Forge Ahead

Posted in Main Course, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

Much as we love spending the winter in Arizona, we are always happy to be back in Denver, for a number of reasons. We are lucky enough to be able to enjoy a second springtime. We see the cactus flowers in Arizona in March and April, and we are back just in time to see the end of the forsythia blossoms and the beginning of the lilacs and the iris. I love to get my garden planted – mostly herbs and a couple of tomato plants – and will put in my petunias just as soon as the tulips die completely back and make room for them.

The pitiful end of my forsythia blossoms

Tulips with their BFFs, the dandilions

This spring, I have made a few resolutions. It makes sense since most of the resolutions I made in January have been forgotten. Not just neglected; I can’t even remember what they were. Sigh.

I have been feeling like a slug because we got out of the habit of exercising, something we had done faithfully for a long time. And I have been putting on weight, something I conveniently blame on my low fiber diet (rich in carbs and sugar), forgetting that one can eat low fiber without eating ice cream every night after dinner. Sigh again.

So I am facing the upcoming warm months with renewed energy and commitment. I started by going to the gym Monday, and plan to go every Monday, Wednesday and Friday beginning right now. Tuesdays and Thursdays I will lift my measly little weights at home. Hey. It can’t hurt.

Furthermore, while I’m not going on a diet (diets don’t work for me; all I think about is food), I am simply going to cook healthier meals.

While in Mesa, I walked over to our nearby Basha’s most every day of the week. I am determined to walk to the grocery store here as well. King Soopers and Whole Foods are a bit farther away than Basha’s, but no matter. Even if I don’t do it every time, I can do it regularly.

There are simple things around the house that will get me better organized. For example, when I want to remember to take something upstairs, I put Whatever-It-Is on the steps. And then I step over them again and again because heaven forbid I would bend over to pick Whatever-It-is up. And then I would just have to PUT WHATEVER-IT-IS AWAY!

No more! Whatever-It-Is will go up with me the next time I climb the stairs.

And speaking of the stairs, I am determined to stop thinking of walking up the stairs as undertaking the Bataan Death March. The other morning I used the last tissue from the box in the kitchen. I found myself using paper towels or toilet tissue to wipe my nose until I finally realized that it wasn’t going to kill me to walk the exactly 14 steps up to the linen closet upstairs where I keep my boxes of tissues. Our house in Mesa is small, and 14 steps will get you practically anywhere in the house. But I don’t live in Windsor Palace, so the stairs will become my friend.

Sometimes I come to the sudden realization that my glasses are so dirty I can practically not see out of them. I am going to use my handy-dandy microfiber cloth to clean my glasses each and every morning before I put them on.

As part of my healthier eating, I found a recipe for a casserole that uses ground chicken for the meatballs. I halved the recipe and we enjoyed it for dinner, with plenty for leftovers.

Chicken Parmesan Meatball Casserole, courtesy Buns In My Oven

Ingredients
For the meatballs:
1 pound lean ground chicken
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 egg
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup milk
For the casserole:
1 pound campanelle pasta (any small shape is fine, such as ziti)
1 jar (24 ounces) marinara sauce
2 cups grated mozzarella cheese
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

Process
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the pasta. Cook for 1 minute less than package directions state.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

While the pasta is cooking, prepare the meatballs. Add all of the ingredients to a large bowl and use your hands to mix them together well. Form into small balls, about 1 inch in diameter and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes or until cooked through and no longer pink. Remove from the oven and reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees.

Add the pasta sauce to a large bowl and stir in the cooked pasta and meatballs. Stir gently to coat everything in sauce.

Spread half of the pasta and meatballs into a 9×13 baking dish. Top with half of the mozzarella cheese. Repeat layers. Sprinkle with Italian seasoning. Bake for 20 minutes or until the cheese is melted. Serve immediately.

20Apr2016

Cooking for Dummies

Posted in Recipes, Side Dishes by kzmclain

I feel like I’m not a great cook any more. I’m not horrible, but I feel like I’ve lost the patience necessary to be a tremendous cook. Almost daily I thank my lucky stars that I elected not to do a blog exclusively about cooking. Because some of my most recent failures would not offer a compelling read, unless my blog was entitled Cooking Blunders.

Take Monday night’s dinner, for example. No, seriously. Take it, because it was practically inedible. And God bless Bill because he doesn’t EVER complain about my cooking. So he bit into the pieces of completely charred Italian sausage and said something like, “Food Network would call this carmelized.”

It was such a nice try on his part, but the truth is Food Network would call it a cooking fail.

