Cooking for One: Fun in the Kitchen

The kitchen window over my sink gives me great pleasure, because I see beautiful juniper trees, and I’m looking through colored glass!

Every time I cook a meal for myself, I think, “I should write about this in my blog!” It seems like I hesitate to write. I like having written more than my desire to write, sometimes. Two of my favorite pasttimes are writing and cooking. It’s great to share these loves.

Many of my friends love to cook! We used to make it a common practice to take turns hosting dinner parties. Then I moved. Establishing oneself in a new community takes time. Perhaps I don’t know the “right” people for such a thing, but I will keep trying. I love to cook, and I love to entertain.

Many people do not like to cook for themselves. I find it relaxing after a tough day at work. I use my mind in a different way than what I do at work. Music always accompanies my time in the kitchen. Time in the kitchen and listening to music are one of the places and times where/when I find my coziness (Hygge).

Let us begin with breakfast! My morning routine consists of drinking a lemon/olive oil system cleanser. I make it with 8 cups of water, two whole lemons, a dash of vanila, and four tablespoons of good olive oil. I blend it in 4 cups of water, and then I add the other four cups. Strain it into a half-gallon bottle. I drink 4-6 ounces before 30-minutes of exercise while listening to daily affirmations. Then I prepare my breakfast. Pictured here includes homemade granola (I think the recipe is found in a much earlier blog of mine). Some times I like to eat it was plain yogurt and honey, and other times I like to pour milk on it. I’m having this with a frothy coffee that I prepare in an electric milk frother.

The spices in my granola turn the milk a little murky looking, but the delightful flavor and crunch make it great!

This “Dalgona” coffee was made by whipping the instant coffee in two tablespoons of hot water. The middle layer is frothy milk, and the bottom layer comes from the frothy milk and whipped coffee blending.

This breakfast features homemade bread for the toast, peanut butter, raisins, and hemp seeds for added protein. It tasted great with a steaming cup of chai!

Winter drags out, but spring will be here soon, and the weather will be more amenable to having breakfast, lunch, or dinner out on the back deck or the front patio. During the pandemic and working from home, I took many breakfasts al fresco so that I can watch birds. Two rivers flow on the outskirts of town along with a 30-mile long creek/reservoir. That means we have bald eagles flying over town. What a better way to eat breakfast?

Often times, my breakfast may consist of left overs from the previous night’s dinner. I tend to eat anything for breakfasts. My 93 year old mother finds that “really weird” that her daughter eats “odd” things for breakfast. She defines “odd” as anything that is considered a “non-breakfast” item, like what we ate the night before. I have no such restrictions on myself. Lunches often consist of dinner leftovers, too.

This is a black bean burrito bowl. It can be vegan, but I used chicken stock to make the Spanish rice.

With social media, magazines, and cook books, one can always find new recipes. Of course, magazines and cookbooks contain such beautiful illustrations of the process and the final product. I like to read ingredients lists, which I think are there for suggestions, but recipes are meant to be experienmented with and tailored to fit your favorite flavor profiles. Most cooks know what kinds of spices go with specific dishes. I like to change it up sometime, so I will share some of those here, too.

This is a take on Jollof Rice with seasonings given to me by a friend from Ghana! I used garbanzo beans instead of lentils, because I had no lentils in the house!

With the two illustrations of rice dishes, I found these recipes online. Remember, when you cook with dry beans (garbanzo or black), since they are likely not “new crop” means that you must soak the beans to re-hydrate them before cooking. I don’t have access to new crop garbanzo or black beans, so I do soak and rinse before cooking them. Always add boiling water to your cooking pot. It helps the beans maintain their color and it helps them hydrate quicker in the cooking process.

I make the distinction between older pulses (legumes), because I love pinto beans, and I only buy new crop. They do not have to be soaked. Simply rinse and add to boiling water, which makes for a quicker meal. I get my new crop beans (usually harvested in late September or early October) from a farm in Colorado. The variety of pinto beans that I love is called, “vibrant,” and vibrant they are!

Sometimes a simple lunch can be grilled cheese, with marinated cucumbers and red onions with sparkling water.

When my grandchildren visit, lamb, Brussels sprouts, and asparagus are always on the menu. They set the menus in these cases.

This simple supper of tuna patties with homemade tartar sauce and a light glass of buttery chardonnay makes for a lovely meal.

I did not share my recipes in this blog today, because I think it’s fun to explore your own preferred flavor profiles. You likely know that some herbs and spices combine with certain ingredients. For example, I never put green chili in my marinara sauces, but I do add green chili to my bean and corn soups. You figure it out, if it interests you.

I realize that cooking or baking does not appeal to everyone. I present this as something that appeals to me.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Winter Comfort Meals

I think that my hibiscus has made more than one appearance in my featured image, but I can’t help sharing pictures with you. I took this photo last week when it had 11 blossoms on its branches. I keep it pruned into a sort of topiary. It appeared to be content when it was on the patio. Now it seems to have what it needs in the living room.

