Adventures with Flat Stanley

November 25, 2017 lovingsixtyfive

Flat Stanley came to visit us for Thanksgiving. If you aren’t familiar with Stanley here is the back-story. Flat Stanley is a series of books by Jeff Brown. The premise? A bulletin board falls on Stanley, flattening him so thoroughly that he’s able to fit into an envelope.

A third grade class in Colorado listened to the book. Each kid then made their version of Stanley. The teacher laminated them, wrote out a letter explaining the Flat Stanley project is a social study undertaking.

A boy named Frankie made our Flat Stanley. So far he’s been to Bainbridge Island, WA, Hana, HI, and here to Palm Harbor, FL. I just mailed him off to friend Jane in Galena, IL. She’s married to a Welshman, so I’m hoping Stanley has a visit to Wales in his future.

Here are the photos we took during Stanley’s visit. We printed them at Walgreens, and they are now on the way to Frankie’s third-grade classroom.

Stanley drew his self-portrait and was pretty pleased with it.

Eeek. Stanley took a terrible tumble to the kitchen floor. Frankie’s teacher specified adult supervision at all times. Who was watching him when this accident occurred?

This is just before the turkey went into the oven.

This is just after the turkey came out of the oven. It was HOT there.

Standing in the ice cube maker helped him to cool down.

One of five pies! Two were pumpkin with gluten-free crusts, one apple, one bourbon pecan with chocolate chips, and the fifth was banana butter brickle. Bet you can’t say that three times fast. I was really worried Stanley would get too pudgy to be jammed back into his travel envelope. Fat Stanley, not Flat Stanley stuffed into a shoe box.

He rode that cow so far and fast he decided to take on a horse.

Here he is confessing his sins to Father Steve.

The day after Thanksgiving, chillin’ with Bronson Dog.

Friday we went out to lunch at Barfly because we hadn’t had enough food and needed to eat more.

The mail-lady just picked Stanley up and he’s off to Galena, Illinois. He has a small baggie filled with Spanish moss. I microwaved it. When we were kids we hauled home a brown paper bag stuffed with moss. When we opened the sack it was crawling with insects. Hopefully the nuking killed any critters. Note to readers-Microwaving Spanish moss stinks up the kitchen. I don’t recommend it.

Published by lovingsixtyfive

Artist, Writer, Positive Thinker, Colorer outside the lines, Product Designer, Rocket Scientist...(Okay, that part is a lie.) I'm a sixty five year old just loving the journey. View all posts by lovingsixtyfive

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Serves 10

Ingredients:

2 small bulbs fennel
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 T. good olive oil
1 T. unsalted butter
2 pounds russet potatoes
2 C. plus 2 T. heavy cream
2 1/2 C. grated Gruyere cheese
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Butter inside of 10 cup baking dish.
(10x15x2)

Remove the stalks from the fennel and cut the bulbs in half lengthwise. Remove the cores and thinly slice the bulbs crosswise, making about 4 cups of sliced fennel. I recommend using a mandoline slicer. Saute the fennel and o nions in the olive oil and butter on medium-low heat for 15 minutes, until tender.

Peel the potatoes, then thinly slice. Again, I used mandoline and it made the slices perfect. Mix the sliced potatoes in a large bowl with 2 cups of cream, 2 cups of Gruyere, salt and pepper. Add the sauteed fennel and onion as well.

Pour it into prepared baking dish. Press down to smooth top. Combine remaining 2 T. cream with 1/2 cup Gruyere and sprinkle on top. Bake for 1 1/2 hours until potatoes and browned and bubbly.

Allow to set for 10 minutes and serve.

My notes:
This would NOT have been enough for 10 of the hungry Easter group. Knowing we'd be 12 I did about 3 1/2 pounds of potatoes and 4 cups of Gruyere. Forgot the part about sprinkling extra on top, but that was fine.

Sadly people were hoping for seconds and we didn't have any. Next year 5 pounds of potatoes, double the cream, 6 or more Cups of cheese. These were simply wonderful!

Thanks again, Ina. You always come through.

These are dangerously delicious and gluten free! Made them today to take to a party this evening. They are sitting on the counter just daring me to eat another one. Already had three. Oink. My daughter, Mo, turned me on to the recipe. She also taught me to use a scoop and silpat mats. More on those in a future blog post.

I used a #40 cookie scoop, baked on Silpat lined half sheets for about 18 minutes. You can also line the cookie sheets with parchment papter.

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups (335 grams) packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups (450 grams) smooth peanut butter
Coarse-grained sea salt, to finish

Preheat the oven to 350°F.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the light brown sugar and eggs until smooth. Whisk in the vanilla extract, then the peanut butter until smooth and completely incorporated; you shouldn’t be able to see any ribbons of peanut butter.

If you’d like to get those pretty striations across the top of the cookies, chill the dough by freezing it in its bowl for 15 minutes, stirring it once (so the edges don’t freeze first), before scooping it. If you’re not obsessed with these markings, you can scoop it right away. Scoop or spoon the dough into balls — Place on prepared pan. For the tallest final shape, place the tray in the freezer for 15 minutes before baking.

Sprinkle the dough balls lightly with coarse-grained sea salt just before baking. When finished, cookies should be golden at edges. They’ll need to set on the sheet for a minute or two before they can be lifted intact to a cooling sheet. Trust me, you should let these cool completely before eating so the different textures (crisp outside, soft inside) can set up.

Do ahead: You can definitely make the dough in advance and either refrigerate it for a couple days or freeze it longer. However, if I were going to freeze it, I’d probably go ahead and scoop it first. You can bake them right from the freezer.

Check out the Smitten Kitchen website for further info. She said she got the recipe from Ovenly, a site I now need to look into!

2 tsp. fresh thyme leaves
1 tsp. whole fennel seeds
kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1/3 C. good olive oil
1 lemon halved and sliced 1/4" thick, cut off and discard stem ends.
1 yellow onion halved and sliced 1/4" thick
2 large cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 chicken, cut up (Ina says 4 lb. butterflied, but I'm lazy and just buy it already cut up.)
1/2 C. dry white wine such as Pinot Grigio
Juice of one lemon

Preheat oven to 450.
Place thyme, fennel seeds, 1 T. salt and 1 tsp pepper in small food processor (I use my Nutri Bullet) and process until ground. Pour olive oil into small glass measuring cup, stir in ground herbs and set aside.

Distribute lemon slices in 12" skillet (I use large Le Creuset) and distribute onion and garlic on top.

Place chicken, skin side down, atop of oniion and brush with about half oil/herb mix. Turn chicken skin side up, pat dry (Ina says this is important!), and brush with remaining herb/oil mix.

Roast for about 30 minutes, then pour in wine being careful not to pour directly onto chicken. Roast another 10-15 minutes until meat thermometer in thickest part of chicken registers 155-160 degrees.

Remove from oven, sprinkle with lemon juice, cover skillet tightly with aluminum foil and allow to rest for 10-15 minutes. Sprinkle with salt, and serve hot with pan juices. The onions and lemons should be included. The lemons are edible and fabulous.

After cooking this go buy Ina's "Cooking for Jeffrey." She is simply wonderful.

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Published by lovingsixtyfive