The recipe was simple. Tiny new potatoes, fresh green beans, sliced pieces of Italian sausage, seasoning, all doused in olive oil and put into a piece of aluminum foil. The foil was closed up to make a package, and cooked for 30 minutes on the grill. Easy, right?

Except that I should have double wrapped it in the foil because it cooked fine on the closed side. However, I turned it so that the part that I had allegedly pinched closed was on the bottom, and unfortunately, it really wasn’t closed. At least not tightly enough. As a result, the olive oil dripped onto the grill and a rather large fire ensued. A fire of which I was entirely unaware because I was engrossed in a book. I was reminded of a simply hilarious episode of the Bob Newhart Show in which Bob was grilling steaks on his Chicago condo’s patio and unbeknownst to him, the steaks caught fire. Bob was in his living room doing all of the funny conversational things of which Bob Newhart is the master, and in the background the audience watched as the grill was consumed by flames.

That was me on Monday night.

Here’s an interesting fact about moi. I am easily influenced by reading what someone in a book is eating. So if I read a book that takes place in India, I crave Indian food. If Mexican food is mentioned, that’s what I want for dinner. It happens the book that I’m reading (in which I was so engrossed and totally missed out on a grill fire which rivaled the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, minus Mrs. O’Leary’s cow) takes place in Scotland, and the characters routinely eat scones.

Normally I can take or leave scones, but after reading about the characters eating scones with their tea, I simply HAD to have a scone. If I was in Denver, I would simply have walked over to Whole Foods and purchased a peach scone. Despite giving it plenty of thought, I couldn’t think where I could get a scone around our AZ house. (Bec has since reminded me that Starbucks sells scones and there are probably two or three hundred Starbucks in a five mile radius of our house. Oh well.)

So I made my own peach scones. Had I shot video of my endeavor, it would not have made the cut on Next Food Network Star. Perhaps on America’s Worst Cooks. Ina Garten makes the process of making scones look easy (using peaches imported from a small organic and sustainable peach grove in the south of France). She ends up with a beautiful disk of dough that she easily cuts into triangles and bakes until they are a golden brown with sugar crystals glistening on top. I, on the other hand, ended up with a crumbly mess that I pressed into roughly a round disk, all the while frantically patting the crumbs back into the dough.

But it didn’t turn out too bad…..

And when it was all said and done, the scones were quite delicious, as evidenced by Bill eating two in a row.

Just as an aside, when I’m cooking, Ina Garten often comes to mind. Mostly how she would be horrified to observe me in the kitchen. For example, I thought of her recently when I was making chicken. I had seasoned the chicken, and needed to throw something away. Because I had not yet washed my hands (which were full of whatever it was that I wanted to toss) and didn’t want to touch anything with raw chicken still lurking there, I opened the cabinet door with my feet. While doing so, a couple of thoughts came into my mind: 1) I have never seen Ina Garten open a cabinet with her feet; and 2) I wonder if it is any more sanitary to put your feet on the kitchen cabinet handle than using chicken-laced hands.

Don’t worry, I used an antibacterial cloth to wipe the handle.

Here is the recipe for the peach scones. Despite the crumbly dough, the scones were delicious.

Peach Scones, courtesy honestcooking.com

Ingredients
2 c. plus 2 T. all-purpose flour
1/3 c. brown sugar
1 T baking powder
½ t. salt
½ c. unsalted butter, cubed and cold
1 egg
¼ c. heavy whipping cream, plus more for brushing
¼ c. sour cream
2 t. vanilla extract
½ c. fresh peaches, diced

Process
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a bowl, mix together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt. Once combined, cut in the butter with a fork or pastry cutter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Whisk together heavy cream, sour cream, egg, and vanilla extract. Slowly add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

Stir in the peaches, and mix until just combined.

On a well-floured surface, turn out the scone dough and pat into a small disk that’s about a half inch thick. Cut into 6-8 slices, and transfer to the baking sheet. Brush each scone with just a bit of heavy cream.

Bake for 16-18 minutes, or just until golden brown. Allow to cool.

Nana’s Notes: Her recipe had a glaze; I chose to sprinkle mine liberally with sugar after brushing on the cream. Also, since I was facing the above-mentioned crumbly mess, I formed my disk right on the baking sheet, and that seemed to work fine. Finally, I didn’t use fresh peaches; instead, I used canned. That made the dough a bit wetter and the resulting scones a bit more moist. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

30Mar2016

Family Cooking Ties

Posted in Main Course, Recipes, Side Dishes by kzmclain

“Do you think you will use that ham bone or throw it away?” asked my nephew Erik as he got ready to leave on Easter Sunday. I knew right away why he was asking.

