recipe

Back in the kitchen.

September 15, 2013 Marie Leave a Comment

For the last few weeks I’ve been in a sour mood and just completely and totally uninspired. And then Thursday morning I witnessed the most horrifying thing I have ever seen/heard to date involving a neighborhood dog getting hit by I car. I completely broke down. Not only was the event itself completely heartbreaking, but my sobbing on my way to work felt like the cumulative release of weeks worth of emotions I’ve bottled up.

I still can’t stop thinking about Thursday morning, and I can’t forget the images permanently embedded in my mind. Not yet, at least. But I think all that crying restored some balance to my life, even if just a little.

Thursday night I did something I haven’t done in a long, long time: I tried a new recipe. Apple Cinnamon Muddy Buddies (though in my family we’ve always called it “puppy chow”). Not exactly gourmet cuisine, here. But it was a step forward in the right direction, a step toward getting out of this funk I’ve been in. (The recipe is okay, by the way, but I’m not at all a white chocolate fan so maybe it’s just me. My coworkers seemed to love it, however)

Saturday night I hosted my knit group girls over for dinner and movies, and I decided to push myself a bit and make fancy grilled cheese sandwiches with Muenster cheese, tart apple slices, and turkey with roasted veggies (pictured above) on the side. The roasted veggies? AMAZING. And so perfect for this cool fall weather we’re experiencing. I peeled and chopped two sweet potatoes, half a bag of brussel sprouts, a red onion, and two Fuji apples and drizzled olive oil over the whole thing, added salt and pepper, and roasted the whole thing at 400 degrees for 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. Before serving I sprinkled crumbled feta cheese on top. SO GOOD. So simple. I think next time I might add some sausage to the whole thing and just call it a meal entirely.

Jam Pot: Blueberry Muffin Jam

July 1, 2013 Marie Leave a Comment

I’m on ‘staycation’ this week. It’s becoming a yearly tradition, though it’s really less about taking a break from routine and more about the fact that my birthday is right next to the 4th of July and I’m not actually using a full week of vacation by taking it off. Kind of like a mini-holiday, I guess?

I spent the weekend feeling restless and somewhat agonizing over what I should do with my week of freedom. The weather here is dreary, with rain in the forecast daily. Not exactly pool weather. I stressed a bit about the rain, because who wants to be stuck indoors on what is supposed to be a relaxing vacation? But then I made the executive decision to not care about the weather. It isn’t something I can control. It’s also just rain. I’m not going to let some silly rain ruin my week, no sirree!

So this morning, bright and early and barely awake, I drove down to my friend’s house to pick blueberries. She has a very lovely blueberry bush that is just FULL of ripe berries, and she kindly offered to let me come pick them in exchange for giving her a jar of what I make. DEAL! I picked that bush for two full hours, grabbing every berry I could reach. Delicious, tasty, local blueberries. I’m in heaven, here! Then it was off to my parents’ house, where they have a little raspberry patch. Mom has already picked a lot of berries already, but over the weekend more ripened. And wouldn’t you know it, it didn’t rain more than a sprinkle the entire time I was out!

On the way home I stopped by the local farm store and bought myself some of those adorable 4oz mini jelly jars. I also treated myself to a new canning pot, since it’s my birthday week after all. :) The one I have been using I picked up at the thrift store for crazy cheap, but it is really quite large, especially when I’m just making small batches of jam. This new one I picked up is perfectly sized for jelly jars. I love my thrifted canning pot dearly, but I have to admit having something shiny and new is a nice little treat! I’ve felt like quite the little farmgirl today with my basket of berries and my canning equipment. I still have that dream of a farm. We still look around for the right house to come along. One of these days my farmgirl dreams will be a reality, I swear it.

I made, in all, 12 mini jars of jam, I have 4 trays in my dehydrator for dried blueberries, and I still have a gallon-sized zip lock bag full of berries in the refrigerator. I honestly can’t believe I picked that many berries in two hours. I started off with a batch of blueberry basil jam from Cupcake Rehab, which is an interesting combination in a really good way! Then I moved onto a blueberry citrus marmalade from SB Canning, though I cut the recipe in half. And then, in a burst of inspiration, I made what I think might be my favorite blueberry jam: Blueberry Muffin Jam. Yep, you read that right. Jam that tastes like a blueberry muffin. My super secret ingredient? Cake-flavored vodka.

Blueberry Muffin Jam (makes 4 4-oz mini jelly jars, or 2 regular 8oz jelly jars; adapted from Cupcake Rehab’s blueberry basil jam recipe)

2-1/3 cups fresh blueberries
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 c cake-flavored vodka

Cook berries, sugar, lemon juice, and vodka until mixture reaches about 220 degrees F (this isn’t exact – my thermometer never got that high, but I could tell from experience when it was ‘ready’). Ladle into sterilized jars, clean the rim if you need to, top with lid and secure band to fingertip tight, and process in your water bath canner for about 10 minutes. Pull out and set someplace out of the way to cool (and maybe cheerfully say “tink!” every time you hear one of the lids pop… someone please tell me I’m not the only one who does this!)

