Chocolate Chip Lemon Coconut Macaroons ...

... or what I like to call "I have homework, so I baked something."

Here is what you need:



1 bag of shredded, sweetened coconut (I used a 14 oz bag)
1/2 cup sugar
6 TBSP flour
4 egg whites
2 tsp vanilla
zest from 1 lemon
splash of lemon juice
Chocolate chips

In one bowl, mix together the coconut, sugar and flour.


Add egg whites and vanilla. (the eggs only look yellow in this picture because of the lighting. Just use the egg whites!!!)


Add the lemon zest and juice. If you don't want lemon, then don't. This recipe actually doesn't call for lemon at all, but I love chocolate and lemon, so I added it.


With a spatula, mix in chocolate chips. The recipe says for 1/2 cup, but I doubt I'm the only one that just dumps the bag in and then says, "okay, that looks like too many, so we're good."

Scoop 'em out onto a cookie sheet and back for about 10 - 15 minutes until the tops and edges are brown and crispy yummy. The smaller the cookie, the less time you want to bake them for.


ENJOY

My Last Semester

My last semester of graduate school started today. I figured that since it was my last semester, I would be able to use this blog for what I meant to use it for - just 500 word blog entries every week. Yeah, well, that's not going to happen.

My schedule:

Monday:
WRTG 2010 = 8:35 - 9:25
Office Hours = 10:00 - 11:30
COMM 6640 = 11:50 - 1:10pm

Tuesday:
Utah Opera/Utah Symphony (Internship) = 9:00 - 2:00pm
Guadalupe School (Work) = 5:30 - 9:30pm

Wednesday:
WRTG 2010 = 8:35 - 9:25
Office Hours = 10:00 - 11:30
COMM 6640 = 11:50 - 1:10pm

SLUG (copy editing) = 6:00 - 8:00pm

Thursday:
Utah Opera/Utah Symphony (Internship) = 9:00 - 2:00pm
Guadalupe School (Work) = 5:30 - 9:30pm

Friday:
WRTG 2010 = 8:35 - 9:25
Office Hours = 10:00 - 11:30

And that schedule is not including everything I have to do for my Masters project. So yeah, no time. But I love being busy, so it won't be too bad.

I almost wish I did have time, just so you could all see my trip through insanity this semester. :)

Why I Need a 4.0 ...

... and why I can still do better.

I am going to preface this post with the following message:

This is not a dig for compliments. This is not a plea for people to reassure me. I don't want any of that. These are my actual feelings and the way my brain works. Throwing out compliments or reassuring me is a way to debase my feelings--an underhanded way to tell me that I am wrong and I shouldn't feel this way and I need to get over it.

So yeah, don't do that.

This is just an explanation, so people can understand me a little bit more.

I got a 4.0 this last semester. Finally. My first one in my masters degree. A big deal or so people assume, but to me, it is what I expect of myself. A 4.0 means I can't be any better. It is the top of the measuring stick when it comes to school.

I can't be any better. But then I think back to all the times that I procrastinated this paper or didn't read that article or should have been working on something but instead I was playing facebook games. And I can be better. I wasn't good enough. I did not do my best. It's really hard for me not to judge myself based on grades (that's a whole different blog post about how we're trained and taught toward the grade). But it isn't just grades. It's just that now that I am in school going toward this degree, that is what it is focused on.

Anything and everything I do is done with the idea that I could have and should have done better. These feelings come from always feeling mediocre when I was younger. Nothing I ever did was good enough, and I was never good enough at any one thing to be great. I could and still can do a lot of things, but I am always stuck in the potential phase. "You have great potential." I got really tired hearing that. I also got really tired of hearing "You could do better," or "Your best isn't good enough," or "Why can't you be more like your sister?" (which my mom doesn't ever remember saying to me, but she did, but not nearly as often as someone else).

My first semester of graduate school, I got a 3.455 - and people praised me. "You did so good for your first semester. That's really really good."

