Two Recipes: I was hungry.

So, unfortunately there are no pictures this time around. I was hungry, and in focusing on the food I was planning to eat, I forgot to take pictures for you. Bummer, right?
Technically, one of those food items isn't actually food. It's a drink, because I'm hormonal and was having cravings that couldn't be denied. (That's a lie, they could be, I just didn't feel like it.) I was craving a chocolate peanut butter milkshake. However, as usual, we lack ice cream. So, I made chocolate peanut butter MILK.
(I would like to take this moment to state that blenders are AWESOME.)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Milk (because people can't figure this out on their own)
Serves 1.5

a lot of peanut butter
a lot of chocolate syrup
a lot of milk

Directions:
1. Combine and blend!

Don't you love one-step beverages? Unfortunately, now that I've discovered this, we're going to go through peanut butter reeeeeeally fast and I will no longer be on a HFCS-free diet (Hershey's Chocolate Syrup has HFCS, unfortunately. This is among the many things I love to hate about it). Add a banana and swap out the milk for soy milk and you can KIND OF pretend that it's healthy. Kind of. Not really. But we can dream, right?
Okay, so, onto something healthier.
We all know that I am a devout lover of mozzarella, yes? Well, I am. I've been drooling over this recipe for months (minus the capers, not big on capers), and decided today that I was going to roast some leftover peppers that were about to go iffy. So, in an act of bad judgment, I decided I was going to roast them over a stove burner. Like a marshmallow. (I can hear family members laughing already.) Well, let me just say that is the wrong technique and we're not going to try that again. So instead I took a different approach and ended up with something completely different from what I was aiming for.

Mixed Pepper Saute, Without Capers
Serves 2

1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
1/2 yellow bell pepper, diced
1/4 yellow onion
2 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
black pepper
1/2 cup mozzarella, shredded
grapeseed oil

Directions:
1. Dice all peppers and toss into a lightly oiled pan on medium-high heat.
2. After about two minutes of occasional mixing, added diced onion, and sprinkle liberally with black pepper. Stir gently and then ignore it for a minute or two.
3. Smash two cloves of garlic, dicing as fine as possible. Add to the pan and stir, lowering heat to medium-low.
4. Continue moving veggies around until the garlic is aromatic and slightly cooked and golden yellow, but not brown. Brown means your garlic is burnt, and therefore terribly bitter.
5. Remove from heat, serve on two plates, and top with mozzarella as desired (you know I'm a little heavy-handed with the mozzarella), or eat plain.

Now, this is very different from Smitten Kitchen's dish in a lot of way. No vinegar, more garlic, different oil (no big deal there), no capers, and no parsley. If you don't like your food to be very garlicky, one clove of garlic is fine, but I'm a total garlic junkie. Parsley would have been a good idea, but I was winging it and didn't think of that. If I have fresh parsley to work with next time, I will definitely consider the addition. For now, I'm happy with it.
My audience (Carolyn) rated this as a "cook again" dish.
Considering that she isn't big on peppers or onions, that's a high compliment.

A Sweet Weekend Snack

It's pretty, isn't it?

Mmm, snacks.
We all love snacks, right? I know I do. I'm a notorious snacker.
This little recipe combines two things I find myself craving most: peanut butter and chocolate. However, on the plus side (the "let's feel less guilty for eating this" side), it also uses fruit! So, while reading Instructables today (about food, of course) I found myself wanting snacks. Yes, snacks. I had already had lunch and so forth and it's too early for dinner.
I wanted something sweet. Something tasty. And, of course, something with enough mass to fill me up a little bit. What I really wanted was essentially a peanut butter s'more, but we have no graham crackers (mmm, graham crackers would be good on a banana).
So, meandering around the kitchen (as I often do), I found myself gravitating towards bananas. I like bananas. They're sweet, they're fairly filling, and they make for a decent blank slate. Conveniently, bananas go well with both chocolate and peanut butter.
So, I'm not going to give you a recipe, because if you can't figure this out by the picture then you should really consider getting some help for that. (I would say try something easier, but this is about as easy as it gets. Just as easy as toast or a PB&J.)