How to end a difficult day.

Alice Medrich’s Bittersweet Brownies (from Cookies and Brownies * OOP)

6 tbs unsalted butter
3 oz bittersweet chocolate
3 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup flour
2/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Preheat oven to 325.

Butter a square 9″x9″ baking pan, and line up two sides with parchment paper.

In double broiler, melt chocolate and butter. As soon as chocolate and butter are melted, remove from pot from heat. Add sugar and stir well. Add vanilla and salt and stir well. Add eggs, one at a time, stirring. Add one cup flour and stir until incorporated. Add nuts; batter should start to pull away from the sides of the pan.
Bake 30 to 40 minutes, until brownies *just* start to pull away from the edge of the pan.

Cool one hour.

If eating while warm, a scoop of vanilla ice cream is perfect.

* This is one of my favorite cookbooks. It’s relatively short, but every recipe I’ve tried is perfect. And judging by the Amazon website, I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Don’t forget! Today is National Pie (not pi, that’s March 14th) day!

Eat pie!

Tomorrow is National Pie Day!

I’m off to make a sweet potato pie!

ADDENDUM the First:
Sweet potato pie is in the oven!

Bonus Conversation:

Grandmom: (Pointing to tablespoon of maple syrup) Are you drinking that?
Me: Nope. It’s going in the pie.
Grandmom: (pointing to bottle of Wild Turkey) You put that in the pie?
Me: Yup. (pointing to two tablespoons of bourbon) That’s the bourbon that’s going on. (pointing back at the tablespoon of maple syrup) That’s maple syrup.
Grandmom: Have you always done that?
Me: Yup. I put boubon in the sweet potato pie and the apple pie.
Grandmom: Really? No wonder I feel drunk all the time.

It’s 17.8 degrees outside. It’s Sunday, but secretly Saturday (I don’t have to work tomorrow) and even with the wood stove cranking out lots of heat, there’s just a chill in the air.

So what’s someone to do in a situation like this?

(more…)

What is this planing ahead of which you speak?

Well, today it consisted of making soup after dinner today, so we can have soup for dinner tomorrow as soon as we get home.

Potato leek soup. Very easy.

~2 tbsp olive oil
~2 tbsp butter
bunch of leeks, white parts minced, greens saved for stock or composted
potatoes, 6 to 12, depending upon size
4cups stock
salt & pepper to taste
~1 to 2 cups, depending upon how many potatoes you used

Saute leeks in butter and olive oil. Add sliced potatoes and hot stock, bring to a boil. Simmer 30 minutes. Add salt & pepper. Run through blender. Eat.

See? Easy.

Now we’ll have soup for dinner tomorrow, which should go well with the cold and snowy weather we’re having.

I don’t understand why I never made soup for years and years. As long as you’ve got good stock, it’s quite easy. Our only problem is that Grandmom can’t eat our favorite soups: broccoli cheese and corn chowder. Which are also the two easiest soups to make. But, I just put eight cups of potato soup in the freezer, so that means she can just eat that next time I’m on the mood for corn chowder…

Which may be very soon, because the more I think about corn chowder, the yummier it sounds.

Mmm…. soup.

This was my Dad’s requested recipe this Christmas. It originally came from one of his aunts (all long dead), so I feel perfectly safe posting it.

This is half the recipe. Last year I made the whole recipe and I thought we’d never get rid of all the cookies–my Dad’s favorite or not. I also made a few modifications regarding the amount of rum, as in I increased the amount of rum. I also can think of no reason why I’d need to dissolve the baking soda in warm water, but with half a pound of walnuts at stake, I decided not to risk it and followed the recipe. (But if I can’t find any rhyme or reason for this I’m going to skip it in the future.) Additionally, as they were no directions, I just did the obvious.

Walnut Cookies

1 stick butter
1 cup brown sugar (217 grams) (I used light, since it didn’t specify)
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour, sifted (180 grams)
nutmeg (it says a pinch, but I just grated some until it looked like a decent amount)
1/2 tsp baking soda dissolved in 2 tbsp warm water
2 tbsp rum (I used dark rum, because that’s what I have on hand)
8 oz raisins
8 oz walnuts

Pre-heat oven to 350 F.

Cream butter. Add sugar. Add eggs. Sift together flour and nutmeg. Add flour and nutmeg to butter mixture with soda solution and rum. Mix until incorporated. Add raisins and walnuts.
Scoop teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheet covered in parchment paper.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through baking.

My goal for the next two days is to be a baking fool (now that I have a dishwasher! Yippee!)

Wish me luck!

Also, for anyone in town? This is a good time to stop by out of the blue and visit.

Today’s accomplishments:

Peanut Butter Blossoms
M&M Cookies (with and without walnuts)
Pumpkin Spice Cookies (with and without walnuts)
Pumpkin Whoopie Pies*
Sugar Cookies

* Actually made and taste-tested

Those are added to:
Lemon Sugar Coins
Spice Cookies
Nutmeg Sour Cream Cookies
Sugar Cookies

Plus, for my Mom’s birthday I made:
Carrot Cake cupcakes (with and without pecans)
No-bake Lemon Cheesecake

What I have left:
Bar cookies of multiple types
Walnut cookies
Rugelach
Anything else I decide looks good

What I am doing differently this year is making all the dough, scooping out balls for those cookies that are not shaped cookies, and the freezing the uncooked balls. This way, I can simply bake cookies as needed, giving me fresh cookies for the entire holiday season, instead of a freezer full of cookies that become more and more damaged as the holiday season progresses. (I scooped out the cookies, froze them on a cookie try, and then put them into ziplock bags.)

