Chef Boyar-Abbotts

I've never been what I would term a chef. Or even a cook. Growing up my mom would let me make desserts occasionally by myself, so I became great at baking. Give me a recipe (well, a fairly simple recipe... preferably a yummy dessert) and I will follow it. Although, as in my younger days, you may end up with less cooked treats at the end than you would imagine because I absolutely love eating dough. Any kind of dough. Of course cookie dough is the ultimate yumminess. But I love eating any kind of dough... pancake batter? You better believe it. Totally good. Bread dough? Delicious. I continued eating dough even despite the many warnings my dad gave us over the years growing up that the raw eggs would probably kill us. Hasn't happened yet, but I don't endorse the eating of dough just in case. Actually, you should probably let me test it out first. Send it my way. I remember when I was little, my mom would have us sit around the counter and "help" while she made cookies. She would hand us a measuring utensil and help us each measure out and pour in a specific ingredient. Then she would be in charge of the mixers. We all looked forward to the 5-10 chocolate chips that she would give each one of us. After we had the batter all mixed up, my mom would either give us a beater or a spoonful of dough. We would fight over those beaters like crazy. Of course, this was happening while my dad in the background was telling us that we really shouldn't eat dough. One beater or one spoonful was never enough for me. To this day, I can eat soooo many spoonfuls of dough that it's pretty crazy actually. I usually have no appetite for the cooked cookies afterwards because of the massive amounts of consumed dough, which is totally fine because dough is ten times better than the cooked cookies. I remember thinking that when I was older and in college (yes, that was the epitome of independence and adulthood in my childhood mind), I would make up a batch of cookies and not cook a single one. I would just put the bowl full of dough in the fridge and snack off of it. While I haven't actually gotten to this point, I have several times bought the packaged cookie dough just for the purpose of eating raw. Such goodness.... sigh....

Anyways, other than desserts, I've never been that much of a cook. I will not claim greatness now either; however, I must admit that I have improved far beyond what I had thought. It's this marriage thing. Makes me feel more domestic. While I don't have a ton of time to put huge efforts into cooking because of working and we don't have a ton of extra cash to spend on exotic items, I have found that I really enjoy cooking. I enjoy making something so yummy and inventive. Cooking up a new recipe and watching it turn out is kind of a rush. Especially when Marky enjoys it. I feel like such a nerd in admitting this, but I enjoy cooking. :) It's been fun to find new recipes and try things out. I have many recipes that I've gathered over the years and several recipe books. We also heavily use google to find recipes for any weird items we have. One of my favorite salad recipes that I found on google is below. We've made it a few times this summer and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Pear/Avocado Salad

Salad

-Lettuce (we've used both spinach and romaine... both tasted good)

-2 pears (sliced, usually carmelize with honey for about 3 minutes... see note below to see why this is necessary)

-1 avocado (cut into small bite-size pieces)
-Grilled chicken (we use the Costco breaded frozen chicken... totally awesome!, cut into bite-size pieces)

-1/4 to 1/2 cup candied nuts (we've just used slivered almonds, but you can also use pecans or walnuts or whatever... as long as they're candied/carmelized... yummy!)

-Cheese (we've used blue cheese, but you could also use gorgonzola)

Dressing (I half the dressing when it's just for the two of us... otherwise way too much dressing and the dressing tastes great with this salad but not really with just lettuce)

-3/4 cup olive oil

-1/4 cup lemon juice

-1 tsp Dijon mustard

-1 Tbsp honey

-salt and pepper

Such goodness. Here's a finished picture of the salad that we had about a month ago...

And now, the best part... Mark getting ready to eat a bite. And yes, for those of you who know Mark and paid attention to the recipe, he is about to eat pears!!! I know!! Mark eating fruit! Crazy. For those who don't know, I have such a cute husband with very interesting eating habits. He totally enjoys eating vegetables, but he won't eat normal fruit at all. He doesn't like the texture of fruits like apples or melons or most other fruits. He'll eat berries or he'll eat applesauce. But nothing delicious like apples or pears. Turns out if you douse the pears in honey and stick them in a delicious salad, he will eat them!! If anyone knows of any other recipes for cooked fruit, which he will eat (because it changes the texture), send them my way! I'm always looking for ways to get Marky to eat some fruit. :)