Salmon ceaser

What is better than a ceaser salad? Almost nothing, right? For dinner last night, I was trying to think up a way to use some salmon that we don't normally do, and I decided on the salmon ceaser. Nothing original, I know, but its not anything I ever make. I would say this turned out pretty professional looking!

Lima Beans

I get more flack for this standpoint, but here I go. Lima beans are good. I would have never believed it myself if I were not forced to taste them, but it's true. Get frozen, not canned, put some in a little bowl with a little water, nuke it for a minute on high, pour the water down the sink and hit with salt. Tastes just like edemame! I like to use a salt seasoning mix my girlfriend got me years ago because it makes them a little garlic-y and a little spicy on top of the salt. Now go ahead and never, ever believe me.

Scallops and risotto

There was a good sale on scallops (pretty much the only time we are lucky enough to get them for dinner) so I made an old copycat favorite of bang bang scallops. You can see how I make them in this old blog. A wonderful treat! I was feeling ambitious so I also decided to make some risotto. Now I know everybody thinks it is sooooo scary to try and cook it, but srsly it couldn't be simpler. Can you stir? Then you can make risotto. All you do is add the cooking liquid a little at a time (not-chicken broth in my case) and keep stirring. When it's done, you add a pat of butter and a boatload of parmesean. This is not an every day food, but man is it good.

Pesto

Back a couple of months ago, as summer was winding down, I cleared my garden of basil. We had a pretty large crop this year, and the best way I have found to store it is to make pesto, and freeze it. I make big batches, and freeze portions in ice cube trays. That way, when it is the middle of winter (although today is technically the first day of winter) and you are being lazy, you can just boil up some noodles, pop in a few of the pesto cubes and you have dinner. Go me for thinking ahead! For this particular dinner, I added a little extra by sauteing some onions and mushrooms to add to the mix. It was good stuff, and the baby LOVED it.

Copycat

I enjoy trying to copy yummy food I have had other places, like a restaurant, out of a box, at somebody's house, etc. This copy is a tortilla version of my favorite Which Wich. I cooked up some chicken breast, cut into bites, put hot wing sauce on it, and served it in a tortilla with crispy bacon and cheddar cheese. Heart attack in a tortilla? Pretty much. But mighty tasty.

Thanksgiving! part two

Since I had done a bunch of preparation the day before, on the actual feast day, the main thing on the agenda was the turkey! And before I get into it let me tell you that I deserve a kick in the shins for FORGETTING to take a picture of it when it was whole and roasted and golden brown and delicious. Blergh.
Anyways, I don't like putting bread stuffing inside my bird, so I stuff the cavity with aromatics and veggies. I used carrots, onions, celery, lemons and some herbs. For the outside, I melted some butter, added a little olive oil, and just sage and thyme. I poured that all over the bird and stuck it in the oven. Oh, I also put most of a box of broth in the roasting pan, along with the rest of the veggies I cut up that didn't fit in the cavity. I basted it towards the end of cooking, but then came my ultimate Thanksgiving worry... was this thing cooked? I was getting wildly different temperature readings on either side of the bird. I decided to cook a little more but then decided that the average of all my measurements was a little more on the cooked side of where I wanted to be, so I took it out of the oven. When carving time came (luckily I was doing this by myself in the kitchen away from everybody!) it wasn't cooked through!! Eek! But I had a brilliant idea to carve the entire thing, shove it on a roasting sheet in a crazy hot oven, and it cooked it the rest of the way quicker than anybody even noticed! Phew.

Meanwhile, I needed to finish the rest of the dinner. Luckily for me the stuffing and mushroom and lentil pot pies cooked at the same oven temp, so that made it a lot easier. The morning of the feast, I had gotten the stuffing prepared. I used a mushroom and toasted walnut recipe I got from a Martha magazine, and it was fantastic! I will never use another recipe again. I have been trying for years to replace my family's recipe because I don't think it is very good, and this is the winner! To finish the pot pies, all I needed to do was to make the dough for the crust and put some cheese over the top. Simple.
The last things I took care of were the veggies. I had to make mashed potatoes, duh, and I decided to make green beans with a lemon cream sauce (mentioned here).

