Our virtue for this month at preschool is – shock and surprise – giving/generosity. We’ve been talking about giving gifts to others for the holidays and birthdays (not just receiving – though it can be tough to see beyond your own little world when you’re 3 or 4). Through stories and conversations, we’ve come up with the ideas that you can also give people: cupcakes, cookies, pictures, hugs, and sing them songs (that would be the list my 3 year olds came up with). One of my class’s projects to practice giving was to make peppermint cookies and then give them to people who help us at school. Before baking, we made a list of all the people who help us (this was all kid-guided, I had no input) and they mentioned each child in our class as well as all of the teachers they see at school and the pastor — I was impressed! I especially liked that they listed each other. Then we set about baking the cookies, using a recipe I found on a preschool site, but one I had never tried – sometimes these kinds of recipes go well, other times not so well. This one turned out great! The kids do most of the measuring and mixing when we bake so proportions are not always correct and then the kids got to shape them – which can make for a wide variety of sizes and shapes that may or may not cook uniformly. Despite these challenges (?), these cookies were really tasty and not too bad to look at either! When we sat down to enjoy them as a class, I had each child give a cookie to another child and then they could all dig in! After we were done, we got to deliver cookies to the other teachers and the kids were super excited to be able to share! Hopefully a small lesson about giving was learned while enjoying these yummy cookies!

Peppermint Cookies
1 1/4 c. crushed peppermints (I used candy canes and had the kids pound them into pieces – they loved it though our ears weren’t so happy)
1 1/3 c. sugar, divided (1/3 c. for topping, 1 c. for dough)
3/4 c. melted butter
2 eggs
1 tsp. peppermint extract (I thought you could go a little lighter on this…)
3/4 tsp. vanilla extract
2 1/2 c. flour
1/4 tsp. salt
Grind peppermint candies in 1/3 c. sugar until powdery with a few larger chunks of candies (recipe recommends a food processor, we used wooden playdoh mallets to pound candy and sugar in plastic bags – when the bags sprung a leak, they were ready to add the mixture to the bowl!). Mix flour and salt in a small bowl. Mix butter, eggs, and sugar together in a separate, larger bowl. Add vanilla and peppermint extracts. Add flour mixture in 3 parts to sugar mixture until well mixed (we kind of did this, but it all worked out). Form dough into balls about one inch wide (our’s were a bit larger and some of them were more snake-like in shape but as long as they were thicker rather than thinner, they all cooked fine). Roll dough balls in crushed candy mixture and place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes (our’s took more like 12) in preheated 350-degree oven. Remove cookies from oven and let cool for one minute, then remove them and roll them in the peppermint sugar mixture once more before placing them on wax paper to cool (this didn’t happen as I totally forgot about it – we’d moved on to circle time and my brain was elsewhere – but I thought the cookies were alreay quite pepperminty and sugary thanks to the earlier rolling).

I had this fabulous idea for Halloween treats this year. Make two batches of marshmallows and dye one batch orange and one batch black. Then in the last step where you roll the marshmallows in a potato starch/powdered sugar mixture, I’d put orange edible glitter in the potato starch/powdered sugar for the black marshmallows and black edible glitter in the potato starch/powdered sugar for the orange marshmallows. Brilliant, huh?

Unfortunately my plan fell flat on both counts. It took a ton of food coloring for me to get the shade of orange right. I used a ton of food coloring times two in attempting to make black food coloring.  Supposedly yellow, red, and blue in equal quantities make black.  I could never get past brown, even after dumping two whole bottles of food coloring into the marshmallows in a fit of frustration.

And then the edible glitter I ordered turned out to be less like glitter and more like flakes of cellophane. I should have gotten glitter dust, though who knows if it would have worked. Something was off with the orange marshmallows, and the “glitter” kind of melted into them. Looks a bit like mold, don’t you think? Neither of the marshmallows tasted quite right, I’m blaming in on all the dye.

