Strangeness and Charm

January
1. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien ★★★
2. The Thirteenth Child (Frontier Magic #1) by Patricia C. Wrede ★★★
3. Across the Great Barrier (Frontier Magic #2) by Patricia C. Wrede ★★★
4. The Far West (Frontier Magic #3) by Patricia C. Wrede ★★★

Header: Dora Winifred @TDA
layout: minty_peach
Mood: kohler 
FO Banner: Dora Winifred @TDA

59. Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe here

I absolutely love oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and these were pretty good. Browning the butter, while an extra step, really gives a nice flavor. My little adventure was that I couldn't find the electric mixer, but I found non-electric hand mixer so I used that instead which made me feel very oldschool. Other than that, pretty simple. I didn't add the pecans or the coconut since I didn't have them, but I might have to try them next time!

60. Spinach, Mushroom, and Feta Mushroom Quiche
Recipe here

This was really delicious. A bit watery, but that was my fault since I didn't drain the spinach enough. My only adjustment was that I didn't add Parmesan cheese, as I thought the feta and the mozzarella plenty.

61. Green Beans with Pecans, Red Peppers, and Onions
Recipe here

I adjusted this recipe a little bit to make it healthier. I used oil instead of butter to saute the peppers and the onions, and I skipped the white sugar. I liked it, and it went very well with the quiche.

It's been a while since I've posted this and I have quite a few to post. So I will be doing several!

54. Baked Spaghetti Squash with Spinach and Cheese

recipe here

A bunch of friends came over and made dinner with me. This was a rich dish, like most dishes with spaghetti squash are. Unfortunately my friends didn't mix everything together once it was in the pan, but it was still really delicious and easy to make. In fact, cutting the spaghetti squash was really the hardest part. It is a bit time consuming as the squash has to cook for an hour before you can shred it, so that plus preparation plus baking the actual dish probably took about 2 hours.

55. Skinny Chicken Enchiladas
recipe here

So, I say I used that recipe but I kind of didn't. What happened was that I realized that I had bought EVERYTHING for the enchiladas except the tomato sauce to make the actual enchilada sauce with. None of my friends had tomato sauce, but I found a recipe that was like, Italian style enchiladas that used spaghetti sauce instead. But because I used spaghetti sauce, I had to chance the recipe quite a bit. Like, I couldn't use a lot of the spices because the flavors would clash. And then for some reason the oven wouldn't melt the cheese, so it was a bit of a disastrous experience all around. Next time, I will definitely make it like the recipe says AND remember the tomato sauce.

56. Spiced Pumpkin Muffins
recipe here
Delicious and easy. I did the option that used extra pumpkin which made it a pretty rich muffin. I didn't have pumpkin pie spice or nutmeg/ginger/clove/allspice so I just used cinnamon and sugar for the topping.

57. Sour Cream Apple Pie with Streusel Topping
recipe here
I got invited to some people's house for Thanksgiving, so I decided to do a test run with some friends of apple pie before making it for guests as I have never made a pie before.

First, we got the kind of dough that you have to roll, which ended up being kind of hard. Fortunately there was enough dough for TWO crusts and this pie doesn't require a crust on top. The first one we baked too long and it burned a bit, so we ended up using the second one, which wasn't quite high enough on the pan but worked well enough.

The filling itself was pretty easy to make. The topping was sprinkled on a bit unevenly. Due to it being our first attempt, very ugly pie but VERY delicious. Would definitely make again, but maybe with dough already on the pie pan that has been frozen to avoid the complications of rolling it and putting it on the pan just right.

58. Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Cookies
recipe here
A pretty straightforward cookie to make! It needed a bit longer of a chill time for me. Used every ingredient except for the ginger, the house I was making it at did not have any.

The pumpkin made this cookie very soft, almost more of a bread texture than a cookie. It did solidify a bit more when I left the cookies in the fridge overnight, but still not really a cookie texture. Either way, it was good!

Apple pie muffins here

So, a bit of back story. I used to be ABSOLUTELY terrified of peeling and cutting apples. The way my stepmom showed me how to didn't help at all, where we used a knife to peel. One of my housemates gave me her apples and I'm also not really a fan of just eating them, I need to cut and peel them first. This time I cut and cored the apples first, then used a vegetable peeler. This housemate then asked if I'd make some apple muffins, so I looked up recipes which ended up being a bit complicated as I currently have no mixer and also not some of the ingredients a lot of them asked for. Then I found these!

Basically I just had to make the buttermilk, which I did by putting some lemon juice in milk and letting it sit for a couple minutes. Other than that, had everything! I was distracted to I accidentally put the dry ingredients directly in the wet ones instead of stirring them separately and then combining, but I figured it was no big deal. I also didn't have a sifter, so couldn't sift the flour etc. I also added a bit of baking powder as well as baking soda. Also, the topping wasn't coming out crumbly, more kind of like batter, so I ended up just spooning some on top. BUT THESE CAME OUT REALLY GOOD. My housemate even had 3 when they were just from the oven :D

And yay, I know I can use apples now! My fear of cutting them is over ;)

Soft Snickerdoodle Cookies recipe

I'm moving into a new apartment in a few days with 3 other girls. One I know pretty well, one I've only met once, and one I've never met before. I decided to bake some cookies as a welcome gift with some extras to give to old friends as they return. I decided on snickerdoodles, since I have all the ingredients.

