Oatmeal Cookies: Take 2

Yesterday I was bored and decided to try another oatmeal cookie recipe. I made a healthy oatmeal cookie a few months ago (before my blog) with apple sauce and it wasn't bad for a healthy cookie. This time around I didn't have apple sauce but decided to give it a go with butter. I, of course, cut back on the butter but I think it changed the texture of the cookie. The taste is great, but they are far too crumbly. They even cooked in a ball and didn't 'melt' down during cooking like typical cookies. I couldn't bring myself to take pictures because I was so perplexed by the crumbly texture. I guess if I had given in on the full amount of butter it might have helped the texture. Oddly, the recipe calls for cooling the dough for an hour before cooking. I think this gave the dough the extra crumbly texture. You don't need to chill dough unless it's a cookie than will run during cooking--something oatmeal cookies are not known to do.

Oatmeal (Almond) Cookie

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 cups quick cooking oats
Raisins or nuts (optional-- I used raw almonds and liked the extra nutty flavor)

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, cream together white sugar, butter, and brown sugar. Beat in eggs on at a time, then stir in vanilla.

2. Combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. Stir into the creamed mixture. Mix in oats. If you are using nuts or raisins, mix into dough, combing well. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour.

3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease cookie sheets. Roll the dough into balls, and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheets.

4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes approximately 36-60 cookies, depending on how large or small you make them.


As I was blogging about this my mom called to report back that she actually really liked the cookies!! Mom's seal of approval on cookies means a lot, especially since I'm not an avid baker. She said we'll play around with the texture to perfect it, but the taste is there. Thanks Mom! =)

On an aside, I saw a recipe using apple butter and I think that would make a great cookie! I'm trying that recipe next and, hopefully, it'll turn out better visually and texturally than this batch!

I love being Italian

Ah, yes, now that is beauty. THAT is my definition of soul food. Something that makes you feel comfortable, warm, loved, and is always reminiscent of home. For me, it is and always will be spaghetti. Every Sunday--and I mean every Sunday-- at home while growing up we had spaghetti. (My mom still makes it every Sunday!) Special occasions would warrant Grandma's ravioli (YUM) and occasionally we had homemade spaghetti noodles. This Sunday we had homemade noodles. Sigh. Happiness does not come in a purer form.

Now let's examine how we got to the picture above.

Above: The noodles exiting the machine.
Below: The noodles laid out carefully on a floured cookie sheet.

I love coming into the kitchen and seeing trays of noodles laid out on cookie sheets. Remember that comfort food thing I was telling you? This is it. Homemade noodles mean you're in for an amazing dinner.

Now what are noodles without an amazing sauce? My mom makes almost a vat of sauce, or so it seems! But, extra sauce means more for me to take home and freeze. =) The original sauce came from my great-grandmother who used tomato paste, garlic, salt, and pepper--very simple yet delicious. My grandmother added the addition of meat and herbs and my mom learned from her. My mom swears pork makes the best sauce, but she switches from time to time and will use anything from ground pork to pork ribs to ground beef to ground veal. Forget BBQ ribs. (Okay, well not entirely because I happen to love those too, but you get what I'm saying.) Pork ribs cooked in spaghetti sauce are out of this world. My mom browns the meat first and then adds garlic, salt, pepper, tomato paste, diced tomato, and a generous amount of pecorino romano. I might have said it before, but my family prefers pecorino romano to parmigiano reggiano for spaghetti. It's much sharper and stands up to the tang of the spaghetti sauce.
Ah, yes. And occasionally we get meatballs. Ground beef and veal usually. But you can be creative and experiment with meats. You get a different taste and texture with each different type. So there you have it. I can't imagine not being Italian and having Italian food as often as I do. For most people it's a nice change from the daily fare, but for me it is my main cuisine.

Pickled Eggs and Beets

I think it's such a gorgeous color.
It's fresh, acidic, vinaigrey, and just so different.
Beets, hard boiled eggs, onions, apple cider vinaigre, dill, pickling spices, garlic, peppercorns-- need I say more? The longer it sits, the better. After over 12 hours of pickling, you can see the beet juice penetrates the white of the egg.
We had this growing up and, with my sister in town for her birthday, she requested it to be made. She's guarding it with her life from family and telling everyone it's horrible so as to have more herself! Translation: It's amazing and mine. Don't even think about it.

It's a wonderful and light side dish for any occasion, but it's awesome in summer since it's so light and fresh. Give it a try when you're wracking your brain for a different side dish and just can't think of anything. And the best thing is that you can make it so far ahead of time!

