Honey Bee Cookies

Sugar, flour, and eggs always make’s a great cookie!

This cookie recipe comes from the ABC’s of Baking obtained when collected enough Gold Medal PCUs when I was a wee little kid. It really is a good cookbook but it is more geared towards children cooking with their parents. That being said I modified the honey bee cookies by using cardamom, instead of cinnamon, and used salt honey from Colorado to give it a more sophisticated taste. I stirred the butter, egg, brown sugar, and honey together on my stove top with a double boiler.

After it was mixed I added the salt, baking soda, cardamom, and flour to form the dough and then refrigerated it to give the dough a soft chewy texture after baking.

On to the cookie sheet, and then the finished product.

Experiments in Baking !

Everyone wants to be a little healthier, so I kind of thought a great place to start would be altering a cookie recipe. Snicker doodles!

My starting point of health in this recipe is less sugar, and my way to accomplish this is by using agave nectar. Agave nectar is from the tequila plant and really is not less caloric than sugar but is 2 times sweeter than sugar. Due to the extra sweetness you only use half the amount of sugar called for in the recipe. As an FYI point when you buy agave nectar there are usually two kinds, lighter and darker. Lighter is used in drinks, usually, and the darker is used in baking. I have used the lighter to make lemonade, makes it syrupy, and the darker in this snicker doodle recipe.

I have been slowly modifying the sugar content in this recipe and right now I am at about a half-cup of sugar and a half-cup of agave nectar, not including the cinnamon sugar mix on top. The texture is slightly different but still pretty sugary, also the first bite might taste different but after that you really can’t tell.

Below are pictures of the dough, the raw cookies and the finished cookies !

Sun tea

I love tea.
I especially love it when I can leave it for a few hours and come back later to discover that the sun has made some lovely tea for me. Yeahhh sun tea, or solar tea as my glass jar says.




The other day I was at my local market and found these spice bags that I am now using for loose leaf tea in my sun tea jar. Usually I just use bag tea, but using loose leaf tea adds so many more dimensions. As of now I am just doing a loose leaf black tea with mango and calendula, however I am excited about the endless possibilities of mixing loose leaf teas being brewed by the sun !

A Consortium of Food

When I cook I prefer to do the processing myself, i.e. I like my food in it's entirety when I purchase it. Very rarely do I buy anything processed, except for tofu, cheese, and bread and even those items usually have the least amount of ingredients, and no processed items in it.
One vegetarian cook book that I use follows my eating habits and has really tasty recipes that even non-vegetarians would enjoy. It is Vegetarian Planet by Didi Emmons.

She includes vegetarian and some vegan recipes, describes several cooking methods, different types of vegetables, and also the recipes.  Here are some of the tasty treats that I have made from this book.

This is the Lambless Shepherd's Pie. Instead of lamb she included kasha and bulgur. Also included some veggies and mashed potatoes on top made with milk and butter. The two whole grains in this dish made it very filling and cheap to make.

  Here we have Daikon potstickers with ginger-sesame dipping sauce. This were very simple to make. I just stir fried the veggies, folded the stir fry in the won ton wrappers, and cooked again. The sauce was excellent as well, as a warning it does have wasabi powder but it is not that strong.

This is the Avocado Bistro salad. Very simple with just butter lettuce, avocado, tomato, onion, lime juice, olive oil, and a few spices. 

This has been one of my favorite dishes that I have made recently. It is the Jerusalem Artichoke Casserole.   Potatoes, onions, carrots, and Jerusalem artichokes are cooked in the oven with sherry and then served on a bed of arugula. The artichokes are more like a sweet nutty potato and are hard to find in the summer months.
    I usually cook from this book at least 3 times a week. Last week I made quinoa sandwiches, calzones,  spinach patties with orange raita,  and eggplant tangine. The recipes for drinks (ginger tea, mango lassi, and honey ginger lassi, etc) and desserts (Mexican Brownies and Chocolate black out pudding) are excellent as well.
   I love this cookbook and very rarely am I disappointed.

GIngery tofu and veggies

I love ginger. It’s spiciness with a slight burn awakens my taste buds to a certain nirvana that I just can’t explain in words.

Sometimes I just use it as a spice, other times I steep lemon and honey with it for a tasty spicy drink. Anyway I can taste ginger is a good way.

The Asian Tofu Marinade and Baby Bok Choy recipes from Veganomicon by Isa Moskowitz and Terry Romero are both great recipes to go all out gingery !!

The first step is to press the tofu

 I usually buy extra firm tofu drain it and wrap it in a tea towel. I then press it with my favorite cook books for about an hour or two, flipping the tofu every once in a while. By pressing the tofu this take most of the moisture out allowing the tofu to be firmer and to soak up the marinade to the tofu's fullest potential. 

For the marinade I follow the recipe except to substitute the Asian chili sauce  with ...

I also omit the garlic, cause this stuff is really garlicy, and hot and spicy and... marinadie

I like to marinate it over night and broil it until it gets crispy and almost burnt. 

Usually I serve it with rice and Baby Bok Choy with ginger and shallots, this recipe also comes from Veganomicon. You stir fry the ingredients and then add the bok choy to steam.

  and here is the finished product, with rice

yummy.