Generation Next

Posted in Main Course, Recipes by kzmclain

When I was a small girl, my mom’s sister Ann lived near us. Well, to be perfectly honest, Columbus was/is a pretty small town, so arguably everyone lived near us. For a period of time, Ann lived in a house that at various times accommodated different members of my mother’s family.

My recollection is that when Ann resided in that house it had a HUGE rock garden with beautiful flowers. When I drive by the house today, there is no garden, and the side yard where the garden once was located is just a normal sized yard. Ah, the eyes of children….

But what I really remember about that house is that Ann’s decorating taste ran to, well, let’s call it busy. There were pictures or crafts or some kind of tchotchke on every part of her walls. I’m not trying to be unkind. It wasn’t particularly tacky. It was just, well, I can’t think of a better word than busy.

Very unlike our house. My mother’s style was simple. Our house was decorated with impeccable taste.

In other words, not busy.

I thought about different decorating styles yesterday morning as Bill and I took a three-mile walk around our neighborhood. Our route took us past a block of single family homes that seemingly house older residents. You can just tell.

One house in particular gave off the vibe of housing an elderly person. (And remember, an elderly person is anyone older than you. As time goes on, there are fewer and fewer people older than you. Sigh.) The yard was filled with garden gnomes and geese wearing clothing and artificial flowers. As we walked past, I said to Bill, “Do you think there will come a time when will I start putting garden gnomes and artificial flowers in our front yard?”

But I realized that I likely never will. It’s just what each generation brings to the table as a result of experiences and what you grew up with. And each generation is different. My generation doesn’t really do garden gnomes.

In my blog yesterday I talked about vegetables. One of my commenters noted that her mother always cooked vegetables – even broccoli – an hour, until they were mush. Her comment made me think about the dining room in the retirement community in which my mother-in-law resides. Their chef, God bless her, offers fresh vegetables at each meal, and every time I’ve been there, Wilma and her friends have complained that the vegetables are undercooked. They aren’t happy unless the green beans or the broccoli are a pale green and can be swallowed without chewing. It’s what they grew up with.

My generation, trained to cook by the Food Network, steams the vegetables until cooked but not mush. Later generations will probably just take a pill instead of eating vegetables at all.

Different generations; different ideas. Life goes on.

And speaking of vegetables, in keeping with my promise to offer a meat-free recipe each week during Lent, here is today’s offering…

The grocery stores are carrying something new from Fleischman’s (and perhaps others as well) called Pizza Crust Yeast. I’m not sure how the yeast is different, but you can literally have a homemade-from-scratch pizza in less than a half hour because the dough doesn’t require any time to rise.

Our pizza was heavy on the cheese and included a few vegetables on half the pizza. Guess whose half?

Please, please, please don’t let the idea of kneading throw you off the notion of making this pizza. The dough is soft and easily worked, and you just knead it for 3 – 4 minutes. Push it away from you, fold it over, push it again. Kneading is easy.

I was able to shape the pizza without a rolling pin, though I did then use the pin to make it an even thickness. I baked it right on my pizza stone that I sprinkled with corn meal, but you can put it on a greased pizza pan or cookie sheet as an alternative. Still try the corn meal. Yum.

The recipe makes one thicker crust, or two thinner crusts. I haven’t yet tried dividing the dough.

That’s amore!

18Mar2015

The A’s Have It

Posted in Recipes, Side Dishes by kzmclain

There are lots of very satisfying things about spring. The flowers begin to pop out. The weather is mostly lovely. Here in the East Valley of Phoenix, weather in March is spectacular. Not yet hot and almost always sunny. People are driving around with the tops down on their convertibles – something they cannot do in the summer when it’s too hot.

In Colorado, there is always the possibility of a spring snowstorm. Still, even in Colorado, there are probably more nice days than not starting in March.

My first three-day dill pickles of the year! They’re about a minute old at this point.

But one of the best things about spring is the emergence of some of my favorite fruits and vegetables. Strawberries are luscious, red, and juicy. Pickling cucumbers are starting to appear in Arizona grocery stores. Pretty soon the sweet Vidalia onions will begin showing up on the store shelves, and they are ever so delicious to grill.

