Food for Thought (and Discussion)

[ValiantArcher]

Rose, thank you for the reply (and sorry about my very delayed response ). I appreciate all the research you've done! I'll have to think about getting a big mason jar or two.
Unfortunately, my sourdough starter adventure has come to an abrupt halt: I pulled it out of the fridge tonight and found orange streaks in it. Google has informed me the starter has somehow got infected, so I need to toss it. I suppose the good news is that the starter was still kind of sickly, so... So now I've got to figure out when a good time to start a new sourdough starter is...maybe I'll wait until it gets a bit warmer. By the way, if you have any of your sourdough research links saved, could you send me any you found particularly useful/interesting? I should probably have a better idea of what I'm doing before I try this again.
Cocoa Puffs treats are good too. Sorry for you being off grains though!
Raw onion is potent. So the salad is maybe almost more a taco coleslaw? Glad it's still good!

Ooooh, yum, fk. How did your mini-cakes go?

Hurrah for the soups, Jo! I've been thinking about making a batch of sweet potato soup next week; we'll see if I actually pull it together.

[The Rose-Tree Dryad]

Oh my goodness, fantasia. If that isn't a sign of the end times, I don't know what is.

Those hearty wintertime meals sound delicious, Jo! We've had a few days of freakishly warm weather the past couple of weeks, but most of the time it's still chilly, so I've been making a lot of tomato-based chicken and vegetable soup lately. It's a pretty basic recipe and it's easy to use either Italian or Mexican seasoning depending on what people are in the mood for that night.

Now it's my turn to apologize for the late reply, Valia! One of my favorite websites for information and recipes for cultured foods is Cultures for Health. A few good articles that they have on sourdough are Basic Principles for Working with Sourdough, How to Activate Sourdough Starter, and How to Feed a Sourdough Starter. One of these days I'm going to put all of this info to good use and give sourdough a try myself!

Taco coleslaw is a perfect name! Why didn't I think of that?

My mom's birthday is tomorrow and the cake she requested is this one with cream cheese icing. It's kind of a family favorite and we've taken to tweaking the recipe a little over the years... we usually double the vanilla, skip the almond extract, and use 1/2 stick of butter in the place of 1/3 cup of canola oil. I think you could use plain yogurt with any fat content and it would still turn out great.

[johobbit]

How did your mom's cake turn out, Rose?

Valia, I hope your next sourdough attempt is a better success.

I promised my old faithful Magic Finger Jello recipe, so here it is:

2 pkgs unflavoured gelatin
2 pkgs jello, any flavour
2 & 1/2 cups water (total)

Sprinkle unflavoured gelatin (use 4 cup bowl) over 1 cup cold water.
Separately, bring 1 cup of water to a boil;
add Jello; bring to boil again.
Remove from heat and add to gelatin mixture.
Add 1/2 cup cold water.
Mix thoroughly.
Pour into lightly greased shallow baking pan. Let set in fridge until firm, about 2 hours. Cut into pieces with knife or use cookie cutters for more fun shapes.

Kids love this stuff (so do adults ). It's much firmer than regular jello and is great to bring to parties at the school or whatever. Tasty, too!

I also have a great playdoh recipe that I used every month (at the least) when our kids were young. They spent hours playing with playdoh, using any number of different utensils and kiddie tools to have fun and create.

2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
1/4 cup cream of tartar
Mix these well in large saucepan.

Make well in dry ingredients and pour in 2 cups water, then 2 tablespoons cooking oil. Mix over medium heat. Stir until makes a ball (this part is good for the arm muscles ). Knead a packet of dry koolaid—any colour—in when still warm, and voilà. It keeps for ages in a sealed container.

[ValiantArcher]

No worries, Rose! Thank you for the links! I've given them a quick read-through, but will have to go back through them when I restart the starter.

Taco coleslaw is a perfect name! Why didn't I think of that?

Because it doesn't sound as nice as "taco salad"?

Thanks, Jo; I hope it works out better the next time too.

This week is kind of a weird one for meals, so I think I'll hold off on the soup for another week. I do have a couple of apples to use, so I may be making some muffins or something.

