The other night I was pouring a bag of sugar into the sugar container and noticed a recipe on the side of the bag for ‘Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies’. Funny how we can see things all the time, but not really pay attention. This time, I did.

What else was I to do, but to make cookies at 9 o’clock at night!

As I started to get the ingredients together, I decided to try and make it a little healthier. I mean come on, it’s a sugar cookie, so I can only go for healthier, not healthy. So, I grabbed some hard white winter wheat berries, yet still, I wanted… more. In our kitchen pantry, next to the grain grinder is where I keep the bin for the oats. Click.

Love when that light bulb turns on! Oats!

Okay, we can work with this, whole wheat, oats, farro*, maybe use less sugar, and since I didn’t have any butter thawed, and no cream thawed to make butter, let’s change out the butter called for with shortening. That works, a crunchier cookie!

Quickly grinding some whole wheat, oats and farro together into flour (1 cup wheat berries, 1/2 cup rolled oats and 1/4 cup farro), I grabbed the other ingredients: shortening, whole powdered eggs, salt, vanilla extract and baking powder. Oh, and some water.

The original recipe called for the butter and sugar to be creamed together in a separate bowl, yada, yada, yada. I didn’t have the patience for all that. So, herein lies my ‘healthier’ sugar cookie and how I did it.

*Emmer (Triticum dicoccum) wheat is one of the three hulled wheats known in Italy as farro and is the wheat that is most commonly called farro. It is rich in fiber, protein, magnesium, and vitamins. I have been told that biblical spelt is now correctly identified as emmer wheat, and that spelt (Triticum spelta) wheat was not grown in ancient Israel.

Multi-grain Sugar Cookies

ingredients

• 2 cups flour (fresh ground whole wheat, oats and farro mixed)
• 1/2 cup PLUS 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup shortening (PLUS - 3 tablespoons water - see notes below)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon whole powdered eggs (PLUS 2 tablespoons water)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

directions

• Toss all ingredients into medium sized mixing bowl.
• Using hand-mixer (or use your stand mixer if you want) mix all ingredients for about 5-7 minutes. Mixture will be crumbly.
• Cover and place bowl in refrigerator for about 15 minutes. Scrape dough out of bowl and roll it into 2 equal logs. Wrap and chill for 2 hours. (I use waxed paper to roll mine.)
• Turn oven on to preheat: 350°F
• While oven is heating, slice logs, about 1/4-inch thick. Then gently pat them back into ’rounds’. (Mine all started turning into half-moons from the slicing.) Then I gave them one gentle squish between my palms to flatten them slightly and placed them about an inch apart on Silpat covered baking sheets.
• Bake at 350° for approximately 12 minutes, or until lightly golden (look at the edges, you will start to see that turn first). Let set on tray for 1-2 minutes and then move to cooling rack to cool completely.
• Cookies can be stored in airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days. (Here I am guessing that long, because we used shortening instead of butter - but always check yours, if you aren’t sure, don’t eat it!)

Notes:

If you look on your shortening container, you’ll notice the conversion for replacing it for butter, is 1 cup shortening PLUS 6 teaspoons water equals 1 cup butter. Yup, that is teaspoons, not tablespoons.

Now, I’ll be honest, when I read the conversion at time of baking, I swear it said tablespoons, so that is what I based recipe on - needed to replace 1/2 cup butter, so changed it to 1/2 cup shortening and 3 tablespoons water. It wasn’t until 2 days later that I realized my oopsie. That is a big oops, but, I can only assume because of the whole wheat and oat flour (which is denser) that it actually worked out, perfectly. So now my oops, is a, thata girl! :o)

Oh, and another thing, if like me you decide late at night to bake something you’ve never baked before, before you start grabbing all those ingredients you’ll need and starting to grind and mix, read the instructions first. ALL of them. I didn’t until after I ground my wheat and oats and started mixing everything. That is when I noticed that they needed to be chilled. Oops.

I cannot wait to experiment some more with this recipe, maybe try using honey instead of the sugar, or other things. I’ll let you know!

Happy
Independence
Day
America
and
May God Bless Us

Okay, I admit it, I am one of those that swore I would never freeze cooked rice. Well, freezing it maybe, but certainly not eating it after it was frozen. Nasty.

I was wrong.

Whew. There, I said it. Take a note, jot down the date, whatever. -grins-

What made me change my mind? A blog post that I found: http://www.freezerdinner.com/recipes/freezing-rice/. I had first heard of Jenny Stanger, the author of the blog, as well as author of Fabulous Freezer Meals, by way of another author and blog site that I visit, http://everydayfoodstorage.net/ by Crystal Godfrey, they were making pizza!

I figured, why not try the rice again after all these years, maybe, just maybe it might not be as bad as I remembered.

It wasn’t.

When I make rice, I usually make about 4 cups at a time, depending on what we will be using it for that week, and how many people there are. I try not to make more than will be used in that particular week, because I hate the thought of wasting it, if it goes bad. Well, not anymore!

I love the thought of being able to just grab some rice from the freezer, already cooked, and just reheating it. So simple and so good. Sure, the garlic powder that I always add to it may have something to do with it being so good, but you get the gist of it. ;o) My only problem is that I do not heat or reheat in plastic. I don’t care whether plastic bowl or plastic bag, I just can’t do it. So, not a problem, I reheat it in a covered ceramic dish, which keeps all the steam in and makes it just right.

Yup, I have completely turned around my thoughts on it. I have tried to think of what on earth I could have done all those years ago to make the rice, well, yucky. I have no clue. I just remember not liking the texture of the rice. Who knows. All I can say is, thank you Jenny for putting up the post about the rice, because the next day I made 10 cups of cooked rice, and froze it. Figured worse came to worse, dogs would have a great treat to be added to their food if it didn’t turn out. But it did. Fabulously!

I started off putting some into freezer bags, and for larger portions (more people) those work great. But then I got to thinking, which is always dangerous, what about some smaller portions. But what could I put it in? I didn’t want to waste a quart sized bag for a little portion. As I was just kind of staring ‘out’ from the kitchen, my eyes caught onto my mini loaf pan hanging up on the shelves. Hmmm.

That might work. Hmmm. So, off to the shelves I went and grabbed it, as well as grabbing plastic wrap. Laid some wrap into one section of the loaf pan, put some rice in, and then put more, packing it down, wrapped it up and pulled it out, popping it into the deep freezer to test.

Perfect! So, I made quick work of the rest of the rice and now have not only family sized bags of it, but individual portions. Okay, really enough for 2 people, but still a lot smaller than a whole quart bag!

I put all the ‘blocks’ onto a jelly-roll pan, freeze them, and then throw them into a large container in the freezer. Pulled one out yesterday and it was delicious. Maybe there is something to be said for trying things more than once if you don’t like… like cooked spinach. Then again, some things are just better left like nature intended, raw.

Make your life a little easier, why not try to freeze some rice!