Category Archives: Food

books, Family, Food

Sunday Soup

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Usually I’m the one checking out cookbooks but a couple of months ago YA asked me to request two for her.   (Don’t ask me why she didn’t request them herself…. I know she has a library card and an online account.)  Both were “Half Baked” titles by Tieghan Gerard – not vegetarian but more veggie recipes than your usual cookbook.

The first one finally showed up last week; both books had a lengthy waiting list.  After YA went through it and marked a few recipes to copy, I figured I should look through it as well.  One of the recipes that caught my eye was the Cauliflower Pale Ale Soup so on Saturday I shopped for the ingredients and yesterday morning, I headed into the kitchen to prepare it.  I had to change it up a bit to make it vegetarian and also because I didn’t have pale ale and didn’t want to buy six bottles/cans.

Ingredients

5 slices of vegetarian bacon, chopped
4 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 ½ tsp. paprika
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 c. vegetarian broth
1 medium head of cauliflower, chopped (6 cups)
2 cloves garlic, minced or grated
2 tsp. dried thyme
Pinch crushed red pepper flakes
Salt & pepper
1 12-oz. bottle hard cider
½ c. milk (I used skim)
2 Tbsp. butter
Shredded cheddar cheese

How To

  • Saute the bacon in 1 Tbsp of the olive oil. Move bacon to a separate bowl and toss with the rosemary, ½ tsp. paprika and the pinch of cayenne.
  • Add the remaining 3 Tbsp. of oil to the pan. Saute the onion and celery until soft.
  • Add ½ c. broth, cauliflower, garlic, thyme, 1 tsp. paprika, pinch of red pepper flakes, salt & pepper to taste. Stir for a bit then add the rest of the broth and the cider.
  • Bring to a boil, then reduce to medium heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes, until cauliflower is tender.
  • Blend the soup (either in blender or using immersion blender).
  • Serve with the veggie bacon bits and cheddar cheese.

It was yummy; YA and I both enjoyed it for lunch.  Between the two of us, there are about 15 recipes we’ve marked with little post-it notes so I’m thinking this might end up being a cookbook we decide to purchase.  Guess I’d better start looking through my current cookbook stash to see which one will have to go!!

Do you often cook with liquor?

2023, Family, Food, home, Kids, Uncategorized, work

Waited On Hand And Foot

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Daughter is coming home for a visit Friday through next Monday, the weather gods willing, and we are all excited. She hasn’t been home for two years. She is currently working six days a week at her agency job and her private therapy practice, and is exhausted. She begins her full time private practice in mid April.

Her plans are to vegetate on the sofa, crochet an afghan for us, and be pampered. We have the yarn. She doesn’t want to go any where, just be at home and have us cook for her.

We planned menus yesterday. There will be chicken enchiladas Friday, German roast pork braised in apple cider with butternut squash risotto Saturday, and pasta with mom’s red sauce and Calabrian meatballs and bruschetta on Sunday. Monday will be leftovers. Her dad has to make bacon and scrambled eggs for her. The bacon must be Cloverdale brand, thick-sliced, hickory-smoked variety, cooked just the way she likes it, meaning it is crisp in the middle and more chewy on the ends. She also wants homemade French bread. I already have two loaves in the freezer as well as the chicken, pork loin, meatballs, and red sauce. There is one remaining butternut from the garden. I think we are set.

What would you request if you could have someone cook for you for three days. When was the last time you were waited on hand and foot?

Food, Uncategorized

Spaghetti Pie

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I probably spend more time on YouTube and Facebook than I should.  Of course the algorithms keep showing me stuff that I like (usually) and some of that content is cooking videos.  I click on a lot – even though I don’t always make it to the end.

So last week I found an interesting food site and the very first recipe I clicked on was Spaghetti Pie.  Sounded right up my alley so I made it full-screen and after watching the entire video, I went to this guy’s website for the recipe.  I didn’t follow it exactly (although I came pretty close) but it was very easy, very quick and very tasty!  Heated up is good too.

