September Baking

I almost made it 30-for-30, but one Monday tripped me up. G was cluster-feeding and I didn't manage to get semi-prepared during his one real nap of the day and then by the time I did have time it was 9:30 and I just was too tired to do anything. Sigh. I was surprisingly disappointed that I couldn't make it to a perfect string.

But, here's what I learned in my month of baking:

• It's easiest if I prep for whatever it is I'm going to bake as soon as I can. What I mean is measuring everything and having it ready to go, so that if need be I can dump ingredients into a mixing bowl with one hand while the other holds the baby.
  
• Bread is not that scary. And it is sooooo goooood it's worth the effort.
  
• Apparently I do not ever get tired of chocolate.
  
• Tyler Florence has a killer coconut bread recipe.
  
• Everything I've ever tried by Dorie Greenspan is killer.
  
• Pie crust is also not that scary. But it is impossible to roll while holding a baby or even wearing him, so plan accordingly.
  
• I counted baking from a mix twice. Because my point in this month was mostly to clear out my backlog of new recipes, but also to clear out my baking cabinet of odds-and-ends, which included some mixes.
  
• I love love LOVE trying new recipes. I thought I'd get annoyed by it or something, but nope, never did. In fact it inspired me to continue with it even more. Details to follow.
  
• I need to trust my instincts, because I had a recipe that was a complete disaster and I thought it seemed weird when I was preparing it. I should have followed my gut.
  
• L never questioned what I was doing with all the baking, or what was going on. He just enjoyed it.

Banana-Buttermilk Muffins

1 cup (5 oz) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (4 oz) whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup (4 oz) sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (8 fl oz) buttermilk
1 cup (8 oz) mashed banana
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (2 oz) chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 375F.  Spray 12 standard muffin cups with cooking spray or line with paper cups.  

In a large bowl, stir together the flours, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda.

In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, banana, oil, egg, and vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and stir until just blended. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Sprinkle the tops evenly with the walnuts.

Bake the muffins until they are lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean, 15 - 20 minutes.  Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then turn out onto the rack and let cool completely.

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I followed the recipe exactly except I probably used a teaspoon and a half of vanilla, and I omitted the nuts on the tops of the muffins since L doesn't really like them enough to make the calories and expense worth it to use them. And it made 20 muffins for me; my muffin pans must be smaller than standard because I couldn't have filled them more than I did without having overflow.

I really appreciated that the recipe gave measurements in both volume and weight.  I very much prefer to weigh ingredients, especially flour, and love it when recipes provide it already and I don't have to convert cups to ounces.

Once I dig out the reference, I'll update the post to include where I found the recipe.

Weekly Menu Plan

Sunday - Pot roast in the crock pot. Specific version still to be determined, but it will involve carrots, onions, and potatoes.

Monday - Black bean soup - one of our favorites. Saute an onion, add some garlic, then chicken broth, cans of black beans (rinsed & drained), some diced tomatoes, SALSA & lots of it, and corn. Serve with shredded cheese and/or sour cream and additional salsa.

Tuesday - Leftovers/sandwiches/whatever we can scrounge.

Wednesday - Spaghetti. Because I've been craving it. I'm completely lazy with it - jarred sauce over angel hair. L loves it when I make sauce with ground beef, but I actually prefer just the jarred sauce (the natural or organic versions because they don't have all the sugar & other stuff of the regular versions). So usually I alternate, and this time it's my turn for my favorite. Actually, we may have some of his preferred sauce in the freezer, which is the best of all - we each get it the way we like it best.

Thursday - Repeat Tuesday.

Friday - If we need something, then the cheesy potato skillet dish or grilled cheese or cheese quesadillas. Lately though we haven't needed anything on Friday for varying reasons, so I'm not really going to plan anything.

Thanksgiving Menu

Barb recently posted her Thanksgiving menu, and it got me thinking about the Thanksgiving menu I grew up enjoying.

Since we usually eat around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, we'd always need something to munch on to tide us over from breakfast:

• veggie tray and dip, which includes:
  
  • broccoli
    
  • cauliflower
    
  • cherry or grape tomatoes
    
  • carrots
    
  • celery
    
  • mushrooms
    
  • green olives
    
  • black olives
• cheese ball & crackers

For the main course, it'd be:

• a huge turkey roasted in the oven (must specify since some of my in-laws get a smoked turkey and some deep-fry their turkey).
  
