Won't Read Directions

No. 3 Cream Pie

2011-10-17T18:48:00.001-07:00

Yes, it's been a while. Sorry to have abandoned you! Yes, it's time I got on with it.

I love pie. So does my Dad. He's fond of all kinds of pie, but chocolate pie is a special treat. And I love any recipe that will stick in my pathetic, junk-filled brain. This one will.
So here is how to make a cream pie. Any cream pie. It can be chocolate, banana, coconut, or lemon, depending on how you flavor it. For coconut, add shredded coconut and coconut flavor, maybe a little rum. For banana, add sliced bananas and a little nutmeg. For lemon, lemon juice and lemon flavor or zest, for butterscotch add caramel, and so on.
And for chocolate, add cocoa. Lots of cocoa. I like to combine the new "dark" Hershey's with the regular, but you can experiment with different variations.

The nice thing about this recipe is there is no "tempering" or straining or any of that bother. You are going to end up with a pie, not a sauce, for Pete's sake!

Step 1. Bake a pie crust. Prick the bottom. Hot oven, around 375. I use heavy "wachas" for pie weights, but some people use beans or nails or a chain. When it's cooked and lightly browned on the edges, about 15 minutes, take it out.

Step 2. In a heavy pan, add 3 cups of milk. Mix in 1/3 c. of cornstarch, and 2/3 cup of sugar. Are you seeing a pattern here? Also add 3 pinches of salt, and 3 egg yolks and 3 T. of butter. Mix well with a whisk. Now you can turn on the heat.

Step 3. Add the cocoa. For this very chocolate pie, I'm adding 1/3 cup of dark cocoa, and 1/3 c. of regular. The cocoa will float on the top, and that's okay. Don't be alarmed! If you are making a banana or coconut or butterscotch pie, add the banana or coconut or caramel right after it thickens.

Step 4. Heat it slowly and whisk a lot. You don't have to whisk it continuously, but don't wander off too far.

Step 5. When it gets hot enough, it will thicken up and all the cocoa will be melted and incorporated into the pudding. Take it off the heat and keep stirring until the moment you pour it into the baked crust. Let it set and cool. Put it into the refrigerator and put whipped cream all over the top before serving.

Thank you, Mrs. Hastings, for all those glorious pies you made for the scruffy little schoolchildren of Anthony Elementary! This is lovingly posted in your memory.

Rhubarb Gallette, Lard Crust

2011-07-02T10:46:00.000-07:00

I need to take a dessert to a dinner tonight with friends, so I was delighted (and surprised!) when the produce man came forth with a box of rhubarb when I asked if just maybe, oh, please, they had any in the back. YES.
Here in the burnt-up desert there's just not much call for this cool-grown fruit.

So instead of a shortcake or cobbler, I want to make a gallette, which is sort of a floppy, free-form pie with bottom folded over to make the top. I'm making it in a tart pan because this one is so big, and I need to transport it.

Furthermore, I have just decided recently, no more Crisco crusts. Lard just can't be too much worse for your health, and it's not like I make a crust every week or even every month. OK?

And here's why I prefer lard. You just can't beat the flavor, and there's no need to add vinegar or hold your mouth just so and cross your toes when you roll it out, it simply cooperates better all the way around.

So, the steps are:

Put 2 c. flour in a bowl.

Add about 1tsp. salt and whisk.

Get your lard and put in about 1/2 cup, cut in chunks.

Cut the lard into the flour until it looks like this.

Put the bowl in the refrigerator, and yes, mine is stuffed like a Christmas turkey.

Wash and chop the rhubarb. This is a big pie, so I cut about 6 stalks.

( added a couple of ripe plums that were hanging around)

Add 1c. sugar, 3/4 c cornstarch and a tsp of salt to the rhubarb and mix. The cornstarch is to soak up the excess juices.
Set aside.

Get your crust dough out of the refrigerator and get a cup of water.
Add most of the water, mix, add a little more and mix again. ( I love my dough whisk!)

When the crust mixture looks like this, with very little dry parts left, gather it into a ball.
Let the dough ball rest a second.

Put a little flour in your tart pan, if using one, or on the cookie sheet if not.

Roll out the dough. I love to use the coated butcher paper for rolling out dough. Just peels right off.

Put the dough on the tart pan. Stretch it out as far as you can.

Put about 1/4 c powdered sugar on the dough. Spread it evenly. This keeps the crust from getting soaked.

Put the rhubarb on the crust and fold over.

Paint with cream for prettiness.
Cook in a 365 oven for about an hour.

I can't wait for dinner.

Green Chile and Corn Tamales

2011-05-22T18:01:00.007-07:00

I ran across this recipe in the LA Times, adapted from "Mesa Mexicana" by Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger with Helene Siegel, and it sure looked wonderful. Here is the link:LA Times Recipe

Don't you just love tamales? The primitive wrapper, the masa that is so ... basic, and sustaining, and in this recipe, whole corn and green chile and cheese?

And... who knew that grits would make a good masa?

I just had to try this.

But I didn't want to fool with the fresh corn that was called for by the LATimes. Dried corn shucks are readily available here. Frozen corn is a lot faster.

Here's what I did. (This made about a dozen tamales.)

1. Start by soaking the corn husks in water.

2. Put a couple of tablespoons of butter in a pan and melt it, and add the frozen corn. Cook on high heat until the corn begins to brown.

3. Then add chopped green chile. Long green chile, or poblano chile, that has been roasted, peeled and seeded. I used 4 chiles, but it depends on how hot the chile is, and your own preference.

4. Put 1/2 cup of grits in a bowl and add 1/2 tsp. baking powder. Mix with a whisk.

5. Add 1 cup of liquid to the corn and chile; the recipe called for heavy cream. So I used a combination of evaporated milk, Mexican Crema, and water. (Because I didn't have heavy cream) And because I hadn't used heavy cream, I added about 2 more tablespoons of butter so the masa would be tender. Tamales need some fat, or you will end up with a grits hockey-puck.

6. After turning off the heat, add the grits/baking powder mixture.

7. Then add about 1/2 cup of shredded Monterrey Jack cheese. Mix well.

8. Let the masa/corn mixture cool.

9. Now take a wet husk and if it's not very large, use 2 with the large side on the edges. Put about 3T. of the mixture in the husk and roll it up. Tie one end with a strip of husk.

10. Put the tamales on a steam basket in a large pot and fill with water to the bottom of the steamer. Cover the pot. Steam gently for about an hour, re-filling the water on the bottom of the pot as needed.

Keep them warm for serving, covering with a wet towel in a warm oven.
OH, MY. They were delicious, and I was amazed at the amount of masa made by that little amount of grits!

A great side for a delicious steak. I will definitely be making these again.

The Five-Minute Mug Cake

2011-05-19T10:00:00.003-07:00

A friend sent me this recipe the other day. I've never liked the way baked goods turn out in the microwave, but I realized that you could frost it and not end up with something that looked exactly like a kitchen sponge.

Also, the time factor and the easy clean-up appealed to me. So... I decided to try it.

Here is the recipe as sent to me by my pal, Ray.

5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
A small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug (MicroSafe)

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
Pour in the milk and oil and mix well..
Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again.
Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts.
The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!
Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.
EAT ! (this can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous).

I only changed it a leeettle.

I used cake flour. You don't have to.

See my previous post about that.

I used Hershey's Dark Cocoa instead of regular, and I used three tablespoons.

I used walnut oil, because I had some!

Also, I added a pinch of salt.

I was afraid it would be stuck in the mug, but it did come out pretty easily. Yay! Next time, tho, out comes the Pam.

It was plenty for two people, as you can see. I cut it in half.

I made a little chocolate ganache with chocolate and a little cream in the microwave for 20 seconds. Stirred it up well.

And I poured the ganache on it and it was not beautiful, but it didn't look like a sponge.

As for the taste, it was good, but a little dry. *Choke* Here's what I would do next time:

The chocolate chips in the original recipe were (supposedly) optional, and I didn't use any, but they would add more fat, which was needed.

If you don't add chocolate chips, use more oil. I would say at least another tablespoon. Or two.

Also, I mixed it up really well, but probably could have done some more, and should have banged it on the counter before popping it into the microwave, because it came out with a "tunnel" inside.

Worth trying, and worth trying again!

Thanks, Ray. I'm all for chocolate.

Raised-Bed, Year 2

2011-04-26T08:06:00.002-07:00

This Spring has come with some events that have slowed me down a bit, as far as my blogging goes. And I won't be posting much new for a little while, but....
I wanted to show you how my raised-bed square foot garden is doing this year.

As you can see, it isn't looking quite as spiffy as it did last spring, and could probably do with a little "grooming".

However, I am happy to report that the soil underneath is great. The 6 inch tomatoes that I planted late in March are thriving and in spite of planting last year's seeds, the squash, okra, and cucumbers have leaped up. My weed prevention (weed cloth, straw and cooler pad fibers) has worked beautifully, and even tho it's covered with %$#* chinese elm seeds, only a couple have sprouted.
I have moved things around, this year the tomatoes are on the north edge, okra on the south. Don't know whether this is really important with these vegetables, but I do know that it's important to rotate crops.
Different also this year will be my pest control. I don't want to see any of those creepy squash bugs or their spawn this year, so early and often applications of Sevin will be used. Hats off to those who search with a bucket, but not me.

Black-eyed peas will be planted in a few days, they need a little more heat to grow, so this year the garden consists of:
Tomatoes
Okra
Zucchini
Yellow squash

Eggplant
Cucumbers
Black-eyed peas

Here we go, again!

Capirotada This Way

2011-04-12T19:09:00.011-07:00

Capirotada (kah-pee-roh-tah-dah) is a dish similar to bread pudding that is usually served during the Lenten season. I first had the pleasure of enjoying it when a fellow teacher brought some "leftovers" into the teacher's lunch room many years ago. Wow! So interesting and full of flavor; nuts and cheese and sugar, sweet and savory together. Just lovely.
I've since learned that the only thing that one Capirotada might have in common with another is the bread and the sweetness. Families have their own Capirotada just like their own Thanksgiving Dressing. Some add candy, some use tomatoes and onions with the bread and sugar "broth". All different kinds of cheeses are used, all kinds of bread. It's basically whatever you want it to be.
For an interesting treatise on the origin of Capirotada click on this link: Capirotada
So for whatever it's worth, having no family recipe to guide me, this is the recipe that I have settled on for ours.
Easter season would not be the same without it.

Here's what I use:
Old dinner rolls (stores around here sell these especially for Capirotada during Lent) torn up and baked until toasty and dry.
Raisins
Currants
Nuts (any kind of nut is good, this time I used some toasted piñones)
Apples
Butter
Piloncillos (Mexican dark cane sugar, or you could use regular dark brown sugar)
Aged cheddar cheese
Cinnamon
Cloves
Mexican Crema (cream similar to creme fraiche, for serving)

To make:
Tear up the rolls and bake them until dry and toasted. You will have to toss them two or three times while baking.

Now take three cups of water, some ground cinnamon or good cinnamon sticks, a few whole cloves, three or four piloncillo cones or 1 and 1/2 cups of brown sugar. Boil this for about 5 minutes, and then strain the cinnamon and cloves out. Put it back in the pan and now add the butter, raisins and currants. Boil 5 minutes more.

Take the toasted bread in the pan and add the apples, nuts and 1 cup grated cheese.

Ladle the hot syrup with the raisins and currants over the bread.

Cover it with foil and bake at 350° for 40 minutes.

Serve hot with cold crema on top. Happy Easter!

Onion Rings a la Jamie

2011-04-04T07:38:00.008-07:00

In El Paso there is a famous family-owned drive-through burger joint. Before McD's and all the others, we had Charcoaler. It holds a special place in the heart of every local yokel who was once a hormonally hungry teenager and fortunate enough to be able to drive through and chow down. My theory is that we imprinted it in our brains like a baby with it's mother as the ultimate in hunger satisfaction!
That's why former El Pasoans often make it their first stop in town before they go home for Mom's cooking. Really!
Everyone has their favorite order to yell at the speaker, but those onion rings are truly special. Crisp, salty, real onions and hot enough to melt braces, those onion rings can make you moan.
And darned if my neighbor Jamie made some the other day that could be mistaken for.....those.
It's one of those recipes that is just so simple you won't believe it.
You will need:
A white onion or two. Or yellow onion. Or vidalia onion. Whatever floats your boat.

All Purpose Flour
Salt
Water
Frying oil. I used peanut.
That's it.
Here's how to make them:

Slice the onions and put the rings into cold water to soak for a while.

They can soak as you are getting everything else together.
Mix 1c. all purpose flour, 1c. water, and 1 tsp. salt. Stir this glue (I mean batter) up well and let it sit.

Put about 3-4 inches of oil in a heavy dutch oven and crank it up.
Get another bowl and put in 1 or 2 cups of plain all purpose flour.
Line a pan with lots of brown paper or paper towels or even newspaper to place them on when they are cooked.
Check now to see if your oil is hot. Drop some flour in there and see if it foams and bubbles. If not, wait a while longer.

Take the onion rings out of the cold water, shake them around to dry them off, and dip 3 or 4 in the water/flour mixture making sure they are coated well, then put them straight into the bowl with the flour. You can either use your hand to coat them or just shake the bowl around until the rings are coated. Don't worry if they look pretty shaggy, that's the way they are supposed to be.

Put them (carefully!) into the hot oil and take them out when they are good and brown.
Sprinkle liberally with salt and serve.

".....and a Number 2, an apple fried pie, and a large chocolate milk over ice, please. Thank you, Mr. Cox."

Curry Chicken Salad for the Ladies

2011-03-24T15:34:00.006-07:00

I love, love, love Ladies' Luncheon Food. It's delicious, it's light, it's fancy. It's fun to eat.

And it's different from regular food, right, ladies?

Classic Ladies' Luncheon is, of course, Chicken Salad, and this is my favorite, even more than Helen Corbetts' Neiman Marcus Chicken Salad. And that's pretty darn good.

