Here are the tastingspoons players. I’m in the middle (Carolyn). Daughter Sara on the right, and daughter-in-law Karen on the left. I started the blog in 2007, as a way to share recipes with my family. I’m still doing 99% of the blogging and holding out hope that these two lovely and excellent cooks will participate. They both lead very busy lives, so we’ll see.
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BOOK READING (from Carolyn):
Music of Bees, Eileen Garvin. Absolutely charming book about a woman in midlife, lonely, who raises bees, also makes unlikely friends. Heart-warming and very interesting about beekeeping.
A Postcard from Paris, Alex Brown. Really cute story. Dual time line, 1940s and present day about renovating an old apartment in Paris, things discovered.
Time of the Child, Niall Williams. Oh such a good book. Very small village in Ireland, 1960s. A baby is left on the doorstep. The town all whispers and helps. I listened to an interview of the author, which made me like him and his books even more.
Sipsworth, Simon Van Booy. If you like animals you’ll swoon. An old woman who really wants to die finds a tiny mouse in her house and befriends it and finds a reason to live. Utterly charming book.
The Forger’s Spell, Edward Dolnick. True story. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren managed to pass off his paintings as those of Johannes Vermeer.
If You Lived Here, You’d be Home by Now, Christopher Ingraham. Could hardly put it down – about a journalist who takes on a challenge to move to small town in Minnesota and write about it. He expects to hate it and the people and place, but he doesn’t. Absolutely wonderful true story.
The River We Remember, William Kent Kreuger. 1950s, Minnesota. A murder and the aftermath. Could hardly put it down. Kreuger has such a vivid imagination and writing style.
How the Lights Gets In, Joyce Maynard. An older woman returns to New Hampshire to help care for her brain-injured son. Siblings and family, lots of angst and resentments.
The Filling Station, Vanessa Miller. Every American should read this book. A novelized retelling of the Tulsa massacre in 1921. Absolutely riveting.
The Story She Left Behind, Patti Callahan Henry. Love this author. Based on a true story. A famous author simply vanishes, leaving her husband and daughter behind. She had invented a mystical language no one could translate. Present day, someone thinks he’s solved the riddle, contacts the family. Really interesting read.
The Girl from Berlin, Ronald Balson. Love anything about Tuscany. An elderly woman is being evicted from a villa there, with odd deed provenance. Two young folks go there to help unravel the mystery. Loved it.
The Island of the Colorblind, Oliver Sacks, M.D. Nonfiction. The dr is intrigued by a remote Pacific island where most of the inhabitants are colorblind. He also unravels a mystery on Guam of people born with a strange neurological problem. Medical mysteries unveiled. Very interesting.
The Bookbinder, Pip Williams. Post 1914 London. Two sisters work at a bookbindery. They’re told to not read the books. One does and one doesn’t. One has visions beyond her narrow world; the other does not. Eventually the one gets into Oxford. Lovely story.
The Paris Express, Emma Donoghue. 1895 on a train to Paris, a disaster happens. You’ll delve into the lives of many people who survived and died in the crash.
A Race to the Bottom of Crazy, Richard Grant. This is about Arizona. Author, wife and child move back to Arizona where they once lived. Part memoir, research, and reporting in a quest to understand what makes Arizona such a confounding and irresistible place.
The Scarlet Thread, Francine Rivers. A woman’s life turned upside down when she discovers the handcrafted quilt and journal of her ancestor Mary Kathryn McMurray, a young woman who was uprooted from her home only to endure harsh frontier conditions on the Oregon Trail.
A Place to Hide, Ronald Balson. 1939 Amsterdam, an ambassador has the ability to save the lives of many Jewish children. Heartwarming.
Homeseeking, Karissa Chen. Two young Chinese teens are deeply in love, but in China. Then their families are separated. Jump to current day and the two meet again in Los Angeles.
North River, Pete Hammill. He always writes such a good story. A doctor works diligently healing people from all walks of life. His wife and daughter left him years before. One day his 3-yr old grandson arrives on his doorstep.
