, who do you think I am? Some kind of fancy pants chef?" Nevertheless, it isn't a bad idea to learn to velvet meat, so I looked it up. I got this recipe from Serious Eats.

Oatmeal Lemon Blueberry Scones

If you want to impress people, make them scones. They won't know how easy it actually is! Biscuits and scones are pretty easy, believe it or not. Making biscuits from scratch, from start to finish (minus the baking time) takes about 10 minutes. Scones take a little bit more time, but it's totally worth it if you want to eat a bunch of scones.

Red (Kidney) Beans & Rice

My neighbor, Chris, gave me his mom's "Red Beans and Rice" recipe back in November 2011. I've made it a few times since then, and I've altered it to my liking, but I put the original recipe (that Chris sent me) at the bottom of the post.

Cloth & Dagger

Hi guys! I'm hijacking The Saucy Choppers to plug in a project that I've been working on.

clothanddagger.com



That's all! I hope you guys are having a great weekend!

Beef and Broccoli

I've been super busy with work lately, and haven't really had time to cook elaborate fancy-pants meals. But lucky for you, that means this recipe will be really simple. Yay. I've been making a lot of beef and broccoli because it is seriously the easiest thing in the world to make. The only think that might be hard is getting the Oyster sauce if you don't have access to an Asian grocer.

Kale Chips

Kale chips have been the buzz on the food blogosphere for quite sometimes, but it seems rather odd to me, so I didn't make any effort to try it. One day, I was at the Ferry Building downtown San Francisco when this all natural food company was giving away free kale chip samples. Curiosity told me to just take the little paper cup. As I nibbled gingerly at the crunchy leaves with a slight hint of salty cheese, I thought to myself "LeTran, I think you made a mistake ignoring this kale chip trend." So, here I am, making kale chips, following the trend.

Minty Oreo Cheesecake Brownie

This is the illegitimate love child of three recipes. In addition to those three recipes, I also bastardized it with a little of my own madness. Oh yes, this brownie is a dirty dirty brownie.

My boyfriend requested that I make this Triple Layer Fudgy Mint Oreo Brownie except he said to make it really fudgy. I know fudgy brownies! I decided to borrow the minty oreo idea, modified this brownie recipe from My Baking Addiction as the brownie base. I'm not a big fan of the white chocolate/marshmallow tops of the Triple Layer Fudgy Mint Oreo Brownie recipe, so I decided to top it off with minty cheesecake from this cheesecake brownie recipe also from My Baking Addiction.

My sister sent me an IM that said:

"Omg your brownies are too much ... I'm going to have a heart attack and die."

So yeah...this will also be known as the Heart Attack Brownie.

Are you ready for this monster?

Lemon Bars

(Click on photos for larger images)

I actually made these lemon bars the day after I made the lemon strawberry cheesecake squares because I had so many lemons. Don't worry, I brought the lemon bars over to my friend's house along with the cheesecake squares.

Lemon & Strawberry Cheesecake Creme Brulee Bars

(Click on photos for larger images)

My mom has a lemon tree that grows a lot of lemons. The Chopping Block's mom has three lemon trees! Do you know how many lemons that means for us? A whole lot of delicious lemons! I saw these cute little lemon cheesecake squares on Lauren's Latest, and I thought what a good way to use up some of my lemons! I doubled her recipe to get 32 squares! Whoa! I bought them over to a friend's house to share, so don't judge!