Category Archives: Food

2024, Family, Food, home, Kids, Theatre

He Made Me Ice Cream

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I brought a crate of peaches to Brookings, and for some reason, I started thinking about peach ice cream. That led to the memory of a friend of mine telling me about some ice cream she had made with a special ice cream maker she had just bought-a Ninja Creami.

Well, wouldn’t you know that the Brookings Walmart had one of those, so I bought it, and Grandson and I have had the best time this week making ice cream. He assisted in making all the mixes and running the machinery. The mixes were mainly cream and flavorings, but no eggs.

The whole premise of this contraption is that you can make a small amount of ice cream quickly after the mix has been in the freezer over night. The mixes are easy and don’t need to be cooked. Then, you put the container in the machine, which sends a whirly blade into the frozen mixture and tuns it into ice cream or sorbet.

We made lemon sorbet, coffee ice cream, peach ice cream, strawberry ice cream, vanilla ice cream, and mixed berry sorbet. Grandson quickly figured out how to get the thing set up. He was so proud and happy seeing his parents eat the ice cream he had made. He said the coffee ice cream was his favorite.

I remember family members struggling with ice, salt, and noisy electric or hand cranked ice cream makers. Boy, it tasted good, though, but it was quite a production. This was easy. Too easy!

What are your favorite ice creams? Memories of ice cream making? Ever seen the musical She Loves Me?

2024, animals, Food, Kids, State Fair, Weather

Mother Nature – 1. VS & YA – 0.

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I’ve been to the Fair in all kinds of weather.  Granted, no snow but light rain, heavy rain, serious winds, tornado watches and heat.  Lots of heat.  In fact, last year there were five days that were 90 degrees and higher.  I was there for two of those days.  The other three days were no slouches either, temperature wise. 

So on Monday bringing in a forecast of 90, we weren’t too worried.  We took our fans and headed out, getting on the first bus and arriving at the fair at 7:45 a.m.  Got a cold bottle of water right away (along with a crepe and cookies….) before heading to the animal barns.  We thought it would be a good strategy to get the barns done before the day got too crazy.  This was a good strategy but after an hour or so petting cows, lambs, goats and horses in non-air conditioned barns, we were squirming.  At that point it was only 80 degrees but the humidity was 85% and you could feel every percent of that.  We were both dripping.

Walked up to the Pet Pavilion to find that the German Shorthair Pointers were not doing any of their demonstrations.  We did pet the dogs that were there and wandered about looking at a few displays but it was brutal.  I would have been willing to sit in the sun (with my fan and my baseball cap) to watch the dog dock diving, as it didn’t require any movement on my part, but YA didn’t want to.  It was nasty enough that neither of us was too interested in food and we’d filled up the water bottle three times.  YA didn’t even last through one level of the Grandstand, which she normally loves – if there was air in there, you couldn’t tell. 

I wasn’t too happy either and I didn’t want to do anything in particular enough to try to coax YA into it.  So for the first time EVER, we headed back to the bus at noon.  Didn’t even pretend that we might come back so skipped getting our hands stamped on the way back.  When the bus arrived, the folks getting off said “it’s freezing on the bus”.  I said “great”. 

When we got home we lounged in the backyard in the shade, filled up Guinevere’s little pool, soaked our feet and tried not to feel completely defeated.

What do you do when it’s hot hot hot?

2024, Family, Food, Kids, Uncategorized

Cooking With Gas

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I and my grandson are cooking up a storm while his parents are at work. Yesterday we made Marcella’s tomato sauce, another peach and blackberry crumble, banana bread, and lemon sorbet. Grandson sliced the onion, lemons, and peaches with his special, child friendly knives.

Son and DIL have a gas stove. My, do things cook fast and at much lower temperature settings on a gas stove! It makes rather alarming pops and snaps and clicks. Son and DIL don’t seem to be worried about reported health problems with such a stove. Son, who does most of the cooking in the family, loves his gas stove. I would have one if we were piped for gas. Perhaps in our new house in Luverne.

I remember that my mother was really anxious about the gas stove we had in our last house in Luverne before we moved to a new house in the country with an electric, glass topped stove. We plan to get a new stove and microwave in our current home in October. We have used and abused our current stove and microwave so that a new set will be a selling point.

Gas, electric, wood, or induction for you? Ever cooked with gas? Any good food burning stories?

2024, Business, Family, Food, home, Technology, Uncategorized

The Yeast Of My Worries

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We typically have pretty good luck with orders and deliveries here, that is, until recently. On July 30 I ordered six, 2 oz packages of fresh yeast on Amazon. Husband has a Nordic baking book that uses fresh yeast in the recipes. Since I had thrown out the remainder of a huge shipment of fresh yeast that I had ordered about a year ago (it got too old in the freezer) it was time to order a more manageable amount.

The order was supposed to arrive on August 5. I tried to track it on Amazon as soon as I got notification that it had shipped, but had no luck. The 5th arrived, and still no yeast. I knew it had to be kept cold or it would start to do its yeasty thing and start growing and expanding. I received a notice that it would arrive on the 9th. It didn’t. By this time, I knew something had gone amiss, and finally Amazon said that it was lost and I could have a refund. It was a bit of an ordeal, but I got the refund and ordered more. This time around I have been able to actually track where it is. It is to arrive today or tomorrow.

