Speed Trials

Angelo and I moved into our new apartment over the weekend (blog post on that one to come!) and now that we’re relatively settled, it’s time to start eating at home again.

In the weeks leading up to the move, I really didn’t feel like cooking at home, and so I ate sporadically, filling up on carbs and sugar, and my vegetable intake took a real nosedive. It also meant that I felt run down a lot of the time.

I’m happy to be in my new home, and the kitchen is completely unpacked and ready for action. So today I filled in our trusty grocery list:

This Knock Knock list is really killer. I’m not one to buy gimmicky things, but after pining for this list for weeks, i finally went out and bought it, and I haven’t looked back. I always struggled with “old fashioned” grocery lists.  Either you create them right before going to store, where you risk the chance of forgetting a key ingredient; or you stick one on the fridge and add items to it as they run out, which leaves you with a list of random items that are in no particular order. So if you’re not careful, you might end up backtracking down an aisle or two at the grocery store, which is just against all supermarket codes of etiquette.

My mom actually keeps her list on her fridge and adds to it as things run out, and then before she goes grocery shopping, she’ll REWRITE it in the proper order just to avoid this very problem. That is what you call grocery list dedication! Or mildly OCD…

Well, Knock Knock gives us the best of both worlds – a list that we can simply add to as things run out, but that also keeps things in the right order for easy shopping once at the store.

They’re right – revolutionary.

Angelo and I are moving out of our place in 10 days, and like everyone everywhere since the history of moving, we are overwhelmed by the amount of stuff we have to pack. I took a huge garbage bag of stuff over to St-Vincent-de-Paul and still, it is but a drop in the bucket of stuff.

Another thing that everyone tries to do before they move is eat their way through their fridge, freezer, and pantry just so they won’t have to move that stuff.  Our pantry is especially dire – there is some stuff in there that I remember moving when we moved into this apartment 2 ½ years ago!! I really don’t want to move that stuff again, so we’ve been using up as much pantry food as we can.

Today I was able to finish off a jar of Tahini by making OSG’s Hummus that changed everything.

This hummus really lives up to its name. Angelo and I had been complaining about the $5.99 tub of commercial hummus that we buy weekly at the grocery store, and that we REALLY ought to get our act together and start making our own. (Aside: food prices are really crazy. We’ve seen a pretty consistent $20 increase to our weekly grocery costs, and it’s not going away anytime soon. So eating what we already have is a great way to save some bucks before we have to move).

The problem is that I’ve always been underwhelmed by homemade hummus recipes. Somehow, they never quite stack up to store bought hummus. Until now…

This hummus is amazing, and I think the secret is that it’s heavy on the lemon juice and light on the garlic. Anyway, whatever it is, it’s absolutely delicious and with an ingredient list that costs roughly $4.00 and yields TWICE as much hummus as my commercial brand, there is no reason not to make it on a weekly basis.

This is actually the second time I’ve made OSG’s hummus.  I fully intended on blogging about it the first time I tried it, but I made the mistake of leaving the tub of hummus unattended for 10 minutes, and when I got back to it, Angelo had already devoured about half of it. I told him it wasn’t exactly economical if he just ate ALL of the hummus the moment I made it, so this time he showed a little restraint.

For about a minute:

Harrumph.

Mmmmmm…..

One of my favourite Christmas traditions is our mother-daughter Cookie Baking Day. We’ve been doing it for four years (2009, 2008, 2007) and this year we hit a culinary peak. I think we produced the best batch of cookies yet!  There are a couple of factors that contributed to our success – the first one is that this year there were only two of us in the kitchen. Unfortunately, the other mother-daughter duo weren’t able to make it, and while we missed them dearly, I must say that the extra room in the kitchen made baking a lot easier. Also, in previous years there was bottle-necking at the stove, and sometimes our dough would sit on the counter and wait (in a hot kitchen) 20 mins or more before going in, and I think that can sometimes adversely affect the cookies.

Another factor is that this year I refused to modify any of the recipes to make them “healthy”. I realized that cookies are cookies: full of butter and sugar and no amount of substitutions will ever make them “healthy”. (If I want to eat something healthy, I’ll grab an apple.) I won’t try to turn cookies into something they’re not. And so, this year I used 2 POUNDS of butter, white flour, and countless cups of sugar in my recipes, and wouldn’t you know it, EVERY one was a success!  My mom and I tasted the cookies as they came out of the oven, and every one became “our new favourite”… They were all so good!

And so, without any further delay, here they are:

Clockwise starting from top left: Cranberry Noels, Chocolate Thumbprints, Creamy Lemon Squares, Lemon Poppy Seed Shortbread Cookies, Peanut Butter Fudgy Brownies, Bolivian Almond Cookies, Mexican Wedding Cookies.

Here they are close up:

Peanut Butter Fudgy Brownies. These are the sweetest of the bunch, and have been dubbed “ooey gooey bars”. Keep ‘em in the fridge to avoid a sticky mess!

Cranberry Noels. So festive and wonderful, I made this dough in the morning, put it in the freezer for about 3 hours, and then sliced and baked. Ah-Maze-Ing. Just like shortbread, with cranberries and pecans. Quintessential Christmas.

Mexican Wedding Cookies. Possibly my favourite of the bunch? (if I were able to choose a favourite, that is!) These are tasty little dough balls with pecans, covered in powdered sugar. Mmmmm… So good.

Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies with Chocolate Ganache. These cookies were the most involved, as I had to make the ganache first. I wasn’t super sold on these (what can I say, I’d take shortbread over chocolate ANY day) but they are definitely the most-improved over time. They taste hella good a day or two later.

Creamy Lemon Squares. My mom is the queen of lemon squares, and has a tried and true recipe. But this year she opted for a creamier version that contains cream cheese. These lemon squares are really tasty and the cream cheese gives them more oomph. A crowd-pleaser, for sure.

Lemon Poppyseed Cookies. These were exceptionally good eaten warm from the oven (I mean, give them a couple of minutes to cool down, but eat a few before they cool completely. You won’t be sorry).

Bolivian Almond Cookies. These were actually a repeat from last year. Almonds in the batter and almonds on top. How can you possibly go wrong? Oh, and a recipe that yields well over 40 cookies. Don’t even worry about it!

Now we’re well-stocked in the cookie department at least until Christmas! I’m hoping to offload some of these to a couple of key individuals, and the rest will be greedily gobbled up by Ange and me… Ahem.. I mean, I need to have a SOME fuel for my New Year’s resolution, right???

Note: You are reading a series of posts that first appeared on craftster.org.  I recently deleted my craftster account (in an attempt to consolidate my internet exposure) and I am therefore posting all of these old projects on bad dirt designs… for posterity.

December 24 2008

So the Baking Day tradition continues at my house, and so last Saturday My mom and I, and my friend and her mom packed into my mom’s kitchen to bake and bake and bake. We made two recipes each.

We had: Lemon bars, soft ginger cookies, dainties, apricot bars, lace cookies, pistachio shortbread sandwich cookies, snowballs, and chocolate & jam bars. Yum yum. By the end of it there’s always so much to go around. I have a freezer full that I’m taking to my boyfriend’s grandmother’s for Christmas.

Here are pictures:
From the back: Snowballs and Dainties, Sandwich Cookies, Chocolate Meringue Bars, and Apricot Bars

Lace Cookies, Chocolate Meringue Bars, Lemon Bars

Dainties (filled with preserves and pecans)

Snowballs (shortbread with lemon icing)

And as always, this was my favourite day of the whole Christmas season. I think I might even like it better than Christmas Day itself… Well, almost!

EDIT:

Pistachio-Cherry Sandwich Cookies

1 1/2 cups shelled pistachios
1 cup unsalted butter, softened (or Earth Balance for you vegans!)
1 cup sugar (I used half that amount)
1 large egg (or egg replacer)
1 Tbs. lemon juice
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup cherry preserves

1. Process pistachios in food processor 1 minute, or until finely ground. Transfer to bowl, set aside. (I only have a hand food processor – my arm was tired!!)
2. Cream butter and sugar in food processor 30 seconds. or until fluffy. Add egg and lemon juice; pulse 15 seconds, or until combined. Add pistachios, flour, lemon zest, baking powder and salt. Pulse 15 seconds more, or until combined and dough starts to clump together. (I just mixed in a bowl).
3. Divide dough in half, flatten into two disks, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate 1 hour, or until firm.
4. Preheat oven to 350F. Roll out 1 dough disk on sheet of lightly floured parchment paper, to about 1/8″ thick. Transfer parchment and cookie dough onto cookie sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Place in freezer 5 to 8 minutes to firm up.
5. Cut out cookies with 2 inch cutter, and place 1 inch apart on parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Bake 12 minutes or until edges are golden. Transfer to wire rack to cool.
6. Spread 1 tsp preserves on half of cookies. Top with remaining cookies.

