Author Archives: kzmclain

Kids’ Whimsical Cooking: Snickerdoodles

Posted in Desserts, Kids' Cooking, Recipes by

Hello, this is Addie and I just made snickerdoodle cookies. They are a great snack to enjoy. The only ingredient that may not be in your pantry is cream of tartar. Everyone that has tasted my snickerdoodles has to have another.

I have used these delicious treats for fundraisers, dinner parties, and more. They are fairly inexpensive and take less than an hour to make from start to finish. Also, it is a fun activity to pass the time you would otherwise be using sitting in front of a screen.

I hope you get a chance to make these wonderful cookies. Have fun cooking.

Snickerdoodles from Betty Crocker

Ingredients
1-1/2 c. sugar
½ c. butter, softened
½ c. shortening
2 eggs
2-3/4 c. all-purpose flour
2 t. cream of tartar
1 t. baking soda
¼ t. salt
¼ c. sugar
2 t. ground cinnamon

Process
Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix 1-1/2 c. sugar, the butter, shortening and eggs in a large bowl. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt.

Shape dough into 1-1/4 in. balls. Mix ¼ c. sugar and the cinnamon. Roll balls in cinnamon-sugar mixture. Place 2 in. apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8 – 10 min. or until set. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack to cool.

Nana’s Notes: You might laugh when you read that Addie serves snickerdoodles at dinner parties, but she has, in fact, hosted two formal dinner parties. She invites all the kids in her fifth grade class to her house. They dress up — boys in ties; girls in pretty dresses. Addie’s brother and two sisters act as wait staff and Addie (with the help of her mom and dad) has prepared dinner. This time she made steak (which her dad grilled), pasta, a fruit salad, potatoes, and pumpkin pie and snickerdoodles for dessert. Last Friday’s dinner party included 20, mostly boys!

Also, a note about snickerdoodles. My brother is a professional baker. Even he is getting excited about my blog! He phoned me earlier this week when he heard I was presenting cookie recipes and gave me this suggestion for snickerdoodles. Add a little cinnamon to the batter to give the cookie a bit of a surprise cinnamon taste. He also suggested making a buttercream, to which you would add a bit of cinnamon, and use it as a filling between two cookies. Snickerdoodle Sandwich Cookies. Yum.

Frightening Fridge

Posted in Desserts, Recipes by

#itstimetocleanmyrefridgerator

Pretty soon I’ll grow tired of hashtags. But I’m on a roll right now. By the way, only two people responded to my plea for help in understanding the concept around hashtags – both of my sisters. One sister told me she thinks they are a way to simply emphasize the meaning of a Twitter or Facebook post. My other sister told me I’m overthinking the whole idea and I should just enjoy them as they are frequently very amusing. Okay then.

I’m addicted to cooking programs. I probably watch more Food Network shows than anything else on television. I’m not so nuts about the competition programs they seem to be moving towards. I like the pure cooking shows. Ina Garten. Ree Drummond. Bobby Flay.

Here’s the thing — no matter who the cook is, when they open their refrigerator door, whatever it is they are looking for is right there in front of them.

No digging through containers of leftover food from three weeks ago. No half-full cartons of half-and-half with expired pull dates. Several of them. No sippy cups containing an inch of Peach-Mango juice or filmy chocolate milk. No sticky ketchup bottles. No fuzzy strawberries.

Not that my refrigerator has any of those things. Ahem.

It just seems like I’m always in a hurry when I am putting things away in my refrigerator. I’m also apparently in a hurry when I make my grocery lists because I don’t take the time to see if there is half-and-half in the fridge, and simply buy more for a given recipe. Bad planning. Don’t do it, Kids.

To be fair, I don’t have a staff that arranges my refrigerator with fake products, and then makes sure that the eggs for my cake recipe are right in front. In a pretty egg holder. What’s more, Ina Garten doesn’t have grandkids that pour themselves a glass of milk and put the empty carton back in the fridge. Nor is her husband Jeffrey experimenting with a new Soda Stream, resulting in 27 different bottles of unknown flavor filling up her fridge.

