For father's day

For the biggest peanut/peanut brittle/peanut butter - loving person I know, my dad, I made some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies this morning. These cookies are a cross between chocolate chip cookies and classic peanut butter criscross cookies. The peanut butter adds a slightly sandy texture to these crunchy-crispy soft-in-the-middle cookies. A healthy dose of chocolate chips thrown into the batter gives these cookies some gooey goodness. I know they weren't made for me, but I ate some anyway. I love these!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

* 1/2 cup of butter (1 stick), softened
* 1/4 cup of brown sugar
* 1/4 cup of white sugar
* 1/2 cup of peanut butter (I used creamy)
* 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
* 1 egg
* 1 1/4 cup of flour
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp baking powder
* 1/4 tsp salt
* 1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. In a large mixer, cream butter, peanut putter, sugars and vanilla. Add the egg and mix until light & fluffy. In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt - mix thoroughly. Slowly add the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, stirring continuously. Add chocolate chips and combine. Drop spoonfuls of cookie dough on the baking sheet and press the center of the cookie with a fork. Bake for 10-11 minutes.

For a pic, see "For the Love of Cooking's" post of the same cookies at:
http://fortheloveofcooking-recipes.blogspot.com/2008/05/peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies.html

Zucchini-Pineapple Quick Bread

In the newest edition of Cooking Light, the "make-over" recipe featured is for Zucchini-Pineapple Quick Bread. The new and improved recipe cut down the amount of fat and calories significantly. Just reading the short blurb about the bread made me want to try it. Reviewers said that they liked the low-fat version better than the original. Could that really be true? Were they lying??

Well, I've made the recipe, and it's really good! I never tried the orignal, but I'd say that if someone served this to me, I would have no idea it was low fat because it tastes just that good. I give it a big thumbs up.

It's an easy recipe. Here are the players.

Just add the zucchini in with the rest of the batter.

Pre-oven bread. I halved the recipe to only make one loaf- the full recipe makes two.

Soooooooo moist and tasty. I think I love it more than banana bread.

Zucchini-Pineapple Quick Bread

3 cups sifted all-purpose flour (about 13 1/2 ounces)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
2 cups sugar
2 cups grated zucchini (about 1 1/2 medium zucchini)
2/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup egg substitute
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 (8-ounce) cans crushed pineapple in juice, drained
Baking spray with flour

1. Preheat oven to 325°.

2. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine flour, salt, and next 3 ingredients (through ground cinnamon) in a large bowl, stirring well with a whisk.

3. Beat eggs with a mixer at medium speed until foamy. Add sugar, zucchini, oil, egg substitute, and vanilla, beating until well blended. Add zucchini mixture to flour mixture, stirring just until moist. Fold in pineapple. Spoon batter into 2 (9 x 5-inch) loaf pans coated with baking spray. Bake at 325° for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans on a wire rack; remove from pans. Cool completely on wire rack.

Yield: 2 loaves, 14 servings per loaf (serving size: 1 slice)

CALORIES 167 (32% from fat); FAT 5.9g (sat 0.5g,mono 3.3g,poly 1.7g); PROTEIN 2.4g; CHOLESTEROL 15mg; CALCIUM 16mg; SODIUM 151mg; FIBER 0.7g; IRON 0.9mg; CARBOHYDRATE 26.5g

Cooking Light, JUNE 2008

MLF's Polenta Casserole

Polenta casserole with spicy Italian sausage, homemade tomato sauce and thick slices of mozzerella.

This is MLF's famed dish. He's been raving about it for months now. He claims it is one of his favorite foods in the world. Finally I was able to try it for myself last week when he decided to cook me dinner after my trip back from Chicago. It's pretty darn good (even though I made a very simliar recipe long ago), but I'd say this is even better because as you know, food always tastes better when others prepare it for you! And because this is SPECIAL polenta. By SPECIAL, I mean that this elusive polenta cornmeal was sought after for over 1.5 hours and at many groc stores. Poor MLF didn't realize that polenta was made with cornmeal! After scouring every grocery store shelf in Charlotte and enlisting the help of clueless store employees for this "polenta" stuff, he realized he could use cornmeal. Note that Harris Teeter employees!