That is it! Dinner was done. Oh wait, also gravy. I made gravy using the drippings and broth from the turkey, along with wine and potato starch. It turned out really well.
Everybody ate 2 or 3 helpings, so I feel like my feast was a success! I am glad that amount of work is only once a year though. And I am glad that I have enough leftovers to last for a while :)

Thanksgiving! part one

MMMMMMMM. Thanksgiving is my favorite. This year, I attended 2 Thanksgivings, but only one of them required me to cook for two days. I decided that I didn't want to freak out and rush on the day of the feast, so I made what I could ahead of time. I got preparations for the stuffing done, all this included was toasting some walnuts and cutting up a loaf of bread so that it could dry overnight.

Next, I made the cranberry sauce. I never really liked cranberry sauce too much, until I tried this recipe a few years back. You simmer the cranberries for a half hour in sugar, water and oj, with some orange and lemon zest. Since I made it a day ahead, it set up really nicely by the time dinner rolled around.

Third, I made the dough for the crust of an apple pie. I ended up finding out that one of my guests was planning on bringing 2 desserts already, so I wound up making this pie later in the week. Still have half of it in my fridge, but it is killer. There are 3 lbs of apples in this sucker! And the top "crust" is actually an oat streusal. Yum!

Last, I made the filling for the vegetarian part of the feast, mushroom and lentil pot pies. There is a vegetarian in my midst and I feel bad when he always just gets stuck eating side dishes everywhere he goes. All that is in it is lentils, mushrooms (fresh and dried), carrot, potato, broth, and spices.

I spent a long time cooking, and this was just the preparation for the official day! Continue on to part two for the rest...

Its that time of year again....

Salad time! Well, I eat salad almost every day, but now its time for the unhealthy, wonderfully delicious kind. The kind that I only let myself make a few times a year, preferably when I have a number of people fighting me for some, because otherwise I will eat the entire thing on my own. My family-famous 7 layer salad. I have turned on a few of my friends to it as well, but its a holiday staple for my family. I've fully explained the makeup here before.
For Thanksgiving #1 this year, the one I didn't have to cook for, my only assignment was to bring the salad. As my aunt put it, "nobody makes it as well as you". And by you, she meant me. Duh. I have tried to make it slightly better for everybody, by using organic lettuce mix, uncured bacon, and mayo that is made with olive oil, but there is not really any getting around the fact that this is a total treat. I was only able to escape with about 2 bowls worth of leftovers. They may be gone already at the time of me writing this. Exactly 24 hours after the actual meal. I won't be making the salad for Thanksgiving #2, the one I do cook for, but I think it will make another appearance at Christmas time, before going away again until the next holiday season.

beer

The people who know me know that I hate beer. Its is gross and makes me want to gag if I drink more than the tiniest sip. And I hate that I hate it because I feel like I am totally the sort of girl who would fit in well in a pub with a pint of something dark. But now I have found the (sort of) middle ground. Its called Lambic. And its delicious. It is real, actual beer. With hops and yeast and everything. But it is fermented with fruit so its girly. If it is made with something dark, like cherries or currants, it winds up a lovely red color, like the result of wine and beer's late night out. Now, like pokemon, I have to collect them all. The only one I am missing in this picture is apple, and that is because I drank it last weekend. Tonight, I am testing out the raspberry. I still have peach and cherry to go. Of the flavors I've had so far, black currant is my fave.

