chocolate chip muffin cookies and beef and red pepper noodles with black pepper sauce

 I made the chocolate chip cookies today again, and I was a bit distracted.  I was watching our cat and goat interact outside the kitchen window, and I forgot all the way to the very end to add the brown sugar!  So, then, I improvised and still ended up with something very good, but they were more like muffins than cookies.

So what happened instead of the regular recipe was :\

375 degree oven preheated with parchment paper on a (non-preheated) flat baking sheet 

1 stick of softened butter, cut into 1/2 cup of white sugar

1 tsp of vanilla extract mixed with one egg, then cut into the butter mixture quickly

1 cup of flour mixed with 1/2 tsp of baking soda and 1/2 tsp of salt - folded in

then add one half cup more of flour

and one cup of chocolate chips SHOULD have been next but I realised there is usually 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar in the sugar mixture.. and I hadn't done it.  I had been laughing at our goat and cat outside the window and not paying enough attention *sigh*  So now I have a floury mixture and need to add the sugar...

So, I added one more lightly beaten egg, a splash of milk, and the packed brown sugar all at one time, then added a bit more flour until the mixture was back to the right consistency.  I worried that not adding more baking soda might make it not rise right - but I went for it anyway.

 I added the chocolate chips and  scooped it out onto the parchment paper and then baked for 10-15 minutes just until the bottom edges looked like they were beginning to brown.  Whew, they all turned out great!  And the other cookies were thin and a bit crisp after removing - these were soft and very muffin-like, but not gooey.  And they hardened up a bit after being put on a plate and then into the fridge in a ziploc bag with a paper towel in the bottom of it.

 

Last night I used Mark's leftover beef roast cut up into a noodle recipe I have been looking forward to.  We had stir fry noodles I wanted to use up the second half of the package before too long had went by.

I added olive oil to a pan and put white onions, green onions and red bell pepper in to begin to sautee.  Then I added about a cup of water to that, and some soy sauce and some Allegro Black Pepper marinade, which usually I would use some balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, prepared brown mustard and spices to make something similar - but I've been liking the marinade and it has balsamic vinegar in it, which is probably why.  Let that sautee and bubble for a little bit, added the well chopped meat and stirred thoroughly, remaining sort of 'saucey' even with the meat in it add some water if it absorbs too much, turned the heat down a little - broke and rinsed the stir fry noodles in their package (wet pack), and then put them into the mixture and let that steam off the heat and stirred it a few times - then served it up

 

just a few days ago (above), with names

these are some of the big chickens that have names, the other rooster's name is Beau and he has one eye and no tail feathers (but he does chase after opossums)  Amber and Peach and Speck are all olive-eggers, I think - and the other olive-egger we still have I'm not sure entirely if they are a tiny rooster or not, but they seem to get along okay any way you look at it.  They have long scraggly little tail feathers and are tiny compared to the hens, called 'He-He' after Moana, and never was very 'bright' - once walked to the end of a stick several inches off the ground and thought 'the world ends here' and turned around and started walking the other direction instead of hopping off.  We've been advised that our olive-eggers might have been crossed with Crested Cream Legbar, for the way that they have little tufts of feathers on their head by their combs.

 

We also cleaned out the baby chicks' cage and put all new material in for them.  Our dog Charlotte was so upset, she thought we had thrown the chicks out with the bed litter - but she realized after a few moments of utter despair (she was actually laying stretched out next to the empty, drying cage like it was the end of the world) that they were inside the house in a different cage, and then she was so excited I had to tell her to go elsewhere for a little bit and calm down as she was jumping around smelling and scaring them.  As we put them back in the big cage she had another super-excitement and they were all bouncey and fluttering around but at least they were in the big cage then.  Esme and I finished giving them names, but we'll have to see if we can still tell some of them apart for a while after they finish molting their adult feathers.

a perch stick they haven't learned to use yet

Prairie is the silvery-brown one next to the grey (Goose) in the corner  Duck is the dark brown, Pheasant is the one with the yellow face and brown back,   Goose is still smaller than everyone and is probably not Americauna, but some other breed we'll find out as we go, or a sport from Sapphire Gem crossing that some say happens in this type.  Duck we think is definitely just a sport (odd color, brown in this case) Americauna, but she also walks low to the ground and holds her head close to her shoulders and the name is fitting more and more every day.  Esme says one of the yellows has a spot on the side of their face and the other has a stripe across (somewhere?) and so she has called them Spot and Stripe - but I'm telling those two apart basically because Stripe is one and a half times bigger than everyone else, they've been 'the one in charge of figuring this stuff out' since the beginning, first to use the hanging feeder and to check out the water bottles etc.

We are supposed to have a wild storm and maybe even a dusting of snow tomorrow, then cold temperatures for days... the wind is definitely up out there now.