And I'm screaming in my head ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I GOT TWO Bs!!!

My second semester I got a 3.79. Much, much better. Just one stupid B+ in a class that I didn't want to take but had to take anyway. The worst part though is that it was the class I tried my hardest in. Just wasn't good enough.

This semester, yes, I got a 4.0. My overall average is now at a 3.739 (which lets me breathe a bit easier), but I had an easy semester. I only had 2 classes and a few hours of an internship that wasn't nearly as much work as I was expecting. So the work load was less, and my grades were higher, which makes me feel even worse.

Next semester, I have less school work and more real life work, work that won't give me a grade. I have one class (which I'm excited to take) and my Masters Project that I have to complete. I have a 10-hour-a-week internship with Utah Symphony and Opera, I have copy editing with SLUG magazine, I have 8-10 hours a week at Guadalupe School. I'm going to be busy and I am going to love being busy.

But the entire time, with every thing I have to do, I am going to be thinking that I can do it better. I can be better. But can I really? That is the worst part. The self-doubt. Because even when I do my best, I feel that it is not good enough. And without a grade to tell me how well I'm doing, without a grade to tell me that I can't do any better, then I am always going to think that I am not good enough. And that is why I need a 4.0.

So, I don't know if that worked. I don't know if I managed to explain myself, but if you give me a compliment, if you tell me "oh you're so smart" and I look away or mumble something about being better, try not to be offended. I'm working really hard on accepting compliments by just saying "thank you" and not contradicting the complimenter. But in my mind, I need to learn to accept them, too, and know that they are true. In my mind, the compliments are not true. I battle with this almost every day. I don't believe them. I am smart, but I can always be smarter. I do my work and meet my deadline, but I can always work harder. I am mediocre. I can always do better.

My New Year's resolution is to work on this. To be better.

But, but, but ... I TEACH YOU THINGS

I saw this picture on tumblr today.



It makes me sad because while I do my best to teach students how to write, this is the reality of writing in high school and college.

Crepes

I decided to be a bit adventurous.

Crepes!!!



2 eggs
3/4 cup flour (there is only 1/4 cup shown in the first picture, but you need more than that as I discovered AFTER I took this picture)
MIX THE EGGS AND FLOUR TOGETHER FIRST

Add 1/2 cup milk
1/2 TBSP sugar
1/8 tsp vanilla
A pinch of salt

THE BATTER WILL BE REALLY THIN! Most websites and recipes say to let the batter refrigerate for an hour, but I was hungry, so I didn’t.

On medium heat, melt a little bit of butter in a non-stick pan.

As you pour the batter into the pan, swirl the pan around. This takes talent that I do not have, but you want the crepe to be thin. If you use a smaller pan than I do then your crepes will probably end up round. :)

(ugh my stove is dirty ... don't look at that ... )

Let it cook (the top of the crepe will look dry) for only a couple minutes and then flip it over. There should be this lace-like pattern on the crepe. Again, cook for a couple minutes.



This recipe made about 4 crepes for me. I ate mine with jam. You can eat crepes with anything.

Strawberry Lemonade Muffins

I've made Lemon Blueberry and I've made Lemon Chocolate chip, but I wondered what Strawberry and lemon together would be like, and of course, the first thing I thought of was Strawberry Lemonade. I don't usually like lemonade because it's too sweet and not tart enough, but what a better place to be sweet than in a dessert. I looked up a few recipes and decided it'd just be easier to modify/create my own.

And if the pictures don't convince you how good these are, then get this. Eldon, who doesn't like ANYTHING I bake, actually likes these.

Besides what most people already have for muffins, you will need 1 lemons and some strawberries (I used about 15 strawberries, but they are different sizes).



Strawberry Lemonade Muffins

Preheat your oven to 375 and line a muffin tin BEFORE you do anything else. This recipe makes 12 muffins.

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl.


