Thankful Thurs #21

1. A wonderful visit with my extended family.

2. A chance to get away for a mini
 vacation.

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3. Perfect spring weather.

4. Blockette enjoyed the movie "The King and I" as much as I hoped she would.

5. Stepping out of my comfort zone.

6. My irises were pretty while they lasted.


7. The mulch kept the veggie plants moist enough in the hot sun while we were away for a few days.

8. Bad dreams aren't for real.

Honey Roasted Chickpeas

My first experiment with roasted chickpeas didn't turn out so stellar. I mean they turned out OK, but they were not the crunchy treat I had intended.

I wondered if it could have been from using canned chickpeas.  So when I made honey cinnamon roasted chickpeas from Two Peas and Their Pod, I used dried, cooked chickpeas.

This time, they turned out exactly how I had hoped, a sweet crunchy healthy-ish little snack.  Sure the Honey and sugar aren't the best, but check out the nutritional value of the Chickpea. With all that protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals, a little sugar isn't too bad. I will be making this again for sure.

Honey Roasted Chickpeas from Two Peas and Their Pod
1 (15 oz can) chickpeas (garbanzo beans) (About 2 cups cooked, dried chickpeas)
2 teaspoons canola oil
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon honey

Preheat oven to 375 F. Drain chickpeas and rinse under cold water until starch is removed. Place chickpeas on a paper towel to dry. I always pop the skins off, but that's up to you.

In a small bowl, whisk oil, cinnamon, and sugar. Place chickpeas in bowl and stir until  evenly coated. Spread chickpeas on a large baking sheet. Bake 35-40 minutes, until chickpeas are crunchy and no longer soft in the middle.

Place hot, roasted chickpeas in a small bowl and coat evenly with honey. Spread chickpeas back out on baking sheet and allow to dry. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

Note: This recipe can easily be doubled or tripled.

Not for Sale

Sorry Christie's. This work of art is not for sale.

Blockette made it for her Great-great Aunt who turned 90 last Saturday. This was the first painting on canvas Blockette had ever done. I've never actually painted on canvas either so I think it may have been a bit of the blind leading the blind. Blockette was so proud of her painting. You may or may not be able to tell by this photo.

I think Blockette's face is going to crack from pride.

Of course my great aunt loved her present, but loved Blockette even more.   This visit was the first time they had actually met. 

Yup.  They are the best of buds.  My great aunt kept saying she was going to keep Blockette, and kept mentioning that the house two doors down was for sale.  Blockette thought that was the best idea ever.  Although, I'm not sure if that was because of the prospect of living so close to someone who would spoil her absolutely rotten, she'd live across the street from a huge park, or because of all the dragonflies she saw hovering around my great-aunt's house.

Either way, Blockette is already planning out our next visit to Northern Wisconsin.  Her goal is to move our entire town up there.  I'm not quite sure how a town of 9,000 would handle a sudden influx of 30,000 people.  Blockette is still trying to work out all the kinks.  I imagine she'll have it all figured out before the start of the next school year.

Weird PB Banana Oatmeal Cookies

I was in the mood to bake and thought I'd try something a bit different. I was just shy of having enough brown sugar on hand for most of the recipes that sounded interesting to me, except for these oatmeal peanut butter banana cookies.

The fact that they were from Dr. Oz's website should have raised a red flag. Another red flag was that they have hardly any sugar in them. And by hardly any sugar, I mean there is 2 T from Honey/agave and the fructose in two bananas. But because they are from Dr. Oz his followers are brainwashed to believe that anything he spews out of his mouth or on his website must be full of awesome.

These cookies were the antithesis of awesomeness.

They were super bland. Not only were they not sweet, which is a no brainer if you think about it. They had zero flavor. I couldn't taste any peanut butter OR banana. Very, very odd.

And the picture of the cookies on the website?  Oh they could not possibly be of cookies made from this recipe.  They look like cookies that were made with a lot more flour than just 1/4 cup.

Here's the photo from Dr. Oz's website:

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And here's a cross section of the cookies I made:

They don't even look done in the middle.  AND this is after baking them for 20 minutes when the recipe states you only need to cook them for 13-16 minutes.

