If you’re regular reader, you’re probably well aware of my obsession with sweet and salty combinations.

I honestly had the most wonderful weekend — these ice cream sandwiches were key, and probably should be part of every weekend for the rest of my life.

On Saturday, a handful of friends and strangers embarked on a river tubing trip. The weekend before, I had made these saltine ice cream bars. Naturally, I avoid them like the plague (especially when I know I’ll be wearing a bathing suit a few days later), so I piled the individually wrapped cracker bars into a ziploc and into a cooler bag. Let’s be real. I didn’t avoid them as much as I should have.

I borrowed Kristen’s car for the drive to West Virginia (and Virginia, and Maryland), and with fewer people tied to our bunch of inner tubes than I was expecting, I had way too many ice cream bars left. So after a couple of runs on the river (and a great roll of fisheye film), I did what I do best: I made friends.

There was the belligerent and NSFW-named team of 29 southern Marylanders who were too drunk to understand “does anyone want free homemade ice cream sandwiches?” but there was an awesome group of girls who were waiting for the bus back to the parking lot at the same time. So I did the college thing and walked over with a bag of melting ice cream bars.

How to make friends 101.

It even escalated to my handing out blog business cards (they’re just the cutest) and one of the girls begging me to cater a bridal shower — why not?

And it even carried through the evening, when I was out to drinks, and complimented a random lady’s super pretty criss-cross backless dress. I’m not exactly sure how it turned into a card exchange, but hey, it’s DC. At least my cards have photos worth salivating over.

Sunday was spent sleeping in, and eventually just chatting in my living room with the Baltimore friends, which later faded into a spontaneous sailing trip on the Chesapeake Bay. Gotta love being friends with awesome people who know other awesome people. I really couldn’t have asked for a better weekend.

This week, there’s a lot of freelance, and a lot of True Blood. Due to too much flopping in bed this weekend, I didn’t get anything cooked… so we’ll see how I hold up.

Saltine Brownie Ice Cream Bars, mostly from Lady and Pups

~60 saltine crackers (2 long packets)
Coconut oil spray (or olive oil, or melted butter… but coconut oil is healthier)

Brownie layer, via Food.com

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
5 tablespoons cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Ice cream layer, from Martha Stewart

240 g of sweetened condensed milk (try not to eat it with a shovel)
1 and 1/3 tsp vanilla extract
3 tablespoons bourbon
1 and 1/3 cup heavy cream

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Line a 9×13 brownie pan with parchment paper, and arrange half of the saltines so they are perfectly lined up. Cut the edges to fit with a sharp knife, and spray one side of the crackers with coconut oil — then flip them all over in place, and spray them again.

It’s important that you remember where you start laying down the crackers, because you’ll want the top later to match for perfectly-sized ice cream bars. I ripped the corner of parchment paper in the nice corner of my saltine grid to remember where to start with the top layer.

Next, combine all of your brownie ingredients with the paddle fixture on your stand mixer. When fully incorporated, carefully pour the batter over the saltines. Bake for 17 to 20 minutes — you want the brownies slightly undercooked (so they’ll be fudgey when frozen).

After your timer goes off, let the brownies cool on the counter for 10 to 20 minutes, and then put the entire brownie pan into the freezer for an hour or so. It’s VERY important that the brownies are cold when you add in the ice cream layer.

To assemble the ice cream, whisk your condensed milk, vanilla, and bourbon in a mixing bowl until fully incorporated. Then, using a stand mixer or hand mixer, beat the heavy cream on high until it forms stiff peaks. Pour half of the condensed milk mixture into the cream, folding carefully until mixed. Add the remainder of the mixture, and fold again until mixed.

Then, pour the ice cream mixture on top of the brownies, spreading evenly with a spatula. Carefully arrange the remaining saltines on top of the whipped cream, and freeze overnight.

Cut with a sharp knife, and individually wrap the ice cream bars in saran wrap (or eat them immediately).

