I Might Be In Trouble

I swore, swore, swore I'd never play around on Pintrest.

Really, I did.

I haven't quite gone to the dark side and joined up yet, but I have found two recipes that I *have* to try.

Tonight.

Admit it...you want to make these too.


I've totally followed this blog,
because what I need is yet another blog to follow.

And I followed this one, too.
Photo cred: Cooking Classy
 

This is the last thing I need - something else to suck up my time on the computer.

I've managed to resist the siren song so far - I haven't joined.  But damn, I'm having a good time looking at all of the recipes.

Lord help us all, I'm on my way to the grocery store.

Cheesy Pictures

I normally wouldn't take up two days' worth of posts for one subject, but we got such cool pictures that I had to share them.  And I'm still completely amazed at how easy the whole project was.

We started off by breaking down two heads of garlic into individual cloves...

Then it was a family effort to peel all of the cloves...

Asset ended up chewing on her clove, so we left that one out of this beautiful bowl...

RockCrawlinChef put them in a pan of vegetable oil and set them on the stove to simmer and roast...

We opened our big block of curd...

Got our ice bath ready for the completed bococini (also very handy for cooling off burning hands - the gloves only protect from so much heat)...

We broke down the curd from the big block to little manageable curd and mixed in some coarse salt...

Added some hot water and began working the curds...

And if, say Nebalee GunDiva someone was to screw up, it was easy enough to pull the curd out of the hot water, pack it onto a plate, strain the water and have another go at it...

A quick check on the roasting garlic...

Finally, the curd begins to cook in the scalding water (along with our fingers) and becomes workable cheese...

Pulling the cheese is a lot like pulling taffy...

A small bit of cheese is squeezed and twisted off of the cheese to form the bococini...

And then it's immediately dumped in the ice bath to help firm it up...



Our not-so-perfectly-round bococinis all nestled in a zip-lock to await their final packaging...

The garlic's all roasted and ready to be strained...



We poured the oil, sans garlic, back into the jug with the other oil so the flavor could infuse throughout and let it sit for a few hours.  The cheese got packed in water in the fridge to chill and finish firming up.

To package them as gifts, I put three in each jar...



Added the roasted garlic and thyme...



And a pinch of red pepper flakes...

Added the garlic-infused oil...

Capped them and voila! Christmas gifts for my co-workers...

Baking Weekend, Day 1

I'll do a more thorough post later in the week, but thought I'd share some of the highlights of Saturday.

Here's a Magic Window cookie courtesy of Auto Bot...

The prettiest cookie courtesy of Little Miss Mantha...

And the day's total cookie count (Kyzzer was my lovely easel)...

At the end of eleven hours spent in the kitchen, we had cranked out an impressive 63.83 dozen cookies (766).

Wish I could say we were done. Today's the serious day...we've got another eight batches of Magic Window cookies to make, three of gingerbread and a couple of toffee chip and brickle chip.

I *Can* Cook

Though to hear my kids tell, not well.  Whatever.  They wouldn't eat anything but macaroni and cheese and Ramen noodles anyway.

When Mrs Mom and her husband and the BrownEyed Cowgirls visited last weekend, I stole RCC's chicken parmesean recipe and attempted it all by my lonesome.  Lest you all say you don't believe it, here is the photographic evidence.

Okay, so I'm not a food photographer; it doesn't look as good as it tasted.  I surprised even myself pulling this off.  I told RCC over and over again not to worry about it, I couldn't screw it up too badly (even though I didn't truly believe that I could do it without screwing up).  You know the phrase, "fake it 'til you make it"?  Yeah, that's exactly what I did.

I've always made RCC make this before, but since he taught me how to do it, I can now do it whenever I feel like it!