[fantasia]

Johobbit, you're always talking about making deviled eggs, and so I feel the need to share this with you. Though any deviled egg lovers will get a big kick out of this.

[johobbit]

Love, love these. I'll have to try them this summer. Way too cute. Thing is to get them peeled properly so that the white will retain their nice shape. I wonder what the black eyes are made from. Licorice? More likely, black olive. And piece o' carrot for the little nose?

We had a wonderful stew dinner tonight with company. I had made a huge batch on Wednesday, then heated a couple of bowls up tonight. Imho, stew tastes that much the better re-heated. The juice and taste of all the many ingredients simply penetrates everything else. SO tasty!

[The Rose-Tree Dryad]

The cake turned out pretty well, Jo! She liked it. That cake always rises beautifully, so it was a very pretty, rustic-looking little cake. She commented on how when she was growing up, it was common for families to make a cake every weekend... and I said that families were bigger back then and could spread the calories around! So in the name of preserving tradition ( ), I've been trying to figure out how to make some lower calorie cake recipes, or recipes that are at least more "balanced" in terms of carb/protein ratio, by substituting a little whey protein or coconut flour here and there. I'm not sure it's possible to make a healthy frosting recipe that actually tastes good, but healthier might be within grasp. Wish me luck, all.

Those deviled eggs are so adorable, fantasia!

Speaking of stew becoming more delectable with time, Jo, I recently ran across the concept of perpetual stew and I find it rather fascinating:

A perpetual stew, also known as hunter's pot or hunter's stew, is a pot into which whatever one can find is placed and cooked. The pot is never or rarely emptied all the way, and ingredients and liquid are replenished as necessary. The concept is often a common element in descriptions of medieval inns. Foods prepared in a perpetual stew have been described as being flavorful due to the manner in which the foodstuffs blend together, in which the flavor may improve with age.

Sounds like another potential kitchen adventure to me, although it's not exactly the best time of year to embark on such a project in the Carolinas, and then there's the rather crucial food safety aspect that requires quite a bit more research. I have heard of people using this general concept for making bone broth, though, and I've also read that some restaurants in Asia boast of having broth that has been going for more than ten years, but boiled twice a day to keep pathogens at bay.

One thing that I have been doing lately, however, is a perpetual jar of soured oats for oatmeal. I feed it with fresh rolled oats daily, similar to how you would feed a room temperature sourdough starter. I've been more or less following this recipe. It's supposedly more nutritious this way, but regardless, I like the flavor better than regular oatmeal. The hint of sour gives it a nice complexity. I usually sweeten it a bit and add cinnamon with berries, apples, or bananas.

[fantasia]

My dad knew a guy back before I was born who was well-known for his perpetual stew. He always brought it to pot lucks in a crock pot and nobody would touch it. I wonder why? I'm going to have to send him this link. He'll get a kick out of it.

[fantasia]

I know it's silly, but I've started writing Pi(e) Day in my calendar every March 14. It's a good excuse to make a pie. This year I needed something easy, so I picked out this one I found online.

http://www.crazyforcrust.com/2015/03/no-bake-peanut-butter-chocolate-cream-pie/

It looks amazing, so I hope it tastes as good as it looks.

Anyone else making pie today? Or eating pizza pie?

[The Rose-Tree Dryad]

Alas, I had not the foresight to mark my calendar, so making a pie is not in my plans for today. I have learned my lesson. Pizza pie is a good idea, and the cheesecake leftover from Christmas in the freezer might be an even better one. Yes, it's cheesecake, but whoever heard of a cake with a graham cracker crust? It's a type of custard pie, and I'm well within my rights to partake of a slice today, methinks.

That peanut butter chocolate cream pie looks so good! And easy, too. (Perhaps dangerously easy. ) *bookmarks for future reference, as she is a sucker for all things chocolate and peanut butter*

[fantasia]

It wasn't too bad, but I made a mistake in not stirring up/loosening the peanut butter mixture before adding the whipping cream to it. As a result it would not fold in, so that part is a bit lumpy. Be warned if you try it yourself Rose.
Can't wait to dig in tonight!

