Friday, April 30, 2010

Sauteed Chicken with Mustard Sauce and Roasted Carrots

So again for those that know me, you know that I have a passion for cooking, and for serving my food on white dishes. My in-laws came over for dinner a while back and they noticed that I didn't have that many serving plates. My mother-in-law is a fantastic bargain shopper and she proceeded to search out and find all sorts of white serving platters for a birthday present. I know right, I totally scored this birthday! Breadmaker, cookie jar, white platters, and my open shelves from IKEA to help with space in the kitchen.


So I loaded up my new platters on the new open shelves (see picture on the left!) and sort of forgot about them, even though I continue to cook like always. Lo and behold this last week I remembered that I had them and started to use them. I believe the first dish was a side vegetable I can't quite remember and I couldn't get a picture of it because I needed to reload the batteries, and when Molly wants to eat, she wants to eat now! Hmm... must be a Carter famlily trait! :-) But I did make a meal this week that was pretty darn fantastic especially since I used one of my new platters, it was a sauteed chicken with mustard sauce; and I must say a very scrumptious roasted carrot side vegetable. When I was growing up I couldn't eat a cooked carrot to save my life. My mom loves cook carrots but my dad and I would have nothing to do with them. As an adult I love them, and it is a nice easy way to get some color onto the plate. I must admit however I had not tried a simple recipe like this before. I have made roasted root vegetables that included carrots as one of the "root vegetables" but I had never thought about putting it together on its own. This was just simple baby carrots, onions, olive oil, salt & pepper, and the recipe called for rosemary (although I am not a big fan of this herb, too woodsy and perfumey -if that is a word) so I used thyme instead. They were fantastic.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Cookie Jar

I have had a cookie jar on my wish list for years, I have a Christmas cookie jar but I don't have an everyday cookie jar. For those of you that don't know my husband has a major sweet tooth/ snack habit. He loves all those gross sugary things that are horrible for you, like Twinkies he can eat a whole box of Twinkies in one sitting. GROSS! He also loves all kinds of Little Debbie treats. I have refused at this point to buy these things anymore, they are expensive for the product itself and I don't really want my Molly to get into the habit of eating them. As a result I have gotten into the habit of baking my own sweets, thus the cookie jar was becoming more and more important. Enter a fabulous cookie jar as a birthday present from my mom. It is brilliant, and exactly what I would have picked if I had bought it for myself. Since then I have made cranberry white chocolate chip cookies, my ultimate chocolate chip cookies (see picture) and the BEST peanut butter chocolate chip cookies EVER! I have made two batches in a row they are amazing, I think it is the amount of brown sugar in the recipe that makes it so chewy and fantastic.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies:

1/2

cup unsalted butter

1 1/2

cups brown sugar

1/2

cup sugar

1/2

teaspoon salt

2/3

cup creamy peanut butter

2

large eggs

1 1/2

teaspoons vanilla extract

2 1/2

cups all purpose flour

2

teaspoons baking soda

6

ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips



Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

[1] In large bowl, cream together butter, sugars, salt and peanut butter. Beat in eggs and vanilla and then add the flour and soda. Mix well and add chocolate chips.

[2] Roll balls of dough and drop onto greased cookie sheet 2" apart. Flatten a bit with the bottom of a glass. Bake 10 - 12 minutes and let cool.

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