Just right

Each winter Saturday, KGMom posts a soup recipe and each winter Saturday I want to make it. Well, today I read her post before my trip to the grocery, added some ingredients to my list and made this delicious Hearty Winter Soup. It simmered away on the stove through the afternoon as I cleaned the house and read the homework for my Beekeeping class. Charlie spent the day coaching his ski team and this evening the yummy soup hit the spot for us both. There is plenty left over for this week's lunches and some to freeze for another day.

'twas the night before christmas.....

Christmas Eve with my family.

We'll bake today, wrap presents and miss Ethan and Sara.

We always enjoy sausage balls and cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas morning. This year I think that I will use Amber's recipe for monkey bread to go with the sausage balls. The sausage balls are a favorite in middle-Tennessee where I lived twenty years ago. Middle Tennessee is one of the places that I call "home" whenever anyone asks where I'm from and the foods from that area are the foods that we have carried with us as we moved about the country and which are part of our lives here in Maine.

These are simple to make but don't tell anyone--they are too good to be so simple.

Sausage Cheese Balls
1 lb. sausage
1 lb. extra sharp Cheddar cheese, grated
3 cups biscuit
Mix ingredients well. Drop by tsp. on ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 15-20 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Thanksgiving and Sweet Potato Biscuits

I love Thanksgiving. It is, without a doubt, my favorite holiday. It has everything that makes me happy: food, family, conversation, stories, and did I say food? For the last fifteen years or so I have been the family's Thanksgiving hostess and the menu rarely varies--if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Turkey, cornbread dressing with lots of bacon drippings, homemade whole berry cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, pumpkin and berry pies, caramel cake, boiled custard and our family favorite: sweet potato biscuits.

This year on the proper Thanksgiving Day, Charlie and I will be visiting his son in Ireland. It will be a whirlwind trip with us leaving on Tuesday and coming home on Sunday but these were the only few days off we could manage during this fall semester while Jacob is studying in Dublin.

Unwilling to give up the feast, we designated today as Thanksgiving Day in our house and as an added bonus--it's my mom's 75th birthday! Happy Birthday, Mom.

Yesterday, morning I was up early starting the dough for the sweet potato biscuits and as I assembled the ingredients on the kitchen counter, my computer beeped in the other room telling me that I had an instant message. Quickly looking at the clock I realized that it could only be Sara, who six hours ahead of us in the Balkans might be awake when it was 6 a.m. in Maine. It was Sara, indeed, so I set the computer on the counter and chatted with her while I made the biscuits. It wasn't quite as good as having her on the stool, chin in her hands, talking to me about her dreams of going into the Peace Corps like she did last year while I made the biscuits but it was pretty darn good. I'll take it.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

3 large sweet potatoes
3 packages active dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water
7-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 Tablespoon salt
1-1/2 cups sugar
1-1/2 cups shortening.

Cook, peel and mash sweet potatoes or use two large cans of sweet potatoes and mash
Combine yeast and warm water and let stand 5 minutes
Combine flour and next 3 ingredients in a large bowl; cut in shortening with a pastry blender or fork until mixture is crumbly. Add yeast mixture, and sweet potatoes, stirring until dry ingredients are moistened. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface; knead 5 minutes. Place dough in a lightly greased bowl, turning to greast top; cover and let rise.
Roll dough to 1/2-inch thickness; cut with a 2 inch round cutter. Place on ungreased baking sheets and bake at 400 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned.

What's for dinner?

So, a few days ago, Sara and I realized with a start that I had never gotten around to teaching her how to cook or mend or iron or really just about anything except how to tell a funny story and laugh at the craziness of the world. Those skills have gotten her through the last 22 years pretty well, but she's going to have to feed herself once she gets to her posting in Macedonia.

So, we decided that two decades of procrastination in learning the womanly arts was enough and this week she has been cooking and baking. We are trying to find easy meals that she likes and can make from ingredients rather than a box and we'll put them together in a recipe book before she leaves.

Last night she made chicken and dumplings. Chicken and dumplings are a true favorite for everyone in our family and she discovered that it was surprisingly easy. She boiled some chicken pieces with onion, garlic, salt and pepper and then when it was tender she mixed up the dumplings.

