Stories of family, creativity, and diverse distractions.

Tag: cooking Page 6 of 7

Cooking at home

The Mouli Salad Maker – kitchen gadgets from the past

There are any number of tools that let a cook slice and grate foods. I have a couple of hand graters and a food processor. But one of my favorite tools if I don’t have a lot of food to process is my Mouli. It “slices, chops, shreds, grates, and shaves ice” according to it’s manual.

Image shows a metal kitchen tool with 5 discs with various patterns of opening.
The Mouli Salad Maker with it’s five cutting discs.

That’s a spicy (or not so spicy) meatball!

I’ve already done a couple of posts, here and here, about prep cooking. Here’s another favorite – meatballs!

Image shows a rack of meatballs on a foil covered pan.
Cooked and ready to enjoy!

What’s for dinner? Preparing meat for a variety of dishes

As I mentioned in this post, I like to do some prep cooking when I have the chance. Walt and I really enjoy Mexican food, so we like to have some meat prepared for easy dinners. We usually just make an oversized batch when we are preparing dinner and then freeze the leftovers for later use.

We have used this basic recipe for quesadillas, tacos, chimichangas, and other dishes. It can be made with beef, pork, or chicken. Walt combined a couple of recipes to create this recipe.

Roasting the harvest – Poblanos from garden to dinner table

For the last few years I have been growing poblano peppers in my garden. They are a darker green and when fully ripe are a nice deep red. When a poblano is dried, it is called an ancho. They are a mild to medium pepper in terms of heat.

I usually pick them when they are green, but I don’t worry if they turn before I use them.

A bunch fresh out of the garden.

Approved by taste buds, but not by cardiologists: Buttermilk Biscuits

I have been trying for some time to find a biscuit recipe that comes out flaky and light. I am getting there, but I will always compare my biscuits to the ones we had in a little café when visiting Memphis .

A biscuit split on a white plate with a fork laying next to it.
Nice and Flaky!

This recipe is the result of many attempts to come up with a really good biscuit. Thank goodness Walt is a willing test subject for my cooking experiments!

The same sort of features that make a flaky pie crust, like I covered in this post, apply to flaky biscuits.

It’s tomato season!

When the garden does well, early August can be a busy time getting all of the produce stored.

A quantity of fresh tomatoes held in a woman's shirt as a basket
I didn’t grab anything to carry the tomatoes in, as I wasn’t expecting this many to be ready to pick.

I love to eat the fresh tomatoes from the garden! The first BLT sandwiches are always a favorite part of summer.

Can’t find what you need? Make it! Oven Mitts

I really like to cook, but I have to admit that I am not the safest in the kitchen when it comes to hot objects. I have bumped my hands and arms more times that I would care to admit when I am taking things out of the oven.

They hang where I can easily get them in my kitchen.

I had been looking for a set of longer oven mitts for a long time, and everything I found had really large hands, so much so that I was having trouble grasping things. It was like putting on a pair of oversized mittens and trying to pick small things up. So I decided to make my own.

I had a fun botanical print that went well with my kitchen decor. I purchased some insulated batting called Insul-Bright©. It is a polyester and mylar batting that can be sewn on a regular sewing machine. I have since used it in other projects.

Triple layered delight – making the best German Chocolate Cake

Every year for Walt’s birthday I make German Chocolate Cake. The recipe comes from the Iowa State Fair Cookbook from 1985.

Here it is in all it’s glory!

That boy is as flaky as Michelle’s pie crust

It took me a lot of practice to get a really good pie crust. It is easy to mix too much and get a tough crust. I found that it is really important to use a large bowl for best results. At first, I mixed in a smaller bowl and my crusts were tougher and not very flaky. When I moved to a larger, wide bottomed bowl I got much better results.

Bake up some sticky, gooey deliciousness! Caramel Pecan Rolls

I am a huge caramel fan, so I increased the caramel and nuts from the original recipe to add even more topping to these rolls. This uses the same dough as the Cinnamon Rolls I posted earlier.

A plate of yummy goodness!

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