Don't go Conan!

Sorry, I really like Conan O'Brien and NBC so I don't want him to go.

In other news, another beautiful day so, for all you northerners, I went for another walk to enjoy the temps and the sun!

Baking was calling my name today, so bake I did. We had purchased baking cocoa and walnuts last month and I wanted to make some chocolate nut cookies. I decided on the Chocolate Creme Drop from the 1956 book on pg 196.

And then I made some basic butter cream frosting from the book as well. Mike decided on vanilla frosting instead of chocolate. I don't think he likes the double chocolate idea. I feel like I have overloaded you with mixer pictures so I will hold off.....for now : )

Here are the finished cookies:

 

The cookies are almost cake like, but so good! And yes, I suck at frosting things.

You may think I currently only have 2 cookbooks in my collection, but I have quite a few for some one who really didn't cook much till she moved to Florida. One that I use frequently is Light Cooking:

Grandma thought I should use this cookbook ...and she was right, I do really like the light twist on classic favorites and since it's from 1994 alot of the fake crappy substitutes that they are trying to market today are not included. Today's choice from the book was Freezer Buttermilk Biscuits. You are supposed to cut them into squares and freeze them and save them for later, which I was going to do, but I got lazy and just made them into drop biscuits. I may make some more to tomorrow for freezing for a later date. If you do get a hold of the recipes (I forgot to take a picture), I used 2 cups of whole wheat flour and 1 cup white flour. I also replaced the shortening with butter (I just love butter, but not so light cooking!), and I used fake "buttermilk" which was skim milk mixed with vinegar and allowed to curdle slightly. They came out tasting great of course:

Tomorrow is Pineapple's 2nd birthday and I was thinking about making her a puppy birthday cake or treat.

While you wait, here is a picture of here on the first day we brought her home from the humane society (at 8 months old):

Finally!

What a great day it was today! 65 and sunny! It was so nice I went for a hour and half walk (while I talked on the phone of course)!

After much cleaning (plus forgetting to thaw anything with substance), I decided to make pasta with a home made sauce (which I just made up today!) and freezer burned chicken (it's only good drenched in sauce or in soup). The sauce came out a little salty but was super good. Here is the recipe:


Stephanie's Pasta Sauce

3 tbsp Olive Oil
1 medium Yellow Onion (chopped)
2 tbsp minced garlic (I use the pre-minced stuff store in water in a jar, if you use fresh I would use a little less)
2 cans diced tomatoes (14.5oz.....try to find the stuff without added salt, I think that's why the sauce was a little salty)
1 can tomato paste (2.8oz)
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp chopped basil (fresh or dried)
Pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a large sauce pan till it ripples over medium to high heat, add garlic and onion and saute for a few minutes. Then add the rest of the ingredients, reduce heat, and simmer for about 20-30 minutes covered. Stir every few minutes.

That's it! And here it is:

And the finished meal. I used little penguin shaped pastas I got from my Mom for Christmas and added some sauteed chicken and fresh shredded mozzarella.

I think if I didn't use the chicken I may have added mushrooms or ground beef (if I had some) to the sauce. 

And I am spent ( I got up early today for a job fair). Please enjoy this picture of a wonderful dinner Mike made for me back in Dec 2006 (tempura veggies, tofu in some sort soy sauce glaze and pan seared salmon). He's such a good cook :)

The sun should always be shinning...

The sun is back out in Florida, so I am happy with that situation. Yet the job situation I am still un-happy with....oh well.

Saturday apparently was not a good day for sewing, so all I completed on the apron was cutting out the fabric. Once the entire thing is completed I will post some tutorial pics and directions. Saturday was a good day for baking cookies though! I use a modified version of  this oatmeal lace cookie recipe. I do not use the raisins or nuts, and I cut back slightly on the cloves and allspice (don't forget the vanilla! It's at the bottom of the ingredient list and I almost always forget it!). This is the first time I used the mixer for this type of cookie:

Worked great, of course. I drop the cookies by the spoonful onto a parchment lined baking sheet and then I used some parchment scraps and a flat bottomed glass to flatten the cookies. There are supposed to be "lacy" with little holes between the oatmeal.

 

I did try using the silicon baking mat for one batch, but they did not come off the sheet so well so Mike had to eat all the broken ones. Once cooled completely you can sprinkle them with confectioners sugar to make them loom more "lacy". And in this picture you will also see me new three tiered cooling rack I got at the outlet mall!

I made pizza dough later that day with the new dough hook I ordered but I forgot to take pictures....boo. 

Monday brought the slow cooker and some pork loin back ribs from Grandma bathed in a Asian Ginger Wasabi BBQ Bath from my Mom:

Quite yummy actually.

