Tag Archives: cooking up a storm

Only Tuesday – again

days on end, in the kitchen, Wee Bairn Leave a comment

I found a stick of butter I didn’t know I had hiding in the very back of the freezer, and as I held its frozen self in my hand I realized that everything was going to be ok. It wasn’t the end of the world after all – it was only Tuesday. I laughed a little to myself, then burst into tears and when I was done crying I couldn’t remember what I needed the butter for in the first place.

Welcome to cooking with a woman entering her 30th hormonal week of pregnancy. I am growing and slowing and laughing and crying all at the same time. It is taking me longer to get up our stairs and I am completely winded when I finally reach the top. My appetite is enormous and while the rest of the world seems to be enjoying their spring greens, I am plotting how to inconspicuously add potatoes to the menu.

Comfort food – that’s what I want. I imagine it must sound insane to those of you not in the throws of prenatal life, but I just want pasta for dinner. Pasta and sausage – preferably with a side of potatoes and bread and butter, please. I would drink heavy cream if I thought for one minute that I could get away with it and pour gravy on my oatmeal. Maybe it’s because I spent the first few months not being able to stomach anything but grapefruit slices and sour candy. Who knows!  The problem to be solved is how to cook hearty, but healthy. How to mix Spring green with my cravings for Winter heaviness, in short – how to eat potatoes more often and yet not gain several hundred pounds in the process.

I think I may have found at least one solution, one of my family’s favorite meals that we lovingly called “Poverty Dinner”. There really is nothing ‘poor’ about it other than being inexpensive and easy to make. It’s a tasty, filling sort of one dish meal that worked perfectly with the first greens that braved the uncertain glory of Spring.

 

Poverty Dinner

4 potatoes, washed and cubed

1/2 lb lean ground beef

1/2 onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

several good handfuls of washed greens; spinach, baby kale, swiss chard, etc.

2-3 Tablespoons of oil or butter for cooking

salt and pepper

 

Potatoes and ground beef, comfort food at its finest, mixed with vitamin-packed greens fresh from the garden or market, making a simple meal that can be cooked up after a day in an office or in the field.

I like to use my big cast iron skillet for this. Heat the frying pan over medium heat and then add the oil and the potatoes then cover. Let the potatoes cook for a little while before adding the garlic and onions so that they don’t get too overdone by the time the potatoes are tender. Once the potatoes are feeling a little giving, break up the ground beef into the pan and stir well. Keep an eye on it to make sure that the ground beef gets cooked thoroughly. Another way to do this, although it changes the ‘one-dish’ nature of the meal, is to let the potatoes cook all the way and then remove them to cook the beef. Either way, you may need to add a little bit of water to the pan to keep the beef moist while it’s frying. If you’ve kept everything together, return the cover and let the potatoes finish cooking. Otherwise, return everything to the pan and reheat.

Now – here’s the super healthy part you’ve been so patiently waiting for. Once your potatoes, onions and beef are completely cooked, heap the greens on top. There will be a little bit of water clinging to them from washing which will help steam them. Cover and reduce the heat to low. In a few minutes the greens will have wilted and steamed and completed your meal. Season with salt and pepper as you desire and you’re ready to go!

Enjoy!

Bear Chili

in the kitchen, Will Cook For Food 3 Comments

They told me bear meat tastes like People – I didn’t want to ask how they knew.

My rugged hunter man went off into the woods and shot himself a decent-sized he-bear. When he came and announced the news to me I thought, “What are we going to do with all that meat?”

I’ve heard that it is a tough, sweet, oily sort of meat, not exactly everything we’ve come to love about good old Black Angus!  But, being the types to embrace adventure – culinary or otherwise – I decided to do my best to cook it into some edible form and Alex promised to eat it with an open mind.

From the various hunters and other adventurous cooks I interviewed, I realized that bear is not a distasteful meat, just a misunderstood and often poorly prepared one. It tends to be on the tough yet mild side and the fact that the animal itself lives all winter on hoarded stores of fat means that there can be quite a bit of grease, but that is easily pared off with a sharp knife, leaving you with less fat than most beef. It seems this meat wants to be spiced up and simmered long. I thought – “Chili!”

I used my crock pot and cooked the daylights out of it while I was at work and we ate it with homemade corn bread and a wild greens salad – a perfect, rustic, simple autumn meal.

