Burger Greatness

Easily my favorite thing to make for myself is a good ol' cheese burger. Tonight I decided to spice it up a little. I added a little garlic powder along with the steak seasoning to give it a little 'pop' and fried up some bacon. I coupled this together with a slightly grilled bun (just so it wasn't so soft from being defrosted), chopped onions and the last of my tater tots. I'm slowly becoming more adventurous on my burger toppings and am looking for some tasty suggestions.

It was all very delicious and the perfect start to my homework filled weekend.

-Sarah

Spice Up Your Morning

Every once in a while, we college students need to take a break from early morning studying and have a good breakfast. Today I decided to add apple pieces and cinnamon to some Quaker's quick oats and I ended up creating something delicious. Take a bland breakfast & add in some flavor, just make sure to add in sweet apples-granny smith would be disastrous!

And if you want to be deep & philosophical, this could even be a metaphor for your day. Wake up to an ordinary morning (oatmeal) and add a little creativity (apples & cinnamon) and voilà now your day is extraordinary.

-Amanda

Oriental Experience

While the rest of the country was having pizza and subs while guzzling beer I made an Asian inspired feast.

Chicken stir fry with garlic, onion, red pepper, broccoli, water chestnuts and green beans, a pork egg roll and four pork pot stickers. Nothing to special since I make stir fry pretty regularly but have recently been having a problem with making rice. I'm not sure if it's the brand i'm using or if I have lost the gift of rice making. Undercooked rice is gross.

How I Made:
I got a lovely Wok at a garage sale over the summer, so greased it up and threw in two pieces of targets individual frozen chicken breast. (defrosted)
I don't have the means or the presents of mind to buy fresh vegetables whenever I want stir fry so I stock up on stir fry vegetable packets that can be found at jewel or target in the frozen food section and then throw in whatever real vegetables i do have, in this case onions. I let everything cook over medium heat, moving around and flipping to make sure nothing sticks or burns. When near finished threw in a little minced garlic and moved vegetables around some more. When everything is finished, after around 10 to 15 minutes, depending on chicken I throw in some kind of sauce, for this instants it was tyriakki marinade specifically for stir fry, but I like my previous brand better. let cook down and coat for a few seconds on low heat and serve with rice.

I also steamed my pot stickers using the steam from the wok, because it came with a small rack that attached to the top.
Was generally unimpressed with halftime show, commercials and game.

-Sarah

Sunday Brunch

Since I got up at a reasonable hour for a Sunday, I decided I'd make pancakes and sausage for a nice Sunday morning breakfast. As I was taking pictures of my breakfast to post, Amanda was trying to open a tube of biscuits. This lead to me talking about how my mom use to always make cinnamon rolls for breakfast. So Amanda looked up a recipe and made semi home made cinnamon rolls.

Here are my Aunt Jemima pancakes with cinnamon and vanilla and some precooked Jimmy Dean sausage. Pancakes tasted good as recipe has been perfected over the course of several years in college. Sausage tasted suspicious, not sure if this is the microwaves fault or an error in the actual making of the sausage. regardless don't think I'll be eating the rest.

Here are Amanda's cinnamon rolls after she put the butter, cinnamon, vanilla and cinnamon sugar mixture in the middle and rolled them.

This is the finished product. Some of the smaller ones ended up looking more like the letter C, but they tasted very good and sugary. I recommend eating them on a sunny Sunday while listening to vampire weekend and staring at Corporate America's poster child.

-Sarah

Pizza Night

For the past week or so, we've both been craving pizza & as that we couldn't decide on a good place to order from, we figured we'd try our luck making our own. After a successful trip to Jewel-once we figured out what makes a good green pepper, we came back & made the dough in the bread machine (a miracle invention, really). Instead of preparing the ingredients while the dough was rising, we thought it would be a great idea to lolly gag & do homework. Not the best plan. But in the end the pizza turned out great, which is all that really matters anyway.

This is our Green Peper, Onion and Bacon Pizza in the oven

And here is the finished product-deliciouso!

How we made it:

Pizza dough from the bread machine, we used this recipe

Four cheese spaghetti sauce, with extra Italian seasoning & garlic powder

Toppings: green peppers, onion, and bacon

Sargento Italian pasta cheese: mozzarella, provolone & parmesan

And we brushed the crust with melted butter & garlic

Meet the Chefs

Welcome to 411Cooks, your blogger(s) today will be Amanda and Sarah. Here we will show you the excellent food we make here in our apartment. So prepare yourself for pizza nights, burger feasts, an assortment of breakfast food and delicious desserts!

Now, we are college students so please remember we are refining our talent and occasionally get swamped by major projects and papers and end up ordering take out and eating things not worth posting.

Thanks for stopping by!