my kind of smores bars and coleslaw pt 1

So i actually felt a little pang of guilt having provided the two recipes in the last post with taunts of "i have better but here is this mediocrity."  I don't really like posting recipes without accompanying pictures because as a mostly visually-based learner i hate non-pictured recipes myself, when i want to know what it's all supposed to look like in the end so i know if i passed or failed.  And i just so happened to finish the last three potato chip cookies for breakfast this morning and i'd just die if i was forced to eat the other very disappointing cheese danish i picked up from sprouts for breakfast tomorrow.  What would be a better excuse to ignore the freshly laundered wrinkling-as-we-speak towels than to share some delicious recipes with my friends especially since it comes with the added benefit of smores bars for breakfast?  It's only a bajillion degrees in my kitchen today.

Also, luckily, i still have a single packet of graham crackers left over from the fourth of july smores bars i made and this recipe turns them into a real cookie, which i prefer over any cracker any time.  I really don't like crackers.  I try to, i honestly do, by topping them with cheese and spreads and peanut butter because the grocery store allures me with all sorts of new and interesting kinds, but they all suck the moisture out of your mouth like woah, resulting in that terrible cement-like sludge that attaches itself to the very back upper gums until you are forced to uncouthly dig your finger back there and dislodge it, making your company uncomfortable when you reach over towards the tray to grab another cracker right afterwards before you realize what you are doing. Or is that just me?

And it will distract me, temporarily at least, from the burning desire of leaving this godforsaken apartment forever, where i breathe dust and fumes every day from constant leafblowers and wait anxiously for the next hellminion child to inevitably move in next door as management gets less and less picky about tenants, or maybe they just hate us with our ever-growing mountain of complaints/maintenance requests and they purposely place the noisy ones near our windows.  Where we have an impossibly tiny kitchen, and the most hideous muddy greyish olive green "accent walls" that give us the exact cave-dwelling look i was going for in every room.  In fact i think the actual name of the color is "Soul Crushing."  And don't you just love the babbling brook sounds?  Except we are not by one of the several manmade creeks on the property--it is just our constantly running, apparently unfixable toilets.  And they just raised the prices on the laundry machines but half of them don't work because people do things like put tennis shoes in there and i have to clean lumps of dry detergent out of the washer because nobody seems to be able to read the sign that says liquid only and then i check for gum in the dryers--the dryers that don't even dry towels all the way through for $1.10 per dryer load, but by far the most annoying thing is the inconvenience of having to retrieve the laundry on time lest we risk it being manhandled by somebody else.

i get irrationally annoyed at this. a bicycle pump and manicure kit are among the items featured. (later i swiped that change)

but then i turn to see this and i am like, oh, yeah that is all me

orange cat, activate!

 don't you feel your happiness being destroyed by that putrid hue? this picture doesn't do it justice.  also this is our vitamin store, in the hallway

monkey in another box

We really liked this place, with all the foliage and wildlife and noise ordinances, for the first five years.  Objectively it is a pretty great complex and certainly one of the nicest ones around.  But after five years of needing the screens replaced annually because the friendly yet crafty squirrels have hungrily chewed through them (after already overturning the bird feeder and digging up my potted plants) as my cats just sit and watch, and us slowly outgrowing our two bedroom place but refusing to buy things like new and necessary furniture because "we're getting a house soon, we'll get some then!" and david uses the wine cabinet as a valet stand and i use the dining room table as a mail-sorting station, and we eat off of tv trays in the living room because after our long hard day (of david doing real work and me just nervously making sure the cats don't escape through the squirrel holes or strangle themselves on blinds cords, while slowly building up resentment for this overpriced dungeon until i finally crack, ahem) we want to sit on the lumpy, torn-up, cat hair-embedded couch and watch (more) law and order and simply relax.  But i digress.

Graham cracker cookies, marshmallow fluff, sugary goodness.  Wiiiine.  Happiness.

I'm afraid i can't properly credit this recipe because it's from the pre-actively-blogging time when i copy/pasted into word documents and then printed for my own personal use without worrying about plagiarism.  If anyone knows the originator i will edit in to credit them.  I'll post the written recipe, even though on this occasion i used nutella instead of chocolate bars (which google says is very unoriginal, sigh) and i accidentally made them upside down because i guess i was too eager to get my hands covered in marshmallow fluff to read the directions again.  I only made a half recipe because i already knew how dangerous these are.  Below is the full recipe.

Smores Bars - makes one serving 

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-1/3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 king-sized milk chocolate bars
1-1/2 cups marshmallow creme/fluff (not melted marshmallows) 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease an 8 by 8 baking dish. 

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars until light.  Beat in the egg and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder, and salt.  Add the dry mixture to the butter mixture at a low speed until combined. 

Divide the dough in half and press half of the dough into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan.  Place the chocolate bars over dough, breaking if necessary to fit a single layer no more than a quarter-inch thick.  Put the marshmallow fluff in a plastic ziplock that has been coated on the inside with nonstick spray.  Pipe the fluff out onto the chocolate.  Place the remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff (most easily achieved by flattening the dough into small shingles and laying them together) (i pressed it into another similarly sized pan and then turned it out on top of the fluff layer.) 

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned.  Cool completely before cutting into bars. (or eat with fork as is)

second layer of dough

right out of the oven

i did not wait for it to cool completely this time

I know i sort of promised to supply the other, better coleslaw recipe but i have to continue that as a part two, because i've worn myself out today and the sirens of the smores bars are calling me.  Plus i think today's post is long enough and if you made it this far you deserve some of this:

 warm and gooey

 a new slice after it cooled completely

i worry there will be little left for breakfast

They have made me forget all about the wretched little kitchen from whence they came, and the worryingly darkening freckle on my shoulder, and about the maybe-arthritis that i think i am getting in one of my big toes.  All my woes, disappeared into sticky marshmallow melty-ness.

At this time i feel i must defend  my cookie breakfast and then batch of smores-eating.  like i said before i fully expected to eat ice cream for every meal when david was gone.  I like to occasionally indulge my five-year-old self without any pretenses of eating something healthy first, like i normally try to do every day just to feel like i took in enough vitamins to "earn" the entire batch of cookies i want to eat at the end of the evening.  But you, normal people, would be proud of me today because of this:

i ate about two cups of this purpley goo for lunch. purple goo consists of blackberries and greek yogurt

artichoke salmon and steamed broccoli for dinner, courtesy of a ready-meal and my fantastic silicone steamer thing.  admittedly i WAS planning to (finally) purchase and eat some black raspberry limited edition ice cream that i have had my eye on but i finished the birthday cake oreo carton too late, and unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, for my pants seams) all that was left on the shelf where the black raspberry was supposed to be was a lone, mangled-looking carton with a smashed lid and smudged ice cream residue (more purple goo!) down the side that i decided to pass for now but i will check the other target for tomorrow's dinner.