Recipes Needed

Back to the new normal?

Expect a recipe barrage in the next day or so.

"in" 

"within"

Thoughts?

We planned on 50

including this one.

By my head count, there were 47 1/2. (Olive eats a lot but she just doesn't put it down the way the guys do.) 

I made a couple of things this morning.

Brandied fruit

Beer potato salad

By about 3pm were ready.

Daughter C had made menus.

We weren't quite sure about the weather, so the guys moved the grills up to the porch.

Meanwhile, we put on the finishing touches.

And iced down the beverages.

People started showing up.

And then my camera ran out of battery.

BUT! Everybody & his brother were taking photos. So if you just go look on the WorldWideWeb, I'm sure you will find a photo of yourself (haha) at the Farm.

Unless, of course, you were not here.

For Those Who Pay for Their Own Groceries

I have not commented on the rash of food thefts this past weekend. Daughter C tells me it happened at the Kroger in Starkvegas-- although the Walmarts in Louisiana are getting all of the attention. The lack of shame in some corners of "society" is despicable. 

But as I try my darnedest to stay upbeat, I thought I'd pass along a few money saving tips to those of you who actually see your hard earned money slip through your fingers as you pass that check over to the nice lady at your local market.

From Most for Your Money Cookbook (Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown, Modern Age Books, Inc., New York, 1938) come these ways to stretch the food budget.

... few cooks know the advantage of snow as an ingredient, yet a cup of freshly fallen snow actually takes the place of two eggs in making a pudding light and toothsome. Likewise, snow saves on milk in making Snow Waffles and Pancakes which have a finer texture because of the chemicals released in melting-- some say it's the ammonia.

"Toothsome." Now there's a word. They include a recipe for Snowy Plum Pudding.

The Browns also remind us that jam and preserves can be cooked in a sunny window (though I don't see any instruction) and that in former days, "frugal housewives kept an iron 'stock pot' constantly stewing, into which they tossed all meat and poultry trimmings, ham bones and leftovers, to provide a continual supply of strong meat broth for soups and gravies."

From The Settlement Cook Book: Treasured Recipes of Seven Decades Third Edition / Newly Revised (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1976; originally published in 1901) a tip at which Mr. Big Food is expert:

Weekly "special" sales of meats and vegetables at your food market can provide a variety of economical bases for meal planning, even including foods usually considered high priced, such as steaks, chops, and roasts. A roast that can be served hot, then cold, then in a casserole dish or in lunchbox sandwiches can obviously have its original cost spread over several meals.

And looky here! 

Fats that are not fit for food may be made into soap.

As we have discussed many times, menu planning is an excellent way to stretch the food dollar. New Delineator Recipes: Including Ten Exclusive Recipes by Ann Batchelder Delineator Home Institute (Butterick Publishing Company, 1930) has seven pages of "Simple Menus" including these for Luncheons or Suppers (not to be confused with Dinners):

Sounds yummy!

 
Finally, from The American Woman's Cook Book (Ruth Berolzheimer, ed., Consolidated Book Publishers, Chicago, 1946; first published in 1938) some advise on how the "modern woman" should divide her food dollar. 

ONE-FIFTH or more for whole milk, cream, cheese and cod-liver oil for growing children. Plan to give each child 1 quart and each adult at least 1 pint of milk in some form, per day.

ONE-FIFTH for vegetables and fruits, with emphasis on green leaf and yellow fruits and vegetables. Serve at least one cooked vegetable, besides potatoes, and 1 fresh vegetable each day. Serve fruit twice a day, with citrus fruit at least once.

ONE-FIFTH or less for meats, fish and eggs, serving liver in some form at least once a week.

ONE-FIFTH for breads and cereals, especially whole grain.

ONE-FIFTH for fats, sugar and other groceries. 

~~
By the way-- the giveaway at the Piglet is up to $750!

 

$0.99 / pound

Mr. Big Food got this four pound pork roast about three months ago and stuck it in the deep freezer. Saturday, he defrosted it, marinaded it for several hours (or was it over night?), and prepared it for roasting.

