Ogre Cookies (Combo Smitten Kitten and Jill Saunders)

Why Ogre Cookies?

They have layers.

I am starting to be a bit adventuresome with online recipes, and I add or subtract things to see what happens.

I also combine recipes sometimes, and that is what happened here.

I was craving a soft cookie that had a couple of different flavors, and a bit of chocolate. I found Brownie Roll-out Cookies by Smitten Kitchen and The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies by Jill Saunders, and I decided to put them together to make something a little like both.

I made the dough separately, and it looks like there is a lot more vanilla sugar cookies than chocolate (if you follow this to the letter).

So, I made the Brownie ones first (and with only a few minor changes):

Choco Layer

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup margarine, softened
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

Don't preheat the oven, because this is going to have to chill for at least an hour. Soften the butter by nuking it for a short time (like 15 seconds).

1. Whisk flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.
2. Mix butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and cocoa in a different bowl. Use a mixer instead of a spoon, or you'll get the same stupid chunks in your dough that I did. That cocoa is insidious stuff that likes to create balls of powder in otherwise nice dough.
3. Mix the dry stuff into the wet stuff slowly. I used my hands to really mix it up, and then I wrapped the dough in plastic wrap and shoved it in the fridge.

Vanilla Layer

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup margarine, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Don't preheat the oven, because you will have to chill this for an hour. Soften the butter by nuking it for a short time (like 15 seconds).

1. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together.
2. Mix butter and sugar together in a different bowl. 
3. Add eggs and vanilla to butter/sugar bowl, and mix together.
4. Stir the dry stuff into the wet stuff, slowly.
5. Mix with your hands, until the dough looks pretty good. Then wrap it in plastic and stick it in the fridge for at least an hour.

Chocolate and Vanilla Ogre Finger Sugar Cookies (Not exactly catchy, is it?)

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
• Grab about a third of the vanilla dough, and roll it out between wax paper.
• Grab a similar amount of  chocolate dough, and roll it out between wax paper.
• Remove the top pieces of waxed paper on both flattened pieces of dough, and then carefully lay the choco layer on top of the vanilla one.
• Remove the wax paper on the choco layer completely.
• Roll the dough into a long cylinder
• Cut the cylinder into 1/4 inch cookies. (I smooshed mine, so that they became long finger cookies.)
• Place them on cookie sheets that are lined with parchment paper. (I'm a huge believer in parchment paper. It makes clean up SO nice!)
• Cook for about 12-14 minutes. Check at the 12 minute mark by sticking them in the center with a toothpick. If you pull it out and it looks like the toothpick isn't wet, and there isn't dough sticking to it...it is done!

This makes a boatload of cookies, and leaves you with a bit of leftover vanilla dough.

The Verdict:

This was a bunch of stuff to go through, and it left me feeling sort of "meh". My daughter felt the same way about them. The two men in the house devoured them hungrily, and raved about enjoying them. These are GREAT cookies to be served with coffee. I've had requests to make them again.

Layers...like an onion.

These are long finger cookies, and that is totally on purpose. It has nothing to do with smooshing the dough when I was trying to cut it into circles. Nope. I'm sure that wasn't the case. *cough*

Cutting Up A Whole Chicken, and Oven Fried Chicken

I'll tell you a secret...

I'm afraid of cooking meat.

I think that I'll do something wrong and kill everyone with food poisoning, and I'm particularly phobic about chicken.

Therefore, it took some courage to decide to look at a whole chicken and decide to cook it in any way. (I've cooked chicken maybe two or three other times, but always in a crockpot. I have produced bland and sad meat that made the baby Jesus cry.)

The first real hurdle was cleaning and cutting up the chicken.

I carefully washed the bird off in the kitchen sink, with just plain water. It was a good idea to get a buddy to turn the water on/off, and make the garbage can available without needing to use my hands. It was also good to have a bowl right next to me to put the bird in, so it didn't drip on the floor on the way to the cutting board.

The CSA that I signed up for plucked and gutted the bird, and I decided to turn to Youtube for the answers to cutting it into pieces.

 

                              How to Cut Up a Whole Chicken - Gourmet Magazine 

This video was super helpful, but cutting up a chicken didn't go exactly like this at all. I had a very crummy dull knife. It is extremely helpful to have a good one, I'd imagine. 

Popping the bones out wasn't exactly effortless either, and I really had to work on some of them. I guess that I have to start working out with weights again. Ha!

 I watched the video once, and forgot some of the steps too...so...I didn't have quite as many pieces. 

The coolest thing about this video is that it gave me an idea of what to do, and it also mentioned kitchen scissors. I finally know what those are really great for doing! 

I managed to do the breastbone part completely wrong, and it was nowhere near as easy as he showed. I'll have to try to improve on that part next time.

I was pretty happy with the end results. I got most of the meat off of the bird, and in a fairly orderly manner. 

I found a recipe that I could use as a jumping off point, Oven Fried Chicken III Recipe by Elizabeth Hinlely.

I changed quite a few things about it. The very first thing was the oven temp. I put it to 375 degrees.

