Eggnog Cookies

I admit, I hear eggnog and I shudder. I have never been able to handle the thought of egg nog. But I am married to a man who loves it. And I have made it from scratch for him many times. Managed to get a Scottish friend who was visiting quite hammered on it even. So last year someone mentioned eggnog cookies and I thought, hmm, I bet Sean would like that. I did some research and found a few different recipes and set to work.  After they were done, I decided to try one. And wow! They were great. I was more than a bit shocked by this fact. Not only does it contain eggnog (bleh) but nutmeg which I find to be a double bleh. Who knew that combined with some butter, cinnamon, and sugar, it would be very non-bleh.

This year I plan to freeze some egg nog when the season ends to be able to make some of these cookies in the summer time. And I know what you're thinking, freeze eggnog? Why not, it's going to be mixed in to something, so it should do fine. I guess we'll see this summer!

I put this in my AllRecipes recipe box and wish I could remember the different sources I used so I could attribute.

Garlic!

Well honestly, can the title say it any better? Garlic! I love garlic. Cooks Illustrated has the most amazing 40 cloves of garlic chicken and I've been addicted since my first bite. I first tried 40 cloves of garlic chicken in the early 90s, stuffing a whole chicken and baking it. For a garlic lover, even I couldn't handle it. Then I found out about roasting the garlic first using the Cooks Illustrated method, and I was in love.

Now this time it is Garlic Soup. I saw a recipe for Garlic Soup on Tasty Kitchen and thought, hum, that sounds good, but I think it would be better if the garlic was roasted. I began a search, and found a lovely version and decided I must try this. So 24 hours after finding the initial recipe, there is garlic soup in my house. I made up the batch, created a small bowl to share with Sean. I had 2 spoonfuls and never got the bowl bake. I guesss that means it was good. :)

Cheese Crack and I'm a dealer!

Ok, so this isn't the real name for this dish, it's just one we have used to describe it. :) I have made this for a number of crops and everyone seems to love it. To the point of being asked "where's the cheese crack" when I made something different one night. On Friday, Sean had a potluck for work and said that's what he wanted to take. So the Thursday night before the potluck, cut to me making his dish as well as 13 dozen cookies. Well, the cookies is a totally different post. :) Yes, I may have been quiet here, but I have been cooking my brains out. I need to find time to get some of the new favs posted with my tweaks and comments. Soon, honest, soon.

Back to the cheese crack. If you are on a diet, read no further. If you are concerned about your hardening arteries, well, this will help harden them. But if you don't care and want something completely yummy, I recommend checking this out.

Mind Altering Dessert

I like to take bits of my baking to my trainer. Yep, nothing like corrupting the healthy person with lots of butter.  In response to my last treat, I received this email.

"Your cookies were great. I assumed that they would be heavy, but they were really light and moist. Thanks for sharing. I think I still like the flourless cake the best though. That was mind altering, because I just didn’t know that flour in cake was just getting in the way of all the good stuff. I hear that learning new things wards off Alzheimer’s, so thank you for that too."

Now who wouldn't love getting an email like that!

So why am I corrupting my poor trainer with Flourless Chocolate Cake? Well, I blame my son's teacher. Hey, someone has to take the blame and it sure isn't going to be me! My son (and soon my daughter) attend a wonderful Montessori school near my home. Like most schools, this school has an annual auction. As I racked my brain for ideas, I struck on one that shows up at our United Way auction every year, desserts. I put together Six Months of Desserts, menu created between the winner and myself. And shockingly, someone wanted them. My son's teacher to be exact. This auction was packaged with Six Months of Pies provided by the head of school. Yes, there's a reason I love my son's teacher. She loves desserts, who couldn't love her. In April we began our journey into desserts and as it was also her birthday month, I felt a chocolate cake was in order. But Crazy Woman that I am, I can't go with just a chocolate cake. Nope, must go flourless.

Beans, beans, the magical fruit...

Some days you find that you really are never more than six years old. This happens to me whenever I make beans. That song must go through my head. Unfortunately, Sean is also six years old and it must come out his mouth. Such a wonderful thing when you have two little people who love to sing daddy's silly songs.

