Funston

There has to be some kind of terrible mistake - a dog this cute could not possibly be capable of trying to kill another animal three times her size.

Chicken Roll-ups

When Martin and I were "thirtysomethings" we used to hang with Jerry and Lynette B. An evening together would consist of dinner and then some kind of card game. Lynette was the kind of person who could cook adequately but didn't really consider time in the kitchen much fun. Her passion leaned more towards all kinds of crafts and home decorating, so any recipe she endorsed was likely to be something that could be thrown together quickly and with minimum fuss. Sometimes the lack of time spent in the kitchen might have been a bit evident but there was one dish she made that I always thought looked good and tasted even better. Of course, I had to have that recipe, especially after she confessed to how easy it was to prepare. As with many different things I've prepared in the kitchen over the years, I go through phases with this dish - making it often for a period of time and then forgetting it for months or even years.

Today, I was driving home from getting my hair done and realized I needed to buy chicken breasts to cook up for my 11 pound canine killing machine. Since Funston decided to try and eat a fellow teacher's dog, we've been working with our own dog whisperer to tame the wild beast hidden beneath her furry little body. The trainer has us using chicken bits as a very special treat to lure Funston to our sides when another dog comes on site. So far, we've been through plenty of poultry with mixed success.

Since I was buying chicken breasts it seemed sensible to figure out a recipe that would use some of the leftovers - and that's when Lynette's recipe suddenly came into my consciousness. I wasn't even sure if I remembered all the ingredients but decided to take a risk and go for it anyway. When I got home I couldn't find my recipe card so I looked up one on the internet that appeared to be a reasonable facsimile of Lynette's original.

I really figured none of the family would even remember what chicken roll-ups were but the minute I put the plates on the table Tim made a comment about how long it had been since he last ate whatever the thing was on his plate. Martin was the one who right away tagged our dinner as chicken roll-ups - major surprise that he could recall the name of what he was eating.

Tim's memory of the last time he ate a chicken roll-up was specific. "Did you put the mushrooms in these?" he wanted to know. Mushrooms!!!! That was the other ingredient I couldn't quite remember! Obviously, in my younger years I was afraid to risk leaving anything out of the recipe as written. Silly me! Now I'm a wild and crazy kind of cook who can forget mushrooms and still serve up a roll-up with perfect confidence that it will be well received. At least by my family.

Chicken Roll-Up Recipe
1 c. cubed cooked chicken (2 breasts)
8 Pillsbury crescent rolls
1 (3 oz.) pkg. cream cheese
6 tbsp. melted butter
scallions
mushrooms (optional)
3/4 c. seasoned bread crumbs
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine cream cheese and half of butter. Mix well. Stir in chicken and scallions. Don't forget mushrooms! Separate crescent rolls into 4 rectangles. Spread each with chicken mixture. Fold roll dough over the chicken mixture and crimp shut. Also crimp ends of the rolls. Dip rolls in remaining butter and then coat with crumbs. Bake 15-20 minutes until golden.

Cottage cheese, avocado and scallion salad

We like watching Master Chef with Gordon Ramsey. If I were to go on that show and a challenge came up involving going to the pantry, finding ingredients and then making up a fabulous dish on the spot....I know just what I'd do! These old legs would be running for the cottage cheese, avocado, scallions and Spike. Ok, maybe I wouldn't have to race quite so hard because maybe, just maybe there wouldn't be a giant run on those ingredients...

Here's the deal - I'm a by the recipe kind of gal. In all my life of cooking, I think I've only "created" one dish of my own - and guess what ingredients that masterpiece needs?

I can just picture it now...Gordon would sample my dish and say something like, "well, it looks like dog vomit but has a surprisingly good taste. Where has this simple but so tasty dish been all my life? Well done, Barbara, you may take your place back in line while I totally eviscerate some other poor soul"

At that point, I'd have to grab up my bowl of newly lauded food and walk out the back door because that's as good as it would get for me! From that highpoint of creativity, I'd be having to sneak cookbooks into the room in order to make ANYTHING beyond a scrambled egg.

I won't sit by the phone waiting for my invitation to be on Master Chef.

