I took pictures.

The cookie dough I made the day before and let it marinate in its own goodness overnight, ready for baking the next day.

Talk to me about not eating raw cookie dough.

Ready for oven-lovin’…

A couple batches down (and many more to go).

Caramel bars. I doubled the recipe and made them on a large sheet pan.

Wheezy was playing outside, but came in hoping for a nibble.

And the Money Shot. See, I’m from a time when blogging was blogging (or journaling), and pictures were snapped, rarely edited; raw. Real. Sometimes you got lucky and your photo turned out pretty smooth, but mostly, it was just a simple picture. Now, visit (some of the most popular) blog sites and the pictures look professional, photo-shopped, glossed, and blurred. No child has faulty hair or skin, no food tainted by an unsightly scorch. I hate it. I prefer the ugly blog, the less-than-perfect pictures, the blog that feels like I fell upon an open journal, blemishes and all. I know, with the ease of digital dumping, and fancy cameras, it is almost impossible to take a bad shot. But I also know they are still out there.

This is semi-jokingly taken. It’s a decent shot, but the layers of mini waxed paper separating each bar is a copycat of the gazillion photos out there of sweet treats that just happen to be adorned with fancy papers, ribbons and glitter, all appearing to have fallen out of the oven along with the food. I wasn’t energetic enough to add colors, balloons, glitter and an adorable child with manicured hands, smiling in the background. But picture it in your head, mmmkay?

They didn’t really cut so well, so we had a few “rejects” to munch on. More than a few.

Recipe for Caramel Bars:

I was very happy with how this last batch turned out, and the family approved. I had the time to mix up the dough and let it sit, so there was no pressure there. Frank made chicken wings, I made pizza. We feasted without breaking the bank. I prefer to purchase bulk cheese at a decent price, otherwise I’m scrambling to find cheese on sale and it can get pricey quickly. I had a large bag of cheese from Costco, and was able to squeeze two pizza-making nights out of it. I also had pepperoni on hand, onions, banana peppers. What I didn’t have was sausage and anchovies, which we picked up at the store. I didn’t have to, but it was a “treat” for us.

Here is the recipe I used to make 3 large, 16-inch pizzas:

INGREDIENTS
4.5 tsp. dry yeast (I used rapid rise)
4 tsp. sugar
1 cup water + 1 cup beer (warmed, about 110 degrees)
4 cups flour* (I used unbleached, all-purpose)
2 tsp. salt
4 T. olive oil (a friend of mine swears by lard for the fat – he makes a great crust, too)

METHOD

1.) Add sugar to the warmed water (stir – it will bubble, so make sure you have some head room). Add yeast (stir – it will foam so mind that head room… this all worked fine in my 2-cup glass Pyrex). Let sit about 10 minutes until foamy and creamy.

2.) Mix flour and salt in mixing bowl (I used my KitchenAid – start with mixing paddle). Add yeast water. While mixing, add olive oil. Change to hook. Mix about 10 minutes. *Sprinkle a bit more flour over, if it is too sticky. I tend to need about 1/4 cup extra during this step. The dough will be sturdy and kind of sticky. Now it needs to sit for a while. I remove mine to a bowl coated lightly with olive oil turning the dough to coat. Cover and let rise for about 30 minutes somewhere warm.

3.) Grab a hunk (about 1/3 of the dough) and go at it on a lightly floured surface. Again, add more flour (sparingly), if you need to. Roll it out, and use your hands to shape a pizza. Add toppings and bake in a 425-450 degree oven for about 15-20 minutes.

How I do it? I roll mine and use my hands. We have a pizza pan (a flat, circular pan with holes in it) that I use. Pizza stones don’t work well for me. I brush some oil on one side of the dough, put that side down on the pan and shape it a bit more. Add sauce and toppings. Put it in the oven for 10 minutes. After it is sturdy enough, I slide the pizza off the pan directly onto the rack for another 10 minutes. When done, I use the pan to remove it from the oven again. Cut and serve. Yum.

I also made the sauce by taking a can of chopped tomatoes, a clove of garlic, some olive oil, salt and sugar. Take about 1T. of OO, heat in a pan, add the peeled garlic clove. Heat it up a little, but don’t burn it. Add a can of chopped tomatoes. Simmer the entire time you’re busy making the pizza. (I added about 1-2 T. tomato paste, too.) When the dough was ready, I pureed 1/2 fresh tomato in my ABSOLUTELY MOST FAVORITE APPLIANCE EVER FOOD CHOPPER, added the sauce and pureed that, too, stirred in about 1tsp. sugar and that was my sauce. I really like a fresh-tasting sauce, and not too terribly much of it.

