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Frightful weather, but my house smells great!
Saturday, 10:49 pm
By Kate
Nov
14
2009
We are drowning in the remnants of Ida. At least we don’t have the strong winds to go along with it, unlike what the folks to the south had to endure. Just pouring rain, breezy, and damp. The cure for crummy weather is a nice warm fire in the stove and a simmering pot of chicken soup. Even better on a Saturday evening.
Currently, there is a large pot of chicken soup on the kitchen stove. Just smelling it makes the world a better place. My chicken soup recipe is a little bit different every time I make it. It all depends on what I have in the vegetable crisper drawer. Tonight, I didn’t have very much beyond one large sweet onion, two large potatoes, and four carrots. So, I dragged myself out into the deluge and went to the grocery store.
I scooped up a green pepper, a small bag of parsnips, some celery, and a bag of extra crusty hard rolls. I brought it home and added more stuff to the soup and it is still gently simmering. It won’t be ready to eat until tomorrow, but it surely smells fine tonight.
I haven’t added parsnips to my chicken soup in a long time. I’d forgotten about the possibility until I browsed through a cookbook tonight. Parsnips aren’t everybody’s favorite vegetable. In fact, I don’t know too many people who’d go out of their way to eat them and I’m inclined to agree if they’re cooked like carrots and presented on a serving dish. But when added to a stew or soup for flavor, they add just the perfect touch. Absolutely delightful.
I don’t know...it’s distinctly possible that I might end up having chicken soup for breakfast tomorrow. Don’t know if I’ll be able to wait until later in the day. I think it’s becoming my favorite food. A little bit different every time and, I suppose, there are still a lot of vegetables and flavors to try.
Maybe I should try for the farmer’s market tomorrow morning instead. They’ve extended the Sunday moring market through the end of December. Not sure what they’ll sell during December. Perhaps I should go and find out.
About that banana bread...
Thursday, 11:58 pm
By Kate
Nov
27
2008
That banana bread that I made this afternoon turned out surprisingly well considering. It was somewhat dense and a bit drier than normal. I attributed that to the much smaller loaves. No one seemed to notice and it disappeared in a hurry. I suppose if you slather enough butter on something, it covers a multitude of sins.
I got to thinking about it tonight and suddenly realized why the bread turned out drier than usual.
I forgot to add the 1 1/4 cups of milk. Dunno how I managed to forget that, but it definitely accounts for drier than usual banana bread. At least it wasn’t an embarrassing mistake. As long as I don’t tell anyone who ate it.
Potato Soup
Wednesday, 8:38 pm
By Kate
Feb
27
2008
When the north winds blow....or not. It’s still tasty. This was an experimental recipe incorporating ideas from three separate recipes. Turned out really well. It’s one of the lad’s favorite dishes now. Mine, too, for that matter. It is most likely not heart friendly, but once in a while, y’know. I’ve been meaning to post this since Christmas....
Ingredients:
3 cups chicken stock
1 cup milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups potato water
1/4 cup bacon fat
2 stalks of celery, quartered
3 large leeks, sliced
handful of small white boiling onions, peeled and left whole
8 slices of bacon, crumbled
8 small potatoes, quartered
6 medium potatoes, cubed
3 tablespoons of butter
shredded cheddar cheese
parsley
cracked pepper to taste
Peel your potatoes and cut up per instructions above. In a stock pot, cover the 8 quartered potatoes with water and boil until crisp tender. Pour off potato water and reserve 1 1/2 cups. Mash potatoes lightly.
In a pan, cook bacon until easily crumbled. Remove bacon and stir fry sliced leeks in bacon fat until translucent. Along with 1/4 cup of the bacon fat, toss the leeks into the stock pot containing the lightly mashed potatoes.
Pour in 3 cups of chicken stock, 1 cup of milk, 1 cup of heavy cream, and 1 1/2 cups of potato water. Stir and bring to a simmer. Add 3 tablespoons of butter, the remaining cubed potatoes, peeled boiling onions, and quartered stalks of celery. Add celery leaves if you have any. Add cracked pepper according to taste (I used about 1 1/2 teaspoons).
Let simmer *gently* until the cubed potatoes are tender. The soup will thicken as it cooks. Stir occasionally and don’t let it boil.
Serve in deep bowls and sprinkle top with crumbled bacon and shredded cheddar cheese. Add chopped parsley, if desired.
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I cook mine on top of the wood stove and it takes about 3 hours to gently cook. It would probably cook a little faster on top of the kitchen stove. Just make sure it doesn’t more than gently simmer (barely bubbling). The longer it takes to cook, the more flavorful it is. In fact, this soup actually tastes even better the second day.
I made some butter
Thursday, 8:34 pm
By Kate
Feb
07
2008
A week or so ago, the blogger known as Crunchy Chicken went and did something rather unusual. She made her own butter, in her own kitchen, without any special tools or gizmos. And she made it sound like so much fun that I wanted to try, too. I bought myself some heavy whipping cream for something else, but knew that I didn’t need to use all of it. So...whatever I didn’t use would be reserved for butter making.
Tonight, I made my own butter out of 1 cup of heavy whipping cream. Following Crunchy’s directions, I left the container of cream out on the counter for about 4 hours. Then I poured it into a mason jar with a securely fitting lid.
Then...I shook the jar back and forth. Not too vigorously, but slammed the cream up against both ends of the jar with a pretty good jolt. It took about 2 minutes before I had a lot of thick whipped cream in the jar. I kept shaking. At about the 6 minute mark, I had some kind of solid chunk in the jar going “thunk-thunk” against the ends of the jar as I shook.
And, at about 8 minutes, lo and behold, the sides of the jar cleared off, the solid chunk in the jar was bright yellow and it was surrounded by a thinnish white liquid (whey).
I poured the whey into another bottle and kept shaking. More whey separated from the hunk of butter. I poured that off and repeated a few more times until no more whey showed up in the jar. At that point, I had this:
I still have to complete Steps 9 and 10 of Crunchy Chicken’s directions, but I was so thrilled I had to take pictures and show you. I Made Butter! And I gotta tell you, this stuff tastes so good...makes the grocery store stuff resemble yellow cardboard by comparison. Who knew that making butter could be so easy? I didn’t even break a sweat. Oh man, this is tasty stuff. I can’t keep my fingers out of the butter jar.
Haybox Cooker
Monday, 9:17 pm
By Kate
Aug
27
2007
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned something about purchasing an Igloo cooler and that I had plans for it. Today, I tested my plans.
As part of the 90% Project mailing list, I’ve learned a lot of useful ideas over the last couple of months. One idea that really grabbed me was a Haybox Cooker. I’m not sure where the idea originated, but the concept is simple. By packing insulating material around a very hot and already cooking vessel of food, the food will continue cooking without additional energy input.
This afternoon, around 4:00, I tossed a cup of rice and a cup and a half of water into a round covered casserole dish. I also added some chopped summer squash and a bit of red bell pepper and onion, 3 small chicken drumsticks, and the usual herbs and seasonings. I put the casserole into the microwave and nuked it on high for 6 minutes, until the water was boiling. Then I removed it and placed it in my small igloo cooler. (I’d already lined the bottom of the cooler with about 3/4 of an inch thickness of newspaper.) Once the casserole was inside, I tucked clean rags around it and tossed a bunch on top of the casserole until they came to the top of the cooler. Then I shut her up and tucked it away in a kitchen corner.
I forgot about it until about 8:30 PM. When I opened the cooler, a waft of very warm and moist air escaped. I removed the rags and grabbed hold of the casserole to lift it out. Bad idea. It was so hot, I burned my fingers. So, with potholders, I brought it out and placed the casserole on the counter. When I removed the casserole lid, steam poured out. The rice was cooked to a perfect turn and the chicken was moist and tender and falling off the bones. I had to wait several minutes before I could eat my dinner because it was still so hot. Just as if I’d taken it directly from the oven and onto my plate. And it was delicious.
I’d say that this haybox cooker idea works pretty darned well.
Of course, it saves quite of a lot of energy and is as good as a crockpot with the advantage of not having to worry about anything shorting out while away from home—or burning/overcooking. I suppose it could be quite useful if one wanted to go traveling for a day or even camping and desired an easy and tasty meal. Or, like me, the idea of cooking a meal so simply, and with very little energy input, just thrills to pieces.
I think this will be an excellent method of slow cooking chili, too. Can’t wait to try that when the weather turns cooler.
Mainly food
Friday, 9:47 pm
By Kate
Dec
22
2006
Dunno about the rest of you, but my second home this week has been the grocery store. Tonight I finished up with all the things I’d forgotten from the previous lists. Plus I bought the Christmas turkey tonight.
A few words about this twelve pound Butterball turkey—the price tag said $23.19. Isn’t that kind of steep for 12 pounds of turkey? But, of course, with my Rewards Card, the turkey only cost me $14.60. That’s a pretty hefty markup for the people who don’t have a Rewards Card. What a rip.
So anyway, having gone through my menus and recipes, I now have all ingredients for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and a couple of days after. The top request for Christmas dinner, aside from the turkey, was green vegetables. Anything green and fresh. And lots of it. Especially fresh green string beans. Never thought I’d hear that. Christmas eve must include stuffed mushrooms.
On Christmas Eve we’ll have the beef stew in the bread bowls with some stuffed mushrooms for an appetizer before we dig into the stew.
Christmas Day will be the turkey, mashed potatoes, home made stuffing, home made gravy, fresh green beans, broccoli, acorn squash with maple sugar and butter melted inside, fresh rolls, and a small spinach salad with an herby vinaigrette.
A day or two later, there will be Jumbo shells stuffed with ricotta, Parmesan, cream cheese, eggs, and herbs; smothered and baked in a combo of vodka tomato sauce and Alfredo sauce.
The left overs plus a turkey pot pie and turkey soup/stew will keep all mouths passing through the door filled for at least a week.
I’m hoping not to see the inside of a grocery store until January 2nd.
Meanwhile, the lad is off to his Dad’s house. I tracked him down and the Dad came up around 7:00. This is a man I know pretty well and I’ll tell you, I haven’t seen such unabashedly happy eyes in a long while. The man literally glowed. The lad wasn’t in the best of moods, having had to cut his day short, so I dragged him upstairs on some pretense. Once I had him out of earshot, I told him pretty bluntly that there will be few enough occasions in his life where his mere presence will light up someone’s face like that. It’s a gift and a blessing and it’s not something to be taken for granted. He has the power to make someone that amazingly happy for no other reason than the fact that he merely exists. Treasure it, kiddo. He lost his attitude on the spot. They will have a fine weekend.
And I am, admittedly, a little glad for a two day respite.