Ingredients 

• 1 whole chicken, cut up into pieces
• 1 cup dried bread crumbs (I used IGA brand breadcrumbs.)
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/8 teaspoon Curry Powder
• 1/8 teaspoon Mustard Powder
• 1 cup mayonnaise

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. Mix dry ingredients with mayonnaise.
4. Rub chicken pieces with mixture. It will be sort of gloppy, and won't stick on the chicken very well. 
5. Put the chicken pieces in a glass baking dish, and then put all remaining glop on the chicken pieces.
6. Bake for 45 minutes. Check internal temperature of chicken with a meat thermometer. It needs to be 160 degrees. If it isn't, put it back in for 5-15 more minutes. 

Verdict: 

 This recipe turned out uber yummy. I left the skin on the bird, because I like it. My partner wasn't fond of the skin, but he removed it easily and enjoyed it anyway.

I'm pretty sure that I'll be doing this recipe again, and I think that next time I want to try using my own (homemade) breadcrumbs and cornmeal. I don't know how to do that yet, but it sounds fun and I think it would taste good. I'm also curious about taking off the skin, dipping these in egg, and then rolling them in the breadcrumb mixture (without the mayo).

~ Patty

Suddenly Salad

I was making that pasta salad that Betty Crocker puts out, and I almost experienced catastrophe.

The pasta is in a plastic bag, and I sort of didn't look in the box and tried to just dump things blindly in the boiling water.

Luckily, I caught both the bag of pasta and the spice bag before it hit the water.


I'm looking at the ingredients for this thing, and it kind of gives me the screaming squicks. I don't want to eat "hydrolyzed corn gluten" and "monosodium glutamate". Those might be great, but I don't want to mess around with this crap. Plus, 770mg of sodium in 3/4 of a cup? Hmmm...

It looks like I could maybe make my own?

Enriched plain, spinach, and tomato pasta... I'm sure that I can probably just buy that, right?

Red bell pepper, parsley flakes, garlic, onion, basil, vegetable oil....

The back of the box gives suggestions for adding pepperoni, broccoli, carrots, olives, and cauliflower.

I just realized that this is what you call "pasta salad", and there are probably a bunch of recipes for it out there.

Some of you may laugh, but if you spend a lifetime not cooking this stuff can feel like a revelation.

Suddenly My Own Pasta Salad...

I'll have to try that.

~ Patty

"He's so greasy he glides when he walks. He goes to the barber for an oil change, not a haircut.'” - S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

I decided that I needed to make my own conditioner, or do some sort of at home deep conditioning.

I'm broke at the moment, and it was unlikely that I was going to get a chance to go somewhere to pick up jojoba.

So, I went to the kitchen and grabbed the virgin olive oil.

"I'll just add a bit to my ends."

Yeah, that is what I thought.

I spread some on my ends, and then sort of over my hair a bit. It seemed like it wasn't really doing anything. I didn't notice much.

"If a little is good, more is better."

This kind of logic sometimes helps to make me one of two things:

1. A happy hedonist.
2. A Regretful rethinker.

I warmed some olive oil in a bowl, and then dowsed my hair with it. Then, I wrapped it in a warmish towel for 30 minutes.

I surfed the internet while I had the towel on my head, and I saw something that disturbed me...and made me think that I might have benefited from some earlier research.

This doesn't bode well.

Hmmm....

Well, I read the article on getting olive oil out of your hair, and it was written by someone that was even more clueless than myself. They pretty much recommended napalm and a blow torch, so I didn't pay much attention.

Still, the idea sat with me and made me uncomfortable.

Then I went to clean my hair.

It looked like I had a bunch of greasy hair snakes spronging off of my head.

No problem, I was going to wash it all out.

I washed with the baking soda shampoo.

Nothing.

This oil was staying IN.

I washed with the baking soda shampoo again.

My hands were still oily when I was done.

Hmm...

I rinsed with the vinegar rinse.

A little bit of relief, but not much!

I rinsed with the vinegar again.

Still oily.

I rinsed my hair in water for awhile, and thought that when my hair dried it would get better.

Dry hair? HAHAH

It has been at least an hour, and my hair is greasy damp.

I'm glad that I don't have to go anywhere until Friday.

Until then, I'll look like one of The Outsiders.

Cool. :/

~ Patty

Edit: I figured out that Dawn dish washing liquid would remove a large amount of the oil. It is still there, but MUCH better after using Dawn. Yeah, that is kind of like nuking your hair from orbit.

The Great Shampoo Experiment III !

Update to the shampoo recipe posted here.

I found out that the baking soda shampoo can leave a white powder in your hair too. I saw some on my brush all of a sudden, and was not pleased.

I used apple cider vinegar for the first time in the rinse recipe, and I noticed that I didn't like it as much. I ended up with the first residue in my hair, and sometimes I felt like the scent of vinegar was lingering a bit.

So, I started over and reduced the baking soda to 1/4 cup and went back to white vinegar in the rinse. I'm already feeling the results, which are very positive.

My hair feels far less heavy using this shampoo/rinse, but I also feel like it is a bit dry. I want to experiment with making a jojoba oil conditioner for occasional use.

My scalp is feeling a LOT more healthy using this shampoo/rinse, and my psoriasis is practically non-existent at the moment. I've also noticed that I seem to have less hair falling out.  Nice!

~ Patty