Cookies

Chocolate Oatmeal Raisin cookies anyone? Soft oatmeal cookies, I might add, due to a minimum baking time and the addition of a tablespoon of lemon juice. Delicious!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1 and 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup white sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup softened butter (1 1/2 sticks)

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 cups coarsely ground old-fashioned oatmeal, uncooked

1 cup raisins

1 package chocolate chips

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two large cookie sheets. In small bowl, with wire whisk, stir flour, baking soda, and salt until blended.

2) In large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat white and brown sugars with butter until creamy, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Beat in eggs, one at a time, bating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla and lemon juice. Reduce speed to low; gradually beat in flour mixture just until blended, occasionally scraping bowl.

3) With wooden spoon, stir in oats, raisins and chocolate chips until well combined.

4) Drop dough by rounded tablespoons, 2 inches apart, onto prepared cookie sheets. Bake cookies until tops are golden, 12 to 14 minutes. With a wide spatula, transfer cookies to wire racks to cool. Repeat for any remaining dough. Enjoy!

(Almost) Restaurant Worthy Pizza

Pizza is our family's Friday night tradition- two of them, actually, to accomodate our many family members :)

Once the dough is mixed together, and has risen for a while, it's time to roll it out. We always have many hands willing to roll, squish and pinch the pizza dough.


With our favorite toppings in place, they are baked for some minutes, emerging from the hot oven crisp and golden.

"It smells like Dominoes in here!" Viv exclaims as she runs down the stairs.
"Yummy!"

The Vegetables of our Labors

This year our family planted a garden... add a couple raised beds, some huge overgrown tomatoes, peppers, and corn, and you get our garden. Yep.
When we first planted our plants, everything was in neat, cute little rows, and everything was contained inside of the raised beds. People who walked by would often stop to admire our yard, complimenting Dad and Mom on "How nice it all looked!" I thought it was nice too.


Until everything decided to grow up.



Above are our pumpkins and corn. Our pumpkins were supposed to grow on the ground around the corn, but as you can see, they're almost half as tall as the corn!



What does all of this garden produce translate into? Canning. Of course.
I'm off work today so Mom's going to have me help with canning some more green beans and beets. Fun!!!

Pecan Torte

My Grandma's birthday was this past Saturday and I made this yummy Pecan Torte- although instead of corn syrup I substituted maple syrup to make it a Pecan Maple Torte. Everyone liked it and grandma said it was 'one of the best cakes she had ever had'. This is a picture of the cake below. Enjoy! Go HERE for the recipe.

Bread, Bread, Bread!

The other day mommy and I made bread. I put all the ingredients into the bread machine and then the machine did the kneading. When it was all done, we took the dough out, shaped it, and then put it in the pan. Here is our basic bread recipe:

1 1/8 cups water

1 tsp salt

1 T honey or sugar

2 T olive oil or butter

2 1/2 cups unbleached flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp yeast

(this recipe makes one good sized loaf of bread)

Cakes and Corn

Tonight I made dinner for our family. The menu included salmon cakes with lemon herb sauce, seasoned rice, corn, lettuce salad, and chocolate pudding topped with whipped cream for dessert. Making it was a lot of fun and Soph helped me debone the salmon (which is a big job and I was grateful for her help :). So, in the end, all of my family thought that the meal was delicious and Si said it was the best meal he had ever had! This is a picture of the salmon cakes.

Baking Cookies

Yesterday Hanna and I made some cookies; she made chocolate chip and I made oatmeal scotchies. My sisters were watching Little Women and, I have to confess, half the time I was mixing the dough I was also watching the show. Mommy was a little worried that I would forget something, but in the end the cookies turned out pretty well (except for one batch that cooked a little too long :( Anyway, which kind of cookie is your favorite? Chocolate chip or oatmeal scotchie? Si