A coworker brought these bad boys into work one day, after chatting about how many great recipes she's found while doing the Atkin's Diet for the past few weeks.

She said they're called Heroin Wings. And after one bite, I didn't have to ask what that name was all about. It was obvious, they're addictive.

So addictive, that I asked her for the recipe and made them that night for a few friends.

For those of you avoiding carbs, they're a great substitute if you're craving a crunchy, "breaded" taste.

What we used:

• 4 pounds chicken wings or chicken drumsticks (I prefer drumsticks)
• 1 1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
• 3 tablespoons dried parsley
• 2 tablespoons dried oregano
• 2 tablespoons paprika
• Fresh ground pepper, to taste
• 1/2 cup butter, melted

How we did it:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
• Combine the parmesan cheese and the parsley, oregano, paprika and pepper in a bowl.
• Line a shallow baking pan/tray with foil. (Very important step unless you feel like scrubbing welded-on chicken skin off your pan for days.)
• Melt the butter in a shallow bowl. If using a microwave, 2:00 minutes on 60% power does the trick.
• Dip each chicken piece in the melted butter, then roll in the cheese and seasoning mixture, and place on the foil-covered pan. If you have extra cheese mixture leftover,  sprinkle on top of the chicken pieces.
• Bake for 1 hour.

This recipe appears in Dana Carpender's 500 Low Carb Recipes, on the CarbWire website, and in the recipe forum at Active Low-Carber Forums, and in the Eades Comfort Foods Cookbook (as "Angel Wings").

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What we used:

• 6 medium apples
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla 

How we did it:

• Peel and core apples
• Chop up into chunky pieces
• Place apples in crockpot
• In a seperate bowl, combine water, cinnamon, sugar, and vanilla
• Pour mixture over apples in crockpot and stir
• Cover crockpot and cook on low for four hour or until soft

• Once apples are soft, mash with a fork for desired texture

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..or in the case green for St Patrick's Day!

What we used:

• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup of butter
• 3 cups of flour
• 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder (unsweetened)
• 3/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 1 12 teaspoons of vanilla
• 1 large bottle of natural red food coloring (1 ounce bottle)
• 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of white vinegar

How we did it:

• Preheat your often to 350 degrees.
• Take a cupcake tin and line it with paper or foil cupcake liners.
• In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, and salt.
• In a larger bowl, beat the butter with a hand mixer (or in a standing mixer) until it becomes creamy.
• Add the sugar and vanilla to the butter, and mix it in.
• Next, beat the eggs in one at a time, then mix in the food coloring.
• Alternately beat the flour mixture and the buttermilk into the butter mix, stopping when it is just combined.
• Next, stir the baking soda into the vinegar, and add it to the batter, mixing it in.
• Fill the liner 2/3 full of cupcake batter.
• Bake at 350 degree for fifteen minutes, then check with a toothpick.  If the toothpick comes out clean, take out the cupcakes.  If there is batter on the toothpick, cook longer, and check again in five minutes, until a toothpick comes comes out clean from the center.
• Cool on a rack before frosting.

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Good morning all!

Hope your breakfasts are as delicious as this all time favorite of ours, Eggs Benny. 

What we used:

• Eggs (4)
• Canadian ham or bacon
• English muffins or bread
• Butter
• Potatoes (4 - 5 optional)
• Mimosas (mandatory)

How we did it:

• First things first, get out your orange juice and champagne: we're having mimosas! 

Home Fries:

• If you want homefries to go along with your meal, begin by peeling and rinsing potatoes.
• Cut potatoes into small cubes and boil until they're soft enough to easily poke with a fork.
• Light coat pan or skillet with oil and warm slowly up to a low heat.
• Make sure all pieced get coated with oil and cook until they become brown and crispy, stirring occasionally.
• Pro tip: add butter and turn the heat up once the potatoes are almost cooked to make them extra crispy and golden brown. 

Eggs Benedict:

• Start with making a hollandaise sauce by first separating the egg yokes from the whites. 
• Blend yokes with butter, spices, and touch of lemon juice.
• Poach eggs.
• Cook bacon or Canadian ham while toasting english muffins or bread of your choice.
• Lightly spread with butter when ready.
• Layer meat, egg, and hollandaise on each piece of bread.. and enjoy! 

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For people with food restrictions, each day can be a challenge in creating a menu with variety while staying within specific boundaries. I watched my boss go through the process after being diagnosed with Diabetes almost two years ago. So when it came to celebrating his birthday in the office I wanted to find an alternative to super sugary, high-carb sweets, that still taste great. 

Meet Chocolate Applesauce Cupcakes! 

