Last Saturday...

...I got to babysit Mark and Mercy's little girls.  Of course, I had to take pictures!

Sometimes people tell me that Olivia and I look alike, but I think they are just trying to flatter me.

As you can see, Charlotte takes food very seriously.

In this case, I can't blame her.  These are seriously good cookies.  They are chocolate crinkles, also known as Mercy's Morsels, or Merc Bursts, or something like that, because Mercy was the first to discover this recipe.  I get a lot of my best recipes from Mercy.  She's such a nice sister to share them with me, don't you think?

And now, it's my turn to share the recipe with you.

Chocolate Crinkles

Ingredients:
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 3/4 cups white sugar (orig. recipe called for 2 cups but 1 3/4 is plenty)
1 cup veggie oil (I use coconut)
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour (I use at least half whole wheat)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup powdered sugar.
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Blend cocoa powder, white sugar, and oil.  Add the eggs, then the vanilla.  Blend the flour, baking powder, and salt, then add to the other ingredients.  Stir in the chocolate chips.  Cover and chill for a while.

When the dough is nice and stiff, scoop out rounded tablespoons and drop them into the powdered sugar.  Nudge the hunk of dough about with the spoon until it is covered with powdered sugar, then pick up and roll between your palms into a ball shape.  Place on a greased baking sheet and bake at 350 F for 10 to 12 minutes.

Enjoy!  I like to chill mine in the freezer before eating them, but I might be weird.

"My name is Charlotte and I approve of these cookies."

Strawberries

A few days ago, the boys and I went strawberry picking with some friends at a nearby farm.  It was a beautiful sunny day, the children were cheerful, and the berries were abundant.  Within a few minutes we had filled our bucket, and I had to go back to the barn for another one.

We came home with two of these...

...a closeup for you.  Aren't they pretty?  It's hard not to feel warm and happy when looking at strawberries...

...and the next morning I made jam.

Easy Drop Biscuits 

(I used 25% whole wheat flour)

Strawberry Jam

...and, of course, some butter

When Jesh and I were young, we had a summer job picking strawberries.  We weren't picking berries in March, of course--in chilly Michigan, the berries didn't ripen until school was out.  We worked every morning from eight to noon, and earned 25 cents per quart picked--enough to make an eleven- or twelve-year old feel pretty well off. :)

Homemade Ranch Dressing

I've been a ranch dressing fan ever since my college days at Indiana University, where it was apparently the "thing" to put ranch dressing on everything.  But in recent years I've avoided ranch because it tends to contain MSG (monosodium glutamate).  So I was happy to discover a easy, delicious, and MSG-free recipe ranch dressing recipe online.  After some trial and error, I modified the original recipe a bit, and came up with this:

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup buttermilk*
3/4 tsp dried chives
3/4 tsp dried parsley
3/4 tsp dill weed
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
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*Just discovered that buttermilk tends to have a lot of artificial ingredients in it.  Happily, a homemade buttermilk substitute is quite easy to make and also quite a bit cheaper--stir 1 tbsp vinegar into 1/2 cup milk, and let sit for a couple of minutes until thickened.*

Dump all ingredients into a jar, close the lid tightly, and shake till well blended.  Or, if you don't have a jar with a lid that fits tightly, whisk all ingredients in a bowl.  Refrigerate for at least an hour, or ideally overnight, before serving.  This dressing may look thin at first, but will thicken up as it sits in the fridge.

If your homemade ranch doesn't thicken up as much as you would like, try adding an extra tablespoon of vinegar.

If you'd like a dip for vegetables rather than a dressing for salad, follow the above recipe, but substitute sour cream for the buttermilk; so you would use 1 cup sour cream and 1/2 cup mayonnaise.

You can tweak this recipe all you want--more spice, less spice, different ratios of mayo/sour cream/buttermilk, etc.  Have fun!

Chewy Coconut Cookies

Usually, if I'm in the mood for cookies, I make chocolate chip cookies or molasses cookies or maybe oatmeal raisin cookies, or, if I'm feeling ambitious, chocolate crinkles.  But the other day I tried out this coconut cookie recipe, and they were so chewy and delicious that I will have to add them to my usual repertoire.