I still think it’s a brilliant idea and am going to try again next year with high quality food coloring and glitter dust. Or maybe luster dust.  I also wonder about rolling the marshmallows in colored granulated sugar instead of cornstarch/powdered sugar/glitter, like Peeps.  Perhaps I should try both, just for good measure.  Oh, and another note for next year–taste the marshmallows before serving them to guests.  That might be the most important change of all.

Now, what to do with the enormous number of weird tasting and weird looking marshmallows I’m stuck with this year?

1/2 cup brown sugar
4 Tablespoon butter
1 cup lemon yogurt
1 generous cup blueberries
1/2 cup yellow squash puree
1 egg
1 Teaspoon lemon zest
2 cups Flour (wholewheat or all purpose)
1/4 cup flaxseed meal
1 Teaspoon baking powder
1 Teaspoon baking soda
1/2 Teaspoon salt

Cream butter and sugar. Add yogurt, squash, egg, and zest. Gently fold in blueberries. Add in flour, flax, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Be careful not to smush the berries. Mixture will be thick and sticky. Transfer into 12 muffin cups. Ice creat scoop works well for this. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes. Pull them out of the oven and let them sit for 5 minutes. Then pull them out of the pan and rest them on their sides to continue cooling so tht the bottoms won’t be soggy.

Recipe from “Taste of Home’s Quick Cooking” Magazine Page 45

1 flank steak (about 1-1/2 lbs) cut in half
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large onion sliced
1/3 cup water
1 can (4 oz) chopped green chilies
2 tablespoons vinegar
1-1/4 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

In a skillet, brown steak in oil; transfer to a slow cooker. In the same skillet, saute onion for 1 minute. Gradually add water, stirring to loosen browned bits from pan. Add remaining ingredients; bring to a boil. Pour over the flank steak. Cover and cook on low for 7-8 hours or until the meat is tender. slice the meat; serve with onion and pan juices. Yield: 4-6 servings.

Michelle Armistead serves this with noodles and a tossed salad.

I got this link from Amy and tried it out last night.

By Peggy Trowbridge Filippone, About.com

Lemon Chicken with Jerusalem Artichokes Recipe

This Mid-East inspired dish uses plenty of garlic, saffron, basil and pine nuts to flavor the chicken and sunchokes. The cream may be omitted to suit dietary needs.
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hours,
Ingredients:

* 1 teaspoon lemon zest
* 2 fresh lemons
* 2 Tablespoons olive oil, divided use
* 4 chicken thighs
* Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
* 1 cup chicken broth
* 1/4 teaspoon ground saffron
* 1/2 pound Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes), peeled
* 10 garlic cloves, peeled and halved
* 1/4 cup heavy cream
* 1 Tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
* 1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
* Hot, cooked rice

Preparation:
Finely grate 1 teaspoon of zest from the lemon and set aside. Juice both of the lemons (discarding pulp) and set aside.

Place a large, deep, heavy skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle chicken thighs on both sides with salt and pepper. Place skin-side down in the hot pan and quickly brown them, turning only once. Remove to a plate and keep warm.

Add the lemon juice, lemon zest, remaining tablespoon of olive oil, chicken broth, and saffron to the skillet. Bring to a boil, stirring to loosen any browned bits. Add Jerusalem artichokes, and garlic cloves. Return chicken to the skillet, along with any accumulated juices.

Reduce heat and simmer about 45 minutes, until chicken and sunchokes are tender. Stir in cream and thyme leaves. Taste and adjust seasoning, if need be. Return to a simmer and cook an additional 10 minutes.