But let’s give it up for the three A’s. Although you can get avocados all year round, come March, they are not only delicious but they are inexpensive. Artichokes…two bucks each. And what can I say about fresh asparagus? Why, I make asparagus probably four times a week, and each time I smack my lips with satisfaction.

At the grocery store the other day, the woman who checked me out was young – and not just young compared to me as many people are. She was, I would say, barely in her 20s. She still had braces on her teeth, though that doesn’t necessarily say much. I had braces on my teeth when I was in my 40s.

But she was quite puzzled by a couple of my vegetables. She looked at my leek as though it was from outer space. She called over to the next check stand, holding the leek carefully with her thumb and her forefinger as though it would bite.

“A leek,” I said patiently.

And because I was so patient, she then pointed to my artichoke. “What’s that?” she asked, her face aghast.

Training, Store Managers. Training.

“An artichoke,” I said, still patient. And this particular vegetable she really should pick up carefully, as those leaves have quite pointy ends, as you may know if you’ve been poked.

I have absolutely no reason to be snotty about her lack of knowledge of these vegetables. I had literally never heard of an artichoke until I was an adult, or very near. Artichokes were not in my mother’s vegetable repertoire. (As an aside, despite the fact that my mother was a very good cook, nearly every single night she opened a can of vegetables for the family. I think that was a 50s and 60s thing. The only fresh vegetables we ever ate were corn on the cob and green beans in season.)

My family’s very first experience with the admittedly hard-to-figure-out artichoke was with my dad’s sister Myrta, who offered it to us one night at her house for dinner. Despite the oddity of the vegetable, every single one of us was immediately hooked. And I believe every single one of us prepares artichokes the way Myrta did – cooked for an hour or so in water with a garlic clove. Served with a side of butter.

As an alternative – pull off a large number of the outer leaves, slice the artichoke in half, clean out the “choke” in the center and cook it on the grill. Very Italian. But I don’t like it quite as well as the old fashioned method.

I’m pretty sure I had also not tasted an avocado until we moved to Leadville and began eating Mexican food. Avocados, like artichokes, were love at first bite. My entire family loves guacamole – haven’t met one we dislike. But I also love to slice up an avocado, a delicious ripe summer tomato, and either a red onion or a couple of scallions, drizzle it with a good deal of olive oil and squeeze a couple of limes over the whole kit and caboodle, along with salt. Yum.

We did eat asparagus as a child, but, well, OUT OF A CAN. When I bought my first house after my divorce, the first spring following our moving in, I noticed unusual sprouts coming out of the ground. It took me quite a while to realize that the sprouts were asparagus spears. I was so freaked out about IF and WHEN I should harvest them that I missed out on the whole thing.

As I mentioned above, I cook asparagus for myself four or five times a week. Bill is not a fan. That’s okay. More for me. I drizzle it in olive oil and season it with season salt or Montreal seasoning and either grill it or roast it in the oven. I want some right NOW.

Enjoy vegetables in season when they taste the best and are the least expensive. When the price goes up, the flavor goes down.

Happy Spring!

17Mar2015

Mora Na Maidine Dhuit

Posted in Cocktails, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

Despite my last name (which I married), I don’t have a Celtic bone in my body. They say everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, but I’m not. Nope. I’m still half Swiss and half Polish. I don’t even wear green despite the danger of being pinched. Kelly green is not in my color wheel.

I don’t mean to sound as if I’m opposed to the Irish. Some of my best friends are of Irish heritage. If I liked beer at all I wouldn’t mind if it was dyed green. I think St. Patrick was one heck of a good saint – one of the best, in fact. I spent 13 years as a “Shamrock” since this was the mascot of St. Bonaventure Elementary School, and Scotus Junior High and High School (though I’ve never known why since St. Bonaventure was Italian and Duns Scotus was Scottish).

But I really do think St. Patrick’s Day is as good an excuse as any to have corned beef and cabbage.

The past couple of years, my sister Bec (who also is not Irish) has had us over for corned beef. This year, however, she is away for the week, watching her beloved Washington Nationals play spring ball in Florida. Go Nats. They’re also not Irish.