Book Club

It's time for another book review, and keeping in line with my first book club post, I'm reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Between his revealing exposé of the corn industry and his brutally honest critique of what he calls 'industrial organic', Michael Pollan again strikes literary gold.

The Omnivore's Dilemma is the precursor to In Defense of Food and I'm loving it as much, if not more. Pollan has this uncanny way of, oh, I don't know, making sense! While our government continues to subsidize cheap corn and harm both us and the corn growers themselves, Pollan is a bold, refreshing voice of truth about the unfortunate state of our agricultural system. I tend to avoid political statements here, but I'll indulge for a moment. If Obama was serious about making veritable changes, he would have picked Pollan as his Agriculture Secretary and not Vilsack, once again buying into Iowa cornfields.

But I digress. Now get ready to fall in love once again:

So what exactly would an ecological detective set loose in an american supermarket discover, were he to trace the items in his shopping cart all the way back to the soil? The notion began to occupy me a few years ago, after I realized that the straightforward question "What should I eat?" could no longer be answered without first addressing two other even more straightforward questions: "What am I eating" And where in the world did it come from?" Not very long ago an eater didn't need a journalist to answer these questions. The face that today one so often does suggests a pretty good start on a working definition of industrial food: Any food whose prevenance is so complex or obscure that it requires expert help to ascertain.

When I started trying to follow the industrial food chain--the one that now feeds most of us most of the time and typically culminates either in a supermarket or fast-food meal--I expected that my investigations would lead me to a wide variety of places. And though my journeys did take me to a great many states, and covered a great many miles, at the very end of these food chains (which is to say, at the very beginning), I invariably found myself in almost exactly the same place: a farm field in the American Corn Belt.

This man continues to amaze me. He is spot on in every way.

Halupki

Are you hungry yet? =) Halupki, or my family's version of pigs in a blanket, is a ground meat and rice mixture wrapped in cabbage (savoy works well since the leaves are so large) and cooked in a simple tomato sauce. Oh my. The cabbage adds such a wonderful flavor to the sauce. The neat thing is that you can change the herbs and spices in the meat mixture. It's almost impossible to mess up!


I think I've made it clear that I have a strong Italian background, but I'm also lucky enough to be a mutt and have some Czech in my family as well! (And by mutt I mean Italian, Irish, English, Czech, Scotch, German--phew!) But the only 'cultural' foods in my family are Italian and Czech. Growing up, Halupki was pigs in a blanket for me. There was no other form. I once went to a friend's house and dinner was pigs in a blanket. I was so confused when it turned out to be a hot dog wrapped in a croissant roll with cheddar cheese!! I guess that was my introduction to the American take on pigs in a blanket.

Peppermonger

Much like Dave in Top Chef from Season 1, I am a 'peppermonger'. I always have been. Probably always will be. I love the stuff. As a kid I used to coat slices of raw tomatoes with the stuff until it was beautifully speckled black on top. I load up my tuna fish with freshly cracked pepper and then grind more on top. I have to remind myself when cooking for others that not all people share this affinity. Is there anything you know you use too much of but don't care?

Why aren't you fat?

I realized I haven't added any pithy food commentary since I began my blog. So here it goes.

People, family, friends, etc. often ask me why I'm not fat since I love food, am always around food, talk about food, or always seem to be eating food. Now allow me to explain. I eat food. Real food. And not "foodlike substances" to borrow the words from Michael Pollan. If you know Cheez-Its aren't good for you, then chances are the low-fat version isn't a miracle health food, allowing you to indulge at every whim. It's common sense, people. I'm not saying you're going to get fat on Cheez-Its--the low-fat version or the original. What I am saying is that it characterizes a mentality all too common in the Western diet:

You can eat whatever you want as long as it's labeled low-fat.

Wrong. I eat food. Tomatoes, freshly made bread without additives, preservatives, and high fructose corn syrup, real meat, fruits, vegetables, pasta, real butter (NOT margarine), cream, natural cheeses, etc. Are you following me here? Nowhere in there is HFCS, preservatives, aspartame, MSG, etc. Natural food doesn't need additives to improve its flavor. It's just, well, good. The flavor comes from the healthy soil it was grown in, the simplicity in its preparation.

My latest nemesis has been the yogurt aisle. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but finding a good yogurt is difficult. I don't want low-fat, reduced calorie yogurt. I want naturally sweetened-- no HFCS, no aspartame. They do exist; but they are few and far between. Stonyfield Farms organic yogurt is good, as well as Wegmans Probiotic Super Yogurt and Dannon's All Natural. Navigating seemingly 'healthy' aisles should not be this frustrating.

Thus the confusion of the Western diet.