Bear Chili

1 lbs lean bear meat, ground

1 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes plus 1 can water

4 oz cooked black beans

4 oz sweet corn (frozen or canned or fresh)

1 Tablespoon minced garlic

1/2 onion, diced

2 Tablespoons chili powder

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (more or less, depending on how hot you want your chili to be)

1 Tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon salt

 

The first thing is to fry up your onions, garlic and bear meat (*or* ground beef, since I suppose not everyone has a package of bear just sitting in their freezer, waiting to be used!)  Start with about a teaspoon of olive oil or butter in a hot frying pan, add your diced onions and minced garlic and cook them over medium heat until they are translucent and fragrant. Next, add the ground meat with a little water. I don’t like to add more fat to fry the meat with when a quarter cup of water will keep things from sticking just as well. Break the meat into small pieces while it is cooking. Once the meat is thoroughly browned, turn off the heat and set the pan aside.

If you are using a crock pot, now is the time to rescue it from its shelf or box. If you are going to cook your chili on the stove top, get out an eight or more quart stock pot with a thick bottom. Pour the tomatoes, water, corn, beans and spices into the cooking apparatus. If you are wondering about the cocoa powder, let me tell you – it does wonders for a chili! It does not make your meat taste chocolate-dipped, rather it adds a depth and darkness of flavor that is hard to beat. Simply trust me and add the cocoa.

Now, scoop in the meat mixture and turn on the heat! As I said before, I let the chili cook on high in my crockpot for several hours. If you are cooking on the stove, let it simmer on a lower heat for an hour or two, stirring occasionally so that nothing sticks to the bottom. If you need to, cover it up or add water by the cupful if it seems to be losing too much moisture. It does need to cook for some time so that all those lovely flavors get a chance to work together and make something fabulous.

It will be fabulous, let me assure you, whether you use beef, bear, moose, venison or even ground chicken. You don’t necessarily need to be a huntsman to enjoy the fruits of field and forest.  Enjoy!

 

 

Make-Ahead Oven Homefries

in the kitchen 3 Comments

Because really, who has time to stand over a hot skillet and *fry* the silly things!

Some days I miss living out on the prairie, with my man busting sod all day while I busy myself with bread baking and soap making and chicken feeding. It was a good life, but not exactly the one we enjoy today – and honestly, that’s alright. Our days have gotten so much easier with the invention of electricity and indoor plumbing – I particularly enjoy toilet paper and dishwashing liquid. And who can say that things were better *before* the advent of penicillin and Tylenol?

I’m here to say that there are good things about this modern age, even if it is a bit hedged in by insane busyness, and one of those good things is my oven.

The other night we had our weekly Breakfast for Dinner and I made oven homefries, a mash-up of sorts of oven fries and the hashbrowns you get at the local diner. One of the best kitchen tips I picked up while waitressing is to boil the potatoes before frying them, they cook faster and get crispier that way. Also – I never seasoned them enough. You’ve got to season homefries like you mean it – like you intend to Taste those herbs and spices when everything is said and done.

Oven Homefries

4 potatoes (this number can be easily adjusted to fit a smaller or larger crowd)

Spices

A big pot ‘o’ water

A flat, oven-worthy cooking vessel

Olive oil, or Butter, or preferably Both

Alrighty then.

First thing to do is chop your potatoes into bite-sized, homefry pieces. While you’re doing this, you should have your pot of water on the stove, heating to a boil. It’s up to you whether or not you want to peel your potatoes first,  I like mine a little on the rustic side so I let them keep their skins.

When the water is boiling like mad, add a little salt and then toss in your potato chunks (toss them carefully so as not to bathe thyself in boiling water). You don’t want to cook them all the way – this is important. They’re still going in the oven to bake  *at some point*. This is the lovely part about this process, you can parboil the potatoes any time you wish. I knew that we were going to have a rather frantic evening, so I boiled my potatoes in the morning and let them sit in the fridge all day, ready to be popped into the oven fifteen minutes before dinner. SO easy.

But I digress. The potatoes are boiling for 5-10 minutes, depending on how big your pieces are. You want them to be slightly fork-tender, but not mushy *At All*.

Remove them from the stove and strain them. After they’ve cooled a bit (and most of the wetness on them has evaporated from the heat), you can either put them in the fridge, or if you are going to cook them immediately,  dump them into or onto your oven-worthy cooking vessel.

Turn on your oven to 375 degrees.

Now for the fun part – the seasoning.

