A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Scotch Eggs: It's What's for Breakfast

I first heard of and tasted Scotch Eggs at a Renaissance Festival near Kansas City with my cousin Ann. We both reacted "No way! This is so cool!"  And tasty too!  It's a great way to use up leftover hard-boiled eggs and a great presentation for company.  I also like, especially for company, that they can be prepped in advance and finished quickly for a charming presentation. 

The One Perfect Pancake of my Lifetime of Making Pancakes (And it's Whole Wheat too!)

 

This post supported by Detox Diet and Reader's Digest.

Isn't it pretty? All perfectly rounded, sitting just inside the inner rim of the place, the perfect golden brown. Okay, that's one perfectly round pancake I've made in 40 years of cooking! Usually, no matter how hard I try to spoon the pancake mix or twirl the pan all chef-like there's always one edge that sort of globs out all retarded and freakish-looking.  One.  Out of 40 years. 

I can live with that. 

This pancake has a hidden secret.  It's actually good for us!  Eating healthy has become a journey for me over the last couple of years. As in so many things in my life where instant gratification is is never realized, I finally realized that pursuing healthier habits in all parts of my life are about baby steps, not about throwing out the old and emerging from my bed a new person on a designated day. (Which is usually how I'd try to do it in the past.) I'd start a new "diet" by saying to myself at bedtime "Tomorrow I will start eating only healthy wholesome perfect foods and exercising for one hour and do it every day for the rest of my life."  Waking up in my new frame of mind, I would be that perfectly perfect wholesome creature up until about 10 seconds after my first breakfast before I had my Hobbit second breakfast of a slice of processed cheese and a Coke.  C'est la vie. Literally, that is my life!

It's Not That Complicated: Julia Child's Croques Monsieur/Croques Madame

 

While watching the movie "It's Complicated" on cable recently I found myself salivating at Meryl Streep's character's chocolate croissants, roasted chicken dinner, and something I'd never heard of before: Croques Monsieur.  In the movie she serves it to Steve Martin's character on a business-ish date while "hilarity ensues" from Alec Baldwin's character as he window peeps on them.  The dish, that they ate with knife and fork, appeared to have been baked and looked creamy and cheesy melty.  She makes reference to having learned to make this dish while in France studying pastry and the reference is repeated by Alec's character talking about how much he misses this dish and how special it was to him.

I thought to myself "Self, you need to investigate, create, and blog this wonderful cheesy thing they're spreading Dijon mustard on and eating with a knife and fork."  As myself often listens to me, I did, and I found that, like my polenta adventure, I was pretty familiar with the dish and remembered how much I liked it:  Grilled Ham & Cheese Sandwich.  That's the basic form and I've included that stripped down bare bones version as Julia Child made it.  There are gussied up versions that include baking in the oven rather than grilling in a pan, and added vegetables, eggs, and sauces, but the basic idea of the Croque Monsieur, or "Crispy Mister" is a Grilled Ham and Cheese Sandwich that was originally served in France in casual bistros around 1910 and has survived ever since. Why? Because it's yummy!  The key difference between a Croque and it's American cousin would be quality of ingredients.  It eschews Wonder Bread for a nice homemade loaf, Kraft American Slices for gruyere or Havarti or Swiss, and a nice ham slice. 

Crispy, hot, and cheesy, it's yummy comfort food with an exotic name.

Good & Good For You: Blood Orange & Lavender Olive Oil Muffins

 

My sweet tooth has been acting up a bit lately. No matter how much I try to feed it broccoli, it screams for sugar. I hate it when it gets cranky, but I will persevere. I'm a firm believer that I can eat healthy AND still satisfy my sugar cravings. My sweet tooth demanded orange: Orange martinis?  Orange jelly candies?  Orange Cake?  What we compromised on, my sweet tooth and I, was a batch of these delicious and good-for-you blood orange and lavender olive oil muffins.  Sweet, but not too sweet, and a treat without being empty calories.  With the addition of the whole wheat pastry flour, these muffins are a little heavier, a little more toothsome than so-called muffins that are really fluffly cupcakes masquerading as breakfast food.  More than breakfast, these are a fruity, flower-scented snack, that also contain a serving of good daily fat, for tea time or any time of the day I need a pretty little pick-me-up. 

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I'm Not the Only Cook in the House: Thanks Gene!

While I've been out of the loop a bit with a bad back, Gene's been taking up most of the slack around the house which I really appreciate! He's been held back by intimidation of me.  I'm not saying that to embarrass him but I really never considered it until several of our friends admitted they were intimidated to cook for me too.  I don't mean to be intimidating in the kitchen and don't consider myself to be any kind of snobby food gourmande but I get it now.  For all of us who have blogs and are fairly knowledgeable about cooking, it can be intimidating to people who don't have as much experience in the kitchen. For me, it's something that always came naturally because as the oldest and a daughter in a family of five kids I was my mother's sargeant-at-arms in the kitchen for as long as I can remember so I never had to cross that more adult psychological hurdle of "Can I learn to do something that seems hard?"  I never knew cooking could be hard so I never had to face that mind game.

Gene is over the hurdle and doing a wonderful job!

 

I love this pic of the roasted chicken butt but I wanted to make sure you all saw how he did this.

Click below to see more of Gene's meals and recipes...

Happy Valentine's Day: Banana Crepes with Chocolate Sauce

 

                           
 

Perfect for Valentine's at home:  pretty enough to have come from a restaurant and easy enough for anyone to do at home.  Although we'll be eating out tomorrow night with friends Jenn and Corbin, had we stayed home I might have made this.  As it happened, I created it for one of our Dexter dinners this past fall when Aunti and James gathered with us to eat dinner and watch the "D" man every Sunday night.

Later this week I'll be blogging about all the wonderful cooking Gene's been doing for me this week--sooooooo yummy!

Eating for Anemia: Crockpot War Eagle Mill 7-Grain Hot Cereal & Berries

 

After a recent lab test, I was informed that I am slightly anemic.  While I will be taking iron and B vitamin supplments, I can also help restore my body's levels through practicing good nutrition.  This is great motivation to follow through on one of my goals this year (and always) of eating more natural foods and less processed junk.

When we hear the term "anemia" most people automatically think iron supplements, and while those often are the treatment, there are actually two kinds of anemia: iron deficiency and red blood cell deficiency.

To continue reading...click below...

Pancakes from the Wheat Kernel Up: Freshly Ground Whole Wheat Pancakes for a Cozy Family Morning Together

By Guest Blogger Robert Kesterson

It may not look like it, but this is a stack of delicious buttermilk pancakes, in kit form. This recipe makes about ten pancakes -- enough to feed a family of four. If they're really hungry you might want to make a little more.

 

The one thing my family does differently since this photo was taken is that we buy raw milk so we can churn our own fresh butter and have natural buttermilk.

Ingredients:

2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar (raw sugar or honey work great)
2 cups fresh ground whole wheat flour
2 eggs
4 tablespoons oil (olive, walnut, and hazelnut all work great)

For all the ingredients, the rule is, the fresher the better. I grind the flour myself from wheat kernels (shown in the photo). The oil in whole wheat goes rancid once it is ground, so if you're buying whole wheat flour off a grocery store shelf, you're missing out. The eggs are fresh from free range chickens, and the sugar is raw, unprocessed sugar. Honey also works well. For the oil, you can use olive, walnut, hazelnut, or any other oil you like. The nut oils will give the pancakes a subtle nutty flavor that is just great. Melted butter will also work.

 

 

Preheat a large frying pan over medium-low heat, and preheat a cookie sheet in your oven on its lowest setting. Beat the two eggs in a bowl. Separately, mix the salt, sugar and baking powder into the buttermilk, then stir it into the eggs. Add the flour a little at a time and keep stirring until all lumps are gone. Then add the oil and stir until smooth. The batter should be very smooth and creamy.

 

 

 

Using a half-cup measure, pour a pancake in the middle of the preheated pan. The half-cup measure will make a pancake about six inches in diameter. Cook until the top starts to look a little stiff, and bubbles start to form in the batter. Then slip a spatula under it and flip it over. If it won't flip without tearing, you didn't cook it long enough. On the other hand, if it is stiff as a board, you waited too long. After flipping, cook until the pancake has stopped rising, has firmed up, and no longer looks wet around the edges. Remove it from the pan and transfer it to the cookie sheet in the oven to keep it warm while you cook the others.

 

Once all the pancakes are cooked, put them on plates, optionally add some fresh butter and real maple syrup, and serve immediately.

 

 

If you're making breakfast for kids, you can be creative when pouring the batter into the pan -- there's no law that says pancakes have to be round.

 

Happy Birthday to Me: Banana Walnut Baked Doughnuts with Cream Cheese Glaze

 

As a kid, I always asked for banana bread for my birthday, much to my cake decorating Mother's horror "But I'll decorate any kind of over the top cake you want, any theme!"  "Nah, we have cake all the time. I just want banana bread."

What an ungrateful child I was.  :-)

Most birthdays now I bake my own cakes and they're still never cake per se. Not that I don't like cake, I love store bought white cake and any kind of country-type cake, it's just that I learned cake decorating from my mom so a fancy decorated cake is fun for me to make for others but I still personally want to make myself banana bread or these doughnuts (was craving them yesterday)  or Almond Croissants  like three years ago.  Not that I'd turn down traditional birthday cake. Most people are intimidated to bake for me so I was genuinely thrilled and touched when my friend Barb, who will tell you up front she doesn't bake much, surprised me with a Home-made Carrot Cake for my birthday two years ago. 

Even though these are doughnuts, I did manage to sneak some health into them.  Seriously.  The flour is 50/50 white/wheat, honey instead of sugar, olive oil as the fat, walnuts and they're baked instead of fried.  And yet with all that, amazingly they're really yummy! Seriously.,

St. Lucia Day: St. Lucia Saffron & Raisin Wreath

 

St. Lucia Day is celebrated throughout Scandinavia and in Italy where St. Lucia was born and died a martyr under the Roman Emporer Diocletian, circa 300 A.D.  The story goes that while she was carrying food supplies into the catacombs to hiding Christians, she needed her hands free so she fashioned a wreath of candles in her hair to light her way.

That story, combined with Medieval superstions about the winter solstice being a night of evil lurking in the dark giving way to the light and goodness of morning, transcended into a celebration of St. Lucia, the girl with the lighted wreath in her hair leading the people out into the literal and philosophical light, freedom, and goodness, by having the oldest daughter of the family dress in a long white dress with a red sash and a wreath of candles in her hair serve saffron buns and coffee to her family on the morning of the holiday.

The story has always appealed to me.  As the oldest daughter, I like the idea of serving my family and if part of that is cooking, then I'll be there with bells on.  Or candles on. Or a mag flashlight or anything that won't burn me alive in the process of the fun.

To mark the day two years ago I made individual swirled saffron buns. They were lovely tasting but I wasn't crazy about the way the raisins looked. No big.  This year, though, I went for a different presentation method and loved the results!