Yum!

I want to make these this year!!! Little two bite pies... Found curteousy of The Crafty Crow.

Okay, Just about all her recipes look delicious! Even her website is beautiful.... Maybe I will have to learn to cook better.....oh wait, I just need to learn to cook.

Crockpot Chicken

Here is a simple and easy Crock pot recipe. Buy a whole rotisserie chicken from the store. Remove the skin (if you want) and add it to a warm crock pot with olive oil. Cover with fresh lemons or add about 1/4 of a cup of lemon juice, and either Italian seasoning or lemon pepper seasoning. Leave crock pot on for 4-6 hours or till internal temp of chicken is 170 and juice is clear. Tada! Your done.

If you want, shred any leftover chicken, add some rice to the leftover sauce and cook on low till rice is done. yummy!

Homemade Yogurt

I started making my own yogurt because I had lots of extra milk (don't ask) and I didn't like the idea of it going to waste. I found a recipe on A Year of Slowcooking but was hesitant to try it as it sounded really hard. Alas, the milk continues to sour whether or not I was going to be too chicken to try it, so I decided to give it a go and if I ended up wasting the milk, it was going to end up wasted anyways. I will warn you, the first batches you make will probably be edible although more liquidy than store bought yogurt, but don't give up after the first batch cause it really is true that you have to practice the recipe a few times before you are truly good at it.

So you may look at the recipe I found.... and feel free to google homemade yogurt recipes. The more you read about it the better, unless you have someone who has made it you can ask questions of. Real live help is always better.

I tried it in non-stick pans on the stove..... I found that the milk at the bottom of the pan would burn and once mixed in the really cooked milk wasn't all smooth and creamy like I liked it. I then used the nonstick pan in the oven, and that worked wonderfully, though I had a hard time regulating the temperature for the last part because ovens don't have 120 degree temp readings. Then I tried copper bottom pans - I would NOT recommend them for yogurt making, there is too much of a temperature difference between the top of the pan and the bottom. I found the difference to be about 10 degrees different and in yogurt making that is a lot of variation. So then I tried the crock pot. I actually had tried it first and found it not to be what I liked, however, if you have a newer crock pot, like the ones with the removable stoneware, then it is absolutely hands down the BEST way to make yogurt. So if you have one of those crock pots, go pull it out of the cabinet. JUST DO IT.

Enough already- Let's start the yogurt!

Pour your half gallon (or however much yogurt that you want) into your crock pot. Put the lid on, turn it on low, and walk away. Yes, I said walk away. Go play with the kids for an hour or two, depending on how much milk you poured in the crock pot. Your goal is to heat the milk to pre-boiling stage.... or 180 degrees. check it with your thermometer.

If it is at 180, turn off your crock pot, remove the stoneware from the heating elements and walk away again. This takes another couple of hours typically, so don't fret over it too much. **** Some recipes will say to do an ice bath too cool it quicker.... I hear you will break your stoneware doing drastic temp changes..... Don't worry it will not matter if it has to come back down in temp slower than some recipes say.... ***** I find as it cools there is cooked milk that rises to the top. I skim it off, but that is personal preference.

When your milk is between 110 and 120, you need to add your yogurt mixture. Your store bought starter yogurt must be ACTIVE culture. Stonefield Farms sells an organic version, but all active cultures works well. If you want, you can use previous batch yogurt as your culture, but only once or twice as it loses its potency. The rule of thumb is that you want one Tablespoon of yogurt per quart of milk. (If you add more, your yogurt will be ready quicker.... if you add less, it will have to sit longer at the next stage.....) You will also want to add one package of dry milk. It is not necessary, but it will make the yogurt thicker.

Mix all the milk and yogurt culture and dry milk together thoroughly. I usually beat it with a whisk till I start getting milk bubbles on top, though that is probably more than necessary. Now replace the crock pot lid, and add it back into the heating elements, but DO NOT TURN IT ON!!!!

Walk away, and check it about every half hour but do not stir. You need to keep the temperature of the milk between 100 and 120. DO NOT HEAT ABOVE 120 - It kills of the yogurt. If it goes lower, it doesn't matter, the yogurt just falls asleep. Reheat to temp and expect the yogurt to take longer to thicken.

After 4-8 hours, your yogurt is done. Now you can stir it, add sweeteners, flavorings etc..... then put it Tupperware and refrigerate or send to neighbors for their refrigerators. Enjoy.

