New Years Eve

This year we stayed home and I made some snack to enjoy. We watch TV and were talking about playing board games but I think that is out, it is almost 2009 and every night I stay up until about one but I am really tired tonight. We are either going to San Francisco or whale watching tomorrow.

Deep fried Raviolis

Jacob reaching for veggie dip.

Jacob Snacking

Sushi

Veggies for dip

An apple, what will I do with a plain apple?

Stuff it

close it back up

and dip it!! I rolled it in the chips and toffee bits to cover the cut marks.

Snowball Cookies

1 cup butter (no substitutes),
softened
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup quick-cooking oats
1/2 teaspoon salt
36 maraschino cherries, well
drained
COATING:
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup milk
2 cups flaked coconut, finely
chopped
DIRECTIONS:
In a mixing bowl, cream butter, sugar, water and vanilla. Combine flour, oats and salt; gradually add to the creamed mixture. Shape a tablespoonful of dough around each cherry, forming a ball. Place 2 in. apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F for 18-20 minutes or until bottoms are browned. Remove to wire racks to cool. Combine sugar and enough milk to achieve smooth dipping consistency. Dip cookies, then roll in coconut.

Coconut-Orange Snowballs

1 1/4 cups sweetened flaked coconut

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

2 1/4 cups sifted powdered sugar (sifted, then measured)

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 teaspoon coconut extract

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 tablespoons grated orange peel

1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake coconut on rimmed baking sheet until light golden, stirring occasionally, about 12 minutes.Using electric mixer, beat butter, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, and both extracts in bowl to blend well. Beat in flour, orange peel, and salt. Stir in coconut. Cover and chill at least 1 hour and up to 1 day. Soften dough slightly before shaping.Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Using 1 level tablespoon dough for each cookie, roll dough between palms of hands into balls. Place on prepared sheets, spacing 1 inch apart. Bake until golden on bottom but pale on top, about 18 minutes. Transfer cookies to racks; cool 5 minutes. Place remaining 1 3/4 cups powdered sugar in bowl. Roll hot cookies in powdered sugar, covering completely. Cool cookies on rack. Roll cookies in powdered sugar again, coating generously. (Can be made 5 days ahead. Store airtight between sheets of waxed paper at room temperature

Leftover Turkey

I used my leftover turkey from Christmas to make this. I made two for dinner and put two in the freezer for a day I just did not feel like cooking or did not have the time. I will be putting a lot in the freezer come Feb. since I will be starting school again.
You can use beef and add potatoes to it, just play around and add what you want to it. I have added broccoli, this one I also added fresh green beans. Cheese would be good with broccoli also.

1 pound skinless, boneless
chicken breast halves - cubed
1 cup sliced carrots
1 cup frozen green peas
1/2 cup sliced celery
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon celery seed
1 3/4 cups chicken broth
2/3 cup milk

2 (9 inch) unbaked pie crusts

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C.)
In a saucepan, combine chicken, carrots, peas, and celery. Add water to cover and boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, drain and set aside.
In the saucepan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent. Stir in flour, salt, pepper, and celery seed. Slowly stir in chicken broth and milk. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Remove from heat and set aside.
Place the chicken mixture in bottom pie crust. Pour hot liquid mixture over. Cover with top crust, seal edges, and cut away excess dough. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape.
Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Christmas Dinner 2008

Someone likes Grandma's cooking. :o)

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup margarine
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon peppermint
extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon red food coloring
1/2 cup peppermint candy
canes, crushed
1/2 cup white sugar for
decoration
In a large bowl, cream together the margarine, white sugar and confectioners' sugar. Beat in the egg, vanilla and peppermint extracts. Combine the flour and salt; stir into the creamed mixture until well blended. Cover or wrap dough and chill for at least one hour.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets. Divide dough into halves. Color one half red by mixing in the food color. Roll a small amount of each dough into a 2 inch long worm. Roll them together in a twisted rope and curve the end like a cane. Place onto prepared cookie sheets.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. In a small bowl, mix together the crushed candy cane and remaining white sugar. Roll hot cookies in the sugar mixture.

Serves 12.
FOR THE CRUST
1 1/4 cups graham-cracker crumbs (from 10 whole crackers)
1/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
FOR THE FILLING
4 packages (8 ounces each) bar cream cheese, very soft
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
2 tablespoons pumpkin-pie spice
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs, room temperature
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees, with rack in center. Assemble a 9-inch nonstick springform pan, with the raised side of the bottom part facing up.
Make the crust: In a medium bowl, mix cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter until moistened; press firmly into bottom of pan. Bake until golden around edges, 10 to 12 minutes.
Make the filling: With an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar on low speed until smooth; mix in flour (do not overmix). Add pumpkin puree, pie spice, vanilla, and salt; mix just until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, mixing until each is incorporated before adding the next.
Place springform pan on a rimmed baking sheet. Pour filling into springform, and gently smooth top. Transfer to oven; reduce oven heat to 300 degrees. Bake 45 minutes. Turn off oven; let cheesecake stay in oven 2 hours more (without opening).
Remove from oven; cool completely. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate until firm, at least 4 hours. Unmold before serving.

INGREDIENTS:
1/4 cup powdered sugar (to
sprinkle on towel)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup LIBBY'S® 100%
Pure Pumpkin
1 cup walnuts, chopped
(optional)
1 (8 ounce) package cream
cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
6 tablespoons butter or
margarine, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup powdered sugar
(optional)

PREHEAT oven to 375 degrees F. Grease 15 x 10-inch jelly-roll pan; line with wax paper. Grease and flour paper. Sprinkle towel with powdered sugar.
COMBINE flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt in small bowl. Beat eggs and sugar in large mixer bowl until thick. Beat in pumpkin. Stir in flour mixture. Spread evenly into prepared pan. Sprinkle with nuts.
BAKE for 13 to 15 minutes or until top of cake springs back when touched. Immediately loosen and turn cake onto prepared towel. Carefully peel off paper. Roll up cake and towel together, starting with narrow end. Cool on wire rack.
BEAT cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter and vanilla extract in small mixer bowl until smooth. Carefully unroll cake; remove towel. Spread cream cheese mixture over cake. Reroll cake. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving, if desired.

