Secret Santa

This is Secret Santa Week at work.  Last week, we all filled out surveys to help our Santa out - filled with ideas of our favorite treats, office supplies, magazines, fast food, scents, etc.  We could be as silly or as serious as we wanted when filling these out (one coworker wanted to answer everything with "wine"), and then we drew from the surveys to figure out who we were the Secret Santa for.

I was SO excited about the person I drew!!  She and I have similar personalities, so when I decided to be snarky and sarcastic about her gifts, I knew she would appreciate it.  For example, one of the survey questions was to name something we need more of, and she answered "time," so for Day One, I gave her a kitchen timer.  Under the category of things she can't live without, she wrote "pasta," so on Day Four, she'll be getting four boxes of different shaped pasta.

Did I also mention that each present also has a thoughtfully written haiku attached to it?

Despite her writing such helpful things on her survey, there were also things that I had to be creative with to accommodate.  One of her favorite smells is Warm Vanilla Brown Sugar, which is a Bath & Body Works scent.  Now, I hate shopping under normal circumstances (I mean, really hate it), and I especially hate shopping during the holidays (thank God for Amazon!), so I had NO desire whatsoever to trek anywhere near a Bath & Body Works to get something with this smell.  Another of her favorite things is homemade sugar cookies with icing.  I love cookie cutters to look at, but I really don't like actually using them.  I prefer cookies that I can just scoop up and drop onto the baking sheet.  Again, I had NO desire to spend an evening cutting shapes out of cookies for a gift.

Because clearly being someone's Secret Santa is all about me (*insert massive eye roll here*), I decided to combine these her favorite smell and her favorite treat into one gift.  I did a little Pinterest searching, and the Brown Sugar Cookies came to be.

Being that it was the first time I'd made these cookies, I stuck to the recipe exactly.  Josh, my faithful guinea pig and taste-tester, really liked them.  The recipe's description of these being a combination of a sugar cookie and a snickerdoodle is spot-on.  They're super chewy and the sugars that they're rolled in just before baking got nice and crusty on the outside.  I really like the difference in texture between the cookie and the sugar.

The only thing I'm not a big fan of with these cookies is their name.  I feel like for such a fun cookie, they need a much better name than just Brown Sugar Cookies.  I'm now taking suggestions to rename them something more creative than that.

Three dozen of these puppies are now cooking on wire racks.  Soon, they'll be packed into a bag or a box to be delivered to my secret person tomorrow morning (by the way, Coworkers Who Might Be Reading This, I am not your Secret Santa, so this post isn't ruining the surprise...and I think you all know who my person is anyway).  In case you're curious, here's tomorrow's haiku, just for good measure:

Homemade cookies, yum!
Brown Sugar Snickerdoodles
You don't have to share.

Thanksgiving Dessert Edition

Ohhhhh-kay, so it's been nearly a week since Thanksgiving, but it's never too late to post about a holiday meal that involved cheesecake, right?

I love cheesecake.

So.  Much.

Inside tip: I love cheesecake so much that, when playing the game Apples-to-Apples, if the red cheesecake card is played, I will always pick that one over all others.

I also love coming up with new variations of cheesecake.  Well, maybe not so much "coming up with" as much as "thinking of something yummy and then finding a recipe online."  Someday, I'll come up with something that hasn't been thought of already, but for now, there's always something online.

Thanksgiving seems like as good a time as any to make new cheesecake.  I've experimented with new recipes two years in a row now, and my toughest critic (my dad) has had good comments both times (which is astonishingly high praise).

This year, the recipe experiment was White Chocolate-Cranberry Cheesecake.

Oh yes, you read that right.

Not only was this delicious, but it was SO pretty (it helps that it was sitting on a pretty plate supplied by my mom)!

First of all, let's talk about that chocolate crust.  I used Nabisco chocolate wafer cookies (after a debate with myself in the grocery store about how horrible it would be to toss the chocolate animal-shaped graham crackers into my food processor before I actually found the plain chocolate wafers...seriously, I have issues), and it was fabulous.  With the bits of shaved chocolate blended in with the cookies - yum.  I've saved this recipe for future use if for no other reason than to remember the crust.

