We’re both heading home to our respective families to celebrate Thanksgiving, which sadly translates into no new posts for the next six days or so. Hope that everyone has a wonderful and delicious holiday!

P.S. Alex received an acceptance today from Mt. Sinai’s School of Medicine in NYC! Woot!

Everyone meet Lara. She’s sitting next me, blogvising. We love her, and not because she helped with the blondies.

My mom sent me this recipe yesterday, and it reminded me so much of Starbucks’ cranberry bliss bars that they required immediate baking. The Starbucks bars were my favorite cranberry dessert bars until 20 minutes ago, when they were eclipsed by cranberry and white chocolate blondies. Lara describes the bars as festive, rich and scrumptious. Good adjectives. They tasted ridiculously good.

So here’s how the baking went: we made one batch, thought it looked like not enough batter, and decided to double it. Except we only increased the size of the pan by a little, and had to bake it for a lot longer. So we can’t say if the baking time is correct, but if you double it, add about 20 minutes to the original time. Bakes easy, goes down easier. Easiest with milk.

Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup fresh cranberries, coarsely topped

Instructions:
Line a 7×11 or 9×9 baking pan with tin foil, and spray with non-stick oil. Preheat to 350. Beat the butter and sugars together. Add eggs and vanilla and continue mixing. Mix in baking powder, baking soda, salt and flour. Beat in dried cranberries and white chocolate chips. Pour the batter into the pan. Sprinkle with the fresh cranberries, and press down with a spatula. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until knife comes out clean.

After a semester’s worth of superb produce, we said our goodbyes to Penn’s on-campus farmer’s market this afternoon. Though the market will return once more next week before closing until spring, we will be home for Thanksgiving. We decided to plan a fully locally-produced dinner to honor the occasion, and found everything we needed for a mere $7.50! There’s probably a joke to be made here about “market price,” but I’m an English major … so yeah.

We love the warm potatoes, string beans, eggs and lemony dressing that compose a salad nicoise — but we’re a bit more lukewarm about the tuna and olive business. We found some beautiful brussel sprouts at the market, and thought it would be interesting to try throwing them into the mix. Since we steamed them for a bit before pan-cooking them in a touch of smart balance and salt, they added a great buttery flavor to the dish. The whole ordeal took about 30 minutes, which was perfect for a busy weeknight (Project Runway Season 4 @ 10, please!). Definitely recommend this.

Ingredients (serves 2):
1 head lettuce (romaine, butter lettuce or frisee)
4 hardboiled eggs (we removed the yolks)
2 red potatoes
1 quart brussel sprouts
1/2 1b. string beans
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper

for dressing:
1/3 cup olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tbsp dijon mustard
1 tsp herbs de provence (rosemary and thyme)
salt and pepper

Instructions:
Steam the string beans and brussel sprouts (takes about 10 minutes each). Peel the potatoes and boil them (takes about 15 minutes). Set aside string beans and potatoes. Heat olive oil, and cut the brussel sprouts in half. Cook them in the oil with a pinch of salt and pepper for about three minutes. When the potatoes are cooled, slice them. Slice the hard boiled eggs as well, and add the toppings to the lettuce. For the dressing, just wisk the ingredients together and pour over the salad.

Alex accuses me of turning this into a stew and muffin blog, and I’d like to publicly offer some defensive arguments:

1) He loves stew.
2) Fall demands stew for warmth.
3) Stews are cheap, healthy and perfect for college students because they freeze beautifully.
4) I have no defense for muffins. I just love them.
5) I nearly forgot, muffins are photogenic.

Moving on, or not … muffins muffins muffins! Baking muffins is decidedly among my favorite stress-relieving activities, second maybe only to listening to Harry Potter on the iPod. The process is simple and instinctual. Liquids and solids combine, mix and bake. And because the steps are basic, there are oodles of opportunities to invent.

