Monster Cookies

I’ve fallen off the wagon.  The sugar wagon that is.  As I’ve mentioned before, I gave up unrefined sugar for Lent.  Well, Lent is over, and so is the fast!

Have you heard the news about the toxicity of sugar?  Or this research that it is more addictive than cocaine?  I believe them both.  Oddly, I gave up sugar for the month of January as well, but the extra two weeks of Lent made a big difference.  When I had my first bite of sugar on February 1, I felt no different than on I did on January 31 with no sugar in my system.  However when I had sugar the first time after Lent, I felt horrible.  I felt nauseous, anxious, and got a horrible headache.  And then I wanted more, and I felt better, for an hour.  So, I believe the research that it is more addictive than cocaine.

And yet here I am posting a cookie recipe!  What can I say, I’m an addict!  And these cookies are my cocaine!

Have you had this trail mix from Target?

It may very well be cocaine packaged up and sold on the shelves at your local Target!  It’s M&Ms, peanuts, raisins, peanut butter chips, and chocolate chips.  I could eat the entire container in a day if I didn’t exercise any self-restraint.  So to keep my self from eating handful after handful, I decided to make Monster Cookies using the mix!  It was a good idea, except I still ate the whole container, wrapped up in my favorite chocolate chip cookie dough from Milk & Cookies.

MONSTER COOKIES (Makes about 3 dozen cookies)

2 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 TBS vanilla extract

1 cup chocolate chips

1 1/2 cups Monster Trail Mix

Preheat oven to 350.

Put oats in a food processor and process until finely ground.  Transfer to a large mixing bowl.  Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In another large mixing bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter on low to soften.  Increase speed to medium and beat for 3 minutes, until light and creamy.  Gradually add the sugars, beating until light and creamy.  Add eggs, one at a time, scraping sides after each addition.  Beat in the vanilla.

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, until almost mixed.  When dough is still streaky with dry ingredients, stir in chocolate chips and trail mix with a spoon.

Drop cookies onto cookie sheet and bake for 10-13 minutes, until edges are barely turning golden.  The center will seem to be undercooked, but this is important to retain chewiness.  DO NOT OVERBAKE!!!  Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

Breakfast Lasagna

I love breakfast casserole.  I also love mexican food.  So put the two together, and this is what you get!  It’s like Mexican Lasagna, with eggs!  It is so very yummy!  Of course, what’s not to love about eggs, sausage, peppers, and onions, stacked between layers of tortillas, black beans, cheese, and salsa!  It’s huevos rancheros all stacked up!

I used my spicy black bean recipe, but feel free to use canned if you don’t have fresh beans.  This would also be delicious with chorizo instead of traditional breakfast sausage.  Feel free to use corn tortillas, but my husband and I aren’t huge fans.

BREAKFAST LASAGNA (serves 6-8, if you can manage to not eat half the pan in one sitting!)

1/2 lb. breakfast sausage

12 large eggs

1 medium onion, chopped

1 medium green pepper, chopped

12 small flour tortillas

2 cups black beans

2 jars salsa

2 cups cheddar cheese

salt

pepper

red pepper flakes

Preheat oven to 400.

Cook sausage in skillet over medium heat.  Remove cooked sausage from the pan and drain off any grease.  Scramble eggs in same pan until just set.  Set eggs aside.  Add peppers and onions to the pan, seasoned with salt, pepper, and red pepper to taste.  Cook for 3 minutes then set aside.

Spray a 9×13 baking pan with cooking oil.  Pour 1/2 cup of salsa on bottom of pan and spread with a spatula.  Top with a layer of tortillas, then 1 cup black beans, half the eggs, half the sausage, half the onions, half the peppers and 1/3 of the cheese.  Add another layer of tortillas, then 1/2 cup salsa, and remaining beans, eggs, sausage, onions, and peppers.  Top with half the remaining cheese.  Finish with another layer of tortillas, a final layer of salsa, and the remaining cheese.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until bubbly.

Spring Break and Photography Workshops

I know I’ve been absent from the blog world lately.  Life has been a bit crazy for the last couple weeks.  My husband teaches at West Point and we were on spring break.  We went to Texas to visit my family.

We mowed lawns!

