Preparing for Christmas - cookies!

I love to bake. Do you know that? I had incredible plans of making tons of cookies this year, but then I remembered that I had to bake them all. Since I'm exhausted and still a little nauseous, I opted for a smaller amount of cookies. AND I waited until yesterday to start. No need to have stale, moldy or frozen cookies!

Benjamin "helped" me bake after his nap. He loved playing with (and eating) the flour. When I was little, my gramma would give me some flour to play with because I loved the way it felt and how it moved. And I was probably much better at her kitchen table than under her feet :) I had to watch B, though. When I wasn't looking a few times he snuck big spoonfuls of flour into the batter!

We made shortbread cookies, dipped in chocolate and gingersnaps. I'm going to make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies today - I hope. Shortbread cookies are one of my favorites. Simple, buttery goodness. I used a recipe from Ina Garten, because I love her and I saw the show where she made these. After comparing my old recipe with hers, I just had to try her way! An added bonus of shortbread is that there are not eggs involved which means this pregnant girl and eat as much batter as I would like (except, too much makes one sick...just FYI).

The gingersnaps are my old stand by, but I made them a little bigger this year. That's okay with me though! Either way, we had a lot of fun and Benjamin enjoyed making and tasting the cookies!

What are your staple Christmas cookies?!

Recipes

Patrick's out of town this week. He's in Utah looking at rocks and eating at lots of restaurants. But not us. We're staying home (mostly) and cooking up a storm. And by us, I mean mainly me. Benjamin is only helpful with pushing buttons and tasting. He's still very necessary, though.

My best friend has to eat a pretty restricted diet because she's nursing and the sweet babe doesn't tolerate dairy or soy well. I've been racking my brain for helpful recipes and made it my mission to help my dear friend eat well, even with restrictions! The sweet Lord knows that I wouldn't be able to do it, why should she have to suffer? I digress.

My first vegetarian/Cayla & Gemma friendly recipe was on a whim. I don't even know what to call it. Quinoa (keen-wa) salad? If you don't eat meat this is your grain!! It packs a serious punch with tons of protein, fiber, riboflavin and whole grains in every serving. Anyways...here is the recipe:


Quinoa Salad
Serves 2
Preheat oven to 400 degrees

You'll need:
1/2 cup quinoa
1 cup water
dash of salt
1/2 of a red pepper - in slices
1/2 bunch of asparagus
1/2 cup diced onions
1 SMALL hot pepper (such as a banana pepper)
1 clove of garlic - diced
some salt, pepper, basil
1/2 can white beans - drained and rinsed
2 cups romain lettuce - cleaned and dry

OK. Start by lining a cookie sheet with foil, add a little oil and toss the asparagus and pepper slices on. Brush with oil, salt and pepper. Roast for 10 minutes.
While the veggies are roasting, start the quinoa. Please prepare according to the directions (usually, 1 part grain to 2 part water - boil, reduce heat, simmer, done).
Also, you can chop and dice now to kill some time.
Now. Heat a pan, add oil and saute onion, hot pepper and garlic. Chop the (just roasted) red pepper into chunks and toss in the pan. Season as desired. You don't need a lot of seasoning - a little salt, pepper, basil - because the hot pepper and roasted red pepper.
Add beans into the pan, toss until warm.

For serving: Put lettuce on plate. Top with quinoa, hot mixture and asparagus. Serve with balsamic dressing - just incase.



I mixed all the warm ingredients before serving. I also tried the salad alone and with lettuce. I preferred it with lettuce (it gave it a nice crunch) and dipped occasionally into the balsamic dressing. I was pretty pleased with this. AND if you're not feeling the vegetarian way - add sliced chicken!

Also, I made nutella oatmeal cookies this afternoon. I decided that I wasn't going to follow a recipe. I mean, I make a lot of cookies, surely I can make up a recipe. They turned out so good. Fluffy. Just right, if you ask me :) I would tweak a few things, though. So, I'll give you my tweaked recipe....

Nutella Oatmeal cookies:
Preheat oven 350 degrees

You'll need:
1 stick of butter - room temp, slightly melted
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
2 eggs
some vanilla - I never measure vanilla. Start with 1 tsp.
2/3 cup nutella
2 1/4 cups quick oats
1 cup old fashioned oats
1 1/2 cups flour
dash of cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs. Vanilla. Nutella. Combine dry ingredients, mix into the wet ingredients. If you're not opposed, stick you finger in the batter and taste it. Yum.

Take your magical cookie scoop and drop little balls onto cookie sheets. I think I got about 40 cookies from this batter. Bake for 8-12 minutes, depending on your oven. Place on cooling rack, eat one warm. Wait about 3 minutes. Eat another one. Give one to your baby when he wakes up from his nap. He'll be SO grateful...even if he doesn't say so :)

A letter of thanks..

