The Omaha Chronicles

Bye Bye Omaha (Chronicles)!

2010-02-24T18:45:00.002-06:00

Last August, I moved to a new apartment. I moved for a variety of reasons, including the fact that I wasn’t too fond of the kitchen.

It wasn’t a bad kitchen, but it wasn’t especially friendly. It was off in its own part of the apartment, detached from all the other rooms with little space for people to mill about in it. As a girl who grew up in homes where the kitchen was always the heart of the house, this was not going to work for me.

So, I moved.

My new kitchen is much nicer. It has better appliances, more usable counter space, an island with outlets and more cupboard space than I’ve been able to fill so far. Definitely an upgrade.

I’m pretty well settled into the new kitchen now (don't ask about the rest of the apartment), and I think it’s time for some more change. Following the advice of some of my friends, I’m moving to a WordPress blog.

The Omaha Chronicles has been a great experiment (a blog with training wheels!) for me. And, despite what my extended absence might indicate, I like blogging, especially since it gives me another outlet to talk about food. But I’ve always had a nagging feeling that “Omaha Chronicles” wasn’t the right place for me. I chose the name with a different plan in mind and then food blogging came along and smacked me upside the back of my head.

Since some quirk of fate has come along and pointed me in a direction I didn’t expect, I’ve decided to go in that direction.

With that… I hope you’ll join me at my new blogging home.

The Kitchen Trials. Me vs. The Kitchen. With no supervision.

Don’t worry about the lack of supervision though.

I bought a fancy new fire extinguisher and replenished my first aid kit.

Poor little blog...

2009-12-31T10:28:00.003-06:00

My poor little blog. It has a bad mommy. I've neglected it and shown it next to no love lately.

I promise to fix that in the very near future though.

After dealing with some personal stuff that's been stressing me out, I received some good news today. So... I'm feeling optimistic. Maybe that means my creative block will be lifted and I can get back to writing.

Just be warned, I might be taking y'all on a "detour" when I do get back to the insanity that is me... cooking... with no supervision... Hmm...

Note to self: Buy a fire extinguisher for the kitchen and new stuff for the first-aid kit.

As I recall all too vividly, the last time I got back into the whole cooking thing, I had a mini-kitchen fire and burned the living daylights out of myself.

Wish me luck!

#PlateSwap

2009-10-30T06:40:00.008-05:00

For those of you not familiar with Twitter, the title of today's blog is what is affectionately known as a hashtag. It's a Twitter thing that helps Twitter users track a particular conversation or a trend. In this case, #PlateSwap helps me and other food bloggers chat about our Secret Santa project.

It's also why the first photo in this blog post features a nekkid, unplated plate. I wanted to be sure to show off my new #PlateSwap plate.

Thanks to the organizational skills of Cheryl Tan (aka @cheryltan88) and Ellise Pierce (aka @cowgirlchef) a few of us food blogger sorts exchanged plates with one another Secret Santa style. One of the goals was to add variety to the plates we use for our photos that accompany our blog posts.

In case you haven't noticed, in my case, this is a good thing. I'm very attached to my Correlleware plates. They're the gold-patterned dishes you see featured on my blog over and over and over again. These actually are fugitive dishes from my Dranny's set. During my next trip home, my goal is sneak some of my Mom's blue-patterned Correllware out in my luggage. (shh... don't tell her...)

I was the lucky recipient of the lovely plate seen here, which was sent to me by Paula Jones, author of bellalimento.com (aka @bellalimento). Paula deserves double bonus points in this adventure. She sent my #PlateSwap plate to me and it was returned to sender.

Doh!

Apparently, my move to the new apartment messed up the delivery one way or another. I suspect that in the haze of moving, I shared the old address, not the new one. Lucky for me, Paula was kind enough to re-send it via priority mail. Like I said, double bonus points for Paula.

Shipping misadventures aside, it was so exciting to receive this gift and to be a part of the #PlateSwap. It gave me a chance to "meet" some other food bloggers and it was an excellent excuse to rummage through a my favorite, nearby antique store so that I could share a fabulous find with my Secret Santa recipient, Cathy Shambley, aka ShowFoodChef.com and aka @ShowFoodChef.

As seen here, I've already started to put my #PlateSwap plate to work. This would be the results of an enchilada recipe I was experimenting with earlier this week. The recipe didn't quite turn out as I had hoped. Though I haven't quite determined what the "off" factor was for me. I guess that means I'll just have to try again.

You'll also see my #PlateSwap plate featured in the previous blog post. My Bacon Cheddar Scones are plated up on it. Those, I'm happy to say came out quite well. (phew!)

To Ellise and Cheryl, a special thank you for organizing the #PlateSwap. I loved the idea and can't wait to participate in future shenanigans with y'all. To Paula, thank you for the lovely plate.

Sweet and Savory Scones

2009-10-30T06:30:00.002-05:00

Fast on the heels of hosting my first dinner party in my new apartment, I invited a couple of my girlfriends over for a "True Blood: Season 2" marathon (thank you hbo ondemand!).

Knowing we would need plenty of energy to see us through the day, top of mind was making sure we'd have enough food and drink to see us through hours of watching Eric and Jason, and wondering who in tarnation thought it was necessary for either one of them to bother with wearing a shirt. (i mean, really. a shirt? on either of them? *sigh* so unnecessary.)

Since it was a Sunday, my friends and I collaborated on a brunch menu. They brought fruit and veggie platters (my mom would be so proud) and the fixins for fruity rum drinks and bloody marys (mom might question this one).

I volunteered to do the baking. (so selfless of me, don't you think?) Keeping with the brunch theme, I made an easy quiche using a recipe from my family's B&B days. This recipe also appeared at my Easter dinner. This cheater's quiche does not count for the blog though. So, for the sake of my poor little blog, I decided to use a recipe for scones from "Baking in America: Traditional and Contemporary Favorites from the Past 200 Years." And, for the pure fun of it, I made a recipe for Bacon Cheddar Scones that I saw featured on Tastespotting.com, a site I love and adore. The featured Tastespotting photo was of scones made by Pink Parsley, and I used the recipe she posted on her site as well.

For whatever reason, I decided to make the Bacon Cheddar Scones first. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I wanted to nibble on two or three slices of bacon sooner rather than later. (photo note: the bacon cheddar scones above are featured on my #PlateSwap plate. loves it!)

In any case, the Bacon Cheddar Scones were relatively easy to make. Me and my trusty pastry cutter got along just fine, and I had the distinct joy of mixing the bacon, cheese and green onion bits into the dough by hand. The result was a pleasing ball of dough that did just what it was supposed to do when I rolled it out and cut it into triangles.

With those scones in the oven, I turned my attention to making the "Baking in America" scones. The exact recipe calls for currants. I hate currants. Raisins too. So, I made a substitution and set out to make White Chocolate Cranberry Scones.

These went so far awry that it's not even funny. At least I can say it was not my fault. Having made the Bacon Cheddar Scones, having read a few other scones recipes and having enjoyed more than my fair share of scones made by others, I knew what the finished product was supposed to look like.

So far as I can deduce, the dough for the second batch of scones was just plain ol' wrong. It was wet, sticky and did not have enough flour by any stretch of the imagination. The "Baking in America" recipe called for one cup of cake flour and one cup of all-purpose flour. Most other recipes I had seen, including the Bacon Cheddar Scone recipe, called for about three cups of flour.

"Baking in America" is a cookbook I loved reading. It's one of the first cookbooks I purchased despite it's shocking lack of pictures (i like pictures in my cookbooks). I wanted to have faith in it and in the belief that maybe I just didn't know what I was doing and that, somehow, someway, the recipe would magically turn out all right.

Well, it didn't.

Aside from substituting cranberries for currants and adding some white chocolate chunks, I followed the blasted recipe and the baking directions.

What a mistake. I should have gone with my gut and added about a cup of flour to the dough. Then, instead of a mass of chewy, not-scones, I would have had proper scones. The scones were edible and my friends liked the flavor of them, but the texture of them killed me. Under other circumstances, I would have chucked those suckers into the garbage. However, my friends are the sort I trust not only with my successes, but also with my failures.

While I will not pass the failed recipe on to you until, at some point, I figure out the right flour proportions, I will share with you the Bacon Cheddar Scones recipe, which came out just the right kind of savory and delicious .

Bacon Cheddar Scones - Makes eight scones
Adapted from Pink Parsley's Blog

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
½ cup chilled, unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 ½ cups finely grated cheddar cheese
4 green onions, thinly sliced
10 slices of bacon
¾ to 1 ½ cups buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

I bake my bacon. As family, friends and readers of this blog know, frying is a dangerous activity so far as I'm concerned. (see here and here and here and here) If you're like me, then here's how you bake the bacon. Put some metal wire racks in a rimmed cookie sheet. Spray them with PAM cooking spray. Place the bacon slices side by side on the wire racks. They can touch just barely, but don’t let them overlap. Bake them for about 20 minutes or until they’re as crispy as you like them.

Or, you know, you can fry your bacon like normal people do. Either way, after they’re done, drain the extra grease off the bacon. When the bacon is cool enough, crumbled or chop the slices.

If you were baking your bacon, leave the oven heated at 400 degrees. If you weren't baking the bacon, now would be a good time to turn it on.

Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and pepper into a large bowel. Using a pastry cutter (or forks or a couple of butter knives) cut in the cubes of butter until the mixture is crumbly. The bits of butter and flour will about the size of flattened peas, but not all of the flour will be incorporated at this point.

Add the grated cheese and mix with your fingers just until blended. Don’t over mix the dough though because the heat of your fingers will melt the butter too much.

Add the bacon, green onions and ¾ cup of buttermilk. Mix by hand until all the ingredients are incorporated.

If the dough does not hold together and is too dry, add more buttermilk 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing lightly with each addition.

Do this until the dough is pliable and can be formed into a ball. Remember, don't overwork the dough or the scones will tough.

Place the dough on a lightly floured surface. Using your hands still, pat the dough ball into an 8-inch circle about a ½ inch thick. With a large, sharp knife, cut the dough into 8 wedges. You can make smaller scones, but be sure to keep an eye on them while baking so that they don't burn.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Place the scones on it with a little space between each one.

Bake 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.

These taste great warm. They taste great the next day. They also taste great on day three when you have to grab breakfast and run to the airport before you miss your flight (just saying, you know, in case you were wondering...).

A word on storing these. I baked these the night before the True Blood marathon with my friends. Once they had cooled, I stacked them on a plate, covered them tightly with foil and left them on the kitchen counter at room temperature.

After the brunch, I put them in Ziplock baggies and stored them in fridge, knowing that I might not eat the leftovers quickly enough before they started molding. Pop them in the microwave for a few seconds or in a toaster over for a minute or three to warm them up before eating them.

A Housewarming Dinner Party

2009-10-24T17:15:00.003-05:00

I am, admittedly, a procrastinator. It's not the best of traits to have. However, I'm also a deadline-driven sort. The shorter the deadline and the crazier the expectations, the better.

Do you have a hand grenade that needs to be defused? After someone pulled the pin? No problem. Got it covered. (well, not an actual hand grenade. i wouldn't know what the heck to do with a hand grenade, but it makes for an interesting metaphor.)

These little tidbits of information about me are relevant because I recently moved. Quite frankly, without the right motivation, I would very likely unpack only what I really need and then curl up on the couch with a book and read and read and read. And watch football.

In any case, as a motivator to make unpacking boxes in my new apartment somewhat less onerous, I gave myself a deadline that also doubled as a reward. I invited a couple of friends over for dinner, which would mean I'd have to have things in some semblance of order before my friends arrived. Not to mention the fact that I'd have to have some dinner ready to put on the table.

I purposely kept things simple. In what still qualifies for a new kitchen, I didn't want to risk things going awry with a complicated menu. With that in mind, I decided to make Pulled Pork Sandwiches, Applesauce, Cole Slaw and Afternoon Tea. Plus, in terms of my cooking challenge, I made some decent progress and used three cookbooks. All of the dishes, except for the cole slaw, are new-to-me dishes and each comes from a separate cookbook.

The easiest of the three was Afternoon Tea from "Cowboy Cocktails." This was an easy drink. In fact, I'm not sure it gets too much easier. Iced tea (unsweetened) spiked with light spiced rum and slices of lemons and springs of mint for garnish.

Easy and refreshing. However, given the easiness of this recipe, I feel obligated to try one or two more recipes from this collection of drink recipes. I know. It's a terrible burden, but someone must undertake it.

Oddly enough, the second easiest recipe was the East Carolinian pulled pork, which came from "The South: The Beautiful Cookbook," a cousin to my beloved "Texas: The Beautiful Cookbook" from which I've made a few recipes (see here and here ). I'm sure this might seem like a controversial choice to some. After all, I'm from Texas. What the heck I'm doing going within sniffing distance of this kind of BBQ?

Well, I'll tell you why I made this recipe. I live in an apartment. I do not have a patio. I do not have a stovetop smoker. This is the only BBQ recipe I could find in my cookbooks that did not involve a grill, a smoker or a crockpot (i've made crockpot, bbq brisket already). This was a recipe with oven directions.

If it makes you feel better though, while I made the vinegary sauce from the recipe, I used Stubb's BBQ Sauce when it came time to make sandwiches. Regardless of your BBQ affiliations, this pulled pork dish was good. Well done, moist and flavorful with just the right amount of spicy heat. The leftovers were just as good.

As a side dish, I wanted to make homemade applesauce, especially since it's fall and I was making pork. My applesauce recipe came from "Joy of Cooking: All About Breakfast & Brunch." I've used this cookbook before, but I made muffins, which didn't count as a new-to-me recipe and, therefore, I felt that I couldn't check this cookbook off the list for the purposes of my cooking challenge.

