Love On A Sheetpan

We were at the grocery store yesterday and I was just minding my own business in the checkout line.  I waited patiently for the clerk to finish with the customer in front of us as CT viewed the gazillion types of chewing gums, contemplating on which pack he should buy (heck, that alone can take 10 minutes!)

Then I heard this whisper... "Yoo hoo... over here."  I quickly turned around to see who was behind me, but found no one.  Then I heard the whisper again... "Psssst... to your right."  I looked to my right, and saw it.  It was speaking to me, and this time I heard it loud and clear.  Here it is:

At lightening speed, I reached for this magazine fearing that someone else would grab it before I could (even though no one else was even around me.)  Without a second thought, and without a quick flip-through to look at some of the recipes, I declared to CT, "I have to get this!"  CT, as good as he usually is about my unauthorized purchases, just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Ok."

Did I really need to spend $6 on a magazine?  No.  Do I have many of these recipes already?  Maybe.  If not, can I find these recipes online?  Probably.  Was this really an unauthorized purchase?  Well, I DID tell CT I was going to buy it before I actually made the purchase, so technically, it was not an unauthorized purchase.   Anyway, the title "100 Best Cookies - Love On A Sheetpan" sold me.  That is why I bought this magazine.  That, and the fact that I love reading the recipes and looking at the photos.  Call me old-fashioned, but I like turning the pages of a magazine, appreciating the art of the beautifully photographed goodies (I'm not sure why my cookie pictures don't turn out as good.)  

Love on a sheetpan... that pretty much sums up my feelings of homemade holiday cookies.  Leanne, my mom and me are pretty good... no, wait... we are EXCELLENT cookie bakers, and our holiday cookies are the best you will find.   And I never met a homemade cookie I didn't like (well, there was that one recipe from last year that will remain nameless, because the baker might be reading this post!) 

At any rate, there truly is nothing better than a homemade holiday cookie - made with REAL butter, REAL vanilla, lots of love and maybe a little passion.  After all, love on a sheetpan is what it is all about!

To Shuck or Shell - That is the Question

Yesterday, we stopped by my mother-in-law's house for a quick visit. Brief background about my mother-in-law, AT, mom of CT:

AT is one of nine children, born and raised in Italy, in a small town just outside of Venice.  After AT and BT (CT's dad) were married, they decided that they would have a better life in America.  So, they packed up their few belongings and traveled to Chicago, where they began a new life.  For a brief time when CT was about six or seven years old, they moved back to Italy and lived there for about a year, but then eventually came back to Chicago.  AT was the only one of her siblings to have left Italy; the rest remained there, and for those who are still with us, remain there today.

I give credit to AT and BT for coming to America, not knowing the English language and the ways of the culture here - which is SOOOOOO much different than Italy.   AT said she learned English from watching TV.  Her English is pretty good, although she has such a thick accent, it took me a while to understand her pronounciation of some words.   CT and his brothers speak fluent Italian, and I always laugh because sometimes AT forgets that I do not speak Italian, and sometimes she'll leave us voicemail messages in Italian, or she will be speaking in English to us, and without realizing, change mid-sentence to Italian.  Then, I have to remind her, "English, please."  And she laughs.

So, back to the original point of this story.  We stopped by AT's yesterday, and there we found her sitting at her kitchen table with a big bushel of beans. 

Not green beans that I'm used to, but these long, white and pink-ish/red-ish colored beans.  She apparantly went to a farm not too far from her house and actually PICKED this entire bushel herself!   It looked like she had a thousand beans there, and she was preparing them to be frozen, so she could use them throughout the winter for soups and sugo (AT's italian word for "sauce".) 

Then I asked her, "So, what do you do with these beans?  Do you shuck them?"  (Heck, what do I know!)  She looked at me and started to laugh.  She said, "No, you shell them."  Well, what can I say, I'm an American city girl who buys her GREEN beans frozen in a plastic package from the grocery store.  Oh, yeah, then I nuke them in the microwave.

Anyway, CT and I pulled up two chairs and we began to help her shell her beans.  With the three of us working, it took us 2 1/2 hours to shell those beans.  At the end of our visit, she had all her beans neatly shelled and stored in freezer bags in her "frigidaire" (as she calls her refrigerator/freezer).

   

I never thought I'd enjoy shucking shelling beans as much as I did.  I had such a great sense of accomplishment after finally seeing the bottom of the bushel empty.  Ok, my thumbs hurt a little, but so what.  And I know that over the upcoming winter months, I will have the pleasure to enjoy some great soup or sugo - courtesy of AT.

Toasting Your Nuts

Day #4 of this blog. What to write… what to write...thinking…. nothing…. blank…. Oh wait... got it.

Ok, here is the question of the day: Do you toast your walnuts? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Today is the first time I have ever toasted walnuts. I found a recipe for a couscous salad from a magazine sitting on Leanne’s kitchen table the other day. (You know Leanne – my sister and blog hero; author of From Chaos Comes Happiness).  I decided to try this recipe. Here are the ingredients: plain cooked couscous, red seedless grapes (sliced in half), feta cheese, toasted walnuts, olive oil, lemon juice (the real stuff, not the bottled stuff), salt-n-pepper, and parsley. All pretty basic. All fresh. All yummy.

Anyway, I proceeded to toast my walnuts. The aroma coming from my oven as my nuts toasted was amazing. When toasted, walnuts have such a different, rich, and earthy flavor. Combined with the other ingredients, this salad is really delicious and is probably one of my new favorites.

(Sorry, the picture does not do the salad justice. I’ll work on my photography skills next.)

So, if you have never toasted your walnuts, I encourage you to do so. I guarantee you will enjoy it!