Tools of the trade

I make biscuits,
light and moist,
just brown on the bottom
with golden tops

Here are my
tools of the trade.

Pastry cutter with
worn wooden handle
and steel tines casting
curving shadows.

Measuring spoons that
dangle from a hook
by the stove
til needed
for baking powder.
My palm suffices for salt.

Rolling pin old friend
with dusting of flour
and squeak, squeak
as it rolls,
even pressure on dough.

And biscuit cutter,
thin handle broken,
so I press carefully,
and shake to release
biscuit discs,
placing each
on the pan,
sides touching.

How many times have
I held tools in hand to
cut in, measure,
roll and cut out.
And baked.

And opened hot biscuit
steam rising,
waiting for butter
and blueberry jam.

National soup month

Oh my goodness! I missed it. January, now a few hours from over, is National Soup Month! I did make and eat plenty of soup this month. I made chicken noodle twice, bean soup, that lovely butternut squash soup, potato soup, cauliflower cheese soup and more. We even ate soup from a can, something we rarely do - clam chowder and good old Campbell's tomato soup, which you must eat together with grilled cheese sandwiches. But somehow, I missed that I should be celebrating soup this month.

Not to worry....I finished this celebratory soup month with a bang. I made two soups today. Chicken noodle with home made noodles by request for a friend and a HUGE pot of corn chowder for tomorrow.

Wonder what food we're celebrating in February?

Golden butternut soup and sweet potato biscuits

As I said over there, I concocted this soup. I looked in the fridge and saw a plastic container with leftover roasted butternut squash, a ziploc with three cooked sweet potatos, and a pot with homemade chicken stock. Seemed the the makings of a good soup to me...which I have decided to call:

Golden butternut soup
Saute in 2 TBSP olive oil:
1 medium onion, diced
1 yellow sweet pepper, chopped

When the veggies are soft, add 2 TBSP. fresh rosemary leaves, let this all simmer gently while you...

Puree:
the *cooked butternut squash and the sweet potatoes together with enough stock to make it all whiz around in the blender. (I just add enough liquid til it blends easily without making my blender seem like it's laboring too hard).

Add the puree to the saute. And then add more stock (I probably used about a quart total).
Stir over medium heat and add a can of evaporated milk (this makes it really creamy and lovely) and about a cup of sharp cheddar cheese.

Now here's the fun part. I thought this soup needed just a little more kick and I had a jar of pickled jalapeno's in the fridge. So, I poured about a quarter cup of the jalapeno juice from the far in the soup. Nice addition.

We ate with a dollop of sour cream. It would also be good with a little feta sprinkled on top and perhaps some toasted almonds....next time.

Sweet potato biscuits
I have used the same biscuit recipe for years. It is based on the basic biscuit recipe in Joy of Cooking. This is my sweet potato adaptation:

Sift together with a fork:
3 1/2 cups flour
6 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 TBSP sugar

Cut in with a pastry cutter:
6 TBSP butter
When the butter pieces are about pea sized, I added a whole baked sweet potato and cut it in just like I did the butter. When this is all well blended together...

Add:
1 cup milk

Mix lightly til moistened all through. Flour the counter and roll out the dough. A light touch means lighter biscuits. Cut with a biscuit cutter and place right next to each other (no spaces between) on and ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 400 for 12-15 minutes.

We ate these with apple cranberry butter and/or pear preserves. Very tasty!

Sorry I have no pictures of this golden meal. It disappeared too fast.

_______________________
* to cook butternut squash, just cut in half lengthwise and scoop out seeds. Bake at 350, cut side down with a little water in an oven proof dish, for 30-45 minutes til soft. Cook time will depend on size of squash. You can also cut in 1/2 inch slices and roast on a cooking sheet sprayed with a little cooking spray. Roast at 40 for about 15 minutes (maybe a bit more) til soft.

Oh, gooooood cookies

Here's the recipe I used for the cookies from my favorite recipe source online, recipezaar. I use it frequently and particularly like that there are comments that describe ways people tweak the recipes. I am definitely a recipe tweaker so I like to see how others do it.

These cookies were delicious. Just what I wanted. I tweaked them by using a bit of cinnamon and cardomam instead of nutmeg since I was out of the latter. Yum, yum, yum!

Oatmeal raisin cookies

I've been hankering for a big chewy oatmeal raisin cookie for several days. I like them way better than chocolate chip cookies. Matthew is taking the SAT as I write so I'm going to greet him when he's done with a warm cookie and a berry/banana smoothie.

Off to the kitchen....

Hungry boys no more

Poor Joel. As we headed from co-op to our afternoon of lab classes he asked if I had anything else to eat. He'd made himself a PB and J for lunch and nothing else and we had a long afternoon ahead of us. (He and Matthew are each in one lab and I teach two so we're there all afternoon). I had the remains of the leftover soup I'd heated up back at co-op. It was cold by then, but he ate it. On the way home, four hours later, he was famished. I was, too.

