have a cookie!

When I was a little girl, my favorite place to be during the holidays was the kitchen with my Mamaw and Mom.  Mamaw spent many hours making desserts for our family dinner and for others in the community, and as long as you were not in the way you could stay and watch while she worked.  Can I tell you something? There is nothing like the smell of red velvet cake straight from the oven and no memory so precious as the ones featuring that kitchen.  

Now I have found that I love to bake - cakes, pies, cookies.  There is something precious about cooking for someone.  Recently I found a recipe for Tea Cakes that belongs to my great aunt, and I wanted to try it out. I don't think I have ever made anything completely from scratch, so it was a challenge and an adventure for me.  I think they turned out well, and as Candace is addicted to anything resembling a sugar cookie, there were very few left.

Looks pretty good huh?

I believe that recipes are sacred - not secret.  Sharing recipes in my family are sharing a part of yourself with others, it's almost like passing down the stories from your grandparents that are part of your family's history. So I thought I would share this one with you.  Oh and the cookies are to die for - try them for yourself.

1 stick butter (softened - not melted)

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup oil

2 cups plain flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix butter, sugar, egg, and oil together.  Add flour, baking powder, and vanilla.  Mix well.  Roll batters in balls and place on greased cookie sheet.  Press flat with hand.  Bake at 325 degrees for 12 - 14 minutes.  Remove cookies immediately from cookie sheet.  (I don't know why exactly but that is what the recipe called for!)

I hope you enjoy!  

BTW you can totally change the flavor of these tea cakes by just making a few adjustments.  For example, instead of vanilla extract try almond (1/4 tsp) and add chocolate chips - it will change your life.  I also think it would be good to switch the white sugar for brown sugar and add oatmeal and raisins.  

I pray that your holidays are filled with great memories, wonderful food, amazing family and priceless friends.

Oh and share a recipe or two!

beads and recipes

So Candace and I are taking "A Daisy A Day" on her first adventure of the summer - we are going to the Farmer's Market in Downtown Laurel this Thursday to sell some earrings and headbands.  So if you are in town - come see us!
In an attempt to make more beads faster, Candace decided she would teach me to make the pretty beaded balls she uses in the earrings!  Well, ladies and gents we now know why I stick to crochet and headbands.  The one on the left is Candace's bead - the one on the right is mine.  Yes it does resemble a funky-looking egg rather than a true sphere!  However, she can no longer say that I have not tried to help!
Don't worry though, Candace fixed my mess up so the earrings will be absolutely perfect for Thursday night!

I also thought I would share with you one of my favorite things about summer so far.  As we are home during the day now, we have to cook lunch.  And as there are only so many times you can have pizza rolls, hot pockets, or anything else from the "college-dorm-food" section of the frozen-foods aisle, we had to get creative.  We love to experiment for dinner, but lunch is supposed to be easy and fast.  So let me introduce you to the grilled cheese.  This is not your ordinary, american cheese and bread grilled cheese.
This particular grilled cheese includes mexican chicken seasoned with a taco seasoning packet!  Today we added left over fried chicken that I cut off the bone and chopped into bite size pieces.

Anyone remember this pic from the other night? The left-over chicken breast became a the filling for a grilled cheese for lunch the next day!  It was amazing!  So my advice is this - use any leftover meat - i.e. taco chicken, sauteed chicken breast, taco seasoned ground beef, add cheese, bread, a little butter.  And you will have the best next day lunch ever!  You can switch it up a little and use a tortilla for a quesadilla instead of bread or heat meat through in a skillet or microwave to top a baked potato or mashed potatoes.

It may just be but this little method never seems to get old.  Oh, one other little tidbit.  Instead of a quesadilla, you could take left over meat of choice, add cheese, dark red kidney beans, bell peppers, onions, etc wrap in tortilla as you would for a burrito.  Store in a ziploc bag, tin foil, or plastic wrap in the refrigerator - and you have a quick homemade healthy lunch for work the next day!  For the OCD types, you could make several burritos, write on the wrapping what it is(if you make different varieties), and freeze them for a couple of weeks of lunches.  I am super excited about making the burritos to freeze when school starts back!  (Even though I am determined not to dwell on the fact that it is now July - the proverbial summer Sunday before the work week starts back!)


So I hope you all have a wonderful day!  Cook your own food - it's fun and so much better for you!  And please don't be afraid to experiment in the kitchen!

Cooking

Okay so its summer (if you couldn't tell by the MS heat) and all the fruits and vegetables are now in season and better than ever! Candace and I are trying to eat healthier foods in order to lose weight, so that means more of the delicious fruits and veggies!  Recently we came across a wonderful recipe by Rachel Ray on her show "30 Minute Meals."  We loved it so much that I thought I would share our version of her creation.

You will need:

1 lb or so chicken breast

(you can substitute anything from pork loin, shrimp, steak)

1 onion

1 bell pepper

2 stalks celery

2-3 cloves garlic

pinch of thyme

1 can Fire Roasted Tomatoes

2 Chipotle peppers in Adobo

1 tsp of Adobo sauce

1 Mexican Beer or 1 1/2 cup of chicken stock

Begin by tossing chicken in mixture of flour, salt, pepper, and paprika.  Brown chicken  in just enough Extra Virgin Olive Oil to cover bottom of pan. BTW you will need a large pot and meal is best if you cook everything in the same pot.  When chicken is brown, remove from pot.  Add a little more Olive Oil if needed and all veggies after chopping (onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic, and thyme).  Allow the veggies to sweat just until the onion is translucent.  Next add the beer/chicken stock, tomatoes, chipotle peppers, and adobo sauce. (Depending on the heat level desired, you can remove seeds from chipotle peppers as most of the heat is in the seeds.)  Let simmer until everything is heated through, and then enjoy.  We made some brown rice and put our tex mex "stoup" over the rice. 

I hope you all enjoy the recipe.  Try it  - its really amazing!  My Dad is really picky and he really liked it!