But I also like to simplify. I like to make things myself if I can. Not to mention, whenever I’d buy the McCormick kind, I’d be spending more money than I cared to spend. So, I made it myself.

Pretty simple ingredients, both of which I purchased bulk-size from Costco (which sells some McCormick, if you like that kind). You can see in the picture that I used “California” garlic, which has a bit of a coarser grind.

For the price of two bottles of the store-bought kind, I can make about 2-3x as much of the mixture (and have enough parsley to use for at least 6 more). The ratio I used was about 3:1 garlic to parsley. But you can tweak to your desire. I have made it with regular-grind garlic as well and it did fine, but I prefer the coarse grind. Works for me!

Today I made this: Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread from AllRecipes.com.

Ingredients

* 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
* 4 eggs
* 1 cup vegetable oil
* 2/3 cup water
* 3 cups white sugar
* 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
* 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7×3 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

I used my pumpkin puree from yesterday. Ooh-la-la. My plans were to make the bread and have Frank take it to Franny’s soccer party. Plan was good. The boys gobbled down slices of the bread before I could even get them arranged on the plate. I put the kabosh on that. And then Frank forgot the nicely (not really, but we’ll pretend) arranged platter behind when he left.

Whatever. I get an “E” for Effort.

Here’s the review I left of the bread. If I were feeling less lazy I would have taken a picture and wrote up a little more here, but… eh.

I make pumpkin bread every year, and wanted to try something new. So glad I tried this one. It is SUPER yummy. Here’s a couple things worth mentioning:

1.) I made mine using 2 loaf pans, 9×5 I believe.
2.) I added about 1.5 cups of milk chocolates at the end, after everything was mixed.
3.) My toothpick NEVER came out clean. Even after 60 minutes. I cooked them about 65 minutes then took them out, letting them cool on a wire rack in the pan. I removed them about 20 minutes later.

I was very fearful they would be a gooey mess, but they were not. Moist in the middle, and yummy.

The only thing I might do different is try to go a little lower on the sugar, but based on the raves from family, maybe I’ll leave well enough alone.

Tastes good with chili. And wine.

Rating:

I wish I could remember how much my pie pumpkins were. I think they were about .99/each, but I really can’t honestly say. I’ll have to check the prices next time I’m at the store. My real experiment in this case was only partial cost-curiosity.

I decided that I would prepare my pumpkins in the crockpot rather than the oven. I got out my big crock to do this and quickly realized that they weren’t going to fit. I took the pumpkins out and left them on the counter. Days later I had a brilliant idea: do them one by one in the smaller crockpot. Aha! Momma didn’t raise no fool.

Since I have a habit lately of throwing things in the crockpot before bedtime, (beans mostly, to freeze and use) last night with nothing to throw in I looked at my two pumpkins. Plop! In went one.

I set it on its side, poured in about 1 cup of water and put the pot on low, brushed off my hands and walked away.

Prewashed, fear not.

(Notice crazy hair reflected in the lid?)

The next morning I have to say the pumpkin smelled pretty darn good. It was a nice aroma to wake to. Since it had been about 8 hours, maybe 9, I wondered if the pumpkin was ready. The outside didn’t get soft like I thought I would. A fork test didn’t work. A quick jab with a butcher knife didn’t work. A more forceful stab with the knife and I was in like slim.

I didn’t save the seeds for this one. I probably should have, but I was lazy and not really “feeling” the whole pumpkin seed thing. If I really wanted to get my bang for my buck I would have, though.

I took a stickblender to it after gutting it out to puree it, and then put it in the fridge.

I’ve read you’re supposed to let it sit overnight to drain any liquid, and then you can freeze it. In eyeballing I’d guess there’s about as much puree in one pumpkin as there is in the can (or maybe 1.5 cans worth), but I haven’t confirmed that yet. Going to weigh it tomorrow and see if it comes out to 15oz. I suppose I’ll have to make some pumpkin bread with it, too, just to try it out yanno.

Update: Pumpkin #1 was about 15oz. right on the nose. So 1 pumpkin = 1 can of pumpkin

If I were making multiple pumpkins, it would have been better to just stoke up the oven, but this was an easy fix-and-forget method that I would definitely use again.

Yesterday I decided to whip up a Pumpkin Dump Cake to take along. I don’t really like going to someones house like that empty-handed. As much as I enjoyed that cake, I figured the girls (there I go again) would, too. I also figured it would be budget-friendly since I had the ingredients on hand. Or so I thought.

I brought out my bowl and mixed up my pumpkin and spices. Oh, golly, gee. There’s that call for condensed milk again. The first time I made it I ran down to the pantry (I say “pantry” but really it’s just some steel shelving in our garage that we load up canned goods on) to grab a can of the milk. I knew I had one, if not two. I sure did. And they both expired back in 1845. Goodness. Trash those. I had just been to the store, and really didn’t feel like going again. I searched the ‘net for viable alternatives, but none of them pleased me. So I made my own. I used regular milk. There ya go. I had contemplated coconut milk, but decided that was straying too far from the path.

