Grandma’s Biscotti

It took me many years of searching and begging but I was finally able to get my Grandma’s, highly in demand, biscotti recipe. My only regret is that grandma did not get to test out this version of her recipe before her passing. It was her rule that she did not like sharing the recipe with anyone. So to respect this decision I will give a basic recipe. That way you get to enjoy figuring out what the secret ingredients are!

I begin by adding unsalted softened butter, eggs, granulated sugar into a mixing bowl. I let this mix until there is a lose liquid batter. At times the dough mixture will look a little weird. If at any point the mixture doesn’t look or feel right try mixing for another 30 seconds.

I then add flour, salt, and baking powder and mix until there is a soft slightly sticky dough. At this point you can add in your flavor. Grandma’s recipe calls for anise extract, but you can use any flavor extract or add in baking pieces such as chocolate chips. Really any flavor that sounds good to you will work.

Once the dough has been mixed enough to incorporate your flavoring, it needs to be split in half. Each dough ball needs to be rolled out to approximately a 2 inch thickness sheet. Extra flour is optional for handling the dough. I find that this optional amount of flour is based on what you choose for flavoring the cookies. Place the 2 dough sheets side by side on a baking sheet and place into a pre-heated 350 degree oven until slightly golden (about 20 minutes). This will turn the cookie sheets into cookie loaves.

Once the cookie loaves are slightly golden, cut individual cookies into desired thickness. It is important to not allow the cookie loaves to cool too much during this process. Once cut, lay the pieces on the side.

Once the cookies are spread out on the cookie sheet, place back in the over for a few minutes to make the top of the cookies golden brown (about 5 minutes). Then pull out the baking sheet and flip the cookies to the other side and then place back into the oven to allow the other side of the cookie to become golden brown (about 3 minutes). Take out the cookies and immediately transfer to a cooling rack or open table/counter space. Do not let the cookies cool on the baking sheet otherwise the cookies will become burnt.

Once the cookies have cooled down you can enjoy them. Most of my family though prefers to let these cookies sit for a day or two in a cookie jar. This make the cookies a little stale and in their opinion better for coffee dunking.

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Ingredients

• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 cups flour, plus a little more if needed
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Flavoring
  • 1 Tablespoon of extract or 3/4 cup of baking pieces

Directions

1. Add butter, eggs, and sugar into a mixing bowl and mix until the ingredient are mostly integrated.Then add flour and salt and mix until a soft sticky dough has been achieved. Add in you flavoring and mix the dough to integrate your flavoring into the dough.
   • if using extract use mixer. If using baking chips use a spoon or spatula to mix
2.  Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
3. Divide dough in half and gently roll each dough section into a ball. If the dough is still a little bit to sticky to handle add a little sprinkle of flour. Roll out each dough sheet to approximately 2 inch thickness and place each sheet side by side on a baking sheet and place in the oven for 20 minutes
4. After 20 minutes pull baking sheet out of the oven and quickly cut each cookie sheet into individual cookies of desired thickness and lay each cookie on its side. Put the baking sheet back int he oven for 5 minutes then flip the cookies to the other un-toasted side and place back into the oven for 3 minutes.
5. Once the whole cookie is golden brown remove baking sheet from the oven and immediately place cookies on a cooling rack or open table/counter space to avoid burning the cookies. When the cookies are cooled enjoy immediately or allow them to go slightly stale and enjoy with coffee.

 

Nut-Free Pesto with Pasta and Veggies

Today was a hard day for me. Grandma would have been 91 today. While it was easy holding things together to get through my workday, after work was another story. I had made plans to pick up a bundle of Gladiolas and bring them to her. I got extra lucky and my Fiance had finished work a little early and was able to be there with me and help me get the flowers situated  in the vase. After a few emotional moments we headed home and decided we should make a recipe of grandma’s that I have tweaked and changed. Grandma’s recipe is a basic pasta, zucchini, yellow squash, with olive oil. My recipe includes the addition of chicken, and a pesto instead of using just oil to coat the pasta

 I start by prepping the chicken and cutting them in half through the middle so that they will be thinner pieces and will cook more quickly. I just add a little salt and pepper to the cut breasts and pass them off to my fiance. He prefers to have the chicken cooked on the grill. While I wait for the chicken to be cooked, I start getting my pot for pasta coming to a boil and get some butter melting in a skillet for my veggies.

