Green Tea

Delicious blooming Green Tea! Becky, thank you for the tea! Chris, thank you for the cup.

Mo's Bacon Bar

Everybody Loves Bacon!

It's Meat Candy!

Hunter Angler Gardener Cook

weird and cool food hunting stuff, check this out:

Honest Food

Honey Sesame Squid

For a simple marinade, mix equal parts Organic Low Sodium Tamari Sauce, Honey and water. Stir until honey is incorporated. Add minced Garlic and fresh cracked Pepper to taste. Drizzle in Toasted Sesame Oil. Set aside.

Clean and prep your Squid. If possible collect the ink from the inksac and behind the eyes. This can be used to make black rice, black pasta or black croutons etc. You can also use it to make block prints... you get the picture.

Soak Squid in milk for 1 hour in refrigerator then drain and or rinse

In a ziplock baggie add Squid and marinade. Let marinate at least 1 hour in refrigerator. Drain.

Fix up some nice Jasmine Rice, Steam some Red Swiss Chard and fry your Squid in a little olive oil. Remember never overcook squid. If you do over cook it, it will be like rubber bands. This Squid was tender and succulent. Most Tasty!

Boob Soup

For this recipe you're going to need the following:

1 Lactating Mother
1 Hungry Baby
1 Mostly Asleep Father
1 Breast Pump
1 Newborn Bottle

Recipe as follows:

Mom previously pumps milk. Then she freezes it. At the opportune time, milk is thawed and warmed on the stove.

Boob Soup

Then Dad gets involved...

And feeds his daughter!

Holiday Wreaths

First, tie a bunch of pieces of twizzler pull and peel into bows.


Then melt the butter.


Melt the marshmallows.


Add the green food coloring.


Stir in the corn flakes.

Holiday Wreaths:

1/3 cup butter or margarine
1 package (10 oz) regular marshmallows
1 teaspoon green food coloring (or more)
12 cups corn flakes
Red cinnamon candies
Twizzler pull and peel candy for bows

Melt margarine in large saucepan over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Remove from heat. Stir in food coloring. Add cereal. Stir until well coated. Quickly shape warm cereal mixture using hands sprayed with cooking spray. Dot with cinnamon candies and add a bow. If they don't stick, using frosting to hold them in place.

Kleiners

We made kleiners, but didn't use Grandpa's recipe.

Separating the eggs


Adding cream


Cutting and twisting



Frying

Chris said they were too light and fluffy, but here's the recipe we used:

6 egg yolks
4 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon melted butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cream
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 1/2 to 2 cups flour

Beat egg yolks well. Add sugar and mix well. Add remaining ingredients. Use just enough flour to make a soft dough. To keep dough light and fluffy, handle as little as possible. Roll out dough until thin on floured cloth and cut into diamond shapes with slit in middle. Pull one end of dough through cut in center. Fry in cooking oil at 370 degrees for 2-3 minutes or until golden. Drain on paper towel. Dust with powdered sugar if you want.

Grandpa's Recipe:

6 eggs, beaten
3 cups sugar
1 Tbsp butter, melted
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp vanilla
1 cup evaporated milk
7 cups flour - add more to adjust consistency

Combine liquid ingredients, then dry ingredients. Mix together, roll out, cut, twist, deep fry at 350 degrees until golden brown.

Gingerbread cookies

First you find a helper who's in a good mood. Then you get out all the stuff, and bake up some cookies!



Rolled Ginger Cookies:

5 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground clove
1 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup molasses
2 tbsp vinegar

Stir together flour, soda, spices and 1/2 tsp salt. Beat shortening for 30 seconds. Add sugar, beat until fluffy. Add egg, molasses and vinegar; beat well. Add dry ingredients to beaten mixture, beating well. Cover and chill for 3 hours or overnight. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a cookie sheet. Divide dough into thirds. Roll each third to 1/4 inch thick. Cut into desired shapes and place one inch apart on greased cookie sheet. Cook for 5-6 minutes. Cool 1 minute on pan, then remove to wire rack. When completely cool you can decorate with frosting or candies or just eat them before there are none left.

Tuesday night potluck thingy

If you really want the recipes you should ask Melissa. But she didn't make the naan.

Razor Clam Chowda

First things first.

"WARNING HIGH FAT"

Ok so here goes. This soup will start with a french Mirepoix, but I guess we should prep the ingredients first so more on that later.

Thaw 1 -2 # frozen razor clams from your trip to the coast overnight in the refridgerator. In the event you didn't have a trip like that, you can order yours online for about $20 per lb. Snip corner off bag and drain tasty clam juice into bowl and set aside.

Get a mallet and have a little fun tenderizing your clams. The key here is not to overwork them or you could end up with clam mush and that is just not tasty...

Chop your malleted clams to the size of your personal preference. Then refridgerate.

Chop 2 onions

Chop a bunch of carrots

Chop maybe 4 celery hearts.

Chop 8 washed potatoes.

Rub 1 bunch Thyme between your palms to remove stems and chop.
Revel in the amazing aroma of fresh herbs.

Now for the Mirepoix. Ok a french Mirepoix is the classic 2-1 combo of onions, carrots and celery sauted in butter providing a rich flavor. These are our base aromatics.

So, melt 1/2 stick butter.

Saute onions til transluscent. (maybe 10 min)

Add Carrots and Celery and continue to saute. (10 min) add potatoes, 1/2 the thyme, salt pepper and cook briefly.

Find 36oz all natural Clam juice sitting around the house somewhere and add to the pot along with the clam juice you retained back at step one.

Bring to a boil and simmer 20 minutes or until veg and potatoes are tender. Dont forget to taste for seasoning and adjust as necessary because potatoes can deaden most anything.

Get 1/2 cup gluten free all purpose flour ready.

Make Roux by melting 1 stick butter and adding flour cooking on low heat about 3 min or so just to remove the raw flour flavor. Remember we don't want our Chowder too dark. When ready take 1 cup of simmering stock and add to Roux mixing together and quickly adding back to the stockpot as this is our thickening agent. Add remaining Thyme and simmer til soup is thickened.

Find a nice pint of organic half and half

Stir it into the soup along with the chopped clams. Heat gently to cook the clams. remember over cooked clams are rubber bands...

Serve topped with a little Bacon, a drizzle of Malt Vinegar, Pilot Bread if you can find it and the beverage of your choice. Enjoy!

Peanut Butter Blossoms

We made peanut butter blossoms tonight since I wanted cookies and the gingerbread needed to be refrigerated overnight. We were going to make kleiners but forgot to buy some ingredients at the store.


First you mix up your ingredients and roll dough balls in sugar.


Place them on your cookie sheet while waiting for the oven to heat up.


Unwrap enough dark chocolate kisses to have one per cookie. Be careful, as unattended kisses disappear before they're in the cookies.


Once the cookies are baked, immediately press a kiss into the center of each. Then transfer to a wire rack and let cool.


Enjoy the chocolatey peanut buttery goodness, but try to wait until the chocolate isn't totally melted or it's messy.

Chicken Noodle Soup

I figured that since it's been so cold, and we've got leftover rotisserie chicken in the fridge, that we could use it up... and be warmer... by making some chicken noodle soup. Completely a comfort food.

Here's the recipe straight outta the cookbook:

1 4-5lb stewing chicken, cut up
6 cups of water
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 bay leaf
1 1/2 cup dried medium noodles
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup chopped celery
2 Tablespoons fresh parsley

And that's cool, but y'know, sometimes recipe's are kind of like guidelines. They're just a starting point. Nothing ventured, nothing gained... at least when you're making soup. I wouldn't deviate if I was baking something, but with soup like this... pretty much anything goes. As long as you're not messing with the seasonings... like adding ground cloves or something like that.

So here's what I did.

I had a lot of chicken (4 thighs -raw, plus most of the breast meat from the rotisserie). So I upped the liquid. Pretty much I used the six cups of water the recipe called for, and then added some chicken stock that David had in the freezer, probably another three/four cups of stock.

And since the stock was already salted and seasoned, I didn't change any of the seasonings from the original recipe. Sure, a lot of salt is tasty, but the health effects negate anything good you can get from it. Anyway, then I added the raw chicken, bay leaf, and onion, and simmered it for about two hours. And I was generous with the onion. As any man should be.

While the chicken simmered, I was choppin' up other ingredients...
I personally like cooked veggies, especially carrots. So I doubled the amount of chopped carrots and celery. A good dose of vegetables have never hurt anybody.

After the chicken was done simmering, I removed the thighs and pulled the meat from the bones. I also chopped up the rotisserie. Then I skimmed whatever fat off the top of the broth that I could, and returned it to a boil.

Once again at a boil, I dumped in the carrots and celery. I'm only going to let this go for about 8 minutes, so after a minute or two I also dumped in the pasta since it'll only take about 6 to 7 minutes to cook.

Now, I had no idea what kind of noodle I was supposed to use in this soup. I don't really care for pasta much, so I'm not familiar with all of the different types of this or that... so I just walked up and down the noodle isle at the grocery and picked out a good thick, wide, whole wheat noodle that I thought would be noodle-ey enough. Yes, I just said noodle-ey. It worked great.

And since no soup is really complete without some sort of dipping bread, I grabbed some potato rosemary artisan bread. Rosemary? With chicken you say? Yes. Rosemary. It was good.

After the pasta and veggies cooked, I dumped in th chicken, let it heat through... and yes. We have dinner.

And not a bad dinner (soup) at that.