Category: Food and Drink

My weekend of food preparation was bookended by a recipe failure and a recipe success. 

The failure was a batch of homemade pizza dough that didn’t rise properly.  I don’t know if the problem was bad yeast, a cold draft through the kitchen, the garlic and herbs I added to the dough, or some unknown factor.  In the end I was stuck with an insufficiently crisp, thin-crust pizza that was far below my usual standard.  Oh, it tasted okay, but it wasn’t what it might have been.

Fortunately, I managed to cap off Sunday evening with a spectacular batch of Baked Ziti with Roasted Vegetables.  The only downside to this recipe is that it makes a TON – way more than any couple can consume as leftovers in a reasonable amount of time.  It’s a great meal for guests, though.  Maybe I should invite other people to dinner and serve it again today.  Nah, the house isn’t fit for company.

Wow, I’ve learned something this week!  If I want more comments, all I have to do is ask you a question.  I’ll keep that in mind…

After yesterday’s vigorous discussion of unwholesome but delicious foods we eat when nobody’s looking, I started thinking about some of the other foods I loved as a child but left behind once I discovered tastier alternatives. 

When I was growing up, we seldom had restaurant food and almost never ate fast food.  Thus, for a long time I had the idea of my mother and grandmother as impressive cooks.  Well, that wasn’t really the case, as I realized once I got out on my own and started experiencing a wider range of foods.

Here are some of the foods that I used to really love when I was a kid:

• "Cheesecake" made with lemon Jell-o.  That was the fancy dessert I always made when company was coming.  Now I have a recipe for real cheesecake – the kind that cures for a couple of days before you serve it.  Back then, though, it was all about the Jell-o and Cool Whip.
• Celery stuffed with a blend of chunky peanut butter and Velveeta.  As you can imagine, this is very, very salty.
• Spaghetti sauce that starts with a can of tomato sauce, a can of condensed tomato soup and a can of tomato paste and includes sauteed onion, green pepper and garlic, spiced with dried oregano.  It’s very sweet and thick.  I can actually still eat this on occasion, but I prefer something lighter and fresher most of the time.
• A supposedly Chinese dish called "Ching Dao" that was made with canned chow mein vegetables, frozen peas, celery, chicken, ginger and a bit of powdered sugar added to the cornstarch used for thickening.  It was served over Minute Rice, of course.  This was my absolute favorite dish when I was growing up, but it strikes me as an unappetizing blob of salty ickiness now.  It’s possible that the dish could be resurrected using fresh vegetables and real steamed rice – maybe I should try that sometime.

So here’s today’s reader participation challenge:  describe a food you used to love until you grew out of it.  I’m not talking about a food you really still like but think you shouldn’t – I mean a food that just isn’t the same for you anymore now that you’re a grownup.

Okay, one more recipe before it’s time to cook the huge Thanksgiving meal.  I’ve always been repulsed by the sight of a can-grooved blob of cranberry sauce sitting on a plate in the middle of an otherwise delectable smorgasbord.  A few years ago, my sister and I decided there had to be a way to make good cranberry sauce from scratch so we bought a bag of cranberries and made up a recipe as we went along.  It turned out delicious and we’ve cooked it every year since then.   Here’s it is:

Fresh Cranberry Sauce

12 ounce bag fresh cranberries
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 chopped apple
1 cup orange juice
1/4 cup water

Combine all ingredients in a medium-sized saucepan and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer until thickened.  Serve slightly warm.

Optional: If you’d like a little spice in your cranberry sauce, add 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of ground clove while the sauce is simmering. After removing from heat, stir in 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger. It’s quite tasty!

Have a great Thanksgiving!  (And for you non-U.S. residents, enjoy your Thursday and feel free to make cranberry sauce with dinner, too, if you like.)

Pumpkin pie is the ultimate Thanksgiving dessert.  Unfortunately there are lots of mediocre pumpkin pies out there: pale and mushy and flavorless.  As a public service, I’m going to share my family pumpkin pie recipe with you today, in the hope that you will not inflict a sub-standard pie on your nearest and dearest next week.

Average Jane’s Perfect Pumpkin Pie

15 oz. can of pumpkin (sure, you can boil and mash fresh pumpkin, but what a pain!)
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, tightly packed
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon molasses
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves (optional)
1/8 teaspoon allspice (optional)

Mix all ingredients and put in an unbaked pie shell.  Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 45-60 minutes (until pie sets and is ever-so-slightly browned on top).  Cool and serve with whipped cream.

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It’s possible to make this recipe healthier with egg substitute, skim milk (which I use because it’s what I always have on hand), baking-approved sugar substitute, etc.  However, don’t skimp on the molasses or the cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger – they’re what make it beautiful and delicious.

Enjoy…and if you end up making it, tell me how it went.

I’ll admit it – I don’t cook at home as much as I should. During the week I have after-work activities planned about half the time, and the rest of the time I get home so late that I’m usually not in the mood to fix dinner.

Yesterday, though, I managed to leave the office at 5:30 and swing by the grocery store. It was not the ideal time to grocery shop and I got stuck with a crippled cart, but I made it home by 6:30 and launched into one of my favorite recipes, Baked Ziti with Roasted Vegetables. Heck, I’ll share it with you:

Baked Ziti With Roasted Vegetables

1 lb. eggplant, cut into 1 in. dice (4 cups)
1 large red onion, cut into 1 in. dice
2 yellow (or red or green) peppers, chopped
1 tbl. olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt
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Sauce:
1 tsp. olive oil
1 cup finely chopped onions
2 tsp. minced garlic
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
1/4 tsp. fennel seeds, crushed
1 can (28 oz.) crushed tomatoes
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1/4 tsp. sugar
pinch of thyme
2 tbl. chopped fresh parsley

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1 pkg. (16 oz.) ziti pasta, cooked
1 bunch (10 oz.) spinach, chopped
4 oz. (1 cup) shredded mozzarella cheese

Heat oven to 450 degrees F. Toss eggplant, red onion, peppers, oil and salt in jellyroll pan (I usually line mine with foil for easy cleanup). Roast 30 minutes, stirring once or twice, until vegetables begin to brown.

