A Cookie You Won't Forget

I'm sure that almost everyone out there has a go-to recipe for cookies that they pull out around the holidays.  You know the one I'm talking about...it's the one that if, for some reason, you don't make one year, you never hear the end of it.  "Mom, where are the _____?"  "Why aren't there any ______?"  "Thanks for the cookie plate, but I really missed those ______ you make."  In my house, there are a handful of these.  both the hubby and I come from some cookie-loving heritages, so we have been handed down some darn good recipes.

One of my family's recipes is always a hit with family, friends, neighbors, and so on.  My mom calls them "forgotten cookies", because you leave them in the oven and "forget" them overnight.  My kids call them "those white cloud cookies".  They're basically a meringue cookie, very fancy to serve, but deceptively so, because they are pretty darn easy to make.

Catching the Gingerbread Man

It snowed here yesterday.  Enough to pile up and stick.  The kids immediately put out the bowl for snow caramel, and I immediately took beef out of the freezer to slow roast into a delicious stew.  We had a Christmas pageant at church that all 3 kids were in, and then we drove around on our annual tradition of seeing some holiday light shows.  By the time we got home, Chinese take-out in hand, it was a bit late for us to send the kiddos out into the snow, and everyone was pretty wiped out anyway.

Today, the kids all were excited about the snow.  The girls left to their bus stop 5 minutes early for the "annual traditional" first snow snowball fight.  Little man was upset that I had to drive to drop him off this morning because I screwed up my foot last week, so he settled with knocking snow off of everything he could get his hands on before I told him to get in the car, and a promise from me that he could have some snow time after school.

Takin' Care of Business

Please tell me that I'm not the only crazy person with a huge stack (okay, let's be honest, stacks) of recipes clipped out of magazines and papers and such.  Mine have gotten out of control.  So, after having a long weekend and seeing as how the first snow fell here yesterday, I'm ready to dig in and start trying some of them in hopes of thinning out or *gasp* organizing the mass.

Here's what I'm hoping to try this week:

Simply Tasteful Beer Bread

High on the list of things I love includes gathering with a bunch of friends and good snacks.  High on the list of things I find crazy are paying $4.99 plus tax and shipping for a loaf of bread.  Wait, strike that, paying $4.99 plus for part of what you need to make a loaf of bread.

You may know what I'm talking about.  I'm not sure of the legal ramifications, so I'm not going to spell it out any more than that.  Anyways, it makes me crazy, and I am usually the one at those parties whispering, "I have a recipe.  You can totally do that at home for a whole lot less."  And it's true.  You totally can.  You can buy a whole bag of flour, a whole can of baking powder, and a whole container or salt for less than that one box of mix costs, and with that, you can probably make this recipe 4 or 5 times...with leftovers too.

Not only is it a lot cheaper, it's practically as easy as opening the box.  A handful of ingredients, an hour in the oven, and there you go.

Sweet and Spicy: No, Not Just Me, the Pepper Jelly Too!

We get a lot of peppers of all sorts from our vegetable CSA.  Sweet ones, mild ones, hot ones, uber-hot ones...and I'm one of those freaks who loves pepper flavor, but doesn't like crunching straight into a raw pepper.  As far as spice goes, I tend to stay on the mid-to-mild side of things as well.  I don't mind a kick, but I hate things that burn just for the spite of it.  So sometimes, when the CSA is pepper-plentiful, I get in over my head with the hot peppers.

I can grab a serrano or two and whip up some salsa, I might chop a red chili and throw it in some beef broh with onions and noodles for a warming lunch, but when I have handfuls of pepper and an hour or so on my hands, I can whip up a mean bunch of pepper jelly.  You can do it too.

Chop up some sweet peppers, about 3/4 cups chopped.  Throw them right into a one cup measure.  Then chop up some hot peppers and fill the measure to a full cup.  Keep a few seeds in there, if you want more heat.  I usually take most of them out, but I don't stress if a few find their way into the mix.  Feel free to play with the ratio, more or less spice as you like.  This is what works for me.  I had a variety of hot peppers: some Hungarian wax, some chilies, some serranos, and some...I really am not even sure.

Making the Best of Things: Green Tomato Jam

The weather's getting colder, and it's finally starting to feel like fall around here.  Which is both invigorating and depressing.  On the one hand, it's kind of a relief that the work-intensive gardening season is coming to a close.  On the other hand, I hate not being able to go out and grab something for dinner from the yard.  But, for now, I'm just doing my best to harvest and preserve whatever fresh homegrown veggies I can from my gardens.

Tomatoes are tricky things.  If it's not warm enough, they won't ripen.  And if a frost happens to hit, they pretty much roll over and die.  So, with this cooler weather, I had bunches of tiny green cherry tomatoes on my bushes, and not much hope for them.  I mean, I do love fried green tomatoes but that battering, dipping, rolling and frying is a lot of work for tomato slices that are only an inch in diameter.  My middle child, the adventurous eater and tomato snatcher, grabbed a green tomato and popped it in her mouth...and then immediately started spitting it out all over and racing for something else to get the taste out.  So naturally, I had to try it too.  They are pretty gross.  Bitter, astringent, a little sour, but not in a good way.  But then it came to me...currants, some gooseberries, things like that have those qualities too, and they make amazing jams and jellies.

I mean, what can go wrong with dumping a ton of sugar on something and cooking it down until it's a sticky, delicious mess?

Merry Widows - A Quick Halloween Craft

It's been 9 months since I started this blog.  Which seems crazy to me.  9 months, 53 posts, over 5000 pageviews...I think that for what it is, it's going pretty well.

But I haven't done a craft yet.

Which may not seem all that strange to people.  I mean, there are a ton of recipes on here, right?  And some insight on parenting, and some fun places to check out.  And not everyone who blog crafts, right?

But I do.  And people who really know me know that I have a lot of fun with it.  And some of them have wondered out loud to me why I haven't posted a craft yet.

This one's for them.