Oatmeal, Chocolate Chip, and Pecan Cookies

These cookies were made from a recipe from cooking light. My daughter Taki, Cheryl and I love them.

They taste as though there were toffee in them.

Below is Taki enjoying some of the ingredients sans cookie

Swedish Cardamom Coffee Cake

Although the Swedish may not be known for their Baking prowess, shown above is an example of my wife's delicious Cardamom Coffee Cake. I enjoy it because it is not overly sweet and a bit bread like. The cardamom itself has a distinct and interesting flavor.

Our local bakery only has it around the holidays. Luckily for me Cheryl makes it any time of year.

Cedar Plank Salmon

Shown here is my latest attempt at cedar plank salmon. I got the smackdown from my wife about the WildFire salmon being a bit tastier. I think I've got them this time. Rich Melman, eat your heart out.

Above is our daughter Taki, enjoying the cooking process.

Ribs via big green egg

It's January in chicago so what better time then to smoke some ribs on my Big Green Egg.

I have a neighbor from the south that I use for advice about smoking. If you haven't used a kamado style cooker before, I highly recommend it. You can control the heat, keeping it at 250 degrees for smoking. I use mine for grilling steaks too. You can easily get 700 degrees with lump charcoal; nice for steak grilling.

Pizza Bake

We set out to assemble and bake our pizza

We are going with cheese and mushroom today

Put it all together and bake

Little ones enjoy helping... and eating

Pizza Dough

Here are some photos of our pizza dough making.

Shown below are the ingredients we use.



We allow the yeast to rise, below.

Next our daughter pounds the dough into submission

Then we are ready for the fridge.