Archive for the ‘food’ Tag

Cookies 2010

Friday, January 7th, 2011 by Jen

Throughout the month of December I worked on baking the Christmas cookies. My plan which worked pretty well considering I have two small children was to make the dough, freeze it, and then bake everything off in the week before Christmas. This year I made peanut butter blossoms, forgotten cookies, candy cane cookies, and sandtarts. Josie helped make some of the doughs and she also helped fashion the candy cane cookies and sandtarts. Playdoh worms help her practice the candy cane shape. The candy cane ones were new this year although my aunt thinks that my grandmother used to make them. I got the recipe from a magazine.

Somehow the art of the forgotten cookies has been lost in our family. They are meringue cookies with chocolate chips and mine and my cousins both turned out chewy rather than crisp and dry. I remember my grandmothers used to break into a ton of pieces (wait is that good?) and melt into the tongue. Our theories are two fold. One is that my oven does not stay hot long enough, these weird cookies go into the oven when it is hot, and you turn it off and leave them there overnight (hence forgotten). Alternatively, my cookies seemed kinda crisp when they were first done and my grandmother always kept hers out on the unheated porch where it would be much dryer than in our houses, so perhaps ours are pulling moisture out of the air?

I’m going to try them again using my bread stone. I’m going to heat the stone up along with my oven at the bottom and that will help retain heat and keep the oven warmer to hopefully cook the cookies more, but very gently. I’ll report on how that goes.

Plus since I’ve been having crazy mint and chocolate cravings, I also just made some chocolate chocolate mint cookies that I can’t stop eating. I used this recipe and added in 1 tsp of peppermint extract too. They’re really good. We’ll have to make them before Christmas for next year, or maybe not, because then I’d have to share.

Thanksgiving Food

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011 by Jen

Seeing as I also like to talk about what I cook on this blog, seems I can’t let it go without mentioning our Thanksgiving food. We started the day off with a high calorie bang as I made some cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting. I had made them the previous week and frozen them. I think they came out well that morning, and promptly ate too many of them. I did manage to give at least one pan away to our neighbors Christina, Zach, Ethan and Chanh, but that was all I could bear to separate from. We had another two pans for Christmas but they didn’t come out as well, don’t know if I gave them enough time to rise that time.

We spent the morning cooking a few more things and then Pipita made us arepas for lunch. She let Josie help which was very gracious of her considering Josie just tries to eat the raw dough (ick).

Then we went home and got Josie and the rest of us a nap before coming back to eat the feast!

We had green beans with almonds, rolls, sweet potato casserole, carrot souffle, stuffing (meat and not), salad, turkey and veggie and turkey gravy. Plus I had made spinach dip for snacking on before dinner, not that we needed it. Yes that cranberry sauce is directly out of the can, I think it’s hilarious that it is can-shaped and insist that we leave it that way on the plate, sue me. I tried making my own one year and it was just terrible and there was TONS of it, so I haven’t bothered again. The new recipes this year were the sweet potato casserole and spinach dip. The spinach dip was pretty basic ho-hum recipe, cheese, artichokes, cream spinach and more cheese. The sweet potato we left the rather gratuitous cup of sugar in the potatoes out, leaving only the one on top plus the marshmallows and it was fantastic. This will be a definite addition to our table moving forward.

We ended the night with pumpkin and pecan pie with whipped cream, but didn’t make much progress on either, see above list of food for the entire day to explain why. With me nursing the girls I generally find I can’t ever eat enough to get stuffed, that was not true on this day with the whole day of rich options! There was wine and pina-coladas (?) for those who wanted to imbibe and it was a mighty feast indeed.

Still here…

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 by Jen

We’re still here waiting. Had the acupuncture today and she went all out, I had needles all over the place, which was  fine with me. Then she took a few of them and ‘stimulated’ things more, i.e. circled them around a little which is less comfortable but no biggie. No major changes, I’ve got some lower back pain with contractions, but I also stood up for two hours afterwords playing with Josie at the park and outside which also tends to cause that. We’ll see.

Tonight I also got some good news/bad news is that our favorite Chinese restaurant, Qingdao Garden, is under construction until November.  Which is good because they haven’t answered the phone the last two times I’ve called so now I know they haven’t closed, but bad because I wanted Chinese tonight. Chinese food seems to cause contractions in me, I don’t know if it’s the salt or MSG or something, but I was hoping to piggy-back on the acupuncture to get things started.

Exactly tonight in my pregnancy (40 weeks 6 days) my water broke with Josie at 2am following a birthday dinner for our friend Wing at a (now closed) chinese restaurant. You can bet we’d have been back if they were still open. You may also remember though that that labor lasted for 42 hours from water breaking to birth, so we’re hoping for a non-repeat in that aspect.

Broccoli

Monday, October 11th, 2010 by Jen

Anyone else found the broccoli crop this year to be overwhelmingly crummy? I try to buy it in the store, it’s already floppy and not worth buying. Or else I do find some that is ok, but it’s going brown within days. It used to be a nice hearty vegetable and this year has just been terrible it seems. My neighbor Christina agrees as they are big broccoli fans too! Not so much this year though.

Tonight’s broccoli went into this General Tao Tofu recipe which has become a staple in our house because it’s actually pretty good imitation and fried (golden brown and delicious as Alton Brown would say). Plus it’s vegan so my mom can eat it too.

As for now, time to sit down with some more carrot cake.