You can change this up any way you please! Poached salmon or smoked turkey instead of poached chicken; you can add apples or mangos or mandarin slices or dried cherries instead of grapes, you can add nuts, it's just whatever your little ol' capricious heart desires. Ladies' Choice.

So here is my choice.

You will need 1 cooked (I poach mine, that is, simmer in seasoned water until cooked) chicken breast for every 2-3 servings. Cooked rice, and that can be ANY rice. I mixed wild and brown rice together. This is about 3/4 cup brown rice and 1/2 cup of wild and it was plenty for 10.
I always remember a friend lamenting that you just have to cook the dawg out of wild rice, but I don't agree. I cooked it along with the brown and then added a little more water and cooked a little longer and even though it's not split apart and curled, neither is it rock hard. It tastes cooked. So there.

And this:
Celery (about 3-4 stalks)

Green onion (tops only, you don't want to ruin your day)

Grapes (red, green, doesn't matter but seedless) about 20, quartered. They were so darn big.

White pepper (1/2 tsp.)
Salt (1 tsp.)

Curry Powder (1and 1/2 tsp.)
Lemon juice
Mayonnaise (1c.)
Greek Yoghurt (not in group photo) (1/2 c.)

Olive oil (2T.)

And, Major Grey's Chutney.

This is IMPORTANT. Major Grey's Chutney is a jam made with mangos, tamarind, lime and spices, and it adds such an interesting sweetness.

So, slice your celery, onion tops and grapes up into a bowl. Squeeze a lemon over it and toss so that the grapes don't turn brown.

Then mix up the rest. Quantities don't really matter that much, just use your judgement. Add olive oil to loosen it up a bit. Pour it over the rice/vegetables/fruit/chicken mixture. Mix well with clean hands or instruments.

This tastes better when refrigerated overnight.

I'm serving with Banana/Pineapple Bread and cream cheese/butter.

It's really, really good. Ladies will like it.

Tostadas Compuestas

2011-03-03T16:01:00.022-07:00

Here is another dish from the Griggs Family. The recipe I'm using is from the La Posta Cook Book, as prepared by the late Katy Camuñez Meek, the original owner of the famous La Posta Restaurant in Old Mesilla, New Mexico.

This was the dish that everyone ordered at Griggs when they were trying to have a "light" meal. It was the menu item that my mother always ordered. This book says that the recipe originated at La Posta in 1939, and I suppose you could say that it might be the original "Taco Salad." It consists of a cup made from a corn tortilla, filled with Chile Colorado con Carne and beans and topped with iceberg lettuce, tomato and cheese.
This is the first time I have prepared Tostadas Compuestas. And to be honest, I probably won't be making them again, (following the recipe) but I'm glad I went through this exercise, if only to make the Chile con Carne. The next time I do this I will spray the tortillas with oil and lay them over an inverted cupcake pan and put them in the oven.
Here is what you will need:
Red Chile Sauce (see previous post about Red Enchiladas, or get a can or container of frozen)
Lean Pork cut in 1/2 inch dice.
Cumin

Oregano
Beans (see previous post)

Tortillas
Cooking oil (I used peanut)
A "wooden roller having a flat end" as says the book. ( I used a wooden muddler.)
Corn tortillas
Tomatoes
Iceberg lettuce
Grated Longhorn or Cheddar Cheese

Making the "compuestas" is one of those things that practice and experience really helps. That, and cussing.

First, cut four slits (the book says one inch long, I say 1 and a half) on the edge the tortillas, at 12, 3, 6 and 9. These will help the tortilla to form the cup when frying.

Heat up some oil hot enough to fry tortillas crisp, that is HOT. DONT USE MORE than a couple of inches of oil, it will rise up in the pot when you submerge the tortillas. Yes, I learned that the hard way.

PUT A HEAVY OVEN GLOVE ON THE HAND THAT HOLDS THE ROLLER. It gets hot down there.

Pushing the wooden "roller" into the corner of the pot helped me to shape the tortillas properly. I had to move it around some.

Compuestas finally done, fire put out, stovetop cleaned and 45 mins. later, I begin the Chile con Carne.

Katy says fry the pork "until brown" but apparently not completely cooked. She says it continues to cook in the sauce, but we're only working with half inch pieces here. Hmmm.

I used bacon fat and peanut oil to fry it with. Every cook should have a canister of bacon fat, to be used sparingly. Said my Nana, not Katy.

So then you add flour and make a roux, and then add water (or tomato juice?) and the red chile sauce. I had some in the freezer, thank goodness! Add Cumin and Oregano.

Let this cook 10 MINUTES! says the book, and you are finished.
Personally, I think I'm going to let it simmer a while longer and try to soften up that pork a little. Also let that big blob of frozen sauce unfreeze.

The rest of the instructions say to put "two heaping tablespoons of heated chile con carne and beans*in each cupped tortilla (is that two of each? or two of the both combined?) and garnish with shredded lettuce, tomatoes, and grated cheese." She doesn't say what kind of cheese, but I remember it being cheddar.

*Here's an interesting thing from the book about beans. La Posta Cook Book says "When beans have cooked tender, heat lard very hot and pour into bubbling beans." Wow! Talk about the secret ingredient! Bet you didn't know that the pot beans you were eating at La Posta had lard in them (2T per cup of uncooked beans), and if they were refried, 1 T per cup more than that. No wonder they tasted so good.

And as the book says, "A very colorful dish for a festive occasion."

Sarah's Egg Casserole for Big Breakfasts

2011-02-23T16:46:00.004-07:00

This was one of the very first recipes that a sweet girlfriend and neighbor gave me as a young bride.
It's the kind of recipe you don't need to read ever again once you've made it. It's so simple your left brain could make it, as mine has a few times.
The ingredients can be anything you have on hand, or think would be good to throw in; bacon, ham, cheese, chile, tomato, spinach, onion, turnips.
Hah! Gotcha.
Anyway, the basic recipe is:
1 dozen eggs
1 large (24oz) container of cottage cheese. (1 egg per every 2 oz. cottage cheese)
Salt
Pepper
And whatever you think would be good. In my case, this was chile and Monterrey Jack Cheese. Cooked sausage is a very good addition, as well.
Directions:
(Note: I'm making a half-sized recipe here)
1. Grease an oven-proof dish.
2. Turn the oven on to 325°.
3 Whisk the eggs.
4. Add the cottage cheese, mixing thoroughly.
5. Add your own "embellishments." (Or don't.)
6. Pour it into the dish.

7. Bake at 325° for 45-50 minutes. (Or, keep refrigerated until morning, as I did, and cook it then.)
8. Cut in squares to serve.

Baked Chiles from Seasoned with Sun

2011-02-17T14:34:00.003-07:00

This is an oldie-but-goody recipe and a fine side-dish to serve with beef. My mother liked to serve it for "company" dinners, but it only takes about 15 minutes to put together, and if you've got this, a steak and a salad, you're set.
You will need :

Original recipe from Seasoned with Sun

1 or 2 chiles for every person.

1 egg for every two or three chiles.
A can or two of stewed tomatoes.
*Stewed tomatoes are peeled and cooked just a little with celery and bell pepper. Plain stewed tomatoes are very common in southern food.
Sometimes they are also Mexican style or Italian style. For this I like the plain Stewed.

Monterrey Jack (or cheddar, colby or longhorn) cheese. I found a blend of cheeses in my refrigerator, but I prefer just Monterrey Jack.

An onion.

Butter. Forget about "margarine".

And( this is my own addition) about a tablespoon of flour.
Here are the steps:

1. Grease an oven proof dish.

2. Stuff the chiles with cheese.

3. Lay the stuffed chiles in the dish with a little space between them. Let the stems climb up the sides.

4. Chop the onion and saute it in butter (or ok, olive oil) until it's translucent.

5. Add the can of stewed tomatoes (and a pinch of sugar) and saute a few minutes.
6. Pour it over the chiles.

7. Separate the eggs.

8. Whip the whites.
9. Then add a tablespoon of flour to the yolks with a teaspoon of water and good pinch of salt. Mix well.

10. Fold the whites in with the yolks.

11. Spread this over the chile/tomato mixture.

12. Bake about 30 minutes in a 350° oven. I don't know why the recipe in SwS says 45(to 60!) minutes, that's just wrong.

This is definitely good enough for "company", or just your favorite people!

Fried Chicken, Redux

2011-02-05T16:51:00.008-07:00

Again with the chicken? Why?

Well, because, last summer when I had to make a TON of Fried Chicken for a couple of fried chicken lovers' Very Important Birthdays, I decided I needed to streamline my method of frying chicken a bit. I needed to move things along, get it going, hurry up, dammit, too many other things to do! Like sitting down to rest! And then I decided that I liked the finished product better after the streamlining.
And so, for the sake of complete and full disclosure, and to help others sit down and rest, I am changing the way I fry chicken. Forever.

And in honor of "Justified"'s 2nd season on AMC, here is the newer, cleaner, quicker, more powerful way to fry chicken! Less cleanup, less standing, less dipping, less worrying about raw chicken. I think Raylan would approve!

The only hitch is this: you need to plan ahead. This method of frying chicken requires that you give it enough oven time to ensure thorough cooking.
Here is what you need:

Peanut Oil

Self-Rising Flour

Regular Flour

Salt

Paprika

Garlic powder

White Pepper

Chicken. Size of the pieces doesn't matter.
Here are the steps:

1. Start with rinsed and dried unfrozen chicken. Soak the chicken in buttermilk. Just buttermilk. This is not technically a brine, but the buttermilk is salty and the enzymes in the buttermilk tend to break the meat down a little. You can do this for a couple of hours or overnight.

2. Mix self-rising and all-purpose flour in equal proportions. I had a lot of chicken to fry for this batch, so I used 2 cups of each.

Then I added 1tsp. white pepper, 1tsp. paprika, 1/2 tsp. garlic powder and 1 T. salt.
Mix all this with a whisk in a large bowl.

3. Set your oven to Bake at 200°. Line a roasting pan with brown paper and a rack if you have one. If not, just the paper do. Put that into the oven.

4. Put about 4 cups of peanut oil into a heavy dutch oven and crank it up. Give it about 5 minutes to heat up really well.

5. While the oil is heating up, take two or three pieces of chicken directly from the buttermilk and put them on the seasoned flour. Lay them down gently, and leave them for a minute, then gently flip them over. Make sure all parts have been dredged in the flour. Then let it sit for a couple of more minutes to bond.

6. When you are convinced that your oil is hot enough (bubbling), carefully put the (3 or less, never more) pieces of chicken in. Turn the heat to medium.

7. After about 5 minutes turn them over.

8. When the chicken is dark golden brown all over, (in other words, about 5 more minutes or until it looks perfect) take it out and put it into the roasting pan. Don't worry about pink insides, it's going to cook some more. But it's not going to get darker, and it will stay crispy.

Continue with the rest of the chicken, and when you are finished, leave the chicken in the oven for at least another hour to make sure it's all cooked. If you are nervous about it, check the deepest part of the biggest piece of chicken with an instant read thermometer and see that it's over 165°. It should be.

This beats KFC. Any day.
So, what do you do with the left-over oil?
As well as making a very fine coffee, Chock full o'Nuts makes a dandy old oil receptacle.

Sopaipillas

2011-01-26T18:46:00.003-07:00

Going out for Mexican food is one of the best things about living here, in this funky old town that never changes fast.
Bet you didn't know that a city of close to a million could exist in the US without having a Williams Sonoma, or a Pottery Barn, a Whole Foods, or even a Trader Joe's anywhere near it, didjya? "Keep El Paso Backward," as the man says.
But, boy-howdy, do we have our Mexican restaurants! And we love them.
And of course, we have our own little whang on Mexican food; it's kinda New Mexico, kinda Northern Mexico, kinda Tex-Mex. But it's all good. And we have sopaipillas.

The correct pronunciation by gringos is something spanish-speakers have given up on completely. You used to hear the waitress politely but pointedly saying "so-piy-piyas" but hardly ever, now. And you can forget all about Ruidoso EVER being said right.

But even if we don't say it right, we do love sopaipillas and honey. And they are easy to make. Yes, I said easy. All you need is some ready-made flour tortilla mix, some baking powder, and some water. Oh, and some oil to fry them in. That's all.

First mix a teaspoon of baking powder in with a cup of tortilla mix. Use a whisk, and get it mixed up good.

Then add 1/2 cup of hot water, plus 2T. more. Mix this up and the dough should look like this, reminiscent of play-doh.

Let it rest. Rest, little dough ball.

Then roll it out as thin as you can. That should be about 1/8 of an inch.

Cut it into large triangles. It's important that they be large, if you want inflation to be successful.
Let it rest a little more. You can do this while you heat up your oil. I used canola this time.

Get it hot. Really hot. Bubbling hot.

Then put your triangles in, one at a time. They should blow up like little pillows. Little, fried, greasy, delicious, pillows.

Take them out and let them rest again, this time on a sheet of brown paper. (or several)

Whether you dredge them in sugar and cinnamon is up to you. I find that to be overkill.

Serve them with honey, and the idea is to make a little hole, pour the honey into the hole, and turn it around until the insides are coated. Then eat.

Yes! Exactly what you needed after the tostadas, chile con queso, enchiladas, refried beans and sopa de arroz.

Chile Con Queso

2011-01-23T15:17:00.003-07:00

Well, there's some football watching going on over here, and my guys want some Queso. It's a tradition.

Chile con Queso is chile with cheese, and there are some really rank canned imitations being served out there in fast/junk food land.

And I'm not claiming that the kind I make is the authentic, original way to make it, but it is certainly a step above the pasty orange grease that is being ladled out over salt-laden fake tostadas at snack food stands. Not a giant step, but a step.

So, okay, you start with green chile. You should use a lot, after all, the dish is chile with cheese, not cheese with chile. I am lucky enough to have green chile available all through the year here, but if it's just impossible for you to get fresh chile you could use canned, but rinse them well. (Or, you could just throw up your hands and use Rotel, no shame in that.)

I could tell as I coughed cleaning it that it was going to be HOT, so this was enough.

