The Best Cookies Ever

Chocolate chips, M&Ms, oatmeal, peanut butter, and... love. These are my "signature" cookie. I've adapted the recipe over the years from various recipes I found online and in cookbooks, and if I may say so, they're perfection.

A few days after we adopted Oliver, I left a batch of these on the kitchen counter overnight. By the next morning, he had taken all ~60 of the cookies and either eaten or hidden them around the house. I panicked and thought I had poisoned him, but he was just fine. I don't condone feeding these to your dog, but if they accidentally eat some, they'll probably be okay :)

The week before our wedding, I made about 5 batches. Each batch makes about 6 dozen cookies...that's a lotta cookies. It took me an entire afternoon, but it was the perfect pre-wedding stress reliever. We served them at our intimate rehearsal dinner for 100 instead of a groom's cake. They disappeared in minutes!

Photo by my friend Jen:


















Amy's Monster Cookies
Printable Recipe

Makes 4-6 dozen cookies. I recommend halving the recipe, as the large amount of dough can get quite unwieldy in the mixing process. They also freeze well if you have leftovers.

1 c. margarine
1 c. butter
1/2 c. chunky peanut butter
2 c. brown sugar
2 c. white sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
4 c. all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
4 c. rolled oats
2 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 c. M&Ms

Preheat oven to 350.

Grease cookie sheet(s) or line with aluminum foil. In a very large bowl, cream together margarine, butter, peanut butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth.

In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and rolled oats. Stir flour mixture into sugar mixture. Stir in chocolate chips and M&Ms.

Drop by tablespoonfuls onto prepared cookie sheets. Bake 9-10 minutes or until edges are golden. Enjoy!

Kindergarten Pipe Dreams, Revisted

Last July, I made guacamole. Then I took one of the avocado pits and suspended it with toothpicks in a plastic cup, just like I did in Kindergarten. Because I am easily amused. I don't remember what happened with my avocado tree when I was actually 5, but this time around, it's thriving.

Can't wait to throw that baby in the ground this spring!

Then:














Now:


















In other "yay" news, we got an email today that after all of our back-and-forth fighting with the warranty people, Casio has finally shipped our repaired camera back.

In the meantime, I've been wondering what life would be like with a Digital SLR, and trolling Craigslist for steals (highly unlikely). If anyone out there is looking to upgrade or has an old, beginner-friendly DSLR that you're thinking about selling, can we talk? A new one certainly isn't in the budget, but oh boy, I'd love to be able to take nice photos.

Orange Banana-Nut Bread

I had some old bananas I needed to use up, so I made this the other night while watching my guilty pleasure, the Bachelor. Recipe from Cooking Light. I even remembered to take a picture! YUM.

Bonus: In addition to tasting good, it made the house smell amazing for about 24 hours.




Orange Banana-Nut Bread
Adapted from Cooking Light
Printable Recipe

2 cups flour, all-purpose
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 whole eggs
1 1/2 cups bananas, mashed
1 1/2 tablespoons orange peel, grated
3 tablespoons orange juice
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 350.

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups and level with a knife. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt, stirring with a whisk.

Place sugar and butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add banana, peel and juice; beat until blended. Add flour mixture; beat at low speed until just moist. Stir in walnuts. Spoon into an 8 1/2 by 4 1/2-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray.

Bake at 350 for one hour and 5 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

CSA Week 5

This week's CSA box is full of fun goodies!



- Rainbow chard
- Broccoli
- Italian parsley
- Red potatoes
- Oyster mushrooms
- Yellow onion
- Braeburn apples
- Blood oranges and honey tangerines

I'm planning on making a frittata tonight. My first time, hope it works!

Online Book Club

The nerd in me is so excited! I just joined an online book club. I've been in 2 real-life book clubs before, and both were great for girly bonding time (did I just say that?), but would inevitably wind up full of non-book-related chatter and gossip. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there was rarely an incentive to read the book. This will be great because I've been wanting to spend more time reading and less time playing on my computer lately, and I needed some structured motivation to do that.



















Image Source

Jillian of Girl on the Park is organizing the book club. She is also the lovely Mrs. Hummingbird from Weddingbee, which I used to read daily while planning my wedding (and through which I met my dear friend Wendy). I've been enjoying following the personal blogs of some of my favorite former Weddingbee bloggers as they've moved on to newlywedness.

If you're interested in signing up for the book club, I believe it's not too late. Just head over to Girl on the Park next Monday when she announces the book selection and comment on the post. Even if you don't want to join the club, go there anyways, she's full of witty randomness that will probably make you smile :)

C is for Cookie

This just made me laugh out loud. Found here while stumbling.

Vanilla Bean Rice Pudding

Rice is my favorite food. Tomatoes too, it's a tie. Anyways, we were invited over to our fun neighbors' house for an Indian-themed dinner last week, and I offered to bring dessert. I thought rice pudding would be a nice way to tie everything together. Plus, well, I just love rice in all forms.

