I made blackberry muffins today, since Safeway has blackberries for $1 this week. However, I wanted something relatively healthy, so I made them without oil or egg yolk.

1/2 cup fat free milk
1/4 cup + 2 tsp unsweetened applesauce
2 egg whites
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 container (~6 ounces) blackberries

Beat egg whites and mix in milk and applesauce. In a separate bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Combine the liquids and dry ingredients, stirring until well mixed. Stir in blackberries. Fill cupcake cups and bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.

They came out really tasty.


Cooked blackberries look more like raspberries than blackberries. Weird.

Changes I would make after eating 3 (they’re really good and I can’t stop ahhh):
Cut up the blackberries so the muffins don’t end up with huge chunks in them.
Grease the pan and bake them without the paper because they are really difficult to peel off.

Lately I’ve been making tasty sandwiches for lunch with ham, spinach, and cheddar cheese. They’re really simple and really delicious.

Also, our rent is going down next year by about $240/month. That’s pretty nice.
The $120/month I save will almost cover food for me… since I’ve been cooking more often (I’ve eaten out once in the past 2 weeks), I’ve been spending far less on food and eating healthier. I suppose part of this is that I plan my meals around whatever is on sale that week and always save at least 50% on my bill each shopping trip, and stock up on nonperishable basics (soup, canned veggies, pasta) when they go on massive sale. Yay food.

Tomorrow I will be making salsa chicken II: baked chicken breast covered in spicy salsa and cheese. (Last time was salsa verde over chicken drumsticks.) I should go buy some rice to go with that or something.

…I wonder what would happen if I substituted applesauce for oil in things like rice-a-roni. This might be worth an experiment to see how terrible it is.

Life is awesome.

As promised, life has received another update that finishes off my college years. Ah memories.

I accomplished nothing today other than running, working on life, eating, and sleeping. I feel so lazy.

I’ve been making lazy pasta lately…
Buy ground meat on sale: lean ground beef or ground turkey. Get the large packs and you can save a lot of money. Mix it with spices to taste (I like various herbs and a generous helping of chili flakes) and make into meatballs (about an inch in diameter). Bake at 375 for 20 minutes or so. Immediately freeze.
Now, when you make pasta, just throw the meatballs in while the pasta boils. Put pasta sauce in a bowl (even if it’s cold from the fridge) and pour the hot pasta and meatballs over it. Let sit a bit to warm the sauce, then mix and eat.
It’s no more work than making pasta normally (less if you’re used to heating the pasta sauce beforehand), and I find that the meatballs make it much more interesting (and tasty) than plain pasta with sauce.
(This is what Ian used to do with sausage back in college.)

I also like making spinach pasta:
Sautee spinach, onion, and mushroom in a medium pot with olive oil until well cooked. Boil pasta (penne for this, probably) simultaneously. Add cooked pasta to vegetable mixture with some premade spaghetti sauce (Classico Carmelized Onion and Roasted Garlic works well with this). Stir, cook briefly to heat sauce, eat. It’s really simple and tasty.

Mmmm food.

Edit: Life has another update. Yay life.

I was bored so I tried my hand at making fresh pasta today. It was much easier than I was expecting and turned into tasty shrimp linguini.

1 cup whole wheat flour
2 eggs
Pinch of salt
8 precooked shrimp
1/4 onion, chopped
Spices to taste
Dash of olive oil
Vodka sauce (or other sauce, if preferred)

Mix flour and salt with one whole egg and one egg white. Knead thoroughly until uniform. Dough will be a little sticky, but it should stretch easily and not break. Cover working area in flour and roll out dough one half at a time until really, really thin (this will take a while… took me about an hour to roll out all of the dough). Cut into strips of desired width.

In a pot, stir chopped onion and spices in a dash of olive oil until cooked. Add shrimp and cook until hot. Set aside.

Boil pasta for 3-4 minutes or until tender and chewy. Drain and immediately toss with a bit of Vodka sauce. Cover with additional Vodka sauce and shrimp/onion mixture. Serves 2.

Om nom nom nom. I could have made the sauce from scratch too, but meh. Good sauce is often more expensive to make from scratch, especially if you buy stuff like Classico on uber-sale.

Also, I need to buy a rolling pin. I rolled out the pasta with an empty glass bottle.

I’ve added some portraits of Matt and Ally from yesterday to portraits. Whee.

Yay for jumping Jayne:

Yay for amazingly tasty salmon and scallops dinner:

Yay for people eating: