"Cooking is like love, it should be entered into with abandon or not at all." -Harriet Van Horne

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Sundays in the kitchen


There are three things I really like to do on Sunday afternoons (and in this order): take a nap, cook/bake, and walk around the block with my family. Today I got to do all three of those things! I enjoy cooking and especially baking, more on Sundays because David is around to entertain the kids while I'm in the kitchen. On normal days if I start dinner before David is home, I'm interrupted a million times which can make for some frustrating cooking experiences. But on Sundays I can start and finish a recipe, usually, with no interruption.

After I got home from church, I put some porkchops and vegetables in the crockpot to make Pork Chop Succotash for dinner. I made a skillet of cornbread, sliced up some tomatoes and cut up some watermelon. With dinner done, I could move onto the fun stuff. I made another batch of those banana muffins my friend Rozlynn makes (because they are that good). I actually bought a batch of bananas and waited for them to turn brown so I could make these again. In the past I've usually only made banana bread/muffins when I have had bananas that have gone bad without me trying to let them go bad!

I've also been in an apple mood lately. I made an apple pie last Sunday and was ready for more apple something today. I have been wanting to try a recipe that I actually got from Rozlynn's mother-in-law several years ago. It's called Apple Pie in a Jar, but the recipe with the jarred apples actually makes an apple crisp. A delicious apple crisp. I bought two bags of Golden Delicious apples at the store last night, pulled out five of my Mason canning jars this afternoon and went to work. This really wasn't a lot of work for several jars of dessert I now have sitting in my pantry. They will be good, quick, go-to homeade desserts. All I will have to do now is put the jar of apples in a pan, make a quick crumb topping and bake. I love it. I also made the cakes for a red velvet cake I'm taking to a cookout at David's office tomorrow. I'll make the cream cheese frosting and frost them in the morning when I get home from my walk/run and try not to lick the beaters. :) There are also beans soaking for me to do some homeade baked beans in my pressure cooker in the morning. That's the other thing we're taking to the cookout. I have gazillions of bags of dried beans. So I'm trying to use those instead of buying canned beans, and my mom has a really good baked bean recipe for the pressure cooker. Hopefully mine will turn out as good as hers.

While eventually I want to share with you all my stepmother's red velvet cake recipe, tonight I'm going to focus on the Apple Pie in a Jar. I had a lot of fun making these, and the kids even helped me some. I think I'm really going to like this canning thing. Hopefully our garden will be bountiful.

Now, for Apple Pie in a Jar, courtesy of Pat Forester.

Peel and slice apples in wedges (made so much easier when using this Apple Peeler/Corer/Slicer.) One of the best kitchen inventions, ever. (Thanks to my honey and my kids for helping me peel all the apples! It was a team effort!) Of course I have the Pampered Chef version, though there are others. If you want to keep your apples from turning brown, place them in salt water while you peel all the apples and make the syrup. (My peeler/corer/slicer did my apples so fast today that I didn't have to put them in salt water and they never turned brown. We peeled two five pound bags of apples in less than ten minutes!)

Before putting apples in jars, wash and shake off excess water. Fill the jars with the sliced apples.

Pour syrup over apples in jars up to 1" from the top.
Wash off rims of jars; put on washed tops and rings.

Cover jars with water in a large stock pot
and cook with a rolling boil for 25 minutes.
Take out and cool on a wire rack before storing in your pantry.

Syrup (I was able to do 5 one-quart Mason jars with this syrup recipe).

4 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup cornstarch
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp salt
3 Tbs. lemon juice
10 cups water

Mix your dry ingredients together in a large stockpot and then add the water. Stir well and cook until thick and bubbly. Take off the heat and add lemon juice. Pour over the apples while still hot. Wipe the jars off and seal with tips and rings. Place into big stockpot (my stockpot was able to hold four quart jars at once), cover completely with water and cook with a rolling boil for 25 minutes.

When you get ready to make a crisp, pull a jar of apples out of your pantry and use this crumb topping recipe.

