Recipes as promised

The first two come from Mimi. She recently moved her site and archives are not there so I’m just typing them out again.

LACE COOKIES

• 1 1/2 cups uncooked oatmeal
• 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
• 2 tbl flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2/3 cup butter, melted (10 2/3 tbl)
• 1 egg, slightly beaten
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix oatmeal, brown sugar, flour and salt in a bowl. Stir in the melted butter, then add edd and vanilla and combine well. Arrange the batter by 1/2 teaspoonfuls, about 2 inches apart on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. **Pay attentention to this!! The cookies will spread a LOT so they need the space and it does not take more than the 1/2 tsp to make a cookie. I know. I’ve learned 🙂 ** Bake until lightly browned around the edges. About 5 mins on a regular cookie sheet, and 9 for an air bake sheet. Cool slightly before removing cookies from the parchment with a spatula. **Another hint – this are super delicate so this year I simply stored them by cutting out more pieces of parchment and stacking them on the slips. This keeps them from sticking together and from cracking apart. See photo here.

HOLY BREAD

Basic dough:

• 3 1/4 cups all purpose white flour
• 1 tbl white sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 package rapid rise yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 1 Tbl butter, melted

Mix 2 1/4 cups flour, sugar, salt, yeast, warm water and butter. Add enough of the remaining flour to form a soft dough. Turn out onta a floured surface and knead for 4 minutes. Roll out into a 10-14 inch rectangle/oval. Now it is ready to be filled. I chose a pesto provalone version. I bought a container of pesto and sliced provalone and simply spread the pesto out down the center 1/3 of the dough and then layered the cheese slices over it. Mimi posted a recipe for a cinamon sugar version where you would slather the entire rolled out dough with 3 tbl of room temperature butter and then evenly sprinkle out some cinamon sugar over that. Either way, once you’ve chosen a filling, the next step is the wrapping. With a sharp knife slice the outer 1/3 of the dough at 1 inch intervals on both sides making the same number of cuts on both sides. Starting at one end, fold the sliced dough tabs alternating sides. Gently press down on each tab so it wont pop free while baking. With the thicker pesto/cheese filling you will need to stretch the dough tabs a bit to cover. For the pesto version, brush an egg white over the folded dough. For the cinamon version, brush more melted butter on it. Transfer the dough to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Boil about 4 cups of water and pour into a shallow baking dish. Place the  baking sheet on top of the pan with the water and cover with a clean towel.Let rise for 15 mins. It will just become slightly puffy. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 400 F. Bake it, uncovered for 20 mins with a thin filling, 25 with more. Before and after photos of the pesto version are here.

I found this crock pot roast recipe on a random recipe site. There are variations like this all over, but this is what I made exactly and as I said – RAVE reviews!

CROCKPOT ROAST BEEF

• 4 lb boneless roast meat (chuck, sirloin etc. Whatever is on sale will do!)
  
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 envelope dry onion soup mix
• 1 envelope brown gravy mix
• 2 cups ginger ale

Coat roast in flour. Place in crock pot. Blend the rest of the ingredients including the remaining flour in a bowl and pour over roast. Cook on low 8-10 hours or on high 4-5. I stirred the gravy around the roast a couple of times while it was cooking since I was home, but I am sure it would be just fine totally left alone. The meat is ridiculously tender, the gravy is perfect right out of the pot and this makes amazing leftovers. Youngest is already asking me when I can make another one!