Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that I spent this weekend with an organization called New Day For Children, an aftercare facility for several girls rescued from sex trafficking. A couple of friends and I were invited to visit the girls for a weekend. Deann, Elba, and I have very different strengths. My strengths are obviously cooking (yay for food!) and math, so I offered to whip up two meals with the girls and help them with their math homework. Deann is great with science and make up, so she tutored the girls in science and then shared some beauty tricks. Elba is a connector and was able to chat with the girls for hours on end to make them comfortable with us and learn more of the girls’ interests, ideas about the world, etc.

Since food is my thing, I offered to prepare dinner both nights that we were there. I figured preparing dinner together would be an easy way for me to engage with the girls while doing something useful. Here was our menu:

Friday night: 

homemade pizza dough + this classic pizza sauce + various toppings
my all time favorite fall and winter salad
dessert (as chosen by the girls): these chocolate cakes and these balls

Saturday night: 

my favorite ever minestrone
no knead bread
dessert: pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided on this meal plan. I’ve cooked with other people before, but I don’t do it often. Most of the time, cooking is a solitary activity for me. In this case, not only was I cooking with a group of people, I was also cooking with a group of kids who had no idea how to do basic things like measure flour or double a recipe. About 15 minutes into our pizza making experiment, I realized that I had to make some changes immediately if we were going to eat before midnight. Eventually, our dough and ingredients came together and the girls were delighted to make their own pizzas. These girls have very little choice over what they eat since food is served cafeteria style. To make their own pizzas and to decorate them however they wanted was a big deal! They shaped their pizzas into various designs, stuffed the crust with cheese, slathered the dough with pizza sauce or pesto – or both! – and loaded them with cheese and other ingredients (including the apples and pears from the salad!). As we removed the pizzas from the hot stone, the girls declared them masterpieces and devoured them in minutes. It was fun to watch so much excitement around something so simple!

I let one of the girls decide what we would serve for dessert that night. Knowing that not everyone shares my dessert preferences (chocolate!) I brought ingredients for several recipes. The girl in charge of dessert chose my favorite chocolate cakes…. and ruined them. To be fair, the recipe does call for whipping egg whites to stiff peaks, something I had completely forgotten until I was trying to troubleshoot why the cakes had crumbled had crumbled into pieces like dirt clods. I wasn’t about to let her creation go to waste so I suggested we crumble all the cakes and serve them as “brownie bits” over ice cream. Success! The girls don’t often get dessert, so there were no complaints about our dirt clod ice cream sundaes.

I had prepped the no knead bread on Friday evening for Saturday’s dinner, but I quickly realized that we were going to have a problem. Their kitchen is about 50 degrees, which is not warm enough to proof bread. I decided to put the dough buckets in a warming oven. When I returned the next day, the dough buckets were literally steaming. The yeast was surely dead as the dough looked more like bread soup than dough. I am fairly confident that these girls don’t eat homemade artisan bread very often, so I hoped that I might be able to salvage the dough. My afternoon schedule was double booked, so I attempted to cook the bread while simultaneously doing math tutoring in another building. Every 15-20 minutes I sprinted from one building to another to remove a lid or remove a cooked loaf and start more dough. Needless to say, we ended up with hockey pucks. We found a bread knife that could saw through the burnt crust and chopped the bread into small pieces for dunking in the soup. The girls were none the wiser. Mental note: if I want to make bread there in the winter, I will need to come up with a solution for letting the dough rise!

The minestrone was a huge success even though the girl in charge of measuring the spices decided to put her own twist on the recipe and double the pepper. The purist in me was a little mad that she has messed up MY recipe, but I decided to shrug it off. One girl was in charge of grating cheese to sprinkle on the soup. These girls love cheese, so there was no sprinkling of cheese… there was only piling on of cheese! One of the leaders even came to us with a plate and asked if she could have a plate of shredded cheese. I was amazed when this container, which was filled to the brim, emptied in minutes!

There were so many hilarious moments from this weekend that I want to share. A photo journal is the best way to do so!

Our friend Justin who arranged our visit to New Day assured us that there was no snow in the forecast for the weekend. Riiiiight.