In the Northern Hemisphere around the 39th parallel in the Midwest, the throes of a rather mild winter offer us opportunities to be outside. With more activity, comes the desire for comfort foods. I am glad to share a few simple recipes for some lovely meals.

Some time in December, I made mashed potatoes with some leftover whipping cream from holiday desserts. It made all the difference in the world! I boiled some russet potatoes. I save the starchy and salty water for making bread. I will tell that in another post.

Once I drain the potatoes, I pour the cream over the potatoes and put the lid back on so that the cream is heated. I take three to five minutes for this step. Then I remove the lid and mash the potatoes with a little added pepper and a little salt to taste. When you use the whipping cream, you do not need to add butter, as with many mashed potatoes recipes. It goes well with meat loaf.

After years of watching my mother make meat loaf, I borrowed some of her techniques. She used oatmeal in place of crackers, as many people use. Here’s my recipe:

1 (45g) pound ground beef

2 eggs, beaten

2 tablespoons (19.5g) Oat flour

Fresh onion, minced (to taste)

Seasoned salt (your choice) and pepper

Worschestishire sauce (to taste)

Ketchup and a small amount of mustard

Bake in a hot oven. I use a two-piece meatloaf pan that has holes in it to drain away the grease into another part of the pan. This makes the meat loaf nice and solid, not to mention less greasy. During the last 10 – 15 minutes of baking, I pour a ketchup/brown sugar mixture, which bakes into a tasty glaze.

I served the meat loaf and mashed potatoes with my giardiniera pickle mix from the garden last summer.

I do love reading cook books and magazines. I cannot say that I follow the directions of the recipes exactly, but I do love the suggestions. Then I cook it how I want or with the ingredients that I do have. For example, I found this recipe for pasta with peas and mint. I did not have mint, so I used one of my 40 frozen jars of pesto from the garden last summer. Basil and mint are in the same family, so that is what I had. Also, I did not have the 2 cups of parmesan as the recipe called for. Instead, I melted graded pepper jack cheese in the simmering cream as I awaited the pasta (shells) to finish cooking. When the shells reached the al dente stage, I tossed the frozen peas in the water (before I saved two ladles full for the creaming of the dish) for one minute. Then I drained the shells and peas into the creamy, cheesy, béchamel. The final result reminded me of the chicken alfredo that the grandchildren had prepared for us.

Perhaps I present a backward way of giving you this recipe. I did sauté onions, garlic, and bacon bits in oil before adding the cream and the cheese. This gave it a base to begin the melt. Anyway, it went well with a crisp chardonnay. My carbon steel wok works the best for preparing sauces. The sweet, from the peas, and the creamy savory of this meal satisfied our appetites while serving as a warm comfort food.

Finally, another one of our comfort meals centers on rice. We love different types of fried rice for breakfast. It tends to be a great way to use rice from other meals. We have a rice cooker, which keeps the rice at just the right temperature for two to three days. It never lasts that long since we love rice.

For this particular breakfast, I had a few mushrooms and part of a red pepper and one grilled chicken thigh that needed to be used. I like to begin by sautéing, in sesame oil, what ever vegetables and protein that I will use for the rice. Then I add at least two eggs and cook until almost finished. Then I add the rice. After everything is thoroughly blended, I add a little soy sauce and some chili sauce. Blend again. I sprinkle toasted sesame seeds on before I serve it.

It went quite well with whipped instant coffee and milk.

We make breakfast special, because it sets the tone of the day. Since the weather is cold, and we cannot sit on the front patio, we sit at our dining room table situated by a large picture window. Today, we had 14 species of wonderful birds at the feeders that I counted within a 15-minute time span.

Take care. Be well, and thank you for reading.

Soups and Stews

My featured image, today, comes from the loving hands of my friend, Lynn, who celebrates camping life with us. We found delightful winter camping, sans tents and camper trailers, at Osage Hills State Park in Oklahoma in cabins built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the 1930s. The ginger camper and its subsequent decorating entertained us one evening.

With cold weather comes body-warming, emotion-comforting, and energy-giving soups and stews. My seasonally renewed love for soup began with my sister’s Zuppa Toscana! This recipe floats all over the web. I think Sis’s came from one of those. Her recipe consisted of: Italian sausage, 5-7 strips of bacon, 5 medium russet potatoes, Kale, heavy whipping cream, water, one half large onion, 2-3 garlic cloves, red pepper flakes, chicken broth, salt, and pepper. Fry sausage and bacon. Set cream aside, but add all the rest of the ingredients, and cook well. I added fresh rosemary and a few shakes of Kitchen Pepper (recipe found in one of my previous blogs). Add the whipping cream just before you serve the soup. Be sure to heat it through once you add the cream. Serve with crusty bread and a crisp white wine, like Chardonnay. The good cook stands to the right with our 90 year old mother in the middle.

Just before Thanksgiving, we traveled to see Granddaughter in her choral concert. Grandmother P invited us to dinner for a heart-warming soup. Like me, she favors pinto beans and other legumes in her soups. I like that she used pinto beans and peas together with potatoes and carrots. It proved to be a most lovely meal. She served it with piping hot dinner rolls and juice.