So I’m on my own for corned beef and cabbage, which admittedly is not rocket science to prepare. In fact, I recently learned that it isn’t even particularly Irish. According to Wikipedia (which, as you know, is NEVER wrong), they rarely even ate beef in Ireland, preferring pork. It wasn’t until the Irish started immigrating to the United States and found the cost of pork prohibitive that they started eating beef.

Bottom line: corned beef and cabbage is about as Irish as spaghetti and meatballs is Italian.

Now you think I’m going to offer a recipe for corned beef and cabbage, but you’re wrong. Just stick your corned beef in the crock pot with some water, the spices, and some carrots, and enjoy your meal eight hours later with a side of braised cabbage.

Nope, I’m going to do you one better. I’m going to offer you a recipe for homemade Bailey’s Irish Cream.

You can thank me later.

Take it up a notch and make some ice cubes out of coffee. Serve your Irish cream over the coffee cubes. Thank you Pinterest.

Now, what do I do with a fifth of Jamison minus 1-2/3 cup? Oh, I know; make some more Irish Cream!

And as they would toast in Ireland….May you live to be a hundred years, with one extra year to repent.

10Mar2015

Cafeteria Plan

Posted in Main Course, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

From first grade (the first year that I was in school all day) through 12^th grade, each and every day I ate my lunch in the school cafeteria. The same cafeteria. That’s because my elementary, junior high, and high schools were all part of the same Catholic school system. The cafeteria was located over near the high school, so in grade school (particularly the younger grades) we had to line up, two by two, holding hands, to quietly walk over to the cafeteria.

By the way, that walk over to the cafeteria caused me to get the only reprimand I ever got in school. I was accused of talking to my friend on the way, and got a paddle on my behind as a result. I assure you, I was innocent.

And for that entire time, and for several years after I graduated, the school cafeteria was run by a woman named Mrs. Fletcher. I’m sure she had a first name, and perhaps I even once knew what it was (Clara?), but I always knew her as Mrs. Fletcher.

I can’t recall what the cost of our school lunches were, but what I can tell you is that, unlike the lunches of today (and perhaps even the lunches of the period about which I’m talking at schools other than mine), the lunches were quite good. Homemade by Mrs. Fletcher and her minion of school lunch cookers. A bevy of women in hair nets who dished out our lunch each day. We would go through the line, take our food (no choices, you ate what they served), grab a carton of milk – white or chocolate – and find your friends at the table.

When you were finished with lunch, you would put anything you hadn’t eaten into the milk carton so that the nuns wouldn’t need to lecture you about the poor, starving children in the Philippines.

Dad was friends – or at least friendly – with Mrs. Fletcher, because part of the reason the lunches were so good is that the bread was made fresh each day by Gloor’s Bakery. Hamburger buns, white bread, dinner rolls. All home made. And he would deliver them.

I thought about Mrs. Fletcher recently when I came across photos of typical lunches from around the world. I believe the point that was being made by these photos is that school lunches in America are inferior to those in other countries. Maybe yes, maybe no. I suspect it isn’t easy to feed children food that they like within tight school budgets, no matter the country.

Here’s what I do know, however. Mrs. Fletcher helped form my taste buds. To this day when I eat Sloppy Joes, I take the two halves of the bun apart, lay them side by side, and ladle the Sloppy Joe mix over the two halves. There is no topping better on chocolate cake than whipped cream. Nothing tastes better than putting mashed potatoes right on top of your meatloaf. Salmon loaf needs to have potato chips crumbled on top. And, while I probably haven’t eaten a fish stick since I graduated from high school, nothing says Friday lunch better than fish sticks.

And speaking of Friday, here is another meatless meal offering. This recipe includes shrimp, so it obviously isn’t vegetarian. There are many recipes for Shrimp Scampi, but I find this lemony shrimp scampi by Food Network’s Melissa D’Arabian to be one of the best. I love the lemony flavor of the sauce.

3Mar2015

Mom’s Soup

Posted in Main Course, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

As promised, here is my second meatless meal recipe…..

I’ve talked before about Mom and Dad’s brave move to Leadville, Colorado, from Columbus, Nebraska, in the mid-70s. For as long as I remember, they had wanted to live in the Colorado mountains that they loved so much. The bakery in Leadville is what finally presented itself to them.

