“Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.”- Barbara Jordan
“I think cookies are sort of the unsung sweet, you know? They’re incredibly popular. But everybody thinks of cakes and pies and fancier desserts before they think cookies. A plate of cookies is a great way to end dinner and really nice to share at the holidays.”- Bobby Flay
“Smell is so powerful, you know. My grannies would both bake things like shortbreads and cookies. I think whenever I smell those kinds of things it really takes me back to my childhood.”- Curtis Stone
“When I was about to graduate, I asked myself, ‘What could you do every day and never get sick of?’ My answer was really simple: Make cookies.”- Christina Tosi
Hello! We’ve had some food adventures lately. Slowly, I seem to be getting excited about cooking again which has helped. One thing we did try while in our slump was one of the meal kit services. We tried Hello Fresh and were sadly, not super happy with the quality. The end results were good, but some of our ingredients came spoiled or moldy, so I had to replace them. We only tried two meals because I was annoyed and cancelled before the end of the trial. Probably should have waited on that, but I didn’t feel it was worth it if things weren’t actually going to be fresh.
This was a Korean beef dish with stir fried veggies over rice. It was pretty tasty! I would make this one again, although I would double the amount of sauce, as it was pretty dry. The Husband liked it too.
The second one was this Crispy Ranch Chicken with Ranch potatoes. It was supposed to have green beans with it, but they came spoiled, so I subbed our own carrots. We liked it, although thought the crust could have been a little more flavorful.
It was a fun experiment and we may try again with a different company. Some of our issues with it were the amount of plastic waste that came with it. It also doesn’t allow you to make mistakes at all, because everything is pre-packaged.
I made these Strawberry Birthday Cake cookies a while ago for Mother’s Day. We had the inlaws over for dinner and these were dessert. They were the second recipe I’ve tried from Procrastibaking. Everyone enjoyed them, although I found the buttercream a little too sweet. The Husband thought they were pretty good, but didn’t like the texture from the dried strawberries. Next time, I might blend them down to a powder and try that.
We had this recipe for baked Chicken and gnocchi for dinner. I subbed swiss chard for spinach. It was pretty good, although the sauce separated and wasn’t as appetizing as the picture in the recipe. https://thecollegehousewife.com/creamy-chicken-gnocchi-bake
We had turkey and dumplings too and it was yummy. We would eat this again. I did use canned biscuits as I was in a rush. I cannot find the recipe I used unfortunately.
We were going to have tacos one Tuesday, but wanted something slightly different, so I made shrimp fajitas instead. We served them with homemade pico to which I added some chopped red onion. Both were delicious.
Pancakes for dinner are my favorite “too tired for recipes“ option. We ate them with homemade syrup from our friends’ sugarbush. Yum!
Grilled cheese and chips were my go to meal when the Husband was away on business. Simple and delicious.
I’ll have more exciting vegetarian meals to share in a later post. I was good about trying new things for meals while he was gone, at least the first week. The second week was mainly easy stuff.
I’ve been doing some more experimenting with some homemade bitters which has been exciting and has made me feel fancy. Canning season is starting up again too. I’ve got more rhubarb growing waiting to be made into new recipes! My tomatoes are growing slowly, but I’m hoping some will be ready soon.
Believe me, I’m just as shocked as you are that it’s already February! Lunar New Year snuck up on me again. We did celebrate by having baked beef buns made from leftover Crockpot Mongolian Beef. I added a side of stir fried Brussels sprouts and bok choy and the Husband had chicken wonton soup as his side. The veggies were too green.
The buns were really, really good! I used the dough recipe from the Woks of Life, but substituted the leftover beef cooked down in the cooking liquid for the filling. I added chicken stock and rice wine to give it a little more moisture for the buns. Also, some extra shallots and garlic. Here’s the bun recipe: https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-bbq-pork-bu ns-cha-siu-bao/
I also made traditional almond cookies from The Foods Of China and it worked out much better than the first time I made them. They are addicting and I may hoard them like a cookie dragon.
