One Thousand Words

When you hear that someone has a freezer full of cookies, you might think “Oh! It’s Girl Scouts Cookie Season!” or maybe “Ah! Holiday Cookie Mailing Prep!”

In my case the answer is much more… farcical.

Nesko was on full baby toddler patrol on Saturday while I did some work in the office. Things got very quiet outside, beyond the closed door, but I figured they were playing trains or reading or playing a game on Nesko’s phone. Then, a few minutes later, I heard little not-quite-crying sounds and scratching at the door.

If Niko was looking for me, that must mean that Nesko’s in the bathroom, I thought. Time to take a break from work and start toddlerwork! I opened the door and… was not pleased by what I saw standing, grinning, in front of me.

Niko had gotten into the fridge and was standing at the door clutching a carton of eggs, a packet of raspberries, and some shredded mozzarella cheese to his chest. “Baby myom myom?” he asked hopefully. “eat! eat! baby myom myom. MMMMMM!”

Apparently he was hungry.

Toddlers need to be fed. WHO KNEW? I gathered the fridge goods from him and went into the kitchen so I could check out the eggs. I could tell that one was cracked, right away, so I slapped it into a bowl to make scrambled eggs out of. I looked over the carton, found a few more cracked but not leaking ones… and then saw the other carton of eggs on the floor.

In all, we lost 10 eggs to toddler-based attrition. I slapped five of them in a bowl before realizing that 1) that was too many eggs for Niko to eat (duh) 2) also: he asks for eggs but then doesn’t eat them 3) nobody else is hungry. I slipped the rest of the eggs into 1/2 cup sized containers with snap on lids and stashed everything in the fridge. Then, on Sunday, I made cookies to use up the single-serve broken eggs.

I made four batches of cookies: 4 dozen peanut butter cookies, 7 dozen chocolate fudge with pecan cookies, 7 dozen chocolate chip with pecan cookies, and 7 dozen very disappointing sugar cookies (do you have a good sugar cookie recipe? Hook me up.). Most of these cookies are now hanging out in our freezer so they don’t go bad or stale, and every time I open the freezer I get a little “oh is it Christmas?” feeling.

It doesn’t help that it snowed last night. There is snow on the ground. THE HELL.

Apparently it’s Christmas in April. Let me know if you’re coming by for cookies, hot cocoa, and caroling. Also, Egg Nog is now being sold in stores to celebrate Easter so we can have that Christmas stand-by as well.

Technorati Tags: baking, parenting, toddler

Mirrored from Now Showing!.

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

I’ve been cooking and baking basically since I could reach the counter/table and remember cooking on the stove top while standing on a stool or chair because I wasn’t tall enough to stand and do it. Hell, I started “helping” my mom make bread when I was 3. What I’m trying to say is, I know my way around a kitchen fairly well.

I don’t make brownies very often, and when I do, I generally use a mix that I buy on sale or something. I came across a recipe that was allegedly one used by a woman and her family for years and years, brownies that she brought to other people when they were sick/busy/In Crisis/whatever and then they loved them and begged for the recipe, etc. Recipes like that, they’re usually pretty good. They aren’t just “Oh, I made this once and it turned out really good,” they’re “I make this all the time and this is exactly right.” I was eager to try this because I’ve gotten some cook books (and used recipes online) that… very obviously hadn’t been tested. Or else they had errors in the recipe that a novice cook wouldn’t know how to deal with but that I was able to figure out. That’s frustrating, you know? Especially in a printed cookbook one has paid money for.

I frowned a little as I read the recipe because it called for a lot of butter. “Hm,” I said to myself, “that is a lot of butter.” Let me clarify here. I have no qualms with butter. My pie crust recipe calls for five million pounds of butter. Butter is fantastic to bake with. So when I say “Oh wow that is a lot of butter,” I should listen to myself.

The brownies turned out kind of… over saturated with butter. Greasy. The finished square of brownie was kind of resting in a 1mm deep pool of butter. It was pretty disgusting.

One of the things I liked about this recipe is that it’s easy to make. You use cocoa powder and don’t mess about with melting chocolate (which I’ve done, it’s not terribly difficult, but when you have a very active and clingy 18 month old under foot, baking really needs to be as simple as possible). I’m honestly pretty disappointed that I’ve wasted butter, eggs, sugar, nuts, cocoa, etc on something so dense and greasy. The actual flavor is ok (under the excessive butter taste) but the texture is just… wow. Oily. Dense in a bad way. I might try this recipe again, scaling back on the butter.

