Getting it out of my system

Last peanut butter recipe for a while, I promise. Unless Taneasha makes jelly, then all bets are off.

I get regular requests for peanut butter cookies and for oatmeal cookies, and I finally decided to give in and make the boys what they want. Now, I’m not a fan of either, but they are popular cookies so I guess most people don’t mind having things that belong at breakfast for dessert.

And even though it’s cooled off a bit lately, I have been thinking lots about the no bake sort of cookie. My mom used to make something that she called “macaroons” as her usual no bake treat. I’ve since learned that this is a Canadian name for what most people call Haystacks, and what other people call macaroons are not what I call macaroons, though both contain coconut.

Anyway.

I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and save myself having to make one or the other at a later date. Less painful for me, and the boys at work get what they want. Happiness abounds.

No Bake Peanut Butter Cookies

What you need:

• 2 c sugar
• ¾ c milk
• ¾ c butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 ½ c peanut butter
• 3 c quick cooking oats
• 1 ½ c rice crispies (gotta love the individual serving size... too bad my kid doesn't)

What you gotta do:

So, I used the Teddy Bear peanut butter (and I can almost see Taneasha cringing at seeing it again) which is a fairly sweet one. If you use an all natural, peanuts only one, you might want to increase your sugar a bit, maybe to 2 ½ cups.

In a good sized pot (bigger than you think you’ll need) combine the sugar, milk and butter over medium heat.

While that heats, measure out your peanut butter into a large metal or glass bowl. Something heatproof.

Keep an eye on your pot o’ milk. This will boil eventually, even on medium. Stir it as it’s heating though, you don’t want it stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Mine looked a little bit curdle-y just as it was starting to boil,

but that disappeared once the boil was good and rolling. And by rolling, I mean it won’t stop or fall if you stir it.

When it gets to that point, just set the spoon aside and set your timer for 2 minutes.

It will rise up a bit as it boils. This is why you need a bigger than you think you need pot. You really really don’t want this boiling over onto your stove.

This is the beginnings of a creamy caramel. Butter, milk and sugar. Freaking tasty.

After your two minutes are up, slowly pour the almost caramel over the peanut butter

And add a dribble of vanilla. Yes, I know I seem to have reverted to just eyeballing ingredient amounts. At least I gave you a volume in the ingredient list. Feel free to actually measure, if you want to.

Once again, stirring stuff into peanut butter looks weird at first,

But eventually it all comes together.

Dump in your oats and cereal.

And start stirring.

I left out the third cup of oats and started with 2 cups of oats and all the cereal; it’s better to have to add dry ingredients than to try to figure out how to hydrate a dry cookie batter (Is this batter? Dough? What exactly is in my bowl??)

Eventually though, I did add the last cup.

That brought the consistency to something I was confident would hold some kind of shape if I dropped it by blobs onto paper.

If you’re not sure of yours, drop a spoonful onto paper. It should mostly hold its shape and not spread too much.

If it’s good, keep blobbing.

And blobbing.

And then add more paper at the end so you can get the last of the blobs out of the bowl.

Build yourself a rag tag army of blobs.

69 of them in fact. Don't believe me? Count 'em.

They need a bit of time to set. And fridging them will definitely help with that process. Just make sure you don’t put them all on one big sheet of parchment if you think you may need to relocate them.

These are gooey and sticky and caramelly in texture, and since they contain peanut butter, oatmeal, milk, and rice crispies, they make for a perfect breakfast cookie.

What's your favourite breakfast cookie??

Teddy Bear Picnic

Ah, dinner. That meal I used to cook with leisurely ease.

I had a whole three hours to make dinner last night (well, all night really, but I was getting hungry) and I ended up with a stirfry. Tons of time and I make a super fast dinner. I am highly amused. It was one hell of a tasty stirfry, and based on a dish I used to have at a little Asian fusion place on the island. It’s actually gained a lot of popularity and you can find it as a “tapas” sort of dish all over the place now. It’s fun to eat, totally sharable, and a little on the messy side, but that just makes for tasty sticky fingers to lick, which is always fun on date night. ;)

But it’s not just a stirfry, it’s a wrap that you build as you eat. Think tacos, but with lettuce instead of tortilla shells, and stirfry instead of meat, beans and cheese… mmm… tacos…

Stirfry. That’s what I made (but I may need to make tacos some time soon)

The place on the island used a wicked hoisin sauce in theirs. Hoisin is like bbq sauce, but with Asian flavours. It has all the same elements: a base (usually tomato in the west, beans in the east), some salt (soy works), some sour (rice vinegar rather than cider or white), some sweet (brown sugar is what I usually see in bbq, but honey sometimes too), and then the seasonings.

