Uncategorized

The Feast: the savory and the sweet

~ nancyruth ~ 8 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

IMG_0642
the savory
  • green salad (every item green) dressed with lime juice and olive oil
  • grilled steak
  • baked sweet potatoes
  • homemade rolls
  • mashed potatoes
  • autumn mixed-grains bake with butternut squash and cranberries
  • quinoa salad with dried apricots
  • sauteed mushrooms and onions in butter and red wine
IMG_0657
the sweet
  • rainbows sprinkles birthday cake from a box mix for the 4 year old and the 34 year old
  • vanilla ice cream with real ingredients anyone would recognize
  • tofu chocolate pudding for the dairy-free
  • pumpkin pie (the Betty Crocker standard)
  • apple pie with an oatmeal crumb topping
  • whipped cream freshly whipped from a carton of whipping cream (the bowl and whisk kept in the freezer beforehand)

I am thankful that we have enough food, actually more than enough. I am humbled that through my church I can take part in feeding hungry people a spaghetti dinner every week. I am thankful that my son and daughter were home to join us for the pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday feast this year. I am thankful for a loving Hubby, our home and our neighbors, our jobs, and our pets Leo and Squeaky.

I am thankful for all you who read my blog. I am thankful to get to know a little bit of each of you by reading yours.

And there are many more blessings I am thankful for. I will try to be grateful each day.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Your Standard Sour Cream Coffee Cake

~ nancyruth ~ 1 Comment

Greetings! I am always so happy and surprised that you read what I write. I was going to be a poet when I was a teen, but I guess it was not my calling. I do love to write, so I am happy to have readers. Thank you! 🙂

So it was a gloomy summer day. And in my effort to suck all the joy out of life…oops! I mean in my renewed effort to breathe in all the joy that life has to offer…I thought I should make myself write a blog post weekly.

(Now that I have said “weekly” don’t hold me to it because…life happens, along with moods, and I don’t always like to make commitments!)

20170530_220846485_iOSA week or so ago I made a coffee cake for work. I did not have sour cream (or did not look for it in my fridge) so I browsed through cookbooks to come up with something. I made a blueberry buckle with blueberries and cranberries without the buckle. It had the fruit but it also had the streusel topping. I baked it in a tube pan so it really did not buckle. I think “buckle” is the way the fruit indents the top of the cake. The people at work loved it and here is a picture. This is basically 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, 2 cups flour, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/2 cup milk, and one egg and 1 cup fruit.

So on this gloomy summer’s eve, I figure it is a good baking day. I will make a sour cream coffee cake because I recently spied sour cream in my fridge. Where’s the recipe? I go to my Settlement Cookbook because it is full of standard baking fare from kitchens of generations of women gone by.

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 3 eggs
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 cup sour cream

preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray or grease a 10 inch tube pan. Cream butter and sugar. Add vanilla. Add eggs one at at time. Sift dry ingredients together and add to butter mixture alternately with the sour cream.

Topping: mix 6 Tab. of softened butter (I accidentally melted mine) with 1 cup packed brown sugar, 2 tsp. cinnamon, and 1 cup chopped nuts.

Put half the batter in the pan. Sprinkle (or glob) on 1/2 the topping, layer the other half of the batter and the rest of the topping. Bake for 50-60 minutes. Let cool in pan 10 minutes before removing.

So the cake is in the oven, Hubby is at the dentist, and I am putting the dog out in the yard, going out to un-loop him from the various patio furniture and bushes at least three times, and thinking that this is a standard sour cream coffee cake that is probably found in all those cookbook collections that various churches and other organizations put together as fundraisers. So I peruse a few of those.

The first one I look through has Sour Cream Coffee Cake and the streusel is just sugar, cinnamon, and nuts. Cool! Because I knew that the streusel topping for my first coffee cake has flour in it and I thought that was pretty standard. So I continue reading this recipe and get to the end and see who submitted it. My sister! Gave me a little joy to see her name at the bottom of the recipe!

