Cooking, Baking, Eating

Faced with hiatus (more time, but no money), I thought, “Hey! Cooking! I should, like, try some of that!”

Of course, when actually faced with the prospect of cooking, all of the recipes I’ve been drooling over for months (on tv, in friends’ blogs, in books) suddenly vanish from my brain, and I’m left staring around the kitchen dumbfounded, trying to make a shopping list.

In the end, I made “Gnutmeg Gnocchi on Spinach” from the Cooking with Trader Joe’s blog. (My awesome new display dish — an almost indestructible Le Creuset wok serving dish — was a Christmas present from Chris’ brother, and I love it! You’ll be seeing it often, I think. Thanks, Alex!)

From Food and Drink

The dish was tasty, easy, and not terribly bad for us. I used fresh garlic, about two or three times what the recipe recommended, and it still wasn’t too much. I’ll caramelize more than one onion next time, because really, you can’t have too much caramelized onion. If I hadn’t been using a recipe, I probably would have used butter, but the EVOO worked great.

One thing I will do, is be more careful with the nutmeg. I don’t understand how I can go from reading “1/4 teaspoon nutmeg” in one heartbeat, to dumping in 1 full teaspoon in the next, but I did. (Partially I blame not having complete sets of measuring spoons or cups — I’m always having to make cups with three 1/3 cup scoops, and teaspoons with two 1/2 scoops, etc.) But mostly, I blame myself. It was a rookie mistake and I’m a rookie, so there you go. I removed some of the more nutmeg-covered gnocchi and moved on.

From Food and Drink

Next up, my second attempt at chocolate chip cookies! (Read about my first attempt.)

I used the recipe on the back of the Trader Joe’s semi-sweet chips, which I accidentally threw away before recording. (D’oh!) A few items of note: it called for far more brown sugar than white sugar, a full cup of butter (ack!), and 1 tsp of vanilla which I doubled. (Also of note: I bought new organic brown sugar and dumped the old stuff I used last time. I swear, that brown sugar was older than my cats.)

The result? Chocolate chip perfection. The cookies came out absolutely amazing. I wouldn’t change one thing about the taste, texture, or look. I am incapable of eating one without making happy noises and proclaiming “Damn!” to the cats. I hate to admit this, but the cookies were actually better than the raw cookie dough. I know, I know. It feels like sacrilege just to type that, but I must speak the truth.

At some point I will challenge myself to create healthier cookies, but for now, while I still have so many basics to learn, I’m going to stick with the sticks of butter. I just can’t argue with the results:

From Food and Drink

Thanks for all the folks who offered suggestions last time — I ended up using a lot of them. Here’s today’s question: How do you corral your recipes from so many different sources? I’m experimenting with a recipe program for Mac called SousChef, but I also just received a wonderful recipe card box for Christmas, and I have a 3-ring binder with some printed-out recipes from the Web already.

What do you do, and how do you maintain it?