Well yesterday I couldn’t remember what I used in place of the condensed milk. Sour cream? What? What did I use? I didn’t want to mess it up, and, since Frank was on a run to pick up a pizza (Groupon deal, large for $6), I called my mommy to see if she had a spare can. She sure did. Mommy to the rescue. Called Frank, who had to circle back, to pick up the can.

Problem solved.

I melted my butter in the microwave, and went to grab my yellow cake mix. Hmm. I did have one, didn’t I? Not in the cupboard. Not below… so.. yeah. No. I didn’t have one. So much of making a recipe with stuff I already had.

Called mommy. Again. She didn’t even try not to laugh at me, and because she’s the queen of having extra baking supplies on hand, she sent my husband home with that, too.

Problem solved. Or so I thought.

Frank gets home, I finish off my mix, add the wet stuff to the pan, add the cake mix, pat-pat-pat it down, and put it in the oven; set the timer for 45min.

Half an hour later, Carlito goes to warm his spaghetti in the microwave and says, “What is this?”

“What’s what?” I called from my perch on the couch.

“This yellow stuff, grouse, in the microwave. I can throw it out”

Yellow stuff? MY BUTTER!!! “Nooooooooooooooooo!!”

I forgot my butter, dagnabbit. You can’t complete a recipe without butter. I contemplated throwing myself down the stairs, or hightailing it in to the kitchen to view the disaster that was awaiting me. Begrudgingly I took the butter from my son’s hands, and opened the oven. It looked OK. It smelled fantastic. Here goes nothing.

Butter poured, back in the oven for 10 more minutes. The end verdict is that it looks fine. I’m apprehensive because I made it in a throw-away pan, which I haven’t done before, and I let it sit in the oven longer than it should have. We shall see. It’s still coming with me on the trip.

After the beans cooked on low for a good 9 hours, I finished them for 1 more hour on high, then transferred the majority over to a skillet where I heated them with some canola oil, garlic, pepper and and onion. After they were a bit mashed and bruised-looking, they were ready. We ate them with heaping plates of warm tortilla chips, shredded cheese, sour cream and cilantro rice. Yum.

However, a few days later I was at a loss over what to do with the remaining beans.  I had already made chili recently, and having more beans and rice probably wouldn’t cut it.  Instead I put the beans (about 4 cups or so worth) into the bottom of my cast iron pot.  I added about 1 tablespoon of minced garlic, 1/2 cup of water, and a package of Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning mix while heating it  a bit on the stovetop, then added 1 package of beef sausages on top*, lidded it and put it in a 350 degree oven for 2 hours.

We went to pick up the kids at the mall and run a few errands, and by the time we got home the house smelled delicious. The sausages were plump and tasty, the beans were delicious. We had baked potatoes on the side (made earlier in the crockpot). I love it. Tonight, with all the running around we did, could have very easily spent $30-plus a night of pizza, burgers or take-out because of poor planning. But a little bit of thinking had me using up some beans I would have possibly tossed out, and putting a meal on the table for much less than one that was store bought.

*These were Usinger’s beef dogs purchased from Costco. They come 12 to a pack, divided into 2 packs of 6. Because they were large, I cut them in halves to make 12 servings. I do this quite often because, for some reason, eating 2 halves rather than 1 sausage makes it seem like you’re eating more. It’s much easier for me to give some of the boys 1/2 a sausage and then give them seconds, rather than start with the whole thing. This isn’t necessary for all of my children, but there’s a couple that prefer quantity over quality.

As I cooked the sausage and sliced the potatoes, adding it all the the pot with little bit of salt and red pepper flakes, I had a moment of panic. Is that IT?! Was it really this simple? Am I forgetting something?

I ran into the computer room to search my site for the recipe and found it: Olive Garden® Zuppa Toscana Soup. It was in the archives from 2004. The recipe (a photo) was missing. Tragedy. This is a VERY yummy soup. I must repost it.

This is a homemade version of the Olive Garden® Zuppa Toscana/potato and sausage soup. And honestly, it’s actually better and super-dee-duper easy.