We all have lazy days. Days when getting out of bed feels like the most difficult task in the world, and you schlep to work and procrastinate your sanity away. It’s painful. I hate those days, because, if I had a choice, I’d design infographics in my sleep.

For a while, I’ve been in a dear-god-please-don’t-make-me-cook phase. Weird, right? A food blogger should never have that problem… but coming up with things to cook, sometimes for the blog, and sometime just for lunch, feels like I’m pulling my own teeth. And it’s not like I’ve been overworked at the day job lately, because things have been relatively calm for the past week.

Freelance, on the other hand, is a different story.

I would classify all of last week as one of the laziest weeks of my life. I didn’t stick to any sort of healthy eating plan, I didn’t get much done at work or in freelance, and I just couldn’t get myself to sit down and write. Hell, making lunches to take to work was probably the most productive thing I did — and that was basically putting salad ingredients in a jar. I spent most of the week envying Keri Russell’s 80s jeans in The Americans (when I really should have been doing squats to get me closer to fitting into said jeans).

During weeks like those, I’m guilt of even my biggest pet peeves, like leaving dirty dishes in the sink.

So naturally, one day, I came home ravished, in the need for something delicious, unhealthy, and fast. No time for pizza dough. No money for take out. But I did have tortillas, pasta sauce, and parmesan cheese.

It took just 15 minutes to make, and 13 of those minutes were spent watching Veep on my living room floor. The downsides are limited: lots of cheese, and a tortilla, which I shouldn’t be eating. The upsides could go one forever, though: lots of cheese, fewer calories than pizza dough, takes three minutes to make, tastes like legit thin crust take-out.

Tortilla Cheese Pizza

1 flour tortilla (whole wheat ones taste great, too — but what’s pictured here is flour)
4-5 heaping spoonfuls tomato basil pasta sauce
Approx. 1 cup grated parmesan cheese
Drizzle of olive oil

First, heat your oven to 500 degrees.

Then, brush the top of a tortilla with olive oil. Generously spoon tomato sauce onto the tortilla, using the back of the spoon to spread it evenly. Then, just cover everything in parmesan cheese.

Bake at 500 degrees for 10 minutes, until the cheese starts to bubble. The crust (tortilla) should be brown and crispy. Transfer to a plate, cut, and inhale.

Let’s be honest. It’s 2 AM.

I almost poured myself a glass of straight bourbon ten minutes ago. I’ll be working late all week on Google projects, so I really should get to bed (and save the bourbon for a better occasion, perhaps, a real-life handsome stranger).

Anyhoo, there will be plenty of use for these cherries this weekend. We’ll be making Manhattans on Sunday.

I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll have inspiration for a real post tomorrow. In the meantime, happy Tuesday :)

Vanilla-Bourbon Cherries

Fresh cherries — preferably the dark red ones
Lots of bourbon — I use Bulleit, which has vanilla undertones to begin with
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons vanilla extract
One vanilla bean per jar of cherries

Wash your cherries over a strainer in the sink, and remove the pits using a cherry pitter. If you’re like me, and too cheap to buy one, just poke them out with the blunt end of a chopstick… carefully. Discard the pits, and set your pitless cherries aside in a bowl.

In a small saucepan, heat the vanilla extract and the sugar until the sugar is all dissolved. With such small measurements, the solution will turn syrupy quickly. We don’t want it too syrupy, so just take the pot off the heat when it starts boiling and the sugar is entirely dissolved.

Now, we want to get vanilla beans into the syrup. I preserve my vanilla beans soaking in vodka (homemade vanilla extract!) which makes it really easy to extract the beans. If you do this too, simply snip off the tip of the bean with scissors or a sharp knife, and squeeze the vanilla beans into the syrup.

If you’re working with dry beans, slice the pod lengthwise, and use a knife to scrape the beans out before stirring them into your syrup.