I slice up my veggies and toss those in the skillet with salt and pepper and let them cook. Once the pasta water come to a boil I add in my pasta. This time we used fettuccine but literally any shape will work for this recipe. Once everything is cooking make sure to keep the heat on low so that we can make the pesto without worries of burning or over boiling.

Pesto is pretty simple. Though unlike a normal pesto, I cannot eat pine nuts so this recipe is nut-free! I add in all the needed ingredients, garlic, basil leaves, salt, pepper, olive oil, and red wine vinegar, and then blend.

Typically I blend for a few seconds, stir the stuff on the stove and repeat 3-4 times. The pesto will look a little watery but all the pieces should be finely chopped. Once the pesto is ready I let it sit until the pasta and veggies are finished cooking.

When the veggies are cooked I shut off the burner and let them sit until the pasta is ready. Because I used fettuccine it takes just a little bit longer to get all the noodles cooked.  Once the pasta is ready I drain out the water and flip the noodles into the skillet with the veggies. I add in a glob of butter and mix it around to keep the noodles from sticking to each other.

Once the butter is melted I pour the pesto onto the pasta and mix it around. You need every bit to be coated by the pesto. I know this doesn’t look like much sauce but it is enough for the amount of pasta and veggies.

Once the pesto is fully mixed into the pasta, I plated my pasta and veggies into a bowl, added my chicken and of course some Parmesan cheese! Its definitely a favorite anytime I make this recipe there is usually no leftovers!

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Ingredients

• 1 box of pasta
• 1 or 2 zucchini, sliced
• 1 or 2 yellow squash, sliced
• 3 chicken breasts, thinly sliced
• 1 container of Basil, leaves only
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1/3 cup of olive oil
• 6 tablespoons of butter
• 4-6 cap fulls of red wine vinegar
• salt and pepper

Directions

1. thinly slice chicken breasts. Add salt and pepper to taste. cooked until no longer pink in the middle. let it cool then slice up into bit-sized pieces. Set aside.
2. Fill a pot with water and bring to boil. Add in pasta. Add 3 tablespoons of butter to a skillet. After most of the butter has melted, add in the chopped squash and zucchini.When the veggies are cooked turn off heat.Once pasta is cooked drain water and add pasta to skillet with veggies.Toss in remaining 3 tablespoon of butter into pasta noodles to avoiding sticking.
3. While pasta and veggie are cooking add basil, garlic, olive oil, red wine vinegar, and salt and pepper to a blender. Blend for 5-10 seconds using the blend setting. repeat 3 to 4 time until pesto is watery and have fine basil and garlic pieces. Pour pesto over pasta and mix until  well combined.
4. Serve pasta in a bowl. Add the chicken and Parmesan and enjoy!

Power Rangers Pillow Case

The past month has been a very hard month for me. My grandmother had passed away.

After a year of fighting shes finally freed from her breathing machine, which she hated. She is definitely the source of my goofiness and also my cooking and baking skills. Many of the recipe that I have previously posted about have either been taste tested by her, were a twist on her recipes, or something she requested to have.

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My family has begun to arduous task of cleaning out the house that we all grew up in. Its been difficult to find some time since then for me to wind down. I decided to just stay in on my day off from work and play around with my sewing machine.

My fiance and step son are big fans of power rangers. While we were at the local craft store, they found this power rangers fabric in the remnants bin and just had to get it. So I decided to sew a pillow case for them to fight over.

I began by pinning up and sewing the top opening edges of the pillow case. This was actually the most difficult part because this was my first sewing project on this machine. After much trial and error and cussing out the not-so-helpful owners manual I was able to figure out my thread tension issues and finally get some real sewing done. My lines aren’t the straightest yet but a little more practice and adjusting machine should help with that.

All I had left to do was sew up the remaining sides and flip the pillow case right side out and put the pillow inside the case.

For my first sewing project on the new machine I say it went fairly well. Now to decide what my next sewing project will be. Project suggestions are always welcome! You can leave me a comment below or email me with your suggestions.

Dragonite Kit

The family and I were out and about window shopping/grocery shopping over the weekend and we came across this cool Pokemon build kits. After much debate I decided to that Dragonite was the best choice.

I’ve build a few different kinds of model kits but never one from Nanoblocks. Judging from the outside it does not look like something that is going to be overly difficult, maybe mildly annoying. So I ripped the top and dumped the packaged contents onto my work space.

