The Chocolate Chip Country

So, I picked up carrots and radishes to put in a garden salad... two weeks ago. Needless to say, didn't happen and the greenery went bad.

So, I wanted to use up the carrots and radishes and put together this very simple, but pretty tasty soup.

Ingredients
Olive Oil
Butter
1 large yellow/vidalia onion
2 cloves of garlic, minced or crushed
8-9 medium sized carrots
a dozen or so red radishes
chicken stock
kosher salt

Dice the onion, set aside. (I found out that onions are healthier if allowed to "rest" 10 minutes between cutting and cooking! Chemical reactions from the juices released by cut cells make beneficial compounds, but heat stops the reaction. Wait 10 minutes until it's all done making the new compounds before cooking your onions.)

Peel carrots, slice into 1/4-1/2 inch slices (I wasn't too careful, just tried to get them mostly even)
Trim radishes, slice into slices

In a large pot over medium heat, melt a couple pats of butter in with a similar amount of olive oil. Saute the onion in the olive oil and butter for 15 minutes or more - the onions should be very soft, sweet to the taste, and just a little brown on the edges.

Add garlic, stir in with the onion for a minute but don't let it burn, then pour in enough of the chicken stock to cool everything down. Toss in the carrots and radishes, then pour enough stock in to just cover everything. Turn the heat up a little, let it get to a good boil, then turn it down and cook until the carrots and radishes are tender.

Take a stick blender and blend it in the pot, or blend in batches in a standing blender. Add salt to taste. Serve warm.

The radish taste is pretty delicate even though I think there was more radish in it than carrots. It also has a carroty aftertaste with a radish like tang, so the flavors married together quite well.

Well, the cub was tired early this morning, and anher was up late last night (oh, insomnia!), so they sacked out relatively soon after I got up this morning. While they slept, I cooked.

I made whole wheat waffles. I ate one plain, but neither boy nor hubby has tried them yet.

This is because I also made hash browns with most of the remaining red potatoes we had.

I fried up some bacon for the grease. (Unfortunately, I burnt the bacon trying to make it crispy enough and had to throw out the actual meat. I prefer my bacon chewy and have little experience cooking it to a crisp the way my hubby likes it.) Into the bacon grease went two small onions, sauteed until starting to go clear. Then I added a leek, light green and white part all chopped up, and sauteed some more until that was nice and tender. At this point the onions were starting to caramelize. I tossed in the diced potatoes (about 2 lbs, I think!) and stirred it all together over a medium heat. At one point I put a lid on the whole thing to get the potatoes to cook faster, but I took the lid off again at the end to let the steam escape. No sense in making soggy potatoes.

The onions had cooked long enough through it all that they were sweet and tender. The leeks were delicious, and the potatoes were just right. With a little salt and pepper, it was a wonderful breakfast.

Afterwards, I felt like I could use a bit more protein to go with all that, and had a little Greek yogurt with honey. This time, I had the whole milk Greek yogurt, which filled me up much faster than the 0%. I hadn't served up much, and anher ended up having to help me finish it off. Serious stuff, that yogurt.

The cub had potatoes and yogurt with us; he turned one year old yesterday, so he can have honey! The whole wheat waffles wait for their turn, but fortunately, they can be frozen for reheating later.

Besides, potatoes. My dad has often told me, "You can't go wrong serving men potatoes." Wise words.

Happy Father's Day!

We took butternut squash soup and pumpkin ginger bread with cream cheese frosting to Thanksgiving. I had a request to post the frosting recipe. So, I'm posting all three.

Butternut squash soup: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/butternut-squash-soup-recipe/index.html

Modification: We used vegetable broth instead of chicken broth, and added paprika to warm up the taste.

Pumpkin ginger bread: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pumpkin-Gingerbread/Detail.aspx

Modification: I substituted applesauce for the oil. You can do that with most baking recipes. It's usually a tad healthier, and makes the result more moist. However, it takes a little longer to bake.

Cream Cheese frosting: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cream-Cheese-Frosting-II-2/Detail.aspx

Modification: I did as one of the commenters suggested and beat the vanilla into the cream cheese first. I didn't measure the sugar, I just kept adding it until it tasted right.

Baked some frozen chicken patties, made some white gravy with lots of pepper, and put them both on a whole wheat sandwich bun for lunch. >.> Didn't take much effort, but was tasty. And fattening!

