Author: MOM

Cards on the table, I'm NOT a chef. Most of the time, I don't really even like to cook. But, I ALWAYS love to eat!....and I've had a lifetime of great cooks in my family showing me what good food's supposed to taste like. People are always asking me for recipes, asking what I'm cooking, so here you go. What I cook is probably as bizarre as my kids think I am. Sometimes healthy, sometimes artery clogging. Sometimes gourmet, sometimes just a quick fix to fill an empty place. Sometimes secret Italian family recipes, sometimes quick dump and stir out of cans. That's the way I roll. Take what you please, leave the rest. It's not brain surgery.

Asian Night

I don’t know about you, but when I go out for Asian food, I want VARIETY! I want the noodles, rice, a few different dishes, the whole megillah. Oh man, if my daughter-in-law is reading this, she just said, “HUH?”. She thinks I speak in some strange foreign language half the time.

OK Angela, “the whole megillah” means having it all, “the whole nine yards”, “the whole ball of wax”, “the whole shootin’ match”, “the whole shebang”. It has nothing to do with the cartoon character Magilla Gorilla, although he was pretty big. And you probably have no idea who Magilla Gorilla is anyway do you? Ah, that darn Generation Gap.

Anyway “megillah” is the Hebrew word for scroll. Reading from those scrolls on holy days was long and tedious. The “whole megilla”started out meaning a long, tedious, or complicated story. Then it also started being used to just mean the whole darn thing.

Now where was I? Oh yeah, Asian dinners. Anyway, last night the kids were coming for dinner so I thought I’d give it a shot. I managed three dishes, Broccoli Beef in Oyster Sauce, Chicken Lettuce Wraps, and Sumi Salad, with a side of steamed rice courtesy of the rice cooker.

Actual cooking is easy, it’s the prep work that sucks. But I got all my ducks in a row earlier in the day, and with Angela’s help we got dinner cooked in short order.

The rice cooker took care of the rice, so I didn’t have to think about that. Angela manned one skillet, fixing the chicken dish. I had broccoli beef going in another skillet. Or, I could have made the chicken and kept it warm in a crock pot, just stirring in the green onion before serving. That works too. You could even hold the broccoli beef warm for a while if you want to get real crazy and make another dish, like some pot stickers. But I wasn’t that ambitious. Maybe another day.

Happy Birthday Grandma!

It was Mr. Man’s mother’s birthday, so I fixed dinner for the family and transported it 30 miles. I get ridiculed for my ginormous collection of cooking paraphernalia, but I really do use all this stuff. I have a group of three serving crock pots, a big crock pot, two small crock pots, and two teeny tiny ones. And I need them all, till death do us part.

I also have one of those portable coolers that keep food hot or cold, depending on which way you flip the switch. I imagine they’re not much good at cooling, but I have ice chests for that. I need it to keep food hot, sometimes for hours.

So I put some salisbury steak and mashed potatoes in the heater. Filled the bank of crock pots with three different veggies, and we had our own version of Meals on Wheels.

Seems fitting I let Grandma choose the cake, since it was her 89th birthday and you should get some perks for being that old. (I don’t think there are very many, just sayin’.) She picked a good old fashioned carrot cake, which luckily everyone likes. So…I pass the recipe on for posterity.

On Men In The Kitchen

I welcome men in the kitchen. I welcome anyone who wants to cook for me because I hate to cook. If the dog could whip up breakfast for me, I’d let him go for it.

Unfortunately, around here Man + Kitchen = Disaster. Today I have no work I have to finish, so I thought I’d make some cookies. Well, Mr. Man got a bug up his nose to make cinnamon rolls last weekend, and I’ll have to say they were pretty good. Better than mine. BUT…..Bobby Flay he’s not.

He tried to mix up a giant batch of bread dough using a little hand mixer. Are you kidding me? Even the Cuisinart couldn’t handle it so he had to give up and knead the dough by hand.

And once that little hand mixer was out of sight, it was also out of mind. (We all know men simply cannot multitask.)

So today I took out the mixer to whip up some sugar cookie dough and this is what I found…

I had to pick dried up bread dough out of the holes before I could stick the beaters in. Sigh!