Chewy Coconut Cookies

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 2/3 cups flaked coconut

*The recipe didn't specify whether the coconut should be sweetened or not, but I used unsweetened, and the cookies were plenty sweet.  I know that unsweetened coconut can be harder to find, but if you live near here, Froberg's farm store carries 1/2 pound bags of unsweetened coconut for $1.50.*

Directions: Cream together the butter and sugars.  Beat in the eggs and vanilla until fluffy.  Gradually beat in the flour, then finally, stir in the coconut.

I used a cookie scoop, sorry I don't know what size but the balls were about 1 inch in diameter.  Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet in a 350 degree oven for 13 or 14 minutes.

I made the recipe as written and they were quite good, but next time I will use 1/2 whole wheat flour and maybe add a little flax seed meal or oats or something.  I find that using whole grains enables me to eat lots of cookies without getting that nasty too-much-sugar feeling. :)

Okra

I like okra.  I like breaded-n-fried okra.  I like oven-roasted okra.  I like gumbo with okra.

And I really like growing okra in my garden.  I got off to a bad start when I let my okra seeds get moldy (long story).  I planted them anyway; half never sprouted, but the other half have been growing happily ever since, despite the fact that I totally ignore them.  It's 100 degrees outside and we haven't had much rain and our soil is like a brick, but the okra plants just soak up the sun and shake off the bugs and grow like weeds.

I love that I can run out to my little garden and come back with these

and I slice them with some onion and saute them with a little olive oil and end up with this

Mmmmmmm.....

I wish I'd planted twice as much.  Or three times as much.  Maybe next year.

Bread and Honey

Half my life ago, I tried baking bread and it turned out delicious and beautiful.  But I was left thinking that homemade bread was a real pain to make.  For years afterward, I had these memories of dough stuck to the mixing bowl and my fingers and the table, and of having to use a butter knife to scrape the dough off the table into the trash can.  Not fun. 

Fast forward fifteen years.  I got inspired to try making bread again, so today, I gave it a try.  Surprisingly, it wasn't the mess that I thought it would be.  I mean, I had a little dough on my fingers, but it rinsed right off, and the bowl rinsed out easily; and all that was on the table was flour.  Cleanup was not a big deal at all.

I wasn't really sure what I was doing, and the loaf came out lumpy and funny looking, but the house smells really good, and the taste...WOW.  I forgot how good homemade bread is.  I sliced off big thick slices while it was still hot and spread it with butter and honey.  The boys and I ate up two thirds of the loaf in one sitting, and I would like to eat more, but I feel like I should save some for Jesh to try when he gets home.

It sliced up kind of ragged, because I didn't let it cool before slicing it, and because our cheapo bread knife is quite dull.  But it sure is delicious, at least for those of us who appreciate simple food done right.  (If you need to be inspired to appreciate simple foods like bread and cheese and honey, go re-read The Hobbit or Heidi.) 

p.s. Bread and Honey is also the name of an interesting food blog.  I won't link to it here because the author uses a lot of bad language.  But you can google it if you are interested.  Also, for breadmaking inspiration, check out www.thefreshloaf.com.

Recipe: Pumpkin Cake

One of my favorite desserts to make is pumpkin cake.  It's similar to carrot cake, but without the hassle of shredding all those carrots.  It's a quick and easy recipe, and it's reasonably healthy, too.  Not only that, but everyone likes it, and I'm often asked for the recipe.  Without further ado, here you go:

Pumpkin Cake
2 cups sugar (I use half white, half brown)
3/4 cups unsweetened applesauce OR sour cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups canned pumpkin
4 eggs
2 cups flour (I use half whole wheat)
1 T baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 T cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ginger
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Blend the dry ingredients together (except for the sugar).  Set aside.  Blend wet ingredients and the sugar; add dry ingredients and stir till combined.  Cook in a greased 9 by 13 pan for about 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

Frost with the following (you might have leftover frosting):

Cream Cheese Frosting
2 8-oz packages of cream cheese
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar
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Soften the cream cheese and butter in the microwave.  Cream together.  Stir in the vanilla.   Gradually beat in the powdered sugar until the frosting is the desired consistency (a lot of times I only need 1 1/2 cups of the sugar).