White gravy is pretty simple. Get a couple tablespoons of butter, melt in pan. Stir in a couple of tablespoons of flour and cook until thoroughly mixed and a little golden. Slowly stir in milk until you have a little more than the amount of gravy you want to finish with, stirring constantly as it's added to prevent lumps from forming. Flavor as desired, stir mixture just below boiling until it's as thick as you want it.

Stick to your ribs cooking.

Incidentally, this means I had a Southern-fried chicken sandwich. When something is chicken-fried, this means that it has been breaded and fried in the same way fried chicken is prepared. Typically steak will be chicken-fried. When it's Southern-fried, not only has it been chicken-fried, but it is served with white gravy on top!

I wanted cookies without all the processed additives, so I hunted down a favorite - snickerdoodles! I started with this recipe: http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Soft-Snickerdoodle-Cookies-97496

and then I modified it a little bit.

( Read more... )

I'll definitely be making these again. A friend at work recommended adding coconut to snickerdoodles, and I liked it in her recipe. If you don't like coconut, make the original recipe with just the vanilla added. These are soft, chewy snickerdoodle cookies, amazingly delicious. I probably ate more than I should have, "disposing" of the ones that didn't come off the sheet quite right.

I think next time, I'll either chill the dough overnight before rolling it, or put them in to chill again for a few minutes after rolling. Colder dough made for fewer torn up cookies.

Had some leftover red potatoes, so I decided to bake some seasoned potato wedges. After a quick quiz via Twitter and Facebook, I had rosemary recommended by three different people.

We used the apple corer on the potatoes, which sped up the cutting and produced nice wedges as well as a cylinder per potato. *shrug* Tossed with olive oil, then added the following seasonings:

2 TBS garlic salt
2 TBS rosemary
1/2 TBS pepper

Tossed to coat. Baked at 375 for 30 minutes, came out wonderful. Woot! A new use for potatoes!

Broke out the slow cooker again today, trying a new recipe from the "Fix-It and Forget It" cookbook.

Turned out delicious! Here in a bit, I'm going to make a grilled cheese to complement the lingering taste of hot sauce in my mouth. Though, looking at the recipe, we forgot something - extra water! I think it was supposed to be a soup, but it turned out like a nice, thick chili. I'm not complaining. I like it as it is.

So, here's how we did it:

( Spicy Potato Soup )

So, the mad scientist cook strikes again! Muahahahaha! It was just spicy enough, and thick as really good chili. It gets a star in the book.

Earlier this week we made a really simple pot pie. We used store-bought pie crusts, but I refuse to feel guilty on account of how much I've been worn out lately.

I unrolled the first pie crust into the dish, then added:

2 1/2 chicken thighs, already baked and cut into chunks
1 can cream of chicken concentrate
1/3 can of milk (using cream of chicken can to measure)
frozen veggies to fill to the top
salt
pepper

I tried to mix the veggies and chicken a bit, then added the 2nd crust on top and tucked it all together. Put it in the oven at 350 until it was cooked through (about an hour).

It turned out delicious! And so easy to do!

I had an urge to bake, so I picked up some yeast while shopping yesterday. We now have a stand mixer with a dough hook. I have bread flour.

So, I made white bread as my first experiment. Had some trouble getting it to rise properly with the cold weather, but it turned out really nice!

I hunted all over the internets for bread recipes that do not call for a bread machine, and finally turned to cooking. They had a 'basic bread recipe' in their memories. I used sugar instead of honey as the sweetener, but otherwise followed it exactly.

The result is two loaves of white bread with a nice, brown crust and toothsome crumb. They're cooling on a rack now. I cut off a piece while still hot and shared with anher. He approved!

Now, what to do with them? One loaf, we could finish in good time. Two is a bit trickier.

In the future, I need to find some whole wheat bread flour, so I can make whole wheat bread.

So, I was heartily tired of chuck roast and splurged a little to get a large chunk of bottom round. And now, I'm debating how to cook it this weekend.

I have the usual "goes with meat" veggies - onions, celery, carrots and potatoes, and a good spice cabinet. Any of the experienced cooks wanna pitch in with ideas? From what I'm reading, a bottom round is cooked much in the same way as a chuck roast - low temperature for a long time. It's the flavor and texture that's different, so I'm not looking for gravy (as with pot roast) so much as straight up beefiness I can slice with a butter knife.