Quarterfinals Game #3: Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies vs. Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last weekend we went to stay at my sister's house for the weekend to squelch the complaints from both my son and my sister that they hadn't seen each other in "forever".  Since the third quarterfinal game in the March Cookie Madness bracket was planned for the following Monday, Sunday morning found me at my sister's house baking up a batch of the number 2 seed, Todd's Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies (p. 130). 

First I had to find English Toffee Bits, which a quick Google search revealed can be purchased under the Heath brand in the baking section of stores.  On Saturday, I stopped by the local Food Lion where I ran into my sister.  The store had no English Toffee Bits, but I did pick up the required sea salt and helped my sister pick out some lunch for all of us (pizza).  Blithely ignoring the fact that I still did not have all of the ingredients, I went about the business of having a good time and left it until Sunday morning to find the English Toffee Bits, despite the fact that we planned to leave right after lunch.  Luckily they were easily located at the SuperFresh (recommended by my sister as a store that has "all that weird stuff") and I got started on the cookies around 10am.  Excitingly enough, the recipe required a 45 minute chilling time.  I mixed them up quickly, using the tried and true pot-inside-another-pot-with-water method of getting around not having the double boiler mentioned in the recipe.  The toffee bits melted into the cookie mix, which indicated to me that I probably didn't allow the chocolate mixture to cool sufficiently.  Nonetheless, I continued, dropping spoonfuls (or rather forming balls out of the play-doh-like dough) onto wax paper onto cookie sheets.  Now, I have never used wax paper in the oven before, but Todd assured me it would be fine in lieu of parchment paper.  The result was a surprising amount of steam which issued forth from my sister's oven!  The cookies took awhile to reach the "cracked top" stage, whereupon I removed them from the oven and allowed them to cool (against my better judgment, but following Todd's instructions) on the sheets.  The result was a slightly burned, hard-as-a-rock cookie.  Oh, and they stuck to the wax paper and pans.  I thought they were awful but my nephew loved them and ate quite a few before I shooed him away.  I pried them up once cool and loaded them all in a plastic ziploc bag to take home, very unhappy with the results. 

After arriving home, I whipped up my second-ever batch of the number 10 seed, Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 133).  The cookies came together similarly to the first time with two exceptions:

1. While measuring out the natural peanut butter, I noticed halfway through that I had not mixed the container well so there was more chunky material at the bottom of the jar versus what I had in my measuring cup, so I tried to add a lump of the chunky material into my cup at that juncture.
2. I baked them a bit larger than the previous time in an attempt to make them a size similar to the Toffee Cookies. 

I mention these two differences because everyone who tasted these cookies said they showed batch reproducibility issues - there was a raging debate about whether these were cookies that had been presented before!  I cleared that up and was surprised to find a lot of support for the Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies.  People were waxing poetic about it, while I downed Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies one after another.  Apparently my tastes now run completely contrary to almost everyone else's.  Perhaps I had simply forgotten that my coworkers overwhelmingly prefer the cookie with the most chocolate to anything else, even if those chocolate cookies are burnt!

Here is a picture of the cookies (Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies are on the left and Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies are on the right):

The end result was 8 votes for Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies and 12 votes for Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies.  I was rather distraught over messing up Pragati's cookies, but I suppose I equally messed up Todd's cookies, so I guess the playing field was even.  I'll just have to try to do better with the Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies next time.  Congratulations, Todd!

Quarterfinals Game #2: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies vs. Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last Thursday night I came home from work on time so that my son could get his wish of eating cheese sticks from Pizza Hut and I could bake cookies for our second quarterfinal match-up.  The cookies: The number 4 seed, Navika's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 127) versus the number 5 seed, Susie's Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 129).  Given the seeding, this match should be excellent!

Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies are a fairly standard shortening-based cookie, but I was a little nervous for Susie when I realized that she was only including one bag of chocolate chips to 4.5 cups flour.  If this tournament has taught me anything, it is that my coworkers are voracious chocolatevores (which is what I assume is what you call someone whose diet mostly consists of chocolate).  The cookies were easy to mix, but called for baking for 16-18 minutes, which seemed like a very long time given that the recipe yielded a ton of cookies.  I had a test cookie at the 16 minute mark on the first pan.  It was crispier than I like my cookies (not a hard mark to reach since I like them on the raw side), and tasted sort of bland to me.  I want back to the recipe and mentally went over the ingredients I had added - everything was correct.  My husband tasted one and basically called me a crazy person - the cookies were fine, just not the over-sweet kind.  I continued with the recipe, working hard not to try to "fix" it, since that would be against the rules.  I would have loved to stir in a bit more sugar, or roll the balls in it, or generally make it much more unhealthy.  Also, I would have baked it for a shorter amount of time.  But, I gritted my teeth and followed the recipe.

During the end of baking Susie's Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies (how does Susie know this Polly, I wonder?), I mixed up a double batch of Navika's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.  Readers will note that we encountered a Navika cookie recipe earlier this year (Brownie Cookies), and that I found them a little crispier than I tend to like, but very chocolatey and delicious.  This was a fairly standard oatmeal cookie recipe until it called for 2 cups of semisweet chocolate chips per 24 cookie batch.  That's right, I added 4 cups of chocolate chips to about 4 cups of dry ingredients.  To recap: Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies contain 1 bag (approximately 2 cups) chips to 4.5 cups of just flour, and Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies contain 4 cups chips to about 4 cups of dry ingredients.  Clearly Navika loves chocolate!  There were times when I was rolling the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie dough balls for baking when I wondered how a cookie could possibly bake when it was mostly chocolate chips.  Somehow, these things managed to form cookies, and they were delicious!

Susie's Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie A (on the left in the picture below) and Navika's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie B (on the right - oddly, you can barely see the chips in this photo). 

People generally liked Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies but they loved the chip-laden Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, which won this match with 14 votes.  Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies received one vote, which I believe was mostly likely from Bob, who commented that it was a great cookie with a cup of coffee.  I tried that with some of the overage, and I would say coffee showcases the cookie best.  I took some overage to my sister's house this weekend and Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies were cleared out of the bag first (despite there being more of them) so perhaps they just had the wrong audience for this tournament.  But, their loss is Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies' gain, since Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies will be moving on to the semi-finals!

Quarterfinals Game #1: Cowboy Cookies vs. Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies

On Sunday I prepared the cookies for our first quarterfinal matchup, between the number 6 seed, Roxanne's Cowboy Cookies (p. 125) and the number 3 seed, Joni's Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 132). 

I began with the Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies because the recipe did not mention how many cookies it would yield, and the ingredients are not exactly pantry staples of mine.  If the yield was low I would be off to the grocery store for more supplies!  The ingredients included unsweetened baking chocolate, condensed milk, Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip muffin mix, and Dove Milk Chocolate and Caramel Candies.  The only two ingredients included in this recipe that I keep in my house are pecans and butter! 

I started to mix up the cookies and quickly discovered that the mixture was rather dry, which is when I began to question whether "Betty Crocker Chocolate Chop Muffin Mix" meant just the mix, or the mix prepared as noted on the package.  The only liquid in the recipe was melted butter and condensed milk?  Really?  Puzzled, I made a test cookie.  It had some compression issues and was fairly friable, but it baked ok.  My son and I cut it in half and tasted it (sans chocolate caramel topping).  My son said it tasted really good and I decided it was far too sweet (it should be noted it was 8 o'clock in the morning), but I decided to proceed according to my original interpretation of the recipe.  There followed a difficult couple of hours of compressing the dough into balls, baking them for 8 minutes, popping a Dove chocolate onto each one (sometimes strategically over an area that was falling apart), cooking for another 2 minutes, then swirling a knife in the chocolate to "ice" the cookie.  Luckily, the recipe makes plenty of cookies for tournament taste-offs so there was no need for another go-round.  Finally, they were all done, and it was on to scrubbing the caramel and chocolate drippings off the kitchen table so that we wouldn't find Oliver (our dog) on top of it when we returned from our outing to my parents-in-law's house to not return a crock pot (please refer to Sunday's post for further details).

