feels her annual Thanksgiving cold coming on. maybe bronchitis.

Husband declares, "Best peanut butter cookies ever!"

While cleaning out the fridge last week, I discovered that we had three almost full jars of peanut butter in the fridge. That fact combined with the arctic cold front hanging over the Mid-Atlantic made Peanut Butter Cookies pretty much inevitable today. I was bored with the same ones I have been making for 30 years so I scoured the web for a new recipe. I found a few that looked interesting so I combined them into this:

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Yields: ~3 Dozen

Ingredients

3/4 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar, packed

3/4 cup white sugar

1 1/4 cup peanut butter, chunky

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs

---

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 cup quick cooking oatmeal

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cream the butter, sugars, and peanut butter together until smooth. Add the vanilla and then the eggs, one at a time until well incorporated. Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, oats, and cinnamon together. Add dry ingredients to wet slowly, until mixed well.

Spoon by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased baking sheet. Mark tops of cookies with standard peanut butter cookie fork cross.

Bake for 12-17 minutes until bottoms just start to turn golden brown.

is enjoying watching the pretty snow.

is lost in a maze of resolutions and statuses. Workflows, it burns us!

is trying to avoid the plague going around the office.

had a 4 cat morning. brrrrrrr.

is sprint planning.

is going to get some apple cider and dumplings http://ping.fm/AtWiY

is going to get some apple cider and dumplings.

finally in lounge pants and the big yellow sweatshirt. ahhhhhhh.

got the good doughnut.

is glad it's Friday.

is full of Charm City Cake and Dangerously Delicious Pie!

is pinging!

Embracing Chickentarianism

Since Mark got laid off our insane habit of eating 2 or 3 meals out a day, every day, has come to an end but I am still completely unmotivated to actually "cook" anything during the week. What's a girl to do? Buy a rotisserie chicken, of course! It is amazing what you can do with a whole chicken. I thought about buying one of those "101 things to do with a rotisserie chicken" cookbooks but I still haven't run out of ideas. Here are just a few of the things I have made lately:

1. Pulled BBQ Chicken Sandwiches
   
   1. Strip all the meat off the chicken and throw it in a pan with some BBQ sauce. Heat it up and slap it on hamburger buns. Or hot dog buns. Or leftover naan…
      
   2. This is an excellent way to disguise dark meat from people who claim they don't like it.
      
2. Chicken Tetrazzini
   
   1. Sauté some mushrooms, make a béchamel, boil whatever pasta you have, mix it all together in a baking dish with whatever chicken you picked off the carcass, slap some breadcrumbs on the top and you've got casserole heaven.
      
3. Chicken Chana Masala
   
   1. An international "can of this, can of that" recipe. Rinse a can of chickpeas and chuck it in a pan. Throw in a can of diced or stewed tomatoes. Add a bunch of your favorite Indian spices (I love Penzey's Rogan Josh Seasoning) and a bunch of cut up chicken. Let it sauté until the tomatoes break down a little.
      
   2. I once found myself completely out of chickpeas and made this with a can of black-eyed peas instead. Still terrific.
      
4. Greek Cous Cous Pilaf
   
   1. This one is based on having some leftover grilled veggies in the fridge also. It originated with some excellent grilled zucchini I made when it was at its peak one summer. Make a pot of cous cous (I like whole wheat cous cous because I can pretend it is healthy) with chicken stock and a little lemon juice. Let the cous cous cool a little and throw in the grilled veggies, cut up chicken, and some chunks of feta cheese.
      
   2. I make boatloads of this in the summer and eat it right out of the Gladware every night until it is gone.
      
5. Quinoa Pilaf
   
   1. This is a variation on the cous cous recipe I had to invent because my husband hates cous cous. Last time I made it, I had half a bag of spinach that was on its last legs so I chopped that up and threw it in the hot quinoa as soon as I pulled it off the stove, along with the feta cheese and chicken. Quinoa's good but nothing beats cous cous for its 5-minute prep time.
      
6. Chicken Pot Pies
   
   1. My tiny kit house has no central AC. The oven goes off as of Mother's Day and does not come back on until Halloween. The official Halloween meal is idiot chicken pot pies.
      
   2. Unroll a sheet of pie crust and cut it in quarters. Fit each quarter into a muffin tin, leaving the excess hanging out. Add some cut up chicken and some frozen veggies. Pour in chicken gravy (the kind in a jar will work) and then fold over the excess. It so doesn't have to be anything close to perfect. Bake then until they are done.
      
7. Quiche
   
   1. My quiche recipe is as follows:
      
      1. 4 eggs
         
      2. 1.5 cups of some combination of milk and half and half
         
      3. 1 cup or so of the cheese that needs to be eaten most urgently
         
      4. Whatever leftover vegetable matter is in the fridge and is about to go bad
         
      5. Whatever leftover protein is in the fridge and is about to go bad
         
   2. This week we are having Chicken and Mushroom quiche with a combination of smoked mozzarella, fontina, and something else I didn't remember buying but was pretty tasty
      
8. The most holy sacrament in chickentarianism is not to waste any part of the chicken. Every Sunday night, no matter what I make, The bones get broken up and thrown in a pot with whatever aromatics I happen to have and some salt and pepper to make a fresh batch of stock. Of all the great things you can make with a rotisserie chicken, great stock is one of the best. Don't forget to scrape in the chicken jelly from the bottom of the container!

I missed the memo

I said I wasn't going to do it anymore but I can't stop myself. I keep reading the comments at the end of articles in the paper. Maybe I should go back to only reading the print version again since that won't include yet another essay about the perils of Barak Hussein Obama by Ordinary Joe from Glen Burnie. But I read it and now I can't get it all out of my head again, the name calling, the accusations of socialism, the derision for his experience… it's all there as usual. But here's what I don't understand. When did the poles shift so selfishness became a virtue while altruism became a sin? I went to church as a little girl and studied the Ten Commandments and the Bible. We learned the Golden Rule, "Love they neighbor." I went to Girl Scouts where we collected canned goods to give to the poor.

But now, I feel like the cool kids are pointing and laughing at me all over again for carrying my Unicef boxes around with my Trick-or-Treat bag. Did they take out the commandment about coveting your neighbor's ass to make room for "Look out for #1"? Somehow I went from living a good, caring life to being a communist and I didn't even notice. Hell, I'm not even a good Christian anymore because I don't hate the right people.