Once every two or three weeks, I go through my refrigerator and toss anything that looks like a science project gone wrong. And judging from the looks of my fridge currently, it’s about that time.

Now, on to cookies….

Before determining which cookie recipes I was going to use this week, I asked my sisters if they had a particular cookie recipe that their kids liked when they were growing up. One sister immediately told me her kids always asked for chocolate chip cookies. And let’s face it, there is nothing better than chocolate chip cookies. They’re good warm. They’re good cooled. They’re good for several days, though they never last that long. But I didn’t want to use that recipe because I’m guessing everyone has a chocolate chip cookie recipe (and probably 98 percent of us use the Toll House recipe).

She also said her kids liked candy cane cookies, which she would make every Christmas. I will wait until nearer to Christmas to post that recipe, but I must admit I was duly impressed by the fact that making candy cane cookies involves weaving together two pieces of dough. That requires more work than plopping dough onto a cookie sheet. Impressive.

My other sister responded with a certainty that her kids would say it was the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies from the Quaker Oats oatmeal box. Again, no argument here. Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies are delicious. But I was looking for something a bit different. “But those are my kids favorite cookies,” she said. “They would tell you that too.” It amused me to learn that later that day, when she asked her thirty-something son what his favorite cookie was growing up, chocolate chip oatmeal cookies weren’t even mentioned. “Those peanut butter cookies with the chocolate kisses,” he said without hesitation.

Voila!

Peanut Butter Cookies with the Chocolate Kisses (courtesy, Hershey’s)

Ingredients
48 Hersey’s kisses
½ c. shortening
¾ c. creamy peanut butter
1/3 c. granulated sugar
1/3 c. brown sugar
1 egg
2 T. milk
1 t. vanilla extract
1-1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
Additional granulated sugar

Process
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Remove wrappers from chocolates.

Beat shortening and peanut butter in large bowl until well blended. Add 1/3 c. granulated sugar and brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk, and vanilla; beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda, and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.

Shape dough into 1-in balls. Roll in granulated sugar; place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8 – 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and immediately press a chocolate into center of each cookie; cookie will crack around edges. Cool completely.

Makes about 48 cookies.

Nana’s Note: I’m pretty sure if I ask my son what his favorite childhood cookie recipe was, he will also say peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses. He wasn’t denied peanut butter as a child as I was.

#carrymekickingandscreamingintotwentyfirstcentury

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Recently, sitting around the table after dinner with our son and daughter-in-law and their kids, we got to talking about men and women who dress too young for their age. I mentioned that I was really cognizant of this phenomenon when I shop for clothes (which is almost never). I’m not ready for pink polyester slacks, but I also don’t want to look like an aged Barbie doll. My daughter-in-law assured me I dressed appropriately, and, in fact, she said she thought I was kind of “hip.” I looked down at my dirty black turtleneck sweater that is at least 15 years old and my crocs and laughed out loud. “But,” she pointed out, “you’re on Facebook.”

This was on top of recent conversation I had with another daughter-in-law, who relayed a conversation she overheard recently as she was driving all four of her kids somewhere or other. She said they were talking about their grandparents (they have three grandmothers and one grandfather). Apparently Bill and I were voted “Best Backyard to Play In” (not surprising since our yard is very large and we have a play set) and “Most Modern House.” Now that one made me laugh too, seeings as my appliances are all 20 years old and I haven’t bought furniture or new carpeting since the Eisenhower Administration. Aha. But I do have an Ipad. With kids’ games on it. And Netflix. And Wii. Boom. Most Modern.

I will admit to owning an Ipad, an Ipod, and a laptop computer. Bill and I are about to finally spring for Iphones. It’s true I regularly check and post on Facebook and Pinterest. I even have a Twitter account, but never post and rarely remember to check my twitter feeds. And, for crying out loud, I blog.

But, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what hashtags are about. All of the sudden, every one of my Facebook friends under the age of 50 includes hashtags: #Ilovebeingpregnant; #mygardenisinfullbloom; #mydaughterdidthecutestthing; and so forth. Why? I’m not complaining; I simply don’t know what they mean. And no one I’ve asked can adequately get through to my pea-sized brain. Of course, I have made the mistake of asking only people who are over 50.

So please, I beg anyone who thinks they can make me understand to please, please, please give it a whirl. Send me an email, leave me a comment, call me on my antiquated cell phone. Tell me the purpose of hashtags.

Now on to cookies….

One of my favorite store-bought cookies are those hard little oatmeal cookies with the sweet powder sugar frosting – I think they are called Mother’s. I never get them because Bill would think I had lost my mind if I bought a ready-made cookie that wasn’t an Oreo. And I don’t need to have an entire bag of cookies lying around that only I will eat. But I found this recipe on Pinterest, and they really are very good.

By the way, at the same dinner about which I spoke at the beginning of this post, I brought out cookies afterwards – the double chocolate cookies and these oatmeal cookies. My 3-year-old granddaughter eagerly took three or four of the oatmeal cookies and, before we knew it, had licked the frosting off the top and set the icingless cookie back on the plate. Photo of her work here:

Old-fashioned Iced Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients
2 c. old-fashioned oats
2 c. all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1 t. baking soda
2 t. cinnamon
½ t. nutmeg
1 t. salt
1 c. unsalted butter, melted
1 c. granulated sugar
½ c. packed brown sugar
2 eggs

Icing
2 c. powdered sugar
3-5 T milk

Process
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease cookie sheet.

In a food process or blender, pulse/blend oats until partly ground. Oats should be coarse, not a fine powder. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Mix until combined.

In a large bowl beat melted butter and sugars. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add dry ingredients and stir until thoroughly combined.

Drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto prepared cookie sheet. Bake 14-16 min until lightly browned.

Once cookies have completely cooled, whisk together powdered sugar and milk until smooth and desired consistency. Frost each cookie and allow glaze to set before storing.

Nana’s Note: It was while making this cookie that I discovered my food processor was no longer working. So much for being modern. Instead of frosting the cookies, I simply dipped them in the frosting. I had about a quarter cup of frosting left after I had frosted the cookies, which I threw away. I wish I had saved it and given it to my granddaughter in lieu of licking the tops off the cookies!

Guilty Groceries

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I enjoy shopping at my neighborhood Whole Foods. The produce is lovely and often locally grown. The seafood looks and tastes fresh and the fishmongers can always answer my questions. The meat is delicious and the butchers are happy to cut up a chicken for me or slice one of their enormous steaks in half so that Bill and I can share. They may groan internally but they always smile. Best of all, it’s only a few blocks from my house, so it is a nice walk. I frequently put two of my younger grandchildren in my double stroller and walk over.

However, in my quick trip yesterday afternoon to buy a loaf of bread, I noticed that I was inundated by guilt producers.

It started even before I got in the door as I was greeted with a large sign that read Our turkeys were responsibly raised. I immediately began thinking about all of the Butterballs and Jennie-O’s that I have bought over the past 40 years, and I have no idea what their upbringing was like. I’ve never even given it a thought. Should I have? Those turkeys could very well have been irresponsibly raised. I’m really not making light of this notion (well, not too much anyway). I am opposed to animal cruelty. Still, I don’t want to have to worry that much about my Thanksgiving turkey. Thankfully (pun intended), my daughter-in-law will be purchasing the turkey this year so it will be her worry. I’ll try not to think about it as I enjoy my turkey leg.

Then, on my way to the bakery, I passed their small clothing line, which sits under a sign that boasts All of our clothes are eco-friendly and sustainable. Oh my word. I’m pretty sure none of my clothes are sustainable. I don’t even know what that means. I’ve never seen the word sustainable on any signage at Kohls. More to worry about.

I finally reached the bakery, selected a nice loaf of ciabatta bread, and handed it to the cheerful bakery worker to be sliced. Suddenly her smile is gone. “This loaf is organic and I can’t promise you that the crumbs on the slicer are organic. Will that be okay?” she asks me somberly.

