A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Oh Fudge!: Peanut Butter Fudge, Egg Nog Fudge, and Opera Fudge Two Ways

The bottom layer is Kraft Fantasy Fudge substituting peanut butter chips for chocolate chips, the top sqare is old-fashioned (no marshamallow cream) Egg Nog Fudge from Jan McCracken's cookbook A Taste of Ozark Mountain Christmas, and the rose is fashioned from homemade soft caramels.  The gingerbread men sugar decorations are a gift from the wonderful folks at The Amish Country Store in Branson. 

Holiday baking is all about the family.  When I was growing up, and I mean this in no way disrespectfully, my mother was a little difficult to live with.  She died when I was in my early 20's and my brothers and sister were teens, but if she were alive today I am convinced she would have been diagnosed as Bipolar.  One of my biggest regrets is that she was not able to get the medical help she needed.  I have mentioned it a few times, not because I want to dwell on the past, but because it helps explain MY love for the holidays.  When I was growing up, our home was filled with lights and laughter, music and good will, and lots and lots of baking and smiles from Halloween through New Year's Day.  The rest of the year was a little rough.  We loved the holidays because it was when Mom was at her best and we all genuinely cherish those memories, they were the best of Mom and we loved her for the joy she brought to us through knitting, cooking, and being happy.

It's no surprise that I love all those things too.  Knitting and cooking for others are the ways I was taught to show love and I am very grateful for those lessons and being able to continue those traditions.

Another family secret I've talked about before is that only a very few of us are big chocolate eaters (James! ) with the exception of dark bitter chocolate.  Most of us could walk away from milk or semi-sweet chocolate any day of the week.  But Peanut Butter? That's a different story altogether.  We'd walk on beds of nails for peanut butter fudge. Same goes for white chocolate or good ole vanilla.

Today happened to be Make All the Cookie Dough and Get It In the Fridge to Chill Day along with Oh Fudge! Day.  On the list to make was a double batch of our traditional peanut butter and then I wanted to make a new recipe from Jan McCracken's cookbook A Taste of Ozark Mountains Christmas for Egg Nog Fudge. I know it will be a huge hit.  What could be better than mixing the silky spiceful taste of eggnog with the sugar meltiness of homemade fudge?  Not much!

By the way, I ordered three more copies of this cookbook to give as Christmas presents. I don't think there was a recipe in it I didn't want to try.  It's a "Christmas" cookbook but it had everything from candy and cookies to a whole section on cheesecake, plus all the normal categories like entrees, appetizers, etc. The book is laid out nicely with great downhome recipes with simple, easy to find ingredients, and easy to follow, uncomplicated directions.

Support Your Local Merchants: The Amish Country Store

I came in tonight from a girls' weekend in St. Louis and found a package waiting for me that said "Merry Christmas!" written in green Sharpie on the outside.  Hmmmm....I thought "Well, I have ordered a couple of Christmas gifts but someone from Amazon is certainly overrun with the holiday spirit!" Wrong, the sender was definitely packing holiday spirit but the box wasn't from Amazon, it was from another of my favorite stores:  The Amish Country Store in Branson.  The punchline is I hadn't ordered anything from them lately.  As Alice would say "curiouser and curiouser."  Opening the box, I found a lovely note from Matt Hayes thanking me for supporting them as local merchants and a sleigh full of goodies! 

OMG, I am so touched! Thanks Matt, your thoughtfulness really means the world to me. Completely unnecessary but beyond appreciated!  I am so happy that your family and mine have crossed each others paths in life.

On top of the goodies, that I am trying to decide whether to share with family at the family Christmas dinner or just be selfish and save for Gene and I (oh, I'll probably share! They're all much to good to hoard for just us), there was a lovely cookbook ATaste of Ozark Mountain Christmas by Jan McCracken filled with recipes from her Branson Bed & Breakfast. Matt also mentioned in his note that he'd shared my blog addy with Jan and that she enjoys reading me.  After flipping through the book and her web site www.janmccracken.com listing all of her books and tales of her B&B, I can say it's a mutual admiration society--way to go, Jan!  I have to tell you that the first recipe I turned to was for eggnog fudge. My family members are not big chocolate fans so we're huge fans of non-chocolate fudges like peanut butter, maple, and opera but we ALL love eggnog so guess which recipe will be the first I try?  THANK  YOU!  I have a feeling that one is going to become an instant family tradition.

You know, the world is full of wonderful people. I am so blessed to have been befriended by so many of them in life.

Fruit Cake IS Good...if you do it right

All my life I've thought fruit cake, even my cake baker Mother's, was the nastiest food on the planet.  It's dry, it's got GREEN pineapple in it, poisonous maraschino cherries (okay, just because they're approved by the FDA doesn't convince me that soaking cherries in formaldehyde, and then recoloring them with red dye and chemical flavors, makes for something good for the body), it's dry, it's tasteless, it's dry... well, you get the idea. You've all been tricked into taking a bite of the stuff at least once in your life. And I bet your swore off it too.

When I started blogging I noticed that all the English bloggers got all excited and into Christmas Cake each October/November and spent the next couple of months "feeding", nurturing, and dreaming out loud of their Christmas cakes.  I wondered what this wondrous stuff was.  I mean, come on, I grew up in a cake decorator's household and grew up to be a baker for a while too.  Was there possibly some divine cake I'd never heard of or made myself?  I looked more closely at those cakes on those blogs and was shocked, shocked I tell you!, to see that Christmas Cake was that other awful "F" word--Fruit Cake!!!

At first I thought it must be the seventh sign of the Apocalypse that a whole country would enjoy making AND EATING such a repulsive cake but then I started looking at the recipes and methods more closely and saw my favorite "B" word, as in "booze".  It was my Oprah "AHA" moment heard 'round my house!  The answer to good fruit cake was laid out in front of my eyes.  Our Puritan forefathers had obviously screwed the pooch on this one when they denied me alcohol in my fruit cake.

Okay, seriously, I think part of my problem with fruit cake is that I always expected fruit cake to be  "cake" and to Americans, cake is light and fluffy. I think it should be called "Fruit Bread"  because, honestly, it's much more of a fruited bread in texture and density than it is a cake, although the cake designation may come from the idea that a lot of non-Americans bake theirs in round cake tins, where we're used to the long square log of nasty.  So once I wrapped my head around the idea that it's really a bread, then I took the recipes that I'd been playing with this summer and combined them with my own baking knowledge to come up with my personal fruit cake/bread recipe that not only tastes great but doesn't require a cup of coffee or tea to wash down the sawdust aftertaste. It comes out a dense, moist bread with a sugary, fruity taste and a pop of smokiness from the whiskey.   It's good straight out of the oven but really something special after being fed for a month or two.  Give this one a try and you might change your mind about fruit cake like I did.

Good & Good For You: Slow Cooker Anasazi Beans

Anasazi beans are named for the Native Americans who inhabited the four corners area of Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico.  Anasazi, a Navajo word that means "the ancient ones", were most likely the original cultivators as crocks of the dried beans had been found in the cliff homes of these Indians in the early 1900's.  The return of the popularity of the bean in the last couple of decades casts a bit of a mysterious shadow, though. Supposedly out of cultivation for 1500 years, one story attributes new crops to an archeaologist in the 1980's who found a store of the them and successfully regrew them.  However, most botanists would say that germination on beans is only about 50 years so it's more probable that the beans had been grown here and there in the southwest until picked up by enterprising boutique bean growers.

 Because of it's similarity in taste to the pinto bean one of the more quietly (pun) interesting fact about the anasazi bean is that the specific type of carbohydrate that induces flatulence during digestion in other beans is only present in a quantity of less than 25% comparably.

Sweet and Savory Yellow Squash

 

Greg, a friend at work, told me to give this one a try:  sweet AND savory yellow squash.  It's quite simple.  Saute a diced large yellow squash in a couple tablespoons of butter seasoned with a 1/2 teaspoon of Cavender's All Purpose Greek Seasoning (or other all purpose seasong blend), and then add 2 heaping tablespoons of brown sugar and cook down until the butter/sugar mixture is thick and syrupy.

When he first told me I was a bit skeptical. I liked the brown sugar part but I wasn't sure about the savory spices. I was wrong. It's very good and a little on the different side. I expected for it to be all sweet, but the herbs give it another dimension that adds a little palate appreciation here in the later part of the season when we're all wondering about our zucchinis and yellow squashes:  "What ELSE can I make with it?  There still so much of it!"

Good AND Good for you: Creamy Cucumber Dip

 

So simple and yet so rewarding, this is a summer constant in my work lunchbox and snack around the house. Only three ingredients that pack an all-out taste power punch:  creamy for the tongue, crunch for the teeth, and salty herby for the psyche pleasure zone.

We eat this primarily as a dip on good fibrous tough stuff crackers or I love it as a sandwich on wheat or rye bread. Middle-of-the-night Afternoon Tea, anyone?

An added pleasure is anytime the cukes come from your own garden. Sigh.  The best part of summer is the garden!

David Leong & Springfield Cashew Chicken VOA Story

 

The rough cut of the Cashew Chicken report Suli Yi of Voice of America made is up on You Tube.

To view, click here:  Springfield-Style Cashew Chicken

(Thank you Suli!)

For more info on the interview itself and recipes, click here:  Voice of America Embraces Cashew Chicken

Breakfast from the Garden: Cherry Tomatoes

I'm in such a good mood this morning.  There is nothing better than a tomato sandwich made from your own garden tomatoes. Nothing that I can think of at this moment.

My poor tortured plants which have been watered inconsistently and battered by the winds of all the thunderstorms we've been having in the Midwest have survived to procreate after all, giving me a small handful of the sweetest, juiciest little darlings.  I couldn't wait until lunch, breakfast it is.

A simple prep of toasted home-made rye bread, a swipe of cream cheese, and a dash of locally made Cavender's Greek Seasoning are the perfect accompaniment to my little ravaged beauties.

Cavender's Greek Seasoning is an Ozarks tradition made right here. Well, the Arkansas Ozarks, as in, Harrison. It's funny. You know people who are devotees when you say the name. Their eyes get big, they lick their lips, and they moan "Mmmmmm...Cavendeeeeeerrrrrrs."

We love it on and in everything from soups to omelets to anything you would use a multi-purpose seasoning on.  My absolute favorite is summer veggie sandwiches, just like this morning's breakfast.  Home-made bread, cream cheese, plenty of Cavender's topped with fresh tomatoes, or cucumbers or paper thin sliced onions or....any veggie you can slice and place on bread, is made better by Cavender's. (I swear I'm not being paid to go on and on about them, I just love it that much.)