A couple of steaks I marinaded the other night in lemon juice, smashed garlic, jalapeño peppers, salt, soya sauce and olive oil. Very tasty. ‘Mmmm, steak.

We were lucky enough to have the in-laws share their baking apple bounty with us recently. I cored, peeled, soaked, dried and vacuum sealed two huge bagfuls of slices before freezing them to use in pies, cakes, crumbles, etc. over the winter months. Lovely tasting apples, too. The bath, btw, is nothing more than water with 2 teaspoons of coarse or sea salt. The salt leaves them tart enough to stand up to the sugar they will be baked with eventually, creating the perfect balance up front.

BASIC OATMEAL COOKIES
1 cup butter, room temp
1 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp vanilla:
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda, dissolved in 2 tbsp hot or boiling water
2 cups quick oats (don’t use instant oats or oatmeal cereal)
1 cup of chocolate chips/dried cherries/dried cranberries/shredded coconut (all optional)

Pre-heat to 375 degrees. Cream butter and sugar in a bowl. When it’s creamy, add vanilla and then dry ingredients. Mix well. Dissolve baking soda in the water and pour soda water over mixture until well blended (mixture should be sticky and tacky to the touch). Gently fold in optional ingredients if using any. Don’t overmix the dough – you want soft cookies, not door stops.

Aside: I made half the batch as soft round mounds that I baked for 15 minutes, and the other half I used the back of an offset spatula (or you can use a spoon) to flatten out each mound so they would bake in 12 minutes.

Using an ice cream scoop, drop soft mounds onto parchment paper lined cookie sheets with at least 1 1/2″ around each mound so the cookies have adequate room to spread out and enough air around each one to bake evenly. Bake each sheet for 12-15 minutes before cooling on racks. Makes 20 large cookies.

And this is an example of a micro batch:

SINGLE SERVE OATMEAL COOKIE BATCH
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp white granulated sugar + 1 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 cup flour + 1 tbsp flour
1/8 tsp vanilla
Pinch of salt
1 tbsp. Water
Pinch of baking soda
1/4 cup quick oats (don’t use instant oats or oatmeal cereal)
1 – 2 tbsp chocolate chips/dried cherries/dried cranberries/shredded coconut (all optional)

Mix the ingredients in a cereal bowl with a fork. Use parchment paper to get a softer cookie, and for quicker clean up. Flatten the dough down a bit with your fingers or fork so the cookie bakes evenly. Bake at 350 degrees, for 12-13 minutes.

Megan’s Microwave Instant Oatmeal Cookie. Megan has posted two other variations of, not only small oatmeal cookie batches, but batches that can be made if a microwave or toaster oven. This is especially interesting to me because we don’t have a stove at work, but we do have a microwave and a toaster oven, to I’m thinking some Saturdays I might be making use of her recipes. 😀

Basic Bread:
2 C bread flour
2 Tsp table salt
2 Tsp white sugar
1 Tsp cold butter or margarine
2 1/4 Tsp (or one 8g packet) active yeast
1 – 1 1/3C (depending upon the humidity and time of year) 120 degree warm water

Bake bread for 35-40 minutes at 425F degrees (200C). Preheat the oven for at least 20 minutes. Bread dough bakes best in really hot ovens, not cold ones.

Measure out and dump the first 3 ingredients into a large bowl. Add the butter or margarine to the bowl and start pinching it into the dry ingredients tll a small crumble forms and everything is mixed well.

Add the active yeast and mix well. Add the water starting with 1 cup first, the rest only if you need it. Using a large wooden spoon or heavy plastic spatula, start mixing and stirring the flour mixture with the water, smearing it along the sides of the bowl to incorporate all of the dry ingredients until a ball of dough forms.

Throw more bread flour onto a counter top and dump out the ball onto it. Add a bit more flour to the top of the ball and start your kneaded. This won’t take longer than 5 minutes. You will see how quickly the ball becomes springy to the touch. When that happens, and the ball is no longer wet or sticky to the touch, you’re done kneading.

