Sunday Kitchen! New record time edition.

I can't believe it but it's only 6:30 and I'm finished for the day! This is unheard of! LOL

Breakfast and lunch were light easy affairs today. Bill had cereal and toast, I had peanut butter and apple butter on toast and some melon. For lunch we both had goat cheese and crackers and fresh fruit.

I got the weekly batch of yogurt in the cooler by 9 a.m. and then moved on to the requested breakfasts for the week: cinnamon rolls. I just bought a mess of apples so I was determined to use some of them.

Apple Cinnamon Rolls:
http://wwwbunnysovencom.blogspot.com/2008/10/apple-cinnamon-rolls-and-award.html

I added some raisins and dried cranberries to the apples, along with a little salt. Now this recipe worked out okay but not the way it did for her. For one thing, I kept having to add more and more flour to the KA to get this dough even close to workable. Also, the amount of apples she used wasn't nearly enough to cover the dough as shown, but I went with it anyway since I didn't have the time to stop and cook more. Also, when she says the cinnamon sugar topping looks like it's too much, but isn't...don't believe it. After I took the pic below, I took a pastry brush and removed quite a bit of sugar from these rolls. I should have followed my instincts and cut it back, and dolloped just a wee bit of butter on top before adding it. Live and learn. They're still very good but not as shown on the website.



I then moved on to sandwich fixings for the week. This is one of my favorites and I was really surprised when Bill actually requested it and that is sandwich spread. You know the stuff that isn't ham salad because it's made with baloney? I bought some Applegate uncured beef hot dogs and ran them through the food processor with onion, pimento, sweet pickles, mayo, a little brown mustard, salt and pepper.

Bill also requested mac and cheese for his lunch this week (it's been getting and staying lots cooler here) so I went poking around for new recipes that might not take a whole lotta work. I found this one below. Not much work and really delicious! Another huge time saver!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chucks-Favorite-Mac-and-Cheese/Detail.aspx


The cookie this week is a repeat. The Smitten Kitchen's Peanut Butter Brownies. A bar cookie saved me lots of time, of course, but I also wanted to use the ganache I had left over from that cake a couple of weeks ago that was in the freezer. It was just enough to cover it nicely, so that worked out well.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/10/peanut-butter-brownies/

Dinner was salmon fillets marinating all day in soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic and ginger, then poached in the marinade in a skillet, with some chopped onion until flaky, then topped with parsley, served with rice pilaf, and Brussels sprouts.

Very good and easy rice pilaf recipe was found here:

http://elise.com/recipes/archives/001825rice_pilaf.php

I used brown jasmine rice (because that's what I had) half chicken stock, half water, half onions and half shallots, pepper and garlic, also added some chopped baby bellas when I scraped the rice into the stock pot. Finished with a few pinches of Salle alla Erbe and fresh squeezed lemon. This was another really easy recipe with excellent results. I did half the recipe and there's still plenty to go with the two remaining salmon fillets for NO Cook Monday Night.

Hope you all had a great Saturday, too. :hi:

I did a clean out the fridge chili with ground beef, a little left over pulled pork, fresh corn, some TVP, black beans, some left over green chili sauce and a shitload of fresh roasted tomatoes off the vine.

I also made Dulce Pear and oatmeal bars... They are still in the oven so I don't know how they came out. I made it up as I went along so I don't even know if they'll work. I'm pretty sure they'll be too sweet but who knows.

I love cooking on Sundays.

If that pear recipe works out, do you think you could approximate a recipe and share it here? :hi:

It wasn't bad ...just not what I was aiming for. I think I put in too many eggs and used the wrong kind of Oatmeal. Anyhoo here's what I did approx.

Cream two sticks of butter with a cup of brown sugar and half a cup of white sugar.

Beat in 4 eggs

Then I added 4 cups of chopped cooked pears (drained of their juice)

Add

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons vanilla

Then this is where I went really wrong....

I added 8 packs of brown sugar/maple Instant Oatmeal. (It's been in the pantry for a year and nobody is eating it...I only eat the weight control oatmeal now)

I added a bag of cinnamon chips and about 3/4 a cup of raisens.

I put it in a large glass pan with a parchment sling. But since it was cleaning out the pantry cake I poured a can of sweetened condensed milk almost on the top of the batter then covered it with a little of the remaining batter.

What came out was an extremely moist and dense cake.` It wasn't too sweet which was a big surprise. The oats didn't hold their shape at all and made the cake a bit spongy but not in a bad way. It wasn't "chewy" at all.

I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to recreate this but it wasn't a failure at all.

Yesterday I started a pot of sauce for pasta from scratch. About four pounds of mixed fresh tomatoes, some sliced garlic, some fresh basil, and some fresh rosemary twigs. Oh, and a couple of bay leaves and some salt and olive oil at the end. I cooked it for a total of about six hours. It was so naturally sweet, and fresh tasting!

Today I roasted three different eggplants -- a white one, a lonnng curly one, and a round one -- and two zucchini. For supper and leftovers, I drizzled that with EVOO and broiled until nicely browned. Served over spaghetti with the tomato sauce and grated parm.

I picked a bowl full of raspberries and golden raspberries for the freezer, and dug some horseradish root to use later in the week with beef.

And I started plotting a care package for my cousin's son who graduated HS in June and is working this year on a conservation project in Arizona. It's an extremely rigorous program; a subset of Americorps. He spends every 11 days camping out in the desert with a crew, and then gets a weekend off in Tucson. So I thought he might appreciate some of the treats we made last year when we were living in the same house. Every fall we would start making big batches of Chex Party Mix. So I will make a big fat ziplock bag of that for him. And some peanut butter cookies. And I'll send him several of the last Sunday Funnies sections, and clippings about his H.S. cross country team.

I also tried deciphering some recipes from a book called "Early American Herb Recipes" wherein old remedies and cosmetics and food recipes are reprinted. I particularly want to make something called "Hungary Water" because Crabtree and Evelyn used to make that as a toilet water and I loved the scent, which is mostly rosemary. C&E has discontinued the product in the last decade. So here I find an 1819 recipe for it. But, alas, it calls for a "glass retort" and "spirit of wine" and a "sand heat" for distillation. Hmmm. This will take some study.

That's something we haven't discussed -- the making of herbal non-edibles.

Your thought processes wear me out, let alone all the energy you exhaust on all your project! :hug:

;)

it's not an efficiency thing. I have to stay focused and really push to get done usually. Sorry you're having trouble sleeping, sweetie. :hug:

and all its wacky news and lovely denizens to keep me company-- and feed me virtual mac-n-cheese. :)

That's a great blog, too. Thanks for the link.

Could be better. I bet you can tinker them into something worth while. :hi:

I just told Bill that a few minutes ago. There was not enough filling to even keep them moist. It's the kind of recipe I had in mind when I set out and I know anyone of us here could do it better. :thumbsup:

I do like the recipes at Smitten Kitchen, tho, hers always seem to work exactly as described.

I used to try to make a weeks worth of meals in one day, but it just wore me out, girl! You are a cooking machine.

:hi: