Monster cookie recipe

We made a monstrous batch of monster cookies the other day. As we went, I kept tweaking the cookies with each new pan. At the end, I had the absolutely perfect monster cookie recipe (in my opinion).

The majority of monster cookie recipes you find online include no flour. Which is great if you can’t do gluten – but it doesn’t make as perfect of a cookie as it could.

Ingredients:

3 eggs
1 3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 17 ounce jar peanut butter (I used soy butter thanks to allergies)
1 stick of butter, softened
3/4 cup M&Ms
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1/4 cup white raisins
2 tsps baking soda
3 1/2 cups quick oats
1 cup flour
2 tsps corn syrup

Mix your egg, butter and sugars together first. Then add peanut butter, vanilla, salt and baking powder. Then oats and flour. Then chocolate chips, M&Ms and raisins.

Scoop out cookies large. If your dough isn’t sticking together well (though it should with the above ingredients), add more peanut butter and/or corn syrup.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Take out before looking fully done (so it doesn’t get too dry from all of the oats). Put cookie pan in freezer to solidify the softer cookie. After 15 minutes, remove from the freezer and they will be good to serve.

Delicious!

Super easy (probably inauthentic) Korean food

To our cooking arsenal we’ve recently added a rice cooker and it’s revolutionary! Yum. I’ve heard stories from other adoptive parents that their children wouldn’t eat anything but rice once they arrived home. So we figured we’d better learn how to make good rice before Henry arrives home – something tells me our Minute Rice microwave version just wouldn’t cut it. 🙂

We made Korean sweet rice this weekend and it was divine! We served it with bulgogi wrapped in lettuce and it was so, so good. I will share with you the ‘recipe,’ although I don’t think you can even call it that. Super tasty and pretty quick to make. Although if you were serving it authentically, it would come with a multitude of side dishes. So this is the American version, and will serve about 4 people.

Ingredients:
1.5-2 pounds of sirloin steak
2/3 cup Bulgogi marinade (told you this was easy! We’re cheating on this part. Available at Asian grocery stores and maybe some hip grocery stores. If you can’t find it, the more Martha Stewart friendly version would be to make this: http://bbq.about.com/od/marinaderecipes/r/bl20209a.htm)
1/2 cup Rice wine (not rice wine vinegar, just rice wine. You could probably use Sake or a dry white wine)
3 tablespoons sugar
2-3 cups cooked Korean sweet rice (we used the rice cooker for this – just follow the directions in your rice cooker. It’s worth it to get the Korean sweet rice – much tastier than almost any other white rice I’ve had)
12-16 green leaf lettuce leaves

3-4 hours before meal time, cut your raw sirloin into narrow strips (about 1/2 an inch wide). Place in bowl. Add rice wine, sugar and 1/2 cup Bulgogi marinade, reserving the rest. Gently toss meat in mixture, ensuring all meat is properly covered, and cover bowl with plastic wrap. Refrigerate. (Could be done overnight) If you have a rice cooker with a delay timer, you could start the rice cooking to be done at the same time as the meat.

You can either grill the meat or cook it on the stove top in a bit of olive oil and some of the leftover marinade. If you grill it, brush strips with remaining marinade.

Because the strips are thin they will cook quickly. Cook until the sugar has caramelized on the outside – on the stove top, this took about 2-3 minutes per side.

Serve in a separate bowl along side rice and lettuce leaves for making your own wraps. Traditionally you would serve this with a Korean red chili paste mixture, but we forgot it at the Asian market so we served it with dabs of Sriracha and a drizzle of the Bulgogi marinade. Yum!

Sharing our joy across blogs :)

I wanted to announce to my awesome blog followers on here that we have a match! We were matched with the sweetest little 9-month-old boy you have ever seen in Korea. 🙂

 

Stay tuned as our extremely long wait to hold him in our arms no doubt means plenty of time to do new crafts!

Follow our journey at ourseoulmate.wordpress.com.

Taquitos

We recently acquired a Sam’s Club membership (thanks Kim!), which has been a delight for the cheap Icees, bulk designer clothes and bargain vacuums. What’s not so delightful?

Every time we go to Sam’s Club, my husband begs me to buy the huge, bulk sized nasty frozen taquitos. Bleck. I love Mexican food, but frozen food? Not so much. Frozen Mexican food? Even less.