This sweet girl came out of the freezer with a pained look on her face. We asked her what happened. She explained that when she was in the freezer she wanted to see just how cold the poles in the freezer were. My friend and I looked at each other and gasped. Apparently this girl has never seen The Christmas Story (remember the scene when the main character sticks his tongue to a pole?), because she just reenacted it. This was a rather painful lesson for this girl to learn!

The first night we were at the ranch, I taught one of the girls the proper way to measure flour. On the second night I watched her teach another girl the proper technique for measuring flour. “No, no, no… this is how you measure flour! I’ll show you!”

This is my friend Deann using a food processor to shred cheese for the first time ever.  She was so ecstatic. She looked at me and exclaimed, “No wonder you cook everything from scratch! You have all these cool tools that make it easy!” Yup…. if I had to shred cheese by hand, I’d order takeout too.

To start with, we have to have one of these:

In general, you should only roast sugar pie pumpkins. They are small, cute, uncarveable, and perfect for making your own pumpkin puree. The pumpkin featured above is called a Cinderella Pumpkin. It’s beautiful, but not really what I recommend for roasting because it seems to be 99% water. The end result is not nearly as much pumpkin as I’d like, but I get more by roasting it than I do by throwing it in the compost pile. If you are going to roast a pumpkin, just buy the tiny ones. You’ll thank me later as you’ll get almost as much pumpkin puree from a couple small ones as I got from this ginormous one!

Preheat your oven to 350 and throw the whole pumpkin in the oven on a foil lined baking sheet.

Bake for 20-40 minutes, or until you can insert a knife without too much trouble. The actual timing for that will depend on the size of your pumpkin. Once you an insert a knife, remove the pumpkin from the oven, and cut it into several good-sized pieces. The idea is to hasten the cooking time by allowing it to cook from the inside out. Bake until the flesh is easily pierced with a butter knife. For this pumpkin, that meant another hour in the oven. Sugar pumpkins will require much less baking time.

Remove from the oven and let cool. Seriously. Let it cool all the way unless you’re a masochist who likes burning the flesh off your fingers.

Ignore the huge bottle of vodka in the background. I promise I’m not a drunkard. It’s for making this. No, really. I swear it is!

Remove the skin and seeds from the pumpkin. Place the remainder of the flesh in a separate bowl.

And here is where it gets fun. And by fun, I mean messy. At this point you can toss all your pumpkin puree into a food processor and let whirl until it’s really smooth. If it’s still too watery at that point, place several paper towels in a strainer that has been set over a large bowl. Pour the pumpkin onto the paper towels and let sit until the pumpkin is the desired consistency.

OR…. you can be super cool like me and use this nifty KitchenAid attachment. First, put the pumpkin in a strainer to let some of the excess moisture drain out. Easier to do that now than later.

Then, feed the pumpkin through the shoot of the fruit and vegetable strainer. You won’t have any waste. In one bowl, the pumpkin will be more watery. In another, it will be more solid. The solid pumpkin is ready for immediate use.

After you’ve extruded all your pumpkin, set a strainer lined with paper towels on top of a large bowl and pour the watery pumpkin mixture through the paper towels. Let rest for 1 hour, or until pumpkin is the constancy you desire.

And voila! Enough pumpkin to get you through the baking season! I got about 8 cups of pumpkin puree from this haul. I gave half of it to my mom because she’s awesome (hi mom!) and saved the rest for making all kinds of amazing pumpkin-filled goodies to share with you. Like the soup that I shared on Thursday. You read about that, right? If not, here it is.

I’m not sure if mashed potatoes will ever be considered a health food, but I certainly don’t feel guilty about giving myself a double portion of these. Instead of having a stick of butter, they have a mere tablespoon. To give the potatoes that same smooth, buttery taste, a bit of sour cream and a splash of milk goes a long way. The secret to these amazing potatoes isn’t just the ingredients, though. It’s also in how they’re cooked. Cook’s Illustrated originally posted the recipe for their light mashed potatoes in one cookbook and their alternative cooking method for full-fat potatoes in another cookbook. I decided to experiment with combining the new cooking method with their light mashed potato recipe and boy oh boy! These were the fluffiest, smoothest, creamiest, most delicious mashed potatoes I have *ever* eaten. The cooler fall and winter weather is a perfect excuse to load up my plate with these spuds.