Seriously?

I assured her it would be fine, as I am sure the pork sausages we had for breakfast weren’t organic, nor were the Taco Bell burritos we had for lunch. And I don’t even want to talk about all of the leftover Halloween candy.

And then there was the inevitable question at the cashier stand, “Would you like to donate a dollar to (fill in the blank). I think today’s donation had something to do with Ghana, which I’m not certain is even still a country. It probably is. I have nothing against donating to causes, but I really do have a hard time keeping them all straight. Still, if I say no, well, more guilt.

I assume that I feel guilty mostly because I’m a second-born and, therefore, a people-pleaser. But I must admit I yearn for the days when my most serious concern while grocery shopping was making sure I was getting the carton of milk with the most distant pull date.

This week I am featuring cookies. There are nearly a million cookie recipes available, but I was looking for recipes that were a favorite of members of our family. I started with Bill since he was sitting closest to me when I got the idea. He would always choose chocolate chip cookies. Seriously, who wouldn’t? But I asked him to think outside the box, and he recalled cookies that my niece’s 85-year-old neighbor made for her several years ago. Chocolate cookies with chocolate chips. In his mind, it couldn’t possibly get better than that.

Double Chocolate Cookies

Ingredients
½ c. butter, room temperature
½ c. granulated sugar
½ c. brown sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla extract
1-1/2 c. all-purpose flour
¼ c. unsweetened cocoa
½ t. baking soda
½ t. baking powder
½ t. salt
½ c. milk chocolate chips
½ c. semisweet chocolate chips

Process
Preheat oven to 350.

Cream the butter and sugars in a large bowl with an electric mixer on high speed. Lower to medium, and add the egg and vanilla. Sift together the flour cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. On low speed, add the dry mixture to the butter mixture. Beat until combined. Add chocolate chips.

Form the dough into 1-1/2 in. balls. Bake on parchment paper or aluminum foil-lined baking sheet 2 inches apart until centers are set, about 12 min.

Nana’s Note: I used the chocolate chips I had on hand, which happened to be semi-sweet mini chocolate chips. The mini chips completely melted into the rest of the chocolate. Next time I would use regular sized chips. Still very yummy.

Ghosts, Goblins, and Grandkids

Posted in Whimsies by

Halloween’s over and we have spent a day either nibbling at the leftover candy or sneakily taking pieces out of our kids’ or grandkids’ stashes. (By the way, they notice; they’ve counted.)

I loved Halloween as a kid, but have never really been excited about dressing up as an adult. I think I did it once. I was invited to a Halloween party – costumes mandatory. So I borrowed nursing scrubs from a friend, put a stethoscope around my neck and called it a costume. However, though I can be cranky about some things (remember my all-things-pumpkin post), dressing up in Halloween costumes isn’t something about which I’ll pick a battle. I’m in favor of having fun.

My grandchildren looked forward to Halloween for weeks. One of my 5-year-old granddaughters asked me to count the days for her every time she saw me. What could be more fun for a kid than to dress up as a favorite character and get candy that your parents actually let you eat?

We were big on trick-or-treating as children. In the Midwest, you could almost count on it being cold and probably snowy. Our parents bought our costume which, in those days consisted of a plastic, frightening-looking mask (even if you were Snow White it was frightening) that you couldn’t see out of and a suit made of a highly flammable slippery material brightly colored with a lead-based dye. But you really never got to show off your costume because you had to cover it with a heavy winter coat. By the end of the evening, we had to toss away the costume because it had frayed to nothingness, which is why any of us ever lived past childhood. Nowadays parents seem to be a bit more creative about their kids’ costumes. Just more stress in the life of a busy parent.

And we had a route we followed every year. Up one side of our street all the way to school, and then back down. When we were a bit older, we ventured into the “rich area” on which our neighborhood bordered because you would anticipate better candy (which never really held true, but you might get a peek into their house). There was one house we all visited in which an elderly woman lived alone. Every year, she gave out gourds which she had grown in her garden. Gourds. A totally useless produce item. Inedible. Not particularly pretty unless you have an arrangement of five or six alongside a haystack. But every year we would trick-or-treat at her house. Go figure.

