Hair cuts

Buttermilk and eating the whole refrigerator

I didn't know much about buttermilk in the past, when I saw it in the dairy case I assumed it was in line with heavy whipping cream or the yogurt you can't actually eat. You know, one of those ingredients you get for making one recipe and then you have this fattening cream leftovers in your refrigerator that you feel too guilty to eat, and just as guilty throwing out a week later. So, not so long ago I looked up buttermilk, and found this amusing explanation by Mr. Breakfast. Buttermilk is lower fat than milk, thick like yogurt, and great for making things soft and fluffy.

So back to this morning, Dan and I are going home for the holidays we are trying to clean out the freezer. We had trouble about 3 months ago when we were out of town and one of the circuit breakers popped and so our electricity was off for a least a couple of days. The refrigerator and freezer were full of spoiled food, it was a real mess. The freezer never fully recovered. We had the maintenance man look at the circuit breakers but he wasn't able to see any problem. So we are going to do our best to eat everything we can before we leave, just in case it happens again while we're gone.

For the frozen blueberries in the freezer, I made these this morning. The only changes I made was to substitute 1/2 cup canola oil for the butter, added 1 tsp of vanilla, and the blueberries are what really make it great, so I used closer to 2 cups instead of 1.5 cups. It made roughly 16 normal muffins (with big tops). This recipe is nice because it really is just a vehicle for blueberries, not overly sweet or too oily like store-bought blueberry muffins.

To go along with

what seems like a news blog turning into a food blog, I have further resigned to myself the fact that I'm scared to cook red meat. Also, the fact that red meat, can in fact, smell fear.

Friday night I tried to make this sirloin tips over pasta recipe, and it really was almost un-salvageable. Luckily, Dan is tall, and was very hungry after driving back from Buckeburg, because the smell (it was too much red wine or something) after two hours of me standing around it and giving it the occasional stir, was almost too much. It ended up being ok, but it looked like something they would serve at the cafeteria at work here, not really a compliment. Perhaps I used the wrong type of beef.

Tonight we are hopefully redeeming the Katherine & Daniel Kitchen's culinary standard - we bought everything to bake salmon, an easy favorite.

Other than that, we have been doing typical weekend stuff, with a few preparations for the holidays thrown into the mix. It's right around the corner already!

More cookies!

Hooray! Dan's back this weekend. Okay, he's back every weekend, thankfully, but it's the holidays and I like making him stuff, so there. I like this recipe, I make the cookie batter, then I divide it, then add white chocolate and cranberries to half, dark chocolate and walnut to the other. Everybody wins.

CRANBERRY WHITE CHOCOLATE COOKIES
CHOCOLATE WALNUT COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
  
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  
• 2 eggs
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 3/4 cup cranberries
• 1 bar good quality white chocolate (candy bar)
• 1 bar good quality dark chocolate (candy bar)
  

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, cream the shortening, white sugar, and brown sugar together. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt, stir into the creamed mixture.
   
3. Divide in two. Stir in the cranberries and the white chips to one half, walnuts and dark chocolate chips into the other half.
4. Drop cookies by heaping spoonfuls onto unprepared cookie sheets. Bake for 7 to 15 minutes (dependent on cookie size) in the preheated oven. Take cookies out of the oven when they are light brown and not yet set. It creates a softer cookie. Allow cookies to cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet before removing to cool on wire racks.

I used 1/2 butter and 1/4 oil to make the fat more healthy. This time I used about 3/4 whole wheat flour as part of the flour, just to see how it would taste.

Marketing

For the last month or so I have been looking forward to Christmas markets in Germany. Everyone said they were impressive, so yesterday I decided to drag Daniel out to Aachen. Aachen was supposed to have a big market, in the open area around the cathedral in the dead center of town.


A little introduction, since I was relatively unaware before we ended up here:
Every year, for centuries, cities and towns all over Germany celebrate Advent (the Sundays after Nov. 26 leading up to Christmas Day) with Christmas markets in their city-centers. The tradition originates with Dresden, Christmas 1434. The markets range in size and slightly in theme, the bigger ones drawing thousands of visitors. There are even vacation packages offered for "Christmas market touring", with hotel and transportation. Visitors enjoy the traditional atmosphere, the hand-made crafts, Christmas decorations and warm food and drink.

So we took the train, had some trouble at the station with the normal train schedule, strike-related we think, but we finally got into town and walked into the market on foot. At first I thought it might be quiet, it being only the second day open, but there were lots of people.














We wanted to try some Gluhwein, the hot spiced wine that is made just at Christmas time here, but the wine area was completely squashed, so we just pushed farther in. There were lots of Christmas decorations and hand-made stuff (that I never seem to be very good at buying), and music and great food.

It was actually a lot of fun, Dan was happy to go after all. Up til now, all the festivals we have seen were beer and sausages and fried potatoes and German songs we didn't understand. Christmas is pretty straight forward.

We'll have to try the Gluhwein this coming weekend when the market comes to Stolberg!

Happy

Happy (U.S.) Thanksgiving everyone!!

PB Cookies

So I guess we should have a section called 'Basic Baking 101', we tried yet another simple recipe over the weekend. All of these ingredients everyone probably has at home. These are good with a glass of milk. Enjoy.

PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a bowl, cream together the butter, peanut butter, and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt; stir into the peanut butter mixture. Roll into balls and place onto a unprepared cookie sheet. Press with fork to flatten cookie and to create criss-cross pattern.
   
3. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Shorter time window for cookies will be soft and chewy, longer for crispier cookies. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.