Fresh Cherry Oat Crumble

Fresh cherry & oatmeal crumble, made with backyard cherries! Our cherries were not very sweet, so adjust the sugar as needed.

Coconut oil can be substituted for the butter, and vanilla extract can be used if you don't have almond extract.

2 Cups rolled oats, divided

1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour

1/2 Tablespoon Baking Powder

1/8 teaspoon sea salt

1/3 Cup White Sugar

1/4 Cup Light Brown Sugar

1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter, cubed

1 Large egg

1/4 Cup Sliced Almonds

*

4 Cups Fresh Cherries, pitted

1 1/3 Cup White Sugar

1 Teaspoon Lemon Juice

1/4 teaspoon Almond Extract

2 Tablespoons Corn Starch

*

Generously grease a 9 inch square pan with butter, oil, or cooking spray.  Preheat oven to 350° F.

Prepare the cherries. Add 1 1/3 Cup white sugar to the washed and pitted cherries to coat them. Add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice to prevent browning. (Don't add the almond extract or cornstarch yet.) Set aside.

In a blender or food processor, pulverized 1 1/2 Cups oats into a coarse flour. (Set aside the remaining 1/2 Cup oats.) Add AP flour, baking powder, and salt. If using a blender, transfer the dry mixture into a bowl or mixer.

Add 1/3 Cup white sugar and 1/4 Cup light brown sugar. Mix to incorporate. Add 1/2 Cup cubed butter and mix or stir with a spatula until the butter has blended and the mixture is a sandy texture. Stir in the egg.

Press 2/3 of the mixture into the bottom of the pan.

Stir the 1/4 teaspoon almond extract and 2 Tablespoons cornstarch into the cherries. Spoon the cherry mixture into the pan, keeping most of the syrupy juice away from the edges to avoid the dessert sticking to the sides of the pan.

To the remaining oat & butter crumble, add the 1/2 Cup oats that had been set aside, plus 1/4 Cup sliced almonds. Stir together. Pour the crumble loosely on top of the cherries in an even layer, allowing a lot of texture. This will make a crunchy top as it bakes.

Baked at 350°F for 30 minutes. Allow to cool for at least 15 minutes before cutting. Enjoy warm or after it has cooled!

#😋

Pasta Salad: Trader Joe's Components

Typically, doing all your shopping for a meal at one place means compromising on either the cost or the quality of some of the components. I'm lucky to have many grocery store chains, as well as farmer's market and bakery options, to find my ingredients. Ideally, I shop in a nomadic way, getting guacamole from TJs, salsa from Safeway, meat from one of the smaller places that only carries Painted Hills (because they won't have a lower quality for specials). That requires a lot of time and traveling.

So I have an ongoing challenge to myself to take the components from any one place to make a meal. For the last few years, I've had the extra challenge of not having a real kitchen to cook in, only plug-in appliances and a small refrigerator. This has meant that I eat a lot of simple salads, using oil and vinegar as a dressing.

That wasn't going to work when I needed a ready-made entree to take to a party. I needed to make something where I wouldn't be stuck trying to store lots of leftover ingredients. I feel that I succeeded in this pasta salad because it covered these bases:

1. total ingredients bought in a $20 shopping trip
2. minimal cooking
3. simple prep/short time to prep
4. varied and tasty
5. organic ingredients
6. vegetarian
7. good for hot weather

This recipe makes good use of Trader Joe's package sizes. You'll need something to cook pasta (appliance and pot or dish), refrigeration or other cold-holding, containers for cut vegetables, a zester/peeler if you have one, a cutting board, and a knife.

Because I used the marination from the mozzarella as the dressing, to make a dairy free/vegan version of this, you would need to substitute in a vegan dressing with garlic and herbs as well as leaving out the two cheeses.

Cooling the cooked pasta apart from the raw veges allowed the marinate flavor to sink in to the cooked ingredients. I didn't have any large containers, so I had to use several. This is how I split it up for travel. It was assembled at the final destination.

A) penne, broccoli, parmesan cheese, peppers, cherry tomatoes

B) cucumber, carrots

C) mozzarella

D) olive can unopened

TJ Trip Pasta Salad

Organic Penne Rigate, dry, 8oz (half of the package)

Organic broccoli (1 package crowns or crowns from 1 stem)

Purple carrots (2 from package of organic rainbow carrots), thinly sliced 

1 organic cucumber, seeded and thinly sliced

4 mini bell peppers (from 8oz package of baby bell peppers, red to yellow), slivered

Organic cherry tomatoes (3/4 of a 10oz package) cut in half

12 oz Marinated Mozzarella (small mozzarella balls in oil/herb/vinegar marinade)

Slivered parmesan cheese, about 1 oz (to taste)

Sea salt (to taste)

Cook 8oz of penne in a saucepan for 7 minutes, or until cooked but still very firm. For me, this means:

boil water in an electric kettlepouring enough water to cover the penne in the pot, cover with lidstart timerleave the covered pot on a hot plate until there's a rolling boil, turn off the hot plate

Add the cut broccoli crown pieces directly into the pot. Cover and cook for 3 minutes. (If you are using whole broccoli, save the stem! Cut away the hard outer layer and slice the tender middle for stir fry or soup.)

Drain. Pour 2 Tablespoons of the mozzarella marinade into the mixture; stir until coated evenly. Cool for 1-2 hours in the refrigerator. After cooling, add salt to taste.

