Last of my summer food endeavors.

As summer has drawn to a close (not officially, but you know), my journey as someone practicing her survival skills of learning how to "fish" has not.

Grilling chicken on my mom's George Foreman grill

George Foreman grills always remind me of Ali, my apartment housemate from when I stayed in Binghamton for the summer of 2009.  She loves her George Foreman grill.  We'd make dinner together using that thing quite often.

My mom asked me to make this chicken - it was super easy.  Just mix in some ingredients for the sauce for the chicken to marinade in for a few hours, and then pop 'em on the grill for about 3 minutes each side.

I made some string beans and rice to go with it, and since I'm not a huge fan of eating or making a salad (for some reason I really dread the idea of putting together a salad, even though it's super easy and you can get really creative with them), my mom had some extra tomatoes and cucumber slices leftover that we used as an almost-caprese (there's supposed to be slices of mozzarella cheese instead of cucumbers) instead of a regular lettuce salad.

Love it - super simple, good flavors, super quick.  Too bad I don't actually own a George Foreman grill to make food with.
   

Chocolate caramel cookies for my favorite driving teacher

These cookies were definitely an endeavor - I had never made any cookies with a filling before, nor have I ever baked with caramel.  But I've been meaning to bake something for my awesome friend Michelle, who, besides being super wonderful and super talented in general, also allowed me to have her as the first person to ever teach me to drive.

It's a cool recipe - you mix walnuts into the batter and refrigerate it before covering a caramel candy into a ball of dough.  I actually made a mistake and found that I was supposed to buy chocolate covered caramel candies instead of plain old caramel candies, so I was worried it was going to mess things up.  Michelle loves caramel!  But alas, it was too late and so I figured I'd try it and see if they'd make any big difference.

The first batch of cookies ended up giving a sticky birth to the caramels out of the bottom of the cookies, so I cut the caramel pieces in half and tried to do a better job of covering the caramels and that seemed to work a little better for the last few batches.  I think they turned out pretty well!

Unfortunately I made these cookies the weekend big, fat, Hurricane Irene came through town, scaring the heck out of NYC and NJ.  I took a risk of baking during the brink of the storm, using the oven with the chance that the power could go out, but they survived, so I feel like I should actually call these babies hurricane cookies.

And since I was moving just after the storm hit, I didn't get to send these out to her until a few days after I'd made them.  Sorry they weren't as fresh as they could've been, Michelle!  

Irish soda bread for my 'last meal' at home

I love my mom's corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and soda bread dinners that we usually have every year on St. Patrick's Day.  She decided to make it this past weekend, though, thinking that since I wouldn't be around, we'd share our St. Patrick's meal together before I left.  She asked me, though, to make the soda bread.  And I told her it was my honor and pleasure :]

I actually made soda bread for the first time up at Binghamton last semester during my senior year.  It was made with whole wheat flour, though...so cool.  I didn't use whole wheat flour for this loaf, though.  So I think it's called soda bread because when you make the dough, you add baking soda to the flour mixture so that it reacts with the ingredients and bubbles before adding it to the rest of the ingredients.  So cool.

Also, while this was baking I was watching Gilmore Girls with Pam and about 30 minutes into the episode I jump out of her bed saying, "Oh no, oh no, oh no!  I forgot to scour the bread!" panicking to my mom, hoping the soda bread would turn out all right.  In a teasing tone my mom said, "Oh no, you forgot to let the Devil out!"

As you can see from the picture, the soda bread turned out all right.  My mom thinks I probably should have baked it a few minutes longer so it's a little firmer, but other than that, it was pretty delightful.  I would have included a picture of my full St. Patrick's Day last supper, but I didn't arrange the plate in a way that looked appealing at all, so I decided to leave it out.  Maybe next time I'll share a picture of my own St. Patrick's Day meal!

In case you couldn't tell, the experimenting won't stop here.  It's been a good summer and I'm looking forward to cooking more!