cooking ala mel

Creamy Greek Yogurt Mac & Cheese

August 15, 2013

This mac & cheese has become the most popular recipe here on cooking ala mel, with good reason! This is one dish that we make over and over again for how delicious it is, how quick it is, and how it’s a bit better for you while still maintaining it’s comfort food status! I love how easy it is to customize – we’ve made many, many variations since this was originally posted back in 2013!

This week, I’ve been a little bit of a zombie. I started my inpatient rotation for school over at the children’s hospital in Buffalo, and the 6AM wake-ups have been a bit of a shock to my system. It’ll get me more prepared for school, since we have a good bit of 8AM classes this year, but boy, am I tired.

With how exhausted my body has felt, I have been in no mood at all to cook dinner, so I’m all about easy things! Last night, we made a huge tray of nachos in the oven with leftover mexican chicken. Yeah. Nachos for dinner. But then there are quick dishes like this one that are so perfect – comforting and creamy, and not totally bad for you.

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DIY Chocolate Almond Milk

August 13, 2013

Well, well. Our internet has been down again (second time this summer), so I’ve been doing lots and lots of reading. No better way to finish the summer, right? While it has been super frustrating to not have internet when I have a good bit of things to do (an assignment for school due tomorrow, for instance), I’ve been trying to make the best of it. I’m currently sitting at school writing this blog post, since I needed to do some research for my assignment. A bit of an inconvenience, but the cable guy is supposed to be here at some point today to fix the issue. Woo!

Alex likes to have golden grahams for breakfast on the weekend, but he’ll only use chocolate almond milk to eat them with. I usually just buy it at the store, but he was out, and he didn’t let me know until he needed it (typical of him, haha), so I decided to finally try making my own. It was super easy and so tasty!

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Decorating with Prints (Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Wine Themes)

August 11, 2013

Before my parents came up to visit, I had to rehang a few pictures that fell down from the humidity recently (I usually use those little command hooks, but they haven’t been working lately, so nails it is). As I was hanging them up, I realized that I really wanted to update them. So I spent a good portion of my day today picking out what I wanted and making my own prints.

We have a pretty decent sized bar area currently, with a corner shelf filled with wine-making supplies, beer, and my Zevia collection, a mini-fridge fully stocked with beer and topped with various liquors (& liqueurs for baking), as well as a 28-bottle wine rack (a few spaces shy of being full). I had two Harry Potter quotes hanging over top: “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good” and “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” Because we obviously are getting way into wine (and we buy way too much), I knew I wanted a wine themed print. I decided to go with teal (my favorite color – can you tell?), listing out as many types of wine as I could recall (that I’ve actually tried before).

I love having the Marauder’s Map password over the bar area, but I wasn’t much of a fan of the colors (parchment colored.. totally gets lost on our cream colored walls). I kept that quote for the second print, just changing up the style and colors. For the “bar area” prints, they’re both 8×10″ to fit into frames.

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