I’ve been very busy but don’t worry. I’ve been cooking and eating. Plenty. Here are some quick updates.

I’ve been on a quinoa kick (with the rest of the health conscious world) and this was such a great, easy recipe. Shauna made it first and I couldn’t get it out of my mind so I found a close recipe that I tweaked to my taste. A little less oil and a quick drizzle of balsamic. Delish.

So, this was much more unappealing than it looks. Which is hard to believe, I know. This is the very blog-famous crock pot buffalo chicken. Simple as pie! Chicken breasts, a bottle of hot sauce, and a packet of ranch dressing mix. I should have known better … how could this possibly turn out good? Well, easy: It didn’t. I added a dollop of sour cream and some chopped scallions to try to break up the saltiness of this dish and ate it open-faced on a soft bun. Still awful. Sorry.

And finally, I attempted to make the Levain Bakery chocolate chip cookies for my co-worker’s last day. This is definitely one of those recipes where you really come to acknowledge the concept that: cooking is more of art, while baking is more of a science. Yes, it certainly is. And my two batches came out completely different. I pretty much followed this recipe (subbing the 1 cup of light brown sugar for a 1/2 cup light and a 1/2 cup dark) without the walnuts. The only difference between the left and right above being the right were scooped out with ice cream scooper and the right were hand-formed. I used an entire 5 lb. bag of chocolate chips in the making of these. Totally worth it.