Lean, mean cooking machine

I've been cooking and baking, and it feels so good!

I made this beef and beer chili yesterday. I liked it so much I had it for breakast this morning (well, that and there was almost no bread left in the house).

Speaking of bread, I made a loaf of light whole wheat bread from my Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day cookbook. It stuck to the peel before it went into the oven, so it's this weird bendy shape, but it smells delish. I may use some for french toast tomorrow morning.

And I made cornbread to go with the chili. It's just the basic recipe from the side of my cornmeal container, but it's oh-so good. As a matter of fact, I'm off to have a square with butter and honey :)

Baking FAIL

I made some pumpkin cookies last weekend for Halloween (come to think of it, they didn't turn out that great either, tastewise). While I was digging out my Halloween cookie cutters, I came across one in the shape of a maple leaf. So pretty. I decided I had to make gingerbread cookies, and I had to use that cookie cutter.

I had some time today, so I dug out my trusty copy of The Complete Cookie. I have kind of a love/hate relationship with this book. There are some amazing cookie recipes, including some of the authors' family favorites (some with a nice twist), but they're not the easiest cookies in the world. Which I was reminded of again today.

Gingerbread dough is notoriously hard to work with. It tends to be on the sticky side, and you typically have to work with it when it's cold. But if you treat it right, it can be very, very good to you. Or so I thought.

I mixed up the ingredients. The dough was pretty darn sticky, but I let that slide. I put it in the freezer for about an hour and a half, 3 times longer than recommended. I rolled it out between 2 lightly floured (ha!) sheets of wax paper. And then it all went horribly wrong.

I peeled back the top layer of wax paper, and half the dough came off with it. I cut out a whopping 2 leaf forms out of 4 tries. The other 2 refused to come off of the wax paper.

I let those 2 cookies bake while I tried again with more frozen dough, and more flour, and more waxed paper. No dice. After many bad words in the kitchen (thank goodness S was sleeping), I tossed the rest of the dough and shared the 2 cookies with J.

If I'm feeling particularly ambitious, I might try again with more flour. Or maybe I'll find another recipe.

So, so disappointing

Lean, mean cooking machine

For a good chunk of last year, I got into a groove where I spent Sundays cooking for the rest of the week. It made it easy to grab a container of yummy, home-cooked food instead of slaving over the stove after a long day at work. I got out of this groove, however, and I missed those Sundays in the kitchen. Though the dinners J made for me lately were really nice.

Armed with my new spices, and some new recipes to match, and a strong desire to utilize every utensil in my kitchen, I got to work today. Behold:


An old favorite, crock pot chicken. I love this recipe, because you can do all sort of things with the chicken: tacos, served over rice, as part of a casserole, the sky is the limit



No bean chili (J hates beans of all kinds, unless they're green). Currently simmering on the stove



Cardamom granola bars. Breakfast for the week--score!




Cardamom mango bread pudding. Dessert for the week--double score!! It turned out better than I thought, since we didn't have any white bread lying around. Double-protein multi-grain bread works fine


A bowl full of yumminess: dried cranberries, and 3 kinds of chocolate chips (white, milk, and semisweet)


And the resulting cranberry chocolate chip cookies, specifically requested by J

If you happen to want any of these recipes, let me know in the comments and I'll be happy to share

Bon apetit!