That's caraway on the top.

Served with a veganized cabbage dish.

It was great! Very moist. Recipes to follow.

Today, Mr. Big Food weighed out a pound and a half of leftover pork roast-- what he needs for carnitas later in the week. And he froze the remainder-- another pound and a half.

So, by my calculations, we spent just under $4.00 and will wind up with at least eight servings of pork. That's $0.50 per serving. And yes, yes, yes, please do figure in the cost of the caraway seeds and the propane for the oven. And the onion (although we'll soon be using homegrown onions). Plus the cost of running the deep freezer!

What are we up to now? $0.53/serving?

It's fun to be frugal!

Recipe: Deviled Round Steak and Variation

Mr. Big Food made the variation for me. I do not care for peas all that much.

This was last night's supper. After the steak is browned in the iron skillet, and the remaining ingredients added, it bakes for two hours, affording Mr. Big Food and I the opportunity to fix ourselves an adult beverage, move the little speakers to the patio, plug in the mp3 player, listen to some of The Redneck Collection, and chat about America & how glad we are we made the move to rural Mississippi & how funny the dogs are & this week's menu which begins tonight with an assortment of appetizers for supper.

BIG LIFE!

Recipe below.

Food for Young Children, especially 4-year olds

Citation information below

By now you've heard about the little kid who walked to work carried her lunch to pre-school only to be forced to eat a school lunch because her mom did not pack a vegetable in her lunch (banana & fruit juice but no veggie). If you don't know what I'm talking about, google "4-year old's lunch confiscated" or something like that.

Not having had any 4-year olds around for some time, I consulted a crappy old cookbook to discover just what Young Children should be eating. From the Introduction to Chapter VI in the Universal Cookbook, I see that

A little child who is carefully fed in accordance with his bodily needs (as these are now understood) receives every day at least one food from each of the following groups:

1. Milk and dishes made chiefly of milk (most important of the group as regards children's diet); meat fish, poultry, eggs, and meat substitutes
2. Bread and other cereal foods.
3. Butter and other wholesome fats.
4. Vegetables and fruits.
5. Simple sweets.

Caroline L. Hunt, Scientific Assistant, Office of Home Economics-- who wrote this chapter-- goes on to provide a "good rule" as to amounts and servings from the groups. Each group is then taken up in turn, with milk being dominant throughout.For example, Milk Toast is discussed at length in the Milk, etc. section and mentioned again in the Breads section. (My paternal grandmother used to make my dad milk toast and he tried to get my brother and I to like it. Didn't happen.)

What I'd like to know is how to properly understand the parenthetical, "as these are now understood." It is modifying "bodily needs," but can be taken one of two ways. On one reading, it says "as bodily needs are currently understood." This reading leaves room for changed understanding of children's nutritional requirements. For example, if the expert child nutritionist Nanny Bloomberg decrees it so, simple sweets get taken off the list-- at least until some future mayor of New York City who's also a child nutritionist puts them back on the list. 

Recipe: Baked Ham Slices with Pineapple

A poor photo of Baked Ham Slices with Pineapple

Mr. Big Food is a meal-planning genius. The baked ham was paired with Carrots au Gratin, which bake for just 10-15 minutes at a higher oven temperature. The ham goes in, it comes out, the carrots go in, they come out, we eat. This-- like Sunday's Oven Meal and Monday's Slow Cooker Soup-- is genius because it means we can spend some quality time together! (Not that cooking together isn't quality time, but it is nice to sit down together.) You can take "we" to mean any combination of Farm mammals you'd like.

Mr. Big Food made some minor adjustments to the recipe: 

I used less brown sugar than the actual recipe calls for, and mixed it with the drained crushed pineapple before spreading on the layers of ham slices.  

Oven Meal

Oven Meal of Oven Fried Chicken, Scalloped Potatoes, Baked Lima or Green Beans, and Apple or Pear Cake Deluxe.

"That year in Virginia was a really good year for us." said Mr. Big Food. 

