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.

Love that Linguine

After a brief hiatus from the blog during which I did actually cook something, but so totally wrong I decided it doesn't count and shan't be remarked on in this forum, today I made Stephanie's Chicken Sausage and Linguine (p. 51).  This dish was a delightful departure from our regular spaghetti and marinara dinner.  As a plus, as a pasta dish with sauce added at the end of the preparation, it enabled me to re-purpose two extra servings of linguine into kid's dinners with regular pasta sauce. 


The dish, amongst other delicious ingredients, included some red wine.  The only regret I have in making this meal today is that I had to take my son to swim class afterwards, so I could not partake of the rest of the bottle of wine while cooking and eating.  However, I am now settled down with a glass while I draft this post -- a lovely side effect of making this dinner.

The sausage/sauce had an upscale, adult taste, which I welcomed after face-planting (hands-and-knees-planting?) outside the Acme after buying ingredients, having engaged in a little horseplay with my son in the hopes of running off some of his energy.  My knee is still throbbing, but the wine is helping!  My husband had to go out to a second store to procure light cream because for some reason the Acme had zero cream on their shelves, light or otherwise.  This is often the case and I suspect that when the Acme employees see my headed towards the dairy products they hide them all, for reasons known only to their own sick, twisted hearts.

The preparation was straightforward, although I still managed to use all four burners at once (one was the sauce for the kids' dinner, so I guess it doesn't count!).  I think it would have been fabulous with garlic bread, but I was busy with my four burners so I didn't think of that until it was too late.  Still, plain bread was fine for sopping the remaining sauce from our plates, and I think everyone was happy with the results of the meal.