December 11

Our custom on Sunday evenings, after church, is to fix a quick "supper snack" and park in front of the TV to eat and watch. Tonight our meal was French onion soup. Melt a little butter, saute some onion and pour in a can of beef consomme along with a can of water and heat until it simmers. Ladle into bowls, topping the soup with toasted french bread and some kind of white cheese. Heat the bowl of soup for a few seconds in the microwave until the cheese melts. So simple--and soooo good.

December 4

Cornerstone Baptist Church can put on a feed! A couple of times a year we have a finger food fellowship and tonight it followed our special Christmas music of lessons and carols which, as usual,  proved to be a meaningful way to usher in the season.
Everyone goes all out on fixing favorite, though calorie laden, goodies.

December 2

With Thanksgiving over, I gathered up the gourds and pumpkins that have been on display since October to ready the surfaces for Christmas decor. One small one was a sugar pumpkin, so I cut it up, dug out the seeds and strings and baked it for about forty-five minutes. I have two cans of pumpkin on the pantry shelf but I knew that this fresh pumpkin would be just as good or better with a little effort. When the pumpkin had cooled I whirred it in the blender, taking the time to stop and start the blender many times in order to push the mash into the blades until it all had the same consistancy. Now this beautiful pumpkin puree is waiting patiently to become a pie or bread. Yum.

Too Much Zucchini?

When zucchini and tomatoes are in abundance, I have a tendency to want to pair the two. Yesterday I cobbled together some ingredients I had on hand to make this Italian flavored dish that turned out so delicious that I am certain to make it again and again.
Here's what I did: 
I sauteed sliced zucchini and onion in a little butter for a few minutes, added chopped fresh tomatoes, whose juice added plenty of liquid and let the mixture cook until the zucchini was tender. I seasoned it with salt and pepper and fresh basil, chopped.  Just before serving I put in chunks of fresh mozzerella and freshly grated parmesan cheese. Yum!

Whose the Fruitiest?

Travis joined us again on our annual blueberry picking excursion to Lexington, SC and we came away with forty-four pounds of the succulent orbs. Berry Hill Farm has to be the very best blueberry picking venue in the whole world!! Hundreds of bushes line the rows of this city farm tucked in the Red Bank area of Lexington and we joined other families eating and picking their fill from about 7:00 until dark on Friday night.
Blueberries are one of our favorite fruits and we bagged them up for the freezer for future use. What to do with all of these berries? Dale's first choice is blueberry pancakes but we also love them with yogurt, cereal, ice cream, and pie or cobbler, and even in salads. (I'm counting on the antioxidents to ward off dementia.)

The bushes were loaded. I spent 45 minutes picking one bush!

The farm supplies you with buckets and a waist strap so that both hands are free.

They should have weighed Dale before and after the picking!

Pickles Anyone?

Our garden is rewarding us with groceries galore and this especially applies to cucumbers. So many, in fact, that Dale suggested I make some bread and butter pickles. Who knew this was his favorite pickle? It has been thirty years since I made pickles and yet I still had the recipe given to me by my old friend and former Clintonian, Rhonda Keve, tucked away in a recipe file. We haven't given them the taste test yet but they sure look good!


Soaking for 3 hours in ice water





 



Heating in the brine





Ready for the water bath



Every jar sealed just right

 Bread and Butter Pickles

25 or 30 medium size cucumbers
8 large onions or you can substitute more cukes
1/2 cup salt
5 cups vinegar (I used apple cider)
5 cups sugar
2 tablespoons mustard seed
1 teaspoon turmeric

Wash cucumbers and slice thin. Chop onions. Combine with cucumbers and salt. Soak in ice water 3 hours. Drain.
Combine vinegar, sugar, mustard seed and turmeric in large pot (dutch oven, stockpot, boiler); bring to boil. Add drained cucumbers. Heat thoroughly but do not boil.
With slotted spoon, pack cukes into clean pint jars; pour brine over cukes leaving 1/2 inch head space. Screw sterilized lids and rings onto jars. Process 15 minutes at simmer heat. Makes 6 pints.