Cut up the rest of the vegetables after washing. Thinly slice the carrot into elongated coins. Use the zester to peel furrows into the skin of the cucumber before slicing, then seed (if desired) and slice thinly.

Select four (about 4 oz) of the baby bell peppers, orange and yellow. Cut off the tops, slice in half lengthwise, and scrape out all seeds. Slice each half against the grain into slivers. Cut each cherry tomato in half.

Assemble: cooled pasta, broccoli, parmesan, vegetables. Add the marinated mozzarella balls. Spoon out the herb mixture from the marinade over the cheese, but not the rest of the marinade liquid. (Save for future salad dressing.) Drain the olives and add them in.

Makes 4 entree portions or party food for 8.

Spiced Sweet Potato Bundt Cake with Brown Sugar Center

Here's another case of not having the ingredients of a recipe on hand, little time and less money, and still wanting to have a cake to eat. Obviously, if you have lots of choices, you can have a rich, succulent cake. The original recipe for this one loaded up with eggs and butter.

Drawing on past success with substitutions, I got this sweet darling.

All bundled up.

This recipe is for a large (12 cup) bundt, but I opted to used a small bundt pan and bake off the extra in a loaf pan, because I wanted a shorter bake time. With all the substitutions, I knew it was going to be a very wet batter.

Cake ingredients
2 3/4 cups All Purpose Flour
2 teaspoons Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Ground Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Ground Ginger

1/3 cup Coconut Oil
1 1/2 cups Granulated Sugar
1/3 cup Mayonnaise
1/3 cup Apple Sauce
2 Tablespoons Plain Yogurt (optional)
2 small Eggs
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
15 ounces of cooked sweet potato

Filling
 2 Tablespoons coconut oil (or butter)
1/2 Cup firmly packed Brown Sugar
1/8 teaspoon Ground Cardamom

Drizzle (make when cake has cooled)

1 1/2 cups Powdered Sugar, sifted
2 Tablespoons milk

If you haven't cooked your sweet potatoes yet, start with that. It sounds obvious, but if you are using fresh sweet potato instead of canned, you need to cook them first. I got tiny ones, none thicker than 2 inches across, so I boiled them whole with skins on for 30 minutes. They are easy to peel once cooked and cooled down enough to handle.

If you are using bigger ones, peel and cut into 2 inch cubes.

Drain all water from the cooked sweet potato and allow it to cool. Mash them smooth. You don't want your eggs to cook when you mix the wet ingredients together.

Preheat your oven to 350° F.

Grease and flour your pan(s).

Mix the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and ginger together in a bowl and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together coconut oil and sugar. Gently stir in the mayonnaise, applesauce, yogurt until incorporated. Beat your eggs and fold them in. You can do all this by hand, but if using a beater, mix on low speed. Add in the mashed sweet potato.

Gradually fold in the dry ingredients until fully incorporated.

Fill the bundt pan 1/3 full with the batter. Sprinkle in 1/2 of the brown sugar filling, careful not to let it touch the sides of the pan (or it will carmelize and stick). Add more batter until the pan is 2/3 full.

Pour 1/2 the excess batter into your 2nd pan, layer with the remaining filling and remaining batter.

Bake for 45 minutes. Check with a bamboo skewer. If it's still goopy, and not because of the filling, turn the oven down to 300 and let it bake 10 more minutes before checking again.

Leave it in the pan, on a wire rack or cool surface, for 30 minutes. Then invert to de-pan and let it cool completely before drizzling with the glaze.

To get a nice, porcelain white glaze, make sure to use as little liquid as possible, use milk, and pour it over cool cake. If you want to skip the glaze, you can dust the top with cinnamon or leave it plain.

Sweet and delicious! The sweet potato made orange flecks, like carrot cake, and had the charm of pumpkin bread while still having its own identity.

As I mentioned, the recipe I started from used four large eggs, sour cream, and a cup of butter, just in the cake. Rich, but I was going to eat those eggs for breakfast. Additionally, I had small, local eggs, so I would have had to use five or six.

Mayo, especially when the best-before date is looming, makes a good understudy for eggs-and-oil in baking. This was, in fact, national brand olive oil mayonnaise, believe it or not. Applesauce can be a tricky substitute for butter, but it does work. In this case, the sweetness of the applesauce and the sweet potato (instead of canned pumpkin) meant I could hold back on some of the granulated sugar, too.

Raid the Freezer: Thai Style Curry Soup with Shrimp and Angel Hair Pasta

Adapted from Serious Eats "20-Minute Thai Red Curry Noodle Soup with Chicken" by J. Kenji Lopez

Coming home tired on a cold night, I realized that I had everything I needed to make a warm, fulfilling soup that didn't require a lot of brain power or prep. All of the main ingredients were in my freezer. I had fish sauce and an open curry paste in my refrigerator.

(I think the recipe would still be palatable without the fish sauce. Maybe some tamari or soy sauce added to the serving bowl would work?)

Ingredients
2 TBSP Thai red curry paste (for a medium heat)
1 tsp oil
5 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1" piece of whole fresh ginger, about 1/2 a tsp
1 TBSP chopped green onion (optional)
16 ounces of mild chicken or vegetable stock
3 TBSP Fish Sauce
2 TBSP cane sugar
Juice from 1 small lime (about 2 tsp); cut frozen limes work great for this
15 oz Coconut Milk
2 TBSP grated carrot
7 oz (about 1/2 a box) of Angel Hair or Thin Spaghetti
1 Quart water for boiling
12 oz salad shrimp
leftover, cooked butternut squash (if you have it), in 1" to 2" chunks
fresh cilantro for garnish if you have it

Directions
This works best with 2 pots so that you can eat in less than half an hour.