Dear Food Network,

I've always enjoyed watching all the great shows you air each day. Some of my favorite people to watch are Ellie Kreiger, Giada De Laurentiis and Paula Deen. Not to mention how great the challenges are and who doesn't like Ace of Cakes?

Recently I had a baby and, as you may know, there are some days that are just not fun. On hard days, I love knowing that channel 191 is there with someone to teach me a new recipe or a new kitchen tip. I also enjoying knowing that I can DVR a show I enjoy and go back to it later in the day. Watching these shows reminds me of how much I love being in the kitchen and makes me want to cook and bake again.

I'm so thankful for your network and wanted to let you know!

thanks,
Ashley

Yummy crunchy bars of goodness

I love reading magazines. It's so relaxing to me and if it's a magazine I like, I can get sucked in for hours. I have my favorites (Real Simple, Cooking Light, Country Living - to name a few) that I get each month. There are others I really enjoy (Self, Shape, Fitness) that I don't get, but love reading and would buy them off the rack if I saw something I liked on the cover.

Recently, I started getting Bon Appetite magazine. Kent got me a BA cookbook for my birthday and it came with a free year subscription (bonus!!!). I didn't know much about the magazine, but for the last three months I've enjoyed every issue. I thumb through it quickly, then go back and read each page. The recipes are wonderful (and I end up with folded corners on a lot of pages!) and the articles usually consist of things I'm interested in or can learn from. Plus, in the back there are two sections that have me hooked - the kitchen section and the "prep school" section. What's not to love about three to five pages of things for your kitchen and then a few pages on bacic to pretty advanced how to's, tips and techniques for cooking and baking.

With all of that said I made a recipe from the magazine on Monday night. They are called Coffee Crunch Bars and sounded pretty good. I was bored and thought, I have everything - why not? They are supposed to be crunchy, so if you're like my dear husband they may not be something you would normally munch on - but try them! They use a lot more butter than I would like, but it's a dessert! :) The dark brown sugar, plus the extract (I used vanilla because I didn't have the almond it called for) and sliced almonds lends a soft toffee flavor to the chocolate chips happily mixed in. Oh yum!

Somethings I love...

*When Patrick gets a craving for crepes and we make them together. Sugary yum-ness covered in nutella - ahhhh, reminds me of our first morning in Paris. However, the crepe was way too big with way too much nutella for this girl and I about passed out because of sugar overload (in paris, that is). Patrick, on the other hand, is eating his second nutella crepe as I type. C'est magnifique!

*When Patrick insists on drawing me a warm bath to ease my aches and pains.

*Romeo's Pizza

*Knowing that I'll get to meet our baby soon! AND knowing that I've done all the little things that I wanted to get done before he gets here.

*Little baby puppies waiting for me to meet them at the farm...

Cooking my days away

Over the last few weeks, I've been introduced to some fantastic foods. Most of them are veggies that I've never tried or even heard of (kohlrabi, swiss chard, scapes, napa cabbage). I've had so much fun cooking them and eating them.

I've made some great things over the last week, if I may say so myself. Last Monday, we had braised chicken with tomatoes and leeks. It was so good! I saved the "sauce" and ate it with rice a few days later. I've also been using up some things in our house and made mini pizzas with whole wheat pitas. Toss some sauce, cheese and veggies on one and bake it for 10 minutes and you have a personal sized, healthy, pizza!

My friend Courtney is part of a CSA and gets great veggies every week. She is going out of town, so she offered me some of this weeks crop. She brought me some garlic scape, radishes, napa cabbage and an assortment of lettuce greens. Oh my soul! I've had so much fun with these things!

To use the garlic scape, I made a scape pesto and tossed it with the radishes, some cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini and onions to make a veggie gratin. Then I sprinkled parmesan cheese on top and baked until it was browning. So good! I'm so sad that the scapes are gone. They had such an incredible scent. I'm hoping that I can find more somewhere over the next week or two, but they are a quick and rare crop!

To use the napa cabbage, I wanted to use it all and make sure it was appreacited. I do enjoy cabbage and loved researching this type of vegetable. Not only did I get some great nutrtional info on it, it was the "food of the week" on the World's Healthiest Foods website! I finally settled on some good ole vegetable soup. I threw a bunch of things that I had on hand into a big stock pot and went to town. I used organic chicken broth, water, napa cabbage, carrots, celery, garlic, onions, sweet corn (from last fall that I had frozen), two cans of diced tomatoes, navy beans, pinto beans, fresh parsley and fresh basil. Whew. I let it cook all day and have way more than I anticapated! Lucky for me, I can freeze most of it. (let me know if you want some! ::grin::)

To use up some milk, I made a batch of quick biscuts in my food processor. They turned out great and we had those with the soup. Last week, I used up some zucchini to make Chocolate Chip Zucchini muffins. Do not knock 'em until you try them! They were fantastic and I had to get rid of them because I was eating all of them!


