Most Excellent Chocolate Chip Cookies

Getting ready for the church boutique tomorrow. Among other things, I'm making chocolate chip cookies. I've made this recipe for years.

Guin’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons hot water

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips

1 ¼ cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

2.  Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour, chocolate chips, and nuts. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans. (I use a medium size scoop)

3. Bake for 8-10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned. Don’t over cook.

Makes about 36 to 42 cookies

Some of the things I have learned:

• Don't use convection only for cookies. Use convection/bake so they get golden on the top and the bottom.
• CC cookies come out better if dough is refrigerated for one or two days. They get golden crispy on the edges, and still chewy in the center, with a smoother, toffee like flavor.
• Use medium scoop (disher), flatten cookies if cold from the frig.
• Sprinkle a tiny bit of salt on top before cooking.
• If dough is cold cook for 8 minutes, turn pan and cook for 3 to 4 minutes longer. Should have golden brown edges and softish centers; cookies centers will firm up after cooling.

Holiday Lane Pillow Blog Hop with Madame Samm and Pauline

And a Give Away

  

Thanks to Madame Samm  for putting together such a great hop and thank you to Pauline for coordinating the hop. Thanks also to Jill from Jillily Studio for the fun pattern.

 

 

I chose a sweets theme. When I sewed together the house blocks I wasn't very excited about

the 2 brown houses. I felt there wasn't enough contrast with the sky, and they sort of got lost. But then I started embellishing:

 

 

I love it.

 

 

 I am going to use it as a wall hanging for my cookie exchange party, and it will also be a big hit on gingerbread house decorating day with the grand kids.

 

 

Before you hop on over to the next blog, leave me a comment. I will have a drawing on Dec 1 for

2 pounds of California pistachios grown right here in Fresno county.

 

Here's the list for the rest of today's blogger.

Wednesday November 28

Quilt n Queen

Keep your fork There's pie (you are here)

Quilts My Way

Grandma's Stories

Quiltscapes

Espritpatch

Quilt on the Edge

Farm Road Ramblings

Rose Prairie Quilts and Farm

Peach Patch Quilts

Cherry's Prairie Primitives

Mary Jo - that other blog

 

 

 

 Jaxie's new bed from the Black Friday sales. He loves it. He lived at a rescue shelter for over a year; he's been living with us for 6 weeks now. He's a very good boy. We can't save them all, but we can save one.

WINNER

Congratulations to Kathy, from Just Quilt It; she won my drawing for 2 yards of Patriotic Stars fabric. Thank you to everyone for the kind comments you left about my little purses.

 

I'll be participating in next weeks Holiday Lane Pillow Blog hop. Take a look at my post - there will be another give away.

 

Maybe Malone needs a holiday pillow.

Cooking for a group

  No sewing last week because Stan and I did the lunches Friday and Saturday for the church Holiday Boutique. We made meatloaf for 96.

We make the food in our home kitchen so we do it in small batches. We do it assembly line style and it goes real fast.

we have the butcher package the ground beef in 6 pound portions

Recipe meatloaf for 24

6 lbs ground beef

6 eggs lightly beatened

1 1/2 cups chopped onion

3/4 cup chopped bell pepper

1 TB dried minced garlic

1 TB salt

1 1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1 TB dry yellow mustard

3/4 cup milk

3/4 cup catsup

3 cups oatmeal

4 1/2 TB horseradish

Mix the eggs with the meat (use your hands)

then add everything else and mix together with you hands.

If baking later, put each batch in a

2 1/2 gallon food storage bag and refrigerate until cooking time. Can be made 2 days ahead of time.

To cook: Divide mixture in half. Shape each half into a loaf and place on a foil covered RIMMED cookie sheet. Spread 3/4 cup barbecue sauce on each loaf. bake in a 390F oven for 1 hour or until internal temperature is 170F. When cooking for a group we always check internal temperature.

Made four batches of meatloaf in 1 hour total. Including cleaning up the kitchen.

Serving crew at the church

Stan also made a vegetarian version. He boiled one pound of lentils; after cooking and cooling he ground them up  in the food processor and used them in place of the beef in the recipe - THE RECIPE WAS REDUCED TO 1/3 QUANTITY OF ALL INGREDIENTS.

No vegetarians this time, so we brought it home; it tasted pretty good!

 

Day 3 of the UR Priceless Blog Hop And A Fabric Giveaway

 

 

A big thank you to Madame Samm for the great pattern and clear instructions,  and to our great cheerleader Katherine for all her time to get us all organised.