"Yes, it was," said I.

That was the year Mr. Big Food discovered Oven Meals and Broiler Meals. The Big Food Manual includes over two dozen such meal recipes. Oven and Broiler Meals combine a meat, a starch, a green or yellow veggie, and a dessert that bake/broil for the same amount of time at the same temperature. It's nice to have a couple of dozen meal recipes on hand. 

The meal recipes themselves come from a pamphlet-style cookbook published by the New Jersey Department of Power. [Mr. Big Food told me what the official name is and I wasn't paying attention. I'll get it.]

Prep time for this meal was just under one hour. It bakes for 1.5 hours at 350*. About 1/2 way through we stopped to check the cake. 

It was Pear Cake Deluxe because

[Oh. She is so pathetic right now. She's squeaking a squeaker thinking that I'm going to pay attention. I am not.]

Hot Chicken Salad III (Adapted) Sandwiches

Adapted!

We had some leftover sub sandwiches so Mr. Big Food put them to good use. Great Sunday Supper! Recipe coming shortly.

500 Delicious Dishes from Leftovers

Edited by Ruth Berolzheimer, Director, Culinary Arts Institute; Published in 1952 by Consolidated Book Publishers, Chicago

Rare indeed is the day when a modern housewife could not find in her refrigerator all sorts of odds and ends in the way of food.

 Indeed.

Mr. Big Food has begun working on putting some recipes from the Encyclopedia of Cooking into The Big Food Manual. When he told me the next up in this series of cookbooks was "leftovers," I didn't understand. But I do now. Continuing from above,

And it is these leftovers that challenge the imagination of the alert homemaker. She has learned the importance of their utilization for food value as well as economy. She knows, for instance, that the liquids from cooked or canned vegetables are full of vitamins and minerals; and so they go into cocktails or soups instead of down the sink. She has become aware of the value of saving everything from pea pods to grapefruit and melon rinds and of preparing and presenting them at the table with eye and appetite appeal. 

I'm not sure what's to be done with the leftover melon rind, but here is a small sampling of what to do with "leftover tidbits."

"Strategic Shopping": January is National Oatmeal Month!

Stock up!

February is National Canned Food Month. March Peanut Butter. April... hum... .

From Strategic Shopping: A Month-by-Month Analysis by M.D. Creekmore posting at The Survival Blog Dot Net.

There are not very many good grocery sales in April—think self-denial. No body wants to advertise indulgence during Lent.

There are some good non-grocery items on sale in April. Daylight Savings Time brings sales on batteries, smoke detectors, and carbon monoxide monitors.

You can pick up hams half price, on sale for Easter dinner. Pick up a few because hams tend not to go on sale very often. April and December are the two months when you can find half price ham. So make sure you buy enough to last you through Christmas.

The premise of Creekmore's post is simple, "By knowing what goes on sale when, you can save a lot of money at the grocery store."  

Remember that crappy old Food Shopper's Creed?

The Cook's Creed

I did not want the year to end before I'd shared "The Cook's Creed" from Meta Given's The Modern Family Cookbook published in 1958.

Food Shopper's Creed here.

Meal Planner's creed here.

Recipe: Chicken in a cooking bag with long grain & wild rice stuffing

I'm looking forward to spending some time with Kat & my new camera.

We're having quick dinners this week. Last evening we had Creative Cooking baked sausages (with homemade sausage with sage), Creative Cooking crisp cabbage, and mashed potatoes. It was a perfect meal. Sorry no photos. I should have thought to make Creative Cooking a tag, but I didn't. If you want to look for more recipes from the Creative Cooking Course cookbook (where we learned about Cognac), check out the Recipes page, which I'm behind in updating.

There are two parts to this dinner. Part 1 is the stuffing, Part 2 is the stuffed chicken. Mr. Big Food dictated the instructions to me as we were retiring, so pardon the format. 