Then I stumbled upon this recipe on Pinterest: http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/04/baked-creamy-chicken-taquitos/

From the amazing blog, ourbestbites.com. Thanks for the great recipe!

I made a few adjustments based on what I had available, and it turned out delish! This would be a perfect party food, as this made enough filling to cook 30+. Rumor has it they are also easily frozen.

I cooked 1 whole ~3 pound chicken in a slow cooker with some salt and pepper. I took the chicken straight out of the freezer and threw it in for 6 hours on high, with a lot of water, and it was perfectly done.

Ingredients:

Meat from 1 whole cooked shredded chicken

1 package fat free cream cheese (or full fat if you’re living on the edge :))

1 can black beans, drained

juice from 1 whole lime

Mama’s Spice or any favorite Mexican spice mix, to taste

1 small jar green salsa

1 handfull of Cilantro, roughly chopped

2 cups shredded colby jack cheese

2 packages fajita tortillas

Shred chicken, maximizing as much as possible. (dark meat is your friend! Not your heart’s friend, but your friend!)

Warm cream cheese in microwave for 30 seconds, or until stirable. Mix in juice from 1 lime, and can of green salsa. Fold in chicken. Throw in cilantro and fold in black beans. Lastly, mix cheese into the mixture and season to taste with spices. Don’t add salt – the mixture is already a bit salty from the chicken/beans/salsa, and you will be topping the taquitos with salt.

Lay aluminum foil out on cookie sheets. (You may need several, or to cook several batches)

Put 4-5 tortillas at a time in the microwave between two paper towels. Microwave for 30 seconds. This will make the tortillas pliable. Put heaping spoonful of mixture in tortilla, roll tightly. Place seam-side down on pan. Repeat until pan is full. Do not let your taquitos touch.

Spray taquitos lightly with cooking spray, top with sea salt. Bake at 450 degrees for about 12-15 minutes, or until lightly toasted and dark brown on ends. Taquitos should come out nice and crispy.

Serve with salsa, sour cream of quacamole.

Warning: Taquitos do not taste as crunchy the next day. However, they would be delicious turned into enchiladas the next day by covering the tops with sauce and cheese and baking until heated through.

Refinished dresser for the kid’s room

For more details on this project, visit http://www.ourseoulmate.wordpress.com.

 

P.S. – I know I’ve been gone forever but there will be more posts soon! I’m working on a crocheted blanket, learning to cross stitch, and a quilt to come soon. The crafting bug is back!

Anywho. Started with this dresser, found off Craigslist for $25. It was solid, heavy, and the perfect height for a dresser/changing table. But it was black. Smelly. And missing some of the hardware.

I’m planning on painting our nursery gray, so I wanted a few pops of yellow. And what more of a pop can you ask for than a yellow dresser?

It’s topped with an easy to clean up oil cloth, and the dresser drawers are lined with it too.

I think it turned out pretty cute and cost less than $75. (Please forgive the iPhone photos :))

Long time gone

I apologize it’s been such a long delay. There’s been a lot going on in our lives that’s distracted me from the main focus of this blog – cooking, sewing and crafts. (The fact that Rufus chewed through the power cord on my sewing machine notwithstanding … good thing he’s cute)

The big news in our life is we have started the process of adopting from Korea! If you are interested in following our journey, feel free to check out our new blog: http://ourseoulmate.wordpress.com/

Thank you all for your ongoing support and understanding about the delays in posts. 🙂

Kitchen illustrator art

I promise, I’m almost done with Illustrator art posts. 🙂

More illustrator art

I’m loving playing with Illustrator. Here are some more wall art pieces I’ve worked on – 3 more to go to replace all of the photos I have in mind. 🙂

New artwork for the walls

So the embroidery attempt is still a work in progress. Yay, Illustrator!

  

Front porch Fridays …. errr, Monday

So a long time ago I promised you a new theme called Front Porch Fridays. Silly beginning blogger that I was, I didn’t realize how quickly these themes fall by the wayside.

Lo and behold, today I was finally syncing all of my iPhone pics and realized that I had taken a number of photos of beautiful houses around St. Joe on my walks with my husband and pups.

Forgive the quality, ogle the architectural details …

(Also, sadly, none of these are in *our* neighborhood)