 

I've made lots of purses and bags but never used a sew-on frame before - once I figured it out, it was fun. I did some iron-on machine applique on the first purse I made; I wasn't too happy with it because after I put it on the frame I realized that the applique should have been smaller.

 

 

 

 

I used an old leftover upholstery sample for the second little purse; I didn't use fleece because the fabric was thick enough on its own. Cuteness improving.

 

 

 

 

I think that I liked using cotton fabrics with fleece better. There are so many great prints - coins for coin purse, chickens, diamonds, stripes - all great fun.

 

THIS WAS A LOT OF FUN!!

 

You can see all the purses here on pinterest

 

  the pattern is now available for $7.50 at Madame Samm's Craftsy pattern shop

 



A day after election day give away

Leave me a comment

and I will have a drawing on November 13th for 2 yards of Patriotic Stars fabric

 

And now hop on over to today's other bloggers

I Love Wool
I Like to Quiltblog
Keep Your Fork There's Pie  - you are visiting me
Retired to Quilt
Selinaquilts
From This to That
Jenny E.
Domestic Deficit Disorder
Pig tales and quilts
CherrysPrairiePrimitives
Espritpatch
Maria
Count it all Joy!
Creative Notions

I've started quilt blog hopping. I will have an entry in Madame Samm's sewwequilt blog hop for coin purses in November. And also, the Christmas pillow blog hop.

This week's quilt blog hop has an autumn theme. leafs me happy blog hop  One of this week's hoppers, Carol from just let me quilt made a GREAT PIE block. I love it!!
Now I need to add a fork.

PI DAY!!

Happy Pi Day

The pie trolley at the Methodist Church.

Yum Yum

Soup Weather

It's always pie weather, but soup seems to be seasonal.

I love stopping at Pea Soup Andersen’s for the soup 

 

but it’s really easy to make at home

Split Pea Soup

1 1/2 cups green split peas

4 (10.5 ounce) cans chicken broth (low sodium)

6 slices bacon, cut into 1 inch pieces (or diced ham or see * below)

1 small onion, chopped

1 large carrot, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary (use dried if that’s all you have) DON'T LEAVE OUT THE ROSEMARY!

Rosemary is often used for ornamental plantings, so look around your neighborhood to see if someone has a rosemary bush. Make sure you wash any purloined rosemary – dogs love to pee in the rosemary. 

 

Directions

This is the most important step: Sort thru the split peas for rocks and dirt pieces. Rinse the peas with running water.

Throw everything into a crookpot and cook for 6 – 8 hours.

I think that Lawry’s Seasoned Salt makes a fantastic addition to this soup, but the amount to add is a matter of taste. I wait until the soup is cooked to add salt.

*I generally don’t have bacon on hand, but usually have a bag of bacon bits from Costco in the frig, so I add about a ¼ cup when I start the soup.

Zoe Pie

I have a niece named Zoe. We call her Zoe Pie. She started working for Apple Computers 3 weeks ago. Now we can call her Zoe Apple Pie. 

Peaches

Smart and Final has 5 lb bags of frozen, sliced peaches. Cost about $12 to $13 a bag. I used these to make a big cobler:

Almost Fresh Peach Cobbler

2 cubes butter melted

5 pounds sliced peaches (frozen bag from Smart n Final)

1 – 1 ½  cups sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 ½ cups sugar

3 cups flour

2 TBL baking power

¼ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp salt

2 ¼ cups milk

Melt butter and pour into 10 x 15 pan

Mix peaches with 1 (1 ½) cups sugar and cinnamon in bowl

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg together with whisk, add milk, stir in milk – do not over blend – mixture should still be lumpy.

Pour batter on top of butter in pan. Lay peach slices on top of batter.

Bake at 375 for 45 minutes

Makes about 20 servings

These peaches would be really good in a rustic pie:

Rustic Peach Pie

Buy a package of pre-rolled pie crust (or make your own if you are so inclined). Use one crust (save the other one for another time).  Drape it in a 9" pie dish with edges hanging over the rim of the pie dish. Mix the filling in a bowl. Pour onto crust. Fold the edges of the crust over the peaches. They won't meet in the center(the peaches in the center will not be covered). Bake the pie for 1 hour at 350F until the filling is bubbling and the crust is brown.

Filling

6 cups sliced peaches

1/4 cup cornstarch, or quick-cooking  tapioca

1/2 cup  granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Where's the pie?

A life lesson: Everyone's willing to eat with a dirty fork if there's pie.