And it’s a good thing I’m pretty rational, or I’d swear we had a Poltergeist in the house. I’m always finding cabinet doors standing wide open. And every time I need to use something like a measuring spoon, it becomes a treasure hunt. Because even though those spoons have been kept in the same drawer for years, somehow they materialize in random drawers with no rhyme or reason. And what’s the aversion to washing a pot or pan by hand? If it won’t fit in the dishwasher, Mr. Man WON’T wash it.

OK, I feel better now…..

Back to making sugar cookies, in January, using a Christmas tree cookie cutter. Because I put all my cookie cutters away. Somewhere. In what I’m sure is a very good place. And someday I’m going to figure out just where that place is.

 

For The Gluten Free

If you’re eating gluten free just because you think it’s healthier, I say forget about it. None of us are getting out of here alive so we might as eat, drink and be merry.

However, we do have a family member with celiac disease, which is a cruel fate for an Italian. Barilla makes a pretty good gluten free pasta, but that doesn’t help when it’s holiday time and nothing will do but homemade ravioli. So I found this gluten free pasta recipe and used it to make some darn good ravioli, and I didn’t even have to say so myself.

One of these days I’ll get around to publishing our family’s ravioli recipe. They’re really not that hard to make. But in the meantime I’ll share my recipe for gluten free pasta.

The dough has a different texture, rather slippery when wet. Without gluten, it lacks elasticity, which makes it really impossible to make ravoilis the way we usually do. You really need to make raviolis one at a time when using gluten free pasta. Just wet the edges of both pieces of pasta and crimp well.

OR you can roll out your dough, spread on the filling, then roll up jelly roll style. Wrap the roll in cheesecloth, tie the ends so it looks like a big firecracker, and drop it boiling water to cook. When done, cut in slices and top with your sauce and cheese. Looks different, but is easier and tastes just the same. In this case it would be called “Rotolo Italiano”. (Italian Roll)

The Ham That Wouldn’t Die

Curse of the Holiday Ham. We gave half of it away. We made ham, biscuits and gravy. We made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. I think the ham was somehow growing in the refrigerator when we weren’t looking.

Today I decided to kill the beast once and for all, so I made some crock pot split pea soup. I really should make soup more often, but I’m pretty lazy. This is about as effortless as it gets and I can barely manage that. But, for all of us who set the bar really low when it comes to effort made in the kitchen, or for those who just need one more way to kill off that holiday ham, split pea soup is about as easy as it gets.

Sweet Potatoes

Holiday time has rolled around again. Time to prep for my standing assignment, sweet potatoes. No, I don’t mean yams. Grocery stores sometimes label them as yams, but they’re really sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes sound delicious. Yams sound like something you just yacked up. But whatever you call them, we’re cooking the taters that are purple outside and orange inside. The ones that are about 2″ in diameter work best in this dish, and try to get them fairly uniform in size so they cook at the same time. So, pick through that potato bin like it’s your job.

My sweet potato recipe comes from my Aunt Violet, who was my Dad’s older sister and my stand-in grandmother, since his mother died before I was born. She owned a little restaurant in Fowler, California for a while, and she was a really awesome cook. She taught me all about healthy eating. Fruit pies & her homemade jams & jellies contained fruit. Fruit is good for you. Hence her pies and jelly were health foods and must be eaten at every opportunity. Same goes for these sweet potatoes. Remember that under all the butter and sugar are sweet potatoes, which are very good for you, so you can feel good about shoveling them in.

Her sweet potatoes have spread to my Mom’s family, and to my husband’s family, who now require them at all holiday meals. Fortunately these are a dish best made ahead of time, so the sweet potatoes get to soak in all the tasty goodness of the syrup we cook them in. You can make them a day or two ahead of time, or even a month ahead and stick them in the freezer. Freezing doesn’t hurt a thing, in fact it might even make them better.

I bake them at home and transport them to family dinners in an electric roaster, to keep them warm until serving time. Two 9 X 13 pans full is enough for our big family dinners of about 35 people.

So, check out Aunt Violet’s sweet potato recipe. Somebody else better learn to make them because I can’t do it forever!

sweet-potatoes-done

 

Here Comes The Bride!

Tomorrow we’ll be the proud parents of a bouncing baby girl. Fully grown! No sleepless nights! One more chance there will be somebody to feed us when we’re old and drooling!

Angela’s been part of the family for years but tomorrow it becomes official. She’s had more than enough time to figure out what she’s getting into but she’s marrying Jace anyway, and we go along with the deal. All I can say is she’s a brave girl.