After a restful lunch and a quick run in the surprisingly chilly/windy weather, I embarked on the Cowboy Cookies.  Cowboy Cookies are made with peanut butter, oatmeal (I used rolled oats, because why would cowboys use instant?), chocolate chips, and a slew of typical pantry ingredients, which made me wonder about how well-supplied cowboys must have been out there on the range.  Or, as my husband pointed out, are they just supposed to taste like cowboys?  Regardless, the recipe mixed up quickly (even though it included a bit of sifting), and the dough formed nice, easy to roll, dough balls for baking.  In fact, my son and I kept up with the baking easily, and managed to roll all of the cookies in advance of available oven space, which facilitated cleanup during the later baking stages.  It should be noted that the recipe for Cowboy Cookies makes a very respectable amount of cookies with very little fuss.  They are light, crispy, and flavorful.

Cowboy Cookies were labeled as Cookie A (and "contains peanuts" for allergy sufferers) and Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie B (and "contains pecans" for allergy sufferers -- kind of a bad day for anyone affected by both peanut and tree nut allergies).  Here is a picture of both (Cookie A on left, Cookie B on right):

My husband tasted both cookies and said, in a very serious tone, that "This is going to be the closest one yet.  These are both great cookies."  My coworkers were, of course, delighted with the offerings.  The supports of the Turtle Chocolate Chip Cookies were vociferous, claiming things like "it's like fudge and cookies had a baby" and "I mean, these are SO delicious".  Perhaps one voter put it best with the written in "Yum!" next to the circled vote for them.  The end results were 10 for Cookie A and 16 for Cookie B.  I prefer Cowboy Cookies, but then, I was there for the construction of both. 

VERY Slowly Cooked Potatoes

Yesterday I put together Carol's Pizza Potatoes (p. 36) because I was due to give my borrowed crock pot back today.  I had purchased all the required ingredients last weekend but could not figure out what this should be a side dish for, so I didn't get around to making it.  I had to run to the store to get an onion (I used up the previously purchased one for Crockpot Lasagna), so, after our weekly visit to the library, we stopped by the store where I bought the onion along with ingredients for this week's March Cookie Madness batches.

All in all, I got home a little later than intended, and then, to my horror, discovered that the Pizza Potatoes are supposed to cook for 6-10 hours rather than the 4-6 hours I seemed to remember.  Instead of eating lunch, I sliced up potatoes (I peeled the potatoes - the recipe didn't specify but it seemed "right") and onions and sauteed them until the onions were fairly translucent.  Then I combined that mixture, pepperoni, cheese, salt, and pizza sauce in the crockpot.

Then I read the recipe and realized the pizza sauce was meant to be poured on top rather than mixed in, so I poured in a little more for good measure.  I turned on the crock pot, had lunch, and then ran off to the going out of business sale of yet another quilt shop (can you believe that???).  I got home several hours later and went to mix the potatoes.  First I wondered why the potatoes didn't seem very cooked yet, then to my mild interest, I noticed the cheese didn't melt.  What an odd recipe, I thought.  I actually left the crock pot and wandered off for a bit, before coming back and realizing that I had never plugged in the crock pot.

No matter, the contents were still quite cold and I didn't have to give the crock pot back until Sunday morning.  The obvious answer was to put the whole thing in the refrigerator and start it heating right before going to sleep -- we would have Pizza Potatoes for breakfast!

Upon waking this morning, my very first thought was of having not started the Pizza Potatoes yet again.  I hustled out of bed, took them out of the refrigerator, and turned them on, hoping the crock pot wasn't needed until early afternoon. I turned off the crock pot early, about 12:15 pm, and we lunched on it (as a main dish after all).  It was pretty good, even with its checkered past.  Some of the potatoes had browned after their prolonged expose to oxygen, but I took out some of the better-looking potatoes for this photo:

Everyone seemed to enjoy it, although my son did hold up a pepperoni and ask:

"Is this a... a... what is this, mom?"

He seemed satisfied with the answer, though, and ate that and some of the potatoes before leaving a pile of onions and cheese for me to consume.  I had thought the onions might be a bit weird, but they turned into more of a texture and vehicle for sauce and cheese, and, really, isn't that what we all want from all foods? 

