Recipe Hoarding

Tags

cookbooks, food hoarding, foodies, Julia Child, Mennonite cooking, paper hoarding, recipe hoarding, Recipes

I don’t clip many recipes, or buy many cookbooks. I do have a couple of notebooks in which I wrote recipes, but they seem out of touch with the way we live now. Many of them were from Kraft, or cooking magazines and websites. I don’t buy canned soups, or prepackaged seasonings, or cake and biscuit mixes. I can’t afford them now. I can’t afford expensive ingredients like chocolate or wine.

People often say, “I’d love to have the recipe!” But I find that most people don’t cook half the recipes they collect. I worked as cook for a family that had three kitchen drawers stuffed with clipped recipes. There were thousands of recipes, more recipes than anyone could make in a lifetime. They were foodies, with pantries and freezers full of ingredients. It was a daunting task to use the food they had collected before it wasn’t useable anymore. I spent probably an hour a day sorting through the stacks of clipped recipes, looking for ones to match the ingredients on hand. They would pick out ones they wanted to try, and it was easily a $200 trip to the market every week, in addition to using what was in the house.

Now, I might have $200 a month for groceries. I have to cook from basic ingredients, and the cheapest ones. So convenience and packaged foods are not on my shopping list. We eat as much local produce as we can get. Some of it is from Milli’s garden across the river, and we are just eating from our own. We will share some of our tomatoes, radishes and beans with her and her husband. I bought fiddleheads, a local wild-gathered delicacy, through Milli at a very good price and I still have some in the freezer.

I cook enough of some foods for three meals -  beans some cuts of meat, quiche. This saves on energy and time overall. I try to alternate leftover meals, and some I freeze. Some months we get down to the last few days without money and I need to cook meals that involve two potatoes, a carrot, half an onion, a handful of lentils and a cup of rice. (The answer is curry with spiced potatoes.) Quiches make good ingredient stretchers, if the basic ingredients of flour, shortening, eggs and milk are on hand. The added ingredients may include cheese, mushrooms, bacon, onions or leftover ham or chicken. Herbs may be part of the seasoning. A basic meal made with garden lettuce salad is supplemented cooked vegetables, cheese, hard-boiled eggs and leftover meat, with a homemade salad dressing. Bottled dressings are convenient but they contain all sorts of ingredients that are unhelpful for good health. They are mostly sugar, salt and flavour enhancers in soybean oil and cheap white vinegar.

Once the basic cooking methods are learned, the cook doesn’t need a lot of recipes. Recipes pushed at us by the food companies are meant to keep us hooked on sugar, fat and salt.

Library of Congress photo

These are the cookbooks I use the most: Edna Staebler’s Food That Really Shcmecks; Doris Janzen Longacre’s More-With-Less Cookbook; Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I have some ethnic cookbooks I use as well, and more on that another time. The first two cookbooks are both Mennonite in background, and I don’t need to explain the stellar Julia. This is the tome for learning genuine French country cooking. A lot of cream and butter get used. But Julia lived a good life of many years; butterfat and decent wine didn’t hurt her a bit.

Not Just Another Recipe Blog

Tags

kitchen, original recipes, plain cooking, plain life

I don’t post as often on this blog as the others, because I actually prepare each item myself and take photos as I go. Some recipe blogs use reposted material or copy from cookbooks, but I will never post a recipe here that I have not made myself and modified for suitability. So expect posts about twice a week. Eventually I will have a good store of reference material here, not only on preparing food, but on Plain life in the kitchen and garden.

 

Kitchen Necessities

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antique cookware, canning jars, cooking, kitchen appliances, kitchen storage, kitchenware, knife block, Knives, pots and pans

I don’t have small appliances. No toaster, no microwave, no blender. I have an electric handmixer for those times I must make a frosted birthday cake, and an electric kettle came with the house. I sometimes covet a stand mixer, but I really don’t need one.

We have lived off-grid in tiny dwellings. Kitchen things had to do double duty, or more. Mixing spoons and serving spoons were the same item. Pans were also casseroles. The canning kettle has been the bread box. The cutting board was the right size to cover one half of the double sink.