Several years ago, when she was six years old, we took our granddaughter to Alaska. We taught her how to harvest mussels from Resurrection Bay during low tide. She fell in love with the taste. Now, six years later, she continues to love mussels. She visited recently, and I always ask the Grands to pick their meals. She chose mussels. As luck would have it, the grocery store did not have any. She did find clams, so I prepared them. I really don’t know if she actually likes the mollusks, of if she likes the way I prepare them. As you may have guessed, I sauté garlic in butter and olive oil. Then I add white wine to simmer for a few minutes. I toss in the cleaned mussels, or in this case, clams. I let them steam for a bit with the lid on the pot. After the shells open, we know that they are finished. She likes to eat them served from the pot. We like to serve them with buttered linguine and crusty bread. One can add a salad, but do not forget to consume with a crisp white wine, like a sauvignon blanc. We see, here, the six year old with her mussels and the 12 year old with her clams. I put this in since the clams or mussels do swim in a luxurious soup.

Finally, I leave you with my all time favorite soup or stew, depending on whether it has a thin broth or a thick gravy. In the case of Thanksgiving 2020, instead of Turkey and all the trimmings, we had our Indigenous/Native traditional “Three Sisters,” corn, beans, and squash. The most important thing to remember about cooking pinto beans: they do not need soaking when you have new crop beans. Producers harvest pinto beans in the fall, usually October. They stay “fresh” for about a year. Then they begin to harden and become darker. Those you buy in the grocery store are darker, because they are older than a year. I prefer “new crop” beans, and they usually cook in two hours or less time, without soaking. We use dried sweet corn in our bean soups/stews. Our grandmas taught us to grow our corn and dry it on the cob. Once dry, the kernels fall off with little coaxing. The dried kernels can be stored in jars on the shelf. Now, to add corn to the stew/soup, it does work best to soak the kernels first, usually one hour in hot water. Drain the water before adding to the soup. To prepare the soup or stew, cook the beans and corn in well-salted water, which becomes your broth. As the beans cook and hydrate in the broth, prepare your meat: lamb, beef or pork. I prefer lamb. My Grandmothers used mutton. I like to use green chili as my seasoning. I do not add chili, garlic or onions until the beans are cooked. Adding an acidic vegetable too early does not allow the beans to hydrate properly, and you can have hard beans. Use salt and pepper to taste.

You might be saying, “Where’s the third sister?” You can choose to put the squash in the soup or stew, but I like to have it served on the side. I take chopped apples, chopped naval orange, raisins, and walnuts. I mix them in brown sugar, butter, Chinese five-spice, and brandy (or bourbon, or Fireball). Mix the fruit mixture and put it inside the seed cavities of acorn squashes that have been split and seeded. Save the seeds for later to bake or plant. It tastes wonderful with a hot piece of crusty bread just taken from the oven.

Thank you for reading.

Time with the Grands

The featured image is the hand of our lovely granddaughter, age 12. She is quite artistic, and she has lovely hands.

The U.S. Holidays seem to center on the fall and winter months. That means we look for ways to gather, at a distance, and partake in each other’s light. I do not have to tell you that the pandemic challenges of 2020 did change the way we interact with one another. While we continue to weep for those who lost their battles with the virus, we must cherish one another and do all we can to stay safe and care for those we love.

We spent some lovely time with three of our four grandchildren. Number three grandson went on a beach trip, so this is what we received from him.

With the other three spending one week of their holiday break from school, and also bringing a friend, we had three teens and one pre-teen in our house for a week. The tradition of their spending the holiday break has lasted a decade. We keep thinking that the soon-to-be 18 year old and the soon-to-be 17 year old “boys” will no longer want to do this, but we have been fortunate.

The week-long visit tends to focus on a very long, at least five evenings, game of Monopoly. Grandson number two took all our properties on the fifth day. Also, to give the kids some responsibilities, we asked them to pick on evening to prepare a menu and meal. This blog celebrates our evenings of meal choices and preparations by the grands plus one.

First night:

Granddaughter number one chose sushi for her evening. Her menu: Sushi (California rolls) and shrimp tempura. Grandpa wanted Inari (bean curd pockets) sushi, so we helped with that part. I did not get pictures of the tempura, but it was delicious. We have an excellent Asian market where we live, so we purchased tempura batter mix. The other items were purchased there, too. Here she is preparing a roll in which she added sushi-prepared rice, imitation crab, avocado, cucumber, carrots. She found it hard to keep up with the demand of the sushi lovers.

Second night:

This day happened to be our wedding anniversary, so Grandson number two wanted his meal to be special. His girlfriend came along for the week and bunked with our granddaughter. They chose chicken broccoli alfredo from a recipe that, said girlfriend, brought along. This grandson likes my homemade bread, so he asked me to bake some that day. I did. These kitchen helpers cooked chicken thighs, and then cut the meat away from the bones and sauteed the meat with onions and garlic. Then they added broccoli and cooked a little while longer. Once the penne pasta finished cooking to al dente, they added it to the meat. The final ingredient, as I remember it, called for whipping cream and parmesan cheese to be added and stirred until creamy. Here they are.

