Eggnog

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I love the tastes of the holiday season and by holiday I mean starting with all kinds of candy at Halloween and extending through cookies at Christmas. The weather may be for the birds and the lack of daylight might have me moping in a gloom but the sugar rush! Oh, the sugar rush! I have long known that moderation is key at Halloween. And I am proud to say that I have not yet succumbed to the temptation of sneaking candy from my kids' bags (yes they still have candy left but I think they've inventoried it). I try to offer the leftover mashed potatoes to the rest of the family before I dig into them on the day after Thanksgiving. (But the butter! Oh, the butter!) I make all of my favorite Christmas cookies to put in other people's stockings because once I have slaved over a quadruple batch of something, it's a cold day in Southtown, USA before I want to sample even one. But I fear I have no restraint with eggnog. And I fear that light eggnog is only light if you don't drink the whole carton all at once. Do I really have to learn another food coping mechanism this time of year? Seriously? ::sigh::

This post was written as a part of Beth Fish Read's Weekend Cooking meme in which I contribute very sporadically. Feel free to join in or just to surf through other folks' contributions.

Carmelized Pear Salad

If you are anything like me, you have trouble mustering up much enthusiasm for fall and winter vegetables aside from mashed potatoes, which are manna from Heaven but not so very healthy for you. So I was pleased as punch to manage to create a fall salad that got raves both times I made it. I'm raving about it too because it is easier than dirt to make, a criteria that is high on my list for outstanding recipes. I made a carmelized pear salad and it was phenomenal.

Ingredients:

firm pears
gorgonzola cheese
dried cranberries
walnuts
peppery salad greens
vinaigrette dressing
sugar
water

Assembly ala K.:

Tear open bags of peppery autumnal greens. Dump into bowl. Dump container of crumbled gorgonzola cheese on top of greens. Tear open bag of dried cranberries and dump contents onto cheese. Cover cranberries with 2 small bags of walnut pieces (roughly 1 cup). Set aside to work on pears. Peel and core pears. Melt 1 c. sugar and 1/2 c. water together over high heat on the stove. Use this much water so that you can leave the whole boiling mess unattended while you take a shower since you haven't had time yet today. Come out in time to keep sugar from burning and toss in pears. Wander off to check e-mail. Come back periodically to poke at sugary fruit. Get absorbed in e-mail until you remember pears again and go flying into the kitchen to discover that 1/4 of pears are charred and gluey in the skillet's hot spot. Scrape those into trash. Cool salvaged pears and dump on top of salad. Serve with homemade vinaigrette on the side. (Yes, I'm not kidding about the homemade; I can be an overachiever on occasion too.) The pears, if too ripe, take on the appearance of toasted slugs but they will still be tasty. It is, however, always better to avoid the toasted slug look so stick with very firm or unripe pears. Your guests will thank you.

Assembley ala some unknown overachiever:

Tear peppery autumnal greens into bite sized pieces and dump into large bowl. Crumble block over gorgonzola over greens. Scatter dried cranberries and walnuts over cheese. Cover cranberries with 2 small bags of walnut pieces (roughly 1 cup). Toss salad with homemade vinaigrette dressing. Set aside. Peel and core pears. Melt sugar and water in a skillet, stirring constantly. When the sugar is nice and brown, add in pears. Let pears brown and carmelize. Remove from heat and cool completely. Top salad mixture with pears and serve.

Either way you assemble it, enjoy!

This post was written as a part of Beth Fish Read's Weekend Cooking meme in which I contribute very sporadically. Feel free to join in or just to surf through other folks' contributions.

Dead Vegetable and Leftover Stew

I have been craving my Nan's vegetable stew. Given that she's been gone for more than 15 years now, this is a terribly unproductive craving. It's even less productive when I admit that I don't have her recipe. In truth she didn't have one. This stew was designed to clear the fridge of anything that was in danger of becoming unrecognizable or masquerading as a penicillin culture. So it was never the same twice. But it was always amazing. And with the temps finally dropping a bit, I really, really, really want this stew. Now I've admitted before that I follow recipe directions like a champ but am reluctant to forge my own path. But Nan's stew calls for just that courage. Plus, I have been a little more confident in my own skills since I read Jam Today by Tod Davies (read my review) last year and tried going commando then. (Full disclosure, I printed off the recipe I created at the time so I would have a copy of it to follow in future. The whole "old dog, new tricks" thing, ya know.) But I figure if I did it then, I can do it now and so off to the fridge I went.

