Dinner at Gloria's, October 8, 2016

Saturday night, we were invited to dinner at our neighbor's house. She had arrived on our front porch with a loaf of zucchini bread when we first moved in and I was delighted to receive the invite to dinner. She even graciously invited the baby to join us. We met some other neighbors as we walked over to her house and walked in with them. Gloria's house was simply lovely inside, with cool murals and all kinds of wonderful Halloween decorations! There was a murder of paper crows parading up her stairs, perched on the risers, which was my favorite decoration, but there were also witches everywhere! She told us she used to dress up every Halloween as a witch and wave to the kids on the school bus in the morning. Then, she served up both tricks and treats in the evening. What fun!

The evening started in the back yard, with drinks, Fritos, and yummy dip brought by another neighbor. Gloria made baked ziti with bbq meatballs, a big green salad, and excellent garlic toast. Dessert was potluck, with perfectly fudgy brownies, banana cake, pumpkin bread we picked up at the pumpkin patch earlier that day, and peanut butter Nutella cookies I made. It was fun to make those. The idea came from a Six Sisters cookbook and I tinkered with it to make it more chocolatey. I mixed up the dough while the baby played on the kitchen floor. When it had chilled, I put him in my lap so he could see everything while I rolled up little balls of dough and pressed them flat with my fork's tines. I remember being with my grandmommy when she made peanut butter cookies for my granddad, who loved them. I think she was there with us as we made our version---a comforting, cozy thought.

Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies

1/2 c. butter, room temperature

3/4 c. peanut butter (I like the smooth sort for cookies)

1/2 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1 3/4 c. flour

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1/3 c. Nutella

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat butter with peanut butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Mix the dry ingredients together. Add gradually to the dough, beating between additions. Heat the Nutella for 20-30 seconds in the microwave, then drizzle over the dough. Fold in to create a marbled pattern. Chill 15 minutes, then form into walnut-sized balls. Place on baking sheet & press down with fork tines to create flat cookies with crisscross patterns on top. Bake 8-10 minutes. Makes about 40.

Potato Leek Soup, March 9, 2016

Last night was our monthly Red Tent gathering, for which I usually make soup and some kind of sweet. When I was growing up, my mom and I made potato soup every year on St. Patrick's Day, so I chose potato leek soup for the March Red Tent gathering this year. It was heavenly! I added some rosemary olive oil bread from the grocery, some Pecan Thins for gluten-free eaters, chocolate chip cookies, and plain old Hershey minis. If I were serving this for dinner at home, I might add a green salad.

Potato Leek Soup

4 potatoes, peeled & sliced (I used russets)

3 large leeks, white and light green parts only, halved lengthwise, rinsed well, and sliced

64 oz. vegetable stock

Salt and pepper

1 c. milk or cream (you could omit this for a yummy vegan soup)

Put potatoes, leeks, veggie stock, salt, & pepper in a soup pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer about 40 minutes. Mash the veggies with a potato masher (or use an immersion blender, for a smoother soup---I like this one a little rustic). Add milk/cream and heat through. Serves 6-8. 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 c. shortening (I use Crisco)

1/2 c. butter

2 1/2 c. flour

1 c. dark brown sugar (if you only have light, that's fine)

1/2 c. sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

12 oz. (2 c.) chocolate chips (I use Ghirardelli when I can, but even store-brand is going to taste good, honestly)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Beat the shortening & butter on medium-high speed until softened, about 30 seconds. Add half the flour and beat well. Add sugars, eggs, vanilla, soda, & salt. Beat well, scraping down the sides occasionally. Add the remaining flour. When well-combined, stir in the chocolate chips. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls, about 2" apart, onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 9-11 minutes. Makes 4-5 dozen.