20170605_215255736_iOS
Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Thoughts on muffins and quick breads

~ nancyruth ~ 1 Comment

I have lately been making quick breads, the kind that bake in one loaf pan without yeast. According to Bittman in How to Cook Everything “The only real difference between muffins and other quick breads is the pan you bake them in.” Sure, this makes sense. We choose between corn bread and corn muffins, same batter. This means I cold make a loaf out of some of my favorite muffin recipes. Cool!

I have enjoyed making loaves. Recently I made the Blueberry Lemon Walnut Bread from the back of the walnut package. This had a bread-like texture and not cake-like in the chocolate walnut loaf made previously. I liked the cake-likeness; Hubby preferred the bread-likeness texture.

IMG_5629

So as I was looking at these recipes in a variety of books, I find that there is a range of sugar involved. Bittman’s muffins call for 1/4 cup sugar (or to taste),  whereas Betty Crocker’s muffins call for 1/3 cup but her nut breads call for 1 cup and pumpkin bread calls for 1 1/3 cup per loaf. What’s up with this?

And why are muffins in The Cookie and Biscuit Bible cookbook? This book also has my go-to popover recipe.

Looking through all these cookbooks to see the differing amounts of sugar tempts me with more and more things to bake. I’ll never lose weight this way!

Here are some thoughts, not all about bread and muffins:

  • What does it mean when an onion starts looking pithy between layers? Is this like celery meaning that it is a bit old? Can one still cook with it? Am I a bad cook if I dice it up anyway and saute it in a dish? Don’t tell anyone.
  • Why did I put the dog food dish under the butcher block table I use for chopping vegetables and rolling out pie dough? Or, why does the dog choose that time to chow down? This is rhetorical because we know the dog can’t talk.
  • I have to decide not to be obsessive over composting when I go camping on weekends. I am sure Hubby won’t want us to come home with a bowl full of food scraps stinking up the truck!
  • Syrian casseroles are what I need to look for so I can provide meals for a family in need. And there are children. What sweet treat would be wholesome for them?
  • Do other’s of you sneak spinach into sauces and casseroles so the family doesn’t know what they are eating? Is this dishonest? I confess if asked.
  • I am planting herbs. What is the difference between German thyme and English thyme? And what to do with lemon balm?

I could go on and on but that is enough for today. Thanks for reading!

 

 

Thoughts from my Kitchen

~ nancyruth ~ Leave a comment

I had a fabulous baking weekend. Well, on Saturday I roasted a big chicken, with Mediterranean vegetables. Yum! I was so tired after winterizing the trailer which included arguing about how to drain all the plumbing properly and running off to the store to buy more RV/Marine antifreeze to be effective that I did not want to make anything else. Wow! That is a run-on sentence if I ever wrote one! As I write this we are waiting for all the little goblins and ghouls to show up to beg for the $20 worth of candies I bought. Then I will turn off the porch light and relax.

After a tiring first half of the weekend I set to work in the kitchen. First I did a bit of cleaning and then got out the sourdough starter to make rolls. I used a recipe that looked good and as luck would have it I had powdered milk and potato flour. If you don’t have these ingredients there are plenty of other sourdough bread and rolls recipes. I had fed the starter the day before so I figured it would be just fine. I let it set out for the entire morning of the day I made the dough: sourdough dinner rolls from King Arthur Flour. This makes two pans of eight. Here is the one for the future!

20161031_204814162_ios

I have found the chocolate cake recipe that bests the  Best Ever Chocolate Cake. I hang my head in shame as I write these words. I had to look again and again at the ingredient list to note the differences.Best Ever uses 1/2 cup more flour and twice the baking soda. I looked into the explanation of using baking soda in cakes in the book BakeWise by Shirley Corriher. She explains that 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda is sufficient for each cup of flour. The new best chocolate cake recipe rises nicely and even has better body than Best Ever.

So what is this rogue recipe that has come to shake up my baking world? It is basically King Arthur Flour’s version of Texas Sheet Cake baked in a 9 x 13 pan. I found this in their sales catalog/flyer that arrives by the post ever so often: King Arthur Flours Favorite Fudge Cake. And its not just because of the fudge frosting, although that makes it awesome!