Christmas 2008

A sleeping Angel







Christmas Dinner
































This is Daniel our youngest child.











Here is Jacob








This is our oldest son David and middle son Jacob.

















This is our daughter Kimberly and our grandson Noah, who just happens to be Kim's son.

This is our soon to be son-in-law Ryan, we had to get him the shirt and I don't feel too bad because Kristine liked it when she seen it and told
us we should. LOL


This is our daughter Kristine.

This is the gift Ryan gave to our son-in-law Eric. Christmas in our house will never be the same. LOL It has changed a lot since Eric came into the family. He loves gag gifts. There has been a gift that has been going back and forth between Eric and our daughter Kristine (his sister in-law.) It is a urinal filled with all sorts of gross molding stuff, candy cookies and only the Lord knows what else. It has just been handed off yesterday for the third year. Now that Kristine is getting married in May it will move to her new home with her and Ryan will help her add to it, this could get really gross. I just hope no one goes to the bathroom in it and pass it on. So far my daughter Kim (Eric's wife) has kept him from doing that.

Cheeseball

I have been making this cheese ball since about 1983, it is the only recipe I use. I love it. Once you make your own and find one you really like you won't want to buy those hard ones you get around the holidays.

This cheese ball can be made three different ways with pretty much one main recipe, just split it into thirds and then you can add a little to each one. I just realize what I did wrong, oh well I think even my husband will like it since it does not had the right amount of blue-cheese in it. My husband hates blue cheese. I only made one recipe and it was the blue cheese so I should had added 1 1/2 cups blue cheese.

1 8 ounce cream cheese

4 cups shredded cheddar cheese

2 T milk

2 T grated onion

2 T Worcestershire sauce

1/2 C crumble blue cheese

3/4 t garlic powder

1/4 C snipped parsley

2 T chopped pecans

2 T cracked black pepper

Let cream cheese and cheddar cheese come to room temperature till softened. In mixer bowl cheeses, onion, milk, Worcestershire sauce; beat with electric mixer till fluffy. Divide mixture into thirds, to one portion beat in blue cheese; to a second portion stir in the garlic powder. Shape each portion into a ball; chill 30 minutes till slightly firm. Roll the blue Cheese in parsley (I roll mine in the nuts) roll garlic in pecans, roll the plain in the better. Chill at least one hour and serve with crisp crackers.

Fried Ice Cream

So here is the Fried Ice Cream Jake wanted instead of a cake for his 13th birthday. We ended up having it Sunday after our Roast Beef dinner.

Monday we are going to head over the hill into San Jose to go Christmas in the Park. Hey maybe I will find some good food to take pictures of. ;o) I have a Flickr account where I will post all my pictures. http://flickr.com/photos/aprilk/ Com on by and check out my Christmas in the Park pictures, I will upload them when we get home on December 22 so if you come by after the 22nd there is a good chance they will be pages into the account, I take tons of pictures. I will have them in a folder on the right hand side so they will e easy to find.

I should be back before but if not

Merry CHRISTmas everyone!!

Another teen in the house.

Well it was our 5th child's 13th birthday and the day he is a so called real teen, so let the fun begin. LOL This is my moody child. He is also our extremely funny child as well. Jacob's birthday is on the 20th and his friends Brandon's birthday is the 22nd so we decided to just throw a little something for both of them. Jacob picked the meal and he does not like cake so he wanted fried Ice cream, well I had the ice cream over in the church freezer and it was too soft to make for Fried Ice cream so we had to wait until the next day to have it. I did make a German Chocolate Cake though.

Noah wanted to try out Uncle Jake's new skateboard.

Getting ready for Christmas

I finished these up last night about 1:00am I won't tell you when I started them. I will give you a hint, I made them all but sewed the bells and put the fur around them and then I put them away until the next season. LOL I know I take on a lot of stuff during the holidays and I never seem to be able to finish them up. LOL I will be using these on my table and putting a napkin and my silverware as well as a candy cane into each of them. I will take a picture of it all when I am done.





Here is part of the baking I am doing along with many of the other post and recipes above and I am sure above also that will be posted in the next few days.









Then I decided to stop and throw some steaks on. There is a place is WI and they are now also in Chicago called the Spice house, if you have never ordered from them you have to check them out online. http://www.thespicehouse.com I started ordering from them about 16 years ago, when I went to WI. to visit my daughter, she took us to a little area called Old World 3rd street. Well I walked into the shop and right away I knew that smell.
Gayle was my blog exchange when we all sent stuff from our area where we live and she just happened to had just moved to Chicago and I just had to tell her about the spice house, well she loves it. I hope sge found about about Garrets Caramel Corn also...yum!!
I forgot where I was going with this, Oh, Gayle sent me some Chicago steak seasoning (love the stuff) and I decided to use the rest up last night and cook some steaks.

Eggnog bread

2 eggs, beaten
1 cup eggnog
2 teaspoons rum flavored
extract
1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease bottom only of a 9x5 inch loaf pan, or three 3x5 inch loaf pans.
Blend together the eggs, eggnog, rum extract, sugar, vanilla and butter.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Add to eggnog mixture and stir just enough to moisten; pour into prepared pan.
Bake bread in large pan for 40 to 60 minutes, or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Breads baked in the smaller pans require 35 to 40 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes, and remove from pan. Cool completely, wrap tightly and store in refrigerator.