Staten Island Ferry & Chocolate Shakes

Roll Recipe

Emily, this post if for you! :)

Brenda's Favorite Dough Recipe
*Use for scones, rolls, bread, cinnamon rolls or twists, doughnuts, etc.

1 1/2 c. Warm Water
1/4 c. Milk
4 tsp. Yeast
1/2 c. Sugar
1/2 c. Potato flakes
2 Eggs
3 Tbsp. Butter, softened
1 1/2 tsp. Salt
4-5 c. Flour

Using a large mixing bowl, combine warm water, milk, yeast, sugar, and potato flakes. Let sit for about five minutes or until you can see that the yeast is completely dissolved and expanding. Add approximately one cup of flour, mixing well. Add salt, eggs, and oil. Continue to add flour (approximately two to three more cups) until ready to knead (will be difficult to stir with a spoon when it is ready to knead). Knead using an alternating pull - punch motion, adding flour in 1/4 cup increments whenever the dough is sticky, for around ten minutes or until dough is soft and elastic. Let sit for 45 minutes then shape into rolls, bread, cinnamon rolls (instructions below), etc. Let rise an additional 40-50 minutes or until fingerprint stays before baking. If preparing scones the second raising cycle is not necessary.

For cinnamon rolls: Roll dough about 1/2 inch thick in a large rectangle shape. Melt about half of a square of butter and spread evenly over dough. Top with a layer of brown sugar and sprinkle with ground cinnamon. Can also add chopped walnuts or raisins (I have never been a fan of either but Dad loves them so sometimes I compromise.) Starting on one side, roll the dough from one side to the other, stretching slightly as you go. Use dental floss to cut (usually between an inch and a quarter to an inch and a half wide) and place on greased baking sheet.

Cook using following instructions.
Rolls: Bake @ 350 for 20-25 minutes
Cinnamon Rolls/Twists: Bake @ 350 for 20-30 minutes
Bread: Bake @ 350 for 30-45 minutes
Scones: Fry in hot oil for 2-3 minutes
Doughnuts: Fry in deep hot oil for 2-3 minutes

Thanksgiving 2008

There are so many things for which I am thankful, but especially the gospel and my family, which are truly the most important things in my life. I'm so grateful to have them.

I'm also happy that there is a day specifically for remembering to be thankful! I hope that everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving!!! I enjoyed another Thanksgiving in NYC this year. The weather was a bit colder this time around, but that didn't prevent it from being a fabulous day.

I started my day at 6am by stuffing a turkey and getting it in the oven in time to meet up with friends to go to the parade (more photos can be found on Facebook). We went to 72nd and Central Park West and had a fairly good view, at least of the floats! It was a fun experience.

The following photos are in no particular order, just a few floats that caught my eye - - -

Dedicated to Swearika.

Richard, totally thought of you! I love Snoopy, aka the WWI Flying Ace

Carla, do you still have your old wallet??

D - - -

We waited (maybe not quite patiently) for Santa, and here he is!!!
For Thanksgiving dinner this year, a group of us who stayed in town got together and put together a traditional dinner. I was very happy that we were able to get a few extras to come so that I had an excuse to make a turkey with stuffing!!

I also enjoyed making a few pies (pumpkin and apple). My Mother thought I stacked the apples a bit high on this one, but it totally turned out fine!

Many thanks to our friend Rich, who loaned us his apartment for dinner! Instead of passing the food, someone brilliant (I actually don't know who devised this plan because I was busy making gravy, but it was truly brilliant) decided that we could put all the food on the table and then walk around it and serve ourselves like a buffet; it worked very well.

Trust me, the food was absolutely delicious! Everyone who came contributed something and it all came together very well.

My favorite part, the rolls.

Thanks to everyone who came, you made it a wonderful day!

Later we watched movies and ate pie and stayed up late talking, a perfect day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Baking = Happiness (For Me!)

One of my most favorite things to do happens to be cooking, any kind really, so I take advantage of every possible opportunity to prepare food. When I heard about the upcoming Luau (was on Saturday*), I begged Jenn to let me help. Since she knows I love to bake, she let me make the cakes. Friday evening was maybe one of the most relaxing evenings I've ever had and so much fun!!! I just hung out in my kitchen and made cakes all night. (It would have been a perfect night if I hadn't had to do my laundry on the side.) I made Pineapple Upside Down Cake and Pina Colada Cake, and based on the amount consumed, I believe they both turned out well.

Before After

The finished product

I love baking!!!

*Note: the Luau was fantastic, many thanks to everyone!

Making Bagels

Thought I would try a new recipe, so Saturday evening I made my own style of NYC bagels. It was a fun process! I love cooking!

Start by making the dough and then let it raise for 60 minutes. Shape the bagels (maybe I felt like being semi-creative) . . . . . . Let the shaped dough sit for 20 minutes and then drop individually into a pot of boiling water for 1.5 minutes per side. Remove . . .
. . . and immediately place on a cookie sheet, greased and dusted with cornmeal. Bake @ 450 for 15 minutes . . .
. . . and deliciousness results!
The bagels worked great for Sunday's dinner.
I will definitely add this recipe to my book!

