Wow. I'm stunned that so many of you want the bread cookbook I offered Sunday. When one person wanted it, I was relieved that it would finally be used. When three people wanted it, I thought I'd let Thor choose the lucky recipient. I'll figure out how to decide, and let you know later this week who got it. Anyway...
Sunday night I made a turkey breast. Since that's standard Sunday night fare, it's no big deal. I did pour 1/4 cup rose over it before I cooked it, and it tasted great, as, I'm told, did the gravy (which I don't eat). The rice had chicken bouillon cubes, butter and chopped green onions in it (yawn), but my favorite side for this meal was the baked apples.
I first learned about baked apples from the Southern Skillet in Maryville along about 1987. It's gone now, having been replaced by a Bel Aire grill, and probably by something else now, but I did love baked apples. I think apples and applesauce are perfect with turkey and pork; both go well with somewhat sweet side dishes. For my version, I like to use those little Macintosh apples, available all the time, and plan on 1-1/2 apples per person. Each segment is 2 bites, and it couldn't be easier. This is a recipe to serve 4 people.
BAKED APPLES
6 small apples
1/4 cup melted butter
cinnamon
2 tbsp confectioners sugar
Quarter and core the apples (I leave the skin on). Arrange them in a baking dish, and pour the butter over them. Sprinkle generously with cinnamon, and sift the sugar over them. Bake uncovered at 350 for about 15 minutes.
Tomorrow I expect to have something better to offer!
Valentine's Day is no big deal here in our little corner of the world. My dearly beloved's father always used to call it (along with Father's Day and Mother's Day) "Jewish holidays," meaning that the people who benefitted most were Jewish shop merchants, since where he came from, most of the candy and jewelry stores and florists were run by Jewish people, some of whom were his neighbors. I'm pretty sure the last time my beloved bought me an actual Valentine's Day present was either 1980 or 1981; however, every time he even thinks I want something, he tells me to order it, or goes out to get it. Case in point: my gurgling jug. So, other than an excuse to wear a pretty red dress (or, more often, pink), and buying candy for the kids, the holiday goes unmarked. And, yes, I did send boxes of Valentine's Day candy to each of the kids last week. I'm nothing if not a loyal mom.
I do have a point, besides "no celebrations yesterday!"
I have this bread cookbook which I don't use.
It isn't that it's not a perfectly good cookbook. Rather, it's for making bread without a machine, since it was written in 1984. There are intriguing recipes in it. There is even instruction for kneading bread. So, I was hoping that someone out there might want it. Leave me a comment with your email if you do, so I can contact you for your address.
We had warmer weather last week (almost 50 every day), and our 8" of snow melted off. Then yesterday it froze again, so our mud is solid.
Happily, I was able to go to a "you-hose-it" car wash, and take the road salt off my winter beater. Doesn't it look great for a 14 year old car? Driving a dirty car irks me; anyone else feel that way?
One of my boys was reading an encyclopedia Tuesday, looking for information on Mars for his research report, when he found me in that wonderful book! I was so excited! I knew all of you would want to know more about me for Dogs on Thursday.
According to the 2000 Encyclopedia Americana, which my humans own, 
because the mom is a book lunatic, I am very historic:"Mastiff - a very old breed whose forebears were used by the Romans to bait and fight wild animals." Well, I've always been told that my kind were the marching dogs for Julius Caesar's army!
"The heaviest of dogs, a male mastiff will sometimes exceed 180 pounds and should stand at least 30 inches at the shoulder." Yep, 250 pounds exceeds 180, right?
"Today's mastiff originated in England. He learns somewhat slowly...."
Mom says I was potty trained within 2 weeks of coming home, and I was only 7 weeks old then. Plus, you've seen the pictures of me in school! I have to disagree with this statement!
"They are seldom long lived. It needs a great deal of exercise, drools, wheezes and snores...."
Well, who's perfect?
"However, it is not only extremely gentle, patient and good-natured - even around inconsiderate children - but also protective of both person and property. It guards by holding the intruder at bay..." There you go! We're great guys! And, besides, who has inconsiderate children?
Happy Dogs on Thursday, Everyone!
Last night was Tuesday night. Hereabouts, that means I'm required by law to make Brownie Tuesdays. Unfortunately for me, we had no brownie mix (yes, I use mix for brownies, since my ungrateful offspring don't like brownies made from scratch). Fortunately, I was able to create a suitable alternative, no one called the police, and I was not forced to spend the night locked in the chief's garage (or in the shed with our plow truck). Yes, the town is that small, although I've yet to hear of someone jailed with the plow truck or in the chief's garage.
This is a recipe which came from a story my youngest read in Calvert School's second grade curriculum, about the son of a Jewish baker married to a Mexican, who had to bring food from his ethnic background to school for heritage day or something like that. Anyway, the kid brought Jalapeno bagels and Chango bars. No peppers ever enter my house, but the bars contained chocolate chips, and the boys were quite certain that they would enjoy making them, so we did. More than once. And, here they are for your culinary delight.
CHANGO BARS
1/2 cup butter1/2 cup margarine
2 cups brown sugar
3 eggs
2-1/3 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup mixed nuts
Melt the butter and margarine together. Meanwhile, cream the brown sugar with the eggs, then add the melted butter mixture to it. Blend in the flour, powder and salt, and mix until smooth. Stir in the chocolate chips and nuts, then pour into a greased 9"x13" pan, and bake at 350F for 45 to 50 minutes. Confession: having no mixed nuts, I used my old standby - chopped walnuts. No one complained.
This leads me to contemplate a question posed by Lakeland Jo recently as to why I homeschool. Well, that's somewhat complicated. My oldest 7 children started in private school, but it was 45 minutes from home. After a few years of them leaving the house (with me, of course) at 7:45 AM and returning between 4:15 and 4:30 PM, depending upon traffic, I decided that was enough, and put them in the local school. I drilled them on their basic mathematical functions, and taught them phonics and grammar (using a set of 1898 texts I had found at, you guessed it, a used book sale). Ryan was 5 years younger than Kellie, and I realized in first grade that the material the schools taught had been seriously downgraded. Mark is 3.5 years younger than Ryan. So, when Ryan was a few months short of 7, and in first grade, I was attempting to make him memorize his addition facts, using verbal drilling and worksheets. My exact words were, "This touchpoints and counting on crap doesn't work!" After a couple of weeks, Mark, then age 3, began giving me the answers, often before Ryan. So I started watching him out of the corner of my eye; the child had figured out the concept of addition. At first, he would put out, for example, three fingers on one hand and two on the other, and count them for the answer. Within a couple of weeks, he used only the second hand, and within a month after that, he simply had the tables memorized. Well, I have an entire house full of certified smart children, and I've never seen anything like this. I've been told that counting using one-to-one correlation is rare in 3 year olds, so this astonished me.
When Mark was 4, I started teaching him basic phonics. His birthday falls 2 full months after the school entry cutoff date, and I knew I'd never get him into Kindergarten, despite the fact that he was more than smart enough. Frankly, this is idiotic. My birthday is a couple of days before his, and I started Kindergarten before I was 5. I feel fully literate, can talk, and appear to have the ability to think despite the fact that I went to school "too early", so I wasn't going to hold back a highly intelligent child. Many years earlier, the director of a private school in Knoxville had given me a couple of copies of a magazine called Gifted Children Monthly, and I had kept them. In them was an advertisement for Calvert School. One phone call, and I had a complete Kindergarten curriculum, including a teaching manual; my little guy took off like a rocket ship. I was so impressed that I purchased their third grade curriculum for Ryan, so that I could teach him math, cursive and composition, after school. Well, he wanted to learn everything in the curriculum, so I taught him on weekends. After Mark completed Calvert's Kindergarten, in February, he wanted to go to "real school with Ryan." I called the school, asked if he could transfer from a private school in Baltimore, where he had finished their Kindergarten curriculum, and, miraculously, they accepted him. I had expected to fight to get him into first grade the following fall, but, here he was, going to school with his big brother. Within a week, the teacher, several aides from different grades, and parents who volunteered at the school were calling me to ask how I'd gotten him to learn this, since he was at what they considered an end of first grade level in all subjects.
And so the homeschooling continued. And I wouldn't give it up for the world.
First things first. Because several people asked, I have a Sunbeam bread machine, which I bought last summer, when my Breadman bit the dust. I ordered it from Amazon (Jeff Bezos, if you're reading, send me stuff - I'll review it for you!) and Thor's friend in brown brought it in. I had purchased one for my oldest daughter, now in law school, 2 years ago, when she moved into a house with her best friend's brother and boyfriend for roommates. She uses hers a couple of times a week, and her best friend uses it a couple of times a week, and it's evidently holding up well for her. I mostly use mine as a fancy mixer for the bread dough, although at least once a week I make English Muffin Bread using the delayed timer cycle. Believe me, the house smells wonderful when I do that - I almost want to get up in the morning. Almost.
Ahem. Back to real food.
Saturday night I was not in the mood to cook. No surprise there. But I had seen a recipe in the paper a while back for linguine in alfredo sauce with shrimp and other assorted stuff that I didn't have or don't eat. Well, I'm never one to let that stand in the way of a good idea, am I? So, creating from my freezer, cupboards, refrigerator and imagination, I turned out this:
ANGEL HAIR ALFREDO WITH SEAFOOD
2 pounds angel hair
4 tbsp (1/2 stick) butter
1 pound imitation crabmeat
1/2 pound asparagus, cut in 1" long pieces
2 cups heavy cream3 cups milk
1 cup parmesan
Ground black pepper
Melt the butter in a large pan. Saute the imitation crabmeat gently in it until it's heated throughout. Stir in the cream, pepper and 2 cups of the milk and heat it. Cook the angel hair, adding the asparagus to the angel hair water 2 minutes before the pasta is done. By the time it's finished, the sauce should be hot. Drain the pasta, add the parmesan and last cup of milk to the sauce, then stir the pasta/asparagus mix into the sauce. Serve immediately.