I didn’t go out with the grandkids this year as they trick-or-treated. Instead, I stayed at their house and handed out the candy to the kids that came to their door. It was a nice night, and it was fun to see the variety of costumes. In a true confessions moment, I have to admit that I also ate almost all of the Twizzlers that were in the basket. No one’s the wiser.

My grandkids all had really cute costumes. I must admit I’m partial to the pirate and his parrot/brother.

That Toddlin’ Town

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When I grew up in Nebraska, my dad owned his own business – a bakery. It kept him busy seven days a week. But once a year he would make necessary arrangements with his business, and take the family on a vacation. We almost always went to Colorado. There were a couple of exceptions, but not many. My mom and dad loved, loved, loved the mountains, which is why they eventually sold their Nebraska bakery and purchased one in Leadville, Colorado.

It’s interesting to me now that I’m an adult that even though it’s about the same distance to drive to Chicago as it was to the Colorado, we never did. There were those mountains. So it wasn’t until I was way into my adulthood that I saw Chicago for the first time. And then I went and married someone from Chicago. Twice, in fact. Funny.

Bill is from the south side of Chicago (where I’m quite certain he never knew Bad, Bad Leroy Brown). What I have learned is that a man can leave Chicago, but Chicago never leaves a man. At least not when it comes to eating. Bill does love his Chicago food.

The most unique thing about Chicago is the number of family-owned food businesses you see as you drive down any even marginally busy street. Most are pizzerias or hotdog stands. If you’re eating Domino’s Pizza in Chicago, well, you must just be related to the owner. And people are absolutely committed to both their pizzeria and their hotdog stand of choice. Woe betide anyone who disagrees with their choice of deep dish or cracker-crust. That’s a North Side v. South Side thing, and they take it very seriously.

Same goes for hotdogs. Bill grew up going to a neighborhood hotdog stand called Reds. Sometime after we were married, which means he hadn’t lived in Chicago for twenty-some years, Bill learned that Reds was going to be torn down so that an Arts Center could be built. “An Art Center,” Bill exclaimed when he heard of the impending change. “There are a million Art Centers in Chicago. They don’t need another Art Center. They need to keep Reds.” He seemed to forget that if there are a million Art Centers in Chicago, there are a million-and-a-half hotdog stands. The Art Center was built and Chicago and Bill both survived, though he’s never visited the Art Center and still grumbles every time he sees it.

I tell you this because my condiment today is giardiniera, a spicy, pickley combination of cauliflower, carrots, celery, and sweet and hot peppers that Chicagoans use primarily to jazz up their Italian beef sandwiches. I for one have never been overly enthusiastic about Italian beef, a notion Bill simply can’t understand. It’s somewhat ordinary thinly sliced beef placed on a French roll that has been dipped in thin gravy. The gravy is put over the entire sandwich, and it is topped with either hot peppers (giardiniera) or sweet peppers.

But I am a fan of giardiniera, preferring, however, to put it on other things, such as bratwurst, or over eggs, or on a hamburger, etc. You can buy giardiniera at the grocery store where you will find it amongst the pickles. I find it very easy to make, though it takes a couple of days since it requires marinating overnight. I use a recipe provided by Chicago native and Food Network star Jeff Mauro.

By the way, since I seem to have 4 quarts of giardiniera in my fridge, what are some other things I can do with it? Any ideas?

Homemade Hot Giardiniera

Ingredients
¼ c. table salt
1 c. small-diced carrots
1 c. tiny cauliflower florets
4 – 8 Serrano peppers, sliced (depending on heat level desired)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 stalk celery, diced small
1 red bell pepper, diced small
2 c. canola oil
1 T. dried oregano
½ t. black pepper

Process
Combine 2 c. water and the salt in a glass or non-reactive bowl. Mix until the salt is dissolved. Add the carrots, cauliflower, serranos, garlic, celery and bell pepper to the salt water and stir to combine. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Day 2, drain and rinse the vegetables really well. In a clean bowl, mix together the oil with the oregano and pepper. Add the vegetables and mix to combine. Allow to marinate overnight. Giardiniera will only get better with time. After 2 days at the most in the bowl, you can place in air-tight mason jars and keep in the fridge for up to 3 weeks.

