I’ve gotten a lot of questions in the comments and in emails wondering how abstaining from Diet Coke is going.

It freaking sucks.

However, I truly expected to say “It sucks a duck and I want to lay down every moment of the day and die from the pain”, so I guess  you can say that it is going better than anticipated.  I don’t have headaches anymore, but I am a lot more tired and unfocused and BLAH.

I’m Linus without his blanket and I miss it with the power of a thousand burning suns. In fact, I have a perpetual urge to tackle and make out with anyone carrying a Diet Coke just to leech off a tiny bit of its melodious essence for my poor, deprived taste buds.

Sigh.

As for the rest of it?  The gym and the dieting and thus?

I am not sure how I did it, but I have lost three pounds this week.

You can see my confusion when I show you a break down:

Diet Coke: 0

Caffeine: 0

Gym: 2

Calories: TO INFINITY AND BEYOND+1

As you can  see, the Diet Coke and caffeine are going well. I have not cheated even ONCE and OH, HOW I FRIGGIN’ WANTED TO!   In fact there were two moments in particular where the stress and anxiety of the moment about drove me over the edge, but I didn’t cheat. Yesterday was one of those times, but as I have another post waiting all about it, I’ll hold off. 

The rest of it is not going so spectacularly.

I have only been to the gym twice.  My neck is out and I need to go to the chiropractor. I’m not proud of it, but it’s better than nothing.

The eating has been the WORST. 

Not only have I had activity after activity that is food oriented this week, I am also dealing with how not having soda is impacting my eating.  I was a “Chain Diet Coke Drinker”.  I almost always had one one me sipping all the live long day.  My mouth is lonely without Diet Coke.  It feels like it has nothing to do. I have never felt so snacky and hungry in my life.  My husband swears this will go away in time, but I’m not so sure. 

Granted, I have tried to not snack on bad things, but I have gone over in calories a lot this week.

It didn’t help that I think I pretty much consumed an entire week of calorie alotment in one meal because of “Food Day” with my brother.  I love Food Day. We bring the whole family and cook for a crowd. Even though it usually wipes us out, the bro and I always have the best time.

For those who don’t know, I love to cook and so does my eldest brother.  We’re acutally pretty darn good at it as well. A couple of years ago we started having Food Day, which pretty much entails us picking a theme (like Thai, Italian, Japanese, and Indian) and creating really challenging dishes together. 

The theme this time was “Country French” and I have to say that it was probably one of the best we have ever done. Wanna see?

We started with Baked Brie en Croute: (A wheel of brie cheese smothered with thick raspberry compote (Jam) and buttered pecans and wrapped and baked in puff pastery and eaten with crackers.

It’s pretty much a party for your mouth, people.)

Whenever we make dishes, we often play around with the recipe and make it our own.  Usually, we end up majorly increasing the fat content which puts me in 7th heavan because, like Ina Garten, I am a firm believer in the awesomeness of cream, butter and heavy cream.

Mmm…

The main dish was my brother’s own recipe of Cassoulet. Cassoulet is a bean cassarole with a breaded stuffing top. This dish takes forever to make because you have to roast a duck before hand and soak the beans a long time. There are a lot of steps that make it complicated, but it is so worth it. 

 With this, we added roasted duck, sausage, bacon and pork to the beans and also sauteed the bread lightly in duck fat.  We then decided that the dish wasn’t heart attack worthy enough so as an added topper, we took the duck skin and crisp fried them into cracklings, which we broke up and added to the stuffing.

I think it must have had eleventyhundred calories per tablespoon, but it was sooooo yummy.

To close off the dinner we served chocolate souffles.

My brother was afraid of making them, and it was a wonderful opportunity to show him how easy they are to make.

 There are some easy tricks to making a good chocolate souflee.

Bake individual souffle’s instead of a big one. It’s much easier to tell when it’s done. Also, triple coat your ramikens. Butter them then refrigerate. Butter them again and then coat the inside with sugar.  The batter adheres to the sugar and helps it climb to puffiness perfection.