I like every sort of season – all at once, but some times just plain old salt and pepper do the trick, it’s up to you. First, however, you have to give the taste something to stick to. This is where the olive oil and/or butter come in. Pour a couple of Tablespoons of oil over the potatoes and stir them around in it, coating them as evenly as you can and allowing some extra for the bottom of the pan so that there is No Sticking. Then, sprinkle on some seasonings. Salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, sage, thyme, oregano, curry powder, basil, rosemary – - the options are endless. My favorite seasoning mix is sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, garlic powder and poultry seasoning (of all things), which is a recipe with its origins lodged in an old folk song, “Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme…”

The whole shibang is going to head into the oven for 15-20 minutes, and half-way through they should be stirred up a bit so they get crispy on all sides.

Yum.

They are definitely house-on-the-prairie-slaved-over-a-cast-iron-skillet-all-day good, without the actual slaving-over-a-cast-iron-skillet part – which is even better.

Peach Pie Pancakes

in the kitchen, Will Cook For Food 4 Comments

I have only ever been truly convinced that I was going to die a handful of times in my crazy life, and one of the most vibrant in my memory involves peaches.

It was back in Ohio in late August and my mom and I were preparing peaches to can. It was my task to peel the fruit and not wanting to waste even the tiniest bit of succulence, I got the brilliant idea to eat the peels from a couple of them. I was utterly absorbed in my work and when it was all said and done I had unwittingly eaten the peels from every single one of a bushel of peaches. Aren’t you impressed? When I realized what I had done I dropped the slippery paring knife and looked at my mom in horror. What happens when a person overdoses on peaches? Would I have a sugar rush? Would I be poisoned by peach fuzz?

I am happy to report that other than having a slight stomach disturbance (which was totally worth it, by the way) I was just fine. We canned the skinless peaches, I wrote an overly-corny peach inspired poem and all was well with the world.

Several years later and it’s peach season in Vermont. Driving down Route 7, I can feel my mouth getting excited as I read sign after sign, “Peaches are Here!” “Ripe Peaches” and “Sweet Peaches for Sale”. It’s a wonderful thing how a tree made of wood can take a springtime flower and turn it into something so decadent come August. A peach is nothing short of a round, fuzzy miracle, and I love them so.

I stopped at the local market this week and bought a few large peaches and then turned them into peach pie pancakes, a slight re-imagining of the classic peach pie. Peach pie filling turns into a tasty topping for hearty yet fluffy pancakes made with oat flour and brown sugar, two of the main ingredients in a streusel pie topping.  They’re a little more involved than your ordinary ‘every other Monday’ pancake, but very worth it. It’s a good way to spread the peach goodness out as far as possible – without having to eat a bushel of skins!

Peach Pie Pancakes

*makes 8 cakes

 

For the Pancakes:

1 cup uncooked old fashioned rolled oats

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

3 Tablespoons brown sugar

1 3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 eggs

3 Tablespoons oil or melted butter

1 1/4 cups milk

 

 

For the Topping:

2 cups thinly sliced fresh peaches

1/2 cup water

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger

1 1/2 Tablespoons honey (or sweetener of your choice)

 

The first thing is to make oat flour. This is done by putting the rolled oats into a food processor or a blender and pulverizing them into a coarse powder. 1 cup of rolled oats will yield about 3/4 cup of oat flour. Blend all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs and then add the milk and oil. Mix together and then add the wet ingredients to the dry, stirring thoroughly but gently – over mixing the batter will result in tough pancakes.

Next step is to make the topping. Put the peaches and other ingredients into a small soup pot on the stove over medium heat. Stir often, this is going to simmer while the pancakes cook.

I fried the cakes over medium-high heat, pouring them out using a 1/3 cup measure. The pancakes are ready to flip when there are bubbles forming in the center of the cake, and the edges appear to be dry . They will need to cook about 2-3 minutes per side, depending on the heat under them.

When the cakes are all cooked up, the topping should be done! I love it when a meal comes together. Serve these with a tall glass of milk and you have a breakfast (or brunch or dinner!) worthy of the fruit that inspired it.

Enjoy!

psssssst…

days on end, in the kitchen, passionate life 10 Comments

I wanted to tell you about something. Come closer… because I’m actually whispering.

I have come up with a meal planning idea that just might work. Just might.

Thanks to the many dozens of people I have stalked and creepily asked about their meal planning methodology, I do believe that I’ve found something that will suit our needs PERFECTLY.

Ok, you can move away now, I’m done whispering.

Here it is in black and white (because I can’t figure out how to change the color of the fonts on this silly program).

