Easy EASY cookies in Japan...

So since I moved to Japan, I have never been able to get my American cookie recipes to work. Something about the flour here. I cheat and do it with American cake mix. My cake recipes don't work with the flour in Japan either, so I keep the cake mixes on hand. I order them a case at a time from the Foreign Buyers Club in Kobe.

So tonight we whipped up a batch. Enjoyed some for ourselves and took some over to the neighbors, who have now started the Japanese thing of exchanging little gifts back and forth. I took her some pie, she brought me some cute little hand towels for the kids, I took her some cake, she brought me some of the most delicious cherry tomatoes I've ever eaten, and tonight I took her some cookies! This is how you start a ministry to your neighbors ;P This back and forth exchange will probably go on now forever. and one of the things I LOVE is that Hana LOVES it! She loves cookie and she loves giving away what she cooked! This is like the beginning of a little ministry for my girl!

My basic recipe for cake mix cookies is 1 bag of yellow cake mix, 2 eggs and 1/3 cup of oil. Then I add whatever my little heart desires at the moment. I chop up a dark chocolate bar (chocolate chips are too expensive here and too hard to find), throw in some nuts, or some dried fruit, etc.

Tonight I wanted to add oatmeal. I was craving oatmeal cookies. So here is how Hana and I made the cookies tonight (sorry no pictures, I figure you have seen a cookie before, lol)

1 box of Yellow cake mix (I used supermoist butter Betty Crocker)

2/3 cup oatmeal

2 eggs

1/2 cup oil (if your mix is NOT the supermoist buttery kind like mine was, you could use butter instead of oil, if your living on the edge!)

Dump all that into a bowl together and mix it up, until it takes on a cookie dough consistency. Then tonight we chopped some walnuts and also added about 1/3 cup of dried cranberries. You could add any kind of dried fruit, nuts or chocolate you want. I bet this would be yummy as white chocolate macadamia nut! Or just white chocolate (I love white chocolate).

So add in the extras, spoon it out onto a cookie sheet (or the little tray that comes with your convection oven in Japan). I cook my cookies on top of these handy little professional baking mats that I discovered a few years ago thanks to my brother the almost professional chef ;P

These cookies will not spread out, so I spoon them on the sheet and then press them down and shape them to the thickness I want before baking.

Bake at 190C for 10-12 minutes. Allow them to cook for a few minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cook. Or before you eat about ten of them hot and gooey and then deliver the rest to the neighbors!!!

THAT's how you make good cookies in Japan!

Sloppy Moes

This is a sloppy joe sandwich. I don't know much about the rest of America, but if you grew up in the south THIS is a classic meal! I remember eating it most at my grandparents' houses. It is yummy!

Well, that was way back in my younger years. I had all but forgotten about sloppy joes until early on in our marriage when I brought home a few packs of the seasoning from America and it became a big hit with first my husband, then his parents, and then his parents' whole church! We made it for lunch one Sunday for everyone in the church and they were all raving about it! Many of them took it home as left overs and came back the next Sunday raving about how awesome it is over rice!!! LOL!

I had no idea how to make it from scratch, and wouldn't have had a clue where to start without those seasoning packets. Then one evening many months ago when I was making my dry curry recipe, I decided to toss in a can of tomato sauce. I tasted the recipe BEFORE adding the curry and it was DEVINE! It was identical to what I remember a sloppy joe tasting like. So my home made version of sloppy joe was born. However, I call it "sloppy moe", because it is a sloppy joe with a whole lot "moe" in it! That is, more vegetables! I try to get veggies in my kiddos anyway I can!!!

Let's get cooking! You will need...

300 grams ground pork or beef (about 1/2 pound) I used pork this evening

2 cloves garlic

1 large onion, diced

2 large carrots, diced

6~8 bell peppers, diced (yields about 2 cups)

2 cans of diced tomato (400 grams or 14 oz)

1 Tbsp oil

1/3 cup worcestershire sauce

2 cubes of buillon

1 Tbsp of soy sauce (not pictured)

salt and pepper to taste

Take your two cloves of garlic and remove the peel

Then finely chop that up and set it aside for later!

Now we are going to dice the bell pepper just like we did in my dry curry recipe.

Slice them right down the middle

Pull out that spine, seeds and the stem on top leaving as much of the bell pepper as possible.

Slice it into long sticks like this, a.k.a. julienne it!

Then rotate it 90 degrees and chop away!

place all that aside in a bowl and lets shed some tears dice an onion.

We've done this several times recently in my recipes. Lop off the top, peel the outside and cut it in half down the middle (root to stem). Lay it on its side, then cut from root to top making narrow slices all the way across the onion leaving the root in tact.

Now rotate that onion 90 degrees and slice again for a nicely diced onion!

place all that diced onion aside in a bowl and lets move on to the carrot.

I like to make several slices down the length of the carrot this way.

Then roll the carrot on it's side so the slices you just made are now laying horizontally. Then cut again in the same away, along the length of the carrot.

This is what you should now have...

Now if we chop across the slices we just made, you magically get some nicely diced carrot.

repeat that process all the way up the stem of both carrots

Now we are ready to begin cooking!

Place a frying pan over low heat with about a Tbsp of oil.

Pour the garlic in and allow it to slowly warm until the oil begins to sizzle.

Now dump in all the ground meat, turn up the heat and brown it

Pour in all the veggies and stir fry on high heat until they are tender.

