A Morning in the Kitchen

Whole wheat zucchini almond muffins.

It is cold and grey outside, but in my kitchen it is warm and smells yummy. I try to spend at least half a day each weekend cooking so that when I come home from work, all I need to do is warm up dinner. Janet from Meatless Mama blog posted this spinach mushroom soup last week. I finally made it this morning from the last of the wild mushrooms and it is heavenly (you don't have to use wild mushrooms). I want to try her peanut broccoli pasta as well. I bought the broccoli, but can't find the peanut butter. I know I have a jar of peanut butter somewhere. I guess I will have to sift through some of the bins of food I haven't yet put away in order to find it. I'm one of those people who doesn't like broccoli, but this sounds good. And if I don't like, I'm sure my husband will as he loves both broccoli and peanut butter.

Then I tried a kale slaw for the first time. Any time I want a new kale recipe, I head over to Diane's blogs for ideas, one of which is dedicated specifically to extolling the virtues of kale. Again this was very good, and I am sure I will be making it again.

I like the way the kale stays crisp and doesn't get all mushy like cabbage slaw does.

I just pulled a batch of whole wheat Zuchinni muffins out of the oven and have a pot of spanish rice simmering on the stove. I actually do the majority of my cooking without recipes. The muffins and Spanish rice are made from recipes I looked up long ago and didn't save. I use recipes mostly to get new ideas or if I want to try something I haven't tried before.

I am so missing having fall greens growing in a garden and am kicking myself for not having made more of an effort to plant a fall garden. We moved here in time to get one in! I could be harvesting lettuce, endive, spinach, kale, radishes, broccoli, and lots of other greens right now. This is the first time in my life that I have had to consistently buy vegetables. I did get a handful of fresh vegetable from the tiny summer garden I planted, but mostly bought from the local roadside stands where I could see the garden that the vegetable were grown in. In fact the zucchini in the muffins came from one of those roadside stands. Now I am stuck with grocery store vegetables and even if they are labeled locally and organically grown, they still don't taste anything like vegetables that were just picked this morning from the garden. I am so spoiled, I know!

Next fall it will be different! I'm looking forward to spring and summer and getting the new garden plot planted.

Here are a few pictures of my garden last year in Ann Arbor, in the beginning of November.

Mouse Ears

There is a portion of woods on our land that is red oaks and white pine. The forest floor is carpeted with a thick layer of decaying pine needles and oak leaves.
(The chickens love scratching in the soft pine needles.)

A friend of ours who is something of a mushroom expert, told me that this makes for an ideal growing environment for one of his favorite wild mushrooms. Today I was hauling rocks out of the woods to border a new flower bed when I unearthed a pale gray mushroom. With a bit of investigation I found many more like it under the pine needles.
As luck would have it, our friend was here working in the wood shop he is building in our of our barns. He confirmed that the mushroom was indeed the mushroom he had been referring to--Mouse Ears--or in more scientific terms, a member of the tricholoma family. They grow under the pine needles so in order to find and harvest them, you have to carefully rake away pine needles.
The caps are quite fragile and I quickly learned that needed to be very gentle as I sifted through the pine needles.

It didn't take long to harvest enough for a couple of meals.

(I did show my harvest to my friend prior to cooking them, to double confirm that yes, this is the mushroom he was talking about. Yes, he says he harvests these every fall, and just this week gathered a bunch from a woods near where he lives.)

Dinner was ribeye steak covered with mushrooms sauteed in butter with onion. And I also made a pot of wild mushrooms soup. It is so good and full of delicate wild mushroom flavor.

(Disclaimer: This post is for entertainment purposes only. The above photos and description is not meant to help anyone identify wild mushrooms. Check with a trusted resource prior to eating any mushroom that has been harvested in the wild.)

Kale Lentil Patties

Young red russian kale, champion collards, and wild lamb quarters greens.

Since kale is coming in strong in the garden right now, I went over to my friend Diana's blog to find some new recipes. This one got my attention. I thought I was making enough to freeze like she suggested, but they are so good, that I am afraid I am going to eat them all in the next two days and have none left over for the freezer. Good thing there is lots of kale in the garden! I will be making them again soon.


Here is the original recipe with my changes in parentheses.