I was nervous about making applesauce. The recipe didn't call for too much liquid and I was supposed to simmer the apples until they were soft. I was certain that, without constant hovering, I was going to burn the apples. I didn't.

Instead, I learned that homemade applesauce kicks store-bought applesauce's keister. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is going to become a go-to recipes. It takes some work with all of the quartering and coring of the apples, but it's definitely worth it.

As a motivator and a reward, I think the dinner was a success. I had a great time hosting my friends and can't wait to host another, even fancier dinner. More importantly, my friends also claimed to enjoy the meal. And I have no reason to doubt them since they went back for more drinks (what does that say about my friends, i wonder?) and cleaned their plates.

Applesauce - Makes 4 to 6 servings
From Joy of Cooking: All About Breakfast & Brunch

3 pounds of apples - choose a mix of apples for a better flavor
1/2 to 3/4 cup apple cider, depending on the juiciness of the apples
1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, depending on tartness of apples
1 large cinnamon stick
1/2 cup white sugar or 6 tablespoons mild honey
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 to 1 teaspoon ground ginger (optional)
1/2 teaspoon ground mace (optional)

If desired, peel the apples. Then quarter, core and slice the apples into 1/2-inch-thick slices.

Put the apples, cider, lemon juice and cinnamon stick in a dutch oven. Cover and simmer the apples over low heat until the apples are tender, but not mushy. Stir the mixture regularly.

Stir in the sugar or honey, nutmeg and, if you're using them the ginger and mace. Cook only until the sugar is dissolved and thoroughly mixed in. About 1 minute.

Remove from the heat. Discard the cinnamon stick.

If you peeled your apples, you can probably mash the apples with a potato masher or a wooden spoon. If you're like me and don't peel your apples, you'll probably have to use a blender to get the right texture. Just pulse the apples in batches.

And there you go. Applesauce. Homemade applesauce. You can serve it warm or chill it before serving. It's excellent either way.

Plan C Pinto Beans

2009-10-17T15:18:00.006-05:00

Now that fall has arrived and is doing a very good impression of winter, I crave the kinds of foods that make you feel warm and cozy, and that fill the house with the scent of cooking.

Inspired by a chat with my parents, I really wanted a big pot of beans. And I was so proud of my organizational skills because I had all of the ingredients. I had the bag of dried pinto beans, a smoked ham hock, fixins for cornbread and assorted toppings.

However, after I’d sorted through the beans to pick out any possible stray stones and then set them on the stove for a quick soak, I learned that my preparations were foiled by the blasted ham hock, which had decided to grow a fine layer of icky fuzz. Lesson learned: smoked ham hocks actually can go bad.

No fears though. I had a Plan B because the grocery store just down the block from my place has a decent meat department.

Yeah. No dice. The darned store didn’t have a ham hock nor any other suitable replacement ingredients because it was Sunday and they were out of just about everything. Fabulous.

I huffed and puffed and kicked some pebbles around on the short walk home. After that mini-temper tantrum, I decided that this was not going to be the end of the world. I would be resourceful and follow my waste-not rule by using whatever I might have in the cupboards. The pot of beans might not be what my parents would typically make, but it would still be a darned good pot of beans.

Luckily, I remembered I had a container of McCormick’s smokehouse-flavored pepper. This is normal ground pepper, but with a bit of a flavor kick. Since the smoked ham hock had thwarted me, I figured this might make a decent substitute. I was right. Here's the approximate recipe.

Plan C Pinto Beans - Makes about 8 servings
1 lb of dried pinto beans
1 can of Hunt’s Fire Roasted Tomatoes
1 can of Ro*Tel
Salt
Smokehouse Ground Black Pepper from McCormick

Pick through the dried pinto beans to make sure there aren’t any fugitive rocks or icky beans. Rinse the beans (not the fugitive rocks and icky beans) in a colander. After rinsing, put the beans in a large pot filled with water about an inch over the beans and about a teaspoon of salt. Bring the beans to a fast boil and then let them soak, covered, for about an hour.

After the beans have soaked, make sure there’s enough water in the pot to keep the beans more than covered. Season the beans with one to two teaspoons of the smokehouse pepper and ½ a teaspoon to one teaspoon of salt.

Bring the beans to a boil again and let them simmer until the beans get nice and tender. This takes about two hours. Give or take.

Be sure to stir the beans occasionally. If too much water boils off, add more. You want to make sure that the beans can simmer easily and aren’t sticking to the bottom of the pot or burning.

About 30 minutes before you’re ready to serve the beans, stir in the cans of Ro*Tel and Fire Roasted Tomatoes.

At this point, taste test the beans. You may want to add some pepper or salt.

Serve the beans in bowls with cornbread. Top it with your favorite fixins. I like shredded cheese, sour cream and chow-chow.

Enjoy!

Disclosure: Hunt's Tomatoes and Ro*Tel are made by the company for which I work, ConAgra Foods.

Bean & Veggie Soup

2009-10-04T15:00:00.002-05:00

My obsession with cookbooks was one of the driving forces behind the start of this blog. In addition to cookbooks, I'm also obsessed with magazines. In particular, food and home magazines. House Beautiful is one the magazines I love the most. It has inspired me on more than one occasion.

However, while House Beautiful routinely features recipes and the like, the October 2009 issue was the first one that drove me into the kitchen. The weather also helped since fall had settled in and brought some cruddy, overcast, stay-indoors-all-weekend weather with it.

There was just one little problem. I didn't have the exact ingredients for the recipe. So, I did what made the most sense to me, I used the recipe as guiding post to make my own soup with the ingredients I had on hand.

The result was a hearty bean and vegetable soup that was even better the next day when I took in to work for lunch.

Bean & Veggie Soup - Makes about 4 servings
Adapted from a recipe featured in House Beautiful, October 2009

2 15oz-cans kidney beans, drained & rinsed
3 to 4 cups chicken stock
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
2 stalks of celery, roughly chopped
1 14.5oz-can diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
1/4 cup fresh, chopped parsley or 1/2 teaspoon dried cilantro
grated Parmesan cheese

In a large pot, combine kidney beans, chicken stock and garlic. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for about 20 or 30 minutes.

While the beans are simmering, in a separate skillet, saute the chopped onion and celery in the olive oil until soft and nearly translucent. This takes about 5 minutes.

Stir diced, canned tomatoes into the onions and celery. I used Hunt's Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes (made by my company) for the extra kick of flavor. Season with the kosher or sea salt. Simmer for about another 4 minutes.

Add vegetable mixture to the beans. Season with fresh parsley or dried cilantro, depending on what you have at home.

Simmer for about 15 minutes so that the flavors combine.

Serve in bowls with Parmesan cheese sprinkled on the soup for garnish and flavor, and serve with a slice or two of bread to sop up the soup juices.

Enjoy!

Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater!

2009-09-26T12:15:00.001-05:00

Last weekend I was determined to make progress toward my cooking challenge goal. I did. Sorta. I used two cookbooks, but think I can only count one of them because I sorta cheated.

Well, I feel like I like I cheated because a couple of the dishes really didn't meet the qualifications for the new-to-me rule, even if they did meet the qualification for the waste-not rule.

A third dish met all of the qualifications though. That makes me feel a little bit better, but only just a little bit.

Anyhow, on the roster for last weekend's cooking shenanigans were Chicken Fricassee (this is the qualifier recipe), Curry-Coconut Chicken Tenders (cheater recipe - i've made tenders of a different flavor before) and Blueberry Muffins (cheater recipe - please. muffins? muffins?! there's nothing new about making muffins).

Both chicken recipes came from Betty Crocker's Best Chicken Recipes. This is one of a number of cookbooks I received in a previous life as a perk of my job. There were several recipes in the cookbook that looked interesting and that were very pretty in their photos.

The challenge I kept running into is that so many of them called for some sort of jarred, pre-made sauce or some such thing that I'm sure was intended to make it easier to put dinner on the table. However, this recipe approach assumes that you're not up to the challenge of making your own sauce or that you keep the jarred stuff hanging around the house. I don't. In fact, I'm not sure I can imagine buying jarred alfredo sauce. Meh...

Anyhow, the Chicken Fricassee recipe (top photo) did appeal to me (hello dumplings!) and I had all the ingredients in my cupboards already. Although, oddly enough, this Betty Crocker recipe recommended that you make the dumplings from scratch. I don't have anything against from scratch dumplings, but a Betty Crocker cookbook didn't recommend the use of Bisquick? I find that odd.

In any case, I made the Chicken Fricassee and, if you know me, then I'm sure you won't be surprised to know that I actually did make one recipe modification. I skipped the whole from-scratch dumplings step in favor of using Bisquick. Yes, I used the Bisquick. I like the Bisquick.

Once the Fricassee had simmered and the dumplings had finally cooked through, I sat down to a nice casual dinner. For never having made Chicken Fricassee before, I think it turned out pretty well. In fact, it's a dish I'd make again, especially on an overcast, damp sort of day when comfort food seems so right.

The following day, I set out to use the remainder of my chicken as an easy way to adhere to my waste-not rule. From the same Betty Crocker cookbook, I picked out Curry-Coconut Chicken Tenders (middle photo).

This should have been a very simple, enjoyable dish. It wasn't. Due to what I'm sure was operator error, it was icky.

Let's start with the fact that even though I own just about five bazillion spices, curry is not one of them. So, I substituted chili powder. No biggie, right? Wrong. That substitution combined with the use of sweetened, shredded coconut and some other undetermined flaw led to a dish that was barely edible.

The coconut did not crisp up. I used too much chili powder. And the sum total was a bunch of chicken tenders that tasted not so good.

I redeemed the cooking adventures that day with a batch of blueberry muffins (bottom photo) using a recipe from "The Joy of Cooking: All About Breakfast and Brunch." Going against my own belief that not-Maine blueberries are bad, I had picked up a pint of Georgia blueberries along with some other berries. Having committed this egregious error, I had to use them before they went bad. I will concede that these were not awful in the muffins, but that's as much as you'll get from me.

The fun twist in this muffin recipe was using brown sugar instead of white. I liked this twist and think it might account for how moist the muffins were.

At the end of the day, I feel like I technically can say, "Check! One more cookbook down!" However, I feel like I cheated too much in making the blueberry muffins. To redeem myself, I will have to make something else from "The Joy of Cooking: All Breakfast and Brunch" cookbook.

Then, and probably only then, my guilty conscience might shut up and leave me alone.

Breaking in the New Kitchen

2009-09-14T23:32:00.013-05:00

At the very end of August, I moved to a new apartment. When I first saw it's floor plan online, I was intrigued enough to book an appointment. Almost from the very first moment I walked into it, I was smitten. Lots of windows. Great space. High ceilings. And, most important, a kitchen designed for entertaining and cooking - much more so than my last apartment.

I love the new place. I couldn't wait to move into it - even though I was in the midst of a ginormous work project and loads of travel. Somehow, I managed the move and the work travel with only the occasional lapse in sanity.

What I did not manage so well was a timely approach to unpacking. I managed to create a semblance of order in my bedroom; found the necessities for the bathroom and kitchen; and hooked up my brand new, fancy TV and cable.

And then I hit a roadblock.

My new kitchen is much, much bigger than any kitchen I've ever had (my parents' kitchens do not count). There are acres of counters and unfathomable depths in my cupboards. Overwhelmed by the prospect of needing to organize my stuff in this much space, I spent several days rummaging through the organizing sections of multiple stores looking for the magic things that would ensure that my kitchen would make sense and that I'd be able to find my stuff in the midst of all this space. A Container Store in Omaha might have made my life a little easier. Alas, no such store can be found here.

And this is where I will call a spade a spade - right before my parents or one of my friends does so.

I was stalling. I was procrastinating.

But thank goodness for Twitter. I made a public promise to make chorizo and maybe even some pate knowing that if I told the world I was going to do something so specific, I'd have to do so.

And I did.

Well, I did make chorizo. I did not make pate. However, I also made roasted tomato soup. I'll try making pate some other day.

Prior to the move, I'd been pouring over Robb Walsh's "The Tex-Mex Cookbook" and remembered there was a recipe for chorizo that seemed relatively straightforward and easy enough. This recollection was confirmed when I finally found "The Tex-Mex Cookbook" in the third box of unpacked cookbooks.

Robb's recipe for El Chico's Chorizo is pretty simple. Not having a full-size food processor though, I cheated and bought ground pork into which I mixed the chili powder, paprika, salt, garlic powder, cumin and red wine vinegar by hand. Robb's recipe calls for buying a cut of pork and grinding it yourself along with the spices. But let's be honest kids, it's way more fun to use your hands to mix ingredients together than a food processor. It's okay to disagree with me, but I'm not sure I'll trust you quite so much anymore if you do. Just saying...

Anyhow, once the spices had been mixed in, I set the chorizo aside to allow the flavors to combine for a bit and turned my attention to making something out of the fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes a coworker gave me.

What I really wanted to make was one of Ina Garten's tomato soups again, but that would be repeating a cookbook and a recipe. Not good since I'm so far behind on accomplishing my goal of making at least one recipe from each of my cookbooks before the end of the year.

Lucky for me, my Mom gave me "Sunday Soup: A Year's Worth of Mouth-Watering, Easy-to-Make Recipes" as a gift last Christmas. This little collection contained a number of tomato-based soups. However, I struggled to reconcile my waste-not rule with my new-to-me rule. Eventually, I settled on Roasted Tomato Soup because it involved actually roasting the tomatoes myself - something I've not done before.