Tonight, we wanted to use up extra apples, so we simply chopped them up and added them to a basic cinnamon swirl muffin. It resulted in a great tartness that complimented the sweetness of the batter, and gave it a healthy, fresh taste.

Ingredients (makes 12 muffins):
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1/2 cup superfine sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup skim milk
7 tbsp smart balance
1/4 tsp vanilla
3 apples, chopped
2 tsp ground cinnamon (for the cinnamon sugar)
6 tbsp granulated sugar (for the cinnamon sugar)

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 375, and fill a muffin pan with muffin cups. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and superfine sugar. In a separate bowl, mix together the egg, milk, smart balance and vanilla. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and mix in the apples. Spoon batter into each muffin cup until it is about 1/4 filled, then add a layer of cinnamon sugar and repeat twice. Using a toothpick or tip of a sharp knife, swirl the mixture in each up to achieve the swirl effect. Bake for 18-20 minutes, let cool and serve.

Weeknight staple: Assorted vegetables with protein in sauce over starch. For example, tonight we made zucchini, peppers and onions with chicken in curry sauce over couscous. But we could have used shrimp or tofu or or broccoli or marinara sauce, etc. Get it?

Our dish tasted pretty okay, I wouldn’t necessarily do the it exactly the same way again, but we weren’t exactly going for spectacular. If you use this recipe, maybe use chicken broth to cook the couscous, and also maybe thicken the sauce for the stir-fry with cream or maybe just a touch of flour and more seasoning. If anyone comes up with a brilliant modification, let us know…

Which brings me to to our exciting announcement: We have Email! The address is twofatals@gmail.com, so now you can direct all of your “Dear Two Fat Als” and other fan mail that way. Woot.

Ingredients (serves 2 generously):
1 cup couscous
4 chicken cutlets
1 zucchini
1 onion
1 bell pepper
2 tsp curry (or 1 tsp each cumin and coriander)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions:
Cook the couscous as per instructed. While it is cooking, heat the olive oil in a large pan and begin to cook the chicken. After about three minutes, add the onions, and when they have begun to brown, add the zucchini and peppers. Add the water and spices, and cook the entire mixture until the vegetables are soft and the chicken is cooked through, about 8-10 minutes. Top the couscous with the mixture, and serve.

Before this week, my most recent attempt at challah was in pre-school, when I stood in line with 10 other kids for the chance to brush a stroke of egg yolk over the ready-to-bake loaf. But having graduated ourselves from the school of kneadless bread, Alex and I felt determined Saturday morning to try something more challenging and hopefully more rewarding. We chose challah, a Jewish sabbath bread, because it was the only recipe that didn’t require a trip to the grocery store.

Now I just said that baking challah is more challenging than baking kneadless bread which is true, but that doesn’t mean that the recipe is actually difficult — it’s not. The recipe calls for hours of waiting, so while the entire process takes a while, the actual work time is minimal. And each ounce of effort put into creating a challah will be rewarded x10 when you see how beautifully the dough rises into a golden loaf. We each gave a little yelp of joy when we first peeked into the oven.

Soft, sweet and eggy, challah begs to be lathered in honey, reborn into french toast, and pulled from the loaf in handfuls for mindless snacking.

Ingredients:
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp instant yeast
1 tbsp honey
3 eggs, plus 1 yolk
1 1/3 cups milk, warmed slightly
butter or non-stick spray for greasing a pan

Instructions:
Mix flour, yeast and salt together. Add honey, eggs and milk to the mixture, and knead together. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes, using additional flour if necessary. Form the dough into a ball, and let it sit in a covered, greased bowl for at least 1 1/2 hours to rise. When you are ready to prepare the dough for baking, divide it into three pieces, and role each piece out into a long rope, about 15 inches. Braid the pieces, pinching the dough together at each end. Preheat the oven to 375, and let the dough sit while the oven heats. Before putting the dough in the oven, brush egg yolk over it. Bake for about 40-50 minutes, until golden.