Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies

My mother-in-law had Greek neighbors who loved to feed her. 

She discovered these cookies at the

Greek festival put on by their Greek Orthodox church 

and now she asks me to make these for her regularly.

Koko Komati

Greek Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup butter (or margarine or shortening - but really... BUTTER!)

1 cup + 2 Tbsp flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup chopped nuts

1 cup chocolate chips

1/2-2/3 cup dried cherries (I chop the cherries a bit for better distribution)

Cream together butter and sugars. Add egg and vanilla and mix well. 

Add flour, soda, and salt and mix till smooth. Stir in nuts, chips, and cherries.

Drop by teaspoonful onto a greased cookie sheet (I don't grease, 

but use non-stick or line with parchment paper) about 2 inches apart.

Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes.

Yield about 3 dozen cookies

From The Philoptochos Cookbook

Deconstructed Breakfast Burrito Bowl

Deconstructed Breakfast Burrito

Makes 10 servings

1 # pork sausage

6 cups potatoes, diced

8 oz mushrooms (a box)

1 onion, chopped 

12 eggs

cheese

green chili

Brown sausage - remove from pan

Cook potatoes - remove from pan

Saute onions and mushrooms

Add eggs and sausage and scramble till about half cooked

Remove from heat and portion out into 10 single serving bowls

1/2-ish cup green chili, 1/10 of scramble, 1/10 cheese, 1/10 potatoes

Freeze

Dump out into microwave safe bowl (so now potatoes are on the bottom and chili is on the top) and microwave till hot.

Creamed Kale and Eggs

For breakfast this morning I tried this recipe for Creamed Kale and Eggs from Deliciously Organic.

For an inexperienced health food enthusiast (me) it wasn't bad. And I've been meaning to try something along this vein for quite some time now.

That being said, here are my notes for this experiment:

1. The recipe calls for 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Now, I'm a standard American when it comes to crappy dietary choices and I LIKE salt. And I don't have any medical conditions that would cause me to limit my salt intake. So I assumed that her healthy recipe would probably be a little unsalty for my taste and didn't measure, but was reasonably (unreasonably, really) generous with my salt. THIS WAS A MISTAKE! If you're not going to measure, at least go easy. You can always add more.
2. If I had it to do over again, I would wilt the kale a while longer before adding the eggs. Again, I've been cooking for myself and my family for a lot of years now. To me, "cook [the kale] about 5 minutes," means stir, stir, get the eggs out of the fridge, stir, ho hum, yeah that looks kind of wilty. So I don't know exactly how long I did actually cook my kale for, but it could have been longer.
3. I have an awesome Cutco skillet with a heavy duty lid that means when the lid is on, heat is being reflected from every angle so it will cook the top of your eggs. So I didn't bake, I just set it sit on the medium-low burner for about 4 minutes. They were cooked perfectly.
4. I also thought it might be nice with maybe some parmesan or goat cheese.

Bottom line - If this morning was my only chance to get this right, I wouldn't make this recipe again. But thank God for new days and second (and third and fourth and fifth...) chances! I definitely plan to try it again with less salt and longer cooking time for the kale.

Today's blog comes courtesy of my delightful daughter. I am the mom in this very true story that happened last Thursday or so.



We have a rather large backyard. And with that backyard comes a variety of wildlife. Like, say, hawks and their squirrely prey. So today a hawk had caught himself a squirrel and was settling in for an afternoon snack when my mom, oblivious to his peaceful snacking, opened the back door, released the dog and the dog promptly scared the hawk so badly he flew off forgetting his snack.

Thankfully the dog was tempted back inside with cheese before she discovered the left-behind squirrel.

My dog, Chai, would have eaten it. With glee.

But now my mother and I had a dilemma. You see, Chai needs the backyard. For things. So we can't conceivably keep her from it forever. And Dad was off doing errands so he couldn't take care of it. 

Mom and I sat hoping that the hawk would come back for his tasty morsel.

No luck.

So my mom 'nope'd out of the situation, went upstairs, and told me to tell dad. I, however, was slightly curious and not totally resigned to making dad deal with it. So I armed myself with a shovel and mom's advice to fling it over the fence into the no-man's-land that is the busy street and sidewalk and grassy patches beyond our fence. (Halfway to the squirrel Hawk flew overhead again. I stepped back to let him have his snack if he so wished. He didn't take me up on that offer. I must have looked too menacing in my sweats and slippers.)