Asian Chicken Meatballs

This recipe really surprised me. I thought it sounded good, but decided to cook it one night just because I already had the stuff in the house and it was quick. Holy crap though, it is super freaking delicious. The recipe (thanks Martha!) calls for turkey, but I had chicken, so that's what I used. All that is in it is breadcrumbs, cilantro, scallions, garlic, fish sauce and sriracha. You mash it all together, easiest with your hands of course, and roll the balls. It makes 12 regular sized meatballs for 1 lb of meat. Then you brown them on all sides in a pan, for about 10 minutes, then toss them in the oven for 10 more minutes to bake through. Including cooking time, it only took maybe 30 minutes. Great for during the week. Serve the meatballs over rice with steamed, shredded carrots- cook the rice in the microwave, and when it's done, before you fluff, toss in the shredded carrots on top and cover with plastic. The heat from the rice will steam the carrots and then you just mix it all together. Do this while you are making the meatballs, and it will be done all at the same time. This one gets an A+ for sure. I ate all of the meatballs by the time lunch the next day was over, and was ready to make it again! This one is totally a new staple for me.

Homemade hot pockets

I got this recipe for hot pockets (the magazine called them handpies, but I don't like the sound of that for some reason) out of my favorite Martha magazine. Since I was going to the trouble, I made a double batch, one vegetarian and the other not.

First, you have to make the dough and let it sit for at least an hour in the fridge. It has cheese built right in! While that is sitting, you make the filling. My vegetarian version had sauteed mushrooms and spinach, and the carnivorous ones were chicken and spinach. I made one big batch of the spinach, and did both the chicken and mushrooms separately. You put broth in with the spinach and it turns into a gravyish substance.
Next, you have to cut the dough into discs, I just used a bowl that seemed to be about the right size, put your filling on the bottom disc, and attach the top with egg around the edges for glue. All that is left is to bake! These took me about 40 minutes, although the recipe said they would be done in 30. They held together pretty well, but the dough was a little bit crumbly. The pies were a hit in the house though.

Noodles n' cheese

You want easy dinners? Here is one that is about as easy as it gets. I mostly use this meal as a vessel for loads of feta. All you do is cook up some noodles, whatever kind you have in the pantry. Then I saute some onions and garlic in olive oil till soft, put the cooked noodles in with it, add garlic powder, tons of Italian seasoning, some butter and more olive oil, and that's it! Then I load my bowl with the noodles and tons of parmesean and feta. MMMMMMM cheese! Fast, simple and yummy.

Lentils

I remembered I do have something today! Its lentils. This is something I made for the baby. All I did was saute some onions, apples and celery in olive oil for a few minutes, then added a can of (organic- la dee da) lentils, and maybe half or 3/4 of a box of not-chicken broth. After that was boiling, I added some dry rice, garlic and Italian seasoning. I simmered it for quite a while in the dutch oven, and that was it. Easy! And yummy for fall

I'm baaaacckk

Due to popular demand by exactly one person (Steph!)I am back on the blogging bandwagon. Lately, I've just been eating meals like salad and potatoes, so right this second, I have nothing for you. But I will start making a better effort. Also, usually I skip the real easy stuff on here for my more impressive endeavors, but I will start putting the everyday kind of meals too. That is the stuff that you guys might actually want to copy. And Thanksgiving is coming soon! My favorite meal of the year. That old chefs question about what would you pick for your last meal? My answer- thanksgiving. Bon Appetit has a recipe for a beer-brined turkey. Hmmm......

Speechless

Nothing really to say here, except this pizza was exceptionally good. That is all.

Wheatberries are a real thing

I got this recipe off of a blog I enjoy called www.bodiesinmotivation.com . I decided to try it because I love me some whole grains, and I had everything else at my house already. The star of the show are wheatberries. I am guessing it is the part of the wheat that goes to seed, but really I have no idea. Dried, they look like Israeli couscous or big buckwheat. Cooked, they soften up, but still have the texture of slightly undercooked rice. But they taste like cheerios!
This recipe calls for you to cook the wheatberries, then once they are done, you toss them in a dressing of olive oil, honey, ginger, coriander and lemon juice. Then you toss in a bunch of chives and toasted almonds. You are supposed to also put in cilantro, but I didn't have any. Also I am not a big fan, even though I do like coriander. Odd, I know. The addition I did make was to put feta on top. And man, was this delicious. I ate it again for breakfast the next day. Kind of strange to eat a savory breakfast, but the honey added enough sweetness that I didn't care. I almost would say this meal is better the next day because the flavors have had a better chance to mix.
This one is a total winner and already has a spot in a dinner for the week ahead.