The cheesecake itself was really good, too.  I omitted the dried cranberries and amaretto liquor, but added in a generous spoonful of vanilla extract (homemade, by the way...insert pat on the back here).  I was hesitant about the semi-sweet chocolate mixed in, thinking that it should've been more white chocolate but you know what?  I was wrong.  Those little chocolate bits were great!  Baking it at the time specified in the recipe yielded a cheesecake that wasn't set quite as much as I'd have liked, so next time, I'll keep it in the oven for at least five more minutes.

Last was the topping.  I did exactly as the recipe said, except the raspberry jam wasn't seedless (it was, however, also homemade!), but it was all terrific.  It seeped into the cheesecake itself, and looked so great dripping down along the sides of the entire cake.

All in all, this cheesecake was a hit!  Honestly, I'm not usually a super huge fan of fresh cranberries, however the combination of cranberries with raspberry jam was spot-on.  This recipe is definitely a keeper.

Thanksgiving marks the start of the holiday cooking and baking season, which is always exciting.  Stay tuned for upcoming holiday treat posts!  

And I hope your Thanksgiving was as delicious as mine!

Pancakes and Chicken Stock

Okay, okay, I know.  That's such a weird combination of things to be in one blog post, but there it is.  I made both of these things today, and I couldn't decide which to do a post about, so I decided to use one post for both (it's my blog, so I can write it how I want, right?)!

This morning, I woke up and wanted pancakes.  This is unusual because as delicious as pancakes are, they're not my normal choice for an involved breakfast (I will choose eggs Benedict over anything).  I think my want of pancakes has come from repeated conversations about pancakes with my co-teacher (her favorite food is pancakes).  Either way, I decided that today was the day for pancakes.

Because I don't make pancakes very often (or ever), I used the almighty Pinterest to find a recipe.  I searched for buttermilk pancakes, and just used the first one that came up, which was this.  The only problem with it was that I don't regularly keep buttermilk on hand, but I know that adding one tablespoon of white vinegar to one cup of regular milk (and letting it sit for 5-10 minutes) makes buttermilk, so I really didn't have any problem at all, did I?

As was mixing everything together, I had to go into my pantry to get more flour.  I saw that I had half a bag of milk chocolate chips sitting there, so BOOM!  Into the batter they went!

Oh yes.  That happened.  I know that I'm clearly not the inventor of the chocolate chip pancake, however, I was pretty excited that I found that bag of chocolate chips this morning.

Fast forward to this evening.  I made a fairly involved dinner of Lemon Chicken Breasts, roasted beets and Brussels sprouts, and lemony rice pilaf.  I'm only linking the chicken breasts because that's the basis of what I used for my chicken stock.

I used bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts for the recipe, knowing that I was going to make chicken stock after dinner.  The roasted chicken itself was just okay (not a ton of flavor, which surprised me, coming from an Ina Garten recipe), and I doubt I'll be making it again, but everything from the roasting pan went into the pot for the chicken stock.

I love making chicken stock.  It uses veggies in my fridge that are on their way to being done-for, and I like the idea of using all parts of the chicken.  Plus, it makes my house smell amazing while it's bubbling away!

So, as far as making the chicken stock goes, it's stupid-easy.  In addition to the bones, skin, juices,  and misc. chicken bits I put into the pot, I also added a bunch of mushrooms, carrots, celery, an onion and a half, and a head of garlic cut in half.  I put in some salt (only a teeny sprinkle) and pepper, as well as some dried oregano and dried thyme, then covered it with water, brought it to a boil, then let it simmer for about an hour or so.

Once it's done, I let it cool off for a bit, then strained it into a colander.  I filled up some plastic containers (I like the cylindrical ones for chicken stock...I have no good reason why).  They're currently in my fridge to keep cooling overnight and then tomorrow, into my freeze they'll go!  I'll be set on chicken stock for a while now, which makes me happy to know that I don't have to buy it for some time (win!).  :)

I really DO like lasagna!

