Snowed In Coconut Cup Cookies

Snow ruined my Saturday night. I made the best of it.

Inspired by the wintery white stuff all around me and trapped in my apartment, I started out looking for recipes that involved one egg and no milk. I came across this neat coconut cup cookie recipe. It sounded easy, so I made half of it (there are no need for 12 cookies at a table for one).

The best part about this blizzard is that I learned how easy it is to make pie crust in my food processor. Seriously, really easy. I pretty much just tossed in a cup of flour and half a stick of butter, then pulsed the processor slowly adding water as I went. The results were fabulous.

After forming the cups in my muffin tin, I baked for 10 minutes and added the fillings. Seeing as I didn't have any gross marmalade like the recipe called for, I decided to mix it up. Two cups had guava paste, two had chocolate chips and two had blueberry jam. All were good, but it was hard to tell them apart!

Pumpkin Puree

Halloween may have just passed, but the excitement I feel when I come across a pumpkin display at a grocery store still can't be matched by any other food or decoration.

Seriously. It's like mesmerizing and I usually just stop for a minute to look. My friends can attest to this weird fascination, as they've been bombarded with a stream of pumpkin-related propaganda picture mail for the last month.

Anyway, there has been a lot of talk about a shortage of pumpkin puree for about the last year. I've yet to experience the scarcity myself, but I thought I'd give this a try. I followed this blogger's instructions.

Then I made some pumpkin muffins. Because while pumpkin puree is time-consuming and somewhat hard, muffins are the easiest thing in the world to bake.

I also made this tasty pumpkin seed and pomegranate salad.

Soup Post

Disclaimer: The are no soup recipes or soup photos in this post.

But I have been on a helluva soup-making binge lately. At least once a week, I make a pot of some kind of vegetable soup, and I eat it for lunch every day that week. The thing about my soup is that it's usually not much to look at. I've made borscht, tons of gazpacho, squash soup and plain-old vegetable stew. All good, none beautiful (ok, maybe the borscht). The result has been very little blogging on my part. Laziness might also have something to do with that though...

Here is a sample of some of the more interesting stuff I have made:

Pretzel Bites (half of this recipe)

Udon Noodles with Tofu

Roasted Beet Hummus

Raspberry Walnut Tart

Potato Ricotta Fritters with Indian Spice

Wheat Bread

On this fine Labor Day weekend, I knew I'd be making some of this vegetable soup. But when I woke up this morning, I realized I had no bread or croutons of any kind.

In addition to being Labor Day weekend, it was also the University of Minnesota's Welcome Week. I've lived in this area long enough to know to shun all things related to U of M students moving in. Unfortunately, this includes the entire Quarry Place Shopping Center, which happens to contain my closest grocery store.

So I just decided to avoid that clusterf*ck entirely and make my own bread. This is only like the third time I've made bread from scratch, and it's getting better each time. This was actually pretty good, as I followed some foolproof Smitten Kitchen instructions. Bellow is my recipe.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups white flour

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

1/4 cup crushed bran cereal

1 tablespoon of salt

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1 tablespoon turmeric

1/4 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

3/4 cup warm milk and/or water

Add the yeast to the warm water/milk. Combine all other ingredients and mix well. Add yeast mixture and mix well with your hands or an electric mixer. Once all the bumps are out. Form a ball with the dough. Cover and let sit somewhere for several hours. When you see that it has risen, knead the dough well. Let sit for another hour. Knead well and then form a loaf with three slits on top. Bake in bread pan at 450 degrees for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 425 degrees and cook for another 15 minutes or so.

Habanero

Another week, another impulse buy at the farmers market. What am I going to do with 20 habanero peppers? Who cares when they cost $3!

But seriously, what am I going to do with them... I suppose I could share with friends, so let me know if you want any.

So far I made some spicy baba ganoush.

As you might guess from the photo, I roasted both the eggplant and the habanero for this recipe. I figured it would tone down the intense spiciness of the habanero. I also had the foresight to deseed that hot little pepper.

That method seemed to work. So I did the same for this raw vegetable curry, which I served with brown rice and a fried egg. This "curry" was made from leftover gazpacho ingredients (i.e. tomatoes and bell peppers). It was so spicy that most people probably would not have been able to eat it. I, however, loved it.

Gazpacho

The most difficult thing about this recipe was getting to the farmers market before noon on Saturday. You see, a trip to the Northeast Minneapolis Farmers Market was absolutely vital for my gazpacho because store bought tomatoes would never do. For me, gazpacho is dependent on the quality of your ingredients, all of which are in season right now.

While I ventured out on a Saturday morning for tomatoes and cucumbers, the market had a lot of other useful produce for this dish. I bought these white peppers, but I don't know their actual name.

They sort of taste like bell peppers. I also bought some fresh garlic, which I had never cooked with before.

Anyway, this is my (first) recipe for gazpacho. It's pretty easy to play with the quantities of the ingredients, and I'll definitely be making gazpacho again soon.

Ingredients:

6-7 plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped

1 medium sized red onion, coarsely chopped

2-3 small cucumbers, coarsely chopped, not peeled

2-3 cups of chopped bell pepper, any color or kind

1/2 cup parsley

4-5 cloves garlic

3/4 loaf french bread, torn into chucks

The juice of 1/2 lemon

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1/4 cup olive oil

A few dashes each of: dried oregano, dried thyme and coriander

2 teaspoons salt

Pepper to taste

Enough tomato juice to cover your veggie/bread mixture

In a food processor, you need to lightly process all of your vegetables. I did this on the "pulse" setting, one vegetable at a time. I used my food processor to shred the bread chunks and garlic too.

Add all vegetables and bread to a large bowl. Add olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, spices, salt and pepper. Cover with tomato juice, mix well and chill overnight.

Sea Scallops with Pineapple Cucumber Salsa

You know you're getting old when you're Target browsing habits change. It used to be all about cloths, cosmetics and ridiculous women's magazines. Now, you give me 15 minutes to fill a prescription and I'm all over the cooking section.

I picked up these scallops at Target on just such an occasion. They appear to be high quality, though my knowledge of real seafood is surely lacking. At least the freezer pack they came in is releasable.

Ingredients:

7-10 sea scallops, bought frozen but later thawed

Oil for searing

1 medium-sized cucumber, coarsely chopped

1/2 medium-sized red onion, coarsely chopped

1 8oz. can of crushed pineapple

1-3 green chillies, diced

A few dashes of tabasco

1/2 teaspoon vinegar (optional), I used apple cider vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

First, you wanna make that salsa. Assemble your veggies, pineapple and spices. Then mix well. Sear the scallops in a frying pan over a medium heat for 2-3 minutes on each side. Top scallops with salsa an serve.