Under a blue moon

1.3.12

We are going to talk about oatmeal this morning.  Oatmeal is not very photogenic - I just want to get that out of the way up front.

I know in order for me to succeed at any weightloss effort it has to be easy.  I can't be whipping up a salad with ten ingredients for lunch or standing over a stove first thing in the morning.   

In order to address breakfast I thought I would get Trader Joe's frozen steel cut oatmeal to have on hand.  I wanted to find out the nutritional information first (in case they were loaded with sugar or syrups) and while I was searching the interwebs I came across this blog post:

http://amy-newnostalgia.blogspot.com/2011/11/oatmeal-freezer-pucks.html

Now is that genius or what? 

Basically you just make your oatmeal and then freeze it in a muffin tin. I made six servings of oatmeal and it divided up perfectly among the six muffins in a large muffin tin.  I froze it over night and them popped them out of tin.

I have a Food Saver gizmo but if you are going to be eating them within a week I think ziplock bags would work just fine.  

You can pull them out of the freezer when ever you want and heat them in a bowl in the microwave.  I microwaved mine for 2 minutes 45 seconds (stirring after two minutes) but depending on your microwave it make take more or less time.  

I used regular rolled oats (not instant) but you could do this with steel cut oatmeal as well.

(See what I mean - not a very glamourous food shot, is it?)

12.24.11

Gosh I love the internet.

Naughty or Nice gift tags from Brooklyn Limestone (from yesterday's Friday's Favorites)
Vintage Santa image from The Graphics Fairy
Candied Almonds from My Baking Addiction
Caramels from Giver's Log

9.20.11

 

I spent last weekend stocking my larder.  I'm very intrigued (and impressed) by the idea of spending a couple of intense days cooking mass quantities of freezer friendly meals and stocking your freezer. 

The idea is to stock up on the major, time consuming components of a meal so that during the hectic work week you can just pull something out of the freezer, add a salad and you have a nice meal with little effort. 

Not everything freezes (or reheats to be totally accurate) well.  So before I started assembling Coulibiac I did a little research and found some good online resources.  Here are two links that I found very useful: 

http://aturtleslifeforme.blogspot.com/2011/06/freezer-meals-on-cheap.html (cooking ahead and freezing tips)

http://joelens.blogspot.com/2007/01/freezer-friendlymake-ahead.html (freezer friendly meals)

I ended up making shredded chicken, chicken stock, taco meat, twice baked potatoes, pasta sauce, bean and cheese burritos (with home made refried beans - very easy) and chicken pesto stuffed shells.

I was careful to label each item so I wouldn't pull out mystery packages of food a year from now (something I actually just did this morning - lesson learned).  Not only did I describe and date the item but I also included cooking instructions. 

I also bought a book suggested by the first blogger listed above called "Don't Panic: Dinner's in the Freezer."  I haven't had a chance to look through it but I'm hoping to spend another weekend cooking up more meals. 

I'm also hoping to get my sisters together so we can do a big cooking session together.  I've also heard of groups of women that each prepare a dish en masse and then share it with the others in the group.  They keep one family sized serving for themselves and give one to each of the other women.   So if you have five people in your group you end up with your own dish and four others that were prepared by the other members. 

Do you have any freezer friend meals or tips?  I will say the chicken and pesto stuffed shells are really good (you can find the recipe here) and that I made my burritos too big.  Next on my list are enchiladas and lasagne.

 

9.13.11

Keeping with the apple theme - I also made apple butter this weekend.  Truly the easiest recipe ever. 

I wish I had a better picture but my props got eaten before I could reshoot.

I loosely followed this recipe for apple butter with the following changes - I peeled and chopped my apples into a 1/2 inch dice.  I filled my 5 qt. crock pot about 3/4 the way full with the apples.  Then I added 1 1/2 cups sugar (most of the reviews said the recommended amount was way too much), a heaping tsp. of cinnamon, scant 1/4 tsp. of cloves and a pinch of salt.  