Back to my recipe - the thing is, I really didn't much like the taste of cottage cheese growing up. When I was a young woman working at the University of Arizona it seemed like all the older ladies were always chowing down on little tupperware bowls of that stuff, some doctored up with tuna and some just plopped into the bowl in a white, lumpy mound. Growing old and eating cottage cheese were two fates I hoped I wouldn't have to endure for a very long time.

Yet here I am...an old lady eating...what else, but? If I was going to have to join the ranks of folks hoping for some kind of weight miracle by way of cottage cheese it was for sure I'd have to find a way to doctor it up pretty good. From this need to make that bland white stuff edible, I created...(drumroll, please) cottage cheese, avocado and chives salad.

Here is the recipe...

Dump some cottage cheese into a bowl. Preferably NOT Tupperware.
Cut up an avocado into chunks and add it to the cottage cheese.
Cut up a green onion and add the scallions into the mixture.
Sprinkle "Spike" on top and eat!

You can laugh at the simplistic-ness of this dish but I've made a few converts along the way. My mother thought the stuff was pretty good. Cindy gets periodic cravings for it. (In fact, I have to give credit where credit is due...I liked the original version with a tiny bit of salt or no seasoning at all, but it was Cindy who came up with the idea of using Spike to liven up the taste a bit. I can be spikeful or spikeless, depending on the day.)

Try it - you too might become a convert.

Coordinated Cooking

See what I mean about cooking to match my placemats?

Avocado Salad with Carrot Ginger Dressing

On picture perfect days like today, it's a pretty great thing to be a San Diegan. We have that shiny, shimmery sunglow to bask in, minus the miserable heat and humidity of less lucky locales. Today I decided to celebrate the beauty of early summer with late lunch on the patio.

I've been wanting to try a Smitten Kitchen salad recipe that involves carrots and avocado so today was the day. I think the hardest part of this dish was finding the sweet white miso. It's one of those ingredients that I figured everyone not born or grafted into the Stoops family would probably know so I felt kind of embarressed in my ignorance of what it was and where I'd find it. I spent some time skulking through Stater Brothers, searching in areas where I suspected I might have success, only to find lots of other Asian offerings but none of the sweet miso. And what exactly was I looking for, anyway? A plant? A can of something like Coke? Darned if I knew.

I felt slightly less stupid when none of the employees at Stater Brothers could give me any kind of definitive answer about the ingredient either. Some came out and admitted they didn't have a clue, others tried to confuse me with explanations but no product. Yea sure, guys! You people are as clueless as I am about what on earth this stuff is.

Sprouts provided the answer to my missing miso and I went on to prepare the recipe with no other problems. Though I will say right now that if I'm going to get more seriously involved in cooking new and different recipes, I'm going to have to invest in a food processor that doesn't look like it was made by Fisher Price. Just sayin'

The salad looks pretty. Actually, when I put mine on one of our breakfast room placemats, it looked like I'd deliberately cooked up something just to match the colors in the mat. The carrot/ginger/shallot and oils mixture (and don't forget the miso), gives each taste a bit of a tangy kick. And really - how could anything with avocados be bad?

My first taste of avocado came when I was a little girl living in West Virginia. My teacher brought in a few to give us children a taste of something exotic from far away. Who knows what we were "studying" at the time, as all academic knowlege related to this incident has obviously been erased from my memory bank. Here's what I do recall about that day. Every other child in my class HATED the taste of that strange fruit. I'm not talking a mild distaste or wavering opinion between maybe and not so much -these kids acted as though our teacher had calculatedly set out to poison them with a slimy green toxin. They couldn't spit their teeny little bites out quickly enough.

Except for little hillbilly Barbara, that is. The future Californian in me must've known that I'd one day be able to pick this strange new fruit from my own backyard...(ok, not really. But surely my mother-in-law's backyard is close enough to prove the point I'm making) because I couldn't get enough of that subtle but oh so wonderful taste into my mouth. Lucky me, with the rest of the haters in class, my amused teacher let me have seconds..and thirds...and fourths...til all her mini-crop was completely gone.

And now here I am - all grown up and eating avocados whenever I want. Life is good.

