Baking on a rainy Monday is always fun. But making cookies to share… twice the fun 🙂
Rainy Days and Monday Monster Cookies
Category: Cooking
Maple Treats
It was a crazy year for sap, but we ended up with a lot of wonderful treats!
The first is maple sap, which is good as a drink or added to chili. Then syrup, maple cream, candy and then maple sugar!
Special Treat
Not sure where we first saw chocolate covered bacon, but everyone thought it sounded good. So, I made some for dinner tonight.
It was not quite right, so I will have to try again soon. 🙂
Dinner Spices
Getting the spices ready for dinner.
Pierogies
The kids helped make pierogies for dinner tonight. I am so thankful that Grandma Bea took the time to write her recipe down for us to keep.
Hands on Education
When Allan has business trips, we do school a little differently. This morning, I treated the kids out to breakfast and then we went to look for some materials we needed for an art project we want to do. After roaming the library looking for books on China and good read out louds, we headed home. Mark worked on the leaves while Adrian sat in the swing drawing tigers. The girls played outside and then worked on some of their art work.
Then this evening, we enjoyed having our friend Miss Jili over. Miss Jili is from China and an intern where Allan works. She said she would teach us how to use chopsticks and teach us some recipes from home. It was a fun evening!
Jili taught us how to make eggs and tomatoes–which is similar to something that I make for breakfast–asparagus with chili peppers and garlic, and spicy chicken called Kong Poa. Everyone enjoyed the meal and ate a lot, even using chopsticks! Adrian asked how do they drink in China and Jili said, “with chopsticks”. Adrian just had to try it. After dinner the girls showed Miss Jili how to make beaded bobby pins. Adrian fixed us apple slices for dessert while Mark made us tea and we talked some more.
We enjoyed ourselves so much, that everyone stayed up very late! I hope that we have the chance to get together with Miss Jili again after Allan gets home so he can share with her some of his trip.
Thanksgiving Praise-Fresh Baked Bread
I am thankful that I was taught how to make fresh bread. I did some learning on my own, but had two friends who took the time to help me improve. Now, years later, my skills continue to improve and I am passing on Nina and Stacy’s gift to my children.
Today’s Guest Cook
Today for lunch, Adrian learned how to cook hard boiled eggs. Master chief Adrian will tell you his secret recipe! Shhh…don’t tell, it is a secret!
First you find an egg, but not duck eggs. You put six in a small pot and add cold water. Until it is on the tip top of the eggs. Then you start cooking it until the water boils. Set the timer from 10 to 15 minutes. (Momma said we like them at 13 minutes) Turn off the heat and cover the pan. When the timer beeps, take out an egg and put it in a small bowl. Put it in cold water and wait until the egg cools down a little. Then open it up and if the egg yolk is hard, do the same thing to the other eggs, but don’t cut them open. Put in refrigerator until ready to eat. If you like pepper on eggs, you can put some pepper on when you start eating it. Enjoy!
Valentine Cookies
Last night we were invited to a friends house to make Valentine cookies. The girls enjoyed rolling and cutting out the cookies. After the cookies were baked, the boys helped taste test them.
Today, we decorated the cookies and the kids were able to share them with the neighbors.
Thank you, Jen and Evie for inviting us to a baking party. It was a lot of fun!
Caramels
We worked on finishing the caramels yesterday. Since we have never tried these candies, we made half of two different recipes. They made a lot! Everyone helped to wrap them until we got tired of that. When we had company come last evening, I asked (made) them help finish wrapping the candy.
We are very pleased with how the candy turned out. We learn how to make a new candy almost every Christmas and now have a good selection of “favorites”.