Each week I will pick 7 meals using ingredients I have or will purchase:

1 Breakfast (because I think breakfast needs a chance to be the ‘most popular’ meal)

1 Casserole/Soup ( two things I would love to make more of)

1 “Ethnic” (Curry, yum…)

1 Salad/Vegetarian ( we like to have a ‘lighter’ meal now and again)

1 Easy/Quick/Simple (for the days we spend away and get home minutes before dinner time)

1 Never Before Tried (can you say ‘cabbage rolls’)

1 Other  (sort of self-explanatory – - and if it isn’t, hang in there, I’ll explain in a bit)

So – once the meals are picked, I can arrange them through the week as needed. The nights I work we can have the casserole or easy dish, a night we have more time I could fix something new and exciting. If I have certain ingredients that need to be used sooner, that meal will come at the beginning of the week. The “Other” meal can be used for leftovers or if we eat out or just decided to have a ‘movie and a snack night’, which happens sometimes. This way, there’s always something different going on at meal time and at least once a week we’ll try something totally new. I’m inordinately excited about it.

Ta-stinking-da.

Alright, I just needed to share that.

Bye now.

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the menu board. in its former life it was a cheap picture frame at Wal*Mart… we made it into something Awesome with a little chalk board paint – boy howdy, I love that stuff!!

‘Tis The Season

in the kitchen, Will Cook For Food 2 Comments

Alright, raise your hand if you read that and then involuntarily followed it up with, “Fa-lalalaLA-lala-la-LA!”

‘Tis the season for excess produce, and that’s something to falalalala about if I ever heard one. Back home they tell people to lock their car doors, not because they were afraid of someone stealing, but there loomed the threat of overwhelmed gardeners dumping grocery bags full of cucumbers and zucchinis in unlocked vehicles. It was like farming graffiti, or a drive-by-vegging.

We always get so excited to see our plants produce their first gaudy blossom, and eat the first cucumber (probably picked at half the size it should be) in the backyard, savoring the honest-to-goodness cuke flavor store bought veggies just don’t have. Then, just a few busy weeks later, the thought of eating another cucumber is enough to drive normally responsible adults into random and often quite creative acts of cucumber dispersal. Cucumbers stuffed into an unwitting dog’s house? It happens, and it’s not a good thing.

Canning seems to be an acceptable answer for most and making pickles and relishes to last the year takes up a good half of the crop, while every salad – both green and pasta style – is lavishly adorned with cucumber slices and chunks.  Alex and I have had the luxury this year of ‘novelty’ cucumbers. They’re lovely plants and they produce handsome little gerkins one at a time that we end up eating en route to the kitchen. It often doesn’t play out this way for gardeners, however.

I went to see a friend the other day who has a hearty, well-tended garden and not two minutes into the conversation she offered me some cucumbers.

“I just don’t know what to do with them! I’ve canned all I need and they’re coming on so fast…” She sounded a little bit desperate, her eyes were wide and her hands were stretched out as she implored me. “Take Some. Please.”

And that’s how I ended up with my own personal shopping bag full of garden-fresh cucumbers.

I decided to make refrigerator pickles. I can’t honestly say I even really knew what they were before I did a little research, but they seemed simple enough and perfectly answered my need for cucumber preservation without a canner. I found a rather basic formula and made up a recipe for refrigerator pickles that came out wicked tasty and different from anything I’ve ever had.

Lavender and Black Pepper Pickles

1/12 cup white distilled vinegar

1/4 cup brown sugar

4 teaspoons salt

2 cups hot water

1 Tablespoon minced garlic

1 Tablespoon whole black peppercorns

5-6 small springs of fresh lavender

4-5 medium sized cucumbers

The pickle scene needs some new blood, I couldn’t find a recipe for pickles that didn’t have dill in it, surprisingly enough, and I like to think outside the box. This is definitely outside the box. The finished pickles have a deep, herbal, garlicky taste with a smarting of pepper. Delicious.

This recipe makes one quart of pickles, so the number of cucumbers you need will vary depending on how big they are. Wash the cucumbers then slice them. I like a heartier pickle, so I sliced mine on the hefty side. Set the slices aside. Heat 2 cups of water to just under boiling. Next add the vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper corns and stir it well until the sugar and salt have dissolved. Let the liquid cool down to about room temperature before adding the cucumber slices, lavender and minced garlic. Stir everything together and then use a plate to weight the cukes down in the brine. Cover, then put the whole bowl in the fridge overnight.

The next day, you’re ready to “can” them up. I used a sterilized quart canning jar, but I suppose you could ‘recycle’ any adequately sized glass jar with a tight lid. Fish the pickles out of the brine and put them in the jar, then fill the jar with brine. Cap them and they’re done. These keep in the fridge for up to a month.