I assured him that the ham bone would be put to good use. But if I wasn’t going to use it, he wanted it.

“What would you make with it?” I asked him.

He didn’t have a plan, but he knew there were a lot of options. He also knew that a good cook would never let something as delicious as a ham bone with a lot of meat still clinging stubbornly to it go to waste.

This past Thanksgiving, Court asked Jll a similar question. What are planning to do with the turkey carcass? Jll assured him she didn’t really have a plan, and as she has four kids and was entertaining Heather and Lauren and the two boys, she was desperate for refrigerator space.

“Take it,” she said with obvious relief.

Like, Erik, Court wasn’t sure what he would make, but knew a turkey carcass would make something good. I think that carcass turned into turkey noodle soup if I’m not mistaken. And it undoubtedly was good because everything tastes better if there’s bones involved.

I have said on numerous occasions that my mother was a very good cook. Though I never asked her, I presume she liked to cook, because I don’t think you can be a good cook if you heartily dislike it. Given all of that, I often think how happy it must make her up in heaven to see how so many of her grandkids love to cook – and do a bang-up job of it.

Not only are they good cooks, but they appreciate the art of cooking and the gift of good food. Recently, when Jen was here, we had the family over for carne asada. Dave’s son Christopher had smoked a pork butt the day before, and had some left over. He brought it along, knowing full well that somehow that smoked pork would be eaten. It was. I put it in a fry pan, crisped up the bottom, and it became smoked carnitas. In addition to pork butt, he smokes a delicious brat. My mouth is watering.

Jen’s son BJ is happiest if he can throw a piece of meat that he has marinated for a few hours onto the grill. He makes up his own marinade using whatever he thinks sounds good. I would never be able to do that. I require a recipe. Jen sent him home with leftover prime rib from their Easter dinner. He sautéed onion, garlic, mushrooms and a jalapeno in some olive oil, then added the meat to warm up. He made it all into a sandwich.

Good cooking isn’t limited to the men of our family. Mom would have loved seeing Maggie in the kitchen. I have watched Maggie mature into an absolutely splendid cook in the years since she’s been married. She is far removed from her post-college days when she would be cooking something in a fry pan and call her mother in desperation as smoke was rising from the pan. Jen could hear even over the phone that the meat was frying at too hot a temperature. “Turn down the temperature!” she would firmly instruct Maggie. “It’s cooking too fast.

It’s nice to see our love for cooking being passed down to our kids and even our grandkids.

I used up my ham bone last night preparing green beans and ham. Here is my mother’s recipe for Green Beans and Ham, in the exact words from her recipe card…..

Green Beans and Ham or Bacon
Sauté chopped onion in margarine, add flour and brown slightly. Add hot water and boil a few minutes. Prepare frozen green beans (or fresh beans). Pour the onion mixture into the beans, add ham (or chunk bacon cut in small pieces). Simmer about 30 minutes. Add water, if needed. Add peeled potatoes and continue cooking until potatoes are done.

Nana’s Notes: I sauté in butter rather than margarine. Rather than water, I use chicken or vegetable broth. Nowadays you can get fresh green beans anytime, so I never use frozen, only fresh. When I was small, green beans were only available in the summer. Mom would buy them from a farmer. I carefully cleaned them, always on the lookout for a worm! I like to use new red potatoes or new yellow potatoes.

17Feb2016

Sunny Day in Paradise

Posted in Main Course, Meat Dishes, Recipes by kzmclain

Bill and I woke up yesterday morning, happy that it was Tuesday which meant we didn’t have to go to the gym, and with no particular plans for the day.

“What do you have on your schedule today?” I ask him every single morning despite the fact that I know the answer is “nothing particular” seeings as we’re retired. Although I should recall that the answer could be, “I plan to make a four-tiered lemon-and-rosemary flavored wedding cake using homemade fondant accented by the fresh roses I have been growing in the greenhouse I secretly built in the back yard.” You never know with Bill McLain. As Lucy (of Peanuts fame) would say, of all the Bill McLains in the world, he’s the Bill McLainiest.

But he didn’t surprise me, and his answer was “nothing particular.”

“Why don’t we take a field trip to Tempe, drive by Sloan Park (spring home of the Cubbies), have lunch at Portillo’s, and stop by Jo-Ann’s Fabrics so I can buy some yarn?” I said, the final part said under my breath with the hope that he stopped listening after I said lunch at Portillo’s. He had.