Magic Beans

At the farm last weekend, I picked up some beans. I will call them magic beans. They probably have some sort of lame boring name that I don't feel like googling, so magic beans it is. They start off this lovely shade of purple, but after you cook them, they go green. Secretly I wish they stayed purple, but whatevs. They have a mild taste. They don't taste as green as a regular green bean, if that makes sense. I have thrown them in a few different side dishes, but this one was the winner. And it wins for simplicity too.

All I did was cut a bunch of red potatoes into chunks, throw in a bunch of the beans, also cut into chunks, and boil it in not-chicken broth till soft. The liquid cooked down, and the starchiness from the potatoes turned it into a gravy like consistency. For flavoring, all I used was salt and pepper and Italian seasoning. The end. Seriously, for as plain as this sounds, it was super good.

It's Jammer Time

Jam!
So, there is this farm by my house that has an awesome market of whatever they are picking right then, but it also lets you "pick your own" when it comes to certain things. Currently, (no pun intended!) the red currants are in season. I've had the dried out ones before that are basically the same as raisins, but I've never even seen a fresh one before. Ask me if I took a picture... of course not. Blergh. Anyway, my family went out and picked a box full and brought them home. The lady at the farm told us they make great pies or jam. Especially jam. Because they are pretty sour when you eat them raw.
We tried some raw, and while they were fairly sour, they tasted a lot like pomegranates. While we were paying for our goodies, we picked up a cute little box of pectin and decided jam was the way to go. Since I tried making strawberry jam last year and failed miserably, I was a little afraid. I decided that instead of ruining our whole box of currants straight away, I needed to practice.

I got some strawberries at the store, and followed the directions in the pectin box. It worked! While I was at the store getting the strawberries, I also picked up a bag of bruised apricots for a dollar, and made more jam with them. It worked too! Then it was time for the currants. Since I am such an expert now, I had no trouble. All of my jars sealed properly and are thick and sticky. This morning, I made some biscuits for us to have the jam on. It was the best breakfast I can remember!

Garlic

This isn't really a post about a recipe, but have you ever head fresh garlic? As in not dried in heads like every garlic you have seen? I got my hands on some from my favorite farm. They put most of it away to dry and sell later in the year, but some they sell fresh. This one happens to be some sort of Spanish purple variety. It looks like a regular head, but the paper part isn't all dried out. Its more like the layer on an onion that is under the paper, but that you still have to remove. And when you cut this garlic it has the feeling like if you cut an apple. Juciy, I guess? I don't really know how to describe it. I don't really notice a difference in the taste or anything, it is just cool as something different.

Tomato Basil Soup

Ah, tomato basil soup. I have avoided you for almost 30 years because I don't like tomato soup. How could I have been so wrong??

I ordered some up for the baby at this restaurant we were at, since he loves tomatoes. I tasted it myself out of curiosity and it was delish!! So then I had to try and copycat it at home. All that is in it is a big can of whole tomatoes, a ton of basil from my garden and some cream. I decided to put some onions in it too. Once it cooked for awhile, I buzzed it with the hand blender and it was good to go! Parents and babies alike think it is a keeper!