Enjoy. :)

A Nice Picnic

Leah & Shona, Mercy & Olivia, Sarah, and the boys & I got together for a little picnic the other day. It was pouring rain and a little chilly, but we ate under a shelter/pavilion thing and enjoyed ourselves anyway. Olivia and Shona were looking really cute and snuggly bundled into their little blankets.

Shona just lights up when you talk to her.


I can't decide if Olivia is really, really calm, or really, really, intense.


In other news, I made refried beans with dry pinto beans that Mom says were at least ten years old [EDIT: Make that SIXTEEN years old]. And they turned out just fine. I guess dry beans really do keep forever. I soaked them with baking soda first, maybe that was the key (3/8 tsp. baking soda per cup of dry beans).

cooking inspiration

I've been lacking inspiration in the kitchen lately. Seems like every day I go into the kitchen, open the fridge and stare into it, open the freezer and stare into it, and open my pantry and stare some more, all the while thinking, "What on earth am I going to cook?" Finally after eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner the second night in a row (Elijah's idea--he LOVES peanut butter and jelly sandwiches), I thought, "Something has to change." So I went to allrecipes.com for inspiration, and discovered something new--a budget cooking page! I'm so excited! One of the first recipes I came across was sloppy joes. Of course my first thought was, "Sloppy Joes! Why didn't I think of that?" Sloppy joes are a perfect freezer food. I like to make big pots of food and then freeze some to thaw later--makes for less time spent cooking, in the long run. So I made a triple batch of the top-rated recipe. However, I'm not sure that any will make it to the freezer, as it's pretty good!

I have a lot of good meals in my repertoire, and I tend to be quite successful with new recipes as well (probably because I don't attempt anything particularly complicated), so I think our lackluster meals of late are mostly due to bad planning on my part. With some proper meal planning and a little browsing on allrecipes, I'm sure I will find myself re-inspired.

If my cooking readers would like to comment and mention two or three of their family's favorite meals, perhaps that would help. :)

Baked Oatmeal

I've often wished I could properly appreciate oatmeal, as I know it's such a healthy breakfast, and the kids really enjoy it. But I could never really get into it...too sticky and goopy and bland. WELL...finally the other day I tried this baked oatmeal recipe, and wow, it's great! I love that I can prepare it the night before, and just pop it into the oven in the morning for a hot breakfast.

Baked Oatmeal
1/2 cup vegetable oil or melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar (or less)
4 eggs
1.5 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
3 cups regular oats

Blend all ingredients. Pour into a greased baking dish.  Cover and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, sprinkle 1 tbsp of brown sugar on top, and bake at 350 for about 35 minutes or till firm in the middle. Serve hot.

My boys eat theirs in a bowl, crumbled up, with milk.  I like mine with a bit of butter and a sprinkle of brown sugar, or some honey.

This recipe is highly adaptable. You can add nuts and raisins or dates or dried cranberries, if you like that sort of thing. Or apples and extra cinnamon and a bit of cloves and nutmeg.  Or pumpkin and some pumpkin pie spice.  Whatever floats your boat!

The baked oatmeal in the photo above had the following modifications: I doubled the recipe, then substituted 1/2 cup flax seed meal and 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut for 1 cup of the oats.  I also added a bit of cloves and ginger, and a diced apple.  It was great!

New Favorite Recipe

I have a new favorite recipe...Honey Baked Lentils. Here goes:

1 cup lentils (I use brown because red turn to mush)
2 cups water
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp ginger
1 clove garlic
1 small onion
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients. Bake in covered dish at 350 till tender (recipe says an hour and a half, but mine only took an hour--I might use more water next time).

Serve with either white or brown rice. YUMMY.

Update Feb 2013:
Optional variations:
Sometimes I add sliced carrots.
Sometimes I add chicken (I just lay it on top of the lentils before I put it into the oven).
Sometimes I cook it in the crockpot, on low for 6-7 hours.
Sometimes I cook lentils, chicken, carrots, and rice all together in the crockpot for a one-dish meal.