Adam's Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies

My brother Adam likes to come up with new variations to traditional cookie recipes. One of his latest inventions: he asked my mother to make him a chocolate chip cookie dough recipe, but to use his favorite trail mix in the cookies instead of chocolate chips. They came out pretty interesting!

Most recently, he asked us to make him oatmeal cookies, but instead of raisins to put in chopped up apples and butterscotch chips. I used a traditional oatmeal raisin recipe, but swapped the white sugar for brown sugar to give the cookies more flavor. I also reduced the amount of sugar in the recipe since I assumed the apples & butterscotch chips would be bringing extra sweetness to the cookies.

I'm very tempted to try this recipe with maple syrup or honey, but I'd have to play around with the recipe a bit since I'd be substituting liquid for solids. I also would like to try it with toffee pieces rather than butterscotch chips.

Cookies by the cookie jar

Freshly picked Michigan apple

Ingredients:
2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp sea salt
3 cups rolled oats
1 medium apple, peeled & chopped into very small pieces
1 cup butterscotch chips

Butterscotch Chips

Directions below:
Preheat oven to 350F.
Beat together butter, sugar & vanilla until creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beat after each. Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Then add to butter mixture gradually while mixing.
Stir in oats, apples & butterscotch chips.

Cookie Dough

This is my awesome cookie dough scoop.
It's similar to an ice cream scoop, but only one tablespoon in size.
It makes this part of cookie baking so much easier.

Madison getting a taste of cookie dough

Into the oven they go.
Bake 10-12 minutes

...until golden brown.

Let cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes.


Then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Enjoy!

Pinecone Birdfeeder

Spring is here, the birds are chirping and we've been seeing a lot of robins around. Madison & I decided to make a special treat for them and hoped it would draw birds to our magnolia tree.

A treat for the birds

How to make a pinecone birdfeeder:

Items needed - pinecone, peanut butter, birdseed, a foot of string

1. Tie the string around the pinecone, about 3 tiers down from the top.

2. Spread peanut butter over the surface of the pinecone.

3. Pour a generous amount of birdseed onto a plate and roll the pinecone in the birdseed, covering all of the peanut butter.

4. Hang in a nearby tree and watch the birds enjoy their treat!

The Marvelous Morel Mushroom

mar·vel·ous: Extremely good or enjoyable

Morels are edible wild mushrooms.

Funny story: My daughter, Madison was playing outside while my husband & I were finishing up our dinner. She comes back inside carrying a mesh bag of these mushrooms. We asked her "where did you get those?" and she replied "some person gave them to me." I could see the concerned look on my husband's face...some strange person giving our daughter a bag full of mushrooms? I had never seen these type of mushrooms before but my husband knew what they were - morel mushrooms. We went outside and found Derrick's Uncle David standing on our back porch - we were quickly relieved! He explained to us how he had gone mushroom hunting and found these in the woods, and how to clean & cook them.

We were quite excited about having these new mushrooms to try so I took pictures throughout our process of preparing & cooking them. We decided to cook them the way Uncle David recommended since this is our first time cooking with morels. He recommended tossing them in saltine cracker crumbs and frying them in butter! Sounded delicious so we tried it out.

Here's our morel cooking adventure:

A morel in my hand.

Derrick ready to cook the morels.

Soaking the mushrooms in salt water.

Soaking some more

It's very important to clean morels well. They have a lot of nooks & crannies for dirt & bugs to hide in (we found a slug hiding inside one of the mushrooms.)
We soaked the morels for 15 minutes in salt water. They were still a little dirty so we swapped out the water and soaked them for another 15 minutes.

After they were done soaking, I dried them on a paper towel and Derrick cut them in half lengthwise.

Derrick cutting the morels in half.

After they were cut in half, I rinsed them again in a bowl full of water to clean out the hollow inside. While I did that, Derrick crushed up some saltines to make crumbs.

The morels anxiously waiting for me to toss them in the saltine crumbs.

The all coated in cracker crumbs and ready to be fried in butter.

Putting them in the pan of butter (we used about 2 tbs).

Cooking in butter.

...and voila! Fried morel mushrooms!

They were delicious! We both really enjoyed eating them and decided they were the best mushrooms we have tasted yet. Thank you Uncle David for bringing us these marvelous mushrooms!

Felt Food!

Madison asked me to make her felt food this year for her birthday. I didn't have much time to make it (about 4 hrs total) and I've never made it before, so I went with items that were really simple to make.

Breakfast

Milk, Multigrain Pancakes with Maple Syrup & Butter, Eggs & Bacon and a Strawberry

Lunch

Quesadilla

Dinner

Spaghetti with Sauce

Dessert

Milk & Cookies

Madison's Birthday Cake

Madison turned 4 years old on Monday! She requested carrot cake this year for her birthday. She said NO nuts or raisins but she wanted applesauce in it. I found a Martha Stewart recipe that had unsweetened applesauce in it and just left out the nuts & raisins. http://www.marthastewart.com/339740/carrot-cake

Decorating was a breeze with my new cake decorating set I bought! Madison picked out the pink flowers on the cake. I found them in the cake decorating section of the store & they were premade by Wilton.


Originally we had birthday candles that spelled out "MADISON". We had found them at a store in NJ, but the "N" candle broke, so we decided to go with these instead.

HAPPY 4TH BIRTHDAY MADISON!

Kale Chips

Kale is an amazing vegetable (it's actually a form of cabbage.) It is loaded with healthy nutrients like calcium, iron, vitamins A, C & K. It is very high in beta-carotene and lutein which promotes healthy eye sight. Just 2 cups of kale has 4g of protein and 3g of fiber!

I was a little hesitant to try these but I finally did. They are so delicious! Kale chips are crunchy, light and make the perfect healthy snack.

This is how I made them:

I took one kale bunch and ripped the kale leaves from the thick stalk, then tore them into smaller pieces. You could probably leave the stalk too if you wanted.
Toss the leaves with 1 or 2 tbs olive oil. Sprinkle with sea salt. Place the kale leaves on a cookie sheet in a single layer.
Preheat oven to 350F and bake for 10-15 minutes, stirring them occasionally and checking to make sure they don't over cook. (I overcooked a batch and they came out kind of bitter, similar to burnt popcorn.)
When they are done, they should be crispy to the touch.
Let cool and then enjoy!