Its a little sparse on words for directions. The few words that are in the instructions are in Japanese but the pictures are done very well. So this should be relatively easy to follow. The package of parts how ever will require some sorting. I find that sorting everything out may seem like an extra step but, it is very helpful in just grabbing the pieces as you need them instead of hunting for them.

For the extra small pieces I used my empty diamond puzzle trays to help keep them organized. The larger pieces I sorted out on my table. This step was probably the most crucial piece of prep work in the assembly of Dragonite. Having all the pieces out and organized was one less thing I had to concentrate on while trying to decipher the pictures for assembly.

 2 afternoons of work later I had managed to build all the individual ‘main’ pieces. The head, the body, and both wings. All that is left to do is figure out how they all attach to each other. This step was the most difficult because the few words that were in Japanese are the ones that help tell you how to hold the pieces in order to find the right places to connect.

Dragonite is finally completed! Its about the same size as my Triceratops model. Overall it was a pretty alright kit. It had enough challenge in it to keep me intrigued but it wasn’t heavily dependent on translating the Japanese words to get the model completed. I definitely would like to purchase more of these kits in the future and have a bunch of pokemon built!

Meaty Zucchini Pasta Sauce

I occasionally get bored with my normal pasta sauce routine. Brown some ground meat dump some sauce in and let simmer. I recently felt like I needed to change it up a bit. So I wandered my grocery store until I found this combination to try with my sauce.

I start this off by chopping up some prosciutto and throwing it into a skillet with some oil. The pieces will stick to each other, which is fine. I try to break up the clusters of meat as much as possible while the meat gets crispy.  The meat will need to be stirred around occasionally to make sure all parts are crispy.

Once the meat is nice and crispy, I add in the zucchini and summer squash pieces to the skillet. I cook this down quite a bit, sometimes it is necessary to add a splash or 2 of  water to keep everything from sticking to the skillet. I also add a very small amount of salt, a generous amount of black pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. Keep the use of salt to a minimum since there is a lot of salt in the prosciutto. But you will need to add a  little salt to help break down the squashes.

Once the zucchini and summer squashes have been cooked enough, I pour a jar of tomato sauce into the skillet. It is important that almost all of the liquid is gone from the skillet before adding in the tomato sauce.The water needs to evaporate away otherwise your sauce will be too runny. As the sauce simmers I taste test and adjust the seasonings. It is important to not add any more salt at this point, otherwise it will be a very salt sauce. While the sauce is simmering away I cook my pasta. Once the pasta is cooked I drain the water and add some butter to it to help prevent the pasta from sticking to itself once the water is gone. I do not run cold water over the pasta after it has been drained of water. I use the heat of the pasta to melt the butter.

After the pasta is cooked I add a little into a bowl. Then add my sauce to it. And of course some parmesan cheese goes on top. Then enjoy!

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Ingredients

• splash of oil, canola or olive
• 1 package of prosciutto
• 1 zucchini, cut to your liking
• 1 summer squash, cut to your liking
• pinch of salt
• ground black pepper to taste
• onion powder to taste
• garlic powder to taste
• 1 jar of your favorite tomato sauce
• cooked pasta
• 3 Tbsp of butter, preferably unsalted

Directions

1. Set a pot of water and bring to boil. Set up your skillet with a splash of oil with the heat set to medium. Allow the oil to warm up and coat the bottom of the skillet.
2. Add chopped prosciutto to skillet. allow the meat to get crispy. Stir occasionally to help get the meat evenly crisp. Once the prosciutto has reached desired crispiness, add in the cut zucchini and summer squash.  Stir around a little bit then add in the salt, black pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. Stir to prevent the veggies and meat from sticking. If oil is completely gone and there is some sticking add a splash of water.
3. Once the veggies are fully cooked add a jar of tomato sauce to the skillet. Stir to combine ingredients. Set stove to low and allow to simmer. Add pasta to boiling water. Once the pasta is cooked drain and add 3 Tbsp of butter to noodles and stir.
4. Serve up and top off with parmesan cheese, if desired, and enjoy

 

 

Gardening Phase 2

Its been a very rainy and cold April and May for Michigan. We finally had a nice weather day on a weekend and I took full advantage of it. My family and I started by hitting up my favorite greenhouse and nursery to pick out our plants for this year.

We ended up leaving with a ginger ficus bonsai tree, Bush green beans, zucchini, “trusty rusty” coleus, roma tomato, and cayenne chili pepper for gardening at our home. For my Grandma’s house we pick up a flat of white and a flat of purple alyssum flowers.