Serve over cooked rice and sprinkle with pine nuts to garnish.

~~~
I’ve never had sunchokes before but picked them up at the farmers’ market and I really liked them. The broth in this dish turned out well, even though when cooking, I had to extrapolate some of the measurements and I didn’t know quite what I’d end up with: Stew? Sauce? It wasn’t totally clear. I guess it ended up being a stewish type dish where i served it with rice in the bottom of the bowl, one piece of chicken and one choke and plenty of broth. (I also simmered covered, which maybe if i hadn’t the sauce would have cooked down more.)
I had more sunchokes than called for so I sort of doubled the recipe but my portions weren’t very exact. I used bone in thighs but I think it’d also work well with boneless or even another kind of cut of chicken. For those of you who don’t eat the chickies I think the saffron/lemon/broth/thyme platform worked well here and would adapt well with more sunchokes and another vege or even a white fish (probably cook for the last 15 minutes or so).

Here’s a dish that I used to make a lot and should probably make again because it’s yummy!

From How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman (a.k.a., the yellow book)

Grilled Scallops with Basil Stuffing

Time:  30 min, plus time to preheat grill, if using

Intro:  Make on the stove top if you don’t want to grill: just heat a large deep skillet and brown the scallops on both sides, with only the oil that clings to them.

1/2 cup fresh basil leaves

1 clove garlic, peeled

1 ts salt

1/4 ts freshly ground black pepper

1/3 c plus 1 tbs extra-virgin olive oil

1 1/2 lbs or more large sea scallops

lemon wedges

1.  Mince the basil, garlic, salt and pepper together until very fine, almost a puree (or put in food processor).  Mix in a small bowl or cup with 1 tbs of the olive oil.

2. Make a deep horizontal slit in the side of each of the scallops, but don’t cut all the way through.  Fill each scallop with about 1/2 ts of the basil mixture; close.  Pour the remaining oil (1/3 c) onto a plate or pan and turn the scallops in it.  Let sit while you preheat a gas grill or start a charcoal fire; it should be very hot before grilling, with the rack about 4 inches from the heat source.

3.  Place the scallops on the grill (don’t pour the remaining oil over them, as it will catch fire), and grill 2 to 3 minutes per side, no more.  Servie immediately with lemon wedges.

I like this with some sort of simple pasta or rice and a salad.

I’ve been feeling less creative with my cooking lately and I’ve been trying to focus more on local ingredients and fresh stuff but instead of going out and buying new cookbooks I decided it’d be a good thing to just check them out of the library instead. Novel thought, huh? My mind works with amazing speed and grandeur these days, as you can tell. I’m going to try and actually cook some recipes out of these books I get, instead of just reading them and thinking the recipes sound good.

I already own a lot of cookbooks. And really, I use like 3 of them. That got me to thinking that I should post some recipes of stuff I actually do cook from cookbooks and I should get you all to do the same. What’s the single-most well used recipe you have? Can you even name one? If so, post it! It’ll save me some money and trips to the library!

It only took 8 years but victory is mine, my friends!!! We’ve been trying to stay at home and eat. I’ve been throwing out ideas for meals and even cooking a little. The other day I suggested pulled pork sandwiches and coleslaw. Jeremy thought that sounded worthy and actually said, “That sounds good. I like your coleslaw better than the stuff you can get in the deli.” I couldn’t believe it. He used to turn his nose up at my coleslaw and now I’m getting high praise for it. What is the lesson here? Persistance maybe? Ahhh, sweet victory.

if there was ever a reason to take a day off from being vegeterian/not eating pork this might be it:

Bacon Explosion

more here at the NY Times: Take Bacon. Add Sausage.  Blog.

i am totally intrigued and disgusted at the same time.

We eat a lot of squash in the Dahlia/Slanky household (well ok, Mr. J eats a lot of squash and since we have it around so much I’ve been trying to think of more ways to use it for our meals as well) and I’ve noticed that I’m pretty one-note with my uses. I’m wondering if anyone has ways they like their squash. I mostly use pumpkins and butternut squash and I either make soups or I stuff them with some sort of mixture, usually made up of stuff I have around, and bake them. Last night we had acorn squash baked with a concoction of garbanzos, onions, rice, spinach and some spices. It was pretty good but nothing spectacular. Can you get spectacular from squash? Anyway. What say you?