Here is how I made it:

  • 1 lb whole wheat spaghetti
  • 8 eggs (I used the yummy ones from Ben)
  • 2 cups shredded fontina cheese
  • 1 cup shredded romano peccorino cheese
  • ½ cup half `n half
  • Lots of pepper
  • Dash of salt
  1. Shred the cheese and set aside
  2. Cook the pasta but not all the way to al dente
  3. Whip the eggs together with the half `n half, dash of salt and as much pepper as you might like (I love black pepper so I cranked away!)
  4. Add most of the two cheeses (saving some for the topping) and mix up.
  5. Add the almost al dente pasta to the egg/cheese and mix well again.
  6. Heat up a tablespoon of butter along with some olive oil in an oven-proof pan (I used my cast iron) and then put pasta/egg/cheese in, distributing well.
  7. Sprinkle last of cheese on top
  8. Bake at 375° F for 15-20 minutes.
  9. Goes great w/ salad or fruit on the side!

How do you like YOUR pasta?

Business, Food, Travel, Uncategorized

Pasteles

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I’ve discovered a new bakery.  Well, technically PJ discovered it for me.  And you all know how I love a good bakery.

On Saturday I dropped off some Ben eggs for PJ (Ben to tim to me to PJ… roundabout) as well as an immersion blender from Bill.  I love how we built a little community on the trail – that’s a blog for another day.

Anyway, PJ and I talked about the great Mexican food that I had in Tucson and she mentioned that there is a great Mexican panaderia close to her.  As I was leaving, she gave me directions and I headed toward it; I found it easily – Don Panchos Bakery on Cesar Chavez.  The customer area wasn’t too big but had huge displays on each side filled with an amazing array of goodies.  Donuts, cookies, cakes, breads and lots and lots of pastries.  Even flan. 

I picked out a couple of conchas, which I adore and then when I turned around to the other case, I saw “besos”.  It’s two cakes held together by sweet custard and I’ve only encountered them a couple of times during my travels.  I quickly added a couple of those to my tub.  Pricing was much lower than I expected.  In fact, when she gave me the total, I asked her if she had gotten everything.  It was all I could do to get out of there without enough pastries to open up my own shop! 

It was also all I could do to not eat all the pastries on Saturday afternoon!

Which direction do you head if you want to find a bakery?

2023, Art, books, Food, Travel

Decisions Decisions

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As you all know I love cookbooks.  And you all also know that I have too many – neither my wallet nor my shelves can handle my just willy-nilly buying of any and all cookbook that look interesting.  But a quick perusal doesn’t cut the mustard either – you need to go though a cookbook thoroughly to know if it earns the right to displace another cookbook on my shelves.

The way I deal with this is to check out prospective cookbooks from the library.  Then I can leisurely go through them, look at the recipes, ingredients, level of difficulty, etc.  If a lot of recipes look interesting and I can envision cooking from the book, then I have to decide if it’s enough to replace an existing cookbook on my shelves.  If there are only a couple of recipes, I copy them and add them to my big binder.

When I was in Tucson, we visited a few places that had cookbooks on display.  One was an amazing cooking shop in the arts colony of Tubac.  We spent quite a bit of time there as Susan was texting photos of various tea towels to a friend who was in the market.  This shop had A LOT of tea towels; it would have been very easy to over-indulge.  Wandering through a cooking shop is not a punishment for me and I came across a handful of cookbooks that looked interesting.  I took photos and then when I got home I requested them from the library.  Three are in transit, so hopefully in the next few days I can relax with some hot tea or cocoa and go through them to my hearts’ content.

How do you decide which books to buy and which to not buy (or borrow)?

2023, Food, Travel

Holes in the Wall

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We talked last week about traveling companions that are suited to our own style.  But we didn’t venture into the dynamics of visiting other folks.  Having spent several days with a good friend at her Tucson (technically Green Valley) home in February, I have been thinking about this dynamic quite a bit. 

This is the first visit we’ve had together since her husband passed last summer and my first time to their winter home.  When he was alive we had a lot of our meals at home.  He and I had loving to cook in common so it was an easy part of the visiting routine.  My friend doesn’t love cooking so on this trip we ended up eating out most of the time.  In fact, prior to my arriving we had talked about having Mexican food every meal. 