2 eggs
1 cup sugar
(mix those up until it's all nice and light and fluffy but still liquidy)
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp of vanilla
Mix all those wet ingredients together in a larger bowl.

Zest one lemon and add it to the wet ingredients.
Zest is the name of the peel of a fruit. You need a zester to do this, because the holes on a cheese grater are too big. There is so much flavor in the peel of a fruit. That is the reason why I added lemon zest instead of lemon juice. I didn't need extra liquid in the recipe, just the flavor.
I don't know how much lemon zest I added to this recipe, but a small lemon zested almost bare.



Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients slowly and stirring constantly. The lemon zest and the acids in the lemon will make the batter a little thick, but the moisture from the strawberries will balance it out.

Cut up about 12 - 15 strawberries, depending on their size. Again, I did not measure this, and just tossed them in. If you feel like you're going to run out of strawberries when you're spooning the batter into muffin cups, just cut up a few more.



Having the muffin tin pre-lined is a great idea because you do not want your batter to sit too long because of the acids in the lemon zest. Fill the muffin cups to the top. Usually I sprinkle the tops of the muffins with sugar to create a crackled surface, but since I am putting glaze on these, I did not do that this time.



Bake the muffins for about 20 - 23 minutes. Remove from the muffin tin and allow them to cool all the way. If you don't, the glaze will melt right off the muffins.



LEMON GLAZE

1 cup of powdered sugar
Juice from one lemon
Some lemon zest

Mix all of that together. Again, I didn't measure any of this, but you want the glaze to be pretty thick so it stays on the muffins. If it's not, add more powdered sugar.



If you're curious about how much flavor is in zest, mix the powdered sugar and the lemon juice together, taste it, add the zest and then try it again.

Once the muffins are cool, cover the tops with the glaze and add a slice of strawberry for looks and a bite of sweetness. I stabbed them with a toothpick because the strawberries were sliding down the side.





Enjoy!

Peach Cobbler Muffins

I decided to try something different. I hope you all enjoy.

This recipe takes a while because of the extra steps, so don't attempt it if you don't have time to kill. I've been procrastinating homework, so I have time to kill.

I didn't like any of the recipes for Peach Cobbler Muffins that I found online, so I adapted my muffin recipe to suit my needs. First, I made a crust, because a crunch topping is always awesome on Peach Cobbler.

The Topping

2 TBSP of melted butter
1 cup of crushed up cereal



I forgot to measure how much Life Cereal I crumbled up, but it made about a cup once it was all smooshed. You can use any kind of cereal for the crust, or Graham Cracker if you prefer. I just had Life at home today. The smaller the pieces and the more butter you use the more the crust will incorporate in the muffin mix. So I kept the butter amount low and kept the pieces of cereal larger than if I was doing this for some kind of cake crust.

Line a muffin tin and put about 1/2 TBSP of the crush mixture in each liner, just enough to cover the entire bottom. Keep the rest, because it will be sprinkled on the top of each muffin.




The Muffins

I used my basic muffin recipe for these, which I'm sure many of you are already aware of, and added some spices for that Peach Cobbler Fall Dessert Yummy Taste.

In a small bowl, mix together:

2 cups flour
2 tsp of baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp of cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp nutmeg

In a large bowl, mix together:
2 eggs (whisk them before adding other stuff)
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla

Add the dry stuff to the wet stuff.

1 large peach, diced (I don't ever peel mine, just toss the fuzzy stuff with the pieces. I also use large peach chunks, because it's SO good to just bite into a large piece of peach). Use a spatula to fold in the peach pieces so they don't break apart.



Fill the cups to the top, sprinkle with left over topping. Press the topping down a bit into the batter, so more of it sticks and it doesn’t come off after cooking. Bake for 25 minutes at 375. Makes about 12 muffins.





The Vanilla Glaze



1 cup powdered sugar
1 TBSP of milk
2 tsp of vanilla

This glaze is pretty thick. If you want it thinner, just add more milk.



I hope you Enjoy!!!