FitFool

These caught my eye since the reviewers of this recipe couldn't stop raving about how these were heavenly perfection. Over a hundred reviews of this recipe! So I had to try them and...yes, these are the best oatmeal raisin cookies I've ever had. Moist, chewy, and full of flavor. Made this recipe (http://www.recipezaar.com/35813)(link includes approximate nutritional info) and following suggestions in the reviews, I added 1 tsp cinnamon and decreased oats to 2.5 cups.

The Italian word saltimbocca literally translates to "jump in the mouth," presumably because this dish tastes so good it will hop right in. The classic Roman dish is Saltimbocca alla Romana, made with veal scaloppini topped with prosciutto and sage. The recipe for this pork version came from Cooking Light (Nov 2003) We’ve been making it with white rice instead of polenta since we always have white rice in the house. And sometimes we'll substitute pancetta instead of prosciutto. I have also seen recipes for chicken saltimbocca that use chicken with mozzarella cheese. This pork saltimbocca dish has served me well and only takes 25 minutes to prepare.

Tasty -- just like the side dish of garlic eggplant I like at one Japanese restaurant. For some reason this always takes me a long time to prepare so I only make it once or twice a year. Must be all the slicing and dicing.

Michael cooks an excellent chicken marsala dish. I'll post his recipe though he does so many variations on the theme that it's always a new meal even though we eat this almost every week.

I love dim sum but now that Chinatown is no longer a subway ride away, I'd like to make some of these dishes at home. But...I don't know what things are called. So quiz time. Here are 10 dim sum dishes. Give the name of the dish. Bonus points given to offering the recipe too (but with the name I can try googling for recipes). I know what some of them are called but I like having an even 10 questions on the quiz. :)

Hooray for Chanukah! Since it's a Jewish holiday, I'll have to give an explanation on its history since apparently that's what you do. Many many years ago, a Syrian tyrant was trying to unify his kingdom and all lands he could control by trying to Greek-ify everyone. Jews weren't allowed to do things like study the Torah and lived with many restrictions. Despite being vastly outnumbered, some Jews (including the Maccabees), fought a rebellion and won, driving them away. (In the words of Adam Brodsky, Jews kick ass!) After clearing the temple of the pagan gods left by the invaders, they wanted to light the lamp (I forget why -- sanctify the temple?) but they found they had only enough oil for a sigle day. They lit the lamp anyhow and in a miraculous sign (presumably of God's favor), the light continued to burn for 8 days. So now we take a moment every year to remember this event by lighting the Menorah candles, eating foods cooked in oil (for the oil in the lamp), exchanging small gifts for 8 days, and playing a dreidel game that was a secret way for them to study the Torah but now seems like a gambling game to me. Or something like that.

In the list of Jewish holidays, I'm told Chanukah is not considered a major holiday but I'll take any excuse to eat latkes (potato pancakes). According to this bit on latkes on NPR (4 minutes), the potatoes themselves are unlikely to have been used in the original latkes (no potatoes there back then). The featured ingredient is the olive oil. These Two-Potato Latkes are made with baking potatoes and sweet potatoes for a nice twist on this traditional food. They tasted so good that we'll make these again tomorrow night despite the annoyance of shredding the potatoes (use a food processorif you've got it). Michael said they were the best latkes he had ever tasted.

I made these a while ago but I really like the pictures. Cooking these was relatively easy, though a bit time consuming with carefully slicing and arranging the fruit. I think this was one of the first recipes where I had to zest a lemon. Takes a lot of scraping to get a tablespoon of grated lemon rinds! But it was worth it. The resulting tarts were almost too pretty to eat (but only almost). I think the recipe came from Cooking Light but I didn't write that part down so I'm not really sure. There are 2 recipes behind the cut. First one is for lemon curd, which is part of the base 'sauce' for the fruit pizzas.

Simple dish that's good for using up leftover rice. I threw in shredded leftover chicken since I had that available but you can omit that if you don't have it or don't want it. This is an easily adaptable recipe. Just toss in whatever leftover vegetables and meats you might like eating with fried rice.

I had requested recipes for a very thin tea cookie and a few people suggested Moravian Cookies. The descriptions sounded right and I eagerly baked a batch up. While they look pretty, they're not the cookies I had remembered eating before. Either I made these wrong or this particular flavoring is too sophisticated for my palate. In case anyone else likes these, I'll post the recipe and photos here anyhow.

And if any of you know the name or the recipe for the cookies I'm thinking about, please let me know! They were a pale yellow in color and had a buttery or shortbread-like taste to them. They were perfect with tea.