Tammy's Recipes

Coarse ground kosher salt doesn't really go very well in oatmeal cookies.

Don't ask me what I was thinking! (If only iodized table salt didn't contain sodium silicoaluminate.)

The cookies aren't a complete disaster. Every few bites, there's a blast of salt, but we won't let that stop us from eating them... :)

Joshua made this banana cream pie, but it didn't go so well for us. We followed the recipe exactly.

This is more what it looked like. Banana cream disaster. ;) And we tried to take out a piece very carefully for a picture. :)

Neither of us thought that the cinnamon in the pudding part was the right flavor for a banana cream pie. The pudding was nice and thick, but after being mixed with whipping cream, it just wouldn't hold its shape, even after being refrigerated overnight. The bananas turned black -- though I don't suppose there's a way around that, when you're using real bananas instead of artificial banana-flavored pudding.

I'm not sure what all we plan to do differently next time. Banana cream pie isn't really my favorite pie, anyway -- which explains why Joshua did 95% of the work of making this one... :)

These "french toast sandwiches" were somewhat of an experiment, at least for me. I started out with this recipe called "stuffed french toast". I didn't have cinnamon raisin bread, so I just used (homemade) whole wheat bread. I didn't have "cream cheese spread" (whatever that is!) so I just softened some regular cream cheese. We don't eat ham, so I used turkey pastrami. :) And pouring syrup over the top of the sandwich didn't sound good to me, so I skipped that part.

The sandwiches were good, but not great. I don't think we would have liked them any better if they had been made like the recipe said, though! It just sounds so sweet, and we don't do well with that much sugar in our main dish... even if it's breakfast.

Well, it was a nice change of pace, even just for one meal. :)

This is the Perfect Apple Pie I made last week, which didn't turn out so perfectly because the apples never got soft. Everything was fine, except for the crunchy apples, and somehow crunchy apples ruins the taste, in my opinion.

Next time? I'm not buying Granny Smith apples from Aldi for the pie. Besides the persistent crunch, the apples were small and starting to go bad in the centers. I had to use all of 6 pounds of apples for my three pies, and the pies weren't even very full. That's a lot of peeling and coreing... and probably at least partly why the pies ended up being so time-consuming.

There's a disaster in progress, in my oven. I'm making a cake, and the recipe said I could use a 9x13 sheet pan. I thought the pan looked rather full, but I wasn't expecting it to run over. (The recipe actually said to put two stacked cookie sheets under the pan.)

After 45 minutes (the supposed baking time), the cake was very jiggly, and starting to run over. I put a bigger cookie sheet in the oven to catch the drips, but not soon enough to stop what was already on the oven floor... and which is filling our house with a lovely... burnt smell. Good thing it's a cool day outside and I already had the windows open! :)

I put a piece of foil loosely on top, since the top of the cake was getting rather dark, and I'm going to keep baking and checking until the cake tests done. I have a feeling I'm in for a real disaster-treat, but I'm not pulling an under-cooked cake out of the oven -- which is a sign of giving up early. You never know what could happen.

Plus, there's a whole cup of honey in this cake. The worst disasters are the expensive ones!! At least this cake was easy to mix up, and Yehoshua had a blast helping me make it. :)

A few weeks ago, I posted a link to Meredith's quick and easy fruit cobbler recipe. She made it look so easy and yummy!

 I actually did make the cobbler not too long after my post, but something didn't go right, because it was a disaster. (And for your reference, numerous people commented over at her recipe saying how fabulous it tasted! So this is truly "Tammy's Disaster" and not "Meredith's Mistake"!)

For starters, the recipe called for an 8x10 or 8x8 dish. I don't have an 8x10, but I do have an 8x8. I have very frequently taken recipes that called for an 8x8 dish, doubled the recipe, and made it in a 9x13 dish... with great success. (Joshua says... it's 117 sq. in. versus 128 sq. in.)

Anyway, I thought I'd do that with this recipe, too. After all, it was going to be so fabulously yummy, I'd save myself even more work by just doubling it to begin with, right? :)

So I melted two sticks of butter. That looked like a lot, but hey, this wasn't supposed to be health food. ;) I melted the butter in the dish like the recipe said, which meant I put the dish in the oven as it was pre-heating. The dish got rather hot by the time the butter was melted, so when I poured the batter on top, it started cooking a little at the sides. But maybe this was supposed to happen?