Happy Harvest!

use the cheese- change the world

in the kitchen, Will Cook For Food Leave a comment

I hate it when people say, “Oh, we’re just eating at home…” as if that were something to apologize for. I believe that the most important meals are prepared and eaten in one’s own home. When you thoughtfully create food for those you love, you are adding something to the world around you and  giving it the fuel it needs to be a better place. I think every home chef holds to the belief that a good meal could change the world. Choosing local ingredients, getting fresh food from neighboring farms, slowing down and actually cooking your own meals for your family – these are all things that decide the way we eat and therefore, how we live.

It is important to give yourself good ingredients to work with, but then you have to enlist your senses to help you create meals that truly please you to eat them. What kinds of foods do you *honestly* like? What scents tempt you? What textures are able to involve you in a meal rather than just give you something to put in your belly? WHat flavors entice you? These are all things to be thought of when you get out your frying pan and mixing bowl. You have to be thoughtful, a little fearless, a little daring and make good food happen.
Something that I hear all too often is, “Oh, I don’t like such and such.” Even I have my list (short though it is) of things I’ve convinced myself I don’t like. Instead of making such final judgments, maybe we should be more open, work on it a bit more, try a new approach. Turn the food upside down and look at it like that for a little while.
This week I decided to do just that with a food that I, as well as many people I’ve known have said they didn’t like – Goat cheese. I love goats – I admire the fact that they can provide us with dairy products, meat, fiber, plus they’re personable critters to boot, I just have never been able to truly enjoy a slice of goat cheese that wasn’t feta mixed in some strongly flavored salad. We have a couple of goat farms in the area that make a variety of artisan cheeses and sell them at the farm stand down the road, so I picked up a creamy white wedge of semi-hard cheese, headed home and began experimenting.
This is the recipe I ended up with. Talk about a senses-pleasing, world-changing dish!

 

 

Sensational Goat Cheese and Summer Squash Fritters
For this recipe you will need:
1/2 cup unseasoned bread crumbs
2 cups of shredded zucchini and/or yellow crooked neck squash
1/2 cup of shredded, semi-hard goat cheese
2 beaten eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon herbal seasoning of your choice – I used a basic Italian blend.
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
olive oil for frying

Makes 6 fritters

 

Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and stir until everything is well blended. It is going to be somewhat of a damp mix. This can be made ahead the night or morning before you plan on cooking them, if you want. Once everything is mixed together, put a frying pan on medium-high heat and once it’s thoroughly hot, add some olive oil. Spoon the fritters into the hot pan and flatten them a bit with a spatula. Cook the fritters for three to five minutes before flipping them. They should be dark golden brown. Fry them on their backs for another few minutes and then they’re done and ready to enjoy.
The zucchini is plentiful this time of year and mild enough to let the cheese’s flavor really shine through, all the while providing a strong sort of ‘foundation’ – they aren’t overly cheesy, aren’t overly ‘squashy’, just delicious. My husband and I ate the whole batch over the course of a day, and I do believe I will be making them again soon.
Don’t give up on a food you don’t think you like. Take up the challenge and *make* it something you enjoy.
Perhaps the world you will end up changing is your own…

Super Salsa

in the kitchen, passionate life, Will Cook For Food 4 Comments

Why does salsa always get sent to stand with the junk food on the dark side?

I object.

Salsa is the unsung Hero of snack foods. It quietly lives amidst the chips and weezie-cheeze of the land and yet salsa itself, when done correctly – could probably save the world from an impending disaster.

Just saying.

Salsa is like – Captain America.

Captain America, AKA, Captain Salsa

Make your own salsa at home and you concoct a food so potent, so powerful and infused with health that you might just find yourself in a super hero costume. (Hopefully one that fits you and doesn’t make you look like a ballerina on steroids… you know, cuz that’s weird.)

…before eating homemade salsa…. after eating homemade salsa

Let’s break this down.

Super Awesome Radically Healthy Save The World Salsa

 2 cups diced raw tomatoes – go ahead and ask any ketchup bottle in the store just how healthy tomatoes are. Lycopene has proven itself to the Health Pros as being a definite Good Guy in the war on cancer. *This* is awesome. If ketchup is good for you due to lycopene, imagine the slap of wellness you’ll get from eating fresh, raw tomatoes?! I can hear the scurry of little cancer cell feet now…

1 medium sized mango, peeled and diced. My husband loves mangos in his salsa, and what do you know – there’s good reason to love them. That’s one smart man! Mangos are nutritional powerhouses, full of vitamins and  boast a great deal of fiber. Yum.