It has been extraordinarily nice for the past couple of weeks. I know I can’t brag too much, because I think it has been quite nice in Colorado as well, and while everyone expects it to be in the 80s in Phoenix, high 50s/low 60s in Colorado is a special treat. Still, a day doesn’t go by that I’m not grateful for the warm sunshine and the beautiful flowers. Look, for example, at the bougainvillea bush in our backyard…..

When we got here a month or so ago, the bush looked like it was on its last legs. It was spindly and it had few flowers. What a difference some warm weather makes.

Anyway, the nice weather called to us, and the day was fun. There were many, many folks at Sloan Park. I think maybe the Cubs pitchers and catchers are going to report any day now, and methinks a few might have been there already, judging from the number of people with their heads plastered against the fence looking into the practice fields. We also saw a number of kids with autograph books shoved into the front drivers’ side window of an SUV with tinted windows, and I don’t think the driver was a member of the maintenance crew!

Portillo’s, of course, is a wonderful family restaurant based in Chicago. In the past few years, they opened a couple of them here in the East Valley – the one very near Sloan Park (no surprise there) and another in Scottsdale, just a stone’s throw from Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, the spring home of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies.

Portillo’s has All Things Chicago, but Bill and I go for the Italian beef sandwiches every time. Bill gets his wet (which means they pour the gravy on the sandwich) with sweet peppers; I get mine dipped (which means they literally dip the entire sandwich in the gravy) with hot peppers. There are advantages and disadvantages to getting the sandwich dipped, the biggest disadvantage being IT IS A SLOPPY MESS THAT MAKES YOU FEEL AS THOUGH YOU NEED TO GO HOME AND TAKE A SHOWER. But yummy.

One of my goals for Lent was to eat simpler. One way I thought we could do that was to serve soup one night a week. I decided last night was a good night to do that since we’d had a sizable lunch. I’ve been meaning to make my mom’s vegetable beef soup for some time now, and I took the plunge last night.

Here is my mom’s recipe, verbatim from her recipe card…..

Vegetable Beef Soup, courtesy Marg Gloor

Cook 2 beef shanks in approximately 6 cups water with 1 chopped onion, 1 stalk celery, 1 c. cabbage; add parsley, salt to taste, pinch of leaf oregano, leaf thyme, and a bay leaf, also a small can of Del Monte stewed tomatoes. Cook 1 hour, then add carrots and potatoes. About 15 min. before serving, add noodles.

Nana’s Notes: I modified the recipe a bit. I browned the beef shanks in a Dutch oven, then added 6 c. water to the beef. I also added 1 chopped onion; 1 stalk celery, chopped; and the same herbs. I let that cook for about 2-1/2 hours until the meat was very tender and fell off the bone. I removed the bones and returned the cut-up meat to the liquid. I added a can of diced tomatoes, one diced potato, a couple of chopped carrots, and a can of green beans (because that’s what I had on hand). I didn’t add cabbage because I’m not supposed to eat cabbage on my new low-fiber diet. I cooked the noodles separately and added them at the end. It was very good, and the first taste made me think of Mom.

9Feb2016

Keep on the Sunny Side

Posted in Recipes, Reluctant Traveler, Whimsies by kzmclain

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side
Keep on the sunny side of life
It will help us every day, it will brighten all our way
If we keep on the sunny side of life. — Ada Blenkhorn

When we were in Salzburg, Austria, in 2008 on our big travel adventure, we were walking to church one Sunday morning. (I kept a blog documenting our adventure and talked about our Sunday in Salzburg here.) It appeared to me that Sundays in Austria were lovely days of family, worship, and food. As we walked to church – the very church in which Mozart was baptized and played the organ – I noticed people eating their breakfasts outdoors in the morning sunshine. I saw sweet rolls, and crusty hard rolls and cups of coffee. At one point, I noticed a woman eating a plate featuring a soft boiled egg sitting in a white egg cup.

I can only imagine the deer-in-the-headlights look a server at Village Inn would get if I answered the question how would you like your eggs cooked? by saying soft boiled.

I, of course, am very familiar with soft-boiled eggs because that was the only way my Swiss grandmother ever prepared eggs for me. Being a child, I didn’t watch how she prepared them. I only know they showed up on my plate almost too hot to touch. I learned at a very young age how to use the knife to cut off the tip of the egg so that I could reach the gooey yoke inside. I would cut my buttery toast into strips and begin dipping them into the yolks.

To this day, I love soft boiled eggs. It’s beyond Bill’s comprehension. He prefers his eggs scrambled. When I fry eggs for the two of us, he requests that his yolks be broken so they don’t run. He’s simply not a fan of runny yolk. I, on the other hand, love them. When we used to be worried that we were going to die from eating undercooked eggs, I dutifully ordered my eggs over medium. Now that we seemed to have calmed down and don’t worry about that quite as much, I prefer them poached or sunny side up. I love to have my yolk run into my potatoes. Especially when eating Huevos Rancheros. Yum.