Recipe: Across the Garden Soup

Alternative title #1: Preparedness

Alternative title #2: Another non-entrant into the soup contest

This is the menu Mr. Big Food prepared on Sunday, November 27th:

Week of Nov. 27-Dec.3

It wasn't until the week had begun that Mr. Big Food decided to carry me away. Thus, some adjustments were in order, as indicated by the arrows.

As I've asserted, one reason Mr. Big Food is so productive is that he's organized. Another is that he's prepared. The whole notion of traveling and arriving back home on Monday could have made Monday supper a real dilemma, given that Mr. Big Food had to work late Monday afternoon-- he wouldn't be home in time to fix supper. Fortunately, we took stock of the freezer not to0 long ago and he updated his records. It was easy as pie for me to take the frozen Across the Garden Soup from last July, and some Turkey Gumbo from Black Friday, out to thaw and slowly heat up on the stove top.

~~

Across the Garden Soup is something I make. As its name implies, the soup changes subtly with the seasons, so go ahead and stroll across the garden to create the soup you like. This is a great soup to have simmering in the background as you go about your business doing other things. Provided it's simmering very slowly, if you forget about it and the potatoes and carrots are fully cooked before you add the cabbage, it's no big deal. In my humble opinion, it tastes better after it's been refrigerated for a day.

Recipe below the fold

Taking Stock

Each year, about this time of year, we take stock of what remains of the harvest and various collections of other edible things. 

We took stock of some frozen peppers.

This is a fine opportunity for me to divert from the main topic to comment on laziness. Mr. Big Food has a day-job. In fact, for the past 1.5 years, Mr. Big Food has had 1.5 day-jobs. And he still manages to manage our dining experiences quite nicely. And keep the paths cut. And keep up with Big Food. And do his own laundry. And stay abreast of SEC and BCSwhatever. And bring in firewood. And Bar-B-Que 260 pieces of chicken. And entertain me. The reason he's able to do all of these things is because he's organized. As any student of biology can tell you, it takes energy to stay organized. 

6CO2 + 6H2O [in the presence of radiant energy, i.e., sunlight] -->

C6H12O6 + 6O2

So when I hear people say they don't have time to cook at home or have a garden or put up pickles, I just point to Mr. Big Food and say, "Get your lazy butt out of your chair, get organized, and get 'er done." (I say this to myself quite frequently.)

The equation above describes photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert the radiant energy of sunlight into a form of energy that can be used to maintain the organization we call "life."  When we take stock, we quantify how much energy-- and other good stuff like vitamins & minerals-- we have stored to maintain our lives over the winter.

Taking stock is fun, although it does take a while. No matter how well we try to keep track of what we're putting up while we're putting it up, some things inevitably slip through the record-keeping cracks. For example, we discovered that we have enough frozen whole tomatillos stored away to last a lifetime.

From Nutrientfacts.com; Who knew tomatillos were such a good source of vitamin D?

As I mentioned, taking stock does take some time. ...

Tuesday before Thanksgiving

Grilled Salmon Bake

I think Mr. Big Food is at his best when he semi-improvises. We were to have a baked striped bass dish this evening. Unfortunately, this morning we unanimously concluded that the bass had seen better days. So he picked up a couple of "Product of U.S.A." frozen salmon filets at the Hog. When we got home, he scanned through The Big Food Manual, and this is what he came up with. (The recipe calls for canned salmon. I don't care for canned salmon.) He started a fire, grilled the filets, brought them inside to cool, picked the meat off the bone and proceeded with the recipe, which I will post.

Grilled Salmon Bake is good.

Creative Cooking Potatoes au Gratin

This was to accompany the baked striped bass dish. It did well next to the grilled salmon bake.

~~

Tomorrow, we roast the Sugar Pie Pumpkins in anticipation of making pie. There will be two pies. One will be traditional. One will be a pumpkin custard pie.

~~

I also need to pull the rest of the rutabagas this weekend. 

~~

Where is A. Leland?

Veggie night: The story

We have veggie night once a week. Please note that it is "veggie" night, not "vegetarian" night. 

Veggie night works well in our Big Life style. Mr. Big Food does have something of a penchant for meat, so veggie night is a nice break.

