Scallops for Dinner

Yesterday was busy but Dale was off from his night job so even though we had a ton of stuff to do I decided to make something decent for dinner. I’d shipped out a bunch of cookies so on my way home from the post office I stopped by Fresh and Easy, a local grocery store. There wasn’t any wild salmon but I did find some scallops that were marked down as the “use by” date was the 30^th.

Although I love scallops I didn’t know quite what to do with them. I got out my Julia Child, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking and found a couple of recipes. One called for a cream and mushroom sauce while the other used wine, I decided on the wine.  While I didn’t have all of the ingredients I was able to substitute some things. Sauté the minced onions and garlic in olive oil/butter combo. Move the onion mixture over and throw in the scallops. After 2 minutes put in some wine. I used a pinot noir, wine which gave the scallops a color probably not intended by Julia Child, but it went well nevertheless. After a couple of minutes the sauce had thickened, I added the cheese. I  used a feta cheese that I’d gotten at the farmer’s market. It wasn’t the crumbly kind but in a block., layering a piece on each scallop. When the cheese melted I served the scallops with corn on the cob.

Great meal!

Standstill in the cookie business

Cookie business seems to have come to a standstill for the time being. Discouraging.

I am waiting for the packaging expo which is one week from tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be able to actually buy the packaging that I need.

I’d asked my niece Laurie for any info she might have regarding snacks for the sets but she didn’t have any names. She does want cookies for gatherings she has so I’ll bake tomorrow then send her some.

I still need to get more nutrition labels but have run out of money for the time being.

Then about a year ago or so I had this idea for a petites four cutter thing but it looks like someone beat me to the punch. I couldn’t find a fabricator to build off of our prototype so put it aside. Now there are ads for a brownie cutter. GURR!

I’ve had better times in my life but it could be worse so I can’t dwell on the bad, just focus on where we go from here.

A warm evening

It is a warm evening, a little breeze; Dale has the BBQ on the back lawn with corn on the cob and squash going. I put some chicken breasts with the olive oil, Tequila, and fresh chili peppers on to marinade. We will make a bunch of food so that we can have leftovers.

The corn we will cut off the cob and use in salads, use the extra chicken breasts in salads and as a dinner and the squash with dinners made with the chicken.

A good white wine will be good with the dinner. I think that I’ll start now.

A day about almonds

Yesterday was all about almonds. I’d gotten one tray of almonds soaking in key lime juice and 3 more in a olive oil, salt and pepper mix. Everything was ready to go into the smoker when Nate called. Opps, it seems that the lime juice almonds are now more popular and I had the mix wrong. Too late.

Sunny, a neighbor girl Lauren and I rushed out the door and off to Santa Barbara where I needed to mix up cookies and pick up everything for the farmers market this morning. We were about 1 hour late but did arrive in time for dinner.

Then it was off to the kitchen where I mixed dough for 400 cookies, baked about 30 and wrapped the rest for freezing.

Nate reported that he sold all of the 30 cookies at today’s farmers market.

The vendor next to me had hoped that her sister would visit. Her sister works for food supply companies who supply the tv production companies. They apparently are always looking for a healthy snack to stock. The sister didn’t come but I’ll investigate on my own.

Cookies are becoming a reality

The cookie business is getting close to being a reality. Today I got my business license, city license and the permit to run a business from my home. We have a certified kitchen already. So now I only need to get my food handling certificate so that I can work at my own business not my son’s.

I was getting the permit to run a business from my home and the clerk asked if I had any samples. I replied yes as I had brought one in the event I needed the address of the certified kitchen. When I told him that there was no wheat only almonds he decided not to try the cookie, but another person asked to try. She tried the cookie and reported that they were really good. So good that she would like to give them out at her Adult Boot Camp that she runs.

I tried to shoot photos for the website but the photos of the cookies didn’t just pop. I’ll try again tomorrow using some different lighting. For tonight I’ll read everything I can find on the internet.

Relaxing dinner on the Patio

After seeing Julie and Julia twice I was so hungry for the chicken and mushroom dish so decided I’d make it.
Last night was the first time we had to have a relaxed dinner so made the dish. Mushrooms sautéed in butter then quick dip the chicken breasts in the butter; put the casserole dish in the oven to bake at 400F. Make the sauce of cream, wine and a little chicken stock and it is done. So very easy!
We haven’t had this dish for years as we don’t cook with butter and cream any more so this was a huge treat! I must admit that I actually ate some sauce straight from the dish it.
The evening was so nice that we decided to eat outside. Dale set up TV trays on the patio with candles. We savored every bite.