Make sauce: Heat oil in saucepan. Add onions and cook covered over medium low heat 10 minutes. Stir in garlic, red pepper and fennel; cook 30 seconds. Add tomatoes, salt, pepper, sugar and thyme. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes. Stir in parsley. Makes 3 cups sauce.

Reduce oven heat to 400 degrees F. Toss ziti with vegetables, sauce and spinach in large bowl. Spread in shallow 3-quart baking dish. Sprinkle mozzarella over top. Bake 20 minutes or until bubbly.

*Note: I sometimes brown a pound of hamburger and add it to this dish.

This recipe came from the January 1995 issue of Ladies Home Journal. They didn’t have it online or I would have just linked to it directly. And no, I cannot explain what I was doing with a copy of the Ladies Home Journal, even clear back in 1995.

This recipe sounds like a lot of trouble, but it really goes pretty quickly. If I could operate more than two stove burners at once without tripping the @#$% breaker, it would go even more quickly. I own a mortar and pestle pretty much for no other reason than to crush the fennel seed for this particular recipe.

Tonight: meatloaf with new potatoes and green beans. Now: another vanilla protein shake with strawberries. I can’t wait until dinner!

I’m doing my utmost to ignore the giant Easter candy displays that have already overtaken every grocery store and drug store I frequent. Of all the holiday candy offered throughout the year, my favorite is definitely the Easter selection.

First of all, I absolutely love Peeps. Sure, they have them for all the holidays now, but the classic chicks and bunnies will always be the “real Peeps” to me. The little sugar-coated marshmallows have quite a fan following, as evidenced by the huge number of websites devoted to them. There’s a site devoted to various experiments you can perform on them. There’s even a site wherein The Fellowship of the Ring is reenacted using Peeps as characters.

And just so you know, I prefer my Peeps stale. If they’re not tough and chewy, they’re just not ready for consumption.

As delightful as Peeps are, they don’t hold a candle to the ultimate Easter candy – Cadbury Cream Eggs. As a purist, I’m not interested in the chocolate or caramel varieties, only the original ones with centers that resemble real, raw eggs. I know that Cadbury Cream Eggs gross some people out, but those people have not given the delectable confections their proper due. If you think they’re too gooey and messy, a little refrigeration does the trick. A few years ago I discovered that Costco sells Cadbury Cream Eggs by the dozen! I believe my last bout of weight gain may have dated from that period.

Other Easter candy honorable mentions:

• Malted milk eggs
• Bunny-shaped circus peanuts in pastel colors
• Cheap jelly beans
• Flat chocolate-covered marshmallow eggs, the cheaper the better
• Solid chocolate bunnies, especially white chocolate ones
• Russell Stover coconut nests (Deserving of extra special super duper honorable mention)

Sadly, my Easter candy consumption must be curtailed if I wish to maintain my newly-svelte figure. I’ll have to be satisfied with just one Cadbury Cream Egg this season…and a package of Peeps…and maybe just one coconut nest…and…

I had the world’s most delicious dinner yesterday. Was it at some trendy independent bistro? A five-star restaurant with linen tablecloths? No indeed! It was at a fabulous hybrid Long John Silver’s/A&W Rootbeer location.

This is a chain I visit, at most, once a year. Five years can pass without a visit from me. I am well aware that a Long John Silver’s meal contains my recommended monthly allowance of fat. For the most part, I just don’t “do” fast food anymore. However…

My dinner was perfection at almost every turn. The Chicken Planks? Deliciously crispy and salty on the outside, tender inside. The coleslaw? Tangy with just the right amount of creaminess. My husband gave me his tiny corn on the cob, which was a little bit soggy but sweet and tasty. The fries were unexceptional, but still nicely crispy. The hush puppies, although a bit different than the more cornmeal-heavy ones I remember, were light yet bursting with grease and pleasantly onion-flavored. I had a wonderful, icy-cold glass mug of A&W rootbeer with my dinner, and it was a refreshing beverage and dessert all in one. Best of all, Long John Silver’s has gone back to including “crunchies” with your meal.

For those of you who do not recall the glory days of Long John Silver’s, crunchies are little fragments of batter that fall off in the deep-fryer and are scooped out with the cooked food and served as a little bonus. When I was in high school, my boyfriend and his friends would stop by Long John Silver’s after school and get a bag of just crunchies (for free, if I recall correctly). Then Long John Silver’s cut way back on the crunchies. Maybe it was during their ill-fated “health conscious” period when they were offering grilled seafood options and steamed vegetables. Anyway, it was a supreme disappointment that has been wisely rectified.

I should mention that even though Long John Silver’s is mainly known for seafood, I do not like seafood at all. My personal culinary rule is: no bottom feeders and nothing with an exoskeleton. For me, Long John Silver’s is all about the Chicken Planks.

So that was my wonderful supper yesterday. I was fully prepared to pay a severe gastrointestinal price for my transgression, but weeks of protein shakes, healthy little lunches and sensible dinners must have paved the way for one “get out of jail free” evil meal. Thanks, Long John Silver’s! Until next year, or the year after…