Having Fun Learning To Cook: 1-21-13

Well this past weekend was my wives annual post holiday party. It was also her birthday on Saturday so I decided that I should "help" by cooking a few things to lessen the load on her. I don't know if it really does but she doesn't seem to mind when I am in the kitchen so I'll continue to jump in. There were a few things that I wanted to make. I made the mushrooms that I have posted here before. Instead of frying them in oil though I baked them in the oven at 350 for about 45 minutes. I had to spray a little pam cooking spray on them to get a little crunch out of them and I did turn them after about 22 minutes so they would cook evenly.

I think I would like to do these baked one more time at a slightly higher temp.

I also made the deviled eggs. I am not going to post a recipe for these as most people know how to make them but I will say that I used a mixture of honey mustard and mayo and, oh my, where they good.

I had decided to make some mini calzones so I found a great dough recipe that I followed to the letter. The result of the recipe was some of the best feeling dough I have used in a long time. I then mixed some fresh mozzarella and ricotta cheese together at about a 50/50 ratio. Rolling out the dough to little sheets I stuffed with the cheese mix, and added sliced yellow bell pepper, sliced onion, sliced mushroom to all of them. I added pepperoni to half of them for the none vegetarians in the group of visitors that we had. I baked them for about 20 minutes on my pizza stone at 425.

I also made some no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies. I remember my mom used to make these when I was a kid but I never really paid attention as to how. Then a few years ago the wife tried to make them and while they tasted fine they never really set up and so I thought I would give it a go. I found this recipe and again, without changing a thing they tasted great, and they set up well. I was pretty darn happy!

The no-bake cookies are to the right. the cookies to the left were something that the wife had made.

The last none cake thing that I made are called Greek Potatoes. They are an oven roasted potato that my daughter asked when I would make again. I again followed the recipe with a couple of exceptions. We had run out of oregano so I skipped that and for the lemons, well we didn't have any but we did have some lemon juice which I figure is pretty much the same thing so I used that instead. The flavor of these was wonderful. I made two pans worth of these potatoes and I suggest using foil on the bottom of the pan to help with clean up. I had read that somewhere and was glad that I remembered the advice.