It wasn’t a perfect fit by any means. A while back I wrote a blog about our family’s time in Leadville. It was a rough town, largely dependent upon the molybdenum mine. Miners are a unique animal we soon learned.

But in addition to having to get used to the thin air (Leadville sits at an altitude of over 10,000 feet making for difficult breathing and short summers), my parents also had to get used to the fact that along with the bakery, there was a small coffee shop.

I’m not sure what the previous owners offered in the coffee shop. But for Gloor’s Bakery and Coffee Shop, breakfast consisted primarily of coffee and donuts or sweet rolls from the attached bakery and lunch was also simple – a few kinds of sandwiches and homemade soup.

Soup wasn’t a particularly new thing for my mom. As we grew up, she occasionally made us soup for a simple dinner or maybe a lunch treat. I remember she made vegetable beef soup with a beef shank that was absolutely delicious. I don’t think any of us have her recipe for that soup (because frankly she probably never had a recipe), but man I would like to have a bowl of it right this minute.

Anyhoo, under the direction of my mother, the Gloor Bakery Coffee Shop offered homemade soup, each day a different kind. Not endlessly different, but 10 or 12 kinds of soup that she rotated. I remember people stopping by the coffee shop in the morning to see what the soup-of-the-day was for that day, or calling to ask. Everyone had their favorite.

The soups truly were homemade from scratch. Each and every afternoon (except Saturday), Mom would make a big pot of soup for the next day. I’m sure at first this was kind of fun. After all, nothing smells better than soup simmering on the stove.

I’m here to tell you, however, that the fun wore off rather quickly and changed into drudgery. I hope that I don’t shock any of you when I tell you that my mother began referring to her soup as her “f***ing soup” as in “I’ve got to go make my f***ing soup for tomorrow.” Petite and pretty as she was, she could cuss right up there with the best of them!

And man-oh-man, was her soup ever good. She made Cream of Broccoli (which she called Broccoli Soup and I posted her recipe previously – also meatless by the way, which many of her soups were), Cream of Cauliflower, Cream of Asparagus, Clam Chowder, Beef Chili, Green Chili, Vegetable Beef, Potato, Ham-and-Bean, Minestrone, and for those warm summer THREE days or so, Gazpacho. I’m probably forgetting a few, and I’m sure my siblings will remind me.

Even writing about them makes me want to go cook up a pot of soup today. I only have her recipe for a few of them, unfortunately.

Here is a recipe I found for Chickpea Minestrone. As I write this, I’m 900 miles away from my mother’s Minestrone Soup recipe (one of the few soup recipes I have), but as a recall, her minestrone also contained chickpeas, pasta and no meat. However, this was a good version, and it comes from Vegetarian Times….

28Jan2015

Cooking With What You Got: Refrigerator Quiche

Posted in Main Course, Meat Dishes, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

What you got…and what you don’t

By Beckie Borman

Most nights my dinner consists of a bit of protein in the form of grilled meat or fish, and either veggies or a salad. Besides the fact that it’s good for me (I think), it’s also a simple meal to prepare. Occasionally, however, I don’t feel like eating the same old meal, so I begin to scrounge through my refrigerator to see “what I got” that I can use for dinner. Many times, I land on the idea of a quiche. Interestingly, at least to me, I don’t know that I ever made a quiche until a couple of years ago. For some reason, I decided to make one for myself, and the rest is history! One of the things I like about quiche is that there are as many variations as there are leftovers in my frig.

So, the other evening I was searching for a meal idea and noticed that I had one ready-made pie crust that needed to be used or discarded. “Quiche!” I thought. I always have eggs and milk on hand. That night, I had a carton of heavy cream with an upcoming expiration date. I usually keep a small sliced ham for breakfasts and for flavoring soups or vegetables. The recipe I use calls for Swiss cheese, which I didn’t have, but I had a little bit of shredded parmesan, as well as a small piece of a random cheese left over from…something. I tasted it and determined that it would work well with the parm. I like mushrooms in quiche, but I didn’t have any. However, I had a few spears of cooked asparagus from a previous dinner, so that would do as well. Yes, I had all the makings of a yummy and easy dinner.