Now my best advice to anyone interested in the concept of this soup is just to go for it and hope for the best. But in case you have some strange desire to recreate what I did, keep reading and good luck.

Pour opened container of chicken stock into a large pot. When chicken stock stops pouring because the rest is a solid mass, take container and throw away. Pour mold infested chicken stock down the drain and rinse pot out. Pour second opened container of chicken stock (don't ask!) into pot, this time being successful because second container has only been opened less than a week. Dump in two cans of stewed tomatoes, the type that no one else in the family will eat except you and that you really only bought because it was buy one get one free at the grocery store two weeks ago. Open freezer and pull out frozen broccoli that is just this side of freezer burned, approximately 5 cups. Dump into pot. Collect sad looking collection of vegetables and leftovers everyone is beyond tired of eating from the fridge: half a wrinkled red pepper, three ears of corn on the cobb which are now off limits to the kid with new braces, 2-3 stalks plus leaves and heart of limp, bendy celery, one perfectly good onion, about 1 cup of baby carrots whose bag has been left open and are therefore so dry they are merely a pale orange, a Tupperware container of herbed potatoes that weren't as good as you'd hoped (originally boiled and then baked with red onion, garlic, olive oil, basil and parsley), and roast beef billed by the recipe title as the best ever (obviously we disagreed or there wouldn't have been so much leftover) still swimming in it's au jus. Toss all of the above into the pot and stir. Take a last gander into the fridge for anything else and decide to add the seeds of one dessicated half of a pomegranate under the impression that they can do no harm and pomegranate juice is healthy for you. Boil and then turn down to a simmer until everything is either soft or rehydrated as the case may be. Serve with a sprinkle of parmesan on top if you have an oldish container of that in the fridge as well.

My Nan must have been looking down on me from above and smiling because you know what? The dead vegetable and leftover stew turned out pretty darn tasty. I would probably skip the pomegranate seeds next time since they don't add anything and contribute a very disconcerting texture when they have been heated. But given that Nan's one big failure with this one was the time she tossed in some green bologna, I figure a slightly wonky texture on occasional spoonfuls is small potatoes. Of course, the fridge is mostly cleaned out (I decided to pass on throwing the cucumbers in sour cream into the pot, deciding discretion was the better part of valor) but this has now generated an enormous potful of stew. So my next question is: Does re-cooking these things re-start their eventual mold development date? Because if not, the freezer's about to look really full again!

This post was written as a part of Beth Fish Read's Weekend Cooking meme in which I contribute very sporadically. Feel free to join in or just to surf through other folks' contributions. They seem more competent in kitchen matters than I do (and less inclined to use questionable ingredients too).

Kristen's Kitchen Chronicles

photo credit here

My kitchen isn't nearly this pretty. It's also falling down around my ears all of a sudden. But I am woman enough to tackle it, sort of. First the dishwasher went. It wasn't working perfectly, the soap trap not always opening during the wash cycle, but it was mostly working. Until the day it wouldn't turn on. Not even one reassuring blue light on the control panel as it at least *tried* to work. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. So after many days of washing dishes by hand, which I find to be an oddly soothing chore (as long as they aren't too disgustingly dirty), I finally talked to a repair man. His first question? Did we check the circuit breaker to mke sure it hadn't tripped? Well, of course we did. I'm not the world's biggest nincompoop. Well, did I check to make sure the outlet that feeds it power was on? Wait! An outlet to the dishwasher? Seriously? Ok, apparently I am not the biggest nincompoop in the world but I'm second tier stupid. Switch located and flipped on, dishwasher is working again. Color me embarrassed and also thankful that the repair man diagnosed my idiocy over the phone so I didn't have to pay a service fee.

Dishes gleaming and no longer sporting dishpan hands, I smugly buzzed around my kitchen using all my assorted and much loved appliances again. And then the garbage disposal quit working. After I had shoved epic quantities of orange rind and tomato seeds down it, of course. No grinding, just a sad and sick sounding hum wavered out of its maw (probably much muted by the slimy muck now slowly rotting in it--hey all cautions say not to reach into the disposal and I wasn't interested in fishing it out and slopping it into the garbage). Now, being a garbage disposal problem veteran, I immediately dropped to my stomach and pressed the handy dandy red reset button on its underside. Didn't help. And that was the end of my garbage disposal fix-it knowledge. Not wanting to get laughed at by another repair man though, I did some poking around on the internet and discovered exactly where to shove that disposal key that gets shuffled unused into the back corner of the cabinet under the sink in every house we've ever owned. After removing the cutting boards from the cabinet (yes, they knocked over and crashed into my head before I had the bright idea to remove them), I was once again on my stomach under the sink, this time turning the handy dandy key to dislodge whatever was causing such problems. Eventually it was unstuck, water was run and the problem was fixed. I am woman, hear me roar! (An optimistic note for anyone else with a stopped and stopped up garbage disposal: when the water drains out of the sink so slowly--and it will, you will still have enough soapy water left in said sink to wash the stray glass or plate you find hours later. Saves on running another sink full of soapy water. Of course, you could also just toss said article in the now working dishwasher too, but I was trying to look on the bright side.)

