I cookied!

I cooked this weekend, for the first time in quite a while!  I made Potato Leek Soup, and some pretty healthy (though not low fat) cookies!


Simple Potato Leek Soup with Ham

• 1 tbsp butter, cut into pieces
• 3 Leeks, white & light parts only, rinsed and chopped
• 5 or 6 potatoes, peeled and diced (i used red, cut up tiny for faster cooking)
• about a cup of diced up ham (i used about 1/5th of a ham steak, cut up tiny)
• little bit of ground or fresh thyme (i used about 1/4 tsp ground)
• little bit of ground or fresh oregano (i used about 1/4 tsp dried)
• 2 big bay leaves
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 6 cups of water

1.  In a large pot, melt butter over medium heat.  Add leaks and stir occasionally to soften, about 5 minutes.
2. Add Ham, stirring until fragrant
3. Add dried thyme and oregano(and salt and pepper if desired), stir well
4. Add water, potatoes, and bay leaves, bring to a boil and cook until potatoes are soft.
5. Remove bay leaves, then mash or blend as desired (I used a masher to break up the potatoes until the soup had a slightly creamy broth, but i didnt use an immersion blender because i didn't want to destroy the ham).
6. Serve with Salt and Pepper to taste.  Yum!

Healthy-ish Everything Cookies!

• 1/2 cup grapeseed oil (i only had about 1/3rd cup, i made up the difference with applesauce)
• 1/2 cup flour (i used Pamela's gluten free baking mix)
• 1 cup almond meal
• 1 cup quick cooking oats
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut (the kind i had was more like ground, unsweetened)
• loose 1 cup of brown sugar (i think maybe this was too much, the coconut added to the sweetness)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup raisins (i used golden)

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Mix together oil (and applesauce), sugar, vanilla, and egg until well combined
3. Stir in flour and almond meal
4. Stir in coconut and oats
5. Stir in chocolate chips and raisins
6. Using 2 spoons or wet fingers, add globs of sticky dough to a parchment lined or greased baking sheet (or 2) in desired cookie sizes, pressing until relatively flat (these don't spread while they bake).  These get pretty chewy once they cool down.  Make thinner for crispier cookies.
7. Bake for about 20 minutes, until they lose their sheen and are slightly brown on the edges.
8. Enjoy!  

These would probably also work fairly well as bars, though maybe a little less sugar would be wise if planning to eat for breakfast.

Christmas Treats!

Ok, so I wrote this a month ago, and never posted it.... better late than never!  More coming soon!

Things have been a bit crazy during this holiday season, and my kitchen has been busy!  Things have been busy enough that I've done a very poor job of documenting my culinary adventures.  Maybe next year.

First, I made gluten free cookies!  I experimented a bit, and made some delicious lemon pecan shortbread cookies.  I was able to convert them from traditional to gluten free pretty easily, since I had read that rice flour is one of the secrets to a super crumbly shortbread to begin with.  So here we go:

Gluten Free Lemon Pecan Shortbread
(adapted from better homes and gardens)

•  1/2 cup all purpose flour (I used bob's redmill gluten free mix)
• 1/2 cup rice flour
• 1/4 cup almond meal
• 1/4 tsp xantham gum
• 1 cup butter
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
• 2 tbsp finely chopped pecans
• bunch of half or whole pecans

1. Preheat oven to 325
2. Combine everything in a medium bowl, until you get a crumbly ball of dough.  It will take a while, I don't have a pastry cutter so I ended up using my hands, which melted some of the butter, whatever, it worked.
3. If you  melted all the butter with your hands, refrigerate for a little while (30 min?).  Or not, in which case you'll probably end up with thinner but still delicious cookies!
4.  Roll out dough until about 1/4 inch thick, use a pizza slicer and cut up dough in a grid-like fashion.  Transfer dough to cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (or lightly greased), and press a piece of pecan into the top of each.  You can place them pretty close together, they won't spread much since they're so thin and no pouffy ingredients.
5. Bake for 15-20 minutes, then cool.  Voila!  Makes about 20 1.5" squares?  (fills a cookie sheet)

THESE ARE FANTASTIC!!!!! Some of the best cookies I've ever made!  I didn't take any pictures, but trust me they're delicious.  They're not very sweet, they'd be perfect for tea time, but i took them to a christmas cookie exchange party and they taste really weird after eating lots of sugary foods, I guess my tongue got overwhelmed by all that other sugar.  So if you bring these to a cookie tasting party, make sure everyone tries these first!

I also made these lemon-raspberry pinwheel's in a gluten free version, which some people really liked, but I was kind of indifferent to them.

And then I made these delicious nuts!!

Mason jars from Agway, and ribbon and fabric from Walmart... easy gifts!
The large one is for my boss since he's a nut-aholic, he ate the entire jar in one day.  That's a pint!

