September Cocktail: The Manhattan

I almost forgot to feature a cocktail this month! Well, here it is, on the last day of September. The Manhattan. This is a very classic cocktail and a favorite in my family. It was my Grandma's favorite cocktail and I always think of her when I have one. She passed away 3 years ago this month at the age of 93. I like to think having a Manhattan every night had something to do with her living such a long life. My husband's grandma passed away a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to dedicate this blog to grandmas. So make a Manhattan and raise your glass. Here's to grandmas!

My Family's Manhattan
You can make this whatever size you want, just make sure the ratio of whiskey to vermouth is 2:1.
serves 1

Ice
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
2 oz. Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey (such as Wild Turkey 101 or Jim Beam)
1 oz. Sweet Vermouth
2 maraschino cherries
1 splash maraschino cherry juice

Fill a rocks glass 1/2 full with ice. Add the bitters. Add the whiskey, vermouth and cherry juice and stir. Garnish with cherries.

The Evolution of an Amateur Photographer

I first became interested in photography back in high school. I took a class to learn how to develop film and enlarge photos in a dark room. This was before digital photography! I also learned some basics about composition and lighting. To be honest though, I think those things come naturally to me. Nobody has had to teach me how to compose a shot, I just instinctually know what looks pleasing or interesting to the eye. I think I get that from both my mom and dad. They are both very artistic. My dad likes to do photography as well and I've seen some excellent pencil drawings of his from way back. My mom like to do pencil drawing and painting. She has been commissioned to do drawings of people's houses and paints the most fabulous Christmas ball ornaments.

Here are a couple of photos I took for my class in high school. It was rumored to be very difficult to get an A in the class, but I walked away with an A-. Not too bad! (I had to take a photo of my photos because they are mounted on really big pieces of board and I have no idea where the negatives are, so you'll have to just ignore the glare.) The first one is a silhouette of my mom, the second is of my little sister.

When I took up photography again a few years ago, it wasn't that great. Here's one of the first photos I submitted to allrecipes.com.

I had a lot to learn and get acquainted with again. Within a few weeks I had caught on and improved greatly.

Now it's almost 2 1/2 years later and I think I've grown a lot as a photographer and I'm pretty proud of myself. Last year I entered a contest for the hospital here in town. There were looking for nature photos to decorate their new maternity ward. I entered the photo below, but I did not make the cut. I think it's a really cool photo, but it may have been too abstract for what they were looking for.

When I heard about a photo contest this summer for the Munsinger Clemens Gardens here in St. Cloud, I knew I could do much better than last year and decided to enter. I was so surprised to learn that I had won first place in the hard scape category. I would have been happy to just place at all, let alone first place! The photos were judged by a retired art professor at St. Cloud State University, so I was completely honored. Here is the winning photo.

I still have so much to learn about photography and I've even considered going back to school to study it. Seeing how expensive that is, I'm content for now just having it as a hobby and teaching myself through reading and shooting as much as I can. My life is pretty great right now. I'm cancer-free, have a wonderful hubby and two adorable dogs. I have a job I really like and that gives me the time for my hobbies of cooking, photography and writing. What could be better? Hmmm, maybe if I had that telephoto lens I've been eyeing.....

Inspired by Fall: Pumpkin Cookie Cups

I know it's fall when there's a change in air, when the leaves start to change, and when my husband turns on the TV during dinner. There's only one reason he would watch TV at the dinner table - FOOTBALL. Yes, I know fall is here because the sound backdrop in our house is referee whistles, cheering and players grunting. Our Sundays are planned around what time the Vikings are playing.

While my husband loves fall because of football, I love fall because of pumpkin. I get to plug in my Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin Wallflower from Bath and Body Works, drink pumpkin lattes from Caribou and bake pumpkin bread, bars, and muffins.

I recently had an idea for a cookie with pumpkin. I was inspired by a recipe I found in my clippings for a Pumpkin Dip (very much like this recipe from Libby's). It's made with canned pumpkin, cream cheese, powdered sugar and spices. It's perfect for dipping ginger snaps, graham crackers or apple slices. I thought it would be great to incorporate it into a cookie somehow and thought of cookie cups. I've made cookie cups before, where you bake the cookies in a muffin tin and then press them into cups right out of the oven. Filled with this pumpkin-cream cheese mixture it would be delicious. So, it should be easy right?

Well, the cookie part was pretty easy. I didn't have any trouble. I decided to use my mom's Nutmeg Sugar Cookie recipe as the base. I figured it would work great since it is a more firm cookie and the cups would hold their shape. It did work great, so now I had to figure out how to make the pumpkin filling. I thought I would make half a batch of the Pumpkin Dip and be good to go. Not so fast! It turns out the the dip was waaaay too runny for the cookie cups. It's great for dipping, not so much for filling. So I had to start over. I ended up using a lot less cream cheese and pumpkin than originally anticipated. I wanted a frosting-like texture, so I used frosting recipes as guidelines. Only 1/3 cup pumpkin was needed. It's pretty amazing that only that little amount of pumpkin gives that much flavor, but it does. I tasted it before adding the spices and sure enough, it's pumpkiny!

Here is my original recipe. Enjoy these cookies and enjoy the fall season!