1. Fill one pot with the quart of water for boiling the pasta. Cover and set on low/medium heat to bring it to boiling while you start the soup. No need to add salt or oil.
2. In the soup pot, add curry paste, garlic, and oil (unless your paste has a lot of oil) and cook about 1 minute, pressing it against the bottom of the pan and stirring. You want the paste to cook but you don't want the garlic to burn.
3. Add your chicken or vegetable stock.
4. Add fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, green onions, and ginger. My limes were frozen wedges. I put them in as they were and fished them out once they had softened from the hot soup, squished the juice out, and discarded the peel. This is totally OK to do.
5. Add coconut milk.
6. Stir or wisk to blend the ingredients. 
7. Add the grated carrot.
8. Reduce the heat to low and allow to simmer covered.
9. By now, your pasta water will be boiling and ready for the pasta. Add your Angel Hair, stir it around in the water once the noodles are soft, and use the cooking time to warm your bowls, pour drinks, and set your table. You want your pasta slightly undercooked!
10. When the pasta is cooked al dente, turn off the heat. Do not drain it.
11. If the shrimp are frozen, add them to the pot of pasta and water. This will thaw them out and cool the water to stop the pasta from overcooking. Allow one or two minutes for the shrimp to warm up. If your shrimp aren't frozen, skip this step.
12. Using a spaghetti fork or other slotted instrument, spoon the pasta and shrimp directly into the simmering soup base. The extra water (about 16 oz) from the pasta adds to the soup volume. When most of the pasta/shrimp has been transferred, you can discard the remaining pasta water, which should be about 2 cups (16 oz). I don't recommend adding all the pasta water to the soup because it will make the final soup too thin.
13. Allow the soup to return to a simmer, then turn off the heat.
14. If you have leftover butternut squash, portion it out into your serving bowls.
15. Ladle the finished noodle soup into warm bowl over the squash, garnish with cilantro, and eat.

I like this curry paste, which is all-natural and has low sodium:

Thai and True red curry paste costs a bit more at my local natural grocery store, but it's a bigger jar and very, very good. Plus, it's been open in my refrigerator for about a year and it's still good!

The nation brand Thai Kitchen is easier to find, likely to be on sale or have a coupon, and has 38% of your daily sodium per serving. It works fine, but my experience is that it grows moldy after being open in the refrigerator about 3 months.

The fish sauce, oil, sugar, pasta, coconut milk, and the curry paste can all be in the pantry for when you need them.The perishable ingredients for this soup can be kept in the freezer, even the limes, garlic, ginger, green onions, butternut squash, and carrot. One bunch of green onions is always too much for me to use up while fresh. I have the same problem with fresh ginger, which I don't personally love, but recognize as the ingredient that makes or breaks a lot of soups and other recipes, and powdered ginger just doesn't give the same fullness.

Limes are expensive in the Pacific NW, so when I can't use up a whole one quickly, it's good to be able to cut it into slices or wedges and freeze them. They stay good for a month or so.

One of the best things about the original recipe is that it uses plain ol' pasta. I loved that! Who hasn't cooked too much spaghetti, at one time or another, and not know what to do with the extra? Leftover cooked noodles can also go into this soup.

If you prefer chicken to shrimp, here's the original recipe with chicken related instructions: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/10/20-minute-thai-red-curry-noodle-soup-with-chicken-recipe.html

Giant Zucchini: it can be delicious, really

Now is the time of giant zucchini, those monsters gushing with liquid, their skins woody and tough. These sun-soaked squash are still good for eating. In fact, the overgrown ones are my favorites for a late summer comfort food.

The dish can be a side dish or a meal all its own. Mix with cooked rice for mock-risotto or serve over pasta as an alternative to alfredo sauce. Whatever you do, serve it in a bowl, because while it tastes heavenly, its looks are, well... cooked down zucchini in cream. 

It's easy, uses inexpensive ingredients, and cooks up in 45 minutes with minimal attention. All you need are:

• A saucepan with a lid
• zucchini, enough to fill the saucepan when cut up (1 or 2 squash/1 to 2 pounds)
• oil or butter
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice (optional)
• sour cream and/or plain yogurt, 1 Cup per pound of zucchini
• parmesan cheese, grated, shredded, or shaved (best with hard cheeses)
• black pepper
• salt
• breadcrumbs (optional)

Step 1. Slice the zucchini into large chunks, an inch & a half long, then cut again to make half-circles.

2. Add 1 TBL of butter or oil to the bottom of the saucepan. Add the cut up zucchini. Add the lemon juice. If not using lemon juice, add a splash of water, just a teaspoon the start the steam. Put the lid on the saucepan and place over medium heat.

3. When you hear the contents start to sizzle and steam, turn the heat down to low. Set a timer for 15 minutes.

This is important: don't lift the lid for the next 15 minutes! You are creating a steam to start the cooking. Letting them steam means that you can use just a little butter or oil, you don't have to stir, and the squash will juice out properly instead of burning. Instead of opening and stirring, hold the lid down on the saucepan and give the whole thing a shake a couple of times. That will be enough to keep them from sticking.