It's not just appliances killing me in the kitchen lately though. I was cooking up a storm for book club the other day. I really enjoy cooking but I am a bit scatter-brained. Now I've gotten more adventurous about not measuring everything exactly but when baking as opposed to cooking, well, it's best to follow a recipe to a T or risk producing bricks and hockey pucks, neither of which is particularly appetizing. So I was makig scones. This is a recipe I've made before. I know it works; it's easy; and it turns out tasty results. Then again, with enough butter, anything will be wonderful. (Is it any wonder I have a weight problem?!) There I stood, having assembled various other appetizers, throwing the scone ingredients together. But then I made a fatal mistake. I threw in 2 tsp. of baking soda instead of baking power. Now the recipe did call for 1/2 tsp. baking soda so it wasn't a total loss but since it would have been all but impossible to fish out the extra 1 1/2 tsp. I decided to just multiply all the ingredients by 4 and call it good. Even with poor math skills, this actually worked and the scones were a huge hit. Multiple people asked for the recipe. But I have about 4 dozen scones left after the night was over. Here's hoping the freezer isn't the next appliance to go on the fritz because I'm about to pack it to the eyeballs with cranberry scones.

As if the scone over-population problem wasn't enough, as I went around cleaning up after book club left, I noticed that I had made the bacon and tomato tart by the recipe but had completely neglected to put the Swiss cheese on it. No wonder it tasted like it was lacking a little something. Apparently I'm a reader but not a recipe reader. Then I went to put away the half drunk bottle of wine. I personally am not a wine drinker. I buy it by the pretty labels. But I know a half drunk botte of red stays on the counter and a half drunk bottle of white goes back in the fridge. Now my fridge (still working as of this posting) is not configured to suit me. And I can't take shelves and stuff out to re-do it better because I need all the shelves so I can store things long past their expiration dates and observe the cool colors of mold you can grow on perfectly common former foodstuffs. So this fridge doesn't have enough tall spaces in it to stuff big things like milk jugs and wine bottles. They have to live in the door. And yes, I know milk shouldn't be in the door but as it lasts all of 6 nanoseconds with my growing children, I don't worry my pretty head too much about it. But the door was crammed so I took the wine bottle, cork firmly stuffed back in its neck, and slid it onto a shelf on its side. Big mistake. Did you know that cork screws sometimes go all the way through the cork, thereby creating a little spigot so you can have a nice, fancy wine-fountain cascading from shelf to shelf in the fridge? Yeah, it was news to me too. Twelve trillion scones, a cheeseless tart, and a leaking wine bottle. All in a day's kitchen work for me. I don't think I'll be earning any Michelin stars in my kitchen any time soon. On the other hand, I might hang out my shingle as a garbage disposal repair goddess. At the very least, it's going on my resume.

This post was written as a part of Beth Fish Read's Weekend Cooking meme in which I contribute very sporadically. Feel free to join in or just to surf through other folks' contributions. They seem more competent in kitchen matters than I do.

New Year's Day foods

Do you have New Year's Day food traditions for good luck? We do. And my immediate family hates the prescribed food so this year, not willing to forgo the promised luck brought about by eating appropriately, I decided to make a different "good luck food." Now being of German extraction, we have always eaten pork and sauerkraut. As mentioned, this is not a big hit here. I remember eating one lone string of sauerkraut when I was younger just to have gotten it past my lips. Oddly enough, as an adult, I have forced this same tradition on my own children, who are significantly less well-mannered than I was and treat me to hideous grimaces and contorted bodies as they force that same single strand into their own mouths.

