vday cookies

I know this is a little late but I just wanted to post about the delicious treat I made for valentines day! I adapted a Martha Stewart recipe and made short bread cookies and the dipped them in melted chocolate. something that I realized while doing this, is that the more oil you put in melted chocolate mixture, the harder it will be for the chocolate to harden when you're done. I made the batter and then put it in the fridge to harden, and when I took it out, it was extremely crumbly and I didn't think I was going to be able to do anything with it but I managed to roll it out (sort of) and shape them into hearts. But they came out really well and solid. After I dipped the cookies in the oil and chocolate mixture I left them in the freezer overnight to harden because I was worried that the chocolate wouldn't stay solid. They were delicious though, my friends loved them. I'm also enclosing a picture of the carrot soup that I made yesterday. It was super easy and I highly recommend it. I didn't really use a recipe. I heated up some butter and then threw in some onions and browned them, then I put in a little bit of parsley and a clove of garlic. I let that simmer for about thirty seconds, then I put in about a cup of brunoised carrots. I poured in about 2 cups of chicken broth and a cup of water. I let that simmer for about 45 minutes and then after it cooled I blended it up really well and added some salt and pepper and it was delicious. Also here's a cute idea for you to ponder-for really easy and bite size frittatas, you can preheat the oven to 350 degrees, whisk some eggs, add in whatever you want, herbs, cheese, veggies meat. And then pour it into greased sections of a muffin pan and bake for 20 minutes. It's super easy and delicious.

successful cooking day!

I'm trying out for an internship at C'est Si Bon cooking school tomorrow so I thought I might as well do some cooking this weekend! Today the lovely Abby Stern came over and took photographs of my food with her very legitimate camera so get excited. Yesterday I started a soup by cutting up some onions and carrots and browning them in a sauce pan with some butter. Then I added in a pound of peeled and diced tomatoes along with some garlic, vegetable stock, dill, a bay leaf, salt, and pepper. I brought it all to a boil and then simmered it for 45 minutes. Then I decided to take a break and I stuck it all in the fridge. This morning I took it out of the fridge, brought it back to room temp and then blended it with my immersion blender. I ended up adding a little more garlic and dill at the end but the final product was delicious. And my mom was sick, so she was very appreciative of the soup! Then I made 7-up pound cake which I had the recipe from cooking camp for and it was delicious and we're eating more of it for dessert at family dinner tomorrow night.

yum! (photo credits to the amazing Abby Stern if you didn't catch that the first time around)

I also made muddy buddies which I found the recipe for on the side of the chex mix box. My mom had some leftover rice chex because she's making these delicious meatballs for tomorrow night so I used the rest for this. It's pretty simple and super addicting. Basically all you have to do is melt some chocolate and peanut butter and butter in the microwave and then mix it all up with the chex and then stick all that in a large bag with some powdered sugar and shake it a lot and then voila!

Anyways, wish me luck on the tryout! And comment if you're reading this. I love comments.

grocery store

I just shamelessly went to a grocery store (the name will be left undisclosed) in my pajamas and bought chocolate cake. things can only go up from here I promise! Ill be blogging soon!!

new ideas

I know I haven't posted in months and for that I apologize. High School is a difficult adjustment but I am getting there and I am writing this post to say that I will be posting again soon. I've recently gotten back from Europe and I've been finding myself really interested in a lot of different types of European cuisine, especially French (Julia Child coming back to haunt me ;)). I'm going to try to get a better camera soon so I can take some better pictures but I have been making a lot of new friends and who knows? Maybe they'll be taking some photographs of my upcoming dishes. This isn't the last of me! Check back soon!

thyme for peanut butter cookies!

If not alerted by the title of this post, we have moved on to yet another cookie recipe.

