Actually I think it's supposed to be in the 60s today, but I am still craving cold weather food. Here are a few of the things I plan to make this week:
Tonight I am going to do a crazy casserole based on scalloped potatoes, but with cabbage, cheese, and ham added in. I just hate to throw food away and I have a cabbage and some potatoes that need to be used up pretty soon. Not to mention that my freezer is so full I can't get anything else in it, so a bag of ham chunks would make some welcome space. I have a lot of cheese I bought for recipes I didn't make, so some of that is going in, too.
It is definitely time for another round of chili and cornbread.
Soup! I want to make at least two huge pots of soup, with lots of leftovers to can. I'm thinking ham and bean soup and chicken vegetable. I still have two or three quarts of soup adapted from Bernice and Paul Nolls' recipe for Beef Vegetable in the pantry. I didn't use the cauliflower, and next time I will cut way back on the potatoes, but this was pretty tasty soup. Have you visited their website? I just love them to pieces. They were among the first of my canning heroes and have inspired many a jar of homemade goodness.
This weekend I want to make large quantities of stock and get that canned up. I have lots of odds and ends in the freezer and I plan to make a run to the butcher shop for beef soup bones and a chicken or three.
That ought to hold me for a while. What's cooking in your kitchen?
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Friday, December 23, 2011
Christmas is Creeping Back Into My Heart
In spite of a few setbacks this week, I woke up this morning with Christmas in my heart.
I've been really inspired by the generosity of the folks paying off K-mart layaways and throwing gold coins worth 16K into Salvation Army cauldrons. Haven't you? Even though these stories have been offset by stories of people ripping off toys collected for needy kids, it still puts a feeling of peace and hope into my heart when I hear of the kindness and generosity people are showing each other at this time of the year.
Tomorrow Bren and I will pack up the sleigh and head over to my sister's. I will depart from our long held tradition of making lasagna on Christmas Eve this year because the niece and nephew are going through that picky stage called childhood. I'll whomp up a big batch of homemade spaghetti sauce the way my grandmother made it (her secret was to put in a big carrot and a chicken thigh) and an equally large batch of meatballs. My sister and I will enjoy the Pioneer Woman's recipe for Olive Cheese Bread http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/?s=olive+cheese+bread&submit= (Honestly, if you've never tried this you really should. It is a greasy, buttery, cheesy, olivey, oniony slice of heaven!) We will make a salad with the lettuce growing in my front yard garden. My Great Dane puppy (Kudzuki) will make some dog treats for my sister's dog (B.J.). (Ok, I'll make them but 'Zuki would if he could.) I will make badly decorated cookies with my niece. Peace will reign on earth, and all will be well.
On Christmas day my sister's in-laws are all coming over for a big dinner. Lots of cooking and baking to do. I found the most astonishingly elaborate bread shaped like Rudolph's head with antlers and red nose and all at a local bakery. I ordered one for dinner Christmas day and one to give to some of the attendees. After dinner it will be home again where Bren and I will celebrate Christmas with all five dogs and three cats. I'm so looking forward to the next few days.
Peace and joy to you this Christmas!
I've been really inspired by the generosity of the folks paying off K-mart layaways and throwing gold coins worth 16K into Salvation Army cauldrons. Haven't you? Even though these stories have been offset by stories of people ripping off toys collected for needy kids, it still puts a feeling of peace and hope into my heart when I hear of the kindness and generosity people are showing each other at this time of the year.
Tomorrow Bren and I will pack up the sleigh and head over to my sister's. I will depart from our long held tradition of making lasagna on Christmas Eve this year because the niece and nephew are going through that picky stage called childhood. I'll whomp up a big batch of homemade spaghetti sauce the way my grandmother made it (her secret was to put in a big carrot and a chicken thigh) and an equally large batch of meatballs. My sister and I will enjoy the Pioneer Woman's recipe for Olive Cheese Bread http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/?s=olive+cheese+bread&submit= (Honestly, if you've never tried this you really should. It is a greasy, buttery, cheesy, olivey, oniony slice of heaven!) We will make a salad with the lettuce growing in my front yard garden. My Great Dane puppy (Kudzuki) will make some dog treats for my sister's dog (B.J.). (Ok, I'll make them but 'Zuki would if he could.) I will make badly decorated cookies with my niece. Peace will reign on earth, and all will be well.