Dead squirrels are cute. I told Squirrel this as I looked at it's lifeless body. I tried to gently scoop up the squirrel with my shovel. 

You know how when you eat rice with a fork sometimes the grains refuse to get on your fork?

Yeah. 

So I got myself a stick (a very long stick. This stick must have been 6 or 7 feet) to help nudge Squirrel into the soft, comfortable resting place that is the cradle of my shovel. After some tricky work and more words to Squirrel (anyone walking by must think I am insane as I tell Squirrel "You are so cute but you are so dead please get in the shovel cute dead squirrel") I did it! I got the squirrel into the shovel!

As I made my way to our back fence I look into the shovel just to make sure Squirrel is just as cute and just as dead as it was when I nudged it in on its belly. IT WAS LYING ON ITS BACK. I screamed. But it still seemed dead.

Deep breaths.

Now my back yard has an 8 foot tall fence.

I am 5 feet tall. 

I am panicking because I am cradling a dead but cute but lifeless squirrel and Hawk is still flying around somewhere and I am a little afraid he is offended by me trying to get his snack out of my yard.

So I don't think things through clearly. I stop, ready my shovel and CATAPULT....

The squirrel right into the fence.

I may have laughed. I may have stifled a terrified giggle. But I went back for more. As I looked down at Squirrel laying next to my fence it was just as cute and lifeless. I tried to scoop it up against the fence. 

No luck.

I got my helpful 7 foot pole back and nudged Squirrely McCulkin back into my shovel-nest.

And tossed it. 

This time it went over.

Good thing too, otherwise it would have fallen on my head.

I think it only made it 3 feet from the other side of the fence. But I did it.

TL;DR - I catapulted a dead squirrel into a fence.

Then I catapulted the same dead squirrel over the same fence.

I have about a kazillion non-urgent things going on at any given time, but the sad truth of my life is that, in the short term at least, I'd rather sit at my desk and read fanfiction than actually accomplish anything. So since I've posted all of four times in four years and already have an unfinished post in progress and don't want to add another, I'll make this one quick. Hahahahahah (if you knew me, you'd totally get how hilarious that is - I don't do quick when it comes to words).


Anyway!


Meal planning is something to which I aspire, but only occasionally succeed. I need something

1. that I'll actually look at on a semi-regular basis,
2. that makes sense, 
3. that is easy to alter based on life, and
4. that I might actually do. 

I'm a huge fan of WRITING IT DOWN - I love the physical process of writing, watching words and doodles form on paper at the end of my pen or pencil - but realistically, to meet all the criteria above and not end up just another scrap of paper that I may run across in a month or a year or a decade, I needed something online. Enter my reliable friend Google. I actually was hoping there was a calendar tool that I could use on my Google calendar. No luck. But dear Google did direct me to my new menu planning friend, here.

It was easy to adapt to my grown-up family. It was easy to pick a color that nobody else was using to make it stand out. It was easy to invite my husband and daughter to share the calendar so everybody knows what the basic plan is. And if I need to switch meals around, or discard one altogether and go out instead, it's click-and-drag easy!

I've been using it for THREE WHOLE DAYS NOW! And so far IT'S WORKING GREAT! :)




Second, while dinner this evening was just bacon and eggs, as long as I had a lined, greased cookie sheet (have you tried baking your bacon? Easiest bacon cooking method ever! No mess, no clean up, and afterward...) I made Roasted Garbanzo Beans. I have several recipes (suggestions?) for these on my "Savory Snacks" Pinterest board and today I tried roasted garbanzo beans with cajun spice.

Instead of olive oil, I just rolled them around in the bacon fat (I drained off the excess first and just used what was left on the foil). I used Sweet Mesquite Seasoning in the big jug from Sam's or Costco. Because my oven bakes unevenly and since it had to bake about 40 minutes I dutifully set my timer to rotate the pan and give it a quick stir/shake every 10. 

Unfortunately, at the last beep of the timer, the 24-year-old son was microwaving chili in the kitchen and turned the timer off. He DID tell me, and I WAS working at my desk, RIGHT THERE in the kitchen, but I didn't stand up right away and ANOTHER 10 minutes (or so - who really knows?) later there was only about a quarter of the pan that wasn't BLACK. But for what it's worth, that tiny amount is quite tasty - and curiously good with craisins. I'm not sure they were supposed to be that crunchy, but since I don't know for certain, I'm going with not a complete disaster.