I pulled out all the ingredients, measured them up, and went to the back room to get a pie plate. Hmmm…not where I expected it to be. After a bit of searching I realized that both my pie plates were at my son Erik’s house, where we had recently celebrated a holiday feast. Fortunately, it’s only a 15-minute round trip to his house, so I was able to buzz over and retrieve my plates.

Although quiche is a quick dish to throw together, it does have a long baking time. But for me it’s always worth the wait. I can enjoy a big slice for dinner and have plenty left over for future breakfasts and lunches. Because another great thing about quiche is that you really can eat it any any time of the day.

My advice, however, is that before you assemble your ingredients, make sure you have something to bake them in!

Here is Beckie’s Basic Quiche Recipe….

9Dec2014

Cookie Cuckoo

Posted in Desserts, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

When I first started thinking about this blog, I really only knew one thing. I didn’t want it to be a cooking blog.

There are a number of reasons I was firm about this decision. First, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of a kajillion cooking blogs. Second, I have lots of interests and didn’t want to limit myself to only one. Finally — and most importantly — I am only an average cook. Somehow I didn’t see a committed audience for a blog entitled Pretty Average Recipes from a Mediocre Cook.

Having said this, I feel I need to add that I really do like to cook and bake. I particularly love to prepare food for big gatherings of family and friends. And I love, love, love to cook with my grandkids. And I do so very often. In fact, my grandkids — mostly Addie — sporadically contribute to this blog in posts called Kids’ Whimsical Cooking. (As an aside, I considered calling those posts Cooking Kids until my grandson Alastair pointed out the macabre potential of that particular name. Being 9, he reminds me of it often.)

Anyway, I must confess to something that happened to me last week that reminded me that it’s a good thing I don’t have to make my living from a cooking blog.

Mylee was visiting, but was preoccupied with some sort of game that involved Legos and Play Doh. I decided to make a batch of shortbread cookies. They are easy to make and delicious. How can you go wrong with a cookie made of simply flour, sugar, butter, and vanilla?

So, as Mylee played with her Legos, I happily placed the ingredients in the bowl of my Kitchen Aid mixer and turned it on. It generally takes between 30 seconds and a minute for the ingredients to come together in the bowl. This time, however, I mixed and mixed and the dough simply wouldn’t come together. I added a bit of water, but that didn’t work. After listening to her Nana mutter and complain for a bit, Mylee, who is 4, finally came over and said, “What are you doing, Nana? Can I help?”

I told her I was making cookies, but that it wasn’t working. “Why not, Nana?”

I told her I didn’t know what was wrong because I had made these cookies many times and they had always worked.

By this time she had pulled up a chair and was standing on it and peering into the bowl, studying it intently.

“Maybe you need to add more butter,” she said.

“No, I added enough butter,” I assured her.

Still, the dough simply wouldn’t gather. But I dumped the crumbs onto a sheet of waxed paper and put it into the fridge. I don’t know what magical thing I thought would happen.

About an hour later, I was sitting with Mylee in the family room as she watched a Christmas movie. Suddenly out of nowhere, the answer as to why my dough wouldn’t come together sprang into my head like the clown jumping out of the Jack in the Box.

And do you know what the answer was? I didn’t add enough butter.

Instead of adding 3/4 POUND of butter (three sticks) as the recipe calls for, I added 3/4 CUP of butter (a stick and a half).

It turns out Mylee was exactly right. I added the necessary amount of butter, and like magic, my dough came together. I’m convinced it was a lucky guess on her part.

The cookies were delicious. Mylee, by the way, is pretending she’s Santa Claus. See her beard?….

Here is the delicious recipe for Shortbread Cookies.

Nana’s Notes: Remember, it’s 3/4 LB. and not 3/4 CUP. Also, don’t leave the dough in the fridge more than 30 minutes or it will be difficult to work. Finally, it’s the one recipe where I will tell you that it really is beneficial to have a Kitchen Aid mixer. If not, you will just have to press the dough into the pan.

2Dec2014

Predicting the Unpredictable

Posted in Main Course, Meat Dishes, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

For the most part, I live a very quiet life – the life of a 60-something retired person. Predictable and nonstressful, and definitely not funny.

Every once in a while, God throws some kinks into my life just to keep me on my toes. That happened to me last week.