Clocking in at only 20 carbs (sans frosting). 

What we used:

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Nothing like a cold glass of homemade iced tea on a hot summer day!

What we used:

• 1 quart boiling water
• 1 quart cold water
• 1 cup of organic sugar
• 10 Red Rose Tea bags

• Measure one quart of water into a two quart pan and bring to a boil
• Measure one quart of water into a two quart pitcher
• Remove boiling water from heat and place ten tea bags into the pan
• Brew tea for ten minutes

• Mix quart of tea into the pitcher with the quart of cold water
• Add one cup of sugar (or more to taste)
• Serve with fresh lemon and ice
• Enjoy!

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You can never have enough Mexican.. or at least we can't! Hot Tamales are not only delicious but super fun to make and eat.

• Corn Husks
• Masa
• Black beans
• Water
• Seasonings
• Cheddar cheese

How we did it:

• Separate corn husks by size; wider pieces will be used for filling the Tamales, and small pieces can be ripped into long strips used for ties. You'll need about twenty of each to make ten Tamales.
• Make your filling using Masa (a cornmeal dough) and any other meats or vegetables you'd like. We choose black beans this time.
• Layer two corn husks so they overlap each other and fill as shown below:

• 
  There are two ways to tie the husks for steaming. The rounded way is traditionally used for corn husks, as the flatter example is used more for Plantain wraps.

• 
  Rolling them tightly takes some practice but the end result should look like this:

• 

  See the full gallery on Posterous
  Steam until firm.
• With the left overs you have the option to reheat them by baking a some cheddar on top, mmm.

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Here's a look at our hand rolled tortellini made from scratch!

What we used:

• Flour
• Water
• Salt
• 1 egg
• Ricotta cheese
• Parmesan
• Roasted red peppers
• Parsley
• Italian spices

How we do it:

• Start by making a simple pasta dough, as we did with the fettuccini but rolled out to a thinner constancy
• Cut off small pieces and roll into circular shapes about 1 1/2 inches wide
• Whip up filling and spoon into dough
• Roll up filled dough to form tortellini shape
• Cook in desired sauce until ready; we used a white wine based cheese sauce and served with garlic Italian bread

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What we used:

• Crock pot
• Veggie Broth
• Curry
• Potatoes
• Celery
• Carrots
• Onions
• Tomatoes
• Salt, pepper and other seasonings

How we did it:

• Instead of buying the preservative filled vegetable broth from the market, we made our own by boiling down leftover vegetable ends saved from during the week and seasoning them accordingly.
• Pour broth into to crock pot and turn on low.
  
• Cut vegetables small in size and wait, hours. This is a slow cooking soup so keep going back to check out it, seasoning as needed.
• Serve as an entrée with baguette or on the side of your main dish.

Bonus:

This recipe tastes even better as a leftover and you can even freeze it if you want to keep it more than a week.

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• One package of frozen spinach
• Feta cheese
• Mozzerella
  
• Cream cheese
• Filo dough
• Seasonings to taste (try basil, garlic, cilantro and/or parsley)
  

How we did it:

• Make mixture to taste and warm on the stove.
  
• Using frozen filo dough, paint on melted butter.
• Fill the edge of the dough and fold into triangles.
  
• Line on baking sheet and cook. 
  

Bonus:

• You can use the remaining filo dough to make some danish. We choose raspberry jam and although slightly messy, it tasted delicious!

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Experimenting with pizzas can be a lot of fun, and also extremely dangerous!

• Wheat flour
• Corn meal
• Yeast
• Olive oil
• Sugar
• Cheddar cheese
• Red potatoes
• Bacon
• Salt, pepper and Italian seasonings

How we did it:

• Place room temperature pizza stone in oven and preheat to 350.
• Make your crust using; yeast, flour, olive oil, salt and white sugar. Stir well to combine, then beat until a stiff dough has formed. Perfecting the crust can be difficult, we've used variations of flour and often beer while trying to create the perfect consistency. We've found the thicker the crust, the harder it is to control the heat while using the pizza stone.
• Roll dough out to your preferred size and top with potatoes, bacon and cheese.
• Gently slide pizza from a flat tray onto the already heated pizza stone.
• Cook until cheese is melted and the dough is nice and crusty.
• Serve with lots of beer and enjoy!

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Our version of fried Tempura, so bad but oh so good!