Aside from being time consuming, this too was a simple enough recipe. First, the tomatoes (cut in half and seeded) were roasted after marinating for about 15 minutes in olive oil, salt, pepper and crushed, dried rosemary. Once roasted, I put the tomatoes and some chicken stock in the blender and pulsed them to a slightly chunky texture. This was then set on the stove in a sauce pan and brought to a boil and then left to simmer. Taste tests proved that the salt from the marinating process wasn't quite enough for my tastes, so I added just a bit more.

While the soup simmered, I finished off the chorizo by browning it with a bit of veggie oil and some chopped onion. Once browned, I removed all but a couple of heaping tablespoons of sausage from the pan and cracked a couple of eggs into the pan to make Chorizo y Huevos, a recipe suggested by Robb in "The Tex-Mex Cookbook."

At this point, you might be asking, "How did this all turn out, Steff?"

Well, I'll be honest. By the time I finished making everything, I was tired and cranky. I'd spent all afternoon cooking not because I was making anything complicated, but because I had to remember where in the freaking world I had put my cooking utensils, pots, pans and whatnot. It was irritating and I just kind of snarfed everything down that night. I guess this is part of the process of breaking in a new kitchen.

Fortunately, I made enough chorizo and soup for leftovers. The next night, I made the Chorizo y Huevos again and put them on top of a slice of country bread with some shredded cheese and salsa. Very delicious. Plus, I think the sausage was better for having had a day to allow the flavors to combine instead of just a couple of hours. The soup was good too. But, I have to say, I like the soup I made from Ina Garten's recipe better. Perhaps that's because of the basil and cream though. Just a guess.

Corn, Ice Cream & a Dessert Potluck for an Entire Town

2009-09-12T07:22:00.018-05:00

This post is long overdue by just about any person's standards, but since I've only just about finished my unpacking, I still haven't cooked in the new place and so now is an opportune time to share this with y'all.

(btw, there truly is something wrong with this scenario that WILL be fixed this weekend. more specifically, i WILL be cooking this weekend. thank goodness!)

While spending 4th of July weekend in Texas with my Grandma Mary Lou, we did some cooking and the like. Among the dishes we made was corn grilled with butter and fresh parsley from her garden.

Talk about fun. Not having a yard, I don't have a garden. Having a cat that likes to get into things, I don't have a window sill herb garden. So, for me, it was a novelty to go out to the garden and pick fresh herbs. Especially since I had to remember which bits of green were parsley and which bits of green I should avoid like the plague. (for the record, i was successful in this venture.)

The corn turned out fabulous. So simple and fresh. I will caution others though to not peel back the husks about two minutes after the corn comes off the grill unless you actually enjoy the sensation of having the top layers of skin on your fingertips singed a bit. I don't, but I still did it. Not very bright, eh?

We also made a few other goodies, including burgers, baked beans and potato salad. No photos of those though. I blame the lack of photos on the homemade ice cream. Not that I have any photograhic evidence of that either. But, let me tell you, when your grandma is an officer in the town's Garden Club and said Garden Club has promised to coordinate the potluck dessert table for the town's 4th of July celebration, there isn't a lot of time to be wasted and certainly not enough time to be taking pictures.

For her contribution, Grandma Mary Lou made the kind of ice cream that you make in those wooden bucket ice cream makers with the ice and freezing salt you put down the sides.

Please excuse me for a moment, but...

Hello! You mean I get to dump ice and salt all over the place and will be rewarded with homemade ice cream? Really? Wow... It was like being a kid again because, gosh darn it, I was going to make darned sure there was plenty of ice and salt dumped on the ice cream maker if it meant I had first dibs on the ice cream.

And bless my Grandma. I did have first dibs. When we pulled the paddle out, she gave it right over to me so that I could eat all the ice cream off of it. Granted, this priviledge would be part of the beauty of having been the only grandkid on the premises. Regardless, I still would've called dibs and won. I'm sure of it. Well, relatively sure.

Anyhow... I got first dibs on the ice cream and it was heaven. On the downside for me, we had to share. Darn the Garden Club and its promise to coordinate the town's 4th of July dessert potluck!

Now, in case you're wondering about this town potluck and whether or not the whole town attended, I can tell you that yes, in fact, just about the whole town attended. Like I said before, it's a small town. Plus, I have reason to know because, in addition to coordinating the dessert potluck, the Garden Club also served up the desserts. And, somehow, I was dragooned into helping.

Okay. So I wasn't really dragooned into helping, but what else was I supposed to do when confronted with picnic table after picnic table of sheet cakes that hadn't been cut before they were brought to the potluck? Just stand there and stare? No. I couldn't do that. Instead, I grabbed a spatula (there wasn't a knife to be found anywhere) and got to work cutting cake for the town's 4th of July Dessert Potluck brought to you by the Garden Club.

Also, while two of these three of pictures don't have much of anything at all to do with the grilled corn, ice cream or other goodies I helped make while visiting my grandma, I wanted to share them nonetheless.

As background, Grandma Mary Lou lives on the very southern edge of town and, across the road to the east, is a neighbor's field. To south and west of her house are the old golf course and more fields. Personally, I find the landscape fascinating and gorgeous in its own right and I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I do.

Grandma's Grocery Store

2009-09-01T18:30:00.003-05:00

I suspect that when my parents read this, they’re going to scold me. After all, I just moved into a new apartment and the vast majority of my stuff is still in boxes.

They might have point. After all, those boxes aren’t going to unpack themselves. However, I can only unpack just so many boxes before I go stark raving mad.

In any case, between the move and some recent work travel that's taken me to Minneapolis and Raleigh for days at a time, I haven’t had much time to make anything more complicated than a faux quesadilla cooked in the toaster oven. Heck, I almost didn’t have enough time to pack before the movers arrived.

Since I haven’t made a lick of progress toward accomplishing my goal of cooking from all of my cookbooks before the end of the year recently, I thought I’d take a moment to share with you one of the reasons why I’m so obsessed with all things food.

I’ll start by telling you that one of my early memories is of me toddling around my Grandma Mary Lou’s grocery store. This is a very, very vague memory from my childhood. I have no recollection of what I was doing exactly, but I’m willing to bet this “memory” is actually an amalgam of several memories of playing in the store or shopping for groceries with my mom or even just stopping by for a visit.

When I was little bit older, Grandma Mary Lou moved her store to a new location. The new store I remember vividly. I spent hours and hours there. I have so many good memories of the time I spent there and the freedom of being able to go into just about any room, aisle or cubby. Although Grandma Mary Lou and Cathy, the store’s butcher, were very serious about being careful around the butcher block area. There was no fooling around there.

I’m sure when I was little, I must have been underfoot a lot. I played silly pranks, played hide and seek with my brother in the back of the store (and the front, if I'm being honest), and would try to help stock shelves.

As I got older though, I did do some actual work around the store. I bagged groceries. Stocked shelves. Rang up customers. Helped make pizzas for the deli. Sorted coupons while watching Bob Barker on the “Price is Right.” (And no, I didn't purposely volunteer to sort coupons at the exact time that "Price is Right" came one. That was merely a coincidence. I swear. No, really, I promise. Pure coincidence.)

In return, Grandma Mary Lou paid me in comic books I read while sitting on bags of dog food, ice cream treats, candy and hugs. And then there was the end-of-summer, back-to-school shopping spree. My brand-spanking new Trapper Keeper and big, fancy box of Crayolas with a built-in sharpener were my pride and joy.

While some kids might have resented working in their family’s business, I never really thought twice about it. For me, it was a fun way to spend time with my grandma. There was also the side benefit of being able to talk and talk and talk with goodness only knows how many people. That was nice.

Plus, without even realizing it, it was a lesson in how important a grocery store can be to a community. The town in which Grandma Mary Lou lives isn’t that big and a lot of folks live out in the country on their farms and ranches. Coming into town to go grocery shopping was a big commitment. I know. When I was little, I lived with my family out on our farm, which was about 20 or 30 minutes outside of town. In an area like that, Grandma Mary Lou’s store was a place where people would run into one another, visit for a bit and share news and gossip.

Grandma Mary Lou sold the store quite some time ago. The first time I went to the store with her after the sale was weird. I wasn’t allowed to go in the back or behind the deli counter. I sure as heck couldn't get an ice cream out of the freezer for free either.

One thing hasn’t changed much though. Folks still have to go to the grocery store and you’re sure to run into folks you know while you’re there – even if you’re like me and you only get back to visit and share news and gossip just every once in a while.

(Note: I published this Aug. 30 originally, but edited it a bit on Sept. 1.)

Blueberry Coffee Cake. Or Raspberry. You Pick.

2009-08-09T14:22:00.008-05:00

This weekend, after blogging a bit about my family’s B&B days and after sharing a blueberry recipe with a friend, I felt the need to put that recipe to work for myself.

The below recipe is for Noni’s Blueberry Coffee Cake. Noni was our next door neighbor when we lived in Maine, and she shared this recipe with us. We, in turn, served the results to our B&B guests, who loved it.

As you can imagine, blueberry-containing dishes were a regular feature on our menu given that we were in Maine. And not just any ol’ part of Maine, but Washington County, Maine, where 90 percent of the nation’s blueberries are grown. That’s right. Ninety percent. Don’t believe me, visit this page then.

Unfortunately for me, while I love Noni’s Blueberry Coffee Cake as is, I don’t live in Maine anymore. Getting fresh blueberries in Nebraska is a little bit on the tricky side of things. And, don’t kid yourselves, those icky, faux blueberries from New Jersey don’t pass muster any whatsoever. No. Those come off of tall bushes and are artificially ginormous in comparison to genuine Maine blueberries, which have to be raked by hand from blueberry bushes that grow close to the ground.

In any case, having no fresh blueberries, I decided to follow my waste-not rule and used the frozen raspberries that have been sitting in my freezer for a couple of months now.

And you know what? It turned out a-ok. In fact, I liked it a lot. And so did my co-workers who were my guinea pigs today. So, there you go. Substitutes do work.

And now, the recipe...

Noni's Blueberry Coffee Cake
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup buttermilk, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (if frozen, do not thaw) or a 12oz bag of frozen raspberries (do not thaw)
1/2 cup all purpose flour (to coat the berries)
1/4 cup sugar for topping

Preheat oven to 350F.

Sift together 2 cups flour & baking soda. Set aside.

Cream together butter & sugar. Add eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly. Alternate adding flour mixture & buttermilk until thoroughly combined.

In a separate bowl, toss blueberries in 1/2 cup of flour. Fold gently into the batter.

Spread batter into a well-greased 9x13 pan. (Note: This is a thick batter & you will have to spread it with a spatula to get it in the pan evenly. Don't work if you mash to berries a bit, the final result will be just fine.)

Lightly sprinkle with the extra 1/4 cup of sugar for a topping.

Bake 45 minutes. Serve hot or at room temperature for best taste.

Most importantly … Enjoy!

Food for Card Sharks

2009-08-08T11:16:00.008-05:00

I think I might’ve fallen off the bandwagon or something.

I’m supposed to be cooking my way through my cookbooks and haven’t made even a teeny, tiny dent in them since June. In fact, I’m pretty sure that during the month of July, I didn’t touch a single one of them except to flip through one or two of them or to move a stack of them from one spot to another.

That’s sad. Really, really sad and maybe just a little bit pathetic too.

Last weekend, however, I felt like I might have turned the corner.

As the co-host for an evening of Euchre, it was my responsibility to bring food. And not just some little nibbles or bags of candy or something. I needed to bring my fair share of treats for about 12 adults and assorted children.

This was a challenge that I was totally up for.

I also knew that I could only get away with only just so much experimenting since I’d have to make all the food in a short amount of time and make sure it was good. None of these experiments where I spend precious time making something that winds up tasting horrid a la Bobby’s Pimento Cheese.

Knowing my friends, I knew sort of what I wanted to make. Knowing that much at least, I went with two recipes I’ve made before – Chiqui’s Creole Cream Cheese Dip and Pecan Chicken.

I modified the Pecan Chicken recipe a bit though. First, I cut the chicken so that it could easily be eaten in a bite or two rather than cutting them into strips. Then, because I forgot to buy more sesame seeds (the recipe calls for a quarter cup), I substituted two heaping tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese. I also switched out the tablespoon of salt and tablespoon of paprika for a heaping tablespoon of Zatarain’s Creole Seasoning. Based on the reactions of the group and the return trips to the platter, these substitutions worked just fine.

Chiqui’s Creole Cream Cheese Dip was done per the instructions – except for one fatal flaw. I combined all the ingredients in my mixer rather than a blender. It makes a difference. The mixer on high speed wound up whipping the heavy cream, which gave the dip a weird fluffy texture. When I made it in the blender last time, I had an appropriately smooth, dip-like texture. So, basically, what should have been an excellent batch of dip was ruined by texture. I hate that.

I made up for one batch of dip gone bad with a different dip – Baked Bean Dip. I saw a photo of this on TasteSpotting, one of my most favorite Web sites, and knew it would be perfect for my group of Euchre-playing friends. Plus, it looked simple enough that I knew I could work into an afternoon of cooking without completely stressing myself out in the making of it and other recipes.

You can see the recipe for yourself at EatWellLivingThin’s Web site. My only tweak was to use a can of Ro*Tel instead of salsa. Based on the reactions of my friends and the fact that the pan was nearly empty by the end of the evening, I think it was a success. In fact, we cracked open a second bag of chips to scoop up as much as possible. Very satisfying.