Spicy Kale Lentil Patties

• 2 cups (1# bag) dry lentils
• 2 bay leaves (I didn't have these)
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. chili powder
• 1-2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp. coriander (I don't seem to have corriander)
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper
• 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper and mixed Italian herbs (I used fresh basil, rosemary, and oregano from my herb garden)
• 1 large sweet potato, baked, peeled and mashed (I substituted about 2/3 cup mashed cooked carrots)
• 1-2 cups frozen kale, thawed, drained well, chopped small ( I used a mix of young collards, kale, and lambs quarters fresh from the garden and lightly steamed.)
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs (I made bread crumbs from homemade cheese bread with caraway seeds)
• 2 tsp. olive oil or parchment paper (I used the olive oil)
• Fresh Salsa or unflavored yogurt
I also added one egg and about 1/2 cup cooked bulgar (you can't go wrong with eggs--especially with an endless supply from our backyard hens, and I needed to use the bulgar up anyway)

Method:
1) Combine lentils and bay leaf in large soup pot. Add water to cover by 3 inches. Boil until lentils are very tender, about 1 hour. Drain water from lentils and discard bay leaf. Transfer lentils to a large bowl and cool.
2) Then add seasonings. Stir with lentils until well blended. Cover lentils and refrigerate overnight. (I didn't do this, but I imagine it would really bring out the flavor of the spices.)
3) Bake sweet potato(s) in oven or microwave. Cool, peel, and coarsely mash. Add mashed potato to lentil mixture the next day and mix well.
4) Add chopped kale (squeeze to make as dry as possible)
5) Using a spoon or both hands, form mixture into balls. Flatten each ball into a 1/2" pattie. These can be any size. Press breadcrumbs lightly onto patties. Cover and refrigerate 30 minutes to 6 hours.
6) Heat in non-stick pan with small amount of olive oil or baked in oven on parchment paper until hot and crispy at 350 for 20-30 minutes (I baked mine). Flip over at the half-way point. Freeze any extras for a fast meal in the future.
7) Serve warm or room temperature with salsa or plain, unflavored yogurt.


I pulled the first garlic bulb from the garden for this recipe today. It still hasn't formed cloves yet, and I peeled back the tough outer leaves and sliced it up like a green onion. Until you've tasted garlic pulled fresh from the garden, you have never tasted garlic. It is a class all its own.

Cream cheese stars

I'm not a sugar cookie fan. So a few years ago when I was looking for the perfect cut out cookie to make to hang on our christmas tree, I was delighted to find this. Acutally, the original recipe, called White Velvet Cutouts, called for twice the butter and half the cream cheese. More cream cheese than butter sounded good to me, so the very first time I made them, I doubled the cheese and halved the butter. They were so good I never bothered to try the original recipe. The recipe below is my version.

They are creamy and luscious, but are sturdy enough to hang on a tree or ship to Iraq.

I made a big batch of them this year, but they never did make it onto the tree (I did get a tree up, but the decorating never got beyond lights and candy canes--oh, well, there is always next year!). But the cookies did quickly get put away into peoples stomachs. I think after the pecan toffee bars, this is my most requested cookie recipe.

And of course they don't have to be cut into stars. When I worked in the hospital and had coworkers I actually worked with, I made these for several holidays..stars with yellow icing for christmas, shamrocks with green icing for St. Patricks day, and hearts with pink icing for Valentines day.

Cream cheese stars

2 sticks butter
2 pkg (8-0z) cream cheese
2 cups sugar
2 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 1/2 cups flour

Cream butter and cream cheese with mixer.
Add sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla; beat until well-mized. Gradually add flour while continuing to mix well. Chill at least 4 hours, covered.
Roll out, a small portion at a time, between wax paper. Roll them sort of thin. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters.
Bake in 350 F oven on ungreased cookie sheets for 10-12 minutes. Be careful not to overbake. They should be only lightly browned around the edges. Let sit on pans for 2 minutes so they do not bend. Remove to wire cooling racks.
Frost with your favorite icing.

Rosemary Flat bread

Every time I go to Plum Market, I look longingly at their rustic rosemary crackers. They are right next to the artisian cheeses, which I always look longing at as well. I've never bought the crackers, because I can't justify spending $6 or so on half a pound of flour with a little salt and rosemary added, no matter how good they might look. (The cheese, though, is a totally different matter.) Yesterday, after looking at the rosemary crackers for maybe the tenth time, I bought some brie and came home and did a little internet recipe search to find a recipe for rosemary crackers to make to go with it. This rosemary flat bread seemed to fit the bill.

