Archive for the ‘Food and Drink’ Category

My husband loves left over night. He will ask, what’s for dinner and I say, “left overs”. He smiles knowing what that means. It means finding wonderful things to throw together. Like me, my friend Denise, does the same thing. She recently threw some things together that makes for delightful tastes. Here is her version of “left over night”. Enjoy!

LEFTOVER NIGHT
3 oz linguine
3 oz pumpkin linguine (fresh)
small pack portabella baby mushrooms
8 stalks asparagus
6 top rings from the top of a red, orange and yellow pepper (left over from cutting the tops for stuffed peppers)
1 tbsp olive oil, 3 tbsp smart balance

In a sauce pan, cook pasta according to directions (I cooked both kinds together). In large skillet put oil and smart balance, slice shrooms, cut asparagus into 1″ pieces, cut peppers into small bites, sauté all together and add salt and pepper to taste.
Put pasta in bowls, smother in veggies. YUM!

Today I was watching this fascinating show on how the eyes trick the brain. How we can think we see things and what we really see is something else.

Marketing uses this asset to get us to buy. Specifically to buy food and here is an example. You see this beautiful lady on TV doing something young and wonderful. She is selling a huge mega burger from one of the major burger chains. She looks beautiful, she looks healthy and she looks successful. Not to mention the one trick on our brain is that she is not FAT!!! We are so captivated by this huge lusty burger our mind takes in that she is skinny and immediately processes that this won’t make you fat. It will. Being obese is the number legal abuse we do our body.

I was pondering this when I began to have health issues. My immune crashed. I had anemia and zero B’s in my body. All of which were nutrient related. I ate poorly. I mean like a good American I knew where to get my daily fix of junk food. Now I am battling daily health issues because I cheated my body early in life and was handed a set of genes that did not add to a positive outcome. Never mind I tried to make up for some of it but too little too late.

Junk food, hmmm? We hear that term a lot but do we really get what that is? These are foods that have little or no nutritional value. Ha! There is the word “nutritional´. That means the object we are chomping away on adds no value added bonus to keeping us going. In fact it works towards depleting our body slowly over time while we pump on the poundage and do not balance our body with nutritional food. And that dear readers is where the problem begins and over time we slowly poison our bodies becoming malnutritioned along the way. The eye tricks us again because we think malnutrition is a sub skinny person living on the African continent  in starvation. It isn’t for us in the West. And we answer the call to junk out as our immunne system responds with a heart attack, diabetes or other break down diseases we cannot figure out.

As a general rule we are risk takers. However many will not risk illegal drugs but think nothing of taking legal drugs as if somehow that makes them healthy. True we need legal drugs because the process of crashing our bodies on junk food now has us needing medical attention. But do not let your brain trick you, they are legal ONLY if a doctor prescribes them correctly and ONLY if you take them within the doctor’s recommendation. Doctors have a plethora of drugs now because we choose to take a drug rather than to control our diet. And what about smoking cigarettes or other tobacco related items? Even the smokers know this is a bad thing. But when it comes to food we are captivated by it. The taste, the looks, the sheer yumminess of it until the poundage packs on and obese related diseases take over. I mean really have you ever seen a really old person that was majorly obese? That supersized meal is a short cut to a shorter life. Big time!

Okay this is a huge rant about food right? That is because I can count on any given day hearing most of the people I know complain about not feeling good. In fact, I know only a hand full of people who do not have anything wrong with them. I mean if it isn’t obesity it is diabetes, or autoimmune issues or a heart attack. Many times these are all brought on by stuffing our gullet and not moving. Because everybody has heard by now that now that exercise is sheer drudgery. Who has time for it? If you are under 50 and have a Significant Other in your life you know you are both working and running and dealing with life and eating junk. Everyone is tired. But food is a huge culprit to the fatigue.

Okay! Okay! I know I am ranting but jeez……how can we get well and live a happier life if we keep pumping and medicating ourselves with food! So what do you think? Can we feel better or are we destined to feel crappy until we die? Can food make a difference, which is only part of the problem. We also have to deal with lack of proper rest to heal the body. Which I know is almost beyond reality. The “experts”, whoever they are, recommend 8 hours of sleep a night. WHO! Has time for that in our competitive world? Until the body crashes no one slows down to just live. So we are over fatigued running on poor nutrition and it is little wonder that we feel bad.