Dumplings
2 cups flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
4 tbsp. soft butter cut into the flour mixture
1 cup milk
The dumplings were dropped into the boiling chicken stock and rose back up to the surface moist and fluffy.


Tonight, she made a pizza from scratch--not a box or a vacuum sealed pouch to be found.

Pizza Crust
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
Knead the dough and let rise for an hour in a well-oiled covered bowl, punch the dough down, roll out and top to your taste. She used a very small amount of tomato sauce and lots of mozzarella cheese. She cooked it for 15 minutes at 425 and we all enjoyed it.

Tomorrow night, it will be homemade macaroni and cheese.

While keeping an eye on her pizza crust creation, I was busy canning tomatoes from the garden. These will be nice to open for a soup or a stew over the winter.

Tomorrow, along with the macaroni and cheese we will tackle hemming pants and sewing on buttons. Wish us luck!

Walkin' Tacos

Last night on the nightly news show about Maine called 207--after our area code--yes, everyone in Maine has the same area code--we were treated to a cooking sensation that is probably sweeping the nation right now. No doubt this unbelievable dish is contributing to the obesity epidemic, the trade imbalance and Type II diabetes, but we all laughed so hard watching that I had to share.

They are so good

I can't stop eating these--we've gone through four quarts since Tuesday--this is only Thursday.

Turkey in the Snow

Today when the teenager finally decided to get up and start his day he and a friend drove off to cut wood and re-stock our front porch.

As they were driving, the car in front of them hit a turkey and didn't stop. The boys did stop and now it looks like we're going to have fresh turkey in our freezer.

So--if you actually see it get hit it's not really roadkill, right?

Food

I could live forever on fruit, vegetables and bread and Chile is the right place for all of the above! We have passed acres and acres of plums, avacodos, corn, kiwis, strawberries, wine grapes, table grapes, pomegranate, citrus, tomatoes, olives and probably other things that I didn't even notice.

One delicious dish is creamed corn cooked inside of the corn husk--it is so yummy. Unfortunately, Brother's patience for translation does not seem to extend to recipes so I am not sure what was in it other than corn.

Another dish that I am enjoying is called Chilean Salad and is made of tomatoes and onion--you can't go wrong with that--I imagine that there is more to it than just the tomatoes and onion, but until I find a Chilean cookbook in English I am out of luck.

The bread is baked daily in outdoor adobe ovens. Today while walking around town with my dad we came across a lady making empanadas and she was kind enough to let us watch and take pictures--or at least we think she said we could. We theorized that she made a fire in the oven early in the day and let the adobe get very hot then when the fire was just down to coals she banked the coals around the edges of the oven and put the empanadas in. But Brother wasn't with us and so I'm not real sure about the method--in other words don't try it at home and say "Beth said this would work"

The wedding starts tonight at 8:30 p.m.--the wedding fiesta is afterward and the orchestra is booked until 5 a.m. We're a long way from Dixfield where it's lights out at 9 p.m.

Cupcakes--it's a whole new world

I have four children--between them they have had 79 birthdays. That's a lot of birthday parties. If we count Halloween parties, Easter parties, sports banquets and all the other celebrations associated with their school days, I must have baked thousands of cupcakes over the years. Back in the day, I thought fancy was a piece of candy corn on a Halloween cupcake.

Today oldest daughter called from a sunbeam in Georgetown while she waited to go to her waitressing job. She related to me the wonderful day that she had had--it being the first day of Spring break--she had gone to J. Crew and bought her first pair of flip flops of the year, had lunch with a friend and then she said....."we tried to go to Georgetown Cupcake but the line was way too long and I had to go to work in an hour." Hmm, a line, a cupcake store, $2.75 per cupcake, an hour not enough time????

Well according to the Washington Post, cupcakes have been hip since 1996 when they were one of the pleasure sought by the women on Sex and the City. I must have been too busy baking cupcakes in those years to have noticed.

Maybe if the bait store in our town goes out of business, a cupcake store would work. The smell of baking cupcakes might cover up any lingering fishy odor.

Chili

My friend Louann gave me a new recipe for chili and it was delicious. The significant differences between this recipe and my traditional chili recipe are that it uses ground turkey, dried cherries, black beans, roasted peppers and roasted tomatoes. Very tasty!