What we used:

• Red peppers
• Zucchini
• Carrot
• Onion
• Broccoli
• Mushrooms
• Flour
• Beer
• Water
• Lots 'o' spices
• Soy Sauce
• Duck sauce
• Chipotle sour cream
• Asian Ginger

How we did it:

• Cut vegetables into small, thin pieces
• Create the batter. We went with a tasty beer batter recipe this time, but here's the general idea; combine flour, salt, sugar and baking powder, slowly add oil and water until smooth and creamy. Chill for at least 15 minutes.
• Heat a generous amount of vegetable oil in Wok over high heat.
• Dip veggies in better, then fry in oil until crispy.
• Traditionally the Japanese dish is served with Tensuyu sauce, similar to soy sauces, but we added some delicious chipolte sour cream, duck and a homemade Asian ginger sauces.

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Get yourself a Italian pasta maker, and you'll want to do this all the time.

What we used:

• Flour
• Water
• Salt
• 1 egg

How we do it:

• Start off with a simple pasta dough recipe, then experiment to get the texture and consistency you prefer depending on what kind of noodles you're making. 
• Cut dough into a few pieces smaller than width of your pasta machine.

• Without using the attachment, adjust the machine according to how you'd like each noodle. Start with a high number and run dough through until you find the right thickness.

• Cut the rolled pieces to the desired length for each noodle.
• Using the attachment, roll dough through the thickest setting on the machine for Fettuccine.
• Hang groups of pasta to dry for about an hour.

See the full gallery on Posterous

• Pour yourself some wine and begin preparing sauce or sides that you'll be serving if you haven't already.

Why we did it:

• The cost is virtually nothing and uses ingredients you probably already have at home.
• There's always a ton of pasta left over that you can freeze once it's dry.
• You can add finely chopped veggies or vegetable juice to make flavored pastas.
• Plus you can alternate wheat flour to make the pasta healthier!

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Just back from Mexico, with an empty fridge, we woke up with a need for breakfast and the urge to bake. Since our supplies were low (no milk or eggs), we had to come up with our own little something, that actually worked well. 

One thing we weren't lacking was white and milk chocolate chips so I incorporated them in replacement of the dairy.

What we used:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinager
• 1 1/2 milk chocolate chips
• 1 cup white chocolate chips

How we did it:

• The regular recipe called for 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of milk. We took 1 cup of white chocolate chips and melted them down to liquid. When melted, the measuring cup was well under the cup level so we to fill up to the cup line with water and stirred until smooth.
• First mix the dry ingredients.
• Then adding the liquids and stir vigorously. The batter will appear more like cookie dough than muffin mix.
• Drop dough into the muffin tins 3/4 of the way full.
• Bake for 13 - 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

It made about 12 muffins. Quite good for a impromptu morning recipe!

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A delayed view of this yummy Winter Festival cheesecake we made back in November.

See the full gallery on Posterous

• 1 sleeve of chocolate graham crackers
• 1 large container of Smuckers red raspberry jam
• Cream Cheese
• White Chocolate
• Vanilla
• Sugar
• Butter

How we did the crust:

• Warm jam on stove in sauce pan
• Smash graham crackers and line the bottom of the spring pan.
• Top with a layer of jam.

We can't give away the entire recipe but I will say, the white chocolate added to the cheesecake mixture really made this desert irresistible!

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Making Kahlua at home can seem a bit time consuming, but the end result will yield you two large bottles of some strong and tasty liqueur.

See the full gallery on Posterous

What we used:

• One pound of coffee
  
• 1.75 liter bottle of rum
• Simple sugar
• Caramelized sugar syrup
•  One large container
• Metal coffee filter
• Several unbleached coffee filters
  

How we did it:

• The beginning process is easy; simply soak coffee in the rum of your choice for a duration of one to two months. We used Kona coffee from Hawaii for more of a richer flavor, a bottle of Bacardi, and a plastic mini-keg used for beer brewing.
• Once the rum has absorbed into the coffee, strain out all the grinds using both a metal coffee filter as well as multiple paper ones. 
• Making all the sugar syrups needed takes several hours of boiling, caramelizing and sifting sugars over the stove. You'll have to research and perfect your own recipes for this part, we can't give you all our secrets. *wink*
• After mixing everything together in a large bowl, taste test of course, then funnel into two large bottle. Our recipe made two 1.75 liters.  

Why we did it:

• A 1.75 liter bottle of Kahlua can range from $30 - $40 a bottle depending on where you get it. We averaged our total process to about $40 between the coffee, rum and sugar, virtually doubling the quantity of product. 
• White Russians and The Big Lebowski. Make with 2 oz Vodka, 1 oz Kahlua, and 1 - 2 oz milk (depending on taste).
  
• Kahlua and coffee; add a shot or two on those cold winter work days.
• Espresso martinis!
  
• For more recipes, check out the official Kahlua website.
  

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