Rosemary Flat bread

1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary plus 2 (6-inch) sprigs
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water

1/3 cup olive oil plus more for brushing
sea salt

Preheat oven to 450°F with a heavy baking sheet on rack in middle.

Stir together flour, chopped rosemary, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Make a well in center, then add water and oil and gradually stir into flour with a wooden spoon until a dough forms. Knead dough gently on a work surface 4 or 5 times.

Divide dough into 3 pieces and roll each piece out on a sheet of parchment paper into a 10-inch round (shape can be rustic; dough should be thin).

Lightly brush top with additional oil and scatter small clusters of rosemary leaves on top, pressing in slightly. Sprinkle with sea salt.

Slide round (still on parchment) onto preheated baking sheet and bake until pale golden and browned in spots, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer flatbread (discard parchment) to a rack to cool. Break into pieces.

This literally took less than 2o minutes to make and is so good. I used white whole wheat flour. The only thing I am going to do next time, is try it with half the olive oil.

Sugary, Buttery Christmas Goodness

I have a very strict rule that I make these cookies only at Christmas time (though I will occasionally break that rule for special once in a life time events, like my wedding). These are the most fabulous cookies-and they get inhaled once are made. They have way too much butter and way too much sugar in them--but so what? Christmas only comes once a year!

Pecan Toffee Bars

Crust:
1 cup butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 large egg yolk
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon vanilla

Topping:
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped chopped pecans
12 ounces milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Mix in egg yolk and vanilla.
Add flour gradually stirring only to blend.
Spread into buttered cookie pan and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Boil butter and sugar for topping together for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Add chopped pecans.
Pour over baked crust and bake for 4 minutes at 400.

Let cool for a couple of minutes, then sprinkle with chocolate chips. Once the chips soften spread them with a spatula.

Let cool for 15-20 minutes, cut into small squares. Don't try to take the bars out of the pan until they have completely cooled.

Pizza for two

Since I have have a long weekend off for the Thanksgiving holiday I'm doing a little extra cooking for the freezer. Yesterday I made a red bean soup with ham and collards and froze 3 quarts. Today I spent the morning making pizza crusts for the freezer.

I learned the secret to good homemade pizza crust a couple of years ago when I was shopping at a little bulk food store. Among the of barrels of flour was a barrel of semolina flour. I had never seen it before, but the yellow grainy flour fascinated me. It looked a lot more like cornmeal than flour. I asked the owner what it was used for. Pizza crusts, he said. He I quizzed him on ratios and recipes and he admitted he really didn't know any thing about baking. The only reason he knew it was used for pizza crust was because the pizza shops in town would sometimes buy the flour from him when they were in a pinch and had run out their supply. I bought a couple of pounds and brought it home to experiment.

With a little experimenting, it seems that about the right ratio is 1/4 semolina flour to 3/4 wheat flour. It makes a crunchy light crust. I'd post a recipe except that I really don't have one. Well, I do sort of, but I have no idea of amounts. I have an idea of rations in my head and just sort of make the rest up as I go. Every now and then my husband will watch me as I mix up bread and comment that it really is amazing that everything I make usually turns out. I am very much an intuitive baker and have a very difficult time following bread recipes even when I try hard to do so. Actually any recipe that has more than a couple of steps is usually a little beyond me.

That said, if you want to make pizza, just take any basic bread recipe (flour, salt, water, yeast, oil, and just a little bit sugar (no more than a table spoon or two) and substitute semolina flour for 1/4 of the wheat flour and olive oil for what ever oil the recipe calls for. You should be able to make a fabulous pizza dough that way. I always use whole wheat bread flour. Because I don't follow an exact recipe mine always turns out slightly different each time. Today's dough was really beautiful--very springy and elastic, the type of dough that is a joy to work with.

I make the crusts small enough to fit in gallon ziplock freezer bag. That is actually just the perfect size for a pizza for two. I bake each crust until it is just starting to brown along the edges. Then they are cooled and popped in the freezer. After a long day at work, all I have to do is thaw the crust in microwave, pour some hot pasta sauce over it, and cover with toppings and put in a 400 degree oven. Five minutes later the cheese is melted and the pizza is ready to eat.