I promise you that if you try these mashed potatoes, you’ll never go back to the old ways of making taters again!!!

Continue reading: “lite” fluffy mashed potatoes

These cookies are dedicated to Sherron, the blogger at Simply Gourmet Photography. Sherron cannot eat gluten in any form, so I thought I’d make her a cookie that is flour-free.

Let me preface this by saying that I’m a huge fan of flour. I buy my APF in 50 pound bags. I’m also a huge fan of butter. I even did a butter tasting. I panic if I have only 2 pounds of butter in the fridge at any given moment. That said, I don’t often make anything that is gluten or dairy free, let alone something that is gluten *and* dairy free. No one cut the flour out of these cookies to make them safe for Celiac eaters. Saveur just preferred the taste of the cookies without the flour. And when I looked more closely at the recipe, I realized that they’re the only cookies I’ve ever seen that have neither flour nor butter. Cookies with no flour or butter? What will they think of next?

Continue reading: peanut butter cookies (which happen to be gluten and dairy free)

I went to Trader Joe’s the other day to buy ricotta and experienced hefty sticker shock. That stuff is expensive! And it’s not even organic. I decided it must be cheaper to make my own, so I did. I can make the same amount of organic ricotta cheese for less than the cost of a container of non-organic ricotta! And better yet, it’s sooooo easy to make! Just heat your ingredients, add some lemon juice, and let sit for an hour. Voila! Homemade ricotta!

Continue reading: ricotta cheese

I threw a baby shower for a friend on Saturday. I love making creative and tasty foods, but I am *not* a good theme party hostess because I am terrible at pulling off decorations and games. In fact, I was making up the rules to Saturday’s games as we were playing them. That’s how much of a procrastinator I am when it comes to tackling a project that is not “my thing.” For Saturday’s party, I told the guest of honor that she could depend up me for food and maybe games, but decorations weren’t happening. She is very gracious and was fine with this arrangement. As I was talking with friends about the party, I realized I should at least make *something* that was baby shower themed. Enter these sugar cookies, decorated with a K for their little baby, Kavin.

When I’m not procrastinating, I’m delegating. My friends are in awe of my delegation skills. I’m not sure how one could be in awe of a skill that is essentially passing off one’s work to another person. It’s simply a matter of asking. We had 4 girls from Utah staying at our house this weekend through the www.couchsurfing.org program. As soon as they stepped in the door, I had them roped into decorating these cookies. It’s not that I couldn’t do it. It’s just that they could! And given that they were staying at my house for three days, they weren’t really in a place to decline my request. I have made these cookies loads of times in the past. I make them for every major holiday as cookie decorating is a fun way to spend time with family while simultaneously giving your hands something to do. Some sugar cookies puff when baking, meaning your little snowflake can end up resembling a snow cone, but not these! They stay perfectly in place. And as long as your icing is the right consistency, they are so easy to decorate. Or, at least, that’s what my house guests tell me!

I personally don’t eat sugar cookies (what’s the point!? there’s no chocolate!) but I hear from other sugar cookie fans that these not only look delicious, they also taste fabulous. That’s a twofer, folks. Everyone loves a twofer, so make these cookies for your next gathering and watch people ooh and ahh at them and then gobble them up!

My garden has been more prolific than usual this year, and those of you who read this blog often have seen more than your fair share of posts featuring tomatoes as a result. We harvested about 150 pounds of tomatoes this year, and figuring out how to use those requires a fair amount of creativity.

Every summer I make a bunch of roasted tomato soup and can it for winter. It’s easy to make since it does not require peeling the tomatoes. It’s also absolutely delicious and makes a great quick meal when I am hungry and crave comfort food. After making five gallons of soup last year, I learned that we do not need five gallons of soup. Even if it is the best tomato soup around, that’s just way, way, way too much soup for our little family of two. So, after turning our first 40 pounds of tomatoes into jars of soup for our family (plus a few to share!) I declared a moratorium on tomato soup for the season.

