Still pale but still trying

Marinated Carrot Salad
Food & Wine An Entire Year of Recipes 2004 Copyright 2004

Salt
1 pound carrots, thinly sliced on the diagonal or julienned
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil I used canola oil
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar I used red wine vinegar
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon minced shallot I used some yellow onion
1 tablespoon chopped parsley I used green onion
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon sugar
Freshly ground pepper

1. Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Salt the water, then add the carrots and cook until they are barely tender, about 3 minutes (watch them - the cooking time with vary depending on the thickness); drain them.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the olive oil with the vinegar, garlic, lemon juice, shallot, parsley, mustard and sugar and season with salt and pepper. I whirled it all together in my mini-chopper. Add the carrots and toss to coat. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight. Serve the carrot salad chilled or at room temperature.
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As I continue my quest to give my complexion a healthy yellow glow, I turned to this recipe. So far my complexion is still the color of Wonder Bread and I was beginning to doubt if I could eat enough colorful vegetables to change it. After tasting this recipe I think it might be possible. I could easily down a pound of carrots a day eating this. I loved the dressing and since I'm not a big fan of raw carrots, that little bit of cooking made the difference. I had to make a few substitutions based on what I had on hand but they worked and I'll probably stick to my substitutions from now on.

I used a cheap mandolin-style, 'as seen on TV' vegetable slicer for this. I don't buy these products directly since I have plenty of opportunities to buy them at yard sales. I bought this brand-new, never-used, in-the-box for $1. It has several blades. I think it's worth what I paid. It actually did a nice job of slicing the carrots, although skinny carrots are not the easiest vegetable to slice on this type of slicer. You can't adjust the thickness of the slices as I would hope you could on a more expensive slicer but I happened to want these slices very thin and that's what I got. Now that I've taken the slicer out of the box and used it, I will probably use it a lot more. It wasn't difficult to use or clean. This is one of those things that I just don't need an expensive version of but I can get some use out of this cheap one.

I have to admit that I liked this so much I wanted to make another batch right away and I didn't feel like slicing another bag of carrots. Since I'm not sure if my food processor is working or not (it stopped working mid-recipe that last time I used it), I bought the bagged matchstick carrots and that worked out very well. They're a bit more expensive but a great time saver.

Since someone asked ...

This is my $20 mixer. It's in excellent condition on the exterior and it came with the paddle, whisk and dough hook. Ain't she purdy?

Recipes I'm not going to tell you about

There have been a lot of things I've made this past year that I never got around to telling you about. I either can't (I don't remember where the recipe is) and/or they were just not that great or exciting (I know, since when has that stopped me?)



This is an eggplant and tomato salad with feta cheese and capers that I made way back when that just didn't wow me. I used the light purple eggplants which are adorable but rather flavorless and I didn't care for the texture of the eggplant. Otherwise, I think this recipe has potential except I don't know where it is. If I even find it I might give it another try with a different variety of eggplant, when tomato season comes along again.

This is a sloppy joe recipe that was fine but there was nothing special about it. I think I used ground turkey.

World Peace Cookies - just about every blogger has made these already. They were okay. I didn't use a really good chocolate or a specialty salt so I won't argue with anyone who did and raved about these (as most people have). Also, I made them for a shower with a bunch of other cookies so I think I was just cookied out when I finally tasted these.

I made these big oatmeal cookies when I made a bunch of other big cookies for my son's teachers. I actually used raisins since I also made chocolate chip cookies for them. I usually put chocolate chip in my oatmeal cookies. These were really good but not so outrageously good that I'm upset that I don't remember where the recipe is. I might have found it online. I think it was the 'big' that made these so good - I'm a sucker for oversized cookies .

These glazed Chinese drumsticks were a failure. They were cooked on the stove top and the skin just about came off and the glaze was pretty lame. They tasted okay but, well, the picture tells the rest.

These drumsticks were cooked in Heinz 57 Sauce. They were supposed to be cooked on the stove top but learning a lesson from the glazed Chinese drumsticks, I did them in the oven. I liked the way they turned out texture-wise but I didn't care for the flavor.

A three pepper relish that wasn't bad, I just don't remember where I got the recipe from.

This is your typical lemon bundt cake, made from scratch with a lemony glaze. It was good, nothing earth shattering about it though. I made it to use up some lemons that I had. I have no idea which cookbook I got that recipe from. I'm sure there is a recipe like this is many of my cookbooks.

The story of my Kitchen Aid mixer

The Essential Soft Oatmeal Cookie
The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion Copyright 2004

1/2 cup (1stick) unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 large egg, beaten
6 tablespoons sour cream or yogurt (not nonfat) I used sour cream
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
1 cup currants or raisins (optional) I used chocolate chips
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon I left this out
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup pecans or walnuts (optional) I left these out

Preheat the oven tho 350 degrees F. Lightly grease (or line with parchment paper) two baking sheets.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, oil and sugar. Add the egg, beating until fluffy, then beat in sour cream and vanilla. Stir in the currants and oats.

In a separate bowl, mix together the baking soda, cinnamon, salt and flour. Add this mixture, a cup at a time, to the oat mixture, beating well after each addition. Stir in the nuts. Let the dough rest for 15 to 30 minutes.

