Momma's Milk Cookies

I have a fabulous friend about 38 weeks pregnant. I have been scratching my brain for something to do for her when the baby comes. Thinking back to when I was a brand new mom, I tried to remember what stressed me out the most. As those of you who know me can attest to, I entered motherhood with the grace of a hippo attempting ballet. Breastfeeding was one of my biggest struggles and I stayed up nights frantically searching the web for ideas in  how to increase my milk supply.

Eventually I gave up the good fight. My sister however, had come across this recipe for lactation cookies. Eww, sounds weird right! She let me know how delicious they are, and I agree!

I gathered my ingredients. Of course, not shown here are the following: Salt, Baking Soda, White Chocolate Chips.

I use the recipe by Noel Trujillo found on Food.com: the only thing I change is to add 2 Tablespoons more of the flaxseed meal into the dry ingredients, because flax, brewer's yeast, and oatmeal are the ingredients thought to help with milk supply. 

The first thing they have you do is mix 2 Tablespoons of Flaxseed Meal with 4 Tablespoons of water. This turns into an egg substitute for baking. There are eggs in this recipe however, so I think it may just to be to stop your flax from making your cookies fall apart. That needs to sit about 5 minutes to gum up.

 Don't worry, you will be busy. Take 1 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, and 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar and mix well.

Add those 2 eggs on in and continue mixing.

 Next add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

If you have waited the 5 minutes you can go ahead and add the flax now. It just looks delicious doesn't it!

 Mix it well.

 Combine your dry ingredients: 2 cups flood, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, 4 Tablespoons Brewers yeast, and 2 Tablespoons flaxseed meal. 

Dump it in and mix well. This would probably be the point where they tell you to incorporate it slowly, but I didn't, and it worked out just fine.

Add your 3 Cups of oats

 Stir in 1 cup of chocolate chips. I did semi-sweet and white chocolate chips. You may have noticed the pictures look a little different. I switched over to the kitchen table and the natural light there is much better.

 Drop the dough by teaspoonful onto a cookie sheet.

 I ate some dough at this point and it was delicious. Yay, raw eggs.

 Cook them at 350 for 12 minutes. Don't worry if their sides touch a little when they are done cooking, they come apart really well.

 Not so bad for a flaxseed/brewer's yeast cookie huh

 Soft and delicious looking on the inside. Oh no, I broke one, better eat it!

 I love these cookie baking sheets. Got them at Target. Some people swear by the silicone matts. I am sure they are awesome as well but no more curling up of my parchment paper on my cookie sheet! Pet-peeve.

 Of course look who came to investigate as the cookies came out of the oven

 He also 'helped' with the dishes. Don't mind the sprinkles on his face! 

Okay, the cookies turned out lovely, easy, and delicious.

 I have purchased a cookie jar for my friend to keep her cookies in. Kids and husbands are smart so you have to trick them and hide them away because they are really good cookies, but now is the time mom's should be hoarding them for themselves.

I have heard that some mom's eat a cookie every time they breastfeed. The suggestion is to drink it with water as well so you are getting your cookie and staying hydrated. Most people eat about 6 a day! Wow, wish I was still breastfeeding :) These are really not low calorie or fat. 1 Cup of Butter and 2 Cups of Sugar. But they do make about 4 1/2 dozen cookies. 

 These cookies can be frozen and pulled out as you need them. These are going to make a wonderful gift for a new momma. Hopefully they are one less thing for her to have to think, about and if she should choose not to breastfeed, they are still pretty awesome cookies.

Thanks for checking out this post and enjoy!

Andrea

Chicken Noodle Soup

This week was a tough one at the our houses. Both family's had a touch of pneumonia, some dr's visits and a few trips to the pharmacy. Thank goodness we had a staple that everyone needs for such occasions: chicken noodle soup in the freezer.   Once we assembled all the necessary ingredients (the noodles are there for fun... we didn't use them when we made the soup for the freezer. However, if you are going to eat the soup today, go ahead and throw them in!). We diced 2 onions, sliced 2 celery stalks and 3 carrots. We made our carrots look like hearts because, come on... how cute! Click on the recipe below for a printable version on allrecipe.com

Ingredients 

Servings: 8

• 
  
• 
  
• 2 Tbsp Oil
• 3 Carrots, sliced
• 2 Celery Stalks, sliced
• 1 Onion, diced
• 1/2 tsp dried Thyme Leaves
• 2 quarts Chicken Stock
• 2 C. Egg Noodles
• 3 C. Chicken, shredded.
• 
  
• Directions

1. Sautee vegetables in oil until softened, add thyme, stock and shredded chicken meat. Bring the soup to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, until the vegetables are tender and the flavors meld, at least 15 minutes. Stir in the noodles and cook until just tender, about 8 minutes depending on the noodle. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve immediately.