Sometimes a gal just needs to rant

So you have few things in the fridge you want to use up. You don’t want to lose those pork chops or the ground turkey. What about those veggies? There has got to be a way to use them up so they are not wasted. Denise Sinkora put this question out on Face book and got loads of possible ways to prepare these food items. Below is the recipe she settled on. Doesn’t this recipe sound yummy? With food prices on the rise it is important to make our food budget stretch. I think Denise came up with a winning recipe. What do you think?

.75 lbs ground Turkey
2 boneless pork Chops – trimmed of fat and cut in bites
4 – 5 cloves Garlic cut up
1/2 large white Onion chopped
2 tbsp Olive oil
1- 1 1/2 cups fresh Green beans halved
1 small bag Parsnips peeled and cut into bite size
about 8 baby gold Taters
Tons of Cumin – probably 1/8 cup
Lots (4 tbsp?) of Paprika
a dash of Hot pepper flakes
Lots (4 tbsp?) of Nutmeg
couple of cups of Water
wish I had some Shrooms (mushrooms)

I cooked the garlic and onion in the olive oil for a few, threw in the ground turkey then the chop bits, went through the spices and threw in as much of what I thought smelled like it would be interesting and unusual, the spice measurements are guesses as I really opened the top and had at it, washed and cut up the veggies, added a couple cups of water, stirred like Baba Yaga at her cauldron, cover and waited about 20 or maybe 30 minutes.  I was missing the shrooms but it was still good.  Serve with a slice of multigrain bread and butter.  YUM.  The parsnips added a sweet flavor that balanced the spice nicely.  Not bad for using up what might spoil!

If you try this or you use other ingredients let me know! I love using a recipe as “guidelines” rather than rules.

He’s got the whole world sleeping beneath a blanket of white
He’s got everything shining on a full moon night
He’s got kids of all ages, clowning around,
Building snow forts and knocking them down
He’s got frost on the windows, ice on the stairs
Smoke from the chimney and pine in the air
~ Old Man Winter lyrics~

This year winter is getting long in the tooth already. While winter officially started at the end of December it came in like a lion, did it not? Today I officially got the Winter Blues. So I decided to turn my thoughts to spring. Why? Because gardeners, like myself, tend to find this a very trying time of the year due to so little to do in the garden with only thoughts of spring to keep us happy. I can handle seed catalogs only so long and then I need to be outside. I am like a caged animal, if I cannot be outside daily it is not pretty and my husband, Skip, suffers the most from my tirades of being homebound. So this year I am trying to relieve him and myself with thoughts of gardening, cooking and bit of sewing. These are few things that get me by. With Garrison Keiller’s Prairie Home Companion on my IPod I am ready to muddle through a few hobbies.

Things that need to get done now for the gardening season are minimal but necessary. One is getting my garden shed in order. This is a perfect time of year to clean it up and sharpen the tools to be ready for spring. Because I live in the south I have a long growing season and for that I am thankful (I believe so is my husband). With that in mind since the winter is shorter it is a great time to access the landscape. For example, I have three unhappy pine trees and a few cedar trees that are struggling. They will need to be dealt with this year. I hate losing my trees. They are a major reason we bought the house we are in. I think I hale from the days of tree huggers, in fact, I am sure of it. But it is giving me some ideas on how to remodel the landscape. Every year I try to make it less about maintenance and more about flowering plants. Spring is a great time to cut fresh flowers for the table.

Since I am homebound my thoughts have turned to cooking new recipes. I made a great homemade applesauce which is sure to be a standby. My husband and I tried our hand at homemade pizza. We equipped ourselves with a pizza stone and a pizza peel. And for Christmas our son got dad a Starship pizza cutter. Just in time!

I am sure more recipes are to come from the S &A Test Kitchen. We both have needed to adjust our eating habits and find cooking new things a nice change of pace. Since my husband is a “Texan” we barbecue regularly. We usually go right on through the winter but this year has been colder keeping us inside. So we are practicing and sharing any new ideas we come up with you on the blog.