Then, like a crazy person, planted everything, at both houses, in 1 afternoon. Normally I would break this up between 2 days but the weather forecast had thunder storms, flood watches, and tornado warnings. So we had a mad dash to get everything in the ground before bedtime. The good thing though is that since the weather was horrible I had the entire day to treat my extra sore muscles.

This is my new vegetable garden! We had added some wood fencing, since gardening phase 1, to the sides to help with keeping the critters away from my veggies. The only additions we plan to make from here is a little rain guard. The water the dripping off the roof of our home is a little forceful for these young plants.  We also plan to stain the sides so it looks pretty.

One of the green beans needed a little TLC. The stem was a bit bent over because it could not support the weight of the leaves.

Since it did not actually break the stem I was able to get some crafting sticks and a pipe cleaner to support the stem so that it can repair itself. It very important to have the stick wrapped tight enough that it wont easily fall off, but not so tight that the stem is being crunched by the sticks. Th is trick works for most young plants.

After we planted the veggies we saw that we had 1 more spot open for a single plant. My fiance and I went back to the greenhouse early in the morning to pick out a jalapeno plant. I had just enough time to get the jalapeno home and in the ground before the rain started up.

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Gardening at my Grandma’s house has been an interesting situation for me. Some days I get a lot of things done and sometimes I’m just really depressed to be there. In the end though its still very weird doing  gardening without a shadow behind me telling me that I’m doing things the wrong way.

It felt kind of silly to plant a vegetable garden in my normal veggie garden space. Instead I decided to fill in this space with white and and purple alyssum flowers.

I felt that alyssum were a good choice for some ground cover around the Peony bush. Especially since I am not really a fan of petunias or begonias. It was a lot of working trying to figure out how much space to leave each plant while trying to fit all of the plants into the garden space. I like the end result I just hope that these flowers continue to grow instead of just die in the upcoming summer heat.

While we were there I was able to dig out and move a Rose of Sharon bush. Last Fall, Grandpa had decided which one I should have and which one my mom should have. We had decided that spring would be better to relocate the plants to give them a little more time to grow and mature before such a drastic change. So I up-rooted mine and moved it to my home.

I assure you it is growing perfectly fine. Last year this particular bush kept getting snagged on anything that was remotely close to it. I guess it learned it lesson because it is trying to shed the wonky parts and grow all straight and nice.

By the time the rain storm hit, I had put around 80 plants into the ground in pretty much 1 day. Man was I so sore the next few days! But now I can sit back and watch the plants grown while I try to decide on what I should make with my upcoming harvest.

Got any comments or recipes? Please hit me up by clicking the contact link.

Craft Corner

Recentlly I had decided it was time to purchase my own sewing machine. After much debate I decided on a Brother CS6000i. It has many of the functions I am already familiar with from my mom’s older sewing machine. It also has made some of the more annoying tasks computerized. Such as giving error messages when you have the wrong stitch/foot combination.When the Machine arrived at the house my Fiance decided to purchase a nice card table so I could unbox everything right away.

And thus, my craft corner has been born! Since I’m not fully able to work on any of the sewing projects I have lined up yet, I decided on doing something else that I had sitting around, 2 small/mini puzzles!

This first one I worked on I recieved in my Easter Basket this year. Its a My Friend Totoro stained glass puzzle. The pieces literally snap together because when you are finished,  it not only looks like a panel of stained glass the puzzle can easily support its own weight.

The Easter Bunny also left me a cool picture frame for this to go into when it was completed. I was skeptical about how well it would look in the picture frame but I actually really like it. The solid white background makes all the details more noticable.

The next puzzle I worked on was one that my Fiance bought me. We were walking through the clearance toys section and came across this Spider Gwen puzzle and he just had to get it for me.

its a very simple 48 piece puzzle but I really like the art and Spider Gwen is my favorite.

 

Gardening Phase 1

I’m back folks!! Life has been really chaotic since my grandfather passed. Trying to take care of the lose ends and legal bits, as well as getting grandma settled in her new living situation. Amoung all the sadness and stress, I do have some amazingly good news. I got engaged to my wonderful boyfriend! We are very excited and very happy to be planning a wedding! But until wedding crafts begins, we shall have lots of fun planning out the gardens at our home.

The weather is finally starting to act like spring in my area which means I can finally begin all my gardening work. Its still a bit too cold to start my vegetable garden but it is warm enough for flowers!

