Cookies for Carl

This is a photo of peanut butter cookies that I just made for my good friend, Carl. He loves cookies and I always take a dozen over to his house when I am baking.

peanut butter cookies
The recipe I use for these cookies is my own, but it is adapted from a recipe I found online. Their recipe was called Peanut Butter Blossoms, because we put unwrapped Hershey’s Kisses in the middle of each cookie right after it comes out of the oven.

My secret for this recipe is which peanut butter you choose. Some people might be tempted to buy the cheapest brand of peanut butter, or something on sale. But I ALWAYS use Peter Pan Creamy in this recipe and they are simply DELICIOUS!

I think its about time I make a batch of Oatmeal cookies with raisins and chopped walnuts. That always hits the spot with a glass of ice cold milk!

Baking Bread with Charlotte

I was invited to come to a cookware party by my good friend, Miss Charlotte, so I went with a skeptical attitude and a tight fist on my checkbook. Turns out that I’m not really interested in the line of cookware that she was offering and I didn’t buy anything that night. But while at the party we did get to chatting about cooking and baking and different shortcuts and kitchen tips.

Miss Charlotte invited me to come back one weekend and spend the day baking with her. I think that would be great – I love to bake and it is even more fun when you have someone there working alongside you.

Net weekend we are going to spend Saturday afternoon together in her kitchen making some different breads and rolls. She wants to donate the finished products to a church function the next morning. So I am looking up bread recipes online and finding two that I want to try. We are not using a bread machine to make these – they will be completely from scratch, hand rolled and raised, and then baked with love. I can’t wait to see how they turn out!

Did the Easter Bunny Find You?

The Easter Bunny was at my house this morning. He left me a basket with chocolate eggs, yellow marshmallow peeps, and a big bag of jelly beans. I have never tried these jelly beans before. They are the Jolly Rancher brand of jelly beans, with fruit smoothie flavors. Sadly, that means no black liquorice jelly beans. But some of the fruit smoothie flavors sound nice! I love Easter candies – this is one of my favorite holidays – all good food and sweet things! Happy Easter!

Yummy Banana Nut Muffins

Betty Crocker makes a great banana nut muffin mix. All you have to do is stir in a couple of eggs and then add some oil and water. Thirty minutes later you have baked deliciously moist warm muffins waiting for the little slab of butter and a cup of hot tea.

I like to add real bananas to the mix before baking, so I try to keep one or two ripe bananas on hand most of the week. It can be challenging to find bananas in varying stages of ripeness. At the Food Lion grocery store near my house, they get a shipment of bananas once a week and they are bright green. They ripen naturally in the store, but they all ripen on the same schedule, so the bananas you buy are either not ripe enough or too ripe all at the same time. So I only buy two bananas at a time at Food Lion.

But Kroger is a few miles further from my house and they seem to get banana shipment three times every week. So you can buy individual bananas in varying stages of ripeness. If I happen to be at Kroger, I’ll buy two very green bananas, two almost ripe bananas and then one that is ready to eat. That way they will continue to ripen after I get them home and not all spoil within just a couple of days.

Espresso

This morning I learned how to make espresso. It was pretty cool and I feel like I could work at Starbucks and turn out hundreds of cups of espresso or coffee!

Actually, I would not like that job very much. People who go to Starbucks have very high expectations and are extremely particular about what their drink tastes like. I would think that good customer service would be very hard to deliver to those customers.

The espresso is a finer grind of the coffee, and you have to tap it down into the drip cup. Then you have make use of the steam from the hot water forced through the coffee grounds and use that steam to make the milk or cream hot and frothy. It is not that hard to learn, but it is good to have someone who knows what they are doing show you each step instead of trying to read it in an instruction manual.

Next thing for me is to start experimenting with adding different flavors, such as chocolate or caramel. And then on to latte, cappuccino and iced coffees. The world of delicious coffee is at my fingertips!

Thanking the Pilgrims and Indians Today

pilgrim bear

Our ancestors were very brave, coming to the New World with nothing but what they could carry onto a boat and high hopes. It is amazing that they survived and had a Thanksgiving feast with the Indians. I’m not that adventurous or brave, but i am glad they did it.

Pumpkins Fresh From His Farm

My friend Spencer called this morning and asked if I want some free pumpkins. Of course I said yes. He has a little garden patch in the back of his house and he grew about a quarter acre of pumpkins and gourds this year.

I’m going over there this weekend to pick out my free pumpkin and visit with Spencer for a little while. It was nice of him to think of me.

Surprise at Lunch

Today we were in Nashville for another trade show and my boss came up for the day. He took two of us out to lunch at one of my favorite Nashville restaurants, the Sunset Grill.

Every time I eat there we see a celebrity. Today we saw Bo Bice and he was nice enough to let me get this photo of my boss standing with him. Bo is a really nice guy and I really like his songs, too. We took one of me with Bo, but it turned out crappy and I deleted it. Just my luck! Maybe another time . . .

Fun in the Kitchen

I just discovered the Paula Dean web site and I am fired up about trying some of her recipes at home. She has the most wonderful personality and I know that everyone raves about how delicious her food is. Real Southern home cooking food. I’m going to start with a dessert and then work my way up to the main course. There are hundreds of recipes and videos on her site – I can’t wait to try a bunch of them.

Where’s My Pizza?

I ordered a pizza and hot wings online tonight. I’m tired and it’s Friday and I think I need pizza and wings to wind down and chill. But I ordered the food online over an hour ago and still no food. I remember when Dominoes first came out, back in the early years, they promised to bring your pizza to your door in 10 minutes or less. Well, that promise sure didn’t last.