The most unreliable delivery service seems to be the US Postal Service. UPS, FEDEX, and Speedee Delivery all do a good job. The latter always makes me think of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Husband is excited that the yeast will arrive soon. I worry that it hasn’t been kept cold. We shall see.

What delivery disasters have you encountered? What are your favorite memories of Mr. Rogers or other children’s programming? What are you worrying about these days?

2024, Fantasy, Food, home, Mysteries

Monster Candy

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Most mornings I try to squeeze in an online crossword puzzle.  My default is the Washington Post puzzles, partly because I already have a WAPO account and partly because there are options, depending on how much time I want to spend.  I’m not too much of a purist… if the puzzle is hard and it’s starting to take too long, the “show me my errors” button gets clicked.  If I make it all the way through without having to “cheat”, I like it, but not enough to struggle and struggle. 

Yesterday morning, early into the puzzle, I read the clue “Godzilla’s rival” for a five-letter word across.  Easy peasy – Rodin.  Then as I was circling back to do the down words, nothing was fitting with Rodin.  And when I got to “Tallinn’s Country” and “Estonia” didn’t fit, I knew something was wrong with my Rodin answer.  I sat for a few minutes thinking of the other monsters that Godzilla doesn’t like.  Gigan?  No.  Manda?  No.  Zilla?  No.  Mothra?  Too long.  Megalon?  Too long.  King Ghidorah?  Way too long.

The only hard/fast rule that I have for crosswords is not to click onto another tab on the internet and look up a word.  So I sat for a bit more, not coming up with any other five-letter Godzilla nemeses.  Then my eyes focused on the clue list and realized that I had mis-read it.  It wasn’t “Godzilla rival”, it was “Godiva rival”.   That was good a for an out-loud laugh – I startled the dog.

Sad but true, I didn’t get the correct answer until I had a couple more letters (Lindt).  What does it say about me that I know so many more of Godzilla’s enemies off the top of my head than I know worldwide famous chocolate companies? 

What is Godzilla’s favorite candy?  What’s YOUR favorite candy?

2024, Family, Food, home, Uncategorized

Menu Planning

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I grew up with a dad who had a small business and a mom who, when she wasn’t teaching, was helping my dad at his coffee shop. That left me at home to fend for myself for meals. If my mom cooked, it was usually on Sunday. During the week and after school I lived on toast, bologna sandwiches, and cereal until I was about 10 when I started to cook real food for myself. Husband grew up in a more traditional family that had three set meals a day, as his mom was a homemaker who had the time to plan and prepare meals. It was easier for me to adjust to his expectations for daily meals than it was for him to scrounge without planning. That made him anxious.

Our meals lately have been planned on the spur of the moment, as we never know what fresh veggies we may find in the garden or the Farmers Market. We can’t bear to let anything go to waste, so we are always planning how to cook up the surplus veggies that weren’t used in any dish we just cooked. So, if I cook too many white beans or chickpeas, we have to find another recipe that will use up the surplus, which usually means yet another trip to the grocery store to get what we don’t have for the new recipe to use the leftovers in.

I blame Bill, the Hutterites at the Farmers market, and the New York Times for the unusual dishes we made recently. I mentioned the other day on the Trail that we had 8 eggplant plants, and Bill commented that was a lot of Baba Ghanoush. Well, that forced me to buy a large jar of tahini, and Husband decided we should make a tahini-yoghurt sauce for some lamb burgers he cooked on the grill, and then I suggested that if we just bought one more pint of cherry tomatoes to go with the leftover pint we had from an earlier white bean caprese salad, and got some curly pasta, we could make this tahini-parmesan pasta salad recipe from the NYT. We did, and it was delicious.

The Hutterites were selling sweet corn on Saturday at the Farmers Market, and wouldn’t you know, the NYT featured a charred corn and chickpea salad with lime crema. We had limes we needed to use up. I cooked a pound of dry chickpeas and we ate that salad Saturday night. I only needed half of the chickpeas I cooked, so we had the other half last night in an Indian curry. You see how this goes.

I feel fortunate to have a love for cooking, a partner who also loves to cook, and a budget that allows us to eat the way we do. I will probably need to get another jar of tahini sometime next week, though. The eggplants have set fruit and are getting bigger.

What is your strategy for meal planning? What was your family’s pattern for meals? Favorite pasta salads?

2024, Food, home, Uncategorized

Perfecting Pastries

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When we visited our daughter in Washington last April, we went to a cookware shop in Gig Harbor. I found a new pastry cookbook there, and last weekend was my first attempt at the recipes. I tried the dough for laminated pastries, and made croissants and Franzbrotchen.

