Category Archives: Cooking

My Happiness File – Day 7

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…. one step closer to getting my life organized

Being organized and having a place for everything makes me happy. Today I cleaned out every drawer in my dresser and filled a garbage bag with clothes that have gotten too big for me or I just don’t wear anymore. Even my husband let me bag some of his old clothes. Amazing!

We did a huge vegetable shopping today. I’m reading an interesting book that recommends you cook all your vegetables the day that you buy them and then they’re ready for the entire week. It was a lot of work but my fridge is now stocked with prepared side dishes for seven days. I roasted a head of cauliflower, 2 bunches of broccoli, 6 beets, 2 sweet potatoes, and 1 winter squash. I cleaned and steamed a bunch of kale, beet greens and dandelion leaves and with the stems, leaves and cores I made a pesto. Very satisfying. I love trying new things. The book is called An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler.

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I bought my husband a new wooden cutting board today. Our old one had split in two and K really misses having a large wooden board to work from. When my husband is happy, I’m happy.

Cheers!

Deep Frying the Turkey

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…. no splatter burns or fireballs in the sky

Once we decided to deep fry our turkey this Thanksgiving we started to have reservations.  The warnings on the deep fryer were ominous. Improper use could lead to serious burns, fire, explosion and potential death.

K spent a good part of the day assembling the propane burner and pouring water over the turkey and then measuring it to see how much oil we would need to cover the bird. I think the final total was 18 litres. The oil cost more than the bird.

My daughter G and her husband B arrived early to watch over the operation. The week before B kept showing us Youtube videos of grease fires and explosions from turkey deep fryers. He was certain that K was going to make him lower the bird into the hot oil as payback but my brave husband did the deed.

Everyone took turns watching over the pot.

One hour later. Done to perfection.

The advantages to deep frying your turkey are:

1. The short cooking time – 1 hour instead of the normal 4 to 5 hours for a 16 pound bird.

2. Very crispy and flavourful skin if you’re not worried about the calories.

3. A very moist bird. It wasn’t at all dry.

4. The social aspect – everyone standing around watching the fryer.

5. A sure fire way to get your husband to cook the turkey.

Sugarless Apple Butter

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…. 30 hours later not including the canning

Last night’s salsa. 12 jars of spicy goodness.

It took a long time but because this apple butter recipe is cooked in a slow cooker you literally can walk away from it and leave it. It’s not a bad idea to stir it every once in awhile.

I love apple butter and I’ve purchased a sugarless variety a number of times. It took me some time to find a recipe that didn’t use sugar. Apples are naturally sweet and you don’t need to add more sugar. They also have a lot of natural pectin in them so you don’t need to add that either.

When I went to the farmers’ market on Saturday I asked which apples would make the best apple butter. They recommended MacIntosh or Royal Gala or a combination of both. I opted to try the combination. I used about 40 apples in total. The original recipe called for 25 to 30. I think the overall amount will depend on the size of the apples and the size of your slow cooker. The one I used was one of the bigger slow cookers on the market. Here is where I found the recipe:

http://eatingrichly.com/07/sugar-free-apple-butter-recipe/

The apple puree after the first 10 hours.

Placing the apples on top of the mash after the first and second 10 hour cooking period.

The final product. This recipe produced 10 small jars like the one you see in the photo and 2 pint size jars.

Not only is this recipe healthy but also relatively cheap to make. I spent about $19.00 in apples and ended up with the equivalent of 14 x 250ml jars of product. That’s about $1.35 a jar.

 

 

 

It’s Been a Huge Canning Day

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…. sugar free apple butter and spicy salsa

Actually the canning hasn’t even taken place yet.

I started the apple butter last night and it’s still got another 8 hours of cooking in the slow cooker. I’ll post the recipe tomorrow.

After I added the second batch of apples to the the slow cooker I decided to start the salsa. I’ve made this salsa one other time and loved it. It didn’t last long so I decided to double the recipe. I think doubling the recipe also makes it necessary to cook it longer.