Note that I found the sauce too thick; I'd probably go with a little less parmesan next time. It was quite tasty, although my smallest fussbudget demanded that I make him plain pasta next time I cook this. Also note that despite the fact that this is only 2 pounds of pasta, I'd be surprised if it didn't feed at least 6 to 8 people (it's hard to estimate, because my guys are all huge eaters, and all skinny, and I'd hate them for that if I weren't so fond of them).
This may be blasphemy to some, but I'm here to confess: I don't like chocolate ice cream. So you won't be finding any here, unless I lose my mind and decide to make it for my kids during the summer. I guess that could happen; I've been accused of being crazy (by them) many times.
However, I am the world's greatest fan of vanilla ice cream. I adore French Vanilla ice cream. I could weigh 400 pounds if there was enough French Vanilla ice cream in my house. (Note to self: don't do it! Restrain yourself!) Anyway, I found this recipe for French Vanilla ice cream, and had a few sorry, store bought, semi flavorless but absolutely beautiful strawberries in the fridge. And so was created this, with, as usual, a way to not have to dirty every pan in the house to make it. Even with plenty of dishwasher space, I'm not a fan of rinsing, loading and unloading pots and pans. So, I use my Pampered Chef 2 quart batter bowl to prepare the liquid which will become ice cream and chill it, then pour it into the ice cream maker bowl, and return it to the Pampered Chef bowl when it's done. Voila! No extra dishes!
STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE ICE CREAM
3 cups heavy cream1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 cup sliced strawberries*
Measure the milk, and heat it with the sugar in the microwave 1 to 2 minutes, until the sugar dissolves. Whisk some of the hot milk in with the egg yolks, then whisk the egg yolks into the milk. Heat about 3 minutes, whisking every 30 to 45 seconds, until the mixture begins to boil. Remove from the microwave, let it stand 5 minutes, then add the cream and vanilla extract. Chill about an hour, then freeze according to your ice cream maker's directions. When it's about done, scoop strawberry slices in, and let it process one minute more, to incorporate the strawberries, and put it in the freezer for at least 2 hours. If you want to be fancy, serve it over sliced pound cake so it's really strawberry shortcake. As for me, I was lazy, and served it in bowls. 
Yes, some nights I'm so worn out I'd just as soon hand everyone a scoop of ice cream and wish them all a lot of luck. Note that I cut my strawberries into chunks, and they were too big: they became really hard after sitting in the freezer for a while. You can see that in this picture.
Next time (and my dearly beloved swears there WILL be a next time for this one), I'll slice the berries.
Have you ever seen one of these?
I bought a gurgling jug for my mother in law for Christmas 2 years back. I loved it, although I think she was less than impressed. So, I decided a couple of weeks ago that I wanted one too, and ordered it. This is made in England, and it makes a very loud gurgle when you pour liquid into a glass, and another gurgle when it's turned back upright. The little guys are delighted with the noise!
I make bread at least every other day. My older kids prefer store bought, pre sliced bread, and when they're home, and willing to go to the supermarket to procure it, that's fine. But I always have bread in the house for sandwiches, snacking, even feeding vitamins to Thor. Often, I make French or Italian bread (minimal ingredients and fuss). Last night, I decided to try a somewhat different bread from Beth Hensperger's Bread Machine Cookbook.
Except for English Muffin Bread, which I set on a delayed timer, so it's fresh and hot for breakfast, I use my bread machine as a mixer. Really, who can fault a nice, enclosed mixer, out of which the dry ingredients can't puff and leave a delightful dusty film on the counter? All of my breads can be put in the bread machine and ignored until they're done, but I prefer to shape them into traditional loaves. Let's just say it's a small reward for my being otherwise very efficient (or lazy) and doing everything in the minimal steps possible.
HONEY MILK BREAD
2/3 cup warm milk
2/3 cup warm water
6 tsp yeast
3-3/4 cups flour
2 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp honey
1-1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp gluten (optional)
Pour the milk and water into the bread machine's container or a mixing bowl and sprinkle the yeast over it. Add the remaining ingredients in the order given, put the container into the bread machine, turn it on and let it knead for about 10 minutes. Or, stir half the flour into the yeast mixture, add the oil, honey and salt, and the remaining flour. Turn onto a floured counter or board, and knead for about 10 minutes, until the dough is firm and shiny. Let rise 15 minutes, then divide the dough into 2 pieces and press into 2 loaf pans. Let the loaves rise until they reach the top of the loaf pans, 30 to 45 minutes, and bake at 350F for approximately 25 minutes, or until the loaves are as dark as you would like.
