The best cookies ever

Disclaimer -- these are not made with local ingredients -- they are just made with love.


My daughter has now been away at college for a month. In that time I've sent Grandma Neva chocolate chip cookies and carmel corn.  This weekend I decided I need to make something new a special and searched the internet for the "best cookies."  Of course people have a lot of different ideas, but one jumped out at me--  Samocolate cookies .  Lipstick blogger was trying to create a cookie that included the key ingredients of a Girl Scout samoa cookie -- chocolate, caramel and coconut.  My grandma Neva had said to include coconut in her cookies, but I'd never tried it,  and I loved the idea of using carmels in a chocolate chip cookie so knew I had to give it a try.

I used lipstick blogger's idea of toasting coconut (I used sweetened, shredded coconut) then rolling a small piece of good quality carmel it.   (I even bought my carmel from her Etsy website.  It was good, but having it shipped on a hot day wasn't good.  I found a box of melted gooey caramel in my mailbox)  I put the coconut enrobed caramels in my grandmothers recipe and found a new creation.  As you can see from the photo some of the caramels melted through, so I will make sure to use enough cookie dough to surround the carmel next time.  The key was to have a full tablespoon of cookie dough placed on the greased cookie sheet, put the carmel in the center, then top with another tablespoon of dough.  I used a pampered chef small scoop to measure the dough and when I used a full scoop, it was perfect.

Grandma would be proud.   (and yes, Katie I shipped the cookies today.)

End of Season Goodness

Trout and Peppers

Summer is quickly coming to an end and so is my source for flavorful, local produce.  This weekend we have had two amazing locally sourced meals.  Friday night was had trout from Troutdale Farm.  I baked it at 375 degrees for 35 with a little mexican fajita seasoning.  While it was baking I made a sauté of shallots (onions would work, too),  a variety of peppers, some garlic and a few red pepper flakes.  When the shallots had caramelized, I splashed on a little balsamic vinegar.  The combination made a great topping for the fish, and was a great way to use some last produce of the summer.   

                   Pappardelle Pasta, Sausage and Chard

I know this one isn't as pretty, but it is just as tasty.  

Saturday morning we made a quick trip to the Tower Grove Farmers market to see what kind of end of season produce the farmers had on hand.  I was pleased to find more corn, which I blanched, cut off and froze; green beans, which I will blanch and freeze; okra, and chard.  Remembering we had Pappardelle Pasta in our freezer from Mangia Italiano, St. Louis, I decided we had to get some of the bolognese sausage I love from salume beddu.   

It is always fun to talk directly to the producer to get ideas of how to use the products.  I told the man at the salume beddu booth I was going to put the sausage with pasta and chard, like he suggested last year.  He reminded me to include onions and garlic.  I already had locally sourced shallots from St. Isidore farms and garlic from Bellews Creek, so I had it all!  

I did make a couple of additions at the last minute.  Remembering how good the peppers were on Friday, I added a pinch of red pepper flakes and splash of balsamic vinegar.  And I had some pine nuts left from another recipe that I threw in with some shredded methuselah cheese (from Heartland Creamery) at the very end.  It was a hearty, tasty lunch on a cold, wet day.  

Jelly Success!!!

Last year when we were receiving a lot of peaches in our Fair Shares CSA share I decided to make peach preserves.  It wasn't hard at all.  I followed the directions and they turned out fine.  This year we received grapes for a couple of weeks in a row.  We weren't eating them so jelly seemed like a good idea.  Like other projects I know nothing about I went out to the web and started reading everything I could.  It seemed the main idea I kept finding was to not play with the recipe.  Jelly needs a scientific balance of juice, sugar and pectin to set and changing the balance would end up with a runny mess.

The problem I had with that was the recipes seemed to have different ratios.  I knew I had been successful with canning tomatoes from the pick your own website, but the writer there was saying to add more pectin than the ball canning instructions, which seemed like a good source since they sell the ingredients.  I opted to follow the instructions that came with my pectin, which was a mistake.  I ended up with 8 jars of grape syrup.

Luckily the writer of the pick your own website was nice enough to include directions for how to fix jelly that doesn't set.  It wasn't too hard, and I now have tasty grape jelly.

You can follow all the directions on that site, but I wanted to share some thing I learned.  First of all, don't be afraid of having grapes, or worry about the skins.  To make jelly you just need the juice.  I put the whole grapes in my food processor and chopped them a little.  You then cook them on the stove to release the juices and strain it through a cloth.  All the seeds and skins stay in the cloth, and the heavy juice strains through.  I had 4 lbs of grapes and ended up with 5 cups of juice.   It was all very easy.

I made full sugar jelly this first time because the sugar free sounded harder to get to set.  Recognizing the difficulty I had, I 'm glad I did, but now I feel ready to try sugar free.

I highly recommend you give making grape jelly a try.  It feels great to know I could get it to work, and I know you will, too.  Any suggestions on what to make jelly out of next?

Homemade Grape Jelly

I'm not posting a picture with this, but decided I had to post to keep myself on track.  On Friday I decided to try my first try at making homemade grape jelly.  We had received wonderful locally grown grapes the last couple of weeks and we weren't eating them.  I couldn't let them go to waste!

It didn't work.  I now have eight or nine jars of thick grape sauce.  Later I'm going to try to "fix" the mess.  I'll be posting pictures when I let you know how it turns out.