Tonight I was scouring the pantry looking for some tomato paste and I noticed I had some pork and beans sitting there. Ah, what a great side to go with the mini-meatloaves I'm making for dinner that I know Lucy will turn up her nose and say, "I no like meat". Lucy is my little fruititarian. She has yet to meet a fruit she won't devour. If you'd see her near fruit at preschool, you'd think we starve her. Some days we think she has a hollow leg! But show her meat and she turns up her nose.

Baked beans are my way of getting some protein into her. I try to keep the pantry stocked so I can make them up regularly. Lucy and I both love these baked beans and they are so simple. It is a combination of two recipes from my old copy of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, the 1981 copyright.

New Year's Resolution or Planned Failure?

Some people are wise and give up New Year's resolutions. My husband is one of those people. He convinced me that they were silly, and I gave them up as well. Then two years ago, after eighteen years of marriage, my husband announces that he has a New Year's resolution. Well, la-di-da. His resolution? To play poker once a month. Well, isn't that interesting? Then last year the resolution was to play twice a month, once in a home game and once at the casino. Well, what's a girl to do, especially a girl with her own vices, namely scrapbooking and cooking.

This year, I embraced my husband's new world order, and set a resolution for myself. My resolution was to prepare one meal a month using my cookbooks. Now, I'm not saying that I don't try out new recipes. Oh goodness, do I try out new recipes! But I have taken to getting those recipes from the internet. Yes, a simple search can give you so many great ideas. And you can spend hours salivating over new combinations and twists. I know, I have. In the process, my poor cookbook collection has been ignored. And my cookbook collection is by no means small. I have a full size book case of just cookbooks. I am not lacking in any way. It's not as if I have only one or two, so the internet ensures I have more choices. No, I have plenty. I just got lazy. The bookcase is in the basement. The laptop is in the kitchen. Nuff said.

January started out lovely. I pulled out an Omaha Steak cookbook and prepared Swedish Meatballs, something I was sure the whole family would love. I do have to remember the audience. They weren't loved. Kids wouldn't touch them. Yes, the kids who love bleu cheese wouldn't touch meatballs. Go figure. Then work got busy, and you guessed it, the planned February and March meals were ignored. So now we're into May, and I decided, it's time to work on that resolution. Ok, so it was broken, no reason I can't try again, right?

Today I received my bi-weekly basket of produce from Full Circle Farm and it included a pound of roma tomatoes and a pound of Italian link sausage from Heritage Meats. The answer seemed clear to me, make some tomato sauce and have Italian for dinner, and I announced that after dinner this evening. Then, at 9 PM I remembered I have a meeting at 4:30 tomorrow at my son's school. So cooking sauce after picking up the kids from school isn't an option. So you guessed it, at 9PM, I started a batch of tomato sauce. Yes, I'm that kind of crazy. And rather than hit the intertubes looking for a recipe, I trekked to the basement in search of a sauce recipe. There was my trusty Pasta cookbook, and the game was on!

Co-workers are evil

I think we all have that one evil co-worker. Let's call mine "Lisa". Yes, that seems like a good name. For a number of years, "Lisa" has put ideas into my head to see what will pop out later. She quickly realized that she could mention something in passing, and later I'd come back with solutions to make that happen. My husband uses the same tactic, and yes, he's evil as well.

A few weeks back, "Lisa" mentioned Ezra Pound Cake. She told me how she found this great cooking blog and how she was addicted to reading it on her crackberry during her commute. And no worries folks, she takes the vanpool, so she's not reading and driving! She's evil, but she's not insane.

The next day she emailed me a link, and at first I ignored it, much as I often ignored her subtle hints of things she'd like to see done to our system. But the idea of a good cooking blog that was both funny and full of great recipes ate away at the back of my brain, the same way her passing comments on ideas for system did. Eventually I broke down, and I looked. Oh my, the goodness.

And it did not stop there. Ezra Pound Cake is part of the Tuesdays With Dorie blog. I was completely sucked in. I needed to get my hands on that cookbook. There were so many great looking recipes. I wanted to try them all. Thus began the threat of being cut off the internet from the husband.