I tried smashing them flat in hopes of getting them a little crisper on the inside.  No dice.  Even after flattening the cookies as thin as I could, and cooking them for 20 min, the middles were still on the soggy side.

Now I'm a fan of gooey under baked doughy in the middle cookies.  But these cookies?  Ick.  It was more of a gummy, chewy, underdone sort of middle.  Not a pleasing texture at all.

I wracked my brain to find a way to salvage these treats.  I even schmeared on a nice thick layer of dulce de leche.  Even that didn't do much to improve the taste of these little villains.

Then it hit me!

The inside of these cookies reminded me of when you cook a bowl of oatmeal in the microwave. You know, the oatmeal gets a bit rubbery because the oats have soaked up all the moisture.  All you need to do is add milk and the texture goes from spackle, back to that of something edible again.

So for breakfast the next day, I crumbed up the rest of the cookies in our bowls along with walnuts, a sprinkle of brown sugar and cinnamon, popped it into the microwave with some milk, and TA DA! 

Delicious breakfast!

Mrblocko and Blockette added raisins to their oatmeal cookie bowls.  That's not my thing so I had mine "plain."

I can see the merits of making a batch of these cookies for the specific purpose of using them for a quick breakfast, but for just the cookies?  No way.

Dr. Oz's Weird Peanut Butter Banana Cookies that You Should Just Eat Crumbled up in a Bowl Like Oatmeal
2 ripe bananas
1/3 cup peanut butter
2 tbsp 2% milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp agave or Honey
1 large egg
2 1/2 cups quick-cooking or rolled oats
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
Dash ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°F. Make banana puree by mashing the bananas with a fork until smooth. Whisk in the peanut butter, milk, vanilla, agave, and egg. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until well combined.

Drop dough onto a cookie sheet that has been sprayed or lined with parchment paper. Bake 13-16 minutes or until pale golden brown. Cool for 5 minutes.

Downton's in the Hiz-ouse

Are you perhaps as obsessed with Downton Abby as I am?  I only just started watching it last month, and am now currently caught up on all episodes.  I probably like it because it's like a sophisticated soap opera with some rockin awesome costuming and sets.   Plus, everything sounds so swanky in "The Queen's English."

So if you are a fanatic about the series I think you'll find these spoofs amusing too.  I actually physically laughed out loud.  None of that usual lip service LOL stuff.

A Nearly Festive Ice Cream - For the Rest of Us

I was never a big fan of Seinfeld before it was syndicated. However, for a long time I didn't have cable/satellite, so that was the only thing to veg out to. Needless to say, I've watched more episodes than I care to admit, for a show I don't even like.

Anyhow, there was one episode where they talk about Festivus, an alternative holiday to the commercial aspect of Christmas. Ben and Jerry's even made a special limited edition ice cream named after this fictional holiday.

It was a brown sugar ice cream with gingerbread cookies and a ginger caramel swirl.  You really had to be a fan of gingerbread to like this flavor.  Apparently, it was not a popular flavor with the masses as they stopped releasing batches, even over the seasonally appropriate wintertime.

I was pretty lukewarm about this flavor.  I liked it well enough to eat it when it was around, but if I had another ice cream flavor choice available, I'd take it.  I wasn't super sad when the flavor was discontinued.  My husband and best friend, on the other hand, were very very put out.  They both LOVED this flavor.

So when I happened upon this Gingerbread ice cream recipe over at Kate's Short and Sweets, I just had to make it.  The ice cream base was obviously not the same as Ben and Jerry's.  I'm fairly certain that their ice cream has an egg base.  That's all fine and dandy as they are professionals.  I don't like to mess around with salmonella.  Go ahead.  Call me chicken.  ::groan:::

I didn't care for the cookie dough recipe that was linked up on Kate's Short and Sweets.  It called for Ener-G egg replacer and frankly, I didn't feel like going on a wild goose chase, just to find one random ingredient.  I settled on using this recipe for egg free gingerbread from Well-fed Everyone to use as cookie dough.