I don’t soft-boil eggs very often, and I’m not sure why that is true. They are very easy to do, and I prefer them to scrambled eggs. But since eggs are low in fiber and high in protein, they are a great meal for me. I have to admit that an egg with a piece of white toast spread with real butter makes me feel less deprived.

Here’s how to make a perfect soft-boiled egg….

Bring a saucepan of water to a boil, and then lower the heat so that the water is just simmering. It should look sort of like club soda. Once the water is simmering, carefully drop one or two eggs into the water. Set the timer for 5 minutes. (Add a minute if you are cooking more than two eggs.) Don’t set the timer until you have put the eggs in the simmering water. When the timer goes off, remove the eggs and drop them into a cold water bath (a bowl of cold water with ice). Let them sit for a few minutes. That will make them easier to handle and make it easier to open the egg.

My grandmother had egg cups. I have them in Denver, but haven’t bought them yet here in Arizona. So I improvised using a shot glass. I also saw a photo of someone setting a soft boiled egg in a cup with uncooked rice to keep it upright. Take a sharp knife (I use a steak knife) and carefully cut off the tip of the egg. Watch for egg shells. Dip pieces of buttered toast into your egg, or use a small spoon to eat the egg. You can buy fancy spoons, but quite frankly, I use the baby spoons that my grandkids used when they were small.

How do you like your eggs?

8Feb2016

Super Super Bowl

Posted in Main Course, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

Jen’s dog Tucker shows his Bronco loyalty.

This post was written somewhere around noon on Sunday. Around that time, Cam Newton was practicing dabbing in the full-length mirrors in the locker room and Peyton Manning was checking to make sure his helmet was tight enough on his head to leave red marks and indentations that will still be there as he, his wife, and his twins are enjoying Disneyland. It turned out the way Bronco fans wanted, thanks to our Big D!

At the time I’m writing this post, the game is hours away. I therefore have no knowledge of which team wins. I am ever optimistic of the outcome. Well, I’m optimistic that there WILL BE an outcome. That’s about as optimistic as I get when it comes to football. When Dad would get nervous about a football game, he would move to the kitchen and play Solitaire. I will crochet.

I believe that God isn’t too worried about the Super Bowl, so in my Sunday morning prayers, I prayed that there would be no serious injuries to anyone on either team, that the fans of whichever team won would be grown up and not turn over cars or start trash can fires, and that the stadium and fans attending the game would be spared from hatred by anyone via a terrorist attack.

I will admit, however, that I did put in a little pitch for a Bronco victory. What could it

Addie, Dagny, Maggie, Alastair and Allen root for the Broncos.

Addie, Dagny, Maggie, Alastair and their Uncle Allen root for the Broncos.

hurt? After all, sunrises and sunsets – all created by God – are orange and blue and not powder blue and white.

By time you read my post, the victor will be known, and I will know if my other prayers were answered.

Even with the game hours away, I am certain about a few things. My brother David, his daughter Kacy, and her kids; my sister Bec; and my niece Maggie and her family will be here cheering on the orange and blue, and we will have fun. I am making a variety of appetizers and they are

Kaiya, Cole, and Mylee show their Bronco colors.

bringing goodies as well, and it will all be yummy. Bill has set up a television in the back yard so that we can watch the game both outside and inside, and as the weather is expected to be in the mid-80s, it will be simply lovely.

When I decided to host the family for the Super Bowl, I began thinking about what I would serve. There are, of course, wings, which are so traditional. Nachos? Mexican food?

But Jen had just told me about something that she said was THE RAGE OF THE INTERNET. (She swears she has a job, but I think she just sits at home and peruses the web all day. She always knows what bloggers are up to at any given point in time.) However, when I looked up the recipe for the thing she said was THE RAGE OF THE INTERNET, I learned that the New York Times was calling this the roast that owns the internet. Despite the fact that it owns the internet, I hadn’t heard of it. What is it?

MISSISSIPPI POT ROAST. THE ROAST THAT OWNS THE INTERNET.

The original creator of the recipe is a woman named Robin Chapman, who apparently proclaims that the recipe has been in her family for years. I wonder if any of my family recipes could ever be THE (fill in the blank) THAT OWNS THE INTERNET. My grandmothers Swiss Mac and Cheese perhaps?

But, whether the Broncos win or lose, I will leave you with Ms. Chapman’s recipe.

