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

Actually, apparently I have half a dozen recipes that I was already working on.  And we did about 5 at xmas that aren’t on here (although they are all things we’ve done before, so I’ll have to double check).

That said, I’m not trying a couple new recipes a week, so … If I finish everything I have and queue them up one a week, it should last long enough to get a few more done, maybe.

Probably also be somewhat more of the “tips” and “ideas” kinds of posts.  After all, I’m pescetarian (vegetarian + fish), my daughter is Milk Protein Intolerant (separate from lactose; even things with whey (like margarine and some non-dairy alternatives)) (seriously, why would I want a non-dairy X with dairy?).  My wife and son are both full-bore omnivores.  Well, my wife. My son is just drifting out of the 3-s and the whole not eating ANYTHING but one brand of mac&cheese … yah, THATS been fun.  M&C for him, and an entirely DIFFERENT thing for her because she can’t eat the C in M&C.

wheeeee

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

So, this isn’t the kind of thing I might normally put up here, but I figured it needed some traffic

We get eggs delivered every other week from the farm that delivers our milk (go go gadget local! fresh! natural!).  We figured 12 eggs every 2 weeks works out.  Pumpkin bread takes 3 eggs, omelet night takes 5 (4 for the omelets and 1 for the pancake or waffle batter).  So that gives us 2 omelet nights and a round of bread every two weeks.  Which works out fine, since the bread makes two loaves and thus lasts two weeks.

Except I quit making the bread because of the insane calorie count   And we’re not doing omelets every week.  So when we got eggs 10 days ago, we had a bunch left still.  We’re down to 16 now, but we get another dozen this thursday

So this afternoon I decided to try making boiled eggs.  I like hard boiled eggs, and I think they’d make a decent snack for me (high in protein, healthy, etc), but I’ve never actually made boiled eggs before.  Growing up, my mom would make them because they had the risk of breaking while you cooked them and such, so she figured it was easier to just do it.  Since then, I’ve just bought a boiled egg at the cafeteria a few times when I wanted one.

So Kiir went to look up how to boil eggs when I asked her.  I mean, duh, “boil water, add egg”.  But I remember something about the sudden temperature change breaking the egg.  but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to leave the eggs in the water while I started it boiling or what.

Directions she found said: put eggs in water, bring to boil.  Cover, remove from heat, 15min.  Run cold water until eggs are cool to touch.

I don’t think thats how my mom did it, but yaknow?  The egg I tried (it slipped when I was dodging the baby, so I figured I’d just eat it) tasted good, so I’m happy

Color: This was a bit of a darker tinge, but still quite pale

Taste: Unremarkable. This was third in a succession of Tommyknockers.

Likeability: It wasn’t bad, per se. Not something I have an interest in, again, but it was palatable

Color: Another very pale, very clear, ale from Tommyknocker. Yellow, though.

Taste: I honestly don’t remember anymore. I want to say this was one of the sour ones

Likeability: I had a single sip and tossed this. I’m not, it seems, a fan of the Wheat Ale.

Color: Goldenrod with a dash of rust. This one has a very bright coloring, a very pale and light amber, as opposed to say Killian’s Irish Red which has a deep and dark coloration

Taste: The taste matched the color. The flavour was much closer to a blonde than an amber.

Likeability: For folks who like the Ambers, I would say probably low. For folks who like blondes, this is probably pretty decent. Personally, I only had a couple of sips before tossing it.

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