Lunchtime Links for November 30th, 2009

• Chicken Pot Pie: Serious Eats tries out a bunch in Manhattan. 
• Beer Bread: Mixed Review of Trader Joe's beer bread mix.
• Zac Posen: Another designer diffusion line is coming to Target.
• Interesting: Recipe for Candied Sweet Potato Marshmallows.
• Real Housewives: Recap of the last OC episode.
  

Lunchtime Links for November 27th, 2009

• Real Simple: Holiday giveaway.
• Cooking Light: Staff holiday favorites.
• Gossip Girl: Recap from TVGasm. 
• Hostess Gifts: Some holiday hostess gifts from The Kitchn.  
• Art Smith: New show on TLC coming up! 

Lunchtime Links for November 26th, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Some fun T-day related links for you today:

• Gobble Gobble: Turkey Cupcakes tutorial.
• Awkwarrrrrd: Let's hope this didn't happen to you today.
• Decorations: Some ideas for Thanksgiving table settings from Real Simple.
• Tasty 10: Links via Serious Eats.
• Bakerella: Yummy recipe for a Pumpkin pie (remixed, haha).

Lunchtime Links for November 25th, 2009

• Yummm: Pan-fried pumpkin gnocchi- sounds awesome!
• It's Paula, Ya'll: Mixed Review of Paula's Sweet Potato Biscuit mix.
• Yay Bethesda: Self Magazine's Healthiest Cities Ranking.
• Holiday Windows!: Slideshow of department store displays.
• 14 Drinks: Hot drinks to keep us warm during the holidays.

Lunchtime Links for November 24th, 2009

• Pumpkin-y: Whole wheat pumpkin muffin recipe.
• Jose Andres: GQ's 5 favorite dishes from Chef Andres.
• Pomptly: Workplace passive-agressiveness, sweet.
• Ewwwww: Duff Goldman's cake serving technique.
• CCCC: Downtown Edition.

Lunchtime Links for November 23rd, 2009

• Holiday Travel: Food airplane travel tips.
• Cute!: DIY Infinity scarves from CheapJap.
• Nice Idea: Bake & Give pans for the holidays.
• Project Runway: Finale recap from EW.com
• Gossip Girl: NYMag Comments recap.

Recipe: Giada DiLaurentiis' Peanut Butter Granola Bars

Mise en place.

I saw this recipe for Peanut Butter Granola Bars on an episode of Giada's show maybe 2 or 3 Saturdays ago- it was a kids-themed episode, but these looked really tasty.  Peanut butter + chocolate, woo!

The recipe was pretty straightforward, although looking back on it I'm not really sure why the recipe says to spray the pan, put parchment paper in the pan, and then re-spray over the paper.  Seemed a little excessive to me, and it was, especially since I had to deal with a greasy pan afterwards (defeating the purpose of using parchment paper to begin with).  If I make these again I'll probably just skip the pan-spray step as it was unnecessary with my glass Pyrex pan. 

 

PB-tastic!

The bars took a little longer than the recommended 15 minutes to get "golden"- closer to 20-25 minutes.  Once they had cooled down for a while, I cut into them and found them to be v. crumbly and difficult to cut into.  Some of the commenters noted that cutting back on the butter might help with this, so I'll probably try that next time.  Taste-wise these were great, assuming you are a fan of peanut butter.  That was the dominant smell/taste for sure in these bars.  The good thing about these is that you can adjust with mix-ins as you please- maybe put in dried fruit (for a PB & J-type bar), walnuts, white chocolate chips, chopped candy bars, etc.  It's an easy and fun recipe for a great little snack!