Cut-Out Cookies for Tanya

As we have a new baby, Elijah, who was born November 5th, I don't know if I'll manage cut-out cookies this year. Perhaps! I did manage some chocolate rum balls yesterday, so who knows? But, my friend, Tanya, asked if I happen to have a recipe for them and I do. I've never had a problem with it and it tastes quite yummy! This is the recipe I always use when I make cut-outs:

Cut-Out Cookies

4 c. flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

2 sticks butter, room temperature

2 c. sugar

2 eggs, room temperature

1 tbsp. + 1 tsp. vanilla (you can use other flavors, too---I like a mix of citrus fruit juice, especially at Easter)

Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Cream the butter and sugar until light yellow and fluffy. Beat in eggs. Add flour, with speed set on low, and mix until well-combined. Add vanilla. Form into 2 disks and wrap in plastic. Chill half an hour. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Roll dough out to about 1/8" thick, on a floured surface, one disk at a time. Cut out with cookie cutters and place on ungreased baking sheets. Chill about 15 minutes, so they're nice & firm. You can decorate them with sanding sugar before baking, if you want. Otherwise, use your favorite icing once they're baked. I like royal icing for these, but plain old powdered sugar icing is great, too. Anyway, bake these until the edges just start to brown, 8-10 minutes. Cool on wire racks before decorating. These are also good without any icing, sanding sugar, or anything. Makes about 30 2 1/2" cookies---or 15 larger ones. 

Corn Chowder, September 13, 2015

Last night was the inaugural gathering of the women's Red Tent Temple I am starting in Rochester, Michigan, and I made a pot of corn chowder to share with the women who came. I also brought some lovely apples, a loaf of wheat bread, a couple different kinds of gluten-free crackers, a bag of gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, and a batch of from-scratch gluten-y chocolate chip cookies. Sue brought red velvet brownies with white chocolate buttercream. Ooh-la-la!

Corn Chowder

2-3 tbsp. olive oil

1 1/2 white onions, chopped

3 large cloves garlic, minced

12 small red potatoes, quartered

Salt and pepper, to taste

5 cans white corn (or yellow or corn cut from 9 ears)

6 c. low sodium vegetable broth (you could use chicken broth, if you have no vegetarians eating)

6 c. 1% milk (you could use whatever kind of milk you like, or even half and half)

4 tbsp. nutritional yeast (optional, but nice for added umami flavor)

6 or 7 scallions, sliced, for garnish

Heat olive oil in a soup pot. Sauté onion & garlic until onion is softened and translucent. Add potato, salt, and pepper. Cover and cook about 5 minutes. Add corn & broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a gentle simmer and add milk. Cook on low until potatoes are tender. Add yeast and adjust seasonings. Cook another 10 minutes or so. Serve with scallions for garnish. Serves 12-14. 

Perfectly Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 sticks butter, room temperature
1/2 c. sugar
1 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. + 1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
12 oz. chocolate chips (the better the quality, the better the cookie)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk the baking soda into the flour. Beat the butter and sugars together until the mixture is pale and fluffy. Add salt, vanilla, and eggs. Beat well. Add flour, in 2 or 3 increments, mixing between additions. Add chocolate chips. Drop onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes. Cool a couple minutes before removing from the baking sheets. Makes 2 and a half to 3 dozen. 

Beefsteak Pie & Peanut Butter Cookies for My Granddaddy Clyde, January 4, 2015

Today, had leukemia not taken him from us in 2007, my granddaddy would have been 96 years old---and probably would still have loved peanut butter cookies. I think his favorite kinds were the fork cross-hatch sort, which my grandmommy made for him, and Nutter Butters. However, when Jeannene offered to make the Hershey Kiss sort, I happily took her up on it. I'd mentioned liking them & she said, "I'll make you some!" I'd planned to make peanut brittle, but this is perfect for Clyde. So, we have those for dessert. Jeannene used the recipe on the Kisses package, but you can find it on the Hershey website.

He loved his mom, Grandma Sadie's beefsteak pie and that was usually what he requested for his birthday dinner. I made it for him a couple years before he died, but usually my grandmom or auntie made it. However, I have the recipe, so now that he's dead, I make it every year on his birthday. It's delicious with mashed potatoes and corn.

