My mojo is back......

Last week I was telling a friend that I felt like I lost my cooking mojo. I was just NOT in the mood to cook. I also had two failures( that I didnt blog about) and was feeling kinda down( I'm sure this horrible weather didnt help either). Friday brought more horrible weather and so much freaking snow that the boys could barely walk down the front steps. But as I always say, the weather here changes on a dime and by the afternoon, it was bright and sunny. I made a batch of Cook's Illustrated Multigrain bread and brought a loaf over to my neighbor who plows our driveway everytime it snows. He does it for free so I make sure to keep him and his family supplied with goodies.

The really bright and sunny continued yesterday and I was in a fabulous mood. ( A little sunshine will do that to me). I also had my hair highlighted and cut and was feeling very sexy so I decided to cook for my really sexy wife. She's been working her sexy ass off and I've been really slacking in the cooking department. The night I made the bread, I scrambled her some eggs and threw some Canadian Bacon( the stuff we Americans call Canadian bacon) on her plate.

As I was reading my favorite foodblogs, I came across this shrimp and gruyere pasta dish on Joe's blog. I had all the ingredients handy so I whipped that up. I added some chicken instead of using all the shrimp, I also threw in some frozen artichokes I had from Trader Joe's. Instead of using orichette pasta, I used Dreamfields Low Carb Penne since Robin is STILL DOING SOUTH BEACH. This dish was creamy and very yummy.



I wanted to bake something too, since its been ages since I've baked something at home. I pulled out the KA flour Whole Grain Baking Book and found some Cranberry Apricot Chocolate chews. I went with the variation at the bottom of the page using white chocolate, dried apricots and cherries and pistachios. The recipe using traditional whole wheat flour instead of AP flour. I was shocked to find I was out of WW flour so I used KA white whole wheat flour and it worked out really well. I used a combination of lindt and ghiradelli white chocolate for these. Robin cringed when I told her I was making a whole wheat cookie, but she seemed to enjoy them and really in the end, thats all that matters!!