Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Exploring

Got my tea, got my popcorn, snuggling in my pajamas, ready to relax and watch.....the Food Network! This is what I've been doing the last few nights. One of my new favorites is Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and Giada at Home. It's really inspired me to explore more of my Italian heritage in some more specialty dishes. We do a lot of Italian but I want to try some new combination that I wouldn't normally think of!

I always make my own pasta sauce and every year at Christmas we make raviolis and have the leftover dough for noodles! Now I'm craving some homemade noodles, bruschetta and Stromboli...just a few things that caught my eye last night!

One of the things I've been really into lately is trying different toppings on slices of toasted bread One of my favorites is to drizzle with olive oil and top with fresh basil, salami, prosciutto, fresh mozzerella or provolone and top with balsamic, salt and pepper. (mouth watering!)

Once a week or so, I have my sister over and we make some yummy snacks and watch Jane Austen or period movies while enjoying tea and whatever creations we have. Last week we had hummus and chips, salsa with avacados and of course tea. Along with that we had a twist on bruschetta and cucumber sandwiches. We toasted Artisian bread, spread cream cheese on it and topped it with tomato and cucumbers. It was addicting!!

So tonight I am going to make Stromboli for dinner. It's kinda like a large pizza pocket that you slice. I have salami, sauce, mozzarella and I just need to make some pizza dough. I am making my own recipe by using the ingredients I have and referring to this Emeril Lagasse recipe for the times and tempuratures.


For the dough I am using my mom's pizza dough recipe. She makes some of the best pizza and her dough is the key. When I was younger, we used my to live near an Amish community and we would make pizza and sell it to all the Amish bachelors! They loved it!

The recipe is rather cryptic but here it is:

Flour-few cups
1 T yeast
salt
1 1/2 c. hot water
Add flour
knead till it's not sticky, not stiff


I let it rise for an hour, punched it down and after filling it, let it rise another 10 min. I layered mozzarella cheese, sauce, minced green peppers, olives and hard salami.





After baking it for about 20 minutes at 375, I put some Parmesan cheese on top and let it get nice and melted. Really added another layer of flavor that was really good!








In addition to trying this new recipe, I decided to bake Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, Oatmeal crasin and rice krispie treats!! With the help of my 5 year old of course!


For the chocolate chip cookies, I made the recipe on the back of the Toll House chocolate chip bag and just added about 1/2 cup of organic creamy peanut butter to the mixture before I added flour. I also cut down the the sugar and you can't tell the difference! I take them out of the oven when they are still gooey cause I like them soft and chewy.



 For the oatmeal Crasin cookies I used a recipe from a vintage Better Homes and Garden Jr. cookbook. I love the old cookbook because it's so simple for kids to follow and almost never uses a mix so most everything is made from scratch. Since my son was helping me, it was the perfect choice and a great recipe. I cut down on the sugar and added some ground flax seed to make them a little healthier.



 







 



I didn't think it was possible to mess up rice krispies but for some reason they turned out a little hard. Still good but just not as soft as I would like them. I think I melted the marshmallows too much first!

2 comments:

  1. Wow! you are in a baking mood! I made these Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies....they were so good, 2 c. of peanut butter in them. Very soft....peanut butter ones.

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  2. Yum! I was just thinking this morning of posting my favorite eat with your hands foods, stromboli being one of them.
    And I too love the Nestle Toll House recipe. I just made a batch myself. It sounds good with the pb.

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