Macaroni Penguin Soup

Several years ago when I was asking the kids what they wanted me to make for dinner that week Adele piped in, "macaroni penguin soup".  It has been a joke in our family ever since.  Well, since we have started watching Chopped on Netflix Emilia and some of the other kids have been asking me to make macaroni penguin soup. I once had a creamy sausage soup with kale and potatoes and thought I'd try to make MPS out of it.  And then I found these Penguin crackers at the store and knew that MPS was meant to be.  I found a recipe online for a similar sausage soup and used pasta instead of potatoes and made it not spicy.  Once we threw the crackers in it it was truly macaroni penguin soup.  Unfortunately the kids didn't really like it.  So now I have to find a new recipe for MPS.

Chopped Challenge

So our new favorite show on Netflix is "Chopped".  There are 4 chefs that get a basket of weird mystery ingredients and they have to make meals out of them.  After each round one person gets eliminated.  The last round consists of 2 chefs making desserts.

The kids thought it would be fun to have me do a chopped challenge.  We went to the store and they each got to pick an ingredient.  Normally there are 4.  I have 4 kids.  Somehow we ended up with 5 ingredients. I am not sure how this happened.  I'm sure fighting was involved.

The mystery ingredients

The final entree

So on the show they have something like 30 minutes to make the food. I'd say it took me over an hour.  You can use other ingredients from the pantry but you have to use all the ingredients and transform them.  I ended up making a bratwurst and chicken meatball with crushed potato chips inside, a salad with a dressing made from the mango nectar and that weird pokey fruit that I can't remember the name of.  And I used the Thai sauce (I think) with the de-glazed meatball pan and served it with the noodles.  The kids actually liked it.  They really liked the chicken and bratwurst meatballs.  They are asking me to do this again. I think I might make them do it.  But it sort of scares me.

Roll Recipe

This is my favorite roll recipe. I have had several people ask me for it so here it is:

French Rolls
2 c. water (very warm)
1 T. yeast
3 T. sugar
2 T. oil
2 t. salt
~5 c. flour
corn meal
1 egg white
2 T. water


Place sugar and yeast in water. Add salt and oil. Add 3 cups of flour and mix well. Add about 2 more cups of flour gradually. Cover and let rise until double. Cut into 20-24 pieces. Grease cookie sheet and sprinkle well with corn meal (0ptional). Shape each dough piece into a ball.

Let rise for 30 minutes or until double. Mix egg white with 2 T. water. Brush each dough ball with egg mixture.

Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Remove from oven and brush again with egg/water mixture. Bake 10 more minutes or until golden. Makes about 2 dozen smaller rolls or 20 larger ones.


And hey, I am not feelin' the love so much around here so be nice to me and leave me a comment ok??? Maybe I'll make some of these for you..... Thanks!

Our Best Bites

A couple of my friends have a really fun cooking blog called Our Best Bites. If you haven't checked it out you really should. They have some really awesome recipes for yummy things like: Mini-Cheesecake Tarts, Homemade Tortillas which I LOVE, and I can't wait to try the Mango Pineapple Sorbet. I have had several friends go to their site from mine and everyone loves the recipes they have over there. Check it out and let me know what you think! (You can add cool blinkies to your blogs if you wanna be a groupie too.)

Christmas Cinnamon Rolls

Despite the jeers of certain family members and friends, I decided to blog about cinnamon rolls. And take pictures of them. All YOU bloggers out there know that it is perfectly acceptable to take pictures of dough. They just don't seem to understand...

I make these cinnamon rolls for Christmas every year. These are my Grandma Nelson's cinnamon rolls. (Or as close as I can get to them without an official recipe from Grandma.) We used to have these every Thanksgiving at her house. Everyone in our family loves them. The reason they are so good is that the butter/cinnamon/sugar to bread ratio is much higher than in traditional cinnamon rolls. The difference in these rolls isn't in the dough, it is in the buttering and cinnamon sugaring technique. The crunchy, cinnamony crusts on these rolls is just to die for. They are my absolute favorite way to eat cinnamon rolls. You can use any sweet dough recipe you like, or try this one:

1 1/2 c. very warm water
1/3 c. powdered milk (go food storage!)
1/2 c. sugar
2 T. yeast
6 T. soft butter
2 eggs
1 t. salt
~ 6 c. flour

Mix powdered milk with water (or just use 1 1/2 c. very warm milk). Add sugar and yeast. Let it dissolve for a couple of minutes.

Next add the salt, eggs and butter. Mix thoroughly. Add flour gradually until dough is stiff but still sticky.

This is the point where I take my dough out of my Kitchen-aid and mix the flour in by hand. I find that if I mix it with my dough hook it ends up too dense and dry. I like to mix it on the counter so I have better control of how much flour is added. I also find that it gets mixed more evenly this way.

Now its back into the bowl to rise until double (about 1 to 1.5 hours). Cover it with a towel so it doesn't dry out.


Now it is ready to shape. Now pay attention. This is the most important part! :) Divide the dough in half. Place half of it back in the bowl and cover with the towel. Divide the remaining dough into 14 parts.

Roll 1 part in your hands to make a snake about 6-8 inches long.

Now dip the dough into butter and then cinnamon sugar.

Tie it in a knot. Now dip it into the butter and cinnamon sugar AGAIN.

Place into buttered muffin pan. If you are too lazy to butter muffin pans, or just hate washing them, go ahead and put them in a couple of greased 9x13's or a jelly roll pan. They will taste the same but they won't be as pretty. And come on, it's Christmas right? You will have a couple of extra pieces but you can just bake them up in a separate dish. I have found that this particular recipe makes about 28 rolls. Cover with a towel and let rise about 30 minutes.

Now you bake them 20-25 minutes at 350. When the tops are crusty and they are golden brown, they are done.

YUM! We don't frost these. You don't really need to because they have so much butter and sugar and cinnamon all over them. But I suppose if you are trying to die of a heart attack you can go ahead and put some frosting on them. I really don't think they need it. The crusty top is good enough to stand on its own.

And, if you want you can split up the dough and make some rolls too. I was in a hurry so I just cut up the dough into pieces and stuffed them in the muffin pans so they would sort of resemble cloverleaf rolls.

They don't look so lovely here, but they will.