Cooking in '08

I've been busy cooking for the last couple months of good, old 2008. I more or less promised myself not to show anyone these recipes because they make me look like a god in the kitchen, but then I figured that most of you don't live with me and I can still wow them folks with these. I've tried all of these without any messups and with really great end results. Plus, all of them are on the internets so I don't have to mess with a cook book that won't stay open. Anywho, enjoy these during the whole new year thing.

Baked Pasta Casserole

(one of the ultimates of ultimates lately)

Big Fat Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sparkled Ginger Cookies

(I got Jessie to eat almost a whole batch even after she knew they were vegan... which says something about how awesome these are.)

Classic Apple Pie

(I made that for Not-so-Turkey-Turkeyday and it turned out beautimous, I did use my own pie crust recipe, so I'm not vouching for theirs.)

Pumpkin Scones

(I can't stress how mind blowingly good these are. I gave the recipe to Star and I think she made at least two batches within the first week.)

Apple Crostada

(very tasty, very buttery)

Honey Mousse with Pomegranate

(This is another one of those foods that make you want to roll your eyes back and ask "If this isn't some sort of religious experience, what is?" So good. Mine turned out a tad more yellow than the picture but that's because I used local, happy eggs with happy egg yolks.)

Swedish Walnut Tea Ring

(My first success with yeast, and a tasty success to boot!)

Gingerbread Cake

(this was tasty as heck however I decided to do something silly. I tossed it right out of the pan onto a rack after it had cooled, instead of treating it like brownies and cutting it up while it was still in the pan. Oops. I lost a good chunk out of the middle but that just meant I got to munch on that before everyone showed up.)

Country Crust Bread

(This is my new favorite bread and also the only bread I've gotten to actually turn out like it's supposed to. Ohhh new bread... you smell so good!)

And yes Star, I do know that I haven't put up pictures of those cupcakes I made, but Jessie got into them like a fox in a hen house and before I knew it they were gone. I guess I'll just have to make some more, now won't I? I have my eye on those hi-hats in that book...

Jessie and I Decorated Those Sugar Cookies

It Snowed Again.

We decided to try and escape today. Dad and I went out at about 10 and started shoveling. And shoveling... and shoveling. I finished a bit from the garage to the front door only to turn around and see two fresh inches of snow covering up everything I'd just done. I cleared out part of the driveway before Dad got the tractor out. The tractor, unfortunately, had water in the bucket before the snow and now it had a block of concrete from somewhere, some rocks AND ice all piled up.After hacking at it for a while everything came out and some of the snow could be pushed around.

Enough to let us get some chains on the subaru and make it out to Sandy for more food. The crazy part is that when we went to get into the subaru we had to push almost two feet of snow off of everything and then up to two inches of ice off of all the important bits, like doors. Dad and I went to the store and after a crazy bit we got back in one piece.

(I found this wine at the store and I thought it was pretty funny. Funny enough to take a picture and then spend some time posting it. So there.)Sandy was a mess, there was about 8 inches of packed snow on the plowed roads and for a while we had to snow plow our way out of our road. Jessie spent some time sleeping, and playing tetris, and watching tv. Mom shoveled snow off of the back deck TWICE today (there was about a foot of snow on it the first time and about four or five the second time). Now, after spending a good chunk of the day shoveling things here and there I'm making some of this pretty bread and Jessie's making some sugar cookies. I've been baking and baking and baking some more!

The Evidence

Why are we still trapped in this house? This is why.

I think there were some cars under that snow. Anyway, last night we were eating dinner and trying to invent some things we could make with what food we have (we're down to two eggs and 1/4 gallon milk so I've been making this AMAZING vegan cookies and everyone's stayed happy... so far) when mom started trying to figure out when we last left the house. "Tuesday," I said, because that's the day I tried to go to Twelve Mile Market and it was closed. "Nooo... I think it was Wednesday, because that's the day I went to the store. I think. Maybe," Mom thought. We all thought about this for a while and then decided that it's been too long if you can't remember the last time you left.

It's been 6 days since I've left the house for sure. SIX DAYS. I've got plenty of yarn and fabric to mess about with but Jessie is going mad. After spending the last couple of days on the couch playing Tetris she surfaced upstairs lastnight at 8 and wanted to build a snow fort. Since she couldn't hang out with her friends in Gresham they wanted to try to do the exact same thing at the same time. That thing: build a snow fort. I'm always game for things like that so we got into our snow pants and dug a pit in the snow. Not so much a fort as it is an ice crater because when we tried to get to a good place to build it we had to punch our way through 6 inches of snow, down to a thick layer of ice and past it to another foot of snow with each step. It was a lot of effort, in the dark, in the snow, in 21 degrees. Plus the snow was all loose and powdery and no amount of hitting it could make it stick together. So, we have an ice crater in our yard.

