We made pseudo French onion soup today. I srsly need to get some ramekins and ovenproof soup bowls. I crave crème brulée. We didn't use a recipe. We caramelized some onions in half a stick of butter and added three minced cloves of garlic. Then we added 2-3 cups of the vegetable stock we made a couple weeks ago and a cup of whey. I threw in some chili powder, cayenne, and a bit of cumin, but the cinnamon and bay leaf really brought it together. Chucking shit in really works! After ladling it into bowls, we topped them with toasted homemade bread and swiss cheese and then broiled them for a few minutes. Totally delicious and Joe was again surprised by how easy the entire process was. I sent him home with some of the frozen stock, which will probably go into ramen soup.
We also made paneer, which turned out to be super easy and yielded more cheese than we expected. The whey is going to be reserved for future bread making and adding to soups and whatever else seems appropriate. Today, we just fried the paneer in butter (in hindsight, we should've used ghee, especially since I made some last night). The outside was nice and chewy and the insides were tender and almost fluffy. Palak paneer is on the list of dinners for sometime in the next week.
For dessert, spicy brownies. We used Alton Brown's recipe and added cinnamon, chili powder, and a few healthy dashes of cayenne. I'm never using another recipe for brownies again. The chili and cayenne amplify everything in the best way, really rounding out the flavors.

no pictures this time : (

Lemon Thyme Cookies

I made about 60 of these tonight. Half were consumed with/given to Joe, Tucker and Ellie. The other half were baked up after they left. I ate a couple, but I am leaving them on the counter for anyone who wants cookies.

They are super tasty. They could've used more lemon, but mine wasn't giving me much juice, and I didn't have anything to zest with, so I had to carve off zest and mince it, which was too time consuming. The thyme flavor came out really nicely though. I used a fair bit, more than the recipe recommends. Also, instead of the ginger, I added a bit of nutmeg.

Here's a terrible pic:


They had a pretty cute teardrop shape.

Recipe from here.