Smoked Salt & Pepper

This was a super easy, throw-together-10-minutes-before-dinner, fridge left-overs kind of meal.  Reid was out-of-town, and it was difficult for me to put in the effort to make a usual dinner so I peaked in the fridge and found kale, eggs, and chicken broth.  Yay! A meal! I did a little googling and found a similar recipe on  http://www.yumsugar.com/Spicy-Garlic-Kale-Poached-Eggs-30574463 .  Most recipes poached the eggs separately, but why dirty another pot? I just poached the eggs over the kale.  It was a tasty, healthy and simple dinner!  Serve with some toast so you can sop up all that yummy egg yolk! Kale and Poached Eggs Ingredients: 2 cups kale, ribs removed and cut into 1/2" strips 2 large eggs 1 c. chicken broth 1 tbs. olive oil 1 tbs. butter 2 cloves garlic, sliced 1 tsp. paprika, smoked if you have it salt 2 tsp. red pepper flakes Directions: Bring a large, straight-sided pan to medium-high heat; add olive oil and butter. Sau...

One of Reid and my indulgences is Auntie Anne's pretzels.  That buttery crust with flecks of salt is the perfect companion to our outlet shopping days or traveling through the airport.  Last week when we were coming back from Cancun, we literally followed the smell of the pretzels to grab a quick 'sninner' (snack-dinner) during our layover.  It's always fun to watch the workers twirl the pretzel into the pretzel shapes, too!  Since pretzels are basically fat covered carbs, I thought I'd try to make it at home and see if I could re-create the deliciousness without quite as much caloric guilt.  I had the intention using water to get the salt to stick but-Surprise! Butter does make everything better! At least we didn't accompany these with the 360 calorie lemonades we usually get at Auntie Anne's... Copy-cat Pretzels Ingredients 1 c. bread flour 3 c. all purpose flour (can substitute whole wheat flour), , plus more for kneading 1 pkg (1 1/4 tsp) a...

I bake these cookies fairly often, but hadn't posted the recipe here because I just didn't think about something this simple, but my mom told me I should post it because it's such a yummy chocolate chip recipe.  The recipe originally came from my friend, Laura.  I think she got it from a children's cooking recipe book.  I've also made these playing around with adding walnuts or heath bar chunks (which was really tasty!) Yummy Chocolate Chip Cookies Ingredients 1/2 c butter 1/2 c brown sugar 1/2 c white sugar 1 tsp. vanilla extract 1 egg 1 1/2 c flour 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 a 12 oz bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips  Directions Melt butter in a medium bowl and mix in both white and brown sugar. In a separate small bowl, beat together egg and vanilla.  Combine into sugar mixture. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Add the butter mixture to flour and stir together. Stir in chocolate chips (and/or walnuts...