Chili

Chili

I decided this afternoon that I was in the mood for cornbread, and since cornbread on its own is not a very nutritious dinner, I made some chili to go with it. I suspect that according to some definitions, this actually doesn’t qualify as chili (Texans can be very particular about chili — I think around here it’s only supposed to be meat in a spicy sauce, no beans or anything), but it was tasty. Mostly I just threw in anything I had on hand that seemed …

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Pictures of Food!

Cake

I had a few close friends over for a casual birthday shindig. As far as I’m concerned, the entire point of turning 30 is to have an excuse to eat cake. I decided on a chocolate-almond-espresso cake, which I got from the Upper Crust Bakery.

It went really well with homemade French vanilla ice cream.

I also made quiche for the party:

Quiche

I’ve made quiche many times before, but this …

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Cake! And SALE!

Originally, I was going to post about this piece of lemon cake:

Lemon Cake

The cake was tasty. But now I have news, so I will post about that instead!!!

Scott Andrews at Beneath Ceaseless Skies has accepted my story “The Land of Empty Shells.” I’m really excited about this sale — Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a great market (go check it out if you haven’t yet, they’ve got some awesome stories!).

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Adventures in Quinoa

Quinoa

Last Thanksgiving, Maureen asked me if there was a side dish I’d like to bring, and, feeling rather adventurous, I volunteered to bring quinoa (pronounced keen-wah). I had never had quinoa, but I’d seen it described as having a nutty flavor. In my mind, quinoa would be about the same size as barley, and would have a flavor halfway between an oat and a pecan. Therefore it seemed like a good base for a Thanksgiving side dish.

Turns out, quinoa is nothing like that. It is …

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Shortbread Cookies

I’m in Olympia this week, visiting family, and tinaconnolly came to visit me. We made shortbread cookies:

Shortbread Cookie

The cookies have rosemary and thyme in them. We got the recipe from a post on Maureen’s blog. The recipe says to press the cookies into flat rounds on a baking sheet, but ours were kind of crumbly so we pressed them into a square pan instead. After making the recipe version, we tried a couple variations:

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Oatmeal Craisin White Chocolate Cookies

Oatmeal Craisin White Chocolate Cookies

These were nice easy drop cookies. I like the combination of the craisins and the white chocolate, and the oatmeal makes for a nice chewy cookie.

I tasted a couple of these this morning when they came out of the oven, just to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with them (can’t bring defective cookies to the cookie swap!). Because the cookies contain both oatmeal and fruit, they are part of a healthy breakfast…right?

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Making My Mom’s Cookies

When I was a kid, my mom baked cookies every Christmas. Not one batch of cookies, or two batches of cookies. My mom made double batches of several kinds of cookies which we arranged on red and green paper plates and took to all the neighbors. They were extremely popular — just yesterday a friend of mine dropped me a note saying that she was thinking about making the sugar cookies my mom always made at Christmas time (and we haven’t done the neighborhood cookie distribution for years). Everybody had a different favorite cookie — date/coconut balls, chocolate chip cookies …

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