So to recap: Heat milk to 180, cool to 120, mix in yogurt. Keep temp between 100 and 120 till yogurt is done. Easy as pie..... actually easier if you ask me.

Cookies

Back in the middle of December, The girls and I travelled up to the mandarin area and made cookies with some friends of ours. The girls had a blast. Zoe, clean so far, watching the cookie dough.

Savannah's clean picture. She is asking to eat the cookie dough.

Laura and I rolling out the cookie dough and using the cookie cutters.

When we arrived Candi already had the cookie dough prepared, but had not tried rolling them out or cookie cutting. Since she had not done much cookie rolling before, or so she claims, Laura and I did most of it. We had to add a lot of flour to make the dough less sticky.... and thoroughly made a mess, but we had lots of fun. Savannah and Zoe are not in these pictures cause they were unable to sit at the table and do it without trying to eat the raw dough.....

our cut out cookies

now we decorate! Sprinkles!

After the cookies baked, they were very thin, but still able to be decorated. So Candi brought out the frosting kit that she has for the cakes she does, and we went to it. Zoe decorated this one..... then licked it and decorated it again.....

This is the ate the cookie and redecorated it part....

But Savannah took a good amount of time decorating and sat there for quite a while. She liked the bagged frosting, but we will still have to work on designs and control of the frosting.... one of her cookies had so much frosting on it that we couldn't find the cookie underneath it all.

So when the Christmas stuff went on sale, guess who became the proud new owner of cake decorating bags..... you got it ME!

It will go real nicely with the cookie press from Randall and Takako.

Cranberry Goodness

While Joanna, Del, and their gang all lived here in St Augustine, we became addicted to their cranberry brew. Cranberry Tea is rather easy to make, though it takes a while, mostly because of the stewing, and therefore is really easy to make even a day or two before hand.

I don't really make it that much, but I do like it at the holidays, and has become a nice little tradition. At our house we take the recipe a step further though, and get a double benefit out of those cranberries. So after you have made your tea, keep going and make cranberry sauce.

First of all, when you make your tea, DON"T USE STICK CINNAMON! Unless you can strain it really well, the little bits of wood from the cinnamon, would not work well in the cranberry sauces. I made this mistake once and had to start over again.....

Once you have strained the cranberry Tea though, take the left over cranberries, add one cup of sugar and one cup of water, Stir well to mix and remove from heat. Add any extra ingredients such as nuts etc. Then pour into dish, and refrigerate till firm. Another recipe that is made beforehand, due to need to chill.

Yogurt

I tried making yogurt in my crockpot yesterday. To hear more about it, visit this post over at Mothers of Invention.

The cooking update

So Remember this claim????

"Next weeks Menu:
Monday: Corn Casserole
Tuesday: Spaghetti
Wednesday: Tuna Casserole
Thursday: baked Shrimp (we have lots of shrimp to use in our freezer)
Friday: Apricot-Dijon-Glazed Chicken
Saturday: Tortilla Soup
Sunday: Sandwiches "

Well, I did cook every night this week, though I will say that it was not in the order that I claimed it would be.... and not all of the ones I cooked were on the list. Monday night I did pork steaks in the oven instead, as they were starting to freezer burn, We had the Tacos from last weeks menu on Tuesday, which pushed the Corn Casserole to Wednesday, the Apricot Chicken to Thursday and the Spaghetti to Friday night. Then tonight we actually heated up leftover Spaghetti from Friday night instead of making the Tortilla Soup. So all in all, we dropped the tuna and shrimp...

However, I don't hear a lick of complaint out of any of the hungry eaters...

Menu planning lessons

So I have found out that it is better for me not to plan a weeks worth of dinners. Nope, not even a days worth really. Well, not in the typical sense.

I have realized that it is not the hassle to plan down to what day I am going to make something, which is the typical way one menu plans. Instead, it is much more worth it to plan only five or six meals for the week and then pick one that I want that morning.

So tonight is the corn casserole. Originally I think it was supposed to be on Monday. Nope, really it is for Wednesday night.

Cooking

I have never been a very big cook. I could really never have liked working in the kitchen very much, except when it came to baking. I grew up in a home in which there never was much cooking, and if there was it didn't involve us kids, so I never really learned how. When I married, it even really became part of the wedding shower joke, you know, "don't worry about buying stuff for the kitchen, Meagan doesn't cook..." So I just went with it. It isn't till the last year or so, that I have felt like I really needed to learn how to cook as a way of providing for the family.

