Something New?

I am thinking of trying something new, for the new year.... I know I am a little early, but thought maybe I would see if any of you out there want to try this with me.
So it turns out I suck at updating the so-called "Recipe of the Week." I am considering switching it to a Recipe of the Month. I would post something up that I have not made before but really always wanted to try. I will then plan to make it sometime before the month is over. And I thought that maybe some of you might want to try it out with me. We could see who succeeds and who fails, and maybe find some great new ideas in the kitchen.
Anyone up for a 2011 challenge?

Productive and Loud

So I had a productive day in the kitchen today! I made 3 jars of carrot baby food, 2 ice cube trays of peas baby food, 3 jars of saskatoon jam, and saskatoon muffins. I needed to get the baby veggies made today because I am almost out of all baby food, and I have to wait to make more fruit until we do groceries on friday, and I didn't want to be stuck making everything then. Daniel is a lucky baby though because all those veggies are local and delicious! Today he tried the peas for the first time and I was impressed that he liked them!
As for the loud part, I had to use the blender quite a bit, and both boys hate the sound of it. I don't know if it hurts their ears but they were both crying. Jacob kept telling me to put the blender away. Poor things.
I am impressed with myself though because I forgot that I was wearing my nice white shirt and somehow I did not get a single carrot, pea, or saskatoon stain on it! Hurray!
Anyways, here is my muffin recipe, it is awesome with blueberries too. Once again it is my own edit from a trusted cookbook. Enjoy.

Blueberry Muffins

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Yield: 12 large muffins

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup blueberries

Directions:

In large bowl combine first three ingredients. Make a well in center.

In another bowl cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg. Mix in milk and vanilla.

Pour into well and stir to moisten.

Fold blueberries into batter.

Fill greased muffin cups 3/4 full. 

Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

Neglect...

So it may appear that I have been neglecting my blog a little bit... however, I haven't really had a need to bake anything lately for a few reasons: A neighbour dropped off a big container of amazingly delicious cookies on my doorstep one morning... we brought home almost a whole chocolate cake leftover from a church potluck... we went to the farmers' market and treated ourselves to a strawberry rhubarb pie... and we've been snacking on suckers left-over from halloween. As for our meals, they have been fairly standard... pizza, fajitas, and BLTs are a few of our standbys. Though I did make lasagna, which I LOVE, but I don't use a recipe. Though I do recommend adding a can of diced tomatoes to your sauce, it made a tremendously delicious difference the first time I tried it and now I always keep some in my pantry.
I plan to make a cheesecake with my Mom's recipe this week, so stay tuned because it might just become a post!

FIRE!!!! x2

Well, not really, but we did have two kitchen adventures this week that were not so great. First, Jeff turned on the wrong burner, on which I had left a margarine container filled with baby feeding paraphernalia. Toxic plastic smoke soon filled our main floor. We opened windows and doors and I took the boys on the porch. Amazingly, the plastic cleaned off our ceramic top oven super easily, and the only real damage done was that one bottle had to be thrown out. A couple days later, I had 3 burners going on the oven. I was trying to open a package of instant mashed potatoes (so sad, I know, but this weeks "Recipe of the Week" is so much quicker to make with them), and it kind of exploded everywhere. Well, all of a sudden our house was filled with burnt potato smoke, it stank, and the flakes were all turned into little flaming embers. I turned off all the burners, to cool them down and clean up, and dinner was delayed by half an hour because I had to re-boil the water for the pasta.
Jeff and I have made a pact not to set the house on fire again. Ever.

Daniel's Baptism Cupcake-Cake

So I had recently made this cupcake recipe and I couldn't remember how many it made or even what size they were. I just knew that I needed 35 for this cake (since I made it for Jacob's baptism too, but this time it turned out better) and I thought I had small liners so I made the recipe as is. Well, it didn't make enough so I whipped up another batch, promising Jacob one when they were done. Turns out I had medium liners, so maybe that was my problem. It also meant that I needed a bigger tray than last time. Well, between two batches I got 36 cupcakes, lucky for me since Jacob now remembers when I promise him something. Anyways... I put them in the fridge to cool, and made up a batch of icing. Now I realized I already wrote about this day once, so I won't say anything more, other than HERE is the final product. I thought it turned out pretty good!

Only 15 cupcakes got eaten at the potluck lunch (there were LOTS of amazing dessert choices, I didn't even have one!) and I really didn't want our family to eat the remaining cupcakes. So the next day I sent them all with Jeff to his confirmation class. He told his students that I didn't want him to bring any back, so 7 kids ate 20 cupcakes. I hope they don't tell their moms.

Happy 100!

Today is a day to celebrate as I now have exactly 100 recipes in my computer database! I have made most of these recipes but sometimes if I see one I want to make in something other than allrecipes or one of my cookbooks, I will add it in. If I make something from a cookbook and it is good I put the recipe on the computer. If I try something after I have added it in and it is no good, I delete it. The program I use is MacGourmet. I really like it! My recipes are all organized into categories and there is this neat (and totally useful) function called "Chef View" that makes the recipe huge so I can see it across the kitchen. I add pictures of Jacob eating my food to the correct recipes. My favourite feature is that once you type in an ingredient it remembers... so if you have already used vanilla in ANY recipe, when you add a new recipe you just have to type in the V and it brings it up. I am having problems figuring out how to temporarily half or double a recipe, but I am not too great at computers. I also can never remember how I got the recipe onto Blogger, so it always looks different. To celebrate, I wish I could either give you the first recipe I put in, but I don't know what it was, or the 100th, but it is kind of boring. So here is a cake recipe instead:

Buttery Snack Cake with Broiled Topping

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Recipe By: Betty Crocker's Cookbook

Summary: 

So delicious!!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup milk

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

Topping

1 cup coconut flakes

1/3 cup brown sugar, packed

1/4 cup butter, softened

2 tbsp milk

Directions:

Heat oven to 350.

Grease 9x9 pan.

Beat first group of ingredients with electric mixer, about 3 minutes. Pour into pan.

Bake 35 minutes.

Make coconut topping.

Set oven to broil.

Spread topping on warm cake and broil 1 1/2 minutes.

Cool 15 minutes.

With Regards to the Meatballs...

(see this week's Recipe of the Week)

I do make my own meatballs. After 6 years of somewhat okay but edible meatballs I finally found a great recipe, and with a little of my own creativity in the kitchen, I invented "Amazing Meatballs" (that is what they are called in my recipe database). Some dishes I use them in are meatball subs, sweet & sour meatballs, polynesian meatballs,  and creamy rice and meatball casserole. I think perhaps that these will be my own secret recipe... just request them next time you visit!