4. After 15 minutes, you can lift the lid and stir the zucchini around. It will still be firm at this point. Cover again and allow it to continue cooking on low for 20 - 25 minutes more. If you cook it longer, it will be suitable as a sauce, but it won't have any body to stand alone.

5. Check your zucchini for tenderness. Like it? Great! You can take the saucepan off the heat.

6. Spoon some of the hot zucchini broth into a bowl. Now add your sour cream, yogurt, or mix of the two and the hot liquid. This will prevent curdling as you add the cream mixture into the zucchini. 

7. Add pepper and cheese. Taste. Add salt as needed.

• If the result is too runny for your tastes, add breadcrumbs, return to the heat, and allow it to simmer for up to five minutes. Do not try to make it thicken by longer simmering. The zucchini will cook down to oblivion and you'll have a weird soup. 

• Alternately, you can move the zucchini and sauce into an oven safe dish, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and more cheese, and toast the top.

One-Bowl, 15 Minute, Super Easy Ham & Vegetables Dijon Pasta Salad

Emails about food make my email inbox at work a little more fun. One of the big brand's free calendars graces our wall, brightening the space with a big, colorful photo every month of something that looks mouthwatering.

For summer, I have been getting recipe emails that tout easy dinners with minimal cooking. These inevitably utilize the brand's cooking shortcut products. I understand that these have their place in the world, but they are not for me, a person who doesn't even make hot chocolate from a mix. 

The "recipe" in today's post is a hack of one of the 30-minute, Cooking Shortcut Bag recipes. The result is a slightly warm pasta salad (yum) with a crisp vegetable appeal, low in salt and without a lot of fuss.

Mine is faster and leaves fewer dishes to wash, but it requires that you, like me, are someone who has small amounts of good stuff in your refrigerator and cupboard for the components.

These were my ingredients:

• 1/3 Cup elbow macaroni or small pasta of choice, such as rotelli or fusilli
• salt to taste
• pinch oregano
• pinch onion powder
• pinch dry basil, to taste
• pinch red chili flake

If you have fresh herbs, add them to the chopped vegetable mixture instead of the pasta water.

• 1 TBL sliced red onion (I used the onion heart, which is tender and makes small pieces)
• 1/4 Cup diced red bell pepper
• 1/2 Cup chopped heirloom tomato
• 1 TBL olive oil
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp dijon mustard
• 1/2 Cup diced ham of good quality (avoid using a fatty ham steak)

• 1/4 Cup frozen green peas (if you have fresh peas, add them to the vegetable mixture)
• 1/4 Cup grated parmesan

1. In a small saucepan, bring 2 to 3 Cups of water to a boil. I use as little water as possible, enough to cover the pasta while it cooks. Add oregano, onion powder, dried basil, chili flakes, and salt. 
2. Measure the elbow macaroni by pouring one layer of the dry pasta into the bowl that you are going to use for the completed pasta salad. Elbows are plain, so I didn't want to use so much that the end salad is blah. Too much pasta makes a bland pasta salad.
3. When the water is boiling, add the elbow macaroni. Set a timer for 9 minutes. Lower the heat to medium and allow the pasta to cook uncovered.
4. While the pasta cooks, chop up your onion, bell pepper, and tomatoes. Place them in the bowl.
5. Add olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and dijon on top of the vegetables. (Do NOT add the frozen green peas!)
6. Dice the ham. Add it to the bowl.
7. Grate the parmesan.
8. When the timer goes off, test the pasta for firmness. I like mine slightly past al dente for pasta salad. If you like yours firmer, 8 minutes may work better.
9. Add the frozen green peas to the pasta water. Stir for a minute.
10. Drain the water from the peas + pasta. Stir it around to get the water out of the pasta tubes.
11. Carefully spoon (I use the same fork that I will use for eating) the peas, herbs, and pasta mixture into the bowl. Some water will still be in the saucepan, and you don't want watery pasta salad. Using a fork to push the pasta out of the saucepan helps drain it as you go.
12. Gently stir together everything in the bowl until well mixed.
13. Add parmesan cheese.

Cutting up the vegetables while the pasta cooked meant that this only took me about ten minutes. I've added five more for the grating of the cheese and putting away of oil, vinegar, etc.

I put the dry herbs in with the cooking pasta to kickstart their flavor. With single serving amounts of everything, it's more difficult to get flavors to infuse or mix evenly.

I thaw the peas with the pasta to stop the cooking of the pasta without rinsing the pasta. I never rinse pasta if I can avoid it. Rinsing removes the starch in the cooking water that helps the sauce or dressing stick to the pasta. I'd rather keep a small amount of cold ingredient or sauce to toss in with the pasta in place of rinsing. I like my pasta salad slightly warm, rather than refrigerator cold.

Honey Granola with Pumpkin Pie Spice

Honey Granola with Pumpkin Pie Spice

4 C rolled oats (not quick oats)
1 Cup nuts (whole or pieces) (suggested: almonds, pecans, walnuts, filberts, pumpkin seeds)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, pinch of nutmeg, pinch of clove)

1/4 Cup vegetable oil
1/4 Cup washed cane sugar (white sugar)
1/2 teaspoon molasses
1/2 Cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
1 1/2 Cups raisins and/or other dried fruit (added while cooling)

Preheat oven to 300° F. Lightly grease a 13" x 9" pan with deep sides.

