cooking ala mel

healthy recipes and the occasional craft

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Classic Guacamole

I am officially done for the semester!  Hooray.  Now, I’m able to get back into working out regularly; the combination of my foot aching every time I exercised and my hectic schedule gave me way too perfect of an excuse to give myself a bit of a hiatus.  I’m totally okay with that, though – it’s always good to give our bodies time to recover and rest, and now I’m feeling better than ever!  I’ve been playing around with my kettle bells (I liked this workout a lot), biking, doing yoga, and adding a few weights here and there.

Another thing that’s fantastic about being done for the semester is cleaning.  Last night, I scrubbed down the entire kitchen – I can’t wait to mess it back up again making new recipes!  I plan on attempting to tackle the rest of the dusting and vacuuming today.  I’ve never been so excited to clean.

I figured I’d start with a quick and simple recipe to kick off the summer – guacamole!  I was surprised when I saw that I don’t have any guacamole recipes in the archives; be prepared for at least a few throughout the summer to remedy that!  To start it off, I went with my favorite classic guac.

This guacamole is simple and fresh, with lots of tangy lime flavor and a hint of spice.  All you need are some avocados, roma tomatoes, onion, garlic, lime, jalapeño, and a bit of cumin, cayenne pepper, and salt.  Here’s the lineup:

Pastel Chocolate Brownie, Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake Cake (Gluten Free)

This weekend has been fantastic.  The weather has been beautiful, so I’ve been able to go on a few long bike rides – some bad sunburn and extremely sore muscles are keeping me from my bike today, but there’s plenty to do around the apartment, so I’m not missing out.  I’ve had ample time to clean, organize, and have some fun in the kitchen.  Today’s laundry day.. for the first time since Easter!

Speaking of Easter.. this is a cake I made over Easter weekend.  My cousin recently graduated from nursing school with her BS/RN, so we celebrated that while also celebrating Easter.  She has Celiac disease, so I was really excited to have the chance to make a gluten free cake for her!  I had been eying up the cheesecake cakes over at Recipe Girl for a while, so I knew I wanted to make something similar but gluten free. [Read more…]

Baked Cinnamon Sugar Yeast Donuts (Gluten Free)

This semester is finally just about over.  I have one exam left on Tuesday, but it’s for an elective, so I’m not too concerned about it.  To say this semester was the hardest of my school career would be an understatement.  I am so happy to have survived – it got to the point that the grades hardly mattered anymore.  After a two and a half hour long exam yesterday writing out compounding procedures, the thought of writing out a recipe seemed a little bit daunting.  But after a nice bout of sleeping in this morning, I think you guys deserve a new recipe after a long month of pretty much silence.

 

I made these donuts when I had a major craving for cinnamon rolls.  It was getting late in the afternoon, though, and I wanted the sweet cinnamon sugar flavor right then, so I opted for donuts.  And then I made them gluten free with almond and coconut flours, since that always makes for a healthier donut.  Since I wanted cinnamon rolls, I decided to use yeast in the donuts, to give them that flavor.  Topped with cinnamon sugar, this was just what I needed after a long day of exams.
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