Merry Christmas

Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season. Mine is filled with some holiday baking.


I am home with my mom and my brother and sister. I thought it was important to be together as this is the first Christmas without my dad.

I also found this wrapping paper with a sugar recipe on it.

Cabbage Rolls

I could not remember the last time I made cabbage rolls. The last time I made them I was a teenager, this was 30+ years ago. I had to go to Pinterest to find a recipe.

Christmas Tags

Skillet

My son suggested making a skillet for dinner. It consisted of fried potatoes with green peppers, onions, diced ham, bacon, tomato, green onions, scrambled eggs and cheese.

Purple Corn Flakes

I had seen these at Trader Joe's and had to try them. It is made with organic blue corn and brown rice.

I have corn flakes all the time, these are a little tougher in texture than I am use to, but not bad. I will likely not get these again.

Simple Toast

Just adding cinnamon and sugar to buttered toast is a simple way to feed a craving for cinnamon.

Kansas

We spent a few days visiting my daughters in Kansas.

We left early on Sunday, ran into fog on the way down.

My grandson wanted to play a version of checkers where the red pieces were on the red squares and the black pieces were on the black squares. It made for an interesting game.

My daughter showed off a Game of Thrones pop up book.

I had waffles for breakfast.

Ended the trip with some mini fried ice cream.

Zucchini Noodles

I found pre-made zucchini noodles at the store and I had to try it.

I did mix the the zucchini noodles with regular spaghetti noodles. I was thinking there wasn't going to be enough for everyone. I was also thinking that my family was going to be turned off by veggie noodles. I thought it was tasty. Next time I would like to make my own noodles, but I don't have the tools to make veggie noodles.

Ashley's Chocolate Chip Cookies

My daughter Ashley had modified a soft sugar cookie recipe into a chocolate chip cookie recipe.
This cookie has been a big hit. It does take more like a sugar cookie to me.

So here is the recipe

3/4 cup (6 oz) butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla
6 oz chocolate chips
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 t salt

1. Mix butter and sugars until fluffy.
2. Add egg, beat until incorporated.
3. Stir in egg yolk and vanilla until combined.
4. Scrapping the sides, add the chocolate chips, flour, baking soda, and salt.
5. Bake 8-12 minutes.

Edit June 22, 2021:

You can now find a video for this here.

Carrot Progress

Here is the progress on my carrot plant.

Greek Frozen Yogurt

I had whipped up some frozen yogurt by combining what I had left from a 1 quart container of Greek yogurt, 1 cup of sugar, about 1/2 cup peanut butter, 1/3 baking cocoa, and a teaspoon of vanilla and churned it in my ice cream machine.


I thought it was pretty good, my husband hated it

Tasty Eats

This is a Food Network worthy meal. The Italian Gyro recipe came from Chopped cookbook I got at Christmas time.
The pasta salad is from the current issue of Food Network Magazine.

The brownie is from a brownie mix. However, I had some coffee flour from Trader Joe's and there is a recipe for these brownies on the coffee flour bag.

Ivy

I had come across this ivy during a routine walk.

Carrot

What I have is a 🥕 carrot that was starting to go bad and started to sprout, so I decided to plant the carrot. In the fall it would be interesting to see what the carrot has become.

#Watermellon

One is a smoothie consisting of watermelon and strawberry ice cream, and the other is the watermelon strapped in my back seat.

Mango Ice Cream

I was going to make avocado ice cream using the recipe from the Food Network Magazine, however we could not find the avocados and I saw the mangoes and thought I would do a substition. I did eventually find the avocados, but had already made up my mind to do the mango ice cream. I was a little worried on how it was going to turn out, especially since I was not sure how the lime component was going to work with the mango. I did turn out delicious. It was easy to make make since you don't have to deal with the cooking with eggs to make a custard.

So if you ever get a Food Network magazine, there is always a little booklet that can be torn out and has 50 recipes. The latest magazine has avocados and the avocado recipe is number 49.

For the mango ice cream I substituted two mangos for the avocados. So mango pureed 1 1/4 cup whole milk, 3/4 cup sugar, and the juice of two limes. Then add 1 1/4 cup of heavy cream. Refrigerate for  at least two hours before churning it in the ice cream machine. In my case it is a KitchenAid attachment.

Several notes; I have never dealt with fresh mango, so it was a messy process working around the hard core to remove the soft fleshy part of the mango. I also added more heavy cream then stated. I bought a pint of heavy cream (which is 2 cups). I separated the 1 1/4 cups I needed and added milk to the remainder to make up the 1 1/4 cup of milk.

So I did make a shake with mango ice cream and some frozen strawberries. That turned out delicious too.

Cups and Saucers

I don't know what it is about tea cups, but I am drawn to them. I don't collect them, but I admire looking at them. I know much about these except that they are at least 50 years old and not complete.

Stuffed Mushrooms

My husband had made up this huge stuffed portabella mushroom. It has​ crab, pesto, and cheese on top.

Amped Box Mac and Cheese

Search the internet and you will find many interesting ways to add some new life to boxed Mac and Cheese. Now granted, I love the blue boxed stuff just as much as the next person. However I wanted to spice things up by adding a homemade cheese sauce and a little bit of taco seasoning.
So while my noodles were boiling, I made a rue and about a cup or two of Mexican blended cheese and a half teaspoon of Trader Joe's taco seasoning. I had found that the Trader Joe's taco seasoning is really spicy.

So go ahead and get creative with a box of Mac and Cheese.