So I was surprised when she suggested pizza for dinner the first night.  Then I found out that she meant a food truck/pizza oven run by two brothers that was almost always parked a few miles from her place – the Family Joint Pizzeria – apparently they have quite a following.  You order your pizza then wait in your car (or at some adjoining picnic tables) and they bring it to you when it’s finished.  They offer a few bakery items as well and we ate this huge (and delicious) concha while we waited.

 I couldn’t pass up the Elote pizza, made with corn and cheese (the top one in the photo)

The other was a more traditional margarita.  Both were unbelievably yummy. 

Except for two breakfasts that we whipped up at home, we did indeed eat Mexican food for every other meal – and all at smaller, out of the way places that many of my friends might pass up.  Lunch south of Tucson near the Tabac community (about 15 miles from the border) that served baby margaritas in jelly jars.  We ate hot fry bread from a stand outside the San Xavier de Bac mission, unbelievably scrumptious cauliflower enchiladas at a place called Guadalajara’s and even breakfast at The Little One.  We both had Huevos Divorciados – one egg with red sauce, one egg with green sauce (on tortillas) but separated on the plate by rice and beans.  It was delightful but the most fun was having chips and salsa for breakfast!

It was a delightful surprise to have all these culinary adventures when previous visits hadn’t been as… exotic shall we say.

Tell me about a hole-in-the-wall place you’ve enjoyed>

2023, Family, Food, Uncategorized

Tea

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I am taking quite a bit of time off this week looking after our grandson. He is quite amiable and happy, and it has been quite fun. He is quite good at entertaining himself, so I have had some time to sit and rest. Yesterday I decided to have Ostfriesentee in the afternoon.

I started drinking tea when I lived in Canada. My mother’s family didn’t drink much tea, but my dad’s parents did. I wasn’t surprised when I ran across an article about the importance of tea in Ostfriesland, as that is where my father’s family came from. Ostfriesland is in northwest Germany right across the Ems River from the Netherlands. People there drink 300 liters of tea per person each year.

The favorite tea in Ostfriesland is Assam tea, strong and malty. There is a very precise way to drink it. First, you put sugar lumps called kluntjes in the cup, then pour in the hot tea and try to hear the sugar make a cracking noise. Next, you pour a teaspoon of heavy cream against the inside rim of the cup so the cream makes neat designs in the tea. You don’t stir the tea, but drink it in layers, so that the last drops are sweetened by the rock sugar. I typically don’t have time in the week for such ceremony, and this was fun.

What are some ceremonies you like? How do you take your tea?

2023, Family, Food, home, Uncategorized

Not Cooking

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Ever since we defrosted our freezers several weeks ago and were able to see what frozen leftovers we had, Husband and I have been making a point of eating those leftovers and trying not to put any leftovers from new dishes in the freezers. Every night during the week we say to each other “we’re not cooking or baking this weekend, are we.”

Then Saturday rolls around, and our resolve crumbles. This weekend, “not cooking” resulted in an Italian Pie of Greens and two loaves of Leinsamen Mischbrot, a German sourdough bread made of several kinds of flours and flaxseed. The previous weekend, “not cooking” resulted in a cod and mussel stew with harissa, chicken tortellini soup, and four loaves of French bread. We tell ourselves that since the Swiss chard for the pie and the makings for the stew and the soup were already in the freezers, that it is good to have homemade bread on hand, and that none of the newly prepared main dishes went in the freezer as leftovers, we are kind of, sort of, sticking to our plan. There are noticeably fewer containers now in the Lutheran freezer where all the leftovers go.

Husband informs me that we are now eating the last loaf of rye bread from the freezer. Beatrice Ojakangas, the Duluth cookbook author, said that her father would complain to her mother that “there isn’t anything to eat in this house” if he couldn’t find any rye bread in the kitchen. Husband loves rye bread, but insists that he isn’t going to bake for a while. I notice, though, that there is rye sourdough starter in the fridge, and we just got some rye chops we had ordered, so I can guess what we are “not baking” next weekend.

When is your resolve the weakest? What is your favorite bread to make or eat? How do you deal with leftovers?

2023, animals, Farming Update, Food, home, Nature

February Shuffle

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Today’s farming update comes from Ben.