Since we now live in the South, I thought I'd give the whole Hoppin' John and Collards a shot this year. I'm not sure the kids liked it any better (well, fewer painful looking contortions accompanied the eating but they still didn't like it) but the adults did. Will I make it next year? I don't know. I guess I need to see if the black eyed peas and greens bring the coins and paper money they symbolize before I commit. And if they don't I'm busy researching other traditions we can adopt. Epicurious has an informative article about many traditions around the world. I'm thinking that despite not being Spanish, the tradition of eating 12 grapes might be an easy compromise for the kids but by no means will we be adapting the Swedish custom of pig's feet. Actually, I'm thinking that faking Dutch blood would be best of all since they eat a donut-like goodie called an ollie bollen. I am all about the ring-shaped fried dough. Beats the heck out of sauerkraut!

Anyway, my Hoppin' John wasn't too bad so I thought I'd share the recipe for you in case you too need to change up your New Years' Day food traditions next year. Because I melded two different recipes to suit my needs, some of the measurements are a little scatty but I don't think you can mess this dish up really.

Hoppin' John with Collards

3 T. olive oil
2 onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 bunch collard greens, stems removed, washed and torn into small pieces
pepper and cayenne to taste
ham
10 oz. black eyed peas
1 1/2 c. brown rice
small green pepper, chopped
3 ribs celery, chopped
1 t. dry thyme leaves
bay leaf
5 c. chicken stock

Heat oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add onion and garlic and cook until transluscent. Add collard greens, pepper, and cayenne and cook until the greens melt. Add ham, peas, rice, green pepper, celery, and thyme and cook for 1 minute. Stir in chicken stock and bay leaf. When heated through, cover and cook until rice is finished, liquid is mostly absorbed, and vegetables are tender. Endure kids' wrinkled noses and snide questions about the smell in the house. Remind them they could be eating sauerkraut instead and watch them magically quit complaining!

Oh, and don't forget that it's even better luck to eat the leftovers the next day because it indicates that you're frugal so will save money during the new year. (I always thought forcing leftovers on my family meant I was cheap but hey, I like this interpretation better!)

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads's Weekend Cooking meme.

Review: Jam Today by Tod Davies

I am not an intuitive cook. I need a recipe. I pull out recipes for things I've been making for literally years. I don't like to fly blind in the kitchen. Is this a control freak thing? Am I so very constrained because I am a perfectionist and don't want to feel compelled to eat a dreadful failure? (Not that following the recipe always guarantees great success, mind you, although I prefer to find the cookbook at fault rather than the cook.) And I think the ability to improvise and pull together a delicious (and edible) meal from seemingly disparate ingredients, just knowing that things will work, is an incredible talent. It's one I wish I had. So the concept of cooking with what I had on hand, as Davies' cookbook cum discussion of her food philosophy book asserted intrigued me no end.

The recipes here are intentionally inexact as she wants to encourage cooks to experiment and to understand that for some things, there's no way to mess up. Now I admit I flagged many of these inexact recipes and intend to go out, buy the ingredients, and do the best I can with every last ounce of guidance that she gives. But I was also inspired to go out on a limb the other night and create something from the things in my pantry, hanging around in my fridge, and on the table in the fruit bowl. And shock of all shocks, it turned out deliciously! (Well, my kids didn't think so but I sure did and the kids are philistines so we tend to ignore their bland, uneducated palates around here).

What was charming about the book itself was that it was written in a cozy, friendly manner, as if the reader was sitting with Davies in her kitchen as she threw together things that were destined to be good. There are loads of vegetarian options here as Davies' husband is a vegetarian but since he travels and she eats meat herself, there are also plenty of suggestions for carnivores. Her recipes focus on using fresh ingredients, appropriate to the season, and local if at all possible. I'm sure her produce, pulled from her own garden moments before inclusion in recipes is far tastier than mine but the overabundance of veggies in her meals inspires me to try and add more into our own diets. My chief complaint about the recipes is more a taste thing than anything else. I loathe eggs and mushrooms where Davies loves them and includes many recipes for both. But there are enough other recipes to keep me happy too so that's really a minor quibble. I enjoyed the book and am looking forward to trying some of the tagged recipes.

In the meantime, here's my off the cuff, had it lying around recipe, as inexactly as I made it (and anyone who comments that there was no way I could have messed it up with this combination of ingredients is banned from the blog in perpetuity--although they have gotten into the spirit of the book):

Citrus Noodles with Chicken and Pecans

Take a half box of Thai stir fry noodles and boil them until they are ready to stir fry. Toss them in a wok with whatever oil you happen to have on hand (I had the dregs of Canola in my pantry). Add in a roughly chopped half (or more if you like it) of an onion and a chunk of butter. Stir in the leftover chicken you have in a container in the fridge, especially if the chicken is getting close to having to be pitched and everyone is tired of eating it in all its other incarnations. Pound the pecans remaining in the bag after the Christmas baking is completed and toss those in as well (pecans, not Christmas baking). Grab a tangelo bought from your neighbor's daughter for a fundraiser. Zest the entire thing into the dish. Then squeeze it into submission and add all the juice and any pulp in the strainer (try to catch the seeds though) into the wok as well. If your concoction is starting to look a bit dry as your stir it around (mine was), slosh a glug of half and half into the mess. Heat through and top with grated pepper. Serve immediately. Now that I think of it, fresh (or even dried if there's no fresh in the crisper) parsley would have made a nice addition too. I'll have to try that small adjustment when I reheat the leftovers tonight.