From this point on, we’re just assembling and waiting. Fill a clean jar with your pitted cherries, and then pour your syrup into the jar. Then, fill whatever space is left in the jar with bourbon. Screw on the top, securing the lid tightly, and give the  jar a shake.

Refrigerate for at least 3 hours. The cherries should be good for a few weeks. Put them on ice cream, in cocktails, or on a toothpick for a sweet snack.

I’m no stranger to traveling alone. In fact, if I go someplace fairly far away, even if I’m visiting someone, I prefer taking the trip by myself.

There are a few reasons behind this — aside from the fact that I need time to myself to unwind, I can be very productive on a train or a plane. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve written a good chunk of the posts on this blog on trains to Baltimore or New York, or airplanes to Los Angeles.

I am a creature of habit. I like left window seats by train, and right aisle seats by air. I listen to a handful of playlists, but when I travel, I generally stick to full albums. At the moment, Maroon 5′s Songs About Jane is helping draw out thoughts and emotions that I tried to coax out hands that type them earlier this week. Side note: some of you associate your emo days with All American Rejects and teenage boys who wear eyeliner. Back in high school, I crushed on clownish nerds who skipped the classes to play classical guitar in the parking lot, so my emo days align more closely with Maroon 5 and Jason Mraz.

Alone time is something I’m almost always itching for — it’s something that’s rare for me, because much of my free time is spent dedicated to the government, or to Google. And while I vowed to dedicate a certain number of hours this week to freelance work and blogging, I found myself in a series of Mad Men wormholes this week.

The choice of television show seems appropriate, now that I think of it — workaholics in the creative industry, each at varying stages on the happy-to-miserable spectrum.

When I’m not traveling, one of the few moments I generally get to myself is breakfast on a Saturday morning. As someone who spends Saturday nights at the gym or working at a coffee shop, waking up early and refreshed on Saturdays gives me a few hours of alone time before texts roll in and I set out for my day. So naturally, the food blogger that craves alone time cooks breakfast, for one.

Growing up with a Filipino mother, one of my favorite things to eat as a child was rice and soy sauce (some of you cringe, but the simplicity of rice and soy sauce makes me salivate). And sometimes, my mom would make fried rice with the leftovers. She’d scramble a few eggs, and I’d give it more soy sauce. As I type this, I realize why I’ve always struggled with carbs.

These days, I try to eliminate rice from my diet. So I’ve taken my childhood comfort food, and made it a little healthier, and a little more grown-up — I buy quinoa instead of rice, throw in a good chunk of fresh ginger, and top with green onions from my window garden.

It’s a good relax-in-bed-with-samurai-sudoku morning meal.

And when I crave company, well, I make something a little more fun. But when I need my morning in bed, the simplest meals are always the most satisfying.

Ginger Fried Quinoa, for one

1.5 cups cooked quinoa
A few tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce (adjust to color and taste)
1 tablespoon fresh ginger
Green onions – just an inch or two, diced off the tops
1 clove garlic
1 or two eggs

I generally keep a container of cooked quinoa in my refrigerator, in case I need some sort of quick meal or a backup lunch — but if you don’t, just cook some up according to the instructions on your package.

In a small frying pan, combine soy sauce with your quinoa over medium heat. Let it sit for a few minutes, and in the meantime, mince both your garlic and your ginger root. Add those into the pan, along with half of your green onions, and turn up the heat. I like to pat the quinoa down into a patty, so the bottom parts get crispy.

Taste as you go, and when you’re happy with it, go ahead and transfer your fried quinoa to a bowl. It generally takes about 10 minutes on the stove for me to get to that point.

Then, wipe the pan clean with a paper towel, grease with olive oil, and fry an egg or two to the yolk consistency you prefer. Serve on top of your quinoa, and top with the remaining green onions.

I kinda failed at following through on posts this week, guys. I’ve needed a bit of a creative recuperation.