It’s always so tempting to run to a department store or go online and order a whole suite of lovely cookware, stainless steel, with glass lids and insulated handles. Mine is all older, even antique. I have three sizes of covered pan, and the largest one doubles as a canning kettle. The cobalt blue Le Crueset pot is the most recent, and was a gift from friends fifteen years ago. The copper teakettle is lined with tin and resides on the stovetop for a constant source of hot water when the fire is going. The big blue canner also has water, which becomes washing water for the sink. The other pan I use is a large cast iron skillet. I would like a second, smaller one. I have no pots and pans with nonstick coatings. They leak molecular particles, no matter how inert the maker claims they are. Avoid them.

knife block

Invest kitchen money in good knives. They will make your life simpler and safer. Dull knives tend to slide and roll off anything tough. Then they will nick your hand. Good steel knives, either stainless or carbon steel, will hold an edge better and be more efficient. I have a sharpening steel, but one of those knife sharpening gizmos that hold the stones at the right angle work well, too. Knives shouldn’t need to be sharpened more than a couple of times a year except in professional kitchens. If a good knife doesn’t seem to hold a good cutting edge it needs to be reground. Poor sharpening technique most likely took the temper off the edge. Most of my knives were inherited, including a real Sabatier chef’s knife, which is at least as old as I am. I also have a carving/boning knife that is as long as a short sword, two utility type Wusthof knives, a serrated stainless knife for half-frozen meats, a very old carbon steel knife that came from my great-grandmother’s kitchen, and a Henckel serrated bread knife. I don’t use a paring knife. I use the old carbon steel knife or a horizontal-blade vegetable peeler. Again, a good quality peeler is worth the extra cost. A real wood cutting board of hardwood, of an inch or more in thickness, is a necessity. I do not use plastic or resin or glass cutting surfaces. They dull the knives and hold germs. A wood cutting board properly washed in hot water, never left to soak, and never left with liquids pooled on it, is more sanitary and lasts a long time. I can’t use anything with a microbial agent in it, whether it is a cutting board or a sponge. Wash the cutting board with hot water, no soap, and dry promptly. It will last a decade or more. My knife block came from a church rummage sale. It is a necessity because knives in drawers get dull with rubbing against each other, and it is dangerous to reach into a knifey drawer.

Work spoons and utensils also need to be of good quality and easy to clean. I use only olive wood or bamboo wooden spoons, so I pay more for them. They last much longer, too. Very cheap wooden spoons can be used for craft projects or to stir paint. They splinter and break and absorb food. My best wooden spoons are 20 years old. My other utensils are solid stainless steel. They are 20 years old as well. They are heavy-gauge and most have hanging holes at the top, although I keep them in a crock on the countertop. Utensils with nylon, rubber or plastic handles can harbour pathogens in the joint where the metal meets the handle. They are not as strong, either. All nylon or plastic utensils are useless and accumulate bacteria. Throw them out.

jars for canning and storage

I can’t store anything in plastic because I have a very serious allergy to chemicals used in many kinds of plastics. I have quite a few old canning jars no longer suitable for canning, and rice, beans, pasta, spices and herbs go in these and into the cupboards. It is best to store food away from light. I save good jars, wash them thoroughly, and take off labels and any lid liners. I even freeze in them, leaving some head space. I despise cabinets full of plastic containers, stacked and nested to the gunwales, with the lids poised to jump out at the unwary cook the minute a door is opened. Any plastic tubs that make it into the house get washed and hustled out to the garage to be used next spring for seed starting.

I use only enameled, ceramic and glass mixing bowls, which also work as serving bowls and storage bowls in the refrigerator. I bought some elasticized covers or I use a plate or saucer of the right circumference as a cover. The plastic covers don’t come in contact with the food, so I don’t mind them.

I have the usual range of baking dishes – a couple of glass casseroles, cookie sheets, loaf pans, cake pans, roasters and square pans. I have muffin tins as well, but I am not baking much besides bread, as we are on a low refined sugar diet. I will be experimenting with natural sweeteners such as honey and maple syrup soon.

That’s about it. I don’t have cupboards, pantries and cabinets full of kitchenware. I have just about all I need for a lifetime now.