Preliminary Game #2: Chocolate Chip Cookies vs. Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies

Thursday night I baked two more batches of cookies for the second preliminary game in our March Cookie Madness tournament: Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 124) and Chad's (well, Chad's wife's) Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies (p. 125).

First I made the Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies.  The recipe makes about 2 dozen cookies, so I doubled the recipe.  The ingredients include not only cranberries and oatmeal, but also mini chocolate chips and peanut butter.  The recipe has a whole wheat flour base.  All in all, it was very similar to Vegan Peanut Chip Cookies, aside from all those animal products.  The batter mixed up well, and stuck together better than the Vegan cookies.  Also, I didn't burn any of them.  I do think there was a little consistency issue in terms of the cranberry to chocolate chip to cookie dough ratios, possibly because the dough was thick and difficult to mix and I was tired and a bit lazy.

Then, I moved on to Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies which included three sticks of butter.  This recipe mixed up well and was reminiscent of the traditional Toll House Cookie recipe, so I knew these would be tasty.  I used semi-sweet morsels since Wanda gives you the option of using whatever "chip" you like.  The dough was so thick at the end that my KitchenAid Stand Mixer actually slowed down significantly and had trouble mixing.  I have never seen that before!  After trying to mix in the morsels with a spoon and then a spatula, I ended up diving in and mixing it with my hands.  Then I started to bake... and bake... and bake.  Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe makes a ton of cookies!  I ended up with so many that I couldn't take them all to work because they wouldn't fit in the container I had.

This matchup seemed very similar to the first preliminary game and I wondered if it would have similar results.  On the other hand, I consider cranberries to be a very polarizing ingredient to add to cookies, so perhaps the ballot would come down to how many voters like the taste of cranberries.  On Friday, the cookies were met with great excitement by all.  Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies had some very vocal support, although those I mentioned that to insisted they had heard equally ardent support for the Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies.  Here is a picture of both cookies (Cookie A, Chocolate Chip Cookies, are on the left and Cookie B, Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies, are on the right):

The final results were: 14 for Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies and 10 for Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies.  (I guess that's what you get for resigning, Chad!).  Congratulations to Wanda for advancing to the next round!

Preliminary Game #1: Chocolate Chip Cookies vs. Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sunday I spent most of the day baking for the first game of the Cookie Tournament, a preliminary match between Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 123, Number 7 seed) and Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 133, Number 10 seed).

I started after breakfast with Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies, which came together in a fairly typical chocolate chip cookie manner, with shortening, sugar, milk, eggs, etc.  The recipe called for butter flavor Crisco, which I bought in stick format (first time ever) and a small bag of Nestle Milk Chocolate Chips.   The recipe gives different baking times for chewy and crispy cookies, so I aimed for the chewy end of the spectrum because I personally prefer that.  They were a little tricky to get off the pan, which lead to me burning the second pan I did in an attempt to bake them into a sturdier format.  Also, I recommend flattening the dough balls ever so slightly - this helps them to flatten out a bit more evenly.

After I finished baking the slightly over 3 dozen cookies, I ran out to the store for ingredients for Crockpot Lasagna and an additional small bag of Nestle Milk Chocolate Chips in case I had to make another batch to even out the amounts obtained from each cookie recipe.  After running back home and putting together the Crockpot Lasagna, I started in on Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies.

This recipe was completely different than any other chocolate chip cookie recipe I've made, mostly because I've never made any vegan cookie before.  I was pleasantly surprised that I could find all the required ingredients at my local Acme, although I was a bit nervous that the Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips the recipe suggested I use were labeled as "may contain small amounts of milk".  This suggests the cross contamination possibilities at the Ghiradelli plant may be higher than we'd like to know about, or perhaps this is just a limit of quantitation issue in their cleaning procedures.  Other ingredients included whole wheat flour, flax seed, applesauce, natural peanut butter, oats, and maple syrup.  I felt very healthy while making these, despite the large quantity of batter I ate.  I made a triple batch of these since the recipe only makes 2 dozen. 

