The Never Ending Cooking Saga

When I say never ending, what I really mean is that this cookie recipe makes 8 dozen cookies! That's 96 stinking cookies! Man oh man!

But I am pleased with how they turned out. They taste good, too. Or so my family avers.

At the last dozen, I ran out of frosting. So I used the next best thing (my husband would say the frosting is the next best thing!)

Nutella! 

Not quite as elegant, maybe, but they taste nice.



That's a lotta cookies for a family of 3! I will be gifting some of these, I think.

Further Adventures

Today I realized I needed some gifts for the people who provide services for my daughter: her piano teacher, her drama coach, and the people who allow her to ride along with them to school every day. My sister had sent me a picture of some lovely patchwork pot holders, and it was these that provided the inspiration.

Front

Back

The first pair

I will be making at least 3 pairs of these. Tutorial, anyone?

And here's the results for yesterday's cookie fiasco:

I baked up a dozen, and we tasted them before we frosted them. Not very cinnamon-y, but my husband thought they kinda tasted like snickerdoodles. I was hoping for something that would taste and smell very cinnamon-y, especially while baking. But oh well. They tasted fine.

I went ahead and made some powdered sugar frosting, but my green food coloring (purchased in Singapore, of course) is rather lime green colored. I wanted a nice pine color, but I wound up with a not very nice olive color. Oh well, again.



I made a dozen, there's only 7 here, and at the time of posting, they are all gone. I decided to finish batch tomorrow. I will frost them white and put silver decors on them. That will be much more elegant.

File this under Good Ideas:



Recently, I decided it was too much of a hassle to take down this large tub of flour off a shelf over my head whenever I needed a small amount for this or that. So, I started looking around for a container that could hold a small amount of flour, and be more convenient.

I was about to dispose of this jar after transferring the Equal out of it to another container I like to keep it in, when I noticed the suitability of this jar for my other purpose.



One of the things I frequently only need a small amount of flour for is to sprinkle on my board to keep dough from sticking. The lid of this jar twists so that one can sprinkle the contents. Isn't that too neat?

Adventures in the Kitchen

So on my grocery shopping spree Monday, I bought a pair of spring chickens to roast. Since Monday was a public holiday here in Singapore, my butcher shop was closed. But the grocery store was open, so I bought them there.
Warning: younger or more delicate blog readers may find this post disturbing.




Let me just say: be glad you don't have to deal with this stuff.




I was only mildly surprised to discover the chickens still had their heads,
but take a look at the indignity this poor fowl is suffering.
Sorry to be so graphic, but I had to share.





Well, I am proud to say that I simply sharpened my chinese cleaver and removed two heads and four feet. And then I made something truly delicious.




First, I made a compound butter: 2 or 3 tablespoons butter, a teaspoon each of chopped fresh herbs (I had rosemary, dill, and some basil harvested from our own plants which I planted for my DH on his birthday in August), 3 slices of turkey bacon, chopped (I would have used regular bacon, but it's so unusual to find the turkey variety in Singapore that I had to buy some), and 2 crushed garlic cloves all stirred together in a small bowl. This butter was then spread under the skin on each chicken breast.
Then I quartered a small red onion and put half in each bird's cavity. I tied the legs together with cotton twine, then placed the bird in a roasting dish. Next I poured a generous amount of olive oil on each chicken, laid some whole sprigs of herbs on the skin, sprinkled some more olive oil and then some dry white wine, and then some freshly ground black pepper.



These were baked at 450 for a half hour, then 325 for 15 more minutes.

I'm not exaggerating when I say they were probably the best roast chicken I have ever made. Totally worth the vivisection I had to commit.

I served them with fresh corn on the cob from Malaysia and roasted root vegetables: potatoes, carrots, parsnips and sweet potatoes with rosemary, quartered onion and sliced garlic all coated with olive oil and salt and pepper.

The dinner was so good, I had to come up with an equally good dessert. So I served perfectly ripe nectarines with vanilla ice cream and crumbled graham crackers, sprinkled with cinnamon.

I feel like such a genius.

The neat part was that we had such a nice breeze blowing through the house that I turned off the air conditioners and they've been off for hours. That NEVER happens. It's usually too humid for me, but it's so pleasant I almost feel like a real human being.