Food confession: the foods that I dislike the most are the most seemingly "normal" foods.  The two biggest - okay, who am I kidding?  The only two foods that I truly dislike are Jell-O and marinara sauce on noodles.

What?!

It's true.  I hate Jell-O so much that I bought it for the first time in my life for Josh not long after we got married.  Josh was sick, and it was the one thing that he wanted while he was home recovering.  I wandered around the grocery store for a good 15 minutes before I found it, because I didn't want to actually ask someone where something as silly as Jell-O was located.  Then when I bought it, I followed the instructions to the T, and it still never set right.  It was only after I realized it hadn't set right that Josh asked me why I didn't just buy the little Jell-O snack packs...which I had to then admit that I didn't even know existed in the first place.

So, yes.  No Jell-O, and no marinara sauce on noodles.

WHAT?!

Due to a traumatic childhood experience involving random pantry ingredients and my dad being alone with a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old for a week, I was well into my twenties before I'd even try marinara sauce on noodles.  I was then even further into my twenties before I discovered that there was some marinara sauce that I actually liked!

Good thing that (some of) our tastes change as we get older, right?  Not only have I realized that there is a marinara sauce that I like (although, admittedly, I'd still really rather not eat it on noodles), but that when it's made with said marinara sauce, I really, really love lasagna!

I know that there are bajillion different ways to make lasagna, and everyone does it differently, but the one I go off of is Johnsonville's Italian Sausage Lasagna.  Now, the first time I made this, I misread the recipe, but my mistake ended up being the thing that I like the most about it.

Most of the ingredients and measurements are the same, but the big changes are these: I use sweet Italian sausage, an entire bag of fresh baby spinach, and an entire container of shaved Parmesan cheese (oh yes, an entire container).  The jarred marinara sauce that I found I like is Classico Vodka Sauce.  In this recipe, I use two whole jars of it.

The lasagna before!

Now comes the layering, which is where my biggest deviation from the original recipe comes in.  Rather than chopping the spinach up and folding it into the ricotta mixture, I leave the spinach whole and use it as its own separate layer.  My layers go sauce, noodles (which, by the way, I don't cook beforehand...I just put them in the lasagna straight from the box), ricotta mixture, spinach, mozzarella...repeat until all ingredients are used up.  I usually end up with two layers of everything, with an extra layer of spinach on the top, followed by a final layer of mozzarella, and the rest of the Parmesan cheese.

The result is this:

The lasagna after!

Is your mouth watering?  If not, then there's something wrong.

Here's an extra tip, too.  Because my 9x13 pan is stuffed pretty full, I always bake this on a cookie sheet, that way as it's baking, it doesn't drip all over the inside of my oven.

This leaves us with lasagna leftovers for days!  We had lasagna for dinner on Saturday night, then dinner again on Sunday, and I had it for lunch today.  There's also at least two more lunches for me left this week, too.

Oh yeah, PS - after pouring the marinara sauce into the browned sausage and onions, I also like to add a generous amount of red wine into the sauce (I actually had a random Parmesan rind that I threw in there, too, but that only happens occasionally).  I just use whatever I have on hand, which this time, happened to be a bottle of Goose Ridge's G3 blend (my favorite!).

Then we drank the rest with dinner.  That wine doesn't last very long around my house.

Squash Squash Squash

This Monday falls in the middle of a weird couple of weeks.

Josh and I spent the last five days in Southern California, celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary (which included two full days in at Disneyland!).  We got home yesterday afternoon, and by this Wednesday evening of this week, Josh will be down in Portland for work.  For a week and a half.

What this means is that I really wanted to make dinner tonight.  After five days of vacay and an upcoming nine days by myself, I wanted to make something Fall-ish and cozy and even a little more involved than normal for a Monday (today was an in-service day at work, so I got off work earlier than normal, so I had more time than normal once I got home).

