Happy Mother’s Day…

…to my mom and all you other moms, too!

Mom, I made you a mocha this morning…
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Wish you were here to drink it with me. But that’s not really possible with you at home 180 miles away. We could talk and laugh till our sides hurt about the adventure it is to be a mom, even though we’re at different stages. Since I became a mom, sometimes I think back to when I was growing up and am awed at the patience you had! Always calm and taking things in stride. For example, remember that goat we had? :) I could go on and on about memories, like the creative way you gave me a life-sized doll for my 6th birthday, the fun we had having our own little garden plots out of your big garden, jumping in the car to go see the ‘billowing smoke’ that turned out to be a cloud, how I openly told my teenage girlfriends that you are my best friend, etc., but since this is a cooking blog, I’ll stick with stuff in the kitchen.

Thanks for teaching me how to cook and bake. Not every 12-year old can make pie crusts, but you taught me young. And I’m sure that in my young days, you thought about how it would’ve been easier to just make things yourself instead of dealing with stuff like batter splattered on the ceiling or having to throw the whole batch away because I got ‘teaspoons’ and ‘cups’ mixed around when I was putting the salt in. But the thing I remember the most is: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” That was said when I’d start peeling eggs or potatoes or making some other mess right on the counter instead of putting down a paper towel or plate first. After awhile, it got to the place where you’d only have to say, “An ounce of prevention…”. Not sure why that was so hard for me to learn, but I did learn… I don’t do that anymore.

Here is a picture of my mom and my mother-in-law… another mom who’s had an impact on my life. She’s done alot of babysitting since we live in the same area and she’s like a walking medical book when one of us has a problem. Very handy and helpful! Each of the moms had 6 children… I’m second to the oldest of 3 boys and 3 girls, Shannon is the oldest of 6 boys. On the picture, they are with my youngest daughter Tiffany, who was 5 days old. She’s surrounded by grandma love.
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My mom is the one in the purple holding the baby and my mom-in-law is in the black. I can’t tell you both how much you mean to me and how much I love you and how thankful I am that you love your granchildren so much! I know how blessed I am to still have my moms, and I especially think of it every Mother’s Day. Other things I especially think about on Mother’s Day are the 3 babies I lost via miscarriage, those of you  who don’t have your moms anymore, and those of you who are a mom only in your dreams. I’ll breathe prayers especially for you throughout the day.

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And now, here’s the mocha recipe that I’m still sipping. Shannon is sipping black coffee because it goes better with the raspberry cream cheese cinnamon rolls that were eating. HE thinks it goes better with it anyway. I can’t handle black coffee. He usually uses cream and sugar, but not when he’s eating something sweet. How do you drink your coffee? I’d LOVE to know! And do you like it black too when you’re eating a sweet roll with it?

Mocha, but don’t think Starbucks!

1/2 cup chocolate chips
4 cups hot brewed coffee
1/4 cup half-and half cream
2 to 4 Tbsp. sugar
Whipped cream

Melt the chocolate chips and put in a plastic bag. Snip of a tiny piece of the corner and pipe “MOM” onto plastic wrap.
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Put in the freezer until hard (at least 10 minutes). Stir the coffee and rest of the chocolate together.
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Add the half-and-half and sugar.
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Serve in mugs with whipped cream and “MOM” garnishes. Yield: 4 sevings.
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Iced Tea and Cookies

Cookies!

Lexi (my dau, just turned 4) and I made some cookies last night. She seemed to sort of need some “mom time”, so we put Tiffany (9 mos) to bed, Shannon (my husband) had a late hockey game, and Lexi and I had alot of fun baking. Baking with her is interesting… She dumped all the ingredients in the bowl, except the eggs, of course. It always amazes me how the mixing bowl can be 10″ across and the measuring cup is 2 1/2″ and she still dumps part of the sugar, flour and choc chips over the edge onto the counter!!!!   She also decided we should wear “cookie baking beads”. She had some in her toybox, so we each wore them… you can see hers on a picture.

This recipe comes from the Mrs. Field’s Best Ever Cookie Book . Did you ever see “Mrs. Fields” in a mall (cookies, candy, etc.)? Well that’s her. This cookbook is written by her, Debbi Fields. Her store/bakery has been going for over 20 years. Shannon got the cookbook for me for Christmas 2 years ago.