My last recipe comes courtesy of Bakerella, who recently featured a post about Petit Fours and Cream Cheese Pound Cake. While I’ve gone through the nightmare of making petit fours myself, I could not resist Bakerella’s pound cake recipe. After making it for myself, complete with some strawberries and frosting, I have to say I’m glad I did not bother with trying to resist the temptation to make this recipe. This stuff was delicious and just a little bit decadent.

One of the nice things about this little cooking adventure is that I managed to make everything in less than four hours, including baking time. For me, that’s impressive since I can be so easily distracted by other things. Although, since I had a hard stop of having to be out of the house at a certain time in order to get to my friend’s house to set up before everyone showed up, I might have had more incentive to get everything done in a timely fashion. Personally, I do not think that this fact takes away from my accomplishment. After all, I made all four dishes as planned and didn’t dump one of them due to laziness or a distraction.

The only thing that would have made this night better would have been if I’d had the highest score of the night. I didn’t. Not even close. Boo…

Confessions of a Recipe Guinea Pig

2009-08-08T10:00:00.003-05:00

As I may have mentioned one or two or a dozen times, I used to live in a B&B. This was a family business in Lubec, Maine, the easternmost town in the United States.

Now, first things first, don’t let those morons who live in Eastport, Maine, convince you that they live in the easternmost town or city or whatever it is they claim. They don’t. Oh. And those kids who went to Mt. Katadhin to see the first sunrise of 2000? Yeah. They didn’t see tiddlywinks because it was fogged in and overcast. Instead, Lubec saw the sunrise first. I watched it from brother’s bedroom window, in fact. After I’d been out for a good portion of the night celebrating. Oddly enough, there’s even photo evidence of my celebrating the incoming millennium. If I recall, correctly, my picture is right next to a picture of the Pope John Paul II in the New Year’s edition of the Bangor Daily News. I know. You’re jealous. I hope you can restrain yourself.

And that bit of digression has next to nothing to do with much of anything.

The point I was trying to make is that I used to live in a B&B. For those of you not so familiar with the lingo, that’s a Bed & Breakfast. In 1989, my family purchased a rather large house with loads of bedrooms and turned it into a B&B. After six months or so of renovations (it was supposed to be six weeks, but that's another story), we opened it just in time for the summer season of tourists that visit Lubec to go whale watching or to visit the easternmost point in the United States, which is at West Quoddy Head State Park (East Quoddy Head is on Campobello Island, which is in Canada – hence the reason a park named “West” is the easternmost point in the United States), and other touristy things.

Anyhow, again, I digress…

The reason my family’s ownership of a B&B matters to this blog is because of how it shaped my love of food and cooking. Not to mention my ability to talk to virtual strangers for hours at a time or to give you a tour of a building that would knock your socks off.

One of the distinguishing services we provided at my family’s B&B was a full, sit-down breakfast. No buffet. No stingy smorgasbord of muffins or cold cereals. Nope. Not at our B&B. My Mom and Dranny served guests a full, sit-down, bring-an-empty stomach, worth-getting-up-super-early-for breakfast.

As a kid living in a B&B, I had a lot of different jobs that varied as I got older. However, the one job that never changed much was my solemn duty of being a guinea pig for the recipes my Mom and Dranny tried. Let me tell you, that one was a tough job. I was “forced” to sit through many a test recipe to help determine if it was any good and if it was easy enough to make en masse for guests.

Yeah. Tough job. Especially when Mom and Dranny would test chocolate waffles with raspberry sauce, oatmeal pancakes with homemade apple syrup, egg blossoms and other assorted goodies.

I know. This time you're actually jealous. Please try to restrain yourselves though.

As we settled into the B&B routine and built a serious clientele of first-timers and return guests, my Mom and Dranny built up quite a collection of breakfast recipes. If I recall correctly, you could stay at our house for about a month and not have the same breakfast twice. And we had a few guests who would stay nearly that long thanks to a music camp for adults that set up shop in town.

That said, I’m not sure that we ever actually did that. If a guest was staying with us for that long, they typically wound up having a favorite breakfast or three that they would request and that we would make – assuming that it wasn’t an issue for another guest.

My Mom and Dranny don’t own the B&B any longer. They sold it a few years back and moved back to Texas. And let me tell you, while I loved being the breakfast guinea pig, I love celebrating winter holidays in Texas way more. I mean, c’mon. I get to wear flip flops on Christmas.

And, if I ask really nicely, Mom and Dranny even make up one of my favorite breakfasts from the B&B days.

Hmm… Speaking of…

Maybe I’ll make up some of those oatmeal pancakes or scrounge through my cookbooks for a new breakfast recipe or two. I’ll have to be my own guinea pig, but I can deal with that.

Bacon. Bacon on Muffins. Need I Say More?

2009-07-26T10:48:00.006-05:00

Creativity is a must sometimes. For example, when you’re too lazy to go out to buy an important ingredient for a new recipe. Say, when you want to make Bacon Pineapple Muffins in which corn meal is the key ingredient for the muffin itself and you don’t have any corn meal or, you know, something along those lines.

Okay. Fine. Something exactly along those lines.

Having no corn meal, having no desire to make a late-night dash or an early-morning run to the store and being determined to have a muffin with bacon and pineapple in it, I decided to improvise. And at this point, this is where I must say: Thank you, Jiffy Corn Bread Mix. Thank you very much.

Yes, I know you can make corn muffins from scratch. They would be darn right tasty, too. Or, when you’re short on a key ingredient, you can improvise and be just as happy. Because, let’s be honest. The only reason I was making these muffins was because they were going to be a carrier for bacon, an ingredient I fully planned on doubling as soon as I read the recipe.

These muffins came from an obscure, goodness only knows where they got it, muffins and only muffins cookbook that my parents used during our B&B days. Many of the muffins have been tried and loved. For some odd, unexplainable reason, we had not made these Bacon Pineapple Muffins. However, we had made the rather icky Cantaloupe Muffins because we had a lot of cantaloupe to use before it went bad. Let me tell you, we didn’t make that mistake again. Bleh!

Anyhow, the muffins were easy. Make a corn muffin base from scratch or use Jiffy Corn Bread Mix (like me). Fold in half a cup of shredded, canned pineapple. Pour muffins into muffin tins lined with paper things. I definitely recommend using the cupcake liners because even with the tins greased up with lots of PAM, the muffins stuck to the bottoms. I blame the pineapple. However, I will also note that since I was using a Texas-sized muffin tin rather than a normal, itty-bitty muffin tin, cupcake liners weren’t much of an option. Oh well…

Lastly, top with bacon. Lots of bacon. I think the recipe called for something absurd – like only using four or five strips of fried bacon crumbled on top. Absurd! Use more. Use lots. I think I used 10 strips of bacon.

And then you bake them. That’s it.

Well, aside from spreading loads of butter on them when they’re fresh out of the oven and eating them as quickly as possible.

From Soup to Biscuits

2009-07-21T13:04:00.007-05:00

When I was home in Texas visiting my parents, we made more than just a pie. I swear. In fact, we made a few things, including a Cream of Chicken Soup and Cactus Jack Biscuits.

I have to tell you though, the Cream of Chicken Soup was not a first choice recipe. It was a last minute substitution made after we decided that it was just too darned hot to even think about standing outside over a hot grill to make steaks.

Now please, do not faint on me folks or accuse me of blasphemy. You have to keep in mind that when I was home it was about 100 some odd degrees and the grill is on the back porch under the sun all day long.

So, unless we were going to grill something for breakfast, then we weren't really up for grilling outside under the broiling sun. Heck, we were barely up for going from the front door to the car to a restaurant. Sad. I know. Oh well.

Anyhow, like I said, Cream of Chicken Soup was a substitute. We picked it because we had just about all the ingredients we needed for it. This was some good stuff and fairly simple. Basically, it's cooked, shredded chicken; chicken broth; some heavy cream; rice; and - in my version of the recipe - a can of Ro*Tel. Mix it together. Bring it to a boil. Let it simmer until the desired consistency. Really. How much easier does it get?

The Cactus Jack Biscuits on the other hand, well, those were definitely an "Oh my gosh! I have to try making these!" recipe. I mean, c'mon! Cactus paddles were the leading ingredient and cheese was the second ingredient. How could I not make them? These little biscuits combined a something new ingredient with a much beloved ingredient.

Plus, I knew for a fact that the local grocery store always had fresh cactus paddles in the produce aisle. So I'd be able to buy just enough cactus for the recipe and would be able to avoid buying the ginormous jar of canned cactus.

Now... Maybe I should take a moment for my Northern friends. Yes. You can eat some types of cactus. Yes. You have to remove the needles or buy them prepared or needle-less. No. I hadn't actually ever used cactus as an ingredient before, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to try 'em.

Okay... Where was I? Oh. Yes, the ease of buying fresh cactus paddles in a Texas grocery store.

Yeah. Whatever. Didn't happen. They were out of them! Out of cactus paddles!

Talk about irritating. I wound up having to buy a honking jar of canned cactus paddles after all.

Now, had I been on my own, I would have gone to every blessed store within a 20 mile radius to find fresh cactus paddles. I can be obsessive like that, I admit it. However, like I said, it was flipping hot as Hades out and I couldn't ask my parents to go in and out of goodness only knows how many stores on a search for fresh cactus. They may be enablers, but even I know they have limits.

Anyhow, the jarred cactus paddles turned out fine. For my mother's sake though, I used only a quarter cup of diced cactus paddle pieces instead of a half cup. She's not a big fan of green peppers or things that look like green peppers in her food. Diced bits of cactus paddle fall into the latter category.

The one thing that surprised me about this biscuit recipe was not that there were only four ingredients (cactus, cheese, flour & butter), but that they weren't fluffy little biscuits. When I think of a biscuit, I think big and fluffy. Granted, given the lack of baking powder or salt, maybe I should have had a clue about their texture, but I was focused on the cactus part.

These were a little more like scones in texture. Since we were having these biscuits with soup, it turned out to be perfect because we could crumble them up into the soup or slather butter or cinnamon honey across them. In retrospect, these scones-like biscuits would not have been as good with a steak, no matter how good the steak.

Go figure! The kitchen gods were looking out for me after all.

And for the record, I didn't even knock another cookbook off the list with either of these recipes because they both came from the "Texas: The Beautiful Cookbook."

At this rate, I'm going to have to lock myself in my kitchen with a full pantry and cook for days on end to accomplish my cooking challenge. Ugh. Why did I think this was a good idea again?

Enabling Parents and Apple-Pecan Pie

2009-07-17T17:28:00.017-05:00

If you read nothing else in this post, I’d like to make sure you read this next sentence.

I have very supportive parents who, apparently, are absolutely willing to aid and abet my blogging habit.

I mean it! They deserve some of little gold stars or something.

First, they helped me knock one cookbook off the list while I was visiting them a couple of weekends ago. Then they wanted to know why I wasn’t taking more food pictures and were the ones to suggest that we take a mini-road trip for the sole purpose of getting some photos for The Omaha Chronicles. They even gave me some presents, including a splatter screen to shield me from future frying accidents and some new cookbooks for my collection…

Hey. Wait a minute.

More cookbooks?

Crud.

Gee, thanks Mom and Dranny. Thanks a lot for making my cooking challenge even harder now. Wow… You must really love me a lot…

Oh wait… Not the point. I’m supposed to be saying how nice they are.

In that case, I guess could talk about the Apple-Pecan Pie I made using a recipe from “Texas: The Beautiful Cookbook” rather than sulking. Okay. Fine. I’ll do that.

So, before my parents got busy undermining my ability to ever get through my collection of cookbooks for the purposes of this blog, I asked them to pick a recipe they’d like me to make. I specifically asked that they pick something from the “Texas: The Beautiful Cookbook” because they have a copy and I have a copy, which meant that I could knock a cookbook off my cooking challenge list and, even better, use a recipe from a cookbook that we’ve all drooled over together for eons.

My Dranny picked the Apple-Pecan Pie.

This was a scrumptious dish. The additions of pecans to an otherwise normal apple pie added just the right touch of crunch and made the apple pie even better.

The recipe called for the addition of a about a half cup of finely chopped pecans sprinkled on the bottom of the pie crust and then pour in your basic apple pie filling. I messed up a bit and mixed the pecans in with the apple pie filling. It was fine though. I promise. If you mess up like that, just make sure you get a good even coating all over the apples.

Then rather than adding a second crust to cover the top, the recipe called for a pecan-filled streusel topping to be sprinkled over the apple filling before baking the pie.

All in all, pretty darned simple and so very good.

To add to the fun, the Apple-Pecan Pie recipe in the Texas Beautiful cookbook specifically referenced the famous dwarf apple tree in Medina, which is about a 25 minute drive from my parents’ home in Kerrville. And, apparently, the recipe comes from a Medina bakery.

My parents, bless their enabling hearts, were the ones to suggest that we drive over to Medina to get some pictures for my blog, even though it was very likely that the bakery would be closed by the time we got there – and it was.

That’s okay though because the drive between Kerrville and Medina is along a meandering Hill Country road that is beautiful and fun to drive. Well, I should qualify that it’s fun to drive along this road when the weather is nice. I wouldn’t want to drive it in a downpour or if it got icy. It might not be a drive through the Rockies, but it would still be a nasty tumble down a hill in the event of an accident.

Anyhow, to top it all off, I learned later, only after we had all eaten our slices of pie, that my Dranny had gone out on a real branch here because she’s no fan of apple pies, but she likes pecans and was willing to take a risk. She liked this pie though. And so did my Mom.

For me, making something that they both enjoyed made me happy. Yay! Baking success!

Although, now that I think about it, I have to wonder… Why didn’t they ask me to fry up something while under parental supervision? Hmm…

Brick Wall. Meet Forehead.