The good news is that I have a nice, long train ride to New York City tonight for a fabulous bridal shower and a couple of catch-ups… and then I’ll find myself on a train back to D.C. tomorrow evening to catch Portugal. The Man at the 930 club!

Hope you have a fabulous weekend — and if you get a chance to spend some quality time in your kitchen, these tunes will keep you happy.

{ Spotify playlist here }

Oh, to be a freelancer again.

That extended vacation from Google was quite nice. But… it’s 1:40 am and I still feel like I have a ton of work to do.

Cooking store-bought zucchini isn’t anything like cooking summer squash from the garden, so this definitely brought back some great memories from the house on Capitol Hill. It feels like it’s been ages.

I have a deadline in the morning, but Adriana (the bestie from middle/high school now roommate) and I have a date with Caroline Wright’s Twenty Dollar Twenty-Minute Meals tomorrow. So I need to make sure I have a couple of free hours in the evening to cook a proper dinner!

So, all that being said, I’m going to refrain from writing a full post tonight. I have a playlist and a fun twist on my own personal comfort food in store for you this week. No more of this letting-weeks-without-blogging escape my grasps.

And hopefully, you’re getting more sleep than I am this week!

I know, I know what you’re thinking. I chose this life. Womp, womp. I did. And I love/hate it (mostly love).

Until tomorrow, you have this: Sara Forte’s shrimp with herbed quinoa. Her book called for cous cous, but I only had quinoa. So we made it work.

Green Herb Shrimp with Summer Squash Quinoa, derived from the Sprouted Kitchen Cookbook

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 green onions, diced
2-3 tablespoons fresh mint leaves
1/2 cup fresh basil
1/2 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley
3 cloves garlic
3 anchovies
Pinch red pepper flakes
Juice of two limes

1 lb. large shrimp, peeled, deveined and tails off
3 medium-sized zucchini
1.5 cups quinoa
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 cup feta cheese

In a medium-sized saucepan, cook the quinoa according to instructions, and set aside.

Combine the green onions, mint, basil, parsley, and garlic in a food processor, and pulse-grind until chopped and mixed. Then, add in the anchovies and slowly add in the olive oil until you have a pesto-like consistency. Throw in a few red pepper flakes, squeeze the lime juice in, and pulse-grind a few more times.

Marinate the shrimp in a few tablespoons of the pesto for about 1 hour, setting aside the remaining sauce.

Dice your zucchini, and saute with a drizzle of olive oil in a cast iron skillet until the edges just turn brown. Season with salt and pepper. In a large serving bowl, combine the quinoa with the remaining pesto, zuchinni, feta, and vinegar. Toss until mixed.

Cook the shrimp over high heat — no more than two minutes on each side. Brush with the burnt pesto from the skillet, and serve on top of a plate of quinoa.

Here are a few of my favorites from May. Check out the rest here, and follow me on Instagram @gurrity!

Last week was rough. Isn’t it horrible how your short work weeks can be the absolute worst? Sometimes, the world just wants you to work extra hard as punishment for having a day off.

Unfortunately for me, I spent most of my Memorial Day weekend with the flu — not fun. And being the optimist that I am, I convinced myself that I was not as sick as I actually was. So on Sunday, I went out for a few beers on a DC patio. There may or may not have been copious amounts of fresh donuts. And a $25 pig’s head. On a platter.

The consequence of tricking yourself into feeling healthier than you actually are, of course, trickles down over the course of a few days. Or a whole week. So throughout the entire week, I suffered the sick-enough-to-be-tired-all-day but not-sick-enough-to-not-be-at-work illness.

I pretty much couldn’t hold a single solid train of thought until Friday. And we all know how Fridays go.

(They don’t.)

I made up for the lethargy of last week with a super productive Saturday — I got back into my gym routine, cleaned my entire apartment, knocked out a few freelance tasks at a coffee shop, and then spent the afternoon and evening biking across DC to the Tour de Fat — a little hipster New Belgium beer festival at Navy Yard. It was too hot to take photos (in my mind), so my apologies for the lack of imagery. But the waterfront is gorgeous, and I got to explore my own personally unchartered territory of DC by bike.