The batter was tricky to roll into balls for baking, but it went a little easier when the dough was refrigerated before rolling.  Still, I could really only get one tray's worth rolled before the dough became too warm to work with again and I was forced to eat the dough that was sticking to my fingers (don't worry, I washed my hands after each of these instances, because I couldn't even lick my fingers clean, warm soap and water was required).  The dough balls were rolled in granulated sugar and then baked.  These cookies were very soft and pliable when removed from the oven, which Pragati warns you of in the recipe.  This caused some of them became a bit misshapen when they were removed to cooling racks.  I managed to burn two trays of these cookies by setting the oven 50 degrees hotter than prescribed, so I ended up with approximately equal numbers of cookies and decided not to make a second batch of Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies. All burnt cookies were added to the rejects container and left at my house to ensure the validity of the vote (note that we are still going to eat them!).

The cookies were taken to QS Pharma today labeled as "A" and "B" and people were encouraged to eat one of each and vote for their favorite.  There was a lot of interest in the cookies, and it seemed that everyone had their favorite (Cookie A, Cookie B, or Both).  Cookie A was Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (left) and Cookie B was Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies (right):

Despite an impassioned group of fans of Cookie B (I'm looking at you, respondent who wrote in "Hands Down!" next to your circled "B"), Cookie A pulled off the upset!  The final score was 12 for Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies and 9 for Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies.  We'll see you in the quarterfinals, Pragati!

A Case of Spontaneous Crockpot Lasagna

On Sunday, somewhat on the spur of the moment, I decided to make Crockpot Lasagna (p. 54).  I had just finished mixing up Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 123) for March Cookie Madness (more on that later), and started discussing the dinner options with my husband.  We contemplated going out to eat, but then realized that Daylight Savings Time had begun, and I was therefore an hour behind on preparing chocolate chip cookies for the first match.  So, I decided instead to make Stephanie's Crockpot Lasagna. 

Of course, this necessitated a trip to the grocery store, but we did have our regular shopping on the docket, so it didn't seem to be a big loss in time.  I took Cynthia to the grocery store while Phil and Grant went off to catch a hockey game at the University of Delaware.  Cynthia really enjoyed the shopping trip, particularly trying to pick out everything we didn't need, and extras of the things we did!  We rushed home, chopped up peppers and onions like a madwoman, browned them, and mixed the unlikely trio of cream cheese, cottage cheese, and sour cream together.  These ingredients were layered into the crockpot, along with some pasta sauce and uncooked lasagna noodles, which brings me to the question:  Why doesn't anyone make square crockpots?  It's not as though this oval design I'm using is particularly space-saving.  Does it have to do with the heat distribution? 

Setting aside these deeper questions in the quest to understand life, I broke lasagna noodles into the approximate shapes and sizes to fill each layer of this oval lasagna and went on with the layering.  With a little better planning, or maybe just less springing-forward, this would have been a very easy dish to put together.  I plugged it in and went about making Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 133) (again, more on that later).  I had time to go for a nice walk with my son and dog (I counted this as exercise because I'm finding hours of cookie-making rather exhausting) before serving up the lasagna.  Here is a photo:

Cynthia, as usual, ate it like Garfield eats a lasagna (two hands and as fast as possible).  Grant complained, but ate most of it.  Phil and I downed ours as quickly as Garfield - only with forks.  I'd say it was an unmitigated success.

I decided not to post about the baking of the chocolate chip cookies until after the tasting/voting because I don't want to prejudice anyone prior to voting.  I'd like to say that friends reading this blog would vote for the easier recipe, but I suspect the vote would swing the other way.  Check in later for a write-up of these two fine cookie recipes, and the results of the first match! 

When Life Gives You Eggs, Make Cheesy Egg Bake

As regular readers of this blog know, my parents-in-law are currently visiting sunny Hawaii.  Prior to their departure, they donated several perishable items to our household, including eighteen eggs.  I, of course, could only think of one thing as soon as I saw them - time to make some of these Wil Research Cooks recipes that require 18 eggs!

Monday brought ice, then snow, then sleet to our area.  Luckily I was forward-thinking enough to plan out making Carol's Cheesy Egg Bake (p. 49), which is a breakfast food that cooks for 90 minutes.  Ninety minutes.  Normally everyone in my family wakes up at about the same time as me, and not one of them will wait 90 minutes for breakfast!

