Tasty Chocolate Chip & Raisin Cookies

Do you ever get a craving for something late at night when you have no snacks in the fridge or cupboard?

The other day I had a craving for chocolate so made these chocolate chip cookies. The recipe was from an old Quaker Oats promotional mini-cookbook I sent away for many years ago. I added the raisins to the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter or margarine
1 1/4 cups of brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups uncooked Quaker oats (or other oatmeal brand)
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup raisins


Beat the butter and sugar together until it is light and fluffy and then add the eggs and vanilla. Blend it all together. Next, combine flour, soda, salt & spice and mix well.Then stir in the oatmeal, the semi-sweet chocolate chips and raisins. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes in a 350°F oven. If you  fing that the dough doesn't stick together simply by stirring, use your hands to mix and form the balls to place on the cookie sheet. You can use the tines of a fork to press the balls of cookie dough down.  Makes about 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

I may have made these cookies once before. I don't remember as it has been awhile since I've used this cookbook or even made chocolate chip cookies. The cookies are not heavy or dense. They are quite light and have a bit of crunch. Yum.

Vancouver Sky ~ Skywatch Friday, March 24, 2010

Song of Solomon 2: 11-12

See! The winter is past;

the rains are over and gone.

Flowers appear on the earth;

the season of singing has come,

the cooing of doves

is heard in our land.

Another winter passes and glorious sunlight is on the way!

Though the skies have been unsettled this week, Winter's earlier warmth meant the blossoms came too soon to the young magnolia trees and to the mature cherry trees. The cherry trees were in full bloom during the Winter Olympics 2010 while I was up country.

On a walk the other day I did manage to find some beautiful blossoms though most trees are now bare in preparation for the late blooming plants and trees. These snap shots will give you a small idea of the annual beauty I so look forward to. With beauty like this every year, it is not hard to see why Spring is my favourite season.

Spring Greetings

Greetings from Vancouver to you my lovely readers!

 

I want to say thank you to my blogging friends for their faithful support. I also want to especially welcome the new readers. Thank you for following me. In turn, I will be reading the blogs of long-time followers and new followers alike. 

Many of you know how I love to post my comments :-) though with an ever increasing list of blogs I love to follow, I may not comment as often as I would like.  I will not be posting every day as I once did but will likely post 4 times a week on average.  This is so that you busy readers can read in a more leisurely fashion.  I know how hard it is for people to make time to read and comment on blogs as well as write their own blogs, especially when they have busy jobs and families also.   Please feel free to comment on any blog, including those in the archives (see the archives of old posts in the side bar to the right). Whenever someone comments, I am notified.

 This blog is primarily one where I get to share the many photos I snap. But it is also a place to share some of the happenings in my life as well as address some of the issues my readers have asked about. I haven't forgotten ;-), nor have I begun to run out of ideas for blogging.  It is just a question of time before I am able to post on some of the things I've been wanting to share for awhile. I also have items to post from the ideas some readers were kind enough to offer up, not so very long ago.

With that I wish all of you in the Northern Hemisphere a wonderful Spring.  To others from further afield, enjoy the season whatever it is where you are. There is something beautiful to behold in all the seasons and passages of time.  See you again soon :-)

Japanese Udon Noodle Soup

I made Japanese Udon Noodle soup today. I didn't use a recipe, I just made up a version based on what I thought would go into it and it turned out rather nicely.

First I boiled a few cups of water in a saucepan and mixed to taste, a few tablespoons of prepared miso mixture into the hot water.

Once the water boiled I put in two small packages of udon noodles, zucchini chunks, a chopped up stalk of broccoli and a small bunch of baby bok choy.

In a frying pan I cooked and browned some minced beef with a finely slice red onion.  This is not your usual meat accompaniment to udon noodles but it was what I had on hand and it turned out quite fine. If you have some prawns or slices of beef you can top the udon soup and vegetables with these if you prefer.

Enjoy!

A Slow Dinner

Today was a day for a slow food dinner. I made Oatmeal Bread, Pork Roast with Tuscan Salt Rub and Baked Beans. For greens, I had the left over spinach salad from last night.

Cinnamon buns were made later for another day.  Photos above are of the buns before they went into the oven.  First photo has the butter and brown sugar sprinkled on the dough after it is rolled out to size. The middle photo is after the cinnamon spice and raisins have been added and the pieces cut for the pan. The third photo is after the dough has risen a bit and the last of course is the buns right out of the oven.

RECIPES

Oatmeal Bread

This was made in the bread machine and so is simple because all you do is throw all the ingredients into the machine, set it and away it goes until the bread is nice and done.

In case you do not have the recipe here is the one I used.

Ingredients:

9-11 ounces of water
1 3/4 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons sugar or honey 

2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
  3 3/4 cups bread flour

2 tablespoons powdered milk
  2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order listed. Select White Bread setting, and Start.

This recipe yields a 2 pound loaf.

Roast Pork with Tuscan Salt Rub

This again was easy. I put the roast pork into a small roaster, sprinkled some tuscan seasoning rub on it and cooked it for about 4 hours, first on low heat of 250 F. oven for an hour and then on 350 F. for the balance of time. I have a pre-mixed rub from Suzanne Somers company. If you don't have such a rub readily available or you like to make your own, you can try this recipe from the blog Eating Well.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon fennel seeds

6 tablespoons dried basil

3 tablespoons garlic powder

3 tablespoons coarse salt

2 tablespoons dried rosemary

2 tablespoons dried oregano

Boston Baked Beans

I soaked the beans last night and boiled them for about one hour today. When I was ready to make dinner I put them in a glass baking dish along with a recipe I adapted from www.allrecipes.com

Ingredients

2 cups navy beans

1/2 pound bacon

1 onion, finely diced

3 tablespoons molasses

2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard

1/2 cup ketchup

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup brown sugar


In my version, I omitted the bacon and Worcestershire sauce which I did not have on hand. I added some Louisiana hot sauce in place of Worcestershire. If you would like to use hot sauce, any hot sauce will do. I added the diced onion to the sauce mixture.

Basically you place the beans in a baking dish and pour the sauce over top. You can add a bit of liquid (from the boiled beans or water) and cover. The recipe says to cook the beans for 3-4 hours on 325 F. oven. I cooked mine for 4 hours and the first hour was at 250F along with the pork roast after which I turned the heat on to 375F for the remaining time. I  had about 3 times the beans so I tripled the other ingredients to taste.

Cinnamon Buns

For easy cinnamon buns I made the dough in the bread machine. I then rolled it out to size, placed margarine, brown sugar, cinnamon spice and raisins and then rolled the dough into a log, pinching it together where needed so it didn't fall apart. Once I had a log, I cut the roll into evenly spaced pieces about 1 inch each in width. I set the cut pieces on a baking sheet, covered with a tea towel and let it rise before baking at 350F oven for approximately 30 minutes. You can make a cream cheese frosting, a confectioner's sugar glaze or leave them plain.

 

Enjoy!