20161031_204852243_ios

I actually followed both of the recipes exactly although I don’t always use KAF products.

I am not advertising for them; I just recently got their flyer and was organizing recipes for my recipe notebooks. And these were two of the ones I had marked to try.

 

The herbal experiment…or Scarborough Fair Veg!

~ nancyruth ~ 3 Comments

Sing along with me…parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme!

I was planning to steam some farm fresh green beans to have for dinner as the two girls would be home with us. I had some very thin baby carrots and thought those would work well in combination with the beans. Then I wondered how to add flavor. Fresh herbs! Why not, I have some growing right outside my kitchen door.

Looking at my herb garden I wonder what to use. I used basil with peas before so I want to use something else. Sage. I have no idea what to use fresh sage with so I’ll see if it works with beans and carrots. I select six nice sized sage leaves and cut them up and sprinkle them on top of the carrots in the steam basket. As I am preparing the green beans, I think to myself…parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme! I step out my back door and pluck some fresh herbs.Actually I snipped them with the kitchen shears.

20160810_211622608_iOS

more green beans get piled into the pan than shown

I used a small bag (one pound?) of mini baby carrots and a batch of fresh green beans that when trimmed equaled about 2 cups. For the fresh herbs I used six sage leaves, a four inch sprig of thyme, a four inch sprig of rosemary, and a few snippets of parsley.

I steamed these for about 7 minutes. I did not keep good track of the time. I had not researched how to use sage and after preparing the pot for cooking I thought I should have kept the leaves whole like the additional herbs.But by that time they were buried beneath.

These get served with grilled pork loin chops seasoned with a Chicago steak seasoning that my son left here before going off to his Alaskan adventure. I put the jars of chimichurri,  A dog fight of flavors!, and plum sauce, Supper, on the table for people to pick for topping their pork. And didn’t Hubby do fabulous grill work on those chops?

20160810_220232580_iOS

The herbs gave a very subtle flavor to the vegetables. I liked it; the others were indifferent.

Lo Mein

~ nancyruth ~ 8 Comments

At a shopping trip a few weeks back I picked up a package of lo mein noodles and a package of soba noodles because they were on the clearance shelf. Yes, I occasionally buy foodstuffs from clearance. Hubby and I like “Clarence”! That’s often where we look first when shopping but not usually for food. But this was at one of those lot clearance warehouse type stores: Ocean State, Odd Lots, and when and where I was growing up it was Grandpa Pigeons!

I figured I would use some leftover cooked chicken that I had in the freezer. I read the recipe on the back of the package and it was BORING! It was a few vegetables and broth. So I substituted my own ingredients.

20160705_204524628_iOS

  • one package lo mein noodles (upper right corner)
  •  4 cooked chicken thighs, bone removed
  • 2 stalks of celery, sliced
  • about a cup full of sliced carrots
  • 1 green pepper, diced
  • 2 green onions, sliced, green and white parts
  • 1 cup chicken broth
  • 1 tablespoon tahini
  • 2-4 tablespoons mushroom soy sauce

Chop all the vegetables. I started off sauteing these in a bit of olive oil in a skillet but had to move them into the wok. I forgot about having a wok. We may have used it no more than two or three times. I cooked the noodles in water in a separate pot. Everything else went in the wok after the vegetables were cooked for about 5 minutes.

The noodles were drained and added to the wok. This gets stirred around until all is warmed. Sprinkle on a bit more soy sauce and it is done.

20160705_214000432_iOS

I was pleasantly surprised that it actually tasted like the lo mein from a Chinese restaurant. Hubby thought it was delicious. And I had leftovers for lunch all that week. Now, what to do with the soba noodles?

Blondies have more fun!

~ nancyruth ~ 6 Comments

 

Here’s a baby llama. The first picture is 30 minutes after birth and the second is one hour and a half. This little guy learned to walk in that time. Fun to see!

I was home waiting to go for a long camping weekend and had already packed the camper and made a list of other things to buy after we picked up our special camping companion, the granddaughter. We would need things like yogurt, cheerios, milk, etc. that we usually don’t take with us. By the way, I lost two pounds on that weekend mostly running after her and not sitting around eating cheese and crackers and glasses of wine!

