Belated Christmas Cookies

Somehow, even though I thought way back at Thanksgiving that I had soooo much time to listen to Christmas music and bake cookies this year, the cookie baking never happened. I can't believe we were THAT busy.

Not that I really need to munch on a lot of cookies–it always makes me feel that I need to spend a lot more time at the gym to work them off–but it's one of those traditions I grew up with and want to continue for my kids.

Yesterday, finally, the kids got to roll out the sugar cookie dough with their cousins and baked quite a few cookies. This event only happened, however, because my sister-in-law already came with the prepared dough. I'm such a loser! But so grateful to Kris for making it happen. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The tradition lives on. There's a great recipe for the buttery dough that makes great cut-out cookies in the Joy of Cooking, called Rich Rolled Sugar Cookies, page 827 in the edition published in 1997.

According to the Joy of Cooking these cookies bake at 350 degrees for 6-9 minutes. In my oven they took 15 minutes at 350 degrees. So check for the way the cookies are browning in your oven. Here's the recipe:

Rich Rolled Sugar Cookies

Beat on medium speed until very fluffy and well blended:

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

2/3 cup sugar

Add and beat until well combined:

1 large egg

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Stir in until well blended and smooth:

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

There you go. Roll them, cut them out, bake them and enjoy!

How this blog got its name

In 1994, when I was a new mother and wanted to feed my baby the best possible way, I first rejected infant formula and then commercial baby food. Both seemed inferior to what I could really provide for my baby. This is how it all happened:

The wonderful people I worked with at the time threw me a baby shower and one of the games we played was tasting commercially prepared baby food and guess what it was. I didn't guess any of them correctly. I was shocked. I couldn't believe that green peas in a baby food jar didn't taste anything like green peas. After that baby shower, I was determined that my baby would eat foods that tasted the way they should.

Up to that point I had never spent much time cooking and had to learn to cook in order to feed my baby healthy and tasty foods. I bought a book to learn what babies and toddlers enjoy eating–as if there was a great mystery to uncover. I have to laugh thinking about that today. Anyhow, our baby always seemed to be interested in eating what my husband and I were eating, so I spent a lot of time during the first year of my baby's life pureeing left-over foods we had had for dinner. Eventually, I cooked up new combinations of foods to please my baby's developing palate and loved when she approved by gobbling it all up. I froze the pureed foods in ice cube trays, so I was ready to pull a meal together for her in an instant.

It was during that first year of my daughter's life that I thought about writing a cookbook focusing on homemade baby food. There was not a lot of information available on the topic, and it seemed so easy to feed her well by pureeing the foods my husband and I prepared for us.

Writing this baby food cookbook never happened, but the idea for it didn't die. As the years went by, my husband and I thought about a working title and "Hey, Baby, what's cooking?" seemed to stick. Thus the title for this blog.

Our first baby is now a teenager and we've evolved and grown as home cooks, still aiming for cooking healthy foods to nourish our bodies properly. It's a quest and a journey that may never end. I've learned many things about health, nutrition and cooking over the last ten+ years and continue to learn new things all the time.

I hope you'll enjoy the blog. Thanks for reading it!

Roasted Turkey for Christmas

Just thought I'd better save my recipe for unstuffed roasted turkey for posterity (haha) while it's still fresh in my mind, especially since I successfully executed it twice in a row this year: for Thanksgiving and a few days ago for Christmas. A good bird definitely makes a difference in taste, but this year I've finally arrived at "my" foolproof method for roasting a turkey that's not only flavorful, but also juicy and nicely browned all around. My method couldn't be simpler.

I started out placing a 14-lbs. turkey (preferably organic or fresh all-natural) in a brine over night. The brine consisted of:

2 cups kosher salt

2 gallons purified water

1 Tbsp. each of dried rosemary, sage, thyme, and black peppercorns

I left the turkey in the brine overnight (approximately 12+ hours). The next day, about an hour before putting the turkey in the oven, I removed it from the brine, rinsed it thoroughly and patted it dry with a paper towel, placed it breast-side up on a V-shaped poultry rack and let it come to room temperature for about an hour.

I preheated the oven to 400 degrees F, cut one yellow onion and a couple stalks of celery into large chunks and tossed them into the turkey cavity, and rubbed the entire surface of the turkey generously with almost a whole stick of softened unsalted butter.

I roughly estimated 15 minutes of roasting time per pound of turkey (14 lbs x 15 minutes = 210 minutes). Then I divided the time it would take to roast the turkey–210 minutes–by three to know when I would want to turn my turkey over, which in this case was after 70 minutes and then after 140 minutes of roasting in the oven.

In any case, the turkey went into the oven breast-side up at 400 degrees for 70 minutes. I added 1 to 1 1/2  cups of water, a cut up onion and stalk of celery to the roasting pan. 

After 70 minutes I flipped the bird breast-side down and reduced the oven temperature to 350 degrees. After 140 minutes in the oven, I turned the turkey over again, breast-side up, and returned it to the oven for the final third of the roasting time.

(By the way, I got the idea for dividing the total cooking time into thirds and starting with 400 degrees for the first third, followed by 350 degree heat for the second and third third, from Alice Waters' cookbook "The Art of Simple Food." I've always been challenged with the temperatures for roasting birds, but her method has worked like a charm for me every time I roasted a chicken or turkey.)

I periodically brushed a little more melted butter onto the turkey to prevent the skin from drying out too much. The turkey was done at the time I had estimated, was perfectly browned all around, juicy and very tender. Perfect in every way.

We served the turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy (made ahead–ah, there's another recipe to share!), red cabbage, and cranberry sauce. Yum!

Swedish Meatballs

Tomorrow, eh, today (it got a little late), is Christmas Eve and I'm supposed to bring Swedish Meat Balls over to my sister-in-law's house for appetizers.

Well, they just got done, all 120+ of them (doubled the recipe), they're all loaded in the crockpot and sort of freezing on the porch–we live in a cold climate, after all. I can't believe I'm still up, with my doggies, while everyone else in the house is sleeping. I hear dear hubby moving on the level above me, so probably not every one is sleeping. :)

The Swedish Meat Balls recipe came to me via my OTHER sister-in-law, courtesy of one of our local grocery stores. Click on the link to get it for yourself! It's pretty delicious!

Hey, Baby, what's cooking?!

I think I'm finally finding my groove. After thinking about this blog I've concluded that it needs a slant in order for me to want to post something. I was just in the kitchen emptying the dishwasher when the idea came to me: My blog needs a new name, layout and the focus will be on cooking because that's one of the things I really enjoy, and I'm eternally looking for great new healthy recipes and school lunches for my kids.

In any case, as I emptied the dishwasher and thought about what I had cooked the last couple of days, I remembered the recipe for an amazing vegetarian chili that we've just about gobbled up. My daughter recently had a birthday and wanted to get together with a few friends to eat sloppy joe's while watching a movie and just "hang." One of the friends doesn't eat meat, so ever the passionate homecook, I was trying to find a tasty vegetarian dinner option that would make the friend feel included. The chili turned out to be a hit with almost everyone, including my meat-loving husband and "sharptooth" younger daughter. My husband said he couldn't even think of anything to improve the recipe, it was great as it was. I did follow the recipe, by the way, no substitutions other than using frozen corn instead of fresh.