Carrot Cake (or cupcakes) with Cream Cheese Frosting

I'm going to start this with a giant apology for the 2 month hiatus in posting- I survived the worst semester ever, I've moved and my best friend got married last weekend, so life was a wee bit busy! On the plus side, I'm now on the other side of all that and even though classes have started again, I can't imagine it will be nearly as bad as this summer. I have 3 recipes ready to go from the summer, so hopefully some rapid-fire posts will make up for the two months I was absent.

New kitchen to break in!

Baked French Toast

Brunch is one of my favorite meals to make, and eat! I can't really explain why, but brunch food is always delicious- maybe it's because I can combine my favorite breakfast and lunch dishes without getting weird looks? Whatever the reason, brunch is awesome and really good french toast is high on my list of things to order-- and this recipe now makes it high on my list to make.

I've been completely enthralled with the World Cup these last few weeks. So far I've refrained from having the live ESPN feed up on my laptop during classes but my weekends are suddenly resembling college football in the fall. After a disappointing US loss yesterday, several of us got together this morning to watch the Germany-England game, which I used as good excuse to try out this recipe! French toast isn't the usual sports watching fare, but it went over very well and I maintain that unless you're actually tailgating at the game, it's completely reasonable.

Roasted Tofu with Couscous

I'm sure some of you out there saw the title to this post and groaned. I know a lot of people out there have very poor perceptions of tofu as a mushy, tasteless, foam-like substance, which is quite unfortunate. Tofu, when made well, is firm, chewy and full of flavor, and hopefully this recipe will inspire some of you to give it a shot. If you're already a fan of this version of soybeans, then hopefully this will give you ideas of new directions to take it in.

Tofu is essentially a blank canvas, it can become and taste like almost anything you want it to. While I'm still a little skittish on using it in desserts (I highly doubt I will ever find a tofu-cheesecake recipe worth posting), it's a really great way to add variety to your protein sources. For what it's worth, tofu is also awesome for you -- very low in cholesterol and sodium, it's a good source of protein, calcium and iron. Good luck finding 10g of protein for 88 calories anywhere else! All of that adds up to a diet-friendly food that can be made to fit any palate.

Portuguese Sweet Bread (Päo Dôce)

Hey look! Andrew's making a second post!

When I signed onto this blog I assumed that I would have more time to myself than medical school apparently allows me, by which I mean that med school consumes my whole life. Posts will probably be few and far between for me, but Carolyn is probably a better cook than I am anyway, so she can take up the slack. However, I am now on summer "break" (read: full-time job, which feels like a vacation), so I hope to be able to post a little more this summer.

So now, after a fairly sizable absence following my recipe for barleywine (which, by the way, is delicious), I'm continuing my adventures with yeast and making bread. This recipe is courtesy of my grandfather (pours one out), and its unofficial name is thus "Grandpa John's Portuguese sweet bread."

Grilled Spiced Eggplant and Minted Yogurt Stacks with Greek Salad

After surviving 3 weeks of finals, two weeks ago was the one week of vacation I get between now and August, and I very lazily enjoyed it! One of my favorite things about vacation is getting to read whatever I want, just because it's fun. What I decided I wanted to read this week were several magazines (alright, only 2 -- I did buy a Vanity Fair, but only for the pictures of World Cup players in their underwear!). Anyway, one of the magazines I bought was the Bon Appétit's travel edition -- the best of Spain, Italy and France? Yes, please!

Trying new recipes for fun is all well and good, but cooking for people is still my favorite. So I called a few of my fellow nursing students and put together a dinner party. One of my friends, Ashley, had never tried eggplant before, so this stuck out pretty obviously as the recipe to make- never mind that I love Greek food. A simple Greek salad was the perfect compliment to this dish.

Rhubarb Crisp

Iowa City Farmer's Market is back!! As promised by the apple pie post, I did indeed buy a bunch of rhubarb, though I decided to be responsible make some rhubarb crisp instead of a pie (pie takes too much time when I should be studying for finals.

In addition to the rhubarb, I also found some asparagus (which will be appearing soon in a pasta recipe!) and herbs for my deck. I went with cilantro, parsley and lemon balm. Truthfully, I thought the lemon balm was lemon basil... anybody know what to do with lemon balm??

Hummus

Ahh, I love it when the weather is (finally!) consistently warm and sunny. Trees are exploding with green, flowers are blooming - allergies aside, I'm a big fan of late spring. A large exception to this being the finals that have taken over my life, which coincide ominously with the wearing of shorts, sundresses and swimsuits. Keeping that in mind, I'm making an effort for my finals munching food to be something other than scotcheroos or mac'n'cheese, and hummus is one of my favorites. The best hummus I've found so far is from a restaurant in Iowa City called Oasis Falafel. It's creamy, a little nutty and just enough spice to make celery not seem so... bland and useless. This isn't their recipe, but basically the same ingredients go into all hummus recipes, so this is my attempt at it.