Granddaddy Clyde's Beefsteak Pie

Crusts for double-crusted 9" pie

2 lb. boneless sirloin, fat trimmed, meat cut into cubes (I have used filet before and I think Grandma Sadie used round steak)

Flour

Salt & pepper

Butter (a tablespoon or two)

1/8-1/4 c. beer (do not use light beer; you can use water here, instead)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Fit bottom crust into 9" pie plate and trim edges, as necessary. Dredge steak in flour. Season with salt & pepper. Brown in butter in skillet. Add beer/water to skillet and cook until a sauce forms on the steak cubes. Place in prepared pie shell. Top with second pie shell, seal, and crimp edges. Prick top with a fork (I like to make a heart, with my granddaddy's name inside) to vent. Bake 15 minutes at 425 degrees, then turn heat down to 350 degrees. Bake another 45 minutes. Allow to stand 10-15 minutes before cutting into the pie, to allow the juices to settle back into place. Serves 6-8. 

La Luna Cooks For Uppity Book Women: Split Pea Soup & Oatmeal Chip Cookies

Last Friday night at this time, I was just slipping a batch of Amish-style oatmeal chip cookies into the oven so I could arrive at book group with them still warm. I had a pot of split pea soup bubbling on the stove, ready to be tipped into the crockpot for the trip down the road.

The cookies were part of the La Luna Cooks Mrs. Yoder project, just what I happened to be making for the day. The split pea soup was chosen very deliberately, based on the book we discussed. Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief is set in Hitler's Germany. It's a wonderful book, full of pain and death and luminous, beautiful life. The mama character is constantly serving pea soup, cobbled together from scarce rations. Therefore, it was the natural choice. We also got to enjoy chocolate chip cookies brought by Brenda & Sue's gazpacho.

Since there have been requests for these recipes, here they are:

Split Pea Soup for Saukerls

1 yellow onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp. olive oil

1/2 tsp. oregano

1 & 1/2 tsp. salt

A good grinding pepper

3 carrots, peeled & diced

3 potatoes, diced but not peeled

1 lb. dried split peas

64 oz. chicken stock

In a soup pot, sauté onions, garlic, oregano, salt, & pepper in olive oil until onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the rest and bring to a boil. Lower heat and cook on medium-low about an hour or until split peas are tender. You will want to stir fairly frequently so the bottom doesn't burn. Adjust seasonings. Serves 6.

Oatmeal Chip Cookies

3/4 c. butter

1 & 1/4 c. brown sugar

2 eggs

2 c. flour

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 c. oatmeal

1 c. nuts (I used chopped pecans)

1 c. chocolate chips

1 c. butterscotch chips

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix butter and sugar together. Add eggs, flour, cream of tartar, soda, & salt. Finally, add oatmeal, chocolate chips, & butterscotch chips. Drop by tablespoons onto greased cookie sheets. Bake about 10 minutes. Makes about 4 dozen.

La Luna Cooks Mrs. Yoder: Oatmeal Chip Cookies

You wouldn't think it to look at me, but I am actually pretty dang picky about cookies. Cake, too, for that matter. When I saw that my first recipe in the cookies section would be oatmeal chip, I thought, "Oh, no! Yuck! Well, good, I won't want to overindulge." Normally, I completely abhor oatmeal cookies with anything but raisins in them. Well, dried cranberries are acceptable. They are not supposed to have nuts, though, in my food rule-ology. They are most certainly not supposed to have chocolate chips, much less butterscotch chips, too. For some people, that would sound like food of the gods. For me, it sounded like a waste of good oatmeal, good nuts (which I mostly prefer in savory dishes---I make a killer batch of rosemary mixed nuts---but dislike nuts in brownies or chocolate chip cookies), good chocolate, and good butterscotch.