Copycat pasta salad

There is a certain boxed pasta salad that I LOVE. But since I am trying to eat less processed things, I decided to make it myself. And I must say, it wasn't too far off! I diced some carrots and cooked them with peas in one pot. In another pot I cooked some noodles. While all that was going, I cooked bacon in the microwave. Once it was all ready, and cooled down, I mixed it together. The sauce is a ranch sauce. Since we make our own ranch anyway, I just did what I usually do (and by that I mean what K does since he makes it) and it turned out pretty well! It wasn't exactly better living through chemicals, but good enough to take away my craving

Chicken Salad

Dang, I am really wishing I had written this post earlier because I cannot remember exactly how I made this chicken salad and it was unspeakably delicious! Lets see... I used chicken, duh. Onions, celery and granny smith apples.... I do know those apples were the key to everything. I think that was all the bits,
Now for the sauce.... mayo, of course. And lots of black pepper, some paprika... oh and lemon juice! That was the other key. It really freshened the whole thing up. I ate this non stop for 2 or 3 days till it was gone. I liked it on a tortilla as a wrap.
I really have to try this one again to see if what I wrote down here was right!

Grilled Pizza

Friday night is pizza night. However, since this has been the case for a long time, we sometimes get sick of pizza. Rather than give up on our tradition, we decided to try something new. Grilled pizza! We watched videos on youtube of that Steven Raichlen dude, you know, the grill king, to learn how to make your dough not fall through the cracks. Turns out there is really no trick. You have to make it thin, but that is about it. Cook it till you get the fancy lines on one side, then flip it and put your toppings on. It is faster and way less messy in my kitchen.

Another fun development is baby pizza! We make a baby sized one and the kid scarfs it up. He will eat his whole pizza. He likes mushroom, pepper and onions, if you are curious. For my new style of pizza, I have been using BBQ sauce instead of Italian style, with chicken, bacon, onions, mushrooms and sometimes peppers. It is super good, and it compliments the smoky flavor from being grilled. I am all about pizza night these days!

Thank you, Martha

My mother raised me to hate Martha Stewart's guts, but I just can't do it! I love her. I think she can do no wrong. Recently I subscribed to the Everyday Food magazine, since I buy it at the store so much. This recipe came from there, and even though it is simple, it was incredibly good. It is a buffalo chicken wrap. With julienned carrots and celery, and ranch sauce. Should I have thought of this myself? Totally, but I didn't. And Martha did. that is why she is a bazillionaire and I am not. I had it on a plain old tortilla. I grilled the chicken first, and then tossed the cut up pieces in the hot sauce. It was really easy and did I say delicious?

Buckwheat

Now don't laugh, but I learned about buckwheat from a Wii game! Ok, you can laugh. Harvest Moon taught me that buckwheat must be good because you can get a lot of money on the game for growing and selling it! So I went and got some from the store. There are all different forms, and things you can do with it. The kind I have experimented with most is just regular cracked buckwheat. I make "oatmeal" (buckmeal? that doesn't sound very good) with it. With cinnamon and cloves and nutmeg, and sometimes apples, it is warm and nutty and tasty. The baby likes it too. If you take the dried form and mix a raw egg in, and cook it in a pan until it is dry before you boil it, it keeps the grains more separated and gives them more of a texture. Or you can skip straight to the boiling, which makes the grain more mushy. That is my preference for buckmeal.

Asparagus

Asparagus. How I hated thee. Until about 4 weeks ago. For some reason, I decided to make it and eat it, no matter that I didn't like it. And then? It was good! I don't know what has changed, but I like it now. I've made it at least once a week since. Ive done it with just some olive oil, salt and pepper... maybe some lemon juice. The time that is pictured here, I did it fancy style, where I marinated it in all kinds of things. Soy sauce, pineapple juice, teriyaki sauce, ponzu, ginger, garlic, sriracha.... that's all that I can remember. Basically anything I could find in the fridge that had that sort of flavor. And man, was it extra good. Woohoo for a new staple!

Artichokes

I had a request (like 3 months ago or something) to tell the story of what I do with artichokes. So here it is! Boil them. The end. Just kidding! Well, sort of. First you have to trim them. I cut off the stem until it's about an inch long. I cut off the top 1/3 of the whole artichoke so the boiling water can get into all the leaves, and I peel off any leaves that are on the stem or lower than the rest on the body part. To cook them, I just boil away, in the biggest pot I have, for 45 minutes or so. Sometimes I salt the water, sometimes I don't.