On Christmas day my sister's in-laws are all coming over for a big dinner. Lots of cooking and baking to do. I found the most astonishingly elaborate bread shaped like Rudolph's head with antlers and red nose and all at a local bakery. I ordered one for dinner Christmas day and one to give to some of the attendees. After dinner it will be home again where Bren and I will celebrate Christmas with all five dogs and three cats. I'm so looking forward to the next few days.
Peace and joy to you this Christmas!
Monday, October 10, 2011
Ham Broth
I am a terrible blogger. I don't write often enough and when I am immersed in something I almost never remember to take pictures. Please forgive me, all 7 of you! Let me try to make up for all of my past and future indiscretions with this one post about a useful and fabulous food that no one ever seems to talk about.
The subject most on my mind today is Ham Broth. Why don't people talk about it more? I just don't understand. Yes it is salty and more fattening than chicken broth, but that is because it tastes like ham, People. Yum!
What do I use it for? Everything! I make soup with it, especially bean soups; put it in casseroles; cook rice with it; cook veggies in it (Oh yes, I do!). My two favorites uses for ham broth have to be ham & dumplings and ham gravy.
Ham & dumplings is exactly what it sounds like. My mom is not a from scratch cook. Really. As a child I thought that Campbell's was the only kind of soup to be had in this world and Swanson were the people who froze our dinner for us every night. In the late '70s, though, my mom and step-dad bought a farm out in the sticks and built a house complete with a woodstove in the basement. One day in the deep, dark cold of an Upstate New York winter, my mom put a picnic ham into a huge pot, filled the pot with water and set it on the woodstove to cook. The smell of that brought me and my sister down the stairs to the basement like in one of those cartoons where you kind of fly though the air led by your nose. You know what I'm taking about? It was incredible to smell real food cooking. After hours and hours on the woodstove the ham fell apart into the broth and mom made dumplings right on top of all that scrumptious goodness. Hot Dog! Or, rather, real, actual food!
Years later, as I was making my own boiled ham I thought "Why have I never had ham gravy?" It sounds really good, right? You should be able to make it like any other gravy - fat, broth, thickener, right? Right! It is simple to make and you should see the look on someone's face the first time they put a forkful of mashed potatoes with ham gravy into their pie hole. You can almost hear angels singing.
Geez, that yogurt I had for breakfast was a long time ago and I'm making myself hungry, here. You know I'm having a ham sandwich for lunch, right?
Ok, Grace, how does one make ham broth? Put a big ham in an even bigger pot, fill it with as much water as you can get in there, and simmer it for hours and hours. When the meat is falling off the bone, remove the meat, allow it to cool, and pull the meat off. I divide it into two cup portions and freeze it. The skin, fat, and bones go right back into the stockpot. I put in a good splash of apple cider vinegar in the batch I made this weekend, and let simmer it even longer, until the broth is rich and concentrated and the bones have given up all of the good stuff. Oh yummyness. I have it in bowls in my fridge right now. When I get home from work tonight I will skim the fat off and freeze it for making ham gravy later. I will also put the bones and some of the broth and fat in my most enormous pot (My beloved cousin-in-law Debra calls pots like this Jethro pots.) with a huge amount of collard greens (and some water and red pepper flakes and plenty of apple cider vinegar) and cook that for a good, long time because I like collards cooked all the way until they are good and soft. There are only two people in my house but we go through collards like an army. Tomorrow night for dinner we will have some of the boiled ham which I will pop briefly into the oven to crisp it up a little; collards; and mashed potatoes with ham gravy. I can't wait to chow down on all of that. Too snug jeans, here I come!
Later this winter when it is good and cold I will make a pot of ham & dumplings. It is awesome comfort food for a cold, blustery winter's day.
The subject most on my mind today is Ham Broth. Why don't people talk about it more? I just don't understand. Yes it is salty and more fattening than chicken broth, but that is because it tastes like ham, People. Yum!
What do I use it for? Everything! I make soup with it, especially bean soups; put it in casseroles; cook rice with it; cook veggies in it (Oh yes, I do!). My two favorites uses for ham broth have to be ham & dumplings and ham gravy.