The final product was this delicious recipe of Butternut Squash and Sausage-Stuffed Shells.  Yum!  It was full of sweet Italian sausage and ricotta and Parmesan cheese.  The butternut squash puree was fabulous - although I did pull the squash and onions from the oven after about 45 minutes, rather than the 50-60 that the recipe called for since they were more than fork-tender at that point.

I liked this dish a lot, but Josh wasn't such a big fan.  He liked the shells and the stuffing, but not the squash puree (however, he did say that he liked the texture of it).  I liked all of it!  I probably won't make it again exactly like the recipe, but I might play around with other sauces for it while still using the same stuffing mix,  The shells were too good to discard this recipe completely, so we'll see what happens!  Next time, I'd also add a lot more spinach than in the recipe (spinach wilts down so much!).

By the way, here's a sneak peek of the next blog post: Foods of Disneyland!  Keep an eye out for another post in the next day or so featuring the delicious things we in the Magic Kingdom!

Something Soupy

Happy Two Days 'Til Fall!

I love Fall.  My wedding anniversary is in the Fall.  Halloween and Thanksgiving are in the Fall.  Fall means blankets and tea and soups and casseroles.  Have I mentioned that I love Fall?!

As fun and wonderful as Fall is, it also means health screenings for Josh and me.  Every year at this time, Josh and I have to do a health screening for our medical insurance.  We do a mini-physical and have blood work done.  By doing so, we save some on our medical insurance rates each month for the next year.  It's easy and doesn't take much effort, except for the fact that the blood work is done after fasting for 9-12 hours, and with the hours that I work, I have no choice but to do this in the afternoon.  That means that I spend an entire day hungry and craving something rich and delicious for dinner.  

Having said that, Josh had a bit of an upset stomach last night, so he wanted the exact opposite of something rich.  He told me in the middle of the afternoon that he wanted soup for dinner.  Soup wasn't exactly the super yummy, rich meal that I wanted for dinner.  I decided that we were going to have grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

I know, I know.  It's not really all that exciting, but stick with me here.

Instead of cracking open a good ol' can of Campbell's, I decided to make the Best Ever Tomato Soup from The Pioneer Woman.  Now, I've made tomato soup once or twice before from scratch, but within the last couple of weeks, I saw Ree make this tomato soup on her show, and it looked easy and yummy, so I just went with it.

Yum, yum, YUM.  Heavy cream, basil, tomatoes that I canned last summer...what's better than that?  Not much, actually, unless you add croutons and freshly shredded Parmesan cheese, which I did.

The croutons and Parmesan really just added that final pop to this.  It was warm and comforting and pretty much the perfect Fall food.  It was also rich enough that after fasting all day long, it really hit the spot for something more than just a can of soup.

Thank you, Pioneer Woman, for not failing me once again!

Oreo Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made a bet with my coteacher today.  What we were betting on doesn't matter - what matters is that I lost.  Because I lost, I have to take her baked goods tomorrow, which means that I had to make cookies tonight.

Terrible, right?

Yes, it's always terrible when my house smells like baked goods.  It's also terrible when I have to scrape the mixing bowl to be able to eat one good spoonful of cookie dough.

Especially when it's Oreo chocolate chip cookie dough.

I like putting extra things into chocolate chip cookies.  Bacon and Oreos are the only two things I've experimented with (but I'm always open to suggestion, so please, suggest away!), but they're So Freaking Delicious.

I know I'm not the first person to think of smashing up Oreos and baking them into chocolate chip cookies (just ask Pinterest), but I came up with these last year for a coworker's birthday (actually, now that I think about it, it was the same coworker with whom I lost the bet today).  I wanted to ake her some birthday cookies, and she told me that her favorite cookie was the Cookies and Cream Pizookie from BJ's Restaurant.

Boom.  Amanda's Oreo Chocolate Chip Cookies were born.