Nana’s Note: This recipe doesn’t include any vinegar. Since I’m such a fan of pickles, I put in about a ¼ c. of vinegar on the second day. The heat level depends on the peppers. I find that some serranos and jalapenos are hotter than others.

Hot Stuff

Posted in Appetizers, Recipes by

I spent the first 18 years of my life playing, working, schooling, worshiping, loving and being loved, maturing, and, of course, eating in Columbus, Nebraska. Columbus is located in the eastern part of the state, smack dab in the middle if you’re looking north and south. It is a railroad town, the county seat in a richly agricultural area.

While the town is only just over an hour from Omaha, we rarely drove there. Times were different. Now 80 miles can be a commute to work; then it was a planned adventure. We went to Omaha twice each year: in the fall to buy school clothes and again at Christmas to see how the large department stores were decorated for the holidays.

When I lived there, Columbus boasted a population of somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 people. Most of the population was of European ancestry, heavy on the Irish, German, Polish and Slavic. I recall absolutely no people of color at that time. I believe there is a fairly sizeable Hispanic population these days.

I offer all of this background as a way of telling you that I ate absolutely no ethnic food and nothing spicy while growing up. The food I ate was delicious, but it tended to be meat, potatoes, and a side of vegetables. And even though we lived close to a city, when we were there, we ate spaghetti and meatballs and we thought we were worldly.

Sometime while I was in high school, a Taco John moved into our town. The only other chain restaurants at the time were a Pizza Hut and a Dairy Queen. It was the first time I ate Mexican food, and I wasn’t impressed. I think I ate there once.

In the seventies, my family moved to Leadville, Colorado. If my dad had purposely set out to find a town that was the polar opposite of Columbus, he couldn’t have done better than Leadville. High up in the Rocky Mountains, it was at that time primarily a mining community, and it really was – even then – the Wild, Wild West. The nearby molybdenum mine was the town’s biggest employer, and Leadville had a large Hispanic population.

As a result, for the first time my family tasted real Mexican food (sorry Taco John’s). And surprisingly, given our meat-and-potatoes background, each and every one of us was an immediate fan. The hotter, the better. Bring it on.

Being such big fans of spicy and delicious Mexican food, hot sauces and different spicy salsas seem to be a common condiment for my family. We all have our own versions – chunky pico de gallos, salsas, and creamy or chunky guacamoles.

My nephew Christopher has a salsa recipe that I particularly like. It can be really hot or really mild, depending on the amount of jalapeno and Serrano peppers you add. I add the full amount.

Christopher’s Salsa

Ingredients
1 small can of whole tomatoes, drained
1 can original Rotel tomatoes
2-3 green onions, roughly chopped
Handful of cilantro
1-2 jalapeno peppers
1 serrano pepper
½ t. garlic salt
1 t. salt
1 clove garlic, peeled
Juice of 1-2 limes

Process

Place all of the ingredients into a food processor or blender. Blend until it reaches desired consistency.

Nana’s Note: The above recipe makes about a pint-and-a-half of salsa. Remember that you can make peppers less hot by removing the seeds and the membranes. Tonight I am going to make tacos using Rachael Ray’s taco seasoning: 1 T. chili powder, 1 T. ground cumin, 1 T. garlic powder, 1 T. onion powder, ¼ – ½ t. crushed red pepper. The tacos will be sassed up by my delicious salsa.

Growing Up Peanut Butterless Doesn’t Produce Ax Murderers……

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….But first, I want to talk a bit about my readers and, in particular, commenting on my blog.