Last year I also canned almost two gallons of pasta sauce to eat throughout the winter months. Given how much I love pasta, this was a fabulous choice and the amount was perfect for us. The problem with pasta sauce is that you have to blanch the tomatoes, throw them in an ice bath, peel off the skins, dice them, and *then* you can make the sauce. Oh, so much work! But I did it. About a month ago, I blanched and cooled and peeled and diced for 3 hours one night while playing Princess Bride in the background (“Inconceivable!”) and getting tomato juice and seeds all over every possible surface in my kitchen. It was a real tomato sauce making party.

The next day, my mom told me she had picked out something for my birthday but wasn’t sure if I wanted it. This is a problem when you have a daughter who is a kitchen gadget collector. How do you track all the toys she keeps buying? Mom hemmed and hawed and finally decided to just tell me about the gift to make sure it was something I’d want. I took one look and said, “I have that! It’s a fruit and vegetable strainer for my KitchenAid. It’s how I make gallons of applesauce every year when my tree dumps apples faster than I can bake with them.” My mom looked at me utterly perplexed. “Then why didn’t you use that for your tomatoes last night?” I stared at her blankly. Then it dawned on me. Oh my gosh. This is a fruit and veggie strainer. That’s what it does! It strains out the icky stuff! Oh my gosh… Oh my gosh. Oh. My. Gosh. Hours and hours and hours wasted on a task that could have taken minutes. I could have kicked myself. My dad suggested that instead of buying me nice things for my birthday, they should just buy me instruction manuals. Ha, ha, Dad. Very funny.

No worries, though. My garden had one more 40 pound tomato harvest, so I decided to give it a try. It took a few tries to figure out how to maximize the results, but let me tell you, this is a breeze compared to the way that I used to puree tomatoes! Do you have so many tomatoes that you don’t know what to do with them? Here’s how to puree them with minimal effort. I made a batch of pasta sauce immediately with my puree based largely on this recipe. I adjusted the sugar and spices to taste since I was not using the traditional canned tomatoes. The sauce was so awesome that I canned even more jars for winter. More pasta for us!

tomato puree

1. Place as many racks as you can in the oven evenly spaced apart. Preheat oven to 500 degrees with convection turned on. If you do not have convection, you will need to rotate your pans as you cook.
2. Cut your tomatoes into chunks or slices and place on a pan. Don’t worry too much about how big the pieces are (I just halved or quartered my tomatoes, depending on their size) and certainly don’t bother with making them pretty. They’re about to be pureed. Save the pretty stuff for later.
3. Place the pans in the oven and cook (rotating after 7 minutes if you don’t have convection) for 10-15 minutes, or until the tomatoes are soft and the skins are bursting a bit. Remove and place in a bowl. Refill the pans with any remaining tomatoes and cook again.
4. Ladle the tomatoes into the feed chute of the food mill and watch as the water and puree pours into one bowl and the “ickies” (stems, skins, seeds, cores) plop into another.

Some notes that you should most definitely read:

One, you’ll notice in my set up above that my bowls are all stacked kadiwampus. That’s necessary because the ickies tend to fall backwards into the bowl of puree that you’re making. It’s a bad product design, but there’s nothing I can do about it now, so I have this system set up to ensure that my puree stays pure.

Two, if you don’t heat your tomatoes first, you will lose a lot of the good stuff to the “icky” pile. Just cook ‘em first like I suggested and you will be happy.

Three, my tomatoes are very, very watery. Yours might be too. If that’s the case, boil the puree along with a can or two of tomato paste on medium low for as many hours as it takes to thicken up to the consistency that you’re happy with. If you need to do this, stir the mixture every 30-45 minutes to ensure it doesn’t burn to the bottom.

Four: I would not add flavorings like onions, salt, garlic or any other spices until you want to cook something with your puree. Other than the puree that I reserved for use in pasta sauce, I canned the remaining puree without any additional seasonings so that I can add it to soups and stews later and then adjust seasonings to taste at that time.

My parents went to Brentwood this past weekend and bought a box of corn. Then they left it in my fridge with a note: “We left some corn in the fridge for you.” Apparently my parents’ idea of “some” corn is 50-60 ears. I think the average person would call that “a boatload of corn,” but my parents are nowhere near average.

Brentwood is the corn capital of Northern California and, according to our local paper, its corn may even be the gold standard for the entire western United States. The corn that my parents bought was so sweet and tender that I could have eaten it straight off the cob without even cooking it. Even I can’t go through *that* much corn, though, so it was time to figure out a way to store it for later use.

