This weekend's work

Some weekends I am really on top of things and get a lot of good food prep done.  This was one of those weekends.  I will recap for the sake of offering suggestions and encouragement to others and to remind myself of what things work for me.

The first good news is that the gluten free mix I make myself and store worked wonderfully in our standby pancake recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook that is a tradition in our family.  This good news goes perfectly with the other good news which is that I found and used the griddle attachment to our stove top which has been sitting in the garage since we moved in two years ago.  (You know some of those pancakes went to the freezer for after school snacks during the week)  To continue with the gluten-free theme, my daughter made a batch of iced cookies that just really hit the spot, and now we are both so excited to continue experimenting with our homemade flour mix in other dessert items.

So I got out my biggest pot, bought a 105oz (or so) can of tomatoes, an almost ridiculous amount of tomato paste, and 4 pounds of ground beef.  I stirred a pot of tomato sauce for a few hours on Saturday to achieve 4 portions of meat sauce for the freezer. Some for lasagna and some for spaghetti dinner.  I'm really excited about those.  That was a lot of meat sauce.

Another exciting adventure was making yogurt with one of my daughters Friday night.  It was a success and we are all enjoying the yummy yogurt even though it is not very thick.  I hear this is a common issue in homemade yogurt. Still working on that one.

To continue, I boiled and shredded a chicken breast to be dressed up and used for lunches, stocked up on fruits, veggies, and a few obligatory salty snack foods for the kids' lunches this week. 

I found a few recipes for the crockpot and made one of them.  It was a sesame chicken recipe that turned out kind of plain.  No one is going to ask for it again, but in a bind I could use it.

That's a lot of cooking and food handling.  Throw in a trip to Costco and Safeway, and we should be good for a while!  Tonight, Monday, there will be leftovers from the not-so-great sesame chicken plus some leftovers from the lunch restaurant we ate at.

Simple White Cake

Assalamu alaikom

This recipe is specifically for a friend of mine who called me the other day needing a quick cake recipe for some guests.  I cannot believe I forgot about this one.  I use it to make cupcakes, but it can make a square 9*9 cake if you want.  It is delicious thanks to the butter and to, what I consider, a little too much sugar.  It seriously has a slight crunch on the crust when you first bite into it! 

So if you're ever in a pinch (and hopefully have butter, eggs, and milk) this is GREAT to make and decorate or frost as you like.  Today I made 6 batches of it for a Girl Scout function this Saturday.

No pictures today, but maybe after Saturday's event I'll come back and add one!

Ingredients:
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk

Directions:
1.  Preheat oven to 350*F.  Grease and flour a 9*9 cake pan or line a muffin pan with liners.
2.  In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla.  Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well.  Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth.  Pour or spoon batter in the pan.
3.  Bake 30-40 minutes for the cake or 22-25 minutes for cupcakes. 

I'm going to link to the website here at allrecipes.com.  You have to read some of the reviews to get a feel for how successfull this cake really is!  Some people add an extra 1/4 cup of milk which I haven't done.  I do recommend beating the heck out of each step as you go.  Beat the butter and sugar a LOT before you even start adding the eggs (one by one).   One lady said she dropped a spoonful of raspberry jam in the batter before baking ... I have to try that!!

Enjoy y'all.

What Brownies Taste Like at My House

My sweet dreamer, my oldest daughter, has really been finding her way around the kitchen these past couple of weeks.  Bless her heart, she's not very attuned to details, so I was rightfully worried when she asked to make her first batch of brownies.  She did great, and it was a little more work than when my son started to bake cookies, but she is over the moon with her accomplishments, masha'Allah, and I'm so proud of her.  Here is the recipe we've been making brownies with for some time.  It's a toss up between this one and some other one I can't find, but we do like these a lot.  They just don't taste so good after the second or third day, but they're not given that many hours to sit around in this house.

1 1/3 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
4 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
2 eggs
2 Tbsp water
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup nuts, optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease 8*8 baking pan although 9*13 will work.  Combine flour, salt, and baking soda in a small bown and set aside.  In a saucepan, melt butter and chocolate squares over low heat, stirring occasionally.  Once melted, remove from heat and add sugar, eggs, water, and vanilla.  Stir vigorously until well mixed.  Stir in dry ingredients.  Fold in nuts if desired.  Bake 18-22 minutes.  Cool and serve!

I'm here! Come on in :)

Assalamu alaikom and Peace to all of you!
I've had this blog page for ages but have never set it up. I finally got the urge to finish it up, and here we are!
It's a gorgeouos fall day here in Plano. 54 degrees right now and sunny. Perfect for a day at a pumpkin patch! We'll be heading out to Flower Mound in a little bit once Aisha wakes up and gets fed. This place has hay pyramids, tractor rides, pumpkin chunkin (lol), and pumpkins or course. I can't remember if they have barnyard animals or not, but they should! We went each year to this type of place back in Redmond, so I'm happy to have found something similar here.

I'll leave you with something sweet today:

Here's a great dessert I made yesterday that you layer into a long pyrex:
graham cracker crust (2cups crushed crackers mixed w/ 1 stick melted butter,bake 8min 350)
beat 8oz cream cheese w/ 2cups powdered sugar, spread over crust
slice 4 bananas, toss with juice of one lemon, spread over cream cheese
spread 1 can crushed pineapple over the bananas
cover with a tub (8oz) of whipped topping (cool whip)
top with maraschino cherries if you like, then freeze. pull out a few minutes before serving.