Spicy Sunday!

We love to eat at Casa Parker. And a lot of the time, we like our food to have a little bit of heat to it.

Yesterday was kind of a spicy day.

Saturday, I was thumbing through this (seriously, go buy a copy!):

and found a recipe in it for "Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies". Well, like I said, we like spicy. And we really like spicy chocolate, so this seemed like a no-brainer to try. I decided to make them on Sunday. Sundays are the days I feel most motivated and domestic and project-oriented. I wish there was more than one Sunday in a week, don't you?

Also (on Saturday), my friend Daeon posted a link on her facebook to Giada DeLaurentiis' spicy mochas. I make those quite often (though I've modified the recipe some), and Josh loves them. So I thought it was high time I make them again. I confess, just thinking about them got me craving them!
Sunday morning, I made them (though a bit too spicy this time - oops) to go with the rest of our awesome breakfast.



(Spicy Mocha, nutella toast, cheesy scrambled eggs that I cooked in a little bacon grease {!}*, and some of those little bacon appetizers we made previously for our Halloween party. We made this batch Saturday night, and used brown sugar on them this time instead of parmesan cheese)

Before dinner, I whipped up the Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies. They are delicious! It's basically a chocolate cookie dough base. You roll it into balls, and then roll the balls into a mixture of sugar, cinnamon and cayenne pepper. They have just the right amount of heat, and are so good for milk-dunking.



For dinner, we had even MORE spice.

I decided to try this recipe I ripped out of the latest issue of Cooking Light:



We had to modify it slightly. I had no canola oil, so I used olive oil to cook them in. But you basically coat chicken tenders in a mixture of flour, black pepper and paprika, then dip into an egg mixture (2 eggs, lightly beaten with a little water), then roll them in some crushed whole grain flake cereal (I used Total Whole Grain Flakes).



Here's where the spicy comes in: the dipping sauce. It's made with mayo (the recipe called for canola oil mayo, but we didn't have that so I used olive oil mayo), Sriracha hot sauce (which is a staple in our house!), lime juice, and soy sauce. It was wonderful - almost a sweet/hot kind of thing. And the sauce was so cool and creamy, and the chicken was so crunchy on the outside. It was a perfect combination of textures and flavors and the perfect dinner. I think we moaned a little with every bite.





I love Sundays, but I REALLY love spicy Sundays!





*Josh said they were hands down the best eggs he had ever eaten in his life.