1 medium onion, diced. Onions make you cry – but so do a lot of good things, like tetnus shots and getting married. In fact, it’s the good thing in onions that *makes* you cry – sulfur and various sulfur compounds. They contain a lot of flavonoids (which, at first sounds like something robotic and scary that should be on the Bad Side, but once you get to know them a little bit, they’re OK.) and help your gut produce the army of bacteria it needs to keep your colon up and running. Think of Captain America in his brightly colored suit, leading the charge against the bad guys and you sitting there in the theater, moved to tears… that’s like onions in salsa.

1/2 cup chopped, fresh cilantro. Cilantro, often treated as a mere garnish, is truly quite the heroic herb, its chemical compounds actually binding to heavy metals in your body and dragging them out, kicking and screaming if need be, thus saving your life every time you eat it. Wow. I think we need a little more cilantro love going around, don’t you? How about a national Cilantro Day -or a super hero devoted to the Cilantro cause… any volunteers?

Now for the cast of side kicks.

Don’t underestimate the influence of a good side kick, just because the movie isn’t *named* after them, or their costume isn’t the coolest, the Hero wouldn’t be able to do his job were it not for his faithful back up.

2 Tblsp fresh lemon juice – kicks up the flavor a notch and adds another dose of potent antioxidants, cleanses your gut (and who doesn’t need a good gut cleanse now and again) and boosts your immune system. It enables you to be ready for the battle when it comes… and it will come.

1 tsp minced garlic. Who can say enough about the goodness of garlic? I certainly can’t. It’s awesome. Eat it. Trust me. Be healthy.

1 Tblsp  mint leaves, chopped

“Do I detect a hint of minty freshness?”
Donkey – he put the ‘kick’ in side-kick

Mint is good for you – let’s face it – after all those onions, mint is going to be good for the world *around* you. Like the best of side-kicks, mint takes some of the brashness away from the main man; improving digestion, making your breath a little sweeter, relieving some of the nausea experienced after spending two hours looking through 3D glasses at the theater – what more could one want?

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper. Please… no ashes.

There you go- the plot is simple. Evil lurks in the form of unpronounceable food additives and the stuff they put in the water (you know they put stuff in the water). The junk is building, hope is fading, hunger is growing… and then

SUPER SALSA

comes to the rescue. Not only does it smash through your taste buds like a guy in spandex trying to save the world, but the goodness just keeps going as it fights the free radicals and heavy metals ravishing your system, then replenishes your natural defenses and leaves you with a sense of fullness and health.

…he’s going to go get salsa now… even heros need a hero

faster than a speeding bullet…salsa

Tuesday and Ten start with the same letter

10 things tuesdays, in the kitchen 4 Comments

And I was clever enough to figure that out….

Aren’t you impressed?

10 Invaluable Kitchen Things My Mother Taught Me

1) Hot pan, cool oil – food won’t stick.

2) Don’t let your man leave home hungry.

3) Buy meat on sale – even if you don’t really need it *this* week – it will be worth it when you do. Stick it in the freezer.

4) Have a stash. Keep your cupboards well stocked and you’ll always have what you need when you need it.

5) How to Make a Roux.

6) How to make granola.

7) How to be bold and daring and creative in the kitchen – keep things interesting.

8) How to make good biscuits

9) How to use my senses rather than a recipe.

10) My mother taught me to love my kitchen, to make it ‘My Space’, a workable, comfortable, joyful place for everyone to be – the real Heart of the Home.

a song for my stupid self

in the kitchen 3 Comments

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Sure. We’d love to come.

She said.

What can we bring? Dessert? Sure!

She said.

No problem.

She said.

Then why am I standing here at 10 am, looking at lemon bars that really belong in a dessert burn unit, trying desperately NOT to throw them out the closed window?

Why?

I checked them ten minutes early – Ten – after they’d baked at fifty degrees Less than the recipe called for, and they were burned to a miserable crisp. I pulled them out of the oven and felt angry tears welling up as my tongue wrapped itself around language I try not to use in front of the clean dishes. My husband rubbed my arm and said, “Come on, babe…”

It’s such a stupid, stupid thing. It makes me mad. I’m not usually prone to violent fits of temper towards baked goods, but today I just wasn’t baking at my best.

It didn’t get thrown out the window, it got sent to hide in the fridge – forever – with a prayer that I might someday be a better cook and sweeter human being. Amen.