A Very Typical Family, Sierra Godfrey. A very messed-up family. Three adult children are given a home in Santa Cruz, Calif, but only if the siblings meet up and live in the house together. A very untypical scenario but makes for lots of messes.
Three Days in June, Anne Tyler. The usual Anne Tyler grit. Family angst. This wasn’t one of my favorites, but it was entertaining and very short.
Saved, Benjamin Hall. Author is a veteran war reporter. Ukraine, 2022, he nearly loses his life to a Russian strike. Riveting story – he survives, barely.
Grey Wolf, Louise Penny. Another Inspector Gamache mystery in Quebec. She is such an incredible mystery writer.
All the Colors of the Dark, Chris Whitaker. A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each. Could hardly put it down.
Orbital, Samantha Harvey. Winner of 2024 Booker Prize. I don’t usually like those, but I heard the author interviewed and she hooked me. This is not a normal book with a beginning, a story and an end. It’s several chapters of the day in the life of various astronauts at the ISS (Int’l Space Station). All fictional. She’s been praised by several real astronauts for “getting it” about space station everyday life.
The Blue Hour, Paula Hawkins. An island off Scotland. Inaccessible except when the tide is out. Weird goings on. An artist. A present day mystery too.
Iron Lake, William Kent Krueger. A judge is murdered and a boy is missing. Riveting mystery.
Tell the Wolves I’m Home, Carol Ricks Brunt. 1980s. A 14-yr old girl loses her beloved uncle. Yet a new friendship arises, someone she never knew about.
Four Treasures of the Sky, Jenny Zhang. 1880s, a young girl is kidnapped in China and brought to the United States. She survives with many hurdles in the path.
The Boy Who Fell out of the Sky, Ken Dornstein. Memoir, 1988. The author’s brother died in the PanAm flight that went down in Lockerbie, Scotland. A decade later he tries to solve “the riddle of his older brother’s life.”
Worse Care Scenario, T.J. Newman. Oh my. Interesting analysis of what could/might happen if a jet crashed into a nuclear plant. Un-put-downable.
Song of the Lark, Willa Cather. Complicated weave of a story about a young woman in about 1900, who has a gifted voice (singing) and about her journey to success, not without its ups and downs.
Crow Talk, Eileen Garvin. Charming story which takes place at a remote lake in Washington State, about a few people who inhabit it, the friendships made, but also revolving around the rescue of a baby crow.
The Story Collector, Evie Woods. Sweet story about some dark secrets from an area in Ireland, a bit magical, faerie life, but solving a mystery too.
A Sea of Unspoken Things, Adrienne Young. A woman investigates her twin brother’s mysterious death. She goes to a small town in California to figure it out, to figure HIM out.
The King’s Messenger, Susanna Kearsley. 1600s England, King James. About one of his trusted “messengers,” and his relationship with a young woman also of “the court.” Lots of intrigue.
In the Shadow of the Greenbrier, Emily Matchar. Interesting mystery in/around the area of the famous resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
Isola, Allegra Goodman. Hard to describe, survival story on an island in the 1600s.
Save the Date, Allison Raskin. Rom-com, witty, LOL funny. Clever.
The Sirens, Emilia Hart. Numerous time-lines, Australia. Mysteries abound, nightmares, abandoned baby, weird allergies.
Red Clay, Charles Fancher. LOVED this book. Mostly post-Civil War story about the lives of slaves in Alabama during Reconstruction.
Stars in an Italian Sky, Jill Santopolo. Dual time line, 1946 and recent time. Love stories and a mystery.
Battle Mountain, C.J. Box. Another one of Box’s riveting mysteries. Love his descriptions of the land.
Something Beautiful Happened, Yvette Corporon. A memoir of sorts in Greece, tiny island of Erikousa, where the locals hid Jews during WWII. All elusive stories told by the author’s grandmother.
The Jackal’s Mistress, Chris Bohjalian. 1860s Virginia, about a woman who saves the life of a Union soldier. Really good story.
Song of the Magpie, Louise Mayberry. Really interesting story about Australia back in the days when it was mostly a penal colony. Gritty strength of a woman trying to thrive with her farm.