I am fairly new to this blogging stuff. Furthermore, I’m technically quite inept. So I have put together this blog as best I can, with some help from a few family members and friends. In fact, if my blog was a physical thing, it would be covered in duct tape and getting ready to fall over. It isn’t where I want to be yet, but it’s getting closer. For example, I want to be able to archive my recipes so that they can be easily accessed. But most of all, I want to be able to chat with my readers.

I’m not sure who is reading this blog. That’s one of the funny things about blogging; you do it sort of in a fog. (Hey! Perhaps that’s where the term came from: blabbing in a fog – blogging!) For weeks now, I have been assuming that the only people who read my blog were my two sisters (and of course, I assumed they only read it out of a sense of duty and because Christmas is on the horizon). But lately two things happened: 1) A couple of people who are under no obligation to read my blog (i.e., they don’t get Christmas gifts from me) told me they do so regularly; and 2) I figured out how to check my stats and discovered I actually have more hits every day than I had imagined.

But as I said, I really want to be able to have this blog be a fun way to communicate, which requires people being able to comment and me being able to respond to the comment. I believe I have fixed the settings in such a way as to make it easier for the public to comment. Now you don’t need to be a registered Google member, for example, to comment. Just select “Anonymous”. You can remain anonymous, or tell me who you are in your comment. If you are a registered Google member, you just sign in and comment under your user name. I also have it set so that I don’t have to approve comments. Should you guys start being mean to me, I may have to change that!

Now on to a bit of talk about food.

Growing up, I believe we four children were the only ones in the United States of America who didn’t eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. In fact, I’m not sure how old I was before I ever tasted peanut butter. The reason for this sad childhood deprivation is that my mother loathed, DESPISED peanut butter. So much, in fact, that it wasn’t allowed in our house. In her opinion a person could have a perfectly acceptable childhood without eating peanut butter.

She was, of course, right. I had a wonderful childhood. Except that I didn’t get to eat peanut butter. I now make up for lost time. I honestly think there is nothing that tastes better than peanut butter and jelly on a piece of warm toast with a cup of hot coffee.

In my perfect world, my peanut butter would be topped with raspberry jam. Before Bill and I married, my son and I lived in a house with an old raspberry bush in the back yard. The bush produced raspberries twice each year – once in early summer, and in late summer, the most delicious, big, juicy raspberries you can imagine. I dream of that bush. I used to pick the raspberries and make jam. I have tried to duplicate that bush in my current back yard to no avail. Sigh.

My husband, however, is a down-to-earth kind of guy, and his perfect fruit accompaniment to peanut butter is good old grape jelly. When we go to restaurants, he roots around the little jelly containers (trying not to think about how many toddlers’ mouths have touched them) until he finds grape jelly. He’s adorable.

So I found the easiest recipe for grape jelly you can imagine at Allrecipes.com. I have successfully made grape jelly using real grapes grown on the Western Slope of Colorado, but man-oh-man, what a pain. You have to get rid of those grape skins, and it’s a real mess. So I like this recipe, which only requires 3 cups of grape juice. I buy organic 100% grape juice at the market and am good to go.

Grape Jelly

Ingredients
3 c. grape juice
5-1/4 c. white sugar
1 (2 oz.) package powdered fruit pectin

Process
Sterilize and dry 6 8-oz jelly jars in your dishwasher or very hot water, and set aside.

Combine grape juice and pectin in a large pot over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, and stir one minute at a rolling boil. Stir in sugar for a few minutes to completely dissolve. Remove from heat.

Ladle the hot jelly into the jars, leaving ½ in. of space at the top. Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean cloth. Cover with a lid and ring to seal (use new lids). Let stand 24 hours at room temperature, then refrigerate. Jelly may take up to a week to set. Store in the refrigerator for up to three weeks, or process for long-term storage by canning.

Nana’s Note: I process my jelly using a hot-water bath. The directions say to process for 10 minutes, but because I live at high altitude, I add 5 minutes to my processing time (1 min. per 1,000 feet above sea level). Also, when making jelly, you can’t cut corners on the sugar in order to make it lower in calories. Your jelly won’t set up. I’m sure there are recipes for sugar-free jelly, but why bother? I would just as soon use a smaller amount of good jelly.

