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.

Farmers Market Beets, Goat Cheese, Pecans, and Butter Sandwich

Well, that makes it sound fancy.

A big bag of small red beets was my inspiration for beets in a sandwich. The small beets mean that I can cook one or two of them in short time and have fresh beets ready to eat with minimal fuss. Beets are dandy with butter. I'm a fan of artisan bread, so making a beet-and-butter sandwich. This sandwich evolved.

It would be a pretty sandwich if done with thin layers of sliced beet, using the goat cheese as a spread on the butter-grilled roll. However, beets are slippery. Slices of beets shoot right out of the sandwich if it is any larger than a slider. The concoction pictured is quick and easy -- and can be eaten without flying beets.

For 3 well-filled sandwiches:

Ingredients
1 Cup of cooked beets, chopped into small pieces or julienned
2 ounces of goat cheese (this was half a package of Trader Joe's basic goat cheese)
Artisan bread rolls or demi-baguette (any firm, crusty bread)
butter, about 1 TBL
1/4 Cup pecans or walnuts
2 TBL cream cheese (optional)

Prepare your beets. Ideally, you will have done this in advance, and you'll be using them chilled from the refrigerator. My little beets -- about 3" in diameter -- took about 15 minutes to cook to tender, boiled. I scrub them well, put them in a saucepan with water to cover, and simmer covered until a fork pokes through easily. When they have cooled, I peel off the skins. I suspect that these sandwiches would taste good with grated, raw beet as well. I guess I'll find out in the next round!

* Beet juices wills stain your skin, clothes, and porous dishes. No kidding! Wear an apron, watch out for your shoes, and use a plastic or glass cutting board. If you don't have food gloves, plan on prepping your beets just before you wash your hair. Shampooing hair is pretty effective at getting fresh stains out of your fingers (says the multi-media artist and former barista). It also helps to moisturize your skin well before working with dyes. The hydrated skin won't be as absorbent.

Cut your rolls in half lengthwise. In a large skillet or on a griddle, melt the butter. Place the rolls cut side down to grill them with the butter. Don't let them burn!

Mix the goat cheese and beets together in a bowl until incorporated together. The more you mix them, the more pink the mixture will become, so go easy.

A little cream cheese rounds out the flavor and helps everything stick together, so I like a little spread on each half of the grilled roll before applying the beet-and-goat-cheese mix. Add your pecan halves and the other half of the roll.

You can make these in advance; they hold up surprisingly well and are good cold picnic food.

Kale & Garlic Chicken Soup

Kale & Garlic Chicken Soup

2 TBL oil

5 cloves of fresh garlic, minced

3 TBL tomato paste

3 Cups homemade chicken stock*

1 tsp lemon juice*

1 lb fingerling potatoes, cut into 1” pieces

½ Cup shredded carrot

salt to taste

½ a bunch of frilly kale, chopped

1 Cup of cooked chickpeas

2 Cups shredded cooked chicken, mostly dark meat

This is one of those what-do-I-have recipes. I don’t have any problem with someone buying all the ingredients specifically to make a soup, but soup can be so forgiving and flexible that, to me, it’s the kind of thing you make when you are trying to make order out of chaos.

Chicken stock is something I pretty much always have on hand. I make it out of the bones of every roasted chicken, including rotisserie chickens from the grocery store. My freezer holds stock ends (carrot butts, garlic and onion trim, mushroom stems, ginger, celery surplus, and sometimes bell pepper seeds and membranes) and I always have bay leaves. To make stock, I basically use Alton Brown’s Bird to the Last Drop recipe, without adding the finishing details of the soup. I never measure anything! The chicken bones, vege stock ends, and bay leaf go into a pot that will hold it all, then I cover it with water and simmer it for half an hour. I let everything cool enough to handle, then strain. (If you are making vege stock, you get the richest flavor by letting it cool completely before straining.) I don’t worry about the fat, because it will harden in the refrigerator. I can scrape it before using the stock.

This particular stock gets an asterisk because it wasn’t normal stock. When I roasted the half chicken (for the meat for the soup) yesterday, instead of putting an inch of water at the bottom of the roasting pan, I used chicken stock. So this “stock” had all the drippings from a chicken rubbed with blackening spices and spritzed with lemon juice. Cold, it was thick and gelatinous. This makes an awesome base for gravy and adds that marrow goodness to the soup. Because the lemon flavored the base, I didn’t add any additional lemon. If using store-bought or plain homemade stock, I strongly recommend lemon juice or lemon salt with leafy green soups. It brings the tomato, greens, and beans/chickpeas together really well.

I’m going to admit that I used the scraped chicken fat from the stock to sautee the garlic. A lot of that fat was the red palm oil that I used on the roasted chicken. This stuff is super deliciously amazing and not to be wasted: Nutiva Red Palm Oil

1. Sautee the minced garlic in the oil until the garlic is aromatic, about 1 minute. Add the tomato paste and cook for another minute. Add the stock.

2. Allow the liquid to come to a simmer. Add the potatoes. Add the carrots.

3. Simmer 30 minutes or until the potatoes are tender (but not falling apart).

4. Meanwhile, cut up your kale and chicken.

5. When the potatoes are cooked, taste your soup. Add salt if needed. Add the kale and chickpeas. Continue to simmer on low heat, covered, for 10 more minutes.

6. Add your chicken. Give it just long enough to get warm, then serve your marvelous soup.

I enjoyed mine with some crusty sourdough bread. It had a full flavor, with sourness from the tomato paste and the lemon that worked well with the other ingredients. A lot of kale soups ask for chopped tomatoes, but I'm glad I didn't have any because I think they would have overwhelmed the tender little potatoes. It was also a pretty soup, thick with ingredients and pretty in color.