I’ve been actually using my blood oranges this year for Lunar New Year inspired foods. Oranges are considered lucky, as is the color red, and I feel like we could definitely use some extra luck this year. A note, you may be able to find blood oranges as “Raspberry Oranges.” A friend of mine got some and I think they just rebranded them.
So far, I’ve made both sweet and savory items with them for a couple of different meals. I used them in this Winter Citrus Salad with Avocado.
It’s really not a thing you need a recipe for. Even the dressing was just blood orange juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. I added iceberg, romaine, cucumbers, red peppers, carrots, crispy jalepenos, cheese, sliced almonds, and avocado to mine. It was very refreshing. I think It would be excellent with arugula too, but I didn’t have any on hand. I’m ordering some in our next grocery order though, so will probably make this for work one day.
I would also like to try the donuts in that link as well, but haven’t made them yet and am running out of oranges. I’m not super fond of these. I have to add a lot of sweeter and heat them to get past the texture and at that point, I may as well just make regular oatmeal.
I was very fond of these Blood Orange Coconut muffins though, although I wish the glaze had been pinker.
I also made dark chocolate chunk orange scones, but ate them before taking a picture. I also apparently forgot to actually save the recipe I used… I do have one that I am intending to try as it uses Spelt flour and I have some that my older brother gave me for Christmas to try.
This Blood Orange Rosewater Mocktail was interesting. I think I would reduce the rosewater by half next time. It was a bit over powering. I did use ginger ale instead of sparkling water, as it was what I had open.
Probably my favorite two recipes were the Blood Orange Amaretto Sour and the Orange Cardamom Cake.
Isn’t it so pretty? The Husband actually had one with me, but he couldn’t finish his. He doesn’t drink often and this was pretty stiff even after I dropped the booze by two ounces. I thought it was lovely! Not overly sweet like they sometimes are, but not super tart either. Also, it’s just amaretto, lemon, and orange juice over ice. One of the simplest recipes I found so far.
Now the cake. Oh My Gosh. This was so dreamy and delicious. Extremely aromatic from the orange and especially the cardamom. The glaze wasn’t as thick as the recipe, so it didn’t look as pretty but it made up for it in taste. I think my eyes crossed when it came out of the oven because it smelled so good. I brought it into work and you could smell it every time you walked by it. Torture, sure, but such delicious torture! It got rave reviews from my coworkers too. I brought a whole cake minus a piece to work and brought back half a cake.
I’ll leave you with a picture of a spring roll wrapped Piggy. Someone gets a little cold during naps. 🙂 May your new year be full of peace, luck, prosperity, and joy!
I got overwhelmed with food while simultaneously not wanting to eat anything again the last couple weeks of the year. Writing about food has not been something that has been super interesting to me. I started to go over all my food posts for the year to get a count of everything, but it was a lot. So I’ll show you some fun foods from the end of the year and beyond. The featured picture is our charcuterie tray from the virtual wine tasting with the Husband’s work.
The traditional family meatballs were served on Christmas Eve along with noodles, buttered herbed carrots, and pickles of course! Cookies were served for after dinner treats, but they are in their own post.
We made Rulle for New Year, as we had planned to have our bubble friends over, but it didn’t quite work out. We ended up having a party foods dinner with the rulle, pigs in blankets, and crab dip. It was yummy! I was quite pleased with my rulle this year. I got enough allspice in them finally.
We had lobster mac and cheese later, since we had been planning to have it NYE. It was yummy, especially with the crunchy, buttery panko crumbs on top. I used the recipe from Grandbaby Cakes. https://grandbaby-cakes.com/lobster-mac-and-cheese/
I did reduce the recipe by half though, as we didn’t need 14 servings.
We tried a new chicken noodle soup recipe with a mix from a local charity, Motown Soups, that helps support local food pantries, clinics, and shelters. We actually liked it better than the one we normally use, so I think I’ll buy some more from them. I made pizza dough cheesy breadsticks to go with it. It was very warm and comforting.
