Christmas Cookies

Mexican wedding cookies...Russian tea cakes...powdered circles of nutty goodness.  Whatever you call them, they are my favorite cookies of the season.  

My Personal KitchenAid

Ready for the Oven

This is an old Bon Appetit recipe.


2 1/4 C. all purpose flour
1/4 t. salt
1 C. (two sticks) butter, room temp.
1/2 C. powdered sugar
1 t. vanilla extract
3/4 C. finely chopped pecans, toasted
powdered sugar


1.  Sift flour and salt together. 
2.  Cream butter in a large bowl until light.  Gradually add 1/2 C. sugar and beat until fluffy.  Add vanilla.  
3.  Mix in dry ingredients in 3 batches.  Mix in pecans.
4.  Refridgerate at least 1 hour or up to 12 hours.


Preheat oven at 400F.  Form dough into 1 inch balls on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake for about 15 minutes.  Cool and roll in powdered sugar.  You can cool completely and roll them again in powdered sugar but who has the time or the patience!  

A Gift

It is official.  I have two readers.  I know who you are and I want to thank you for reading my blog.  I would like to gift you a recipe, an idea for dinner.  I always appreciate dinner ideas.  This one is from my pastor's wife.  

Jackie Rigatoni

It really is delicious and a cinch to cook up especially if you have three hungry little kids running around.  I am surrounded with friends with three kids (including my pastor's wife).  


1 pound of rigatoni pasta
1 package of Trader Joes Sweet Italian Sausage
2 packages of Trader Joes broccolini
1 handfull of sun dried tomatoes in olive oil (Trader Joes sells this as well)
5 or 6 cloves of garlic sliced up


1.  Boil pasta in salted water.
2.  Saute sausage and set aside.  
3.  Saute sliced up garlic in olive oil.  Add broccoli and sundried tomatoes.  Chop up the tomatoes and cut up the broccolini first though.  I also like to peel the broccoli stalk.  
4.  Add sausage back into broccolini mixture.
5.  Add pasta.  As soon as the pasta gets near al dente, I scoop up the pasta from the boiling pot with my trusty spider and dump it into the pan.  No need to rinse.  Plus, some of the pasta water ends up into the sausage/broccolini mixture which adds some liquid to the dish.
6.  Mix and season with salt as needed.  


It's yummy to let the pasta sit in the pan a bit - you get a nice brown crust on some of the pasta pieces. Enjoy!

Random Thoughts

I am a cryer.  Just today, I think I teared up three or four times.  Sometimes, it's embarrassing.  Like when my boss is telling me something cute about his kid and I can feel my eyes welling up.  It's weird because there's nothing particularly moving about it but I just start tearing up.  I'm hoping people can't tell.  But I have a sneaking suspicion they can.  Other times, it happens when I'm singing in my car by myself.  Something about a combination of notes and I start tearing up.  It's a joke amongst my family and friends.  My singing and my crying.  


A song that made me tear up:

Those Christmas lights light up the street
Down where the sea and city meet
May all your trouble soon be gone
Oh Christmas light, keep shining on

Ms. Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better

Within a month, GP has done two things that I can't even imagine doing in my one lifetime - meeting Ina at her house to cook one of her recipes and singing and dancing on Glee.  

Happy Birthday

I love Martha Stewart.  She has made cooking, entertaining, crafting and decorating accessible to everyone.  Martha made this post possible...


My daughter just turned nine and most of her birthday wishes were food oriented.

Rib dinner at Lucilles!

Lucilles was for family only.  Then we had a separate celebration with her best friend.  Kelly wanted to decorate cupcakes.

In addition to the cupcakes (and two kinds of frosting), Kelly requested marble cake with chocolate frosting.  I never baked so much in my life but luckily I stumbled onto a Martha recipe and though I admit it was slightly involved, the cake turned out great!  Moist and yummy.  I was quite please with myself!  

The cake doesn't just become marbled by swirling the batter together in a random fashion.

Nicely marbled and moist!

Happy Birthday, Kelly!  See those purple pompoms?  Also came from Martha but after making two, I just didn't have it in me to make another one.  

I can't quite believe Kelly is already in the fourth grade.  Where has the time gone.  It is quite remarkable that most of her birthday requests had to do with food.  She comes from a long line of gourmands.  

What I Want

This is a tribute to one of the MacArthur Fellows, recipient of the "Genius Award."  His name is Matthew Carter and he created this typeface called Verdana.  How do you go about creating a typeface?  What an awesome job that would be.  Making up fonts all day long.  


A co-worker asked me today, "Where do you see yourself in five years?  What kind of job would be ideal?"  In other words, "What do you want?"  That is a difficult and complex question.  At 38, what I want is often what I can no longer have.  But as I sit here in my nicely air conditioned house, watching my kids read (my five year old is reading so well), typing on my very own Mac, my husband taking a short nap upstairs, I can only think, what I already have is enough for this girl.  Anything more is bonus.  


What I can really go for right at this moment is a nice latte...

Peaches, Peaches

I bought a square cake pan from Surfas months ago.  It wasn't cheap ($22) but I liked the shape and could see it as a future vehicle for brownies, coffee cake, lasagna.  But, alas, the pan found a home behind the tupperware in my cupboard... until today.  


I had everything I needed.

Peaches!

Another easy recipe with fabulous results...I hope I don't eat the whole pan.

Pan, finally getting some action

On a completely unrelated note, I am reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (call me a late comer, I know).  It had me at page 20 or so.  I need a harmless diversion these days and this is doing the trick.