Week 2: Mint Chocolate Swirl Almond French Toast

I am late. VERY LATE for Week 2's challenge. Mint just wasn't inspiring for me. I bought some peppermint extract and let it sit for a while. I could have used fresh mint in a recipe, but really....Nope. Just wasn't feeling it.

Then last night happened. I was hungry but since we're moving soon, I haven't been doing much shopping. I remembered I had some Pillsbury Chocolate Swirl quickbread and figured "Hey! I can add peppermint to this and I can finally move on from week two!"

But that felt too easy and Diego wasn't going to consider that dinner.

Given our bare pantry, I didn't have many options, except for the eggs I just bought. Scrambled eggs and French Toast. BAM!

The only interesting part of this venture is that when I went looking for vanilla extract for my french toast batter, I saw Almond extract and decided that was an interesting kick.


When all was said and done, my french toast was met with mixed reviews.

Diego, eater of all my concoctions, "The mint feels overwhelming at first, but once it mixes with the chocolate, it's really not strong. It's good. I like it. The mint was unexpected but good."

Jan, a finicky eater, yet honest, "The mint is not for me."

Myself (French toast)..."The almond taste is overwhelming everything, tasty enough to eat, not tasty enough to make again."


David only had pieces of the mint chocolate swirl bread, not the french toast "This is AMAZING! I'm going to eat it all!"

WEEK 1 : APPETIZER : Baked Hawaiian Spring Roll

This first week, I wanted to make some buffalo chicken spring rolls, but it looks like someone already beat me to it on /r/52weeksofcooking. Besides, the boyfriend used the rest of Frank's Red Hot! -_-

So, last night, while I had the Burd over, I decided to raid my fridge and see what I could throw together.

One roll of expired sausage? Dammit. Toss.
A kielbasa? Yes.
Spring Roll Wrappers. Ok.
Onion. Check.

I was going to throw potato in, but I have been neglecting my kitchen and my potatoes had sprouted. Insert another disappointed look. But right above where I keep the potatoes, I saw a can of pineapple. Boom. Let's do this.


I took one yellow onion and sliced it up in my mandolin. Tossed it in a pan and started frying. Then I throw the kielbasa in and started browning. Diego threw some pineapple juice in the pan, I'm not sure if it made a difference, but what the hell.

Now, I've never used a spring roll wrapper before. I was confused. It feels like plastic. I figured I'd just throw some water on it. Voila. It worked.

After browning the kielbasa, I took about half of it with the intention of throwing it in my mini food processor. However, a KEY component of the unit is missing, and I decided to use my hand blender.

I blended the meat so it looked a little like spam. Then I blended down the pineapple.


Two things:  I need a food processor next time, definitely. And I will dry out the pineapple more in a cheesecloth or something.


I threw the blended kielbasa-spam-looking stuff into a wrapper, threw some pineapple in and some of the browned onion. Rolled it up and popped it in the oven for 10 minutes, flipping it at 5 minutes.


Another mistake : forgetting to spray the pan. So after the first flip, the undersides to my eggrolls split open and looked like they were leaking pink guts. YUM.


It was all experimental, but it was fun to have to improvise every step of the way. My test eaters, Burd and Diego gave positive feedback, but they both love me, therefore not sure if they liked or just trying to make me happy. :D  I liked it, but I could definitely see where I needed improvement.

Burd came up with the idea to add some Sriracha and that is really what made these yummy!

Maybe one day I'll have a luau and try these again. I'd probably try with egg roll wrappers instead of spring rolls as well.


Does anyone else have any ideas on how to improve on this idea? 

Reddit's 52 weeks of Cooking

I found this challenge a few weeks ago on Reddit. For those of you who don't want to click the link, the premise is simple! Each week has a new theme for what you should cook. The month of January looks like this:
Week 1 : Appetizers
Week 2 : Mint
Week 3 : Korean
Week 4 : Inspired by Music


 I'm a novice in the kitchen but I have big dreams of dazzling friends with my cooking skills one day. What better way to get started and get my creative juices flowing?