Soft Gingerbread Cookies

3/4 cup unsulfured molasses
3/4 cup light brown sugar (I used about half cup of each)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup butter, softened (again, I used Earth Balance)
2 3/4 tsp ground ginger
2 1/2 tsp cinnamon (who measures that out??? Just go by “feel”)
1/2 tsp salt
3/8 tsp ground cloves
1 large egg, beaten (or egg replacer)
4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup crystallized ginger (I forgot this ingredient at home, so omitted and the cookies still tasted really gingery)

1. Combine molasses and brown sugar in saucepan; heat over medium high heat 2 to 3 minutes, or until sugar dissolves and bubbles appear around edges of saucepan. Remove from heat, and stir in baking soda. Add butter, ginger, cinnamon, salt, and cloves, stirring until butter is melted. Stir in egg, then flour, and mix until no white streaks remain. Add crystallized ginger.
2. Line workspace with 10″ long sheet plastic wrap. Roll out still warm dough to 3/8″ thickness on plastic wrap. Cover with plastic wrap, and place on baking sheet. Chill 10 minutes, or up to 8 hours.
3. Preheat oven to 350F, and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Cut dough into shapes with cookie cutter, and transfer to prepared baking sheets. (If dough is too warm, refrigerate 10 minutes). bake 10 minutes, or until firm to touch. Serve warm, or transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

Notes: I used a 1 incher cookie cutter, so I knocked off a couple minutes baking time.
I used store bought egg replacer for these recipes, instead of other substitutes like applesauce or banana because I didn’t want any competing tastes.
For the Pistachio cookies, less is more with the preserves. You don’t need much to hold the cookies together, and it keeps them nice and moist for days.

Lemon bars and dainties to come…

Did you know that I used to be a smoker? It’s true. I started when I was about 16 years old, and didn’t really quit till I was about 26.

Circa 2000

TEN YEARS of my life were spent in a cloud of blue-grey smoke, caughing, hacking, and putting on weight.  I’m one of those weirdos who actually LOST weight every time I tried to quit smoking, because I would usually get through cravings by running or working out and I would stop going to bars (where the temptation to smoke was too much for me) which drastically reduced my alcohol intake.

Smoking is a terrible habit, everyone knows that. It did devastating things to my poor little lungs, not to mention my skin, hair, and nasal passages. Honestly, this is my driver’s license photo from when I was 19:

Those dark circles around my eyes were caused by my smoking – my sinuses were all kinds of effed up while I smoked.

I haven’t had a cigarette in a long time, and even though I still get that pang every once in a while, I just think about my training and the craving vanishes (even one or two puffs on a cig causes MAJOR disruption on any ensuing runs – I have a harder time breathing, I run at a slower pace, and I hack up all kinds of grosseness.)

I’m pretty proud of myself for breaking that terrible habit. I feel like smoking is DEFINITELY behind me now, and I feel free and liberated from it.

So, what does this have to do with muffins, you ask? Well, I’ve decided to kick another bad habit – the store-bought muffin habit. I know that store-bought muffins (and all store-bought baked goods) are TERRIBLE for our health: they are full of trans fats, they hover around the 400 calorie mark, they are usually filled with sugar and white flour, and they leave us hungry for more so soon after they’re gone. Nothing about them is good, except for that instant gratification I get from biting into a big-ass muffin.

That’s when I made the correlation between my muffins and my cigarettes. Both are bad (despite being “goooooood”), both don’t do anything for my lifestyle or running regimen, both are unnecessary in my life. And if I can kick something as addictive as cigarettes, I KNOW I can kick the bad muffin habit.

I haven’t had a store-bought muffin in 8 days. I think I’m off to a good start!  So here’s the deal: no more Bridgehead triple berry muffins or lemon scones:

Source

No more Second Cup blueberry scone, no more dough balls of any kind from any specialty coffee shop or bakery.  On top of that, forget the packaged bars, or individually wrapped breakfast cookies.  They are (like cigarettes) a waste of money, and I don’t need them!!!

So… Can you guess what I’ve been doing in the meantime?

Baking at home, of course! Ah, home-made baked goods, where you can see what ingredients you’re putting into your muffins, where they are sized appropriately for a snack (and not a whole meal), where you can experiment with fresh flavour combos.

This month alone I’ve made some mint-chocolate brownies (with mint from the garden – so good!)

Some lemon poppyseed muffins, and these super moist applesauce-oatmeal muffins:

So you can expect to see me baking a whole lot more now that I have to get my dough fix at home, and hopefully you’ll see me kick another bad habit to the curb!

PS. If you’re thinking of quitting smoking, congratulations and good luck!!! It took me a couple of tries before I quit for good, but I figured that any day I didn’t smoke was one step closer to breaking cigarettes’ grip over my life.