1) Go to my sister’s blog to enter her contest. It’s her 500th blog post, and you have a chance at winning one of these adorable goats that I made:
or

2) I’ve been trying to cook more. We’ll see how long it lasts, but I recently made my own naan, french toast, and stuffed bell peppers:

The peppers were inspired by a friend’s blog. Sadly, I didn’t have any avocados, so the photo is lacking a little green, and my stomach was missing avocado. Still, tasty, and not too difficult, even for someone like me.

3) I’ve also been keeping up with a photo of the day again. I haven’t been posting them here, though I probably should. You can see them on my flickr page, but I’ll give you today’s. The classic, “I’ve run out of ideas” daily photo of my dog. I love her.

So that’s it for now. I’m excited about tomorrow – we’re off to see Tori Amos. It’ll be great.

Pit and cut the peaches, add some sugar, and lots of heat and stirring.

Once it gels and sheets a bit, you pour it into warm jars and close them. You boil them for 10-15 minutes and then they’ll seal when you take them out.

A peck of peaches and some extra raspberries (plus 32 cups of sugar) make an awful lot of jam:

We ended up making two batches that day – the first was a pure peach jam that we boiled a little too long. It turned out rather tasty, but it really ended up more of a caramel than a jam. It doesn’t so much move if you turn it upside down, and it’s hard to actually get out of the jar. But, it might be good microwaved and put on ice cream.

The raspberry peach stuff was a little better, but still not so spreadable.

It was fun though. Not sure whether I’ll try again anytime soon, but I think in the meantime I have enough “jam” to last me awhile.

I love avocado sushi, but it’s not always available to me; I don’t have a lot of take-out places near me, and it’s inexplicably more expensive at the grocery store than at restaurants, so learning how to make it myself has been on my list for some time. So on Sunday I finally decided to take the plunge, and here I present my first-ever sushi making experience.

Ingredients (enough for 2 avocado rolls and 2 bacon-avocado rolls):

• 1 1/2 cups sushi rice
• 2 cups water
• 1/3 cup seasoned rice vinegar
• 1 medium avocado
• 6 slices bacon
• 4 slices of nori
• bamboo mat for rolling

Sushi needs good rice. You want a short-grain rice for sushi rice; it gets stickier than its longer-grained friends. Cook it according to the package. Mine was 1.5 cups rice to 2 cups water. Bring it to a slow boil, and cook (covered) for 20 minutes, or until all the water is absorbed. Take it off the heat and let it cool for 10 minutes. If you don’t have pre-seasoned rice vinegar, you’ll also want to make that mixture during this time: rice vinegar, sugar, and salt. I took the easy way though. After the 10 minutes of cooling, fluff the rice with a paddle or spoon, and slowly add the rice vinegar to it. Let it cool, and ta-da! Sushi rice! (I admit to being a little impatient and not letting it cool before making my first roll.)

Once you have your rice you’ll probably want some fillings for your roll. I chose avocado (and thought bacon would be a brilliant addition), so I started with those. I’ll probably branch out into some other things (cucumber, shrimp, etc.), but avocado is a good starting point. I fried up some bacon while cooking the rice, and sliced my ripe avocado into thin strips:

Rice? Check. Fillings? Check. Now to assemble your roll. Take your bamboo mat (surprisingly inexpensive at my grocery store), and you’ll probably want to wrap it in saran. The rice really is sticky, and cleaning the mat doesn’t sound like fun. Take a slice of your nori (shiny side down) and place it on the mat.

Take some rice and spread a layer on the seaweed. (My package said 2 cups of rice, but I never measured.) Be sure to leave an inch plain at the top to help seal the roll. Place your desired fillings in the center of the rice:

And roll! Thumbs at the base of the mat, and your fingers to help keep the fillings from sliding out. (If your fingers get sticky, you can rinse them in some diluted rice vinegar. It helps.) It’s a little awkward at first, but I was surprised that even my first roll turned out.

Slice and serve!

Yum!

It wasn’t the fastest to prepare, but it was so delicious, and 1 avocado made four generous rolls. Definitely worth doing every now and then. Shoot. I’m making myself hungry writing this. I want more! In retrospect, I’m not sure the bacon added enough to the sushi to be worth the extra effort, but it was all tasty.

Ingredients

Dry:

• 1 cup soy protein powder
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 3 cups oats
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 to 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Wet:

• 1 package silken tofu
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup pineapple juice

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 350º and lightly oil a 9″x13″ baking pan.
• Combine all the dry ingredients.
• Fully mix together the wet. If you use soft enough tofu, you might be able to fork mash it, but I used a stick blender. (I had purchased merely “soft” tofu.) You can also play around with the liquid. The original recipe didn’t add any juice, and had yogurt instead of tofu. I’ve seen other recipes add fruit juice though (often apple), and I thought it would help with the consistency. I used pineapple because I had some. Some recipes also call for oil (1/4 cup) instead of the peanut butter. There’s room to play and to find what works for you.
• Add the wet to the dry and stir until they’re completely combined. I used my hands for this, to knead it all together. It really gloms together, but it takes a little time to get all the dry ingredients to stick.
• Pat the doughy-mixture flat into the pan and bake for 15 minutes
• Take it out at 15 minutes, cut it into whichever shape you’d like, and move those to a baking sheet. Return to the oven and bake until they’re done. (I did another 15 minutes, and they were just golden on the edges.)
• Let them cool, and wrap them tightly in cling wrap. I’m keeping half of them out (probably for a week), and I’m freezing the other half.

Nutrition Info
If you cut these into 16 bars (which I did, although two of them are rather large), I’ve calculated the following nutrition info (rounded, and courtesy of NutritionData.com):
Calories: 250
Fat: 9g (3g saturated)
Carbs: 31g (3g fiber, 14g sugar)
Protein: 14g
Not a bad start for a breakfast.

Initial Thoughts
I cut a bit off one of my too-large bars to try it, and my initial reaction was, “They’re okay.” I’ve had tastier commercial protein bars, but I think it’s a valiant first attempt. They’re a little bland – I’d probably up the cinnamon content, or maybe find some other spices. I might slightly increase the sugar in the next batch too. I’ve got a couple variations I’d like to try as well – with chopped up dried fruit instead of chocolate, maybe add some nuts, etc. This recipe is a good starting point, but I don’t think I’ll make this exactly the same way again.