in comes this delicate, floral tea, Meditative Mind.  Isn’t it the most beautiful tea you’ve ever seen?  The colors and textures are magnificent, and oh so  comforting.  The taste is ever so mild.

soothing, calming, stress-relief

Chinese white tea with jasmine pearls and rosebuds.

anti-oxidants + anti-aging + very low caffeine = Love

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Enjoy making this cookie recipe with your family!

Russian Teacakes

(Thanks to the 1950′s version of Betty Crocker)

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp.  vanilla

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/4 tsp. salt

3/4 cup chopped walnuts

powder sugar

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Mix butter, 1/2 cup powdered sugar and vanilla.  Mix in flour, salt, and nuts until dough holds together.

Shape dough into 1 -inch balls.  Place about 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake until set but not brown, 10-12 minutes.

Roll in powdered sugar while warm/ cool.  Roll in powdered sugar again when cool.  Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

Enjoy the festivities of the season!

Peace

Let me explain.

While I was out Saturday morning, one of my wonderful former students showed up on my doorstep with a dozen of his mom’s delicious homemade tamales.  He had remembered that I had been wanting to order tamales from his mom, but since I’m no longer a regular in the school scene, I never get a chance to place an order.  So this boy decided to take things in his own hands, and make a house delivery (with his mom’s help of course).

Not knowing which kind I preferred, red/pork/mild, or green/chicken/spicy, he delivered the first kind, then ran out to his car and brought out another dozen to cover all bases.  Woo hoo, we hit the mother lode.

Forward to dinner time.

After hearing of our new food acquisition, Second Son stepped up and offered to make us a complete dinner featuring the tamales as the stars.  I actually couldn’t believe this random act of kindness.  He had long given up cooking, which is too bad since he was an excellent cook in his past.  After a quick ingredient check, he began to whip up dinner (one he had made with friends a while ago).

First, he sauteed green, yellow and red peppers, and red onion in a little EVO (extra virgin olive oil), and seasoned it all up.

colorful veggie assortment

He then cut up romaine lettuce and baby cherry tomatoes, in order to make a bed out of them on the dinner plates.

During the last few minutes of sauteing,  he added fresh sliced mushrooms to the other veggies.  In a bowl, he tossed the hot veggies with mango salsa.

My son served the steamed tamales (one red, one green) on top of the bed of  lettuce and cherry tomatoes, then spread the mango salsa tossed veggies over the tamales.  The last step was to sprinkle  grated Mexican cheese on top.

Voila!

tamale dinner ala Second Son

I wasn’t sure how all these flavors would blend, but to my delight, this was extremely delicious!  I’ve got to hand it to my son, not only for the scrumptious dinner, but for taking on cooking risks in the kitchen by being creative and not using a recipe.  Aren’t kids amazing sometimes?

Muy sabroso !   Muchas gracias hijo!

Yo te amo!

Some like it hot!

Besides baking, there is very little I enjoy cooking in the kitchen … except pizza and bread!  This is “Tony’s Famous Cholula Spicy Chicken Pizza”, and it came from this book .

60 Different Pizza Recipes

It had a robust tomato pizza sauce topped with Cholula soaked, shredded chicken, mozzarella, jalapenos and garlic.  The recipe also called for chorizo, and onion which I chose to leave out.

The boys in my house liked this, but requested that I turn up the heat even more by adding  more jalapenos next time.  I on the other hand, thought it had  good flavor, but was much too hot!, hot!, hot!, for my liking.

Remember that if you just want to browse a recipe book and don’t necessarily want to invest the money to buy it, see if your local library carries it.

This usually works for me, but some lame-o neatly cut out a page containing the  “New York Style Pizza Sauce”,  leaving that section of recipes useless.

Hope you’re enjoying your stolen page.   Tsk… Tsk!

Bread in pan

Here is another bread post of a completely different nature than the artisan bread.  This bread tastes just like the store bought stuff.  I used a modified version of some person’s adaptation of the Honey Wheat Bread I on all recipes.com.

People who know me, know I like the faster baking versions of recipes, so here is my recipe.  Of course I used my bread machine to do all the work.  This bread is really very scrumptious and would work well for sandwiches.  I just can’t get enough bread!

Mmmm Bread!

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup (100 degree) water
• 6 oz. milk (lukewarm)
• 2 Tbs. butter (room temp.)
• 2 1/2 to 3 Tbs. honey (your choice)
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2  cups white (or bread) flour
• 2 tsp. bread machine yeast
• 1/2 tsp. white sugar
• 1 tsp. salt

Place in bread machine in the order given by the manufacturer.  I listed the ingredients in the order I put them in my machine.