More to the point…I suddenly had the urge to bake something to take with for a dessert. And Blondies occurred to me. Why not? Granddaughter might like these.

I have a favorite Blondie recipe from a coffee table size cookbook given to me as a gift by a dear friend that I have not been in touch with for a long time. Heritage of America Cookbook. It is a Better Homes and Gardens collection. This book puts these in The South and as served in South Carolina saying that the South has a partiality to brown sugar.

First, spray or grease a 9 x 13 inch baking pan. Heat oven to 350 F.

  • 2 cups packed brown sugar
  • 2/3 cup butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 2 cups all purpose flour (I used one cup whole wheat and one cup all-purpose)
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
  • no nuts as I was not sure about a toddler eating nuts

In a sauce pan melt the butter with the brown sugar. Remove from heat. Stir in eggs one at a time. Add vanilla. Stir in the dry ingredients. Spread in prepared pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Cut and eat. Super simple.

20160630_192448676_iOS

Confession time!

  • I mixed up the baking soda and baking powder amounts but went ahead with the recipe.
  • I cut these when warm, as directed by the recipe, and ate one. I found it way too sweet! I’ve made these before and they were fabulous.
  • I froze half the pan and took half camping. The sweetness mellowed out over time.
  • They were not the chewy Blondies that the recipe produced before. They were crispier and would be good broken into chunks and served with ice cream.
  • I merely ate them one at a time for a bit of sweet crunch.
  • Next time I will be more careful about the ingredients and I will use only all-purpose flour.

Live and learn!

 

Get the Dog Out of the Kitchen!

~ nancyruth ~ 2 Comments

The subtitle of this blog is “Went to a dance, looking for romance.”  In honor of my wedding anniversary to the best and last husband I am posting 12 year old pictures of pictures!

My sister had offered to make my wedding cake.She decided not to “wing it” from the cookbooks when she arrived at my house half-way across the country, so she researched it and found this one on the internet. She and my daughter spent two days before the wedding baking and assembling this cake.

20160625_115657373_iOS

 

 

 

20160625_115808725_iOS

Fondant covered wedding cake with chocolate and raspberries. I don’t have the recipe, just the pictures in my wedding scrapbook!

20160625_115834387_iOS

A dog fight of flavors!

~ nancyruth ~ 2 Comments

Chimichurri. What is it? According to Wikipedia, chimichurri, it is loosely translated as “a mixture of several things in no particular order”. is that the best definition or what?! Anyway I came across a recipe from a magazine several years ago that I saved just because it was on a page with other interesting recipes to try. I am not sure which magazine this was. It was the sauce to serve with shrimp but with Hubby allergic to shrimp I did not think anything further about the recipe…until now!

20160621_222120506_iOSI have a thriving container garden of herbs hanging on the banister of my back porch. And I have all of the ones listed in this recipe! And I came across other recipes in my recent reading of food magazines while walking the treadmill that called for other combination of herbs. I thought it odd that mint was in here along with the others and the basil with dill. But I want to make this but with what? Steak? Pasta? Seafood?

I recently bought fish “burgers” at the store. Just for something different. Not Salmon burgers, but Alaskan Pollock. I don’t usually plan menus but I was writing a few ideas down and thought the chimichurri would compliment the fish. It would be different than the usual mayo with pickle relish tartar sauce.

Per usual I just go about harvesting the plants without really measuring. Then I chop everything into bits. I pour out a bit too much red pepper flakes but it works out well. A little after bite never hurt! I think I used about 3/4 cup of olive oil.

20160621_223118477_iOS

Looks beautiful, even if I do say so myself! It really should be served in a small mason jar with a spoon, but it looks very nice in the cruet! Now to dinner…

20160621_224358151_iOS

 

What we ate this past week…

~ nancyruth ~ 6 Comments

This past week I had not been terribly inspired to try new recipes or cook elaborate meals. But we do go to work, Hubby and I, and come home and need to eat. For the most part I am trying to eat better, and less, for health and well-being. I usually get two to three days into the week and BOOM!, I fall back into eating too much or having that extra glass of wine or sweet thing that sets off the indigestion or sets back the good efforts I have made.