Using a tablespoon cookie scoop, drop the dough onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake the cookies for 12 minutes, or until they're light brown, Remove from the oven and transfer to a rack to cool.
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Okay, not the most exciting cookie recipe. I can't get fancy when I'm looking for a sure thing to put in Nick's lunch bag. He's funny about what he likes and what he doesn't. Store-bought definitely has a greater appeal to him than homemade at this point. He really liked these and so did I. Although I love the oatmeal cookie recipe that uses vanilla pudding, it's nice to have options.

This is a somewhat historical recipe, boring as it is. It's the first recipe I prepared using my Kitchen Aid stand mixer! I never thought I needed an expensive Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Well, there was a point that I wanted one but I was given a Kitchen Aid hand mixer as a wedding gift over 10 years ago and it's so powerful, I stopped coveting the stand mixer.

But I was one of the first shoppers at a local church yard sale late last summer, and what do you think I did when I saw a Kitchen Aid stand mixer sitting there priced at $20? Yep, I bought it! Well, I guess I gave the ending of that story away already, huh?

$20 is a lot for me to spend on something at a yard sale, especially something mechanical that may or may not work. I might have passed it over if it weren't for the handwritten note written on a sticker and placed on the mixer letting me know that all Kitchen Aid attachments work for this mixer. Would someone have taken the time to write that note if the mixer didn't work? And it was a church yard sale after all, all items donated, all of the money going to the church. I took a chance.

I picked that thing up and paid for it so fast, putting down the strawberry shaped cookie jar I was carrying. I was wrangling a 2 year old too, something had to give. Someone else snatched up that cookie jar while I was paying for the mixer and getting it to my car but that's okay. It was nothing special. I've seen those at other yard sales and at Goodwill. I've never seen a Kitchen Aid mixer out in the wild before.

The cashier was amazed that I was paying $20 - everything was priced so cheaply, he thought that was a lot! It's a Kitchen Aid K5-A, with the Hobart name on it, so it's older but those older models are usually better made than the newer models.

So now I'm using it cautiously. I don't know how much life is left in it. I want to use it, but if it croaks, I don't want to be so attached to it that I find myself wanting to replace it at a more believable price. I used it for all of my Christmas baking (my poor neglected hand mixer!) It got a great workout and gave me no problems. What was also nice about it was that it forced me to keep washing the bowl between cookies instead of building a large mountain of dirty bowls like I might tend to do when I use my hand mixer.

So yes, I'm getting a wee bit attached to it, but would I pay hundreds for one of these? I still don't think so, not at this point in my life. I'd rather have more cookbooks.

2 less frozen bananas in my freezer

Quick Banana Coffee Cake Streusel Muffin
The Ugly Binder, clipped from a newspaper

For the streusel topping:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, cut into small pieces and softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

For the muffins:

3/4 cup sour cream
2 bananas
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, cut into small pieces and softened

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 12-cup muffin pan with baking spray, or line it with paper muffin cups.

2. To prepare the streusel, in a food processor, combine the flour, butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. Process for 15 seconds, or until well blended and resembles slightly clumpy wet sand. Transfer to a bowl and set aside

3. To prepare the muffins, in the food processor combine the sour cream and bananas. Process until smooth. Add the cinnamon, ginger, salt, vanilla, egg and brown sugar. Process again until smooth. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and butter. Pulse only until combined. Add 1/4 of the streusel mixture, pulse the processor 2 to 3 times. I hate the vagueness of that step - tell me exactly how much streusel to add back!

4. Scoop a generous 1/4 cup of batter into each muffin cup. Top each with a heaping spoonful of streusel topping, pressing it lightly into the top of the batter. Bake for 18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted at the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes.

Makes 12 muffins.

Nutrition information per muffin (values are rounded to the nearest whole number): 310 calories; 97 calories from fat (31 percent of total calories); 11g fat (7 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 48 mg cholesterol; 49 g carbohydrate; 5 g protein; 1 g fiber; 172 mg sodium.
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This is not one of my old recipes from the Ugly Binder, I actually clipped this from a newspaper recently. I sometimes kill the long 3 1/2 minutes it takes to heat my lunch in the microwave by picking something out of the recycling bin to read and that's where I found this recipe, in a coworker's local newspaper.

I've had a stock of overripe bananas in the freezer forever, planning on making something with them every week, but all the banana recipes I saw seemed blah. This isn't terribly exciting but it was a step up from banana bread or plain banana muffins. I love a muffin with a topping. I'm not a fan of a plain muffin top. I will use this topping on other muffins.

I had some technical trouble. My food processor cut out before I finished. I switched to a mixer but I don't think the butter incorporated properly. I'm not sure. Even though I used foil liners, there was melted butter under each muffin when I took these out of the pan. Weird.

I thought these were very muffin-like, not a cupcake disguised as a muffin. They weren't too sweet or too oily. They looked beautiful - I piled on the topping expecting it to fall off but it stuck beautifully. They rose so nice, and didn't spill over at all. The flavor didn't make my eyes roll back into my head but it was very pleasant.

It's been a while since I made muffins but this might be the start of another muffin kick around here.