So, dinner needed to be delicious and filling and wonderful. I had a whole cooked chicken in the fridge that I'd boiled yesterday in anticipation of making soup later in the week. Just the ticket for the start of a very good, simple meal.

Chicken salsa saute:
1) Saute an onion, a cup or so of chopped celery, and a red sweet pepper in a little olive oil
2)Add 2-3 cups of the cooked chicken, pulled off the bones (I didn't really measure, just pulled it off til I had a skillet full)
3)Add some salsa, whatever you have. I had a green salsa made with jalapenos and tomatillas (from Trader Joes) and a little bit of very garlicky salsa (also from TJ's)

While this was simmering in the cast iron skillet, I cook brown rice in the rice cooker. And then I made this sauce:

Cheesy Salsa Sauce
1) To about a cup of stock, add a couple of TBSP flour, stir til smooth over medium heat
2) Add a cup more stock and a cup or more of sharp cheddar
3) Then stir in a 1/2 to a cup of the same salsa that's in the chicken. Stir over low heat til smooth and creamy.

So, now picture the chicken saute over brown rice with this lovely flavorful sauce on top. On the side we had roasted broccoli, roasted butternut squash (leftover) and roasted orange ginger glazed baby carrots. (Very simple - just put baby carrots in an oven dish, I used a pie plate, pour a little juice of some sort, orange is good, a TBSP of brown sugar or honey, and dash or two of ginger and roast at 450 til carrots are a little soft.) A meal full of vitamin A and other vitamins that are good for you. I always figure if there is a lot of color, there is a lot of nutrition.

chicken saute over brown rice with lot of sweet red pepper, glazed carrots, roasted broccoli, roasted butternut squash

Joel's face lit up as the food was brought to the table. I love it when I concoct a meal with surprises (like the salsa sauce) that everyone really enjoys. This was one of them.

We sat around the table and Coty read to us while we drank tea for awhile afterwards. Hungry bellies were filled and minds fed, too.

Thomas's last evening dinner

Before heading back to college Thomas requested:

Enchiladas
Tortilla chips and cheese dip (to which he added Chinese siracha hot sauce which jazzed it up!)
Banana pudding

OK, not the healthiest dinner, but hey, the boy's leaving home and I won't see him for quite awhile. He gets what he asks for. His mama was aiming to make him happy.

For the enchiladas, I sauteed onions and yellow and red peppers, added a little mango chipotle sauce, refried beans, a can of chili beans, and some corn. All of that got rolled in flour tortillas and layered with sharp cheddar and enchilada sauce. Very, very colorful, filling, and comfortingly yummy.

And banana pudding...well, it's a southern comfort dessert, I think. Vanilla wafers, vanilla pudding, bananas. Layered. Simple. Also yummy.

Oh, yea, we had organic mixed greens for salad. A little healthy redeeming feature of a meal heavy in cheese and dairy. Oh well, we got lots of calcium....

And Thomas was happy. That was the goal.

Indian, African

Tonight's dinner had both Indian and West African influences.

The menu:

Fish tikka
Gumbo
Roasted sweet potato sticks
Basmati rice

The fish:
I used a package of frozen tilapia, coated a 9x13 pan with cooking spray and laid the tilapia in it.

Then I made a sauce:
Saute a yellow pepper and a red pepper in about a TBSP of butter
Add a couple of TBSP Patak's Tikka Masala Curry Paste
1 1/2 cups of plain yogurt
a 1x3 chunk of tamarind, softened and mushed around in a cup of boiling water, then strained and added to the sauce

I poured this over the fish and baked at 350 for about 30 minutes.

Really delicious.

The Gumbo:
1 chopped onion, sauteed in a little olive oil
2 cans diced tomatoes
2 large bags frozen okra
a little salt and about a TBSP of sugar

Bring to a boil and then simmer for awhile.

The sweet potatoes:
Scrub sweet potatoes
Cut in half lengthwise, then cut each half into four sections lengthwise
Drizzle with olive oil or spray with cooking spray
Bake at 450 til done - 10-15 minutes

While all this is happening, I cook the Basmati rice in the rice cooker.

This was a colorful and very flavorful meal. The boys devoured it. The only thing left over is a bit of rice....

Chick pea soup

I had about 7 cups of cooked chick peas in the fridge yesterday that needed to be eaten before they went bad. I hate it when I do that...cook extra and then forget about them til I smell that horrible stench in the fridge - such a waste. Anyway, yesterday, I remembered, so we had a wonderful chick pea soup for dinner.

Here's the "recipe:"

Saute together:
1 large onion
a red sweet pepper
a green pepper

Add the chick peas (I used all 7 cups)

Add two cans of tomatoes, the juice of two lemons, and water to cover plus a bit more

And now for the good part - herbs from the garden:
leaves from three four inch springs of fresh rosemary
a few stems of fresh cilantro (still a little in the garden)
a few snippings of fresh bronze fennel

a little salt and pepper to taste

This was a colorful and delicious soup. The boys tried adding salsa which was tasty, but the soup was just fine without the salsa. We ate it with carrot raisin salad and leftover biscuits. Very satisfying.