Back on Track ~ This and That ~ Cashew Brittle

I hope you are enjoying the recipes lately.  I am sorry I am posting them after the holidays, but maybe it will spark motivation for next Christmas season.  Or for that matter, any time of the year.

No, I am not turning my blog into a cooking blog ha ha!  It's winter, and there is not much going on that is "news" worthy, so you get to see some new or older recipe posts.

(Before a weeding day, and they grew almost 6 feet tall!!)

...... and yes I do miss my garden shenanigans.  Oh man, this last season was a good one, and I will not forget how I would start my day with a good laugh.  Every time I went out to work in the garden, I would just laugh and laugh about the enormous squash plants we had.  Not to mention the enormous bounty we got from them.

Something ate the tops off of a few of my bunching onions, that are in my herb garden.  Hm?  I will have to put a deer camera on it if it continues to come back.  The herb garden is very close to the house too.  

 * * * * * 

The outside Christmas lights are all taken down, and put away.  The tree decorations are off, the holiday bedding washed, dried and put away, and other decorations collected to be boxed up as well.  Another Christmas all wrapped up and put away for a year.  The tree will be put away this weekend.  Believe it or not, my husband is the one pushing me to keep it up longer (it only has lights on it right now).

Lists are back in action.  I have a goal for each winter month.  Trust me, when I say we will not be running out of things that need done around here.   I've already cleaned out one shelf in my refrigerator.  The holiday season baking/cooking really put a toll on my organization.  The fridge is a hot mess, so the plan is to finish that job first.

The warmer days have spiked the egg production here at the homestead.  I guess we can't complain about that.  

We had some leftover "innards" from omelet making, and I did not want to waste them.  I decided to whisk up 9 eggs, and make a small-ish sheet pan egg dish using all the leftover omelet bacon/bell pepper mixture.  

I harvested some bunching onions from the herb garden for this too.  I cooked up some sausage patties and made it into a sandwich.  I'll be doing this again, but adding some greens too.  Gosh, you could eat it without the bread, jazz it up with flavor etc.  

Tip:  I save my bacon grease, and greased my pan with the bacon grease.

The weather otherwise, is still damp.  However, we are starting to cool down again.  The current chicken coop run is a muddy mess.  

Detox for the win!  

I'll admit the holidays get us off track of every day meals, and life in general.  By the way, I am still waiting on my holy basil to arrive.  In the mean time, we are using what tea we have on hand.  

I forgot about our traditional Christmas Cashew Brittle recipe.  I did not make it this year, only due to the lack of time.   I do have the recipe already posted on my blog, and it makes a small batch (I use my metal round baking sheets for this).

You can get the recipe HERE.

Back on Track ~ This and That ~ Cashew Brittle © Dec 2023 by Kristina at Pioneer Woman at Heart

Angel Cookies ~ A Recipe that I found reading a library book!

 

Angel Christmas Cookies.  Recipe is online, but I found this recipe in a book I read years ago - Aunt Dimity's Christmas, by Nancy Atherton.  We use the recipe for our traditional cut-out cookies at Christmas, but Christmas has passed, so I made them "winter" themed this year - snowflake cookies.

I'm glad I went searching for the book on my blog, because the link does not work anymore, and the recipe has been changed over the years.  

In the book, the recipe is called "Angel Cookies" because she makes them all angels.  I make all sorts of cut out shapes with the dough.  Very easy to make and you can make it the day before to chill the dough.

The recipe states that if the dough is sticky to chill it, but every year we've made these cookies, we chill the dough.  I take half the dough out, cut the cookies, and take out more chilled dough as we bake them.  You can also chill this dough overnight.

Did you know that if your dough is cold when you cut your cookies out, they are more likely to keep their shape vs. puff out when baked?

Over the years, I have only used the frosting recipe that comes with this cookie recipe.  I noticed the only change in ingredients was the amount of butter in the frosting.

Recipe from the book says:  1/3 cup butter

Recipe online says:  1 cup butter 

All other ingredients are the same.  I used one stick this time, and had enough frosting for 38 of these snowflake cookies.

TIP:   I use parchment paper.  My notes (on my own recipe card) stated that I used air bake baking sheets and did not grease my sheets, but that is not the case.  I have no idea why I wrote that down ha ha!  These cookies will not come off the sheets without greasing them or using parchment paper.  I highly recommend using the parchment paper (original recipe states to lightly grease your baking sheets).

A little "ditty" about the cookie recipe. . .

The cookies were so popular with my kids, that one year a daughter took all of my recipe cards out and copied them.  However, when she filed them, she did not put them in the right place in my recipe box.  I had to go on my blog and find the recipe again for these.  Later I found the recipe card filed in my box under something else.

Another year, our youngest wanted to make this recipe.  She rolled the dough and cut the cookies, but forgot to grease the cookie sheet.  They all stuck to the baking sheet and she cried and cried.  I felt so bad for her that year.

Angel Cookies © Dec 2023 by Kristina at Pioneer Woman at Heart