Today I took the plants back outside and look what I found:

 

Bummer. It was the only plant we couldn't bring inside every night and look what happened. Oh well. We will just have to try again. So to cheer myself up I decided to try the corn bread recipes in the Betty Crocker cook books (pg 93 in the '56 copy and pg 80 in the '61 copy).

Before:

After:

 

The mixer did really good with the corm meal mixture. One new thing I have never done before was heat up the muffin tins before pouring the batter in. I have never seen a recipe call for that before. One note: I would add more sugar to the batter.

And that's about it. Sorry today's post wasn't very exciting. I am still recovering from my house guest!

To hold you over....here is a picture of Daddy and his little girl :)

Brrrrrrrrrrr....

It's Saturday morning and I am sitting here in my fleece pants, slippers, shirt, and robe with a fuzzy lined hood. You might say I am slightly chilly. Today's high isn't expected to break 40, 35 degrees below normal. Hooray! Of course this whole week has been crappy and my friend from Ohio is visiting. And as soon as she leaves the weather is supposed to warm up to normal. Go figure.
This weeks cooking and crafting has been simply uneventful. Wednesday morning I made the Butterquick Coffee Cake recipes on page 79 as is, no substitutions.

Mixer in action:

 

And finished product:

Now the topping didn't come out the way I am used to for coffee cake, but it was good none the less. I may suggest using a pastry cutter to blend the topping and using slightly chilled butter. I did neither and this is how it turned out.

Later that night, after a super chilly day fishing down in Sarasota I decided to make the Chili Con Carne recipe on pg 265.

 

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the finished product, but it came out too watery for my tastes. I cooked it slightly longer to try and steam off the excess water, but with no luck. I have never used green peppers before in my chili so maybe that is throwing me off. At least everyone else liked it.

Thursday warmed up a bit so my friend and I soothed ourselves with a uber good day shopping at the outlet malls in Ellenton, followed by a visit to Gamble Plantation. That night I roasted a little chicken for dinner (the rest of the dinner was pre-made items we had in the freezer that Grandma had given us).

It was soooo good! On the package it said to roast for 20 minutes per pound, uncovered, breast side up. Instead I roasted breast side down with the entire pan covered in aluminum foil for 60 minutes, then uncovered for 40 minutes. Seasoned it before with olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper. Amazing! For how cheap that whole chicken was ($0.79 per lb) we will totally do this again.

Friday was just a local shopping day (no cooking, we went to Cafe Don Jose for some excellent seafood), but during our visit to Sherry's Yesterdaze Vintage Store look what I found!!!

 

The Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book 2nd edition, circa 1956!!!!! The binding is pretty beat up and needs some repair, but none of the pages are missing or torn and I got it for $10! Here are some more pictures from the book:

Luckily there a different recipes from the one I currently have and some more "helpful tips" for being a house wife : )

Today I will be working on an cafe apron for my Grandma for Christmas, so look forward to a tutorial when I return. In the mean time, this is a variation of the apron I made for one of my friends for Christmas:

It's Florida.....why is it so cold?

Well I guess it's colder in other parts of the country....but this is not what I signed up for when I decided to move to Florida. Since it's "cold" all the plants are still inside.

If you look closely you can see the lavender is now in a larger pot : ) I wasn't sure how well our plants were going to do with all the moving back and forth and the cold weather so I decided to harvest some basil and cilantro.

And then I chopped them up and made herb ice cubes for use at a later date.

Then I had this job to tackle....well this doesn't look that bad, but you should see the closet I was trying to shove all this stuff into and make it accessible.

Here is the closet post shoving.....it's not perfect but it's way better than before. This is where I store some towels for the dogs, our filing boxes, our safe, and all of my crafting supplies: sewing machine, notions, all my fabric, books, paper, wrapping supplies, and other random useful (at least I think they are useful) items.

I would like to get a small set of shelves for that blank spot on the wall so I may organize even more. The joy of organizing!

Tonight's dinner was very simple since we were cleaning all day (and I mean all day, 10-4, since we had a slight mildew problem to deal with in our back room). My Dad gave Mike the Rachael Ray M.Y.O.T.O Card Deck and I made Thai Chicken Noodle Soup. Except I had no carrots and we used thin rice noodles instead of the very similar bean thread noodles, but it still came out very good especially using our fresh herbs! Here it is still steaming in the pot:

Like I mentioned before, I may be taking a few days off, but I will still be taking pictures so you willl be able to see my awesome cooking skills : ) In the mean time, please enjoy this picture of little Mikey with our now big ball python, Ichi:

What to say about Sunday?

