My husband loves french toast. He’s been asking for it for a few weeks now. His idea of a proper french toast is regular sandwich bread, dipped in egg and fried in butter. I’m right along with him until we discuss bread. I much prefer challah, or some eggy, slightly sweet, buttery bread. And it’s difficult to find good challah in these part of the woods. So I decided to make my own. I may have overcooked the french toast a wee, but that’s the way Richard likes it, too. Some things are worth compromise. (more…)
Meet Auggie Doggie! She’s a sweet girl we rescued from the Crow Indian Reservation three years ago. At the time I was working for a small museum in Garryowen, Montana, and every summer the museum hires interns to help work the summer tourist season, and they live on the museum grounds. Two of our recruits that year were real animal lovers.
Auggie Doggie
There is no shortage of animals in Big Horn County – horses, cattle, dogs, cats, porcupines, snakes, skunks, coyotes, turtles, rabbits, deer. Everyone at the museum has personal animal stories. Once a hawk flew into a small shop on the property – pretty exciting. Another of our interns killed a bull snake that was going after a litter of young kittens. The biggest snapping turtle I’ve ever seen was strolling around the parking lot before it was corralled into a box and safely returned to the Little Big Horn River.
A quick totally fabulous dinner, this baked chicken and orzo salad is a great weekday meal that can be put together in 30 minutes. Do yourself a favor, and get a rotisserie chicken from your favorite outlet. In Billings, I personally like the chickens from Costco. They’re perfectly seasoned, plump and juicy, and can serve a family of four for five bucks.
Yesterday, I made this absolutely phenomenal recipe for Karaage – Japanese Fried Chicken. And it called for freshly grated ginger. Hmmm . . .
If I really want to get serious about this blogging thing, then I should become more organized in meal planning so I don’t forget critical ingredients at the store. I’m getting there, but haven’t quite arrived.
As I thought about how I was going to overcome the ginger, I remembered I had a ginger root in the freezer. Eureka!! Once upon a time, probably when I initially decided to put the root in the freezer, I read this was a good idea. You don’t have to peel it, and, because it’s frozen, grating is quick, quick, quick. Look how beautiful it becomes. It’s like snow. All the juices stay intact, and it’s so easy to measure.
I don’t use fresh ginger that often, but it is very important to Asian cooking, especially marinades, stir fried dishes, and the like. When you buy fresh ginger, put it in a ziploc bag and pop it in the freezer. Preferable in the freezer door, so you don’t forget you have it, like I did. Anyway, this was a perfect solution for me. I hope it works for you, too.
Tomatoes, lovely tomatoes! My poor little garden pumped out some amazing tomatoes this summer. In fact, there are still some on the vine. It’s getting cooler here in Billings, but I’m hoping the lovely red fruits will survive another few weeks.
I managed to pick about five pounds of tomatoes a few days ago, and turned them into the most luscious marinara. I found several recipes, and combined little bits of them that appealed to me. And I used fresh herbs harvested from the garden as well. It doesn’t get any better than that.
There weren’t enough of the tomatoes I picked to can large batches of sauce, which is the way I planned it. I didn’t want the job to be so overwhelming that I wouldn’t look forward to the same thing next year. Also, I didn’t blanch the tomatoes to peel off the tomato skins. I just used a paring knife and skinned them that way. Wouldn’t recommend this method for a large canning batch, but it was easier than waiting for a large pot of water to boil, finding a large bowl for ice water, and all of that. For the amount of tomatoes I used, probably took me as long as blanching.
I’m in love with Italian food. Isn’t everyone? So many dishes are creamy, rich and very satisfying. They’re easy to prepare and fun to make, unpretentious – something to please everyone. And Italian food is inexpensive and serves plenty. Besides, I have two tomato plants in my garden with lots of ripening fruit. So, I made a couple of batches of marinara sauce Saturday. And I made the sauce expressly with this recipe in mind.
This is the thing I really love about the Internet. As I sit through reading about more of the same, every once in a while a recipe makes my eyes go wide, my jaw drop, and I have to make it – RIGHT NOW! I was searching for inspiration and there it was staring me in the face. Tomato Cobbler with Biscuits looked too good to be true. Why had I never thought of doing something like this before? And, it just so happened that I collected a very large bowl filled with tomatoes from our garden that morning. Tomatoes are a fruit, right? They’re juicy and slightly sweet, and with a savory, crunchy topping? Oh my – sheer genius. It must have been fate. The other reason this is a perfect recipe is that you don’t have to use your prettiest tomatoes for the cobbler. A few blemishes here and there – just cut them out. Many of the recipes I found for this dish called for cherry tomatoes. Those looked pretty. Others had a variety of different colored cherry tomatoes, yellow, red, purple – very pretty. And if you don’t have a bounty of fresh tomatoes, you can make the casserole using canned tomatoes. How versatile is that? While this scrumptious cobbler takes an hour to bake, putting all the ingredients together is a cinch. I started at 4:30 and we were ready to eat by 6:30 – the cobbler needs to rest for 20 minutes before serving. The majority of prep time is baking and resting. Many of the recipes I found online called for thyme. I’m not a huge thyme fan, so I added basil and a little pinch of thyme. And the biscuits called for grated Gruyere cheese – I substituted sharp cheddar, because that’s what I had. Another interesting cheese substitution is blue cheese or gouda. I bet that would be delicious, too. Are you ready?
My grandmothers, mother, and I always cooked bacon in a frying pan. Over the years, I’ve had a number of burns on my hands and arms from hot splattering grease. Ouch!!
Enter my friend, Colleen. Colleen was familiar to cooking for a group of people. She also had a lake house in central Wisconsin, where she would frequently entertain friends and family. Luckily, our family was invited for weekend visits for a couple of years, and she shared with me her bacon secret. It was the way her mother always did it.
A dear friend in the old homestead neighborhood where we grew up in Indiana made this delicious potato casserole for a family get together many years ago. Everyone loved it and asked for the recipe, which Mrs. Swedo generously supplied. When I decided to bake a ham Sunday, I thought this dish would be a perfect match, and different from the other ways we usually eat potatoes. And it was!
I found this substitute when I couldn’t find mascarpone cheese in my neighborhood. It worked very well in a frosting I made for an orange cake. What a lifesaver!
1-8oz package regular cream cheese, not low fat
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
21/2 tablespoons sour cream, not low fat
Mix well and substitute in recipes calling for mascarpone
Richard and I ate this for dinner last night. It’s not the first time I’ve prepared scampi, but it is so flavorful, heightened by fresh garlic, lemon, olive oil and butter. If you’re a garlic fan, this is the dish for you! We’re huge garlic fans – this is very popular with my family. Scampi is a very quick recipe. It’s perfect for diner, to be served as an appetizer rather than shrimp cocktail, or as a late night supper.
Let’s compare three different scampi recipes from unique sources: Lidia’s Italy, Shrimp Scampi with Spaghetti, and Shrimp Scampi from The Sopranos Family Cookbook. Lidia Bastianich is a well-known Italian chef and restaurateur in New York. I lost touch with her programming, but a couple of months ago happily found her again on PBS Lidia’s Italy,
I like watching Lidia cook. Sometimes she will invite her mother in for a taste of dessert and a cup of coffee at the end of her show. She reminds me of my Polish grandmother. The recipe from the Soprano cookbook is very straight forward. You can’t go wrong with any of these dishes.
I bet everyone has a favorite recipe for Sloppy Joes. This all-American sandwich is a standard I bet eaten in most households in one form or another. I bet, too, that most of us make the sauce using a powdered pre-packaged mix or sauce from a can. I get it – it’s easy and quick. Great in a pinch when you have to get a meal on the table in a hurry, and one that the family will enjoy.
While I was raising my children, I got into the habit of making food from scratch. I thought pre-packaged mixes, noodles, rice, and the like had too much fat and salt. If I made dishes from scratch, I could control seasonings and change up the recipe in any way I wished. As a result, I’ve turned into a spice junkie. A visit to Indiana is not complete unless I shop at Penzey’s Spices. Gee – they have everything!