At this point I always feel like I want to eat the veggies up. Oh look... celery, onions, and carrots, must be soup time at my house.

 Sautee those veggies up in about 2 TBSP of oil until softened. 

Throw in the 3 cups of chicken and 1/2 tsp of dried thyme leaves.

Add 8 cups of chicken stock, or water and chicken bouillon. You want a lot of liquid if you are going to be cooking your noodles in the soup.

Bring to a boil

 Once the soup is boiling, reduce heat to simmer and let simmer for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes you are ready to put in the noodles or freeze the soup.

 This time we went ahead and froze the soup!

Ahh Chicken Noodle, So easy and so delicious!
Look I even took some cell phone pictures of the finished product:

 Had some spaetzle noodles laying around

 dump it in a pot

  cook it up

Enjoy!

Andrea

Chicken Wild Rice Soup

Happy Soup Sunday. Look Mom, Dad, I posted on a Sunday. A few months ago, Jes and I stocked our freezers with some of our favorite soups. I actually think this soup may be our absolute favorite. My mom started making this soup oh I don't know about 15 years back or so... Getting older really messes with your timeline :) It was a hit and we have never looked back! Have I ever showed you guys how gorgeous my mom is!

Here she is early morning this Christmas, talking to little man about the ornaments and bulbs!

So without further ado, the soup. You can use turkey, chicken, pheasant, grouse, or I don't know, whatever poultry you have on hand. Leftovers work really well for this soup too! Jes and I didn't have any leftover turkey or chicken so we boiled 2 large chicken breasts and diced it up. You will need 2 Cups.

Click on the recipe below to go to all recipes for the printable version

Servings: 6

 Yield: About 8 Cups of soup

• Ingredients: 
• 1 Onion, chopped

• 2 Celery Ribs, chopped

• 2 Carrots, diced

• 1/2 C Butter

• 1/2 C Flour

• 4 Cups Chicken Broth

• 2 Cups cooked Wild Rice
• 2 Cups half and half

• 2 Cups diced, cooked chicken

• Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions

1. In a large dutch over (or soup pot), sauté onion, celery, and carrots in butter until the onion is transparent. Reduce heat to low. Add flour and cook until bubbly. Gradually add the chicken broth, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil; boil for 1 minute. Reduce the heat and add the wild rice, cream, chicken, and salt and pepper. Simmer for 20 minutes

Chop those veggies fine, and then throw that stick of butter in the pan to heat it up

You could let it melt all the way, but I was getting impatient!

Oh my gosh, veggies in butter. I could just about eat it now. You may have noticed that a carrot, celery, and onions are the base of just about all my soups. Yep, they are amazing, and should be the base of many of your soups too!

Let them cook down about 10 minutes

Yumm! Now reduce the heat to low.

Okay, this is how we make our soup thick and delicious, Add 1/2 Cup of flour

Stir and cook until it starts to bubble. Not a great photo, but you will see it better at home when you are making it. Then add the Chicken Stock slowly, stirring constantly, this will help keep the flour butter roux from clumping!

You need to bring this mixture to a boil and boil for about 1 minute.

Okay, now it is time for the half and half, the chicken, and the wild rice.

Salt and Pepper to taste, to me this means liberally

Stir it up, and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

This soup is one of our family favorites. it is delicious and actually easy to make if you have the wild rice on hand. We cook up a big pot at a time and freeze it, 2 cups, in a ziplock bag. 

Because this was for our freezers, we put it into 4 Cup ziplock screw on locking lid containers and went ahead and froze it. Make sure you have a bit of extra room at the top so the soup can expand while it freezes. It makes enough for 2 containers.

Okay, you made it to the bottom of the post, confession time, I add 1 extra tsp of chicken bouillon to my soup! It just pushes it over the edge in terms of flavor, but the sodium can be reduced by not doing it! The soup is so good as is, but I love my salt!

Enjoy :)

Andrea