A Blogger is born!

Well, I've finally took the plunge and decided to create my own blog. I love to cook, and I figured this would be a great way to keep track of the recipes I try. Today was a banner day-I made ratatouille (as my garden is overflowing with tomatoes and zucchinis), my standard chicken soup (kind of a quick and easy wedding soup) that uses the leftovers from a Costco rotisserie chicken, and five kinds of cookies for my son's wedding, which is in two weeks. Husband and I made 2 batches of pizzelles, snowballs (aka Russian Tea Cakes or Mexican Wedding Cookies), buckeyes, sugar cookies shaped like wedding bells and hearts, and ice cream nut rolls.

I found the ratatouille recipe at http://www.provencebeyond.com/food/ratatouille.html

It's simple yet delicious! For the most part, I followed the "Our Method". Here's the recipe:

• 2 pounds or so of tomatoes, blanched, skins removed and chopped
• large zucchini, coursely chopped
• large eggplant, coursely chopped
• 2 large peppers (red and green)
• 6 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 large onion, coursely chopped
• 1/2 small can tomato paste (or small can of tomato sauce)
• herbs de provence (basil, thyme, parsley)

1. Prepare a large cooking pot with thick bottom, put in plenty olive oil.
2. Chop the onion, put it into the pot and start it cooking slowly. Chop and add the garlic.
3. Wash the bell pepper, cut into small strips, and stir it in.
4. Chop peeled tomatoes in big chunks, and throw them in and stir in well.
5. Add the herbs de Provence and pepper. If the tomatoes are flavorless (all too common these days), add 1/2 can of tomato paste at this time.
6. Cut the eggplant and the zucchini into big chunks, then throw them into the pot. Then then need to be stirred down frequently until they've merged with the rest of the ingredients.
This takes about an hour, from when we first start chopping until everything is in the pot together. We then cook slowly for one to two hours, depending on how chunky you want in and how eager you are to try it.

This was fabulous! Husband and I ate it with nothing more than a couple of pieces of crusty bread.

The snowball (Russian Tea Cakes) recipe came from Allrecipes. I prefer pecans to walnuts, so I've changed the recipe to reflect how I made them: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Russian-Tea-Cakes-I/Detail.aspx (makes ~ 3 dozen cookies)

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoons confectioners'
sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar for
decoration (or more)
DIRECTIONS:
1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

2.In a medium bowl, cream butter and vanilla until smooth. Combine the 6 tablespoons confectioners' sugar and flour; stir into the butter mixture until just blended. Mix in the chopped walnuts until all flour is incorporated. Roll dough into 1 inch balls, and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet. (they don't spread, so it's possible to get all the cookies on one cookie sheet if it's a big one).
3.Bake for 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Once you've gotten all the cookies on the rack, roll in confectioners' sugar. Let cool slightly and roll in the sugar a second time.

Finally, I finished the Buckeyes.

1 2 lb. bag of confectioners sugar

1 lb butter

1 18oz jar peanut butter

3 8oz Hershey chocolate bars

1 slab parafin wax

Cream the butter and peanut butter. Add confectioners sugar and mix until combined. Roll in 1" balls, place on cookie sheets with waxed paper, and refrigerate until firm.

On top of double boiler, melt chocolate and parafin wax. Insert toothpicks into balls and dip into chocolate until most of the ball is covered. Remove toothpicks and smooth over the toothpick hole.

Refrigerate. These can be frozen. One note: I had a lot of chocolate left over after all the balls were dipped. I may try to do this with 2 bars and 2/3 slab of parafin next time.