Really, you can't screw this up, short of having it burn to the pan. If I can learn to cook intuitively, anyone can. And that is a gift for which I give thanks to Ms. Davies, even if she does like fungus just too much for one person's good!

This post has been a part of Beth Fish's Weekend Cooking meme. Check out her blog for other people writing about food, cookbooks, and food-related novels this weekend.

Refrigerator space

I only wish my refrigerator was this tidy. Unfortunately, I come from a long line of refrigerator penicillin manufacturers. By that I mean that as long as there has been a contraption resembling an icebox in the homes of my family members, we have been pushing things to the back, hidden for months and letting them grow mold that completely obscures whatever the item once was. It's like the refrigerator version of kudzu. Now while this is great when you are scrambling last minute for a science fair project, it's not particularly appealing visually or gastronomically. And so I've taken to freezing things just before they attain that glossy, iridescent, greenish color that warns of botulism, trichinosis, e-coli, salmonella, or any of the other biggies in the potential food poisoning pantheon. Freezing works. Just ask my friends how long I've been serving up bits of ham leftover from Easter without any of them getting sick, although come to think of it, I don't think they eat what I bring to our gatherings anymore. Hmmm. For their benefit, let me repeat that with emphasis: Freezing works!

But I find myself in a dilemma right now as concerns my refrigerator and I don't think it's one that can be solved by freezing. You see, Thanksgiving is coming up and that means an inordinate amount of "stuff" that must all be crammed willy nilly into the fridge. But there isn't room. I've already tossed the buckets of vegetarian chili that none of us loved much, but will eat at some point because I'm too cheap to throw it out, into the freezer. And after today, the leftovers of the homemade spaghetti sauce, which is darned good if I do say so myself, will be likewise banished to the freezer to be recovered at a later date. And the few other leftovers in there will be offered up as dinner tomorrow night, nevermind that the kids likely didn't love them the first time, which does tend to leave an inordinate amount of leftovers to work through. And so with luck those won't be hogging vital space needed for the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, squash, Cope's dried corn casserole, and whatever other bizarre side dish I decide we just *have* to try out this Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll make up a mess of collards to add a little southern to our generally Pennsylvania Dutch dishes.

But back to the point here. Even with all leftovers cleared out, there's still not enough room in the fridge. And the reason is that I have a refrigerator jammed full of condiments and things I bought in order to make a dish calling for less than the entire bottle or jar of something. Some of these dishes were good and that's why I always have an opened jar of chili sauce in my fridge. Some were okay but didn't wow me enough to want to try and search through my thousands of recipes to figure out exactly which one used the marinated dried tomato slices. And others were just plain gross and so I need something else to make to use up their ingredients, like the thai chili garlic paste. So I thought I'd post a list of some of the ingredients I have had for far too long (might even have moved them here from Michigan, if that isn't too pitiful and cheap to admit) and see if any of you have any wonderful ideas how I can use them in the next week or so and clear up a bit of room for the excessive Thanksgiving feast. Even just clearing out the doors of the fridge will mean I can stash the ever present stuff in there, leaving the body of the big metal box open. Here's what I have to work with:

green curry
teriyaki sauce
szechuan stir fry sauce
lemon curd
hoisin sauce
capers
marinated dried tomato slices
thai chili garlic paste
whole cranberry sauce (which must be used simply because it's old otherwise I'd just save it for Thanksgiving and frankly, I don't like the whole berry stuff anyway; give me the jellied, over-loaded with sugar, can-shaped glob any day of the week and twice on Sunday)
samosa dipping sauce

That's probably enough for now but if you're successful in helping me rid the fridge of these, I might have more ingredients to list next time (and I'll eat a thawed slice of last Easter's ham in your honor).

Other, more appealing posts on food and cooking can be found at Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking post if you need to cleanse your palate after reading this one. ;-) This week Beth's on cookies, which totally trumps my moldy refrigerator woes.