The cold weather this week has thrown off my groove. It was 40’s and sunny last week and I was without a jacket. It’s hard to readjust to temps in the teens isn’t it. 

Still got two ducks! And some wild ones. It rained all day Tuesday, and Wednesday morning there was 10 or 12 squirrels running around together. Up and down the trees, across the yard, digging up acorns, back up the trees, it was fun to watch them playing. I didn’t even know we had that many squirrels. Bailey would have been having conniptions if she’d seen them. 

Years ago, when I was measuring grain bins for the Agriculture Department, there was a squirrel running around inside a bin. The grain was down about 10 feet and the squirrel couldn’t get out. I wrote a note on my report to tell the farmer there was a squrril, squerrel, squierril, “rodent” in his bin. 

There are a few icy spots around the yard yet. It’s kinda funny to see a chicken slip on the ice. And when you think about the ground contact area of a chicken’s foot, they don’t really have much surface area so I guess it’s not really surprising how often they slip.

We had to put our dog Allie down. She was 18 years old we think. We got her as a stray when a sheriff deputy picked her up one cold rainy October night and called me, because I’m on the townboard, and said she had this stray dog that had jumped into her car, and she’s not supposed to have dogs in her car, so I needed to take her. Kelly heard me on the phone talking about a dog and me saying, “Bring it out”. Kelly groaned and rolled her eyes. Just what we need, another dog. Kelly was with me when the deputy got out of the squad car with this little Rat Terrier in her arms. Kelly had a little dog like this when she was growing up, so her heart kinda melted right there. And Allie had a home. We’d never had an indoor dog before. I said she wasn’t staying inside, and she wasn’t sleeping in our bed. Lost on both of those counts, but that was OK. She must have been abused by a man in her first life because she sure didn’t like men at first. And if she did, boy, you were OK. If there was thunder, Allie would climb up on my head. As she got deaf, that became less of a problem. Deaf, and eventually blind, but there was nothing wrong with her nose. And she never lost her spirit or spunk. She ruled the house and the other dogs up until the last day. All attitude. We loved that about her. 

I attended a meeting about growing oats for the food market rather than the animal feed market. It was very interesting. It needs to be much higher test weight to make oatmeal, than it does to be animal feed.  The diagram is from the article Processing of oat: the impact on oat’s cholesterol lowering effect. by Grundy, M, Fardet, A, Tosh, S, RIch, G, and Wilde, P. Food Funct, 2018, 1328-1343.

Representatives from the Albert Lea Seed House, from Grain Millers Inc, and from soil and water conservation department spoke. There are some grants that have been received by RAA – Regenerative Agriculture Assoc, and the county to support cover crops or small grains. There are some hoops to jump through yet, and there’s a huge carry over of oats from 2022 driving down prices. Canada sets the markets for Oats; they’re the largest producer of oats in the world so what they say, goes. 
But it was all interesting and I’ll get signed up for some of it and see what happens this year. 
They provided lunch. Pizza! How about that. 

BEST MEAL YOU EVER GOT FOR ATTENDING A MEETING?

WORST MEETING YOU EVER ATTENDED?

2023, animals, Food, Nature, News, Uncategorized

Big Fish

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The Bismarck Tribune had a fun story yesterday about a 34 year old oil worker from Minot who went fishing early in January in the open waters in the tailrace below the Garrison Dam Power plant on the Missouri River and caught a State Record setting 20 lb, 42 inch long Burbot on an 8 lb test line. Burbot are freshwater fish in the cod family. It was the only bite he got all night. Burbot are sometimes referred to as “poor man’s lobster. That was a huge fish.

I was really tickled by the fisherman’s plans to have the enormous fish “fully encased in a coffee table or display case ” in his living room. This guy is evidently not married, as he was out fishing at 11:30 at night when he caught the fish, and I don’t know many women who want something like that in the living room. It also made me think about what his heirs plan to do with the fish 50 years from now when he is gone and they have to figure out what do do with Grandpa’s fish coffee table.

What are some “interesting” family heirlooms you have had to contend with? What do you have that your heirs have will trouble finding a place for? What would you do with a stuffed and mounted 20 lb, 42 inch Burbot?