Ingredients
1 chuck roast, 3 – 5 lbs.
1 packet dry Ranch dressing mix
1 packet au jus mix
1 stick butter (not margarine, butter)
5 pepperoncini peppers

Process
Layer all the ingredients in a slow cooker; cook on low for 8 – 10 hours. Shred and serve with your favorite side dish or as a filling for a sandwich.

Nana’s Notes: The roast was good. It would be yummy as a main dish with mashed potatoes or noodles. I served it shredded with crusty rolls.

This post linked to the GRAND Social

4Feb2016

Thursday Thoughts

Posted in Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

Like Chasing a Rabbit
I’ve had a Fitbit for a couple of years now. Fitbits, as you know, measure your activity. My daily goal is 10,000 steps, and I reach it on the days I work out; other days I have to work a bit harder to reach the goal. One of the incentives is that you compete against others, who agree to compete against you. Bec’s grandchildren got Fitbits for Christmas, and shortly thereafter, they asked me to be on their list of “friends” against whom they compete. I can look at any time and see how I’m faring against the others, and let me tell you, when it comes to Mackenzie and Carter, it isn’t a pretty picture. It’s seriously like competing against Jack Russell Terriers. The numbers are given in 7-day averages, and Carter is always, ALWAYS in the hundred-thousands. How can I possibly compete against someone who has Running Club in the morning and plays soccer every day at recess? I’ll bet on any given day, he has beaten me by 9 o’clock in the morning. I’m pretty sure he gets up during the night and just runs up and down their hallway for an hour. I wonder if Bill would notice if I did that……

Rich and Famous
I truly wonder how many famous people I have walked past without ever seeing them. When the family was in NYC a number of years ago for Heather’s college graduation, every once in a while as we walked the streets of NY, Allen would say, “Oh look, there’s Yoko Ono,” or “Did you see him? That was Alan Rickman” (the guy who played Hans Gruber in Die Hard (may he rest in peace). In 1995, Bill and I were in the Oak Bar at The Plaza Hotel in NYC having a drink, when Bill said to me, “There’s Marcia Clark.” If you will recall, Marcia Clark had her 15 minutes of fame because she was the prosecuting attorney in the OJ Simpson trial. So it’s of very little surprise that the other night, when we were out to dinner for Bec’s birthday and suddenly there was some commotion at the door, I paid ABSOLUTELY NO ATTENTION. This, despite the fact that a giant of a man accompanied by a bevy of people had entered the Cajun restaurant where we were dining. It was Erik, who actually had his back to the door, who casually said, “Huh, there’s Charles Barkley.” Well, I looked up and confirmed that it actually was the former Phoenix Sun great himself. After getting past being stunned by his sheer size, I made a very quick decision. I grabbed Mackenzie’s and Carter’s hands and briskly led them through the crowded restaurant to his table, just as he was getting ready to sit down. I politely asked him if he would be willing to let me take his picture with my niece and nephew. Now then, that could have gone south very quickly. After all, I was interrupting his private dinner. But it didn’t. See……

When I’m rich and famous, I’m going to be as nice as Charles Barkley.

Cake Wars Continues
Bill isn’t the only one in this family who can bake. I made some cupcakes from scratch yesterday afternoon, using a wonderful Barefoot Contessa recipe. I changed them up a bit by using leftover icing from Bec’s birthday cake as a filling. I put the icing – a mixture of cream cheese, marshmallow fluff, and powdered sugar – into a squirt bottle and filled the chocolate cupcakes with the cream before icing them. They were delicious.

Chocolate Cupcakes, courtesy Ina Garten and Food Network

Ingredients
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
2 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk, shaken, at room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream, at room temperature
2 tablespoons brewed coffee
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup good cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Process
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line cupcake pans with paper liners.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and 2 sugars on high speed until light and fluffy, approximately 5 minutes. Lower the speed to medium, add the eggs 1 at a time, then add the vanilla and mix well. In a separate bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, sour cream, and coffee. In another bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. On low speed, add the buttermilk mixture and the flour mixture alternately in thirds to the mixer bowl, beginning with the buttermilk mixture and ending with the flour mixture. Mix only until blended. Fold the batter with a rubber spatula to be sure it’s completely blended.

Divide the batter among the cupcake pans (1 rounded standard ice cream scoop per cup is the right amount). Bake in the middle of the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, remove from the pans, and allow to cool completely before frosting.
Nana’s Notes: The Barefoot Contessa wouldn’t even consider OWNING a plastic squirt bottle, but too bad, her loss. The filling makes the cupcakes good. And, unlike Bill, I used store-bought frosting. So there.