Crump Topping

1 stick butter, softened
1 cup self-rising flour
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
dash of cinnamon

Mix together with hands to make clumpy. Put filling in a 13 x 9 pan. Put crumb mixture on top of filling and bake at 350 degrees until golden brown. Come on now. You know you want some. With a big ol' scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yummmm!

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Green Smoothies


Last night we had a women's Relief Society meeting at church. It was all about health and fitness, which goes along perfectly with what I'm trying to accomplish with my body and diet right now.

One lady I go to church with is what I would consider an extreme health foodie. She's been a vegetarian since she was 14, and she, nor her three children, eats white flour, white sugar or anything processed or bleached or bad for you. Period. She buys the mess out of some produce and has to order a lot of what she eats and cooks with off of health food websites because Clovis doesn't have crap in the way of specialized health foods. While I admire her for it, I could never give up my meat. I think our bodies need some kind of meat, probably in more moderation than what I prepare at my house. We usually do one meat-free night a week, and that's about all David or I can handle. Nothing against vegetarians, I just know I couldn't be one.

So last night my uber-healthy friend did a really neat demonstration for us, and this is something even I can eat. Every morning, she and her daughters make these spinach smoothies. She got the idea and recipes from www.greensmoothiegirl.com. She said her girls love them. She made two different spinach smoothies for us to sample, and I loved them both. Even though it looked like a blender-full of diahrrea, I thought, if her three year old can drink this and like it, then I can too!

She shared with us that the recommended amount of fresh fruits and vegetables for adults is 5 servings per day. She said less than 50% of adults actually get the recommended amount, and even fewer children do, and that's counting french fries and ketchup as a serving. I'm so glad that David and I have taught our children to love and eat fruits and vegetables. We do not have picky kids, and I'm glad for that. I think it's one of the best gifts we can give our children is to introduce them to all kinds of food and make them try everything, sometimes making them try it more than once or even twice.

Anyway, my friend drinks 1 quart (4 cups) of this particular smoothie every morning for breakfast and her girls drink about 2 cups each (She has a three year old and a two year old and an infant). She said you should probably start with two cups and work your way up to 4 cups, and to plan to spend some time near the toilet for the first little while after you start drinking these.....). She gave all kinds of benefits to doing this. She said it kind of acts as a detox for your body. 1 qt of this smoothie has FIFTEEN servings of fruits and vegetables in it. So even if you didn't even look at another fruit or vegetable all day, you would have still gotten THREE times your recommended daily limit by BREAKFAST. She said her cravings for sweet things has gone down, her energy level has improved, her skin has improved. She started doing these about two years ago just after the birth of her second baby. She lost thirty pounds in a matter of months without exercising at all. Her hair, her nails, everything just became more radiant.

I'm excited to add this to my healthier eating routine. Don't you worry, I'll be adding plenty of recipes to this blog that won't do a thing to help your skin, hair, nails, or your waistline, but I'm going to throw some healthy things in here too.

Basic Green Smoothie

1 1/2 or 2 cups water
3/4 - 1 lb greens (spinach, kale, collards, chard, etc) (The one she made last night had spinach and kale in it). (She used a whole entire bag of bagged spinach)
1-2 bananas, fresh or frozen
1-2 cups frozen or fresh berries (she likes to use frozen berries to help keep the smoothie cold)

Put water in blender. Gradually add greens until, briefly pureed, the mixture comes up to the 5 cup line (in an 8 cup blender). Or maybe the 4 cup line for kids or new "converts" to green smoothies. Puree greens for at least 90 seconds or until they are very smooth.

Add fruit until the container is very full. Blend 90 seconds or until smooth.

You can save your smoothie in the fridge for up to two days - just shake well or blend again before drinking.