I had never made rice pudding before, and boy did I underestimate the difficulty and guesswork. I really had to play with the cooking times in the recipe, cooking the rice in step 3 about 15 minutes instead of 25, and then extending the time in step 4 to about 40 minutes instead of 10 before I felt it was thick enough.

In the end, it rocked everyone's socks off. This was also my first time using a real vanilla bean. Fun! Would definitely make this again now that I figured out the timing. Also, I omitted the rum since we didn't have any on hand. I didn't miss it, but I'm sure it would be a yummy addition.

At first:



Finished product:



Vanilla Bean Rice Pudding
Adapted from Everyday Italian
Printable Recipe
Serves 6


Ingredients:
5 cups 1% low-fat milk
2/3 cup arborio rice
1 vanilla bean, split length wise
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons rum, optional

Instructions:
1. In a heavy, medium saucepan, combine milk and rice. Scrape in the seeds from the vanilla bean and add the bean.
2. Bring the milk to a boil, stirring occasionally.
3. Reduce the heat and simmer, stirring frequently, until rice is tender, about 25 minutes.
4. Stir in the sugar and rum. Cook until mixture thickens about 10 minutes longer.
5. Discard the vanilla bean.

Note: If you're on Weight Watchers, this recipe is 4.5 points for a serving.

CSA Week 4

Butter lettuce, arugula, D'Anjou pears, green cabbage, shallots, Russian kale, garnet yams, Fuji apples, frozen blueberries.

Heart Day Feast

For the last few years, my Valentine's Day present to the hubs has been a massive feast. This year, I must say, was better than ever! I found most of the recipes on some fantastic food blogs. The foodie blog world never fails when looking for inspiration.

The menu:
Arugula Salad with Smitten Kitchen's pickled onions
I've made several batches of these pickled onions, and I've been eating them with a bit of the pickling juice over salad for the last few weeks. Healthy and yummy!

Here are mine at the beginning pickling stage:



And here are Deb's from Smitten Kitchen, this shot puts my photography to shame:












And here is the recipe, from Smitten Kitchen:
Pickled Onions
Printable Recipe
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup cold water
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 to 3 really good shots hot sauce (recommended: Tabasco)
1 red onion, sliced into very thin rings

In a small bowl, combine red wine vinegar with 1/2 cup of cold tap water. Stir in salt, the sugar and the hot sauce. Add the sliced onions and let sit for at least one hour. [Do ahead: Make these the night before to save time; they were even better pickled overnight.]

Roasted Broccoli from Barefoot Contessa via Amateur Gourmet. The recipe is in narrative form, so pop over to Adam's site for instructions.

Image via Amateur Gourmet














Potato Gnocchi from Simply Recipes
In my opinion, this was the highlight of the meal. Plus I was so proud of myself for making gnocchi from scratch! I had never used a potato ricer before, and I think I was about ready to kill it by the end... maybe the one I bought was low quality. Anyone have potato ricer tips? Totally worth it though. I'm not going to include the recipe here since Elise's photos are integral, in my opinion, to getting it right. You can find the recipe here.

Here are my little guys before boiling:



And here are Elise's beauties from Simply Recipes:












Homemade marinara sauce from this America's Test Kitchen recipe. I eat this stuff plain by the bowlful, seriously. My favorite.

Filet mignon

Sorbet

I'm already thinking of how to top this meal for next year. Among my presents from the hubs, a sweet bouquet from my favorite florist on the planet (they did our wedding and I heart them forever), Passionflower Design. Anemones, tulips, stock...lovely!

Disclaimer: Crappy iPhone photo

Community Supported Agriculture

When we first moved to Oregon from Los Angeles in 2006, I was thrilled to be living in the world of local, organic, sustainable food. As any good new Oregon hippies should, we quickly signed up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription. In a nutshell, we enrolled with a local organic farm to receive weekly shares of their produce for a season. We learned about lots of fun new vegetables and I taught myself a lot about how to cook, but the box was huge and we wound up wasting a lot since we were new in town and didn't know anyone to share it with.

Fast-forward a few years, and I started thinking about doing it again. I even added "Subscribe to a CSA for one season with no wastefulness (i.e. use or share everything)" to my 101 in 1001 list. My friend Bonnie was all raves about Good Food Easy, so I did a bit of research. It sounded perfect: they seem to be the only farm in the area that offers shares through the winter, but more importantly, they offer small, medium, and large shares to avoid wastefulness! I was sold. When I found out that they sometimes include pickles, sauerkraut, and kimchee from the licensed kitchen on their farm, I certainly needed no more convincing. Oh, and you can get their eggs too! The other great thing about Good Food Easy is that, after the 4-week minimum subscription, you can subscribe to as many weeks as you'd like (the other one we did required an entire season).

