No interesting dinners to speak of, but here are some other goodies my assistant and I concocted in the kitchen:
Zucchini mini-muffins, made from a combination of all-purpose (white); whole-wheat and oat flours. They tasted all right the first day and the morning after, but after that the whole wheat kind of dries out the entire experience. I might experiment with the levels (which were pretty good for the banana muffins, but not zucchini), and am looking for an “moistener” that might help the cause (maybe sour cream? mainly because I happen to have some in the fridge). I’ll give them 3 out of 5 stars.
Lemon tea cookies. So, here’s the story with these. From the aforementioned zucchini muffins, I had purchased a lemon and used only part of the lemon peel. So, I had a leftover lemon that needed to be used pronto. I wanted to bring something to Easter dinner, but didn’t want to arrive with Lemon Bars since I think I brought them once already. I like to try something different every now and again. Keep people on their toes. Not be known as the “lemon bars” girl or whatever. Found this recipe after a night of searching for different lemon ideas, and what probably cinched this one in particular was that we had all of the ingredients in the pantry (always a good sign). Again, I used a combo of whole wheat & all-purpose flour (the ratio was 3:2). I’m sure the shortbread would have been a different texture had I not used the whole-wheat, but all around a decent cookie. The lemon curd was, um, lemony. Pretty tart. I might have overdone it, but I wanted to make sure it had a lemony flavor and for some reason I wasn’t convinced that 3 tbsp of lemon juice along with 2 tsp of lemon zest was going to do the trick. I like them, but I likely won’t make them again (a little more time-consuming than I like, especially when I am short on time). Because of that I give this 3 out of 5 stars.
Easter Eggs. Ho-hum. These didn’t turn out fantastic or anything, but perhaps that’s what you get for spending all of $1.99 on supplies. The turquoise blue one in front has “L I L Y” spelled out thanks to the handy wax crayon that PAAS provides. The pink one behind spelled out “Easter” (ooooh. creative writer, I am). The purple one in the back is purple because the toddler dunked a blue egg into the pink dye. Most of them came out spotty, and the “egg-around” experiment resulted in a cracked egg when I dropped it in boiling water as the instructions, um, instructed. And, why are there five and not, oh, say a half-dozen? Because I cracked one in the initial hard-boiling. Butterfingers. Then again, they are EGGS, after all. I remember having so much fun hunting eggs down, but now, as the grown up all I can think is “what kind of crazy invention is this??”
More important than the actual dye job was the fun that the toddler had while we dyed the eggs. Mainly because she deftly ignored her mother’s pleas of “no, don’t touch that!” and “be patient” and “use the egg carrier” and “no touch no touch no touch no touch”. I’m sad I forgot to take any pictures of these, until we had already brought them to the in-laws’, where they were man/child/bunny-handled several times over.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without my little iron chef:
Allez cuisine!