I’ve adapted the recipe slightly. Not only did I double the ingredients but I changed the variety of peppers. A word of warning. If you have sensitive skin you might want to consider wearing gloves as you prep the vegetables. The acidity in the tomatoes left my hands burning.

Here is the original recipe: Peppy Salsa recipe – Canadian Living.

It is recommended that when you chop jalapeno peppers that you wear rubber gloves or at least wash your hands really well before touching parts of your face with your fingers.

When choosing tomatoes for your salsa make sure they are very ripe and free of blemishes. Blanche them in boiling water for 30 seconds and then shock them in a bowl of ice water. The skins will slip off easily.

The tomatoes after they blanched, shocked in ice water and then peeled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I chopped the peppers in small cubes. I didn’t have enough yellow peppers so I added so I added some green ones.

A pot full of chopped peppers and tomatoes.some green ones to the mix.

 

 

 

 

I hate chopping onion. My eyes sting so badly that I usually have to leave the room and wash my face before I can continue.

I chopped the onions and garlic last. The cilantro is added in the last 5 minutes of cooking.

 

 

 

I’ve tried holding my breath but as soon as I breathe through my nose my eyes tear up.

My solution: I get my husband to chop the onion.

 

 

I’ve had to let my sauce cook longer than the recommended time. Use your own judgement. Adjust the seasoning before adding the cilantro.

I put the salsa into hot sterilized jars and then into a water bath for 20 minutes. In fact the jars are in the bath as I write. I will post pictures of the finished product tomorrow along with the directions for the apple butter.

Cheers!

What Do You Do With Nine Pounds of Plums?

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…..make plum jam of course

I love plum cake, plum jam and Polish donuts with plum filling.

It’s part of my German upbringing. Every August/September, growing up, my mom would make ‘pflaumenkuchen mit streusel’ and serve it with freshly whipped cream. It was truly special.

Months after my mother’s death I purchased a plum cake from a local bakery situated near the cottage. When I served it, my youngest daughter started to cry because it reminded her of her Oma. No one, in her young memory made a better pflaumenkuchen.

I have tried to recreate her recipe. Of course she didn’t share the recipe with us and we only have our memories of the taste and appearance to go by. My father’s wife makes a wonderful version of this traditional German cake but always makes it with a yeast dough. I’m pretty sure that Mom used a batter made with butter, flour, sugar and baking powder.

http://www.huettenhilfe.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Pflaumenkuchen.jpg

Ah, memories…… however, I am trying to lose more weight and baking a plum cake right now would be counter productive. So most of the plums that we bought have gone into making plum jam and most of the jars will be gifted to family and friends.

My husband found an interesting recipe from a cookbook called My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss. It uses less sugar than most jams and is baked in the oven for 2 hours. We’ve tweaked the recipe somewhat and doubled the amounts suggested in the original recipe. I also love the name ‘Pflaumenmus’. If you’d like the original recipe go to: http://www.foodinjars.com/2012/09/my-berlin-kitchen-giveaway-spiced-plum-butter/

Eight pounds of plums soaking in sugar, cinnamon and cloves.

Pflaumenmus (Spiced Plum Butter)

8 pounds of Italian plums, washed, quartered and pitted

4 cups of sugar

4 cinnamon sticks

8 cloves or 2 tsp. ground cloves

1. Place the washed, quartered and pitted plums in a large ovenproof pot or baking dish.

2. Sprinkle the sugar and  cloves over the plums and place the cinnamon sticks under the plums.

3. Place the pan or pot in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight.

4. Put the pan of plums in a preheated oven (350 degrees) and bake for 2 hours.

5. Here is where we tweaked the recipe. The mixture was very soupy so we put the pan on the stovetop and cooked it longer until some of the liquid cooked down.

6. Place the mixture in a blender or use an immersion blender and puree the mixture until you get the desired consistency. If you like a chunkier jam, blend less and longer if you like  it smoother.