Also, I'm very thankful for foil lined pans. After salvaging my half-cup or so of beans, I just carefully folded up the foil and, voila! the pan is spotless.

Food

Yep, today's blog is all about food. Well, let's be honest - mostly it's just about sweets. But among my blog aspirations is one day a week devoted to the new and marvelous recipes I've tried over the last week. But truly, at the moment I pretty make the same things over and over and over. (Actually, the husband makes the same things over and over and over. I mostly quit cooking when he made me get a job. I may have just a little bit of an attitude, but that whole story is a post for a different day. Remind me.)   :-)

So anyway, my menu for any given week looks like:

Monday: Hamburger something - The current "something" is typically a pound of hamburger, browned, with a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom with Roasted Garlic soup stirred in. Simple but tasty. This delectable menu is rounded out with Minute Rice and canned green beans.

Tuesday: Eggs/breakfast foods - Husband doesn't particularly care for pancakes or anything similar as a meal, so generally scrambled eggs. Maybe some toast. More recently, if we're feeling fancy we'll make what he grew up calling Egg In The Bread (clever name, no?). I've also seen it called Bird In The Nest or something similar. Where you put a piece of buttered bread in a pan (or on the griddle) and fry it up a bit, then flip it over, cut a hole in the middle, and crack an egg into the hole. Flip it back over to cook the yucky white slimy stuff and, Viola! Yummy dinner! The first time I made these (yup, me not the hubs) a few months ago, the hubs and adult son each ate three. The adult daughter and I each ate two. That's a good way to get rid of a loaf of bread that's been around for a while and is starting to dry out.

Wednesday: Chicken something - Usually I cut up the chicken into bite-size cubes and sprinkle it with some seasoning thing in the big bottle from Sam's - I think we have a Citrus Grill and a Poultry [something] and some Southwest Spice thing. Then I chop an onion, green pepper, zucchini, yellow squash and jalapeno. When hubs gets home from work, he starts some pasta to boiling, cooks up the chicken and sets it aside, then cooks the veggies. Stir the whole thing together and if I was particularly industrious there might be some grated parm. I like this with a big dollop of sour cream stirred in.

Thursday: Mac & Cheese - Just the stovetop version, with cut up hot dogs, of course. Nothing too fancy - unless the daughter or I decide to make hot dog octopi instead of just chunks.

Friday: Pizza - Which the hubs picks up from Papa Murphy's Take and Bake on the way home.

Saturday: leftovers - If there are any.

Sunday: Wildcard Day

These items don't necessarily have to happen on that particular day of the week (except pizza - pizza is almost always on Friday). I just make sure I have everything on hand and we make what we want when we want. But that's a typical week for us. So a weekly food entry might be pretty boring.

But every month or two I'm in charge of taking snacks to church for our fellowship after the morning service. I LOVE this. People think I'm amazing. They say things like, "Oh, Pam brought snacks today? I'll definitely have to go check it out," and, "Everything Pam makes is wonderful. I can't wait to see what she brought this time!" So it's a bit of an ego boost for me. Who wouldn't love that.

So tomorrow I'll be taking Mississippi Mud Cake, Amazing Lemon Bars, and Meringues.

Important lessons learned from the Mississippi Mud Cake - drop the batter in by spoonfuls. It's thick like a brownie batter and does NOT want to spread nicely in your greased and floured pan. The frosting on top should also be drizzled on as evenly as possible because it catches in the marshmallows and doesn't like to be moved much after that. However, if you wait a few minutes and let the heat of the cake soften the frosting, it can be very gently coaxed to more even coverage if necessary.

Very important notes about the Lemon Bars - most of the lemon bar recipes I've seen floating around have melted butter in the crust. This recipe uses cold butter and it makes for a much easier to handle crust. I went a little heavier on the lemon juice. The recipe called for 1/3 cup and I used 1/2. That's just what my 2 lemons netted me today. I also zested the lemons and added that into the filling. The recipe (and my blog notes) are for a 9x13 pan. I like to make them in a half-sheet for church and for that I make a batch and a half. A double batch was way too much for the pan.

