Soup’s on!

Tags

chicken, cooking, postaday2014, roasting

Food before”

Food after:

The weather outside warrants a hearty soup and roasted chickens. I have already made butternut squash soup this season, but it is one of my favorite soups so it got made again. Roasted chicken does more than just feed us with goodness, but it also envelopes the kitchen with intoxicating roasting aromas that last for the entire hour and a half that it crackles and roasts in the oven.

Best of all, leftovers for tomorrow!

A much better day

Tags

cooking, postaday2014, writing

A good friend of mine wrote me that she hoped that the sun would be shining in my mind today, especially since today happened to be Sunday. It so came to pass; today was a much better day. Yesterday I brought in my plants and my precious Rosemary plant is now in our bedroom where I can nurture it through the long winter; it does look very beautiful where I put it, I hope that it will be happy in its temporary home.

The next best thing after that is cooking and this afternoon, I spent quality time with my oven and cooking utensils and I made chicken pot pie. The kitchen smelled wonderful for quite a few hours.

There is something about peeling, dicing and sautéing vegetables and chicken that soothes the soul; the same thing with gardening and writing. The sun was definitely out today, both outside and in my mind.

Reunited with our son and Jack

Tags

cooking, postaday2014, salmon, sauce

I am so happy to be back home. We stopped off on route to grab some groceries and my husband roasted salmon and sautéed green beans while I made the SAUCE. The dill sour cream sauce is something that I found a while ago on the Internet when I wasn’t sure what to do with salmon. Personally I prefer smoked salmon, but my husband and our children love salmon, so I wanted to find something to give it a little something special and what a find did I luck into.

The SAUCE is so popular that they ask for the SAUCE before asking for the salmon. The best thing about the SAUCE is that it takes little time or work in preparing it. I used about three quarters of a container of sour cream, I added two teaspoons of Dijon mustard, I chopped, a healthy bunch of dill very finely and added that to the bowl, I also smashed and chopped four cloves of garlic very finely and lastly I squeezed a large slice of lemon into the mixture. I stirred everything together, a pinch of salt and a few turns of the pepper mill and voila all done.

I love cooking and I usually never mind the prep work necessary, but when I can find something scrumptious and it just happens to be so easy to put together, I don’t turn my nose up at it, au contraire I embrace it and count my lucky stars that I found something that great to put in my cooking repertoire.

Daily prompt: Ring of fire

Tags

cooking, paella, postaday2014, spice

Do you love hot and spicy foods or do you avoid them for fear of what tomorrow might bring?

I love spicy foods, albeit not necessarily hot, spicy should not have to mean feeling as if your mouth is on fire or that the skin inside your mouth is peeling off. I love spice such as how nutmeg spikes up the flavor profile of spinach or the way it gives added depth to béchamel sauce. Cinnamon is another spice that perks up a variety of dishes, it is a secret ingredient in my husband’s chili; I can spill this little secret because there are a few more secrets to his chili, one slip won’t be the end of the world.

Saffron is another lovely spice that brings so much to the plate and the table; it is one of the key ingredients in my paella and I love adding it to my sautéed cauliflower.

One of the most exciting discoveries that I have made about spices is how beneficial they are to our overall health. Turmeric has been shown to have great effects on brain health, cinnamon has excellent antioxidant properties and nutmeg just has to have medicinal properties, just think of how wonderful you feel after eating pumpkin pie, it must be the nutmeg, I’m sure of it.

Just the thought of cooking without pepper, salt, cayenne, oregano, paprika or any other spice, leaves me bereft of joy and anticipation; where would all of the fun be without spices and the experimentation and individuality of spicing something up?

Spices have been in our culinary history for eons and we are so very lucky for it.

Part two in the brioche saga

Tags

baking, bread, brioche, cooking, postaday2014

Today was the day to see if all of my work in preparing and kneading the brioche dough was successful. After going out food shopping with my hubby for the lasagna ingredients and the rest of the bread pudding ingredients, I came home to start the tomato sauce and to bake the brioche. I had taken the dough out of the refrigerator before leaving and put it in a warm place to get a second rising and then I had gotten home, I had punched down the dough and shaped it into the loaf pan, brushed it with egg wash and off into a 350 degree oven for 35 minutes.

At this point, I couldn’t tell if it was going to turn out well or not. I was still nervous at this point and so I had 35 minutes to wait before I knew if my work was going to pan out. I was so happy to see a golden brown brioche when I opened the oven door. Here is the picture of the brioche just out of the oven.

