I Have Cooked Some Things Recently

With Carla:

Bell peppers stuffed with farmers' market ground beef and beef heart!

With Jamie:

Onions stuffed with a cheesy broccoli concoction,

and topped with cream cheese sauce!

I have embarked on a project, and those are part of it - to cook all of my several hundred recipes (some printed and in an enormous binder, some saved in an unorganized fashion on the computer) and get rid of the ones that aren't good or aren't worth the time/money/bad-for-you-ness and take notes on and reorganize the ones that I'll make again! This includes entrees, breads, breakfasts, desserts, soups, everything. Well, actually, the beef-stuffed bell peppers was not part of the project - it was a recipe Carla had. But the stuffed onions were, and boy howdy are they a keeper!

Naturally this project has been a good excuse to bake up a storm. I've been making half recipes so that the things I bake get eaten faster and I can make more things, plus that way I'm more comfortable trying recipes I'm not sure about, because it is less of an investment of resources. Anyway, recently I've made chocolate nut cake (keep), divine decadence (duh), brown sugar pecan shortbread cookies (I don't love them, but Alex and Jamie do, so they're a keeper), walnut shortbread cookies (yum, keep), regular shortbread (not as good as my other regular shortbread recipe, so the recipe is headed to the scrap paper drawer to be used in games of Boggle!), ginger cookies (excellent), and coconut oatmeal cookies (meh. I'll give the recipe to Skye probably, since she liked them a lot). Not a lot of chocolate (aside from the cakes; and I think I have some kind of chocolate espresso cake coming up next), mainly because I've already made all my chocolate recipes and have notes on them! Probably there will be more recipes with pecans soon, as they look tantalizing but I have to shell out for more pecans before I can make them (I ran out after making the chocolate nut cake [which is very moist and rich primarily due to two cups of toasted ground pecans]). Anyway, I'll keep updating y'all on the project as it proceeds! I expect it to take several years.

Several lovely walnut shortbread cookies,

and one hilarious one.

In other cooking news, I've hit upon a brilliant way to get rid of leftovers: gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches! Basil, mushrooms, pickles, parsley, a leftover hunk of mozzarella... it can all just get chucked with some sharp cheddar between two pieces of homemade sourdough, and I have something people pay ten bucks for in a restaurant! For example:

Soon-to-be-grilled cheese with dill pickles

Delicious amazing grilled cheese with sauteed mushrooms, onions, and garlic

and fresh basil

Recently our oven stopped working and the landlord replaced it. In the process, there was a day when we did not have an oven.

Fortunately, Jamie thought to make a handful of hard-boiled eggs ahead of time so we would have something to eat that day! I seized the opportunity to make myself one (or is it technically two?) deviled egg(s).

A little Dijon + some mayo + egg yolk + plenty of paprika =

delicious

And I think that's all the cooking news for now! But I still have stuff to talk about, so more posts soon, I hope :)

Bonus:

Popovers!