Anyway, tonight, I made them again for her as her prize for winning our bet.  It also worked out well, because our classroom volunteer's birthday is tomorrow, so she'll get a bag of cookies, too.

In case you're wondering, Josh is working late tonight, so he's completely missing out on these cookies.  Don't feel too sad for him though - there's still chocolate chip zucchini bread left for him that I made yesterday.

"So, in case of a zombie apocalypse, you can THROW your canned goods at the zombies?"

The title of this blog post came courtesy of my brother-in-law, Noel, yesterday.  I was trying to suggest that in case of the apocalypse, I would have plenty of canned goods to get us through for a little while, but apparently, I watch too much of "The Walking Dead," so the word "zombie" came out with it.

Noel was right though - in terms of a zombie apocalypse, my canned goods won't do any good other than hurling quart-sized jars of tomatoes at the zombies, but I guess that's better than nothing, right?  Josh will be protecting us with all kinds of anti-zombie weaponry, so I'll just stand behind him with jars of tomatoes as backup.

Anyway, I digress.

So, I've discovered that one of my favorite things about summer is Carpinito Brothers in Kent.  It's a produce stand/garden center and it's awesome.  They have lovely flowers and all kinds of locally (and state-grown) produce for sale.  They also have this super awesome table of clearance produce.  You know - the kind where if you buy it today, you'd better use it today, otherwise it'll be bad tomorrow.  Not only have I found useful things for cheap on said table, but I've also been able to experiment with recipes I've got (and haven't wanted to spend a lot on a produce-gamble).

Today at Carpinito, I bought a 20-lb. box of Yakima beefsteak tomatoes (not on sale, but that's okay), a couple of bell peppers, and from the clearance table, I got a bag of Anaheim peppers and three random peaches.  I went down there specifically for tomatoes, but I was super excited about the peppers, knowing that I've had a recipe for pepper jelly that I've been wanting to try.  The peaches for the jelly were just an added bonus.

Throughout my canning projects today, I tried very hard to take ongoing pictures of what I was doing.  I realized that I just don't have the patience for it, because I have to stop what I'm doing, wash my hands, get my camera out, take the picture, blah blah blah.  It takes too much time, but some turned out pretty, so I'm going to post what I have this time.

The recipes I used were easy to follow, and I've made sure to save them for future use.  

The tomatoes were canned in their own juices (squishing tomatoes into a jar is cathartic and fun!), and I just followed this recipe from Never Enough Thyme.  The recipe suggests adding a tablespoon of sugar to each jar, to offset the taste of the lemon juice, and both times I've used this recipe, I've done it - with the result being terrific.

I found this recipe for Peach-Pepper Jelly to follow to start, and I immediately made changes to it.  I used fresh peaches rather than dried, I kept the diced peppers a little bigger than suggested so that it would be more of a jam than a jelly, and I threw in some cilantro that I had in my fridge already that was begging to be used.

This was the jam mixture just before I started boiling it.  Oh, my gosh, did it smell amazing!  The peppers, the cilantro - YUM.  I tried a spoonful after I'd filled all my jars, and it's fantastic.  It's mostly sweet, but the heat from the peppers and the red pepper flakes hits you just a little bit in the back of your mouth at the end of the bite.  I can't wait to use this for all kind of things I haven't come up with yet.

And now - the finished products!

I threw that last one in because I just really loved the colors in it!  I love that you can see the chunky peppers and the pretty golden color of the jam itself.  Are you jealous yet?  If not, you should be.

I have visions of not only jam-covered cream cheese and crackers for this jam, but I'm also thinking it would be yummy on a pork roast or roasted with chicken.

And those gorgeous tomatoes?  Those are begging to be soup this fall and winter.  If all else fails - zombie deterrents.

Dinner, Wine and a Tom Hanks Movie

The Husband has a work thing all weekend, so rather than being solo tonight, I invited two of my favorite girls over for a wine night.  Well...it started off being just a wine night, but it quickly evolved into wine and a Tom Hanks movie (we watched "The Terminal").  The plan was wine and finger foods, but I decided that I wanted to make something decadent and crazy-rich for dinner, so the final plan was set.