I cooked on high for an hour then turned it down to low and cooked it for about 24 hours, stirring every couple of hours.  When I turned off the crock pot I blended it with my immersion blender.  Perfect.  Very silky.

It yielded about two and half pints of apple butter.

As an added bonus the house smelled fabulous all weekend long.

9.10.11

Normally I don't post on Saturdays but I couldn't resist the date.  I love when the numbers line up like that.  

Yesterday I made my friend Keith come over and pick apples with me. Our two trees have been very prolific this year and the apples were starting to jump off the trees.

I have no idea what the varieties are - one tree produces apples with a vaguely Golden Delicious flavor to it and the other one has tart apples on it.  Neither are particularly good eating apples but they do cook up nicely.

Luckily for Keith and me he brought his daughter with him so we made her go up the ladder and pick them from the higher branches.  She is infinitely more agile than either of us.  

Next year I want one of those old three legged orchard ladders.  I think it would a look a little more charming than our day-glo yellow fiberglass one (which is stage left, out of camera range).

I baked one pie and have a pot of apple butter simmering with my windfall.  

The pie recipe is used is this one.  It has a ton of great reviews and I like the story of how the woman's grandmother wouldn't have known what all the fuss was about - it was just her standard apple pie recipe.  And her granddaughter loves how, with one simple little recipe, her grandmother has entered so many kitchens and has joined many families at their tables.

Even though it is still in the 90's today there is a suggestion of Fall in the air.  That subtle breeze and the first of the leaves dropping from the trees.  The smell of apples cooking sure adds to that Fall feeling.  

There is something really rewarding about taking something that grew in your own garden and making something out of it.  

12.22.2010

 

It's that time of year!!  Popcorn balls! 

Hmm - the festive cocktails made their way back into the picture as well.  Lest you think I am a total lush I rarely drink spirits.  I'm normally strictly a wine girl but tonight my friend Keith came over to help Rick and I make popcorn balls and the occasion really called for an Andreatini. 

Here is the recipe (for the popcorn balls).

 

Oops Keith is in need of a refill.

First pop mass quantities of popcorn and place into a buttered cauldron.

 

Then boil up some sugar and more sugar in your oldest, crustiest pot.  Hmmm - wonder how much teflon we've ingested over the years....

Then busy yourself with soup making so the two male helpers have to grease up their hands with butter and assemble the popcorn balls.   Remind them they aren't packing snowballs and to not squish the popcorn balls into hard, inedible spheres.

Admire their work:

 

 

11.1.2010

 

It looks like we had an actual ghost at our Halloween Soiree. 

We were expecting rain so we did the food inside.  No great culinary genius here - the food is as scary as the costumes.  This is the one day of the year where we buy all the crappy hors d'ouvres Costco has to offer.  Tacquitos, jalapeno poppers, meatballs in bbq sauce, mini corndogs, hot wings.  We figure we've already eaten a metric ton of Halloween candy so why stop there. 

 

Actually I take it back - my cousin Stephanie made a fabulous cake and cupcakes.  That was pretty genius.  She's adorable, isn't she?

By the time I took the group shot it was kind of late so a few of the revelers had already left.  

 

I'm not sure how to explain my costume.  It was my homage to the magpie.  Every year there is someone that sheds feathers all over the house and this year it was me. 

Any excuse to incorporate a tiara into my look.

 


 

10.20.2010

 

There is something pleasingly symmetrical about today's date.  Might be a good day to get a lottery ticket.

Last weekend was all about food.  I made two things that I thought were pretty splendid (three if you count the pear upside down cake).  The first was a seafood potpie from Ina Garten.  The second was a fall fruit salad.

There are no pictures of the pot pie.  We were hungry and it was too dark to take pictures anyway.  As I tend to do I made some adjustments to Ina's recipe.  First of all her recipe calls for lobster.  I made it with three different types of seafood instead.  I also used puff pastry for the crust rather than making my own and it worked perfectly.  I'll make it again and photograph it for posterity.  When I do I'll post my exact version of her recipe. 

