Peppermint Cookies

My Mother-In-Law's Kitchen

Since I met my amazing husband, and subsequently his fabulous mother, I have been wanting to write a whole series of posts entitled "My Mother-In-Law's Kitchen." Why you ask? Simple...her food is delicious (both my husband and I love it), many of her recipe's are heirloom recipes I want to treasure and pass on, and she is an amazing person I love getting to spend time with. Especially in the kitchen!

Finally after nearly three years of marriage (and a new amazing camera from my awesome husband) I have gotten a few recipes on camera, and I hope to get many more in the years to come. 

I hope you enjoy these amazing recipes as much as we do! With love from my Mother-In-Law Linda's Kitchen xxxooo

When the recipe card looks like this you know the cookies are good!

2 cups sugar

1 cup lard (yes lard! - but don't shy away these are fabulous)!

1 cup buttermilk

3 eggs

1 tsp peppermint extract

4 tsp baking soda

6 cups flour

Cream together the sugar and lard.

Add buttermilk (it will appear lumpy)

Add eggs, peppermint and baking soda.

Mix thoroughly.

Add 6 cups of flour to the wet mixture one cup at a time. 

  

 Cover and refrigerate.  

 Roll out dough, sprinkle with sugar, and cut into your favorite shapes.

Bake at 400 degrees for 5-7 minutes or until lightly brown on the bottom. Cool cookies on a wire or wooden rack.

Frosting:

1 bag powdered sugar

Milk

Peppermint extract

Food coloring

Mix powdered sugar, 1-2 tablespoons milk, and 1-2 tablespoons extract. Add food coloring to your desired color. Drizzle over cookies.

 Allow frosting to dry before storing in zip lock bags or storage containers. 

These can be made in advance and placed in the freezer. Just remove and bring to room temp before serving. Delicious!

Pear Mice

Vanilla Snowmen

It is something to do with the kids when they want to be out building a snowman and it is too cold or they are sick or, like here in Utah, when the inversion makes the air quality awful.

Basically, you use vanilla ice cream for snow and  add goodies to make the face and body.

I started with a light dusting of coconut for "snow" covered ground:

Next, I made a plate of leftover Christmas candy:

Then I scooped 2-3 balls of vanilla ice cream and let them build:

Turkey Parmesan Muffins

I saw something similar a while back online, but I couldn't find it, so I improvised. It was really good!

Grease medium sized muffin tin
Preheat oven to 350

In a mixing bowl combine 1.5 lbs ground Turkey, 1 egg, 1 egg white, 3T Italian seasoning, 2 tsp crushed Garlic, 1/2 C bread crumbs, 1/2 C Parmesan cheese (grated) --don't over mix.

scoop into muffin tin 3/4 full in each section.  Top with a layer of spaghetti sauce and Mozzarella.

Bake for 20 min.

makes 8 medium sized muffins

Penguin Party!

We "invited" some penguins to our holiday dinner this year!

(olives, cream cheese, carrot)

Easy Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken with Ham fried Rice

I love Pinterest!

One of my latest finds is this tasty meal found HERE.  It is easy, light and filling and my kids vaccuum it down knowing there is plenty more.  I'm adding this to the label "under $10" because we had every indgredient but the chicken on hand which cost me six dollars to feed 8.

The chicken coating:

3-4 boneless chicken breasts (I used the stir fry cut packages)

salt + pepper

1 cup cornstarch

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup canola oil

The sweet and sour sauce:

3/4 cup sugar

4 tbs ketchup

1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

1 tbs soy sauce

1 tsp garlic salt

This is about half way done in the oven.  My fully finished golden brown version had a corrupted file.

Start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees. Rinse your chicken breasts in water and then cut into cubes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Dip chicken into the cornstarch to coat then dip into the eggs. Heat your 1/4 cup oil in a large skillet and cook your chicken until browned but not cooked through. Place the chicken in a 9x13 greased baking dish. Mix all of your sweet and sour sauce ingredients in a bowl with a whisk and then pour evenly over the chicken. Bake for one hour and during the baking process you will need to turn the chicken every 15 minutes

Fried Rice : This is so dang easy and it tastes just like restaurant ham fried rice.   

3 cups cooked white rice (day old or leftover rice works best!)

3 tbs sesame oil

1 cup frozen peas and carrots (thawed)

1 small onion, chopped

2 tsp minced garlic

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1/4 cup soy sauce

(I added ham)

On medium high heat, heat the oil in a large skillet or wok. Add the peas/carrots mix, onion and garlic. Stir fry until tender. Lower the heat to medium low and push the mixture off to one side, then pour your eggs on the other side of skillet and stir fry until scrambled. Now add the rice and soy sauce and blend all together well. Stir fry until thoroughly heated!

Lazy dessert...

This is best filed under things I threw together and didn't turn out half bad... :)

1 small bag frozen raspberries, dumped into a glass baking dish that has been sprayed with oil

1 chocolate cake mix, dumped directly on top of the raspberries

1 stick butter, cut into slices and put on top of the dry cake mix

Bake for about 1/2 an hour. You will see it bubbling slightly on the edges when it is done.

It looks like a big gooey mess, as you can see, but was actually pretty tasty. I let it cool for a little while, but served it while it was still warm. Goes great with vanilla ice cream too. Think cobblerish dump cake?