7. Place the hot jam in hot sterilized jars. Make sure that the rims are clean and place the lids carefully on top and screw on the rings.

8. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Three of the 14 jars of Pflaumenmus we made with 8 pounds of plums.

 Enjoy!

Up to Our Elbows in Tomatoes

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….that motorized food mill looks better all the time

After spending 12 hours with daughter number one on Saturday, I felt I had to extend the same courtesy to my second daughter, G.

I called G, early Sunday morning to see if she would be interested in making tomato sauce and learning how to use the pressure canner that she helped pay for. It was a Father’s Day gift for my husband who is becoming more and more conscious of the food we eat.

It took a bit of coaxing but G’s husband was away and she needed to do laundry. Being able to use my washing machine and having her father pick her up clinched the deal. G lives about 35 minutes from us, when the traffic is good. Luckily it was.

After putting a load of laundry into the machine we started the process of making our own sauce about 12 noon. A bushel of tomatoes is a lot of tomatoes. Until you start cutting them up and putting them through the hand operated food mill you don’t realize how big a job it’s going to be.

While one person fed the tomatoes into the food mill, another one turned the handle to grind them and the third person scraped the sauce from the screening and the slide into a shallow bowl. The advantage of using a food mill is that the skins and seeds are separated and deposited from a separate orifice  and you can eliminate the blanching and peeling and straining steps.

This is only the beginning. We had tomatoes next to the food mill and there are more tomatoes hidden behind this pot.

We started to fill the large pot that you see behind the smaller one in the picture. After preparing one bushel of tomatoes we ended up filling that pot about 3/4 full with sauce.

Our fancy new food mill.

Once we were ready to start cooking the sauce we realized that we didn’t have enough propane for the new burner outside. I volunteered to head out to Costco to purchase a new tank and have it filled. Nobody said that making your own sauce is economical.

My trip to Costco was a nightmare. You would have thought it was Christmas. I searched the entire parking lot before finally finding a spot to park and the line-ups to pay for your purchases literally snaked halfway through the store. I wish I had taken a picture of that. The girl at the checkout said that it was just as crazy the day before.

By the time I got home it was almost 5:00 and G and my husband got tired of waiting for the propane so they started cooking the sauce on top of the stove. Now you might wonder why we didn’t do that in the first place but I think when you see the next picture you’ll see why cooking inside isn’t the most ideal place.

K standing on the ladder so that he can stir the tomato sauce.

As you can see from the picture, K literally has tomato sauce up to his elbow. Another purchase that we need to invest in is a much larger wooden spoon.

After cutting, grinding and simmering tomatoes for 7 hours we were too tired to cook dinner so we ordered in. After regaining our stamina we started the canning process. Having never used the pressure canner before we did a lot of checking on the internet and watching youtube videos to make sure we didn’t end up with tomato sauce erupting over the entire kitchen.

The process was relatively simple but time consuming. We only managed to process 7 jars last night. By 10:30 G packed up her dog, Lucy, her laundry and 3 large jars of sauce and I drove her home. By the time I got back it was going on midnight and I had no energy left to write about our experience.

“The fruit of our labour”, 20 jars minus the 3 our daughter took.

Today K processed 7 more jars and hopefully he’ll finish the rest tonight or we’ll be eating a lot of sauce this week. Is canning your own sauce economical? We figured it will take us years before we recoup what we spent on equipment but the time spent with family is priceless.

Will we do it again? Absolutely!

Cheers

P.S. By the way for those of you who are following my fitness journey, I got out this morning and ran 2.4 k with the kids at school. Feels good!

The Joy of Spontaneity

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…. and I reached my goal Saturday morning!

Some of the best times in life are those that are not planned and just happen as the day progresses.

The only thing that I had planned for the weekend was cleaning the house and getting some of my son’s belongings from the apartment he had shared with his girlfriend.

