My friend Emily emailed me last night to pass along a new recipe for some cookies she had invented recently. The cookies are called “Regards“, so you can literally “send your regards” to someone.
These are essentially coconut-oat-fruit cookies, but have a delicious twist to them. I actually varied from the recipe Emily gave me, which called for quick oats instead of rolled oats. I also cut down on the butter, added a half cup more coconut and only used 1/2 an apple rather than a whole. I imagine they’d have a smoother texture using quick oats, but the cookies were still delicious, scoring a very positive rating out of all five taste testers in the house.
Ingredients:
3/4 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups quick oats
1 1/2 cup shredded sweetened coconut
1/2 apple, peeled and diced
1/2 tablespoon nutmeg (to taste, be generous)
some cinnamon
optional:
other fruit like nectarines, raisins, peaches or whatever your heart desires
walnuts
Instruction:
1. Set your oven to 350ºF
2. Cream the butter, brown sugar, white sugar, eggs, and vanilla.
3. Add the wheat and white flour, baking soda and salt, then mix.
4. Add the oats, coconut, diced apple, nutmeg, and cinnamon, then mix.
5. Add any additional fruit or nuts as desired and mix. Your final cookie dough should be pretty sticky and thick.
6. Spoon the dough onto your cookie sheets. As with any cookie, make sure to shape the cookies as close to the same as possible so they cook evenly.
7. Cook for 10 minutes or until golden brown.
Be sure not to over cook as these cookies tend to dry out if left in the oven too long.
The end result is a batch of soft, delicious cookies!
Enjoy!
Posted in Recipes.
Spinach pie is traditionally called Spanakopita in Greek restaurants. This is the family twist on the recipe, using a traditional pie crust instead of layers of phyllo dough.
Crust:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup shortning
Filling:
1 bunch of washed and chopped fresh spinach
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped yellow onion
4 or 5 sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup shredded carrot
2 tablespoon olive oil
salt, pepper and dill weed to taste
12 oz. cottage cheese
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
1 tablespoon parsley
1 egg
Instruction:
1. Knead crust ingredients together. Divide into 2 balls of dough. Use one to form the crust bottom and one for lattice strips for the top.
2. Fry the spinach, onions, mushrooms, and carrot in the olive oil until the spinach wilts.
3. Gradually mix the remaining ingredients and add into the spinach mix.
4. Pour the filling into the pie and bake at 350º F for 1 hour.
Posted in Recipes.
You’ve seen the advertisements on TV. Maybe. If you were lucky. The ads had a catchy little jingle that went something like, “Pizza Bagels, eat them all the time, even dinner time!”
We’re gonna take the idea and run with it. Why spend a ton of money on a Djorno Pizza, or even pizza hut when you can make pizza bagels and have a perfect snack or meal, depending on who’s over to enjoy your cooking skills!
Ingredients:
Your favorite bagel
tomato sauce
mozzarella cheese
toppings (as desired)
Instructions:
If you’ve made pizza, this is common sense. If you’ve eaten pizza, this should be easy too. Cut your bagel in half and lightly spread the tomato sauce over it. Then take a few slices of cheese and loosely cover the bagel. Believe it or not, you don’t want to over doit with the cheese. Then add your pepperoni, canadian bacon, or whatever toppings you like on your pizza normally. Now you can take 3 routes for cooking, microwave, microwave + oven, and oven.
Feel free to use a toaster oven rather than a full huge over if you prefer (or if you already have something else baking).
Microwave: Cook for 1 minute on high, or until you see the cheese start to melt.
The main problem with microwaving these is that if you cook bread-based food for too long, it gets rubbery and looses it’s appeal quickly. I don’t recommend cooking bagels with a microwave unless you are really desperate.
Microwave + Oven
One trick to recovering some nearly-ruined microwave Pizza Bagels is to take the bagels from the microwave and put them into the oven (or toaster oven) so the bread can crisp up and lose that soggy bread feeling.
Oven: Set your oven on High and broil for 1 minute, or until the cheese has melted thoroughly. This method allows you to cook the toppings, warm the bagels up, and melt the cheese without burning anything.
Posted in Bagels, Recipes.
I was going through the archives of Delicious Days and found that they posted a recipe and photos of mini bagels on my birthday, way back in January! How could I have missed it?!
The post is titled “Cute, Cuter, mini bagels” and their photos prove exactly that. You can’t but help just want to start baking your very own little mini bagel.
The article reminded me of a very tempting advantage that mini bagels have over regular large sized bagels: you can have multiple mini bagels to try different flavors in one sitting, without feeling like you’ve eaten your fill. Nicky, the author of the post, says it so much better:
“Generally, if available, I always opt for the smallest portion of a snack, which makes it easier to indulge in the many flavors and tastes. ‘Love to sample without making commitments, so to speak. Voilà , this is where the mini bagels come into play. Three to four big bites and they are history, allowing to taste different spreads and toppings without being completely stuffed.”
Posted in Bagels, Food Blogs.
If I asked you how many bagels a team of 4 people could make in an hour, most people guess around 100 to 300 bagels each. If they were really good. Most people are very wrong.
The Thompson Bagel Machine changed the entire bagel industry, back in 1963.