I made this amazing Red Wine Chocolate cake with some of the wine from the Husband’s work. It’s probably the best chocolate cake I have ever made. I used a different recipe for frosting, as I didn’t think we would like the wine in the frosting listed. That recipe is from Sally’s Baking Addiction. Here’s the cake recipe: https://bakerbynature.com/red-wine-chocolate-cake/
Here’s the frosting recipe: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/favorite-chocolate-buttercream/. My only criticism for myself was that I should have added more buttercream in the middle. I seriously could eat this frosting by the spoonful, it’s that good! It’s chocolately, creamy, and not super sweet.
We had a country scramble after eating glazed ham and potatoes for dinner one night. It was delicious. We cooked them separately, as the Husband didn’t want peppers and likes it squishy with cheese.
I made pancakes on one of our vacation days and topped them with yogurt and a dollop of fruit soup. Oh, it was so good! I think I made an almost perfect fruit soup this year!
We had regular mac and cheese too. I used ritz crackers for the top, as we were out of panko. It was also good. Those are dino shaped noodles, by the way. We’re almost out of silly shaped pasta, so I should add some to my next grocery order. 🙂
We had a few stir fry dishes. One chicken and one special fried rice with ham and shrimp. That’s literally what the recipe is called in the Wok and Stir fry cookbook I was using.
I would definitely make both again. They were pretty tasty!
I don’t have a picture of the chicken, I don’t think, but ended up using some of it in this filling chef salad. I made homemade naan with it too, as I had meant to make it with curry the night before.
Here’s the curry. The Husband had pork. I used dried chickpeas for this, which I soaked/cooked in the Instant pot. It only took about an hour instead of having to soak them all night and I was very pleased with that. This curry wasn’t as thick as some and I wasn’t sure if it needed more cook time, or if it was because I was using a carton of coconut milk instead of a can of it. I’ll have to do some more experimentation.
This potato soup was lovely, although I paid dearly for the bacon. Apparently my digestive system hates bacon as well as pork. I’m going to refuse to believe it though and just make sure I have stomach meds on hand. It’s so good!
I need to make more pasties, but make them a little bit bigger next time. These were more like snack pasties than dinner pasties. They were yummy though
I had a hankering for a fried chicken sandwich yesterday and used this recipe to make a knock off Popeye’s sandwich. It was good, although I had problems keeping my oil to temp. I made a quick spicy mayo by adding garlic powder and sweet chili sauce to mayo. We were out of fries, so had some roasted potatoes for dinner as well. https://gimmedelicious.com/popeyes-chicken-sandwich/
One thing I didn’t like at all this past week was this Asian Crockpot Shredded Beef. It was weird because it smelled really good while it was cooking- I was home all day getting tortured by the smell. And then when I opened the lid and started shredding it I was just absolutely done. I couldn’t even eat it! I think I took two bites and that was all I can manage. My stomach was upset for the rest of the evening too. I ended up eating chicken with pico and cilantro rice leftovers instead.
I’ll leave you with this ‘love-ly’ apple pie I made today because it looks so pretty even if it did have a slightly soggy bottom.
In honor of my Mom, who has a birthday today, here are some of my favorite baking memories! I am very thankful that she taught me the important parts about baking, life, and having enough butter on hand.
And also, the importance of a pickle tray! Happy Birthday, Mom!
Food poisoning really makes me not want to write about food, much less cook it. We’ve had a few soup and sandwich suppers lately, while I’ve recovered. Trying to boost my interest in cooking and baking again, I have picked a new cookbook to review. I’m hoping to go through them all again too and start weeding some out. Oddly enough most of the recipes have just been made up ones.
This is baked mac and cheese and roasted curry carrots. Both were yummy and I had a fruit as well. I did my usual “throw all the cheeses in the fridge in a pot with a roux.” Next time, I think I would toss the panko with some butter to get it brown and crispy. It was kind of insipid without it. The carrots came from a carrot that was as big as my wrist. It was ridiculous!
We decided that we didn’t like the texture of this Instant Pot chicken marsala and would rather have it made on the stove top so it would maintain the crispy coating. It tasted good though! The recipe is here: https://littlesunnykitchen.com/instant-pot-marsala-chicken/
This was a thrown together after food poisoning soup with mini Costco cilantro chicken dumplings. It was yummy and light.
You’re probably tired of seeing Instant Pot Korean beef, but it’s so yummy.
