Boo Boo Kitty

Happy Halloween.

I know I have been a very bad blogger, but I do make the rounds daily and enjoy what everyone is up to.

As I sit here waiting for the trick or treaters to start knocking on my door (I hope we get more than the 5 we got last year) I'm thinking about my little black kitty that is no longer here.
His name was Boo Boo Kitty. Here is a picture of his namesake. He was the best cat. We got him right before Halloween 15 years ago. He took lots of "love" from the kids and their friends and never once scratched, bit or even hissed.
Now Tinker is all alone and I can tell she misses him. We all miss him.

Old School Sugar Cookies

I like to bake.

I bake a lot.

It seems like I'm always baking something for school or for Joj to take to work. I usually make cookies because they seem to offer the most bang for your buck. While I have a few good stand bys I'm always on the look out for a new cookie recipe. I'm kind of a stickler when it come my cookies. They have to be pretty, chewy and easy. Well, I think I'm in love...

When my friend Jenny P was in town this summer, we were talking about sugar cookies. Now I have a sugar cookie recipe for "cut outs", but that takes too much effort. I've been using the cake box recipe and while that is good, I'm kind of over them. So Jenny sent me the Paradise Bakery cookie recipe and I was going to try that, but I didn't have cake flour (it was one of those things I had kept in my pantry forever and then finally pitched only to need it a week later) Jenny mentioned the recipe must be followed exactly, so I didn't make them. However, now I was craving some sugar cookies and my search began.

Allrecipes.com is one of my new favorite sites. The best part is that is has recipe reviews. I love to hear what people have to say and how they tweak the recipes to make them better. Anyhoo, I found a recipe and everyone loved it (I always look for over 100 reviews with at least 4 stars) The best part was that I had everything on hand so I whipped some up. Can I just tell you they were YUMMY!! They totally reminded me of the cookies you would get with your lunch at school. They were slightly crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle. Did I say they were yummy. I took them to the PTA meeting the other night and they disappeared very quickly.

So, if you are looking for an "old school" sugar cookie recipe in which I'm willing to bet all the ingredients are already in your pantry, look no further.

Enjoy!!

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Old School Sugar Cookies (makes 3 dozen)

1 1/4 cups white sugar (divided)
1 cup butter
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).

Cream together 1 C sugar and butter.

Beat in egg yolks and vanilla.
Add flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar. Stir.
Form dough into walnut size balls (I use a 1T ice cream scoop) roll in 1/4 sugar and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Don't flatten.

Bake 10 minutes, until tops are cracked and just turning color.

Leave them on the sheet for about 5 minutes to finish cooking and cool.

Little Chicken in the Woods

I hope everyone had a nice and enjoyable weekend. We spend the second to last weekend of the summer at our cabin. We have been up a few times this summer and every time has been fun. The best part about our cabin is that our property is large for folks to camp and bring trailers, but there is a cabin which means a real bathroom and kitchen.
The past couple trips we have had folks bring some food and have done some community meals. The kitchen is small and we always seemed to be tripping over the collections of coolers that tend to make their way in. This time, we did all community food. I did the shopping and kept the meals pretty simple. To save money I did some shopping from my freezer and brought up a couple of chickens. I thought it would be fun to try "Beer Butt Chicken" and I'm glad I did. It was soooooo easy (you know me I'm all about the easy) and it was soooo good as well.


Seriously all you do is season the bird (I think our birds were around 4 lb) with your favorite seasoning (I used Old Bay because that is all we had up there, but anything would work. I wanted Johnny Salt, but we didn't have)
Place the chicken upright on a can of open beer (all we had was Keystone so a quality beer isn't necessary) and roast for an hour at 400. We had two birds and one was a little bigger than the other. The larger one could have gone longer, but we just chopped it up and threw it back on the grill. Anyhoo, the chicken was crispy on the outside and the meat was super moist. I will totally make this again and if you need a cheap and easy dinner I recommend you give it a try.

Fresh Blackberry Pie

Tonight we had the best dinner. We caught some salmon of the deck of a friend's house and grilled it up. For dessert we had blackberry pie. Ben and Sam went berry picking with my mom so we had lots of fresh berries and I whipped up this pie. It couldn't be easier and since it is blackberry season you might as well give it a try.