1Feb2016

Feeling Crepe-y

Posted in Main Course, Recipes by kzmclain

When Court was a little boy, one of his favorite breakfasts was crepes. They weren’t fancy or difficult – maybe not even worthy of being called crepes. I would mix flour and milk and eggs and a bit of oil, pour a couple of tablespoons into a hot pan, roll the pan around until the batter covered the bottom, and let it cook. A little butter and cinnamon sugar, roll them up, hand them to Court to eat. He would literally consume them as quick as I could make them.

I thought about crepes yesterday because Bill and I joined Bec and her son Erik and his kids Mackenzie and Carter at a Food Truck Festival in Scottsdale. We walked around and walked around. There were somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 or 70 different trucks. And out of all those options, Bill chose crepes.

I would never – not in a million years – choose crepes. I don’t hate them. But when I’m surrounded by options like barbecued pulled pork or street tacos or lobster mac and cheese, there is no contest.

But he chose crepes. Of course, he chose crepes smothered in Nutella and bananas, with a dollop of whipped cream and called it lunch. But he chose crepes.

I was reminded of a time this past past summer when I took Addie, Alastair, Dagny, and Maggie Faith to a movie. Afterwards, I offered to take them to lunch. Would you like a burger, I asked. Or maybe some Mexican food? How about some barbecue? As they were pondering, we passed a little kiosk selling homemade crepes.

“Voila!” they all said. “We want crepes.”

(Well, they didn’t actually say voila.)

So crepes it was. Of course, much like their grandfather, their crepes included strawberries and bananas and Nutella and whipped cream. They were hot and sweet and delicious. As we sat at an outdoor table eating our crepes, I looked up at the building towering over us. It happened to be the building in which Court works. I wondered to myself whether or not he ever ate these crepes for lunch.

I later asked him and he admitted he didn’t even realize there was a kiosk that sold crepes that he could see from his window. I think he’s moved on from crepes to huevos rancheros.

When we were in northern France during our big adventure in 2008, we were in a town called Dinan in the Brittany region. Before we would ever move to a new area, I would judiciously study my Rick Steves Guidebook. The Brittany region of France is famous for (among other things) their wonderful crepes. And so, when in Rome (or France)…… I looked back at my blog entry for that day way back in 2008 and discovered that Bill had a crepe that included bacon and mine had scallops, leeks, and cream. Ding, ding, ding. I won!

The recipe I prepared for Court’s breakfast crepes came from my sister Jen. Therefore, the buttery-stained handwritten recipe card calls them Aunt Jennie’s Crepes. Here is her simple recipe…

Aunt Jennie’s Crepes (makes 18)

Ingredients
1 c. flour
1-1/2 c. milk
2 eggs
1-1/2 T. oil
¼ t. salt

Process
Mix ingredients until smooth. Spray a small pan with Pam and preheat. When the pan is hot, drop 3 T. of the batter into it. Roll the pan around until the batter covers the bottom. Cook until light brown. Using a fork, turn the crepe over and finish off.

Remove from pan. Smear with butter and sprinkle liberally with cinnamon sugar. Or smear with Nutella and add bananas or strawberries. Or whatever else strikes your fancy. Call them breakfast or an after-school snack.

This post linked to the GRAND Social

27Jan2016

Bulk Down

Posted in Main Course, Meat Dishes, Recipes by kzmclain

So, now that I’m out of the hospital and feeling better, I am taking the next step of getting used to my apparent new diet that consists of very little fiber. My hope is that I have fewer (or no) intestinal obstructions. My fear is that I will blow up like a balloon and eventually POP due to a fiberless existence resulting in, well, you know.

I went to see a gastroenterologist Monday afternoon, and unfortunately, he confirmed the need to limit my fiber if I have any chance of preventing further obstructions. LOW fiber, he emphasized, not NO fiber. Folks on the internet called it a low-residue diet, as they clutch their tummies and eat their yogurt without berries.

The doctor said an absolute no-no to apples or pears with the skin, popcorn, sweet corn, citrus fruit, nuts, and tomatoes with the skin. He listed those just off the top of his head. Further research on low-fiber, er, low-residue diets indicated I am able to eat zucchini (no skin), cucumbers (no skin, no seeds), asparagus with the woody part removed, carrots cooked to an inch of their lives, mushrooms, lettuce, very ripe bananas, soft melons, applesauce, peaches, apricots, most dairy (as long as there are no nuts or berries), most meat, poultry, and fish, and white bread, white pasta, and white rice.

In other words, consider the diet that doctors have BEGGED us to eat for years, and eat the opposite. Perhaps I should just eat Gerber baby food.