• mashed potatoes
  
• gravy
  
• Stove top stuffing (fixed outside the bird, so I guess technically it'd be dressing)
  
• green bean casserole, made with frozen beans not canned because my mom is picky. And some of the casserole would be made without the onion topping because her daughter is picky (that would be me).
  
• cranberry sauce. Straight from the can, but we're fancy and get the whole berry kind (and we don't actually serve it from the can, again, we're fancy and put it in a pretty dish.)
  
• rolls & butter
  
• sparkling cider
  
• wine

And then, the REAL attraction. Dessert. My mom loves her desserts and goes all out for Thanksgiving. There is usually more than one pie for each person. No, they don't all get eaten that day; that's what the rest of the weekend is for. Pie types might include:

• pumpkin (usually two)
  
• apple (usually Dutch apple)
  
• French silk (for my brothers)
  
• mince (for my father)
  
• blueberry or triple berry (for me)
  
• lemon meringue (for my grandmother when she was still alive, and now just for my brother)
  
• cherry (for my mom's favorite son-in-law, also known as the only son-in-law)
  
• Key lime

The Key lime pie, berry & cherry pie filling, and all of the pie crusts would come from the store; everything else was homemade.

Personal Cookbook

One of the best gifts my mother has ever given me is a copy of her recipe book. She typed all the family favorites, printed them off, put them into a binder and presented it to me when I moved away from home. Even better, she gave me an electronic copy of the recipes too.

It's now been so many years since the gift that the original binder is long since trashed; I managed to break the back of it and had to replace it. I've also reprinted most of the pages after adapting them to fit my tastes; I like my food SPICY and my mom has a very tame palette. I even deleted a few of the recipes which I never liked (shhh, don't tell her.)

Even more than just modifying my mom's recipes, I've added to it. So much so that I split it up and now have two binders - one for savory dishes and one for sweet. Both binders live next to my microwave and there isn't a week that goes by that I don't refer to at least one of them.

New recipes that I find and like enough to make again get added to the appropriate binder. Sometimes it's a page torn from a magazine, sometimes it's a printout from the internet. Occasionally it's my scribbled notes from a conversation at work, or a TV show. Every so often I get really motivated and take all the odd sizes and pages and type them up and print it out again, but I'll usually save any pictures that I might have of the dish and add them to the printout. Page protectors make it super easy to just drop items in no matter their size.

I can't imagine not having my cookbooks; they keep me organized and make it simple to find that dish I loved. They make menu planning easy too; often I'll have planned out most of the week but end up looking for a particular type of entree to round out the week; dividers I've established make it simple to turn to the section featuring whatever it is I want (whether it's chicken or beef or beans or soup...)

To go along with the cookbook binders, I have a plastic tub that holds file folders. I used to use the tub in lieu of a file cabinet but eventually had to graduate to a real cabinet. Now I've got it filled with files of recipes I want to try. Yes, I said files. Again, I've got them divided by category and refer to it when menu planning.

I like trying new things (and usually aim for 2 - 3 new recipes a week) so I really do work through the files. They've got recipes I want to cook and bake as well, and there are plenty of days when I've gone looking through them for a new cookie recipe to try. It used to be that most of the recipes I found to try were from magazines, but nowadays I find more recipes from the internet - especially food blogs!

I find having the tub is helpful to keep me from getting completely out of control with recipes to try - I've got this much space to fit new ones, and no more. And it's easy to sort through and find interesting items when I'm planning my menu for the week.

See more Works-for-Me Wednesday tips at Rocks in My Dryer.

Does 2 = a Streak?

I think it should, because that means I've started a new blogging streak. Woo-hoo! Two days in a row!

Dinner tonight was a bit of a bust. I originally planned to make stovetop meatloaf (by which I mean, meatloaf cooked on top of the stove, not meatloaf made with stovetop stuffing), but I just was very uninterested in it when it came time to fix it.

Instead I tried a new recipe, for beef and gnocchi pie. While the theory is good, and it certainly was an easy way to have a meat-and-potato dish, it just was a little bland for my taste. L thought it was really good though so I guess it was just me. I'm trying to restrain myself from heading back into the kitchen and making some brownies or apple dumplings or something sweet. I try to limit that sort of baking to the weekend.

My laundry is now calling me to move it along if I want to have clean pants to wear to work tomorrow. And that would probably be a good thing so I'll leave it at that and plan to post again tomorrow.