It all started the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, while having lunch with Court. Our server brought the bill to our table. I opened up my billfold and couldn’t help but notice a big empty space WHERE MY CREDIT CARD SHOULD BE.

“Do you remember where you used the card last?” Court asked calmly, trying to prevent me from full-out panic.

I did. The day before, I had gone to Toys R Us to pick up a package I had ordered. I paid with the credit card. There had been a lot of excitement as another shopper had been hungrily looking at the Zoomer Dino that I was buying. Zoomer Dinos are apparently going to be one of those “Cabbage Patch Doll” phenomenons this year. (Baby Boomers will remember the Cabbage Patch craze and how parents and grandparents were tearing dolls out of other people’s hands in toy stores in the 1980s.) I was prepared to take the lady to the floor for the Zoomer Dino if necessary. It didn’t happen, but I was distracted nonetheless.

So when I noted the absence of my card, I suspected Toys R Us immediately. Particularly since after leaving Toys R Us that day, my car once again wouldn’t start. Same issue as the previous week that, almost $700 later, the car service people told me they had fixed but clearly hadn’t. I called Bill, who told me what cables I needed to jiggle and voila!, the car started.( I love being nearly 61 and having to start my car by opening up the hood and jiggling cables. I feel like I’m back in college.)

The credit card story has a happy ending, though, because when I went back to Toys R Us, the nice young man who had helped me the day before was delighted to see me. He said he had chased after me upon realizing I left my card on the counter, but couldn’t see what car I was getting into. He clearly disregarded the possibility that it could be the yellow bug with the hood up and the owner madly jiggling cables. He had placed the card in the store safe, and before long, it was back in the little space in my billfold.

But the blimps in my life weren’t over yet.

The next day (which was the day before Thanksgiving), I was – yes, I’m afraid I must tell you this – doing my last last shop before the holiday. I remembered that morning that I had thrown my old turkey baster away long ago as it was cracked. There were also a few odds and ends that I could have lived without, but as long as I was going to the store, well…..

Before even entering the store, I spotted lovely evergreen wreathes. I put two particularly pretty ones in my basket. I proceeded to do the rest of my shopping. Now, I prefer to leave my shopping cart at the end of the aisle rather than trying to maneuver it between carts in the narrow space. I did so, and picked up maybe six or seven other things. I put them in my cart and went to the check stand to pay.

The lines were predictably long, so I settled in to wait my turn. I began thinking about how lovely my wreathes were, and looked down at them. Unfortunately, rather than seeing two pretty evergreen wreathes, I instead saw a variety of wholly unfamiliar items, including two or three sacks of sweet potatoes.

Whaaaaat?

I suddenly realized what had happened. I had inadvertently confiscated someone else’s basket. I immediately worked my way past the people behind me in line. “Excuse me. Pardon me. Excuse me,” I said to several quite unfriendly shoppers.

When I got to the back of the store where I had last seen my buggy, I saw a very distraught woman who was speaking with great angst to two store employees. “I really, really don’t want to have to start over with my shopping,” she was saying.

I admitted the error of my ways and apologized profusely. She, I’m happy to say, couldn’t have been nicer. It had happened to her before, as it has to many of us. And there was my very own cart with the two evergreen wreathes.

But I’m not quite finished with my tale.

I took my groceries out to the car, and filled my trunk. I began to roll my cart over to the cart stand. As I neared the stand, suddenly the cart’s wheels froze. I tried backing up. Nothing. I tried rolling forward. Nothing. They were firmly stuck in place.

I recalled the signs on the shopping carts that tell you not to take the carts beyond the parking lot as they wheels won’t roll. I never actually believed them. I’m here to tell you that it’s true, my friends. Never mind that I wasn’t even close to being out of the parking lot. In fact, I was only about 10 feet from the cart stand. I must admit I simply abandoned the cart. I blame it on Google.

Aside from realizing on Thanksgiving morning that I had accidentally purchased a 19 lb. turkey instead of a 15 lb. turkey to feed the six people at my Thanksgiving table, everything else went as smooth as silk. As for the 19 lbs. of turkey, after sending home leftovers with my guests, there was only enough turkey left for one more meal….turkey pot pies.