The whole process of freezing corn is pretty simple. From start to finish, it took my mom and me less than an hour, which is not bad given how many ears we were working with!

Have more corn than you know what to do with? Here’s how to preserve it:

Fill a *large* pot 3/4 full with water. The bigger, the better. Bring the water to a boil. Fill a large bowl with cold water. Set aside.

Shuck the corn and remove all the silks.

Once the water is boiling, add several ears of corn and cook for 4 minutes. While the corn is cooking, add a bunch of ice to the bowl of cold water. Immediately transfer the cooked corn to the ice bath until chilled. Remove from the ice bath and set aside. Repeat the boiling and ice bath procedures until all your corn is blanched.

The secret to getting the corn off the cob is to use an angel food cake or Bundt cake pan. Place the tip of the corn in the hole in the pan and use a serrated knife to cut the corn off the cobs. The corn won’t slip and the kernels will fall into the pan! After you’ve removed the kernels from the cob, scrape the cobs using the back of a butter knife. The juices that come out are liquid gold. You may eat the corn as it is, but I recommend you tread with caution. Once you try some, you’ll want to eat it all. Refrain from eating all the corn immediately so that you can have some later.

Place the corn in freezer bags and freeze. When ready to use, simply thaw the corn and add it to your recipe. Or, if you want additional flavor, roast the thawed corn in a skillet on the stove over medium-high heat until it starts to brown before adding it to the recipe.

When my husband and I were on vacation a couple of weeks ago, every place we stayed at offered English muffins for breakfast. I think of English muffins as a treat because they are so darned expensive to buy at the store. After 10 days of filling those nooks and crannies with butter (but not great butter… should have packed that with us!) I was hooked. I decided to make my own and see how they compared.

Alton Brown is the source of this recipe, and the man is a genius! These English muffins are amazing! They have all the holes I was looking for! And if you can make pancakes, you can make English muffins, because English muffins are just a glorified pancake recipe! You just pour the batter into rings – or in my case, canning lids – and voila! English muffins!

just-like-thomas english muffins

www.foodnetwork.com

• 1/2 cup non-fat powdered milk
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon shortening
• 1 cup hot water
• 1 envelope dry yeast
• 1/8 teaspoon sugar
• 1/3 cup warm water
• 2 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1 cup AP flour and 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour and had great results)
• Non-stick vegetable spray and oil for brushing
• Special equipment: electric griddle, 3-inch metal rings*

In a bowl combine the powdered milk, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, shortening, and hot water; stir until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Let cool. In a separate bowl combine the yeast and 1/8 teaspoon of sugar in 1/3 cup of warm water and rest until yeast has dissolved. Add this to the dry milk mixture. Add the sifted flour and beat thoroughly with wooden spoon. Cover the bowl and let it rest in a warm spot for 45-60 minutes (longer = more holes!).

Preheat the griddle to 300 degrees F and brush the bottom of skillet with a thin coat of oil. I don’t have an electric griddle with a temperature gauge, so I just cooked my muffins on the stove-top with the heat set to low. If you are in the same situation, I recommend cooking one muffin as a tester muffin before filling your skillet with as many rings as you can. Because the muffins cook for 5 minutes per side, they are easy to burn. You want a temperature that will allow the outsides to brown nicely while the insides are just cooked.

Add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt to mixture and beat thoroughly. Coat the metal rings with vegetable spray and place them on the griddle. Using an ice cream scoop, place 1-2 scoops of batter into each ring and cover with a lid or cookie sheet and cook for 5 to 6 minutes. Remove the lid and flip rings using tongs. Cover with the lid and cook for another 5 to 6 minutes or until golden brown. Place on a cooling rack, remove rings and cool. Split with fork and serve. Note that these must be split open with a fork. If you cut them open with a knife, you can kiss all those beautiful holes goodbye!

*If you don’t have muffin rings, try wide-mouth canning lids or mini-tart rings. And if you don’t have those, try using tuna cans with the top and bottom removed!

If you follow me on Facebook, you have probably already read about our butter tasting experiment. I was inspired by America’s Test Kitchen’s latest video in which they tasted several butters and rated them either “highly recommended” or “recommended with reservations” or “not recommended.” Would we generate the same results using a double blind taste test here at home? I had to know.

