I am trying a new recipe for supper tonight: cock-a-leekie soup, using a NY Times recipe:
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1022930-cock-a-leekie-soup-scottish-chicken-and-leek-soup
The main ingredients are chicken and leeks, but there's also celery, carrots, bay leaf, thyme, parsley, star anise, rice (or barley) and prunes. (I left out the garlic, of course.) The chicken and leek greens are just starting to get to a boil, and it smells interesting already.
We're in a winter storm watch, with anywhere from an inch to 10 inches of snow forecast, depending upon the latest update. Right now it is just flurries, but it's a good day for a nice warm soup.
Joan--Nothing is sadder than having great snacks with a disappointing football game. 🙁
On Friday, I made yogurt. I also made hummus from chickpeas that I had cooked and frozen a couple of months ago.
For dinner, we finished the pork loin roast with barley, butternut squash, and kale. Leftovers always give me time for other projects!
The scoop number is supposed to represent the number of scoops in a quart, but how full you fill each scoop is a big factor, and it always seems to me that a larger scoop is prone to produce a rounder ball of dough than a smaller scoop.
On the basis of the size numbers alone, if a #60 scoop produces 60 cookies, a #50 scoop should logically produce 50 cookies, but I only got 38 a few days ago.
The #50 scoop produced dough balls that weighed around 1.2 ounces each, the #60 scoop produced dough balls that weighed around 0.8 ounces each.
The other thing I noticed is that the #50 size cookies seemed to have a more open interior. (These cookies tend to have big open areas inside, which is why they're so good with milk, as they have lots of space to hold the milk when you dunk them.)
On New Year's Eve, I baked Spiced Pumpkin Bread (Kurbisgewurzbrot), a German rye bread from Stanley Ginsberg's blog, The Rye Baker. I've been baking it for about five years now, and I love this bread which uses just whole wheat and medium rye flour. It is cooling on the rack, and we will slice it at lunch tomorrow.
I also made the dough and assembled Eggnog Sweet Rolls on New Year's Eve, which I will refrigerate overnight and bake and glaze in the morning. I created this recipe last year out of a Fleischmann's Yeast and a Red Star Yeast recipe.
I made a batch of oatmeal crisps (chocolate chip cookies) today. I've used a #70 or a #60 scoop in the past, today I used my new #50, it made the cookies about 1.2 ounces each post-baking, and they took about 5-6 minutes longer in the oven. The batch made 38 cookies.
Made a 3rd batch of oatmeal-date-raisin cookies, grinding up the oatmeal a bit, doubling the dates, and making them with a #50 scoop (previous batches were with a #60 or #40.) We like this batch the most.
One of the items I ordered the first time was a set of tools that was missing one item. I emailed them on Wednesday evening (Christmas day) and by noon on Thursday the replacement was ready to be shipped direct to my son's house in Pittsburgh (he's leaving in a few days), so they get an A+ from me on service.
I was interested in some of the Fiesta items they have. We have a large collection of classic Fiesta, some of it dates back to my wife's grandmother. Some years ago there was an antique store in Lincoln that closed and sold out their inventory at an auction. It was a HUGE sale, and by the end of the afternoon, most of the dealers attending were out of cash, so we were picking up real bargains in the remaining Fiesta, like a stack of a dozen bread plates for $5.
Diane made oatmeal-date-raisin cookies today. I think she and our son are planning to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies over the weekend. (Or they may be hoping I make them.)
Recently I've been ordering from Everything Kitchens (in MO), they've got some interesting stuff on their site and are very fast. I ordered something at 10PM last night, by 7:30 AM today I got a notice that it was ready to be picked up by the carrier.
I gave my son this set of implements for Christmas, my wife liked it so much I just ordered one for us:
https://www.everythingkitchens.com/dreamfarm-set-of-the-best-1.html
If anyone is interested, I can have them send you a 'referred by friend' email.
Merry Christmas everyone. Jack (the cat) let us sleep in until 8 AM to day, most days he wants us to feed him by 6:30. Another hour of sleep would have been nice, though.
I think we're having sort of a brunch today, not sure if it will be before or after opening presents, that sort of depends on when everyone is up and hungry. We got some thick bacon at Just Good Meat in Omaha and still have a few bagels left, plus we bought a Racine kringle. Christmas dinner will be Steak Diane this evening, with trifle. (We wound up making a second trifle to use up all the ingredients, and had some of it as a late night snack.)
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That's good news, Mike! My aerogarden needs a new bulb. But I haven't used it for a year or two, as I have 2 grow lights mounted on a baker's rack, which allows me to grow a much larger variety of foods. Now that Christmas is over at our house (yes, we have our gathering on Christmas Eve to allow our significant others to join other family members in celebrations) I'll start up indoor gardening again.
We had charcuterie (assorted meats & cheeses) with some roasted balsamic mini peppers, roasted olives with whipped feta, I also made crostinis. We will be able to nosh on this for a couple of days. My manager joined us tonight - Will had picked up her dog from doggy day care as it closed earlier than we did, but we were able to leave shortly after 5.
We've been invited to brunch tomorrow morning which will be nice.
Merry Christmas to All!
The cinnamon roll croissants came out great. I cut the triangles for the cinnamon rolls, spread a compound butter (plant butter, sugar and cinnamon) on it, then rolled them up and let them proof for 2 hours before baking.
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Tonight is 'assemble the trifle' night, I made the pastry cream earlier today, made the ladyfingers the other day and the other ingredients (angel food cake, strawberry jello, fruits) need to be prepped. Cool Whip is in the fridge.
Christmas dinner guests are arriving within the hour. I'm ready, thanks to a lot of help from my husband. Spiral sliced ham, mashed potatoes, maple candied carrots, corn, broccoli salad (our daughter is bringing it), garlic knots, dinner rolls, assorted cookies (molasses, lemon-coconut, peanut butter-chocolate chip, cranberry-coconut, and buckeye bars). 13 guests plus a 4 week old. My granddaughter will most likely bring a boule of her sourdough bread. We open gifts after dinner and put out trays of the cookies to "graze" on. I'm wishing joyous cooking and eating for all of my baking friends tomorrow!