[ValiantArcher]

Yum, fk! Did you have a lot of help making the pie?

Enjoy your cheesecake, errr, pie, Rose.

I wasn't going to make a pie for today, but my sister and her flatmate were planning on making one and encouraged me to make one too. I don't own a pie pan, though, and was a bit short on proper pie making supplies, so I improvised. I, oddly enough, had two cans of cherry pie filling (for another project that I never got around to making ), and the ingredients for a pat-in-pan crust and a streusel topping. And I made it in a 9x13 pan.



I took it to wok and put this note on it:
"Happy Pi Day! 'cause we miss circles when they're not a-round."

I have some left (which is rare), but several of my coworkers said they liked it, so that was good.

[Meltintalle]

My Pi Day dessert looks like this:




It's a non-chocolate ice cream cake. Vanilla ice cream, strawberry ice cream, and a lemon butterscotch cookie.

[SnowAngel]

Yummy!!! Both of those desserts look delicious, Valia and Mel!

I am so glad Pi Day was my cooking day, I got to pick and bake/make the two pies. Several of my young siblings helped me make the pies - Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie and Chocolate Coffee Pie. Same base recipe, two variation. We had a blast baking, drinking coffee (mostly I drank the coffee), and listening to Disciple on the stereo, hooray for days when parents have errands.

Sadly I have no pictures to post. I tried to take pictures of the pies, but I couldn't get the white balance right. However, I do have a recipe.

Chocolate Cream Pie

3 T. cocoa
2 1/2 cup milk
1 cup sugar
6 T. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 egg yolks, beaten
2 T. butter
1 tsp. vanilla

1 baked 9 inch pie shell

Combine cocoa, sugar, flour, and salt in a sauce pan; gradually add milk. Stir over low heat until thickened. Temper eggs, add to chocolate mixture. Cook for two more minutes. Mix in butter and vanilla. Pour into pie shell. Serve chilled and topped with whipped cream.

For the Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie - I mixed 8 oz. cream cheese, 3/4 cup peanut butter, 2 or 3 T. milk, and 2 or 3 T. sugar. And then spread on the baked pie crust and topped with the chocolate "pudding".

For the Chocolate Coffee Pie (it wasn't creamy, so I won't call it Mocha) - I made the chocolate cream and just added 3 T. instant coffee to dry ingredients.

So, I order this new to me coffee on the 1st...also the first time I have ever bought coffee beans to be exact. Four different kinds from the Black Rifle Coffee company, in two days I have tried two: Just Black and Sniper's Hide. It was a big splurge for me, so I was nervous about it, I shouldn't have been. It's good coffee. My sisters offered to take the coffee beans and my brothers offered to take my ammo cans that I bought to store the coffee beans in, my siblings are just all heart. We (three siblings and I) were drinking Sniper's Hide while cooking today, I got a full mug and they got shot glasses (which we normally use to take oreganoil).

SnowAngel

[ValiantArcher]

Yum, Mel!

Yum, SA! Those pies sound delicious.

I made some peanut sauce chicken stir fry this week. My mom makes a delicious Thai pork crockpot dish, which I was craving, but didn't have the recipe or ingredients. I looked up four or five recipes and then winged it off of what I did have. I served over spaghetti since I didn't have any rice or rice noodles.
About 1/4 c. peanut butter mixed with a couple tablespoons of water; I microwaved it for about 30 seconds so it mixed better. Then I added a pinch of ginger and a couple pinches of garlic, then a tsp or so of brown sugar and another tsp of white vinegar. I mixed it all together and then poured it on top of the vegetables and chicken I'd heated up in the skillet.

The "essential" ingredients I seemed to be missing were soy sauce and rice vinegar/red wine vinegar. But I thought mine turned out delicious, so I'm sure I'll try it again.

[fantasia]

I'm curious, who all has tried one of those new unicorn frappuccinos from Starbucks and what did you think? I can't... I'd be admitted to the hospital shortly thereafter in diabetic shock. But my niece tried one and really liked it. I guess it's mango base?