I went to Whole Foods with my mom and loaded up on $25 worth of butter, in addition to two butters that I had purchased at Costco. I had my mom dish out a pat of each butter into a numbered dish and write the numbers on the packages of butter for later cross reference. Then I whipped up a huge loaf of delicious Rustic Italian Bread (recipe to come soon!) and waited for my hubby to get home so we could dig in.

We started with four butters. Brant took a bite, grabbed a pencil and paper and wrote:

Figures.

I tasted the same one and agreed. It did indeed taste like butter. I tried #2. It also tasted like butter. Uh, oh? Was this whole experiment a waste? After tasting the third and fourth butters I began to realize that I’m no Chris Kimball, the host of America’s Test Kitchen. I couldn’t tell the difference between any of them. Meanwhile, as Brant continued tasting, he was able to discern subtle differences. “#2 has a strong starting taste but then it just disappears… it’s like it’s watery.” Or, “#3 is tangy… I don’t like that one.” I did not believe him. Could he really tell a difference or was he pulling my leg? I sent him out of the room and buttered a piece of bread. He returned and kept his eyes closed while tasting it. “#1. Definitely #1.” And he was right. I sent him back out again and we repeated the test. He knew without a doubt that this second sample was #3. Hmph. Obviously there was a difference. (Note: I tried taking the same taste test. My results were less than abysmal. I clearly cannot fool anyone. )

The next night we had friends over to do the same taste test, although this time we added the other 4 butters to the mix. We tasted, tasted, and tasted some more. We wrote down comments. Courtnie said, “#3 tastes like it has plants in it.” Josh exclaimed, “This one is really salty to me!” Of course, the one he referenced was the only non-salted butter in the line-up. We cracked up at this realization. Courtnie declared #7 to be her favorite, followed by #1 and #5.

For Father’s Day my mom, brother, and father tasted the butters and give their opinions. My dad also preferred #7. Brant still declared that #1 was definitely the best. My mom preferred #1 as well, but also liked #5 and #7. A common theme was occurring. My friend Nicky joined the fray later in the evening and tasted all of them in order, reaching #7 and saying, “Oooh! I like this one!”

Finally, it was time to reveal our contestants.

#1: Plugra – This butter was rated as a favorite by everyone who joined the taste test. This is about $7.50 per pound.

#2: KerryGold Irish Butter - This butter had the highest salt content of all of our butter choices, but no one liked it compared with the others. This butter is $6 per pound.

#3: Organic Valley Pasture Butter – This seasonally available butter is cultured, meaning it has a tangy, almost cheesy taste. Few people preferred this, and Brant’s comment was, “If I wanted cheese, I would have asked for cheese.” This butter is about $8 per pound.

#4: Strauss Family Creamery Organic European Butter – This butter was lightly salted so it was difficult to compare with the more heavily salted alternatives. Most agreed that if it had just a bit more salt, it would have been in their top three if it wasn’t there already. This butter is about $6 per pound.

#5: Lurpak – This is the butter that America’s Test Kitchen favored over all. It was definitely among our top three! This butter is about $8 per pound.

#6: German Butter – this unsalted butter was really impossible to compare with our other salted versions. No one liked it, but we all knew that this is likely because it had no salt.

#7: Costco’s Kirkland Brand Organic Butter – This was a real surprise winner! Almost everyone loved this butter even though it’s not a true “gourmet” butter. It’s about $4 a pound.

#8, 9: We also threw in two “cheap” butters to compare with all these gourmet options. One was the Costco Kirkland unsalted butter to which I added salt after experiencing peoples’ opinions of #6. Another was a container of whipped Challenge Butter. Most people found the Kirkland unsalted brand to be unexceptional. And the Challenge butter? “Ick! It tastes like it has chemicals!” I tasted the Challenge butter and almost gagged. There was a major difference between this and the other gourmet butters we had tasted.

Overall comments? Plugra, Lurpak, and Kirkland’s Organic Butter were our favorites. Brant says that the Plugra was definitely his favorite, but that the Kirkland brand was the best value for his money so he would most likely buy that. However, once in a while it’s fun to have a special treat. When those times come, we will be choosing Plugra.