This was a very soft, surprisingly light bread with a lot of flavor from the honey. The boys ate quite a bit with their chicken dinner last night, which was surprising, since the chicken came with stuffing. G, if you did get a bread machine, this is an easy experimental bread for you!
He was a cute little dude, wasn't he?
At the age of 2, following his older sister.
Jeff always was a moose. On his sister's second birthday, when he was 11 months old, she weighed 21 pounds, and he was 25. No matter, she would tell him she was the leader. If he disobeyed, she'd tell him she was bigger, and slug him. Until the day he pushed her down.
I still think he's a mighty handsome guy.
I sent him a King Cake, and a present, by UPS overnight. After all, a guy only has one 21st birthday.
"I want lemon chicken for dinner," declared my youngest child last night.
"Splendid," I replied. This is the child who only likes orange juice and brownies, after all. So I came up, thanks to Craig Claiborne, a recipe that I thought would be suitable. The chicken was easy to cook, and quite tender and moist. Now, the original recipe called for this to be cooked in a skillet, but you know that's not in my 10 year infrastructure program. 3 to 4 pounds of meat in one skillet requires a lot of "taking turns", after all. So, cooked under the broiler (which works out well when the temperature is below freezing), I present you with...
LEMON CHICKEN SAUTE
3 pounds chicken pieces (I used boneless, skinless thighs)
1 stick butter
salt and pepper to taste
4 chopped shallots
1/4 cup chopped parlsey
1 tsp marjoram
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 tbsp cornstarch1 cup chicken bouillon
Melt the butter in the bottom of the broiler pan. Lightly salt and pepper the chicken pieces on both sides, and arrange in the pan. Broil on the highest rack setting for 5 minutes, turn over, and broil on the second side another 5 minutes. Remove the chicken to a plate and set aside for a few minutes.
In the same broiler pan, saute the chopped shallots for a minute or 2, until they are wilted. Whisk in the cornstarch, then whisk in the bouillon and lemon juice. Add the marjoram and parsley to the sauce, and return the chicken with any juices which have accumulated to the pan. Place the pan on the bottom rack of the oven, turn the temperature to 450F, and cook for 10 minutes. Top with lemon slices for decoration.
I served this with plain white rice and peas and carrots. Poor Thor only got rice and a little bit of gravy in his dinner dish with his "bites and bones".
And my little guy? "This was not what I wanted. I wanted lemon tarragon chicken."
You know just how exciting my weekends are when I tell you that the highlight of the weekend was my son taking me to Sam's Club to "check it out!" and get lots of exciting stuff in large containers. Well, I did enjoy the 11 pound boxes of dishwasher detergent, the 5 pound tub of animal crackers (my favorite cookie - really) was thrilling, and they had big containers of the vitamins Thor takes. Woo Hoo! Thor's vitamins are set for 200 days! Yawn.
Today it's snowing outside, again.
It's snowing in the backyard, too. I checked. I was hoping summer would be out there.
But I did make a Plantation Cake this weekend. I don't know why it's a Plantation Cake, and I certainly don't believe I ever had ancestors who lived on a plantation, despite the fact that the only ancestors of mine who arrived after 1840 or so are the guy from Denmark, and the two from Nova Scotia. (Can you immigrate from Nova Scotia to New Hampshire? Isn't that rather like immigrating to Virginia from New York?). Again, I digress. Anyway, the moment you've all been waiting for....
PLANTATION CAKE2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp ginger
1/8 tsp nutmeg
6 tbsp butter
3/4 cup hot water
3/4 cup molasses
1-1/2 tsp baking soda
Sift together the dry ingredients, and cut the butter in with a pastry cutter. Press half of this mix into the bottom of a greased 8"square pan. Mix the hot water and molasses, and stir in the baking soda. (Use a 4 cup measuring cup, so it won't fizz all over your counter. Consider yourself warned.) Pour 2/3 the molasses mix over the dry mix pressed into the pan, then sprinkle the remaining dry ingredients over it and drizzle the remaining wet mixture over the top. Bake at 350F for 25 to 30 minutes. Serve warm, topped with....
Lemon Sauce
1/2 cup sugar
2/3 cup water
1 tbsp cornstarch4 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp sherry (optional)
Stir the cornstarch with the sugar, and stir in the water. Heat in the microwave until the sugar melts. Continue to heat, whisking periodically, until the mixture thickens, then whisk in the lemon juice and sherry.
This makes the cake really good, and is great over ice cream, too! Check out the lemon sherbet, with and without lemon sauce.
