Sugar Cookielicious!

 

It's cookie time!  Ky came home from work the other day seeming a bit "American treat" homesick, so I surprised him with some nummy yummy sugar cookies.  It also made my little girl who was pleading to make Santa some cookies pretty darn happy.  (Not sure how Santa's going to get any cookies since my little love and big love keep asking me to bake more of the dough that I froze for the big guy!)

 

Now I've got to give it to you straight, these cookies are AWESOME.  Full disclosure though, the recipe with the Crisco is just a bit better.  The cookies puff up nice and pretty with the Crisco, and if you're not a butter enthusiast, these are just a touch more buttery than they would be with Crisco.

 

This nice thing about these cookies, is that they make about 50 per batch (awesome, right?), and whenever I've been in a "baking pinch", these have saved me from having to devote hours that I don't have to making tons of cookies for that party/event/school lunch that my exhausted, semi-brain dead self may have forgotten about.  Whew.  Also, since I usually do these as 2 inch balls, if you shrink the balls down to 1 inch, you'll have twice as many cookies, and barely any extra work.

 

First, here is the recipe as I would make it in the States:

 

Sugar Cookies

 

You'll need:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3 egg yolks
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350-degrees Farenheit.
• Whip the butter and shortening for 20 seconds.
• Add the sugar and vanilla.  Whip until creamy.
• Whip in the egg yolks.
• Beat in the baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.  Scraping the sides occasionally.
• Gradually beat in the flour. 
• When the dough is well mixed, shape it into 1 or 2 inch balls.
• Place 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet, and pop them in the oven!
• Bake for 6 minutes.
• Allow to cool on cookie sheet for 2 minutes. 
• Transfer to an air tight container.
• Make sure your container is air tight so that your cookies stay chewy!

Enjoy!!

American Sugar Cookies Italian Style

 

You'll need

• 250 grams butter, softened (I could only find salted)
• 2 Cups Sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 3 egg yolks
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

Instructions:

• Preheat your oven to 125 degrees Celsius.  (I tried it at a higher temperature and it made the cookies spread too much).
• If you're kickin' it old school like me and don't have a mixer in your beautiful new abode, here's what you do: 
• Put your softened butter, sugar, vanilla, and eggs into a nice big bowl.  Wash your hands thoroughly.  Dry them thoroughly.  Dive those hands in and cream that sugar baby!  Squish until it's mixed!  You'll know it's ready when everything is feeling very thoroughly mixed.
• Next, work the cream of tartar and baking soda into the creamed sugar.
• Add the flour, and work that in until it's a nice, sticky-smooth dough.
• Create 1-2 inch balls.
• Place the dough balls 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet.
• Bake for 5-7 minutes.
• Allow to cool for 2 minutes on the cookie sheet.
• Place the cookies in an air tight container.

Enjoy!!

 

 

 

Laela wouldn't share!

 

Holiday time!

Holy moly, where did the time go?  Life has been a whirlwind for my family and I lately.  We lived in a hotel for six weeks, and now we've finally moved into our beautiful apartment...that has six broken sinks, one squirting toilet, and a partridge in a pear tree.  But we're finally in our home, and the adventure can officially begin!

You might be wondering what my family and I have been eating since we moved to Florence.  If you guessed pasta, you would be correct-a-mundo.  I have eaten so many different types of pasta over the last 7 weeks, that it would make a carb avoiding American run for the hills...then hit the treadmill, and maybe some bikram yoga.

It's interesting though.  Italian pasta isn't as heavy as American pasta.  Everything is fresh.  Typically, what you're feeding your family is what's in season.  Farm to table is just the way things are here.  It's not a trend.  It's not some next big thing.  It's the way Italians have always, and more than likely, will always cook.

We're talking about a place where the residents choose to maintain the history of their buildings, rather than knock them down and make them modern.  The art, architecture, and food are some of the most important aspects of Italian culture, and unlike many other countries, Italians don't want to change their culture.  It's amazing to walk down streets, or walk into a shoppe, and find out that it's been that same shoppe since 1706.

So while I'm on this Italian journey, bear with me as I learn the proper ways of cooking pasta, pizza, and other Italian specialties during my family and my time in Italy.

Lesson 1:  There is no brown sugar in Italy.

It's the holidays.  I found myself with a hankering for a giant ginger cookie- my most absolute favorite cookie in the whole entire world.  After a harrowing search, I came upon some vanilla (score!), and I had thankfully brought baking powder and baking soda with me from the US (for some reason it's flavored here.  Odd.).  Then I went on a molasses and brown sugar search.  Some friends directed me to one of the local shops that sells foreign goods.  I jumped for joy.  Silly, silly, naive American girl am I.

It looks like brown sugar.  It even smells like brown sugar (sort of).  But it is not brown sugar.  It's fine natural sugar that sticks together like brown sugar.  Sure, it'll be fantastic for some pumpkin muffins (which I also scored, even though I grossly overpaid for my tiny can of pumpkin.), but honey, it won't work for my ginger cookies.

So what's a gal to do?  Amazon baby.  I pillaged that website like it was no one's business.  I did however, have to come up with a solution to make my little girl who was BEGGING to make cookies happy.