I got a sewing machine for Christmas. I had another one that was basic that I was doing quilting with but the new one can do embroidery and is progammable. So now I am trying new sewing techniques out. When I was a child my three sisters and I sewed. My mother made sure she taught us all. We always had material, patterns and whatever else we needed. Still to this day all my sisters sew with my oldest sister turning out quilts of award winning quality. Sometimes I am the happy recipient of one of her efforts. I love putting her work on display. I think that sewing has become a lost art today. Now it is used a lot for hobbyists but when I was growing up sewing was a necessity for clothing, quilts and whatever else we could mend and make useful. It is amazing how the mind can create when you need something. Sewing became a way of life even to this day. I have passed on some of these wonderful works of art to next generation.

I am hoping with sewing, cooking and garden planning maybe just maybe I can make it through this cold winter. I cannot get into to why it is cold. I don’t like getting carried away with the fears of global warming or other catastrophic thinking. It is hard to watch the Weather Channel when I hear some weather person getting ramped up about the weather. Many times I can separate that it is the Red Bull Energy drink from the real crisis at hand. I hear the weather person getting more and more ramped up and I know I am hearing the Red Bull not the weather. So I don’t get into that. I just know that being busy and keeping clarity is important. Until the first signs of daffodils let me know we are ready for spring.

I

Below are two recipes from the S & A Test Kitchen. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Homemade Applesauce

4 medium cooking apples, each cut in fourths

½ cup of water

½ cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

Heat apples and water to boiling over medium heat: reduce heat. Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally to break up apples, until tender (about 7-10 minutes). Gradually mashed apples with potato masher, here I like chunky so I have larger pieces as you can see in the picture.

Stir in remaining ingredients the heat to boiling for 1 minute, stir continually.

Next:

In the morning we are having waffles! I have made waffles from Bisquick or other shortcuts but decided to try a recipe for guidelines and I added a couple of personal touches. These were the best waffles I have made, light and buttery.

Waffles Recipe

2 eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour (King Arthur brand is the best)

½ cup softened butter (to room temperature)

1 ¾ cups milk

1 tablespoon sugar

4 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

Heat your waffle iron now! Then start putting the ingredients together. I used my Kichenaid which makes a big difference from stirring or using a hand mixer. And in the past the recipe called for vegetable oil or water, I purposely used butter. I beat in eggs, milk and sugar until glossy, added in the baking soda, salt and flour until creamy, about 2 minutes on medium-low speed. Poured into waffle iron until done, these waffles were light, rose nicely and the taste was lighter than if I used Bisquick or vegetable oil.

Enjoy!

Recently I have been getting into cooking again. I decided to pull out some old cookbooks and see what is in them. I have a “McCall’s Cookbook” that was my mother-in-law’s. It is copyrighted 1963. My husband and I faithfully used the corn bread recipe found in this cookbook but I had never taken the time to actually look through the recipes.

As you, dear readers know, I love pancakes. I have made Oatmeal Pancakes and traditional Pancakes but! I have never made Flapjacks. And there on page 72 is a great recipe for “Old-Fashioned Flapjacks. I couldn’t wait to share with you the recipe. So here you are:

3 eggs

1 cup sifted all-purpose flour (and yes, I really did sift the flour with a hand sifter)

3 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoon granulated sugar

1 teaspoon light-brown sugar

½ cup buttermilk

2 tablespoon butter or margarine melted

In large bowl of electric mixer (use my Kitcheaid) at high speed beat eggs until light and fluffy- about 2 minutes.

Into eggs, sift flour with baking powder, salt and granulated sugar. Add brown sugar; beat until smooth.

Stir in buttermilk and butter just until combined; do not over beat!

Meanwhile slowly heat your griddle or pan the test temperature by dropping a little cold water onto hot griddle; water should roll off in drops.

Use ¼ cup batter for each flapjack; cook until bubbles from on surface and edges become dry. Turn; cook 2 minutes longer, or until nicely browned on underside.

I hope you enjoy these flapjacks as much as I did. I love the fact this is in a family recipe book. And now it will be a recipe I use time and again. My mother-in-law was in the military and was a cook while serving as a Sergeant in the Army during World War II. I know you will enjoy this family recipe as much as I do!