Wandering Gypsy Girl Broccoli Cheese Soup

Broccoli Cheese Soup

Ingredients

1 leek sliced

1/4 sweet yellow onion sliced

1 small potato sliced

1-2 heads fresh or frozen broccoli (florets separated from the larger stock-discard large stock or hold aside for making vegetable stock later)

chicken or vegetable stock (enough to cover veggies)

1 stick butter

2-3 tbl flour

cheddar cheese shredded - to taste (at least 2-3 handfuls)

milk or cream 

S&P to taste

 Rinse leeks to remove grit (slice at about 1/2 way up the dark green stem). Remove broccoli florets if using fresh broccoli and slice onion and peeled potato.

 Add 3-4 pads butter to pot and saute broccoli, leeks, onions, and potato until onions are translucent. Season with S&P here.

 Add enough stock to cover the veggies.

 Cover with lid and simmer until broccoli, potatoes and leeks are soft.

 Transfer all but 2-3 tbls of liquid to the blender and pulse until smooth.

 Add flour to stock remaining in the pot and make a rue. Add milk in slowly creating a base for a cheese sauce.

 Add desire amount of cheese (I like a lot!).

 Add veggie puree back into pot with cheese sauce - combine and bring back up to temp.

Serve warm with crusty bread.

Carrot Cake Pops and a Lollipop Garden

 With a 3 year old b-day, I decided to go the Cake-pop route.  It seemed (and was) SO much less messy!  That "frosting" isn't gooey, it is firm chocolate.  YUM!  The recipe looked so easy, I couldn't pass it up.

I decided on Carrot cake, since we were going with an Easter/Spring theme. 

1 box cake made per directions on the box and cooled.

Take 1/2 of the cake and 1/2 container of Cream Cheese Frosting and mix together making a dough.

Roll into balls (or carrot shapes) and stick in the fridge 2 hours or the freezer 30 min. (Make them small... like donut hole small, or to your horror, your beautiful creation will slowly make its way down the stick and die a sad death.  With the carrot shapes, you can get a way with more weight because it it distributed differently... still, there was much bellowing and perhaps a few off color words dierected at the demise of some of my best cake pops.)

Melt white chocolate pieces and add desired food coloring.

While chocolate is melting, prepare candy sticks or dowels.  Candy sticks are a lot more pricy. (I used dowels 3/4 covered with floral tape and on the one pictured, I used floral wire covered with floral  tape to make the stem of the carrot.)

Dip the tip of the stick into the chocolate and place the firm, cold dough onto the stick. Hopefully you will have more luck dipping your dough in the chocolate.  Not only did I have to thin my chocolate out with milk a bit, but I spread it with a spatula, as the chocolate kept pulling the dough off of the stick for me.

Place in styrofoam or a candy stick holder, like the one I got at Walmart and I would suggest keeping them cool until use.  As you can see, some turned out MUCH better than others.  But the kids loved them and their faces were CLEAN!

I had seen the idea for a lollipop garden on Pinterest using Tootsie pops.

It looked so cute and all it was, was the candy stuck in a patch of grass.  Cute and easy, right?

Well, not for me.  i couldn't find Tootsie pops anywhere.  So I used dum-dums.  Well, dum-dums are significantly shorter and got lost in the grass.  So I added a mini muffin liner and tied the bottom with emroidery floss, then placed them in the actual flower garden.  Even the boys att he party liked picking these flowers.  :)

Complete with egg hunt, gift bags, coloring printable crowns and

rounds of duck-duck goose, simon says, and a bubble machine, I only spent

$30 on the entire party.

Grilled Potatoes and Carrots

This is by no means an "original" recipe. I have seen variations of it at bar-b-ques and picnics, so I don't really know where the credit for it's tastiness should fall. It is however incredibly quick- incredibly tasty- and incredibly easy to make.

Potatoes
Baby Carrots
(any other veggies you may like)
Ranch Seasoning Packet (or 2!)

Wash and cut raw potatoes. I used approximately 8 medium-smallish Yukon golds, but any type/size will work. Just clean enough for your family. Boil potatoes for a few minutes to soften them. You don't want them mushy, just slightly cooked through so they will cook quicker on the grill. You can even do this ahead of time and have them in the fridge, ready to go whenever you are. (You don't have to pre-boil them, but they will definitely take longer to grill if you don't.)

Combine carrots and potatoes. Mix in 1 Ranch Dips packet (I used Hidden Valley). Sometimes I even throw in some salt and pepper.

Make a foil pouch and dump veggies on it. Roll up tight and take it to the grill.
Flip it a couple times to make sure it cooks evenly.

End result:

 yum

Traditional Irish Soda Bread Farls



Place a large flat skillet, lightly floured on the stove over medium low heat.

2 C Flour

1/2 tsp Salt

1 tsp Baking Soda (Sifted)

fluff together in a large bowl and make a large hole in the center

1 Cup Buttermilk

fill the hole with the buttermilk and quickly mix into a dough.

Place dough on a floured surface and gently knead into a ball, then press into a disk about 1/2 in thick.

cut disk into 1/4 pieces (Farls)



Place your fourths/Farls on the floured, heated skillet and cook until golden brown (about 5 min) flipping once to brown the other side (another 5-ish minutes)

Think really dense KFC biscuit with butter and jam....but better.  Also, the dough can be fried like a scone or baked into a bread.