Whoa, What Happened?

Short answer: I’ve trimmed back the number of recipes to what I think is the very best, and I don’t think I’ll be adding more.

Long answer: I started to get a lot of traffic, which was caused my hosting service to shut off the database, which made this website unusable. I’d try to resolve it, and it would happen again. They would suggest upgrading my service, but since I have no advertising (yay!) it would cost me, so I made some changes that you might not like. Sorry.

First I removed a whole bunch of recipes. These were ones I didn’t use on a regular basis, so I had no reason to keep them around.

Second, I made the site static so it would no longer rely on a database. It should be a lot faster, and use far less CPU time, which should make my hosting service happy.

Third, I’m trying to think of something new, it’ll probably be cooking related, just a whole lot more focused.

Peanut Butter Cups

Mmm. Chocolate and peanut butter.

We’ve been making candies at Christmas for several years now, and, while we have our favorites, we do like to try something new from time to time. This year we decided to try our hand at making Peanut Butter Cups. Not like the ones you can buy at the store; we’re talking Peanut Butter Cups with real ingredients. Quality ingredients, such as a good dark chocolate, and a not-too-sweet peanut butter filling. After all, those Peanut Butter Cups in the two-pack are overly sweet, and the chocolate barely tastes like chocolate. We know we can do better. So can you, fellow scratcher.

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Dutch Baby Pancake

What an odd name: Dutch Baby Pancake.

Super easy! Super tasty!

We’ve known about Dutch Baby pancakes for years, but we never had one. We knew that they are basically a large popover type dish that you bake in the oven, and for a long time we just figured that if we were going to eat something like popovers, we might as well eat popovers. Then we had a friend tell us about a Cacio e Pepe Dutch Baby that she made and showed us pictures of how well it turned out. With an example like that, we knew we had to try one (Thanks, CL!) . We figured you’d like to try one yourself.

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Buckwheat Pancakes

Slightly nutty, very delicious.

While we’ve not been going many places during the pandemic, we have been trying to keep it interesting at home. For example, most Sunday mornings we have a somewhat special breakfast. Now, we’re not talking a huge breakfast buffet, or anything like that, just something a bit more special (normally we have a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and a bit of our Best-Ever Scratched Granola sprinkled on top). So sometimes we have muffins, and sometimes pancakes, and lately we’ve added in the star of today’s post: buckwheat pancakes.

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Worth the trouble?

Macaroni Gratin

It’s worth bringing out the good china!

Doesn’t Macaroni Gratin sound nice and fancy? Something you might get at an upscale restaurant. Of course, you and I know that Macaroni Gratin is pretty much Mac ‘n’ Cheese. Well, not that neon yellow sauce- coated macaroni that some pass off as Mac ‘n’ Cheese (yes, of course, we’ve had that kind, too). This recipe for Macaroni Gratin is far more upscale, and you wouldn’t really make it for the kiddies, either, as you definitely need to put effort into making this version.

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Homemade Soba Noodles

A pleasant change from plain white rice!

Well, it certainly has been a long time since we put together a new recipe. I guess it’s just a bit difficult to come up with something new and different when you’re staying in most of the time. Plus, it’s a bit more difficult to head out to find special ingredients, even if it is just a trip to the store where we normally shop. Rather than look around, we just try to grab what we need and head for the checkout. So, we rely on a lot of standard dishes that we’ve already written up; therefore, a lack of posts.

Today, we have something for you: Homemade Soba Noodles. Somewhere along the line, we picked up a package of soba noodles on sale at the store. We think they might have been approaching the “best by” date, so they were 50% off. Even so, we think that they were close to $2.00 for a 300g (10 ounce) pack. Sure, they were nicely formed, separated into three 100g bundles and all that, but it’s not as if we’re going to pay the original price of four bucks for less than a pound of noodles. We know how to make noodles, and, how much different can soba noodles be, anyway?

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Sage Cauliflower with Crispy Bread Crumbs

With a bed of pasta, this can be a meal!

We took this dish and turned it into a full meal by serving it on top of some fresh, 50% spelt pasta (just make fresh pasta with 50% spelt flour, or any whole-wheat flour if you don’t have spelt), but we think that this will also work just fine as a side dish by leaving out the pasta. And, while we made some crispy sage leaves for an extra topping, you could leave those off, too. It just depends on how much scartchin’ you want to do.

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Worth the trouble?