Sesame Tofu

The Lovely Daughter found this recipe:  http://www.food.com/recipe/sesame-tofu-177242

It was yummy.

Recipe for GIngerbread scones

http://thesuburbansoapbox.com/2015/12/14/gingerbread-scones-with-eggnog-glaze/?utm_source=P-0679&utm_medium=FB&utm_campaign=SocialFabric is the site, but it hangs up dreadfully, so recopied for utility - also noting things I want to change

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup cold heavy cream
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon- increase to 1 tsp
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves 
• 1/4 - 1/2 c chopped crystallized ginger
• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1 tablespoon cold heavy cream
-use raw sugar for sprinkling

Icing (I'm unlikely to do this)

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons eggnog

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a small bowl, whisk together 3/4 cup of cream, egg and molasses. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon, salt and cloves. Grate butter over flour mixture.
2. Work butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal, with a few pea-size pieces of butter remaining. Add crystallized ginger.  With a fork, stir in the cream mixture until just combined. The dough will still be crumbly.
3. Pat dough into a 7-8-inch circle. Cut into 8 wedges and transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush the tops with 1 tablespoon cream and sprinkle with granulated sugar. Transfer to the oven and bake until golden, 16 to 18 minutes, rotating the sheet pan halfway through. Allow to cool on the sheet pan for 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
4. While the scone cool, whisk together the powdered sugar and eggnog until smooth. Drizzle the glaze over the scones. Allow the glaze to set, approximately 30 minutes, before serving.
5. Store in an airtight container for up to 48 hours. Best when served the same day.

vegetarian chocolate pie

The Lovely [vegetarian] Daughter is home for the holidays. Chocolate marshmallow pie is a long-time favorite of the older two kids, and marshmallows are one of the few non-veg things that TLD will eat. Today I tried it with marshmallow fluff, which IS vegetarian.

The pan scrapings tasted quite yummy, so I have high hopes!

This is a VERY easy pie, and the marshmallow creme worked really well.

Chili Lime Peanuts

http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/chile_lime_peanuts.html

I actually used about 4 cups of peanuts - I cut everything in half, but it seemed to be a little too much chili powder, so I added extra peanuts and lime juice. Next time, probably even less chili powder.

Menu planning

It's been working writing dinners on a little whiteboard on the fridge.

For this week, we've had/will have:

Mon: French Bread Pizza (Small Man's suggestion)
Tues: Hamburgers
Wed: Chicken pot pie
Thurs: Pasta (raviolini)
Fri: Pancakes

Dinners can be a little more time-intensive since I've had to start teleworking more. They're renovating our office space, and while we have limited access to off-site office space, most of us are teleworking almost full-time.

My Grandma was famous for her pies

My cousin Sonya just sent me a copy of a newspaper article written about my grandmother and her pies ~6 months before I was born.

Orange-Cardamom Cookies

I used this recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/printerfriendly/orange-cardamom-cookies-240927

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tablespoons grated orange zest
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamom
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks (1/2 pound) unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 large egg yolk
• 2 tablespoons heavy cream

EXCEPT I doubled the cardamom as suggested in the comments on the recipe, I used a whole egg instead of an egg yolk, I used half-and-half instead of heavy cream because it's what I had in the fridge, and used tangelo zest because the tangelos were on sale.

I also didn't roll and cut - I made a log, froze it, and sliced rounds to bake.

They were really good - light and crisp.

Chocolate muffins

Not dinner, breakfast :)

Does anybody else remember when Williams-Sonoma had actual catalogs:

And when they sold a ton of really cool stuff that was actually affordable? I used to love poring through the new W-S catalog, and actually bought some things from them. I still use my stainless steel measuring cups - AND the odd-size cups as well - and miss the broken Japanese fish soup bowls that have gotten broken. I'm pretty sure I actually purchased the animal muffin pan on the cover of this catalog (Fall 1984), but gave it away a long time ago because I could never get it properly seasoned and the muffins always stuck to the pan!

ANYWAY, the ingredients listed are from the original recipe, my mixing order is different.

Preheat oven to 400 (recipe calls for 425)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder

4 Tbsp butter, melted
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs

Melt butter, warm milk slightly and add to butter, blend eggs slightly and add to milk/butter, add vanilla. Mix thoroughly.

Mix dry ingredients and sift into wet ingredients, mix just until combined. Spoon into greased muffin tins and bake 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned. (recipe claims yield is 24 muffins; 18 is what I usually wind up with)

These are lovely; not overly sweet.

Menu planning

I tried something new the first week of school:

I posted the weekly menu on a whiteboard on the fridge.

The Karate Kid loved it! The only thing he seemed to not like was that I didn't have the weekend meals on it :)

Thinking about next week...
Sat. - Leek quiche (I made a leek frittata before and it was awesome; TMOTH would've preferred a crust, so crust it will be.
Sun.. - Pizza we had soup instead
Mon. - Pork chops
Tues - Taco Tuesday! (suggested by the Karate Kid)
Wed. - Bean soup Waffles
Thurs. - Spaghetti and meatballs
Fri. - Grilled chicken

Banana Chocolate Chip cookies

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/11201/banana-chocolate-chip-cookies/

Tastes like banana bread in cookie form! Both The Lovely Daughter and the Karate Kid loved these; the Small Man, not so much. TMOTH didn't like them at all - too soft for him (one reason Karate Kid liked them so much).

