Old-Time Applesauce.

I made this for breakfast when my in-laws were in town for a visit.  Chris made pancakes, and we ate it both as a topping for pancakes and separately as applesauce.  Mmmm.  This recipe comes from my 1930's cookbook. My apologies for the images being a little fuzzy.  I was too excited to try this to focus well! 

Ingredients:

1/3 c. brown sugar

1/2 T. flour

1/3 c. water

2 apples, sliced

Directions:

Mix brown sugar, flour and water in sauce pan.  Add apples, and cook till it bubbles.  Serve hot.

So simple! It will look as though there is not enough sauce for the apples, but never fear!  The apples will cook down and help to make their own sauce.  Stir occasionally and you'll be fine.  Enjoy!

Making Simple Food Pretty.

Dinner doesn't have to be complicated to taste good, and it doesn't have to be difficult to prepare to look good.  Sometimes the only difference between a dish prepared at home and one in a restaurant is the look. (And that wonderful little fact that you didn't have to prepare it....but that's beside the point!) Take spaghetti for instance.  Have you ever ordered spaghetti at a restaurant?  It always looks so good.  There's just something about the way its set in front of you with that little sprig of parsley or basil on the side, and the sauce perfectly centered on that mountainous heap of pasta.  It simply inspires your taste buds.  This is not unattainable by any stretch of the mind.  Here are a couple of examples on how you can plate your pasta. (We had asparagus as a side, and had fun with it too!)

As a side note, Chris and I had a competition for plating our meals this night.  Vote for the one you like best in the comments!

Pasta or not, your dinner can look nice.  In general, take time to put your meals on your plate.  If you want that extra touch, take a paper towel and wipe around the edge of the plate to pick up any drips when you are done, and it will look extra special.  Put thought into how you serve your meal, not just what you serve, and you will enjoy the end product that much more. 

On to dessert.  Whether you're making dessert for your family, company, or yourself, it doesn't have to be complicated to be nice.  I decided to take box pudding and see what I could do with it. 

Prepare pudding according to package directions.

When you've got the pudding ready, and ideally cooled a bit, carefully spoon some into the bottom of whichever serving glass you've chosen. (I used our zinfandel glasses, which turned out to be a bit large for the project, but still worked rather well.  Any clear glass will work for this, though generally a narrower, straighter-walled glass works best.)

I sprinkled nutmeg on top of this layer.  Be sure to place your fingers to the edge of the inside of the glass so that the spice is seen from the outside of the glass when placed.  When you've sprinkled your spices, very slowly add more pudding on top of the first layer.  If the pudding breaks through the spice layer, it needs to cool more first. 

I put cinnamon atop the next layer.  Again, be sure to get the spice as close to the edge of the glass as possible so as to be seen through the side as a clearly defined layer.  Place the rest of your pudding on top of this layer, being careful not to get the edges of the glass.  When you've finished, sprinkle a very light mixture of the spices used on top of the pudding in the center.  Wipe around the inside edges of the glass with a paper towel if you got the sides messy.  If you want, top with whipped cream.  

(Unfortunately, I didn't reserve very much pudding for the final layer, but you get the idea.)

You can get creative with almost every step.  Try different puddings, spices, glasses, toppings, whatever you like.  Perhaps chocolate pudding with powdered sugar layers?  Butterscotch with pumpkin pie spice?  Coconut cream pudding with coconut shavings layers?  Whatever you wish.  Have fun, and make dinner pretty again!

Yogurt Cream & Berries, Cuban Coffee Chili, Steak Soup and Pumpernickel Bread.

So, this week Hubby and I have made many wonderful things...and I've been putting off posting about them.  For no good reason really, except that I had other things come up to keep my attention.   In any case, I'm back now, with yummy food to share.

First, we have Yogurt Cream and Berries. We had it both with blueberries and strawberries, myself finding strawberries to be infinitely the better choice.  It's meant for breakfast, but we had it for dessert after dinner as well.

Next, there is Cuban-Coffee Chili.  This is one is a specialty of Hubby's and mine.  We love taking it to church chili cook-offs.  People are wary because of the name, and because it has raisins in it, but believe me, you have to make it, the smell of it alone, will make you salivate.  

ingredients:

1 1/2 lb lean ground beef

2 med onions, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 bay leaves

2 t chili powder

1 t ground cumin

1/2 t nutmeg

1/4 t fresh ground black pepper

1/4 t ground allspice

1 t salt

1/4 t fresh chopped thyme leaves

1 T dark molasses

14 1/2 oz can diced tomatoes

1/3 cup raisins

1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds

5 cups hot cooked rice

1 t capers

2 T chopped pimiento-stuffed green olives

9 oz can (2 cans) diced green chiles

2 cups strong coffee

Directions:

1. Brown the meat and vegetables: In a large Dutch oven, brown the beef over medium-high heat -- about 3 minutes. Remove contents from the Dutch oven and set aside. Reduce heat to medium low. Add onions and saute until translucent -- about 3 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1 minute.