For the most part, we eat leftovers for lunch. And for the most part, the rest of the week's suppers are built around meat. So left over veggies get paired with left over meat dishes for lunch. We do have veggie side dishes throughout the week, but veggie night gives us more pairing options. 

It is also the case that if the day after veggie night is particularly busy, Mr. Big Food might choose to plan on a quick-to-prepare meat dish (something in the slow cooker?) and serve veggie night's veggies with it. 

Finally, veggies that have seen better days become Suzy food. It is important that Suzy, who is 17.5  years old, has a balanced diet.

This only works if you plan a menu. I refer the interested reader to Crappy Old Stuff: The Meal Planner's Creed.

Locavoure: Not that there's anything wrong with local

The following mini-rant was brought to you thanks to a post up at Instapundit:

WHEN YOU GET RID OF THE PRETENSION BEHIND THE LOCAVORE MOVEMENT, THERE’S STILL SOMETHING: It can save you money.

Here’s what the Raeses have grown this spring, summer, and fall: turnips, black beans, purple hull peas, cranberry beans, Flossy Powell beans, Delicata squash, zucchini, horseradish, onions, potatoes, kale, rhubarb, sweet potatoes, beets, broccoli, blueberries, umpteen kinds of tomatoes, and almost every herb you can name. (Note: This is an incomplete list.)

The Raeses also belong to a CSA (community supported agriculture) share from a local farm. What they can’t eat fresh, they freeze or can—Kat has an entire pantry filled with brightly colored mason jars. She pickles turnips and cans lentil soup and makes jam and even her own ketchup.

Raese said she got into canning because she couldn’t land a full-time job after finishing her Master’s in English at UT. Matt was (and is) still working on his Ph.D. in English, which meant their income was next to nothing—and Kat had nothing to do with her time. Once she discovered canning and then gardening, she says she found a way to channel her frustration at being underemployed into something productive.

Maybe someone should drop by the #Occupy protests and pass out copies of Square Foot Gardening.

 I skimmed through the whole article. (IMHO, it needs some serious editing, but who am I?)

What irritates me-- wait, there are a lot of things that irritate me about food fads. One thing I hate about them is the waste. From the article where "I" is the author, Cari Wade Gervin:

I have grown tomatoes the past two summers (in containers, from seedlings that I bought). This summer I also grew one pot of sweet red peppers.

An admission: I have never once cooked anything with the tomatoes I have grown, unless you count slicing them up and making a tomato sandwich or caprese salad. Half the peppers I grew this year rotted on the plant because I had too many to eat. And that was from just one single sweet pepper plant.

Another admission: I have stopped going to the farmers’ market most weekends. Why? Because every time I go I spend $40 on produce that I then inevitably never have the time to cook. And I end up tossing those $4 oyster mushrooms and $3 arugula and $10 peaches in the trash. (Yes, I could freeze the peaches, but I’ve done that before, and I never eat them either. I don’t like frozen peaches, and I don’t like smoothies.) And every time I throw that rotten produce in the trash, I hate myself for not being more like Alice Waters. Or for not being more like Kat Raese. [My emphases]

1. If I were a vendor at The Market Square Farmers' Market in Knoxville, and I knew you had thrown away produce I grew, I would be pissed. I know that once we make the exchange you are free to do what ever you want with your produce, and I am free to do what ever I want with my money, but that wouldn't stop me from being pissed. If I had foreknowledge about who would be throwing my produce in the trash, I would refuse to sell it to you. 

Wash day

I made mention of "wash day" in a previous post. Every day is wash day for those of us here on the Farm, except for Mr. Big Food who does his laundry on a schedule. Every so often, he has "shirt-washing days," "pant-washing days," and so on. (He's very disciplined.) But in the crappy olden days, there really was such a thing as wash day-- the one day a week the laundry was done. My neighbors still have wash day. I know this because they hang their clothes out on the line every Wednesday, although Wednesday was not the preferred wash day.