We drove tractors!

Some of us relaxed a bit!

And pondered the beauty of nature!

We rode horses!

And golf carts!

It was a great time.  Eli was exhausted at the end of everyday!  Nothing like some fresh air and horse power to waste a little energy!

Sadly when we came home, we found one of our cats to be very sick.  Ginger was in kidney failure and had to be put down.  She was my cat from high school.  I had had her for 17 years.  When she was younger she would take pinwheel peppermints out of our candy dish, knock them to the ground then chase them back and forth on the wooden floors, crashing into walls, and having a blast for hours.  She would play baseball with balled up candy wrappers.  She would sit on any book, newspaper, or paperwork you tried to read!  She always knew when I was feeling sad, and would give me a little extra attention.  She would purr like a motor just to the sound of her name being called!  She was well loved!

For more cheerful news, I’m taking an online photography workshop through Clickin Moms.  It is Shooting 101, and it is amazing!  I had been using manual a little before the class, but usually shot in Aperture Priority.  I have learned so much from the class that I’ve decided to take a study along to Shooting 201.

So far in the class we’ve covered metering, back button focus, white balance, including custom white balance, and so much more.  Below are some of my submissions for the lessons so far!  I know they aren’t great, but they’re getting better!

This was my submission for finding the “sweet spot” meter reading, or proper exposure for Adelaide.  Who knew that everyone would expose differently for your camera!

This is my pic for catch lights in my daughters eyes.

This week we were supposed to show motion by altering our shutter speed. I had a hard time capturing this.  But below was one attempt.  I’m going to keep working on this.

And this one is just for fun!

If you are looking to deepen your photography skills, whether it’s basic shooting skills or processing, they have tons of workshops to chose from.  I’m learning tons.  I highly recommend them!

Chicken Riggies

I had never heard of chicken riggies until I met my husband.  Apparently they are a regional dish in central and upstate New York.  It’s a pretty simple dish of chicken and rigatoni in a tomato cream sauce.  But what makes these amazing are the cherry peppers.  It gives the sauce a good kick.  The amount of spice, unfortunately is all determined by the peppers, and it’s always hit or miss if you get a hot jar or not.  A little extra red pepper flake is an easy fix for a mild jar though.

This would be delicious with fresh basil, but as I’ve said before, we live in a small town and the pickings are slim at our store.  So I used dried basil.  If you are lucky enough to have quality fresh basil, you’ll want to add quite a bit more then the 1 TBS I call for here.

My store only had whole cherry peppers, so I cut the stems off, leaving some of the seeds inside and pulsed them a few times in the food processor.  In the end, I wished I had left all the seeds in for more heat.  I’ve found that pre-sliced peppers have more heat than whole peppers, because the seeds are exposed.

This recipe is adapted from one by my beautiful sister-in-law.  Thanks for sharing Monica!

CHICKEN RIGGIES

4 TBS Olive Oil, divided
3 or 4 large chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1 large jar sliced hot cherry peppers (This may be more than is needed, depending on the heat of your peppers, taste them first and adjust as necessary.)
29 oz jar tomato puree
1 TBS dried basil
1-1 1/2 cups half and half
1 lb rigatoni
salt
pepper
red pepper flakes

Heat 2 TBS olive oil in large saute pan.  Add chicken and season with salt and pepper.  Cook chicken until no longer pink then using slotted spoon, remove chicken from pan.

Add remaining 2 TBS oil to pan.  Saute cherry peppers for 3 minutes, then add garlic and saute for a minute longer.  Add tomato puree to peppers and garlic.  Season with basil, salt, and pepper.  Allow to simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile put water on to boil for rigatoni. Cook rigatoni to al dente.

As pasta finishes cooking, add half and half to sauce, while stirring, until desired consistency and color.

Taste for seasoning and bring back to a simmer.  Add pasta to sauce pan and serve!

Peanut Butter Banana Muffins

Pardon my brief absence from the blog world.  I made some granola bars last week, but when I pulled my camera out to photograph them, it would not work.  I’ve shipped it off for repairs, but the frustration of the whole ordeal kept me from ever posting the recipe.  It turns out, I’m okay with that because I want to try a few tweaks to the recipe.   This also means, I’m relying on my iPhone for a camera now.  I’m thinking of it as a fun little challenge to get quality pictures!  If anyone is curious, I’m using the app Camera+ for my pictures, and I’m doing all the editing in the app, no additional edits on my computer.