We got our 3rd small share last week. I never really had a reason to look forward to Thursdays before, and now it's quickly becoming my favorite day of the week! Along with the CSA newsletter, the farm owners send recipes and explanations of potenially unfamiliar vegetables via email each week. I'm going to start blogging about our weekly shares and what I do with them... I can't believe I didn't think of that already! Good Food Easy also contracts with organic distributors during the winter to include produce (i.e. citrus fruit) that's not necessarily local in the shares.

I highly recommend looking into a CSA subscription. What could be bad about having a ready supply of healthy food while supporting a local farm?

Week 1: Celery, rainbow chard, beets, apples, oranges, red cabbage, delicata squash, garlic


Week 2: Pears, apples, clementines, potatoes, lettuce, orange cauliflower, dried oregano, kimchee


Week 3: Grapefruit, lemon, navel oranges, bananas, French fingerling potatoes, oyster mushrooms, collard greens, carrots, red onion

Aerogarden Update #1

We have little sproutlings! This afternoon, we played survival of the fittest and pruned all but the strongest-looking sprout in each of the 3 pods. It's been a little over a week since we first "planted" these. Grow little guys, grow!

See my original Aerogarden post here.

Before:











































After:

#101

Oh noes! I was going to have a big celebration for my 100th post, and it blew right by me. This is #101! I'm going to get nostalgic for a sec, so feel free to run away, slam your laptop shut, or at the very least close your browser window. If you stay, my bestest non-human friend Oliver J. Dogg will do his best to ease your weary eyes.

Photos by our buddy Jon













When I started this blog, I had absolutely NO intention of anyone ever reading it. It was just a convenient little place to gather my inane thoughts. Now, about 7 months later, I think maybe somebody out there might be reading this, and I'm so glad! If not, I'm still happy as a clam using this as a place to record cool stuff I find on the internet and occasionally produce in real life. I often start projects I don't finish, so I'm really proud of myself for keeping up with this blog and pleasantly surprised at how much I've enjoyed it.

















One more thing: the power of the internet as a social tool never ceases to amaze me. It brought me my husband, one of my dearest friends, and connections with wonderful strangers with so much to share. Thanks for stopping by... and if you're not already, be my Twitter friend (I'm severely addicted)!

Etsy Find: Annechovie

Social work can be a thankless job. A couple of years ago, I was going through a particularly rough time at my last job (at a residential facility for abused and neglected children) when I came across this print (mine's ever so slightly different) from Etsy seller Anne Harwell at Annechovie. Now it brightens up my living room, and is a constant reminder to take care of myself. I tend to forget about that while I'm busy taking care of others.

(All images via Annechovie)


















There are some other prints with poignant quotes in Anne's shop... maybe one speaks to you?

Cute as a Button

These candy buttons from Bake it Pretty are so cute, I might just have to throw a party so I can give them out as favors. I love, love, love the red & aqua pairing, but you can of course make them in any color. The step-by-step photo tutorial is here, including a selection of 4 different free retro-inspired label designs! Via Craftzine

(all images via Bake it Pretty)





































Bake it Pretty is also a shop with everything you never knew you needed to make darling goodies, including the button molds used for the candies above. The perfect mix of kitsch and good taste! Here are some of my faves:

Bavarian Rose Cups










Magical Forest Sampler










Heart Window Mini Box










Mini Fruit Cutters

Handwriting = Font

#57 on my 101 in 1001 list is to have my handwriting made into a font. Yesterday, I came across Amanda at Fonts for Peas (via iDIY), a free service that will do exactly that, as long as you follow their simple instructions. How neat! If you're not crazy about your own script, you can also download and use fonts that Amanda has created for others. Movin' this one to the top of my list.

Image via Fonts for Peas:











If that isn't fun enough for you, Amanda also has an adorable collection of free "scrapbook fonts" that you can download here. Just a small selection:

Image via Amanda:


















Can't wait to try these out!

Tomatoes from The Future

During our engagement, Andy got really excited about using the registry scanner gun. When left on his own for a few minutes in the vast Macy's housewares section, he found one thing he wanted: an Aerogarden.



















Source

We also registered for these:





















































Source

We set it up a couple nights ago, and it rocks! It's not as eyesore-ish as I had feared, and it's in our downstairs room so it's pretty out of the way. Obviously I can't tell you yet if it works, but I'll be documenting the progress here. It should take 4-7 days for the first sprouts to pop up. There is only space for one type of crop at a time, so of course we did the cherry tomatoes first. How awesome would it be to have fresh, homegrown tomatoes in the middle of winter? I'm excited to see how this experiment goes.

99 Things

Saw this here today, and thought I'd play along, in honor of the almost 99 posts on my blog, and in honor of the paper I'm putting off writing....Good times!

Here are the rules: Bold the things you’ve done and post on your blog. Leave a comment if you do it, I'd love to read yours!

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been a passenger on a motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Kissed a stranger at midnight on New Year’s Eve
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Got a tattoo
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee