Sotto voce

Laryngitis - I haz it. Thanks to some lovely germs which briefly affected Big Girl, but decided to linger much longer with Hubs and me, my voice is, at best, a quiet croak today. I'm staying at home and drinking lots of hot fruit tea. It's a variation on stuff that the women in my family make, and it's not really tea, exactly, but that's what I call it. You could add some tea bags to it, which some of my relatives do, and it would be delicious, but I often omit that step. My mom adds mulling spices when she makes it, but today I'm sticking with the following simple recipe since I have these ingredients on hand:

In a monstrous pot on the stove, combine a gallon of apple juice with half a big can of pineapple juice, and/or same amount cranberry juice. Toss in some cinnamon sticks and/or cloves. Simmer for a while until flavors come out and get mixed, then ladle into mugs and drink. It's nummy, as my boy would say.

I'm making some now.

This recipe sounds divine.

(image from Food Network)

As if I need more delicious recipes for sinful food - Alton Brown has this recipe for Chocolate Truffles. The cook time on this is only five minutes, and if they taste as good as they look, they will make great Christmas gifts for select lucky neighbors and friends. Something different from my usual loaf of banana bread, perhaps.

Hubs and Brie

Hubs loves to bake brie in various ways and spread it on yummy crackers. Always delicious! The kids love it, my relatives are suitably impressed by his culinary prowess, and it's quite simple. You can make baked brie with a round or cylindrical piece of brie. Here are his two similar-yet-different recipes:

Using a round wheel of brie - cut the skin stuff off the top. Place the brie in an oven-safe dish, and sprinkle the top with brown sugar and sliced almonds. Bake in oven at 400 degrees until runny and hot. Scoop hot cheese out of middle and spread on to crackers of your choice.

Using a cylindrical log-shaped brie - scrape skin stuff off. Take a flat pie crust and sprinkle brown sugar on it, and maybe drizzle some honey. Wrap it around the brie log and top with some more brown sugar and slices of almonds (yeah, we like almonds around here). Bake until pie crust is nicely browned. Slice and serve.

We took the latter to my grandmother's house today as an appetizer before the enormous Thanksgiving feast. Two and Big Girl monged significant quantities, as did all of my relatives, and they all thought it was super-fancy. But it's really, really easy. It makes a good, quick thing to serve at holiday parties - we've served it for New Year's Eve before as well.

Giada De Laurentiis's Chocolate-Hazelnut Tart

I found this delicious recipe, on the Food Network site, for Giada De Laurentiis's Chocolate-Hazelnut Tart. Hubs is going to get the ingredients I need to try this recipe today. It sounds like an easy recipe to try while I'm in recovery mode. If we like it, I'll make it for Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother's house!

Ingredients

* 1/2 cup sugar
* 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 3 eggs, beaten
* 1 1/2 cups peeled, chopped, and toasted hazelnuts
* 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips (about 1 cup)
* 1 cup corn syrup
* 2 tablespoons butter, melted
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1 store bought frozen pie crust, defrosted

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

In a large bowl, mix together the sugar and the flour. Add the eggs, hazelnuts, chocolate chips, corn syrup, butter, vanilla, and salt. Stir well. Pour the mixture into the pie crust. Bake for 1 hour.

Cool the tart for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Doesn't it sound yummy? I think it would be great topped with some whipped cream or even vanilla ice cream. I've developed a love of the combination of chocolate and hazelnuts, due in large part to my beloved Nutella.

Delicious!

I started out this afternoon with the Barefoot Contessa's recipe for pear, apple, and cranberry crisp, but ended up with something a little bit different, and very much delicious. I mixed the main ingredients but realized we didn't have any craisins, thanks to my favorite munchers, so I used raisins instead. When I went to the fridge for butter to make the topping, I realized Hubs had used it all, so I had him stop by the grocery store on his way home. I then added craisins on top of the fruit layer, and then put the topping over that.

After this had been baking for nearly an hour, the house smelled heavenly. I pulled out the dish and everything looked so nice and hot and bubbly! I had a hard time waiting for it to cool a bit before tasting it. The kids and I all sampled it, and this crisp is a keeper! It has a wonderful sweetness from the apples and pears, and a lovely caramelized sugary-ness to the topping, thanks to the sugars. The oatmeal in the topping is a great dimension, and the cranberries give it a touch of tartness that offsets the sweetness nicely. I think the recipe would be delicious with raisins instead of craisins (as I initially planned, but ended up with both in the end), but the craisins give it extra dimension and color. Vanilla ice cream would complement this beautifully, but it's delicious alone. Hubs hasn't tried it yet - he went to bed early - but I suspect I'll find him eating it for breakfast!

Variations on hot fruit tea

When I have a cold (or sinus infection, as it inevitably becomes), I love to make a large pot of hot fruit tea and just keep it warm and ready to drink throughout the afternoon and evening. My recipe is never quite the same, but it often is something like this:

1 64 ounce bottle of apple juice
1 quart of cranberry juice, and/or 1 quart of pineapple juice
Two family-size tea bags
One or two cinnamon sticks
A few cloves

I put all of these things in a large pot on the stove, or in the crock pot, and just heat until warm, and then simmer. If too much liquid evaporates and the fruit tea becomes too strong, I add some extra water.

I have a pot on the stove this afternoon, with pineapple juice since I had it on hand. It makes the whole house smell lovely, and the kids generally like it (I use decaf tea bags when serving it to little ones). My grandmother, mother, and aunts all make variations on this same recipe throughout the cooler months, and I have wonderful memories of drinking this while sitting around a card table playing cards or Scrabble with all of them. I also made it a few times in college, when my roommates and I had parties (no, not the wild kind of parties) - it works well without the tea, even, if you just want a hot spiced fruit drink. Hope you enjoy it!

Mmmmm, pie!

Country Apple Pie - I made two this afternoon, and they are so very good.

Pastry for double-crust 9-inch pie, with half in a 9-inch pieplate (other half for top)
6 cups peeled, sliced cooking apples
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons butter

Combine apples and lemon juice in a large bowl and set aside. Combine sugars, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Spoon over apple mixture, tossing gently. Spoon filling evenly into pastry shell and dot with butter. Place remainnig pastry on top of pie and cut slits in top for steam to escape. Cover edges of pastry with strips of aluminum foil to prevent burning. Bake for 15 minutes at 450 degrees, and then turn oven down to 350 degrees. Bake for 35 minutes longer.

By Hubs' special request, I added a few maraschino cherries to the pie filling before spooning the filling into the pie shell. This was a nice colorful and tasty addition! I also used a flaky pastry shell instead of usual pie crust on top this time, and the top of the pie is deliciously light.

Busy in the kitchen!

I've been on a bread machine kick since the weekend. I make bread, and Hubs and the kids show up promptly to slice, butter, and devour it. A third loaf is in the machine now, to bake overnight so we can enjoy it for breakfast. I've made a loaf of whole wheat, a loaf of half white/half wheat, and this latest is a cinnamon raisin breakfast bread. I've made it before and can't wait to enjoy it in the morning.

Between tasks around the house and work duties, I haven't had time to share any recipes lately, so I thought I would take a minute, now that the house is quiet save the sounds of the bread machine and dryer, to share a few tasty ideas. These are taken from a cookbook that my church published in 1999, with all of the recipes contributed by church members. Many of the dishes in this book have made appearances at church potlucks, so I can attest to their deliciousness. Here are a couple of tasty appetizers:

Cheddar Cheese Olive Balls

2 cups grated cheddar cheese
6 Tablespoons butter or margarine
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
48 olives, drained and dried on paper towels

Knead all ingredients except olives together until consistency of pie dough. Take off about a teaspoon to form a ball. Make a thumb print in the ball and insert an olive. Cover olive with dough and place on cookie sheet in freezer until firm. Repeat with additional olives and dough. Either remove from freezer and cook, or place in plastic bags until ready to cook. Take out of freezer. Place on cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 10 to 13 minutes.

Sausage Pinwheels

1 stick margarine
8 ounce package of cream cheese
2 cups Bisquick
1 lb sausage

Cut margarine and cream cheese into Bisquick. Mix together to form dough. Roll dough into rectangular shape. Crumble sausage to cover rectangle. Roll up lengthwise into long roll. Chill overnight wrapped in waxed paper in tin foil. Slice and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Makes approximately 20, depending upon thickness of slice.

Yum

I was just reading along, minding my own business, when this delicious-sounding recipe grabbed me and demanded my attention. I think I'll have to pick up the ingredients to make this delight very soon.

Pear, Apple, and Cranberry Crisp

My mother-in-law's award winning pie

Last weekend, my mother-in-law entered this recipe in a pie contest. She got rave reviews and won a prize. The woman knows pie, and I can't wait to try her recipe:

Karen's Best Upside Down Apple-Pecan Pie

Crust
l/4 Cup Butter Softened
1/2 Cup Texas Pecan Halves
1/2 Cup Light Brown Sugar

Spread butter evenly on bottom and sides of a 9 inch pie plate. Press pecan halves, rounded side down, into butter. Sprinkle brown sugar evenly over pecans. Place first pie crust carefully over brown sugar.

Filling
1 cup Apple Cider
2/3 Cup Sugar
6 Cups Peeled sliced apples
2 Tablespoons Corn Starch
2 Tablespoons Water
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 Tablespoon butter

Combine Cider, Sugar and Butter in large saucepan and bring to a boil. Add apples and cook until tender. Drain saving the liquid. Add enough cider to liquid to make one cup and return to sauce pan with apples. Combine corn starch and 2 Tablespoons of water stir and add to apple mixture. Stir in cinnamon and cook till thick. Stir in butter. Spoon mix into pie plate on top of first crust and cover with second crust. Seal edges, cut slits in top, and bake for 45 minutes.

Cool and invert onto a large serving platter and serve with Whipped cream or Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream.

More Tuesday Recipes - heh, heh

With the way this week is going, I decided I should add a slight variation on the recipes. So, here are recipes for some of my favorite "adult beverages."

Shots

Buttery Nipple
2 parts Butterscotch Schnapps
1 part Irish Cream

Blow Job
Equal parts Irish cream and coffee liquer
Top with whipped cream

Mixed Drinks

Green Dinosaur
2 oz vodka
2 oz gin
2 oz rum
2 oz Midori
2 oz triple sec
2 oz sweet and sour mix
2 oz 7-Up® soda

Whiskey Sour

2 oz blended whiskey
juice of 1/2 lemons
1/2 tsp powdered sugar
1 cherry (on top)
1/2 slice lemon (on top)

Honey-Apple Cake Recipe

This delicious recipe is from an old edition of Southern Living. I picked up a jar of local honey at the Downtown Market on Saturday, and I've been eager to try it in a few recipes since then. I must restrain myself from eating too much!

1 cup chopped pecans
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup honey
3 large eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups chopped apples

Grease and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan; sprinkle bottom of pan with 1/4 cup pecans. Set aside. Beat sugar, oil, and honey at medium speed with an electric mixer until well blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until blended. Combine flour and next 4 ingredients. Gradually add to sugar mixture, beating at low speed just until blended. Stir in vanilla, remaining 3/4 cup pecans, and apple. Spoon over pecans in pan. Bake at 350° for 55 to 60 minutes.

After the cake has cooled for a few minutes, take it out of the pan and top it with some of this delicious honey sauce:

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup milk

Bring all ingredients to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring constantly; boil, stirring constantly, 2 minutes.

You won't need all of the honey sauce for the cake, so you can save some to warm and serve over ice cream. ;)

Yellow squash

The kids and I went to the local downtown market this morning, and I picked up all kinds of goodness. Some delicious bread, a lovely hand-dyed silk pillow for Big Girl's room (from Julie Belle Designs), a jar of fresh honey, a bar of handmade baby soap (fragrance free for my sensitive skin), and some lovely crook-neck yellow squash. I was tempted by some of the lovely handmade clothing from seworiginal, made by a local woman who also sells on etsy, but I decided I had done enough damage. Big Girl has enough pretty pillowcase dresses to take her through the end of the warm season, and by next spring she may be taller.

I really love yellow squash. Growing up, I typically encountered it in my aunt's traditional squash casserole, which is delicious, but I rarely make it that way myself. I often cut it in thin slices, coat it in olive oil and some spices, and roast it in the oven, or steam-cook it with butter and spices in foil packets on the grill. I love both of those versions, but they don't always get the kid seal of approval, so when I want to get more into the kids' tummies, I bake it as follows:

Wash squash well and slice in half lengthwise. Place in glass casserole dish, cut side up, and sprinkle with desired spices (I usually use some salt, pepper, and oregano, but sometimes I mix it up). Top with breadcrumbs, a pat of butter (optional), and shredded or thinly sliced cheese (generally cheddar since it's a kid favorite). Bake at 325 degrees for about half an hour - the time really depends on how large the squash are. This is a very easy and quick way to prepare baked squash, and the bread crumbs and cheese make it very popular with the kids. It's got the nice browned top that I love from my aunt's traditional squash casserole, but it's a bit healthier, too.

Someday I'll grow my own squash, and then I'll can or freeze some of it so we can enjoy it through the winter. Until then, I'll eat as much as I can while it's fresh in season, and look forward to its return all winter long.

White Chili recipe

This is one of several recipes that my college roommate shared with me recently. She's a big fan of the crock pot, particularly since it means a nice, hot meal at the end of a long workday. And this one sounds delicious!


White Chili

(This is really good, but requires a lot of chopping. We usually prepare everything the night before and combine the ingredients in the morning. We also cheat and use an alligator chopper rather than cutting by hand.)

3 15-oz. cans great northern, pinto and/or cannelloni beans, drained

2½ cups cooked chicken, chopped (we use boneless skinless breasts and just boil them)

1 cup chopped onion

1½ cups chopped red and/or yellow pepper

2 jalapenos, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp. ground cumin

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. dried oregano, crushed

3½ cups chicken broth

shredded cheddar or Monterrey Jack cheese (optional)


Combine beans, chicken, onion, peppers, jalapenos, garlic, cumin, salt and oregano. Stir in broth. Cook on low for 8-10 hours or high for 4-5 hours. Ladle into bowls; top with cheese if desired.

New plan...

I've been a bit disorganized and lackadaisical in my approach to blogging, and so I've decided to develop a plan, a schedule, as it were (I had a professor in college who used to say "as it were" all the time and it cracked me up). So, I'm going to incorporate a couple of regularly scheduled features into my blogging, in addition to my random stream-of-consciousness posts. Once a week, generally on Tuesdays, I'm going to start posting a recipe. And on Thursdays, I'll post about a book, either one I've read/am reading/want to read, or one that I like for the younger set. Since things are getting increaingly hectic IRL, and I'm trying to impose a little more order to that chaos, I'll bring a little more order to this place too. Feedback welcomed!

Food! (the gumbo recipe)

Dinner on Tuesday night was quite yummy. We've been eating the leftovers for the last two nights, and it's still delicious! I made this up and tinkered with it to get the desired taste:
Mild Italian sausage, cut into large pieces (I used a package with five links -
ground sausage would work just as well)
Boneless chicken breasts, cut into large pieces (about 1 lb - to save money, cooked
and deboned meat or darker cuts would work well)
Two cans of chicken broth
One large sweet onion, chopped
Ten lovely cherry tomatoes from Big Girl's garden
Two bags of frozen gumbo mix vegetables
One cup rice
Three cups (guesstimate?) water
Half a bottle of beer (I used a dark brown ale)
Salt to taste

I browned the sausage and chicken together and then added the chopped onion, and cooked that on medium heat until the onion started to get slightly caramelized. Then I added the cans of chicken broth and the cherry tomatoes. I let this simmer uncovered for a while (30 minutes?), and during this time I also poured in half a bottle of homebrewed beer. Then I added the frozen vegetables and some water, so that everything would be covered nicely. This simmered for about 30 minutes more, and then I added the rice, a bit of salt, and more water. I covered the pot at this point and played with the kids for a while. When the rice looked done, I served up a few dishes and we tried it out.

The first night, it was good, but the second night it was even better, as the flavors had time to meld together a little more by then. I think next time I'll make some cornbread muffins to go with it. I also plan to use sweet Italian sausage instead of mild on my next attempt, since the spices of the mild sausage overpowered the undertones from the beer.

Delicious summer food

My mom sent me some recipes from the ABC website that sound delicious: Ribs, Slaw, and Coffee Cake from the Deen Brothers (Paula Deen's sons). I could tell the ribs would be delicious when I saw the first ingredient, dark brown sugar. Yummy.

This got me started looking around for yummy recipes, and I found a delicious one from Southern Living for Spinach-Stuffed Squash. We've had a lot of fresh squash lately, courtesy of my aunt's vegetable garden, and I can't wait to try this one. It has three of my favorites: spinach, squash, and onion.

I need to dig around and find the recipe for my (other) aunt's black bean and corn salsa. It's delicious, and I tried to track it down on the Southern Living site for easy linkage, but couldn't find it. I'm pretty sure she got it from the magazine. They must have a limited number of recipes online to keep people buying the magazine. ;)

Couscous - even better this time...

I made my couscous dish again for today's family dinner/birthday extravaganza, and this time I made a few modifications. I didn't cook the sweet onion first, just chopped it. I used corn, petite diced tomatoes, fresh cilantro, and half of the aforementioned onion, plus I used fresh juice squeezed from two limes. I added all of that to two cups of couscous (precooked measurement), and I served it cold, although I think warm would be delicious as well. And they liked it! I was curious to see what the extended fam said about it, and they all responded well (except my dad, who didn't eat me, but he's not exactly food-adventurous) and asked me how I made it. It may have helped that my mom, aunt, and uncle had tried the couscous at the baseball game on Friday (yes, they sat in swanky seats with ritzy food at the Braves game, courtesy of my dad's work connection - did I mention that we could see them on teevee throughout the game?).

Big Girl's cake turned out well, although the caramel icing was a bit thicker than I had intended. I tried a new recipe using sweetened condensed milk, since I couldn't find that can of evaporated milk that I know I bought a couple of weeks ago. It was very sweet, and kind of like candy - a bit chewy, even. I used my rose Bundt pan but the lovely rose shape was largely obscured due to the thickness of the caramel icing. When I make cupcakes for Big Girl's party, I'll aim for a slightly thinner icing, plus I'll serve the cupcakes upside down, since I'll be using fancy bakeware for those, too, and they'll look like rosebuds on the bottom. It'll go with the whole flower theme.

Mind like a steel trap: she's been talking about planting flowers at her party, even though I only mentioned that once when I ran the idea of a flower party by her. My mom already has some pots, and I'll pick up some plants - probably annuals in six-packs since those will be easy for the girls to manipulate - later this week. I don't want to run the risk of buying a flat of flowers only to have them die before next weekend.

In other news, a friendly random black lab, roaming loose in the 'hood, stole Hubs' brown leather dress shoes off the front porch as we were leaving for church this morning. An amusing scene in which I chased the dog, and said dog ran and encouraged the fun game, ensued. We didn't make it to church on time, but the shoes are now safe and intact. The dog chewed into a bag of potting soil (?) while we were gone, and busted open a jug of windshield washer fluid. Hubs shooed him away around lunch, and he apparently went down the street a couple of houses to see if our neighbors wanted to play, and stuck around their house all afternoon. He had a collar but no tags. We're hoping he just escaped from his yard while his people are out of town for the weekend - I hope he wasn't dumped out because his owners got tired of him, but unfortunately that happens all too often. We would have invited him to stay, but we have more than enough canine companionship at present, in the form of two ravenous blond bums. Hubs would be furious, so I squelched the voice in the back of my mind that thought he was a very sweet puppy who needed someone to love him. But I'm still a bit worried and will keep an eye out for him tomorrow.

Yummy couscous recipe

I made this up myself. And I liked it, and lots of people at the church dinner really liked it too. First, I cooked three cups of couscous with water, butter, and salt according to the directions on the side of the container. Then, I sauted a chopped Vidalia onion in a skillet, with a tiny bit of olive oil, until it was nice and tender, and mixed the onion, a can of (drained) petite diced tomatoes, and a can of (drained) yellow corn with the couscous. I chopped about half a bunch of fresh cilantro and added that as well, plus a sprinkling of lemon pepper seasoning.

I served this chilled, since I had to make it in advance and store it in the church fridge for a couple of hours while I was herding kids, but I think warm would also be nice. This made a huge bowl - plenty for the potluck line plus plenty for us, too. I think next time, I'll cut back to two cups of couscous but keep the other ingredients the same, and that should work nicely. I may also experiment with other seasonings - I love the fresh cilantro, but I think that it might also taste yummy with some cumin (maybe if I toasted some cumin seeds and added them), or maybe lime juice instead of the lemon pepper.

The fresh cilantro made the whole kitchen smell divine. I just love that beautiful fresh smell. I have some cilantro left, so if I have the time before it wilts, I may make some black bean and corn dip. Love that stuff - a recipe my aunt found, I think in Southern Living a few years back. Because I can't resist the chance to tweak recipes to my liking, I make that recipe with Vidalia onions instead of purple ones (too strong), and no red bell pepper (me no likey). I'll track down that one and post it here for your enjoyment sometime soon.

Caramel Icing

from a cookbook published by the women's group at a local church:

2 3/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 stick butter
1 tsp vanilla

Melt and brown 3/4 cup sugar in small iron skillet over medium-high heat. Simultaneously bring 2 cups sugar and evaporated milk to a boil. Pour melted sugar into milk and sugar mixture. Cook to soft ball stage (use a candy thermometer). Remove from heat. Add butter and vanilla. Beat to spreading consistency. Ices 8- or 9-inch cake or 48 small cake squares.

Notes from my latest venture: This recipe works best (as do most caramel icing recipes) if you make it when the weather is good - high pressure systems yield better results. If you're forced to make this when there are thunderstorms beating down on your roof, as I was, be prepared to add some powdered sugar while beating the mixture in order to thicken it up. Also, don't try to heat things up too quickly by turning the stove up to high. Take your time, so it won't splatter your hand and burn it. Results are sinfully delicious.