None of these photos are any good. But I like documenting a process.
First, pizza. I can make pizza crust fine, but I really just like using Wegmans whole wheat pizza dough. And this time I used their sauce as well; Grandma's Pomodoro Sauce is good for pizza. But I went lavish with the ingredients. I'd been sick for awhile and wanted to give the kids something special.
The last two are of mine; I like to use tomatoes instead of sauce, and I like goat cheese best.
Then I made minestrone, with one vegan batch for my daughter's friend.
And I made Easter cookies. The recipe is at the end of this post.
And I made a cherry pie exactly the way my mom used to make it? We all enjoyed it but I realized I like it my way much better!
When I'm cooking just for myself, it tends to go a little differently.
Here's the Easter cookie recipe:
Italian Easter Cookies--this is culled together from an old yellowed piece of notebook paper, and some trials with various internet recipes. It's one of 4 or 5 recipes I should have asked my mother for, that I've been trying to conquer for a long time.
Yield up to 6 dozen.
6 medium eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup oil (I use butter, or half butter, but the recipe had oil written on it--I think they keep longer if you use only oil.)
1 tbs vanilla or anise flavoring (or almond extract, which is what I prefer.)
2 cups sugar
6 cups flour
2 tbs baking powder
Cream sugar and oil. Beat eggs until lemon-colored and foamy. Combine with sugar mixture, milk and extract and beat until light. Sift dry ingredients together. Combine with egg mixture, and knead lightly on a floured surface, until the dough is smooth and easy to handle, then roll dough into 1 inch balls. If you like, you can roll the balls into ropes about five inches long. Tie into loose knots or braid and place cookies one inch apart onto greased cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees until lightly browned. Dip into icing when cool, and let dry on waxed paper.
Icing:
1 ib powdered sugar
Several tablespoons milk, add a little at a time to the powdered sugar, until it's thin enough to dip cookies in.
2 teaspoons lemon, almond, or anise flavoring (I mean, you should probably only use the lemon or anise if you used vanilla in the dough. And you could combine some vanilla and anise or vanilla and lemon for the dough, but I just like almond.)
A few drops of food coloring can be added to make Easter colors—just be sure to start with only 2-3 drops, then add more, one at a time until you have the color you like.
My grandma made these at Easter, and we each got a special one which was a braided circle with a colored hard-boiled egg placed in the center of it. She put a cross made of dough over the top, and cooked it in a slower oven. They are not very sweet, especially if you leave off the icing. They are perfect for coffee or tea, and improve after a day or two.
