Jennifer's 365 Project

I kicked off the morning in the kitchen with some plain (for Chris) and cherry-filled pancakes. I've made blueberry and strawberry pancakes in the past, but I don't usually have cherries on hand. Pancakes are definitely tasty with cherries too!




I took a short break to do some research on a few recipes and then it was back into the kitchen. I was determined to make pierogies, if nothing else today.

The dough recipe yielded far more than I thought. I'm not entirely sure how many equal a "serving size" for pierogies (my guess is three to four), but it certainly isn't one or two, which is what I was I initially thinking. So next time I'm certainly scaling the recipe back (five cups of flour should have been a tip but I wasn't really processing that fact - I was too busy enjoying viewing recipes on the webOS tablet). So i ended up with a fair number of cheese and potato pierogies that are now living in my freezer.




With the pierogies boiling in water and converting the kitchen into a steam room, I decided it would be a fantastic idea to make cookies. I think the heat was affecting my judgement.

These particular cookies I grew up eating on holidays at my Grandmother's house. For some reason I had it in my head that these things were sugar cookies (Hey! They look like them and I swear someone at a family get together called them that once). As a result whenever I have "real" sugar cookies I'm always disappointed and can't eat much. They're too sweet. (Yes, I realize that's the point and it's right there in the name.)

This recipe is apparently from my great-grandmother, and after poking around on the internet the ingredient list looks similar to sour cream cookies. They're pretty light on flavor so my grandmother always topped them with raisins or frosting. The recipe is for Champion White Cookies and goes something like this:

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup lard (I use crisco, you could use butter as well I imagine)
• 1 1/2 cup sour cream
• 3 eggs
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• "flour to handle" - (which my mother figured out is somewhere between 5 and 7 cups of flour)

Directions:

• Set oven to 350 degrees.
• Mix the dry ingredients (sugar, baking soda, powder, nutmeg, flour) together. Add sour cream, eggs, vanilla extract, and lard, mixing well.
• Take dough and roll out on floured surfaced. Use cookie cutters to cut shapes. *note: the less flour added to the cookie dough during the rolling process, the less dry and more soft/chewy the cookie is.
• Bake 7-10 minutes. Allow to cool before decorating. Makes approx 3 dozen.

I didn't have any sour cream (I'd used it all for the pierogi dough) so I used a tip my mom had given in the recipe above and used milk and added two teaspoons of lemon juice.

I did use far too much flour while making these, so they're a little dry. But they taste pretty close to what they should and every bite is a like a bit of my childhood.

I jammed a few dozen into the freezer because there's no way the two of us are going to eat that many cookies anytime soon.

This morning I stumbled across a recipe for home made bruschetta. I'm a fan of the tomato concoction but I've never made it at home (like a lot of things, actually). So I added cherry tomatoes to the grocery list.

The bruschetta turned out well with one tiny exception - I completely forgot to make bread for it (or buy any at the store). Typically it's served on a thick piece of a baguette, but I just used a slice of regular pre-sliced bread from the store. I'll have to make some bread tomorrow.

Also, if I'm feeling ambitious I may try my hand at home-made pierogies.

I have next week off so the end of Friday couldn't come soon enough. Work got out a little early, so that meant I had a chance to hang out at Rosa Park Circle and enjoy my book and the weather.

They had an outdoor concert going on (Soul of the City GR) so fun tunes and tasty smells kept wafting over to me.


Chris picked me up around 4:30 and we headed out for an early dinner. We tried Twisted Rooster, which is over on the Beltline. Not bad. They appear to have a knack for taking whatever and presenting it nicely.

And now begins a holiday weekend and an entire week off of work. Yay!

I live in a decent size apartment complex, with roads sprawling through a network of trees and brush. There are lots of roads. Major thoroughfares from one end of the complex to the other, and lesser ones that lead straight to apartment buildings.

One thing my apartment complex does not have is sidewalks. Sure there are slabs of concrete dumped in a straight shot from parking lot to building door. But that's it. Do you need to walk to the bus stop? The mailbox down the road? Even to the office to drop off your rent check? Well, you have two options. You can stroll down the road where cars zip by at 40mph, or across the uneven ground in your business shoes and hope there's no dog shit hiding in the brush.

I always though the lack of sidewalks was a strange design. That's not to say this is the first complex I've lived in with a stunning lack of them. I guess the assumption is that people drive in and out of apartment complexes, but they certainly don't walk anywhere. I'd like to say that's not true for most people, but I honestly don't know what the statistical breakdown would be and if having more sidewalks would mean more people use them, or no difference in pedestrian traffic at all.

For me, I would have loved for there to have been sidewalks put in while they were building this place. But perhaps it's just as well. The drivers coming down one of the roads have a difficult time staying on the pavement. Over the last year I've witnessed a succession of lampposts and signs mowed down by runaway vehicles (or possibly dinosaurs, you never know).

I'm sure this is mostly fueled by annoyance that I'm constantly dodging near-hits while crossing the street downtown on my lunch break, simply because drivers are unaware of the concept of pedestrians. Or maybe their surroundings in general.

Ok, rant off.

...and he's already checking out the computer. Can't bring anything "new" around him...

Squeezed in a stroll after dinner before the rain storms roll in later tonight.

I started marinating some strips of steak round late yesterday. Right before bed I tossed the meat into the dehydrator. In the morning I woke up to teriyaki jerky.

If I'm sick the next few days, you'll know I did something wrong.

I've always liked the large, soft pretzels sold at movie theaters and in malls, but I rarely buy them these days. That doesn't mean I don't miss them. So I woke up this morning and asked myself "why haven't I ever tried making them myself?"

I snagged a recipe from online that will work with my bread machine (saving me from having to knead, rise, knead) that does not require beer (since I dont have any on hand) and got mixing. A little less than two hours later I was twisting dough into pretzel shapes.


They came out pretty tasty, all in all, though I think I should have let the dough sit in the baking soda/hot water bath a little longer. I might have ended up with more browned pretzels.


Once the pretzels were done, Chris and I headed out to Palmer Park to enjoy the fantastic weather. The park is relatively quiet. I think a lot people either don't know it's there or avoid it because it can be a haven for mosquitoes.


There were no blood-sucking pests out and about, so we enjoyed a nice afternoon stretched out on the blanket reading. I really do love that Kindle. Easy to read in the sun and easy to flip to a new book when you finish an old one.

Horrocks in Kentwood always has an interesting assortment of items, including lots of fresh produce. They even have fresh dinosaur egg thingies! (I've never heard of them but they look tasty.)

The Polish Harvest Festival is this weekend downtown, starting on Friday. So that meant I could swing by on my lunch hour and check it out.

The festival is mostly Polish food (which I enjoyed) and Polish-themes music. These are a few stands selling various wares, but, at least on a Friday at noon, I think the main focus is to come out, enjoy music, and eat food.

Because there aren't enough on the Internet already...

Despite scarfing two doughnuts today in an attempt to turn around my mood, it's been a crappy one. I was ranty and snippy the ride home, and honestly have been that way for a few days.

So Chris was super awesome and made me a fancy dinner, just because. Hooray for him putting up with my moods. This marriage thing is cool.

Yay!