Tomato Salad

Green zebra, Cherokee purple, and Glacier tomatoes...

A little bit of everything bread

I love it when my house smells like fresh baked bread--that is half the reason why I bake, and it is why I made bread today. My house smells so musty when it rains. Baking bread freshens the house so nicely. I rarely ever follow a recipe when I make bread. Often people ask me for my bread recipes. Honestly, usually there isn't one. I usually just throw in whatever I have at the moment--that is what I did today.

I started out with the basics--yeast, water, and honey, whole wheat bread flour and a little white bread flour. That all got mixed together in my kitchen aid mixer. Then I added some left over mashed potatoes, rice flour, teff flour and some fava bean flour. It wasn't until my dough was pretty stiff that I realized I had forgotten to put in oil and salt (I am a very disorganized baker!), so I threw in some oil, salt and flax seeds. In spite of my haphazard approach, 99% of the time my bread turns out great and smells fabulous.

I love my kitchen aid mixer. I can throw in all my ingredients, put in on speed 2, and putter around the kitchen for twenty minutes or so, and take out beautiful elastic dough.

See? A BLT can be heathy!

I picked the first Mortgage Lifter today. In spite of my best intentions, somehow bacon made it into the frying pan. But that is where the resemblance to a normal BLT ends. This is what the finished product looked like:
Whole wheat pita bread, heirloom tomato slices, crispy bacon, and lots of tender baby greens--kale, arugula, beet greens, mustard, bok choi ,and purslane.

Pita Bread

All day at work, I thought about making bread. I wanted to come home and bake bread.The only problem was, I didn't need to bake bread. I still have three loaves in the freezer from the last time I baked. Then I remembered my pita bread recipe. I hadn't made pita bread for a long time and it would be perfect as something different to bring to work for those cold lunches. So I came home and made pita bread.



Pita Bread

3 1/2 cups bread flour (I used one cup white and rest was whole wheat)
1 t salt
1 T dry active yeast
1 t sugar
1 t olive oil
1 1/3 cups water

combine flour and salt in a large bowl.

Combine yeast, sugar, and 1/3 cup warm water. Stir and set aside for about until yeast is bubbly.

Make a well in the flour mixture, add the yeast mixture, one cup warm water, and the olive oil. Mix and form the dough into a ball.

Turn dough onto floured surface and knead for ten minutes. (Honestly, I never do it that long--10 minutes is a long time!)

Place dough in large oiled bowl, cover with damp cloth, set in a warm place, and let rise until doubled in size. Then punch down and form into a smooth ball.

Cut the ball into 12 uniform pieces, form each piece into a ball, roll out each ball and place on a baking sheet dusted with corn meal. Cover the flat pieces with a damp towel and let rest for 45 minutes. (I rolled out three at time---that is what fit on the cast iron skillet I was using for a baking sheet---and only let them set about 10 minutes. )
Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Bake pitas for for 2 two 3 minutes, then flip over and bake for another couple of minutes. Don't overbake! Wrap the hot pitas in a damp towel as they cool to keep them soft.

It always amazes me how they can go from being completely flat........
to all puffed up in a matter of seconds when placed in the hot oven!For dinner we had the pitas stuffed with chicken, tomatoes, summer squash, and fresh pesto. (Hmmm....note to self, don't take pictures of food on rooster plates...having a rooster tail in the picture doesn't do anything for the food.)

Curried Yellow Squash Soup

This evening I made this recipe from my first three yellow crookneck squash that you see in this picture. (This is todays harvest... royal burgundy and jade green beans, beets, carrots, collard greens, and Matt's wild cherry tomatoes, the first yellow pear tomato , and a glacier tomato.) I even made the vegetable broth following Diana's instructions. I would have never though to use yellow summer squash in a soup like this. Of course I didn't follow the recipe exactly ( I never do). I added a lot more garlic and used powdered ginger and maybe two teaspoons of curry powder. I also used half the recommended amount of broth and ended up with 6 cups of soup. It was thicker than Diana's, I am sure, but it was really, really good! I had some warm for dinner and put a big dollop of plain, no fat yogurt on it instead of the cilantro puree. I put some in my lunch box to to eat cold tomorrow when I am at work. I will definately be making this soup again!

Mr. Stripey

This is Mr. Stripey.