Spray the same large bowl with cooking spray, going up the sides to the top rim. Drop the dough into the bowl and flip over a couple of times to coat both sides. Cut off a sheet of plastic wrap big enough to cover the bowl, but before you place it over the bowl, spray the underside with more cooking spray. This will allow you to peel it off the wet, tacky dough as it rises easily.

Set the bowl, covered, aside for 30 minutes. When 30 minutes have passed, life the plastic film and push the dough down in the centre so the dough deflates as it releases the air trapped in it. Cover the bowl with the same sheet of film and let it rest another 30-45 minutes before you do this same punching down once more.

After you punch down the dough 3 times, throw some bread dough onto the counter once more and turn the dough out of the bowl again. Lightly top the dough with more flour and start kneading it. This time you will only need to knead 2 minutes till the tackiness or stickiness of the dough disappears. Drop this dough into a baking dish or bread pan that’s been sprayed with cooking oil and lightly floured.

Cut two or three slits into the top of the dough on the diagonal or down the length to help release trapped air in the bread as it bakes. Right before placing the pan in the oven, top the dough with sprinkles of milk for moisture.

If your oven is like mine, old and cranky at high temperatures, you can create a tin foil tent to place over the bread pan while the dough bakes. Take a sheet and fold it gently in the middle down the length and place it over the pan so that it loosely sits above the dough, resting on the rim of the pan on either side.

Let the bread rest in the pan after it’s baked and taken out of the oven. Once the pan is cool enough to handle, turn the bread out onto a wire rack to cool completely before even thinking about slicing it up. This should take about a half hour. Wrap the loaf in plastic film and store at room temperature or freeze for the future. This bread is so amazing, it doesn’t last long enough in our two person household to go bad, but should it go stale, fear not for this bread will make wonderful bread crumbs for other cooking purposes.

Variations: Add some dried, crushed herbs to the dry ingredients before as you add the water. This will make lovely savoury bread that would be ideal for holiday stuffing or leftover meat sandwiches. 🙂

Chicken Enchiladas:
* Pot of water, boiling
* 3 Skinless chicken breasts or 3C of leftover, shredded, chicken meat
* 1 Bay leaf
* Mexican seasonings
* S&P to taste

* 4C Shredded Monterrey cheese (or any other cheese you have on hand)
* 12 Small flour tortillas
* Sheet of tin foil big enough to cover your baking dish
* 9×13 baking dish (or whatever you have on hand that’s clean and oven proof)
* 1C Pasta sauce
* 1C Mild or hot salsa
* 2 Tbsp sugar (to cut the acidic salsa)

* 1/8C of your favourite herb, finely chopped and placed over the cheese before plating

Boil enough water to cover the three chicken breasts while seasoning the meat on top of wax paper (cleaner, faster clean up) with the Mexican seasoning and S&P. Add to boiling water along with the bay leaf. Cover and cook till the internal temperature of each breast reaches 160 degrees. Set cooked meat aside to cool down completely before you start to shred into medium size strands of meat.

While the meat is poaching, grate 4 cups of the cheese. Cover and set aside till everything is about to be assembled.

While the meat is cooling, mix the pasta sauce with the salsa and sugar in a small sauce pan. Heat till it comes to a rolling boil. Turn the heat off and let it sit till you finish the enchilada assembly.

While preheating your oven to 300 degrees, wrap the tortillas loosely in foil, and place it in the oven for 10 minutes to heat them through. The meat by this point should be cool enough through the whole breast, start shredding it up and placing it into a bowl.

Take the tortillas out of the oven and turn the heat up to 450 degrees. Unwrap the tortillas and start your assembly of chicken and cheese in a 1.5" line across the middle of each tortilla. Top with jalapenos if you like. Wrap each one up and place in a baking dish seam side down. Make as many as will fit comfortably in the pan. Don’t overcrowd.

Top the enchiladas with your hot tomato sauce and add whatever cheese is left, place in the 450 degree oven for 7-10 minutes. You can cook them for 5 minutes and broil them for another 3 if you like your cheese to have a golden colour to it.

Plate two enchiladas per person with herbs over them, and add sour cream and guacamole on the side. Enjoy!