RECAP

Wow! the holidays have kept me busy! I haven't written anything since the tenth.... yikes! Well, most of the cooking that has been done is desserts, desserts, and more desserts! I baked a pleather of cookies for my friends for their Christmas gifts (Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread cookies, coconut cream cheese pinwheels, all DELICIOUS), and made a scrumptious banana cream cheesecake for Christmas eve. It was all soooooo good! My mom was also able to make some yummy cookies and treats before the break, and believe me when I say they did not last long! I'm hoping to do some more full out meals when things go back to normal, but with my Birthday ( January 8th, save the date!), track, and upcoming exams, I'm not sure what's going to happen! But, in spite of all the setbacks, I was able to start doing some research into the history of cooking and have just started my powerpoint for the project. I also read an interesting book called, "The Sweet Life in Paris" by David Lebovitz. I didn't realize all the specific nuances of living in Paris until I read this book! Apparently, the French like to cut each other in line, and carrying around a dirty rag is the thing to do! If you want an Americans point of view on the city of Paris, this is an amusing and informative read. Wow, that sounded like a sales pitch : ).... anyway... To go along with the sales- pitch theme, GO SEE THE MOVIE THE YOUNG VICTORIA!!!!!! It was AMAZING!! Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend did an amazing job as Queen Victoria and Prince Albert! it was a great romance and is up there with one of my favorite movies of all time, Pride and Prejudice ( with Keira Knightley). Well, it's New Years Eve, and the clan is all coming over for dinner ( buffalo chicken wings!!!) so I'd better help clean up and cook up before my mom blows a fuse.... i can already here her sighing.... better get moving!!! TTYL

Grace

Switcharoo ( No more martha)

I have a declaration to make: I will now be using other cookbooks in my cooking project! This comes after a rather dissappointing Martha Stewart Recipe book which had some flaws ( sorry martha!). For one thing, some of the recipes were kind of, well, blah. Nothing special. Another problem was with the measurements in the recipes. In the Hollandaise, she called for waaaaaay to much butter! It started to turn into gorilla glue, so I had to water it down....watery hollandaise....blah! So, for last weeks entry ( sorry! schoolwork and track have diminished my ability to update immediately) I used a book that my mom ordered from the library called Mad Hungry. I can't remember the name of the recipe off the top of my head, but I made a delicious spatchcocked, lemon chicken. Spatchcocking, for those of you who don't know, is basically taking a whole chicken and flattening it out. This involves cutting the backbone out of the chicken with chicken shears.... that was quite an ordeal! Just the idea of scissors scraping and crunching bone was desturbing to me! So, when I started to cut, i got soooooo squeamish that i couldn't continue! lucky for me, mom rolled up her sleeves and wasn't afraid to complete the dirty deed. The rest of the process was easy and bone-crunching free. The chicken was divine, yes divine, and i made a heavenly arborio rice to go with it. I love arborio rice..... : ) Anyway,aside from the butchering, this dinner was a good one, and i am excited to pick out this weekends dinner!

Thanksgiving break!!!!!! Haven't been able to update in soooooooo long!! And because of Thanksgiving, I didn't use any recipes from the Martha Stewart book....oops.... But I did make some delicious sweet potato gnocchi with fried chesnuts and fried sage AND Pumpkin cheesecake. Ok, so here's the scoop....

Sweet Potato Gnocchi:
I was sooo excited about the chesnuts for this recipe! Roasting and frying chesnuts made them like potato chips! It was delish... the same with the fried sage...soo good. And with the actual gnocchi, well, i didn't have a ricer, so i had to use a cheese grater... it worked pretty darn well! Improvisitation is a great thing.... Anyway, the result was delicious and it was gone in a jiffy.
Pumpkin Cheesecake: This was soooo good! It was like pumpkin pie, but better! The tangy cheesecake part of it made it soo good. It was really easy to make too. it was like regular pumpkin pie but you just added cream cheese and sour cream. The only mishap was cooking the crust for too long, but it still turned out really well. Well, I'm writing this at school... soooo... they are probably going to kick me out soon so i'll have to write more later.....much later.... : ) ttyl