Fruits of Our Labor

Our winter gardening efforts are paying off. I picked a small mess of sugar snap peas on Monday along with a cabbage, some side shoots of broccoli and a handful of strawberries. I added the snap peas to a scallop/ mushroom/alfredo sauce I was cooking and served it over angel hair pasta for our supper. Delish! 
I used the cabbage to make slaw for our salad supper at church on Wednesday night. Rather than the traditional coleslaw I typically make, I used an apple coleslaw recipe I found on the internet from Food Network http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/wolfgang-puck/apple-coleslaw-recipe/index.html  This sweet and tangy salad combines apples, cabbage, carrots, onion and parsley among other things with a poppy seed honey dressing. Definitely a keeper.

Fresh and Easy Dinner

The beautiful weather on Friday prompted me to quit the sewing room and get outside for the afternoon. Our yard was in sore need of beautification and I worked mowing grass and cleaning flower beds until it was too dark to see. Needless to say, I was worn completely out and still had supper to fix. Our asparagus bed has begun to yield (after planting it two years ago) so that was the only start to some semblance of supper. A recipe I gathered from a electric coop magazine last summer beckoned as a quick and easy remedy for our hunger. I have relied on this dish a couple of other times and it has become a go-to recipe in my notebook.


I tweak it to fit whatever fresh ingredients I have. Here's the tweaked version I used this time. I have also used browned Italian sausage in place of the shrimp.
The fresh asparagus and tomatoes made it look so pretty that I wanted to share it with you.

Chef's C's Healthy Tomato Basil Pasta
1 T. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 c.. chopped onion
4 c. fresh tomatoes, chopped
2 T. fresh basil, chopped or 1 T. dried
1 T. fresh parsley, chopped or 2 t. dried
 l t. sugar
1/4 t. each salt and pepper
3/4- 1 lb. shrimp
1/2 lb. or more of asparagus, cut in 1 1/2  inch pieces
4 oz. dry Barilla Plus Angel Hair pasta, or any angel hair pasta

On medium-high heat, add oil to saute pan. Add garlic and onion and cook until translucent,
approximately 2 minutes. Add asparagus and tomatoes and cook uncovered about 7 minutes.
Add shrimp, spices and sugar and cook until shrimp is pink.
Boil pasta in boiling, salted water until al dente. Drain. Serve the sauce over pasta.

Kitchen Appliance Magic

Shortly after Christmas I bought this present for myself. I have never owned a toaster oven until now and I didn't get it primarily for toast as our four slice pop-up was still working. I wanted it for baking and broiling on a small scale. I struggled with this decision for months, researched different models online and looked at them in several stores. I couldn't decide if I wanted the thing to take up counter space in the kitchen and I certainly didn't have room to store it away. I also knew that I'd be giving up my pop-up toaster for its space. I stopped the contemplating when I was in Wal-Mart one day and found this white Black and Decker model that wasn't too big or too small, but just right, as Goldilocks would say. I've loved it ever since and with just the two of us, I hardly heat my big oven. I've baked biscuits, broiled fish, cooked cornbread in a skillet, baked white and sweet potatoes, made pecan pie and tons of toast. Dale calls it my "easy bake oven." I'm probably the only one of my group of friends who would get so fired up about a new kitchen appliance.

Yummy Pie

In preparation for the Morgans' visit to Mountville, I decided to try a new recipe for a dessert. It's really just a twist on an old, family favorite, banana pudding, but in pie form. I had recently gone through a stack of old magazines and pulled articles and recipes that I thought might be of use someday. In February 2007, Southern Living published this Banana Pudding Pie recipe that looked delicious and simple. Well, delicious it certainly was, but it involved three different steps that proved to be time consuming. The result was a beautiful confection every bit as tasty as the original with a much prettier presentation.  It was worth the effort--for a special occasion--at least.

 

 

  

                                                                              VIOLA!

Pioneer Morning?

Our power went off Tuesday morning at 7:55. I had just turned the griddle on to make Hamilton, Dale and I some French toast for breakfast. We waited around a few minutes to see if Duke Power would set things humming again, but to no avail. In fact, they said it would probably be 1:00pm before the problem was fixed. My pioneer skills quickly kicked in to feed a hungry little boy. Our woodstove was already hot from its house-heating endeavor so I grabbed the iron skillet and improvised. I even cooked some hard-boiled eggs (which took so long, we had them for lunch). This is not the first time we've used our woodstove during power outages and I'm grateful for it. We can stay warm and we can cook, but we don't have water since our pump is electric--oh well, two out of three's not bad.