Finally, for good, and cute, measure - here are some pictures of our friend's sweet baby, Micah. We watched him yesterday so she could go to the grocery store. He so precious and is starting to smile a lot. Plus, he's one cute kid. It was fun to entertain him and carry him around while I cooked and cleaned in the kitchen.

As you can see, Patrick is ever so comfortable with small children

You have to tag team to get a smile in a picture. This was as close as I got. :)

It's that kind of day

Normally, I love being in my house. I love the smell of it. I love the feel of it. I'm sure you know this, but mostly I love being in my kitchen. I really enjoy the home the Lord has provided for us. He certainly has fulfilled desires of mine through this home.

This kitchen remodel is taking a toll on me. Laugh if you must, but I'm having the hardest time working around the lack of counter tops. Only recently have I gotten a slight desire to cook and bake again because Patrick put the sink back in the kitchen (although we have to be careful because the sink is resting on the cabinets and the dishwasher tips forward when you don't hold it back while loading).

Today, I wanted to make waffles. I love waffles and with my handy waffle maker, I can make and freeze waffles at my leisure. I was following a Cooking Light recipe and happily stirred everything together when I realized that I didn't separate the eggs. You see, waffles need extra care because you need to fold in the stiff egg whites at the end to get the perfect waffle texture.

I poured a bit in to see if it would magically work. Nope. Too floppy, too soft, all wrong. I decided to throw in some bananas and chocolate chips and try to get some bread out of it. Well, that didn't go over so well either. How frustrating! I feel like I have a cooking handicap without a complete kitchen. It throws me off and I don't like it.

(The results of my baking time today...)

(At least the photograph well... ::grin:: )
Oh well, without experiments, without failure, how can I become better at what I love doing? So, I'll take this cooking flop of a day and learn from it. I'll be grateful for the lesson and appreciate the ability to get back into the kitchen. Until then, I'm going to go work out and drive around and look for stuff students threw out that I can bring back to life.

My life, recently,...

The last few weeks have consisted of so many random things. I've been a baking fool, I've babysat more in the last week than I have in years, I've had baby showers, I've been sick, I've been quite busy.

I babysat two little girls yesterday for four and a half hours. They are 3 and 1 1/2 and so much fun. I was wondering how to keep them entertained or at least not fussy for that long, but it worked itself out. We went for a walk, we gather hay and made a "hay okay" (which is translated, hay bouquet), we watched 102 Dalmatians, we ate lunch, we had a tickle fight and a dance party, we snuggled and we made little rainy day crafts. It was so refreshing and so good for my soul. I need to get back into children's ministry!

Over the last two weeks, I've baked three dozen snicker doodles, four dozen chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, four loaves of banana bread, and a dozen apple oatmeal scones. The last two baked goods were made to use up our fruit before we leave. Also, the scones are probably one of my favorite things I've ever made.

I had a baby shower for my friend, Liz, three weeks ago and it turned out very nicely. Since I had no clue what I was doing I called my mom a lot during preparation and then winged it on the day of. A few days ago, Liz and I had a mini shower for our friend, Courtney, who is also pregnant. It was a nice time to get together and we handmade Courtney's presents, which is always so much more fun!

And now I'm wide awake, bright and early on a Saturday morning. The past week was so exhausting that Patrick and I fell asleep on the couch last night at 8pm, woke up at 9:30pm, went to bed and I woke up at 7:45am. Refreshed! There's a lot I need to get done this weekend and I'm so glad that the Lord allowed us to get so much rest for the next few days. Did mention that I'm going to Europe in three days?

Here are some random pictures, taken with my new camera of course!

The first batch of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies....


My very cute Piper...My incredibly handsome husband...

The perfect tea time...
Liz, me, and Courtney at the Commonplace for Courtney's mini shower...

Morning Glory!

When we lived in Texas, we visited one of our favorite (to date) B&B's, The Firefly Inn in Canyon Lake. They were wonderful and more so, the breakfasts were incredible. It was there that I fell in love with Havarti Eggs, Baked Oatmeal and Morning Glory Muffins.

