Creative Cooking Monday!

This week’s key ingredient was basil. I was incredibly lucky to find this basil (pictured above) that still contained it’s roots. Buying the basil this way was only $1 more than the regular way (already picked and in a plastic container) and so far it has kept 3 days in a cup of water. It looks beautiful on the counter and smells nicely, too!

The first thing I made was a small and simple snack. I used Laughing Cow Cheese, spread on crackers and topped with basil. You could add tomatoes to this, too.

Next up, for dinner was this pizza! Which, went over so well and was ate so fast that I didn’t have time to snap a good photo of it 🙁 I guess you could consider it a good thing, though! So, this week I don’t have an exact recipe… What I did was buy pizza dough mix (get the kind with yeast, it tastes much better!) marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese and all the toppings. You can top your pizza with anything really but I choose olives, mushrooms, tomatoes and basil. I think using just the mozzarella cheese and the fresh basil made this pizza delicous!

For the next nights dinner I ended up using up all the basil and tomatoes left over from the night before! After I cooked the noodles I sauteed some garlic in olive oil and dumped the noodles back into the pot. Added the tomatoes and basil and let it cook for just a tad bit longer, just to warm the tomatoes and basil. You could sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top or add any left over mozzarella cheese in when you add the tomatoes and basil.

And, I also ended up making these cookies 🙂 I probably won’t make dessert every time, but I just couldn’t resist these! I found this recipe at http://www.marthastewart.com/ and they are called Outrageous Chocolate Cookies and they are outrageously delicious! I recommend these cookies for anything! You’ll be the hit of the party with these on a plate! They were gone in about 20 minutes at my house (well… I did have help eating them!). I give these cookies 6 out of 5 stars 🙂 *Quick side note: I did substitute the “8 ounces semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped” for milk chocolate chips – just because we are a milk chocolate group around here and I knew that two packs would be to much semi sweet!

So that is all my cooking adventures for this week! We’ll see what next week brings… I’ll leave you with a picture of the baby 🙂

XO, Elle

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