Daniel Thompson relates the huge technological innovation of the first Thompson Bagel Machine on his official website,
“Before Lender’s installed my bagel machine, they made bagels in the following manner: Sam Lender mixed the bagel dough and one man cut it into small slabs and fed it into an Italian breadstick machine. The Italian breadstick machine made bagel dough strips that were then distributed to workstations where six to eight men rolled them by hand into bagels. With this system they averaged 50 dozen bagels per hour per man. The first Thompson machine, with three unskilled workers, was able to do the work of eight skilled workers.”
That was in 1963. Fast forward to the present, where Lender’s Bagels makes tens of thousands of bagels using only four people!
“Winkler working with other companies engineered, built and installed a number of bagel lines around our K-Frame bagel machines that produce 64,800 bagels an hour! It only takes four people to operate these lines with the same 99.5% efficiency. There is not another bagel machine on this planet that comes close to any of the performance records that we have established with these machines!”
Daniel Thompson’s continual innovation of the bagel machine has earned him quite the dollar, and the top place in the bagel industry.
Read Daniel Thompson’s whole story about the history of the bagel machine at the official Thompson Bagel Machine website.
Posted in Bagels, Traditions.
Some people might think that the bagel is just for eating. The truth is that it’s abilities are far more than anyone ever expects. Just the other day, I lost my glasses and had to rush out somewhere. Not wanting to crash into anyone I decided to pull a Macgyver and use what I had at hand. Looking around the kitchen, I found a mini bagel and some licorice and carefully fashioned a pair of Bagel Glasses.
Ingredients:
1 mini bagel
4 straws of licorice
1 full imagination
Instructions:
The first step would be to cut your mini bagel in half. Then run a straw of licorice through the each of the center. Carefully twist the two pieces of licorish together and tuck the ends into the center of the bagel halves. Next, you will need to make two small incisions on the end of each bagel side. You can use a smaller steak knife and simply slide the knife into the edge to make a small opening. Tuck the remaining straws of licorice into these openings and stand back to admire your creation. Carefully slip on your new glasses and you’re good to go!
Posted in Advice, Bagels, Humor.
So you want to make a sandwich, huh?
STOP! Don’t grab the bread. Grab a bagel. Here’s why:
Bagels aren’t easily smashed.
When you’re brown bagging your lunch, you have to be careful. Sandwiches made with bread just aren’t the same after someone accidentally steps on your lunch repeatedly. With a bagel, you’ll barely be able to see the impact.
You only need one bagel.
Rather than waste two slices of bread, (or worse, only have half a sandwich!), grab a bagel. It has two halves built in. You’ll always be ready for a whole sandwich with a bagel.
Stacking
Bagels stack so much better than bread. You can stack on a ton of toppings onto a bagel without too much trouble. With bread, you’re pretty much limited to the size of your mouth, divided by the limited viscosity of a single slice of the bread you’re using, and then subtracted by the size of your hands multiplied by two. No one wants to do math while they’re trying to eat. Grab the bagel instead.
Posted in Advice, Bagels, Humor.
Brueggers Bagels have been around the block, long enough to know a few things at least, and they’ve published a collection of tips and tricks on how to keep your bagels FRESH.
Their best advice is the advice they give first. As any cook or baker would tell you, “enjoy the food on the day it’s made, no later”.
Here is their list of do’s and don’ts
DO
* keep your bagels in a tightly sealed plastic bag
* remove as much air as possible when sealing the bag
* reclose the bag promptly once opened
* slice your bagels before freezing
DON’T
* put your bagels in the fridge
* microwave your bagels
* store Onion, Garlic or Everything bagels with milder flavored bagels (unless you want them all to taste like onion and garlic!)
* leave your bagels open on the kitchen counter.
Posted in Advice, Bagels.
One of my good friends introduced me to this style of bagel and it has become a favorite over the years. Topping off an onion bagel with whipped cream cheese, sliced tomato, and onion makes for a great morning.
Ingredients:
1 tomato
1/4 red onion
1/4 white onion
whipped cream cheese
Your Favorite Bagel
Instructions:
1. Take your favorite bagel, cut it in half, and spread just the right amount of whipped cream cheese on both sides.
2. Dice both the red onion and white onion into fine thin chunks and sprinkle on top of the cream cheese.
3. Cut your tomato into thin slices and add to the bagel.
4. Then bake in your oven or toaster oven on high broil for 1 minute, or until lightly toasted.
Enjoy!
Posted in Bagels, Recipes.
Ninjas have a hard time, sneaking around and not getting caught. I have never seen a ninja at bagel shop - or anywhere for that matter. This lead me to believe that one of the following must be true: ninja don’t exist or there are secret bagel shops made specifically for ninjas, and only ninjas know where to find them.
Through careful research, several trips to the library, and consulting the fortune teller downtown, I’m fairly certain that not only do ninjas exist, but that they’re single handedly keeping the frozen bagel industry in business.
Hold on a second, I’m not saying that ninjas are the only ones who buy frozen bagels. I’m saying not only do ninjas eat bagels, they use frozen bagels as a knock-out device. Bagels not only have the range based advantages of a ninja star, they can silently knock out a person with a single blow. Seeing as how ninjas are all about stealth, this is the only logical answer.
If you have further information or tips about the ninja mafia’s involvement in the bagel industry, please comment and I’ll update this post.
Posted in Bagels, Humor.