Double-Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

6 oz, semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened (I didn’t use unsalted because I only had salted, maybe I should’ve omitted the 1/4 tsp of salt then)
1 cup creamy peanut butter
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
12 oz milk chocolate chips (about 2 cups)
24 - 30 whole shelled peanuts (we used 55 because that’s how many cookies we had)

Preheat the oven to 300. In a double boiler, melt the semisweet chocolate over hot, not simmering, water. (My microwave worked great for this. ) Set aside to cool to about room temperature.   In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. In a medium bowl, combine the sugars, then add the butter and beat until well combined. Add the peanut butter and beat until smooth. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until just combined. Add the flour mixture and the milk chocolate chips and beat until no streaks of flour are visible.      Pour in the melted chocolate
cookie1  and mix partially with a wooden spoon until marbleized. Drop the dough into 3-Tablespoon mounds (that would be huge, I made them smaller), 2 in apart, onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Top each with one whole peanut. I thought the one peanut thing was kinda ‘yeah, whatever’, but it turned out to be a really fun job for Lexi.
cookie2   Bake for 23 min, or until just set but still soft. Cool on the cookie sheet for 30 seconds, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Yield: About 2 dozen. M ine made about 4 1/2 dozen.  
cookie3    These taste GREAT, but they beg for a glass of milk! I prefer chewy cookies, these are kinda dry. Maybe it’s because they bake so long at a lower temp. They don’t melt down into a flat cookie… however you put them on the cookie sheet is how they’ll look when they come out of the oven, so I smashed them down a little before putting them in the oven, after the first batch came out and I saw that’s what they do. Another thing, semisweet chocolate chips are not my thing… if semisweet was the only chocolate, I would not be a chocoholic. Chocolate would tempt me about as much as, let’s say, raisins (I like them, but nothing special.), so next time, I’d do ALL milk chocolate in these cookies.

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I’m also going to feature a tried-and-true recipe here. Iced tea . I try to keep it on hand in the fridge. If I do, we go thro’ at least one pitcherful a day. It’s so easy and fast… in about 10 minutes, you can go from no tea anywhere around to drinking a cold glass of iced tea. For the taste, it’s comparable to meadow tea , if you know what that is. When I first started making it, I thought it wasn’t as good as meadow tea, but was well worth it for less work and time being put into it. Now that I’m used to it, I like it better than meadow tea. My mother-in-law makes it too and I forget who started making it first, so I’ll give her credit in case it was her.  Maybe we don’t even make it quite the same anymore, I haven’t compared notes with her on it lately.

Iced Tea

Put a coffee filter in a coffee maker (sometimes little pieces of leaves somehow get out of the tea bags, so the filter catches them then). Put 2 Mint Medley tea bags in it. Note: Somewhere between when I posted this and now, I switched from using 2 tea bags to using 1.
tea1 Fill the coffee pot with water to 10 cups and pour into coffee maker. Turn it on and run it thro’ just like you’d be making coffee. While that’s being made, put a scant cup of sugar into a 2-qt pitcher (about 7/8 cup). When the tea is done, pour it into the pitcher (I don’t know if piping hot liquid is good for a pitcher, but I’ve used the same 2 Pampered Chef pitchers for this for a few years and they’re holding up great… putting in a plug for Pampered Chef, you’d love the plunger thing to stir it with too). Stir it to disolve the sugar,
tea2  then fill it up with ice
tea3  to within 1″ of the top. Stir till ice is about all gone. It’s cool, but not cold by this time, so if we drink it right away, we serve it “on the rocks”, as my dad would say.
tea4   I really need a lemon slice to put on the side of this mug!

By the way, if you rinse out the coffee pot and filter holder thing right away each time, you can make coffee and tea in the same coffee maker and the tastes don’t cross over… we do it, although we don’t make coffee more than a couple times a week.

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I just got a comment on the stromboli post this morning that I don’t want you to miss… mom_of_5 has some great stromboli tips!    

Also, the ‘What’s your kitchen theme/colors’ is SO interesting! In a couple weeks, I’m planning to compile a post with excerpts from all your comments (anonymously… people will have to go back and read the comments if they want to see who said what) on what your kitchen is. So, I’d still love to hear more!

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