Mix oats, salt, and spices in a bowl and set aside.

In a saucepan, combine oil, sugar, molasses, and honey. Warm until incorporated. (Do not boil.) Stir in the vanilla extract.

Carefully pour the warm honey mixture over the oat mixture and fold it in.  Spread the combination into your pan.

Bake for 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. Check in the last 5 minutes because oven times vary.
When it is done and cooling, stir in the dried fruit. Scrape the granola loose from the pan while warm; this will reduce the amount of sticking to the pan when cool. Allow it to cool completely before storing in an air-tight container. It will keep at room temperature for up to one week.

If you like clusters, I recommend using baking parchment instead of greasing the pan. That will allow you to leave the mix until completely cool, which is how you get clusters. Otherwise, when you scrape the granola loose, you break the granola into a looser, muesli-like cereal. Increase the sugar by 1/4 Cup and decrease the honey by the same amount for a harder, sweeter granola.

Granola is one of those things that is expensive when store-bought, but can be marvelously cheap if you make it yourself -- especially if you are using up ingredients on hand. It is one of those straightforward recipes that work consistently, as long as you follow the easy instructions. Stirring every 10 minutes is vital, or else the granola will not toast evenly, and it will burn instead.

It's a superb use for crystalized honey. Honey is often expensive these days, but if you have a Farmers Market, there is often a honey vendor who sells better honey than the supermarket for a lower price. If you have a Trader Joe's store near you, their mesquite honey is perfectly suitable and as low as $10 for a 3 pound container.

Have you noticed that when you buy a bottle of molasses for holiday gingerbread, you still have most of a bottle well past New Years? Other granola recipes ask for brown sugar, but I use my brown sugar up on a regular basis. Regular sugar and molasses take the place of brown sugar in this recipe. (Brown sugar is sugar where the molasses has been returned to it after the first stages of refining.)

Pumpkin pie spice is another one of those things that shows up around the holidays but has limited use, unless you like a lot of things to taste like pumpkin pie. If you have it, it's a good shortcut for this recipe. If not, cinnamon is the vital spice in this recipe. Clove, nutmeg, ground ginger, and even cardamom are merely accents.

Oats can be purchased from the bulk section of grocery stores and co-ops for lowest cost. I usually have oats on hand, but I'm not good about eating oatmeal often enough to use my oats up fast. I'm a big fan of granola, which is full of crunchy goodness, spice, and sweet. I first decided to try my hand at granola because I was concerned that my oats had been hanging around too long, and might be getting a little stale. I had some nuts in shells left over from holiday nuts, and raisins that had been forgotten until they lost all plumpness.

I made this batch with "plumasins," little pieces of dried plum. Previous batches had dried apricots that I chopped into fine pieces. If you aren't a fan of raisins, there are a lot of options. I may try drying some backyard tree apples to use in granola later.

Chickpea Popovers stuffed with Curry Chicken Salad

For the chicken salad:

2 Cups of roasted chicken, chopped

1/2 Cup plain yogurt, or mayonnaise if preferred

2 TBL curry powder

1 Cup roasted, salted cashews

1/4 Cup golden raisins

1/4 Cup cranberries

 cilantro leaves for garnish (optional)

For the popovers:

1 Cup chickpea (besan) flour

1/2 tsp salt

3 eggs (I use medium sized eggs)

1 Cup milk

1 tsp olive oil

1/4 tsp garlic granules

1/4 tsp black pepper

spritz of lemon juice (about 1/8 tsp)

Jumbo (6 muffin) muffin tin

Cooking spray

Mix all ingredients except cilantro for the chicken salad together. Set aside. If possible, prepare the chicken salad in advance. The flavors of the spices come out more fully after a day. 

Preheat oven to 450.

In a separate bowl, gently wisk together all in ingredients for the popovers until a smooth batter forms. Grease the muffin pan; cooking spray makes this easy. Pour the batter equally into each of the muffin cups, about halfway. 

Bake at 450 for 20 minutes. Then lower the heat to 350 and continue baking for 15 more minutes. Total bake time is 35 minutes.

Pop popovers out of the pan while still hot. Turn so that the side with a depression is up, and fill the "bowl" with curry chicken salad. Garnish with cilantro.

Lemon Lavender Cake with Lemon Icing

This is an easy recipe that uses plain, non-fat yogurt and safflower oil, with just a little butter to fill out the flavor notes. I used culinary lavender from Lost Mountain Lavender Farm in Sequim, Washington. If you are a fan of lavender, you can experience the best-smelling festival around: the Sequim Lavender Festival, which happens each year in July.

Though our lavender is spectacular here in Washington, our citrus is less  wonderful. For this reason, I had something called "volcano lemon burst" on hand instead of actual lemon. Volcano Lemon Burst comes in a plastic lemon-shaped container; it's a blend of water, lemon juice, and lemon oil. Since I didn't have any lemon zest or lemon oil for this recipe, it was a good choice for this cake. You could use fresh lemon and its zest, if you have them.

The other ingredients are available year-round, allowing a taste of summer any time the winter blues get to you.

Cake Ingredients:

1 TBL unsalted butter

1/4 C oil

1 C white sugar

2 medium eggs

½ tsp vanilla extract

2 C all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

½  tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 C plain yogurt

1 ½ TBL dried lavender flowers

¼ C lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a 12 Cup bundt pan.

Cream butter, oil, and sugar. Add in eggs and beat until mixed, about 1 minute.