2. Make the chili: Replace meat and add bay leaves, chili powder, cumin, nutmeg, pepper, allspice, salt, thyme, capers, olives, chiles, coffee, molasses, and tomatoes. Simmer uncovered for 20 minutes.

3. Finish the chili: Add raisins and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Garnish with almonds. Serve hot over cooked rice.

The day after, we made Steak Soup for lunch.  Much better than I thought it would be, considering that I'm not a fan of minute steak. We'll definitely make it again. (Sorry, neglected to take pictures for this one.) Here's the recipe.

Ingredients:

2 4-oz. beef cubed steaks (also called minute steaks)

1/4 t. garlic salt

1/8 t. pepper

1 T. cooking oil

1 med. onion, chopped

1 stalk celery, chopped

4 cups water

1 10 oz. package frozen mixed vegetables

1 T. instant beef bouillon granules

1 T. Worcestershire sauce (We left this out, Hubby is allergic)

1 t. dried basil, crushed

1 7 1/2 oz. can tomatoes, cut up

1/2 c. cold water

1/3 c. all-purpose flour

Directions:

1. Sprinkle meat with garlic salt and pepper.  In a large saucepan, cook meat in hot oil over medium-high heat ablut 3 minutes or until brown, turning once.  Remove meat from saucepan, reserving drippings in pan.  Cut meat into cubes, set aside.

2. In the same saucepan, cook onion and celery in the reserved drippings over medium heat until tender.  Stir in meat cubes, the 4 cups water, the vegetables, bouillon, Worcestershire sauce, and basil.

3. Bring to boiling, reduce heat.  Cover and simmer about 5 minutes or until vegetables are crisp-tender.  Stir in undrained tomatoes.

4. In a screw-top jar shake together the 1/2 cup water and flour; stir into meat mixture.  Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly.  Cook and stir for 1 minute more.  Makes 5 servings. 

Tonight we made homemade pizza for dinner.  We'll post a step-by-step of this another time...it's a staple in this house, so it'll be around again soon, don't worry.  (Sorry, no picture...we were too hungry to stop and photograph.) 

Finally, I'm currently making Pumpernickel Bread. The end result of the loaves is actually croutons.  We recently tried Ruby Tuesday's croutons, and I'm now trying to simulate them.  If you have the opportunity, check out their salad bar...it's probably one of the best salad bars I've been to! Delicious!!!

Also, Hubby is wonderful.  He made me oatmeal for breakfast one morning, after a particularly difficult and sleepless night with our son.  It had apples chopped up and cooked in it, with pumpkin spice and nutmeg and cinnamon.  Yum!

Great Aunt Mary's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Alright, I am willing to make these cookies for anyone, but I consider them one of my few family recipes that stays with me.  I love to make them, and they're fairly quick, but they call for a lot of ingredients.  Thankfully, I keep most of them on hand, so it's not difficult to whip them up in a pinch.

Because the recipe is so large, (it calls for a pound of butter, among other things,) I always make a half recipe.  Even then, I have to place my hands over the edges of the bowl when the mixer's on to keep it from overflowing.

I made these for the women's retreat I went to this weekend, and they were a hit.  I brought fifty cookies, and came home with the broken pieces of about five cookies.There were around thirty women at the retreat, so I figure that was pretty good.

Now, I am definitely cookied out.  Maybe some bread next?  

P.S. My hubby is fantastic.  Tonight he made me a salami sandwich, when I was perfectly able to make one myself, because he's sweet and I was being lazy.  MMM...hubby sandwich...

Hello World! Mmm....cookies.

I love to cook.  I love to bake.  I love to try new recipes.  This is where I get to talk about all of that. Enough explanation.

I've been wanting to make cookies for about a week, but kept putting it off.  Finally, when it came time to make a meal for a family at church, I had an excuse.  I was out of chocolate chips, so my favorite recipe was not doable, but I found this recipe instead.  It was in a cookbook that my mom gave me, which was originally my grandmother's.  It has a combination of recipes from the 30's and the 80's. Fun fun!

P.S. If you all want me to actually post the recipe, please cast your vote for it in the comments.  I'm still figuring out the format for this blog!