If you’ve never canned before and aren’t sure where to start, Ball Canning has a lot of good information. Also, Food in Jars. I promise it probably feels overwhelming before you do it, but after a batch or two you’ll feel more confident to start canning other awesome treats :)

Banana Bread Roll-Ups

January 25, 2013 Marie 2 Comments

I’ve been having way too much fun with this dehydrator. The latest adventure: banana bread fruit roll-ups. Over the last couple of months I’ve been changing my eating habits and cutting out a LOT of the wheat products. Not entirely, of course, because seriously if I ever give up homemade bread and pastries someone shoot me. I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in how I feel on a day-to-day basis now that I’m eating a lot better. Basically what I’ve figured out is that by giving up sandwiches for salads, pasta for spaghetti squash, etc I can enjoy the breads and sweets a lot more when I do decide to eat them. I don’t take them for granted, I guess you could say.

With new eating habits come new recipe ideas. When one has ripe bananas on the kitchen counter the normal thing to do is make banana nut bread. Or, at least, that’s what I do with them. A few weeks ago I found Katie’s Peanut Butter Banana Leather and I knew I wanted to try a variation of it. What I ended up settling on was a 4-ingredient banana roll-up that reminds me so much of banana nut bread that it’s now my favorite snack.

Banana Bread Roll-Ups

Ingredients:

2 ripe bananas
1/4 cup almond butter
1/4 tsp apple pie spice*
1/4 tsp rum extract

Directions:

Slice bananas and mash until as smooth as possible (or puree if you are fortunate enough to have a small food processor/immersion blender that isn’t a huge pain to dig out/use/clean up after). Mix in the 1/4-cup almond butter until well combined and mixture is smooth. Finally, blend in spice and extract.

Pour mixture onto leather trays in your dehydrator and try to get as even as possible. (I divided my batter between two trays for faster dry time/thinner roll-ups) Dehydrate at 135 degrees for several hours until your mix looks dark and shiny. You can do these in the oven on the lowest temp setting, just pour your batter on a bit of parchment or a Silpat mat and watch it closely because it should dry out faster.

* On the apple pie spice… A couple years ago I made up a big batch from a recipe I had found online, but of course I didn’t write it down anywhere. I think it was a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and maybe some clove? There are a lot of recipes in internet land if you look for them.

Sunday Baking: Banana Bread

November 12, 2012 Marie Leave a Comment

Took a go at a new-to-me banana bread recipe. Years ago I was given one of those Better Homes & Gardens binder cookbooks, which is where my original recipe had come from. I hadn’t made banana bread in years because, well, I didn’t like my old recipe. Or that cook book, for that matter (and I suspect that, given the amount of them I see at the thrift stores, many other people out there have had the same experience after they actually learned a thing or two about cooking or baking).

There they sat, three pathetic-looking bananas, wasting away on the kitchen counter. And, since I’ve been on a trying-new-recipes groove this last 6 months or so, I thought I’d start my search for a new recipe. One worthy of a place in my family recipe book, next to my grandmothers zucchini bread recipe.

This recipe was picked because it didn’t call for adding oil to the batter. Instead, it called for melted butter. And butter = better, in my opinion. Also, it didn’t require a mixer – you can do it by hand with a wooden spoon (or, in my case, a regular ol’ fork).

So I mixed the wet ingredients together, and sifted the dry, and then beat the whole thing into submission before I dumped it all into a buttered loaf pan and threw it in the oven.

And then I licked clean the spatula, because I’m of the opinion that you can tell how good your finished product will be if your batter is tasty (raw eggs and salmonella be damned!)

And 50 minutes later I had what has to be the most gorgeous loaf of banana bread I’ve ever baked. The house smelled amazing, the bread turned a gorgeous golden color, the inside was perfectly done (not gooey or under-cooked like my previous recipe), and it tastes really wonderful and moist. I think we’ll call this a keeper, with a few modifications of my own, of course.

Banana Bread
Adapted from here

3 ripe bananas, mashed
1/3 cup melted butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp rum extract
1 tsp baking soda
A pinch of salt
1-1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup chopped nuts (I prefer walnuts. Also, this is optional if you’re not a nut person)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and grease or butter a bread loaf pan.

Sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Mix the butter, egg, vanilla, rum extract, and mashed bananas together. Then add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir until thoroughly combined. Dump it all in the loaf pan and bake for about 50 minutes, then cool in pan for 10 minutes before removing from pan and transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cake. Redeeming my wasted day.

January 8, 2012 Marie 2 Comments

I needed something to keep myself busy this afternoon. I attempted sewing myself some new pajama pants, only to fail miserably. It takes a special kind of stupid to end up making the top waist area into legs, effectively reversing the entire pant. The project was thrown into a wad in the corner of the closet – I couldn’t bear to look at it any more.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I went to the kitchen to console myself by baking a cake. With a recipe I’ve never made before. With the hope (and maybe a prayer) that I could make something work today. The big challenge: I really need to make a grocery run. So a lot of recipes were out. Too many of them needed a lot of butter, or heavy cream, or whole milk. I had a stick of butter, about a dozen or so eggs, and cream cheese.

So I made do. I used this recipe for the cake. I had powdered sugar, cream cheese, and oranges in my possession, so I attempted a half-assed citrus cream cheese frosting. 1 package of low fat cream cheese, some orange zest, about a 1/4 of an orange’s juice, and probably way too much powdered sugar (maybe 2.5-3 cups?). Seriously, it tastes a little too much like the powdered sugar and has lost its ‘cream cheese’ goodness. With a mild orange flavoring. Icing the cake was, well, cake. It was smooth/supple and spread nicely, and has that pretty drippyness to it over the edges that I like.

I haven’t cut a slice yet, so I can’t vouch for how the cake itself turned out (though it got a lot of great comments/reviews). But at this point I don’t think I give a damn what it tastes like – I just needed something to turn out today and, at least as far as the pictures show, I think I accomplished that.