1Dec2014

It’s Getting Ahead of Me

Posted in Recipes, Side Dishes, Whimsies by kzmclain

From the time I was a little girl, yesterday’s gospel from Mark in which Jesus tells his disciples, “Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come,” scared the hell out of me. I want to know what my future holds, thank you very much.

And yet, that same gospel always gave me comfort when various zealots and/or nuts would say the end was coming on such and such a date. When I would fret, Bill would always remind me that Jesus himself said no one knows when the world will end. Both St. Matthew and St. Mark tell us that very thing in their gospels.

But our pastor put it all into perspective when he reminded us that as we prepare for the birth of Christ during this Advent season, we should be mindful that we should always be preparing for Christ’s coming. It’s an absolute cliché to say that we forget the real meaning of Christmas, but alas, it’s all too true.

The Christmas hub bub seemed to come really early this year. Earlier than other years, it seemed. Perhaps that’s because Thanksgiving was so late. But Christmas music was playing on the Phoenix easy listening station even before we returned to Denver on November 18, and Christmas decorations collided with Halloween decorations this year. Never even mind Thanksgiving.

Both of my sisters have been telling me that they are almost finished with their Christmas shopping. That absolutely FU-REAKED ME OUT! I have had to remind myself that it wasn’t even December yet.

The Christmas season really has expanded in the recent years. I remember when we used to put up our Christmas tree on my birthday in mid-December. Now it’s hard to wait even until Thanksgiving. This year I put my angel tree up the Sunday before Thanksgiving because I wanted my grandkids to help, and some of them were going to be out of town this past week. That, and the fact that we leave for Arizona on Christmas day, which requires that we dismantle Christmas on December 24 – just like the Grinch.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I am going to try and remember that the Advent season is upon us. Advent gives us the chance to prepare not only for the commercial Christmas, but also for the real reason we celebrate Christmas.

By the way, yesterday after doing a bit of Christmas shopping and feeling pretty snappy that I was finally making some progress, I got into my car, turned on KOSI 101 to listen to Christmas music. What I heard was Auld Lang Syne. Yikes. Now I need to worry that I’m not prepared for New Year’s!

I served this blueberry coffee cake on Thanksgiving morning. It was absolutely delicious. It comes from Betty Crocker.

24Nov2014

Dressing Throw Down

Posted in Recipes, Side Dishes, Whimsies by kzmclain

I have learned over the years that one thing people are very proprietary about is their recipe for Thanksgiving dressing. Mom had a dressing recipe she always used, and it’s the one all of her children use. I don’t even give it a second thought. I have always presumed everyone likes it as much as I do. After all, it was my MOM’S!

A year or two after we were married, Bill (who NEVER cooks), asked me if he could make his mother’s dressing for Thanksgiving dinner. I acquiesced reluctantly. As I recall, the dressing was good, but it wasn’t my mom’s dressing. He undoubtedly reluctantly puts up with my mother’s recipe year after year as he has never made that dressing recipe again. Perhaps he just got tuckered out cooking when he could have been watching football.

In a recent blog post about hand-written recipe cards, my cousin Kate shared her grandmother Clare’s recipe for dressing (October 16, 2014). It was not terribly unlike my mother’s – not surprisingly since Clare was my mother’s sister. Clare used Cream of Chicken soup; my mom’s recipe calls for Golden Mushroom soup.

I am going to post my mom’s recipe, and I am going to request that you all respond via the comments section with your favorite dressing recipe. It might be an old family recipe or it might be something new you have discovered more recently and liked. You can share the recipe or simply tell me about the ingredients and what you liked about it. I come from a long line of really good cooks, so I hope you won’t disappoint me – or my readers.

Mom’s recipe stops there because I presume at that point she stuffed the bird. I do not stuff the bird, but put the mixture in the oven and bake at 375 for about an hour, until cooked completely through and browned.

I AM ISSUING A THANKSGIVING DRESSING THROWDOWN. What is your favorite dressing recipe?

Nana’s Notes: You might notice that I am using a new format for my recipes. My IT support (who also is my yard man, household repairman, and shares my marital bed) designed it. It is in its opening stage. My hope eventually is to have a button whereupon people can share or print. Baby steps. What do you think?

Nana's Whimsies

Musings of a Baby Boomer….

Category Archives: Recipes