Since most of the rise of the souffle depends on egg whites, fold them in gently. Don’t beat your batter to death. It needs to be fluffy and light.

Buy the best ingredients you can get your hands on. There are few ingredients in a souffle, so it is important that they are top quality. Splurge on a vanilla bean and use high quality bittersweet chocolate. It is worth it.

DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN TO PEAK.  You could collapse the whole thing.

And last?

Serve right out of the oven. As in, pronto. The more time the souffles have in the open air, the more they deflate. It doesn’t make it any less tasty, though.  If it should happen, just say that you are having individual molton chocolate cakes. No one will know the difference.

I also recommend trying your hand at a Creme Anglaise sauce.  (Again, best of ingrediants! Use a vanilla bean. You will never go back.) When your soufflees are done, make a deep hole in the middle with your spoon and pour it in. I would have loved to put some fresh berries on here, too.

It’s to die for.

As you can tell, Saturday was a load of delicious fun. 

Sunday ended up being a big, fat headache. 

THAT is a story for another day.

I like to cook. Actually, it boarders on love. For one birthday, Jon asked me what I wanted and I said that I wanted to cook a gourmet meal for people that I loved. 5 kitchens, three sets of china and an obscene amount of money later, fifteen of my friends and family sat down to THE BEST SIX-COURSE MEAL. I made everything, EVERYTHING by scratch (Including the herb poaching liquid for the Salmon Mousseline.) I even found Foi Gras to go on top of the Fillet Mignon.

I have a knack for it.

Baking? Not so much.

Unlike her, I am no award winning baker. I’m not even what I would qualify as a “Good” baker.

I’m ok at it.

I don’t bake often because I am not nearly as good at it as cooking. It is too precise and measured (No pun intended.) I have had some major baking catastrophes in my life. It seems like the times that I try “Extra hard” the worse the end product SUCKS. Some of my attempts would have made Julia Child run screaming out of the room to chug copious vats of her cooking brandy.

I have learned over the years to not be hugely ambitious and to not ever, ever tweak or alter the basic recipe. I almost always slightly alter a recipe, but nowhere NEAR the amount I change recipes when I am cooking.

I am attending a holiday cookie exchange party tomorrow. It means making TEN FREAKING DOZEN COOKIES. The good thing about it is that I only have to make one recipe and I will leave with 10 dozen various Christmas cookies.

This year I am making one of my favorite cookies. I took the recipe from Ina Garten on Food Network. My only tweak to this recipe is that I add finely chopped pecans to the coconut mixture.

They are totally worth the widening of the ass that consuming them causes.

Jam Thumbprint Cookies
3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash
7 ounces sweetened flaked coconut
Raspberry and/or apricot jam.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until they are just combined and then add the vanilla. Separately, sift together the flour and salt. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar. Mix until the dough starts to come together. Dump on a floured board and roll together into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. (If you have a scale they should each weigh 1 ounce.) Dip each ball into the egg wash and then roll it in coconut. Place the balls on an ungreased cookie sheet and press a light indentation into the top of each with your finger. Drop 1/4 teaspoon of jam into each indentation. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the coconut is a golden brown. Cool and serve.

Butter is the backbone of this recipe. Lots and lots of fattening, lovely butter. MMM… Use unsalted butter when you bake, people. It’s for your own good, trust me. Oh, and if you even think for a millisecond of using anything other than real, honest-to-goodness BUTTER, you and I may have to meet in the gladiator cage. Since I am freakishly weak, I may not be able to actually give you a smackdown for committing such a grievous sin like using margarine, but I will fight to the death trying.

Cream butter and sugar together. Add a generous teaspoon of vanilla.

