My little guys love ginger cookies, and I have discovered a really quick way to make them!
Betty Crocker makes a Gingerbread Cake mix, and on the back of the box, there is a variation for making cookies! Add a little water, a little flour, and we are off to cookie land!
A couple things about the recipe:
If you like crisp cookies, like we do, squish them down thin with a glass, an bake them for the full time. Let them sit ont eh cookie sheet for a minte before transferring them to a wire rack.
Be sure to roll them in sugar, or they crumble easily, even if you make them the soft way.
They are addictive.
I have tried this trick with other gingerbread mixes, like Washington, and the cookies aren't as sweet. If you are into sweet ginger cookies, use the Betty Crocker mix. However, using the Washington mix rolled in sugar is a good, cheap alternative- the mix is usually about fifty cents. It only makes about a dozen cookies, though.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Slow Cooking
OK, I am addicted to my slow cooker. I admit it. Its a wonderful contraption. You put food in it, toss in some sauce, set the heat, and several hours later, you have dinner. How great is THAT?
Well, there are some problems with slow cooking. First, with cheap cookers, you have to put the food in within certain time windows, or you're not having a slow-cooker dinner tonight. I have a cheap cooker, so I have to pay attention to how long stuff needs to cook, and be sure I am putting food into it in time for it come out for about 6 pm. Secondly, someone has come up with the not-so-bright idea of inventing slow cooker recipes that require you to open the pot and add stuff during teh cooking process. The point of a slow cooker is that the food cooks and you don't have to mess with it. Inventing recipes where I have to mess with it is completely pointless. However, now you have to wade through these complicated recipes to find good, simple ones.
To make the slow cooker easier, I started paying attention to the cooking times. If you are into experimenting, it seems to be a general rule of thumb that chicken cooks in about 2-3 hours on high, beef and pork take about 5 hours on high, 8 hours on low.
Here's my favorite easy-slow-cooker recipe:
2-3 pound beef roast
3-5 potatoes, medium size
2 tablespoons of Worchestershire Sauce
Seasoned salt to taste
Seasoned Pepper to taste
1/3 cup water
Clean and slice the potatoes. I leave the skins on. Place these at teh bottom of the crockpot. Place the roast on top. Add the water, then the Worchestershire, salt and pepper. I use about 1/4 teaspoon of the salt, and liberally sprinkle the roast with the pepper.
Put the top on the pot, and set: high, 5 hours; low, 8 hours. I prefer high for 5 hours, because I can put everything in while one of my kids is napping. At 6 o'clock, we have dinner! Pot roast! Yum!
Well, there are some problems with slow cooking. First, with cheap cookers, you have to put the food in within certain time windows, or you're not having a slow-cooker dinner tonight. I have a cheap cooker, so I have to pay attention to how long stuff needs to cook, and be sure I am putting food into it in time for it come out for about 6 pm. Secondly, someone has come up with the not-so-bright idea of inventing slow cooker recipes that require you to open the pot and add stuff during teh cooking process. The point of a slow cooker is that the food cooks and you don't have to mess with it. Inventing recipes where I have to mess with it is completely pointless. However, now you have to wade through these complicated recipes to find good, simple ones.
To make the slow cooker easier, I started paying attention to the cooking times. If you are into experimenting, it seems to be a general rule of thumb that chicken cooks in about 2-3 hours on high, beef and pork take about 5 hours on high, 8 hours on low.
Here's my favorite easy-slow-cooker recipe:
2-3 pound beef roast
3-5 potatoes, medium size
2 tablespoons of Worchestershire Sauce
Seasoned salt to taste
Seasoned Pepper to taste
1/3 cup water
Clean and slice the potatoes. I leave the skins on. Place these at teh bottom of the crockpot. Place the roast on top. Add the water, then the Worchestershire, salt and pepper. I use about 1/4 teaspoon of the salt, and liberally sprinkle the roast with the pepper.
Put the top on the pot, and set: high, 5 hours; low, 8 hours. I prefer high for 5 hours, because I can put everything in while one of my kids is napping. At 6 o'clock, we have dinner! Pot roast! Yum!
Why Cooking For the Kids?
There are, literally, thousands of cooking and recipe sites out there in teh big World Wide Web. Millions of recipes just waiting to be tried, tinkered with, wondered about, and even scrapped. Why put another one out there?
I have discovered a number of unfortunate things about cooking and recipe sites:
1. Most "easy" recipes include tomatoes. My son doesn't eat anything with tomato.
2. Most recipes are for three or more people. Finding recipes for a single child with special needs is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I have a child with autism, and food textures are something I always have to consider- sometimes I need to feed my non-autistic child something other than mac and cheese, hot dogs, or peanut butter and jelly.
3. I've never had a recipe I've pulled off the net, gone into my kitchen, and been able to get perfect. This is probably partly because I am not a gourmet cook- but then, how many gourmet cooks ARE there in the world? How many of them are trying to raise kids?
So I am offering my own experiences with recipes, and hoping it will benefit moms everywhere to hear exactly what happened when I tried something. Did the kids like it? Was it easy? What needed tweaking? What variations worked? Which ones didn't?
Please check out my links. I have selected some recipe/cooking sites I have found useful as places to begin a cooking experience. For example, the Kraft site is an excellent place to go trawling for recipes to try, though they usually need tweaking. I would also like to recommend _The Joy of Cooking_- a fabulous resource for those of us who have no idea what we are doing in the kitchen. This is a cookbook that provides simple, straight-forward instructions for dealing with ANYTHING. Mom and Dad show up with a rib roast and expect you to cook it? No problem. Some wonderful neighbor bring you 15 pounds of butternut squash form their garden? No problem! Love it. I also have a 1940's edition, which gives you "work-arounds" for rationing- what to do when you have no flour, no sugar, no baking soda, etc. I recommend tracking one down, its great for when you need dinner tonight, don't have an ingredient, and can't go to the store!
I have discovered a number of unfortunate things about cooking and recipe sites:
1. Most "easy" recipes include tomatoes. My son doesn't eat anything with tomato.
2. Most recipes are for three or more people. Finding recipes for a single child with special needs is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I have a child with autism, and food textures are something I always have to consider- sometimes I need to feed my non-autistic child something other than mac and cheese, hot dogs, or peanut butter and jelly.
3. I've never had a recipe I've pulled off the net, gone into my kitchen, and been able to get perfect. This is probably partly because I am not a gourmet cook- but then, how many gourmet cooks ARE there in the world? How many of them are trying to raise kids?
So I am offering my own experiences with recipes, and hoping it will benefit moms everywhere to hear exactly what happened when I tried something. Did the kids like it? Was it easy? What needed tweaking? What variations worked? Which ones didn't?
Please check out my links. I have selected some recipe/cooking sites I have found useful as places to begin a cooking experience. For example, the Kraft site is an excellent place to go trawling for recipes to try, though they usually need tweaking. I would also like to recommend _The Joy of Cooking_- a fabulous resource for those of us who have no idea what we are doing in the kitchen. This is a cookbook that provides simple, straight-forward instructions for dealing with ANYTHING. Mom and Dad show up with a rib roast and expect you to cook it? No problem. Some wonderful neighbor bring you 15 pounds of butternut squash form their garden? No problem! Love it. I also have a 1940's edition, which gives you "work-arounds" for rationing- what to do when you have no flour, no sugar, no baking soda, etc. I recommend tracking one down, its great for when you need dinner tonight, don't have an ingredient, and can't go to the store!
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