Mix dry ingredients except for the lavender. Add the dry mixture into the oil-sugar mixture, alternately with yogurt. Do not overmix. Fold in lemon juice and the lavender.

Bake for 1hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool completely before removing it from the pan. When cool, drizzle on the glaze. (See recipe below.)

If you cover the cake (such as putting it in a cake carrier or covered container) before the icing sets completely, the icing will wrinkle slightly.

     

Lemon sugar glaze

For the sugar glaze:

2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

2 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon lemon juice

A pinch of dried lavender flowers

Prepare the glaze:

Combine the powdered sugar, milk and lemon juice in a small bowl. Stir with a rubber spatula until the glaze is smooth and of drizzling consistency. Spoon the glaze over the top of each slightly cooled cake, letting some run down unevenly on the sides. Sprinkle the lavender decoratively over the tops of the glaze and serve.

Bob's Red Mill Vegetable Soup

The time I followed the recipe on the package, I got mush. Maybe I didn't follow the recipe to the letter, in that it may have boiled, but -- mush? The mush became meatloaf.

There was still an almost full package of Bob's Red Mill Vegi Soup Mix in my kitchen, however. The first thing I decided to try was making soup again, this time soup that would not be mush soup.

This is a soup mix of barley, lentils, split peas, and vege pasta. The cooked down vege pasta was responsible for the mush factor. While there is a recipe on the back for creamed soup, where after the hour of cooking, the soup is blended mush, I didn't completely believe that the shorter cook time for the pasta elements had been factored in when creating the mix.

I looked to Alton Brown's advice on rice, and took elements from a great white bean minestrone recipe that I have.

1 Cup Bob's Red Mill Vegi Soup Mix
1 TBL Earth Balance non-hydrogenated buttery topping (coconut oil would be a good substitution)
3 Cups water (not stock!)

1 tsp tomato paste
2 large cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
1 carrot, cut into circles
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute (a seasoning blend similar to Mrs. Dash, list below*)

 Melt the buttery topping in a saucepan on low heat. Add the soup mix. Stir until coated with the melted fat.

 Add the water. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes on very low heat. Do not allow to boil.

Test a split pea; tender "al dente" but not at all chalky or hard is perfectly cooked for this soup. When ready, add remaining ingredients and cover. Turn off heat, and allow 5 - 10 minutes for the flavors to incorporate. Taste; increase seasoning if desired.

This makes a hearty, thick soup with a lot of chew factor. I didn't have any other vegetables to add in besides the carrot, and I'm glad. I think more would have upset the texture. The basic soup mix has what it needs for the foundations of a satisfying soup. It made a good main dish for dinner. I was happy that it reheated well in the microwave, for take-to-work lunch.








TJ's 21 Seasoning Salute (below) has muchin common with  Mrs. Dash - Original Blend .

Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute ingredients label

*Onion
Spices (black pepper, celery seed, cayenne pepper, parsley, basil, majoram, bay leaf, oregano, thyme, savory, rosemary, cumin,  mustard, coriander)
Garlic
Carrot
Orange peel
Tomato granules
Lemon juice powder
Oil of lemon
Citric acid

No Mayo Hot (or Cold) Spinach Artichoke Dip

Nearly all the recipes for hot artichoke dip have the same components of mayonnaise and cream cheese. Take those ingredients and the cheese into account, and no amount of but-it-has-green-vegetables justification can spin artichoke dip as anything but a high-fat treat. The only thing wrong with a high-fat food is that you may not want to eat much of it for health reasons, but you do want to eat lots of it because it's so very nom-worthy.

Replacing the cream cheese with neufchatel or using sour cream (lowfat or regular, but never, ever non-fat if you still want your dip to taste like something you want to eat) is one way to dial down the fat and calories. That still leaves the mayo. I have the kind of relationship with mayo that I've had with an ex-fiance: I quit it, then came back to it, decided that it was still good for something, then packed all my belongings and moved to another state. No, really. I stopped eating mayonnaise all together when I lived in California, and it wasn't until I moved to Washington that I started eating it again. I've had good mayonnaise and bad. The reason why I have a jar of store-brand mayo in my refrigerator is an effort to quit mayonnaise again. (If I buy the good stuff, the aioli or lemonaise or organic all-natural mayo, I may never quit.) The reason I didn't want to make my artichoke dip tonight with mayo is because I the mayo that I have in my refrigerator is terrible. It makes me think of glue or play-dough. Because I can't throw away food, there it stays.

What is mayonnaise anyway in its purest state, except 1)oil, 2)egg, 3)vinegar, and 4)salt. My mother used to make aioli to go with a particular dinner that she would make. I have watched the magic first hand: a slow, thin, steady stream of virgin olive oil falling into the beating blades of a hand mixer, creating the thick, glossy condiment. I'll tell the truth; I didn't like my mom's aioli either. It was too rich with egg yolk and heavy oil. Until I discovered fresh-within-a-day eggs from Bett's farm -- a story for another day -- I never knew there were real eggs that I liked.

I made my dip instead with regular olive oil, a splash of cider vinegar, and quark. This was only my second time trying quark. Although it had not made a strongly positive first impression, I purchased it because it was on sale for half the usual price. I'm not sure if its less-than-delicious, slightly metallic, bland flavor by itself is because it's short dated. I sort of remember that I didn't love it the first time for a similar assessment of its flavor. However, quark seems to do fine when stronger flavors are mixed in to it.

