Apple Cranberry Hermits

There's something about the holiday season that makes me feel in the mood, nay, compelled to bake cookies. In this case I've had a couple of accidents while baking lately that made me feel like maybe I was cursed (or too absent-minded from being 9 months pregnant) to bake. They had a baby shower for me at work, and I had decided that I would bake some cookies and take them in to the people who contributed gifts. So my first effort was making Maple Oatmeal Cookies, during which I broke my bottle of vanilla and was unable to bake enough for all. So a week or so later I decided that I would make some Cranberry Orange Sugar Cookies, and things were going along swimmingly until I noticed that the clean spoon I had taken out of the dishwasher had some food residue on the concave part of it. So I'd just about decided that the rest of the people just weren't going to get their cookies.

Tonight I got bitten by the bug again, and had an apple that was getting in a bad way. So I went online and looked up apple cookie recipes. I found a recipe for Apple Hermits on allrecipes.com and decided I'd give them a try. I made a couple of changes to the recipe, notably substituting craisins for raisins, reducing the amount of cloves, omitting the nuts and shredding the apple instead of chopping it. I also added a teaspoon of vanilla, because really, who likes cookies with no vanilla in them? These turned out really tasty, and had an almost butterscotch flavor to them. The recipe called for them to be glazed but I'm happy with them without it.

Apple Hermits

2 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. softened butter
1 1/2 c. packed brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 c. shredded apple
1 c. dried cranberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (175 C). Line cookie sheets with parchment paper. In a medium bowl,, sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and salt. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter until light and fluffy. Mix in sugar and egg. Stir in flour mixture, and mix thoroughly. Fold in apples and cranberries.

Drop by rounded teaspoons onto prepared cookie sheets about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake for 12-14 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Apple-Hermits/Detail.aspx

Janet Lembke

I personally think that one of the most important innovations on the internet was when online bookstores started acting as marketplaces for used book stores, i.e. Amazon Marketplace. It seems that almost no book is too obscure to be able to find online now. It used to be so frustrating to find an author whose work you just loved, and then be unable to read their previous works because they are out of print.

Janet Lembke is one of my very favorite authors. I first came across her work in the book "Shake Them 'Simmons Down" about ten years ago. She is from the same area of Eastern North Carolina where we used to live, so I identify with her work. The book was a collection of her essays about trees, and I loved it. So the other day when I was on Amazon, I happened to look her up, and saw many of her works available through the marketplace. So now I have some new reading material. The first is "Touching Earth", which is a collection of essays on kitchen/vegetable gardening. The second is "Despicable Species: On Cowbirds, Kudzu, Hornworms, and Other Scourges", which (as you can tell from the title) is a collection of essays on undesirable species.

Over the years I have gotten much fonder of reading essay collections. I don't seem to have the attention span necessary to read a whole book at a time, unless it's something that really catches my attention. Essays are usually the perfect length to fill in the time that I have available to read now, and I don't have to worry about trying to figure out what I read last time.

Bookstore Lovin'

We stopped and ate after work today, and then headed over to one of our favorite bookstores to hang out for a while. He read some manga and I read some gardening books and we just enjoyed sitting for a while. We're not going to have a whole lot of quiet downtime soon, so I figured it was a good thing to enjoy it while it lasted. It was quiet until the two teenage boys showed up hanging around the Dungeons & Dragons books and going on and on about their gaming. It kind of ruined the mood. ;) So we left and got some coffee and headed home. I think it's about time to snuggle up in front of the fire with a book and relax. :)

Cooking with Mojo

I haven't been up for cooking the last couple of months, so we've been eating out quite a bit. Every now and then I will get an inspiration to make something. For the last week or so, I've been getting really tired, most likely since I have a space alien in my stomach that is sucking the energy out of me. I also get out of breath easy, and have almost no room in my stomach for food because there is a space alien growing in my stomach that is taking up a whole lot of room now. So I tend to lay on the couch and nap a lot. I was doing just that this morning, and watching the Food Network in between snoozes. One of the times I briefly surfaced Guy's Big Bite was on, and he was making Cuban Pork Chops with Mojo and Sofrito Mashed Potatoes. Now I'm a girl that loves the Latin flavors and I also think mashed potatoes go just super with anything tomato-ey. So when we went to the grocery today I got what I needed to make them. You can see the results above, and it was REALLY good. Very flavorful and didn't take a long time to make. The sauce for the pork chops was a bit acidic when I tried it so I cut in a tablespoon or two of brown sugar to round it out. Definately something I'd make again. :)

The recipes can be found here:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/show_gi/episode/0,2857,FOOD_26717_49895,00.html