I decided to start with my smallest garden. Well miniature planter pot is a better description. My soon to be Mother-in-law got me this cute little planter with Petunia seeds for Easter. It was a complete kit that included a planter pot, dirt disk, and seed packet. All that needed to be done was wet the dirt disk, fluff the dirt, and plant the seeds.

My next project required a little assistance from my fiance. I had won/acquired 2 centerpieces from a baby shower. There are planter shelves along the outside of our home from previous occupants. These shelves are designed for starter plants that aren’t quite ready to go in the ground yet, so we retro fitted one of these shelves to hold something a little larger than a starter pot. I am still undecided if I want to keep all the decorations in these planters or to relocate them to the front garden. I’m just glad that the flowers are outside and doing a lot better than when I originally took this picture.

The front yard area is pretty bare so I started sprucing it up a bit with these red bricks to enclose some garden space along the front of the house. Its not much right now but once the plants start growing it’ll looks awesome! Inside the garden area I added these:

Otherwise known as Loyalist Hostas. My grandfather had a bunch of these in his front yard until he had his driveway re-paved. I’m hoping these will sprout up and do well in this garden.

On either side of the garden space I planted these neat looking flower bulbs.

Hopfully these will grow well. It has been raining a lot so the area I ended up planting them was heavily flooded the next day.

Thats all I have done for now. My fiance and I are working on our plans to build a vegetable garden box. We have a lot of feral/domesticated cats, squirrels, and skunks that run rampant around our house so we have to have a raised garden bed with a netted top. Otherwise there will constantly be critters in the garden

Any tips or suggestions? feel free to leave a comment or contact me!

Made in Rememberance

The past month has been such a mix of emotions and anxiety. On Februrary 20th I got the call from my Aunt informing me that my Grandpa had passed away. For me this was extra rough becuase Grandpa taught me all the skills no one else thought I should learn. Like gardening, basic electrical knowledge, how to tell the difference between tools, when to use duct tape vs when to use a bit of wire, etc. He really sparked the creativity in me because he believed that there is more than 1 way to fix a broken object.

He lived to be 95 years old and was always being silly for a picture. I literally haven’t had time to do anything besides funeral stuff and trying to console grandma and help get her situated with her new life changes. Since things have settled down a little, and I could finally have an evening at home, I decided to make one of the many favorite meals I’ve made for grandpa, Beef Stew.

I don’t use many measurements for this recipe. This was mostly an indulgent dish for grandpa because of his health issues he had some dietary restrictions. I heavily altered the original recipe to sneak in some things that he could eat every once in a while.

I prefer to get the pre-cut beef stew meat but if that isn’t available, such as this particular meal, I get a nice London Broil and cut it up in into cubes. I throw the cubes into a bowl and add some flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder and then mix it up until the meat coated. Once coated I add a little oil, grandpa preferred extra virgin  olive oil, to a large pot and allow it to heat up. I then dump the coated meat and any excess seasonings into the pot. While the meat is browning I slice up 1 onion, 2-3 carrots, thoroughly wash 1 small bag of baby potatoes, and trim and rinse 1/2lbs – 1lbs of green beans. DO NOT USE CANNED GREEN BEANS! canned green beans will turn to mush and/or dissolve away in the stew because they are already cooked. Plus they won’t be able to take much of the flavor from simmering in the stews juices.

Once the meat is mostly browned I toss in the sliced onion. I then let the meat finish browning and allow the onion to get soft. I also add a bit more salt and pepper to help break down the onion a little bit faster. If needed, add a little bit more oil so that things do not stick to the pot.

Once the meat is browned and the onions are soft, I add in the carrots, baby potatoes, and 1 carton of unsalted beef stock/broth. I allow this to simmer for a few minutes before I begin adding in spices.

After everything has been simmering for a few minutes I add in a few bay leaves, a generous amount of salt and pepper, and my special secret spice. My special secret spice is 1 cap full of ground corriander. I know its a very untraditional beef stew ingredient and it kind of sound like a large amount but trust me it’s delicious.

I stir the spices around and put the lid on the pot and let everything come up to a boil. Once at a boil I add in another non-traditional beef stew ingredient, green beans. Adding in the green beans made this feel like a more filling meal. I give everything one last good stir and then put the lid on and let the pot simmer for at least an hour.

Once the potatoes, carrots, and green beans are fork tender its ready to be eaten. Don’t forget to take out the Bay Leaves before serving up! If you’re feeling extra indulgent, you can add a sprinkle of your favorite cheese on top.