Fresh Blackberry Pie
1 prebaked pie crust
3 C fresh blackberries
1T lemon zest
1T lemon juice
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C water
1 T cornstarch plus 2T of water

In a saucepan combine 1 C berries, sugar, water, zest and lemon juice.
Bring to a boil and add cornstarch slurry and stir until thickened, let cool
Mix remaining berries and "jelled" berries, stir gently
Pour into crust and let stand until set ~ you could put it in the fridge to help set.
Serve at room temp with some whipped cream or heat and serve a la mode.
Enjoy!!
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Z is for Zucchini

This is the time of year when backyard gardens are over run with zucchini. If you are someone who like zucchini then you are lucky. I am not a fan. When I was little, one summer every night for dinner my parents would make sauteed zucchini. Didn't help my love of zucchini, but I digress...
It seems everyone has a zucchini bread recipe and I thought I would share mine. It was the one quick bread my mom ever made and it tastes really good with a little schmear of butter.

Laurie's Mom's Zucchini Bread
1 C oil (just regular veggie ~ or you could be a good mom and use 1/2 cup applesauce & 1/2 oil)
2 C sugar
3 eggs
2-3 C grated zucchini depending how much you need to use up (frozen zucchini works just fine)
1/4 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 T cinnamon
3 C flour
Mix wet, add dry
divide between 2 9" well greased loaf pans and bake @ 350 for 1 hour ~ let cool for 10 min and then take them out of the pans
It will also make 24 muffins, bake those for about 20-25 min
The loaves and muffin freeze fine, just be sure to wrap them up well.

My mom gave me one huge zucchini and from it I was able to make 4 loaves and 2 dozen muffins with enough leftover for two more loaves.
Enjoy
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Lemon Love

Yesterday was my friend Matt's birthday. One of my favorite qualities of his is that he loves my cooking (which comes in handy since he works for food) Anyhoo, I wanted to make him a little treat and decided on Lemon Chiffon Pie.
This could not be any easier and you probably have everything you need in your kitchen already. I know the picture is not the best. I was planning to take more, but the pie was gone in a matter of minutes. If you like a light and lemony, this pie is for you. Plus as an added bonus, if you use a premade crust, no cooking required, perfect for a summer dessert.
Enjoy!!
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Lemon Chiffon Pie
8 oz of room temp cream cheese (if it isn't room temp, it won't blend smooth)
1 can of sweeten condensed milk (I use about 3/4 of it, but you can use it all if you want)
1/2 C lemon juice (I have used fresh, from a jar and a combo of both ~ whatever you have on hand)
2 T lemon zest (I think this makes the pie, but if you don't have it a dash of lemon flavor would work)
Mix everything, pour into a graham cracker crust and chill (to help with plating, you might want to put it in the freezer for an hour before serving)

Graham Cracker Crust
2 C graham cracker crumbs (about 1 1/2 "sleeves" of crackers)
1/2 C melted butter
3 T sugar
Mix, pat into pie plate and bake 10 min at 350. Let cool before you pour in the filling
If you wanted to, you could serve this with some whipped cream, but I think the crust is sweet enough to balance the tartness of the pie.

Somethin' in the oven...

I'm taking advantage of our cool weather today to do a little baking. Our dear friend showed up at our door last night with 3 big salmon (I love living less then a mile away from Puget Sound) that he caught off him mom's deck. We had just eaten the fish he had given us yesterday, so yummy, and now we have six more fillets waiting to be eaten at a later date. So to thank Big Daddy Fox for sharing the wealth, I'm making some of my favorite Pineapple Bread. I found this on line off some B&B site, but when I tried to find the source to give credit, I couldn't find it whaddya gonna do? So anyway, this is super yummy, tastes like pound cake and you probably have everything already in your pantry :0)


Pineapple Bread
(makes one loaf, yields 18 slices)

1/2 C soft butter
1 C sugar
2 eggs
2 C flour
1 t baking powder
1 t salt
1 C chopped pineapple (drained) I think a 14oz can is what I use and I prefer not to use the "crushed", but I guess you could.

Cream butter and sugar
mix in eggs one at a time
add pineapple
add dry ingreds
pour into greased 9" loaf pan
bake 1 hour @ 350 or until toothpick comes out clean

ENJOY!!
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