Dried Cherry Chili

2 cups lower-sodium chicken broth, divided
4 ounces dried tart cherries, chopped (3/4 cup)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon fresh chopped garlic
1 pound ground turkey
1 roasted red bell pepper, cut into ¼-inch cubes
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon chili powder
1 ½ teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon dried mustard
½ teaspoon dried oregano
4 cups chopped fire-roasted tomatoes
1 (16 ounce) can black beans
¼ cup chopped cilantro (I left this out because I couldn't find any)

Heat 1 cup of broth. Place cherries in small bowl. Add hot broth and set aside. Heat olive oil in a 4-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add onion; sauté about 5 minutes, until onion is soft. Add garlic; cook 1 minute. Do not brown garlic. Add turkey; cook until it is no longer pink.

Add bell pepper, chili powder, cumin, coriander, mustard and oregano. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, about 2 minutes. Add tomatoes and remaining broth; bring to boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, about 5 minutes.

Stir in beans, cilantro and cherry mixture. Continue cooking until thoroughly heated.

Lamb-Stuffed Peppers

Amity said in one of her posts that "one should never photograph brown food" and I probably should have heeded her advice.

As we make the change to eating grass-fed and local meat, we have expanded our food choices to include lamb. I have always resisted eating lamb--as a life-long chronic insomniac I am somewhat protective of all the sheep that I have counted. But Michael Pollan was very convincing in The Omnivore's Dilemna.

Lamb Stuffed Peppers
1 lb. ground lamb
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 cups brown rice
1 can organic chopped tomatoes
season with oregano, salt and maple pepper

Brown the onion and the garlic with the lamb, add the seasoning and the rice and tomatoes. Simmer while the peppers are softening up in boiling water. Remove the peppers from the water, fill with the meat mixture and bake. For a little extra something, I sliced the peppers in half and topped them with a slice of provolone cheese before baking.

Corn Chowder

There is nothing that I enjoy more than a bowl of corn chowder in the winter when a cold is flirting with my immune system. My kids grew up on this for comfort food and it was the first recipe that E asked for when he moved away and got married. He and Annie have amended it a bit by adding organic chicken sausage.

Here's my recipe.

Corn Chowder
1/2 pound bacon, diced
1 medium onion, chopped
2 Tbsp. flour
4 cups milk
2 cans of creamed style corn
1 can of whole kernel corn
2 cans of sliced potatoes
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
Fry bacon until crisp; removed and drain. Pour all but 3 tbsp. of drippings from saucepan. Add onion to drippings in pan; cook and stir until onion is tender. Remove from heat and blend in flour. Cook over low heat, stirring until mixture is bubbly. Remove from heat. Stir in milk. Heat to boiling stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute. Stir in potatoes, corn salt and pepper; heat through. Stir in bacon.

Nothing sweeter....

Both 100% natural, Made in Maine and Sweet as can be!


A pretty yellow kitten and delicious Maine Maple Cream.

Christmas cookies

Last night was the night we decorated cookies. J took a picture of some of them on a sparkling plate under the tree.




Christmas Cookies
3/4 cup shortening (part butter)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2-1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
Mix thoroughly shortening, sugar eggs and flavoring. Blend in flour, baking powder and salat. Cover, chill at least 1 hour. Roll and cut into shapes. Bake at 400 degrees for 6 to 8 minutes.
For icing, I combine some confectioner's sugar, food coloring and a small amount of water and try to be creative in design.

Grass Farming

After a terrifying first section on industrial food and a disillusioning second section on organic food, the third section of Omnivore's Dilemma gives me something to take heart in. Michael Pollan visits and, for a week participates in, a sustainable farm in Virginia. The working philosophy of the farm is that the sun feeds the grass, the grass feeds the animals, the animals feed the people, the people take care of the grass. The farmer manages the grass in such a way that it is constantly being nourished by the animals that it feeds. Different animals are rotated into pastures on a strict schedule that maximizes the benefit to the animals, the benefits to the grass and factors the recovery time needed for the grass.

A google search found grass farms in Maine. It makes sense to me to use these local resources for as much of our food as possible and to plan my trips to pick up food to coincide with my ordinary travel in order to minimize the environmental cost.