My husband and daughter number one, A, took care of the latter job while I started on the first. As it turned out retrieving my son’s belongings didn’t take long at all and my daughter called to arrange for me to meet her and my husband for breakfast.

As I was driving to the designated location for nourishment, A called me and asked if I would pick up her partner, J from the house so that she could join us for breakfast. The four of us ended up having a delicious meal in a very funky and popular yet unpretensious location.

I announced to my family that I had reached my goal that morning and my husband joked about celebrating by eating whatever I wanted. I wasn’t tempted. I ordered an omelet with cheese and herbs, a small side salad and a delicious cup of Americano. No potatoes, no toast.

As we were sitting in the booth (comfortably by the way even though it was pretty small) we talked about the large bag of pears my husband received from one of his clients. He wanted to make pear butter and put it in jars (there were so many pears).

The discussion soon turned to how we could all get involved and maybe we could pick up some tomatoes and make sauce as well. Hmmm….we had no idea how time consuming this would be.

The girls and I headed for the hardware store to pick up more jars, a food grinder and a propane burner to cook the sauce outside. We couldn’t find everything we needed in the first store so we decided to drive to a famous Italian store on St. Claire that catered to the Italian community, specializing in kitchen supplies. They had everything we needed except the jars and the pots were pretty expensive so we decided to continue our quest and we headed west. So far we had only purchased the food grinder.

After numerous discussions back and forth on our phones with K we decided to buy the propane burner at Canadian Tire where they were on sale. This particular model included the pot. Actually it was advertised as a turkey deep fryer. Guess how we’re preparing our turkey this Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately the first store had sold out but the Canadian Tire close to the house had 9 of them in stock. Back in the car. We made a couple of detours and stopped in a small cheese store where they make their own fresh ricotta everyday. What a treat! It was so fresh that it was still warm. The second detour was another cheese store. Have I ever told you that I love cheese.

We finally had all the supplies we needed for making the pear butter. In the meantime K picked up a bushel of plum tomatoes (another project for another day).

It was mid afternoon before we actually started making the pear butter. Turns out I had to make another trip to buy star anise, lemons and fresh ginger. It took us about 4 hours to cut up the pears, cook them, grind them and then cook them some more.

Pear butter after 45 minutes.

The actual cooking time for the butter to reduce was about 2 hours. As it cooked the sauce  went from this light yellow to an amber and after processing it in jars it turned a pink colour.

After 2 hours.

For the recipe go to:

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/pear_butter/

The final product. Delicious on ricotta cheese and toast.

After supper we were ready to put the pear butter into jars. We got the water bath ready and K volunteered to watch the last step so that the girls and I could go for a long walk with Frances. The rain that was forecast for the day was over by the afternoon and the wind blew the clouds over the city and to the east. An interesting sky.

The girls and I walked for about 45 minutes. We passed a house where the owner was selling fresh vegetables from his driveway and A and J bought a bag full of corn, potatoes and cheddar cauliflower. When we got home the girls packed up their goodies, including jars of pear butter and I drove them home.

The best part of the day was spending it with my husband, my daughter and her partner. None of this had been preplanned. It was an adventure and even though it was a lot of work it was very rewarding. What about those tomatoes you ask? Well that’s another story for tomorrow.

Frances guarding the tomatoes for Sunday’s sauce.

Crazy Hair Day and a Relaxing Weekend

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…. how one preceded the other

On Friday I wrote how I was getting ready for Crazy Hair Day at school. When I walked into school I felt like I had the day wrong. I don’t normally have my hair up in 3 pony tails with pink, red and black hair ties. For a change it was other teachers who had forgotten the ‘theme day’ and not me.

I didn’t feel out of place for long. When the students arrived there were a number of them who sported unusual hair styles. What surprised me was that most of them were boys.

….heading up north for a relaxing weekend!

Driving to cottage country on a Friday, after work is crazy. A trip that normally takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours took 3 1/2 hours this weekend. There’s a reason why I normally go up north in the middle of the week and that was it.