Bye bye 10/10/10

Sunday, October 10th, 2010 by Jen

Would have been a cool birthday but it looks like Oct. 10, 2010 is passing us by with still no baby. On the plus side, I tried to tempt the kid out by baking a birthday cake. I made a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. I won Jordi and Josie over and I liked it a lot too but no particular action from the impending arrival. Maybe I need a second piece.

What’s cookin?

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 by Jen

Lately we’ve tried a few new recipes as I try to find more foods without tomatoes in them or spiciness to keep the heartburn in check. Let’s start with the big FAIL. Coconut rice and beans, can’t recommend it, we even ended up throwing the last bit out after eating it 3 times, it was just that unappetizing. Maybe it would have been better if I had made it with white rice per the recipe, but we only had brown rice in the house. It was just entirely bland and a chore to eat. Onto the successes!

To usher in the fall season, we made pumpkin muffins today. They are yummy and sweet, Josie called them cupcakes. Dairy free for my mom too. I intend to make some cream cheese frosting for them to make them extra good, but they might be good enough without it.

Last week we also made banana, oatmeal, chocolate chip cookies. This is a fun one for a couple of reasons, a) there’s no eggs, so it’s easy to make with small people who want to lick their fingers and not get sick, b) it has no butter (but does have oil) or sugar (discounting the chocolate), yet they’re still sweet and gooey, and c) it’s loaded with fiber (good for my fellow pregnant ladies!). Josie repeatedly proclaims her excitement for them, but takes one bite and then leaves the rest every time. I’ve enjoyed them as did my parents and Jordi.

I’ve had my eye on this recipe for pecan pie muffins, although it’s hard to imagine calling them muffins when they’ve got more sugar and butter than flour. Just gotta get to costco for some cheap pecans for pie season!

Summer is…

Thursday, July 29th, 2010 by Jen

Ice cream!

Yum, nothing beats an ice cream cone on a hot summer day. This may actually be the first one we just handed to her and let her eat. The back porch was an easy cleanup spot and we all enjoyed a cone after our morning swim. She could use some work on her technique, it was melting faster than she could eat it. Ethan and Zach did not have the same problem, theirs were gone lickety split.

Making Arepas

Sunday, June 13th, 2010 by Jen

One food from Jordi’s childhood are arepas. As I have been taught, arepas are different depending on where you’re getting them from, Venezuelan ones are primarily white corn meal and water formed into english muffin shapes and sauteed/steamed. Columbian ones are more like pancakes with yellow corn meal, Jordi would call those cachapas. We stuff cheese into the middle of all of them, yum.

Josie got her first lesson in making arepas and she enjoyed it. She helps me most every day in the kitchen to measure and pour food for dinner. For the arepas I had to demonstrate just how to mix them up with your hands because she did not seem to believe that I actually wanted her to stick her hands in the food, since I usually am cautioning her against it. She had fun. She still doesn’t really eat them though, but the cheese is well liked.

Dinner tonight

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 by Jen

Tonight for dinner I tried a new recipe. Tex-Mex Rice Cakes from a website I’ve just started reading for some more meal ideas. We’ve gotten into a serious rut and I have been completely uninspired to get us out of it. These were a pretty good success, although nothing crazy but they were quick and used up leftover rice. Josie enjoyed helping to make them, eating most of the ingredients as they went in. And she is slowly lingering over them this evening even though they weren’t too exciting to start with. Jordi compared them to crab cakes, minus the crab flavor.

I made some small modifications, I didn’t have cilantro, so I threw in some taco seasoning for some flavor. I also thought corn plus rice plus bread crumbs was a little much so I swapped out half the corn for black beans. We had some avocado on the side too, I’d add a salad, soup or other nice veggie rich dish to go with it.

Josie’s favorite dish – Zucchini pasta

Monday, March 1st, 2010 by Jen

Whenever Josie see’s a zucchini in the grocery store, or in the fridge she immediately proclaims ‘Zucchini pasta!’. It’s her favorite dish. It’s simple, it gets some veggies into her and it’s yummy and garlic filled. Since I seem to keep screwing up 3/4ths of the new things I try to make, I’ve been sticking to the old favorites lately like this. Here’s how it goes in case you want to make Josie her favorite meal! I think I may have picked it up from Rachael Ray, but I really can’t remember at this point.

Zucchini Pasta

serves 6 (or 4 big big servings)

  • 1 lb linguinie
  • 4 cloves garlic, grated
  • 1 large or two small zucchini’s, grated and dried a little with paper towels
  • 3 oz parmesan cheese shredded (grated works too but good cheese is really important to this)
  • 1 Tbsp butter
  • 1 Tbsp olive oil

Boil water for pasta and cook according to package. Save 1 cup of the pasta water before draining. In a big (I use non-stick) frying pan, melt butter and olive oil together over medium low heat. Add in zucchini (I add it when I put the pasta in the water for pretty good timing) and garlic. Cook approximately 7 minutes, until cooked and just starting to brown.

Add in the drained pasta and cheese and half a cup of pasta water. Toss to spread everything around to keep cheese clumps from forming. Ideally the cheese will just melt into the sauce. Add more pasta water if the pan is dry, the pasta shouldn’t have a soupy sauce, but shouldn’t be sticking to the pan either. You can cook it off if you add too much. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Add generous heaping to your plate and enjoy eating some well hidden vegetables. I’ve also added shredded red peppers in too which adds a slightly different but also yummy flavor and color to the mix.