Beef noodle stir fry made for a quick dinner. I sliced up a steak and threw a bunch of sauces at it. It worked out pretty well.
I roped K2 into making a cookie recipe from my Pinterest while I was making bao. It worked out well for all of us! The frosting recipe with it made them ungodly sweet. I’ll use it on a spice cake for the distance Hobbit party instead where the spice will balance the sweetness.
I made a different kind of breakfast for dinner this week, so I could have some egg cups for breakfast. I need more protein in the morning and these generally work. I also made current muffins, but didn’t add enough oil, so they weren’t very delicious.
I like breakfast for dinner, but the Husband doesn’t, so sometimes I will make it just for me and he’s on his own. This one worked out nicely. I like the egg cups for breakfast too, since they’re really quick and keep me full through my morning appointments.
I’m hoping to have some more interest in food again. I’ve been trying to bake, as that can sometimes help. The Husband suggested food in movies, so let me know if you have any good suggestions!
I realized I hadn’t posted about our dinners lately and thought I should remedy that. I need to get back on track with trying some cookbooks, as we are having a lot of the same things again. There’s nothing wrong with delicious favorites, of course, but it is nice to have a little variety. I was able to rework my schedule again to have one more night where I could actually cook at home too. Now, on to the foods!
A quick, but good dinner was these chicken sausages with onions and cheese. Also a little handful of garden veggies and probably a fruit of some kind, although it’s not pictured.
Kebobs made an appearance over pearl couscous. I marinated the steak in Galena street rub from Penzey’s. They were yummy.
We had apple crisp after our trip to the apple orchard. I think this had three different types of apples in it. We used the extra donuts to make decadent caramel donut sundaes the day after. It was a very delicious idea, especially after toasting the donuts. It is in the featured picture.
We used the Instant Pot for this chicken and dumplings. It was so delicious! I’ll definitely be making it again, especially in the winter. I did use canned biscuits for a shortcut and they weren’t bad. Here’s the recipe: https://lifefamilyfun.com/instant-pot-chicken-dumplings/
Due to the meat issues, I made chickpea curry again. It wasn’t as spicy this time, but was still comforting and tasty. I have some dried chickpeas in my cupboard that I need to cook so I can make it again. I liked switching up the veggies. This version had corn, garden beans, carrots, and butternut squash.
The Apricot Rosemary Streusel bars were a hit at work. I used a recipe from the 9 by 13 pan book. I have been wanting to try this recipe for a while and recently found out that a few of my coworkers don’t like chocolate. I know, the horror, right? 😳 The Husband declined to try them. I think I would make them again. They were quite tasty and it was unusual to have the savory rosemary with the sweet. I would skip the pine nuts next time though. They were really expensive and didn’t a ton of interesting flavor.
Some favorites that made an appearance were pancakes and bacon with the best maple syrup from our friends’ sugar shack, chicken divan, toasted turkey and cheese sandwich, and loaded potato soup. We totally watched the movie “Ratatouille” while we ate the soup. 🙂
I’m looking forward to making soups and other yummy fall treats soon. I have a jar of apple cider in the fridge that wants to be something scrumptious, I know. I may even bring more treats to work, if I can get the school to stop thanking me so much. 🙂
It never fails with parties. I make several towers of cookies and treats and not very many people come. But if I make less, lots of people come and they I don’t have enough cookies! It’s a struggle. This year the weather was bad too, so some of our regular crew couldn’t make it. It was lovely to have the people who were able to come though and we had some new guests as well. Everyone was charmed by the tablecloth story as usual and we did pretty well on eating up leftovers. We still have cookies though…
I was excited to try pepperkaker this year and have them actually work! The last time I tried them, they went horribly wrong and I cried. This year, they were a hit and I figured out some tricks for the dough. I used this recipe from Outside Oslo- http://www.outside-oslo.com/norwegian-christmas-cookies-pepperkaker/
So the trick for me was to let the dough warm up just a little and then just wale on it with the rolling pin. Once it started getting too sticky, I would put it back in the fridge. The recipe makes a lot though, so I would halve the recipe next time. They are delicious! This particular recipe doesn’t have black pepper in it, so I would be interested to try one with that added. I eye measured the spices and so probably had some of the proportions off, but they were a hit at the party.