So what did I do when I didn't have the majority of the ingredients I usually use to make cookies?  I made make-shift sugar cookies.

Tune in Friday for a tastylicious sugar cookie recipe that's super easy to make in Italy and the USA!

Thanksgiving in Italy

Thanksgiving is in a few days, and here I am, kitchenless, living in a hotel in a foreign country.  I have to say, I've gone back and forth about how we'll celebrate.  Should we go to an Italian restaurant claiming to make classic "American Thanksgiving fare"?  Should I take a cooking class that one of the local cooking schools is hosting to learn a way to "fuse" the Italian idea of Thanksgiving with American Thanksgiving?

Maybe this is me having a moment where I don't want to change my culture.  Thanksgiving is not an Italian holiday.  It's American.  I'm American.  So me, with my crazy American, individualist, marching to the beat of my own drummer mindset, will be celebrating Thanksgiving late this year- when I can cook it, and celebrate it, in a way that makes me and my family feel at home.  Until then, I'll just continue to enjoy Italian culture and their culinary expertise.

The truth is, I'm a thankful person.  I was raised by a small village of people (particulary my parents) who taught me that thankfulness and family are not something you celebrate on single days.  You should celebrate them and appreciate them often. 

I'll never forget our first Thanksgiving with Laela.  I was so exhausted (she was barely three months old), that there was no way this milk machine was going to throw a dinner together.  My parents, my husband, and our baby daughter got ourselves together for a simple Thanksgiving dinner that Abner's (the best bbq you could get in the Northeast until they so sadly closed) gloriously threw together for us.  It was a great Thanksgiving- in my Daddy's words: "We should be spending time together...not hiding in the kitchen."

That's what Thanksgiving is.  It's about your family.  It doesn't matter if you're risking your lives frying a turkey, baking pies, having pizza, or gorging on pizza.  It matters if you're being together.  So this year, be present.  Put down the damn phones.  Turn off the computers.  Spend time together.  I'm not giving advice on how to get everything out of the oven in time, or how to get it all hot simultaneously.  I'm telling you to genuinely be thankful for the gifts you have been given.

Quickie Pepper Soup

Every now and then, I want to make a serving or two of soup without any hassle.  I don't feel like making a big batch and having to store it, or sometimes, I find myself with random leftovers, and see if I can whip up something quick and healthy for lunch, or dinner if I find myself in a subsidized single parenting situation.

Right before we moved, Kyle was away on a business trip.  I found myself in the odd situation of not having anything in the fridge (since we were cleaning the fridge out before our big move abroad).  I foraged through the fridge and came across some chopped peppers from a salad I'd had a day or two before and a frozen cup of pasta sauce, as well as a frozen cup of chicken broth in the freezer. It's amazing what you can come up with when you only have a few paltry leftovers in the fridge and you're sick to death of take-out!

This pepper soup is awesome and literally takes five minutes. 

Quickie Pepper Soup

You'll need:

• 1/2 cup pasta sauce
• 1/2 cup broth (chicken, veggie or beef will do)
• 1/2 red pepper (or a whole one, whatever you have in your fridge!- you can mix other flavored peppers in as well if you want)
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions:

• Heat a medium saucepan to medium-high heat.  Drizzle a bit of olive oil (no more than 1tsp) into the pan.
• Roughly chop the pepper.  Toss it in the pan.
• Cook for 1 minute.
• Pour in the broth and pasta sauce.
• Heat the pan to high.  Bring the pan to a boil.
• Lower the heat to medium-high heat.
• Cook for 3 minutes. 
• Blend with a immersion blender or a blender until liquid.
• Serve!

**Since I was the only one eating this, I added a bit of hot sauce and sriracha!  Make it however spicy or mild you like!

Caprese Salad

 

I love caprese salad.  It's one of my oddball comfort foods.  It reminds me of when I was younger, and would try to wow my grandparents with my cooking ability (little did I know how little I didn't know!)  I remember serving it up with some homemade Italian bread, with the caprese salad placed neatly in a bowl and my family devouring it.  It's one of the first things I ever made where I had hope that I could really be good at this cooking thing, so it'll always be a bit special to me, regardless of the fact that it's incredibly easy to make.  I think it goes to show that sometimes the best things in life are the simplest.  

Since we've been living in a hotel for the last few weeks, I've had to find different ways to make healthy, fresh food.  I don't want to live on take-out or go out to dinner all the time.  I have a preschooler.  She needs her sleep, and we all need some time to relax! 

Caprese Salad is literally the most simple, yet fancy seeming dish that you can make.  And all it takes is a tomato, a ball of fresh mozzarella, a few basil leaves, 2 tablespoons of some balsamic vinegar and 2-3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, with a dash of salt and pepper.  It doesn't matter if you cube, slice, or chop your cheese and tomatoes.  It will be perfectly delicious regardless of how you present it.  Does it get more simply, or more lovely than that? 

A Cookie Cutter Kind of Day

 

I have this silly obsession with old school cookie cutters.  You know the ones, the really sharp metal ones that everyone's Grandma used to use? Those sharp as nails cookie cutters are much better than those rinky dink plastic ones, so when you find them, and you like the shape, pick them up! They can make super cute "rainy day" sandwiches, such as these lovely little butterflies!