Needless to say, I crashed into my bed the instant I got home, with the AC on full-blast. And I slept in, wandered to Whole Foods, where I eyed a container of labneh — a college staple when all of my friends were Lebanese.

The perfect cross between cream cheese and Greek yogurt does well on sandwiches. It was a good start to the end of the weekend.

Labneh Breakfast BLT

Whole grain sourdough, sliced
1 fresh heirloom tomato
Arugula
1 egg
A few strips of bacon, baked or fried
2-3 tablespoons labneh

Heat your oven to 350 degrees, and line a large baking sheet with foil. Arrange your bacon on the foil, and bake for about 30 minutes, until crispy. When you remove the bacon from the oven, promptly drain each piece on paper towels on a separate plate.

Fry an egg to the yolk consistency you prefer, and toast two slices of whole grain sourdough. Generously spread one slice with labneh, and then top with your tomato, bacon, arugula and egg. Season with salt and pepper if you like — but the bacon and lebnah are pretty good on their own. I went without.

Quick lunchtime update: I may or may not have just eaten a pound of watermelon for lunch.

Normally, I’m a big advocate of eating fruit as-is. But these watermelon and feta salads are just all over the internet, so we made one this weekend just to try it out.

It’s a winner. I understand why they’re everywhere now.

Watermelon and Feta Salad – this is pretty simple.

Watermelon
Crumbled feta cheese
Arugula
Balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper

Slice your watermelon however you like it. For presentation, I thought a stacked salad would be nice. Arrange your watermelon on a heap of arugula, top with crumbled feta, salt and pepper, and then drizzle just a little bit of balsamic vinegar on the plate.

Growing up, I didn’t know very many people who liked sardines or anchovies. I definitely didn’t eat them — but like I’ve mentioned before, I was the pickiest of eaters.

I honestly didn’t even eat them until former-roommate-turned-friend, Kristen, introduced this pasta dish to me.

Back in the day, when we lived together in that old, falling-apart row house, she and I spent a lot of time making dinners together. We’d both come home, pop open a bottle of wine (we went through a lot of wine back then), and throw something together for dinner. It was usually some sort of pasta, because we were both pretty much broke, and a little bit of pasta goes a long way.

I can’t remember where she got the recipe, but it was her go-to meal when it was her turn to cook. And it costs less than the wine, so it was a-okay for our budget.

I still make it for dinner, from time to time. And it’s the recipe that turned me on to sardines and anchovies. In fact, I sneak anchovies into a few of my recipes, just to strengthen the flavor… pesto, salad dressings, pasta sauces. You name it.

Spicy Penne with Tomatoes, Sardines and Lemon

1 lb. uncooked penne pasta
2 14-oz. cans of diced tomatoes
1 lemon
2 cans sardines or 3 cans anchovies
Crushed red pepper flakes
Parmesan cheese

First, fill a large saucepan with your pasta, cover with a couple of inches of water, and cook pasta to your desired consistency — IMHO, al dente is best for this dish.

In a large skillet and low heat, empty both cans of tomatoes and sprinkle with red pepper flakes. I like this dish very spicy, but you can add pepper flakes to taste.

As your tomatoes heat up, peel open both cans of sardines over your sink. Using your hands, remove the spines from each of the sardines, and use your fingers to break the sardines up into chunks. Set the meat into a separate bowl. Note: this doesn’t really apply if you choose to use anchovies.

When the tomatoes are boiling, add your sardines, and use a wooden spoon or spatula to help mix them into the sauce. They should start to disintegrate. Cover the skillet, and let cook over low heat for about ten minutes. Then, squeeze the juice from one lemon, two if needed, and stir to mix completely.

Mix with the cooked penne in a large bowl, and garnish with heaps of parmesan cheese.