HOME LAUNDERING: Need for cleaning knowledge [full citation at post's end]

Please do take a minute to enlarge and read this. It is delightful! Look carefully at the diagram on the left-hand page. Note the decidedly non-Electric dryer. We have it so hard these days. We should protest. 

Tuesday is preferred over Monday for wash day for the following reasons. (Who does their laundry on Wednesday?) Monday can be used to:

1. Replenish the larder
2. Put the house in order after the weekend
3. Mend tears, etc. that would worsen when the garment was laundered
4. Remove stains
5. Prepare food in advance for wash day
6. Gather, and presumably sort (this is a dig), laundry and prepare laundry apparatus without "infringing on the pleasures or quiet of Sunday"

I say again, we have it so hard these days. Can you imagine what it must have been like for housewives women before the invention of the Electric washer and dryer made it possible for them to escape the drudgery of wash day?? They had to mend clothes so clothes would last longer. They actually had to think things through: cook a day ahead, gather-- and presumably sort-- the laundry, get the "apparatus" ready.

Could they have taken pride in this drudgery?

To be clear, I like Electric stuff just as much as the next guy. In fact, while typing all of this out on my electricity driven laptop, a storm came up and the power flickered a few times. I had to stop what I was doing, go get the flashlights and the oil lamp. I had to quickly think through what else I'd need to do if the power went out for more than a few minutes-- it's after dark already. Trust me, I am a fan of Electricity.

But I wonder how much we've paid for being able to throw a mega-load of unsorted clothes into an Electric washing machine with that new detergent that forgives us for not knowing that black and white make grey?

Citation: Care of Clothing. The Women's Institute Library of Dressmaking, vol. 3. The Women's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences. Press of International Textbook Company, Scranton, Pa. 1925.

Note: The book in front of me makes no mention of Mary Brooks Picken, but see this.

Crappy old stuff: The Meal Planner's Creed

A dear old friend once commented that we "have a lot of crappy old stuff." True. Our Big Life is filled with crappy old stuff-- especially books. From one old cookbook:

The Meal Planner's Creed from The Modern Family Cookbook by Meta Given 

(J. G. Ferguson Publishing Company, Chicago. 1958. p2)

Question. Why do authors continue to include the word "modern" in book titles-- especially cookbooks, books on decorating, fashion, and so forth? I know here "modern" modifies "family" but what family isn't modern? Oh. Those that have a lot of crappy old stuff.

So there's no need to click to enlarge:

The Meal Planner's Creed

The health of my family is in my care, therefore--
I will spare no effort in planning the right kinds of food in the right amounts.


Spending the food dollar for maximum value is my job, therefore--
I will choose from variously priced foods to save money without sacrificing health.


My family's enjoyment of food is my responsibility, therefore--
I will increase their pleasure by planning for variety, for flavorful dishes, for attractive color, for appetizing combinations.


My family's health, security, and pleasure depend on my skill in planning meals, therefore--
I will treat my job with the respect that is due it.

The first thing I wonder is, why a creed? The Modern Family Cookbook also has creeds for Shoppers and Cooks. What is a creed? According to Webster's New School and Office Dictionary (1962), a creed is a "brief statement of belief."

ASIDE: I have several old dictionaries-- I think if you're going to wonder what I'm wondering, you should make some effort to be in the same time frame. I should have referred to a dictionary older than 1958, but unfortunately, my dictionary collection has gaps. I'll look for a crappy old dictionary from the '40s and '50s next time I'm out. Note that this is not the #1 definition given at dictionary.com. It is decidedly different.

A meal planner believes four things about herself. (I'll not go PC here. It was 1958. Women did the meal planning. End of story.) She believes she is responsible for her family's health, her portion of the family budget, her family's food experiences, and their security and pleasure! That is a lot of responsibility. But it's her job and she's going to respect it. And what's more, when she finishes planning and shopping and gets down to the business of cooking, she's going to

... take pride in doing an outstanding job of cooking.

(My emphasis.)

IMHO, the our county and culture would be a lot better off if we had more "modern" families.*