For the Meringues - only minimal notes. I didn't top with the candy canes the recipe calls for on account of it being August. I've never tried adding food coloring. I do now own a large pastry bag with a large star tip because I've made these every snack Sunday since last December and this makes them prettier. They're just a very simple, sweet, low-calorie, gluten free, tasty bite of awesomeness. I think I figured out that an entire batch only has about 300 calories. That makes it about 5 calories a cookie. And did I mention AWESOME? The kids especially go through these. I, myself, have been known to eat half a pan while they're still slightly warm (but don't tell anybody).

The Big List of Things I Could Accomplish If Only I'd Come Down Every Day and Just Get My Work Done

I love to make lists! My latest list, created just yesterday, I titled, "The Big List of Things I Could Accomplish If Only I'd Come Down Every Day and Just Get My Work Done." Because every day I come out of my bedroom and make my way to the breakfast room where my office is set up with the intention and expectation of working for six hours. And every day I instead check Facebook, Pinterest, and e-mail; surf through a variety of websites checking for new fanfiction; read fanfiction (lots of time spent there); check out the totally implausible-sounding website, "Wow, that really IS a real website!" or that bizarre item I read about in the fanfiction on Amazon, "Oh, hey, check that out. Cool. Ooh, people who bought this also bought____. I should check that out too!"; play games on my computer (I'm especially fond of Soduku, Spider Solitaire and a couple games on NeoPets) and finally - sometimes five or six or more HOURS later - I finally decide I'm wasting time and better get busy if I want to get my work done before bed time. And then I'm sometimes (often) up until at least 10 or 11 pm trying to finish those six hours of work. What a waste of life! I'm worth more than this!

So anyway, back to my BIG LIST...

The boring basics made an appearance. Accomplish chores in a timely manner - things like keeping up with dishes, shopping, menu planning, and other miscellaneous cleaning. Make time to get on with the business of life - things like exercise and devotions. 

But BIG things - the things I'd like to accomplish "if only I had the time" - those were the point of the "Big List" in the first place. The very special and exciting things on this part of the list are:
1. Go through all my Creative Memories stuff and make an updated and accurate inventory. I'll be able to find what I need when I need it and maybe I'll even be able to sell some of it and make a buck or two!
2. Go through the stuff that's in boxes or laying around and make garage sale, give away, and throw away piles.
3. Finish cleaning/packing up my craft room, aka the room where everybody in the family dumps the stuff they don't know what else to do with. 
4. Reclaim my naked room. Have you seen Failure To Launch? The dad, played by Terry Bradshaw, has always wanted a naked room, where he can just hang out naked and do whatever he wants. I didn't have any need or desire to hang out naked, but when my kids grew up and my son decided he no longer wanted to have a bedroom upstairs with the rest of the family I decided I wanted a room that would just be mine where I could do things that were important to ME and not have to share the space with the rest of the family and their habit of filling up every inch of spare space with their own clutter. Eventually (with my son's blessing) I adopted his room as my "naked room." My mom helped me power-clean through years of trash and orphan socks and old games and forgotten books and unwanted toys. We stripped it down to just the bed and desk that ds said he wanted and some memorabilia (that he didn't want, but I just couldn't throw away his T-ball participation trophy from when he was 4) and then gave it a decorative sponge paint job (I'd wanted to try that for years but dh "couldn't see it"). So I finally had a room with a TV/VCR/DVD to play exercise videos/DVDs as well as plenty of floor space to do the exercising. There was also a comfy chair that was supposed to provide a quiet spot to have devotions. Then the daughter came home from college and decided that the big empty room right next to hers was the ideal space to dump all her unwanted CRAP when she cleaned her own room. Naked Room=Gone. Hmmm. Do I sound bitter? I think I sound bitter. I don't mean to be bitter. I might be just a tiny bit bitter. :-(
5. Make time to consistently blog. I don't know that I have anything special to say to the world, but I think it's therapeutic to see what I have to say to myself. I'd like to one day look back and see how far I've come and how much I've changed since starting this. I'm a strong believer in journaling about everyday life, just not really a practitioner. Yet. I'm working on it! :-)

So - I had intended to say, "Look at me! I made a little list about big goals!" But instead, once again, my fingers had more to say. And that's ok. I'm going places and doing great things. And as I do, I'll tell you all about it.

And I'm starting tomorrow morning by coming down to my office and just getting my work done without doing all that other time-wasting stuff first. I'll let you know how that goes.