2009-07-16T22:44:00.005-05:00

Some days, I have to wonder about just how bright I am.

I write my own blog. I write about food I make. I use cookbooks I bought or that were given to me. So, essentially, this all about me, me, me, me. (no comments from the peanut gallery!) When I think about it that way, I have to wonder why in the world have I been making it so darned hard to write about my last few cooking adventures?

Well, after whining about the lack of visits from my writing muse, she swung by and gave me a swift kick to the seat of my pants, told me to stop crying and reminded me that I make the rules around here.

Oh. Yeah. Duh.

Turns out that trying to write one blog entry about a weekend's worth of cooking adventures while visiting my parents was not my brightest idea. Far from it when you consider the fact that the three different meals didn't even necessarily have the same cookbook in common.

For the record, I've scrapped four versions of a post while trying to cram too much into it. I swear. You'd think I wasn't a professional in the communication field at that rate. How embarrassing.

Now that I'm past my own, self-imposed, dumb-as-all-get-out, brick wall writer's block, I feel like I can move on and write a few different posts about delicious goodies such as Apple-Pecan Pie, Cream of Chicken Soup, Cactus Jack Biscuits and Bacon Pineapple Muffins.

Exicting, huh?

Now, if you'll excuse for me for a bit, I have to go get some ice for my forehead. It feels like it's been bashed against a brick wall one or two times recently.

And you thought I was kidding, didn't you?

2009-06-26T15:01:00.006-05:00

Below is a note I received from my Dranny after my last attempt at frying:

"Can you not find a meal without the frying bit??? Or at least use the much safer electric skillet to make things a little less dangerous for you anyhow. haha"

Just like I said. She's simultaneously horrified by my insistence on frying without parental supervision and dying of laughter.

Gotta love that about my family. =)

Recipes for an Expedition!

2009-06-23T19:08:00.013-05:00

When you start out on a cooking challenge like the one I've set for myself, surely you can expect to learn a few things.

For example, I've learned that grease burns hurt like all get out. I've learned that I'm not fan of pimento cheese as prepared by Bobby Deen. I've learned that simple recipes aren't always as simple as they appear. I'm sure there are some other lessons learned so far, but you get the point.

You might also be able to say that this cooking challenge is a bit of an expedition. And, for the purposes of this posting, I plan to do so - if only because it goes so well with the title of the cookbook I used for my most recent adventure. Namely, I used one cookbook titled "The Food Journal of Lewis & Clark: Recipes for an Expedition."

I've had this cookbook for a while and it epitomizes one type of cookbook I adore, which are those that deliver more than just a collection of recipes and that tell a story about the recipes' origins and their place in history or a region.

The Food Journal is derived from the journals of Lewis & Clark as they traveled west to explore the Louisiana Purchase as well as their return east. It begins in 1801 with their meeting in Washington, D.C., with President Jefferson and plots out their course chronologically, including recipes, lists of provisions, excerpts from their journals and much more - nearly all of which is focused on food, food and more food.

Living on the Missouri River in Omaha, this cookbook has even more meaning to me because I'm able to visit a park dedicated to the expedition's crossing of said river. Very cool in my nerdy-ish opinion.

In any case, I decided that I had to use one or more recipes from The Food Journal because I've promised to loan it to a friend of mine who shares my love of cookbooks like this. So, this blog and these recipes are dedicated to her (she knows who she is). I only wish I'd had enough forethought to have invited her over for dinner before diving head first into these recipes.

I will say that I purposely selected recipes that could be dished up as a complete dinner. However, what I didn't realize was that I had selected a collection of recipes that also vaguely resembled a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. All in all, I think this is very appropriate. The Lewis & Clark expedition had much to be thankful for and subsequent generations are much beholden to their hard work and bravery.

Okay... Enough of that! On to the food!

The Lewis & Clark menu consisted of Roasted Cornish Game Hens stuffed with Sweet Potatoes; Hominy and Sunflower Cakes; and Peas with Mint-Butter Sauce.

The cornish game hens were easy-peasy to fix. I seasoned them with salt and pepper; stuffed 'em with some chopped up sweet potatoes; poured a bit olive oil over the tops; and then put 'em in the oven to bake for about an hour and a quarter.

And, apparently, in my case, when it comes time to carve them, the messier the better.

The peas were easy too. Peas brought to a boil for a few minutes with some chopped scallions tossed in for the last minute and tossed with some salt, butter and fresh chopped mint.

The Hominy and Sunflower Cakes were a different story.

First off, they required the use a food processor. I have a mini-food processor. No biggie there since I've learned the art of processing in batches.

The problem came into play when I had to fry them. Ugh. Frying. On my evil, electric-coil stove top. I would have used my electric skillet, but figured it wasn't worth the effort for a such a small batch of hominy cakes.

Yeah... That was stupid. Course, maybe it's just plain ol' stupid for me to be frying considering my recent history (see here and here).

Oh... And let's compound the matter by taking into account the fact that I was frying CORN! Hello! Corn and high temps equals popping! Doh!

Quite frankly, I'm sure my parents are simultaneously horrified and dying of laughter over my seeming inability to fry anything on my own.

Anyhow, by the third batch of hominy cakes (see pic at right), I had turned the heat down low enough and poured off most of the frying grease in order to minimize the damage I could do.

Luckily, hominy cakes like these taste fine even before they're fried and frying them just added some extra zing thanks to the sunflower seeds. And once I added the boysenberry jam as a topping, I had nearly forgotten that I nearly lost a couple of more patches of skin and maybe even an eyeball to this dish.

Ahh... The joy of cooking... It really is an expedition and one that I'm enjoying in all its facets.

I've been away for a while. This is why.

2009-06-21T21:40:00.003-05:00

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post. I wish I could tell you I was doing something fun, but that's not the case.

I was in Garner, NC, after an explosion at one of my company's plants. Three people lost their lives, many others were injured and countless lives have been forever changed.

There has been a lot of news coverage regarding our plant, where we make Slim Jims, so I won't go into details. However, I do want to say that during the last couple of weeks, I've learned so much about the strength and grace of my ConAgra Foods family in Garner and elsewhere as well as the Garner community as a whole; and I'm absolutely humbled by what I've learned.

Lastly, I hope you'll consider making a donation to the ConAgra Foods Garner Plant Fund, which is being administered by the United Way of the Greater Triangle. The United Way has waived its administration fees for this fund, which means that 100 percent of the money raised will go to employees at our Garner plant and their families.

Chicken Pot Pie Made Easy

2009-06-21T20:00:00.001-05:00

Have you ever made a dish that had you wondering, "Really? Are you sure about that?"

I have.

Paula Deen's "Hurry-Up Chicken Pot Pie" from her "The Lady & Sons, Too!" cookbook was one of them.

All in all, this was a pretty straight-forward dish to make. Better yet, it allowed me to adhere to a few of my rules, including the new-to-me and the waste-not rules. The chicken I used was from my Pecan Chicken dish (recipe also by Ms. Deen), and I think it gave the dish some extra oomph. Plus, I haven't made this dish before. Although, I have made tamale pies, which are sort of similar, but not really.

The "Do what?" moments starting to come into play when I made the biscuit topping. First of all, the recipe called for the "Lady & Sons Biscuit Mix." Now I don't know about y'all, but I don't have that in my cupboard and it's not stocked at my grocery store. However, I made a calculated guess and went with my beloved Bisquick instead.

I got a little worried as I poured the biscuit mix across the top because it seemed to sink into the layers of veggies, chicken and gravy; and then made the peas float to the top. All of my doubts about this being a successful dish were then compounded by the recipe's directions to pour an entire stick of melted butter on top of the dish.

Uh... An entire stick? Yep. An entire stick.

Oh. And the addition of two hard boiled eggs seemed odd to me too. In all honesty, I don't think I've ever had a pot pie that had eggs in it. But as we all know, there's a first time for a everything.

Anyhow, you bake this little concoction up and then serve while piping hot.

And this is the part where I learned, again, not to doubt Paula Deen. Dished up, it was not the prettiest thing I've ever seen. But it was hearty and delicious. I suspect that it would make for a much nicer dinner in December as opposed to June, but whatever.

Oh... Please note the presence of vegetables. Lots of them. Peas. Carrots. And a big ol' side of broccoli. My mom would be so proud of me.

Well That Was Easy...

2009-06-07T16:36:00.007-05:00

I’m not sure what to make of this latest development.

Last night, I made dinner featuring a new recipe and a good ol’ reliable recipe.

And it went just fine.

No injuries. No accidents. No horror stories or overly dramatic moments to share.

Now what? What the heck fuzzy am I supposed to write about? The food itself? Hmm… Well, that would be a novel-ish concept, wouldn’t it?

Okay. I feel better now. I turned a simple dinner into a dramatic moment of some sort.

Actually, last night’s dinner was quite pleasant and pretty straightforward. I used my third Paula Deen cookbook and revisited one of my favorite Paula Deen recipes. I felt the need to do so because I couldn’t have my most recent Paula Deen recipe be one that I really didn’t like. Although, I can blame Bobby, not Paula, since it was his recipe. (stupid pimento cheese)

Okay. Enough rambling…

Last night I made Pecan Chicken, which is a baked chicken recipe that calls for dredging your chicken pieces in a seasoned pecan, flour and sesame seed mix after dipping them in a buttermilk and egg mixture. Messy? Certainly. Easy? No doubt about it. Delicious? Yep. Even better the next day for breakfast? Why yes, in fact, it was.

I do have to say though, the recipe called for ground pecans. I didn’t have ground pecans on hand. Nor did I have an easy way to grind them myself. So I took the easier way out and chopped the pecans very finely. The results were just fine, but I can’t help but wonder if it would have been even better with the ground pecans.

To accompany the Pecan Chicken, which is featured in “The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook,” I made Corn Casserole, which is featured in “The Lady & Sons, Too!”

I talked about this recipe before. It’s a classic recipe for me. After all, what’s easier than mixing together a can of corn (drained), a can of creamed corn, a box of Jiffy corn bread mix, a cup of sour cream and a stick of melted butter together and then baking it in a casserole dish at 350 until golden? Not much. And when I’m thinking about it, I add some cheddar cheese as a topping when it’s nearly done. Purely delicious, so far as I’m concerned.

However, if I’m following my own rules, neither of these recipes really counts against my cooking challenge. Darned rules. The Pecan Chicken comes from a cookbook I’ve already used; and the Corn Casserole is not a new-to-me dish.

To rectify this travesty, I’ll be making “Hurry-Up Chicken Pot Pie” from “The Lady & Sons, Too!” tonight. This has the benefit of adhering to two rules while officially ticking off another cookbook for my cooking challenge. The first rule being that it’s new-to-me. I’ve never made a Pot Pie that didn’t come from a box or a deli. The waste-not rule will come into effect too because I’m going to use some of the leftover Pecan Chicken. Because, while I could probably eat all of the leftover Pecan Chicken in one or two seatings, it might not be the healthiest thing I’ve done recently.

And, now that I look at the time, I’m thinking I should wrap this up and get my keister into the kitchen. Wish me luck!

P.S. – Your eyes are not deceiving you. There are no not-casserole-ized veggies on that plate. Mom, please don’t be mad at me.

Transparency and Authenticity

2009-06-07T15:04:00.006-05:00

As I become more familiar with the social media world, there are two words that I hear repeated time and again.

Transparency and authenticity.

The more time I spend engaging in various social media arenas and the more I hear about the importance of these two concepts within the social media world, the more I have thought about how they apply to me.

Clearly, they do.

I started this blog because “all the kewl kids are doing it,” but also because it’s a great way for me to share my love of cooking and cookbooks and whatnot with others in a way that allows them to engage on their own schedule. Otherwise, I fear that my friends, family and co-workers would have to listen to me talk about it all even more than they already do. And I would really like for them not to bludgeon me over the head to make me stop talking. (a thought that I’m sure has crossed someone’s mind at some point…)

In any case, because I believe in the importance of transparency and authenticity, I want to make sure I’m upfront with all of my readers.

First things first. This blog is my own personal space. I write it because I enjoy doing so. Period. Well, and to be perfectly honest, I like to talk. In case that wasn't already apparent.

All of my readers should also know that I work at ConAgra Foods where I’m part of the Corporate Communication team. As an employee of ConAgra Foods, I recognize the importance of using my company’s products whenever I can because brand loyalty matters.

I’m very lucky in the fact that I love so many of those products. For example, Ro*Tel. We make that. The fates surely smiled on us all when Ro*Tel was created. We also make Hunt’s Tomatoes, Rosarita’s, Gephardt Chili Powder, Peter Pan Peanut Butter, Ranch Style Beans, Luck’s Beans and many other products.

So when a recipe calls for an ingredient like canned tomatoes or peanut butter, I’m going to use the brand made by my company whenever possible.

However, in case you walk away thinking I’m loyal only to my company’s products, let me set the record straight.

I’m brand loyal to the core when it comes to other products too.

Just try to serve me a Pepsi after I’ve asked for a Coke. Not happening. In fact, I might kick you in the shins for insulting me in such a fashion. And if you think you could pry my Starbucks Venti Iced Coffee with two Splendas out of my hands, think again. And Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups… I love them. Love, love, love them. There is no substitute or comparable product in my opinion. And I’m pretty certain that some folks might have noticed my love of Bisquik. Jiffy Corn Bread ranks right up there too.

Anyhow… Enough about my love of various branded food products…

More to the point of this post is the fact that this is my attempt to be more transparent about what it is I do during the typical work day. This blog is my own space, but I would be stupid to claim or to believe that my 9-to-5 job doesn’t have an impact on me during non-work hours. I learn a lot about food, ingredients and cooking thanks to my job; and I’m proud of what I do.

However, that said, I want assure you that the opinions expressed within this blog are authentically my own and do not represent the opinion of my employer, ConAgra Foods. (i added that underlined bit of text on nov. 4, 2009, just to be clear on whose opinion are represented in this blog.) If I don’t believe it, I’m not writing it. Period. That is my promise to myself and to you.

I hope you’ll let me know if you have any questions or suggestions regarding how I can ensure the transparency and authenticity of The Omaha Chronicles.

When Did Cheese Stop Being My Friend?

2009-05-26T20:54:00.013-05:00

In my family, we have any number of recipes that are handed down generation to generation. These are the recipes that I should know by heart, but I don’t make them often enough to not consult a written recipe for a reminder or three on ingredient quantities or oven temps.

However, there are some odd recipes that aren’t among my family’s repertoire. Corn casserole, for example. I love it, but it wasn’t until I was watching Paula Deen while on the elliptical that I “found” a recipe for it. I memorized it while getting in another mile and then immediately rushed to the store to buy the ingredients and make it for myself. Heaven.

So this weekend, when I was making “Bobby’s Pimento Cheese” from Paula Deen’s “The Lady & Sons” cookbook I expected to be wowed. After all, pimento cheese is a classic Southern recipe loved by many. Plus, it’s made with cream cheese, two kinds of shredded cheese, mayonnaise, the obligatory pimentos and some seasonings. I mean, seriously, how could this be anything less but fabulous?

I made two batches.

The first one came out like crap because I accidentally put too much salt in it. Okay. Fine. My fault. I could fix it by not eyeballing the seasonings.

The second time around, I followed the directions for “Bobby’s Pimento Cheese” verbatim.

Still bad. And by bad, I actually mean, I hated it. Really, seriously hated it.

I feel like a traitor to the South, but it was gross. Too salty and a huge waste of cheese. The only thing I could do with either batch was to feed 'em to the garbage disposal. Poor garbage disposal, it didn't do anything wrong...

When I called my Mom and Dranny to discuss this failure, they could only laugh and tell me that, had I asked them, they could have told me how much I would not like pimento cheese. Then they laughed some more.

Fortunately, my weekend cooking also included making a batch of Baked Beans from my family’s recipe to take to a Memorial Day/House Warming/Surprise Birthday Party (efficient, no?). We make our baked beans with four cans of Van Camp’s Pork & Beans; a ½ pound to a ¾ pound of bacon, cooked and crumbled; an onion and a bell pepper chopped and sautéed; a ¼ cup or so of brown sugar; a ¼ cup or so of ketchup; ½ tsp to 1 tsp of dry mustard; and 2 or so tablespoons of white vinegar – all mixed together and baked at 325 for an hour or so. (Can you tell that we don't believe in exact recipes in my family?)

The Baked Beans turned out just like they were supposed to. Delicious!

So delicious that there were no leftovers. Isn’t that the best compliment any cook or chef can receive?

Oh... Who am I kidding?

There were no leftovers. I wanted leftovers for me. And there were none. I could have cried.

It Started With Some Simple Cheese Straws...

2009-05-16T16:29:00.010-05:00

Last weekend started with a simple idea: “Let’s make Cheese Straws!!!” In fact, I’m pretty sure that after I saw the recipe for the Cheese Straws in “The Savannah Cookbook,” I immediately began to imagine just what a smashing success I’d be with my co-workers when I brought them in. Because, I mean, who doesn’t like Cheese Straws?

Since the Cheese Straw recipe looked pretty straight forward, I picked out a couple of other recipes. Crab Tassies and Corn & Chicken Chowder.

For a few reasons though, I wavered about making the Chowder. Mostly because I realize that I’ve been making a lot of soup-y dishes, and it felt like I was either bending my “try-something-new” rule or possibly even breaking it. Ultimately, when I made up my grocery shopping list, I left off the Chowder ingredients. I reasoned that this was a good thing since I need to focus on trying new things and, besides all that, fresh corn on the cob isn’t in season.

This well thought out plan was blown to pieces though when I walked into Whole Foods and saw loads and loads of corn on the cob. I was a goner. I went from a reasonable amount of cooking project-ness to a level of cooking that really ought to have come with a sous chef. Not that I thought about that sort of thing *before* I started cooking. No. That would have been smart of me.

Anyhow, the day started out with me looking around my apartment and realizing that my couple of weeks of traveling and craziness at work had done no favors for the cleanliness of my place nor the level of laundry in the hamper. By the time I’d dealt with that nonsense, it was the middle of the afternoon and I was, finally, ready to get a cookin’.

Looking at the timing of things and what needed to be made when, I decided to tackle the Crab Tassies first. Crab Tassies are, essentially, crab cakes in cream cheesy pastry shells. In other words, they are freaking awesome! I really don’t know what else to say about these except that I loved them. LOVED THEM!

Even better, they were relatively easy. Make the pastry dough, roll the dough into even-sized balls and refrigerate them. While the dough is chilling, make the filling. When dough is chilled, press it into the muffin tins. The recipe called for making 24 mini-muffin tin sized Crab Tassies, but I only had normal-sized muffin tins. Once you have the pastry pressed into the muffin tins, fill it with the crab mixture. Bake. Eat. And eat. And eat.

Seriously, the biggest challenge for me with this recipe was stopping myself from eating all of the Crab Tassies.

Anyhow, once the Crab Tassies were out of the oven and I’d managed to clean up some of the resulting mess, I moved on to the Chicken & Corn Chowder. I manage to justify this as new-to-me in a sideways manner because I followed the recipe’s direction to use fresh corn on the cob and to cut the corn kernels off instead of cheating and using frozen corn.

This may not seem revolutionary to some of y’all, but it is to me. I mean, seriously, I used a sharp knife to slice off corn kernels off the cob – without supervision or medical assistance on call. Brave. Very brave. And messy. Unbelievably messy. It took me two of the five corn cobs to kinda, sorta master the art of cutting off the corn kernels without having corn juice squirt all over the place. Whatever though. It was fun.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I had the Corn & Chicken Chowder ready to sample, I was stuffed. I had had one too many Crab Tassies. I don’t regret it though. Chowder is always better the second day. And I was right. I will say though, that next time I make this Chowder recipe, I’ll go with my initial gut reaction and decrease the chicken from two cups to one cup, and add more corn.

Then I started in on what I had deemed to be the easiest of the recipes. The Cheese Straws.

That’s when I realized that these little buggers are lying, deceptive bastards! Easy? Oh no. Not at all. Not even close. And I didn’t even finish making them.

Let’s start with the fact that the recipe calls for softened butter and lots of cheese. Okay. That’s fine. But softened butter does not like to mix with grated cheese. And my mixer was not up to the task of forcing them into submission. Maybe a food processor would have worked better, but I don’t have one and I just soldiered on.

I’ll be honest. By the time I started making these, it was later than I anticipated and I was more tired than I expected because of the morning spent cleaning and the making of the other two recipes.

So when the Cheese Straw dough refused to work for me, I gave up. What I wound up with was a too dry hunk of expensive cheesy flour. It’s still in the fridge. I’m wondering if maybe I can salvage it some way. I doubt it though.

That’s okay. I’ll consider it a lesson learned of some sort. We’ll see how well I remember it down the road.

Now, two closing notes for important people in my life.

One: “The Savannah Cookbook” is Christmas gift from my Mom. And it’s one of my new favorites. Thanks Mom!!!

Two: My friend Troy called when I was about to start this particular cooking adventure. He asked if I was going to mention him in my blog. Troy, I guess you’ve got your answer now, dontcha?

Life Gets Busy, Do I Have to Give Up Cooking? Maybe.

2009-04-27T19:00:00.003-05:00

So I’m a few weeks into this whole cooking challenge thing and realizing that it is *work*. Why did I not realize this earlier? Like before I got started with it? Granted, it is work with some particularly yummy benefits (if I do say so myself), but still…

There’s the obvious stuff. Like the cooking (duh...). The grocery shopping. And the blogging thing. Like I said obvious.

But then there’s the other stuff. Like cleaning.

For whatever reason, I cannot cook in a messy apartment. Yes. The entire apartment has to be clean before I feel like I can do something that, when all is said and done, makes one gawd-awful mess of my kitchen.

I’m not entirely certain why I feel the need to have a clean apartment before I start making a mess in the kitchen. Maybe it’s the fact that if I’m up to my elbows in goodness in only knows what in the kitchen, I need some respite from the mess.

And then, there’s my whole short attention span issue. It takes next to nothing to distract me. I’d like to say that it’s something sexier like multitasking, but it’s not multitasking when I forget to do whatever it was that I was going to do before I was distracted while on my way to do whatever it was I was going to do.

So this is a lead in to the explanation that, while I sometimes have no excuse for being behind on my self-set schedule of cooking and blogging other than my own short-attention span, I will have one during the next couple of weeks. The job that pays the bills (and that I enjoy, too) is sending me on the road for some conferences and the weekends will be full of other commitments that do not involve me cooking or baking for others.

Although… Now that I think about it, this might be an opportunity to more carefully plan out how it is, exactly, that I’m going to make sure I make it though all of my cookbooks by the end of the year as planned. Hmm…

Oh! What’s that? A silver lining? Seen through some rose-tinted glasses? Why yes. Yes, I believe that is the case.

A Blog Entry in Which I Describe Four, Count 'em, FOUR Dishes!

2009-04-25T13:26:00.006-05:00

Last weekend was a busy one in my kitchen.

It was also a bit of torture. And if you think I’m being melodramatic, then I’d like to see you make BBQ brisket in a slow cooker. You spend several hours smelling its BBQ yumminess knowing that you have hours and hours and hours to wait before you can have any, and then you just try to tell me that that isn’t some sort of horrid, self-inflicted torture.

In the end, it has so totally been worth it. The two pounds of brisket that simmered for a little more than eight hours in the BBQ fixin’s turned out just lovely.

Admittedly, this BBQ brisket won’t be winning me any awards, but it was a very good first attempt at making BBQ. Especially if you take into account that 1) I rarely make any dishes that contain a beef ingredient that isn’t ground and 2) that I have no real clue as to what goes into the making of BBQ.

That last comment might be a bit of an overstatement, if I’m being honest. The reality is that there are no BBQ from scratch recipes in my family. At least none that I’ve ever seen. So while I get the differences between Texas, Kansas and North Carolina BBQ, I’ve only ever really had BBQ from scratch while at a joint that specializes in BBQ.

Anyhow, the BBQ brisket was turned into pulled BBQ brisket sandwiches. Yummy. In fact, I had some leftovers last night, and it was just as good, if not better than when it came out of the slow cooker the first night.

At the end of it all, this BBQ attempt has inspired me to do a little more research into BBQ recipes so that I can better understand how it’s done and then I can see what I can do to make it my own.

To go along with the BBQ brisket, I made two side dishes. Cole slaw. Easy enough. I’ve made it plenty of times before and went with my good ol’ standby recipe from my trusty "Better Homes & Garden Cook Book." Unfortunately, since I now use that recipe as more a guiding post than a recipe, I got the proportions a little bit wrong. Oh well. It wasn’t anything that couldn’t be doctored up later on.

The other side dish qualified for the new-to-me category. It was a Baked Mexican Black Bean dish. This one was fun to make, even if I did misread the instructions and underestimate the cooking time by about an hour. It just meant that the BBQ brisket had to slow cook for a little bit longer.

This was a good dish made with a half pound of cooked bacon; onions and garlic sautéed in the bacon and bacon grease; add a whole jalapeño, a pound of black beans and six cups of liquid (chicken broth, water, a combo, or whathaveyou) dumped and in brought to a boil. Then, you throw all of that into the oven to bake for an hour covered up; and then add a can of diced tomatoes and bake it for another hour uncovered.

It was this last step that I missed when reading the directions. On the bright side, I realized this early enough to turn down the BBQ brisket so that it wouldn’t overcook.

Like all bean dishes of this sort, it was great straight out of the pot and has been great in subsequent leftover dishes. Well… Actually, they’ve been really great straight out of the fridge on some tortilla chips, but I’m willing to bet that they’d be great in a burrito or quesadilla too.

And, lest you think I’ve been a horribly lazy person by not blogging about all of this earlier this week, let me tell you that I also made a third new-to-me dish last weekend.

It’s a Tuscan Bean Dip. Very simple stuff. Lots of garlic sautéed in a quarter cup of olive oil until golden. Toss in a couple of teaspoons of fresh rosemary and a pinch or so of hot pepper flakes after the oil was taken of the heat. Now, at this point, if you had a grownup’s food processor, you’d dump all a can of cannelloni beans and all but a teaspoon of the oil in that and process it till creamy enough to suit you taste.

In my case, I have a mini-food processor. So I mixed the beans and the oil together in a bowl and processed it in batches. That worked out just fine *and* I got to use my mini-food processor for the first time ever.

A fact that I hope doesn’t upset my Mom or Dranny too much since they gave it to me eons ago thinking I’d use it to chop veggies.

A note for my Mom and Dranny: I was just scared of it and of liquefying the veggies instead of just chopping them. Really. I swear.

Back to the point…

When finished, the Tuscan Bean Dip was perfect on some toasted slices of french bread along with some goat cheese on some other slices. It was just right for a light supper in my case or would be a good appetizer-y dish in other instances.

At this point, you may well be wondering just how many cookbooks I managed to use this weekend. I am sad to report (sort of) that I only used one new cookbook.

One?! Just one?! Clearly, I am very not efficient at this whole cooking challenge thing.