Chop some onion and saute it with the chile for a few minutes, until the onion is cooked or transparent. I am using a steel bowl to saute so I can just move the whole thing over a pan of water for a double boiler. You really need a double boiler to make this, it's too easy to ruin over direct heat.

Add the tomatoes. I used canned diced that I had rinsed and drained.

To that add evaporated milk, 1 large can to start, and you might decide you need more if it's too thick.

Then add Velveeta. I know.
Velveeta?

Velveeta is a kind of processed cheese. Velveeta is used as a base to melt in the rest of the cheese. If you don't use Velveeta or can't find it, it is possible to just use the evaporated milk as a base.

Then throw in the real cheese. I used Monterrey Jack for this but you can experiment with Cheddar, Colby or Longhorn and decide what combination you like the best. Colby/Jack works well, too.

Then it's just a matter of letting the water boil underneath and stirring until the cheese is all melted. And you're done.

Enjoy the game!

Tlalpeno Soup at Cafe Corona

2011-01-09T18:56:00.020-07:00

A long, long time ago, I remember...

There was no better way to enjoy a blustery cold winter day than to go to over the bridge to Juárez for lunch. The market was so much fun! Beautiful things to see at Decor and El Patio, then a late lunch at Julio's Cafe Corona. Pitchers of margaritas! And we're talking tequila, triple sec, and lime, none of that phoney mix, nuh-uh. They were fuerte... but sooo delicious.
And we were young, then.

Julio's still exists in El Paso, and is still wonderful.

But this is how I remember that Tlalpeño Soup. (Pronounced talpenyo). Like a swig of tequila, it warmed your mouth and chest. The heat and smokiness of the chipótle with the fresh sharp onion, tomato and cilantro, mellowed by the rich broth and succulent chicken were perfect compliments. What a dish!

First, cook your chicken and make the caldo (broth). I'm cooking a whole chicken because it makes the broth divine.
I use a pressure cooker, but it really doesn't matter. A soup pot and a long simmer is just fine.

To the whole chicken add celery and onion and garlic, salt and pepper and water. Cook until it is falling off the bone. In a pressure cooker this is about 40 minutes.

When it is cooked, strain the broth from the meat into a colander lined with paper towels, and let the meat cool. This takes most of the fat from the broth without having to chill it.

While the meat is cooling enough to pull off the bones, you can chop up the other ingredients:

Tomato

Green onion top and a little thin sliced white onion.

Green jalapeño, seeded and finely diced.
Cilantro (or Parsley, if you are averse to Cilantro)
Avocado

When your chicken meat is removed from the skin and bones and chopped, you can compose your soup.
Put your broth in a saucepan and turn up the heat.

In a soup bowl, put 1 chipotle chile and some adobo (sauce).
Follow that with chicken meat (and be generous, this is a meal!)

A heaping tablespoon each of onion, tomato, and cilantro. A little bit of the jalapeño.

A half of an avocado, cut into bite sized pieces.

When your broth is SCALDING HOT, pour it over the contents of the bowl.
Serve with limes, the best bolillos (french rolls) you can find, and butter. And maybe a margarita!

And there it is. If only we could go back in time.
If only Juárez could be like it was then.

We are horrified, daily, at the continuing nightmare of carnage and tragedy in that city.
Please pray for the good people of Juárez, and all of México.

Cracker Jack's Skinny Cousin

2010-12-19T14:19:00.079-07:00

This recipe was the result of necessity and invention and the munchies. And trying to stay away from candy.

What to do? Here I was with some free time, a book to read, and needed....yes I really needed, something sweet but not high-calorie-sweet.
I had some popcorn. Hmmm.

What would happen if I melted some of this natural cane sugar with a little pancake syrup? (Which contains corn syrup, useful when cooking sugar.)

Let the sugar cook until it was liquid and clear-ish? About 5 minutes on medium heat. (Don't let it burn!)

Sprayed the popcorn with butter flavor oil and salted it...

Threw in some slivered almonds?

Poured on the melted sugar and stirred like mad?

Wow. All I'd need is a prize!

Cake Flour

2010-12-13T19:53:00.081-07:00

I like to make cakes. Everyday, not fancy, spur-of-the moment kind of cakes. And it's easy, if you know proportions.

Decide first how big a cake you want to make. 2 c. of flour is regular, 3 is extra big.

You will use almost as much sugar as you do flour. 2 cups flour, slightly less sugar.

Fat and oil should make up about 1/3 c. per cup of flour. 2 cups flour, 2/3 cup of butter or oil and butter combined. Beat this in with the sugar for the first step. Whip it until it's "fluffy" or some semblance thereof.

1 egg per cup of flour, plus 1 extra. Add to sugar/fat mixture one at a time.
Measure out your flour and add salt, 1/4 tsp. per cup of flour.

One teaspoon of baking powder per cup of flour. Whisk this in with the dry ingredients.

Alternate adding flour and liquid to the sugar/butter/egg mix.

Use liquid enough to make your batter thick and not soupy. This "liquid" can include fruit, and I would start with a quarter cup per each cup of flour used.

Use your imagination. Add whatever seems right.

But use cake flour.

And I have a problem with store-bought cake flour. For one thing, it's in a box. And I'm pretty bad about searching out expiration dates--who has time for that? So I see a box of flour and I wonder how long that's been sitting there, and if it will infest my other boxes of stuff with weevils. I'm not looking to get protein that way, thank you very much.

This is definitely the best way to have cake flour ready to use.
Get a nice big canister; I happen to love the large clear ones because I can see what I have.

In a big mixing bowl, put 2 cups of all purpose flour and 1/3 cup of cornstarch. *The other recipes I have seen are silly, with measuring out cups, and removing some flour, and adding cornstarch then, but this really makes more sense and less mess.

Mix them up with a whisk.

Then put them into a sieve and shake it vigorously over the big bowl. You can do this multiple times if you wish, but let's not get too crazy here.

Place this mixture into your canister.

And you're done. Now go make yourself a delicious cake.

Fruit Cocktail Cake

More Plum Pudding, Tiny Tim?

2010-12-09T17:12:00.008-07:00

There are two things my little Kiwi mother cooked that I know came from her family tradition; Mint Sauce for lamb, and Plum Pudding. She was always too scared to flame it and so didn't, and didn't make Hard Sauce, at least I don't remember that, but the Cool Whip was just fine, thank you.
I'm kind of a cream snob these days so that's what I'll top mine with, but finally I got busy ahead of time and made my Plum Pudding. For Mom.

The most difficult part of the whole thing was finding suet, and that's one thing I made sure I got because I remember that Mom said it just wasn't right without it!
I knew that suet was the hard fat from around the kidneys of beef, and that you grate it up like hard cheese, which it resembles but actually looks and feels more like tiny soap flakes.
So if you are going to make a Plum Pudding, the first thing you need to do is find either an honest-to-goodness butcher shop or, as in my case, a grocery store that cuts up the beef carcasses.

Here in El Paso, I bumbled around until the nice man at the Ruidoso Market downtown (where everyone assured me I would find it) told me to go up the street to Silva's Market.
Silva's is nestled right down at the bottom the Stanton Street Bridge from Juarez, and you need to ask for "sebo de res". A great big chunk of this stuff will cost you one whole dollar.
Hot Damn! What a buy!
For a lovely Plum Pudding sans suet, see http://makinglifedelicious.com/2010/12/11/english-plum-pudding-aka-christmas-pudding-aka-cake/

Anyway, after you procure your suet, chill it well and grate up however much you need.
Here is the way I have the Plum Pudding figured out:
In a large bowl, combine equal amounts of:
Bread Crumbs
Self-rising flour
Grated Suet

In my case, I used 8oz. of each, but could have used 10 and had enough room in my steamer mould.
Add these spices, generously, and by that I mean at least a teaspoon:
Mace
Clove
Nutmeg

Cardamom
Allspice
Add 1T salt and half as much brown sugar as the amount of flour, that was 4 oz.
Add 4 oz. each (half as much as the flour) of:
candied peel (I used just a bit -- fruitcake phobia, but next time I'm leaving it out altogether)
golden raisins (Sultanas! don't you love that word?)
currants
chopped date
chopped prunes (hence "PLUM pudding")
and a chopped apple.
In another bowl pour125ml. ale ( Stout in English recipes) You would of course increase if you used larger proportions of the rest.
and 4 eggs, or half as many eggs as ounces of flour.
Mix that in with the dry ingredients and pour it into a heavily greased bowl or steaming mould. Cover with wax paper or cloth and tie securely, or use a covered mould like mine.
Put it into a stockpot with the water coming up halfway the bowl, cover, and boil softly all day.

Or, put it into a pressure cooker with the pressure gage OFF, put the top on and simmer for 1 hour, then, add more water, put the pressure gage ON and cook about another hour. This is to give it time to rise before "really" cooking.
NOW, here is where it gets mysterious. Supposedly, you can just put this away into a cool cabinet and leave it alone until right before serving, when you steam it AGAIN for a while to get it warm and moist.
I cannot abide the idea of something that's to be eaten NOT being in the fridge, so of course that's where mine is. I think I remember Mom leaving hers in the pantry, but maybe not?

The verdict -- it's good. It tastes pretty much like my mother's, but doesn't seem as dark as hers was. Possibly because I didn't give it a liquor "bath" as my Auntie recently recommended. Hard to do when there are non-drinkers to partake.
It makes me think of my sweet mother and all the generations of women before me who did their best to make Christmas as special as it could be. Merry Christmas!

Magic Tomato Box

2010-11-30T20:26:00.004-07:00

Not really magic. But it does work.
As usual, I had a bumper crop of late tomatoes. Summer was too, too hot and dry, but this fall the tomato plants were very happy.
So, when word was that it was going to frost, I went out and picked a big bunch of green tomatoes.
The ones that were starting to turn went to the window sill and we're still eating them now.
The ones that were solid dark green I did two things with.
1. I made a batch of green tomato/jalapeño relish.

2. I put the rest in a box of sawdust with a couple of apples on the bottom and left it in the garage.

I really didn't know if the sawdust/apple combo would work or not, but have not had much luck with any other method in the past.

This worked like a charm, and continues to do so. Some weren't quite there yet but I'm sure another week will turn them red. Not as tasty and juicy as off-the-vine ripe, but tomatoes nonetheless.
*Follow-up. Every single dark green tomato turned dark red. The flavor was comparable to store-bought, so $ saved. Heh-heh.

Turkey Sopa -or What Do with Rest of the Turkey

2010-11-26T16:27:00.001-07:00

Sopa is a spanish word that causes some confusion, because it's used slightly differently in different regions of the spanish-speaking world.
It sounds like soup and doubtless the words come from the same origin. Sometimes it is used for "soup", but more often it is some kind of starch (bread, tortillas, rice, or pasta), cooked in a broth or liquid.
Hence, "sopa de arroz" is the ubiquitous tomato-y rice pilaf that is served with all "Mexican Plates".
In other parts of Texas you wouldn't call this sopa, you'd call it enchiladas, or some kind of King Ranch Casserole, but I prefer the word Sopa, and I like my sopa to be very simple and minimal. I exclude a lot of Tex-Mex add-ons, such as other vegetables or lots of herbs and spices, such as cumin. There is just way too much cumin being tossed into "Mexican" food, IMO. Ditto for cilantro.

We always have so much white turkey meat left over, this is a wonderful way for me to use it up. So here is how we make ours, and of course you can do this with chicken as well.
I usually use Long Green Chile, but this time of year the long green is too flaco, so I'm using Poblanos. They are always gorgeous.
I learned at A Little Cup of Mexican Hot Chocolate that if you boil your chiles first, the skin comes off easier when you roast them, so I do that.

Then I spray them with a little oil and put them under the broiler, which is quicker for me than over the flame, but you don't get as much of that wonderful smell in the kitchen!
Into a baggie they go to steam and cool off.

Then I peel and de-seed them, and it really works better using a paper towel and a little sharp knife than under the tap.

Grate the cheese, Monterrey Jack. I guess this is about 2 cups.

Put 2 cans of Cream of Chicken Soup into the blender with about a cup of milk and 2 poblanos. Blend that up good.

Assemble your ingredients:

Turkey, Cheese, Chiles, Soup, and of course, Corn Tortillas. Salt and Pepper.

Layer 1: tortillas
Layer 2: turkey meat
Layer 3: chile strips
Layer 4: cheese
Layer 5: soup
Continue until you have used up your ingredients or filled your dish. I like to finish up with a big layer of cheese.

Cook for 1 hour at 350°. Or, you could freeze this and have a wonderful dinner ready for another day.

Of course, you need some beans to go with this meal. To me, this is one of those "comfort" foods that always makes me feel better. Must be all the carbs! Or the chile.

Mango Salad, a regional classic from Seasoned with Sun

2010-11-24T09:13:00.003-07:00

Here in our sharp corner of West Texas/New Mexico, our most popular regional cookbook is Seasoned with Sun from the Junior League of El Paso.
The original, published in 1974 and followed by several later variations, is sub-titled, "A Blending of Cultures", and that says it all. This cookbook is about what happened when Margie from Dallas got together with Maria from Durango in the kitchen to fix dinner. It's about cooking with what's plentiful and common in this area, and using Northern Mexican foods and culinary techniques in new ways, as well as in the time-tested and traditional ways.

There are certain dishes from "Seasoned with Sun" that have become traditional in many homes, especially at holiday and entertaining time.

One of these is Mango Salad. Straight out of the 60's, (in a good way), it's tangy, light, and refreshing; a perfect side for a holiday dinner, and since it must be made ahead of time there's no last minute interference with the turkey and gravy preparations.
Here's what you will need:
3 boxes of Lemon Jello. In a pinch you can use another kind, but lemon is the best.
1 box of cream cheese
1 can of sliced mangos in syrup
1 or 2 limes

1. Drain the mango syrup into a measuring cup.

2. Add enough boiling water to make 3 cups, then add the jello and dissolve it.

3. Blend the cream cheese and the mangos.

4. Stir it into the jello liquid along with the juice of 2 small limes or one large one.

5. Pour it slowly into a large casserole. This will be enough for a crowd. Then cover and chill overnight. If you wanted to, you could make this several days ahead of time.

6. Serve on a lettuce leaf with a nice dollop of sour cream or crema (creme fraiche) and a sprinkle of brown sugar. Good for any dinner, luncheon or brunch.

Seasoned with Sun, the Original, can be found at the following link, or at Amazon.com

http://www.jlep.org/?nd=store

Adventures with Quince, or Membrillo

2010-11-07T19:17:00.146-07:00

One of my very favorite appetizer/snacks is Manchego Cheese with Ate de Membrillo, or Cajeta de Membrillo, or even Dulce de Membrillo. It's very sweet, but with a sharp tartness at the same time, very.... refreshing and tangy. Combined with the mellow, salty funkiness of the manchego... delicious. Perusing through a neighborhood store the other day, I saw some quince and decided to have a go at it, even though my history with candy is mainly disasters.

You can find this in some stores.

I have consulted dictionaries and translators, and apparently there is no consensus on what to call this unusual and sweet delight. Ate is supposed to be "quince jelly" but in Mazatlán you can buy Ate de Guayaba (guava) or Ate de Membrillo (quince), and Mrs. Griggs calls it Cajeta de Membrillo which is quince caramel. So since there are probably many equally correct names for it, for my purposes, I'll just refer to it as Membrillo, and it is pronounced mem-bree-yo.
Here is what I found in Wikipedia about Membrillo:
"In Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela the membrillo, as the quince is called in Spanish, is cooked into a reddish jelly-like block or firm reddish paste known as dulce de membrillo. It is then eaten in sandwiches and with cheese, traditionally manchego cheese, or accompanying fresh curds. In Portugal, a similar sweet is called marmelada. It is also produced and consumed in Hungary where it is called "quince cheese". The sweet and floral notes of carne de membrillo (quince meat) contrast nicely with the tanginess of the cheese.^[7] Boiled quince is also popular in desserts such as the murta con membrillo that combines ugni molinae with quince. Similar dish exists in Dalmatia, Croatia."
In Mexico, sometimes membrillo is eaten as jam on toast or rolled in sugar as a candy.

Well, to get to the gist of this tale, I followed Josephine Griggs' recipe (which had left out an important step). And then I compounded my mistake by thinking I could leave it in the oven to cook instead of cooking it on the stove top. ¡Tonta!

And, I hate to admit it, but I did that twice, cooking up two batches of burnt quince jam that didn't set. Aaaarghh!

Finally I found a recipe in Allrecipes that mentioned an essential step: you must drain the water out of your quince before adding an equal amount (in weight) of sugar. Then add the juice of a lemon and about a teaspoon of salt.
Here are the steps:
1. Clean and chop your quince. You don't need to peel it. I used about 6 large ones and got a 10x13 pan full of finished product.

2. Cover it in a heavy pan with water and low boil it until soft, around 20 minutes.

3. Put the quince into the blender and blend it, using only a small amount of the boil water.
Blend it into a fine puree.

Important! Drain most of the water out!

I didn't use this dish to cook, only for measurement.

4. Put it back into the pot, add the equal amount in weight of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, and the juice of a lemon and cook in that heavy bottomed pan over medium low heat. a Give it a good stir every 10 minutes or so. The color will change from yellowy-tan to a lovely shade of pink/orange/brown as you cook.

When it starts making large bubbles that pop loudly and shoot burning hot quince all over the place, and you can see the bottom of the pan when you pull a wooden spoon through it, you know you are done.
5. Pour it into a cake pan that is greased and lined with waxed paper. Heating the knife before you cut makes nice cuts. I like to sprinkle chile powder on mine before serving.

Enjoy your delicious Membrillo! Wide mouth jam jars would be a perfect way to package this for gifts, maybe with a chunk of Manchego and some crackers.

Griggs Ensalada de Col, or Cole Slaw

2010-11-05T15:29:00.005-07:00

This Post is being done as a Public Service.

One of the main things people seem to remember from Griggs Family Restaurant is the Cole Slaw. None of that sickly sweet, mayonaisey stuff, no pickle juice, no pineapple, not for Josephine, no siree. This was a slaw that made your taste buds stand up and salute! Vinegar and Pepper! Yeee-haw!

Did you know that cabbage in Spanish is col, as well as repolllo? I didn't, until I read Mrs. Grigg's Cookbook.

So, if you've ever wondered where "Cole Slaw" came from, there's your answer. Now, as for the word "Slaw"... ¿quíen sabe?

I also happen to think that the oil and vinegar in this recipe made for a slaw that would "hold up" as they say in restaurants. No fears about bad mayonaise here, you could probably just jar this up and keep it on the shelf. Just kidding... (A little...)

So here it is:

Take a small head of green cabbage and shred it finely. (Or you could buy the pre-shredded stuff and take your chances on "fresh").

A side note: Am I the only person in the world whose mother had her convinced that this was just as good as candy? And I never could convince my kids. Oh, well...

Mix:

1/4 c. olive oil or Wesson oil (from the book)

*2 T. vinegar (white, as I remember, but apple cider vinegar would be nice.)

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. coarse grind black pepper (that's not how I remember it in the restaurant, I remember fine ground pepper straight from the can)

*I have to note that I ended up adding 2T. more of vinegar. You might want to add more, somehow I think that Mrs. Griggs didn't share everything with us on this one. Please tell me what you think.

"After cabbage is shredded, mix remaining ingredients together. Add to slaw, mix well and chill before serving." I used latex gloves and my hands. This takes a lot of tossin'.

This is a fresh, healthy and zing-y accompaniment to any Mexican dish, and a great alternative to plain old shredded iceberg.
You're welcome!

Chile Verde

2010-11-03T09:17:00.005-07:00

There are a ka-jillion variations for Chile Verde con Carne, or green chile with meat. Some call for tomatillo, some for tomato, some for potato, some have lots of spices. Some are for beef, some for pork. Everybody has one, as they say. Including my Dad.

Dad makes himself a big pot every week or so in the retirement apartment where he lives. He then eats it several times during the week for lunch. He never gets tired of it, and although I wish he ate more vegetables, it's a healthy, low fat meal.
His recipe is: chile, round steak cut into pieces, potato, and onion. Sometimes garlic, sometimes not. Water with beef bullion cube. Salt and pepper. He cooks it a long time on low. That's it. He doesn't brown the meat or the vegetables and he uses only round steak. He learned from a butcher that a local Mexican restaurant always used round steak, because the cooked meat held together and didn't disintegrate into vague beef-ish stuff. His weekly batch definitely needs to hold up.

I use round steak as well, but sometimes I'll cut up a tri-tip or a chuck roast because I like the flavor. You could certainly use "Stew Meat".

Personally, I like Chile Verde that doesn't have potato.
Here is how I like to make mine:
You will need;

(for 6 servings)

2 1/2 lbs. of trimmed round steak.
seasoning (I like Great American Steak Seasoning) and flour
6 (minimum) green chiles, peeled and seeded.
1 small can of tomato sauce
1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic
oregano
1 bottle or can of beer or 2 cups of water.
Cooking oil for browning the meat and vegetables.
1.Season the meat with seasoning and flour lightly. Cut into bite sized pieces.
2. Heat up a heavy dutch oven and put a small amount of oil on the bottom. ( I use peanut oil for browning)
3. In batches, brown the meat well. Remove from the dutch oven.

4. Cook the chopped onion, garlic and chile and 1/2 tsp. oregano until it's slightly browned.

5. Return the meat to the pan.
6. Add the can of tomato sauce and the water or beer.
7. Cover and put into a 300° oven.

8. Check after 2 hours for tenderness and add liquid if you need to. You can cook this all day if you want to.

Serve with flour tortillas.

Popcorn Balls at the Lion's Club Carnival: My Re-creation.

2010-10-28T13:59:00.009-07:00

This time of year makes me crave red enchiladas. And pomegranates. And popcorn balls.

Yes, the popcorn balls that were sold at the pokey little Lions Club Carnival that was held in my pokey little New Mexico hometown.

My mother, being a member of the ladies club that made them, always packed the sticky corn around a big fat marshmallow, and I thought that was just divine. I considered myself gypped if I didn't get one made by my mom. Indignant!

But today I didn't want to fool around with a double boiler, and lots of butter, and marshmallow creme. So...

I popped the corn in this.

I have to admit that this was a recent purchase. This is NOT the same hot air popcorn popper that I had about 25 years ago. That one was sold in a garage sale, along with my melon baller. Could you possibly be surprised?

I sprayed a little butter flavor oil on the pan, then on the corn, then salted it. Back then, you snuck it in, but now we've got salt crystals sitting on sweet stuff just like that was normal!

Then I mixed in some mini-marshmallows.
Yes, I know it. This is going to end up tasting like Fruit Loops. So do yours with white ones!
Then I put it into the oven (350°) for 5 minutes.
I took it out and pushed down on some parchment paper on the top of it really hard. Moosh, smoosh.
And when it was cool, I cut it with a buttered, serrated, knife.

And I was happy. Now excuse me while I go find some dental floss.

Puppy Reward Treats (that won't eat your lunch)

2010-10-17T15:07:00.004-07:00

My Baby Boy, Oliver, really, really likes his treats. He's giving me the stink-eye because he's wondering why I am calling his name for no apparent reason, and if he will have to give up those chewy bones. No worries, Ollie. Just wanted to take your photo.

I've been training Oliver how to do the regular doggie stuff, sit, stay (working really hard on that one), come-right-this-minute, don't pee on the floor, all that. As all dog trainers know, dogs respond fast to edible rewards. And faster to really tasty rewards.

However, a person could go broke buying store-bought doggie treats! In desperation I searched online and this has worked like a charm. I never would have thought of using hot dogs, and doing it this way saves you from having a stinky wet mess on your hands or in your pocket.

1. Buy the cheapest weiners possible. Fud! Why does that make me think of Forrest Gump? Or those Hukd on Foniks jokes? Anyway...

These were about $.79 for a package of 6. A package of 6 will make a ton of treats if you do it this way. Cut them in half lengthwise, turn a quarter turn, and cut again. Then cut them in slices about the width of an uncooked macaroni noodle.

2. Spread them out on a paper towel, and cover with another paper towel

3. Roll the towels up like a burrito.

4. Put the paper towel burrito in the microwave for 4:00 on high.

And when they are finished, take them out and let them cool, then separate any that got stuck together. They should be almost completely dry and crispy. They will keep almost forever in an air-tight container. Ollie and Josephine think they are the best thing they've ever tasted, ...with the possible exception of cat poop.

Mom's Recipe Box

2010-10-13T18:55:00.004-07:00

I was going through my mother's recipe box this morning.
She had gotten very confused around the time they moved off the farm, and complained a lot about not finding her recipe box after the move. About not finding anything after the move, dammit!
However, when my sister and I were cleaning out the house later, I came across it in a kitchen cabinet.
I was hoping to find many of the everyday recipes that she cooked often; but of course those weren't ever written down, ...she just cooked! Maybe I could find her recipe for chile con queso? Nope.
What I did find were about 13 variations on chicken/broccoli casserole, 11 kinds of "impossible" or "unbelieveable" pie, 8 kinds of apple cake (I wonder which one was her favorite?) , and lots of praline, brittle and fudge recipes. Mom had a sweet tooth, for sure.
A good many of them were cut out of the newspaper. That Ann Landers must have been some cook. And Heloise had some goodies, too. I am definitely going to make that Jamaican Barbeque sauce.

Also, almost every single one of these recipes calls for either "oleo" or "Crisco". It's a wonder we are still alive, having consumed so much trans-fats in all that time.
In the end, what I found that interested me the most were recipes from her lady friends that had their names on them, in their own writing, or else written by my Mom on a scrap of paper. Now, you know that if Mom had asked right then for the recipe, it was good.

So, first up, Esther Claire Brown's "Flemish Steak". This just sounds wonderful.

Flemish Steak, serves 6
Melt 1/4 c. butter and pour it into a large covered casserole. (Restaurant supply steam tray pans are fabulous)
Slice 3 onions and put them over the butter.

Pound 1/4 c. flour (and I added some steak seasoning) into 3 1/2 lb. of round steak, (trimmed, of course) I learned the hard way that pounding flour into a piece of steak could turn into an "I Love Lucy" mess if you didn't put the steak into a plastic bag before you pounded it.

Place on top of of onions and bake at 450°, uncovered 35-40 minutes until browned.

Reduce heat to 325° and add:
1 bay leaf
2 whole cloves (I used a pinch of ground clove)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. rosemary and......
2 bottles of beer. (all the recipes I found that remotely resembled this used good Ale)
(I added 1 tsp. of dijon mustard)
Cover and bake at 325° until tender. This might be 1-2 hours. Or more.
Arrange on a platter, top with juices and chopped parsley and chives. (or serve on a plate)

Really rich mashed potatoes are called for with this, dontcha think? This recipe actually turned out to be all I thought it would. The Ale and the spices made it so flavorful! Mom, thanks for asking for this recipe. And I'm so glad you kept it.

SusieGee's Roasted Veggies

2010-10-10T18:28:00.005-07:00

My friend, Susie, made this the other day for a Very Important Meeting. The reason for the meeting was to discuss and resolve various issues in the world at large and in our local community. While drinking various forms of alcohol.
....Right.
Anyway, everyone was going nuts over Susie's veggie thing, which we ate on pita chips.
Here is how she told me to make it:
1. Peel and cut an eggplant into small chunks. Lay it on paper towels and salt generously, then leave for 45 mins.
2. Pat it dry gently and put it in a sheet pan with olive oil and roast at 450° for 35 mins.
3. Cut up red onion, yellow, red, and orange bell pepper, and 6 cloves of garlic and put them on a sheet pan.
3. Add (all drained) 2 jars button mushrooms, 1 jar pitted kalamata olives, a small jar of capers, a can of un-marinated artichoke hearts and a container of cherry tomatoes. Mix it up in the pan with more olive oil, salt and pepper. Bake at 450 for an hour, stirring at 15-20 minute intervals.
4. Mix this with the eggplant. Done!