But I never really did it. I think out of a combination of not being a big eater (usually), not knowing how to cook, morning sickness, and being afraid to really try. Oh, and the "Mommy, I don't like this.... can I have peanut butter and jelly instead?"

One thing that is popular up north, with Mike's family at least, is that all the women cook.... or at least know how to cook. I don't know why exactly, maybe it is cause you can cook for fun in the middle of winter when there is snow up to the rooftops and you are going stir crazy....(I think maybe I should even be tempted to cook if that were the case) or maybe it is just that Mike comes from a family that likes to cook.

Well, Uncle Clyde and Aunt Maryann (whom we stay with) have cooking down to a science. Not only do they do it well, but all the food ends up on the table at the same time (It may sound easy, but I at least have always struggled with that). They make it look so easy that *even I could do it*.... and every year I come home thinking, I am going to make dinner plans. I am going to attempt to cook.

So I have been this past week. I think our grocery bills are going up a little, but that is probably not a bad thing... being that one can only get so much health benefits out of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and noodles. (okay it wasn't that bad but still) Anyways, I took some of Maryann's cooking secrets home with me too.... here's her secret.

( everyone is on the edge of their seats in anticipation...... I just know it)

Her secret is..... preparation. Now I used to think that it was a rather abstract sounding word when I didn't know how to cook.... I would think preparation was what cooking was all about. I mean cooking is preparing to set food on the table so everyone can eat. Rather, the opposite is true, in a sense anyways. Maryann's method of preparation is that one must decide early in the day what to have on the table for dinner. That way you can prepare to prepare dinner. You know, pull out any meat that needs to be defrosted, or plan the time to go grocery shopping. Then, pull out the pots and all non-perishables that can sit out for a while and have them ready and waiting for dinner time to come around. For example, having green beans for dinner???? if canned, place the can in the pot on the stove so you just have to open the can and pour them in to heat them up. If fresh, then clean them up and have them in the pot so you can add water and turn it on. That way you are not distracted by too many things going on at once (searching the pantry for the can of beans while the rest is burning on the stove) and can spend the time you need to tending to the food that needs tending to while it cooks. Plus seeing it started makes it easier to carry it through and have it on the table when it needs to be because there is the constant reminder of what needs to be done.

So what have I cooked this week? Well, we had chicken on the grill on Monday, Tuesday I made shrimp fettuccine Alfredo from scratch, Wednesday we had leftovers from Tuesday, and Thursday we had Grilled cheese sandwiches and for dinner tonight we are having pulled barbecue chicken from the crock pot. (So far I think tonight's dinner is by far my favorite.... even if it isn't real yummy, it sure has made my house smell yummy..... I just can't wait!)

Now, that isn't to say that it hasn't been a week worth of cooking mishaps and later than intended dinners. Like Tuesdays dinner, was at 8, rather than 6.... in part cause I didn't know how to clean the shrimp all the way and had to wait for help from Mike the shrimp expert. Thursdays dinner involved some burnt bread scraping.... but it was still yummy enough to eat (once I scraped it). And hey, I am finding that I even kind of like cooking, little delays, mishaps, and all.

And it will be even better once I get even better at it.

Next weeks Menu:
Monday: Corn Casserole
Tuesday: Spaghetti
Wednesday: Tuna Casserole
Thursday: baked Shrimp (we have lots of shrimp to use in our freezer)
Friday: Apricot-Dijon-Glazed Chicken
Saturday: Tortilla Soup
Sunday: Sandwiches

CUPCAKES!

Today was Uncle Clyde's Birthday so Savannah and I made him cupcakes. I baked the cupcakes early this morning before Savannah woke up, but then Savannah helped me with the sprinkles and nuts. We had a blast, and we were able to keep the mess pretty minimal. For other moms out there that hadn't discovered a somewhat clean way to decorate with sprinkles.... The easiest way to put sprinkles on cupcakes is by turning the cupcake upside down and pressing it into the sprinkles, rather than sprinkling the sprinkles on to the cupcakes.



Then the whole Lindberg clan came over for dinner and we had a good time. I'll tell you more in a few days.

Peaches!

Here is Savannah helping wash Peaches for our peach cobbler type dish. She was having fun! and Here is the finished project before it hit the oven..... yum!