Making a Pesto of Myself

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Way back in 2001, Bill and I traveled to Italy with my sister and her then- twentysomething daughter. We had a really wonderful time, visiting Rome and the Tuscany area. We spent a couple of days in one of my favorite spots on earth, the Cinque Terre. While I have been back to Italy several times since, that was my first time to see the Mediterranean Sea.

The Cinque Terre are five small towns sitting on the side of a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. The villages are lovely, with pastel houses and colorful boats tied up along the shoreline. It really is probably the most beautiful place I have had the good luck to visit. The climate is warm and sunny, and all of the houses and restaurants have window boxes bursting with geraniums and fragrant basil.

The first night when we went to the café for dinner, we noticed that many of the diners were eating spaghetti with a green sauce that I knew to be pesto. At that time, however, I had never eaten it and really didn’t know how it was made. We just knew that we kept seeing this bright green sauce, and we all commented that it didn’t look good to us. “It’s so green!” we all exclaimed as we ate our pasta with some kind of seafood.

One of the most interesting things about the Cinque Terre is that there are no roads connecting these five villages. The only means of getting from one town to the next is by boat, train, or on foot. There is a footpath that connects all five of the little towns. So the next day, the four of us set off from the first village, determined to make it to all five by the end of the day. Which we did. Yay for us.

What a walk. The path varies in width, sometimes being wide enough for two to walk, sometimes being nothing more than a narrow little path set on the very edge of the hill. One false move and you seriously could tumble into the sea. The view is absolutely spectacular. The Med is as blue as the Crayola crayon called Azure, and so is the sky, or at least it was that day. Vineyards climb up the sides of the hills, grapes somehow growing in that rocky soil.

It was a very hot day, and though we had brought water, we were all getting extremely tired and warm. We came around the corner and, like a gift from God, there was a farmer who had set up a table and chair from which he was selling his homemade vin santo wine. Icy cold, sweet white wine. Well, just like the boy scouts, Bill and I are always prepared. In our little fanny packs we carried four plastic wine glasses in case we needed sustenance after an afternoon of sightseeing and wanted to buy a bottle of wine. We paid the farmer for a small bottle of vin santo and again set off, figuring we would find a wide spot in the road where we could stop and sip a cold glass of vino. We went around the corner, and lo, and behold, there was a picnic table overlooking the ocean. Wow. That’s a memory I will never forget.

Fortified with our wine, we completed the walk sometime midafternoon, and landed back in Vernazza, one of the little villages. We all laid down, completely spent, in some cool grass, and realized that we were very hungry. What did we want to eat, we asked each other. Funny enough, we all agreed we wanted to try spaghetti with pesto. Somehow after all of that clean air and hard work, the freshness of a basil sauce seemed the perfect thing. We went back to that same café and each of us ordered a plate of spaghetti with pesto. It changed our lives!

I use pesto as a sauce for pasta, but also as a condiment for other things. Last night I made tilapia, which I topped with parmesan cheese and broiled for 10 min. I put it on our plates and covered it with pesto. Yum.

Basil Pesto
Courtesy Giada Di Laurentis

Ingredients
1 clove garlic
2 c. fresh basil leaves
¼ c. toasted pine nuts
Salt and pepper
½ c. extra virgin olive oil
½ c. parmagiano reggiano

Process
In a food processor, mix together the garlic, basil, pine nuts, salt and pepper until finely chopped. With processor still running, slowly pour in olive oil. Transfer to a bowl, and add the cheese.

Nana’s Note: Since my life was changed, I always have pesto in my freezer. Each year I grow basil in my garden, and at the end of the summer, I pick what’s left since it won’t live through our cold winters. I make a batch of basil pesto, put it into several ice cube trays, and freeze the yummy sauce. Once it is completely frozen, I wrap each pesto cube in plastic wrap, and then store them all in a bag in my freezer. When I need a quick dinner, I take out two cubes, let them thaw, and put them in a bowl over which I drop some kind of cooked pasta and mix. Boom. Dinner is ready!