Classic Rolled Sugar Cookies Recipe (Christmas Cookies)

I'm not a a baker!  I really don't like making these cookies because they take FOREVER but they were always a big hit and I spent many years helpin my mom with these cookies.  She usually did get the compliments, but she'd give us kids the credit for the decorating.  Ha ha!  I sure do miss my mom!

This is also all my brother ever wants for Christmas.  When you think about it, this is a very nice gift!  They take a lot of work, time, love, sweat, swears, and they are sweet and delicious.  I'm thinking GIFT CARD this year.  Ha ha!

My brother and my baby girl!

A funny story and then I'll share the recipe!  A few years ago, my sister sent me a picture of her showing me that she was baking these cookies for my brother's Christmas gift!  He's a sly devil, as he asked BOTH of us that year!  So I asked her for the recipe because obviously she had our mom's recipe.  She said she'd bring it to me when they came to see our new house.

She and her honey came to see us, from Charlotte, NC, before heading to my brothers.  She brought us some of the cookies but NO recipe.  She said, I didn't remind her to bring it.  Well... well... that was true.  Ha ha!  So, no recipe and we were a day away from our Christmas gathering.  Sigh!

Baby girl with my sister and her honey!

So began the frantic recipe hunt!  I thought mom always used her yellow cookbook when we made the cookies, so I went to my cookbook bookshelf and looked.  THE PAGE WAS MISSING!!!  So I looked in my grandmother's old Betty Crocker cookbook and the sugar cookie recipe page was missing from her's too!  WHAT THE...

Then I was really scrambling.  I looked on vintage recipe sites, pinterest, cookbook.com sites, and even my grandma's Encyclopedia of Cooking book.  In there, I found a recipe that seemed close.  After discussing this weirdness with hubby,  I wondered how my sister had the recipe.  Thinking back... I vaguely remembered emailing it to her when mom was still alive.  YES!  Hit the email archives... JACKPOT! (but I kept the Encyclopedia handy)



via GIPHY

So now that I have the recipe too, I'm putting it here so it won't mysteriously disappear again!

Making Christmas cookies or any cut out sugar cookies is always more fun if:
1. You enjoy baking
2. You do it family and friends (and a cocktail).
Doing it by yourself is torture, unless of course you are 1.

Rolled Sugar Cookies from the Pillsbury New Family Cookbook (1973)

Yield: 72 Cookies
Ingredients:
1 cup butter softened (I used real butter of course!)  {my mom used margarine }
1 cup sugar
1 egg
3 tablespoons cream or milk (I recommend 2% or higher - I used half and half)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tsp anise extract (Not sure if this was my mom's add in or in the original recipe.  We DO NOT like licorice so I used almond extract)
3 cups unsifted flour (with self-rising flour, omit baking powder and salt)
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt (I used my Himalayan pink salt and they were great!)

Directions:
In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar.
Beat in egg, cream, vanilla, and flavored extract
Stir in flour, baking powder, and salt until well mixed

Wrap the dough in wax paper and refrigerate for easier handling.

Getting ready to chill the dough while I chill with a rum and coke! 

Preheat oven to 400
Roll out dough, one-third at a time on a floured surface to 1/8 inch thickness.
Cut into desired shapes
Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets
Bake 5 - 8 minutes or until slightly golden.
Cool on rack

Decorate as desired

Enjoy!

Homemade Ketchup Recipe

Okay, we hardly ever eat ketchup so I've not really stressed about the ingredients of what I'm buying, but we've been exercising 30 minutes a day and watching our carbs and sugar.  The result... 2 lb weight gain.  Thanks!

So I am looking at everything!  Sugar is in almost everything and sugar is evil.  I think I've mentioned before that I don't have a huge sweet tooth, so cutting sweets is not a big deal for me, but finding out it's in almost everything I buy, just sucks.

So I'm trying to cut it out in places I know where it is.  Ketchup is one of those places.  I've searched pinterest and this recipe is very common out there.  I've made my own tweaks but that's how I "own it'  You need to do the same!  "Own it!".

Homemade Ketchup
Ingredients
2 6oz cans of tomato paste
1/4 cup honey (use your local honey)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 packet stevia (optional - I might leave it out of the next batch)
1/2 cup of water
Pink salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and pepper to taste.  Start with a 1/4 tsp of each.  You will need to add more to "own it!".
Additional Tracy "own it" ingredient was white wine.  Yum!  - We usually have chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon on hand which make great cooking add in!

Put all of the ingredients in a saucepan and simmer for 2 hours.  Taste and add more seasoning.  Mine was way too sweet when I tasted it but adding a few more shakes of the garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper made it pretty awesome!

Use a funnel and slowly pour your ketchup in a container (preferably glass) and store in the fridge.