*Beginning of “Hatred of Vile Imitation Vanilla Rant*

Please, please, PLEASE use “REAL VANILLA”! I cannot stress this enough. Fake vanilla sucks ass more than Internet Explorer. It is like taking an old wad of stale chewing gum, throwing it in some boiling water and calling it peppermint herbal tea. It HAS to be bad for you. I can’t find any statistics that prove that imitation vanilla flavoring has actually killed anyone, but I wouldn’t be surprised. So, DON’T BUY IT, PEOPLE! Because I care about your health, I really do.

*End of rant*

Slowly add flour to mixture and incorporate.

Roll dough into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap.

Chill for 30 minutes. (Smilee face optional).

While your dough is chilling, whisk your egg wash and gather the rest of your ingredients.

Roll dough into balls. Make most of your batch about 1.5 inches across. I make some of my cookies slightly larger (Below) and slightly smaller as well because of the way that I package them.

.
Dip in egg wash and roll in coconut/pecan mixture.

Assemble on a non-greased cookie sheet and make an indent with your thumb. Reseal any cracking that occurs or your jam with run onto the cookie sheet. They should look like little bird nests.

Take a teaspoon and fill with jam. I like to use multiple jams when I make these as gifts. This time I picked apricot, raspberry and blackberry, and strawberry. I like a healthy amount of jam, so I use about a half a teaspoon instead of an 1/8th.

Bake at350 for 20-25 minutes. My oven burns VERY hot, so I bake at 325 for 20 minutes. Just keep an eye on them. When the coconut is browned, remove them from the oven and cool on a rack.

My favorite way to package these cookies is to stack them in a cellophane bag and tie it with a ribbon. You want the cookies to graduate in size. This is why I make some cookies slightly larger and some slightly smaller.

VOILA!

Eat up and enjoy.

I love homemade soup. I go through huge soup phases where it’s all I want to make and eat. (Sorry, family!) If you have a few basic soup bases, you can tinker and make dozens of different soups from one basic recipe.

This soup recipe is one of my very favorites. I get requests to make it regularly. Every Halloween, my friend, Brian, requests that I bring this soup to his annual party. One year I happened to have a spare pumpkin, so I hollowed it out and used it to serve the soup out of. So, along with the soup request, I get requests for the container as well.

First, buy your veggies. Really, you can use any kind of root vegetable-As many or few as you like. These are selections I have used in the past: Potatoes, pumpkin, squash, yams, sweet potatoes, turnips parsnips, onion, carrots, and leeks.

This is the recipe I used today. (Keep in mind that I rarely cook with strict measurements. Tinker, play, season to your taste)

2 large red potatoes
2 yams
1 cup mini carrots (Or 3 regular size carrots)
1/2 large butternut squash
2 leeks
1 medium sized onion
2 turnips
1 bulb of garlic
Olive oil (About 3-4 Tbsp.)
About 1 to 2 Tbsp. salt (To taste)
Pepper
2 tsp. sugar
Fresh herbs (Rosemary, thyme). You can use dried herbs if fresh are not available.
2 hamburger buns
2 cups chicken stock
2 pints cream
Milk as needed

Chop vegetables into chunks. Make them approximately the same size to ensure that they roast evenly. Place vegetables on a large cookie tray. Sprinkle vegetables with olive oil, salt, pepper, sugar, chopped herbs and toss it together with your hands until the vegetables are coated.

Peel the outside paper off of garlic bulb (Leave intact). Wrap in aluminum foil and place on vegetable tray.

Cover the cookie sheet with aluminum foil, shiny side down. Roast for approximately 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Uncover and roast for an addition 10 to 15 minutes until the thickest vegetables are fork tender.

Let vegetables cool until they you can handle them. Chop up roasted garlic bulb and and to veggies. Puree them in either a food processor or food mill.

Pour in chicken stock and heat.

There are different ways to thicken soup. You can make a roux, which is flour and a little milk whisked into melted butter, or you can use cornstarch or even instant potato flakes or riced potatoes. One of my favorite thickeners is to use bread. It is best if the bread is a little stale, but it doesn’t have to be. You can use any kind of bread, but I prefer to use thicker bread like homemade, or even English muffins of hamburger buns. Today I used hamburger buns because I had them on hand.