I sprinkled about 4 cups of fruit on top. (The recipe said at least two cups but up to four cups of berries, and I was doubling the recipe. So I guess I used the minimum amount.) My fruit was a juicy mixture of cherries and mulberries (a combination that makes delicious pie, by the way!).

The dish didn't look too full, but as it baked, it got very full. It started to run over a little, but the edges got dark and formed sort of a crust that held everything in.

I was glad I hadn't used any more fruit than I did, and I was also realizing that the suggestion of an 8x10-inch dish was probably more accurate than the 8x8. Or else the 5.5 square inches I was missing (per recipe) were really important to the cleanliness of my oven.

"Bake 40 minutes." Unfortunately, at 40 minutes, the entire middle section of my cobbler looked like pancake batter that had sat for a few hours. Bubbly and wet, and most certainly NOT cooked. I set the timer again and again, and continued checking for doneness.

I put a piece of foil loosely on top, because the edges were getting too dark. I think I baked the cobbler for about 90 minutes before deciding it was finally done.

Sadly, the edges were really too dark to be very enjoyable, and the part that wasn't so dark was soggy with grease. We decided that maybe the butter should be cut in half for the recipe (it tasted THAT greasy to us!) and certainly, I had used the wrong size of pan.

Does anyone know what else I could have done wrong?!

I seem to have lost the link to whoever shared this recipe for quinoa on their blog. That's okay, though, because we didn't like it.

I will admit that it's partly my own fault... my black beans were undercooked, and I didn't have fresh lime juice (I used bottled lemon juice instead). I'm also pretty sure (now) that I don't care for a lot of cumin and chili powder on black beans, corn, or quinoa.

My quinoa was getting pretty old, too. I'd had it it my cupboard since we moved to Ohio, about 3 years ago. At least now I know how to cook it! Have you ever bought something and then felt too intimidated to use it? This happens to me especially when something was purchased from a bulk foods store, and lacks the fancy labeling and instructions... :)

I especially enjoyed this post by Crystal about housekeeping through difficult seasons. I wish I could chalk up my lack of energy to being pregnant, but I'll still be taking her advice to heart. :)

A number of people asked for more details about my "once a week cooking" day last week. I'm hoping to have more on this in the future, since last week was basically a flop... and I've been too exhausted this week to do much of anything... but read more for a few photos and an account of my pathetic cooking day! :)

Okay, these weren't really a disaster. These homemade bagels are really delicious! But I thought you might enjoy seeing a picture of my first bagel-making experience. I didn't follow the directions about a 2-inch hole in the middle, and when the bagels came out of the oven, they were like big round balls. :)

Joshua and I made these homemade blintzes a few weeks ago. Neither of us had made blintzes before, and I had never even eaten one before, so I was a little clueless about what they were like.

We used a recipe from a cookbook, and the batter was a thin, flour-y, unleavened batter. It got rubbery as it cooked. The sweet cottage cheese and egg filling didn't fully cook inside. When we tried to roll the blintzes after putting the filling inside, they cracked.

They tasted good enough to eat, but not good enough to make again, that's for sure!! I wonder what we did wrong...??

Are any of you skilled at making blintzes? Tell me your secrets! :)

I somehow lost my previous photos of my homemade wheat bread. I can only find one, small, cropped photo of the bread, and that just won't do. So all these weeks, the thing that was keeping me from sharing my wheat bread recipe was the fact that I needed some pictures.

That's easy enough to remedy. I made bread... but it was a night when we were having guests, and by the time I had it sliced, it was time to eat. By the time we had eaten, there wasn't much left to photograph.

So, I made the recipe yet again. This time, before I could even get one picture, my little baby got up to the table and stuck his fingers in the loaf! I turned around when he started saying "Ahhh! Ohhhh!! Ooooohhh!!!!"

So I sliced up the rest of the loaf and took pictures of those other slices. ;) Recipe coming tomorrow... I hope! :)

These cookies look harmless enough, but trust me -- they were as hard as rocks!