Black bean paste is the typical base for hoisin, but peanut butter can work to. And since I was fresh out of bean paste, I opted for the pb. And before I start, I have to admit to a bit of a guilty pleasure.

So, when I was a kid, my mom refused to buy this one kind of peanut butter that I was sure that aaaalll my friend’s moms bought. And now that I’m a reasonable hand drawn facsimile of a grownup, I can buy what ever kind I want. So there. I know it’s going to make Taneasha have half a heart attack, and so I apologize in advance for my love of sugar sweetened, partially hydrogenated oil stabilizied, Kraft (*cringe*) peanut butter. I know the all natural stuff is better for me. I don’t care. I want the one with the bears on it.

Chicken Stirfry in Lettuce Wraps with Home Made Hoisin Sauce

What You Need:

Hoisin

•  4 tablespoons soy sauce
•  2 tablespoons peanut butter or black bean paste
•  1 tablespoon honey or molasses or brown sugar
•  2 teaspoons rice vinegar
• 1 clove garlic
•  2 teaspoons sesame oil
•  1 tsp Sriracha cock sauce

Stir Fry:

•  1 clove garlic
•  1 bit of minced ginger
•  1 tbsp peanut oil
•  a few drops sesame oil
•  1 chicken breast
•  1 large red bell
•  ½ small onion
•  a few mushrooms
•  ½ c cashews
•  1 head lettuce

 What You Gotta Do:

Dump all of the ingredients for the hoisin into a bowl much bigger than you need.You can leave out the hot sauce and add it a bit at a time once it’s mixed.

Mixing the hoisin doesn’t take long, but it really looks strange at first.

Don’t worry, keep whisking and it’ll all come together. See.

Add as much or as little (or none if you insist) of the hot sauce as you like. Dip a bit of lettuce in to taste as you add.

There, you just made hoisin sauce. Fancy schmancy. It really does work well on the bbq too.

Since the stirfry cooks really fast, it’s best to have everything chopped and ready to go before you start heating the pan. Start with the chicken, then grab a fresh cutting board.

I used a head of romaine for my wraps. I like the boat shape of them. The restaurant where I first had this dish served it with a quarter of a head of iceburg. Use which ever lettuce you prefer, but make sure it’s one that will hold up under the weight of a warm stirfry.

Rinse the lettuce and dry it well. I lay my leaves out on a teatowel and roll them up. Works just fine, and keeps them out of the way while I’m cooking.

 

Chop the onion, pepper and mushrooms into less than bite sized pieces, and mince the garlic and ginger.

Heat a dry pan over medium heat, add the cashews. Those are some wrinkly nuts.

Shake them around from time to time so they don’t burn, just get nice and toasty brown. Dump them out of the pan and back into the bowl.

Add some peanut oil and add a few drops of sesame oil to the hot pan. Peanut oil has a really high smoke point, and sesame oils is probably one of the lowest. Combining them tempers sesame’s tendency to burn before you can get anything else into the pan.

Sautee the chicken in the oil until the pink is all gone,

Then add the veggies.

Shove them around in the pan until the onions are just barely translucent and have lost their crunch.

 

Add about half of the hoisin sauce. The rest can be stored in the fridge for… probably as long as the shelf life of the ingredient with the shortest shelf life. I dunno, it’s never lasted more than a week or two in my fridge.

Mix in the sauce then add the cashews. Cashews will soften quite a bit in a saucy stirfry, so you only want them in there long enough to get them coated.

It looks good, but it seems to be missing something…

I haven’t been able to find cilantro or beansprouts to save my life lately, so I scrounged a half wilted green onion from the bottom of the veggie drawer.

That did it. Cilantro would have been much better, but this'll do.

Serve the stirfry in a bowl, with the lettuce leaves on the side.

Hold a leaf in your hand and spoon in a bit of the stirfry. Just like building a taco.

mmm…. Tacos….

What are you bringing to the teddy bear (peanut butter) picnic??