That said, I have been making protein shakes for breakfast and taking a decent lunch with plenty of fruit for snacking at work. I have a bag of string cheese in the small fridge in my office for a healthy snack mid-morning. One morning I cooked up an egg with a piece of ham with a bit of frozen spinach for color. It took just a few minutes so I am not sure why I don’t do that more often.

Another hallmark of the week is that I have logged 10000 steps one of the days! I did this by walking to work (7/10th of a mile) and walking a mile on the treadmill during my lunch break. AND carrying my iPhone on my person to track the steps. A Fitbit would be easier but it’s just an extra bit of technology that duplicates the App on the smartphone. I do not walk to work everyday because I need to give my ankle a chance to rest and sometimes because I am just plain lazy!

So what did we eat?

20160606_224500433_iOS

Monday was barbequed chicken baked in the oven. I used my homemade sauce (It’s different every time!). I baked the chicken and poured on the sauce after 30 minutes and then set it under the broiler after 20 more minutes to brown them. I served this with a spinach/romaine salad topped with strawberries, toasted pecans, and feta cheese, dressed with homemade Green Goddess dressing.

20160607_224038711_iOS

Tuesday was a quinoa salad made with the two leftover pieces of chicken from Monday’s dinner. I found a fabulous quick cook quinoa/wild rice mix that cooks up in 10 minutes and there are no additives or spice mix in it. This is the multi-grain crunch salad from the back of the box. I forgot to use chicken broth to cook the quinoa and just used water. I did not measure the vegetables but added plenty along with my own addition of Craisins and walnuts.

  • make the equivalent of 1 1/2 to 2 cups quinoa/rice/grain mixture
  • add 1 cup cooked diced or shredded chicken
  • 1/3 cup chopped carrots (I used prepared shredded carrots and chopped them up further.)
  • 1/3 cup diced celery (I used 2 large stalks)
  • 1/3 cup diced red pepper (I used 6 mini peppers of varying sizes and added 2 yellow ones as well.)
  • 1/3 cup citrus vinaigrette (I made about 1/2 cup using 1/4 cup of the Persian Lime olive oil and the juice of one lemon. I chopped up fresh chives and thyme and parsley to make a few tablespoons, add a bit of kosher salt and pepper.)
  • 1/4 up Craisins and 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Cook the quinoa, chop the vegetables, add the chicken, and toss with the dressing. Super simple and super delicious. And super good for you! I made double and was able to take some for lunches. It can be served warm or cold.

20160608_224100740_iOS

Wednesday was a “BAD DAY”: Super Nachos! But served with guacamole for the vegetable! For these nachos I browned about 1/2 pound of ground beef seasoning it with 1/2 teaspoon cumin, 1/2 teaspoon paprika, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, a pinch of salt, and a few drops of hot sauce. Pile on cheese and jalapeno peppers and bake for 10 minutes. I make guacamole with garlic powder, diced tomato, lime juice, and a spoonful or so of sour cream. Oh yeah, don’t forget the avocado!

20160609_225602653_iOS

Thursday was a re-run of the quinoa salad. For this supper I put fresh baby spinach leaves in the bowls and then piled on the salad. This is a great salad. One could switch it up and use rice or lentils or barley instead of quinoa for a nice summer supper.

Friday was the start of a camping weekend. We had our usual Subway grinders for Friday with chips. This lets us get to the campground, set up, and then have a supper ready to eat. For Saturday I had par-cooked (read that as “boiled the heck out of”) chicken leg quarters that we would finish cooking on the grill. I forgot that they were on the stove so they were more than par-cooked and turned out a tad dry but good enough with a Texas BBQ Rub. I did end up with a nice rich chicken stock out of it though! We made a foil packet of potatoes with butter, onions, and cheese as well.The best meal of the camping was the cheeseburgers for lunch. But here is a pic of our dinners:

So now it’s Sunday and were home again. What to cook this week?