The other thing I made was a Fall fruit salad.  I made it with pears, Honey Crisp apples (Is it just me or are the Honey Crisp apples HUGE this year?), plums, dried cranberries and diced cheddar cheese (any kind of cheese works - I've done it with blue cheese too).  I was going to put walnuts on it but when I opened the bag I did it a bit zealously and bag ripped open and the walnuts went flying into the adjoining room. 

What made it really good was I drizzled a little bit of flavored balsamic vinegar on it.  I used ripe peach balsamic from Marisolio.  It adds a nice sparkliness to the salad and it keeps the cut fruit from browning too.  I used the peach because it's what I had opened but I think the fig or cinnamon pear would be nice too. 

Pie

I'm taking advantage of the abundance of blueberries available right now.  Last year I couldn't find a good tasting blueberry to save my life.  They were either tasteless or sour.  

This year is another story - they have been really sweet.  Must be a weather thing, I'm guessing. 

And baking them brings out the sweetness to a whole other level.

I looked on-line for blueberry pie recipes and created this one based on what I found. 

5 cups fresh blueberries
1 cup washed raw sugar*
5 Tbsp. corn starch
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. butter

Double Pie crust - I cheat and use the refrigerated rolled kind.  You can certainly make your own.

*This sugar makes a big difference in the taste and texture of the pie.  It has a subtle molasses flavor and adds hint of crunch now and then. 

Wash the berries and let drain. In a large bowl combine the sugar, the corn starch, cinnamon and salt.  Toss in the berries and stir to coat evenly.

Line your pie dish with the bottom crust.  Pile on the berry mixture and dot with butter.  Put on top crust.  You can get fancy and do a lattice top (very striking) or do what I did and just make small cut-outs evenly across the top crust.   Bake at 400 for 45-60 minutes.  Crust should be golden brown.  

Here's a couple of tips for you.  When determining how many berries to use just measure by cupful into your empty pie pan.  Mine holds five cups.  Then add 1 Tbsp. of cornstarch for each cup of berries.  

If you do cut outs on your top pie crust first lay the dough on a piece of parchment or wax paper.  Then pick up the paper with the crust on it and flip it over onto the pie.  Peel off the paper.  It helps stabilize the crust. 

Ha!  No rolling pin was harmed in the filming of this pie.  It was only used for photographic purposes.  Actually I had to bring it out so it wouldn't feel neglected.  Poor thing rarely gets used. 

I wish I had a better picture of the cutting board.  This is recycling at its finest.  A million years ago we had one of those portable dishwashers.  The kind you roll over in front of your sink and plug into the faucet.  It had a butcher block top to it.  When we finally remodeled our kitchen (in our last house - not this one) we took off the top and installed the washer under the counter.  My brother in law Robert took the butcher block top.

This was 15 years ago.  A couple of months ago Rick was talking to Robert about making a cutting board and Robert dug out the old top and gave it back to Rick.  Rick cut it down to size, sanded it oiled it and put little feet on it.  It is a lovely cutting board now.  
 
 

Am I taking this too far?

I found this cute vintage cookie cutter on iOffer (kind of like eBay only smaller scale and you basically offer what you want to pay and the seller says yes or no).  I had to have it. 

I never find rolled cookies all that tasty.  But they are fun to make.  This recipe is decent.  Easy to work with (I would recommend chilling the dough for an hour though).  

I also hate royal icing.  There is a raw taste to it that I just don't care for.  I found this packaged stuff by Betty Crocker in the baking aisle and while the taste is just marginally better it is a breeze to work with. 

A friend of ours came over the day I made these and he said that he was trying to decorate cookies with his godson and it was a frustrating experience for them both.  I told him to bake the cookies and then ice them with the packaged icing.  After they set up for an hour or so then they can decorate them ala Mari's painted cookies, using food coloring and paint brushes.

Another thing I have found is the rolled cookies freeze like a dream, even pre-iced.  You can bake ahead and then just pull them out and paint them after they have thawed.