In the mean time, share your favorite brownie recipes, please. I’d love to see what you’ve got. For the record, I prefer chewy brownies to cake-y brownies.

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

We hosted Christmas Dinner this year, the first time we’ve REALLY hosted a holiday meal. We’ve participated in pot luck in the past (including one year I made a turkey and it was the best tasting turkey IN THE ENTIRE WORLD and I’d never made a turkey before), and one year we half-assed it to the point of not bothering to check to see how long a spiral sliced ham needed to cook and wound up pan frying slices of ham for everyone’s dinner.

This year we made lasagna, cauliflower gratin, mashed potatoes, peas, 2 kinds of rolls, and a spiral sliced ham (well, the ham only needed to be heated up; it was already cooked). All of this, except for the ham, was made from scratch.

There was also cheese and crackers, pumpkin-cranberry muffins, and 4 types of cookies, as well as sugared almonds and spiced mixed nuts. The muffins, cookies, and nuts were also made from scratch.

This was a lot of cooking. I have a 9 month old who needs to be within touching distance of me at all times. I did a lot of prep cooking while he napped or was in bed.

Whew!

Nesko has never personally had to work to host a holiday meal. In the past, we either went to my parents’ or else his family hosted, which is to say that he sat around and drank and talked while Teh Wimmens busted their asses cleaning and cooking. Which meant that Nesko kept fluttering around the kitchen on Christmas early afternoon waving his hands and exclaiming that Christmas “was ruined.”

It was hilarious. And of course nothing was ruined.

The ham and lasagna went in then came out and were covered in foil to stay warm, and the cauliflower and potatoes went in. The peas were microwaved. The rolls were cooked the day before (but I should have heated them up in the oven but I was afraid they’d dry out or something).

Oh! There was also devilled eggs and fudge that didn’t set right (and I need to make a cake so I can melt that fudge down and turn it into frosting).

Next Christmas we are going to make appetizers, cookies, and pie. And if people want actual food we can have sandwiches or something. But people were very interested in the appetizers and were kind of full when the main meal came out. Sure, we could just skip appetizers, but they are MUCH easier to throw together than a meal is.

When we finally have a million billion dollars, we’re going to remodel our kitchen and put in two ovens to make life easier.

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

We are, obviously, not going to be able to move into the new apartment by the end of this month. Which, yeah, means we’ll have to pay an extra month’s rent on this crap hole we’re currently in (I use crap hole in the literal sense, here, as every time someone upstairs takes a crap and flushes the toilet, water falls onto anyone taking a crap on our toilet. Or a pee. Whatever. There is a hole above our crapper.) but also gives us more time to clean and paint the old place, gives us more time for roach abatement, and allows for a less stressed move. So it’s more good than bad.

I’ve been packing stuff from the living room and dining room, mostly books and vases and candle holders and the like. You know, stuff that can be boxed up and not missed for awhile. Although I do want to get at some of those books. I started in on the kitchen today, even knowing that we won’t be moving for awhile. We have one million glasses, many of them cute little juice glasses, and the extras are now all packed up. Shot glasses: packed up. Extra little bowls: packed up. The remnants of the nesting glass mixing bowls that survived Nesko’s glass mixing bowl rampage: packed up. Cookbooks: packed up. Several pans: packed up.

By “several” I mean “a very large box full, and then some more added in on the top of the box of cook books.” I went through cabinets and drawers and asked myself Very Hard Questions. “Am I likely to make a cake in the next month? No? In the box! How about a pie? Eight pies? No? In the box! A cheese cake? No! In the box!” One might question the wisdom of having enough pie pans to even make eight pies, but those people obviously hate Thanksgiving and Pie and The American Way Of Gluttonous Life. Also, several of those pie pans are glass and I make casseroles or cakes in them.

I should probably go through and pack up pantry items we aren’t going to use, like the five bags of semi sweet chocolate chips and the two bags of milk chocolate chips and the bag of red hots and the six cans of sweetened condensed milk and… well. You never know when those will come in handy. What if I want to make my fudgey chocolate one-pot cookies which calls for flour, butter, chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, walnuts, and vanilla? I could omit the walnuts, sure, but everything else is necessary and the cookies only take about ten minutes to mix up, and then they go in the oven. Fast! Easy! Tasty! Impossible to make without ingredients!

…

Yeah. I’m not going to make cookies in the next month.