Sometimes I steal...

Clearly, I don't conjure up everything I cook from the aether. No, sometimes I scan other blogs and make exactly what I see there... minus the measurements... and usually plus more garlic. I think that this is a perfectly reasonable approach to life.

Recently I have had two that have gone over so well that I'm going to post them here for you. What can I say, I was a blob of uselessness for the holidays and haven't cooked nearly enough lately. Soon, I promise!

First we have a spinach soup by Pioneer Woman. I pureed the whole thing, mostly to demolish the onions in an effort to sneak them past my roommate should she want to try some (she came home too late, oh well, more for me!) and completely failed to measure anything, as per usual, but I followed the gist pretty well. It  was one of those soups that satisfies you to the core: warm, thick, does not strictly require tooth involvement and has enough spinach that you can pretend it's healthy. Perfect. You can find it here.

Option 2 for today is the other end of the spectrum: chocolate chip cookies. I actually made the dough for these when I was making cookies for my christmas cookie decorating party and just threw it in the freezer. Last night I had a dinner party to attend and nothing to bring, so I made a baker's dozen (yes, there is still cookie dough in my house)and took them over. They were still warm when I got there and quickly demolished amidst a chorus of "mmmmmmmm"s. In the interest of full disclosure, I did not love the taste of the dough when I first mixed it up: too molasses-y, but after a few days in the freezer, it was much improved and obviously the finished product went over well, thus the recommendation. Oh, you want the link? Here you go.

So yes, that's all I've got for you today, but I promise to have something more original next time!

Savory Snacks: Fancy Carbs (Soft Pretzels!)

If you aren't a carb person, I really just don't know what to do with you. Seriously. It's not that I don't want to understand it's that I quite simply can't. I love veggies and sometimes I get pretty strong meat cravings, but in my heart of hearts, I'm all about bread. For example, when I was in law school I managed to procure a free mini-loaf bread maker (thank you, LexisNexis) and for the next several days, I was in rapture. I made honey-oatmeal bread, tomato-basil bread, garlic bread (many times), and pretty much anything else you can think of (aside from sourdough, as I did not have a starter lying around). It was heaven.

One problem: I would eat the entire mini-loaf in a sitting. I would take it out of the bread maker, steam still rising from it, and inhale it with balsamic vinegar. Invariably I would get halfway through and think to myself "I should stop now and save the other half, but I'm still hungry." Then I would get three quarters of the way through and think "Soooooooooo full, but the last quarter isn't enough to save." The result of this dance being me in the fetal position on the couch for an hour alternating between "oh god so full" and "but it was so goooooooooood."

You didn't need to know that. I'm sorry, but here are bread-like items for your digestive delight! Does that make up for it? I hope so.

Savory Snacks: Meaty Delights

Cookie parties are fantastic, they really are, but you simply must have some form of salt-laden snacky goodness to combat the sugar high.

In an unrelated note, children are not the only people who respond amusingly to sugar.

Back to salt. I'm a huge proponent of having at least one or two warm snacks. This requires a little bit more attention to timing, in that you should be pulling things out of the oven maybe 10 minutes after people start arriving or you should be cooking as the night goes on, depending on your personal style, the location/visibility of your kitchen, and the likelihood that you will forget about something and set your house on fire. Please do not set your house on fire.

I opted for foods that can be assembled at any time during the day and then thrown in the oven right before people arrive, with a bonus of making the house smell pretty fantastic: (1) Andouille sausage wrapped in puff pastry dough and (2) Bacon-wrapped dated stuffed with goat cheese. Men will eat these, women will eat these, even children will gobble them down (though they may make a face when first presented with a date).

Christmas Cookie Party!

I get an inexplicable level of satisfaction from entertaining. It's just so enjoyable to me to have a bunch of people in the house, eating good food (preferably that I made) and making that contented-sounding conversational buzz. So, before I move, I wanted to put together a little holiday shindig with Dawn (roommate). We opted for a Sunday afternoon Christmas cookie decorating party, and it went really well. People were great sports, probably aided by the mulled wine, and, I have to say, there was some real creative talent in the room (not mine, I assure you).

Over the next few days I'll post several entries covering the savory appetizers that I put together to combat the overwhelming sugar intake that goes with cookie decorating, but I thought it made sense to start with the cookies themselves.

You do not want to know how much flour and sugar my house has gone through in the last 48 hours. You really, really don't.

Ok, Step 1: Make the sugar cookies (recipe below). I made a vanilla-almond cookie because I do like a wee bit more flavor than just sugar and flour. Also! Make the cookies a day in advance if you can. When you refrigerate the dough overnight, it becomes much more flavorful and much less ode du flour.

Beef Stew -or- Things to Feed a Cranky Girl

Do you ever have those days where you just know that the next day is going to be a little rough? You feel a cold coming on, you know you have to do something you've been dreading, the anniversary of something is coming up, etc. I had one of those days, and I decided that the best way to combat it was with comfort food, namely: a thick beef stew.

Truth be told, I've never made a proper beef stew before. Weird, right? I tend to make soups and the like with ground turkey, but that just cannot match the richness of quality stew meat. I say "quality" because you really don't want the stringy, tough, fat-covered "stew meat" at the store, it's worth it to upgrade to a slightly better cut. To aid me in this journey, I turned to Pioneer Woman, not only does she know her kitchen, she also makes generally awesome points. She has a really basic beef stew that looked like an excellent place to start. I happened to have some shredded carrot and a few other things lying around the house, and instead of noodles I was in the mood for rice cooked in, jambalaya style, so I had to thin the base out a little. It was delicious and, yes, it did make my less-than-ideal day slightly brighter.

In other news: It is impossible to take a pretty picture of a hearty stew. Impossible! I swear that the many many things that I will post over the next couple of months that happen to be stew-like are so much tastier than they look. Sigh.

Anyway.

Creamy Corn Chowder

I understand that the food-related zeitgeist these days can be boiled down to “bacon makes everything better.” Now, I’m pretty sure there’s a line, and I’m even more sure that said line is definitely on the near side of bacon vodka (sorry, Jacob), but there is one thing that bacon consistently improves: chowder.

Much as with cheese, I grew up in a bacon-free household. Oh sure, we had turkey bacon, but unless I was at my grandparents’ house inhaling 2-4 ethereal BLTs at a time, I never had the real thing. I had the lowest cholesterol on earth… or at least I would have if I didn’t drink milk by the gallon… but I never learned how to properly cook using bacon. This all changed when I started taking cooking classes: bacon happens.

One of the classes focused on stocks/soups/stews/pretty much anything that is primarily composed of broth. Before this class, I thought that putting bacon in chowders was a uniquely southern habit, and maybe it is, but the class was in Boston and they still did it, so I ‘m going to assume that it’s fairly widely accepted these days. That day, we made a fennel corn chowder that, if I loved fennel, would have been perfect. As I do not really favor licorice-y flavors, however, I then went home and messed around with the recipe to correct the potato-corn balance (there was way too much potato) and substitute a big pile of sweet onion for the fennel. Delicious!

I’ve made it for a bunch of people and it rarely has leftovers. In fact, it may be my most commonly requested recipe. I’m going to be nice, even, and give you both the “good” way and the shortcuts. So, here it is and, in case I have somehow been unclear, do not omit the bacon!