This is that recipe!

Strawberry Cookies

• .5 C softened butter
• .5 C brown sugar
• .25 C +2T sugar
• .5 t vanilla
• 1 egg
• .25 t baking soda
• 1.25 C flour
• .5 t salt
• .5 lb strawberries
• 2T sugar

Mix through vanilla, add egg. Add dry ingredients and mix gently. Slice strawberries and sprinkle with sugar

dry strawberries with paper towels. I missed that step and they never quite set right.

Spoon onto lined baking sheets, bake at 350 for 10 minutes, give or take

Original recipe says to rotate pan on the middle. Also says to eat them soon as they’ll get soggy. Since I didn’t dry the berries, they started a little soggy so I can’t speak to that. But it’s only about 24-30 cookies, so my kids didn’t let them survive the night

Recipe: Simple, straightforward.

Difficulty: Biggest issue is drying the strawberries, and even that’s not complicated just not something you think of

Price: In season only. Out of season, I think the strawberries would make this too expensive. But since we picked them ourselves, this was fairly cheap. I’d say maybe 5$ for the two dozen.

So, I went looking for some idea of how to make some at home. For less money and fewer ingredients

Butterscotch Peanut Bars

• 1.5 C flour
• .75 C brown sugar
• .5 C softened butter
• dash of salt
• .5 C honey
• 1 T water
• 2 T butter
• 1 C butterscotch chips
• 3.5 C peanuts

Mix up to salt, and pat into bottom of jelly roll pan covered with parchment/wax paper. Bake 10 min at 350.

When you pull that out, layer the peanuts on top. Mix remaining ingredients until melty. Pour over the peanuts.

This’ll not go very far so try to drizzle it to get decent coverage.

Bake another 15 min. Cool fully and figure out how to cut it. I generally pull it out on the paper (I assure you it’s stuck) and use a pizza cutter to break it down decent sizes. Paper comes off during this

I generally store in a ziptop bag and leave it open occasionally to keep them the right softness.

Difficulty: Easy enough. Little bit of time, but they seen to last a couple weeks.

Recipe: Done it twice now. Last time we used chocolate chips instead and it worked good. Technically it calls for corn oil but we didn’t have any. I even put the peanuts on after pouring the melted chips and they still work. So it’s very forgiving

Price: We stuck with cheap honey (bear bottle). Still I think it’s a toss up between the honey and the chocolate chips for which costs more. This is probably 10$ at the outside and makes 25 or so bars of average granola bar size. Maybe 30? Depends on how well you cut them I suppose

Definitely a fun simple recipe. Not really much for the kids to help with, but when they’re a little older definitely

Repeat? Yes

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/moo-less-chocolate-pie-recipe/index.html

Taste: Initially we picked out this recipe for my daughter b/c she has a Milk Protein Allergy (Mild).  This is completely distinct from a lactose intolerance, in that she can eat lactose in things and she’s fine, but dairy in something and she’s tetchy.  Anyway, because of that, we went looking for a chocolate to use that didn’t have milk.  The only one we found was a very bitter chocolate.  So the pie was a little on the bitter side (the fact that I use too much of the wrong alchohol didn’t help).  The second time we found some dairy-free (& gluten-free) chocolate chips, and skipped the alchohol.  Tasted like a chocolate pie!  yummmm!  Next time I’m planning to use a homemade oreo recipe to make the crust, meaning the pie will be vegan, gluten free, and low-processed (agave instead of sugar, and no HFCS in the crust).

Preparation: Hardest part (well, really, ONLY part) is melting the chocolate.  And that’s not really hard unless (like me) you don’t HAVE a double boiler.  (I bought an insert between our first time and the second; not the greatest, but it beats the ceramic bowl I was floating in boiling water, ow!).  Then you just blend and fridge

Recipe: We changed the recipe up a little bit by taking out the alchohol.  I’ve been using a big glop of killer bee honey from our last trip to a Renaissance Festival near us, and then using Agave to sweeten to taste.  But the original recipe is melt, blend, pour, cool.  It doesn’t get much simpler

Cost: Tofu, Chocolate chips, crumb crust.  The chips are fairly expensive, b/c they’re “speciality”.  But if you’re not actually concerned about the dairy content, then regular old chips should work great.  The crust is brand-named, so that’s pricey.  And tofu isn’t too bad, but silken isn’t one we usually have on hand, so it was a special purchase.  So, even though it has very few ingredients, it can be relatively expensive :/

Moo-less Chocolate Pie

Repeat? Yes

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slow-Cooker-Taco-Soup/Detail.aspx

Taste: Tastes like chili, honestly. But it IS spicy. Especially after the second package of hot taco seasoning and a dash of some pepper in the cabinet. To the point that I can taste the spicy. And I burned my tastebuds out, so that’s gooood soup.

Preparation: OMG. I browned the meat (“meat”) the night before, then the next morning after I went to work kiir put it all together (and added the extra seasonings) and left it cook all day, stirring occasionally!

Recipe: Brown. Simmer for a day Only thing was we decided it wanted more spice. And next time we might leave the meat out, since it was plenty hardy already, and kindof almost too lumpy to be a “soup”. And we still haven’t figured out WTF a “chili bean” is, so we just used more kidney beans

Cost: Beans – cheap. Corn – cheap. Tomatoes – cheap. Ground “meat” – moderate. Tomato sauce – free, basically. The meat and the taco seasoning may have been the most expensive ingredients, honestly

Taco Soup

Repeat? No

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Butternut-Squash-Soup/Detail.aspx

Taste: Well, let’s start with the fact that I’m not a huge fan of squash. I like pumpkin. I’ll eat eggplant occasionally. I do like the butternut squash ravioli from lean cuisine, although the sauce is vile. Actually, that may be the extent of the squashes/gourds I eat. So I’m not big on butternut, but I figured I’d give it a shot. And a lot of others like it. So. It tasted … like cream cheese and squash. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, to me, either. I could eat it, but it wasn’t on my list to do again.