Therefore, when my husband's work and my kids' schools announced closures and delays on Sunday night for the following morning, I saw my opportunity.  I woke up at the regular hour of 5:30am, leaving everyone else sleeping.  My work was suspiciously not delayed or cancelled.  Perplexed, I decided shoveling the driveway would probably take an hour anyway, so I started preparing the Egg Bake.

It was very simple to make - layer frozen hash browns in the bottom of the pan, top with sausage or ham (I used ham because I could buy it pre-cubed), then pour an egg/milk mixture over top and bake.  I halved the recipe (not because I didn't have enough eggs, let me stress that I definitely did).  To halve the recipe, I used some tips from the internet, which indicated this is best done in an 8x8 baking dish.  Aside from having to break some hash browns in half, this went exceedingly well.

I put the dish into the oven and headed outside with my son to shovel the drive.  It took us over an hour, at the end of which the snow/sleet had begun again and was blowing sideways into our faces.  Also, I couldn't help but notice a layer of ice on the driveway everywhere I shoveled.  Undeterred, I headed inside to find that the Cheesy Egg Bake was finished.  I sprinkled it liberally with cheddar cheese and sat down with my portion just in time for my husband and daughter to wake up and get pieces for themselves.  It was delicious, particularly after the strenuous exercise I had just participated in!  Here is a picture:

Then I proceeded to head off to work, which both my husband and my son told me was a bad idea, that I'd never make it, etc, etc.  I know you're all pulling for me to make it now... but... my car ended up sideways in my driveway within seconds, so I gave up and headed back inside to work from home.  Luckily, I had a Cheesy Egg Bake to warm me up and soothe my ego. 

For fans of sports cars stuck in large amounts of snow (well, I enjoy it), here is a picture of my son later in the day, sliding down the driveway on a shovel behind my sideways car:

March Cookie Madness begins Monday!  Have you filled out your bracket?

March Cookie Madness Bracket!

The March Cookie Madness bracket is now ready!  The chocolate chip cookie recipes in the Wil Research Cooks cookbook have been seeded according to the highly scientific method of "What Sarah Thinks Sounds Good".  Obviously, Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 121) is the number 1 seed, having (apparently) previously won awards.  Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 133) is the number 10 seed because I'm not so sure about a cookie with no butter, but it could very well pull some upsets because the ingredients do sound rather yummy.  Without further ado, here is the tournament bracket:

To enter, print out and fill in your picks and submit the completed form to me no later than Monday, 10MAR2014.  The first tournament "games" begin the week of 10MAR2014.  Cookies will be baked and provided to QS Pharma employees, who will be asked to choose which cookie they prefer.  Winning cookie recipe is the recipe receiving the most votes.  There will be prizes (not sure what they will be yet, but I can almost guarantee they will be lame and inexpensive) for the person who contributed the winning cookie recipe and for the person who amasses the most points for their submitted bracket.

The brackets will be scored as follows:
Preliminary round picks will score 2 points
Quarterfinal round picks will score 4 points
Semifinal round picks will score  6 points
Final round picks will score 10 points

Good luck to everyone!

Grant's Suggestion

My parents-in-law left for vacation in Hawaii last Monday.  I mention this not to make everyone in the mid-Atlantic region feel sad about the impending snow predicted for Monday, but because it means I have access to their crock pot for two weeks and can really start to pare down the number of pending crock pot recipes to try from the Wil Research Cooks cookbook.

This morning I was going through possible crock pot recipes today and my son randomly suggested a potato soup.  Coincidentally, there is a crock pot potato soup recipe in the Book, so we made Cheryl's Slow Cooker Cheesy Potato Soup (p. 21).  My daughter and I ran out to the store to buy all necessary ingredients, then rushed home to set it up before I had to leave for lunch with some current and former QS Pharma employees.  The set up was easy.  All I had to do was cut up a little bit of onion (didn't skip on that this time!) and celery, and then basically dump all the ingredients in the crockpot (crowned with a stick of butter), turn it to low, push it as far back on the counter as possible to discourage the dog, and I was done.  I went off to my lunch, which was long and lovely and full of great company.