Preparing for the Farmer's Market

The two granddaughters, Sunshine and Taylor, plus the neighbor girl Kristin and I spent the early afternoon preparing for tomorrow’s farmers market in Santa Clarita. We’d picked up the entire product from Nate last night.
He remembered the Almond Butter this time; he had forgotten it for the past two weeks and people were asking for it. But he did forget to bring the Roasted Almonds. They will keep but there are people who only want Roasted Almonds.
So tomorrow we have Blister Almonds, Almond Butter, Smoked Lime Almonds and Smoked Salt and Pepper Almonds. We also have raw almonds, some right off the ground still in the hull and some already shelled. We had to pick thru the shelled almonds as water had gotten to some and caused them to spoil so we had to remove them. The girls found some bugs as pointed them out, poking on them and yelling EWWW.
We’d hoped to have our cookies there this weekend as we had obtained the product liability insurance as required by L.A. County but now they have added another requirement to the list.
Now I’ll try to get our evening going as we have a very early morning.

The Bad news in the Nutrition Label

We have our nutrition labels for our cookies. Unfortunately I didn’t tell the chemist that the total amount of the recipe wasn’t what would actually go into the package so the label is for the total amount that a recipe makes not what I’ll package.
The worse part about the nutrition label is having the info in front of my eyes. Each cookie is over 200 calories with 140 calories of fat! OMG that is so bad!!! I can’t even eat one of my cookies. I’d have to work out at the gym really hard for an hour or two. I hate to see how many calories I’ve devoured in testing these.
I’ll tell myself that the cookies are really healthy!

New Possibilities

Over the last couple of days I’ve called every bakery nearby and a kitchen rental business trying to see if anyone would rent some space to me. All I heard was NO, NO, NO. And the kitchen rental didn’t even answer. I was really discouraged.
Well yesterday late afternoon the owner of the kitchen rental business called and we agreed that I would come by today.
My inspection of the kitchen indicates that they have all of the equipment that I need. As compared to the kitchen in S.B. the oven is very new. There are 3 Hobart’s with the smallest being the size we have in S.B.
After inspecting the kitchen I went back to the front office where both owners were. They told me that they made cookie dough for fundraisers among other things. The man told me that they are interested in carrying our cookie dough for their fundraisers. WOW!
I must get this thing on the road.

Not a Good Time in the kitchen

Sunshine needed to make some money so I had her make almond meal and help with other products. We made another batch of bars but after they were baked I thought that they looked funny. I lifted them and the whole thing was like one large cracker. UGH. We’d forgotten to add baking powder. Everything went into the trash.
I ran to the store to purchase more egg whites but once home I decided we’d quick mix up some cookie dough to get into the freezer. After getting one long roll in the freezer I thought I’d just bake one sheet for us. A timer went off and I glanced at the oven and saw flames in the oven. I opened the oven door and the paper under the cookies was on fire with ash throughout the over. Of course there were no oven mitts available but I did find some and sent Sunny out to get Dale. I got the cookies out and as they had only been in the oven about 3 minutes I sent them with the neighbor girl to finish baking them at her house.
Dale is cleaning the oven now so we will see if that takes care of the problem.

Cookie Bars Pt. 1

I thought that I’d make up a batch of bar dough, freeze it then try making cookies from it. The dough is made with egg whites so it is difficult to know how it will bake after freezing the dough. I have made a big batch and frozen ½, the rest is in the oven in order to check of the recipe.
My problem with these bars is that I have to take the number of egg whites to be used and translate it into cups. I did this at the Bakersfield kitchen but found that I needed more almond stuff. I didn’t write down what I did. GRR.
Today I made the batch and added meal until I had the consistency I wanted. After giving this some thought I believe that I’d added more almond butter when I was at the kitchen than I did today. I’ll need to make another batch tonight using more butter and then I’ll compare the taste.
It is never ending.

Putting things together

Nate didn’t need cookies this week so we came on home only to find out that my nephew David (Dale’s sister’s son) had started working on a cutter thing that I’d had an idea for. This idea came about 1 year ago and Dale and I had built a prototype but when we could not find a fabricator to make one for us we put the idea aside. I’d also made a video using the cutter and the video referred to a buttercream icing that I developed.
David heard about the cutter at the Siemens Reunion and immediately had ideas on building one. So as we came home we got a message from David with some initial drawings.
While Dale drove home I’d been working on the timeline for the cookies. Now I had to combine the cookies, icing and cutter must do list.
Today I spent looking up companies who provide barcodes and who do nutrition testing. I want to get that done next week.
I also sent out requests to friends and family members to test the icing. Friday I’ll make icing and bake some cookies to ship out that afternoon.