Since our cherished time there, two years ago, I've made the egg and oatmeal dishes on several occasions. Sadly, I have not found a muffin recipe that sounded good and at least a little healthy. That is, until yesterday. I needed to bake something (it's kind of like an addiction for me...) and had time, so I searched for a good recipe. I went with this recipe from Cooking Light. With only 165 calories and packed full of goodness, I couldn't resist.

I, of course, tweaked it. Instead of using white flour, I used white whole wheat flour. I added ground flaxseed. I didn't use the crushed pineapple it called for. I was very excited to use so much of my favorite things in these muffins, though: carrots, apples, raisins, apple butter, cinnamon, coconut and pecans.

The muffins turned out great and Patrick can even eat them, since they're so healthy! (He gave up sweets for a month. argh. It's almost over though!) The recipe makes 24 and I was a little sad that I didn't double it. I shared a few with our friends and froze six of them. I'm looking forward to my snack this afternoon!

Scones

I made scones today. In Europe, we're staying at B&B's. We LOVE B&B's and would choose these over any hotel. When picking a B&B, the breakfast part is always most important to me. I check out the menu or their breakfast options and then decide which one I like best from those items. No menu? No reservations. :)


Most of the B&B's we chose have scones, especially in Scotland. So last night while we were booking the last of our room accommodations, I looked for scone recipes. Just seeing a picture of these little pastries made me want to eat one. I found a few I liked, but checked my cookbooks this morning for something that really struck me.


For Christmas, (man, this post is all over the place) I got a cookbook that I'm really enjoying. It's a cookbook about baking for two people. How perfect! That way I'm not making cookies, cakes, pies, etc for twelve people each time I bake (and I bake a lot). I found a Cranberry Orange Oatmeal Scone recipe. It was so good. I think I'll double the recipe next time and share it with some friends.


As for the one's I made this morning, they were gone after lunch. Yum!

Cookie decorating party!

Well, I'm all cleaned up from this morning. I didn't realize all the things icing could stick to...hum? We all had a great time. The girls and I decorated about 30 cookies and I did the rest after they left. After about four each they were done, except for Emma, who is nine, she decorated much more!

After the cookie decorating, we had our yummy lunch. I had to cut the crust off of some sandwiches and a few girls trader apples for graham crackers :) It was very nice to sit with them and talk. Let me tell ya, little girls LOVE to talk!

They colored their bags and loaded them with a few cookies. We finished just in time for their mom's to walk in the door. Whew! It was a busy morning! Five little girls screaming and whining and laughing and crying... those are the blessing of life, wouldn't you agree?

Here the much anticipated, I'm sure, pictures from our fun morning....

Their bags all lined up so they could find their letter...

All the toppings: little kissables, icing and sprinkles, oh my!
Sarah, Laura, Emma, Caroline and Graci decorating cookies!
After lunch, holding up our cookies.....yummy!

It was a very fun morning. Oh, not to mention that the guys from Sears brought the oven right when the girls were getting here. I think I'm ready for a nap!

Tomorrow will be fun...

I'm excited for tomorrow. Tomorrow is Saturday and two very fun things are taking place. The first one is this: I'm getting my new oven. Oh, I can hardly imagine the wonderful joy of cooking and baking without the annoying whirl in the background. I can't help but wonder, "will I cook as well without it?" My guess is yes.

Perhaps the thing I'm most excited about for tomorrow is that I'm having a sugar cookie decorating party! Not just any party, I might add. This party includes me and five little girls from our bible study. They range in age from three to nine and we are all very excited!

My heart is passionate about children's ministry. I love being around kids and sharing God's love with them. I just love it and I know they do too! Since our church doesn't have a children's ministry, I have to get my fill elsewhere. We didn't have any Christmas parties to go to this year (a little bummed about that ::grin:: ), so we had some weekend free time to fill in. I was so excited to find out that a few mom's from our bible study were willing to hand over their kids for a few hours!

I've made up little bags for each girl. They are white bags with the letter of their first name in a Christmas paper. I figure the little ones can color bags if they get bored. I just finished mixing up the sugar cookie batter and I'll cut out cookies and bake them tonight. When the girls get here in the morning, I'll have fresh cookies, three colors of icing and tons of sugary topping to decorate with! We're also having lunch together. The menu: PB&J, organic graham crackers, apples slices and carrots with a cookie, of course.

When it's time for them to go home, they each get four or five cookies to take with them and share with their parents. The rest of the cookies will be taken, by me, to our bible study Christmas party on Sunday. I thought the kids would love to see their decorated cookies on display for everyone to eat.

Oh my soul, I'm so excited! Please pray that the Lord would use me as I desire to bless and minister to these sweet little girls! I'll be sure to post a lot of cookie decorating fun pictures :)

What's a girl to do?