The cookbook in questions was the surprisingly good “Food Network Kitchens Favorite Recipes.” I say surprisingly good because I half expected this to be full of cast-off recipes that the Food Network stars didn’t like. Instead, it’s actually full of a lot of interesting, basic recipes for all types of occasions.

So while my cookbook usage efficiency is a bit on the crap side of things, the recipes were not. And there you have it.

Now I must be off. I have a new menu to plan.

What's With the Whole Cooking Thing, Anyhow?

2009-04-19T19:07:00.005-05:00

While I’m waiting for dinner to slow cook itself into readiness, I figure I’ll do some writing.

Rather than write about what’s in the slow cooker (BBQ brisket), the oven (Baked Mexican Black Beans) or the fridge (cole slaw) for tonight’s dinner, I thought I’d tell you a bit about why it is that I’m so obsessed with cookbooks that I have 46+/- cookbooks and countless food magazines lying around while hardly, if at all, being used.

The easiest explanation is that it’s all the fault of my Mom and Dranny (she’s my maternal grandmother).

Yep. I’m going to lay this habit squarely at their feet. I don’t even feel the slightest twinge of guilt in blaming them for this. After all, next to their collection of cookbooks, mine is insignificant. Absolutely, utterly, 100 percent insignificant.

Of course, I don’t help them much since I’ve added more than a few cookbooks to their collection. That’s beside the point though.

Actually, in all seriousness, I really did learn my love of cookbooks from my Mom and Dranny. We would sit together and read through cookbooks quite a lot when I was growing up. We would pick out recipes to make or just drool over the pictures and recipes. Heck, we still do for that matter.

One cookbook in particular, “Texas: The Beautiful Cookbook,” which was a gift to my Dranny from one of our B&B guests, is still a favorite of mine. When I graduated from college and moved into my own place, it was one of the cookbooks that I wanted for myself. However, on a Hill staffer's paltry salary, paying $60 for a cookbook was more of an extravagance than I could justify at the time. I did buy it for myself several years ago when I found it on sale at Barnes & Noble. I still have it and will pull it out every once in a while and just flip through it. Gorgeous pictures, interesting recipes and some great info about how the recipes are tied to Texas.

In addition to blaming my Mom and Dranny, I have to give them credit too. When I decided to make something, they’d let me.

For example, the tuna noodle casserole that was one of the first dishes I insisted on making all by myself. I might have been in 4th grade, maybe 5th. It took me nigh on to forever to fix, but I did it. How my Mom and brother survived the wait without either bursting in to the kitchen to help me or to kill me is still a mystery to me.

Even better was the time I got it in to my head that making petit fours from scratch would be a good idea. We all laugh about that one - now - and use it as a cautionary tale for others. It seemed like so much fun and so simple. Ha! Cutting all those little cakes and glazing them and decorating them. Not even close to easy.

To this day, I can still smell the weird almond-flavored glaze and can only shudder in horror. And you know, now that I think about it, I’m not sure we even ate any of them. That’s how disgusted I was with them by the time I finally gave up on them.

This is only part of the reason I’m so obsessed with cookbooks in particular and food in general. The rest of the explanation will have to wait because dinner is just about ready.

Dinner time!!!!!! Yay!!!!

Easter Orphans - A week after the fact

2009-04-19T15:26:00.009-05:00

Easter has always held a very special place in my heart.

On my mother’s side of the family, this is a big family holiday. When I was young, it came complete with all the usual trappings, including a special outfit, Easter eggs and baskets, the Easter egg hunt, and – best of all – a very large Easter dinner.

Growing up, Easter dinner was almost always an Easter ham, potato salad, baked beans, some sort of veggie and bread. This was a tradition that I very much took for granted my first year at college, when I had no plans to go home and then broke down at the very last minute.

And I mean that literally. I was a crying, desperate mess making last minute arrangements to get home for Easter. I simply could not fathom *not* being home for Easter. In my books, it would be almost as bad as not going home for Christmas.

After that first year at college, my Easter traditions began to change. I spent an Easter with my paternal grandmother and her side of the family enjoying time with family I don’t get to see as often as I would like. Then I moved to DC, where getting home to see family became harder since I was an underpaid staffer on the Hill trying to make ends meet in a city that eats your paycheck before it’s even in your bank account. It was while I was living in DC that I began my own Easter tradition.

Easter Orphans Dinner.

And lest you start thinking that I’m some sort of noble soul hosting actual orphans, let me set the record straight. Easter Orphans is a dinner I host for friends who, like me, can’t go home for Easter Dinner. And when you live in DC, there are a lot of people in very similar situations.

My first Easter Orphans Dinner did not feature my family’s traditional menu. Instead, I served a Tex-Mex feast of chicken enchiladas and assorted other goodies. In subsequent years, I served the traditional menu, but I also hosted an Easter brunch whose center piece was the mimosa bar.

This year’s Easter Orphans Dinner was actually brunch for supper, featuring a mix of recipes from my family’s Bed & Breakfast days and new-to-me recipes from Ina Garten’s “Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics” cookbook.

Oh. And mimosas. Mimosas are a must when it comes to brunch, even if it’s a brunch served at supper time. An absolute must.

First up on the menu was an Easy Quiche we served our Bed & Breakfast guests. The recipe is uber-easy and relies upon Bisquik rather than a pie crust. Add some eggs, cheese, sour cream, assorted spices and your choice of filler, and you’re all set. Following my waste-not rule, I used the cheddar and smoked apple chicken sausage already in the fridge as the key flavors in the Easy Quiche. I was a little worried that the smoked apple chicken sausage would be weird, but it turned out just fine. And the cheddar complemented the apples and vice versa.

But more to the point of my whole cooking challenge, I used two new recipes from Ina Garten’s “Back to Basics.” First off, let me just tell you that I want to make everything in this cookbook. Even the fish dishes, and I *hate* fish. For Easter weekend, I settled for tackling two recipes.

Actually, I feel like I should say I tackled three recipes. “Back to Basics” has two tomato-based soup recipes. One of which was more complicated than the other. The other of which used fresh tomatoes.

Being somewhat lazy and not having five pounds of tomatoes on hand, I went with the easier recipe, but used canned tomatoes as described in the more complicated recipe. The easier recipe had the added benefit of being Creamy Tomato Basil, a soup I love, love, love.

Essentially, you sauté an onion and couple of carrots in olive oil. I added two cans of Hunt’s Diced Tomatoes and one can of Hunt’s Fire Roasted Tomatoes in place of the five pounds of fresh tomatoes. Add chicken stock, fresh basil, salt and pepper; simmer for 30 minutes or so; add heavy cream; and then blend it to a smooth consistency. The easier recipe said put all through a food mill. I don’t own a food mill. So I just put the soup through the blender in batches.

Et voila! A Creamy Tomato Basil Soup to die for. I will never buy the pre-made stuff again. Well, unless I’m really freaking sick and can’t even contemplate putting one foot in front of the other, let alone making a soup that requires the use of a knife and blender.

The tricky part of the meal was the stupid warm goat cheese salad I made. Lawd!

The recipe made it sound so simple. Goat cheese wrapped up in some bread-crumb dusted phyllo dough.

Yeah. Whatever.

First off, I used the wrong type of goat cheese since the recipe called for a wheel and I used not-wheel goat cheese. Second, I put too much bread crumb between the layers of phyllo dough.

It looked pretty enough, but it wound up being too dry and not cheesy enough. Oh well. You can’t win ‘em all. The spring greens with champagne vinaigrette (store bought) that accompanied the warm goat cheese were lovely though…

Dessert was an ever so simple Strawberry Shortcake. I love making Strawberry Shortcake. Any recipe that is easiest to make by simply squishing the ingredients together with your hands gets big points in my book. And smishing strawberries together with a touch of sugar doesn’t get any easier or yummier. The shortcakes were made using the super, duper, top-secret Bisquik recipe that you’ll find on the side of the box.

And yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, I like Bisquik. So does Paula Deen. If you care to suggest alternatives to Bisquik, feel free to do so. Just know that I’m not very likely to listen.

And that was this year’s Easter Orphans Brunch for Supper Dinner. I made a big mess, had a great meal with fabulous company, and managed to walk away from the day with no injuries.

Definitely a success so far as I’m concerned.

Hushpuppies!!!

2009-04-06T22:15:00.001-05:00

If I'm going to meet the goals of my own personal cooking challenge, then I'm going to have to step up my game and get a-cookin'. To that end, I spent some quality time perusing my cookbooks for recipes that would make use of a few of the ingredients I have in the fridge already.

And then I stumbled acrossed it.

A recipe for Hushpuppies.

Hushpuppy memories flooded my brain.

I could practically taste the huspuppies.

I could hear the gerbils running on their wheels as they thought up a meal centered around hushpuppy yumminess.

To heck with making due with what's in the fridge! I could go grocery shopping.

And then I finished reading the recipe, which included this direction:

"...heat the oil over high heat ... fry in batches ... maintain the temperature of the oil between 350 and 375 degrees." (Source: "The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook")

My delight in finding this recipe evaporated in less time than it took me to look at my wrist and to remember the Natchitoches Incident.

So yeah. I won't be making those hushpuppies anytime too soon. I'll leave the frying of them until I get a new electric skillet for my birthday (hint, hint Mom!).

Never Underestimate Paula Deen or Chocolate Cookies

2009-04-05T21:37:00.009-05:00

Today, I made three different goodies from three different recipes. Only one of them counts against my cooking challenge.

Seriously? Yeesh….I need to get more organized about this gig if I’m going to use all of my cookbooks before the end of the year. Okay. Enough complaining.

Brunch today included a do over of my family’s banana muffin recipe. The last ones were good, but they seemed a little tough to me. These came out much better. Plus, I made them with chocolate chips instead of walnuts. Even better.

The big to do was, in fact, a very simple recipe from “Paula Deen & Friends: Living It Up, Southern Style.”

First, I had to get past my 12-year-old-boy-esque reaction to a dish called “Sausage Balls.” Sausage Balls. Yeah. Go ahead. Giggle. I did. More than once. Still giggling, actually.

Whatever your reaction to Sausage Balls, they met a few of my criteria for making brunch this morning. 1) Easy. 2) Use the ground sausage in the freezer (the waste not rule in effect). 3) Be a new dish.

Sausage Balls are a mixture of ground sausage, Bisquick, shredded cheddar cheese and some pepper. That’s it. You mix it all together by hand. Form one-inch balls. Bake ‘em all on a cookie sheet sprayed liberally with PAM cooking spray. Flip ‘em once. And then eat ‘em.

I liked ‘em. I was sort of surprised. But I should've known better. This is a Paula Deen recipe. You can underestimate her or make fun of her for using more butter than might seem reasonable. But she is Paula Deen. She knows what the heck fuzzy she is doing when it comes to food.

I capped off today’s cooking adventures by making cookies for dinner.

Are you really all that shocked? After all, I ate muffins and Sausage Balls for brunch. Cookies for dinner were the only way to go, really. And no, salad wasn’t an option. Today was a blizzardy, sleety, icky mess. I deserved comfort food.

Tonight’s cookies were inspired by a photo I saw on TasteSpotting.com, one of my new favorite Web sites. It took me to A Pookie Pantry’s blog and this recipe.

My biggest challenge with these cookies is not eating every. single. one. of. them. RIGHT NOW. All of them. All two dozen of them.

Gah! The restraint is killing me.

If I hadn’t promised to bring cookies to my co-workers tomorrow, these cookies would not be sitting on their plate untouched. They would be in my belly. Where they belong.

*sigh*

The restraint I am showing in not eating every single solitary cookie deserves some sort of an award.

*sigh*

Oh well. I will content myself with sharing them and just hope that my co-workers like them as much as I do.

If not, I’ll snatch them out of their ungrateful hands and snarf them all down myself.

The Pink Elephant

2009-04-04T19:00:00.000-05:00

If you've visited my site before or if you've heard me complaining in the last couple of weeks, then you know that I recently burned the holy living daylights out of myself. I find this somewhat amusing since the burns coincided with the first of my cooking challenges.

For the purposes of maybe putting the whole thing behind me (or at least trying to do so), I thought I would share with you the status update on the burns.

For one thing, I'm bandage free. A good thing since I had been losing more layers of skin than I actually have each time I ripped the bandages off to put more medicine on the burns.

Of the four burn marks, only two of them look like they'll be leaving noticeable marks. As for the other two, I'm very glad they're fading to barely discernible patches since they look like cigarette burns. Not a cute look.

On the other hand, if you play the cloud game with the worst of the burns (upper right corner), you can just make out a pink elephant if that pink elephant had been carved from wood by a crunchy, granola sort who thinks kids shouldn't have normal toys from PlaySkool.

So while these scars will likely prompt future questions along the lines of, "Honey child! WHAT did you DO to yourself?!" I can now say I'm seeing a pink elephant and folks will hopefully think I'm only a just little bit crazy rather than thinking that I might be just a little bit tipsy at an inappropriate hour of the day.

Somehow, I'm thinking that that might bit just a little bit of wishful thinking on my part. But, then again, maybe I'm just plain ol' crazy. We shall just have to wait and see, won't we?

A Simple Pleasure…

2009-04-04T17:29:00.002-05:00

Last night, I was cooking dinner and realized that I had missed cooking.

I did not start my little cooking challenge two weeks ago because I missed cooking. I started it because it seemed like a cute idea. You know, “cook your way through your collection of cookbooks and blog about it” cute.

Well, maybe not so premeditated as that sounds, but you know what I mean. It just sounded fun in a cute way.

I didn’t expect to realize I had missed cooking and that it’s actually a suitable stress reliever for me. Being as short-attention spanned as I am and having the kind of job that requires that I switch gears with little to no warning, it’s nice to focus on something to the exclusion of all else.

And if you doubt that cooking takes focus, you’ve clearly never cooked with me.

For example, chopping vegetables. Yeah. Me plus sharp knives. Needless to say, I’m paying very close attention to the knife and veggies and ignoring other everything else while chopping them into little bits and pieces. I may have no apparent regard for avoiding burns based on the Natchitoches Incident, but I would like to keep my fingertips in place.

If you’re wondering how I could have come to a point in my life where I could miss cooking, I can sum it up pretty quickly. I’m single, work some oddball hours, hate doing dishes and had gotten in to the habit of not cooking while living in DC, where going out to dinner five to seven nights a week was the norm.

All things considered, cooking had become this exotic activity I did only when visiting my family or when I got a wild hair and decided to host a random dinner party.

So whatever else comes of my cooking challenge, it has reunited me with my joy of cooking (hello, pun intended!). And, as Martha Stewart might say, that is a good thing.

Now… If only someone else would do all of the freaking dishes and pots and pans. *sigh*

Sweet Potato Explosion!

2009-03-29T19:21:00.020-05:00

This past Sunday, I woke up. Puttered around the house a bit.

When my stomach rumbled like a convoy of semis, I realized that, maybe, just maybe, it was time for breakfast.

Following the waste not rule, I used my overripe bananas to make banana nut muffins using my family’s recipe from our Bed & Breakfast days. Yummy and easy, even if it doesn't count toward the cooking challenge.

Fortified, I decided to peruse the cookbook collection for new recipes that do meet the cooking challenge requirements. In particular, I was looking for recipes to use some of my sweet potatoes that are sitting around gathering dust.

Quite frankly, if you haven’t noticed yourself, there are not a lot of recipes for sweet potatoes. At least not in my collection. I found that odd all things considered, but still found a couple of new recipes in two cookbooks.

First up was dessert. A Sweet Potato Buttermilk Pie from “The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook.” This cookbook is chock-full of recipes I want to try. So get used to seeing it.

The challenge with this recipe was the number of steps in it and my unfamiliarity with it.

First off was steaming the diced sweet potatoes. Then mashing 'em. Easy enough. Then getting the ingredients mixed in the right order. Fine. Separating eggs that didn’t want to be separating. Beating egg whites to soft peaks when they didn’t nothing to do with it. Sort of annoying.

And then there was the stupid pie crust.

I don’t have cabinet space nor patience enough to make my own pie crust. I admit it. Instead, I used the handy dandy pre-made Pillsbury pie crust dough.

Note: When pre-baking a pie crust before filling it, do not spray the pie plate with PAM. The pie crust won’t stick to the pie plate. So I had to make up the second pie crust. Okay. Fine.

The work was worth it though. The pie came out tasting just fine.

Once the pie was done, I moved on to sweet potato recipe #2. Chicken Nuggets from “Deceptively Delicious.”

I expected this recipe to be a nuisance to fix and questionable in the taste department. In actuality, this was easier to assemble than I expected.

Essentially, you make a sweet potato puree, mix it with an egg. Dip the chicken nugget size bits of chicken in it, then dredge ‘em in a bread crumb mixture.

The nuisance came in to play with the pan frying on my stupid electric coil stove top. Too hot. Not hot enough. I finally said enough was enough and threw the rest in the oven to bake after the pie was done.

Yeah… That didn’t work. The slightly burnt, pan-fried nuggets tasted better than the baked ones that I overbaked, which gave them an over-done, dry, sawdust texture through and through.

Bleh. A half pound of chicken – ruined.

However, I have to say. Had I fried them up the right way, they would have been really good. The sweet potato puree gave them a great flavor and just the right balance of juicy chicken and crunchy outer layer.

The lesson learned through this process and last week’s horrid Natchitoches Incident is that I really, really, really need to get an electric skillet so that I have better control over my frying temps. I’d rather have a gas stove, but that ain’t an option.

Luckily, my birthday is coming up very soon, so I can give my mom the birthday gift hint she’s been asking me for.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go console myself with some Sweet Potato Buttermilk Pie.

The More Cheese the Merrier!

2009-03-26T20:14:00.006-05:00

Tonight I'm putting leftovers to work again. No recipe really. No cookbook crossed off the list as part of the cooking challenge.

That's okay. I'll pour over one or more of them later tonight and plot the next effort to whittle down the list.

Anyhow, tonight was pretty simple. Leftover meat spaghetti sauce. Leftover ricotta. Boil some rigatoni. Mix with the sauce, ricotta and an extra can of Hunt's Diced Tomatoes. Add some dobs of the ricotta. Pour in a greased pan. And then add mozzarella.

Lots of mozzarella.

And I mean LOTS. No holds barred lots. Half the block of cheese lots. Sometimes even the whole darned block of cheese lots.

Because more cheese is better.

That's all there is to it, really.

I justify my consumption of huge quantities of cheese by reminding myself that osteoporosis is a terrible, awful disease and the calcium in cheese will save me.

Anyhow, dinner was good. Ricotta mixed in. Mozzarella melted on top. Parmesan sprinkled on it before serving.

Yum.

It was even furball approved. She must like cheese too.

Waste Not...

2009-03-24T20:43:00.015-05:00

I have a new rule for this cooking challenge.

Do NOT waste food.

And by that I do not mean, "Eat everything in sight." I do not mean, "Eat it all, even if it tastes gross." And I do not mean, "Well, it only smells a little funny. I'm sure it'll be fine after I cook it."

Tonight's dinner is an example of this rule.

After making the Natchitoches Meat Pies on Sunday, I had browned, seasoned ground beef and pork leftover as well as some sun-dried tomatoes that were used in Chiqui's Creole Dip.

To make sure I didn't let them become disgusting petri dishes, I sought out a recipe amongst the 45 cookbooks that have not yet been used. Easy enough, right? Mostly, except that I kept finding recipes for things like Tamale pie, which I've made before (breaking the "it's gotta be new to me" rule) or Shepherd's Pie, which I couldn't really imagine with a spicy meat base.

Well... You know... Maybe if I had used some sweet potatoes instead of potatoes...

Wait. Nevermind. That would not have adhered to the waste not rule per se since I would have had to buy more ingredients. Anyhow...

I went for the meat spaghetti sauce from the 12th edition of the "Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book." Having no tomato paste, I figured that sauteeing the sun-dried tomatoes in their own oil would serve as a nice substitute. I tossed in the previously browned meat, a couple of cans Hunt's Fire-Roasted Tomatoes, some oregano and a pinch of thyme; let it simmer; and then poured it over spaghetti. Add a little grated parmesan, and dinner was done!

All-in-all, this was a way super easy dinner. But if I had had to chop up all the veggies and brown the meat tonight, I might have skipped it because of the mess and time required.

Lesson learned? If you're going to brown a bunch of meat like I did on Sunday, then brown extra for a future meal and save yourself some time.

Oh... And on a closing note. I didn't hurt myself this time. Phew! Still all bandaged up though.

And check out all the bandages! Four in all... Woo. Hoo. Or not. Bleh.

P.S. No. I have not made spaghetti sauce before. That's the sort of thing that comes in jars and is for lazy dinners.

One Down, 45 to Go

2009-03-22T18:02:00.012-05:00

Let me start this post by first saying: I will not forget this cooking adventure anytime soon. In fact, I will, quite literally, bear the scars of this adventure for years. Serious cooking burns are funny like that... Details below...

More to the point of this blog, I officially embarked on my cooking challenge today. On the menu were two items from a recent acquisition that I'm slowly, but surely falling in love with. Namely, "Cooking Up A Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans." I first heard about this book in a New York Times article by Kim Severson and immediately ordered it.

Per the title and the article, these are recipes that Louisiana residents lost during Hurricane Katrina and that are much loved by so many people. Given the importance of recipes in my family, the story of this book's creation absolutely resonated with me.

Now, as part of the cooking challenge, I set a rule for myself. In picking a recipe, it has to be new to me in some way. Cooking Natchitoches Meat Pies definitely counts as new. 1) I've never made them before. 2) They involve deep-fat frying, which I've not done before - at least not without parental supervision, which maybe I still need - all things considered.

The original recipe makes a HUGE batch of Natchitoches Meat Pies. So I cut the recipe by a third, but pretty much followed the directions for making the meat mixture of ground beef and pork along with the assorted spices and whatnot.

I will admit to getting lazy though.

I did not make the dough from scratch. I figured deep-fat frying was going to enough of a challenge for one day. Instead, I used pre-made pizza dough. Maybe not an exact substitute, but - in the end - it worked out alright.

Also on the menu from "Cooking Up A Storm" was Chiqui's Creole Cream Cheese Dip. According the recipe, which includes cream cheese, creme fraiche, ricotta, sun-dried tomatoes, assorted herbs and spices, and Worcestshire sauce, this is for crackers, but it was just right as a dip to complement the Natchitoches Meat Pies. This counts as new-to-me because I've never made it, never heard of it, and typically use little, convenient, pre-made packets of seasonings when making dips.

Lastly, I have a bunch of avocados. I put one of them to work with some creme fraiche, lemon juice, fresh ground pepper and Zatarain's Creole Seasoning. This dip was good, but would have been better with sour cream instead of creme fraiche. I made do with what I had though. This is a recipe I made up, so it does not count against my cooking challenge.

Now... To the part of this story where I tell you about burning the holy living daylights out of my wrist.

Going into this, I knew that deep-fat frying might not be the safest thing for me to do. However, I was determined to try. Frying the Natchitoches Meat Pies (I like saying Natchitoches. Have you noticed?) went just fine. In fact, it was way easier than I expected. While they might not be the prettiest things around (see above...), they tasted great.

However, when I went to move the pot of hot oil off the burner, I knocked the pot on the back burner just hard enough to slosh flipping-hotter-than-all-get-out oil out of the pot and all over the stove and my wrist.

To make matters worse, I couldn't tend to my burns immediately because I had to put out a very small grease fire. Seriously, this was a tiny, miniscule fire. Small enough that I was able to blow it out like candles while simultaneously reaching for the flour jar so that I could smother it. No damages to anything in my kitchen - not counting my wrist.

Unfortunately, I now have a rather serious burn on my wrist (see the odd blister, upper left corner) along with three or four other smaller, not so bad burns. I've had similar burns before (a story for another day); and, 15 years or so later, I can still see the scars ever so faintly. So I'm pretty sure that I'll have a nice little scar to commemorate the first time I ever made Natchitoches Meat Pies.

Now, last but not least, I'd like to give a shout out to the hero of today's debacle. My aloe vera plant.

Thank you Mr. Aloe Vera Plant for your leafy sacrifices today as well as in the coming days. Your aid in helping ease my pain is very much appreciated.

380 Books. 46 Cookbooks. One Cooking Challenge.

2009-03-16T22:07:00.006-05:00

I like to think I’m a laid back sort. I figure there are times to kick up a fuss (not too often), times to be detailed oriented (like when booking flights or at work) and times to just be chill (most of the rest of the time).

However, I can be a wee bit anal retentive about some things. Spelling and grammar are one of those things (though I will not claim to be perfect when it comes to either – that’d be stupid).

Another weird anal-retentive habit?

I catalogue all of my books. For the record, I own more than 380 books. This has no bearing on the number of books I’ve actually read. There are plenty of books that I’ve read and then let go – either I didn’t want it on my bookshelves after I bought and read it or because those pesky librarians insist on my returning borrowed books. If I’m being really honest (yuck), I should also admit that I’ve not yet read all of the books I own.

Anyhow, to make things worse, I categorize them into general buckets (e.g. fiction, biographies, humor, philosophy, etc.). Some books even qualify for secondary buckets. This ain’t no Dewey Decimal system, but whatev.

I recently updated the list to include some new acquisitions. Then I sorted the list for giggles, and Excel told me I own a grand total of 46 cookbooks.

Forty-six? Seriously?!

Yes. Forty-six.

Worse yet is the fact that I haven’t actually put all those books to use for even just one recipe a piece, not even the cocktail books. And let’s not even talk about the cooking magazines I purchase each month and read like so much food porn.

To rectify this situation, I’m going to borrow a bit of inspiration from that Julie girl who cooked a Julia Child’s recipe-a-day.

I am no where near as ambitious or organized as that. However, I do like to cook. I do like to host dinner parties. And I do have all these cookbooks and recipes just hanging around…

So, here’s my goal. Before the end of the year, I’m going to use at least one recipe from each of these cookbooks. I just hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew. Pun intended.

All the Kewl Kids Are Doing It...

2009-03-15T22:22:00.005-05:00

Okay. I give in. I'm doing this. I'm jumping into the blogosphere. The desire to keep up with all the kewl social media kids has bitten me.

However, I am not going to put on any airs about how fabulous this blog is going to be and how it's going to change your life. Not yet, at least.

What I can tell you is that this is an experiment. Can I commit to blogging? Can I say things that interest you and have you coming back for more? We shall see, won't we? (And I sure as heck hope that I can!)

For starters, you should know that I'll write about food a lot. Mostly because I love food, but also because I've set a food-related goal for myself. By the end of the year, I will use at least one recipe from each of the cookbooks I own.

Before you scoff, keep in mind the fact that I own more than 40 cookbooks. Closer to 50 actually (I'll have to double check the latest tally). And I suspect that I'll buy and/or receive more cookbooks before the year is up. So yeah, wish me luck with that one...

Let's see, what else? Daily foibles, but that might be a no brainer. Isn't that what so many blogs are for?

Well... I'm sure as this goes along, I'll think of other things to talk about. I always do.