These were an adventure, considering how easy they were. I think the butter was too soft because first of all it was hard to form them into balls (and at that point I should have realized and stuck them in the fridge or freezer or something but I didn't think of it) and then the cookies ended up being pretty flat and all clumped together even though the amount I used was TINY and they were far apart. I experimented with size and cooking time for the batches and ended up taking pictures. Since each batch had fewer than I normally would for regular dough, it took more batches. Improvement each time, though, so it was worth it!

They were soft and delicious, but I would like to try them again sometime with the dough being a lot better. I'm curious how it would be if not quite as thin. The butter was my fault, as I had skipped over the egg part so when I creamed the butter and sugar, it was hard to do. I heated the butter up a bit more before realizing that ooops, no eggs which I then added. If I had added them originally, I think it would have been the right texture and I wouldn't have decided to melt the butter further.
( pictures of each batch )

Chicken piccata recipe

My sister cooked a chicken stir-fry a couple nights ago and didn't cook all the chicken, so there was still one piece left in the freezer that I decided to do something with. I spent a lot of time looking at recipes, but unfortunately most either used the oven (which I'd prefer not to do for a one-person dish during the summer) or used ingredients that I didn't have. So it was nice when I found this recipe, which was cooked using the stove, had simple ingredients that I had around, and didn't require too much adjustment to change portions.

This was good. Easy to put together and cook. Unfortunately for once we didn't have freshly grated Parmesan, so I had to use the store-bought kind. Next time I will have to try the other way! I used the white wine option, and it took me slightly longer than it said for it to cook the whole way through. She said 3 minutes for each side, I probably did about 6 or 7.

It was also my first time doing (and hearing about) the butterfly cut, but once I found the right knife to use it was pretty easy to do. All in all, her estimate of 20-30 minutes was actually accurate in my case. I'm used to being much slower than they say but this was simple enough.

I offered to make dinner tonight and wanted to make something with zucchini in it.I got a request to make something with white fish in it, so I decided to make fish and zucchini tacos.

The recipe.

I'm not a huge fan of white fish but since it was his request figured I'd try it anyway. These were really easy to make. Most of the prep time was just cutting up the zucchini. The directions for how to cut the zucchini were phrased a bit oddly but I figured it out. I cooked the fish for 10 minutes as instructed but it was a bit undercooked so I had to do it for a few more minutes.

I got a lot of compliments for these! I wasn't thrilled due to the white fish, but if I had to cook it this was probably one of the better ways to eat it. And it's certainly healthier than frying it.

Wednesday night was my turn to cook dinner. As I am still a fairly new cook it took me a long time to make these two dishes (yay for being slow and having to double check everything/look up what steps mean!) but it was worth it. The dinner turned out really delicious.

My idea was to make one thing that was a bit more complicated and one thing that was easier to make than the first. This worked out nicely.

lentil and chickpea salad with feta and tahini
This dish took a while to make, mostly because of having to cook the lentils and waiting for them to cool. The actual recipe wasn't that hard, but there were a lot of steps. There was no sage in the house so I had to do without, and we had coriander and cumin in spice form so I did that instead of using seeds. Since I wasn't using those seeds I accidentally skipped the step with the sesame seeds, but even missing/changing those steps the dish turned out fantastic. The lemons were fresh lemons from our garden.  Also, finally learned how to cut an onion into half moon slices. I thought I knew how but it turned out to be wrong so I ended up having to look that up online. When I served the dish the lentils were still warm, so I can vouch for the fact that this dish tastes good both warm and cold.

lemon-ginger chicken thighs
This was a lot simpler to make. Actually cooking the chicken was the part that took the longest. MAKE SURE TO GET CHICKEN THIGHS WITH SKIN ON IT! Part of the process is to rub the ginger/lemon peel mixture under the skin, and I'm glad that I made sure to get ones with skin. I followed the steps exactly but when I cut into the chicken to make sure that it was fully cooked it was still pretty pink. This could be in part because I used a saute pan rather than a pan that would have been more useful for this dish but I just put it in the microwave for a couple minutes and then stuck it back on the pan for a few more minutes. The chicken ended up being nice and tender and cooked perfectly. There is honey in it too so it's a bit on the sweeter side, which suited me perfectly. Next time I make this I will probably add more ginger.

A friend of mine came over today to bake with me and she wanted to make these sugar cookie bars.

39. sugar cookie bars

We followed the recipe as is. The bars themselves came out pretty OK but the frosting made WAY too much (we probably used only 1/3 of the amount that the recipe made) and way too sweet. In fact, they were so sweet that we both said that we wished we had made another recipe instead. If I ever made the recipe again I would use a different frosting recipe. We also didn't have any food dye so the frosting was just white.

We put parchment paper inside of the pan to put the batter on top of which made it so that there was no mess on the pan. This made the cleanup SO easy.

40. chocolate chip cookies
I made this a couple months ago (I guess I forgot to post about it) as a thank you present for some girls in my hall. They came out extremely soft and chewy and extremely delicious. One of the girls even asked me if I had some secret ingredient that I used. I think that using both white and brown sugar adds a nice flavor to it.

The only real change was that the dough as directed didn't seem quite right so I had to add a bit more milk. Here's what it looked like at first:


They also looked a bit undercooked fresh from the oven so I had to cook them a bit extra: