EatLocal365 » peanut butter http://eatlocal365.com Rediscovering cooking from scratch Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:24:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 Hello, again! http://eatlocal365.com/2014/03/18/hello-again/ http://eatlocal365.com/2014/03/18/hello-again/#comments Tue, 18 Mar 2014 23:18:52 +0000 Lindsay http://eatlocal365.com/?p=6758 Well, we’ve been busy! Obviously not with the blog, but with, y’know, life. A week after our last post, our son, Finley, was born. He’s amazing! We’re loving parenthood, but have struggled to find time to blog. We’ve been using our pantry and freezer a lot. When we cook, it’s mostly old favorites that we’ve already posted or really easy things, like the sausage (from our local butcher) and roasted veggies (from our CSA) that . . . → Read More: Hello, again!]]> Well, we’ve been busy! Obviously not with the blog, but with, y’know, life. A week after our last post, our son, Finley, was born. He’s amazing! We’re loving parenthood, but have struggled to find time to blog. We’ve been using our pantry and freezer a lot. When we cook, it’s mostly old favorites that we’ve already posted or really easy things, like the sausage (from our local butcher) and roasted veggies (from our CSA) that Erik is making right now.

HOWEVER, I did make cookies last week that got oohs and aahs and were much more local than I realized. Hurray! They’re based on a recipe from Joy the Baker, which is a fantastic blog/book that will fill all your indulgent dessert needs. These peanut butter, bacon, chocolate chunk cookies are free of gluten, dairy, and soy – all no-nos for me at the moment because of migraines and breastfeeding – but I swear that you won’t even notice because peanut butter, BACON, and chocolate. ‘Nuff said.

No pictures because I ate them too quickly. Oops!

Peanut Butter, Bacon, Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Makes 2 dozen

Amount Ingredient Preparation Notes
8 slices Bacon Stillman’s
1 cup Peanut butter Smooth or chunky Teddie
1 1/2 cups Sugar
2 tsp Molasses Blackstrap or regular
1 large Egg Stillman’s
1 tsp Baking soda
Generous pinch Nutmeg Freshly grated; can omit, if you don’t have it on hand.
1/2 cup Chocolate chunks Coarsely chopped (or substitute chocolate chips) Taza Chocolate


Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

  2. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil (helps with clean up) and lay out the bacon strips in a single layer. Roast for 15 minutes or until really crisp. Don’t let it burn, but make sure it’s not chewy. I didn’t cook mine thoroughly enough, so my cookies had a textural disadvantage. Set it aside and let it cool a bit. Don’t turn off the oven.

  3. Mix the peanut butter and 1 cup of sugar together, like you’re creaming regular butter and sugar.

  4. Add in the molasses, egg, baking soda, and nutmeg, and mix well.

  5. Once the bacon is cool enough to handle, chop it coarsely. It’s nice if the bacon and chocolate are about the same size, but don’t go nuts.

  6. Gently mix the bacon and chocolate chunks into the dough.

  7. Put the reserved 1/2 cup of sugar in a wide bowl.

  8. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or coat well with nonstick spray).

  9. Take about 1 tablespoon of dough, compress it in your hands to make a (very) free form ball, roll the ball in sugar, and place on the prepared baking sheet. The dough will be crumbly, so just do your best to smash it into a golf-ball-sized cookie. Repeat with the rest of the dough. The cookies don’t really spread, so you can put them pretty close together and fit all 24 on one baking sheet.

  10. Bake for 10 minutes or until browned a bit.

  11. Immediately after the cookies come out of the oven, use the tines of a fork to add that characteristic peanut butter cookie cross hatch pattern. You won’t get a clear print on each cookie, but it will serve to flatten them out nicely. Let cool for 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool down all the way.

]]> http://eatlocal365.com/2014/03/18/hello-again/feed/ 0 Working Through the Potato Bags: Potato Peanut Curry http://eatlocal365.com/2012/04/06/working-through-the-potato-bags-potato-peanut-curry/ http://eatlocal365.com/2012/04/06/working-through-the-potato-bags-potato-peanut-curry/#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:52:58 +0000 Lindsay http://eatlocal365.com/?p=5240

Our winter CSA gave us SO many potatoes this winter. All sorts of varieties and colors, too. I’m not sure why, but potatoes are never top of mind when I’m meal planning. I’ll be better prepared next winter, but I let too many of them spoil this year. Does anyone have a good method for storing them? We’ve tried lots of things, but without success.

Anyway…we had two paper sacks of potatoes (some purple . . . → Read More: Working Through the Potato Bags: Potato Peanut Curry]]> Potato peanut curry

Our winter CSA gave us SO many potatoes this winter. All sorts of varieties and colors, too. I’m not sure why, but potatoes are never top of mind when I’m meal planning. I’ll be better prepared next winter, but I let too many of them spoil this year. Does anyone have a good method for storing them? We’ve tried lots of things, but without success.

Anyway…we had two paper sacks of potatoes (some purple and some white) and a couple of random sweet potatoes. The purple ones were starting to sprout and the sweet potatoes were drying out. Never fear! Curry is here! Super delicious, super easy curry, that is.

These were aging potatoes, but look at them now!

This recipe is from Wildly Affordable Organic by Linda Watson, the genius behind Cook for Good. Erik and I tried to take the Cook for Good Challenge a couple of years ago, but had to bail due to some unexpected business travel. We got some great recipes out of it, though. This is one of them and I’d definitely recommend it for the night you get home late from work and are tempted by the takeout menu. It only takes about 25 minutes and is made from ingredients you probably have already.

This is filling enough that I don’t think rice is necessary, but put some on before you start the curry if you want it.

Potato Peanut Curry
From the book Wildly Affordable Organic by Linda Watson. Excerpted by arrangement with Da Capo Lifelong, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2011. www.dacapopresscookbooks.com

Serves 4 (or 3 if you’re really hungry)

Amount Ingredient Preparation Where we bought it (SWM = Somerville Winter Market)
1 pound Potatoes Feel free to use different types. Peel them if they’re not organic or if the peels feel tough. Cut out any eyes or bad spots. Red Fire Farm
14 ounces Canned tomatoes We used half a quart jar of home-canned tomatoes instead. Home-canned
1 cup Water We used some of the liquid in the tomato jar and topped it off with enough water to make 1 cup. Somerville Public Works
2 TBsp Vegetable or olive oil Stolor Organics
1/4 tsp Salt
2 TBsp Tahini Give it a good stir to distribute the oil.
2 TBsp Peanut butter Teddie (made close by!)
1 tsp Cayenne pepper
4 cloves Garlic Red Fire Farm CSA
1/2 tsp Turmeric Optional
2 TBsp (or so) Fresh parsley Chopped or torn up NorthStar Farm

Directions

  1. Dice the potatoes into 1/2 inch cubes.

  2. In a medium pot, add the potatoes, tomatoes, water (or water/tomato juice mixture), and salt.

  3. Cover the pot and bring it to a boil. Once it boils, turn down the heat so that it simmers gently.

    Red, purple, and orange!

  4. While the potatoes are cooking, chop the garlic finely. You could also put it through a garlic press, but I prefer to mince it with a knife, since I already have the cutting board out.

  5. Put the garlic, vegetable oil, tahini, peanut butter, and cayenne pepper into a microwave-safe bowl. (Note: I accidentally put the turmeric in, too, which I wasn’t supposed to do. It turned out great.) Microwave on medium-high (80%) for two minutes.

    Uncooked tahini-garlic sauce

  6. Add the turmeric to the tahini-garlic mixture, if you didn’t already, and stir it into the cooking potatoes.

  7. Let the curry continue to simmer until the potatoes are tender. This will take about 15 minutes, if you made the tahini-garlic sauce at an average speed, or 5 minutes, if you, like me, had to run to the store for tahini you though you had, but didn’t.

  8. Garnish with a little sprinkle of parsley. I think this would be good with a dollop of yogurt, too.

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