Our disgustingly hot Seattle summer is supposed to give way to a pretty fierce, autumn-like storm this weekend, and the meteorologists mistakenly told us that it was going to start today (which, beyond some rain this morning, did not).  Following the weather forecast, I wanted to make something that was comfort food-ish, so I toyed with the idea of some over-the-top macaroni and cheese.  When I Googled this, I found a lot of bacon mac and cheese (and you all know that I'm all about the bacon), but that just didn't seem special enough.  I browsed a few more links and found some recipes for lobster mac and cheese, which sounded perfect, except for one teensy little problem.

I don't like lobster.

You know what I love, love, love though?  Dungeness crab.  One quick swap, and the Dungeness crab macaroni and cheese was born.

I found this recipe for Lobster Bake Macaroni & Cheese, which came from the Tillamook site.  I did everything exactly the same, but for the one pound of lobster meat, I used two-six ounce tubs of Dungeness crab (oh yeah, and I used shell-shaped pasta rather than gnocchi because I couldn't find any).  I thought about going for three tubs, but Dungeness crab is pretty spendy, so I figured it would be just fine with one less tub (and it totally was).

This recipe was really easy to follow, and it was the very first time I made a bechamel sauce (which I would like to eat All The Time, Forever).  I felt VERY accomplished!  The problem with this recipe is that the timing for all the steps was kind of off.  Looking back, I really should've realized it the first time I read the recipe through, but I was trying to follow the instructions, so I did what it said.  The water for the pasta should've been started as I was making the bechamel sauce, and the oven doesn't need to start being preheated until the pasta is actually in the water (because otherwise, your house heats up for longer than necessary because the weathermen are liars who were wrong about the heat and humidity that actually happened today).

Anyway.  The end result of this was freaking amazing.  The three of us ate a really decent amount of the mac and cheese, and there's still a ton left, so I'll be eating Dungeness crab mac and cheese for several days to come (cue the violins, right?).  It smelled soooooooooo good, and looked fantastic!

Side note: if you're looking for a lot of step-by-step pics of my food, you're really not going to find it here.  I admire people who are able to take pics as they cook, but I don't have the attention span for it.  I need to focus on one task at a time, otherwise, I'm likely to burn the bechamel (I'm pretty sure that's my new favorite word).  What I do like, though, is extreme close-up pictures, so be prepared for lots of those!

Extra wine night tip:

Last night, while I was shopping for ingredients for the mac and cheese, I made a pass through the wine aisle, and came across this, Acronym White Wine Blend.  I bought it because I really liked the look of the label, and it ended up being completely delicious wine!  It was sweet and fruity, but not ridiculously sweet.  The bottle is empty now, ha!

Also, I just finished up a lovely helping of mac and cheese leftovers while writing this.

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'm a terrible photographer.  Along with being an amateur foodie, I fancy myself an amateur photographer.  Armed with my Canon EOS Rebel T3i or my Samsung Galaxy S4, my cameras take the good pictures, and I just get lucky while clicking away.  I randomly play with the lighting and hope for the best.

Having said that, I've decided I need to practice a whole lot more than I do.  I started thinking about what I should take pictures of and I landed on three things I'm around a LOT: my husband (Josh), my cats (Gibbs and McGee), and the yummy things I make in my kitchen!  Rather than bombard you right away with pictures of my husband and cats, I thought I'd start off with a sweet and salty treat - bacon chocolate chip cookies.

Bacon chocolate chip cookies are one of my favorite things to make.  They're sweet, they're salty, and they involve bacon.  What else do you need to know?

Literally, all I did to make these cookies is use the recipe on the back of the bag of whatever chocolate chips happen to be on sale that day.  Instead of nuts, I add crispy bacon.

Boom.  Done.

My coworkers should be pretty excited, because these cookies are headed their way tomorrow.