 

Homemade Noodles, the Mennonite Way

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herbs in soup, homemade noodles, how to make noodles, Mennonite Amish recipes, Mennonite noodle recipe, soup with noodles, using bacon in soup

A package of pasta in the grocery store costs more than CAN$1 right now, and is gradually climbing to about CAN$1.50. This is a lot to pay for a flour and water product. I’ve stopped buying boxed pasta or the crinkly cello bags of egg noodles. My mother would sometimes make noodles, and the average Waterloo County Mennonite cook would not consider store-bought noodles except in an emergency. So I turned to my favourite Deutsch style cookbook, Food that Really Schmecks, by Edna Staebler.

ingredients for noodles

I have altered her method a bit, as it assumes that one has all day to make noodles, and I don’t think she had ever owned a rotary pizza cutter.

Ingredients: 2 cups flour, 2 eggs or 3-4 egg yolks, a pinch of salt if preferred, maybe 1/2 cup cold water.

Tools: Medium mixing bowl, wooden or steel prep spoon, rolling pin, knife or rotary cutter, cutting board, drying rack or flour dusted dishtowel.

Directions: Put the flour and salt in a bowl, and make a little well in the middle. Drop in the eggs or egg yolks, muddle the egg a bit with the spoon, and stir beaten egg into the flour. If the dough is not hanging together and leaves too many crumbs in the bottom of the bowl, add up to a half-cup of cold water. Knead the dough ball on a floured countertop or pastry board, divide into 4 equal pieces, and roll each piece flat as you can, in a semi-rectangular shape, until it is almost transparent thin. You will have to keep flouring a bit to keep the pin from sticking.

cutting the noodles

Cut each rectangle the long way into thin strips with the knife or pizza cutter, a 1/4″ to 1/2″ in width, but don’t worry too much about precision. I hang my noodles on my wooden drying rack, or they can be hung on a broomstick or dowel across chair backs. I put a clean towel under the rack in case I drop noodles or they slide off.

noodle drying rack

Let the noodles dry a couple of hours, get everything else ready for the meal, then get a pot of water boiling. Pull off the noodles you want to cook, boil for no more than five minutes, test for texture, and when satisfactory, drain in a colander. Do not rinse.

Let the rest of the noodles dry at least ten hours or overnight, break into pieces, and store in a jar. Use them within a week or so so they don’t get mouldy if they weren’t perfectly dry.

tomato soup with noodles, herbs and bacon bits

I put the noodles in bowls, added fresh herbs – chives and parsley from my garden – poured tomato soup over the noodles, and topped it with bits of home-smoked bacon from our local butcher. We shared a bowl of steamed green beans, which we ate with our fingers. (We did use spoons for the soup.)

Red Beans

Tags

dried beans, fasting food, Lent, vegetarian

Lent is coming soon and this is the time to start collecting some bean recipes. I came up with this recipe because I thought the family was a little tired of New England style baked beans, and I was out of navy beans, so I picked up a package of red beans at the market. Red beans have a mild taste, not too beany.

Ingredients: 1 lb. of red beans, about 1 cup of tomato paste, 1 vegetable bouillion cube, one carrot, diced, one medium onion, diced fine, one stalk of celery, diced. (For use outside Lent, about 1 tablespoon olive oil.) Oil for sauteing, if wanted. One and a half cups hot water.

Soak the red beans overnight, drain in the morning, rinse, cover with water, bring to a boil, and cook abut ten minutes. Drain and rinse again. Meanwhile, saute the diced vegetables in a little oil or in water if entirely Lenten, until softened a bit. 

Put the beans and vegetables in a crockpot or a 2-3 quart covered pot. Dissolve the vegetable cube in the hot water, add the tomato paste, and pour over the bean mixture. Cook on high in the crockpot for about 4 hours, then turn down to low until time to serve. If using a stovetop pot, simmer about three hours. Keep the liquid just at the top level of the beans, adding hot water.

If you want a non-vegetarian version, crisp fry a couple of slices of bacon and lay on top of the beans. Or add a few slices of cooked Italian sausage.

I served this with pasta mixed with Parmesan cheese (use minced herbs in Lent) and steamed rapini.

Bread

Tags

bread, bread recipes, monk's bread, rye, spelt, using stale cereal, whole grains, yeast, yeast sponge

Almost every bag of flour has a bread recipe printed on it. Basically, it’s two tablespoons of yeast, a tablespoon of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, at least four cups of flour, a tablespoon of vegetable oil, and a cup or more of water. Add flour as you knead; knead at least ten minutes. Let rise until doubled. Punch it down, knead another five minutes, shape into loaves, let rise again by one-third, put in a 350 degree oven, bake until done, 40-60 minutes, depending on the size of the loaf. Rap the bottom of the loaf with your knuckles. If it sounds hollow, it’s done. Let cool before slicing.

Yeast makes the bread rise by releasing carbon dioxide as they feed; sugar and wheat flour feed the yeast; wheat flour provides gluten in the dough so that the bread will stretch and expand. Salt keeps the yeast from growing too fast. Water is the medium for the yeast to mix with the carbohydrates. Oil makes a softer, moister bread.

Bread wants to happen. It is the natural result of yeast (which is everywhere), water and wheat. If you leave an uncovered bowl of damp flour out overnight, it will probably be bubbly in the morning from the wild yeast in the air.

There can be more to bread than this. If you mix equal amounts of flour and water and set it out as I mentioned in the last paragraph, you will have sourdough starter. Keep it fed with more water and flour, cover it loosely (a lidded beanpot is good, or an old cookie jar) and it will keep forever on the kitchen counter (or refrigerated when its really hot out). There are many recipes using sourdough: bread, muffins, biscuits and pancakes. Sourdough is an art in itself. The starter, if it’s kept going, gets to be a member of the family.

Bread is not limited to white flour. It’s best if it includes other grains. At least it should have whole wheat flour in it. Whole wheat is the entire grain ground including the bran and germ. It is higher in fibre and vitamins. I make 100% whole wheat bread, although I keep some white flour for kneading.

Only wheat flours produce gluten. If adding other grains such as rye, they can be substituted at about 25%, for too much will make the loaf heavy and almost flat. Oatmeal is a good grain to add. I have been using extra germ and bran, and flakes of spelt, which is a relative of wheat.

Stale whole grain breakfast cereal can be used. The large flaked or circular kind is best crushed with a rolling pin, but the smaller flakes can be mixed in. I add about one-half cup to every 4 cups of flour.

Bread can be made without sweeteners. Put one cup of warm water, a half cup of flour, and the yeast in a bowl. Put in a warm place for about 30 minutes. It should get all bubbly and leavened. Then add the other bread ingredients. This is called a sponge. It used to be all breads started that way, before the days of instant dissolving yeast. The yeast got dispersed throughout the sponge so you didn’t get nasty little sour lumps in the loaf.

Other sweeteners besides white sugar can be used – basically, anything that is a glucose or fructose: Brown sugar, molases, honey, corn syrup, maple syrup, sorghum.

Oil is not necessary, but improves the texture of the loaf. Melted butter, vegetable oil and olive oil are the usual additives.

Nuts and dried fruit can be added – not too much, or the loaf will collapse on rising. Use flax seed, psyllium seed, sunflower, pumpkin, or sesame seeds. Raisins and dried cranberries are good in a somewhat sweet loaf. Spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg or cardamom are good in a fruit and nut loaf.

Add up to a half-cup of grated (real) cheese. Watch carefully so that it doesn’t burn on the bottom.

I sometimes add dried vegetable flakes and sundried tomatoes, about a quarter cup combined per 4 cups of flour. Made with whole-grain bread, this is known as monk’s bread – a nutritious meal substitute for the fasts.

Don’t be afraid of bread. It is one of the oldest foodstuffs in the world. There are many more variants to this, using other liquids (milk, yoghurt, beer) and even other leavening. Swap bread recipes. Try new kinds. I bake bread about three times a week, usually two big loaves at a time. It becomes second-nature, like brewing coffee. Enjoy the taste, and thank God for this “staff of life.”

Turkey Giblets

Tags

giblet safety, turkey giblets

For all of those who keep looking for the answer, NO, it is not dangerous to leave the giblets in the turkey. I don’t recommend it, because they look kind of gross when you take them out of the cavity. Even the little plastic wrapper can be just tossed after cooking. It won’t poison the turkey – or you. We all do it at least once in our turkey cooking lives.

Post-Christmas Cooking Disaster

Tags

beagles, cooking diasters, lost dogs, pugs, turkey casserole

I made the casserole, and it sure looked good when I checked it about fifteen minutes before planning to serve it. I have some frozen petit pois in the freezer, and the youngies and I were going to sit down to a cozy, home-style meal. They went out for a few minutes to get something from the store, and I decided while they were gone that I would put the dogs out on their leads.

The crafty and footloose beagle decided to take that opportunity to explore the neighborhood and beyond. I heard her go, as she pulled the lead clasp loose and it hit the porch step. By the time I got outside, the pug right behind me, the beagle was across the street and headed for the hills. I fastened the pug on the lead and headed after the beagle, in the cold and dark, in apron, cardigan and wooden clogs. Around the block, down the street about half a block, and she disappeared behind the church. I decided to head back and change into boots and a coat, and enlist the kids to help.

In the meantime, pug had gotten off the broken lead, but decided the wise course was not to head into the street where I was calling and clapping and threatening. He went back to the porch and waited patiently for his beloved owner, my niece, to return. Good pug. Bad beagle.

The kids came out with me, the niece on foot, her fiance in the truck. We searched. We shone flashlights into backyards. We called. After almost an hour, niece was worn out and cold, and it was starting to sleet. She jumped in the truck and the kids kept looking. So did I. I circled wider, checking the waterfront, the park, behind the convenience store. I climbed the hill and checked the wooded path. Dog prints here and there, fresh ones, about beagle size, but the snow either turned to sodden grass or ice. Finally, I though I might be closing in because I found a lot of criss-crossing prints in the snowbank behind the Girl Guides building. I headed down the street, and was about a block from home when the kids caught up with me in the the truck.

“We found her. She was headed home, so I just jumped out of the truck door right on her.  She’s in her crate.”

Back home, my sister-in-law was waiting, perplexed. She missed all the excitement by being at work. “Well, that turned out all right.” (I didn’t think minor frostbite of my earlobes was all right.) Then she asked the Big Question: “What’s for supper?”

The turkey casserole, abandoned in a warm oven (I had turned it down) for almost three hours. I pulled it out. The biscuits looked like wood chips. The gravy was a shiny paste. I probed a little. “It’s ruined,” I pronounced. “No, it’ll be all right. We’ll just take the biscuits off.”  ”No, it’s ruined.”

A quick consultation between the youngies. “We’re going out.” “Oh, it’s late. I’ll make something else.” “No, no, get your coat.”

So the turkey casserole became fish and chips, a bit late, but solid comfort food, and compensation for my stinging earlobes.

It’s good to have family.

Post-Christmas Cooking

Tags

gravy, leftover turkey, mashed potatoes, turkey pot pie

What’s there to cook after Christmas but variants of leftovers, for about a week? Well, less here, with a whole household of good eaters. (Except one. Some one has to be the brunt of our jokes.) Just in case you have a refrigerator full of what-to-do leftovers:

Take the meat from the turkey, cut into edible sized pieces. Put aside some of the gravy. Now butter a casserole dish, line the bottom with mashed potatoes (or stuffing, if you have lots of that) put the turkey pieces on top, pour on the gravy, and top with homemade biscuits. Bake at 350 degrees F. for about an hour, or until everything is heated through and the gravy is bubbly.

Mashed Potato Recipes

Tags

fried potato cakes, leftover potato, mashed potatoes, potato casserole

There may be nothing sadder on the leftovers table than cold mashed potatoes. We ate a lot of potatoes when I was young, and that last half-cup of mash always looked desolate and poverty-stricken in the bowl. My mother just tossed it out.  Potatoes were free.

But I have to buy potatoes now. We don’t live in the midst of potato farming country. Potatoes, even leftover, look a little more like food to save. So what do you do with that grim substance called leftover mash?

Here is a good casserole. The family practically drew straws to see who would finish this.

4 cups leftover mash, cold. (The kind made with milk and butter.) One-half cup fried onions (not french fried onions, just an onion sliced and fried.) Two tablespoons dried vegetable flakes. Mix together, put in buttered casserole, top with bits of butter and wheat germ. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes. Use fine bread crumbs if you don’t have wheat germ.

Also, for breakfast or an egg dish supper, fried potato cakes.

3 cups mashed potatoes, 1 egg, beaten. Mix together, form into patties about the size and thickness of your palm, coat with wheat germ or whole wheat bread crumbs. Fry lightly on both sides in olive oil.

You may make extra mash just to have these dishes.