The trick became justifying purchasing another cookbook. Baking: From My Home to Yours looked so amazing. So I decided to check it out from the library and try out a few recipes to tempt Sean into letting me purchase it. The first recipe was Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops. And Ezra says they are better after a few days. I'm not sure we'll ever know in  my house, I don't think they'll last that long. Lucy helped me make the cookies after school today, and the child was covered in cookie dough from licking the paddle. She could hardly wait until they were done baking to have one. I kept hear, Me Like, Me Like. Yea, I got it.

And Sean seems very interested in a number of the recipes from this cookbook, so I may soon own a copy. Wish me luck. And that evil co-worker. I'm not sure yet if I'm giving her a cookie and admitting that once again she can work her evil upon me.

Silly midwest girl

I am probably one of the whitest people you were ever meet. According to my OB, while examining me during my first pregnancy, I have the whitest stomach she had ever seen. I grew up in Ohio, the land of meat and potatoes. A land where cucumbers and zucchini were the stuff of nightmares, plant one small plant and they give you 5000 of each. So what in the world am I doing sharing my version of Asian Cucumber Salad? Well, why not?

I had my first experience with Thai food when I moved to Seattle in 1995. My first experience did not thrill me. My second experience won me over. That experience included cucumber salad. Then I found a teriyaki place that also had wonderful cucumber salad. And I was hooked.

Now that I have two kids, I don't eat out very often. And when I do, it's usually some place where the kids can be very loud and no one will notice. And cucumber salad isn't on the menu. One day I decided to find a recipe to use the cucumber that had come in my bi-weekly deliver from Full Circle Farm. I found a number of them out there, but none of them alone called out to me. So I combined a few. And then promptly forgot what I had done. That was actually part of the motivation for creating this blog, to help me remember recipes like this one.

Tally me banana

I hate bananas. I love banana bread. Specifically I love banana nut bread. But then I married a man that hates nuts in his banana bread. Well, he hates nuts in most everything. It almost broke us. I mean really, first the salt vs pepper and then nuts vs no nuts. And really, a man who doesn't love nuts marrying me? Just makes no sense.

My grandmother made amazing banana nut bread. I still have a recipe card of hers with her recipe. My mother in law makes great banana bread. In a cookbook she made for my bridal shower, she shared her recipe for banana bread. Her recipe came from another family friend. And guess what. The recipes are the same. Well, except for the missing nuts.

My guess is that in 1957 Better Housekeeping had this recipe that "every modern housewife" needed to make to keep her husband happy. I know in my house it has worked.  And how do we resolve the nuts vs no nuts problem? I make two loaves of course. For awhile after having a child with peanut allergies, I gave up the nut version of this recipe, but then I found peanut free walnuts. Husband and son get no nut, myself and daughter get nut version. And now it requires four loaves rather than two.

So with nods to my grandma and my mother in law and whomever originally created it, I give you Banana (Nut) Bread.

Sloppy Joe's...Slop...Sloppy Joe's

It seems only appropriate that I start with sloppy joe's as my first post (and a nod to Adam Sandler). Sloppy joe's is one of the first "meals" I remember cooking for myself. And it was my favorite meal. I would go to my grandmother's on Saturday night and she'd let me cook. After dinner I'd stay up much too late to watch Carol Burnett. It was wonderful.

The meal would start by my grabbing a potato and cubing it. I'd then fry it up. In another pan, I'd brown the ground beef and add bbq sauce straight from the jar. It was pure heaven. For 30+ years, this is how I have made sloppy joe's. Of course, Hunt's Manwhich came out and I tried that for awhile, but I like my sloppy joe's to be a true BBQ beef.

When I met my husband, I found he also loved sloppy joes as just ground beef and bbq sauce. If I added onions or peppers, he would tolerate it, but he truly preferred the purity. I've used from the jar as well as homemade BBQ sauce, but always stayed simple. And since Lucy adores BBQsauce on pretty much everything, she was actually tricked into eat beef on occassion.

When I saw this recipe for sloppy joes on Pioneer Woman, I knew I had to try it. It had a number of interesting flavors that called out to me. Last night, I pulled it out and gave it a shot. She did something I've never done before, cooked the ground beef in butter. I think it actually made the beef "less dry" but that could be my imagination.