Dump in both cans of diced tomato, two cubes of boullion, 1/3 cup of worcestershire sauce and season with salt and pepper.

Bring to a boil and let this cook well till all those flavors are married together and harmonizing better that the Gatlin Brothers! (DON'T tell me you don't know who the Gatlin Brothers are!!!!!!! Go look it up - NOW. Look on you tube! For the love of country music, go listen to All the Gold in California!!! If you don't this recipe won't taste very good!)

Taste it and adjust the flavor. Sometimes it may need a little more salt and pepper. Tonight I added about a Tbsp of soy sauce and it added the perfect finishing touch!

Cook this down until much of the liquid is gone and it is sloppy joe consistency (i.e. it'll all stay in the burger, and won't make a runny soggy mess of the bun)

I had some dinner rolls form Costco so tonight we had them like tiny little burgers, I think they call these "sliders" in the states at many restaurants? Did I get that right?

One just looks way too lonely...

THERE, that is much better. Only most of us went back for seconds and thirds. Hana and Kai were just eating the sloppy moe filling alone by the end of the meal.

I threw in a coke to try to really feel like I was back at home. Only things is, Granny always only had Pepsi at her house. And Memaw always only had Dr. Pepper. But my sugarpie went out and bought that coke especially for me, so it was PERFECT, since we are at HOME... in Japan!

Spinach and Tomato Quiche

Quiche!!! I don't remember having quiche before coming to Japan. For some reason a savory pie just sounded... weird. Oh what I was missing out on! During my first two years here in Japan, me and a girlfriend (hey Kathryn) loved to go to a tea shop called Auntie's. Their lunch set had quiche, scones, salad, tea and a cake! I fell in LOVE with quiche. If I had known it is so easy to make at home all those years ago, I could have had it more than 2 or 3 times a year ;)

I have a base recipe of ingredients for quiche and then for the meat, veggies and toppings I vary it every time I make it, depending on what is in the fridge or what was fresh at the market. I love how moist and yummy this recipe always turns out, and my FAVORITE topping in the whole world is tomatoes!!! Give it a try...

First you will need pie crust from my grandmother's pie crust recipe. Roll one portion out and prepare it in a pie plate for the quiche filling. All those instructions are in Granny's pie crust recipe.

Or I GUESS you could try store bought pie crust, but just don't tell me you used store bought pie crust. We'll pretend it never happened. A note for those living in Japan, store bought pie crust here doesn't go well with this recipe. It gets all mushy, it isn't strong enough to hold up to this quiche recipe, so I suggest making the pie crust from scratch.

For the egg mixture you will need the following ingredients...

4 eggs

1/2 onion

1~2 cloves of garlic

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

1/2 cup grated cheese (use your favorite kind, I love Goda)

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup cream

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp oregano

1 Tbsp flour

Veggies and toppings...

in the pic above you can see that I used bacon, spinach and tomato

other yummy suggestions..

asparagus

mushrooms

avocado

zucchini

or be creative with the things you love!

Let's get started on making this one. In a large bowl break 4 eggs and beat them slightly with a fork.

We'll need half an onion, so take your onion and peel it, and cut it in half.

Store half of that onion for something else later, and then finely chop the other half for the quiche.

Take that chopped onion and just dump it into the egg.

Take one or two cloves of garlic and peel them.

Then grind it. I love my litle egg plant shaped grinder that I found in the first house we lived in and have kept all these years! I hope it lasts a lifetime, it's so handy for garlic!

Throw away the root that is left!

Scrape the ground up garlic into your bowl.

Then add the cheeses. Just dump them in there!

Add 1/2 cup milk,

and 1/2 cup cream,

again just dump it in there, or have your mini-me do it! ;) Isn't her sweet little hand the cutest!

Dump the spices in (feel free to add any fresh herbs you maye have, or an italian seasoning mix, or just go with a salt and pepper flavor if you prefer). I didn't use basil on this day, but I love putting in basil leaves!

Add salt and pepper to taste.

And 1 Tbsp of flour to act as a bit of a thickening agent to hold the whole thing together when cooked!

Now have your mini-me mix that up to her heart's content while you chop a couple veggies and bacon.

I first cut up the bacon into smaller pieces and put that into the egg mix.

Next I prepared the spinach. I always wash the stems and leaves before cutting the root.

Then lay it down and cut the root portion off, and rinse again around the exposed stem area to get any remaining grit out that may have been trapped in there with the root still on.

Now begin to chop it into the pieces about one inch long like so...

I chose about three stalks of spinach and they yielded about one cup, packed, of spinach.

I also dump this into the egg mixture and mix it in.

Now take your empty pie shell...

and dump it all in there!!!

Next I sliced a couple of tomatoes because I LOVE love LOVE the flavor of baked tomato! So tart and bold, MMMMMMMmmmMMMMM!

Lay those out on top of the quiche in a nice little wagon wheel pattern!

I like to slightly submerge the tomato and let a little egg run in on top of it. It makes the final product look yummy!

Now sprinkle a little more cheese right on top!

And bake at 160ºC (325ºF) for one hour. When you remove it from the oven, shake the pie plate back and forth gently and if the middle of the quiche jiggles like jello, it still needs to bake a little longer. Put it in for another 5 minutes or so and check again. If at this point the top is beginning to look too done or the crust is starting to burn, you should cover it with foil for the remainder of the baking time.

Savory yumminess in a pie shell. H.E.A.V.E.N. in the kitchen! YUM!