Dianne's Pumpkin Cookie Cups
makes approx. 32 cookies

Ingredients
Cookie Cups:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (optional)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

2 Tablespoons milk

Pumpkin Filling:

3 oz. cream cheese, softened

1/3 cup pumpkin puree

3 3/4 cup confectioners' sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

pinch ground cloves

Optional decoration:

ground cinnamon or chopped nuts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease mini-muffin pan(s).
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, nutmeg (optional) and salt in a medium bowl.
3. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until creamy. Add egg and milk and mix until combined. With mixer running on low, slowly add the flour mixture. Mix until dough comes together.
4. Roll dough into 1 Tablespoon-size balls and place a ball into each cup of muffin tin. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, just until edges start to turn a golden-brown. Remove from oven and let sit 1 minute. Using the back of a rounded teaspoon measure, press a well into each cookie. Let cookies cool in pan for 5 minutes before removing to cooling rack. It helps to give the cookies a little twist as you lift them out. Cool completely.
5. To make the filling, mix the cream cheese and 1 cup of the confectioners' sugar with an electric mixer until smooth. Slowly add the pumpkin and mix until smooth. Continue mixing while adding the remaining confectioners' sugar. Mix in the cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves. Spoon or decoratively pipe the pumpkin mixture into each cookie cup. Sprinkle with additional cinnamon or chopped nuts for decoration if desired.

Making cookie cups

I Love Leftover Night!

As much as I love to cook, I love leftover night even more. I get to enjoy the fruits of my labor without having to work! When I was a kid and we would ask Mom what's for dinner and she would respond "leftovers," we would groan and complain. Now that I'm the one that cooks dinner, I really see the appeal of leftovers. It's easy. After a long day at work, it's really nice to just heat something up.

We don't have kids, so I'm cooking for just my husband and myself. I like to cook for four, that way we always have leftovers the next day. I usually end up only cooking 2 - 3 nights a week. This works great because on the days that I work a long day, I don't have to worry about coming home and slaving over a hot stove.

So after working 6 hours on my feet yesterday, I was so happy to have leftovers of the dish pictured above. This is a recipe from the July/August 2006 issue of Cooks Illustrated called "Grilled Shrimp Skewers with Spicy-Lemon Garlic Sauce." It's our absolute favorite shrimp recipe. I wish I could share it with you, but you have to have a paid subscription to the Cooks Illustrated website to view it. It is so easy, I just brush shrimp with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper and tiny bit of sugar. While that's grilling, I cook up a sauce of butter, lemon juice, garlic, salt and crushed red pepper. Serve over angel hair pasta, add a side salad and some cold white wine and you've got a perfect end of the summer meal. And great leftovers the next day!

Clipped Recipe: Chicken with Fennel and "Kiss my Polenta!"

Chicken with Italian Sweet-Sour Fennel

We had a fabulous dinner this weekend inspired by "Cooking Light" magazine. The recipe was for Chicken with Italian Sweet-Sour Fennel. I love fennel and up until about a year ago, it was completely foreign to me. If you like black licorice, like I do, you will love fennel. However, you don't even have to love black licorice, like my husband, to like fennel. I first used it in Ina Garten's Perfect Roast Chicken. I then used it in a lovely salad recipe. I have usually used just the bulb of the plant, but recently learned that fronds (the top green parts) have a lovely anise flavor too. They also made for a lovely garnish. I used sweetened dried cranberries instead of raisins and doubled the pine nuts, which I then proceeded to almost burn, but caught them just in time.

Our Chicken with Fennel Dinner

The magazine had a couple of simple side recipes to go with the chicken. Because I had some leftovers and was lacking other ingredients, I improvised and came up with my own recipes. The first was for the green beans. Earlier in the week I made up a batch of balsamic vinaigrette dressing for salads and had a bunch leftover, so I decided it would be great on green beans. Balsamic Bacon Green Bean Salad is the resulting dish.


As for the polenta, I didn't have cream cheese, but I did have Parmesan and fresh garlic, so Parmesan Garlic Polenta was invented. I've recently discovered the joy of polenta, a great alternative to mashed potatoes as a side. I grew up eating Cream of Wheat, the ultimate comfort food for breakast, and polenta is very similar. It is almost the same as grits, just a slight difference in the type of corn that is used in Italy (polenta) versus the South (grits). There may also be differences in the grind of the cornmeal. I couldn't find instant or quick-cooking polenta at my store, so I used Quaker Quick Grits, which can be found near the oatmeal. For people with less discerning tastes in regards to cornmeal, it is a perfectly acceptable substitution, in my humble opinion. Since I explained this to my incredibly mature husband, he's been running around saying, "Kiss my polenta!" (for you young'uns, it's from the TV show "Alice".....)

Balsamic Bacon Green Bean Salad
serves 4

1 lb. fresh green beans, rinsed and trimmed
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp. honey
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
2 Tbsp. real bacon bits; or 2 slices cooked, crumbled bacon
2 Tbsp. sliced almonds, toasted

1. In a large saucepan, bring the green beans and a small amount of water to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer, about 5 minutes. Drain green beans into a colander and rinse with

cold water, until beans are cool.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, honey, mustard and pepper. Pour over green beans and toss with bacon and almonds. Serve. This dish can be made ahead of time and refrigerated before serving.

Parmesan Garlic Polenta

serves 4

1 Tbsp. unsalted butter

1 clove garlic, minced
2 cups milk
1 cup water
¾ cup quick-cooking polenta or grits
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. fresh ground black pepper
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

 In a large saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Pour in milk and water and bring to a boil, being careful to not let the mixture overflow. Stir in the polenta or grits, salt and pepper and simmer for about 5 minutes, until thickened, stirring frequently. Stir in Parmesan cheese and serve.