Peanut Butter Cookies

This is my go-to peanut butter cookie recipe.  It is simple, tastes great, isn't too sweet, and freezes like a dream.

To start off, here's the starring line-up.  I personally think the cookies taste better with organic peanut butter, but it is up to you.

First, add 1/4 cup of butter to your bowl.

Then, 1/2 cup of applesauce.

1 cup sugar... Raw works better, but white is all that's in the budget at the moment.

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

2 cups of flour...

1 cup of peanut butter.  You can even use crunchy if ya want.

After the flour, add 1/4 cup of milk (I used skim), the mix it all up with either a mixer or a fork, whatever.  This mix will get pretty thick, though, so make sure your  mixer can handle something like this.

If you have a cookie press, load it up and pipe some cookies on to some wax paper.  If not, then just roll 1-inch balls of dough, then press them flat with the back of a spoon or fork.  Slide them into the freezer for about 2 hours, then you can move them from the wax paper into a freezer bag or container.

Ignore the splatter on the back of the freezer.  The vegetable stock?  Yeah, I did that the same day I did this and apparently there was some splashage.

Splashage.

Yay for new words!

Anyway, since I doubt you have room in your freezer for the gazillions of cookies this will make (I make them rather small, admittedly), pop the dough in the fridge between batches.

If you have a cookie press, I hope you are better with yours than I am.

Some of my cookies came out cute, but some came out...

Well...

I did finally get the hang of the heart-shaped press, though, YAY!  Score one for the home team.

Not quite sure how to stop the y-shaped thing in the middle though...Maybe flip them over next time?  It is disconcerting.  It makes them look like they're about to go out to a bachelorette party.  Which is great and cute, but these are just for everyday eating, not for a naughty party.  Its not like I'm just sitting around and suddenly am struck with a craving for penis-cookies.

Well, since these have phallic shapes on them and are the ones in my freezer at the moment, then maybe I do!  O.O

Whenever you get a craving for penis-cookies (or the other shapes), preheat your oven to 350, pop them in for 10-15 minutes depending, of course, on whether you like your cookies soft and chewy or crunchy and crumbly, and there you go!  These really do taste about the same whether you bake them right away or whether they've been sitting in the freezer for a while, so they are very convenient to have on hand.  An easy way to make a few cookies to satisfy a craving without making a HUGE batch every time you get a sugar craving.

<3
The Wookie Wifey

Egg Salad

Here's a super quick and easy egg salad recipe I use with TONS of bacon which makes it so very yummy.  We don't use eggs much around here, so its a good way to use the extras up before they go bad.

First off, fry up 5 pieces of bacon.  Whether you want it crispy or soft is totally up to you.

Then, after it has drained, chop it up, (or tear, I find tearing it is easier and quicker), toss it in a bowl with 6 hard-boiled eggs which have also been chopped up.  I suppose you could tear those, too, but that would be pretty messy.

Next, add a teaspoon of garlic powder and two teaspoons of onion powder to the mix.  I like to use these in egg salad because I want the flavor of both, but don't necessarily want to bite into an onion or piece of garlic while noshing down on an egg salad sandwich.  For some reason chunks of onion are perfectly, entirely acceptable in tuna salad, but not in egg salad.  I'm weird that way.

Next, chop up a pickle slice.  This was a kosher dill, the stacker kind that are sliced length-wise.  If you use regular slices, I'd say use about 4, more if you like a very pickle-y flavor to your salad.

Add about 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise (I use the kind made with olive oil), half a tablespoon of spicy mustard, and stir it all up then salt and pepper it to taste and there you have it!

Pile it on a sandwich or a salad - either way it is delicious and super simple!

<3
The Wookie Wifey

Vegetable Stock

This is such an easy staple you can make and keep on hand and later on I'll be posting dark chicken stock as well.  Stocks are good to have around because they can add a depth and richness to otherwise bland foods.  Making stocks on your own is good because you can control the amount of salt that goes into them as well as controlling what/if any spices and herbs go in.  Basically, if you DIY this you can control the entire flavor and I like that.  This one is a vegetable stock, so its vegan and vegetarian-friendly (duh).