OK.  So the original Ben and Jerry's  Festivus uses actual baked gingerbread bits.  I was afraid that any gingerbread cookie I made would get soggy in the time it takes for the ice cream to set up.  So I went with gingerbread cookie dough instead.

Let me tell you, that cookie dough was awesome. I could not stop eating it.  Even with all my nibbling and snacking, there was enough cookie dough for this batch of ice cream, and another down the road.

Instead of a ginger caramel swirl, I just used dulce de leche that I made in the crockpot.  Truth is, I'm scared of making caramel.  I'm terrified of burning it or myself; I don't have the best of luck with molten sugar.  I played it safe went with what I know.  And I know how dulce de leche in the crockpot tastes.  (Damn good!) If you are feeling adventurous, why not try this basic Ginger caramel sauce from Food and Wine, or this slightly fancier version from My Man's Belly. They both look really good.

So to sum up, while this wasn't an exact copy of the original Festivus ice cream, it was a very tasty facsimile. Make some for the gingerbread lover in your life.  They will thank you for it!

Festivus Fake-y Faker-ton  Ice Cream adapted from Kate's Short and Sweets and Well-Fed Everyone
2 C milk
2 Tbsp molasses
1/2 C brown sugar, divided
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
pinch of salt
2 Tbsp cornstarch
1 C cream
1/2 - 1 c frozen gingerbread cookie dough balls
Dulce de leche or other caramel sauce of your choosing (I used about a 3rd of the can)

Add milk, molasses, 1/4 C brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt to a small saucepan. Heat, whisking occasionally, on med til steam rises from milk 3-5 min. Remove from heat.

Meanwhile, whisk cornstarch and a couple T cold cream in a small bowl. Whisk away as many lumps as possible.Whisk cornstarch mixture into heated milk, along with remaining 1/4 C brown sugar. Heat, stirring constantly, until thick. This mixture is ready when it thickly coats the back of a spoon and a line drawn across with your finger remains intact, 3-5 minutes.

Cool completely (about 1-2 hours in the fridge), then stir in the remaining cream. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Pour the ice cream into the container you're going to freeze it in.  Fold in the frozen gingerbread dough bits. Drizzle on the caramel and swirl into the ice cream base.  Freeze for about 2 hours or until the ice cream is just set.

Frozen Gingerbread dough bits
1 3/4 c flour
1/4 t salt
1/4 t baking soda
1 tsp gr cinnamon
1/2 t ground ginger
1/4 t ground nutmeg
1/4 t ground cloves
1/4 c butter or margarine
1/4 c  brown sugar
1/4 c. unsulphured molasses
2 T water
1/2 t vanilla extract

Combine the dry ingredients in a small bowl and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine butter and brown sugar.  Beat until light and fluffy, scraping bowl and paddle occasionally, about 5 min. In a small bowl or measuring cup, whisk molasses, water, and vanilla.  Stir into buttery stick mixture (it will separate and look all funky and gross).  Scrape bowl and paddle.  With mixer running on low speed, slowly add dry ingredients until evenly incorporated.  Flatten dough into a disk and refrigerate for at least an hour or up to three days, or freeze for up to three months.  Once the dough is no longer super sticky, roll into small marble sized balls.  Freeze balls on a wax paper lined cookie sheet until they have hardened, about an hour.  Transfer to a freezer safe storage container.

Thankful Thurs #20

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1. Mrblocko called at the exact time that I saw the gigantic man-eating yellow jacket come flying into the computer room like he owned the place.

2. Mrblocko calmed me down from my hysteric unintelligible shrieking and talked me through killing the offending wasp without me getting stung.

3. Mrblocko was able to take Blockette to the reading reward baseball game.

4. Blockette making another goal at soccer, this time using actual teamwork.

5. Getting the raised garden assembled and planted before it rained/we fell over from exhaustion.

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6. The thank you card from our 4 and 5 year old Sunday School class. (I managed not to cry only because Mrblocko jokingly nudged me and asked, tongue in cheek, "You gonna cry?")

7. The bake sale at church for Relay for Life raised over $600.

8. Helping out at Blockette's school.

9. Getting myself motivated to do the stuff I needed to get done instead of getting sucked in by the computer, or laying down for a nap.