The kids didn’t want traditional wedding cake. Angela is a girl after my own heart. She’s having an ice cream bar. Jace wanted his favorite strawberry swirl cheesecake with strawberry sauce. I just finished making the last two. (Insert sigh of relief) But I say there’s no such thing as too much dessert, so I made some rum cakes too. Just in case we’re feeling a mite peckish after all that dancing.

This rum cake is no family secret. It’s the old Bacardi Rum Cake recipe that’s been around forever. And yet, I’ve never seen anyone else made it. That’s really a pity because this is the most awesome go-to holiday dessert ever. It’s really moist, so it keeps for days. You can make it a day or two ahead of your holiday party, or a month ahead and just stick it in the freezer. It freezes really well. Best of all, everybody loves it.

I always make it with Bacardi rum. It’s the least I can do to pay them back for all the years of tastiness.

rum-cake

My Favorite Apple Pie!

This isn’t just my favorite apple pie in the whole world, it’s the only apple pie I’m allowed to make for the rest of my life. I’m always trying to improve on perfection, but my last attempt at making a better apple pie was my last, period.

Son Jace was soooo looking forward to apple pie because it’s one of his favorite desserts. Sadly, I was trying a new recipe. He took one bite and looked at me like I’d just ripped the ears off a kitten. He was horrified, disgusted, disappointed, all in one very expressive look I’ll never forget, and will never live down.

He wanted to know what was wrong with the pie. I told him I was trying a new recipe. He said, “Why would you do that”? Why indeed. Every time I serve apple pie now, the family teases me about the horrible apple pie debacle of 2013 and I have to relieve the horror all over again. Lesson learned. You just don’t mess with perfection.

This was not the first time apples got me in trouble with Jace by the way. It all started when he was still really little, less than two years old certainly because he was sitting in his high chair eating lunch. Apparently he had done something that displeased me, don’t remember what now. I remember I delivered what I thought was a very eloquent lecture designed to induce immediate attitude adjustment, which I concluded by saying in the time honored words handed down by my mother, “So, how do you like them apples?”. He just looked at me and said, “No, Mommy. It’s not THEM apples, it’s THOSE apples”. Sigh! It was then I knew I was in over my head, and I’m still trying to keep my parental head above water. Lesson #5,652: don’t mess with his apple pie.

So this is what perfection looks like. It tastes even better! Plus it’s EASY!!!

Apple Pie

I LOVE Stew!!!

stew

Apparently most people think stew is like tuna casserole, something you’ll only choke down if there isn’t something better. But give me a bowl of stew and some biscuits, and my stomach goes into it’s happy dance. It takes a while to make stew, but it’s a good weekend endeavor. Kind of like a food mullet. Not much business to attend to up front, big party in the rear. Yes, my mind does work in mysterious ways.

Stew’s in the pot getting delicate. Think I’ll go read a book and enjoy doing nothing for a while, since it’s back to the old grindstone tomorrow. Sigh!

When A Pie’s Too Much….

When a whole pie is just more than you want, or making a pie is just too much trouble, don’t do without, make a galette! Nothing could be faster or easier, especially if you use a ready made pie crust. (I should have stock in the Pillsbury company.)

galette done

The nectarines are getting ripe on our little tree, so Mr. Man brought some in and left them sitting on the counter. Yeah, I can take a hint. But I could not possibly put out less effort making anything than it takes to make a galette, and he’ll be a happy camper. That’s what I call a win, win.

Of course most of the time we want some nectarines, we have to resort to buying them at the store or some local fruit stand. Either way, you’re apt to be looking at fruit that was picked before it was quite ripe and put into cold storage. So I’ll pass along some advice I got from a fruit inspector. Look at the nectarine right around where the stem was attached. You’re looking for a nice warm, golden yellow color. Those will be the ones that were ripest when they were picked. OK, there are white nectarines, and I can’t help you there, but those aren’t the ones you usually see at the grocery store.

You can make a galette with nectarines, peaches, plums, apples, whatever you have on hand. I’m ashamed to admit that it’s not really a problem for two of us to polish off a whole galette of an evening. But, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it makes a nice and rather elegant dessert for four.

Summer’s here and fruit’s ripe. Now’s the perfect time for a galette!