Here’s the exact recipe I have written down, with my subs in parentheses:

Serves 2 [my subs serve 7]

2 3/4 c. Chicken broth [2 large containers of chicken stock]
1/4 c. heavy cream [I don't use nearly this much -- I use 1/4 cup for my increased version and that's plenty]
1 med. russet potato [3-4 red potatoes]
2 c. chopped kale [no measure, about 5 handfuls, whatever will fit to fill the pot]
1/2# spicy sausage [5 sausages, cooked and cut into medallions]
1/4 tsp. salt [to taste, I don't measure]
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes [about 1/2-1tsp. depending on your taste]
1c. shredded Parmesan, if desired

Prepare the sausage by placing in skillet with 1/2 cup water. Cook on medium for 10 minutes, then uncover, turn and cook for 10 more minutes. Cut into medallions. If you use bulk sausage, brown it and break it up into chunks.

1.) Heat stock in large pot over medium heat
2.) Slice unpeeled potatoes; add to soup
3.) Add cooked sausage to soup
4.) Add salt, pepper, cream; stir
5.) Add kale; stir

Simmer for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Garnish with some shredded Parmesan and serve with a nice hunk of bread. This soup is wonderful the next day and freezes well.

It is still, technically Monday. Not too late for a weekend wrap-up.

We did a lot this weekend. Friday night we went out with my brother, Frank’s cousin and a couple friends. It was a long night, but a nice time. We covered lots of ground, had plenty of fun, and finished the night off at a favorite Mexican restaurant with a delicious platter of shared food.

Saturday I woke up and made pancakes. Mmm. Later, we bummed around and then stopped at an anniversary celebration (parents of a boy on Dante’s soccer team). Got to catch up a bit with folks we don’t always see. Then it was home to watch some television with the family.

The next day we went to an impromptu soccer tournament, local festival where we played BINGO and the kids played some cheap games to win cheap toys. Oh, and I made waffles Sunday morning (they didn’t turn out so well).

Nice weekend. But back to the pancake-making. My mom’s been making buttermilk pancakes for the boys for lunch the past few weeks on occasion. She’d watch them (actually, she’d entertain them) for a few hours while I went in to work, and they would delight in some of her “famous,”  “best-ever” pancakes. I’ve been requested to make them at home, but keep forgetting to get the recipe. So I had to improvise. A try at it last week left me with some not-so-good ‘cakes. But this recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes was a keeper (not only is it a keeper, but it introduced me to Google’s Knol, which is pretty darn cool).

My favorite eggs.

What happens when you get too cocky…

What happens when you pay attention… (this is Lootie’s batch, he has a syrup-love)

For Franny and Dante, who love chocolate chips.

It was a yummy recipe, with great instructions (read the instructions, if you like making pancakes… I like his way of mixing in 1/2 of the dry to wet, and then mixing in the rest of the dry). I tried using it for waffles and it was a bummer; didn’t work. But that’s OK. It makes delicious pancakes. Will have to make a point of getting my mother’s Famous, Best-Ever Buttermilk Pancakes recipe to compare.

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GIVEAWAY – Good-As-Money

I have 2 coupons to give away, courtesy of Eggland’s Best Eggs (they sent me some for me and some to share).

(1) for a  Free carton of Eggland’s Best Eggs
AND
(2)  50¢ off coupons for Eggland’s Best Eggs

Simply leave a comment here telling me what you’d use the eggs in and I’ll pick a random winner on Friday. Make sure you use an email address I can contact you with. Yup, that’s it. You don’t have to follow me, you don’t have to blog about it. Just leave a comment so I have a way to contact you.

Well I don’t. I also don’t like the hideous worn-down paprika colored countertop. But that’s a whole ‘nother issue. That will be tackled in the near future.

I’ve been working up the nerve (aka “energy”) to just get started on the project. Either I’m compulsive and start something without thinking OR I over-think it and never start.

As summer break neared, my desire to make a dent in the project grew greater, and before I knew it I had a paintbrush in hand. With a well-timed stumble onto this page: How to Paint Kitchen Cabinets: For Imperfectionist, I was on my way. It was the gentle nudge, this compulsive imperfectionist needed to jump into things. I knew my painting would not be perfect, and that my kitchen is nothing beyond being a simple-as-they-come canvas. But I desperately needs a change, and paint is one of the simplest, cheapest ways to change the look of a room.

I started priming; 2 coats. Frank came home after I was well into the priming and had no desire to paint the kitchen (or do anything aesthetically to the house at all — <em>ever</em>), but he did pitch in and start on the upper cabinets, as well as finish up some of the lower ones that I abandoned by evening.

We are now closer to <em>finishing</em> the priming than starting it, and I need to firm up on my color choice. I know for sure the upper cabinets (or “cabs” as the trend is to call them) will be white. I am a liker of white in the kitchen. But I’ve been contemplating some color on the bottom. Right now I’m tending to favor an olive green for the bottoms, with darker handles). Our walls are a darker shade of eggshell, and the floor is a mock-marble(ish) linoleum.

Decisions, decisions.