So, what's the occasion? None. Just felt like doing it.

But this post is entitled AdventureSSS (plural)

So, while all this was going on, I made up a batch of cookies I found the recipe for on the internet.

Here's the recipe. See if you can spot the adventure.

3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
Cream together. Add dry ingredients:

1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt

Chill for 1 hour. Roll out and cut out shapes. Bake at yadda yadda yadda...Did you catch the error?

I'm standing there, in front of my KitchenAid, thinking this is a little too wet to roll out. Even if I chill it...


Where's the flour?

Well, I eventually ended up adding 4 cups of flour to make the right consistency. But the recipe never mentioned it.

I'll bake these off tomorrow and let you know how they are.

Ugly Christmas Lights

I was surfing around on the web this morning, trying to find a nice picture of a house decorated with Christmas lights to put on my desktop for the holidays, when I happened on this site. Well, an hour and several LOLs later, I finally had to do something else. Enjoy!

The Next Step

Well, I finally made it downtown last Sunday and bought a king sized batting - 120" x 120" - for $75! I haven't paid attention to the price of batting when I've bought it in the past, but this time I was surprised. Luckily, I will be able to make many many quilts from this large piece, so it will be worth it. I don't think I've bought batting for almost a year now, so I guess I shouldn't sweat it.

Many have asked the size of this latest quilt, and I don't like to state that until it's finished because it will shrink in the binding and quilting stage, but I measured it anyway. It is 40.25" x 36.75". For now.

Next will be the binding. I plan on doing the usual: the escape hatch finish. Then I can begin quilting it. Unfortunately, I have some obligations at my daughter's school this week, so I'm not sure how much time I can put into the quilt. This is frustrating as last week didn't see much work getting done on it, either - except for Tuesday, when I finished it. Hurry up and wait.

A Singapore Thanksgiving

Which should rightly be called a Martha Stewart Thanksgiving. Let me 'splain:

A couple of weeks ago, driven crazy with boredom, I decided to browse ITunes and see if there were any free video podcast I wanted to watch, and I found a whole slew of Martha Stewart podcasts. Now, I'm not a huge Martha fan, but I was desperate. So, I downloaded them and began to watch. It took a couple of days to see them all; I didn't just sit in front of the computer for hours. Fortunately, they were all about Thanksgiving. That was when I noticed they had all been uploaded on the 5th of November. That's bad news because it means the podcast isn't consistently updated. And sure enough, it hasn't been updated since. Darn!

Well, I got inspired and here's what we had:


Spicy Sweet Potato Wedges and Brussels Sprouts with Lemon Vinaigrette

Herbed Mashed Potatoes (and sparkling cider)


And then I made the Joy of Cooking recipe for stuffing, adding dried berries and raisins, and I invented this turkey part: cutlets rolled with stuffing inside, glazed with honey.


Here's what they turkey looked like when cut.

You'll notice the small portions; there's only three of us, after all. We also had cranberry sauce, not very interesting.

And then for the big finale (was it the 4th of July? Wrong holiday.)




Rustic Apple Tarts (my daughter made the tiny apple sauce tart.)

Pumpkin Souffles (now I'm just getting silly)

Here they are together. The souffles were a disaster. My husband's was the only one to set up properly. Mine and my daughter's were quite wet inside. Well, you saw my little oven...pitiful. Not good for souffles, anyway.

So, you can tell, we stuffed ourselves. Thanks, Martha!


Oh, and here's our lovely table and my lovely daughter before things got messy.

Filling In The Blanks

Well, this is the solution to the problem of the gaping holes in my quilt top. I'm showing it to you step by step.


I actually took 40 photos of the process, but I wont bore you.


I'm dragging it out like this for you because this is what it was like for me. It took me all stinking day!




Ok, so I could sense your impatience.




This last corner has more filler than motifs, but I kinda like that.

Ok, ok. Here it is, unbound, unquilted.


And I am so happy with it. But I discovered I don't have a piece of batting big enough, so I have to go downtown. And tomorrow is the pre-Thanksgiving blur, so it probably wont happen until next week. Sigh.

Wheee! I am so happy with this quilt!