The Boomerang, Robert Bailey. A thriller that will have you gripping the book. About a lot of secrets surrounding the president (fictional novel, remember) and his chief of staff and about cancer. A cure. Such a good story.
Care and Feeding, Laurie Woolever. Really interesting memoir of a woman driven to succeed in the restaurant business. She worked for Mario Batali and then Anthony Bourdain. Gritty stories.
Everything is Tuberculosis, John Green. Maybe not a book for everyone. A real deep dive into the deadly tuberculosis infection, its history. I heard the author interviewed and found the book very interesting.
The Book Lovers Library, Madeline Martin. Fascinating read about Boots’ drug stores’ lending library. And the people who worked in them.
The Arrivals, Meg Mitchell Moore. LOL funny, about a middle-aged couple whose children (and their various family members) return to the family home and the chaos that ensues.
My Life as a Silent Movie, Jesse Lee Kercheval. About grief. A big move to Paris, finding herself a new life with a new set of real blood family.
Escape, Carolyn Jessop. Another memoir about a woman really in bondage in Utah, Mormon plural marriage.
My blog's namesake - small, old and some very dented engraved silver plated tea spoons that belonged to my mother-in-law, and I use them to taste my food as I'm cooking.
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Posted in Desserts, on March 25th, 2010.
It was just a few days ago that I posted – basically – this recipe – but made with blueberries. But at the cooking class where we got to eat the blueberry version, Tarla Fallgatter told us that it would be equally good using plums, and she mentioned Costco had some lovely looking and tasting plums right now.
Posted in Chicken, on March 24th, 2010.
Over the years of my cooking history, I’ve made Country Captain from a recipe in one of my homespun cookbooks. And it just never tasted all that great. All I remember was the volume of tomatoes. And in a gloppy watery tomato-ey sauce. It just didn’t hit any taste buttons for me. So after trying two similar recipes (this would have been in the 60’s or 70’s, I guess) I never looked at any Country Captain recipe again. Until now!
Posted in Uncategorized, on March 23rd, 2010.
No, I’m not in Tuscany. I wish I were. It ought to be beautiful there, right about now. With spring popping up all over. I happened to be searching on my upstairs computer for some pictures. And had so much fun going back over some of the trip photos from our travels over the last 10 years. I’d forgotten they were even there. One of the days we were on this particular trip (we had a group of us who stayed at an old villa in the eastern part of Tuscany – this was in 2004), most of us took a drive up a long, unpaved windy road – it looked a lot better on the map than it was in actuality, but we eventually ended up at a lovely restaurant where our group met at the end of the day. We all got there by circuitous routes, with many stories to tell about what we did and how we got there. Anyway, we stopped the car on this ridge, and as I glanced over this little valley, there was this gorgeous vineyard plus a very typical Tuscan farmhouse, and the twisted junipers punctuating the landscape. It was so beautiful. And an evocative recollection for me. I do love Tuscany.
I’ve been meaning to put a photo of myself on my front (home) page. And I knew I had some photos here and there, but had to hunt for them. If you are viewing my home page you’ll now find this same one over on the left sidebar as part of my “Currently Reading” section. There is one on my About page, but you’d have to click over there to see it. Rather than create another section on my sidebar, I just decided to put this little snapshot of me by my current reading area. I find that when I read other people’s blogs, I want to see what the writers look like. So there you have it. That’s me!
Posted in Soups, on March 22nd, 2010.
This is another recipe from the Tarla Fallgatter cooking class I attended earlier this week. And if you’d like a delicious, but different kind of potato soup, here it is. Bacon isn’t an unknown in potato soup, but the topping – that cute crouton you see above, is. If you look closely you can see the bacon, garlic and Italian parsley on top of the crouton. What a clever idea, I thought. Usually I just put a toasted crouton (maybe a buttered or olive-oiled one on top of soup or even with cheese) on top of a soup. The bacon incorporation is altogether different here.