Avocado Salad with Carrot-Ginger Dressing
From Smitten Kitchen

Serves 4, with dressing to spare

1 large carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
1 small shallot, peeled and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons roughly chopped fresh ginger
2 tablespoons sweet white miso
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seed oil
1/4 cup grapeseed or another neutral oil
2 tablespoons water

1 small/medium head of lettuce (I used Bibb) or mixed greens of your choice
1/4 red onion, thinly sliced
1 avocado, quartered

Whiz the carrots, shallot and ginger in a blender or food processor until finely chopped. Scrape down the sides, then add the miso, vinegar and sesame oil. While the machine running, slowly drizzle in the grapeseed oil and the water.

Divide the lettuce among four bowls, add some of the onion and a quarter of the avocado. Drizzle with plenty of dressing and serve.

Smitten Kitchen Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Thick, Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

The trick to getting a really thick, chewy cookie is to chill the dough before you bake it. You can scoop it and then chill it, or, if you’re like us, scoop it, freeze them and store them in a freezer bag so you can bake them as you wish. I find they’re always thicker when baked from the cold — only a couple extra minutes baking is needed.

This is a half recipe. It makes a couple dozen standard-size cookies. (I get more because I make them tinier.) I always feel like I’m swimming in cookies when I make the full volume, but if you’re feeding a crowd, go ahead and double it.

1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) butter, softened
2/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt (I often use a half teaspoon, but I like more salt in my baked goods)
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup raisins
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together. Stir this into the butter/sugar mixture. Stir in the oats, raisins and walnuts, if using them.

At this point you can either chill the dough for a bit in the fridge and then scoop it, or scoop the cookies onto a sheet and then chill the whole tray before baking them. You could also bake them right away, if you’re impatient, but I do find that they end up slighly less thick.

The cookies should be two inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake them for 10 to 12 minutes (your baking time will vary, depending on your oven and how cold the cookies were going in), taking them out when golden at the edges but still a little undercooked-looking on top. Let them sit on the hot baking sheet for five minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool.

oatmeal raisin cookies

My oldest son informed me yesterday that he's invited 75 people to come and say good-bye to him before he leaves for his move to Cincinnatti. And where is this gathering to be? Right here at the house, with good ole' mom coming up with food and drink for the event.

As soon as I stopped screaming and banging my head against the wall, Number One Son hastened to add that the actual number of attendees would undoubtedly be WAY smaller than the first terrifying number he threw out. This because he did his invites via Facemail (how else) and targeted everyone he wanted to come, no matter what state they live in. Realistically, it's somewhat hard for his sister to come from New Haven - especially with one day's notice.

OK...so now I know I'm having an undertermined number of folks show up. What to do? Well, this is one of those times when I will NOT be baking tons of fabulous home-made goodies but, instead, making a run to Costco to see what I can buy that will be easy to make and feed crowds. I do actually have unopened bags of chips left over from recent class pool parties so those will be hauled out of the garage and added to whatever the good folks at Costco can entice me with - and what can fit in my oversized shopping cart.

That said, I did decide to make Smitten Kitchen oatmeal raisin cookies this morning. Because when you're expecing an undetermined amount of guests to show up later in the day, what else do you do but bake up a batch of cookies for your family?

I've made lots of oatmeal raisin cookies in my day and I think I can turn out a fairly credible cookie. Not too hard, not too soft -just right. I use the recipe straight from the top of the oatmeal box. I have this theory - the folks at Quaker Oats really do have an investment in whether you like their cookies enough to keep buying boxes of oats so you can produce more. It is NOT in their best interest to devise a recipe so idiosyncratically weird that only the marginal few will actually like the resulting cookies. Moral of the story - trust the tried and true recipes put out by the people who have the greatest stake in coming up with pleasing results.

That said, it took a tiny leap of faith to try Deb's version of oatmeal raisin cookies. While I like pretty much everything she creates, she does sometimes add that extra flair that can spell doom in the Stoops household. Would she tweak the cookie recipe to the point where my family would turn up their noses at my cookies and beg for the old recipe? Reading through her ingrdients and process, it seemed like she was pretty close to the boxtop original so I went for it.

The cookies are everything an oatmeal raisin cookie should be. All the familiar taste of oatmealy goodness and just the right texture. Martin's so happy with the result that he took a baggy full to the train museum. And when Hubby is happy, so am I.