The only good news about the whole thing is that I can eat Frosted Flakes without feeling guilty. No fiber. Lots of sugar, but no fiber. Oh, and martinis have absolutely positively no fiber. I’ll happily forgo the olive.

I’m speaking tongue- in-cheek of course. Not about the diet. That, I’m sorry to say, is reality. Or at least my reality until someone wearing a doctors’ coat tells me something different. The tongue-in-cheek part comes in my complaining about it. Because I have said it all along, and I will say it again, if I can eat or not eat something that will subsequently prevent me from a bimonthly hospital visit with a plastic tube inserted down my nasal cavity, I will do it. And not complain. Much.

But I am dangerously close to become one of those people. You know, the people for whom you have to cook special meals. I’m not complaining about those people because our daughter Heather has celiac disease and if she eats gluten, she gets very sick. So people cooking for her have to be careful that they aren’t accidentally poisoning her. She, by the way, has a very good attitude about her dietary limitation. She told me once that she was asked if she liked gluten-free beer. Her answer was, well, not particularly, but it’s what I can drink if I want to drink a beer, so what’s the use of complaining. I want to – and plan to – adopt such a good attitude.

Because the reality (and the good news) is that I have to eat low fiber and NOT that I have to figure out how to survive a few more months with liver cancer. So wah, wah, wah and keep your perspective straight!

Here is an example of the meal that I cooked last night, thanks to the Pioneer Woman.

Scalloped Potatoes and Ham, courtesy Ree Drummond and Food Network

Ingredients
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, plus extra for greasing dish
1/2 yellow onion, diced
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups half-and-half
1 1/2 cups milk
Freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds russet potatoes, washed thoroughly
3 cups diced cooked ham
2 cups grated Monterey Jack cheese
Chopped fresh parsley, for sprinkling, optional

Process
Slice the potatoes really thin using a mandolin or a really sharp knife, the thinner the better. Generously butter a 2-quart baking dish, then add half the sliced potatoes and half the diced ham. Sprinkle on half the cheese then pour on half the sauce from the skillet. Repeat with the rest of the ingredients, ending with a layer of cheese and sauce. Sprinkle extra pepper on top.

Cover the dish with foil and bake it for 40 minutes, then remove the foil and bake until the cheese is golden brown and the sauce is bubbling, an additional 20 to 30 minutes. Sprinkle with chopped parsley if desired and serve it up.

9Jan2016

Saturday Smile: Tongue in Cheek

Posted in Meat Dishes, Recipes by kzmclain

My son’s guest post this past week on his culinary adventure involving the tongue of a cow generated lots of talk and opinions. Frankly, most people said, “No thanks.” Others proclaimed they grew up on a farm and were used to eating all parts of an animal. My brother promised he was going to bring me a lengua burrito from a place called Erickberto’s that I would most certainly like. We’ll see.

The whole experience made me recall the andouillette sausage Bill and I ate, quite by accident, while in Europe in 2008.

We were driving in France, near the Germany border. We stopped for lunch at what was for all intents and purposes a truck stop that offered a buffet. We chose our food items. Having never met a sausage I didn’t like, I chose a sausage for my lunch. I took a bite, and thought, hmmm, that’s actually quite nasty-tasting. I offered a bite to Bill and he agreed. Later, I looked at our bill and noticed that what I had eaten was andouillette sausage, the one thing that travel guide writer Rick Steves urged his readers to NEVER EAT.

When we got to our hotel, I logged on to my computer and Googled “andouillette sausage” and immediately wished I hadn’t. Andouillette sausage is made, frankly, from the colon of a pig. It smells like it and it tastes like it. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

Gloria tells my brother David just how to make the world’s finest tacos de lengua.

But back to the tacos de lengua. At 6:15 a.m. yesterday morning, I received a text message from my brother, who continues to try and convince me to try lengua. As part of his job, he had run into a baker of hispanic descent. He asked her if she cooked lengua. Of course, she answered. The best in the world she proudly proclaimed. Here is her recipe straight from the horse’s mouth:

Wash but don’t clean the top skin. Boil for 30 minutes with onions, whole garlic, garlic salt and a spice of which she couldn’t remember the name. After it’s boiled, clean it. The skin comes right off. Put on a corn tortilla, cilantro, onion, and jalapeno. Enjoy.

But perhaps my sister Jen had the best idea. You know how people have Meatless Mondays? She suggested I start a regular Tuesday blog post entitled Tasty Tongue Teasers Tuesday, and feature a weekly tongue recipe.

Have a great weekend.

Nana's Whimsies

Musings of a Baby Boomer….

Category Archives: Recipes