The bacon is chopped up and cooked in water. Why, I asked her? To reduce the salt and to make the bacon softer for pureeing purposes. Made sense. So the bacon is cooked for about 15 minutes, drained, then pureed in the food processor with the fresh garlic and Italian parsley. Then that mixture – a very little bit of it – is spread on top of the already lightly toasted baguette slices. Those slices are really thinly sliced – her recipe said 1/3 inch – I’d say they might have been narrower than that. Those are toasted (again) to crisp-up the bacon and cook the garlic a bit, then they’re laid on top of the hot potato soup.
The soup was easy – butter and shallots, potatoes, chicken stock, salt, pepper and a bit of heavy cream. It’s pureed – and a little bit of the bacon topping also is stirred into each bowl, then served with the crouton on top. I did find the crouton a bit hard to eat – if you pick up the whole crouton with a spoon, you have to bite it in the spoon – very awkward. The crouton is a bit too big to eat very daintily. I think it would be better to cut the croutons into thirds after they’re baked and drop in 3-5 of the smaller pieces into the soup bowl. That way you could easily pick up one at a time and eat. There is a little bit of bacon in the soup too – just enough to give it that bacony-smoky taste. Tarla also said you could add cubed cooked turkey to this (or chicken, obviously) and make it a main dish meal. What I liked was the texture difference – the smooth soup with the crunchy savory crouton on top. Liked this very much.
Recipe By: Tarla Fallgatter, cooking class 3/2010
Serving Size: 6
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 medium shallots — peeled, thinly sliced
1 1/2 pounds baking potatoes — peeled, sliced 1/3 inch thick
6 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste
BACON CROUTONS:
4 ounces bacon — cut in 1/2″ pieces
2 whole garlic cloves — chopped
1 tablespoon Italian parsley — chopped
1/8 whole baguette — cut into six 1/3-inch slices
1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. Melt butter in a large saucepan, add shallots and saute until softened, about 4 minutes. Add potatoes and saute a few minutes, then add chicken stock and bring to a boil. Simmer until potatoes are tender.
3. Pour hot soup mixture (in batches if necessary) into blender or food processor and puree. Return soup to the pan.
4. Meanwhile, in a small frying pan simmer the bacon pieces in 1/2 inch of water over low heat, until tender – about 15 minutes. Transfer the bacon to a mini-food processor. Add the garlic and Italian parsley and puree until smooth.
5. Arrange baguette slices on a baking sheet and spread
NOTES: You can also add some cubed cooked turkey or chicken and make this a main meal soup. My advice: cut each bacon crouton into about 3 pieces (after baking them) so they’re easier to pick up with the spoon. The larger baguette slice is just too big for one bite.
Per Serving: 372 Calories; 23g Fat (56.0% calories from fat); 11g Protein; 29g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 55mg Cholesterol; 2539mg Sodium.
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A year ago: Yam Slices with Garlic and Rosemary
Two years ago: Beef Stew with Currant Glaze
Posted in Desserts, on March 19th, 2010.
It’s been some months since I’d been to a Tarla Fallgatter cooking class. I’ve mentioned her here on my blog many times, and there are lots of recipes in my files credited to her. She’s Le Cordon Bleu and La Varenne trained and runs her own catering company, and teaches classes hither and yon. She aims to give us recipes that are do-able for the home cook. She’s also an avid world traveler – she’d just returned from a trip to Southern India when she came to teach us the other day. She was the first chef to show me all about risotto, way back in the early 1980’s. And osso buco – it’s her recipe I always make – when I make it. At the price of veal shanks, that isn’t very often!
Posted in Chicken, on March 18th, 2010.
First I must tell you a short story about the last week in my house. Starting about 2 weeks ago my computer (5 months old, from Dell) starting bleeping to a blue screen, often called the “blue screen of death.” Then it would reboot. Some of my work was lost each time this occurred. This has been going on since January, but it got a lot worse recently. After a phone call or two to Dell, we ran a complete scan of the hard drive, trying to find out if there are hardware problems. Per the report, no. So therefore it’s software problems (I did a “clean” installation of the new Windows 7 on this computer in February). Dell handed me over to their partner, iyogi.net, a company in India. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Essays, on March 17th, 2010.
