Mommy Lester's Pasta Salad

In Chicago with Busty. Needed to make some pasta salad -- Mommy Lester's signature stuff: tri-color rotini, broccoli, balck olives, cucumbers and Italian dressing -- 'cause we're going to a little get-together BBQ thing. I tried to convince Amanda to put in some garbanzo beans and bell peppers, but she wouldn't budge on the recipe. Not experimental at all! We played some pop culture / anything goes Take Two Scrabble. And we had some beer. Good times. I love life.

6/21/09 Pasta Salad and Take Two Scrabble with Busty, Nate and Jake from Molly O on Vimeo.

Amelia's birthday!

This morning I made cranberry walnut banana bread, cake brownie cupcakes and haystacks for my friend Amelia's birthday. Used Gawker (a Mac stop-motion program) to record my time in the the kitchen baking, fixing my lunch to bring to work and doing the dishes.

It's a surprisingly fast little video for the time I spent in the kitchen, with the interval at 1 frame taken every 30 seconds. I'm just glad it didn't catch me doing anything too embarrassing.

Amelia's Birthday: Experimental Cookery StopMotion! from Molly O on Vimeo.

You might remember my previous attempt -- arguably a failed attempt -- at haystacks a few posts down. The good news is that I had the recipe wrong! My Aunt Tammy uses PEANUT BUTTER (about a cup) and butterscotch chips. -- Not BUTTER and butterscotch chips like I tried last time. Epic fail! This time they were delicious.


The cupcakes were great, but -- don't tell anybody -- straight outta the box.


The banana bread is an old family recipe (that we got out of a favorite cookbook). Seriously, the best banana bread ever. It was perfect, but I let it get a little crispy around the edges ... because I was uploading the stop motion video and sort of forgot about it. Oops! That's the risk you run when you never set a timer in the kitchen. I know the inside will be delicious.



While the goodies were baking, I made a quick salad to bring to work tonight: spinach, cherry tomatoes, turkey (though I prefer Genoa salami), garbanzo beans/chickpeas, walnuts, cranberries. I bring along one of those little spritzer salad dressings -- the raspberry vinaigrette is so good.


So that was my morning in the kitchen -- really super fast!
Oh, and Happy Birthday, Amelia! =]