Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Flour-less Peanut Butter Cookies

My intentions were to make a 12 days of Christmas cookies list to post on here. I LOVE Christmas baking and actually started a couple weeks ago. I was going to post my top 12 Christmas cookies after I made them all. But chances are I won't have time to do that until after Christmas so I thought I will just post them as I go. We will see how far we get...

So for my first Christmas cookie I would like to share a recipe that makes me think of my sister, Lizzie, every time I make it. I do not remember how or where we discovered this recipe. What I remember is that we were about 15 or 16 and we made them almost every day for like a month because we were so in love with these things. Incredibly easy to make and hardly any mess. It's the cookie to bake when you don't have much time but want something sweet. Sooooo without further ado (I just googled that and I spelled it right first try!) anyway....without any further ado......


Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients:
                1cup peanut butter (or any peanut butter substitute, I use pea butter)
                1 cup sugar
                1 tsp vanilla 
                1 egg
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Mix all ingredients until combined.
3. Bake for 10-13 minutes.

I made half of mine with chocolate chips and I preferred them over the regular ones. Also mine took closer to 20 minutes to bake but that might be because I have a gas oven and you can never really tell when it's fully preheated.

Enjoy and please let me know if you tried them and what you think!

Monday, November 19, 2012

Some Firsts....

Our first first is Jennifer's first time trying solids. She LOVES rice cereal and is even more in love if you put in some mashed apples. Our little girl is growing up!

Our next first is William's first hot chocolate. He was so excited to come in an have a hot chocolate after playing in the snow. He was delighted to put in as many marshmallows as he wanted. He takes after his mom :-)



Our last first is my first time making a Chinese supper by myself. MMMmmmmm it was so good. You don't have to be a fan of Chinese food to enjoy this supper, either. It is so simple (and cheap!) to make and it tastes so good! I will post the recipe below. It can also be found here. This recipe is too good not to try!!!

After I took a photo of Shane's plate William wanted me to take a photo of his plate, too.


Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken

The chicken coating:

3-4 boneless chicken breasts
salt + pepper
1 cup cornstarch
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup canola oil

The sweet and sour sauce:

3/4 cup sugar
4 tbs ketchup
1/2 cup distilled white vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tsp garlic salt

       Start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees. Rinse your chicken breasts in water and then cut into cubes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Dip chicken into the cornstarch to coat then dip into the eggs.  Heat your 1/4 cup oil in a large skillet and cook your chicken until browned but not cooked through. Place the chicken in a 9x13 greased baking dish. Mix all of your sweet and sour sauce ingredients in a bowl with a whisk and then pour evenly over the chicken. Bake for one hour and during the baking process you will need to turn the chicken every 15 minutes.  



Thursday, November 1, 2012

Happy November

The kids and I are celebrating November 1st by making some homemade apple sauce. It's a first for me and I am excited to see how it turns out! I let the kids add the sugar and the cinnamon (boy do they like dumping the cinnamon!). It's cooking now, can't wait to try it with lunch!

Last night we had our church harvest party. We do it as an alternative to halloween. We had several kids make the decision on their own to come to church instead of trick or treating. That was great to see. Very encouraging! We had a carnival theme with carnival games and carnival snacks. Then Shane gave a great message on avoiding the appearance of evil. It was a great night.

Here are a couple photos for you!