Food Pantry Feasts: Blessings and Cookies

Food Pantry Feasts: Blessings and Cookies: "Nick had to tell me the other day to stop obsessing about getting things 'right' for Christmas. That's what the Thanksgiving Event was abou..."

The Cookies I baked this Christmas

These cookies are rich butter and sugar cookies with mint and chocolate chips and sprinkled with green and blue sugar crystals. They are rich and buttery sweet with a surprise dose of chocolate and mint. Enjoy.

4 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups white sugar
2 sticks of butter
Canola or Vegetable oil
2 eggs
About a teaspoon of baking powder
About a half Tsp. of baking soda
Chocolate Mint chips
Green and blue sugar crystals.

Mix the flour, baking powder and baking soda in one bowl. Add a light sprinkle of salt. Mix. Preheat oven to 350. In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, eggs and sugar. Mix in with bowl of flour mixture. Mixture will be dry. Add vegetable oil until mixture is moist enough to roll into little balls. Roll mint chocolate chips into each ball of dough and sprinkle with sugar crystals. Bake in oven until moist and golden brown. In order to keep them moist for Christmas morning, place on a plate, cover with slices of bread and then a cloth. The cookies will absorb the moisture from the bread slices. So in the morning, the bread will be dry and crisp, but the cookies will be chewy and moist.

Super Easy Cookies

I do not remember where my Mom got this recipe from, but I remember loving to make them as a little girl and a young woman.
I used to make them as a young woman for my younger siblings. It was comfort food for them to cheer them up in a time when nobody was happy. My parent's divorce had happened and Mom was too depressed to be a mom for her eleven kids. So once, again, I was trying to prepare to leave my family for college in another state, cope with the guilt my mother was putting on me and cheer up my poor brothers and sisters, for whom, at the time, I was a second mom. Mom was always griping about how hot the tiny kitchen was, but these cookies I could make without much complaint because they cook in nine minutes.
She also complained about mess, but because almost everything is pre-packaged, these cookies did not make as much mess.

All you need is one box of cake mix (I used Betty Crocker or Pillsbury) of your choice of flavor (my babies loved chocolate, or funfetti, or french vanilla).

Just empty into a bowl. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a cookie sheet.
Now into the mixing bowl add a third of a cup of vegetable oil and two eggs. Now mix it all together with a spoon until it is sticky and oily cookie dough. Now roll batter in your hands to form little balls of dough, (the kids used to love helping me do that) place on greased pan and put in the oven and heat for nine minutes.
That is for the first batch, every subsequent batch only let it bake for eight minutes.
What will come out will look so perfect and be so perfectly moist and chewy. The kids and I could get them baked up and eaten and then clean up the mess before mom even got home and found out that we were having so much fun!

Around Christmastime my mother always taxes her poor heart and drains energy from everybody around her by trying to do too much. When I get married and have kids, baking Christmas cookies should not be more stress than can be redeemed by the taste. These cookies just might save my celebration some day.

Throwing lots of different canned soups together? Guilty!

Yes, I have been known to throw frozen or fresh vegetables in with canned chicken broth and several different kinds of canned soup and add fresh herbs or spices to make it my own. I used to blush at the thought of doing something like that. But poverty and fatigue can take one down a peg.

This one I am eating right now is made of Swanson's chicken broth,
Progresso Chickarina Soup
Progresso Pot Roast soup
Turkey Stuffing
Carrots
Kidney Beans
Fresh thyme
Meatballs

Next time I will add more rosemary.
But it does taste pretty good.

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Chicken Soup

Tonight I made some Chicken soup. I boiled some bone-less skinless chicken breasts.

I never use bones in my soup because my younger brother almost died one day choking on a tiny chicken bone in my Mom's soup. It was too scary to ever take the chance again.

Anyway, I boiled it in a tiny amount of water, chopping onions, garlic, and celery into the water. Once it was almost cooked I added chicken stock and chicken broth. Then I added Rosemary and green peppers. Then I added dry turkey stuffing. Yes, the actual bread cubes. It gave body and seasoning to it. I love huge chunks of chicken in my soup, not tiny cubes like they have in most canned soups. If you want anything done right you have got to do it yourself, as they say.