They are pictured here with the Tahini Blossoms which were from the Better Homes and Gardens cookie issue from 2019. People were surprised to find out that these weren’t peanut butter blossoms! They have a nice nutty taste. They did take some extra prep work. You had to chill them, make the dough into balls, and then freeze the balls for a while to prevent spreading. I don’t think it helped that much because they still spread a bunch. They weren’t my favorite, but were liked in general.
The top cookies on this plate are Malted Butter Riches, which were pretty plain. I didn’t have a chance to make the frosting for them, so I might have liked them better with it instead. They were one of the Retro Recipes from the BHG magazine. I was intrigued by the name, but probably wouldn’t make them again. Also from the magazine were the Linzer hearts on the bottom. My friend sent us home from our visit with sugarplum jam, which was delicious sandwiched in between the cookies. We also had sandbakkels from this recipe: http://www.outside-oslo.com/norwegian-christmas-cookies-sandkaker-sandbakkelse/
I really enjoyed reading Outside Oslo, by the way, and have several other recipes that I want to try. Lingonberry cake is high on my list, but I will need to order some lingonberries.
Last, but not least, on this plate are Cranberry Spiced Shortbreads. I didn’t end up making the eggnog icing, but the cookies were still good. They are from Sally’s Baking Addiction. https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/cranberry-spice-cookies/
We, of course, had to have peanut butter balls.
It wouldn’t be Christmas/Epiphany without them!
We also had some dairy free, gluten free, and vegan cookies this year. On this plate were the gluten free/dairy free Almond Spritz Cookies and the Vegan chocolate chip. I was surprised to find vegan chocolate chips from Nestle at the store. I taste tested a few of them and they weren’t too far off what I was expecting. You know I’m a huge chocolate snob too, so if I liked them, they had to be good.
I don’t remember tasting a vegan chocolate chip, so I couldn’t tell you how they tasted, but they were on the table with Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip and people were eating them both up, so they must have been good. The Almond Spritz had a grainy texture, which is sometimes an effect of the gluten free flour. My gluten free blend is nut free, which I learned is not always the case. I was glad to be able to offer them to my friends with different dietary needs though.
On this plate, we have chocolate banana bread and Nissu. The chocolate banana bread was from one of my cookbooks. I want to say Baking Unplugged, but I’m not entirely sure. It was pretty good.
Of course, we had to have a pickle and veggie tray!
We had homemade dilly beans and spicy pickles. Fancy charmed everyone into giving her carrots. 🙂
Another traditional item was the Rulle. It was delicious! I had freshly ground allspice this year again, which made a big difference, I think.
We tried a new savory item this year, in addition to the crab dip and meat, cheese, and cracker tray. These are ham and cheese crescent rolls.
We had a panic moment the night before trying to figure out another savory item to have, as we thought we didn’t have enough. I do tend to focus more on the cookie part. I made the crescent dough because I’m an overachiever when it comes to hospitality. We also had a balela bean salad, which was vegan and fancy. Also, delicious. I ate it for lunches and didn’t have to share after the party. https://reluctantentertainer.com/balela-salad/
So like I said, it was a smaller party, but definitely worth the work. Fancy was in heaven with children and adults to rub her belly. We had the guest room set up with the Husband’s loose Legos and a book of Lego Christmas ornaments. Fancy kept shooting worried glances down the hall, as she could hear them, but not see them. We didn’t get any actual Christmas ornaments, but did get some pretty neat towers.
Next year, I might try to reign it in foodwise…
Ha! Who am I kidding? I’ll see you at the Epiphany Party 2021 post wild eyed, battle weary, covered in sugar, and holding 4 pounds of butter clutched to my chest.
I’m a little behind on my cookie notes! It has been a busy couple of months and I’m still getting back into the swing of blogging. I thought you might be interested in seeing some more of the recipes though. In case you forgot, these were the cookies I made before the party. I’ll share our party treats in another post. I officially made all 25 treats, but some of them didn’t get photographed. Everyone was quite amazed. I ended up making about 2 batches of cookies every couple of days, sometimes three doughs, if they needed to chill.