I never used to like chokes, but got the taste for them a few years ago. This came in handy when I was pregnant, seeing as 90% of my diet consisted of artichokes and ceaser salad. They come in all different sizes. We found these monsters a little bit ago. There is many a night where we will make up huge chokes, one for each of us, and that is our dinner.

Part of the fun of chokes is the dip. You can make anything you want. Some people use melted butter, but I prefer a mayo based sauce. In a little food processor (you don't have to use it, but it makes it easy) I start with some mayo. Maybe a cup or so, that we will split. I always put garlic powder and the juice of half a lemon. I add chives if I have them (and boy do I have them right now) and some sort of herbs. Maybe rosemary or thyme. Oh and pepper. Tons of pepper. Salt helps too. Then, you just have to buzz it for a second and thats it!

Birthday Party

So, after all those trials about which birthday cake to make, it came time for the actual party. I made a big spread, much too big for the amount of people there, and of course forgot to take a picture of the whole thing. Here is part of it at least:

I had chips and salsa, chips and a few dips, cheese and crackers, fruit salad, veggies, pigs in a blanket (pigs in blankets? how do you pluralize that?) and cupcakes! 2 kinds of cupcakes, to be exact. Chocolate with chocolate frosting, and maple with maple frosting.

The chocolate definitely was the winner. The baby ate 1 of each, but whatevs. You only turn one once, right?! Next year, I will just plan on chocolate though, to save myself trouble. Anyways, who am I kidding? Nobody wants to eat stuff that isn't chocolate.

Reminds Me of Prince

As my bestie would say, ohmigosh! I can't believe I have slacked this much on my writingz. Well, what better place to start back into it than purple potatoes! We picked these up at a farmer's market. For no other reason, really, than because they were purple. We ate them baked, although I had the desperate urge to make mashed potatoes out of them. I wish they tasted as awesome as they looked. There weren't bad by any means, but very plain. I know, duh. But I mean even more so than a regular potato. Still. A+ in the looks department.

Ginger soup

Last night we had what may be (I hope) one of the last cold nights, until next winter. We celebrated it with soup. This time the recipe came from a Martha magazine. It is super easy. All you do is simmer some ginger and scallions in chicken broth (or in our case, not-chicken broth), and put in whatever you want. We used carrots, mushrooms and pad thai noodles. We topped it with some more scallion and Sriracha and it was really good. This is going to become a new staple, no matter if it is cold out or not!

Birthday cake, test 2

A girl at work gave me the incredible idea of making cupcakes instead of a real cake. I decided to try it out for test number two. I took the recipe for a maple cake (from 'Bon Appetit' of course) and made cupcakes out of it. I just randomly picked a time to start testing to see if they were cooked through. I think it worked well and I decided that this would be the winner for the party, but K is giving this recipe a thumbs down. The only thing he doesn't like is the frosting though, because it is cream cheese based, and he hates that. Now I don't know what to do. My options are to make these and another kind of cupcakes so people can choose, just make another kind altogether and ditch these maple ones, but I think K may be the only person on the planet to hate cream cheese frosting..... hmm.... to be continued, I guess.

The great ricotta experiment

At lunchtime the other day, I was looking through the fridge for something to eat. I didn't find any sort of complete meal, just bits. I decided to try something inventive. I had half a tub of leftover ricotta, some plain cooked noodles, part of an onion and part of a can of tomato sauce that we use as pizza sauce. I sauteed the onion and some garlic in oil, added a few spoonfuls of ricotta, mixed in the noodles and cooked it together for a couple of minutes. It kind of looked odd, so I decided to put in the tomato sauce too. The result wasn't the greatest thing I've ever made, but it was pretty good. And better than just wasting the rest of the ricotta. I don't know what else to use it for besides lasagna type of meals.