We all love, love, loved this dish, and felt like the world was a much better place after having eaten it.

...Right.

Anyway, I decided to see if I could make it but be lazy and cheap. So here is what I did.

1. Peeled and cut the eggplant, or in my case, eggplants, because they were small.
2. Put them in a colander and salted the heck out of them.
3. Waited 30 minutes.
4. Rinsed them off.

5. Tossed them into a roasting pan.
6. Then I cut up some red onion, green bell pepper, omitted the garlic, and put it all in with the eggplant.
7. Added fresh mushrooms, washed and chopped,

then the olives, the artichoke hearts, the capers, the cherry tomatoes, a lot of olive oil, granulated garlic and a little bit of Italian herb mix.
8. Tossed it around good and put it into a 500° oven for an hour.

And it was good. Thanks, Susie, for your contribution to peace, love and understanding throughout the world.

Mojito Tilapia; My Dish of Fish

2010-09-28T19:23:00.003-07:00

Often I think, "We should eat more fish."
This is mostly because I think our West Texas rotation of beef, chicken, beef, pork, beef, lamb and beef decidedly needs some variety. For some reason, nobody around here loves salmon. Trout is fine when you can get it, but the bones are a hassle.
So what else is available? Tilapia.
Nutritionally, compared to other fish species, tilapia is not an especially healthy choice because the farm raised tilapia is so high in fat, but it is high in protein, very low in carbs, a good source of vitamins and minerals, has very low sodium and mercury content is nil. It is mild and un-fishy. And it's cheap. And, let's face it, anything home cooked is better than take-out.

The best thing this particular recipe has going for it? It's delicious, dead easy and quick. If you keep frozen tilapia fillets in the freezer you can have this on the table in 15 minutes. Here's what you will need:
Rice
Butter
Limes
Fresh mint leaves
Tilapia fillets

Step 1: Start your rice. I think you need some good brown rice to go with this dish.

2. Chop up the fresh mint leaves.

3. Put the tilapia fillets in some warm water to thaw.
4. Cut some nice juicy limes and get out your lime squeezer. You'll need about 1 for each fillet.
5. Put a couple of pats of salted butter in a skillet. I like to use carbon steel because of the way it browns.

6. Heat the butter until it's starting to brown.
7. Put a paper towel-dried fillet in the butter and cook for 2 minutes.

8. Turn it over and grate some lime zest over the fish.

9. Squeeze some lime over it, too.

10. Cook another 2 minutes and check to make sure it's flakey and cooked through.
11. Put it on a plate of hot rice, spoon any juice/butter in the pan on it, and sprinkle mint leaves over it.
12. Nice with a glass of crisp white wine.

Yes. We should definitely eat more fish.

Chope's Tapatias

2010-09-25T18:33:00.016-07:00

"Chope's" is a very famous restaurant/bar in La Mesa, New Mexico. Doña Lupe's tortillas were homemade when I was a child, and a bean burrito from Chope's was something that I loved just as much as fudgesicles or peanut butter and jelly. Her green enchiladas were made with jalapeños, and you needed to have your feet nailed to the floor when you ate them! The Chile Verde was, and still is, succulent, tender, and can cure the common cold.
But I have another favorite, too. Tapatias.

Lupe Benavides with great-great grandchild

The Tapatias at Chope's are like something your Mom would make on a busy weeknight; light, tasty and easy to get on the table. No body part is going to burn, now or later. All the major food groups are represented; vegetables, lettuce, meat, cheese and corn tortillas. I think it was Margie Benavides (maybe Amelia, or Cecilia, it was a long time ago) who told me how to make them and I'll think of their welcoming and hospitable family and my friends and loved ones in La Mesa every time I serve them.

Here's how to make it:
Cook a pound of good quality lean beef with seasonings, as for tacos. I used a mixture of garlic, onion and Consomate. Let it get cool.

Slice a head of lettuce into thin ribbons.

Take some corn tortillas and put them on a cookie sheet sprayed with oil. I used olive oil. Put them in a 350 oven for about 15 minutes and take them out when you have reached the desired level of crisp. I like mine just slightly soft, not quite as hard as tostadas.

Cook a bag of mixed vegetables . I used the microwave kind. Throw it in the same dish as the cooked, cooled meat, along with the lettuce.

Add 2 tablespoons of good mayonaise to the meat, vegetables and lettuce. Stir it around to mix well.

Get your cookie sheet and put the baked tortillas on it. Mound the the meat/vegetable/lettuce mix on top of each tortilla.

Sprinkle the tops with grated Monterrey Jack cheese, and run them under the broiler for a few seconds until the cheese is melted.

And there you have it. I ♥ Chope's.

Griggs Empanadas

2010-09-19T16:41:00.007-07:00

One of the recipes in Mrs. Griggs cookbook that I've been wanting to try is the empanadas; it's one of the many dishes from Griggs Family Restaurant that I miss on a regular basis. Mincemeat empanadas were the perfect dessert after a plate of red enchiladas. Today seemed like a good day to try my hand at it.

You can see from the recipe that it's simple enough, in fact, sparse in the instructions, but I like the economy. If you don't have a jar of mincemeat and have instead, as I did, a box of the kind that needs to be reconstituted, you ought to do that first. Then:

Mix 2 cups of flour, 1 tsp. salt and 2 tsp. baking powder by sifting it together. Cut in 2 tablespoons of "shortening" which I took to mean Crisco into the flour. Then the recipe says, "Add only enough milk to make a medium dough."

Well. Hmmm. I thought about that, and decided 1/2 cup of milk would probably work, and luckily I was right. I wrapped the dough in plastic wrap and went out for a while to play with the pup.

About 30 minutes later I rolled it out, as instructed, very thin. This is important! I found out why when I fried them.

She said to cut them in circles 3-4 inches in diameter. I found a saucer that seemed about right, and cut 5 out of the first rolling. Then I took the scraps and rolled it out again for 2 more, so I had seven in all. I think if I had rolled it just a little bit thinner I could have done 8.

When you fill them, paint some water on half of the inside edge and put a tablespoonful of filling in it. Close it up by pressing the edges together and then crimp the edge with a fork.
Do not poke any vent holes in the crust, you don't want the filling leaking out into the hot fat.

Yes, I said fat! Mrs. Griggs says fat, which I take to mean lard, and that's what I used. And I learned something about frying in lard. First of all, it makes a beautiful brown crust, and two, it cooks really, really fast. This isn't like frying chicken, where you can toss in the chicken and turn away for a couple of minutes. This will burn very fast if you let it!
Empanadas cooked perfectly brown in a minute or so on one side, then the other. If your dough was too thick it would be raw on the inside.
A shake of powdered sugar on top, and they are ready to try.

Yep. Just like I remembered. Mrs. Griggs surely has a winner there.

Griggs Empanadas

Sift the following:
2 C. AP flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1tsp. salt

Cut in
2 T. Crisco

Mix with 1/2 C. Milk until it forms a ball
Rest the dough 30 mins.
Roll out very thin.
Cut into circles 3 to 4 inches diameter.
Brush water on half of the edge of the circle.
Place a heaping Tablespoon of filling slightly off center.
Fold long side over and press closed, then crimp with fork tines.
Fry in hot lard until golden brown.
Dust with powdered sugar.
Serve warm.

Easy as Cobbler

2010-09-15T18:46:00.003-07:00

It's been awfully busy. Getting started at school again, new puppy, all kinds of business going on. What's an easy dessert? Cobbler.
My Mother made cobbler often. It's just such a snap to throw together, and of course, it's much better nutritionally than a cake or cookies.
Here's how to get one together in about 5 minutes flat. Then you have to cook it, of course.
I use frozen blackberries or mixed berries all the time. You can use any kind of frozen fruit.

Sometimes I will find a bag that has been hiding (for a while) in the freezer. If that happens, just put your berries in a colander and run cool water over them. Good as new, right?

Put your berries in an ovenproof dish and add sugar. For this much I add about a half cup.

Then add instant tapioca. Again, I used about half a cup.

Add some lemon juice to brighten up the berries, about 1 lemon will do.

Add some salt because it sharpens up the flavors. Now you can just stir it up and top it with some chunks of butter.
Everything's better with butter, right?

Okay, now for the cobbler part. I used a cup of self-rising flour. That way I don't have to mess with baking powder.

To that, I add a small amount of sugar. Best to let the berries be sweet and the cobbler contrast a little bit.

Salt, again, and then stir it well with a whisk.

Add vanilla, and about a cup (for a batter, you need about the same amount of liquid as flour) of half and half or cream. This was half and half, because that's what was in the fridge. You could also use buttermilk, or just plain milk.

Whisk it smooth and into the oven it goes, 325 for about 45 minutes.
Make sure the cobbler crust is completely done before you take it out, and the berries are all bubbly. Wow, isn't that easy?

Carne Picada at H&H

2010-08-24T18:07:00.018-07:00

The most famous of all the hole-in-the-wall restaurants in El Paso is H&H Carwash. I, myself, have been talking about it since, oh, 1958. Yes, since then!

Well, I was a toddler, and the reason was that I could mimic the KHEY radio announcer saying, "H&H Carwash, right across the street from the Tasty-Pastry Bakery!" And for some reason my Dad thought that was real funny and clever of me.

Anyway, they serve a dish there called "Carne Picada." Which means, basically, chopped up meat. What it really means is that you will be served incredibly delicious diced beef, tomato, onion, and jalapeno that has been seasoned and seared perfectly on a very hot griddle. It will be served either as a burrito with a dollop of guacamole (the diet version) or as The Plate, which is with refried beans and rice and grill-warmed flour tortillas.
Both Kenny Haddad and his cook told me how to make it, and I can present a pretty good approximation; but for some reason, the plate that you are served in H&H is, ... well, just more perfectly Carne Picada. There is some special magic in the old gas stove or the hands of the hard-working woman who stands over it all day that makes it wonderful.
So, even though this will not be exactly the same, here's the recipe:
1. Mix granulated garlic, salt, pepper, and a Mexican tomato/chicken broth powder called Consomate in more or less equal amounts. This is the seasoning that will get sprinkled over the beef and vegetables as they are searing, and it's key to the flavor of the dish. They go pretty heavy on the black pepper at H&H, but I will use a little less.

2. Dice up some Tri-tip. This is a cut of beef from the bottom of the sirloin that is flavorful and tender and is what they use. Dice it into approximately 1/2 inch cubes. This is supposed to cook fast!

3. Chop some tomato, white onion, and jalapeno. Chop the jalapeno really fine, but the tomato and onion small to medium dice. I prepare equal amounts of tomato and onion, less of the chile, for obvious reasons.

4. Get ready to cook. You need to prepare this in small portions because the griddle needs to stay hot, so maybe enough for 2 servings at a time. If in doubt, do one at a time. I'd use about a heaping tablespoonful of each vegetable with each portion of meat. Crank up your griddle or pan until it's screaming hot, and add just a little oil. Peanut is good for hot frying. I have found that I love using these iron pans to brown meat. They get hotter faster than the cast iron, are easier to move around, and are exceptional browners.

5. Put the meat in first and leave it alone! Let it sear for a few minutes on the pan. Then stir to turn it over and add the veggies. Sprinkle liberally with the seasoning mixture. Get it good and brown and the onions "carmelized". (I don't know why but I hate that word.)
6. Serve it. Be sure your tortillas are warm and toasted. Add some guacamole.

Now, close your eyes. Listen for the voices of the politicians, the students, the cops, the school friends, the compadres, the UTEP coaches and players, the sons and daughters and grandchildren and greatgrandchildren of the Arab fruit vendors and Jewish refugees, the TB sufferers, the ranchers and miners who were chased out of Mexico by Pancho Villa, the braceros, they are all here. Hey! Your car is ready! Ahh, ... yes, this is almost, but not quite, perfect.

Chickens and Answers to Common Questions

2010-08-23T16:57:00.005-07:00

Why do I have chickens? I was a farm girl. My Nana (my grandmother, the only grandparent I knew) had chickens. My family also had chickens. And I have a treasured memories of gathering eggs as a young child.
I remember selecting a bird for that evening's dinner, and the head being chopped off and the bird running in circles sans head! This didn't traumatize me as a child, it was just presented in a very matter-of-fact manner. Later, I remember Nana cutting the bird open and showing me the internal parts. That was fascinating! (I dare you to show me a kid who isn't interested in internal organs.) I seem to remember the parts being different colors. She showed me some things that she said were going to be eggs. This has to be when I was about 3 years old. It's an important memory for me, since I lost my Nana when I was 8.
Then there is also the story about the mean rooster that jumped up and scratched my face with his talons. He didn't have those talons very long after that. My Daddy fixed him.

So, it's all wrapped up in my childhood. It's in my brain. It's in my genes. Just like having a larder (pantry) with enough food to survive a disaster, I got it in the gene pool.

Some of my friends have asked me questions about keeping chickens, so here's what I know: (and the following is my opinion only)
1. Where do you get chickens?

You buy them as baby chicks at a feed store, in the Spring, beginning in March. Then you need to keep them in a big box, inside, with paper and pine shavings on the bottom, and with a clamp -on light above, for about 6 weeks. In the garage is fine.

Blanche and Isabe

2. Do you have to have rooster?

No, you don't have to have one. I don't have one. You only need a rooster if you want to raise chicks, or have fertilized eggs. Otherwise, your hen will lay eggs anyway.

3. Any advice about a coop?

Yes. Keep the floor off the ground. When it gets wet it gets stinky and we have more flies. I have my coop up on pallets. Put vinyl flooring down on the floor to make cleaning up easy. Throw sawdust down on the flooring and sprinkle it with diatomaceous earth. You only need to sweep it out and put down more sawdust and DE every couple of months.

4. You said"flies".

Yes, I did. Once or twice a summer I spray around the ground and in the coop with a permethrin solution and that takes care of the flies, for the most part.