This was a new recipe I had tried, and I was congratulating myself on following the directions so accurately (the only thing I changed was adding whole wheat flour instead of white flour).

I should have gotten a clue when I tried forming the cookies into balls, and I had to press the "dough" (more like crumbles) together as hard as I could, or else it fell apart.

A little water or milk, perhaps? Well, leave it to me to actually follow directions even when red flags pop up -- but hand me a tried-and-true perfectly-good recipe and I'll find something to change!!

P.S. I guess I'm not the only one who has cooking disasters -- check out Bethany's awesome chocolate mud cake here! Hmn... tired mommy, trying to do five things at once? Sounds familiar! I'm blogging through my nap time yet again! ;)

Here is a cheesecake that Joshua made last week. It was a vanilla cheesecake, similar to this basic cheesecake recipe (for those curious).

Due to various factors (forgetting to grease the sides of the pan, allowing the cheesecake to completely cool in the pan, etc.), the cheesecake ended up with some huge cracks in it. I don't think I've ever seen such a disastrous-looking cheesecake before!!

The good news is that we smothered the top of the cheesecake with some super-flavorful homemade cherry pie filling/topping. I used some of my canned sour cherries. The addition of red food coloring would have made the topping even more attractive, but we knew our guests would rather eat a dark topping than a bright one, if it meant adding food coloring. :)

When the cheesecake was cut, the cracks still weren't even really noticeable. It tasted great! :)

This morning, I really got busy in the kitchen. I hadn't washed the dishes last night, so I tackled those first, with the help of Eliyahu. I got a chicken in the oven and started some homemade roll dough in the bread machine. For once, I had actually completely followed the recipe for the rolls, which was a recipe given to me at my bridal shower that I'd saved and never made. (Read more...)

I tried a new recipe today. It called for sweet potatoes cut into wedges and tossed with oil and seasonings before being baked.

They looked yummy. They tasted awful! They were soggy, too. I got a nice photo though. :D

We're out of cheese.  Those of you who peruse my weekly menus and the recipe archives on this website might realise how much my kitchen depends on cheese. I don't think I've ever run out of cheese before.

I normally find cheese on sale at Kroger for $1 per 8-ounce block. This sale comes every couple months (or used to) and I purchase a large amount, which is usually plenty to last until the next really good sale. (This is the main reason we can afford to cook with so much cheese!)

But sales are fewer these past few months, and our cheese consumption hasn't decreased. I've found myself purchasing a pound or two each week at Aldi's (which is excellent cheese, just slightly higher than the sale price I like).

We've been doing our grocery shopping on Sundays. I dislike grocery shopping. It takes so long, and by the time I'm back home, the children are famished and there's so much to do, always all at once. Which thing should I do first? Do I put away the frozen foods, start making lunch, change Eliyahu's diaper, nurse Eliyahu, or use the restroom? Hmn.

Last Sunday, we shortened our weekly shopping trip by skipping Aldi and just going to one store. I figured I would just go to Aldi this week. I could last two weeks between Aldi trips.

I forgot that this week, Sunday was Christmas Eve. We may be out of cheese, but we're not going to any store on Christmas Eve, cheese or no cheese. We're also not (obviously) going grocery shopping on Christmas Day, since everything is closed. And we're not even desperate enough to go shopping the Day After Christmas.

Have I mentioned that we dislike shopping and we dislike traffic? :) So, waiting we are.

Now, other news...

For those interested in a photo of the Easy Saltine Cracker Candy I made, the recipe is now up! :) I made half with nuts and half without, but somehow only got photos of the part without nuts. Oh well; there will definitely be a next time for this recipe! :)

I heard a peep from Eliyahu, and it's getting closer to my bedtime. I think I'll close for the evening. :) Tomorrow is clean-the-house day, and maybe I'll even get some photos of my recent organization efforts! :)

You know you're a mom when you're re-sizing your (supposedly) professional-looking photographs of food you've made, and you're cropping out things like sippy cups and pudgy little fingers.