Meatloaf
1 lb beef (I used organic, next time it will be sustainable)
1/2 lb. sausage (ditto)
1 egg
1/2 cup of barley
1 can of organic tomato paste
1 onion, chopped up
minced garlic (suit yourself)
season with organic maple pepper

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes.
Enjoy for a meal, but meatloaf's real treat is the sandwiches from leftovers. I love to have it sliced onto wholegrain bread and sprinkled with alfalfa sprouts. Many years ago I had to make sandwiches for a homeless men's shelter in Nashville and thought about what would taste like a warm hug and decided on meatloaf sandwiches and alfalfa sprouts.

Fudge

On Saturday afternoon, M called from her freshman dorm wondering how to make fudge. I gave her a recipe and all evening imagined how it might have been for the girls to smell fudge bubbling in their basement kitchen. Can there be happier smells than fudge-in-the-making or bread-in-the-baking?

Chocolate Fudge
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate or 4 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup milk
2 Tablespoons light corn syrup
2 Tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
Butter an 8x8 inch pan. Combine the chocolate or cocoa, sugar, milk, and corn syrup in a medium-size heavy pot, stirring to blend all the ingredients. Set over low heat and, stirring slowly, bring to a boil. Cover the pot and let boil for 2-3 minutes. Uncover and wash down the sides of the pot with a pastry bush dipped in cold water, then continue to boil slowly, without stirring, until the syrup reaches the soft-ball stage (234 degrees F). Remove from the heat, add the butter without stirring, and set the pot on a cooling surface or rack. Do not stir until the syrup is lukewarm (110 degrees F), then add the vanilla and stir without stopping until the mixture loses its gloss and thickens. Pour it into the buttered pan and mark into squares. When firm, cut into pieces and store airtight.

Organic Meat

I've been reading the Omnivore's Dilemna
and am really scared about our food supply. I'm only through the first part of the book but what I have learned so far (and this is probably an over-simplification) is that we are intentionally over-producing genetically engineered corn and fertilizing it with a petroleum-based fertilizer and then feeding it to cows whose four stomachs were not designed for corn but for grass. These poor cows are getting up to "harvest" weight in 14 or 15 months instead of the 3 or 4 years it would take on grass. Because the cows aren't built for this hormone-laced corn, they get sick from eating it and are kept alive and growing due to massive amounts of antibiotics. One veterinarian at a feed lot was quoted as saying that if they weren't slaughtered at 15 months, their livers would probably burst. The hormone-laden and antibiotic contaminated waste produced by all the cows in the feed lots gets into the watershed and pretty soon it's into the water supply.

As if that isn't all bad enough, some of the excess corn produced by American farmers (at a financial loss) and subsidized by the government, is used to put corn syrup into just about everything and the cheap calories are contributing to the obesity epidemic.

So, what to do??? I have no idea on a big scale--I'll leave that up to the smart folks running for office; but as for me and my family, we are going organic. I looked on line for organic meats--I could get grass-fed beef from California, but maybe something closer to home without the environmental impact of transporting it across the country. Today, on my way home from court, I stopped at a nearby organic farm and picked up some stew meat. I'll make a stew in the crock pot tomorrow and we'll start our new lives without hormones.

Dinner on a snowy night

At the end of our snowy day yesterday, I wanted to make something tasty and warm but that didn't take too long in the kitchen. A recipe that I found this fall in Southern Living Magazine
and modified a bit to suit our tastes, seemed like it would fit the bill. Here it is,

Pan Seared Chicken Breasts

4 tsp dried Italian dressing mix
3 tsp paprika
2 tsp dried marjoram
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
3 chicken skinless, bonelss chicken breasts cut in half
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
2/3 cup chicken broth
Stir together Italian seasoning and next 4 ingredients. Sprinkle evenly on both sides of chicken
Cook 3 breasts in 1 Tbsp. hot oil over medium heat 6 to 8 minutes on each side or until done. Remove chicken from pan. Repeat with remaining 3 chicken breasts and 1 Tbsp. oil
Saute garlic in hot skillet 1 minute. Add chicken broth and cook 2 minutes stirring to loosen particles from bottom of skillet. Serve sauce over chicken.