I had some bananas that were in need of being used, which is usually when I whip up some chocolate chip peanut butter banana muffins.  But I gave up refined sugar for Lent, so the recipe needed quite a bit of tweaking before I could eat it.  This version is much healthier, and I have to say I don’t miss the sugar one bit!  I’ll admit, I did miss the chocolate chips a bit, but these are still delicious without the chocolate!

I substituted the original sugar in this recipe with maple syrup, and some molasses to add the flavor of the missing brown sugar.  Maple syrup is a good source of manganese and zinc, providing your body with antioxidants, building heart health, and boosting your immune system.  Pure maple syrup also has a lower glycemic index (54) compared to refined sugar (80) preventing a spike in blood sugar levels.

I also substituted coconut oil for butter in this recipe.  Coconut oil will give baked items a hint of sweetness, but not a strong coconut flavor.  Since I was omitting sugar, this sweetness is a welcome thing.  Coconut oil is also a much healthier option than butter, being linked to weight loss, preventing heart disease, improved digestive health, and boosting your immune system.  So really these muffins are pretty darn healthy!  So don’t feel too guilty if you splurge and have a second muffin at breakfast!

PEANUT BUTTER BANANA MUFFINS (makes 12-15 muffins)

1 1/2 cups mashed ripe bananas
1/4 cup plain or vanilla fat free greek yogurt
1/3 cup creamy all-natural peanut butter
3 tablespoons coconut oil or butter, melted
2 large eggs
3/4 cup maple syrup
2 tsp molasses
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup ground flaxseed meal
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 cup chopped dry roasted peanuts (optional)
1 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F.

In a large bowl, whisk together flours, oats, flaxseed meal, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg.

In a medium bowl, whisk together  mashed bananas, yogurt, peanut butter and melted butter (or coconut oil).  Whisk in eggs, maple syrup, and molasses.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients.  Fold together with a spatula until no more flour bits remain. Fold in the chopped nuts and chocolate chips, if using.  Pour the batter into muffin tins sprayed with cooking spray and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan for 5 minutes before removing muffins to cool on a wire rack.

Pizza Dough Cinnamon Rolls

This is the last of my left over pizza dough posts, and I saved the best for last!  I apologize to any of you that are giving up sweets for Lent.  This is definitely a sinful dish, so it may be best to enjoy them after Lent!

I split these into two small batches, one I cooked immediately, the other I froze for later.  My mother in law was in town this weekend and we pulled the frozen batch out of the freezer.  She was a bit skeptical about them being made from pizza dough, but after she tried them she said “On a scale of 1 to 10, I give them a 20!”  And she’s a tough critic!  And she had the frozen ones, which didn’t turn out nearly as delicious as the fresh ones!

PIZZA DOUGH CINNAMON ROLLS

1 prepared pizza dough, ready to use

1 cup softened butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 TBS cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp ginger

2 cups chopped pecans, toasted (optional)

 

For the icing:

3 TBS butter melted

3 TBS milk, the more fat content the richer the icing, I use half-n-half

1 tsp vanilla

powdered sugar

 

Preheat oven to 375.

Combine softened butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and pecans.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out your pizza dough to a roughly 12 x 16 inch rectangle.  Spread dough with butter mixture.  Roll dough up from the long side. Seal seams and cut into 15 even slices.  Arrange rolls in 9 x 13 pan or 2 9 inch round cake pans sprayed with cooking spray.  Cover lightly with a towel and let rise for 30 – 45 minutes.

While rolls are baking, prepare the icing.  Combine melted butter, milk, and vanilla.  Whisk in powdered sugar slowly, starting with 1 cup and adding additional sugar 2 TBS at a time until desired consistency.

Bake 20-30 minutes until golden and bubbly.  Cool slightly then top with icing and serve warm!

You can prepare this in advance, up until the rise time and put in the fridge overnight.  Simply let sit at room temp for 15 minutes before baking.  You can also freeze them, and put in fridge the day prior to baking, although mine did not rise well this way.