I had my serving of chicken broccoli alfredo with a crisp chardonnay from the Brix cellars in Upstate New York. After dinner, we played more Monopoly.

Third night:

Grandson number two chose steak, baked potatoes, and grilled asparagus for this night of preparation. The university, which employs me, has a meats department from which I purchase beef and, on occasion, lamb, when they have it. I wanted to assure good cuts of meat for this evening’s meal. Grandson #1, first marinaded the steaks with Daddy Hinkle’s marinade, that he learned from his father. His grilled steaks turned out fork tender. He prepared the asparagus in foil packets on the grill. It tasted buttery with a hint of lemon, and the potatoes came out with creamy flesh. I served the children sparkling grape juice, and I had my serving with a dark red cabernet.

We had s’mores for dessert prepared over an indoor grill:

Besides eating their prepared meals, the week consisted on shopping and playing Monopoly. The game began on Sunday the 27th and ended on New Year’s Eve. Grandson #2 won, and we each took our losses with great consternation. Over that past ten years of playing this game with them, I have never won. I do not possess that killer instinct when it comes to games and acquiring properties. In this game, I managed to have one full set of properties on which I put houses. Here’s what the game looked like before #2 wiped out the last three players before me.

Alas, it became time to store the holiday decorations, which consisted of a colored light on the hibiscus and a small Precious Moments Nativity with a few of my edits.

Luckily, the hibiscus, which I moved in from the front patio, served as a decorative tree with its four to seven blossoms per day. We had a wonderful time, though we greatly missed grandson #3. He did love his trip to the beaches of Mexico, however.

Thank you for reading.

Making Meal Times Special

While this story focuses on making meal times special, notice my featured image. I walk in the cemetery in the mornings before work. The cemetery in my town stands out among cemeteries because there are no restrictions on headstone sizes, as far as I know. The cemetery’s rolling topography with expansive spaces supports many species of flora and fauna! Only a block from my home, the burial space offers inviting views of nature, and it links to a network of trails that lead to the creek. I especially love the stone picnic tables on the trail built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the U.S. depression of the 1930s.

Meals: While walking in nature remains one way to make our day special, we look to our meals as a way to find memorable moments. Given my penchant for cooking, I’ve added pictures to mark such memorable moments. There have been times when we have finished a well-prepared meal only for me to remember that I failed to snap a shot. But then, not all gustation should be chronicled for posterity!

We like to go camping, and we don’t live far from that opportunity. I grew up in the mountains of Colorado, and we used to spend many weekends enjoying trees, streams, lakes, and rivers, not to mention a wide variety of four-legged and winged creatures. That’s where my love for camping grew. I like to cook outdoors, too! My husband likes to eat, so we make a fine pair!

Breakfast helps us to begin our day with special contemplation. Something as simple as my homemade granola. Preparing granola is a significant event that takes the better part of a Saturday since I make about 25 pounds (11.34kg) at a time, and I pack it into freezer-safe container. That much granola lasts six to eight months. Pictured above is a bowl of granola with whole milk and a steaming cup of coffee. Eating it from my favorite restaurant ware, Shenango China, makes it extra special. The “vitrified china” from New York and Pennsylvania will have to be a story for another time.

We love granola, and here is a general recipe for my bi-annual mix. Instead of baking the granola in the oven, I use an electric roaster, those used for preparing a turkey!

38 Cups (5.9kg) of rolled oats

3 pounds (1360.78g) mixed raw nuts (I like almonds, filberts, walnuts, pecans, and cashews) Hemp seeds work well, too.

3 pounds of raisins or dried fruit of your choice

3 teaspoons Kitchen pepper (seasoned salt of the 18th century!) This recipe can be found in a previous blog.

4 Tablespoons crushed cardamom, 4 Tablespoons cinnamon, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, and 2 teaspoons ground cloves

1 cup coconut oil (not fractionated) and 3/4 cup of sunflower oil

2 cups honey (use your local honey where possible)

2 cups of sorghum or cane molasses and 1 half cup of pure maple syrup

Heat liquids on the medium heat enough to blend.

Have oats, spices, fruits, nuts, and seasonings set in roaster. Pour the hot oil and sweeteners over the dry ingredients, fruits and nuts. If you bake this in the oven, it will take several batches.

This process takes about three hours. You will know it’s finished when the ingredients begin to clump a bit together.

Store in freezer containers. Keep what you use out on the counter or in a cupboard. Enjoy with yogurt, on ice cream, as a crunchy addition to cooked oatmeal. Also, you can heat the granola with milk to make a creamy hot meal with nuts and fruit.

Breakfast Ice Cream

I call it “breakfast ice cream” because it originally began as a smoothie. My ingredients tend to produce a consistency too thick to be a smoothie. It’s more of a soft serve ice cream, which can be a quite special treat no matter what time of day you eat it. It requires a food processor as opposed to a regular blender since it has frozen fruit. Here’s the lucious outcome:

2 frozen bananas (I cut them into pieces before freezing them) This is a good way to use bananas that are about to over ripen.

1 cup frozen blueberries (about 190g)

1 cup plain yogurt (285g) or a similar non dairy substitute

1 serving of any type of protein powder

2 TBS (18g) Badia Trilogy health seed mix (Flax, chia, hemp)

1/4 cup water (59g) or equivalent in ice

Blend in your food processor (I use a Ninja, which is one-thousand watts). It takes a bit, and you have to scrape it down once in a while, but the end product is about four, 1 cup servings. It’s thick, creamy, sweet, and smooth. Be creative and enjoy!

Eggs Benedict

I love eggs benedict. There are some days I don’t want to consume bread, so I made these with crispy hash browns. I had just eaten a salmon eggs benedict in a restaurant in Kansas City, so I thought I’d try this with Canadian bacon like traditional benedict. I grated potatoes, steamed them in oil with the lid on so that they would cook while the bottom would brown. When the potatoes looked transparent, I flipped them to brown on the other side. This time without the lid. I used the lid to steam them initially.

The Hollandaise sauce came from the Betty Crocker cookbook, and it’s the best-ever. We enjoyed it with espresso, and sometimes we add steamed milk for a luscious cappuccino.

These are just a few of the things I’ve been creating lately. I hope you like it, and I thank you for reading my blog.

Eating Together – At a Distance

I took the “featured image” as “The Guys” began an evening fishing trip on Chautauqua Lake in Western New York, not far from Lake Erie. My memories of floating in that lake on my back with my head submerged just enough to shut out the sounds of the world with only my breathing noticeable, is one of my most healing experiences – ever. This photo, taken with my cell phone, illustrates the colors of peace and serenity at a time that I needed it most, having lost our daughter six months earlier that year, 2016.

Here we live in 2020 during a pandemic. We continue to stay connected with friends and family through calls, virtual meetings, and occasional visits to the back deck. I admit, my usual practice was to invite large gatherings for food, stories, drinks, music, and such. I love to be around people!

Sorry about the random pictures! I’m trying to get used to the “new” format of WordPress! Not sure I like it.

As we navigate the new way of being in community, with others, the onus falls on each of us to practice safe distances. Rather than abandon my social life, I continue to look for ways to engage with my friends, families, and others by opting for outdoor interactions with no more than two to three people. We can be at a safe distance on my back deck or my front patio that way.

Serving food can be a challenge. How can I assure the visitors to my deck for patio that I am practicing safe hygiene practices in my kitchen? I wash my hands, a lot!, and wear a mask when preparing food to share. Also, I use plates fresh from the dishwasher! Instead of my usual cloth napkins, I use paper napkins.

I went to a birthday party last June. My friend staged the party on her concrete driveway. Each of us provided our own chairs, dinner services, drink, snacks, and glasses or cups. The friend provided cakes from a professional caterer. It was a great time for people who were feeling isolated. Look at the cakes.

I thought the distancing for the party demonstrated a rather safe way to interact. There were face masks worn, though the picture shows none. Notice the chalk markings to indicate six feet!

In the meantime, we must be creative to keep our connections with one another without exposing ourselves and others to the COVID-19 virus.

So, what have I cooked lately?

Experimenting in the kitchen, especially during this pandemic, gives me great pleasure. Sure, we like to eat, and we have to find ways to make our meals fun, even if we change places where we take our meal. We like the patio in the front of the house for breakfast. We sit with our hibiscus with our morning eggs and coffee (or whatever else we’re having that morning!). In the evening, we sit on the back deck. We enjoy watching the birds, listening to the sounds of the evening: birds chirping, cicadas making that familiar crackling known as crepitation, and dogs barking. Interestingly, if you listen closely, you hear the hum of car engines, children emoting, and leaves rustling. What a better way to take a meal.

The experiments in the kitchen still surprise me. Nine times out of 10, they are tasty and fun. We have a great Thai food restaurant. My favorite dish is basil fried rice. It’s almost too hot with Thai chilies, even when I order “mild.” I have made the rice at home. The one thing that I’ve not done well is topping the fried rice with the egg that’s been “poached” in about three inches of hot oil. The egg white comes out crispy crunchy while the yolk stays runny and creamy!

Based on my tasting and listing what I think are the ingredients:

1 big bunch of fresh basil, one quarter of an onion, two cloves fresh garlic, one or two Thai or other hot chilies, one-half red pepper, all sauteed in sesame oil on medium high heat. Once the vegetables have properly sweated, add a bit of fish sauce and frozen green beans or peas and carrots. Now add the rice and fry some more with added soy sauce. Top it with a poached egg or fry it in butter, over-easy. The extra flavor from the restaurant comes from “poaching” (actually deep fat frying) the egg in hot oil. The egg should only be in the hot, deep oil less than one minute. The egg pictured here was steamed in butter, and I let it get a little crispy on the bottom.

We enjoyed it very much.

Thank you for reading me.

Happy Accidents…in the Kitchen

My featured image proves that there are happy accidents in the kitchen. It’s cheese with a dollop of my APOS jam, i.e. Apricot-pineapple-orange-saffron jam. While one may want to consume a bite of this with a cracker, I found it wonder to take a small serving and eating it with a small spoon. Think – small spoon with which one might eat caviar. Also, it’s great on a nut cracker, which does not overwhelm the delicate flavor of the cheese and the jam.

How did I make the cheese? That’s the happy accident! Backstory: I drink lactose-free milk. I have a favorite brand, but I was at a different grocery store a few weeks ago, and I bought the “store brand” of lactose-free milk. An ingredient added to lactose-free (lactose is milk sugar) milk is lactase, an enzyme that helps us to digest milk sugar. Cells in the walls of the small intestine produce lactase.

Well, I was heating up the milk on the stove for coffee. It separated, just like when you put a rennet tablet in milk you’ve heated to 118 degrees fahrenheit (47.7779 C) for cheese. Noticing that curds had separated from the whey, I poured it all in a cheese bag. After squeezing more whey out of it, I had a creamy, solid ball of cheese. The natural sugars in milk rendered a slightly sweet cheese. I added salt to the forming curds to give it some body. Voilà, c’est fromage!

Always looking for yummy happy hour appetizers, I purchased another of the “store brand” of the lactose-free milk, this time from a different store. I heated it to about 120 degrees F. (48.8889 C), and this time, the curds that separated from the whey were smaller. Well, I thought a nice dessert cheese would be nice, so I added a small box of lemon flavored gelatin and 6 strands of the wonderful saffron! I rubbed the lovely orange-red (crimson?) stigma and styles in my hand to release the aroma and flavors. After I spend a few minutes deeply inhaling the perfume of the saffron, I mixed the gelatin and the saffron gently so as not to disturbed the developing curds too much.

I let the mixture gather, drain, and form in the cheese cloth for about 8 hours. The result was the most scrumptious, creamy cheese you could imagine. Quite incredible considering that I did not age it in a dark room surrounded by little pine wood cases (I’m thinking of one of my favorite cheeses, brie!). It turned out to be a great appetizer with a small glass of sweet vermouth. Or it could be a small dessert with a small glass of port.

Notice the color imparted by the lemon-flavored gelatin and the orange-red streaks from the saffron. I’ve used the lemon-saffron combination for Thanksgiving “jello” salad last fall. Right now, I am thinking about other flavors. I wonder how blueberry would taste. I mean, it’s best not to expect, like, Stilton, which goes great with blueberry. It may be worth a try.

Actually, I found the best cheese cloths are handi -wipes. I think handi-wipes are a cloth-paper hybrid. They’re great for a semi-disposable dish cloth that dries easily to cut down on bacterial build-up in the kitchen. I use those freshly from the bag – never used.

Now, this is not a happy accident, but my friend, Mirta, asked if I knew how to make lavender honey. I had some locally-sourced honey, which carries the local pollen, which helps us to build up immunities to those pollens as allergens. Also, I had some locally sourced lavender from a friend. I heated the honey, which was starting to crystalize, just enough to make the crystals melt. Then I crushed the lavender buds to add them to the honey. I used about two cups of honey and 1/8 of a cup crushed lavender bud and one drop of lavender essential oil, for good measure. The result was delicious! It’s great on toast, with peanut butter on bread, and in teas.

The immersion blender helped to whip the honey into a creamy substance while it assured that no lavender buds would get stuck in your throat.

I have more creations from my kitchen, but I will share those later.

Thank you for reading.

In the Kitchen From the Garden

One of my gentle readers, thank you SLA, asked if I could show a picture of the San Juan Mountain Range as it’s viewed from my hometown. Can you imagine looking at that every day? Such an auspicious sight to behold. Though, this blog has nothing to do with this magnificent mountain range, it is part of who I am. Perhaps I shall engage some experts for another blog, my brother Lee and sister Eileen. For they climb these great “hills” just about every weekend. Yes. I was up on those ranges in my younger years with my brothers Dan and Lee, but I don’t get to there as often as I’d like. I live a long day’s drive from my hometown and there is no easy way to get there by plane. If you visit these lovely mountains, leave them better than you found it. They are a precious resource.

About two years ago, I wrote about a crazy prolific basil plant. This year, my garden has proven to be basil prolific. Plus, I have a few other herbs from which to create: rosemary and thyme, too. Of course, the obvious is, pesto. That wonderful mixture of basil, olive oil, parmesan, pine nuts, garlic, and a little salt and pepper.

This year, I decided to try other things such as OGB: Olive oil, garlic and basil, used for a bread dip. It goes into the freezer quite well. You may want to add just a touch of pepper flakes and a little salt to make it even more scrumptious.

Another way to preserve the basil, was to blend with olive oil for sauteing mussels or any other light fish. Just add garlic. Yes. It’s a bit different from pesto. It stays as green and fresh as the day you put it in. I froze one and refrigerated the other. I call it, “basil oil.”

Here is something new for me: Basil Rosemary Pesto. I give the ingredients without measurement, because I just put it together until it looked and smelled green and fragrant.

Large bunch of rinsed and drained fresh basil (three big hands full!)
About five long rosemary sprigs (pull the leaves off the stalk)
About 1 cup (236.59 mL) olive oil and a half cup (118.29 mL) sunflower oil
4 big cloves of garlic (I threw in about four small cloves of wild garlic, too!)
1 cup shelled pistachios (I didn’t have pine nuts)
10 juniper berries (from the Colorado juniper). Since I had no pine nuts, the juniper berries added that nice “piney” taste.
Parmesan Romano cheese to taste
Salt

For this batch, I added a small piece of a hot pepper from my garden just to add a bit of spice, but not too much! It freezes quite nicely, and I keep one in the refrigerator for a spoonful here and there in my cooking. Notice the little hot pepper in the upper right corner. It’s a hot little devil, so I only used a tiny bit.

So, you can use pesto as pizza sauce. Just spread it on your dough before you add the vegetables and/or the meats. It can be a subtle flavoring for a pot roast or chicken. It makes a wonderful spread on hot bread.

I think it’s a near perfect food. Basil is an antiviral. Olive oil is good for your “happy” fats. That’s how I remember that HDL is the good cholesterol. “Happy” is my mnemonic for the “good” cholesterol. Parmesan and the nuts are a good source of protein. Garlic is said to be a vasodilator. There you have it. Pesto is a great food!

Finally, I leave you with one of the dishes made this week with my pesto. It’s a simple vegetable pizza. I used a fresh tomato paste (simmered with garlic until thick) and pesto as the base for the cheese and vegetables. It was yummy with a glass of cabernet sauvignon. Thank you for reading.

The Joys of the Kitchen

While my feature photo is not that of the kitchen, it’s one of my favorite places. It’s an arch that connects two buildings. Named after its donors (Bird), the arch connects the Marianna Kistler-Beach Museum to its offices and education department, on the campus of Kansas State University. I think I had snapped this picture during one of my winter visits to admire the exhibitions. I like the lines in the photo…

Now, for time in the kitchen, I realize that many people talk and write about food, cooking, and “this is what’s happening to me,” sorts of sharing. These types of communications illustrate ways that we connect to the world. I like to write, and I like to cook, so I share these two things with you. Here are some meals that I have prepared these past few days.

While I’m preparing food for only two of us, of late, I find it interesting to using what I buy or grow to the fullest of the life of the food. For example, if I by a jar of pickles, and we’ve finished all the pickles, I like to use the brine for preparing another jar of pickles, because there are these lovely garlic bits left behind. Here’s how you do it.

Refrigerator Pickles: Take one or two English hothouse cucumbers. Slice the cucumbers, and place them in a bowl. Sprinkle the sliced cucumbers with two tablespoons (17.06g) of salt. Toss to mix the salt into the cucumbers. Let the cucumbers sit for 10 minutes. Then rinse and pat dry, and place the cucumbers in the cleaned, sterilized, and dried jar that held the original pickles.

In the meantime, bring the brine to boil. Assume that you will not have enough brine, so prepare additional brine with equal parts water and vinegar. Likely, you won’t need more than one cup (227g) of the additional brine. Then pour the boiling brine over the cucumbers in the jar. The brine should, entirely, cover all of the pickles. Replace the lid, and allow the jar of cucumbers-about-to-turn-pickles to cool, slightly, before you refrigerate. They keep in the refrigerator for as long as it takes for you to eat them.

Also, during our physical distancing, we do cook a lot more, which I was greatly missing when I was, physically, going to the office every day. Keep in mind, I am thriving working from home! I’m much more productive in my job, because I can step away for a moment to come back to my computer with a brighter mind to complete the task as hand. I’ve even lost weight with the decrease in my stress levels from the office. I, greatly, dread the idea of returning to the, physical, office. I love my home office! More recipes…

This has been a week of turning to other proteins, besides beef. We love beef, but try to vary our proteins. I prepared pinto beans. We buy “new crop” pinto from a small farmer in the Arkansas River Valley of Southeast Colorado. Pinto beans are harvested around October and November. New crop pintos easily cook in one or two hours, don’t need soaking, and taste wonderful, if you like pinto beans. I love pinto beans, as do many of my Indigenous peers. Most of the beans you buy in the grocery store are old, and that’s why you have to soak them to rehydrate before cooking – not so with new crop beans. I cooked the beans with ham pieces and served them with a sort of “Spanish Rice.” I didn’t take pictures of that meal, but I did make a luscious breakfast the next day with the beans. I steamed eggs in a wee bit of butter, added savory green chili to the beans, and put it atop the eggs. It was quite memorable in beginning the day.

The next night, we had salmon. First, I sauteed a roma tomato with spring onions, and garlic in butter and sesame oil. After the vegetables softened a bit, I added the seasoned (with soy sauce and pepper) salmon and place the lid to allow the ingredients to steam and cook the salmon. I had never used rice noodles, so this was a new one for me. They are simple. Pour boiling water over the noodles, and let them sit for 20-25 minutes. After the salmon reached its cooked temperature, I took it out, and set it aside while I thickened the veggies in the saute. I added the rice noodles to the vegetables in their sauce. The rice noodles, in this case, are wide meant for Pad Thai. I think they could be used for linguini and clam sauce, especially for those with wheat intolerances. Here was our meal. Oh, we had a crisp Sauvignon Blanc, which made it perfect!

One night, I prepared a similar dish with shrimp, but my focus was on garlic (It’s a good thing we are physical distancing, because our garlic intake has increased of late), and I served it with spaghetti and mozzarella pull-apart bread. The sauce for the salmon and shrimp is rather easy. I saute the garlic, onion, and celery in butter and olive oil. Once the vegetables cook, I add white wine and simmer to thicken the sauce. For the shrimp, I used one tiny Roma tomato. For the salmon dish, I used red pepper and a bit of spinach. The garlic shrimp dish required a buttery Chardonnay as its accompaniment.

I will continue to practice a sort of artistry in preparing delicious meals. Sometimes, there are failures, but I just learn more from them. Also, I tried making mozzarella. It was partially successful. I’ll keep you posted on that, too.

Thank you for reading.

Gifts from Nature and the Kitchen

Sometime last week, we set out to find some fungi, specifically morels. On on our way out we saw a neighbor leaving her house. She was headed to another friends to “pick up some mushrooms!” I asked if her friends had found morels! “No.” Well, we took a long walk tromping through the woods near our home. We returned home to find a brown paper grocery bag on the front door step partially filled with oyster mushrooms. I have a feeling my neighbor’s friend grows these at home. That sounds like something I’d like to do!

The cemetery that sits about one quarter mile from our house is a favorite place for us to walk. I found a nice patch of wild garlic, so I picked a small bunch (about 10 little shoots). I had those in my hand when when we found the bag containing the lovely fungus. I remembered that we had a rice cooker with a new batch of cooked rice, Also, I remembered that I had some chicken broth with little strands of chicken. That meant I had everything I needed to whip up a nice mushroom soup! I sauteed spring onions from the garden, rosemary from my window pot, celery, and the chopped mushrooms! The chicken broth, thawed from the freezer, added to the saute, made a most delicious soup. We poured the soup over rice. We added a crisp romaine salad with an Asian dressing.

Asian Dressing:

1/4 c (59.15mL) sesame oil

1/4 cup (59.15mL) seasoned rice vinegar

Finely minced: garlic, spring onion, fresh ginger to taste. Add 1 tablespoon of pure maple syrup and roasted, crushed sesame seeds. Shake well before using. It’s quite delicious and makes a simple romaine into something quite sublime. Actually, the lettuce is just a vehicle to get the dressing into your mouth, because it’s rude to drink salad dressing!

Two things are happening to us as we physical distance from community while working from home. I am experiencing less stress. I work longer hours, but those hours are not stressful, because I can step away to the garden, to the kitchen, or to a book to get a quick recharge. I am actually more productive at work, because I can do all my meetings and teaching virtually! It will be interesting to return to campus, physically.

Right now, I take great delight in getting my garden ready with sprouted seedlings I’ve begun in the house. This is my yard’s first garden in decades, I think. We have been in this house almost one year. The soil is heavy clay with lots of limestone deposits. We have a large populations of bunnies, woodchucks, squirrels, and deer in addition to multiple species of birds. I will have to write a blog submission on the great birds in my yard! With a garden, I get to spend lots of time in the kitchen creating dishes from the bounty. More about all that later. Here’s a picture of my embryonic garden.

Shortly after the Easter holiday, I wrote about our leg of lamb. Being only two in the household, we had leftover lamb. I cubed what was left of the lamb and stuck it in the freezer. I took it out this week. It made two more meals. The first evening, we had lamb tacos. I forgot to take a picture. Suffice it to say that I took half the thawed lamb from the freezer container, and placed it in the frying pan. Though I added no grease or oil, I did add green chili made from roasted Anaheim green chili peppers. They are a wonderfully, savory chili that is not hot. On a scale from one to 10, I’d put Anaheim at 2 or three. Though, I think they are being bred to be much hotter these days. It was a simple taco with a warmed corn tortilla, the meat, and the green chili. The tacos were great with a lime enhanced light beer.

The next night, we had lamb curry prepared with the other portion of the lamb. Here’s what I did, I think.

One quarter of a diced yellow onion

Three cloves minced garlic

1 Tablespoon minced ginger

I sauteed the first three ingredients in a mixture of sesame and sunflower oils

I added one can of stewed tomatoes with its liquid

I added a prepared curry powder and a spice mix my Ghanaian student brought from his home country for preparing Jollof Rice. That was the winning combination, though I may never be able to create this dish again. Of course, we served it over rice and ate it with naan bread prepared the night before.

Sometimes, we eat at the dining room table. Now that it’s warm, we eat outside on the deck. We may even consume our meals in front of the television with a movie. The most important thing is that we enjoy the food, and savor the convivial moments.

Thank you for reading.

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