It's a snowy day here in Indiana, PA. There's about three inches of snow on the ground and it's not stopping! So, what's a girl to do? I didn't want to go out and so I had to entertain myself to keep boredom from taking over.

I love being a homemaker. I love that my job is to make our home! The things I get to do every day are things that I love, things that come naturally to me! Here is a peek at how I kept busy today:

I sat here, studied, went through the mail and also ate lunch... I also spent quite some time in the dining room today arranging random pieces of furniture that got moved to make room for the Christmas tree. That was quite a puzzle!

I made these "homemade" Christmas decorations using serving pieces I already had. I grabbed un-used bulbs and cut come greenery off the trimmings from the tree. The center picture has bulbs from my dad. They were his grandmothers, then his and now mine.

I did my best to tackle this mess of laundry! I didn't get as many loads done as hoped, but there's still tomorrow!
I read some of this pile of goodness: Taste of Home, Cooking Light, my Bible, and a few extras from the coffee table... And I baked, of course. I'm starting to realize that baking may be one of my favorite things to do! Today I made an Apple Cranberry crisp to take to a friend's house for dinner and also I made granola. This is the first time I've attempted it and it was super easy! For a little extra flavor I added dried cranberries, coconut, almonds and walnuts! I'm pleased with how both turned out!

Whew! That was my day in a nutshell. A few other things that I did: Entertain the dog, worked out, drove to the grocery store to get honey (I ran out), stopped at a bookstore and got an Advent study (more to come on that one), made several phone calls, cleaned the office and started organizing presents to wrap. I don't mind snow days at all!

Yummy cookies!

Tonight, Patrick was meeting with a friend and I was left to entertain myself for a few hours. This is not at all difficult for me, as you can probably imagine. There are just so many things that I could do! I was out and about when Patrick called to let me know, so I stopped by the farmers market downtown and ran a few more errands.

I knew that we were going to play games at a friends house later, so I decided to bake! Wonderful! I chose to make pumpkin cookies. However, I was quite picky about the recipe I wanted and looked through several before deciding on one. You see, I wanted thick, cake like pumpkin cookies. Yum!

I found the recipe I wanted and got to it. I got adventurous by the second batch and threw some chocolate chips in the batter. I did end up tweaking the recipe a bit, but that's just how I work.

I am very pleased at how well they turned out and Patrick enjoyed them too.

Oh, one side note: I ran a few cookies over to our sweet 84 year old neighbor and when I came back, 20 of the 41 cookies were gone. Piper helped himself to my tasty HUMAN treat. That makes me so angry when he does that!

Pineapple upside-down cake

Last night I made a pineapple upside down cake. I've never made this cake before and quite honestly, couldn't ever remember eating a pineapple upside down cake. Pineapples were buy one, get one free at my grocery store this week, so I got two.

I wasn't aware of this until two days ago, but pineapple upside down cake is one of Patrick's favorite cakes. I'm also learning that Patrick likes a lot of cakes. If you search for pineapple upside down cake on the internet, it helps to spell pineapple right. I was typing "pinnapple". I didn't even notice I was not spelling right! I ended up learning how to spell and used a recipe from Betty Crocker:

1/4
cup butter or margarine
2/3
cup packed brown sugar
9
slices pineapple in juice (from 14-oz can), drained
9
maraschino cherries without stems, if desired
1 1/3
cups Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
1
cup granulated sugar
1/3
cup shortening
1 1/2
teaspoons baking powder
1/2
teaspoon salt
3/4
cup milk
1
egg
1.
Heat oven to 350°F. In 9-inch square pan, melt butter in oven. Sprinkle brown sugar evenly over melted butter. Arrange pineapple slices over brown sugar. Place cherry in center of each pineapple slice.
2.
In medium bowl, beat remaining ingredients with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly. Beat on high speed 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour batter over pineapple and cherries.
3.
Bake 50 to 55 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Immediately place heatproof serving plate upside down over pan; turn plate and pan over. Leave pan over cake a few minutes so brown sugar mixture can drizzle over cake; remove pan. Serve warm. Store cake loosely covered.

I didn't use the cherries and I also added 1 (ish) tsp of vanilla to the cake batter. The batter was kind of bland and the vanilla perked it up a bit. Instead of using canned pineapple, I used fresh pineapple slices. Finally, I didn't need to bake the cake for 55 mins. I ended up using a 8 1/2 x 11 dish, so the batter was (obviously) more thin and didn't need to bake as long. I appreciated this because I felt like an hour was a long time to wait.

The cake turned out pretty well, if I may say so. I enjoyed eating it and thought it even looked ok for my first upside down cake!