I had saved our last ketchup bottle to store my homemade ketchup.

I'll be on the lookout for a glass bottle or 2 for the next batch of ketchup.  I must note that the brand on the bottle that you see, is the the best store bought ketchup we have ever had!

Enjoy!

Easy Homemade Fried Potatoes

I usually try to plan our next week's menus the day before I grocery.  That way, we stick to a budget and a healthier eating plan.  Are we flexible enough to deviate?  Well... when you find a sack of potatoes that you forgot you had purchased (and they're still in excellent shape)... you deviate from your planned side dishes and plan ahead a little.  

So this week, we had chicken breasts for 2 nights and then I had a package of pollack in the freezer for tonight.  I had planned long grain rice for both chicken nights.  As I went into my fabulous new kitchen cabinet that honey restored and refurbished for me (OMG!  I need to do a post on the cabinet!), I noticed a sack of small potatoes.  As I thought to myself, "when did I buy those?".  I also thought, "dang, I better use those before they go bad!".  

So we had rice one night and then I baked potatoes last night.  Thinking ahead, I baked 2 extra potatoes for fried potatoes tonight.  

So here's the simplest way to make yummy fried potatoes for 2: (of course do your potato count and onions based on family size)

Ingredients:

Leftover baked potatoes chopped (you could also quick bake your potatoes in the microwave prior to making these but they are easier to handle cold out of the fridge rather than hot out the microwave)

1/2 large sweet onion chopped

1 tbsp EVOO

Seasonings: 

onion powder

garlic powder

pepper

pink Himalayan sea salt

That's it!

Put your EVOO in your frying pan and heat on medium.  Add your potatoes and onions to warm pan, season, then stir up on the warm EVOO.   

Periodically mix the potatoes around to brown them nicely (about 15 minutes or so)

Enjoy as a side dish for any meal and also as yummy extra with weekend breakfast!

Healing Chicken Noodle Soup

Okay... I'm on day 6 of the flu.  I'm still running a fever.  It's the worst week to miss work.  Yay me! But amidst dozing, changing "Sliders" episodes on Netflix, and putting my robe on and off (hot, cold, hot, cold) I've been inspired to blog some.

I was at work the day I started getting sick and since I made this on day 2 of feeling like poo (hey, that rhymes), I didn't put my all into this.  I made it the best I could in hopes of the garlic, onion, and broth would do their thing and make us feel better.

The problem is that after I made this soup, honey and I were too sick to really eat.  We never could get much of this in us.  Maybe a half a cup at a time and honey sometimes passed on it completely.  He's only started eating more the past 2 days.  So although, this should be a healing recipe, it didn't really help us this time because we hardly ate any of it.

Here's the quick homemade recipe with a picture of the final product.  It was my lunch today, but I could only eat about 1/4 of.  But Baby dog got to enjoy a little taste.

I have to admit, this could have looked better too if I hadn't felt so bad.  I got feeling weak part way through shredding the chicken, so it's half chunked, half shredded.  ha ha... also I couldn't stand slicing the onions so I stopped at 2.  I put noodles in it because honey likes the noodles.  I wish now, that I had not even added noodles since he hardly ate any.  I completely forgot celery, but I don't really like cooked celery anyway.  If you forget it, I think they make celery seasoning if you have that.

Healing Chicken Noodle Soup
Ingredients:
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 cartons low sodium chicken broth (reserve 3/4 of 2nd Carton)
1 package of carrots (I used Bolthouse organic carrot chips) 12 oz.
2 celery bits or seasoning for flavor
1 tbsp of Better than Bullion
Pink Himalayan Salt to taste
pepper to taste
2 large sweet onions or 3 medium
fresh garlic (as much as you can stand)
olive oil
noodles of choice (optional)



Put the chicken breasts in your stock pot and cover with filtered water.  Bring to a boil and reduce heat and cover for about 30 minutes to cook the chicken and create a broth base.

While the chicken cooks, gather the rest of your ingredients, slice your onions as you please and peel and chop about 8 garlic cloves.

Go ahead and throw 4 whole cloves in the pot while the chicken simmers.  Chop the other cloves and put in a small fry pan with olive oil and brown it over medium low heat to bring the flavor out more.

Once the chicken is done, remove from pot, shred, then put back in pot.

Add the rest of your ingredients.

If adding noodles, I added about 4 small hand fulls (my hands are small!).  I still had too many noodles it for us.

Add 1 carton of chicken broth, keep your pot on a simmer temperature, put the lid on it and go take a nap!

In a few hours, your soup will be done and may need a bit more broth and possibly salt and pepper. The noodles soak up the broth and it can hardly look like soup after spending the night in the fridge.  So keep your reserved broth handy.

Enjoy and feel better!