Conference Tradition

Brigham Young doughnuts are a General Conference tradition in my family. Even though the family is 2000 miles away, it is still possible to carry on traditions with great friends!


I Y General Conference!

Much Better than Expected

It's true. I am officially old. As in the number representing my years on earth has officially increased now that my birthday has come. I wasn't so much looking forward to this birthday as I wasn't quite ready for another year of my life to be over - I want to take a bit more time to stop and smell the roses! But alas, I am not able to hold back time so I will accept the inevitable aging.

Now I mentioned I wasn't so keen on this birthday, but it truly turned out better than I had expected . . .
I started out the day by attending an early 7:45am session at the Manhattan Temple. This may have been the earliest I have ever dragged myself out of bed on a Saturday, but it was absolutely worth it! Attending the temple at the start of a new year was the best idea I ever had! And I was joined by my dear friends which made it even better.
Here I am with my temple buddies, Lyndee and Melanie

And Sara too!

After the temple, we wandered down to 57th and 9th Avenue to Whym Restaurant where we were joined by five other friends. Lyndee had orchestrated the brunch, reservations and all, getting the recommendation from Cory. And can I just say, wow, absolutely fabulous choice! The service was perfect and the food tasted oh, so good! And I was able to enjoy it with my very close friends, who had all sacrificed there Saturday mornings to come all the way uptown. It is most likely the best brunch that I have had while in the city. Below are a few snapshots of the delectable food.

As I mentioned, I was joined by 8 amazing friends! I cannot express how amazing these ladies are and all that they do to help me be a better person - thanks gals for celebrating with me!

Ashley, Heidi, Cory, Me, Melanie, Sara, Lyndee, Kimberly, Courtnie

Afterwards I was forced to face reality and walk in the pouring rain to work, where I spend the next 12 hours, interrupted periodically with phone calls, emails, and texts. But even with working all that time, it was still a fabulous birthday! Thanks to everyone who celebrated with me or sent me happy birthday greetings!

It Tastes Better

Thanks to the many dinners that I've had the privilege of eating at my desk during this busy season, I have determined that Heinz ketchup packets have a better flavor than Hunt's. For serious.

I would say I am someone who truly loves individual packets of ketchup (ever since the two quarter bet with Ron, I've been addicted to this stuff - but only what comes in the little packets!)
I didn't realize the subtle differences until now, but I have found Heinz to be truly superior. You don't have to take my word for it . . . go get some french fries and see for yourself!

Happy Thanksgiving

A group of us who stayed in the city had Thanksgiving dinner together. Many thanks to Whitney for doing most of the planning, food assignments, organizing and finding guests to help eat. Also thanks to everyone who contributed food - everything was homemade! As the weather was so beautiful, we ended up having dinner on our terrace. It turned out perfect.

We had such fun preparing the different dishes. I was lucky to get to make pies and rolls. On Wednesday evening, Mel helped out with making the fresh apple pie. She did a wonderful job stacking the apples carefully within the shell to make a very full pie.
It baked up beautifully and tastes delicious.
I also made two pumpkin pies and a raspberry pie. It didn't set up as well as I would have liked but the flavor was still good. Spent Thursday morning making rolls. I love making rolls. Maybe my favorite part of the day.
A collection of some of the goodies...we had so much food. I think about fifteen people came for dinner and we probably had enough food for thirty! Oh well, plenty of leftovers :)

It was such a blessing (another reason to be thankful I guess) that NYC was experiencing such mild weather for a fall day...it was somewhere in the 60's and the sun was shining. It worked out great to have dinner on the terrace - room for everyone!

I really hope that everyone who came had a good time, I certainly enjoyed the opportunity to build relationships and enjoy good food.

The rest of the day was spent in relaxing, enjoying good conversations, eating pie and watching movies. It was such a nice day.

I convinced Kimberly that she wanted to stay up late and watch movies with me. We couldn't resist a little snack...something about the day just makes it hard to stop eating!

The price of eggs

We are talking about the actual price of eggs here...
These are the most expensive chicken eggs I have ever seen! I have lived in this city for a while now and feel quite jaded so far as the cost of, well just about anything here...but this caught me by surprise - $5.49 for a dozen eggs - wow.

Baking!

Over this past weekend I had a great time baking…here are a few fun things I made…

Bread - for the Enrichment activity - made whole wheat and it actually tasted good! Special thanks to Mom for the amazing recipe and for teaching me to make bread when I was young.

Pot Pie - this is Cory's favorite and she has been requesting it for months, as it was her birth-week I figured it was a good time to make it.

Farm-pan Apple Pie - Lyndee helped me peel the apples for a pie...then I realized that I had guessed wrong and there were way too many apples...so we resorted to a bigger pan!

Corn Bread - made it for the last week's ward social - fairly certain that it was the most corn bread I have ever made in one setting.

Needless to say, I spent many enjoyable hours in my kitchen over the past week. I wish that I had more time for cooking...and maybe more people to feed!