The book New European Baking is by an American baker, Lauren Kratochvila, who was trained in France and runs a bakery in Berlin. The recipes look wonderful, although are pretty complicated. There were illustrations that were helpful, and the finished dough tasted wonderful. I don’t know how many baboons have made their own croissant dough, but the basic premise is that you envelope a 10 inch square of butter (about 9 oz) in a 10 inch round of dough, and then proceed to roll the dough into a 30 inch length, fold the dough in a specific way, chill it, roll it again to 30 inches, fold it again, chill it, and then roll it out into a 20 X 12 rectangle and cut the dough into rolls. The end product has hundreds of butter/dough layers because of the folds. This all has to be done really quickly so the butter doesn’t get soft in between the dough layers and ooze out. I was so irritable and stressed during all this that Husband was afraid to come into the kitchen.

I have made Julia Child’s croissant recipe in the past. This recipe was more complicated, but I am determined to try it again. My rolls turned out pretty good for a first try, although they didn’t have the perfect shape that the book author showed in the book photos. They were light and airy and buttery. The Franzbrotchen have a cinnamon filling and are supposed to look like squashed bicycle tires. You can see the rolls I made in the header photo. I considered this first try a learning experience, and I am going to try them until I get them as perfect as I can.

What have you tried to perfect and with what success? What pastry would you like to learn to make?

2024, Food, Mysteries, Uncategorized

The Tipsy Steer

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I’m ashamed to have to admit it but I’m really not a very adventuresome eater.  When I find a restaurant or a particular dish that I like, I’m loyal.  I stick to it like glue.  There are often pangs of guilt involved in this.  Whenever I’m about to order my favorite, it occurs to me that I could try something else.  Maybe I would love it just as much.  But I rarely take the chance.

So when my friend Tony said we should have lunch on my side of town, I decided it had to be at a new place.  I spent a lot of time googling restaurants, looking at the menus, checking the ratings/reviews.  Finally found a place called the Tipsy Steer over on Hiawatha.  I will admit that the name was the hook but the menu had a good variety that I was sure would give Tony and me options.

We sat outside on the patio (overcast but cool so perfect weather for it) and then I found another selling point.  All of their different burger combinations can be made with a meatless burger option!  I love that although it does make it a much longer process for me to pick something.  I settled on a Pimento Cheese & Olive Tapenade with Roasted Red Pepper Burger.  They serve the burgers on metal platters with a nice helping of fries – nice presentation. 

The burger was fabulous.  I’ve never had pimento cheese OR olive tapenade on a burger before and I have to say it was an excellent combination.  It was messy, but we had plenty of napkins.  Tony had a straight up cheeseburger which he reported was great.  The fries were no slouches either.  We had grabbed to-do containers before the food even arrived – good thing – the burgers were huge – we needed to put half of them in the containers right away!

I was so happy to have chosen a new restaurant and tried something different.  Now the only problem is getting myself to try a different burger when I take YA there sometime soon!

How do you like your burgers?  Ever had a burger that you would consider “adventuresome”?

2024, Fantasy, Food, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

High as an Elephant’s Eye

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I was glad to see how tall Ben’s corn is last week.  The summer has been good for me – after last summer’s blisteringly dry heat, I’m enjoying the slightly milder temps and the rain.  I haven’t even had to get the sprinklers out of the garage yet. 

And Iowa must be doing OK as well.  My next-door neighbors were gone for about 10 days – visiting the grandparents south of the border.  When they travel in the summer, I always water their outdoor plants; it’s easy as they just pull all the pots over to the fence and I can just apply the hose to them whenever I am watering my bales.

I’m happy to do it and I don’t think of it as an onerous chore (especially when it rains so much) so I was surprised when they came home with a bag full of corn for me as a thank you.  Straight off the farmstand corn and the pretty kind I like best – yellow and white. 

The only problem with 12 ears of fresh corn is when you are the only one home for over a week.  YA was away on a work program.  There was no way I was going to waste all that gorgeous corn so I rolled up my sleeves and dived in.

I saved two for just eating and de-kernelled (is that a word?) the rest.  Froze one bag then made a double batch of corn salsa (froze some), a lovely fresh kernel cornbread and then a fun garden veggie pizza with ricotta as sauce.  All done in three hours! 

So now I’ve processed cherries and corn this summer.  Wonder what else will come my way?

What kind of foodstuff would you like to have too much of?

2024, Food, home, Uncategorized

Wild about Cherries

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The plan was just to go into my local Aldis, get the shredded cheddar and a half gallon of milk.  I swear.

You know those big cardboard boxes that usually are full of watermelon at this time of year?  Or all those bags of freezee-pops?  Well, right inside the door was a big cardboard box of cherries.  Bag after bag of gorgeous cherries and at a very good price I might add.  I was powerless.

Yesterday I pitted all the cherries from one of the bags – chopped up the amount was exactly what I needed for a batch of cherry freezer jam – 6 and a half jars.  Fairly quick but the messiest of all the jams I make.  I ended up using my Vidalia chopper – it made just the right-sized bits for the jam and it also didn’t spew cherry juice all over the place. 

But here’s the kicker; you all know that I didn’t just buy one bag of cherries.  I’ve never actually made cherry jam before so wasn’t sure exactly how many cherries I needed.  Well now I know.  With YA out of town for work, it’s just me and that whole bag of cherries. I suppose I could make more jam but I’m already pushing the limit of how much jam I can eat in a year.

What should I do with all these cherries?