I mixed everything into the food processor. Then I scooped it out into a saucepan to make it into hot dip. Since there was nothing in it that needed to be cooked to prevent food-born illness, I'm sure this would also be fine as a cold dip. The flavor was bright and fresh. The following ingredients are what I happened to have on hand.

No Mayo Hot (or Cold) Spinach Artichoke Dip

1 Cup washed baby spinach leaves
1 can (13 oz) whole artichoke hearts (not seasoned or marinated, and quarters would work fine)
1/4 C olive oil
2 tsp apple cider vinegar (the good kind, Bragg's, that has mother-of-vinegar)
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2/3 C shredded parmesian cheese (I used 1/3 mystery hard leftover-from-party parmesian-like cheese and 1/3 C actual parmesian)
1/4 C quark

Assemble everything in the order listed into a food processor set up with the chopping blade. Pulse until you have small pieces but still a chunky consistency. Move to a saucepan and heat 3 to 5 minutes on low flame, stirring constantly. It will boil, so really, keep stirring until you turn off the heat. Serve with pita chips or bread item of choice.

I don't see any reason why you can't do this in a bowl, but if you don't have a mezzaluna to do the chopping, you may want to cut the artichoke hearts and spinach into small pieces before mixing everything up. The key to a really tasty artichoke dip is vegetable pieces that are confetti sized, to get an orchestra of flavor.

I served this accompanied by smoked salmon, sliced tomato, rosemary bread, and iced black tea. It was fantastic with the smoked salmon. I do not advise heating this in the oven as is. For a bubbly, goopy oven dip I think it needs at least 4 oz of cream cheese (or neufchatel) and a soft, rich cheese such as gouda.

Scotch, Raisin, & Banana Muffins with Oatmeal-Pecan Crumble Topping

3 C cut up ripe bananas
1/2 tsp ground Ginger
pinch of ground Clove
2 TBL butter
2 TBL corn oil
1 TBL Scotch
1/2 Sugar (regular white cane sugar)
2 Eggs
1 1/2 C All Purpose Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
2 TBL Cinnamon
1/3 C raisins

1/4 C Rolled Oats
1/3 C Pecans
1 TBL oil+butter+sugar mixture (remaining in the bowl)
pinch of salt

There are more elegant ways to do this, without using as many vessels, but this is how I made these muffins today. I had a hankering for some morning baked goods. These were the ingredients on hand. The bananas were frozen; when they get too ripe to eat, I save them in the freezer for banana bread, and experience has taught me that cutting them up first makes them thaw out faster, which makes them easier to use. Because they were frozen, I popped the icy lump of them into a small saucepan, covered them, and put the flame on very low. In about 5 minutes, they were steaming enough to break apart. I stirred them (this consisted of me giving the saucepan a shake every now and again) until they were warm, not hot. Remove from heat. This is very important because if the wet ingredients are hot, they will make scrambled eggs out of your eggs. Yuck. Add the ginger & clove at any point.

I preheated the oven to 350 F. In my steel mixing bowl, I put the butter and oil and popped that into the oven while it was warming, to melt the butter. Now, the bowl will be hot even before the butter melts completely, so remove the bowl from the oven once the butter looks soft. Stir the butter and oil together. Why oil? Using oil cuts down on the cholesterol (and cost), and corn oil adds another sweet flavor into the medley. Stir in the sugar. In this case, I specifically cut down the amount of sugar from my usual recipe because I wanted to use the white sugar I had on hand. (Otherwise, I would use 3/4 C honey or loose brown sugar.)

Pour the butter+oil+sugar mixture into the bananas. Leave about 1 TBL in the bowl for the crumble topping. Add bourbon into the banana, etc. mixture.

Toss the oats and pecans together in the steel bowl that has the remaining sugar mixture until you have a nicely coated crumble. Scrape into a dish and set aside.

Move the saucepan mixture into the bowl. Wisk the eggs separatedly and fold into the mixture.  Add the flour in a half cup at a time, alternating with the remaining ingredients: flour, then powder, soda, and cinnamon; flour, then raisins; finish with flour. You want to mix the raisins into the flour because this helps them grab their place in the batter and stay distributed. Like the cinnamon it also distributes the flavors throughout better than mixing all the flavors into the wet ingredients.

Pour into a tray for large muffins (6 muffin tray). My batch was a little too much batter for one pan, and I cooked off the rest in a small pyrex. Top with crumble. Bake 25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Mad Scientist Waffles

I used this recipe for waffles:

Yogurt Waffles

Ingredients
1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups (16 ounces) plain non-fat yogurt
1/4 C skim milk
1/4 olive oil
2 eggs

And I added about 1/3 C of crumbled feta, 1/4 tsp of dill, a pinch of thyme and a pinch of white pepper. I actually used 3 small eggs (from the co-op), as an equivalent to the 2 standard eggs. Nixed the salt, because the cheese had plenty, and the spices and yogurt kept the batter from being bland.

Applied lightening...
They lived!

These unexpected constructs were delicious. They had a light, crispy body and the feta melted in just the right amount, without causing any sticking onto the griddle.

It's not science. It's Mad Science -- mwhahahahaha!