Hooray, it looks pretty good and it is cooked all the way through, the knife came out clean. I called my hubby into the kitchen to look at it, he said that it looked a little weird, he was imagining something more grand I think, but no matter, I was impressed with it. Now my hubby asked me to turn it out of the pan, so that he could taste it.

He really, really liked it, I tasted it and it tastes light and buttery, perfect for the breakfast bread pudding tomorrow. All in all it isn’t too much work, it is more a question of timing than actual work, the resting time is the “tricky” part. It’s also a much stickier dough to work with than what I am accustomed to, what with the eggs and all of the butter. I will definitely make it again, now that I know what to look for and what it feels like as a dough. That is what I love about baking and cooking, always something to learn and it involves all of the senses, it isn’t a static or boring past time, it keeps me constantly engaged and interested.

Here is a picture of my tomato sauce, it’s about ready so I will be putting my lasagna together and tomorrow we will have lasagna to eat, always better the next day.

Family time

Tags

baking, cooking, dogs, pets, postaday2014

Our cousins came for a visit and we got to meet the newest puppy, Louie, a pit bull/bulldog mix. He is very handsome and very, very sweet. Jack and Louie have become fast friends, running around and playing tug of war with all of Jack’s toys. They are both napping with Carly, who is Louie’s proud Mama.

I made four pizza pies for our guests yesterday and they are all gone. So tonight will be roast pork tenderloin, potatoes au gratin and cauliflower au gratin. The house smells very nice and comforting right now, since everything is currently in the oven. As I was pulling the pizzas out of the oven, I got to baptize my newest kitchen tool, a wonderful pizza cutter that my two babies gave me for Mother’s Day, I was very excited to use it and it worked really well.

It is so much fun to use new gadgets, kitchen stores are my weak point, especially Williams-Sonoma, one of my favorite stores, I love to lose myself in there, looking at all of the beautiful shiny toys. I don’t need to buy any of it, I just like to look and imagine what I would do with whatever caught my eye.

The baby boy is on a frittata kick

Tags

cooking, dinner, eggs, postaday2013, preferences

I thought that I was alone with zeroing on a favorite food and eating it until the cows came home, but apparently I bestowed this quirk to the baby boy. He has latched onto the frittata, the same way that I had latched onto smoked salmon, whipped cream cheese on black cracked pepper and poppy seed water crackers spritzed with lemon juice, very specific I know, but I love it. I got over my obsession with the smoked salmon a few weeks ago and moved onto turkey and provolone on rye bread with golden brown mustard. My baby boy so far just has the frittata obsession, he doesn’t care what’s in it, as long as there’s a lot of garlic and cheese, the rest doesn’t matter, it could be bacon, prosciutto or simple ham, he doesn’t mind and he loves most vegetables so whatever needs to get cooked and eaten, is fair game, another good thing about frittata’s, anything goes.

Tonight’s frittata had ham, diced Swiss cheese, I didn’t feel like grating it, chives, fresh thyme and oregano, onion, garlic, eggs and salt and pepper. It didn’t take long to prepare or to make, a half hour at the most. I wonder what will be the next meal of preference, I hope nothing too labor intensive, I have gotten spoiled with the ease of the frittata.

Could frittata’s get predictable?

Tags

cooking, dinner, food, inspiration, postaday2013

All this travel over the past few days left the refrigerator more or less empty and I was too tired to go out and do some proper food shopping. I walked down the road to an acquaintance’s vegetable stand and I bought myself zucchini and radishes but that was all she had, this summer hasn’t been kind to her garden, the weather was off; either too hot and dry or too cool and wet. The zucchini was perfect for me but what to make for the menfolk?

This is where the frittata comes in handy, I had left over ham and Swiss cheese, coupled with a generous helping of minced garlic and chopped onion, the chives from out back and thyme as well, add that to ten eggs with some Pecorino cheese, salt and pepper and hooray! Dinner is served.

My baby boy loved it, he is easy to cook for,as is my baby girl, she would have loved it as well. I miss her, sniff, sniff.

That’s all I got, I’m a little frustrated, the red, burning rash with bumps is back on my rib cage from last summer and the summer before that. The first time I had it, the doctor said it was the Shingles but how can it be Shingles again, the same spot and now it is the third time that I am dealing with it, weird. I am going to take it easy and not move for the next several days, this is why frittata’s are so great, barely any work to make and everyone is happy.