Homemade Pizza Dough

Again, I have to apolgize for my poor photography today.  These pictures were taken at night with a flash, and in a hurry.  But hopefully you get the idea of the deliciousness of their subject!

One of our favorite meals is homemade pizza.  We started making it about 5 years ago, but at the time we would buy our dough from a local restaurant.  Then we moved and the local places wouldn’t sell their dough to us.  Necessity is the mother of invention right?  So I made my own dough.  I guess I didn’t invent pizza dough though.  I’m not quite sure who did that, but they are good people in my book!

I tested out a couple recipes on my family, and this one from Annie’s Eats was the favorite.  Over the last few years, I’ve figured out some tips and tricks to get the perfect pizza every time.

My Pizza Tips

1. Invest in a pizza stone.  They are worth their weight in gold.  I keep mine in the oven all the time and use it for everything.  Throw some foil or parchment paper on it and put your cookie dough on it, although this will change the cooking time, heat frozen chicken nuggets directly on it, toast garlic bread on it.  It has way more uses than just pizza.

2. Planning – To make dough from scratch requires a little planning.  Because of the rise time, you’ll have to start your dough in the afternoon, or make it the night before and allow it to rise overnight in the fridge.

3. Stretching the dough was the trickiest part for me my first couple times.  It gets easier with every pizza you make, but here is how I do it.  After letting the dough rest for about 30 minutes, I lay out a piece of parchment paper the size of my pizza stone and sprinkle some flour all over it.  A tip for sprinkling flour, the higher up you hold your hand above the surface, the better.  If you hold your hand close to the surface, you will get large piles of flour, hold it up higher and you will have a more even dusting.  Okay, back to the dough.  Sprinkle a very small amount of flour on both sides of your ball of dough, less is more here.  Just enough so it’s not sticky.  Push your dough down into a disk.  Using both hands, grab the dough by the edge, hold it in the air, and rotate, allowing gravity to help stretch the dough for you.  Once you have a disk about 8 inches in diameter, put the dough on your floured parchment.  Use a rolling pin to continue rolling out the dough for a thinner crust.  If needed, sprinkle a little more flour on your dough and your rolling pin.  If your dough keeps bouncing back, let it rest for about ten minutes and try again.  Of course, this is just what works for me.  If you want to learn how to throw your dough, go for it, but my toddler keeps our kitchen floors plenty dirty, I don’t need any help in that department.

4.  Less is more.  If you use too much sauce, especially with a thinner crust, it will get soggy.  The recipe I’m sharing for sauce, is super easy, and to be honest nothing special, but that’s how we like it.  We want our toppings to be the star of the show, and not the sauce.  This one is a good background flavor, but it won’t work on your favorite pasta!  If you use too many toppings, you’ll have the same problem of soggy crust, along with a heavy pizza that is a mess to hold and even messier to eat.

Par-bake without the cheese for a crispier crust and no burnt cheese!

5. Forget the cheese, at first.  I discovered this completely by accident.  I put the pizza in, and went to check on it a couple minutes later, to discover that I completely forgot to put the cheese on!  What can I say, dinner time can be a little hectic with a hungry toddler and a crying baby!  I added the cheese and let it cook a few minutes longer.  It was the best pizza I had ever made!!!  This gave the crust time to crisp up, without the cheese doing the same thing.

6.  Cook right on the parchment.  I use a large rimless cookie sheet to transfer the parchment paper and pizza directly to my pizza stone.  The edges of the parchment paper will brown a little, but it won’t hurt anything.  This keeps the pizza dough from sticking, and corn meal or flour, that would otherwise be necessary, from burning.  And if you’re an environmentalist, you can toss your parchment paper in your compost.

7.  Pizza is best served with ranch dressing.  I know many of you will disagree with this last tip.  To each his own!  We like a creamy homemade buttermilk ranch, but if your lazy or out of time, or out of buttermilk, Hidden Valley will do.  My husband would say it must also have a bottle of Frank’s hot sauce to go with it!

So here are the recipes.  And later this week, I’ll share some super yummy ways to use up your pizza dough if you are only planning on making one pizza!  Hint: one of them is sticky sweet, and so very delicious!!!

