Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Frightening Fridge

#itstimetocleanmyrefridgerator

Pretty soon I’ll grow tired of hashtags. But I’m on a roll right now. By the way, only two people responded to my plea for help in understanding the concept around hashtags – both of my sisters. One sister told me she thinks they are a way to simply emphasize the meaning of a Twitter or Facebook post. My other sister told me I’m overthinking the whole idea and I should just enjoy them as they are frequently very amusing. Okay then.

I’m addicted to cooking programs. I probably watch more Food Network shows than anything else on television. I’m not so nuts about the competition programs they seem to be moving towards. I like the pure cooking shows. Ina Garten. Ree Drummond. Bobby Flay.

Here’s the thing -- no matter who the cook is, when they open their refrigerator door, whatever it is they are looking for is right there in front of them.

No digging through containers of leftover food from three weeks ago. No half-full cartons of half-and-half with expired pull dates. Several of them. No sippy cups containing an inch of Peach-Mango juice or filmy chocolate milk. No sticky ketchup bottles. No fuzzy strawberries.

Not that my refrigerator has any of those things. Ahem.

It just seems like I’m always in a hurry when I am putting things away in my refrigerator. I’m also apparently in a hurry when I make my grocery lists because I don’t take the time to see if there is half-and-half in the fridge, and simply buy more for a given recipe. Bad planning. Don’t do it, Kids.

To be fair, I don’t have a staff that arranges my refrigerator with fake products, and then makes sure that the eggs for my cake recipe are right in front. In a pretty egg holder. What’s more, Ina Garten doesn’t have grandkids that pour themselves a glass of milk and put the empty carton back in the fridge. Nor is her husband Jeffrey experimenting with a new Soda Stream, resulting in 27 different bottles of unknown flavor filling up her fridge.

Once every two or three weeks, I go through my refrigerator and toss anything that looks like a science project gone wrong. And judging from the looks of my fridge currently, it’s about that time.

Now, on to cookies….

Before determining which cookie recipes I was going to use this week, I asked my sisters if they had a particular cookie recipe that their kids liked when they were growing up. One sister immediately told me her kids always asked for chocolate chip cookies. And let’s face it, there is nothing better than chocolate chip cookies. They’re good warm. They’re good cooled. They’re good for several days, though they never last that long. But I didn’t want to use that recipe because I’m guessing everyone has a chocolate chip cookie recipe (and probably 98 percent of us use the Toll House recipe).

She also said her kids liked candy cane cookies, which she would make every Christmas. I will wait until nearer to Christmas to post that recipe, but I must admit I was duly impressed by the fact that making candy cane cookies involves weaving together two pieces of dough. That requires more work than plopping dough onto a cookie sheet. Impressive.

My other sister responded with a certainty that her kids would say it was the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies from the Quaker Oats oatmeal box. Again, no argument here. Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies are delicious. But I was looking for something a bit different. “But those are my kids favorite cookies,” she said. “They would tell you that too.” It amused me to learn that later that day, when she asked her thirty-something son what his favorite cookie was growing up, chocolate chip oatmeal cookies weren’t even mentioned. “Those peanut butter cookies with the chocolate kisses,” he said without hesitation.

Voila!

Peanut Butter Cookies with the Chocolate Kisses (courtesy, Hershey’s)

Ingredients
48 Hersey’s kisses
½ c. shortening
¾ c. creamy peanut butter
1/3 c. granulated sugar
1/3 c. brown sugar
1 egg
2 T. milk
1 t. vanilla extract
1-1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
Additional granulated sugar

Process
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Remove wrappers from chocolates.

Beat shortening and peanut butter in large bowl until well blended. Add 1/3 c. granulated sugar and brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk, and vanilla; beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda, and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.

Shape dough into 1-in balls. Roll in granulated sugar; place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8 – 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and immediately press a chocolate into center of each cookie; cookie will crack around edges. Cool completely.

Makes about 48 cookies.

Nana’s Note: I’m pretty sure if I ask my son what his favorite childhood cookie recipe was, he will also say peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses. He wasn’t denied peanut butter as a child as I was.

5 comments:

  1. ohh, those are some of my favorite cookies too. AND they are easy to make GF: http://www.shockinglydelicious.com/5-ingredient-gluten-free-flourless-peanut-butter-cookies/ We should make them in a couple of weeks!!!

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    1. I want to do a week of gluten free, so be thinking of good recipes. See you soon!

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  2. I thought of these, too. I never made them, but a friend gave us a plate of cookies every Christmas and those were, hands down, the first to fly off that plate.

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  3. And on this particular cookie note; I remember Court sitting at my table one year during lent plowing thru a plate of those cookies. But he took the chocolate kiss off of every one and left them on his plate. When he left the room Kris explained he had given up chocolate for lent. I believe the next year he gave up chicken. No joke!

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  4. P.S. Regarding cleaning out the refrigerator. My friend Heather was once encouraging her mother to clean the frig once a week before doing the weekly shopping. I've been doing that every week now for a long time and it works well. And I waste less. I bet we would all cringe if we knew the dollar amount of food we waste. #wastenotwantnot. : )

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