Menus for the short week

I leave Saturday morning to take The Lovely Daughter back to college, so the boys will be on their own for a few days. TMOTH usually makes burgers one night, pasta one night, and they order pizza one night. More than that, and they start eating out :)

Sunday: Karate Kid's choice: it's his birthday. He's REALLY like to go out to dinner, but since Mama doesn't want to, it's not happening. So we had cheese tortellini (I could have predicted this!).

Monday: Likely fair food, although that could be Wednesday. Burgers if we don't.

Tuesday: Leftover cornish hen.

Wednesday: Burgers, or the fair.

Thursday: Karate night ~ waffles and fruit.

Friday: I need to go to karate, so something quick. But it's The Lovely Daughter's last night to have family dinner, so maybe something she will eat. Lasagna?

miscellaneous

Pickles last weekend: http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/pickled-cauliflower-carrots-red-bell-pepper.aspx

Then made more peach-ginger jam. MMMM.

Tonight I made an herbed pork loin roast for dinner - I ground up garlic, rosemary, basil, and sage with some salt and pepper in olive oil, smeared it over the pork loin, made some shallow slashes, and rubbed it in, then roasted it. Also MMMMM.

Tentative meal plan for this week:

Monday:
Bacon
Waffles
Fruit

Tuesday:
Chicken/fish sticks
Frozen vegetables
Salad/crudites
Bread/rolls
Fruit

Wednesday:
Chicken fried steak/hamburgers
Mashed potatoes/gravy
Broccoli
Biscuits

Thursday:
Fish/shellfish
Farmers Market vegetables
French Bread

Friday:
Pizza

Saturday:
Hot dogs
Smores if the weather is good

Sunday:
Pasta
Breadsticks
Salad

canning today

Mint jelly, from the recipe in the Certo box, made from the exploding mint on the patio, and pickled peppers, made from this recipe from peppers from the garden. TMOTH planted some kind of "hot" pepper but it is NOT AT ALL hot - but I planted jalapenos, and they ARE hot. Each jar of pickles got one hot pepper :)

Crab cakes

recipe here

We had steamed crabs for our anniversary dinner, and had picked crab left over. I wound up with 5 crab cakes from what we had; we each had one for dinner and I'm freezing the rest. (We being TMOTH and me ~ no way the boys would try it.)

I mostly followed the recipe, except for the Old Bay. I just hate it. So I subbed in Zatarain's instead.

Fried fish

Actually, cod pieces from Trader Joe's. Cod pieces. *snerk*

I used this recipe, mostly: Alton Brown's Chips and Fish
Although- I didn't fry chips; I roasted potatoes in the oven, and I didn't use Old Bay. Because it's awful. I used a dash of Zatarain's instead, and it was yummy.

No hushpuppies. We were out of cornmeal, and TJ's didn't have any, and I wasn't about to stop by Safeway on a Saturday afternoon just for cornmeal. TJ baguette instead.

Coleslaw with a ginger-sesame dressing made by Marie's. Tasty, but too thick. I added some lime juice to thin it a bit and spark up the flavor.

Lemon Meringue Pie Fudge

The Lovely Daughter and I made this last night - recipe is here.

I made some changes.

- I used graham crackers for the crust. A full sleeve made about 1.5 cups, and I wound up using 5 Tbsp butter to get it to hang together properly
- I didn't actually measure anything other than the graham cracker crumbs :) I poured about half a bag of white chips (I used Nestle because they were on sale!) in one bowl, and used the other bag and a half in the other bowl.
- I tried the trick in the comments of adding some of the condensed milk mixture to the marshmallow cream mixture. I don't think there would've been enough white, otherwise.

King cake

So, a couple of weekends ago I made king cake. It was extremely good, although the glaze called for a LOT of lemon juice. I cut it back as I was making it, and it still seemed overly tart. You can occasionally get a king cake at the groceries here, but they're just not very good. The dough from this recipe is really workable; I think I might tweak it some to see if I can get it to work in the dough cycle of the bread machine and use it for cinnamon rolls.

Beer-braised chicken thighs

Tonight's dinner was a recipe from Rachael Ray for chicken thighs.

I had boneless skinless thighs, and parsley-in-a-tube rather than fresh, but it still turned out OK. I would say it is good, not great - not sure I'd make it again without tweaking. Maybe half beer and half chicken broth to braise? and more seasoning, I think, and possibly rice to soak up some sauce.

We also had roasted potatoes and roasted asparagus.

menu planning

new year, new plans

Sunday: chicken
Monday: quilt guild night AND cub scout night - soup!
Tuesday: fish
Wednesday: Leftover pork tenderloin with THIS sauce
Thursday: Cheese and crackers
Friday: waffles
Saturday: lamb chops/hamburgers

Bacon-wrapped Pork Tenderloin

This was a recipe from Bobby Flay:  Bacon-herb-wrapped Pork Tenderloin

I followed the hints in the comments and left it in the oven for 30 minutes and it was cooked perfectly.

I didn't have fresh rosemary or sage or thyme, so I used dry. I also added a little bit of refrigerated parsley puree.

Overall, it was really good, and there are leftovers - I think I'll look for a simmer sauce for later this week.

We also had fried apples, macaroni and cheese, and The Good Rolls.