Birthday cake, test 1

In a little over a week from now, my baby will have his first birthday... yikes! So, as you would expect, I am baking the cake instead of buying one. Since I didn't really start baking until about a year and a half ago, and I haven't ever made an actual cake, I decided I need to do some testing before the big event. This is test one. I didn't have very high hopes for it, but decided to try it just in case. It is a vegan chocolate and orange cake. Recipe out of 'Bon Appetit', again. I got a subscription for Christmas and am putting it to good use!

I didn't quite know how a n eggless cake would be, or how it could even be done, but surprisingly, there weren't that many unusual ingredients in it. In fact, I pretty much had everything I needed, except for the vegan "butter".

The cake looked really good, all frosted and everything.
After conducting a scientific taste test, K and I decided it wasn't bad. He liked it better than I did, but really, my main complaint has because I am not a big fan of chocolate and orange. Why didn't I leave the orange out seeing as I knew this ahead of time? Don't ask me! Anyway, the cake was kinda crumbly, but moister than we expected. And the frosting was a nice consistency, and kind of hardened up, which we both liked. This cake isn't going to be the birthday winner, but it was a fun test.

Eggs in Purgatory

This might be the strangest recipe I have ever made. I found it in an issue of 'Bon Appetit' magazine. It was one of those things where we decided that even though the end product seemed weird, we liked all of the individual ingredients, so we went for it.

First, you saute some potatoes, onions and garlic in oil. Then you add a bunch of artichoke hearts and a can of tomatoes. You cook it for awhile till the potatoes are pretty much done. Then you put the whole mixture in a casserole dish, make some dents in the top with a spoon, and crack and egg into each one of the dents! Crazy, right? Next you sprinkle the top with parmesan and put it in the oven till the eggs are cooked.

It's not the prettiest dish, but it tasted better than it looks. And better than it sounds, for that matter. I don't think this is a dish that will make it into our regular rotation, but for every once in a while, it was good.

Chocolate Chip Cookies 2.0

Inspired again by "America's Test Kitchen" I decided to try out their claim of a better chocolate bhip cookie. Better, you say? That's what I thought too. Their changes included, less butter, but you turn most of it into brown butter, using an egg plus a yolk instead of 2 eggs, using more brown than white sugar, and to NOT USE Tollhouse chips. Can you imagine? Their taste tests showed Ghiradelli 60% cocoa chips were the best. So I did just what they said. I think my butter was a little less brown than they were going for because I chickened out, but other than that, the same. The cookies were good, but in the taste department, they didn't have much on the regular old recipe. The way these cookies shined is in the texture. They were perfect! A tiny bit crunchy on the outside edges, but really soft and chewy on the inside. Oh and they are thick. Whenever I make the regular recipe, the cookies tend to melt out and be extremely thin and then crunchy. I don't mind this, but it was better for them to not be that way.

The Actual Recipe

For months now, K and I have been using this sauce recipe for salmon. It is actually just part of a larger recipe, and we pulled the bits out of it that interested us. Finally though, I made it the intended way, which is to put the salmon, veg and lemon sauce on egg noodles. It was good! To be honest, it isn't really any better than not having the noodles, but it is something different, I guess

Raw Cheese

Whenever we are at Vitamin Cottage, I look at the selection of raw cheeses. For some reason, I have decided that these cheeses are probably amazing. Alas, they are also expensive, so we have left them to our imagination. A couple of weeks ago, it was my birthday. My husband, correctly so, decided that a good present would be a fun kit of different teas, cookies, crackers, chocolates, and... the cheese! He got me two different kinds to try, one a hard cheddar, and the other a soft cheddar spread. Cheddar is totally my favorite. So I made each of us some samples and we had a taste test. Raw cheese, it turns out, tastes way better than pasteurized cheese. I don't know why exactly, maybe you can taste more of the subtle things that might be otherwise killed. All I know is this cheese has spoiled me into wishing it was the only cheese I ever got to eat. We will be sure to get it for special occasions here and there, but unfortunately, it can't be our go-to thing.