A busy bee in the kitchen

Tags

baking, blanching, cooking, peach pie, postaday2013, shrimp scampi

Since coming home from the hospital yesterday with my hubby, I have been a busy bee in the kitchen. I find that keeping my mind occupied with recipes and my hands busy with chopping, peeling and mincing results in my keeping an emotional even keel or balance if you will. Yesterday I made shrimp scampi which is actually very easy and doesn’t take long at all to make. In this day and age of easy peel shrimp, the work is halfway done for you, al you have to do is peel away the shells and give the shrimp a quick rinse, the garlic and the parsley need to be chopped but that takes all of maybe ten minutes. I sautéed the shrimp first in sunflower oil and then put them onto a plate right off to the side and I threw in the garlic, deglazed the pan with chicken stock, that’s what I had in the pantry, and then added three tablespoons of butter, I waited maybe a minute and then in went the shrimp with the parsley not far behind. I already had quinoa ready at the waiting and if not quinoa, Jasmine rice or even couscous would be wonderful to serve it with. Quick and easy, plus the kitchen smells really good because even if you’re not crazy about any lingering shrimp odor, the amount of garlic and parsley used easily dispels the shrimp smell really quickly. As a homecoming meal, my hubby was seriously happy and it definitely outdid what he had eaten at the hospital by about a mile, well actually most anything would beat hospital food by a mile, but it still was tasty lol.

Today I tried for the second time to replicate the Briarmeir fresh fruit peach pie. I have written about it before, the fresh peaches covering a type of whipped, thick, tangy, sweet, cream cheese filling and how we love it so much, that a two hour drive isn’t out of the question to procure a pie as special as this one. Between my hubby and I, we had assembled what we think are the components of the pie; peaches of course, I already had a pie crust dough ready, cream cheese, sour cream, lemon juice, vanilla, sugar and a glaze. The only baking needed for this pie is the pie crust and that only took forty minutes. It isn’t really that hard to assemble; I blanched the peaches beforehand to peel them easily, I then whipped three packages of room temperature cream cheese with 2/3 cups of sugar, I then added about a cup and a quarter of sour cream, whipped that up and then I added about 4 teaspoons of lemon juice and two teaspoons of vanilla. Once my pie crust had cooled off after being fully baked, I spooned the mixture into the pie shell and put it into the refrigerator for about 4 hours.

I sliced the peaches up and I tried to make an attractive rosette on top of the cream filling, it didn’t come out as elegantly as I had hoped, but I think that the abundance of sliced peaches on top of the filling gives a real homemade look to it, rustic is a good word for its look, I think. The last step is to brush on the glaze which is nothing, but apricot preserves boiled to become more liquid, strained through a sieve and slightly diluted with water. And voila a shiny peach and cream fresh fruit pie. I hope that my hubby and the baby boy like it. If they do, I’ll be making more of these and using other fresh fruit such as raspberries and blueberries.

Daily Prompt : On the edge

Tags

baking, cooking, Gardening, postaday2013, therapy, writing

We all have things as need to do to keep an even keel — blogging, exercising, reading, cooking. What’s yours?

I have written about finding and keeping that even keel. As a recovering anorexic, I have read A LOT on the subject and it is such a complex disease; linked very closely with depression, anxiety and the latest is that it has been linked in certain types of autistic expression. It really is fascinating and it gives me a lot of insight into myself and the triggers that led me to develop this often debilitating and insidious challenge.

Luckily for me, I have found many outlets that today give me the even keel that I have always needed and searched for; writing is such an anchor and stabilizing influence on my life. I look forward every day to share my thoughts with you, even when I have “nothing” to say. Putting thoughts on paper gets them out of my head and leaves my mind less cluttered, always a good thing, getting the excess whirling, churning noise out of your mind and finding calm.

The baking, the cooking and the gardening that I love doing, are equally important tools in my repertoire when it comes to keeping me happy and fulfilled. These activities may make me exhausted and nowadays I take care not to over do it, but they are so important to me. They serve as creative outlets and reflect another side of me that doesn’t come through in other ways.

I am so very lucky that I was given a second chance almost six years ago when I was in the hospital, to come back and find all of these ways to live my life in a better, more fulfilling way, a much more expressive way and a way that is full of promise and life.