Recipes

Since I love to cook and the cooking theme that some bloggers are doing for the A to Z Challenge has recipes on my mind, I thought it might be fun to talk about recipes for my R post. 

It seems that most people either follow a recipe exactly, or they view it as more of an inspiration or a very loose guideline.  Which one are you?

I tend to follow recipes exactly when it comes to baking and view them as more of an inspiration or very loose guideline when it comes to cooking.  I’ve heard people say that cooking is an art and baking is a science.  I don’t think I’m an artist, but I know for sure that I’m no scientist.  I can usually troubleshoot cooking recipes (though there are some that are beyond help).  I can’t troubleshoot a baking recipe.  If it seems fixable, I ask Nick’s mom.  Otherwise, I move on to another recipe. 

I do think I’m fairly good at judging whether or not a recipe will be good.  When it comes to baking, it seems like buttermilk and/or lots of eggs are usually a good sign.  Trying to decide between two different recipes for the same kind of cake?  Go with the one that has more eggs. 

I’m a lot more adventurous when it comes to cooking.  I come up with a lot of ideas on my own.  Some are great!  Some are terrible.  If you’ve ever wondered if sloppy joe pasta is a good idea, I’m here to tell you that it definitely is not.  Fortunately, Nick is very patient with my cooking experiments, and the good ones far outnumber the bad ones.

When I’m not concocting my own recipes, some of my favorite sources are old cookbooks.  It seems like the fundraiser (usually for a church or some kind of charity) cookbooks have some of the best recipes ever.  Sometimes the comments and notes are kind of cute, too, things like “sure to make your husband smile” or “Herschel’s favorite chicken.”  I like the stories that go with the recipes. 

The only drawback to some of those cookbooks is that they sometimes have instructions like “cook until done,” “bake in a hot oven,” “add a large scoop of …”  I’m usually willing to take a guess when it comes to the cooked ones, but not when it comes to the baked ones. 

I don’t know if anyone even does the fundraiser cookbooks anymore.  I imagine it might be hard to get someone to buy them when there are so many blogs with recipes.  Though, recipes from blogs seem to be very hit or miss.  Some of my tried and true favorites are Good Cheap Eats, Budget Bytes, and The Frugal Girl.  We’ve consistently liked enough of those recipes (and my modifications to them) that I feel confident in trying new ones from them. 

Some tips I’ve learned for avoiding bad recipes are to look at other recipes on the blog/website to see if they sound good or if they sound gross, leave me with some food safety concerns, or sound too good to be true.  Have a recipe for cooking kidney beans in the crockpot?  I’ll pass on all of them from that site.  Food poisoning is something I prefer to keep off the menu, thank you very much.  Have a recipe that promises to take something that takes hours to prepare and have it done in 20 minutes?  I’m probably passing unless you have a very compelling argument for why/how it works.  Seem more focused on keeping the recipes under a certain price point?  I’ll probably pass.  Some things are just more expensive to prepare, and making cheaper substitutions just gets weird.  I’d rather wait and make the real thing.

I also love taking cooking classes.  A local Mediterranean restaurant offers cooking classes, and I’ve learned so much from them.  I had no idea what Tahini was before those classes.  That’s also where I finally learned to make an omelet.  It helps when you’re the most fearless person in the class.  (Cooking class is the only place where I will ever be the bravest person in the room!)  I’m willing to try it anytime they ask for a volunteer, which means I’ve gotten a lot of hands-on instruction. 

They stopped offering cooking classes during COVID but are starting them back up again.  Now I just have to wait for one I haven’t already taken. 

Where do you find recipes, or do you create your own?  Are you a strict recipe follower, or do you make changes? 

Thanksgiving Menu Ideas

You may have noticed by now that I love Thanksgiving, and get really excited about it.  It’s a holiday all about cooking for and spending time with the people you love.  What’s not to love about it?

Sometimes, though, searching for good recipes can be a little overwhelming, so I thought I’d share links for some of my favorites.  Some of them are my recipes, and some are from other places. 

Obviously, the turkey is the main part of the traditional meal, so here’s my turkey recipe: 

Practically Fool-Proof Turkey

And you can read about my various misadventures with turkey here, in case you’d like a guide for what not to do. 

Some might argue that the side dishes are the most important part of the meal.  Here are a few of our favorites:

Green Bean Casserole.  I can’t stand this one, but Nick loves it, and I think it’s one that most people have come to expect at Thanksgiving.

Creamy Slow Cooker Macaroni & Cheese.  It’s creamy, delicious, and incredibly easy to make.  It’s also very helpful that it’s made in the Crock Pot since that frees up more oven space. 

Heavenly Mashed Potatoes.  This link is actually to The New Southern Garden Cookbook by Sheri Castle.  I don’t feel right posting a recipe if the author hasn’t made it available online.  I highly recommend this cookbook.  It has lots of great recipes, but it’s worth having for the mashed potatoes alone.  I didn’t think I liked mashed potatoes very much until I tried this recipe.  They are out of this world good, which I suppose is why she named the recipe Heavenly Mashed Potatoes.

Kale Salad With Red Grapes.  Don’t let the fact that this sounds fairly healthy turn you off.  It’s delicious! 

Watergate Salad.  I think is technically a dessert, but it does have salad in the name, so classify it however you want.  No judgment here.

Speaking of desserts, it just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without them.

Pumpkin Pie.  It’s probably the most traditional Thanksgiving dessert.  It’s also one of my favorites.

Cherry Crunch.  This was a surprisingly big hit last year at Thanksgiving, so I’ll be making it again. 

Apple Crisp.  This is delicious and easy.  Perfect for a day when there’s already a lot of cooking and baking going on.

Fresh Apple Cake.  This cake is amazingly delicious, and just seems like the ultimate dessert for Fall.  The link mentions cream cheese frosting, but don’t do that.  You’ll want to use the Browned Butter Frosting.  Trust me!

Browned Butter Frosting.  This is the end all, be all of frosting.  If you’ve never had browned butter frosting, do yourself a favor, and make it.  Right now!  It’s amazingly good!  It’s rich, creamy, decadent, has a slightly nutty flavor, and pairs perfectly with the apple cake.  

Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Cake & Frosting.  I can’t personally vouch for this one, since I don’t like chocolate.  I can tell you, however, that everyone seems to love it.  I make this cake (or the cupcakes) several times a year, and it’s always very popular.  

Apple Cake & Browned Butter Frosting on Back Left

Banana Pound Cake.  It may not be a very traditional Thanksgiving dessert, but it’s still delicious, and always a crowd pleaser.

So what about you?  What are your favorite Thanksgiving recipes?  Is there a certain dish that’s always on your Thanksgiving menu? 

A Cookbook Giveaway

Last month when I posted about our anniversary and wedding, I shared that our wedding favor was a family and friends cookbook.  A few of you commented on what a good idea the cookbook was.  We still have a few extra copies, so I thought I’d give one away. 

Just let me know in the comments if you’re interested in having one.  I’ll draw a name on Saturday, and announce the winner on Sunday.  Make sure you check back so you can send me your address if you win.

Recipes

I love cooking, and I love collecting cookbooks and recipes.  You might even say I’m a little obsessed, but it makes me happy, and some of the recipes make other people really happy.  So no harm done, right?

It’s practically impossible for me to pick a favorite recipe.  So much depends on what I’m in the mood for, what else I have going on, and what I’m looking to accomplish with a recipe.  But there are definitely some recipes that are special because of where they came from or because of memories associated with them.  These are two of my special recipes:

Sausage Gravy:  This is my paternal grandmother’s recipe.  She doesn’t cook at all anymore, but she used to love cooking.  I have so many recipes from her, and she probably taught me more about cooking than any other person. 

This sausage gravy is absolutely delicious, and it was almost always what we had for breakfast when we’d visit them.  It’s also the very first breakfast I ever made for Nick when we were dating, and it’s the first breakfast we ever had using our new dishes that we received as wedding presents. 

Pumpkin Pie:  This is my maternal grandmother’s recipe.   She hated cooking for the most part, but this was one of the few things she enjoyed making.  It also helped that I was the first grandchild and it was my favorite dessert.

It’s an incredibly good pie, and it’s the only handwritten recipe I have from her.  It’s also the dessert we had the night that Nick and I announced our engagement to my side of the family.  My mom made dinner and Granny made pumpkin pie because we were coming and it was my favorite. 

So what about you?  Are there recipes that are special for you? 

Garlic

I love garlic, in fact, it’s probably my favorite spice to cook with.  And I recently learned that April 19^th is National Garlic Day.  So garlic had to be my G post during the A to Z Challenge.  I tend to buy garlic in bulk because we use so much of it, and the garlic press is one of the most used tools in my kitchen. 

I love garlic because not only is it delicious, it’s so versatile and works in so many different dishes and types of cuisines.  There also seem to be quite a few studies confirming some pretty impressive health benefits of garlic.  So it’s delicious, versatile, and good for you. 

I know we’ll be eating garlic on the 19^th in celebration of National Garlic Day.  Here are a couple of garlic recipes for you in case you’re looking for a way to enjoy garlic too:

Garlic & Herb Cream Cheese

Summer Vegetable Pizza

So what about you?  Do you enjoy garlic? 

Let’s Talk Turkey – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

With Thanksgiving practically upon us I thought it might be a good idea to talk about turkey. We’ve all heard the stories, and maybe even been party to, some of the turkey disasters that can befall the hapless Thanksgiving cook.  I’m sharing mine (starting with the bad and ending with the good, because I really like to end things on a positive note), and I hope you’ll share yours too. 

The Bad:  The first time I ever cooked a turkey was for a friend’s graduation party.  I was 18 years old and the oven at home was out.  My mom dispatched me and the turkey (which was her idea to serve) to another friend’s house where most of the party prep was going on.

I had no idea how to cook a turkey, but I wasn’t going to let that slow me down.  I decided that turkeys were basically just large chickens (at that point I didn’t have much experience cooking chicken either) so I would treat it that way.  My mom always bought the boneless, skinless chicken breasts, so I decided that the first order of business was to skin the turkey. Yeah.

Have you ever attempted to remove the skin from a 20 pound turkey?  You can cancel your gym membership if you’re going to make that a habit.  I enlisted my friend’s brother (who didn’t know how to turn on the oven) to help me, and we basically engaged in a tug of war match until the turkey was skinned. 

After we skinned the turkey I proceeded to wash it, using dish detergent, because I’d heard you were supposed to wash meat before cooking it.

I’ll be honest.  I didn’t try any of that turkey when it was finally cooked.  I was pretty sick of dealing with it by then.  People said it was good.  I suspect they were being polite. 

After that turkey fiasco I swore off cooking turkeys for a while.  But then my job gave everyone a turkey as our Christmas bonus is 2005. That was the year that my sister, my best friend, and I were renting a house together. 

My best friend and I decided to brave cooking the turkey. This time we knew not to skin it.

My mom has always cooked a turkey by smearing it down with a mixture of mayonnaise and mustard (about 2/3 mayonnaise and 1/3) mustard, sprinkling it with salt and pepper, and covering it with aluminum foil and pouring a little water in the bottom of the pan.  It sounds disgusting, but it’s actually pretty good.  It’s not my favorite way to prepare turkey, but it’s good.

It also sounded relatively foolproof.  Except for the fact that we had just moved in a week before and didn’t have a fully stocked kitchen.  We didn’t have mayonnaise, and we didn’t have aluminum foil, but decided that neither were terribly important. 

We were wrong.  We ended up with an extremely dry turkey that tasted more like burnt mustard (gross!) than turkey. 

Once again, I swore off cooking turkeys for a while.  I decided to learn from the pros.  I asked everyone who ever served a delicious turkey how they did it, and took copious notes.  I filled up an entire notebook with notes on how to cook a turkey. 

The Ugly:  My parents went out of town, and my husband and I came to take care of my grandparents (maternal grandmother and paternal grandmother and grandfather).  I decided it would be nice to make a big turkey dinner.  They liked it when I cooked for them, and my parents could have leftovers when they came home.

I used a combination of techniques I’d picked up from various people and the turkey was delicious.  The only problem was in carving it.  I’d never carved a turkey and neither had my husband.  None of my grandparents were up for carving it.  So hubby and I basically executed the poor turkey.  It didn’t even resemble a turkey when were finished “carving” it. 

My grandparents all giggled about it for weeks, and insisted on pictures of the carnage.  At least it tasted good!

At Thanksgiving the same year we were facing the same problem.  Hubby, my sister, my best friend, and I were all standing over the turkey (holding various carving tools) each arguing as to why we should NOT be the one to carve.  We all agreed that something didn’t look quite right already and none of wanted to be the one to execute the turkey.

Finally, another friend, Cathey, (who is much older and wiser) arrived.  She started laughing hysterically as soon as she came in the kitchen.  She said the four of us looked like we weren’t quite sure the turkey was dead and were planning to kill it if it moved.  It was also upside down (still not sure how I managed that one), which was why it looked a little off to us. Cathey carved the turkey, which was delicious.

The Good:  I have two favorite ways of cooking whole turkeys now:

The Cosmopolitan Turkey:

Stuff the turkey with a mixture of cranberries, chopped granny smith apples, and chopped onion, mixed with a about a tablespoon of butter.  Salt and pepper the turkey and pour vodka over it.  You want a little vodka pool in the bottom of the pan. Cover and bake according to the package instructions for the weight.

The Drunk Buttery Turkey:

Coat the inside of the turkey with butter and stuff with chopped onions mixed with butter, parsley, salt, and pepper.  Generously butter the outside of the turkey and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and parsley.  Pour in white wine and cognac (about 2/3 white wine and 1/3 cognac). Once again, you want a little pool of liquid in the bottom of the pan.  Cover and bake according to package instructions for the weight.

Both of these recipes are great with turkey breasts, which you can easily fit in a large slow cooker.

We’ve also learned to designate someone else as the carver.  Last year we asked a friend who was coming to come early and carve the turkey. 

So what about you?  What are your turkey disaster stories?  Or tried and true techniques?  Do tell.

The Save Up & Clear Out Project

I read about a Pantry Challenge a while ago.  Parts of it sounded intriguing; I liked the idea of using up some of the random things that have been on the shelves for a while, or that we have just way too much of, or that tend to go bad before we use them.  There was a great sale on canned tuna a while back, so now we have a lot of tuna in the pantry.  I recently had to throw away a box of beer bread mix from a specialty store because it expired before I got around to using it.  I never seem to use up more than half of a carton of sour cream before it goes bad.  I liked the idea of maybe addressing issues like these.  Part of it sounded kind of annoying, though; I don’t always have the time to get super creative when it comes to meal planning.  Hubby’s work schedule is weird (to put it nicely) and some days there’s a very limited window of time to get dinner ready between when I get home from work and when he has to leave for work.  It doesn’t leave much wiggle worm for extreme creativity or made from scratch everything.  And we like food.  A lot.  Neither one of us are terribly happy when dinner isn’t great. 

One of the perks of the Pantry Challenge is that in theory you’re able to save up the money that you normally spend on groceries, or use it for another purpose.  I definitely liked the sound of that.  The bills, even with insurance, from my medical issues earlier this year are insane.  We also had some septic tank issues last month, so that was a big hit to the savings account.  It could definitely stand an infusion.

I haven’t been very diligent about keeping the grocery spending as low as I can.  We’ve switched to organic milk and organic beef.  Because I’m trying to avoid soy now we’re pretty limited as to which brands we can buy of a lot of different things.  I’ve found myself justifying a higher grocery bill because we’re trying to eat healthier and buying more organic foods.  But I need to be more conscientious of checking to see which stores offer the best deals on organic milk and beef and trimming the cost of other grocery items to help balance it out.  In an effort to do this we’ve allotted $200.00 for groceries this month.  It works out to about $44.45 per week when you factor in the half week at the beginning of the month, with about $22.20 for the short week. 

We’ve also slipped into the habit of eating out quite a bit more than we should.  It started slowly, but has built into a pretty bad habit.  It’s kind of shifted from “hey our favorite Mexican place sounds great for Friday night” to something along the lines of “I’m tired/had a bad day at work/don’t feel like cooking/didn’t defrost anything/it’s just easier/ we won’t have to clean up the kitchen”, which leads to eating out a lot more than we should.   It’s bad for the budget, and has brought the weight loss to a halt.  Fortunately we haven’t gained, but restaurant portions aren’t the way to keep that from happening. 

The eating out thing is a little tricky, because as I said before, we like food.  We like trying new foods, and going new places.  We don’t have much time off together, so we tend to eat out when we do as something that we both enjoy doing to spend time together.  We talked about it and decided that saying we’re not eating out this month is just setting ourselves up for failure, so we’ve imposed a limit.  We’re allowing ourselves three times of eating out together this month, and we each get one time of eating out on our own with friends or co-workers.  If we both don’t use our own option by the end of the month we’ll allow ourselves the fourth time together. 

We’re hoping that we’ll save some money this way, start losing weight again, use up some of the things that we have too much of right now, and eliminate a lot of food waste by actually using the bottles of salad dressing, bunches of herbs, cartons of sour cream, leftovers, and everything else that ends up languishing in the back of the refrigerator.  I’m also hoping to come up with some new recipes this way; some of the best recipes are born of desperation, so I’m hoping for some good ones. 

One of my other objections to the Pantry Challenge was the daily blogging of what you eat.  Daily blogging doesn’t seem to happen for me lately.  And I think that kind of daily blogging makes for very boring reading!  Maybe, maybe if you’re someone like Kate Middleton the world cares what you eat for breakfast on Tuesday, otherwise I don’t think so.  So, I plan to only post recipes or quick meal ideas, or how to make something cheaply.  I hope that will keep it interesting. 

Basically this all comes down to our very own Save Up & Clear Out Project; $200.00 for groceries this month and limiting eating out to four times this month to save up some money, using up things we have on hand to clear out the pantry and freezer, and sharing recipes and time savers we utilize to do this.  I’d also love to read about any of your quick go-to meal ideas.