Happy Chinese New Year

We hope you are all having a happy new year and that all of your goals and wishes are coming to fruition.

 

Homemade Egg Roll Wrappers

by Cheryl Bowman

2 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 egg whites, beaten

1/2 cup cold water

cornstarch

Mix together flour and salt. Make a well in the middle and pour in the eggs and water. Using your fingers gently combine the ingredients to make a dough. If the dough seems a bit too dry, add cold water a tablespoon at a time. Dough should be smooth and soft.

Cover with plastic wrap. Set aside and let rise 30 minutes.

Divide dough in half. Keep 1/2 covered while you work. Roll dough out on a floured surface. When dough is about 16th of an inch thick cut into 6 inch squares. Dust each square with cornstarch to keep them from sticking together. Don't be stingy with the cornstarch.

You can use these right away or freeze them for later.

Jill's 4 easy steps for perfect bean selection

This week we jarred 40 quarts of green beans. (We have another 40 still in the garden waiting to be picked if anyone is interested.)
Jill, our quality check specialist understood and preformed her job very thoroughly. Here are Jill's 4 easy steps for perfect bean selection:

Step 1:

Grab a handful of beans (no fewer that three or four).

Step 2:

Carefully examine each bean for any signs of age, over growth, or decay.

Step 3:

Test a few for taste. (This is a very important step. At least half of the beans are guaranteed to be fresh and crisp if you taste test along the way.)

And Step 4:

Discard any beans that don't meet the highest standard for quality.

There you have it. Now, go can your beans with speed and confidence If you need a quality check specialist, Jill works for $20 or one bunch of bananas an hour.

Give me a C

At our house C is for cookie. That's what I sing everytime I put a Cookie Monster diaper on little bit. But to day C is for cookie and for Chelsea. Happy birthday Chelsea. Here are some cookies for your birthday. I wish I could be there and make them for you.

Peanut Butter Rolo Cookies

1 cup sugar

1 cup powdered sugar

1 cup shortning

1 cup peanut butter

2 eggs

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 teasoppns baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 package of Rolo chocolates (about13)

1. Mix all ingredients together except rolos

2. When dough is mixed well, take a small amount, flatten out in hand and place a rolo in the middle. Close the dough around to form a ball.

3. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 12 minutes. Let cool before eating.

WMMMMMMMM

Dear William,

You don't remember your third birthday, but I do. You had a scare over your lip from a tragic, rainy day, park accident and you had just learned how to say how old you were. You would hold your hand up to your mouth like an "O" and very slowly lift up your pinky, then your ring finger, then your middle finger, all the while saying "thhhhhrrrrreeee" with great focus. You would move your hand with three outstreached fingers away from your mouth and down to your side on the "eeee" part. Then you would smile the biggest, crooked mouthed, smile. So cute.

Happy birthday, and happy St. Patties day. Here's a green treat for you and Rebecca to make.

Feta Spinach Dip
(party size)

1 ten oz box of chopped spinach, thowed
1 six oz container of feta chese, crumbled
1/3 cup mayonaise
1/4 cup toasted walnuts, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 package crackers or bread rounds

Add first 5 ingredience together in a bowl and stir to your hearts content. Eat on crackers or little toasts. (I really enjoy it on toated pieces of sour dough bread. I also added more walnuts that asked for. About a cup, and it was good.)

Lemon Chicken

I found it!!!

Here is the lovely link for this luscious lemon chicken.

I like it for the following reasons:

1) It has a spicy kick, but it's not too spicy.
2) It's so easy to make.
3) It doesn't include instant lemon pudding mix.
4) I bet you all the ingredient are in your house right now.
5) I bet you can change the ingredient a little to make this any flavor of chicken you want.

Things I changed:

1) I didn't have lemons, so I just used lemon juice.
2) I didn't have coconut oil (but I wish I did). Instead, I used canola oil and then poured coconut milk on top as the chicken cooked.
3) I had rice vinegar, but I think you could use regular vinegar and add a little bit of sugar. Next time, I'm going to use a little less than the recipe calls for. Mine came out a little on the vinegary side. But it was still very good.

Shout Out

I'm not a cook. I've learned a lot about cooking in the last couple of years from my awesome cosin at Perry's Plate, like 1. don't be afraid to try something new, 2. look up the ingredent names when your'e not sure what they are, and 3. you can always change it up and make it different if you don't like the results. Oh, and I learned to roll out dough with oily hands instead of floury ones. 9 times out of 10 it makes my bread more fabulous.

So, last night when I made a wonderful Lemon Chicken recipe that turned out to be more than I expected, I thought for sure I had printed it off from Ms. Perry's Blog. But alas, I can't find the recipe now. It was lovely though, and although I don't think it's hers, I'm giving her credit for inspiring me to make it.

When I figure out where I got it from, I'll share it will all of you.

Fancy!

Friday, I got an exciting new post from Perry's Plate. They made some sushi at their house! I thought, "Wow that's amazing!" I love sushi and always have to go to a fancy restaurant to get it. So, I read though the instructions every carefully and looked at all the pictures. Then I visited For the Love of Food and watched all of the videos about making perfect sushi rice. Then I went down stairs and made a shopping list and told Matt we needed to go to the store!

Sunday morning we made a cup of sushi rice and rolled a few crab and salmon rolls with avacado, green onion, and cucumber. We quickly realized that one cucumber can fill more than one cup of rice worth of rolls, so we made LOTS more rice and rolled 10 sushi rolls!

I was pretty hungry by this point (even though I had two helpings of german pancakes just 2 hours before), So we tried a few with pickled ginger and wasabi (they were on the shopping list). Then we packaged the rest up. Some we took to Matt's roommate and his wife who served us dinner Sunday night. Some we took to our neighbors who both served Asian missions. (Mary, I wore my Tai shoes to deliver and they both noticed them and were really excited to hear they were from Taiwan.)

And we are slowly eating the rest. Sushi = very fancy! Sushi = very yum!

Ooooooo, Fonduuuuuuue!

We got a fondue set as one of our gifts (the thank you note is in the mail, by the way), and we decided to use it! So we invited 4 other couples over for a dinner party. (We like dinner parties! Mostly I think we just like to fill our house with people.) This was not just a chocolate and pretzels event (although we had those too).

For the first course, our friends served a cheese fondue with bread. Followed every closely by the second course: beef, chicken and pork cooked on a beefy fondue broth. We put out some sauces. I think the peanut one was the most surprising and most well liked.

My most favorite thing about fondue meals is that it takes a long time to eat. You stick a piece of meat and put it in the boiling broth then wait, and hopefully talk, while your meal cooks. I love to hear people talk, so it was a ton of fun for me.

For dessert, we finally busted out the chocolate and pretzels. Yum! It was so so much fun and so very good.