Cook until bread is falling apart (About 5-6 minutes. Pour mixture into a blender, mill or processor and blend until bread is fully integrated and soup is smooth.You can stop at this point and refrigerate the soup if you are making this recipe ahead. When you are ready to serve, add cream and reheat until slightly bubbling.

Pour into hollowed out pumpkin and serve.

It’s good to be back home and in my kitchen again. I have eaten like such crap the last month because of all of my traveling, I have LONGED for good, home cooked food. One of my favorite dishes is Chicken Lyonnaise.

I am a Titanic freak. Yes, this obsession started way before the movie came out. In 1985 I ran to elementary school so excited to announce that they had found the wreckage of the Titanic! Nobody but my teacher knew what I was talking about.

One of my favorite gifts on the planet was from my friend, Amy. It’s a recipe book inspired by the menus of the Titanic. “Last Dinner on the Titanic”. I freaking love it. This is one of my favorite dishes and I make it regularly (Though I really should remember to make it more IN THE WINTER).

Here is the original recipe:

1/3 c. Flour

2 tsp. Thyme

1/2 tsp. each of salt and pepper

6 boneless chicken breasts

1 egg, beaten

3 Tbsp. Vegetable oil

2 Onions, thinly sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

1/3 c. white wine

1 c. chicken stock

2 tsp tomato paste

Pinch of sugar

Put flour and spices into a plastic bag and shake to incorporate. Dip chicken pieces into egg and place in bag. Shake to coat.(It gets gooey, but this is the best method ever to coat chicken in fry batter).

Cook chicken in oil (I used garlic infused oil today to kick things up a notch) until browned and crispy. Transfer onto cookie sheet into 350 degree oven.

Put more oil into pan and add garlic, and onions and more thyme. Sprinkle onions with 1 tsp. sugar and cook until onions are translucent and carmelized. Add wine,chicken stock and tomato paste and cook until thickened.

Take chicken out of oven and place in pan, turning until coated. Cook for 5-10 minutes until the mixture is thickly coating the chicken and serve.

I totally fool around and change this recipe (As I do almost all recipes) for example? I used chicken tenders instead of breasts, I don’t measure the flour, I add a lot more spices and tomato paste, along with some nutmeg and I usually substitute the wine for white wine vinegar and add more sugar.

Just play around with it until it’s how you like it. I actually don’t think I even measure anything in this recipe, I just know what ingredients to use and I add what I like.

Serve it with fresh French bread and chow down. MMM…

I have decided to have my children help me bake and cook this summer to help keep them occupied. I have a rampant paranoid fear of them catching fire from the stove or mangaling a limb in the garbage disposal, so I have been wary up until now.

They need to know how to cook before they leave my house. For one, it will help them when they are living on their own and for two, it’s just a good life skill to have. I LOVE that Jon and I can cook together. True, he isn’t as adventerous as I would like him to be, but still…There is something homey and comforting about preparing a meal with your spouse and family. The chopping, the banter, it’s just…appealing.

I decided I would start with a very basic recipe and show them how to turn it into something fun and creative, albeit a bit “Girly”. I got this idea, all on my own, way back in the 9th grade when I had to do a cooking demonstration in Home Ec. I have used it ever since.

RICE KRISPY KISSES

3 Tbs. Butter

1 Bag Large Marshmallows (Or 4 Cups Mini)

6 cups Rice Krispy Cereal

A cup of cold water, aluminum foil, butter, paper, scissors and a cookie sheet are also needed.

Make the Rice Krispy Treats:

Measure Rice Krispy’s and pour them in a mixing bowl. Melt the butter in a sauce pan. Add marshmallows and stir until a thick, gooey cream forms. Pour over Rice Krispy’s and Incorporate. Let sit for about 5 minutes.

Butter a large funnel.