First, I have been reading this blog for quite some time now even though I only became a follower last week : Ruffles and Stuff and the amazing woman who writes it is having a totally awesome giveaway (I know the guys won't be too interested in it, but I know the girlies will). So please visit!

Nothing exciting today in the world of food (or crafts for that matter even though I told myself I would cut out the fabric for Grandma's apron). I did decided to whip up a batch of biscuits to go with breakfast this morning and, boy, did having all my new gadgets (mixer, ice cream scoop to form dough, silicon baking mat) make it super easy and quick! If you look through my previous posts you will see the page I made this from (pg 76). Just the basic biscuit recipe except swapped in some whole wheat flour for regular flour and added some Spinach & Herb Dip Mix I bought from Tastefully Simple. Ta da!

And then just leftovers for dinner. Nothing really planned for tomorrow night either since I will be cleaning and getting ready for Jenny's visit on Tuesday.

Here is something fun! Mike found some tiny little poopies yesterday on the floor and we thought that a tiny tree frog had gotten in the house again but we couldn't find it. Today I found more under the couch and too my surprise I found this little guy:

A little baby brown anole (Aonlis sagrei). I felt bad putting him back outside since we have another freeze warning in effect, but anoles are very hard to keep in captivity. I have feeling this poor little guys was the last of the litter before winter since he (well it could be a female, but it's too small to tell) was so small. 

Here is a baby picture of Charlie to tie you over until next time:

"You're blogging everyday? That's worse than Facebook status updates"

Yep, that's what Mike said to me. Blogging is way different than a Facebook status update. It's much more informative, fun, inspiring, and useful. So there..... But as a side note, I may be taking a few days off next week since my friend will be visiting from the great state of Ohio.

After a restful night sleep, I followed the dogs downstairs to feed them their morning meal only to find an empty plate on the counter. "Mike, did you eat all the cake last night?!?" Yep, he did. After my morning chores, I quickly perused my cookbooks and decided to make the basic refrigerator cookies on pg 192.

Of course the mixer in action:

And then it said to roll the dough into a log to be placed in the refrigerator for a few hours. Here is my turd:

 

While it was refrigerating, Mike and I took a drive over to the store to get some things. As per Mary's suggestion, I re-potted my lavender in a bigger pot. I would have taken pictures, but the plants are all in the house tonight since we have a freeze warning in effect till 9am tomorrow. 26 degrees Fahrenheit is the low tonight. Yay! While at the store, I found this sweet silicon mat by Wilton. I have always wanted one and I finally decided to buy one, so I tried it with this batch of cookies:

Everything worked out as expected and I made way too many cookies:

 

They taste sort of like a mix between shortbread cookies and sugar cookies, but delicious and crunchy non the less. 

 

Dinner tonight was from another book I am borrowing from my Mom. The Connoisseur's Cookbook by Robert Carrier, circa 1965.

The dust jacket is missing but I am never a fan of dust jackets as they always get in the way and get ripped or crinkled. Tonight's dinner was centered around Steak in Beer on pg 220.

 

Sauces are taking quite a liking to me. To jazz up that fish the other night I made the white mushroom sauce. This recipe called for a brown mushroom beer sauce that I also drizzled over the brown rice I made to go with it. Mike liked this picture since you can see the steam rising off the plate.

 

Sauces make even boring dished better! We have breaded chicken patties in the freezer from Angel Food Ministries (I normally don't like breaded items unless I can bread them myself, but I will work with what Mike has graciously purchased for us) so I will be kicking them (as well as some broccoli) up a notch with a sauce.

I hope everyone is staying warm! Here is Pineapple trying to stay warm : )

The Beginning of a Decade

We have survived the first decade of the 2000s, here's to surving the next one!

Nothing exciting to report today in my world of cooking. It was quite a lazy day (especially since we were up till almost 4am). Mike made me breakfast : ) And then for dinner I made home made chicken noodle soup, nothing fancy, and some guacamole. I have a steak thawing in the fridge right now, but I haven't decided what to do with it yet, I guess I need to read through my cook book again.

Sewing has sort of been put on the back burner right now. And can you blame me? But I need to finish my Grandma's Christmas present. Speaking of Christmas presents, here is a pillowcase that I made for my friend Rick. It was supposed to be his going away present when he went to China last time, then it was supposed to be his Christmas present last year, then it was supposed to be his going away present in March when he went off to school, but I finally finished it in time for Christmas this year! It's just a basic panda cross stitch pattern. I found the pattern so long ago that I really don't remember where I got it from. Sorry!

I hope everyone has a happy new year! Here is a happy gecko to help you celebrate!