You're probably wondering about the cost of these..one blender full, if you use all organic ingredients is about 2.53. If you have a Sam's or Costco close, you can get giant bags of bagged spinach for cheap, and if you have commissary privileges, a bag costs about 1.50 (non-organic). I noticed at Wal-Mart last night that the GV brand is just under 2.00 a bag. Buy the big bags of frozen fruit..they'll last you awhile and are more economical.

Don't knock it 'til you've tried it!!

And one last thing, she had a BlendTec blender. I'm quite convinced this thing could chew up a ski if it were put in there. You can make bread dough in it. Definitely on my wish list.

A new favorite gadget.


So y'all know I love a kitchen gadget. One of the main reasons I began selling Pampered Chef was to support my love for quality kitchen tools. I honestly believe if you invest in good quality kitchen utensils and products, you will enjoy your time in the kitchen all the more. I have expensive pots and pans, and expensive, sharp knives. My cleaning time and prep time is cut literally in half by having those two things. A good sharp knife can change your relationship with the way you feel about cooking, I promise it can. Pots and pans that clean right up in about ten seconds, no matter what was in them, makes you more apt to use those pots and pans and more often. I have the Pampered Chef pots and pans and the Pampered Chef knife block set. I highly recommend both, even if you don't buy them from me.


But my new favorite gadget I actually got on clearance at Michael's for $3 while I was home in Alabama. It's a thick batter whisk. It's in the cake decorating section at Michael's. Y'all, this is awesome. It's great for brownies, muffin mixes, and the like. Things you don't use an electric mixer for, but batters really too thick to be whisked with a normal wire whisk. (I hate having to stick my fingers in between the wires and clean them out every ten strokes when using a normal whisk). Awesome. I'm all for stuff that makes cooking easier.

Recipe Organization



My mom is a recipe cutter. If she sees one she likes in a magazine or the newspaper, she rips it right out. David makes fun of me because this is my favorite past-time on long car rides. I come with my stack of magazines that I haven't had time to read and then I catch up, and I tear out. My mom's organizational system for her recipes is something I have copied exactly. She has a huge three ring binder with page dividers according to types of recipes. Appetizers, Breads, Chicken, Desserts, etc. From the time I was in high school I have been collecting recipes. I have organized them in the same way as my mom, except I have THREE of those huge three-ring binders, with a soon-to-be added fourth. I also have a recipe box that is stuffed FULL. My step-mother copied several of her favorite recipes onto index cards and gave them to me in a recipe box several years ago; one of my favorite gifts ever. I love having my recipes organized so I don't spend 30 minutes digging through drawers looking for the recipe I want to make.

What is your system? Do share.


Most of my cookbook/recipe books collection. I had to weed out some with this move. Books are heavy and we have weight limits on our moves in the military. I think I got rid of five. Maybe six. And it was painful. I love them. I read them like novels.

Inspired.

So I have been inspired. A few months ago, my sweet friend from Alabama, Rozlynn, started a cooking blog. I love it when I see she has posted a new recipe. I rush over there to see what she has posted and more often than not, try what she has posted (the most recent being these Banana nut muffins which are FAR AND AWAY the best banana muffins I have ever put in my mouth. Period.) I have several cooking blogs I read often and love to get recipe and meal ideas from. I've thought for some time I wanted to get my favorite recipes on the computer so if heaven forbid my house burned down and I lost my recipe books, I'd still have them stored someplace (and here's praying Blogger never decides to shut their site and everyone's blogs down with it). So, I'm going to start. I don't know how much I'll be able to do until Ethan starts Kindergarten in the fall, but I feel an urgency to start this now (and maybe the urgency is just my excitement taking over my emotions!). So, I figure I'll start and do what I can, when I can. (I have vowed to spend less time on the computer, so I guess this may be bad timing to start a new blog!)

How fun will it be to print this out one day and give to my kids when they're off and on their own? (That's how I'll justify this anyway!)

This will be a hodge podge of recipes I try and like, old favorites, new favorites, gadgets that make cooking a pleasure, and anything else that may have to do with food, cooking, or baking.

My mouth is watering already.