Liz's cinnamon sugar nuts 
(I dont know where the original recipe came from, I looked at a whole bunch and combined)

• roughly 6 cups of raw mixed nuts (I used almonds, walnuts, and pecans.  I also did once with just almonds, but the walnuts and pecans really added to it!  The walnuts are my personal favorite in this recipe :)
• 1 egg white
• 1/2 cup to a cup of sugar (depends on how sugary you want your nuts... I'd start with 1/2 and you can add more later)
• 1 tsp of cinnamon (again, you can add more if you're cinnamon crazy)
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp water

1. Preheat oven to... oh no!  I can't remember!  I'll look it up and post later...not very hot, something like 250, we're going for low and slow.
2. In the biggest bowl you have, whisk egg white, vanilla, and water until lightly foamy
3. Add nuts, and stir until all the nuts are wet.  (If they're really wet, you could add more nuts if you wanted to)
4. in a small bowl or measuring cup, combine sugar, cinnamon, and salt, then pour over nuts.  Mix well until all the nuts are coated, it's easiest to use your hand.  
5. Spread out on 2 large cookie sheets, I coated mine with parchment for easy clean up, I suppose lightly greased or possibly even aluminum foil would work too.  
6. Bake for roughly an hour, stirring nuts around every 15 minutes or so.  More often would be ok, if they start to burn it progresses pretty quickly!  Luckily, they still taste decent slightly burnt :)  Let cool before you eat, because they're delicious and addictive and I don't want you to burn your tongue! 

Mmmm.... now I'm hungry!

To Wheat, or Not to Wheat...

I'm doing an experiment.  It all started with a giant bowl of pasta.  Followed by weird stomach pains.  I don't really know if these pains were caused by the size of the bowl, by the pasta itself, or maybe they were just coincidental.  But it happened a few times... hence my experiment.

I'm attempting to go 2 weeks without consuming gluten. 

THIS IS HARD!!

Do you know what gluten is?  I knew it as "that stuff that makes bread dough...doughy."
But it's also a magic ingredient that's in just about everything!  Cookies, chicken broth, soy sauce, cookies, cookies... did i mention cookies?

So, in preparation, i did my research and stocked up on some gluten free cookie supplies.  Here's what you need to know:  packaged gluten free cookies are pretty gross.  Homemade gluten free stuff is DELICIOUS!  I even found a "cookie" that I can claim is breakfast.  Here's a scone recipe, right off the package of baking mix!  IT'S DELICIOUS!  (I'll be honest, the only scones I ever baked before were weight watchers... and therefore a huuuuge dissapointment.  but not these!!)

Here's how good these are: I went to take a picture of them, and ended up eating half of one, even though I wasn't hungry!! Mmmm.

Click Below for Recipe 

Oatmeal... Bread?

I've been baking a lot of bread lately, now that I have a handy dandy mixer to cut down on the mess.  I've been keeping my eyes open for new kinds to try... and I came across a few recipes for oatmeal bread.  What the heck is oatmeal bread?  I don't know!  So I decided to try it!  It seems there are many different ways to make oatmeal bread, so I modified the easiest recipe I came across to suit my pantry.  It's not usually safe to experiment with baking, but I'm doing it anyway!  It turned out to be delicious, though possibly tooo moist? Doesn't even need a spread, tasty and moist all by itself!  Yum!  Also, I'm really excited, because I've come close to solving the mystery of the delicious but "what the heck kind of bread is this" bread from Tir Na Nog!

Quick (no yeast!) and Easy Oatmeal Bread 

Makes 12 servings.  Per serving:  149 Cal, 2.3 g fat, 27.6 g carb, 1.4 g fiber, and 4.2 g protein.

(click link below for recipe)

Lesson Learned

Ah... weekends. Two more days to play with my new mixer! Husband and I went on a fun Friday night date to the supermarket, so I was all ready to continue with my experimentations.

Alas, did you know that you cannot make meringues with store bought egg whites? I didn't! Turns out it says so on the carton, in tiny writing. Who has time to read tiny writing in the grocery store? I didn't have time to read it until after my failure had become obvious. At this point my plans fell apart and I threw some flour into the frothy not whipped egg whites and sugar... and called it a cake? (more like guessed it a cake). Actually, I think almost accidentally created an angel food cake, it puffed up huge in the oven, but then deflated to the thickness of a pancake (which is pretty much exactly what happened the time I tried to make an angel food cake for real). This "cake" tasted great, but was impossible to eat, it was like chewing gum with a crunchy layer on top... I salvaged a few crunchy bits (husband declared them a delicious breakfast the next morning) and started over with REAL, HAND SEPARATED egg whites. Finally, SUCCESS! All these, from just 2 egg whites:

They look kind of like peeps, don't they?

While all of this was happening, I had some ropa vieja in the crockpot, getting ready for our dinner guests from Thundermoon Farm (not the animals of course!). But I still needed to make dessert! I had some leftover pound cake that was tasty but dry, and strawberries were on sale this week... so my plan was to try out my mixer on some home made whipped cream to tie those two together! I though to myself, if I succeeded in whipping egg whites, cream will be easy, right? WRONG! I don't know what I did wrong, but my whipped cream wouldn't get whippy enough! Tasted fabulous though... especially with a little sugar and vanilla thrown in... mmm. Unfortunately I only ended up with about half as much whipped cream as estimated... so my trifle was more like an ugly single layer mess that tasted great.

Dinner was a success, I taught our guests how to play Scattergories (which, as I discovered thanks to college roomies is 2nd only to trivial pursuit, and muuuuch easier to play), and we had a great night! Fun was had by all (I hope)!