Lemon & Lime Fish Chowder

Lemon & Lime Fish Chowder

1 small leek, thinly sliced
2 TBL unsalted butter (don't substitute or leave out)
3 sprigs marjoram
1 1/2 lbs white fish (cod and sole), fillets
1/2 a medium lemon
1/2 a medium lime
salt to taste (1 tsp)
splash (around 1/4 C) of mirin cooking sake (sherry or white wine)
fresh parsley, chopped (optional)

I used to think that every meal would be improved with garlic. The problem is how often anything I cook tastes the same as any other thing I cook: garlic, oregano, black pepper. Tonight I set out to cook something that would bring out the best in the fish. Due to too much fish for too small a cooking pot, this became a chowder instead of poached fish. Happy accident!

In a 3 quart (or there abouts) saucepan, melt the butter. Add the leeks and cover. Cook on medium heat until soft but not brown. (About 3 minutes.) Cut a couple thick slices of lemon.

Cut the fish into 1/2 pieces and place in the pot on top of the leeks. Add the marjoram and the lemon slices. Squeeze the juice out of the remaining lemon and the lime, over the fish. Cover and cook over low heat. (About 5 minutes.) Add the mirin. Let simmer uncovered for another minute. Don't overcook; you'll lose the "broth". When the fish flakes easily, remove the pot from heat and gently turn all the ingredients, removing the marjoram twigs, slices of lemon, and any pips or bones that got loose.

If you're serving this, you can garnish it with a pinch of chopped parsley and one of the lemon slices, which should still look pretty good, since this all cooks very fast. I would say that this serves 2 people generously. I ate the whole thing, I will admit, and it was too much. I ate the whole thing partially because it was soooo gooood and partially because I don't think this is something that will hold up to reheating. I was too hungry/impatient/lazy to make rice or angel hair pasta to go with the fish I wanted for dinner; again, I think that turned out for the best. While some crusty bread would compliment any fish chowder, I don't think this needs it.

It's all about the fish and the butter, but the delicately musty marjoram, the mildness of leek, and the zingy mix of citrus, further sweetened with the mirin, were the right supporting flavors. Sole by itself would have been mushy. The fillets are so thin, they are better for flash cooking. Mixed with the cod, which is a pretty robust fish, the sole broke up the dominant flavor and added texture interest.

No photo. I had nearly eaten it all before I thought, "I should post this."

Honey, Almonds, Dried Figs, Dried Apricots, and Two Colors of Raisins

The timer is on its final 10 minutes. I've peaked at the baking, and I think it will be done at the projected time.

Wouldn't it be great to stick to the rule of dessert only once a week? It's unlikely. I've already had an oatmeal raisin cookie today (from Little Ray's Bakery, all natural). After dinner I had a craving for something sweet, but not sugary, yet not one of the deliciously perfect gala apples of which I still have two. I wanted something like the baked honey-date-butter-phyllo creation I made that one time a few years back. I didn't want anything that was only at its best while still freshly made, like a scone.

Using a coffee cake recipe as a guideline, I came up with this:

Batter
 1/3 Cup light brown sugar (tightly packed)
2 Tbl butter, cold
1/3 C oil (Canola, because that's what I had on hand)
1 egg
1/2 C plain yogurt (Greek style, in this case)

1 C All Purpose Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
pinch of salt
pinch of ground Cloves
1/4 tsp ground Ginger (lackluster stuff)
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Fruit & Nut filling
Chopped dried figs, golden raisins, and Thompson raisins simmered in 1/4 of black tea with a cinnamon stick
Chopped dried Apricots
Whole dry roasted, unsalted Almonds
About 1/3 C (a little more than) Honey. (Mesquite honey from Trader Joe's, in this case.)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix dry ingredients and set aside.
3. Cut the butter into very small cubes and cream into the brown sugar with the oil. I did this by hand.
4. Mix in the egg. Don't overwork it.
5. Mix in the yogurt.
6. Fold in the dry mix, adding a third of the dry at a time while you blend it with the wet.
7. Prepare the baking dish. I used an 8" cake round lined with a circle of parchment.
8. Spoon half of the batter into the pan. It will not cover the bottom layer.
9. Drizzle on half the honey.
10. Spoon on the soaked fruit (no extra liquid)
11. Drizzle on the remaining honey.
12. Layer the apricots and almonds.
13. Top with the remaining batter. Using a rubber spatula, shaped the sides so that you have a dome of unbaked goodness.
14. Bake for 35 minutes. Allow to cool enough to remove from the pan, but serve warm.

I love tea and fruit together, poaching fruit with tea or, as in this case, softening hard, dried fruit to make a soft filling. Black tea adds a subtle flavor. I just used a tea bag that had already been steeped once for a cuppa.

Yogurt is awesome in places where sweet recipes usually ask for heavy cream or sour cream. It's a good way to use yogurt that you don't want to eat, because you have too much of it, or it's been open for a while, or it just crossed the expiry date. (Look at me, using non-American words. Snark not.) Yogurt is less expensive than sour cream and far less expensive than heavy cream. I find it works well in scones, waffles, and coffee cakes (anything levened with baking soda).

Most batter cake recipes that I have made that call for butter work just as well with oil. I like to put a couple of tablespoons of butter to get some of butters oomph. Mixing fats creates all kinds of rewarding results in flavor and texture. Roll out biscuits and cookies have to be made with solid fat, and if it calls for shortening, don't think you can get away with butter. If you make a biscuit recipe with oil, you get a fluffy scone or bannock. Make it savory with cheese, herbs, and olive oil and you have a good thing.