CookieD-oh

Thanksgiving is almost here!  That means it's time for pie!  Yay pie! This pie is epic, especially when it's warm.  It's good enough when it's cold, but you really have to have it warm to get the full experience. First things first, I apologize again for the pictures.  I found my camera, but it's broken now.  Of course. Anyhoo, first thing is to make some taffy.  Mix melted butter, brown sugar and flour in a bowl until it's crumbly. Don't make fun of my pitiful little plastic bowl.  It was a wedding gift. It's like, 16 1/2 years old. Now peel, core, and slice some apples. Go ahead and forget to engage the peeler for your first apple. It's fun to peel a sliced apple. I use winesap apples that I get from the local fruit farm. I have loved winesap apples since I was a child. We lived in San Diego and we would drive up to Julian for apples in the fall.  Stopping at Dudley's Bakery on the way.  Is Dudley's still there? ...

Enough with the healthy food, already.  Let's get back to the bad stuff!  Who wants cupcakes?!?!?! I saw these over on Make Me Cake Me ages ago, and I finally got around to making them.  They're lime cupcakes with lime Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMBC) frosting.  I've been meaning to try SMBC for some time, but because I'm lazy, I haven't. What does lazy have to do with trying another kind of frosting?  Dishes, that's what. I plan entire dinners by how many dishes I have to wash afterward. And this frosting uses extra dishes. But you know what?  After trying it, I may not care about the dishes.  It was delightful. Silky and smooth and not too sweet.  Perfect! Anyhoo, it was the boss' birthday, so I brought cupcakes.  And because I took them to work I opted not to use the booze that the original recipe calls for. That, and I don't really drink, so I don't have any Tequila in the house and I didn't want to go to the liquor store f...

My husband is going thorough cheese withdrawal.  It ain't pretty.  But we found a pretty good plant-based vegetable lasagna recipe to help him work through it. It's a lot of work to make it, I'm not going to lie.  But the recipe makes a TON, so you only have to make it once to eat it two or even three times. Or more.  Seriously. Start by prepping your veggies!  It took about an hour for me to chop/thaw/mash all of these veggies. The weird looking thing on the bottom left is mashed sweet potatoes.  That's the first thing you'll want to do.  Peel, chop, steam and mash two sweet potatoes. In the meantime, chop an onion, two carrots, one head of broccoli, and two red bell peppers. Slice 8 ounces of button mushrooms and 8 roma tomatoes (when I went shopping they only had three roma tomatoes, so I had to go with regular tomatoes. I used two...they were large). Thaw 16 ounces of spinach and a few cups of corn. While you're at it, cook a la...

Good morning! I made cookies the other day!  I have been meaning to try this recipe for a LONG time, and I never had an occasion.  But yesterday one of the gentlemen at my job moved on to greener pastures (he found a better job) and to celebrate we threw him a party. I am so sorry for the wretched photography. I did find my camera this morning, so there's hope for the future. Anyhoo, I used this recipe from Baking Joy . It was an adventure because I don't have a good scale and the recipe is European, with the ingredients listed in grams.  In fact, here is an approximate representation of my scale.  Only mine is a little chintzier. Really. It's a wonder anything I make turns out. But I'm happy to say the cookies came out perfectly! I did not use caster sugar, as the recipe says, because I've never in my life seen caster sugar in the grocery store. I also could not find Cadbury Chocolate Caramels, so I used Dove. I was out of chocolate chips (that ...

So we've been going to this awesome little cafe lately. It's called Portia's Cafe , and Portia serves mostly raw, totally gluten free, mostly soy free, completely vegan food. She's a lifesaver. And very nice, to boot! Unfortunately, she's on the other side of town, so we are limited to one visit every week or so. On second thought, that's probably fortunate. Now, my absolute favorite is her raw Pad Thai served over kelp noodles. It's not technically on the menu, though.  It's frequently on the "Specials" board, but sometimes I can't get it. So on one of those shattering occasions, I ordered a NoTuna Wrap (a.k.a Sunny Walnut Pate), and I fell in love. So I came home and figured out how to make my own.  It's not exactly like Portia's, but it's close. It kind of looks like tuna salad. It doesn't taste much like it. Which is good, because I'm not a fan of tuna. I piled it on some Ezekiel 4:9 bread with shredded car...

Well hello there!  It's been a while.  Again.  Sorry about that. Anywhoo, it's Harvest Party season.  We have two kids in school this year, so I got to make cookies for two classes instead of one.  WooHoo! Actually, it wasn't so bad. The boy's class has six kids.  You heard me. Six. Kids. And because the class is so small, I decided to go a little crazy.  The boy is really into tic-tac-toe right now, so I made cookie game boards and cookie game pieces for everyone in his class. All six of them. Each kid got one board and 10 game pieces. When I got ready to bag them it was dark. And I couldn't find my camera.  And it was dark.  I was very frustrated by my inability to take a decent picture. Like, not gonna blog anymore frustrated.  I need some natural light, people. It's dark at 5:30. OK, whinefest over. Sorry you had to see that. The girl wanted happy candy corns.  I told her no tic-tac-toe for her class because th...