These cookies are Chocolate Orange Pecan, Ginger Sugar cookies- hearts, and Norwegian Spice Cookies-snowflakes.
I thought the ginger sugar cookies didn’t have enough ginger. I was very into spices and unusual cookies this year. The Norwegian Spice cookies reminded me of apple pie and were one of the hits at the office. The Chocolate Pecan Orange cookies were also delicious, although I found that the chocolate cookies didn’t hold well and got kind of weird and dry. I would make a smaller batch of the chocolate cookies next time and wouldn’t bother making the ginger cookies. The spice cookies I would make again.
The chocolate cookies were from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookie magazine from 2019. The Ginger Sugar Cookies were from the Food Network December issue from 2016. The Norwegian Spice Cookies were from this website: https://roamingrosie.com/tag/norwegian-spice-cookies/
These Lemon Poppyseed cookies are from the Food Network December 2016 issue too.
The cookies were not super sweet and I accidentally left the poppyseeds out of the dough. As you can see, I just added them to the glaze. They almost started an office war between the Office Manager and another therapist who was trying to steal the tin. 🙂 Oh, and another therapist hip checked me away from my own cookies! It was a shocking, but hilarious display of cookie rage. 🙂 There was one other kind of cookie involved in this particular cookie mob and were also delicious. I found I tended to use the same magazine for a couple of different recipes- this one is also from FN Dec ’16.
Peanut Butter Crinkles with mini chocolate chips. I would make both of these cookies again. They both held well too.
The next one up was hotly contested and may have caused a not very Christmasy disagreement between the Husband and myself. These Cookies and Cream Drops from the Better Homes and Gardens magazine were either the favorite, or very much disliked. I was in the middle, but wouldn’t make them again.
They had frosting made from melting the middles of Oreos. It was weird and I didn’t like that part. They were either supposed to taste under-baked or I accidentally under-baked them. I baked them at the correct temperature for longer than it called for and they still tasted that way. They were also not sweet, which was really weird considering how much sugar there was in the recipe. I think they were supposed to be soft and cakey. The Husband had one bite, spit it out, and loudly declared them to be “an embarrassment to your reputation” and refused to take them into work! According to him, they were inedible. 🙁 However, at least a couple people at my work liked them, so they did mostly get eaten. As you can imagine, I will not be making them again.
Sadly for the Husband’s office, I declined to send many more cookies after that little incident. I was much offended. The Husband has since apologized and I have forgiven him his ridiculous statements… well, mostly…
I also made Malted Milk Brownies, Tahini Blossoms, and Dulce de Leche Thumbprints, all from the BHG magazine. The Thumbprints were too plain for me. They were a recipe that you made a large quantity of basic dough and then added to it. The second batch of them had cinnamon and other spices added to the dough and it still didn’t taste good to me. I won’t be making that dough again.
Lessons learned this year was that I definitely needed to add up amounts of ingredients like butter, flour, and sugar before the start of baking season. I definitely wasn’t prepared for the need for brown sugar this year and had we not had extra flour, I would have run out. The butter stores were good. I ended with about 10 pounds left, so probably used around 12 pounds total, just for the cookies. We did run out of regular chocolate chips, so I had to make a small Costco run to find more in the middle of baking season.
It was helpful to list out the specialty ingredients and know which recipes I was going to make ahead of time. I spread those purchases over a couple of shopping trips too, so that was good.
Getting into a routine of “make this dough to chill, then make this recipe to bake right away” was another good organizational tool. I felt very organized with all my lists in the same spot too. My blog notebook is full of all the lists! I still have about half of the notebook left too, so room for many more. 🙂
I still have a bunch of recipes I want to try, so I’m sure you’ll see more cookies this year. Hopefully not everyone at the office is on diets!
Please bear with me as I catch up on blogging again! I’ll bribe you with cute Fancy pictures, if I have to! Here’s one, so you know I’m serious. 😉
With that done, please excuse me while I head to bed. I have to have rest to bake up more cookies! Have a sweet night!