Of course I finished making all this cookie dough, and then decided that I was really in the mood for oreos. I did not, however, make any oreos.

Yesterday I made my favorite in comfort food: Turkey Pie.

This is usually made with leftover turkey, but can be made with chicken as well. If I’m on the mood for this and don’t happen to have leftover turkey, I’ll make chicken stock, and use the cooked chicken from there for the pie. Amounts of mushrooms, turkey, sausage, and peaches can be modified to meet your gustatory preferences. I like more mushrooms and peaches. My grandmother loves the sausage. Michael loves the sausage and mushrooms.
Turkey Pie

425 F for 30 minutes

~1/2 lb organic turkey sausage
1 or 2 small package mushrooms
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
~2 cups chopped cooked organic turkey
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups turkey stock/broth (if you use turkey stock, it’ll make the dish a little more flavorful.)
1 cup half & half
1 to 3 cans sliced peaches in juice
Single pie pastry crust

Slice sausage into 1 inch pieces and brown in a large skillet. Remove from skillet.

Saute mushrooms in butter. Stir in flour and salt. Cook over low heat until thickened. Add cream and stir until flour mixture is incorporated. Stir in broth and stir until incorporated. (I always have the broth hot, because I will inevitably have forgotten to remove it from the freezer and thaw it. This may help the sauce thicken, so heat or not as you please.) Stirring, heat to boiling, and then boil for 1 minute (the goal is for the sauce to be slightly thickened).

Spread peaches, turkey, and sausage in bottom of large rectangular pyrex pan (whatever size that large pan is). Pour cream sauce and mushrooms over top, distributing mushrooms as evenly as possible.

Roll out pastry and place over top of dish–I don’t even bother to flute, I just tuck the extra pastry underneath.

Cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes at 425 F. Remove foil and cook for 10 more minutes. Sauce should be bubbling. Remove from oven and wait several minutes before serving. Forget about being neat. This is comfort food, it’s all about taste, not presentation.
Eat with caution. The peaches will be much hotter than you expect, and will burn your mouth. But it’s totally worth it.

NOTE: I have made this dish in advance and frozen the entire thing uncooked. Simply add five to fifteen minutes to the baking time. The for ultimate comfort you can pull it out after a bad day and with no work, have a hot, yummy dinner.

I had two packages waiting for me when I got home. A mystery I’ve been waiting months for, and Alice Medrich’s newest book, Chocolate Holidays: Unforgettable Desserts for Every Season

After a few seconds of indecision, I grabbed Chocolate Holidays and curled up on the sofa.

Yum!

So today is stock making day. I bought all the veggies last week, but, what with Michael being busy all weekend, never got around to making it. So that was part of today’s plan (after going to the Mountaineer Week Craft Fair). As I was chopping things up and dumping them into the stock pot, I realized that this is about it for my herb garden. The basil is dead, and the oregano is down to the ground, where it will wait out the winter.

But there are some herbs that are still good.

So, if anyone is in town and interested, feel free to come decimate my herb garden. I’ve got multi-color sage, which will die back to the ground over the winter, and insane amount of parsley that won’t last much longer, a gorgeous rosemary plant (that almost certainly won’t last the winter) some thyme, chives (which will probably last the winter, but I do have plenty), and some marjoram, which was okay for stock, but I’m not sure how great it would be for anything else.

In a week or two I’m going to cover it with leaves (maybe that will let the rosemary survive, but I’m not counting on it) and that’ll be it for the year.

Let me know if you’d like to take some of these off my hands. I certainly can’t use them, and it’s a shame to waste them. So I’m begging you: if you’re in Morgantown, please get in touch with me and help clear out my herb garden before everything dies for the year.

I’ve raved about Jungle Jim’s before (though most of my raving occurs in person), and how when we’re in Cincinnati visiting friends we HAVE to go to Jungle Jim’s because it is THE most amazing store ever.

Well, you don’t have to take just my word for it, Neil Gaiman likes Jungle Jim’s too!

Whenever I drive across America — which isn’t often — I try and stop in at Jungle Jim’s on the way back. And not just for the UK food, but for the amazing variety of world food. It’s an amazing place. Would that all supermarkets could have that magic.

See! If Neil Gaiman thinks it’s cool, then it MUST be cool!

In case you hadn’t noticed, fall is here.

The mornings have been crisp and cold, and apples are coming into season. Made an apple pie on Sunday, and I think I’m going to have to make several more while apples are at their prime. Especially since I just got individual serving pie dishes from King Arthur’s Catalog. Because sometimes it’s just too much to make an entire pie for two or three people, and pie isn’t something easily taken to work, like cookies.

But the pie I made really was very delicious.

I’m not saying there isn’t something to it, I’m just saying that my first reaction to this:

WVU researchers studying nutritional benefits of krill
Mention krill, and whales might come to mind. The tiny shrimp-like
crustaceans are the food of choice for whales – nutritionally dense,
easily harvested and abundant. It’s those same qualities that make krill
seem like a short-list candidate for the next big protein source to a
pair of WVU researchers. Drs. Janet Tou and Jacek Jaczynski, assistant
professors in WVU’s Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer
Sciences, have been collaborating with Taiwanese scholar Yi-Chen Chen on
a study of the nutritional benefits of krill for human consumption. The
research was featured in a recent issue of Nutrition Reviews.

…was to giggle.