Memory lane

My co-worker A hosted a PartyLite candle party tonight and I was obligated to attend. I took the opportunity to go to Murillo's for dinner with Jim, since the restaurant is less than 10 minutes away from her house. Murillo's is a Mexican restaurant that M & R absolutely love. I don't, but that's not surprising, since we have completely opposite tastes in Mexican food (Momo's and Issy's being prime examples). However, A assured me that the original Murillo's, which is much more of a hole in the wall vibe, is way better. She was absolutely right. While their salsa was still nothing to write home about, the food was quite delicious.

Jim was starving, so he ordered us nachos as an appetizer. They were a decent size and smothered in nacho cheese, green onions, tomatoes, and jalapenos. While I definitely prefer real cheese, it's always nice to eat some toxic orange stuff once in a while. I really like their chips, which are light and flaky white corn.

Anyway, our main course burritos came with a choice of either sour cream or guac, which was a no brainer for JIm. I also chose guacamole and used some of the sour cream from the nachos, which Jim requested on the side. They were a good size but on the pricier side (Sandoval's/Randy's ballpark). Mine wasn't particularly spectacular. The guacamole wasn't great, the rice barely seasoned, and the whole beans didn't have a special flavor. It wasn't bad at all. It just wasn't memorable. What impressed me was Jim's burrito, which was stuffed full of shredded chicken breast.

Afterwards we went to Foster's Freeze, somewhere I haven't been in at least a decade, maybe even longer. When I was young, I used to get Foster's Freeze french fries after my piano lessons if I did well. So FF has always had a special place in my heart. Murillo's shares a parking lot with FF, so we couldn't resist. Neither one of us was particularly hungry, so we split a 12 ounce soft serve mixed with Reese's peanut butter cups. They were super generous and ironically, we both would have preferred them to have not been quite so liberal with the Reese's. Both of us love soft serve ice cream plain. At any rate, it was still super yummy and a walk down memory lane.

Tonight we stayed in and watched The Big Love, since my latest thing is polygamy. With the recent compound raid, my fascination has turned into a borderline obsession. I've read Carolyn Jessop's book, as well as Irene Spencer's, and I'm completely curious about the whole thing. Anyway, I got season one from the library and we ended up watching three episodes while I baked some oatmeal cookies, the recipe courtesy of Paula Deen.

I absolutely love oatmeal raisin cookies, but I haven't yet found quite the perfect recipe. Better Homes and Garden has a great recipe for oatmeal butterscotch ones, but the base recipe isn't great with raisins. The back of a Guittard white chocolate chip package had a fantastic one, but I've since lost it and have been on the lookout ever since to find a great oatmeal raisin recipe. Tonight's try definitely needs a repeat performance. While a ton of work, they end result was perfect.

Th recipe ingredient list was about a mile long, with a ton of different spices: vanilla, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, all spice, and cinnamon. A unique touch was the use of buttermilk and a combination of butter and shortening. Paula said it would be 60 cookies and I think that's about the number I netted. I used a small ice cream scoop to keep all of the cookies uniform in size, a tip I picked up from Ina.

Using my KitchenAid, I mixed a stick of butter, 1/2 a cup of shortening, and brown sugar together before adding in a couple of eggs. At that point, I was supposed to keep mixing until the batter turned into a lighter color. I was a little distracted trying to sift together all of the dry ingredients (including the seemingly never ending spice list) that I didn't pay attention to the original color, so I ended up just guessing that it was lighter after it mixed for several minutes. I added low-fat buttermilk and then stirred in the flour mixture by hand with my handy dandy Williams-Sonoma spoonula. I have to admit that when it comes to kitchen things especially, name brand appliances and utensils give me great joy to use. Anyway, I also added in oatmeal and raisins, omitting the walnuts, since Jim doesn't really like nuts in his cookies.

Then came the usual tedious chore of actually scooping the cookies onto the cookie sheets. I used my Silpat and parchment paper in an effort to avoid some cleanup. I have to say, parchment paper may be my new love. So utterly convenient! Not only was there no cleanup, but I was able to use the sheets multiple times. It was a win-win-win (to quote The Office). The cookies turned out fabulous, if I do say so myself. They were perfectly baked--soft and chewy, just the way an oatmeal cookie is supposed to be. They weren't too sweet, but then I added some frosting, which gave them plenty of added sugariness. The icing was a pain in the butt, but I'm quickly learning that icings aren't exactly my strong point, since I manage to make a mess just about every time I try. Tonight was certainly no exception. I almost burned the butter and I was having serious issues sifting the powdered sugar. My timing was all off and it was headed for a complete disaster when Jim rescued me, thus averting a meltdown by me and a ruined batch of icing. I loaded the icing into a parchment pastry bag and piped the icing onto the cookies. Jim also got a bag and he got all creative with his assigned cookies. I just zig zagged back and forth, but he wrote our names and drew hearts, stars, and smiley faces. Very cute. The cookies were even more fantastic with the icing.

The cookies allowed me to use up more buttermilk, which was great. And now I have something to send to S (who's still in Kuwait) and my best friend M, who just had her third child (a girl!). Plus I'm ripping through other pantry items, which is always good. I've got quite a spice collection going on now, and I'm very happy about that. I think they only thing I want now is cardamom. Anyway, I was very happy with my cookies. Hope they keep well.