This is one of the easier things to keep on hand.  When I chop vegetables for another recipe, instead of throwing away any good parts or hearts I cut out, I just rinse them and stick them into a container in the freezer.  Once I have a few containers, I toss it all into a stock pot and boil it up.  Due to that, this stock was made with green and white vegetables because that's what I'd been cooking with mostly for the last week or two, but almost anything can go into this.  Sometimes you'll have green stock and sometimes you'll have tomato-based or carrot-y stock.  Just adds to the fun, really.  :)

I used roughly:

2/3 head of cabbage
4 stalks celery (mainly ends/parts I'd trimmed off, just not the leafy tips)
1 cauliflower heart (the inside chunky part I didn't use for the actual recipe I'd made with it)
3 green onions (what was left of the green parts and the white, too, I just peeled off the outside layer, washed them, and cut off the roots)
1/2 an onion's worth of chopped onion (frozen leftovers)
3 bay leaves
1/4 cup parsley
1 tbsp thyme
1 tbsp pepper
4 cloves garlic
salt to taste

I used two stock pots for this, but only photographed one.

Toss it all in the pot and then put just enough water to cover it all up.

Bring it to a boil and let it go for about one hour.  Covered or not, your choice.  Just add more water if it gets low if you leave it uncovered.

After about an hour, everything should be wilted and kind of questionable-looking.

At that point, you can strain it into another pot to get all the vegetables out of it.  If you have a cheesecloth or fine strainer to get all the herbs and such out, then that's good, too.  I don't.  Its no biggie to freeze it with the herbs in it.

Freeze it up in some ice cube trays, and there you have it!  Just pop however many cubes you need straight into your recipes or thaw before hand.  Cooking pasta, rice, or couscous in this stuff makes a world of difference.

Easy!

<3
The Wookie Wifey

Random Photo Post 2 - Wild Critter Edition

Yay for random photo posts!

Here's some snapshots I've taken.

Yes, that is a wild chipmunk.  I happened across him and he ran into a rotten, hollow log next to an old barbed wire fencepost.  He bitched at me the entire time I took the pictures.  Just chattered his little head off.

This little guy was super curious.  I didn't zoom in.  I just bent down on the ground to get a closer shot and he came over to investigate.

You have no idea how much patience it took to get this photo.  That is a wood bee.

Of all the critters, this one appears to be the most angered by having its picture taken.

<3
The Wookie Wifey

Strawberry-Cherry Soda Cupcakes

I've been seeing things all around the web about making cake mixes with soda, so I figured I'd give it a try and put my own twist on it.  This was one of those times when adding things by impulse worked out oh-so-right.  These cupcakes are Wookie-approved.  They are the best cupcakes I've made to date and trust me - I've made a metric fuckton of cupcakes in the 5 years we've been together.   These things are delicious, super-easy, and a good example of how you can tweak boxed and packaged mixes to get a different taste when you're too tired/too lazy/too broke/don't have enough space to cook from scratch.

First, just get a cheap box of cake mix.  Doesn't matter what brand.  I picked strawberry because it is my favorite.  I picked off-brand because it is the cheapest.

Next, add 12 ounces of diet lemon-lime soda.

Once you get to the end of the soda, it becomes delightfully frothy and bubbly!  Mix it all up.  I tried to get the big clumps out, but wasn't concerned with the little ones.

Then, I added an entire jar of maraschino cherries.  Because I am evil.  Save the juice they are in, too.  More evil is about to be up in here, guys, so cross yourselves, or whatever it is you do to prepare.

Add them to your cupcake tin.  Either grease that baby up or line it with cupcake liners, whatever.  I used leftover cupcake liners I bought on clearance after Halloween.  I think it may be time to hit another clearance sale.

I am not a clean cook at all.  Usually, when I finish cooking it looks like no fewer than twelve things exploded with violent force in the kitchen.

Bake them at 350 or until a toothpick comes out clean, and then let them cool.

After that, its time to get started on the icing.

Dump one container of cheap, store-bought vanilla icing into a mixing bowl.  Whip it at a high speed until it starts to get fluffy.

Now, add about 2 or 3 tablespoons of the syrup reserved in the cherry jar and mix that in.

Mix until it is all uniform and until you reach your desired shade of pink.  I basically used the juice as a food coloring and as an added bonus it adds a slight cherry-flavored twang to the icing.

Ice them, sprinkle them, sugar them, eat them.

I'm going to go ahead and sign off here and leave you alone with delicious, sweet, sweet cupcake porn.

<3
The Wookie Wifey