This weekend's "busy kitchen" included:

Coconut macaroons, mainly because I had a bag of coconut left over from another recipe that I needed to use. I had never even tasted a coconut macaroon before. I think these are alright. They are chewy and sweet like the center of an almond joy.

I am seriously considering buying some roasted almonds, pushing them down into the center of each gooey macaroon and then dipping each macaroon in melted milk chocolate and letting them dry to see if I can turn them into homemade almond joys. Wouldn't that be awesome?!

I'll share more on this project later. I have to find and buy the almonds first and then figure out how to dip things in milk chocolate. But I have a hunch that dipping things in melted chocolate will just come to me naturally.


I made a batch of spicy black beans. I came up with my own recipe for this since no recipe online appealed to me totally. I sauteed onion, minced garlic and a jalapeno (seeds included) in some olive oil in the bottom of a big pot. Then I added several cans of chicken broth and the quick soaked beans and boiled them for about two hours, adding more broth and some water as they cooked to keep the liquid level up. I also added ground cumin, salt, ground cayenne pepper, ground chipotle pepper and more salt to the broth as they simmered.

They turned out well, but my family is not as into the heat as I am being pregnant. Next time, I may use less jalapeno and ground pepper for their sake. I may also use less broth and more water. These beans are pretty salty and they could do with less.

But, it's been nice having beans made and in the fridge and ready to be heated up. We've had them for three meals already, with corn chips, in flour tortillas and in toasted corn tortillas.

I tried a copy-cat recipe for Chipotle's lime and cilantro rice. The rice came out very sticky, more like mashed potatoes than rice. I will do some reading to see what I can do, if anything, to fix that. But, as it is, the rice isn't inedible so I plan to store this in the fridge and eat it with the leftover black beans above for lunches.


I made another batch of salsa. I used this recipe this time. I added white onion at the beginning instead of green onion at the end, I added more salt than the recipe calls for and a little extra dried pepper this time, too. Tip: I cut the dried peppers up with scissors before I put them in the food processor. I've done this recipe more than once and I have found that the peppers don't break up into small enough pieces if I just throw them into the food processor whole. And I left out the fresh garlic, but that was totally by accident. I didn't even realize this till way later, but without the garlic, it still turned out alright.

I tried this recipe for cinnamon rolls twice. Twice! But my dough didn't rise either time. I talked to my friend who gave me this recipe. She also lives in Connecticut and she said she turns her oven on while the dough rises to keep her kitchen warm and she soaks her yeast in warm water for a few minutes till she adds it to the dough. I plan to try those tricks later this week and see if I can't get my dough to rise that way.


I made a big batch of rustic chicken minestrone. Dwayne was able to take a big container to work today which made me very happy. We've agreed that the less he goes out to eat on work days the more healthy he will be and the more money we will save. And there is still some of this soup left over for my and the girls' lunches this week, too.