BB Bars

As I think I said in my welcome post to this blog, my cooking and baking styles are pretty different.  When cooking, I generally throw a bunch of stuff together and hope for the best.  I rarely follow a recipe, except if I'm making something elaborate or something new.  In baking, it's the opposite.  I follow recipes, even the ones I have memorized, and I rarely make up something new.  This recipe, though, is something I made up a few years ago when I wanted to satisfy my simultaneous cravings for peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and oatmeal cookies all at once.  Clearly I was in graduate school at the time.  My roommates served as guinea pigs as I tinkered with this recipe over and over again until I finally came up with a version that is the ultimate comfort cookie.  And there's oatmeal in them, so you know they're good for you.

These cookies are practically health food!

Cheesy Grits with Roasted Veggies

Being from the South, I could eat grits pretty much all day every day and be happy.  They're sooo good!  Matt and I usually eat them for brunch on the weekends, when he makes omelets and we sit on the couch watching Meet the Press or Jersey Shore or something (kind of diametrically opposed options, now that I think about it...).  He is a master omelet maker - I'm too impatient and always end up with scrambled eggs with stuff in them, but Matt really has the knack.  He's a keeper! 

So simple.  So good!

Cookie of the Month - First American Cookies

Yesterday, Matt and I took a super-fun field trip to Old Sturbridge Village, an 1830s re-enactment town about 50 miles southwest of Boston.  We went for my new favorite holiday, Tomato Day, where heirloom tomato plants are given to visitors as part of the entrance fees.  Matt and I are newbie gardeners, but our garden is growing pretty well so far, so we figured we'd supplement it with a tomato plant.  Matt's not even big on tomatoes, but I love them enough for the both of us.  And they're free!  Ahh, America.  Unfortunately, when we got there, we were told at the door that they were out of tomato plants.  That was discouraging, but we had a great time exploring the village anyway.  While there, we saw re-enacters making shoes, carding wool, throwing pots, making barrels, printing leaflets, forging iron, and making candles, as well as an old-fashioned baseball demonstration (they run to third base first!  What is that about?!).  Maybe most fascinating was the hearth cooking re-enactment with a woman baking bread and a pumpkin pie from dehydrated pumpkin, as well as making soup with dumplings.  Keep in mind that it was about 80 degrees out yesterday, and she was wearing a full 1830s respectable woman outfit - including long sleeves and a bonnet.
  

Leftover Thursday - King's Cauliflower

This is actually an old Leftover Thursday from last Thursday that I'm just now getting around to finishing - it's been a busy week!  Newer posts coming soon!  Anyway, after a beautiful couple of days where Matt and I tested out our new grill (I mean, Matt tested it out and I watched), it started to rain.  While I've certainly grilled in the rain before (in the sense that other people are grilling and I am watching, often from inside), we returned to strictly indoor cooking.

Boil, boil, toil, and trouble.

Old-timey Cooking - Brownies

I've been looking forward to making the Palmer House brownies since I made brownies the last time (which you can read about here).  Now, my brownie recipe is pretty different from the Palmer House one.  All the basic ingredients are there - chocolate, flour, sugar, butter, eggs - but the Palmer House recipe uses more of everything.  I mean a lot more.  For the same size pan.  This is madness, I tell you, sheer madness! 

I sprung for some of the good stuff.

Grilled Cauliflower

We got a new grill over the weekend.  Big news!  Matt spent some time doing research and we ended up with a brand new grill to replace the old grill that came with the apartment (and had seen better days).  So, we've been grilling.  Or barbecuing, as Matt calls it.  I don't correct him, but those of us who grew up in the South know that there is a difference between grilling and barbecuing.

Nothing says fun like a rosé.  You can quote me on that.

Leftover Thursday - Biscuits

I've been thinking about making biscuits for a while, particularly since reading Amelia Simmons' recipes for biscuits.  As I think I mentioned earlier, one of Amelia's biggest contributions to the world of cookbooks is her use of chemical leaveners, particularly pearl ash and emptins.  Pearlash - potassium carbonate, for the chemists out there - is a more refined version of potash, which is made from the ashes of hardwood trees and is commonly used in soap-making.  Pearlash was discovered in the 1740s, although potash has been around for much longer.  By the 1760s, potash had become a major export from Canada, with most of it being sent to Great Britain.  Potash continued to be a major export from both Canada and the United States as pioneers moved westward, culling forests as they went.

First U.S. Patent, issued in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for his new process of refining potash and pearlash.

Chicken Soup with Rice

Remember the Maurice Sendak poem/book Chicken Soup with Rice?  I think of it every time I make any kind of chicken soup, with rice or no.  Admittedly, that's not often, as I don't make a lot of chicken soup.  What happens more often when I'm making soup is that I sing my soup-centered version of Shoop by Salt-N-Pepa.  You can probably figure out how it goes.  Not super original, I know, but catchy.  Anyway, Sendak calls the book "a book of months," which means that every month gets its own five-line poem about how chicken soup with rice is the perfect meal for that month.  This is the poem for May (Happy May Day!):

In May I truly think it best

To be a robin lightly dressed

Concocting soup inside my nest

Mix it once, mix it twice

Mix that chicken soup with rice.

Today was definitely the type of day for chicken soup with rice.  Not quite the type of day to be a robin lightly dressed, though, unless you want to freeze your tailfeathers off.