Select the 1 1/2 pound whole wheat cycle.   Press start!  After about 10-15 minutes of the initial kneading, I added 2 Tbs. of flour.

Ready in about 4 1/2  hours.

Now if I could only learn how to cut the perfect, consistent sized slices!

Boule - Artisan Free-Form Loaf

Beautiful!  This recipe came from the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. The idea is that you throw together the dough in less than 5 minutes then refrigerate it up to two weeks and use it as you need it.

It turned out exceptionally well … but it ruined my pizza stone!  The book suggested using a high grade 1/2 inch stone, and that’s what I thought I had, until I heard a loud “snap” in my oven as my bread was baking.  Sure enough, my stone split right in half.

The dough is very, very, wet … quite unlike any other bread dough I’ve worked with.  It reminded me of those warm, steamy, loaves of bread that restaurants bring out.  I want to make this again, but I need a new pizza stone.  Apparently the evenly browned and crusty crust comes from a very hot oven, the even distribution of heat from the stone, and steam.

We ate this with tortilla soup.  Yum!

Thank goodness Mother’s Day is just around the corner (hint, hint).  Williams-Sonoma carries one that has a lifetime guarantee from cracking.  I could see myself baking bread in the future on a regular basis, using this method.

Mmmmm!  The smell of homemade bread.

Ham & Eggs - Salt style

For Sunday brunch,  I had the pleasure of dining with the future grandmother of my future grandchildren.  She invited me to Salt, a local eatery.  We both ordered ham and eggs with cornbread on the side.  The fancy factor was way up on this yummy meal.  The presentation was very attractive along with the entire restaurant’s surroundings.

This newer restaurant is housed in the location of a long-time downtown restaurant which is no longer in business.  The chef of Salt is a local who’s well known in the area.  The interior has so much character and texture.

Inside Salt

It was nice to visit with my friend and discuss the amazing plans for her soon-to-be built mountain paradise.  We respect the fact that we both have specific talents that we are more than willing to exchange in trade as she proceeds with this project.   I see some very creative ventures happening in my future.  I can hardly wait!

A great big “thanks”  to C.C. for inspiring me, and for the delightful brunch.

Stir Crazy

Kettle Corn

Okay … I had to go snooping around other people’s blogs and happened to stumble across this amazing recipe for homemade kettle corn.  Be forewarned that consuming this is habit forming.  Some have described it like “crack”,  in terms of its addiction factor – but I don’t know anything about that!  I just know that you can’t stop eating and eating it.  Words can’t describe how delicious this kettle corn is.  I dare ya to eat just one!

The original recipe calls for you to make this on the stove top.  Well, I tried it the first time and shaking that big pan the whole time was down-right tiresome.  So I thought … I have a Stir Crazy, circa 1980′s, that stirs the popcorn continuously and keeps it from getting scorched.  What did I have to lose?

The kettle corn recipe worked like a dream this way!  It was light and fluffy with just the right combination of salt and sweet.

So this is the original recipe that I found here, thanks to “Joy the Baker.”  My quicker version follows.  Happy popping!

1. Put 1/4 cup of oil in the bottom of the corn popper and let it heat up.
2. Dump in 1/2 cup of corn kernels.
3. Sprinkle with 3 Tbs. of white sugar.
4. Put the lid on and wait for it to pop.  Don’t let it burn!
5. When finished popping, invert the lid and sprinkle with 1/2 to 3/4 tsp. of salt while stirring.

Making Scones

Do you remember last weekend when I said that I was going to go home after my winter walk, and do chores and take care of other boring business stuff?  Well … I immediately went home and started making the cranberry orange scones I’ve been thinking about since the holidays.  These are actually the first scones I’ve ever made.

on the way to the oven

They were easy to make, and tasted scrumptious right out of the oven with a steamy cup of good coffee.  I miss all my old, (as in frequent) baking habits.  Eating healthy just isn’t as much fun.  That’s for sure!

bd grillers

Because of the snowstorm last weekend, we postponed our son’s birthday dinner celebration until tonight.  It’s a tradition for him to choose bd’s Mongolian Grill.  The wait time for dinner was about two hours, but it was worth it.   This place is alot of fun.  You choose your “raw” foods, create your own sauce, and the grillers ham it up and grill it before your eyes.  These guys were good sports in posing for my photo.  I hope my son enjoyed this celebration.

Too much food!

Since we had quite a bit of time to occupy, we took a long walk on the 16th Street Mall.  Although we hopped on the mall shuttle bus for a few blocks, this mode of travel looked much more desirable.  Yee Haw!

prettiest mode of travel

HAPPY BIRTHDAY !  I LOVE YOU!