5. What do the chickens eat?

Of course they need chicken feed. They get sunflower seeds and scratch feed as a special treat. And kitchen scraps! Anything fruit or vegetable is a great, but they will eat almost any leftovers. I buy them corn on the cob when it's cheap. They love cheese and pasta, bread and tortillas; I just don't give them meat. And in the early spring, when the wild mustard weeds are all over the place, they loved, loved, loved that. Whenever I went for a walk I brought back wild mustard and their egg yolks were so beautiful and dark golden.

Harriet plotting a way into the tomatoes

6. Are they pets?

Yes, they run to me (it's very funny!) when I call them and they are very amenable to being picked up and petted, as long as you start when they are young. They won't like it at first, but after a while they will squat down in front of you and want to be picked up. It's pretty clear mine think it's special treatment.

7. Are they stupid?

Gertrude looking for bugs

No. Not at all. They pick up really quickly on a routine. I "herd" mind back into the coop every evening and let them out in the morning, and they know all about it and expect it. I take a broom with me and sort of "shoo" them into the pen and after the first few times, and they totally get it. If I don't get outside in the afternoon, they know to get into their coop at nighttime. When I'm at home I like to protect them from neighborhood cats and varmints by making sure they are in the coop.

8. What are the other negatives?
Well, I paid $450 to have my coop made, which was a bargain. Feed is about $12 every couple of months. I buy 40 pound sacks at Walmart. If the chickens get into my garden area, they dig up the ground and displace all the mulch, and they like to eat tomato plants, as well as tomatoes. I keep their wings clipped so they can't fly up really high.
9. In the winter, are they cold out there?

My coop has an "enclosed" area with a perch where they can get inside if the wind is cold. I threw them in there a couple of times when the temps got really cold last winter, but they seemed to want to roost outside (in the coop) even in the coldest times. Of course, we rarely get temps below freezing here, just a few times a year and only into the 20's a few weeks. Chickens are very hardy and those feathers do a good job of insulating them.

10. How many eggs do you get?

Last fall I had 3 mature hens and I got 3 a day until this spring when they started to moult. Then production dropped. When it's really hot they don't lay every day, and I get about 2, sometimes 1, sometimes 3 a day. When my three young hens start laying and the weather cools down I expect to get 5 or 6 a day.
11.Do they need a nesting box to lay eggs?
Yes, but a cat box (the kind with a top part) with straw in it will work. You might need to get a wooden egg (Hobby Lobby) and put it in there to show them what to do. You need a nesting box for every 3 hens.
12. Do the dogs bother them?

Shady, our big dog did kill some chicks. I have to keep them separated until the chicks are a decent size, and then for some reason, she leaves them alone. She was a farm dog and often killed dove and grackles on the farm, and didn't understand that she needed to differentiate birdies.

13. Are you ever going to eat your hens?

Not unless we get into a situation that's really, really

dire. Then yes, I probably would. But that level of hungry seems awfully remote.

14. Anything else?

Yes. You can get tons of information from this website including some inspiring pictures of great coops. It's lots of fun and just not that hard to do.

http://www.backyardchickens.com/

Fried Okra; from the garden, to the freezer, to the table.

2010-08-15T14:10:00.008-07:00

Since I've got such a lovely bunch of okra plants in the garden, I'm going to be putting bags of okra in the freezer for later this year. That's a good thing, because I love okra. And I won't qualify that in any way. I like stewed okra, pickled okra, fried, ...any way you can serve it, I like it. However, my favorite of all is fried okra, and I've tried many different recipes over the years and have come to this as the nadir of fried okra perfection.
So without further ado...

Because I'm going to put this bunch in the freezer for demonstrative purposes today, I blanched this freshly picked mess of okra. That just means that I dunked it into some boiling water for a few seconds, then into a bowl of cold water. It's important to do that if you're going to freeze it.
Then I'm going to chop it into rounds of approximately 1/4 inch.
Next, I'm going to put the chopped okra into a bowl of buttermilk, and stir it up to make sure it's coated well.

Then pour the whole mess of okra and buttermilk into a big strainer and shake it up to get as much excess buttermilk as you can drained out of there.

Put 2 cups of cornmeal into a cake pan. Then put 1 cup of self-rising flour in. Add salt (1tsp.) and mix it up, fingers will do.
Throw the okra into the cake pan with the cornmeal/flour/salt mixture and really shake it around, and keep doing it until all the okra is coated and dry. "Shakeum, shakeum, shakeum, ..." (remember that playground game?), then let it sit for a while to bond.

Next pour that whole mess into a colander with large holes and shake the excess cornmeal out.
Spread the okra on a sheet pan, I lined mine with parchment paper, but you don't have to.

Pop it into the freezer, and in an hour or two it should be frozen enough to put into a zip-loc bag.

When you are ready to cook the frozen okra, pour about an inch of peanut oil into a fry pan and get it hot, cook okras about 5 minutes, stiring once to turn.

Don't over-crowd the pan. Sprinkle more salt on the cooked okra. This is a great side for barbeque or pork chops, or as an appetizer. You can't do much better than this, if you love okra.

Raised-bed Garden Update

2010-08-05T16:04:00.001-07:00

Well, my vegetable garden has been a mixed success. Some things never came up, some plants (melons, cucumbers, and most of the squash) got eaten by bugs (nasty, ugly, stinky, fuchi squash bugs, eeeuu).

The Evil Squash Bug

But a few things came up and thrived.
Okra. I have a great okra crop. And there are so many pods coming on right now, I'm having to freeze it. More on that later.

The only thing I don't like about okra is how sneaky it is. It's very hard, somehow, to find all the okra that is ready to be picked. It really tries to hide.

Okra pretending to be a stem.

And succeeds! I'll look and look and look, and swear they are all picked. Then two days later I'll find one that is about 8 inches long and that's just too darn big! However, the chickens will eat it if I cut it open.

I have a couple of lovely eggplant... plants.
Then I have a lot of black-eyed peas coming on. They have been slow so far but I think I'm going to have an explosion of peas pretty soon.

Mystery Bean

This bean plant is either a rattlesnake bean or a red ripper. I don't remember what I planted there, I just got so excited about putting seeds in the ground, I went a little nuts. And this particular one has just grown and grown and never produced bean one, yet when it does, the mystery will be over.

My tomatoes started out fine but then got blight and pfffft. Luckily I planted reserve tomatoes in other places. The rule is: One can NEVER PLANT TOO MANY TOMATOES!

This zucchini is clearly trying to make up for the rest of his team getting offed by the DSB's. (the last two words are squash bugs). By the time I got control of that situation, this plant was the only survivor left.
I learned my lesson; get after the squash bugs earlier. Next spring I will be on the look-out for those little red eggs on the underside of the leaves and get busy eradicating those destructive animalitos, con prisa!
Speaking of insects, I happened to see this drama on one of the picket stakes today. The spider is definitely winning. Go, Spidey!

Junket, the Mystery Dessert

2010-07-20T11:59:00.007-07:00

So, ask me.
What is it?

A dessert.

Well, the box says rennet custard. So like a pudding?

Kinda sorta. But not thick and gooey like pudding. And not especially rich. More like sweet milk jello.
Huh?

How is it that nobody around here has ever heard of Junket? Zero of my friends were ever served Junket as a kid. Apparently Junket is pretty much unknown here in the U.S. (although it seems to have been readily available), but much more common in Europe. I'm assuming my Kiwi mother had Junket made for her by her British mom. And she made it for me.
I can remember making Junket for some of my room-mates in college and they loved it. Then I made it for my guys.
And I hadn't thought of it in ages, but the other day I started thinking about the cold sweet milkiness of it and just had to have some.
Junket is made with Rennet, an enzyme. It comes from cows. That's all you need to know about that. It is used to make a variety of desserts and cheeses. Rennet begins the digestion of food. When it is added to milk that's just a little warmer than human body temperature (like a cow's body temperature) it causes the milk to ... not curdle, because it's not sour.....not thicken, but to turn into a kind of loose, jello-ey, er...well, ... not pudding. And not rubbery.
Is that not clear now?
Junket is sweet just the way the milk in the bottom of the cereal bowl is when you eat sugared cereal, which, believe it or not, is now being served in a very hot NYC restaurant. Cereal Milk, they call it. And they sell that!
I estimate the calories in 1/2 cup serving of Junket to be around 100, which I consider to be a bargain for this much sweet delight.

This is what you will need.
2 cups of Whole Milk.
1 junket tablet (pulverize with two spoons)
mixed with 3 T. sugar
Vanilla (oops, not pictured)
Nutmeg (Freshly, finely grated is best)

Here are the steps. The actual composition should take 5 minutes, max.
1. Pour 2 C. milk and some vanilla (1tsp.) in a saucepan.
2. Put 3T sugar combined with one crushed Junket tablet aside.

3. Heat the milk, stirring constantly, until it registers barely warm with your clean handy-dandy finger-thermometer. Think about it; 110°F, the recommended temp, is just 11 degrees over body temp. And remember: if it gets too hot it won't set.
4. Add the sugar and Junket and stir thoroughly, until the sugar is dissolved.

5. Pour the milk mixture into individual ramekins or whatever you want to serve it in.

6. Grate fresh nutmeg on the top. Done.
7. Walk away for 15 minutes. Rennet needs some time to do it's magic.
8. When you come back it should be set. Jiggle it a little to see, and what you should see is slight movement, but definitely not liquid. If it's still liquid, your milk was too hot. Try again.
9. When you're sure it's set, put it in the fridge until it's good and cold.

10. Get ready for questions, unless you're going to eat it all by yourself.

Junket tablets (the kind I used here) were in all the grocery stores back even 20 years ago, and some still carry it, you just have to search. It is usually on the top shelf of the Jello/Pudding/Tapioca section.
Please let me know if you've ever done anything different (recipe wise) with these tablets. I'd love to hear about it.

Fat Mama Cookies

2010-07-11T06:35:00.007-07:00

This is my only cookie recipe. I used to make them often, when the boys were little. (A long, long time ago.) I used to call these "Goody Two Cookies" because you can remember the recipe so easily that way, but then I had to rename them when I realized that they were completely responsible for porking me up, as we say around here.
They are (here's that tired but apt descriptive) addictive and delicious; once, years after I had taken them to an event, a woman I had met there called me from Kentucky to ask for the recipe. Again.
This recipe can be used for oatmeal or chocolate chip cookies with a minor variation. Sorry to say they are just as fattening either way. So.. here is the oatmeal recipe.

Take 2 sticks of softened butter and throw them in the mixing bowl.
Add 2 cups of sugar. (I use 1 of brown and 1 of white, but you can use either/or.)
2 very generous pinches of salt
2 eggs
2 big slurps of vanilla

2 eggs
2 cups of all purpose flour
2 cups of oatmeal
1 tsp. baking soda
and mix this up.

This part is important:
Let it sit for about 15 minutes before you start making cookies! Bake at 350 for 12-15 minutes.

Here is how you change it up for chocolate chip.

Instead of adding the oatmeal, add 2 more cups of regular flour.

Add chocolate chips (and nuts if you want to). That's it!

Don't say you weren't warned.

The Greenhouse that Time Forgot

2010-07-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

In the cool mountains of Southeastern New Mexico there is a relic of a large plant business. The sign is on the facade, but the original nursery bit the dust back in the 70's. What's left is a quiet green and mossy testimony to the passage of time. Every year I go back to wonder at the awesome tenacity of the plants and the man who tends them. This plant, for example.

Here is a picture of the pot it grows in.

Here's a beautiful example of lush overgrowth.

And another...

and another...

and one more...

and I can't forget about this one...

But along with the freakiness, there is breathtaking beauty. Like this:

or this,

But don't get too excited. Because you cannot, under any circumstance; you cannot buy this one.

Chiles Rellenos

2010-07-06T15:17:00.010-07:00

Chile relleno means "re-filled" chile. Llenar (yehnahr) is to fill, and chiles rellenos are chiles that are filled or "stuffed" in many different ways. Rellenos Frios are not fried but served cold, stuffed with with guacamole or shrimp, chicken, or tuna salad. Chiles en Nogado are stuffed with a meat/fruit/nut mixture, traditionally served for holidays. Where I live on the Texas, New Mexico, Mexico border, the "Chile Relleno" dish is a thick-meated green chile, roasted and peeled, and usually, but not always de-seeded, stuffed with cheese and coated with simple batter made with eggs and flour. Then fried carefully in a pan with a scant amount of oil; this is not a deep fried dish. This Relleno is served warm, as a side dish or as a main course.

My guys would rather have a steak with a chile relleno than a potato. Any. Day. Something about the blending of the flavors of green chile, Monterrey Jack cheese, crispy batter and a piece of delicious beef cooked perfectly over a hot grill.... well, it's just the about best combination ever invented. The next best way to enjoy one is wrapped with a schmear of refried beans in a freshly toasted flour tortilla. That, my friend, is a burrito that will bring tears of joy to a hungry person.

But, back to the Chile Relleno, simplicity and just the minimum of everyday ingredients once again trumps the overwrought and the over-thought. Steak, Chile Relleno, and maybe some sliced fresh tomato.... now that's what we consider a perfect summer meal.

As the daughter of a chile farmer, I always look for green chile that is thick and meaty. Rounder tips are generally, but not always, milder than the pointy ones. I am very lucky to have a neighborhood store that always has freshly roasted chiles available. And they are usually very good ones. And.....someday I am going to find the sweet little man who roasts them so perfectly and give him a big ol' kiss. Probably.

Anyway, you take your roasted and peeled chiles and make a small slit in the side and rinse out the seeds. Then you dry them well and dredge them in a little bit of flour.
Cut the Monterrey Jack cheese into strips and stuff them into the chiles.

Now you take some eggs, say one for every 3 chiles that you are going to make, and separate the yolks from the whites. Be careful! You don't want any yolks to mix in with the whites or it won't beat up fluffy and white, like this.

I put some plain flour in a strainer, along with a generous pinch of salt and some baking powder ( a half tsp. per cup of flour). How much flour, you ask? Well, just guestimate about the same volume of flour as yolks.
Then shake your strainer over the yolks and mix the dry ingredients with them, and add a little water until it is thick but not stiff, about pancake batter consistency.

Take the yolk mixture and fold or whisk it into the beaten whites. Don't over-mix it, just until the whites and the yolk mix together. Heat up a pan with about a half inch of light olive oil, or any other oil that you like.

Now, dip your chile into the batter, and lay it carefully in an ugly pan just like this one.

Don't have one this bad? No worries. Just use what you have. Your rellenos should fry but not sizzle and spit. Turn them over when they are brown and fry the other side. Then lay them on some paper or paper towels and keep them warm (200) until you're ready to serve them up. If you are lucky enough to have some left over, be sure you try the chile relleno/refried bean burrito. You will never be the same.

Not a cure for insomnia, but....

2010-06-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I started waking up in the night. Not for any special reason, just for the hell of it, so to speak.
What to do? Roll over, close eyes, try to sleep again. No luck.
Don't start thinking! That will just lead to worried insomnia.
Get up? Uh uh. Don't want to do that. What if I get sleepy and I'm not in my bed?
Can't read. Can't turn on the TV. Can't really do anything without disturbing Left Brain's sleep.
Listen to my Ipod! But I don't want to listen to music, that just wakes me up more.

What's a podcast, anyway? Hmmmm.

And that was the beginning of my love affair with late-night listening. Now, I have to know that my Ipod is right there, ready to grab if I should wake up, which unfortunately, I still do from time to time.

And I've found some really wonderful listening is to be had, and free!

Some of my favorites:

Persiflagers Infectious Disease Puscast- Dr. Mark Crislip of Portland talks about recent literature in his speciality, Infectious Disease. Now, you might think that this really must be boring, but no! If you have any interest in medicine and disease, which I do, it's just plain fascinating, and if I don't always get the arcane language and technical jargon, I get enough to get the gist of what's been studied, and it's fascinating! Dr. Crislip is funny and gives it just enough personality to keep you coming back. Also, his voice is soothing in an odd way and after a while of being half interested and entertained, off to sleep you go! Another way to enjoy Dr. Crisplip's wit and voice is to listen to the QuackCast, wherein he debunks the frauds and pseudo-science of Alternative Medicine. I wish I could get more people to listen to this and stop supporting SCAMS!
PRI Selected Shorts- Live performances of great short stories, read by actors. Wonderful!
This American Life- Another great program from Public Radio International, this show takes a theme and people tell true stories that amplify and elucidate that particular theme, in depth. Hard to describe, but once you listen, you'll be hooked. Funny, informative, thought and discussion -provoking themes every week. I save these for when I take a walk; they usually run about 45 minutes.

The Moth- Another idea that is hard to describe. People get up in front of an audience and tell stories, without notes. Usually about 10 minutes long. Not that these stories aren't rehearsed, you don't hear anyone hemming and hawing, but they are told in a personal way about all kinds of situations in life, funny ones, sad, stories with lessons, sometimes about extraordinary people or events. I've heard a few I wish I'd never bothered with, but most are very good and some I listen to more than once.
Coopette.com- An Englishwoman talks about her garden and gardening. Very informative, but the thing is, she just has the loveliest, most melodic voice and phrasing, and I just adore listening to her. Very sleep inducing, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.
The Survival Podcast- Jack Spirko wants us all to be self-reliant and ready to face whatever comes our way. His topics range from world economy to canning green beans and which shotgun we should have. He'll tell you how to store food for emergencies and how to plan an escape to a B.O.L. (bug-out-location). He'll talk about squash bugs. I love it. I think I inherited the survival gene from my grandmother, who never could have enough food "put away", and I want to be prepared for anything that comes down the pike. Jack tends to get a little over-excited, but you can't fault the man for his passion and downright smarts. For someone who is self-educated, he knows an awful lot about a lot of things, and has common sense as well. I do have to skip the long intro, though. I understand he has to do it, but it gets old.

I have other podcasts that I listen to, and I'm open to suggestions, but if you are interested, this is a good place to start. It's certainly better than laying awake and "stewing".

Mazatlan Smoked Marlin Dip

2010-06-23T09:10:00.003-07:00

In Mazatlan, Mexico, there is a famous old restaurant called "The Shrimp Bucket" on the malecon- the avenue that runs along the sea-wall. Many a shrimp and a margarita have been consumed there out on the front porch, happily gazing at the Pacific Ocean. It's still a wonderful place to go.
They have an appetizer there, usually served in a leaf of a purple cabbage, and with delicious freshly cooked tostadas (see prior post) that I just love. So naturally, I went about getting myself some smoked marlin and re-creating it.

Now, I'm not sure how this works, but it seems that the smoked "marlin" that one buys in Mazatlan may not be marlin, but tuna. As you can see on the package that I bought, it says Marlin y Atun Ahumado. Marlin and Tuna Smoked. So I suppose they must not be discernably different in taste or texture. I'd sure like to know more about this. However, to continue...

Smoked Marlin/Tuna Dip
1/2 kilo or 1+ pounds of smoked fish
1/2 block of cream cheesse
1/2 c. good mayonaise
1/2 c. sour cream
juice of 1 lime
1T. soy sauce
1T. worchestershire sauce
3T sweet pickle relish
1T hot sauce or 1 chipotle jalapeno adobo
1 tsp. thai fish sauce (optional)
Place all in a blender or food processor and mix until smooth.

This is delicious and unusual. Sit back and enjoy people saying "What is this?"

Tostadas, The Real Deal

2010-06-16T16:21:00.011-07:00

You might remember I told you that I think pre-made taco shells are nasty. And if you've ever eaten freshly fried corn tortillas that are known around here as tostadas (in some places totopos) that are crisp and warm and salty, you know that Doritos are a cheap (tasting) and much inferior substitute. So what's it going to be, steak or baloney? Eggs or Eggbeaters? Rasberries or fruit roll-ups? Okay, enough already. You get it.

First you need some corn tortillas. With tortillas, fresh is always better. However if they've been in your fridge for a while they are still better than you-know-what.

This is a 5lb. bag of corn tortillas. It cost $3.89. I'm going to fry up this whole bag of tortillas for a party. Look how much this makes!

You're going to want to get the thinnest tortillas you can find for this job.

You will also need some oil. Well, OK, a lot of oil. I've gotten to be a big fan of peanut oil for frying. It has a very high smoke point, has a very neutral/pleasant taste, and since it has mostly monounsaturated fat it is better for your heart. I used about a half gallon for this, because it was a big ol' stack of tortillas. That's about $6.00 worth of peanut oil.

Use a heavy dutch oven with high sides, or a deep fryer. This is a lot of oil that will be dangerously hot, so protect yourself. Also get a big tray, sheet pan, or some other receptacle to put the cooked tostadas on, and line it with lots of paper. You can use paper towels, or brown paper bags, or even newsprint. Or you could let it drain on a rack. I used the brown paper I keep around for this purpose.

I recommend cutting the tortillas into 8ths. Quarters are too big for bite-size.

Get your oil hot, hot, hot but not smoking. Then take about 20 tortilla eighths and separate them by bending the chunk like this,

and then layering them on your fry scooper or some other implement. Put them in the oil gently and then, gently stir the pot and separate the tostadas. Don't go splashing hot oil around!

When you see your tostadas are turning brown on the edges, scoop them out, let them drain over the pot a minute, then put them down on the paper. If your grease is hot enough, the oil will run right out of them and there will be very little oil left in the chip.

Sprinkle a little salt on each batch and taste one. Come on, isn't that about a kajillion times better than one of those proccessed things made out of who knows what? I'd say.

Rhubarb Shortcake

2010-05-22T11:27:00.005-07:00

Rhubarb is a fruit (deemed so in 1947 by court decree, although it is botanically a vegetable) that many people don't know much about. It is very high in fiber and contains substances that "aid digestion" and you all know what that means! It's very low in calories, but you do have to sweeten the dawg out of it so it's not exactly a diet food.
My Mom and Dad loved rhubarb, and so do I. They liked theirs stewed and had it in the morning with breakfast. However, if you have ever seen a bowl of boiled rhubarb, you will readily understand why this isn't my favorite way to serve it.

I like to roast my rhubarb and serve it with cake or shortcake. And this is NOT with strawberries. Talk about gilding the lily!
I also like to make rhubarb crisp which is just like any other crisp. But for today, here is how to make Rhubarb Shortcake.

Try to buy thin stalks of rhubarb, about the size of very big celery. You might have to make do with giant stalks, but the thinner the better. Don't worry if they aren't all bright red. They are usually available here in May through the summer. Sometimes I have to pester the produce man to order it for me.

Get about 6-8 stalks of rhubarb and wash it, and if it's big, run a knife down the stalk and cut it in two. Then cut it into pieces about 1 inch long. More or less.

Put it into a bowl with about a cup of sugar, and toss it around until the pieces are coated.
Spread it out over a sheet pan.
Put it in a hot oven (400) for 20-30 minutes. Some of the sugar will be browned and the rhubarb will be tender.

With a spatula scrape it off the foil into a bowl and give it a taste. Be sure to get all the juice! If it's too sour, add more sugar and toss gently. That's all there is to it.

Here's my recipe for shortcake:
2C. SR flour
1/4 C. sugar
1 good pinch of salt
1 stick of softened butter
1/4 brick of softened creamed cheese (optional)
1C. milk
Mix the dry ingredients. Cut in the butter and cream cheese. You can leave some large chunks.
Add milk, stir and form into a ball.
Flatten the ball into a greased pie plate, or shape into individual biscuits.
Cook at 350 for 30 minutes.
Slice the pieces horizontally in half before serving.

You are also going to need some whipped cream, creme fraiche, or ice cream.

Then assemble your rhubarb and shortcake in layers: shortcake, rhubarb, cream, shortcake, rhubarb, cream and mint if you have some.
Oh, yes. This is much better than a bowl of stewed rhubarb, don't you think?

Guacamole

2010-05-09T19:06:00.008-07:00

Everyone has their own guacamole recipe. Isn't that right? Some like it with onion, garlic, cilantro, whatever floats your boat. Some people don't include tomato. My family likes it this way----simple.

You will need perfectly ripe avocados. They give to the touch, but are not mushy soft. I like Hass avocados best, the ones with the bumpy skin.

Take your avocado and a big, sharp knife.

Put the knife in at the mid-point and roll the avocado down it, cutting it in two around the pit. Twist the two sides and pull them apart, pop!

Carefully stick your knife into the pit and twist it slightly, until the pit can be removed.

Then, take a soup spoon and slip it between the skin and the meat of the avocado and separate the two.

There you go!

And you didn't even have to touch the slimy avocado!

So into the bowl go the aguacates and the skinned tomatoes. Don't know how to do that? Just submerge the tomatoes into boiling water for about 10 seconds.

When you take them out of the boiling water, the skin should just slip off, like this:

Dice your tomatoes and add them to the bowl, along with salt and the juice of limes. Here's the basic ratio:

1 tomato per each 2 avocados. 1 lime per each tomato, extra if they are not juicy. Salt to taste. That's it, todo completo.

Then, you mush/mix it up with a pastry blender, or a potato masher, or pair of knives. There are those who want pieces of actual avocado in their guacamole, not pureed into baby food, and I am one of those. Which leads me to a story...
Once in a classroom long, long ago, an ESL teacher was encouraging her students to talk about movies they had seen. The movie "Exorcist" was not that old, at the time. Fermin Wong excitedly waved his hand. "Yes, Fermin?" "Mees, did you see that movie? She threw out guacamole!"
She sure did.

So when it's just the way you like it, take one of the pits and put it in the bowl. It keeps your guacah from turning brown.

How are you going to eat it? Up to you. I like it as part of a steak, dinner, myself.

Chinese Barbecue Sauce aka Char Siu

2010-05-01T09:44:00.003-07:00

Many people don't know that Chinese Roast Pork is called Char Siu Bao. The only reason I'm a smarty-pants is because when I saw it posted on foodgawker.com by My Asian Kitchen I realized that my recipe box was missing something that I truly loved. Remember Moon Garden, anyone? Wow, was that exotic! Driving downtown, the chinese music and waiters. What a thrill for a little farm girl from Chamberino.
So, most of the recipes go something like this:

Pork. Most recipes use Butt or Belly. Have you ever seen pork belly for sale, here in West Texas? Please tell me where. And another thing, isn't that called bacon? Anyway... I use what I can get.
1c. sugar
6T soy sauce
3T hoisin sauce
4T rice wine or sherry
1T salt
1T Chinese 5 Spice
1/2 tsp. garlic chile or just red chile flakes
Red food coloring (but why bother?)

Just mix it up and marinate your pork in it. Several hours, if possible. If you cook a loin roast, set the oven at 400, put it on a rack and turn it after 30 minutes. I cooked these ribs in the oven for about 2 hours at 325, turning and painting again once. Some recipes call for a coating of honey and/or Maltose at the end for shininess, but if you put water under your roast or ribs you won't need it. If you grill it, you might just use honey thinned with a little water right before you take it off.

Chinese chicken salad minus the chicken would be a great side for this, it seems to me.

Tres Leches

2010-04-25T15:35:00.011-07:00

Tres Leches is Ice Cream and Cake. Birthday Cake! And, after all, my favorite vanilla ice cream has always been home-made Eagle Brand. This is by far the quickest Tres Leches I have ever made. And it makes a small cake, important for space because you keep it refrigerated. If you need to, it can be doubled, but this is enough
for 8 people.
Here's what you will need:

3 eggs
3/4 c. sugar
*1c. Self-Rising flour. (or 1c AP flour with 1/2 tsp. baking powder.)
1/8tsp. salt
1/4 c. milk
Evaporated milk
Sweetened condensed milk
Heavy cream
Powdered Sugar
vanilla optional
*I always use SR flour when I bake. It just seems to me to be more dependable and no sifting.
Preheat your oven to 350.
Separate the eggs and put a pinch of cream of tartar in the whites and beat to soft peaks. I love, love, love this whipper for egg whites. You can do this by hand in about one minute.

Mix up the yolks with 1/4 cup milk and gently mix it into the whites in about 3 portions.

Combine the SR flour and sugar and salt and add that, gently, in about 3 portions.

When it is just combined, put it into a prepared pan more or less 8x8.
By the way, I love this stuff for cake pans.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, sticks to this stuff. You can get it at Walmart. And I wish I were getting something for my recommendation, but nahhh.

Put it into the oven for 20-25 minutes.
While it is cooking, mix a can of sweetened condensed milk, about 3/4 of a big can of evaporated milk or 2 small cans, and 1/2 c. Heavy Cream.

When your cake is done, you can take it out of the pan like this, or just leave it in and poke holes all over the cake with a skewer (not too skinny) and use the flat end.

Pour the milk mixture over the cake and refrigerate for 2 hours before serving.

And for even more smooth delicious milkiness, whip about 2 cups of heavy cream with 2 T powdered sugar and a few drops of vanilla. Did you know that powdered sugar has lots of cornstarch in it? If you use powdered sugar in the cream it will "stabilize" the cream and the whipped cream will stay whipped much longer. Good to know, for us cream freaks.

Hide this in the refrigerator and just see if this lasts long enough to be worried about. I bet it won't.

Hello, Cutie.

2010-04-21T18:01:00.002-07:00

Hey! So glad you could make it! Come on in....I mean up! Wow, little Rattlesnake Bean, you are not shy, are you?

Awww... Have you ever seen anything so sweet?

Baby Zuchinni is one of those really, really agressive kids.

Little okra, you steal my heart!

Update on the Raised-Bed Square-foot Garden

2010-04-14T08:24:00.004-07:00

This, right here, this goofy little plot, is my 10x10 "Square-Foot Garden". I'll tell you about some of the steps we went through to make if you're interested. If not, pass on by to Fried Chicken.
Below is some of the stuff, er.. .amendments, we put in the soil; peat moss, and vermiculite, and I don't show the kitchen and yard compost I made last year but we put that in as well.

Below is how the garden turned out with all the amendments dug in and covered with weed blocker. You can never have too much protection. Against weeds.
I also consumed some medicinal tequila later to loosen up my back.
The roof tiles were there to make the soaker hose behave. I removed them later.

Then I covered it all with a bale of "hot" hay that my neighbor kindly gave me, also some insides from some evaporative cooler pads, (left over from another idea) and got started putting my old collection of picket fence around it, mainly for vine support but also just to be funky. I am planning to make a bigger support trellis for the beans later on.

And...then I had this idea about the "squares" in the square foot garden. In order to be able to have two (admittedly) narrow walking paths through the garden, (the burlap) I bought lath and made it into long T's with cross pieces. Each one of those rows is 20 square feet.

This was actually fun to do, mostly because I got out Left Brain's skill saw out to cut the 2 foot pieces. Wow! I love power tools. Left Brain just hates it when I use his tools.

At this point, I needed some help to make the "gates" into the "walkways' and Left Brain got out his own power tools and made me two lovely little gates that just stick into the soil. Waaaay cool.

Now that I have all the soil ready and the plan laid out, I sketched out my spaces and had fun figuring what to plant where. I have 60 square feet to work with! These are the plants I will plant, either as seeds or seedlings:
Red Ripper Cowpeas (isn't that the coolest name? My dad told me about them.)
Black eyed Peas
Rattlesnake Beans (who could resist this?)
Okra
Zucchini
Yellow Squash
Eggplant
Bell Pepper
Jalapeno
Poblano chile
Cucumber
Cantaloupe
Beets (Beets?, really?)
Pumpkin
Radishes
Greek Oregano
Fennel
Watermelon
Tomatoes

I have a sneaking suspicion that some of you reading this are laughing out loud at the idea of all those plants in this little space, and you are probably right! But this is experimental, and however it turns out, I'll show you the results. I just could not resist all those lovely little seeds. I'm missing my Mom, and this helps.

However, I do have to admit that my funny little mother never made such a to-do out of a vegetable garden. She just put seeds in the ground and out they came. She would probably have laughed at this. But I have never had her luck or skill. This garden is actually my most all-out effort at a vegetable garden. So wish me luck, por favor.

Raised-Bed Vegetable Garden, the Easier Way

2010-03-27T10:09:00.010-07:00

There are a million schemes for raised-bed gardens, and if you are going to put yours on an unleveled spot, it can be tricky. Pioneer Woman's is a good plan, but takes a lot of leveling of dirt. That's hard! And Hard Work! My garden bed plan was based on one I helped build for St. Clement's School, and the 4th graders grow some beautiful flowers and vegetables, and have learned so much about gardening. What you do is make a real....bed. With legs. you can level it easily by digging under the legs, not necessary to level the entire ground under it.

This plan is easy and only took myself and Cerebro Izquierdo 2 hours to put together, but that was using some power tools, a saw and a drill, to be specific. Here are some of the hand tools you will need.
I decided to use 2x12x10ft. boards. They were about $8 apiece. I also bought a 4x4 inch post which was also around $8.00. The Square Foot Gardener says that you only need to use 6 inches of soil, so you could use 1x6's. Also, using 10x10 is going to cost me about $100 to have filled with a soil compost mix from a local materials outfit. You figure 27 square feet in a square yard of soil, and since I don't want to fill it to the top, and I'm going to amend the soil some, I need 2 yards. All together this garden is going to cost me around $200.00. However, it will be moveable if I need to, and it's very large. That's a ton of vegetables, and over the years....what's that word? Amortize?

You will need 16 bolts, like this, 3/8x6,
and washers and nuts to tighten them up.
I realized that if I set the boards up on the posts with some space underneath like a real bed, we could easily dig holes under the posts to get the top level, which is what we did. We cut the 4x4in. posts to 18 inch lengths, giving ourselves a 6 inch leg to use when leveling. If your space is not as sloped as mine was, you could leave less space on the "legs".
I made two templates with drill marks spaced so the bolts wouldn't hit each other.

We marked the posts with the templates like this, and then used the drill to make a 3/8 (the same size as the bolt) hole through the post.

We then set up the boards and posts on the ground and held the boards to the posts and used the drill to mark where to drill on the board. Then we drilled holes in the boards and used the bolts to connect the pieces. Voila!! Then we used the level to check which sides were uneven and dug underneath the high posts until the level was happy.

I decided I didn't need the bottom of the boards to touch the ground, and I'm using some left over vinyl flooring that I used for the chicken coop to close the larger openings, but I'm not sure I even needed it.
Now for the dirt, the peat moss, and the vermiculite. Hmmmm. Seeds or plants?

My Arctic Air Glass Door Refrigerator

2010-03-22T18:34:00.004-07:00

I am posting this because when I was thinking about buying an Arctic Air restaurant glass-front refrigerator for our home, I could only find 1 opinion about it, and that was, I believe, on epinions. That person loved it.
So, I am posting this after owing and using this for a year and a half, and I am saying, "I love it."

However, you have to have another freezer to keep ice or an ice maker or some scheme like that. Because of course, this fridge won't freeze anything or make ice. It doesn't have the shelves on the door for condiments. And that's OK. There's plenty of room in here for condiments. I keep my veggies in one box and my cheese in another and my meat(ish) stuff in another and my condiments and tortillas in another. The top shelf holds a ton of milk, drinks, yogurt, cream and sour cream.

Having a glass door isn't everyone's dish of fish. And I did, admittedly, spend quite a bit of time finding just the right plastic boxes for keeping things organized on the shelves. I finally bought a plastic thingy with drawers at Walmart, keeping the drawers and ditching the plastic drawer holder.

But, here is the thing. It's alive. It's light. It has a pleasant hum. It's food. I can see what's in it and know when I need to pick up some milk. It's not boring. I can keep tons of food in here, much more than any other fridge I've ever owned. And it's the easiest-to-clean refrigerator I ever cleaned. I bought it from an internet restaurant supply, no tax and free shipping. My own epinion is: A+.

Mazatlan Sourdough Bread, Part 2

2010-03-19T15:23:00.006-07:00

This is my waaay-easy, almost knead-less bread recipe. It only involves using the starter 7 hours before you make the bread. So sometime in the morning, put 2 ladlesful of flour
in a big bowl. I just used AP flour from Ley. Add two ladles of sourdough starter to the flour in the bowl and one ladle of water, more if your dough is too dry, also 2tsp. of salt. (Remember to add two ladles of flour and 3 of water to the starter and stir well, then put that away.)

Stir up your flour, starter and water, just until well mixed, and cover it with plastic or a towel and let it sit in a warm place. It needs to double in size and that could take as little as 2 or three hours, depending on how active your starter is. You'll just have to check. If you want to leave it until the next day, you ought to put it in the fridge so you don't wear out your yeast. I usually leave it until 2 hours before dinner, so it's just cooked but not hot when it's time to eat.

At this point take it out of the bowl and turn it onto a floured surface. Knead it for a couple of minutes, adding more flour if it's really sticky, until it makes a pretty ball like this. You can leave it in the dutch oven to rise a while, but I found I didn't have to with the starter I used.
Put the ball of flour in a heavy dutch oven with the lid on, and put it into a cold oven. Set the oven to bake at 400F and let it bake for an hour. Take the lid off and let it cook about 15 minutes more. Then, it's done.
Wrap it in a towel when you take it out of the dutch oven. Serve with lots of good butter and wine, or course. Don't you just feel like an earth mama now? Try and not break into "I am Woman". But I know you'll feel like it.

So, to recap:
1. Two large ladles full of starter in a bowl.
2. Two ladles of flour.
3. Three ladles of water.
4. 2 tsp. salt.
5. Mix well, cover, and leave in a not-cold spot.
6. When doubled, knead with enough flour to make into a ball.
7. Put the ball into a dutch oven and cover. You can let it rise a while in the dutch oven or,
8. Put the dutch oven into the oven and set to bake at 400.
9. Leave in for 1 hour, then uncover for 15 more minutes.
10. Try (it's hard, I know) to let it cool down before eating.

Mazatlan Sourdough Starter

2010-03-19T14:39:00.007-07:00

I love to bake bread. And sourdough, made with wild yeast? It's so ... miraculous. And easy. Just look what you can do with air, flour, and water!

What is wild yeast? It's yeast that is floating around in the air, everywhere. Maybe not so much in the dry Mojave, but tons around the ocean or humid places. The day I caught my little yeastie pals in Mazatlan was sunny and breezy. All you do is mix an amount of pure water and flour, 1.5 to 1, and go outside and stir, stir, stir. Leave it outside for a while and then stir some more. Put it in a clean jar and don't screw the lid down all the way, because the little yeast organisms digest and produce co2 which will need to escape. But you'll need to nourish and grow your little colony of yeast. So, after your initial "catch" has sat in room temperature anywhere between 8 and 12 hours, take half of it and throw it away, Yes, it seems a waste, but until you have a good batch you have to do it. Then, you need to feed the remaining "batter" with more pure water and flour, in 1.5 to 1 proportion. Stir, stir, stir again, because yeast likes oxygen. Think of the remaining yeast organisms getting stronger and healthier, and reproducing at a faster rate. Do this 3 or 4 times and you'll have a lovely little Yeast farm in your jar. It should smell pleasantly tangy, sour and ... yeasty, and a little liquid will form on the top, this is "liquor" and it is alcohol. You can either stir it back in or let it drain off. I think the flavor doesn't improve the sourdough batter and when I make bread, I use a lot of starter, so I pour it out.
So, to recap:
1. Put flour and purified water in a bowl on a breezy day. About 2 to 1 water to flour. Stir well.
2. Set outside for a couple of hours.
3. Stir again and put in a clean jar or container.
4. 8 to 12 hours later, take out half, and put more flour and water in. Stir well. Cover with a loose lid and let it sit out unrefrigerated.
5. Do it again.
6. Do it again.
7. Do it again.
8. Add 2c. flour and 3c. water the last time. When it's bubbly, either use it or put it in the fridge until you do.

9. Always add flour and water every time you use some. It can go right into the refrigerator afterwards.

My Favorite Roast Chicken

2010-03-04T10:57:00.009-07:00

When I roast chicken I generally roast 2 or 3 at a time. Roast chicken meat is just a good thing to have on hand; you can put it in soups or pasta or fried rice. You can chop it up for tacos, or slice it for sandwiches. You might as well just go ahead and go ahead.

I like to buy my chickens at a Mexican Grocery in our neighborhood. The nice butchers in this store take the chickens out of the wet stuff and clean them up some, and then put them on clean, dry styrofoam plates. Isn't that nice? So I always get them there unless I'm in Mexico and then I just like them to be put whole into a plastic bag, knowing that the chickens I buy down there were walking around the day before! OMG, the flavor of those chickens!!! However, lacking that, I like them ready-to-roast. Also, at this little store, the chickens are small and young, not big ol' pig-birds. I like them little and not covered with 2lbs. of fat.

I take those little chickens and put a lemon (or a tangerine, orange, apple or onion) in them, but first I stab the lemon several times so the juices cook out. Then I roll the lemon in herbs and salt; sometimes different ones, parsley, thyme, tarragon or sage. My herb garden is pretty puny at the moment so I used something I buy called Garlic with Herbs, also dried parsley and poultry seasoning. Stuff the lemon where the sun don't shine and then tie up their little legs. This is where I keep my twine. Thanks, Martha.

Use the bowl with the herbs and salt that you dipped your lemons in, and add olive oil, lemon juice, and honey or agave syrup, or even maple syrup. About equal amounts of each. Mix that well, then paint up the birds, top and bottom.

Put your chickens on a rack in a large roasting pan. Add water to the left-over herb mixture, and pour it in the bottom of the pan. Ooooh, this is going to smell so good!

Into an oven set to 375 for 45 minutes, then take them out and turn the birds over. Cook for another 45 minutes. Yes, it's a pain. Just do it. The sugar in the sauce will make the birds brown really well, if you don't do this you'll end up with two-tone gallinas, not very pretty.

When your birds are cooked, take them out and let them cool, then remove the lemons and cut the chickens in pieces for serving. I have a special carbon steel knife for this, Left Brain has to leave the kitchen because it makes him muy nervioso.