Spoon mixture into the funnel. Dip your fingers lightly in the cup of cold water (Or you will get SO much goo on your fingers) and press. Turn the funnel over onto cookie sheet and repeat.

Let the treats sit for about 15 minutes.

While they are sitting and your children are devoring the remains of the mixing bowl, write out your personalized message to put in each of the “Kisses”.

Put a kiss on a square of aluminum foil. Place the message at the side and wrap up.

VOILA.

Yummy Rice Krispy Kisses.

I had SUCH a good time doing this with my boys today. I think it’s just more fun than plain old Rice Krispy Treats and it makes me feel like one of those cool, inventive, “Crafty” mom’s.

Cool.

It rained and stormed all day today.

This type of weather makes me happy and cheerful. It also really put me in the mood to BAKE!

My friend, Michelle has been feeling very under the weather lately, so I thought that I would make a treat to take to her and try to cheer her up. Lemon Bars are both sunshiny and on Chelle’s “MMMMM” list so they seemed perfect. I make pretty yummy lemon bars. I started off using my favorite shortbread recipe, tweaking it so it was a little less dense and then adding coconut. When I’m feeling really randy, I throw in some finely chopped pecans into the crust mixture as well, though today was a nut-free sort of day.

Besides the ultra yummy crust, the biggest secret is that you can NEVER USE ENOUGH FILLING!!!! Bare minimum, I double what the filling calls for and I often end up tripling it. This recipe already has the filling doubled, but if you want to add and addition half to triple it, feel free. As I said, it would be difficult to use too much filling in my opinion. Of course, you are also talking to the girl that unscrews her double-stuffed Oreos and makes them into “Quadruple Stuffed Oreos”, so you may want to rethink the last statement. (I still think Oreo should consider marketing these, though. It would save me a lot of work. Though, knowing me I would just end up with Octuple Oreos. Ug. I feel sick, now.)

A lot of people have asked me for my recipe, so I thought it would be a perfect goodie to post on my blog.

The following is for an 8X8X2 pan. I double this when using a standard 9X13.

Crust
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sweetened flaked coconut, toasted, cooled
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

*Optional 1/4 cup minced pecans.

Filling
1 1/2 cup sugar
4 large eggs
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoon (packed) finely grated lemon peel
2 teaspoon all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt

Powdered sugar to sprinkle on top

PREPARATION

For crust:
Preheat oven to 350°F.

Toast coconut until golden brown and cool.

Line 8×8x2-inch metal baking pan with foil, leaving overhang. Butter foil. (I ran out of foil, so I just butter the pans directly. Using the foil saves a LOT of work if you are cutting them into squares)

Combine flour, sugar, and salt in processor bowl and blend 5 seconds.

Add butter and mix;

Before the butter is too finely integrated, slowly add the coconut.

Mix until dough resembles fine meal and begins to clump together. The dough should be the size of large peas (Left)and be able to form a ball when squeezed (Right)Gather dough into ball. Press dough evenly over bottom of prepared pan.

Bake crust until golden at edges, about 25 minutes.

While the crust is baking, prepare filling:
Combine 1 1/2 cup sugar and eggs into mixing bowl.

Zest and juice lemons and add to the mixture. (I love my hand-held citrus juicer and the microplane is one of my very favorite kitchen tools in the world.)I ALWAYS end up adding more zest and lemon juice to this recipe because I like my lemon bars on the tart side. Just take a taste and make play around with it until it is to your preferred taste.

Add flour, baking powder, and salt in processor. Blend filling until smooth.

Remove crust from oven. Pour filling evenly over hot crust.

Return to oven and bake until filling begins to brown at edges and is just set and springy to touch in center, about 30 minutes. Transfer pan to rack; cool lemon bars completely. Using foil as aid, transfer lemon bars to work surface. Flatten foil edges. Cut into 16 bars. Sift powdered sugar over. (Can be made 5 days ahead. Store airtight in s

ingle layer in refrigerator.)

Enjoy!