Anyway Saturday proved to make it all worthwhile. It was the perfect day, warm but not too hot, and sunny. I actually went swimming. I can’t remember the water ever being this warm so early in the season. I guess the mild winter, early spring and recent heat wave all contributed to the warm lake water.

The weekend was definitely relaxing. I had two nights of great sleep and I’m ready to face the remaining four days of school with the kids.

When I got home I made a great salad that I would like to share with my dieting friends. It’s an Italian Mushroom and Celery salad that I found on 5 and Spice. It is on the previous post to this one. Try it. If you like mushrooms I’m sure you’ll like this.

Cheers!

Holding Steady at 18 and the Potato Salad Wars

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…. if I write about it, it usually changes the next day.

After the race yesterday my friend L thought I would drop 3 more pounds, based on the effort I put out during the run. Today my thighs were actually a little bit sore. I notice it mostly when I walk down stairs.

Unfortunately a drop in weight did not happen and certainly not 3 pounds worth. The one side effect of the race is that I am extremely tired and find myself drifting off in the middle of doing something (like checking my email and scanning things on the computer). It looks like it’s going to be another early night.

Yesterday I had a few challenges with eating because of Father’s Day. I’m happy to report that I passed on the KFC, the wine, the apple pie, the bread and the tarts. I did have a small sample of my homemade potato salad. My baby sister and I are having a bit of a disagreement as to whose potato salad is closest to our mom’s original recipe. I’m sharing my version with you.

German Potato Salad With Bacon

5 lb of new white potatoes, skins on

1/2 lb sliced and diced bacon

2 ribs of celery

small bunch of green onions

3 large radishes

3 small dill pickles

pickle juice

mayonnaise

salt and pepper

1. Boil the potatoes with the skin on. If they’re not new potatoes you may want to peel them after cooking.

2. When a knife pierces the potato easily, remove from the heat and drain. Allow to cool for a few minutes.

3. In a frying pan cook the diced bacon until the bacon is crisp. Let it drain on a paper towel. Save the fat.

4. Finely dice the celery, radishes, green onion and pickles.

5. Slice or cube the cooked potatoes and add to a large bow. Add the diced vegetables and bacon.

6. In separate small bowl mix together about 1/4 cup of pickle juice, 1/4 of bacon grease and 1/2 cup of mayonnaise. Add salt and pepper to taste. If you like your dressing tart add more pickle juice or reduce the amount of bacon grease. To be honest I never measure the ingredients for the dressing. I go by how it looks and tastes.

7. Add the dressing to the potato mixture and gently toss. Start with half the dressing and if you like it more moist add more as needed.

Best Served Warm

Serves 10 to 12 people

My version of Mom’s German Potato Salad

My Sister’s Version

Potatoes

Bacon

Mayonnaise

Pickle juice

Salt and Pepper

The steps are identical to my recipe but she omits the pickles, celery, radishes, onions and uses way less mayonnaise.

You be the judge!

P.S. This is definitely not a recipe for people trying to lose weight!

Plateauing

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… is there such a word?

I’ve been up and down all week and I’m feeling like I’ve hit a plateau. I’m sure that a lot of it has to do with that “stress” thing I’ve written about in the past but I’m not going to let it get me down. 

Tomorrow I’ll be doing a lot of sitting as I keep K company during his final chemo round. I’ll probably read and maybe even mark school assignments when he sleeps. When we get home I’ll make sure that I take Frances out for an extra long walk and maybe if I get up early enough I can take her out in the morning as well.

Yesterday I made a wonderful low GI chicken bake with salsa. I regret that I didn’t take pictures of it before we consumed it but I have leftovers and I’ll be sure to post pictures and the recipe sometime this week. I served it with a dhal that I made from scratch and it was delicious as well. I’m wondering if the legumes played havoc with my weight loss totals this week. Beans don’t always fit into the low GI category. Oh well, no point in crying over spilt milk. What’s done is done. Moving on……

Cheers