However, I had agreed to make everything. I knew Jeannene would likely love them and the day of making them fell on an Uppity Book Women night. That's my book group. So, I figured they'd be pretty easy to pawn off. The second loaf of last night's cake has gone to friends across the 4-lane and I hoped I could get rid of a bunch of these pretty easily, too. Jeannene is just delighted with this project because it gets me to make treats I wouldn't ordinarily make. Flourless chocolate cake, yes. Plain old brownies, yes. Apple crisp with a streusel type topping, yes. Even oatmeal raisin cookies---but the raisins give my darling the heebies. But never oatmeal chip cookies in my ordinary food universe.

This is the first recipe of this project that was relatively no-brainer for me. It makes a bunch. I'd say 3 or 4 dozen. I could tell you for sure, but I haven't baked the rest of the dough. I wanted them to be still warm for the Uppitys, so I waited until the very last possible minute, baked 2 dozen, stuck the rest in the fridge for later (perhaps the new neighbors' welcome gift?), and hit the door. There wasn't one thing in the recipe that I didn't already have in the house. I always have a bounty of chocolate chips, nuts, and so forth. I seldom use cream of tartar in my normal cooking life, but I did have it on hand, fairly recently purchased for something special. I also tend to keep butterscotch chips on hand so Jeannene can make worm balls if she gets the notion. Oh, the rest of you might call those "haystacks." You know, those chow mein noodle, peanut butter, butterscotch concoctions. They were a favorite family Christmas recipe when she was growing up, something they did together each year. They weren't part of mine and I looked askance at them my whole life---until Jeannene made them our first Christmas together. Oops, they're actually really yummy. I didn't need to know that.

Since Mrs. Hershberger (not the same Mrs. Hershberger of last night's hickory nut cake) didn't specify the nut variety, I went for pecans again. It was either that, peanuts, pistachios, or slivered almonds. I might try them again with salted peanuts. That'd be interesting. But the pecans were good. The directions were fairly well complete, although there was, again, no cooking time. Having baked cookies since I was a wee thing with my mama and my grandmom, though, I knew that a good number of cookie recipes bake for 9-11 minutes. So, I set Grandma Sadie's timer for 10 minutes and they came out perfectly. Admittedly, I kind of dropped them by tablespoon instead of the prescribed teaspoon. But they looked lovely, all puffy and browned, when they were done. I hate when my chocolate chip cookies are puffy like that, but this was right for the sturdy sort of cookie they are.

I'd snitched a little dough before popping them into the oven---I know, I know, I could be paralyzed for life or even die of salmonella poisoning. I know that in this day & age, we are absolutely not allowed to eat raw cookie dough. But I've been doing it since I was a little kid and I figure I might as well keep doing it. There are enough risky behaviors I don't indulge in that I figure I can toss back a smidgeon of raw egg in cookie dough every now and then. I have promised my wife that I won't eat pre-packaged cookie dough raw, but she did not extract the same promise regarding from-scratch dough. I figure I'm grandfathered in. Anyway, I was astounded to discover that the dough actually tasted good. Not just not revolting, but good. Huh. How about that? And when the cookies came out of the oven, they smelled good. I exercised admirable restraint in not actually eating one until I opened the container at book group (okay, it doesn't really count as restraint when you're simply not tempted). I'd managed to get them there still warm. Brenda didn't even want us to eat her cookies after she saw mine. I thought that was completely silly, as she'd brought my absolute favorite, plain old chocolate chip, so I brought one home for later. Jeannene ate I don't know how many and had no room for Sue's gazpacho (although she did have a nice, big helping of my split pea soup). I had the one and was perfectly happy---and I managed to give most of them away. Jeannene will be happy to see, though, that there are still a few left for her snack at work tomorrow.

I really liked the butterscotch-y undertones and I found that I didn't object to the wide variety of ingredients. Normally, I don't like cookies with a bunch of different flavors, but these were pretty good. I wouldn't make them on purpose for me, but for people who do like ingredient overload, they would probably be the bomb diggity.