How lovely to come home and not have to worry about dinner!  This crock pot thing is fabulous, I just wish there were more recipes for more like 12 hours of crock pot time, then we could make dinners this way during the workweek. 

Here is a picture of the soup:

Not really an impressive photo but it was cheesy and delicious, and we all ate it, except Grant (who suggested it in the first place!).  Grant ate the bread I served with it.  Nonetheless, this is a super simple, delicious dish, perfect for a winter's day.

Cooking Suggestions from Den Bosch

As usual, I'm behind on my posting, but I have a big weekend (of cooking) planned so I thought I had better catch up.  Last Sunday I made my first non-US dish, Gina's Chicken a la Castaliana (p. 49).  Gina hails from the Den Bosch site, so I can now tell you that 250 grams is roughly 8.8 ounces, and 2 deciliters of chicken stock is about 0.8 cups.

The recipe (perhaps due to translation, perhaps due to culture differences, I don't know) felt a bit like a series of suggestions to me.  Nonetheless, I really enjoyed interpreting what I was supposed to do, just going with what felt "right" at the time.  The recipe calls for "1 or 2 Chicken".  Since my family consists of 2.5 people who actually eat meat, and my kitchen isn't even big enough to hula-hoop in, I chose the 1 Chicken.

Purists will say that I cheated with this recipe since it calls for cutting the chicken into parts and I bought an already cut-into-parts chicken (this exists, I had no idea!).  In my defense, the cut up chicken was for some reason several dollars cheaper.  The recipe specifically calls for using the legs, drumstick, and breasts.  I included the thighs because, hey, I like thighs.  And, they are technically legs, right?  Plus, what am I going to do later with two thighs?  I saved the bony back portion of the chicken, thinking I will someday soon follow Carl Weathers' advice and get a stew going.

Then I diced the ham and decided that "bake the ham into the butter" (note: butter was not on the ingredient list) meant I should cut up "enough" butter into pats, put ham on top of the pats in a glass baking dish, and stick it in the oven at 350°C.  (When all else fails, set your oven at 350°C.)  While the ham was baking, I cut up the onion.  By the time the onion was sliced (I only used one - I always cut down the onion, not sure why Wil Research employees universally love onion so much), the ham was not exactly brown but I was beginning to get nervous about the time, so I popped the chicken into the pan and pondered what the recipe could mean by "roast these but leave the meat white".  I decided this meant I should roast the meat until I was ready for the next step.  I washed the mushrooms (more cheating, they were already cut into "slides") and parsley, and chopped up garlic, then decided the chicken was roasted "enough" and added all these ingredients to the pan along with chicken stock.

By this time the pan was quite full and it occurred to me that the recipe was probably intended for an actual roasting pan.  I suppose this should have occurred to me sooner since the recipe called for 1 to 2 chicken, but I persevered and arranged everything very carefully in the pan and continued.  Next, for the first time ever, I peeled tomatoes and removed their seeds.  Thank goodness for the internet, where I found directions for the task of peeling tomatoes (I chose her least favorite method, I guess because I'm contrary) and removing the seeds.  This took forever and left me with a pile of skins and seeds that seemed rather wasteful.  Thirty minutes had passed so I added in the tomatoes.  Upon opening the oven I saw that the parsley had burned, so I replaced that and covered the whole thing with foil to hold in the juices better.  Then I spent time cleaning the kitchen and eating tomato peels/drinking seeds while I waited for quite a bit longer than the suggested 10 minutes for the chicken to cook completely.  Perhaps that "roast but leave the chicken white" step really meant to cook the things a lot longer!  Even so, overall I felt very zen while cooking this dish.  It was a very enjoyable experience and made our house smell heavenly.  Here is a picture of it when it came out of the oven (aren't my tomatoes peeled and seeded excellently?):

I served it with baked potatoes, as the recipe suggested.  The chicken and vegetables were absolutely delicious.  The mushrooms were so good, I found myself being grateful that no one in my house would eat them (more for me).  As for the chicken -- well, at this point, if you're not sitting down, I think you should.

Are you sitting down?

My son Grant ate the chicken.