Patience, my young grasshopper....all shall come in time..soon...

Sorry I haven't written lately.  Been working.  My next nights off are tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday, so I'll try to do some cooking, sewing, or gaming, and blog a bit about whichever I do.

Unfortunately, I do have to work tonight because of a strange situation, so I have to go to bed.

More soon.

Ciao

Shewhomustwearhats 

Nighttime adventures in baking

I made cookies!  Huzzah!  Here's the recipe.

I have no idea when or where we got this recipe, or if the story is true, but we've had it for my entire extended life of 20 years.

It's really, really easy to follow, and plays in with my not loving to meticulously measure things.  You can put a little more or less of pretty much any of these ingredients and they'll still turn out delicious.

So, for the sake of having a few more words, I'll describe the process.  

I usually half the recipe.  Cause I don't know about you, but I do not need 112 cookies.

That is far too much temptation, right there.  

Maybe if you're having a party, or giving the away as gifts.

Start out by getting two large mixing bowls.  One for dry ingredients, one for wet.  

Grab your oatmeal and blend it up to really small, basically powderifying it.  It calls for 5 cups, so I make 3 1/2.  

It has to be 3 1/2 of blended oatmeal, not just normal oatmeal.  That's important.

Once that's blended and the correct amount is in your dry mixing bowl, put in the rest of the dry ingredients.

Halfing it, so 2 cups of flour, half a tsp of salt, and one tsp each of baking powder and baking soda.

Have all those?  great.  Now grab a spoon and roughly stir those together.  And no, I do not mean be really rough (as in violent), I mean you don't have to stir so perfectly that every single thing is mixed to amazing perfection..  Not a huge deal if it gets perfectly mixed, you just want them mostly mixed.

Now on to the wet ingredients bowl.  Toss in your butter, Halfing would be 1 cup, which is usually two sticks of butter.  16 oz.

I suppose if you're trying to be healthy you could sort of skimp on that, but if you're trying to be healthy, why are you making cookies?

Halfing it, add one cup each of brown and normal white sugar.  Grab your mixer, and start mixing!

Got that pretty well mixed?

What's half of 2 tsp's vanilla extract?  1 tsp?  Good job!  Add that.

And grab two chicken babies to put in, too.  Again, if you want to be healthier you could take out the yolks, but this is seriously not a healthy recipe, so why are you here?

Got that all mixed up?  Now slowly add some dry mix into your wet mix, half a cup at a time is easiest, if you put more than that it tends to puff up in your face and you're breathing flour/oatmeal/baking soda/powder/salt air.  Less pleasant than normal air, so I'd avoid that.  Small amounts at a time.

Now just mix all that up until you've combined both of them.  

Once it's all mixed, toss in your chocolate chips and ground up Hershey bar.  I don't usually add nuts, but that's up to you, you nutty people.

Preheat your oven, that helps speed things up a bit.  It's easiest to have two cookie sheets, that way you can be rolling cookie balls while the others are cooking.  It says 6 minutes, and that is usually what I start at, but in order to get that slightly crunchy crust and soft gooey inside, I usually have to cook it for 2-4 more minutes.  Depends on how you like your cookies, though.  You could do more, you could do less.

Now take'em out, let'em cool, put'em away, and eat'em!  Not all at the same time, though.  That might be unhealthy.

This is one out of four plates of cookies, all equally as full.  I didn't count, but even halfing the recipe, you end up with a lot of cookies.

Congratulations!  You now have cookies!  Share them with your friends, for they are amazing and delicious, and your friends will love you forever.

Or at least, until you run out of cookies.  Then you're no your own.

Ciao

SheWhoMustWearHats

Cooking adventures

So, in my cooking adventures tonight, I made Orange chicken!  Sort of.

Ingredients

Three skinless, boneless chicken breasts

Probably three or four oranges worth of freshly squeezed orange juice

A dash of powdered ginger

A glop of honey

Some oil

A sprinkle of flour

A little bit of soy sauce

So I started by thawing the chicken, cause it was really, really solid.  Took like, fifteen minutes.  

Then my boyfriend and I cut it up all neat and nice.  

He's very particular about food.  

He cut off all the "bad" parts, fat, whiteish parts, reddish parts, all that jazz, off of all three breasts, and it ended up being about the equivalent of one small chicken breast.  

Anywho, cut it into bite sized pieces, toss it in a pan with the oil, to make sure the chicken doesn't stick or anything, and cook that with much stirring until the chicken is all cooked.  

Then put your glop of honey, your soy sauce, your orange juice, your dash of powdered ginger, and your sprinkle of flour into a bowl and mix it up.  Now add dashes and globs of all these ingredients until it's the saucy consistency you want, and the flavor you want, and mix it all in with your chicken.  

Congratulations!  You now have sort-of orange chicken!  Is it delicious?  Good job.  Mine turned out pretty well, but I think I'm going to make it again on another night off and do some experimenting.  

Lemme know how it turns out if you try it!

Just warning, this is very much my style of cooking.  

I don't usually do a ton of measuring, so when I write things down they're going to be in estimated amounts, not actual measurements.

Have fun deciphering!

Maybe cookies tomorrow night?  Or I guess tonight...being on nights is confusing sometimes.

Anywho, goodnight for now!  

Ciao

SheWhoMustWearHats