Ham & dumplings is exactly what it sounds like. My mom is not a from scratch cook. Really. As a child I thought that Campbell's was the only kind of soup to be had in this world and Swanson were the people who froze our dinner for us every night. In the late '70s, though, my mom and step-dad bought a farm out in the sticks and built a house complete with a woodstove in the basement. One day in the deep, dark cold of an Upstate New York winter, my mom put a picnic ham into a huge pot, filled the pot with water and set it on the woodstove to cook. The smell of that brought me and my sister down the stairs to the basement like in one of those cartoons where you kind of fly though the air led by your nose. You know what I'm taking about? It was incredible to smell real food cooking. After hours and hours on the woodstove the ham fell apart into the broth and mom made dumplings right on top of all that scrumptious goodness. Hot Dog! Or, rather, real, actual food!
Years later, as I was making my own boiled ham I thought "Why have I never had ham gravy?" It sounds really good, right? You should be able to make it like any other gravy - fat, broth, thickener, right? Right! It is simple to make and you should see the look on someone's face the first time they put a forkful of mashed potatoes with ham gravy into their pie hole. You can almost hear angels singing.
Geez, that yogurt I had for breakfast was a long time ago and I'm making myself hungry, here. You know I'm having a ham sandwich for lunch, right?
Ok, Grace, how does one make ham broth? Put a big ham in an even bigger pot, fill it with as much water as you can get in there, and simmer it for hours and hours. When the meat is falling off the bone, remove the meat, allow it to cool, and pull the meat off. I divide it into two cup portions and freeze it. The skin, fat, and bones go right back into the stockpot. I put in a good splash of apple cider vinegar in the batch I made this weekend, and let simmer it even longer, until the broth is rich and concentrated and the bones have given up all of the good stuff. Oh yummyness. I have it in bowls in my fridge right now. When I get home from work tonight I will skim the fat off and freeze it for making ham gravy later. I will also put the bones and some of the broth and fat in my most enormous pot (My beloved cousin-in-law Debra calls pots like this Jethro pots.) with a huge amount of collard greens (and some water and red pepper flakes and plenty of apple cider vinegar) and cook that for a good, long time because I like collards cooked all the way until they are good and soft. There are only two people in my house but we go through collards like an army. Tomorrow night for dinner we will have some of the boiled ham which I will pop briefly into the oven to crisp it up a little; collards; and mashed potatoes with ham gravy. I can't wait to chow down on all of that. Too snug jeans, here I come!
Later this winter when it is good and cold I will make a pot of ham & dumplings. It is awesome comfort food for a cold, blustery winter's day.
Friday, January 21, 2011
January Spice Rack Challenge - Rosemary
I decided to join Mother's Kitchen's Spice Rack Challenge because I need a challenge to get me out of my spice rut. I have a cupboard full of spices, but really only use 10 or so in my everyday cooking. I'm looking forward to trying some new ones and to using familiar ones in different ways.
My recipe for this month is Roasted Whole Carrots with Rosemary. I recently discovered that my husbian (Yes, she's the tomboyish one, lol) will eat carrots if I roast them. What a nice and easy side dish they make!
The ingredients are:
1 bag whole carrots, NOT baby carrots
2 T olive oil - I used a lemon flavored olive oil and it was really good in this
2 T fresh Rosemary leaves, stripped from stems and lightly chopped
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Coarse Kosher salt to taste
Wash and lightly scrub the carrots. I try to peel only the blemished spots.
Place the oil in an oven baking bag or on some aluminum foil;. Add the carrots and the rosemary and roll around to coat.
Grind some pepper over this and add a little salt.
Close the bag or the foil packet, place in a roasting pan and bake at 350 degrees until tender. The time this takes will vary depending on the thickness of the carrots.
I love this dish! It's so pretty when you plate this up. It smells heavenly and tastes fab.
My recipe for this month is Roasted Whole Carrots with Rosemary. I recently discovered that my husbian (Yes, she's the tomboyish one, lol) will eat carrots if I roast them. What a nice and easy side dish they make!
The ingredients are:
1 bag whole carrots, NOT baby carrots
2 T olive oil - I used a lemon flavored olive oil and it was really good in this
2 T fresh Rosemary leaves, stripped from stems and lightly chopped
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Coarse Kosher salt to taste
Wash and lightly scrub the carrots. I try to peel only the blemished spots.
Place the oil in an oven baking bag or on some aluminum foil;. Add the carrots and the rosemary and roll around to coat.
Grind some pepper over this and add a little salt.
Close the bag or the foil packet, place in a roasting pan and bake at 350 degrees until tender. The time this takes will vary depending on the thickness of the carrots.
I love this dish! It's so pretty when you plate this up. It smells heavenly and tastes fab.
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