Nooooo!

Mother's Cookies (makers of those tasty pink and white frosted animal crackers) has closed it's doors. There will be no more tasty-crack cookies for you! Which is sad (but I admit, I've only been allowed to indulge in them a couple of times but even those few have left an imprint on my brain). Never to fear, those creative people who blog about such things have created a recipe for you when you're stuck with a craving for these extinct cookies.

Dessert First has posted a recipe using these Williams-Sonoma cookie cutters. And don't bother, I've already checked around for other circus animal cookie cutters and can't find any. Sadness. I crave these little guys though!

Dear Star-

I'm thinking that we'll have to make some of these soon. And I'm also thinking that this would be a great nickname "Hannah 'ginger skellies' Claire". I really just like sticking that in the middle of names.
Sincerely,

Hannah 'Ginger Skellies' Claire

p.s. I am soooo looking forward to sleeping on your couch, fishing for pennies in its' cushions and generally making a nuisance of myself.

COOKIES!

So, I've finally found a chocolate chip cookie recipe that rocks my socks consistently. This is the second batch I've sent with Jessie to school so I think I'll call them Dorm Cookies but their real name is just as good: Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies. I got them from Milk Eggs Chocolate which is a blog by another Portlander which I think is pretty cool. Ok, for you Corbin, not technically in Portland, but really, it's the closest big city and I'm going to say I am for the sake of convenience.

These guys are a little flatter than the originals because I ran out of flour (I even tapped the jar out over the bowl and wound up with only 1 1/2 cups) so I threw in some quick oats instead and that worked, but the ratio of flour to butter still isn't as happy as it would have been if I'd had the actual amount of flour. Oh well, they're still really tasty. Especially with Trader Joe's Organic Chocolate Chips. They're so much better than the regular store kind.

I've Been Cooking Alot Lately...

And I'm always perusing the interweb for good recipes, preferably things that don't have meat or easy substitutions for the contribaned substance. Last night (and I can't remember how I got there) I found this site full of them called 101 Cookbooks. It all started with the animal craker cookies and I haven't been able to stop browsing!

These are some of the things that caught my eye...

1.) Black Sticky Gingerbread
2.) Homemade All Natural Thin Mints
3.) Maya's Day of the Dead Cookies (These look fabulous for halloween... Star, if you read this IGNORE! I have a feeling they're going to make an apppearance at your party)
4.) Spice-Kissed Pumpkin Pie
5.) Coconut Chocolate Pudding

I'm pretty hungry all ready and these are only making things worse. Enjoy this amazing selection of crazy-wonderful looking recipes!

Bleh

I've been slightly productive today. I made myself some rice for lunch (my food supply is getting dangerously boring, about all I have left is half a box of cereal, some rice, a bag of potatoes and pancake mix) played with Monty, finished my homework for The Fifties: Fab and Fraught, worked my way through most of my ASL II homework and now I'm knitting a mitten pattern that I'm making up as I go with some yarn I splurged on yesterday (it's called Lobster Mix, how could I NOT buy it?!). But all of those things involved sitting. And I've been sitting for the majority of the last week. So I decided to go for a short bike ride. I'm talking epically short. But hey, it's better than nothing, right? The clouds started to go away and there was even some blue sky peaking out so I decided to bundle up and head out. The minute I crossed Eastside the rain started. I heroically decide to keep going to the end of Fir which is what I had in mind all along. Once I turn on to Fir it REALLY starts to rain. My pants get soaked and my nose started acting like a drain spout for the rest of my cranium, channeling the water coming in onto the top of my head through the holes in my helmet. I get to the end of Fir and peddle as fast as I can back to the safety of the garage. The minute I pull into the driveway the rain stops and the sun comes back out. I huff and kerfuffle my way around the garage, sulky that the weather decided to mess with me and my brief exercise.

I think this is a sign that I'm just not meant to shift myself from a slouchy-sitting position on the couch. The cookie crumbs on my shirt leftover from the sacrificial cookie I nabbed from the freezer agree with me. Damn.