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" strips2 large eggs1 c. chicken broth1 tbs. olive oil1 tbs. butter2 cloves garlic, sliced1 tsp. paprika, smoked if you have itsalt2 tsp. red pepper flakes

Directions:

Bring a large, straight-sided pan to medium-high heat; add olive oil and butter.Saute garlic and red pepper flakes until fragrant, about 1 min…

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 flour3 c. all purpose flour (can substitute whole wheat flour), , plus more for kneading1 pkg (1 1/4 tsp) active dry yeast…

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 butter1/2 c brown sugar1/2 c white sugar1 tsp. vanilla extract1 egg1 1/2 c flour1/4 tsp salt1/2 tsp baking soda1/2 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 or heath bar chunks or whatever else del…