 

PIZZA DOUGH (enough for 2 medium pizzas)

1 3/4 cup warm water (110 degrees)

2 1/4  tsp. instant yeast (or one packet)

4 cups (22 oz.) King Arthur all purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1½ tsp kosher salt

1¼ cup water, at room temperature

2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

Sprinkle the yeast over the top of your warm water and allow to sit for a few minutes.  In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the bread flour and salt, mixing briefly to blend.  With mixer running, add in olive oil.  With the mixer on low speed, pour in the yeast-water mixture; make sure you get all the yeast, scraping down the sides of your bowl if necesary.  Mix until a cohesive dough is formed.  Switch to the dough hook.  Knead on low speed until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes.  Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl, turning once to coat.  Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size, 1½-2 hours, or place in the fridge overnight.  If you plan to freeze your dough to use later, do so now, by wrapping in plastic wrap sprayed with cooking spray.  I find it easier to divide the dough in half before freezing.

If you let your dough rise in the fridge overnight, you can follow the steps below with directly from the fridge, no need to let it warm up or anything.  If you froze your dough, you’ll want to move it to the fridge the morning you plan to use it, and allow it to rest at room temperature for an hour or so before using.

Press down the dough to deflate it.  Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface.  Divide the dough into two equal pieces.  Form each piece of dough into a smooth, round ball.    Cover with a damp cloth.  Let the dough relax for at least 10 minutes but no longer than 30 minutes.

To bake, preheat the oven and pizza stone to 525˚ F for at least 30 minutes, on the bottom rack of your oven.  Transfer the dough to your shaping surface, lightly sprinkled with flour.  Shape the dough with lightly floured hands.  Brush the outer edge lightly with olive oil.  Top as desired, minus the cheese.  Bake for about 5 minutes, add your cheese, then continue baking for another 3-7 minutes, until bottom is crisp and edges are golden.

SUPER SIMPLE PIZZA SAUCE (enough for 2 pizzas, depending on your preferences)

One 7 oz can tomato sauce
One clove garlic, minced or grated with a microplane
1 tsp italian seasoning
salt, pepper, red pepper flakes to taste

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and allow to sit for at least an hour before use.

Food Matters

We had friends over for dinner Saturday evening and I was telling them about all my New Year’s resolutions.  I was laughed at for setting myself up for failure by having so many.  But I’m hoping this blog will help give me some accountability.  I know I won’t fail if I have to admit it to the whole wide cyber-world!

A handful of these resolutions are food matters.  Here they are:

1. MAKE FRESH BREAD & PASTA  I love carbs.  I like to say that since I’m a runner, I burn them all off…  I love fresh baked bread from a local bakery, but since moving to a small town, that is no longer an option.  So to my kitchen I turn.  I am going to pull out the yeast and get friendly with my loaf pans!  I would love to make my own tortillas and pita bread as well.  And while I’m at it, I’ll throw in some fresh pasta!  I promise to share all my carbohydrate adventures with you!

2. USE MY COOKBOOKS  I have an obsession with cookbooks.  I have at least 3 dozen cookbooks on shelves and in stacks all over our house.  I could spend hours flipping through the pages, reading recipes, and drooling over pictures.  And yet I actually cook out of them only a few times a year.  Sadly, when I’m looking for a new recipe to try, I turn to my good friends, Google and Pinterest.  So this year, I’m going to cook at least one recipe a week from a cookbook.

3. TRUST IN BETTY CROCKER AND MY GRANDMA  The picture above is an old cookbook I inherited from my grandmother.  It worked hard in her kitchen.  The pages are falling out, the binding is nearly gone, and the pages are stuffed with news clippings and notes she left behind.  Sadly, I have never made a single recipe from this book.  That ends now!  I’m going to cook at least one recipe a month from this book, and I’m going to reconnect with my grandmother with each one.  Hopefully her notes, and my mother’s childhood memories, will lead me to some of her favorites.

There you have it.  It’s now in print for all the world to read.  And I’m not one for failure, so I have to succeed!  And I’ll share it all with you along the way.

What’s in store for this week?  I’m going to try my hand at some good old fashioned wheat bread.  And to go on that bread, some homemade peanut butter, adapted from this book.