Oven-dried Cherries

I give myself very good advice,

but I very seldom follow it.

                                                                                   -Alice in Wonderland

Alice and I have that in common.  Remember how I JUST SAID to get your cherries squared away within 24 hours of picking?  Well I didn't do that.  I picked all the stems off of a pretty sizable batch, washed them, and then got lazy and stuck them in the fridge over night.  The next morning they were all yuckish.

See how they've all started turning brown near where the stem was?

'Healthy' is not a four letter word...

Swimsuit season is not only inevitable, it's up on us.  Time to think about eating some cardboard and suffering the days away.  Well unless...

Unless you make your granola at home.  I have to say, granola has never been something that makes my mouth water.  But in my search for healthy things to put on the table, I tried making some myself.  It's high in fiber and protein, but low in sugar and bad fats, none more so than when it's homemade.  No unappetizing preservatives, colorings, or chemicals. 

And if that's not enough, you can control all of the ingredients so that it tastes exactly to your liking.  Hate raisins?  Ditch 'em.  Prefer walnuts to pecans?  You should totes magotes swap them out.  Many many options and alternatives.  

Freeze-n-bake Cookies

Hubs loves chocolate chip cookies more than anything.  Well besides, you know, his loving wife that makes them from scratch for him.  And his adorable son.  And Jumbo.  But that's it, he loves chocolate chip cookies more than anything other than us.  (Sorry Poose.)

Mmmm, minty...

I love cookies, but I do feel the need to change them up every once in a while.  The clearance rack at the grocery store had some mint and chocolate nibs for $0.84 a bag after Christmas, so I nabbed a crap ton of them.  And I thought they'd be good with chocolate cookies.  So we gave it a whirl.

Taste of Summer

This WEATHER.  Ugh.  I'm not usually one to spend the entire Winter wishing for Summer, but even I have reached my breaking point.  I'm craving balmy nights, friends on the front porch, fresh vegetables and meals made on the grill.  Obviously I have no pull in the weather department, but I can control what I eat.  So last Wednesday night we had a summer inspired meal.  Pineapple bourbon burgers on homemade bacon rolls, tangy spinach salad and potato wedges.  And for dessert?

Grilled pineapple skewers with brown sugar-rum sauce!

Step 1- stab with pokey things.

4-Ingredient Apple Pie Galette

My mother-in-law is famous for her pie crusts.  Actually, the recipe she uses has been passed down from generation to generation.  She's been offering to teach me for months, and SOON I will get a chance to take her up on it!  In the mean time, I don't do a lot in the way of pie baking, which is kind of ironic because I would pass up cake any day of the week in lieu of pie.  Blueberry, cherry, peach, mmm.

Never been a huge fan of apple pie.  When I told my husband that, he nearly fell off his stool.  The thing is, I've never had good homemade apple pie before!

Well, ladies and gents, I'm NOT going to teach you how to make apple pie today.  Instead we're making a galette, which takes all of about 5 minutes to prep.  The good news is that apple galette is a pretty sufficient swap out for apple pie, and there's very few ingredients, very little fat.  In fact, the only really unhealthy thing in this recipe is the pie crust!  So if you find a way to make healthy pie crust, hit a lady up.

'A' is for Autumn and Apples!

Hubs and I took our yearly vacay to the mountains this past weekend.  We have friends there, and since both of us grew up near the beach, we like to change up the scenery every once in a while.  It was a beautiful weekend to go.  The evenings dipped into the 30's, but the days were bright and merely brisk.

On our way out of town we stopped into the farmer's mart and got some goodies.  Sold by the bushel, 'deer apples' are apples that hit the ground naturally before they can be picked off the tree.  They are somewhat bruised, but otherwise completely edible.  Hubs has been lusting over the thought of making apple cider, so he picked up a box with that purpose in mind.  We had also already grabbed a peck of hand picked Arkansas Black apples.  (We planted an AB the same day we planted all of our other trees, but this year it decided to go to tree heaven.  So we figured we'd have to buy them if we ever wanted to try any!)

We also got a quart of local honey with honey comb in tact (nom!), some very fresh heads of cabbage, and a cream soda.  For me.  Delish.  Oh, and when we were leaving home we came across a guy selling half bushels of sweet potatoes, so we bought two!  Think I'll have my work cut out for me soon enough...

Pro Tip: Butter Skins

In the wake of a week filled with images of Miley Cyrus wearing some really unattractive outfits (I feel like if she had been wearing clothes that weren't made from pleather or teddy bear pelts, maybe this wouldn't be quite as big of a deal) I thought I'd share something pleasant, innocent, and much less scandalous.  

Although with even less clothes.  Did you think that was possible?

After the bridal shower on Saturday (which was at a friends house who lives by the river), I had a glass of wine or three, and left my truck down there for safe keeping.  We went back the next day just to retrieve it and ended up spending the majority of the day!  Boo was fascinated by the water, and since we hadn't been planning on a swim, and the river is pretty secluded, we let him go all natural.  It was pleasantly cool, in the low 80's, but the water was perfection.

Anyway this has no correlation to my ProTip.

Butter skins.  Use 'em.  Fold your butter wrappers in half and store them in a little container in the fridge.

Use them to grease muffin tins, cake pans, frying pans, whatever.  The muffin tins are my fav because it's much less messy than trying to get the nonstick spray in every angle.  Also you'll save a good bit of cooking spray just by using something you would have tossed out!  Woo hoo!

Enjoy the long weekend, I am headed up yonder North to visit my best friend.  I'll see if I can't find something interesting to report back on.  Like a winery or equal purveyor of trouble.

Deception! But the good kind. The kind that involves chocolate.

"Oatmeal raisin cookies that look like chocolate chip cookies are the main reason I have trust issues."

This is a popular mantra on Pinterest.  I enjoy oatmeal raisin cookies, but I do understand the disappointment that stirs ones soul when you realize that you won't be partaking in the chocolate you had hoped.  It's a powerful thing.

Anyway, I was thinking about this saying.  See, you don't ever actually SEE oatmeal chip cookies, so I don't understand why anyone ever thinks the raisins are chocolate.  But why don't you ever see it?  So I gave it a shot.

OM NOM NOM!

Even more nom.

Conclusion:  DERISHUS.

Okay, so I actually didn't come up with this idea on my own, but it sounds good, right?  I was telling my friend Beth about my blog, and how I've been doing a lot of baking from scratch lately, and she special requested oatmeal chip cookies.  I made them and Hubs loooooved them.  Unfortunately for Beth, who went out of town this weekend, there may not be any left by the time she comes around for them!  They're tasty, and although the recipe I use calls for a stick and a half of butter (yeah, for real) I still count them as a somewhat healthy option, as the oatmeal provides fiber.  Just sub chocolate chips in for raisins in your fav O.R. cookie recipe!

The spoils of baking.

Pecan Thumbprints

I found a delectable cookie recipe in one of my Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks.  The thing I really like about it is that it utilizes some of the many homemade jams I'm quickly adding to my pantry arsenal.  The recipe is as follows.

Ingredients:
     ~2/3 cup butter, softened
     ~1/2 cup sugar
     ~2 egg yolks
     ~1 tsp vanilla
     ~1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
     ~2 slightly beaten egg whites
     ~1 cup finely chopped walnuts (I used pecans though)
     ~jam, preserves, or frosting for the centers

1.  Beat butter w/ an electric mixer for 30 seconds.  Add sugar, beat until combined, scraping bowl.  Beat in egg yolks and vanilla until combined.  Beat in as much flower as possible and stir in remaining flour.  Cover and chill dough for 1 hour or until easy to handle.
2.  Shape dough into 1 inch balls, roll in egg whites and then nuts.  Place 1 inch apart on greased cookie sheet and press your thumb into the center of each ball.  Bake at 375 for 10 to 12 minutes, or until edges are lightly browned.  Let cool, and fill centers with jam or frosting just before serving.

Here's kinda what it looks like.

Whipped butter & sugar.  This is like dessert to my husband.  It's good he wasn't around or these cookies may have never come to pass.

I cracked some pecans for the cookies.  Curiously I found one that said "Your Mom" on it.  I don't....I just don't even know.

Roll 'em in balls, dip 'em in egg whites and pecans.  Stick them on the pan and put your thumb in the middle of them.  Be sure that you make the dimple pretty deep, it tends to want to fill back up while baking.

Ready to go in the oven!  I wanted to make a few without the pecans just in case I wasn't crazy about them, and I wasn't sure if the egg whites would make or break the recipe, so I did a few
samples to see. The egg whites make them shiny, and they also hold them together
a little better.  But if you choose to go without the pecans or the egg whites, just
make sure your dough is good and cold, because this stuff
gets gooey quick, and will not hold the shape right.

Here they are!  You may notice an imprint on the cookies.  That's because I didn't make the centers deep enough, and had to squish them down when they were fresh out of the oven.  I filled my cookies with my (not to tout) insane-o delishus Peach Cobbler Jam, but you could use any jam you have, or frosting.  You could also skip the filling and eat them as is, they taste similar to a
pecan sandie, but aren't as tough.

Try them!  They're not very difficult, but they do make an impressive gift!  Happy merry making!