I think I've been mentioning that the baking/cooking bug has really gotten to me this month. Every single day, I feel the urge to cook or bake something (or several things!) and I've been so busy cooking, I haven't even blogged about half of it yet!

When Crystal sent me a copy of her breakfast recipe ebook, "Simply Centsible Breakfasts", I could hardly wait to try some new things!

After making 5 batches of Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins, I moved on to her Easy Peanut Butter Granola. In a word, YUM!

Of course, I was able to transform "easy peanut butter granola" into "try-again peanut butter granola", and I managed to waste some good peanut butter in the process!

To start with, I was melting my peanut butter as the recipe said. I had used a spatula to clean out my peanut butter jar, and for some reason, was using that same spatula to stir it in the saucepan as it melted.

Before the peanut butter was even half-melted, I noticed something sticking to the bottom of the pan, and the harder I scraped, the more there was stuck. After stirring a little longer, I realised that my spatula had melted into the peanut butter. Yay!

So, I got a new pan* and opened a new jar of peanut butter. Those pesky all-natural peanut butters sure do like to separate, and I managed to get peanut butter on the counter as I tried to mix up the practically level-full jar of separated peanut butter.

Finally, it was mixed, and I scooped out a cup to use for my granola. I chose a silicone spatula to stir the pan. I rarely use my one silicone spatula, but now I'm down to 2 spatulas in my kitchen, and I knew at least this one wouldn't melt on me!

I must not melt peanut butter often enough, because I didn't realise that turning the heat on medium and going over to measure out some oats would result in burned peanut butter.

So, I'm back at the beginning again, trying to get some peanut butter melted without melting a spatula or burning it!

But it was worth all the hard work... and I'm definitely making this granola again. With a silicone spatula and the heat turned to low. ;) 

*Thankfully, I was able to clean the plastic off my first pan later!

The past couple weeks have been full of great new learning experiences.

For example, I learned how NOT to make dinner rolls. Twice.

First, I learned that, while citric acid is used as a dough conditioner, it's used in very small proportions. VERY SMALL PROPORTIONS. Yep, I ruined an entire batch of rolls, and we had company coming, too! How lovely!

So, I tried the rolls again. The second time, I learned that even if a yeast bread recipe claims to be a "30-minute" or even "60-minute" recipe, it might take longer to make. Allow plenty of time. No one wants hard, dense rolls. When I give these rolls a third try, I am going to start several hours in advance, especially if we have guests coming.

I also learned how to start fires in my electric oven.

Just let your oven-roasted chicken run over, onto the bottom of the oven.

Then take out the chicken and heat up the oven to 450 degrees, so you can bake some Italian Cheese Bread. Or, not.

Flames all across the bottom of my oven and smoke filling the kitchen...

I quickly learned how to put out a fire... with baking soda. (Actually it was Joshua to the rescue -- thanks, Hon!)

And then I learned how to clean out my oven, and I will always put a cookie sheet under my chickens when the dish is that full. Always.

But, if I'm not learning about rolls and fires and citric acid, I'm busy learning how to not over-salt our foods, how to follow a recipe (yep, I still ruin things because I think I have a better way!), and how to fully cook rice.

Bet you don't wish you were eating at our house last week! ;)

Somehow, I don't think this is how Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins are supposed to look. I could blame the recipe, but it's a family favorite of the lady who passed it on to me.

So, I'll blame Yehoshua. He's the one who sneaked into my bananas and ate TWO of the remaining four. I had my heart set on making these muffins today. And now I was one banana short of the three bananas this recipe called for.

But a chef like myself doesn't even bat an eye at having two (small) bananas when the recipe calls for three.

I just got right busy substituting things. I hadn't been planning to substitute on this recipe. I planned to measure everything just how the recipe said for once. But I should learn to not turn my back on my little Curious George toddler.

So, I added an extra egg. Then I added some applesauce. I would have added pumpkin, except I was worried that might give the muffins a funny taste. The batter did seem a little thin, but for all my adding, I didn't even think to add a little extra flour.

So, I made some flat-topped muffins. The good news is that they taste delicious!! The bad news is that photos of flat-topped muffins aren't suitable for a website recipe. So, someday I'll be making these again... with the proper number of bananas... and then I can share the recipe!