 

 

Laela told me that it was a "gloomy doomy day" because it's dark, cold, and rainy, so I busted out one of the old school cookie cutters I brought with me from the US.  (Yes, my favorite cookie cutters were a priority for me.  I've been here two weeks an they've already been useful!  Hah!)

 

We made "sandwich treats", which are sandwiches filled with peanut butter and honey.  Other times we'll use pumpkin butter with a sprinkle of "fancy cinnamon" (Laela's very into Fancy Nancy, can you tell?) or peanut butter with Nutella.  It depends on what kind of day we're having.

 

These are very easy to make.  Make the sandwich of your choosing.  Place the cookie cutter over the sandwich.  When you are inside the crust, push down, and you'll have a lovely shaped sandwich!

 

 

 

Tip:  Did you know you can clean metal cookie cutters to a pearly shine with some Dawn and vinegar?  The solution is just 1 drop of Dawn added to 1/2 cup water mixed with a 1/2 cup distilled white vinegar. It also saves scorched pans. No joke.  To save a scorched pan, soak the pan in the solution for a few hours.  Then, hit it with a tad more Dawn and a scrubbie, and you should be good to go!

My Last Meal in America

Holy exhaustion Batman.  You don't know tired until you move to a foreign country.  A little over two weeks ago, my family and I moved to Florence, Italy for my husband's job.  Thankfully, my husband and I visited over the summer, so I was reasonably prepared for what we would need, and what things we should bring from the States (thankfully I remembered taco seasonings and Old Bay!)

I think people really don't realize that Italians eat pasta every single day.  It's nothing like pasta in the States, it's lighter, more flavorful, and in all ways just better, so trust me, I plan on taking plenty of cooking classes to share my experiences and recipes!  I want to learn not only authentic Italian cooking (which varies by region), but other European cuisines as well.  Italian food is amazing.  Everything is always fresh and homemade.  In Italy, if something isn't homemade, they'll tell you. 

And trust me, Italian food is kind of like dating.  You can weed out the phony "tourist trap" food versus the amazing Italian food very very quickly.  (For example, if you see a huge mound of gelato, slowly back away.  You are being bamboozled.  Go to a small gelateria where there aren't any/many tourists and allow yourself to be completely blown away.)

The thing is, as much as I love Italian food, I had a hankering for a cheeseburger the other day, and me, yes, Little Miss "I only eat healthy food" dragged my husband to Hard Rock Cafe for a huge bbq burger.  I have to say, it was awesome- until I was in a food coma and literally couldn't move for ten minutes. 

After my honkin' "American cheeseburger", I got to thinking...in the whirlwind of packing up and moving to Italy, what was my last homemade American meal?

Shrimp and Grits!!

 

How befitting, I moved to the South a Philly girl, and left the US with grits in my belly.

Here's the easiest recipe for grits you'll ever find.  This is not quite as amazing as my best friend Alexis' shrimp and grits recipe, but she's promised to share that with you all another time.  This recipe is simple and no holds barred delicious.  Give it a go!

Cara's Shrimp and Grits
serves 4

You'll need:

For the Shrimp:

• (1) 1lb bag of shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1/2 Green Bell Pepper
• 1/2 Yellow Pepper
• 1/2 Red Bell Pepper
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 Cup corn (I used frozen sweet corn, but you can use fresh if you want)
• 3 Tb Old Bay (You can add more if you like.  I tend to go heavy on the Old Bay)
• **1lb Andouille Sausage, sliced (I didn't have any on hand, but you should definitely try it with the sausage!

Heat a medium sized skillet to medium heat.  Chop, slice the peppers (or if you want, just buy a bag of frozen chopped/sliced peppers) and toss them in the preheated pan with 1/2 the butter, sliced andouille and Old Bay.  Cook for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Stir in the corn.  Cook for 1 minute.  Add the remaining butter and the shrimp.  Cook until the shrimp go from clear to white/pink and begin to curl (2-3 minutes).  Stir occasionally.  If it seems like the butter is reducing quickly, lower the heat a bit and add a bit more butter, a splash of fish or chicken stock, or a splash of white cooking wine  Don't overcook them!  Add more Old Bay to taste.

For the Grits:

• 1 1/2 Cups water
• 1 1/2 Cups milk
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup white or yellow quick grits (NOT INSTANT) 
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1 Tb butter
• 1/2 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese (optional)

1. In a small pot, bring water, milk, and salt to a boil.
2. Slowly stir grits into boiling mixture.
3. Stir continuously and thoroughly until grits are well mixed.
4. Let the pot return to a boil, cover pot with a lid, lower the temperature, and cook for approximately 30 minutes stirring frequently.
5. Add more water if necessary.
6. Grits are done when they have the consistency of stiff cream of wheat.
7. Stir in butter.
8. Serve with additional butter on top. (Optional- I didn't do this since the grits were being topped with the shrimp, veggies and Old Bay butter sauce.)

Serve grits topped with shrimp and veggies!  Enjoy!