Food goodness

Adapted from a back issue of Cook's Illus. If you like thin and crispy choc. chip cookies then this recipe is for you.  But.  Do yourself a favor and buy *good* chips, not Nestle's, something good.  Like Ghiradelli.  And try to buy the mini chips if you can.  You'll be glad you did.  Makes ~4 doz. 1.5 C (7.5 oz) AP flour (if you aren't weighing the "dry team" as AB says, you should be) 1/4 t salt (more if using kosher) 3/4 t baking soda 1 stick (8 oz) unsalted butter, melted and cooled 1/2 C white sugar 1/3 C brown sugar 3 T light corn syrup 1 large yolk 2 T milk (not skim, tho) 1 T vanilla extract 3/4 C semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used minis) Preheat oven to 375.  Line baking sheets with parchment or a silpat and set aside.  Sift together flour, salt and soda and set aside. Fit your stand mixer with the paddle (or use a hand mixer) and beat butter with the sugars and corn syrup until blended--about 1 min.  Add yolk, milk ...

Oh Smitten , what a great recipe. If this soup doesn't cure what ails ya, I don't know what would. You food goodness folks already know that I've recently owned my new persona as the lady who pushes soup on people who sniffle in my presence. This soup is so so delicious and so pretty and orange. Downside: My husband, he no like (ginger is not his preferred flavor). My kids, they no like either (It is actually downright spicy, not hot, but very zingy with all the garlic and ginger). I like. so. much. Soup 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 pounds carrots, peeled, thinly sliced 1 large onion, finely chopped 4 regular or 6 small garlic cloves, peeled and smashed 1 tablespoon finely chopped or grated ginger, or more to taste (it could easily be doubled) 4 cups vegetable broth 1/4 cup white miso paste, or more to taste [I accidentally bought red but it was so tasty. yuh-hum!] To finish Drizzle of toasted sesame oil [DO THIS.] 2 scallions, very thinly sliced [as much as...

In parenting, there are things on which I hold my ground and things on which I "drop the rope," as a former colleague used to say. For a few months, I had dropped the rope about letting the kids eat E--o waffles every morning for breakfast until T began waking every morning with a daily declaration that it's, "wapple time."  Oh yes, it was cute, but a "wapple" a day is not ok by me. For starters, S needs her breakfast to get her through an entire morning at pre-K, so I added breakfast back to ground-holding territory. I've been making these with the kids. I'm hoping to keep it up with weekly baking of healthy breakfast recipes that I then pump up with additional protein, fiber, calcium, etc.   This one is adapted from Simply . 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed [I use my freezer stock, but I recently found I prefer just plain old overripe bananas before they hit the freezer] 1/3 cup melted butter [I plan to try to sub yogurt with the next batch]...

Adapted From: Smitten Kitchen , who adapted it from Julia Child Yuuuu-uuuummmm!   This was really good.  I've been eating a lot of spinach lately (spinach salads, creamed spinach, etc) because it is a good source of iron.   I had a giant box of fresh spinach in the fridge, but that was only one pound.  3 pounds of fresh spinach is a LOT of fresh spinach.  So, I will admit that I cheated a little.  I used the 1 pound of fresh spinach that I had, and then I supplemented with a bag of frozen cut spinach.  I used beef stock and I really think that it added significantly to the deliciousness of this dish.  You can use other types of stock or cream instead, but if you have beef stock, I would recommend trying it. Serves 6 3 pounds fresh spinach (or, a combo of fresh and frozen worked just fine for me) 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter Salt and pepper 1 1/2 tablespoons flour 1 cup stock (your choice; Julia recommends beef) or...

From: Gina's Skinny Recipes I actually made this in a crock pot.  The soup was really good, but I think if I made it again I would do it on the stove-top, or at least add a little less liquid.  I'm not great at translating stove-top to crockpot.  Anyway, it's still really good and I'll definitely eat it all week.  Todd said that it was better than the Au B0n Pain split pea soup he often gets at the cafe at his job, so I know he liked it, too.  This was just a little liquidy, whereas I think of split pea soup being a thicker soup.   the recipe below is for the stove-top version.  If you want to try it in the crockpot, I would suggest decreasing the liquid by a cup or two.  I did 6 hours on high and everything was pretty mushy.  I would probably do 8 hours on low next time?  I don't know.  I would have to play around with it a little.  Again, though, it's still really good and we'll gobble it all up this week.  Apparently ...

From Everybody Likes Sandwiches , with a lovely family story to go with it. This is a quick basic cake, with something special from the taste of the vanilla sugar. I doubled the number of chocolate chips, but otherwise left it alone. 1 c butter 1 c sugar 1 6-gram pack Oetker vanilla sugar (or 1 t of vanilla extract) [I found this vanilla sugar in the baking aisle, with the frosting and sprinkles] 3 eggs 1 1/2 c flour 1/2 c corn starch 1 T baking powder scant 1/2 c milk 1 package of chocolate chips Preheat oven to 350 and grease a bundt pan. Cream butter, gradually add sugar, the vanilla sugar and eggs. Add mixture of sieved flour [I never sieve], corn starch and baking powder alternately with the milk. Mixture should be firm; don’t add too much milk. [I probably only used about 1/4 c.] Stir in half the chocolate chips and pour/scoop batter into the pan. Sprinkle the other half of the chocolate chips on the top and press in lightly. Bake for 50 minutes. When coo...

Modified from Gina's Skinnytaste -- I originally followed the recipe exactly, using this disgusting unsweetened unsalted almond-flaxseed butter that is awful by itself, and the batter tasted just like it, so I had to start modifying. If you were using good nut butter, her suggestion to have a blob of it in the middle is probably a nice one; if you're using a butter you're just trying to get rid of, I'd skip it. Her recipe originally came out to 4 WW points per muffin... I used less PB and exchanged some AP for whole-wheat flour, but then added chocolate chips and a little more sugar, so I'm not sure where that ends up exactly. Ingredients: 3 ripe medium bananas 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce 3/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour 3/4 cups whole-wheat pastry flour 3/4 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt 2 tbsp Earth Balance, softened 1/2 cup light brown sugar 2 large egg whites (I used a big splash of EggBeaters) 1 tsp vanilla extract 7 tbsp nut butter as...

I usually make chicken stock in a slow cooker ( a la Shannon ) but a few months ago, I'd seen something online about saving vegetable scraps to make broth and wanted to try it. Whenever you trim the tips off of carrots or the leaves off of celery or the outer layers off of an onion, you throw them in the freezer -- just make sure they're clean. When you make chicken stock, you just add everything; since it's being strained out anyway, it's not like you'll be eating the veggie parts you didn't want in the first place. And hey, it works! This isn't rocket science and you could probably use the scraps in the slow cooker too. But this made the kind of perfectly clear broth that I don't usually get from my crockpot, so I'm writing it down so I don't forget it for next time: 1. Put a lot of water in a pot and set it to boil. 2. Get rid of all the skin from your chicken carcass. This is worth a few extra minutes, because it means there is hard...