Apple-Pear Crisp

I had several pears and some apples that needed to be used before they went bad, so Sunday night I made an apple-pear crisp. No real recipe to share, because I modified it so heavily from the basic apple crisp recipe I use.

I used about 4 cups of fruit, about half pears & half apples. I forget what type of pears & apples they were. The apples were pretty tart though. I peeled them & sliced them into semi-thin pieces (my knife skills aren't the best so I can't claim that the slices were truly that thin). Since the apples were pretty tart, I tossed the fruit with a little sugar (2 tablespoons?) and some cinnamon, then put that into a greased 8x8 baking dish.

For the topping I mixed brown sugar, flour, and old-fashioned oats with additional cinnamon & then cut in butter.* Spread that over the top & baked it at 350 for about 40 minutes. It was delicious! I wish I'd had whipped cream or ice cream with it but even without it it was very good and a nice end to what had been a not-so-great Sunday.

*Let's see, amounts. Guesstimating, I'd say equal parts sugar & flour, like maybe a 1/2 cup each, then about 2/3 cup oats & a teaspoon of cinnamon, to maybe 1/2 a stick of butter. I love butter.

What I Fix

Apparently this really is my week to break out & join the wider blogging world. Normally I can't think of ideas to add to Works for Me Wednesday, but this week's theme is what you fix for dinner when it's been a crazy and all you want to do is either call for pizza or otherwise abdicate dinner responsibility.

If I can't convince L that he wants a sandwich or frozen pizza, black bean quesadillas are my standby. Super tasty, super easy, super quick.

Black Bean Quesadillas:
Tortillas. Whatever size you have on hand. We use flour just because that's what we prefer but I'm sure corn would work.
One onion. Or two if they're really small and/or you really like onion.
Oil. I usually use olive, but use whatever kind of fat you want.
A can of black beans, rinsed and drained.
Salsa. Or use some diced tomatoes if you don't want the heat.
Shredded cheese. Whatever type we have available is what we use.

Chop the onion into as small a size as you can manage/feel like making the effort.
Saute onion in a little oil until soft. If you don't mind your onions being a little raw, you can move on to the next step sooner. I hate raw onion so I make sure this is well cooked.
Add beans and salsa to taste. I add a lot of salsa.
If tortillas are cold, briefly warm them in microwave (10 seconds in mine), then put one tortilla in a clean (hot) skillet, and add some bean mixture to one side of tortilla.
Add plenty of shredded cheese.
Fold other half over bean mixture and cook until golden brown and delicious, and cheese is melty and yummy.
Carefully flip tortilla (you will lose some beans) and cook until other side is golden brown and delicious, and cheese is even more melty and yummy.
Remove from skillet, cut into pieces and enjoy with sour cream and/or more salsa.

This sounds much more complicated than it really is. I can have them on the table in 10 minutes, 15 max if I have to hunt for tortillas in the fridge or shred my own cheese.

One can of beans makes three stuffed quesadillas, which is enough for both of us and gives leftovers for lunch the next day.

Layered Enchilada Bake

Fixed this tonight and it was a winner. It was simple & tasty, so even though I don't really like using prepared taco mix & salad dressing, it's nice to know this works for evenings when I'm looking for something easy.

Layered Enchilada Bake

1 lb. lean ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
2 cups salsa
1 can (15 oz.) black beans, drained, rinsed
1/4 cup Italian dressing
2 Tbsp. taco seasoning mix
6 flour tortillas
1 cup sour cream
1 pkg. (8 oz.) shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 400ºF.

Brown meat with onions in large skillet on medium-high heat; drain. Add salsa, beans, dressing and seasoning mix; mix well.

Arrange tortillas in single layer on bottom of 13x9-inch baking dish; cover with layers of half each of the meat mixture, sour cream and cheese. Repeat all layers.

Bake for 30 - 40 minutes or until casserole is heated through and cheese is melted. Let stand 5 min. before cutting to serve.

What is wrong with me??

Found a new blog today and have spent the last 3 hours reading through archives. I can't imagine why I get so little done from my to-do list and my house is a mess.

Oh, and dinner tonight? Microwave popcorn & homemade rocky road "fudge".* Good stuff.** Wonder why my stomach is a little upset. Surely it has nothing to do with the horrific food choices I've made this evening.

*I used pecans instead. Way better than walnuts.

** Might be really tasty made half with peanut butter instead of chocolate. May have to try that if there is a next time.