salted nutty oat cookies

I like to consider myself an oatmeal raisin cookie connoisseur. Whenever I eat at a bakery or sandwich shop, I have to try their oatmeal raisin cookies. Texas French Bread has one of my all time favorites; I think they use nutmeg. But a recent favorite is at Walton's, which in itself is worthy of mention. A picturesque cross between a bakery, little deli and florist shop on west 6th allegedly owned by Sandra Bullock. Everything there is good. I recently had green pepper chicken salad and eyed enviously my friend's Garden Party sandwich of grilled eggplant and squash with roasted red peppers, Texas Chevre and balsamic on rye. Their scones are great and their Monte Cristo looks truly epic.

But anyway, back to cookies. Their oatmeal raisin cookies are chewy (a must) but also have coarse salt sprinkled on top. So that was an aspect I wanted to try when I decided to make cookies today. I also didn't want to finish off my butter and wanted to do something with the wheat germ I have sitting in the fridge staring at me. So this is what I came up with. Wheat germ gives it a nutty taste. And I guess has some heath benefits, but I'm not much into marketing them that way since they have plenty of sugar and were made with shortening. But feel free to think of these as healthy! ...whatever helps you sleep at night.

{salted nutty oat cookies}

adapted from here and here. picture from here

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cups - old fashioned rolled oats

1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp - all purpose flour

3/4 cup  - raisins

1/4 cup - toasted wheat germ {simply replace this with an equal amount flour if you’re not interested}

1/2 tsp each - baking soda and baking powder

1 tsp - ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup shortening

1/2 cup - granulated sugar

1/2 cup (packed) - light brown sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

1/2 tsp - pure vanilla extract.

coarse sea salt

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix oats, wheat germ, flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.

Mix butter and sugars in the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment on medium speed until pale and fluffy for about 5 minutes. Fold in eggs and vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Add oats mixture; mix until just combined. Add raisins.

Drop dough in inch balls onto lined baking sheets.

Bake until golden and just set about 10-12 min. Sprinkle sea salt over warm cookies.

buckeyes

Happy Labor Day! Taylor and I enjoyed ourselves a late breakfast at Magnolia Cafe this morning with our friends, M & C. I got the "Economical" --scrambled eggs, homefries, black beans with a large side of salsa. Tay go the "T-Rex Omelet" with pico de gallo, avocado, cheese and smoked turkey. He also got a short stack of gingerbread pancakes, which I hadn't had in years. They smell like fall and like my highschool breakfast dates with my dad.

On another note, on to dessert. My mom got these as a teacher gift years and years ago. I was rereminded of their greatness a few weekends ago. Homemade Reese's essentially.

buckeyes

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cups peanut butter

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 cups confectioners' sugar

4 cups semisweet chocolate chips


DIRECTIONS 

In a large bowl, mix together the peanut butter, butter, vanilla and confectioners' sugar. The dough will look dry. Roll into 1 inch balls and place on a waxed paper-lined cookie sheet. Press a toothpick into the top of each ball (to be used later as the handle for dipping) and chill in freezer until firm, about 30 minutes.

Melt chocolate chips in a double boiler or in a bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir frequently until smooth. Dip frozen peanut butter balls in chocolate holding onto the toothpick. Leave a small portion of peanut butter showing at the top to make them look like Buckeyes. Put back on the cookie sheet and refrigerate until serving.

green pizza

Pizzas are such a great leftovers meal. Especially since I'm overcoming my fear of yeast. Since we've been frequenting The Grove, it's inspired me to throw just about anything on there. Too bad I didn't have any mushrooms, then it'd be heavenly. But then I probably couldn't call this Green Pizza.


I realize I'm using spaghetti sauce on this but I sort of like how it's sweeter and plus this jar is much more versatile if I use it for more than just spaghetti. I also like how these come in flavors. The tomato & basil has chunks of tomato that add to pizzas. In my honest opinion. Obviously you could just use marinara sauce or even tomato paste with some garlic but that wouldn't be as random....
Note the feta placement in the bottom picture. Taylor claims to not like strong cheeses, but I really do. And they make pizzas and a lot of other dishes much more fun. So I thought I start him out on feta {since blue cheese would probably be a criminal starting place....but we'll work up to that}. I put a little cluster to see what would happen, and he ate it! I informed him later, at The Grove actually, that he likes feta. Was that mean? I'm not sure but it makes it easier to cook for both of us if I can work on cheese diversification.


green pizza
INGREDIENTS
this pizza dough, or prepared dough {some hebs sell raw dough near their deli section}
1/4 cup thinly sliced and then quartered zucchini
1 cup uncooked baby spinach leaves
4 tablespoons of this pesto, or basil pesto
1/3 cup cooked chicken, diced
1/3 cup shredded colby jack cheese
1/4 cup shredded parmesean cheese
3 tablespoons crumbled feta cheese
1/3 cup of your favorite, well seasoned tomato sauce {or omit and increase the pesto!}
DIRECTIONS
Lightly saute zucchini and spinach {or zap in the microwave} until just beginning to look and feel cooked. I cooked the spinach just about all the way and then squeezed out the moisture and diced it. I cooked the cut zucchini till it was tender but not completely cooked. {see note}

Oven to 550. Cover pizza stone or baking sheet with parchment paper if you have some. {I'm never consistent about using parchment paper}. Roll out pizza dough to desired thickness, will {or should} rise some. Spread pesto then tomato sauce. Sprinkle with about 2/3 of the cheeses. Add zucchini, spinach and chicken evenly. Sprinkle the rest of the cheeses. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

{note} I'd never tried these veggies on a pizza and wasn't sure if they'd cook all the way, being put on the pizza raw. So I gave them a head start. I have no idea if it was necessary but they turned out great.


{recommended variations for your green pizza} asparagus, green peppers, green tomatoes, arugula. ooooo arugula...

the leaning pear

Here is a new feature to my loyal readers, a restaurant review. For Valentine's day Taylor humored me and we took a trip to Wimberley. In addition to this restaurant, we also visited the Cookie Jar and Driftwood Vineyard.

We highly recommend The Leaning Pear to anyone venturing into the hill country or traveling on R.R. 12. Owned by a pair of fellow Aggies, The Leaning Pear states that they use the freshest seasonal ingredients and in our opinion, did a fantastic job of giving classic dishes a unique, memorable yet tasteful twist --pun intended.

To start, we split the Hill Country Cobb salad which, much to my pleasant surprise, was made with real, leafy greens (not iceberg), included avocado (a Cobb essential) and was mixed with an ample but not excessive amount of zesty 'southwestern ranch dressing.' Taylor "branched out" and ordered the Soup and Sandwich combo. He got the Grilled Chicken Club with avocado, provolone cheese and sundried tomato aioli on what we think was freshly in-house made grilled ciabatta bread. For the soup, he ordered a cup of one of the soup specials, Potato Curry, and said it had a nice kick at the end but wasn't too spicy. He said the soup was fantastic and that it made the meal.

I ordered Crab Cakes, another of the specials. It was a great big, single crab cake with generous (and colored) crabmeat chunks. The cake also included corn kernels and some cooked red peppers for a subtle southwest twist. Crab cakes are always served with the same type of aoili or rémoulade sauce and what sold me about this dish was that they did a pesto version of that standard sauce. Any addition of pest0 = heaven. So I was sold. Also, the breading fell apart beatuifully, indicating that it was not prebattered and then frozen. Obviously no one wants a crab cake with a McFish Fillet battering.

We arrived at 11:35am right before the crowd. It's a hoppin' little spot and, from what we could tell, with good reason.