Preparation: Chop, boil, blend. Prep isn’t bad, a little long winded with waiting for the squash to cook, but that’s about it.

Recipe: Cook the squash in the broth (sub veg broth for the water and boullion), then blend all that squash with that pound of cream cheese. Spice to taste?

Cost: The squash wasn’t expensive, but it wasn’t cheap. And two containers adds up. And two packages of cream cheese. The broth was a bit, but not comparatively. I wouldn’t mind so much if I ate squash, I suppose. Maybe a half portion if I have leftover butternut from trying my hand at ravioli

Butternut Squash Soup

Repeat? Yes

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Delicious-Pumpkin-Bread/Detail.aspx

Taste: Tastes like pumpkin bread. There was a bit of an issue with the first batch, because I ended up shoving in some batter that hadn’t mixed properly, so that kindof ended up not cooking up properly. Basically, since it wasn’t blended right, we ended up with a chunk of dried pumpkin batter in the middle of both loaves :/ Still tasted great. Rave reviews from a friend and the baby And the puppy, but he’s not traditionally been choosy.

Preparation: Straightforward. I didn’t follow it quite directly, as I added everything to the stand mixer and turned it on. Neglected to scrape the bowl and turn it back on before pouring it out, though, causing the aforementioned problem.

Recipe: Mix, pour, bake. It turns out that one can of pumpkin puree is 1.75 C, rather than 2C. So next time I need to cut back a notch on the other ingredients to get proper proportions. not sure how I cut down on half an egg though Also, we made 2 9×5 loaves instead of 3 7×4′s or whichever, b/c I had those pans Actually, I made 2 1qt (maybe 2qt?) loaves, but i think that’s about 9×5 since they’re BASICALLY the same size as the 9×5 pan I have. Unfortunately, my pyrex bakeware is all labelled in a strange amalgam of measurements. But it looked about right. Next time I might fill them a little less and use the extra batter for some muffins.

Cost: A bag of flour and a bag of sugar will make 3 of these I’d imagine, maybe more. a third of a dozen eggs. The most expensive item is the pumpkin, and if you buy a bunch in fall when it’s all on sale for pies, that’s not too bad. Probably ~5$ total, which is just at that line for the second $ mark, but since it makes two loaves, and I’m not sure on the price on pumpkin, I’m letting it slide. You had eggs, flour and sugar ANYWAY, right?

Pumpkin Bread

Repeat? Yes

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Baked-Salmon-Fillets-Dijon/Detail.aspx

Taste: Mustard-y. Something to do with all the Dijon I think. Wasn’t completely bad, but wasn’t quite right. Way too much mustard b/c i followed the recipe with only half the fish

Preparation: Fairly straightforward. Put dijon on the fish, put breadcrumbs on the dijon, and shove it all in the oven.

Recipe: Two problems were the mustard issue and the fact that it took nearly 3x as long to cook through as it was supposed to. I don’t know what was up with that. Ended up opening the foil and letting it sit free to cook up. Something of a flaw with the recipe IMO.

Cost: Real cheap. Fish. the dijon and breadcrumbs cost a bit, but there’s enough of those to last a while, so they hardly count.

Salmon Dijon

Repeat? No

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Alfredo-Blue/Detail.aspx

Taste: Was a little weak. Too much taste to be subtle, but not exciting enough to be primary. A little bit bitter.

Preparation: Pretty short. Saute, simmer, and otherwise melt.

Recipe: Straightforward recipe, simple enough. Cream, blue cheese, parmesan, and melt. Then pour it over the alfredo. oooooh.

Cost: 4oz of blue cheese, a cup of parmesan, a pint of heavy cream. Basically all three items are a whole container, which means no reusability, and pricy.

Alfredo Blue

Repeat? Yes

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Spicy-Baked-Sweet-Potato-Fries/Detail.aspx

Taste: Taste was a bit off. Fries were a little on the burnt (“crispy” was one word that kept coming up) side. Taste was good, where they weren’t burnt/

Preparation: Fairly simple. Cut up a sweet potato (I went with half across, then tried 8ths , but we decided they might be too thick ; I might try it again next time anyway), brush with oil, coat with topping, flip, repeat. Directions called for putting oil, spice and potatoes in a bag and shaking (like shake-and-bake, I guess) but that ended up with one fry with a bunch of seasoning, and a bunch without any AFAICT.

Recipe: 30min@420 , flip and again. Yeah, no. It may partially be that I cut thin, but I flipped and the bottoms (the bottoms, not the tops?) had all burned, and within 5 minutes there was smoke as things continued to burn more. Oops. We ate some, and they were good, but the recipe needs tweaking. Admittedly, I used olive instead of canola, more than they suggested, and cinnamon/sugar (on half, “cajun seaoning” on the other) instead of cayenne and taco mix, but I don’t think that was the major issue involved.

Cost: Sweet potatoes were 2lbs/1$ yesterday, we buy big bottles of olive oil b/c we use it a bunch, and seasonings I don’t count unless it’s obscure. So, very cheap.

Sweet Potato Fries

Just a note, that using pesto, instead of tomato sauce, tastes good on pizza pesto, mozerella, maybe some other cheeses if we have ‘em in the fridge

yum!