See you in a week!

Love you all!  I'm taking the week off (mostly to play with the little one), and I'll see you bright and early in 2013!!

Merry Christmas!

Eat early and often, my friends!

All the pretty cookies!

I like to gather up all the new varieties of cookies that we've tried and add them to my list of old favorites.  Even though I mostly make the traditional cookies for Hanukkah and Christmas at our house, I am of the opinion that you can never have too many cookie recipes and I like to add something different from year to year.  Here are some suggestions if you feel your cookie list is getting a bit stale!

Show-off chocolate chip cookies

Cranberry cookie bars

Chocolate-orange cookies

Snickerdoodles

Raspberry mascarpone cookies

Chocolate matzo treats

Graham crackers

Mom's shortbread

White chocolate ginger biscotti

Lemon-macadamia nut cookies

Thin and chewy molasses cookies

Gingersnaps

Grammy's chocolate cookies

Hamantaschen

Chewy chocolate gingerbread cookies

Lavender biscotti

Lemon and lavender shortbread

The world's best brownies

Lime and basil shortbread

Chocolate shortbread

Homemade Oreo cookies

Perfect vanilla sugar cookies

Perfect chewy chocolate cookies

Bourbon balls

Fudgy chocolate cookies

Mandelbrot

Matzo toffee

Cream cheese-raspberry brownies

Chai-pistachio sugar cookies

Mexican chocolate cookies

Cream cheese-apricot brownies

Amish raisin cookies

Peanut blossoms

Italian cornmeal cookies

Lime swirl cheesecake bars

Italian Stuffed Mushroom Caps

Not all my friends are as crazy about mini-bell peppers as I am, so I recently tried making my appetizers in mushroom caps instead.  The filling is an Italian-inspired ground beef mixture, related to the Greek Stuffed Mini-Bell Peppers that I already shared. 


Italian Stuffed Mushroom Caps

2 packages (12 oz) of large mushrooms
1 lb ground beef
1 c cooked rice
Salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 c Parmesan cheese, grated
1 T lemon zest
2 T fresh oregano

Preheat oven to 400.  Remove each mushroom stem and reserve for another use. 

Mix the rest of the ingredients together in a bowl by hand.  Using a small spoon, fill each cap and place on a foil lined rimmed baking sheet.  Place on the high-middle rack of the oven and cook for about 5 - 7  minutes.  Turn on the broiler and cook a few more minutes until the meat is sizzling and cooked through. 

Chocolate shortbread

I've been making chocolate shortbread for years, but just recently I came up with a better recipe than what I was using before.  At least I think it is.  It's a variation on my mother's classic shortbread, which I'll reprint below:

Mom's Shortbread


1 lb butter
1 c sugar
1 t vanilla
Pinch of Salt
5 c flour

Cream butter and sugar together with electric beater until light and fluffy. Add salt, vanilla and flour slowly. Bake in a 9" x 13" glass dish at 275 degrees for an hour. When you remove from baking score in squares and sprinkle with sugar. 

To make the Chocolate Shortbread variety, make the following changes:
Add 1 c cocoa powder
Subtract 1/2 c flour

Delicious soups to help remove the holiday pounds

Mostly Vegetable Soups

Click to purchase ~ $2

Just before the holiday gluttony kicks in, and just after the New Year gluttony ends, Mike and I fill ourselves up with healthy healthy soups and stews.  These comfort foods give us the boost we need to resist some of the worst abuses, and they also help to get us back on track in the New Year.  This has been our pattern for years now, and I'm happy to say that even if we pack on a few pounds during the week leading up to Christmas and the week in between it and January 1, we always manage to get them right back off before another two weeks have passed.

No, we're not special (as in "well isn't that special?")...we just choose our gluttony wisely!

Well, I've put together an e-booklet with 13 of our favorites.  While I can't make any health or nutrition or even diet claims for these soups (I am not a registered anything), I can tell you that they work for us. 

  
Tomato Basil Soup 

Cucumber salad

I tend to think about this salad more in the summertime, but there's absolutely no reason not to serve it at other times.  Use an English cucumber, and slice it paper-thin with a processor if you've got one.  I did this one by hand, and my slices are a bit thicker.  I used shallots instead of the more traditional red onions, and doused it all with oil and vinegar.  Sprinkle with sesame seeds just before serving.