They're good for your heart

Charlie's eating red beans and rice from my kitchen for the first time. Doesn't he look thrilled?

Usually, I make beans sans meat, and I eat the entire pot myself. He doesn't like beans but I guess he got tired of hearing me talk about how good they are for you, high in fiber, low in fat, easy to make, and cheap. If sausage was added to the pot, he'd force some down.

He got his way today, with some low fat turkey sausage. He didn't quite have a grimace the entire time he ate, but we'll see how it goes when he's got to eat them as leftovers later this week.

On Soup

My love affair with soups began at Houston's on St. Charles...tortilla soup every Thursday. Yum. Or maybe it was the corn and crab bisque at Vincent's. Yum-my. That one's in a bread bowl! And I can't leave out the smoky gumbo at Dick and Jenny's. De-lic-ious.

I generally have a cup of soup, no matter what it is, each time we eat out, and sometimes it's even my entree. I love the creamy, fattening varieties, potato and chowder being high on the list, but I really love all kinds of soups.

I make soup each time we have a turkey or a chicken. Just can't bare the thought of tossing that carcass without boiling those bones. And with that generally follows tossing a bunch of stuff into the stock: leftover poultry, a can of corn, some tomatoes, chopped parsley, a can of beans, some rice, and anything that just so happens to be available in the pantry, refrigerator, or garden. No planning when making a pot of soup, with the exception of a gumbo (which I'm thinking we'll have for Mardi Gras as the early date bodes well for chilly, gumbo eating, weather).

I made a pot today with my newest, most favorite ingredient: barley. It's high in fiber and much better for you than rice, noodles, or potatoes. High fiber was my mission, but I omitted the beans because I'm serving it to picky Charlie for supper, with a grilled cheese sandwich. There's enough to freeze half and enjoy during the next cold snap.


As the pot was simmering, I have been poking around the net looking at actual soup recipes. Lentil soup may have to be next and then potato leek. But that would involve some advance planning on my part. We'll see how it goes. I'm open to any tested and approved soup recipes if anyone's got any!

Cream Cheese Choclate Chip Cookies

This recipe was torn from Oprah Magazine (hope you weren't turning pages looking for it, Emmy) and credits Carrie Nahabedian.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 (3 oz.) package cream cheese, room temperature
• 16 Tbsp. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 (12-ounce) package semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 tsp. grated orange zest

DIRECTIONS

• Preheat oven to 350°.
• In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat cream cheese, butter and sugar on high speed until well blended.
• Beat in eggs and vanilla until smooth.
• Reduce speed to low; beat in flour and salt until just combined.
• Stir in chocolate chips and orange zest.
• Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets; space dough about 1 inch apart. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until cookies are lightly browned around the edges.
• With a spatula, transfer to racks to cool completely; store in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

I didn't have any orange zest on hand, and I added pecans. I like nuts in my cookies.

The recipe says it makes about 54 cookies, and I got about half that. I suppose my making them too large is one reason why they didn't take 12 minutes to cook and they never really got brown.

Keeping in mind that my mixer bit the dust during step one, I think they turned out rather well, although I still like the recipe on the back of the chocolate chips bag better. I suppose I'll bake those next week, if I get a new mixer!

Smoke, but no fire

I had no intention of being within a five mile radius of any retail operation until I hit the after Christmas sales, but an emergency has arisen. My hand mixer burned up during my batch of cookies and I'm right in the middle of prime baking season, no less. I have breads, cookies, and sweets to mix!


I imagine party goers at our upcoming holiday gatherings won't even know the difference anyway as I usually bring something premade from Dorginac's, but I had visions of the house smelling of gingerbread as I prepared jewel toned tins of homemade cookies for our neighbors and friends. Since I haven't yet bought any jewel toned boxes, I suppose it's just as well the mixer go up in smoke 14 days before Christmas.

New entries

I do use this blog as a garden journal, and have found it helpful to look back at prior posts to see what I had planted and what was doing well in the garden during a particular month. So with that in mind, I decided that I would start using the blog to document my budding hobby: cooking. (Stop laughing. And Charlie, I mean you!)

I'm not sure I can go as far to say that it's a full fledged hobby, but it has been taking up a lot of my time lately. I have been seeking new recipes to assist in our quest towards healthy eating. Easy sweet treat recipes are also high on my list. They cancel each other out, but I think I like baking more than cooking.

Over the summer we learned that Janet, Charlie's mom, who makes lots of new meals, uses a recipe once and then tosses it. Yep, throws it in the trash with the dinner scraps. And I've been doing that as well, but really because I am a neat freak and can't stand the recipe hanging around. I can't commit to some recipe filing system.

What I try in the kitchen I will be posted on the blog. Sorry if you're a reader, but this blog serves multiple purposes for me right now. Hoping it generates some comments with recipes for me to try!