This is what he looks like on the inside.

This is what he looks like made into a BLT.

After one bite, one wonders why anyone ever bothers to buy store bought tomatoes ever.

A Pickling Sort of a Day

Today was dedicated to pickles---sweet spicy bread and butter pickles and sour spicy salt pickles.

I would love to tell you that I grew all these cucumbers, but alas, my cucumbers are in serious crop failure this year. I was planning this summer to be a big pickle summer and in antipation, planted lots of dill and garlic and about 20 cucumber plants. In a normal year, I would be swamped with cucumbers. But this summer I am getting only a few everyday and those I saved for my bread and butter and pickles plus some for salads. And just for the record, I wasn't the one who bought these cucumbers--this was my husband's daughter's idea. I'm glad she suggested it, otherwise I would have ended up with just a few jars of pickles this summer.

I started the day with bread and butter pickles. I have this neat old book with lots of unusal recipes in it.Terry and I both love the this very simple bread and butter pickle recipe. (Click on the picture for a larger image.)It lends itself very well to being tweaked to allow you to use what vegetables you have on hand at the moment. I used one big bowl of cucumbers, four green peppers, and 3 big onions. I also only put in 2 1/2 cups of sugar. Somehow I can't quite quite justify using 5 cups of sugar in one recipe (unless of course I am making pecan toffee bars, but that is a recipe for another post).

Here are the cucumbers, onions, and peppers after they have been salted and ready to be packed into jars and covered with brine.

And here they are, all ten pints of the them ready for be stored for eating later. In the background you can see the cucumbers soaking in salt water for the salt pickles.

When I was done with the sweet pickles, Becky came over and we got down to the serious business of turning all those cucumbers in the first picture into salt pickles. The recipe we used is a secret Trombley family recipe and since I cannot claim to be a Trombley, I will not share it here. However, it did contain lots of garlic (homegrown, course)...

and dill....

and jalapeno peppers.
And of course lots of salt. If you are a Trombley, you need your salt, especially when it comes to pickles!

We peeled garlic, chopped peppers, and sliced cucumbers, and filled jars for what seemed like forever...and ended up with 31 quarts of salt pickles. Here we are, tired and hot, but almost done!

Becky's little son Finn couldn't wait for the cucumbers to be turned into pickles and had to eat one right away. In fact I''m pretty sure he ate at least two or three.

He also though that sitting in the canning pot was a lot of fun. It is a good thing he doesn't resemble a pickle!

When the pickles where completed, husband came in and insisted that we open a jar. My personal opinion was that the pickles needed to sit in the brine a while...say a week or two to soak up all the goodness from my home grown dill and garlic and the flavor from the spices. But I'm not a Trombley, so I defer their wished when it comes to salt pickles. Terry opened a jar, that was still warm and proceeded to eat half the jar. It appears that these pickles at least have the received the Trombley stamp of approval.

Roasted Cauliflower Soup

I got up this morning and did something useful for a change, instead of going out and spending the morning admiring my flowers or wasting time on the internet. =) I cooked enough food for a couple of meals all before 9:30 am. Then I went and did my 40 minute workout (my fitness trainer will be proud of me!) I made baked tahini chicken, chicken noodle soup, and roasted cauliflower soup. I have been making a fair amount of soup lately, and this Cauliflower soup is one of my favorites--and I like it even more because it is one that Terry will eat (he even occasionally requests that I make it!). I'm alway trying to find ways to get my husband to eat more vegetables without him thinking I'm trying to force him into a totally healthy diet!


It is really a simple recipe. You need:
1 small cauliflower (separate florets)
3 potatoes (diced in small pieces)
1 big onion (cut in chunks)
2 T olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Approximately 4 cups milk

Place the prepared vegetables in a broiler pan, toss with the olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Place pan on the lowest rack in the oven and roast until everything is tender (I set my oven at 375 this morning, and the vegetables were done in 20 minutes). You may need to stir the vegetables occasionally.



This is what they looked like when they came out the oven.

Puree the roasted vegetables in a blender with enough milk to give the soup the consistency you like( I used soy milk this morning because that is what I had in the fridge). I like my soup to be a bit chunky, so I only put in the blender for a few seconds, but if you like it smoother, leave it in longer.


Reheat before serving. Sometimes I add cheese or little cream to it while reheating.