These are peanut butter that I found off of a website, they were better than expected, crumbly and delicious.
If you want to make them I would recommend making the cookie size to a pretty small ball, so that they won't crumble, they spread out a lot, more than you would expect. Also make sure to refrigerate for ALL 3 HOURS if not more, I got a little lazy and took them out at like 2 and a half, it worked okay but the dough was a little hard to work with, so I wouldn't suggest taking them out early. Here's the recipe:

Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe

from simplyrecipes.com

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

METHOD

1 Beat the butter until creamy, 2 minutes. Add the sugars, beat for 2 more minutes. Mix in the peanut butter and egg. Mix together the dry ingredients - flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir the dry ingredients into the sugar butter mixture.

2 Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate at least 3 hours.

3 Preheat oven to 375°F. Shape dough into 1 1/4 inch balls. Place about 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten in crisscross pattern with a fork. Bake until light brown, 9 to 10 minutes. Cool on baking sheets for a minute; transfer to rack to cool completely.

For chewier cookies, bake at 300°F for 15 minutes.

Try them out! They're super easy.

Update on the gnocchi: I'm making gnocchi for dinner tonight! I've so far quartered and peeled the potatoes, they were taking a really long time to cook. They need to be less firm, more mushy so I can put them through the ricer. I bought a ricer just for this, so I'm really excited to use it!

I'm in the process of considering buying an actual URL for my blog. nothing is decided yet but keep checking back for an update!

xoxo

Thyme for the end of a wonderful week..

This week has been amazing. I would like to thank everybody who has inspired me throughout everything, everyone at the house, I love you guys, stay in touch. Dorette, Jeremy, Rich, the owners of fickle creek farm; Ben and Noah. Everyone from Jack Tapp's, the farmers on the homestead, everybody at what used to be called 'rusty gate', everyone at Chapel Hill creamery, prodigal, the workers at Miel bon bon, Vimala and her helpers. Just thank you so much to everybody. I had an amazing experience, starting to find who I am through other people. I would also like to thank my loyal blog followers (mostly my mom). Writing is something I love and will continue to do, but seeing that other people are enjoying my writing and continue to check back, is what encourages me to keep on going. Keep checking back. I can't make any promises but I'll do my best to try and keep my blog interesting and helpful to everyone.

Thyme for our Jack Tapp's visit on Tuesday

I'm gonna miss these kids..

The other day we went to Jack Tapp's house. He owns the honey company 'busy bee'. The honey is purchased by buyers around the globe including Thailand, China, Canada, the Bahamas, and of course right here in the lovely usa. They had many types of honey, but I think my favorite was the wildflower honey. They were all delicious though. Considering I'm deathly scared of bees, especially honey bees, I think I did quite well, you can see how close I got to the hives from the pictures I took, no zoom involved.

if you ever want some good honey, which I would highly recommend, as honey is delicious on everything from french toast, to regular toast, to biscuits, to tea, I would recommend busy bee honey, the most fresh and delicious honey in the area. You can buy busy bee honey at weaver street market, and you can also check out their website: http://www.busybeeofnc.com/

after we checked out the hives, Jack Tapp, his daughter in law, and granddaughter got us the treat of getting to go to the place where busy bee honey is packaged and shipped off, which was amazingly cool. The place we went to was called JFAP. I believe I heard it referred to as a early business incubator, which makes a lot of sense. When businesses are starting out, they can go to JFAP and rent space and use their utilities, which can save a ton of costs. JFAP was only culinary businesses, and I actually saw a few places that I recognized that rent space there which was pretty cool. For example baguettaboutit and luna pops. Baguettabout it is a really cool food truck that I've seen in front of harris teeter in Carrboro, I keep meaning to try it, I'll get around to it eventually. But apparantly they make and package their food at JFAP and then put it in the truck to travel around with. Also Luna Pops, a local popsicle brand, they use only locally found ingredients and their popsicles are delicious, we got to try a free one while we were there. I tried a cookies n cream one. mmm.

 This machine below is pretty cool, it can freeze the luna pops in 15 minutes. wow!

  In the picture below, the man sitting on the plastic bucket is filling up jars with honey, the honey comes out of a spout in intervals of just the right amount so that they don't waste any. After he finished each jar he would hand it to the man next to him who would put a lid on it and finish packing it up.

 Below is one of the luna pop freezers, you can rent freezer or fridge space, or an entire freezer or fridge.