Having just told you how I learned about the different taste receptors in the mouth (and tongue) at my first wine tasting class back in the late 1970’s, and how they affect my perception of wine taste, I ran across this article in a 2008 Gourmet article, which completely counters most of what I learned. (I’m still trying to go through a stack of magazines collecting dust in my family room.) All of this post comes from Bruce Feiler’s article.
So why this change? The human genome. But, of course. Scientists are only now discovering new information about us humans. Off the head of a pin. Hard to comprehend. And what they’ve found is that flavor chemistry is all over. It’s about how those chemicals interact with our bodies – like the fact that one person likes the taste of cilantro, for instance, and other people think it tastes like soap.
Up until recently all the food scientists worked on two basic truths: (1) there are four basic tastes – bitter, sweet, sour and salt (and they added umami later); and (2) different tastes are detected on different parts of the tongue – the “taste map,” they called it. I wrote up a previous post about those tastes. What they’ve determined is that we taste everything, everywhere in our mouths. And scientists are debunking #1 above too.
Mr. Feiler talked with biochemists, geneticists, sensory specialists and food psychologists. Consumers (like us) use the words flavor and taste interchangeably. Scientists do not. What’s important is that the tongue and mouth, assisted by the nose, are considered the body’s primary defense against poison. Ah. The human body tastes faster than it can touching, seeing or hearing – yes, we detect taste in as little as 1.5 thousands of a second, compared with 2.4 thousandths for touch, and 1.3 hundredths of a second for hearing and vision.
To be tasted a chemical must be dissolved in saliva and come in contact with tiny receptors that are grouped together in buds (taste buds, right?). They’re not just on the tongue but all over the inside of our mouths. They convert the chemical into a nerve impulse, which gets transmitted to the brain. Apparently the number of taste receptors we have has yet to be determined. Terry Acree of Cornell says it will likely be around 40 – a fixed number. Olfaction receptors, on the other hand, is much higher, around 300.
Now here’s some chemistry stuff – or the biological part – molecular biology has allowed scientists to identify which proteins, in which receptors, send which signals to the brain. Only one receptor can identify sweet . . . but more than 20 receptors detect tastes that are bitter. Because scientists are identifying the chain of messages (receptors to the brain) they can begin to manipulate the “conversation.”
When I first read this I thought, uh-oh. We’re going to start doing unnatural things to food (well, yes, they are). It’s not exactly like genetically modifying corn (see my essay about Monsanto if you’re interested), but it’s not too far off. What Feiler did was participate in a taste test of tomato juice. He drank 4 types: (1) V-8 juice with 480 milligrams of sodium; (2) low-sodium V-8 (doubling the amount of potassium chloride, thereby cutting the amount of sodium by about two-thirds); (3) and (4) were tomato juices containing low-sodium V-8 mixed with different amounts of Betra (something that is designed to block the unpleasant aftertaste of potassium chloride). Betra is a new substance made by Redpoint Bio, a very small company in New Jersey (located in an area called the Flavor Corridor). Betra therefore, blocks that taste of potassium chloride, which is fairy awful IMHO. So I like the thought of blocking that taste, but I wonder about what that will do to our bodies over time.
The bottom line is that we all taste things differently. So suppose I serve a French, succulent long-slow-baked beef pot roast to a group of friends. If you went around the table and asked them to be brutally frank, I’d probably hear mostly good remarks, hopefully because it was prepared well. Maybe I’d hear some raves about it. But there would likely be a couple of people who would say something negative – or maybe just “it was okay,” or didn’t have much flavor. Or even, “I don’t like beef.” We’re not talking texture here, but flavor. So even though we all have the same number of receptors, how the brain interprets what those receptors transmit can be very different (even among family members).
Did you know there are people referred to as “supertasters?” They experience almost all taste with more intensity – sugar is more sweet, Brussels sprouts more bitter, chiles hotter. Supertasters happen to also dislike plants with higher degrees of toxicity.
Now you throw into the equation culture. And they’ve identified – so far – about a dozen haplotypes (collections of persistent mutations within a particular population). How that plays out is, for instance, with lactose intolerance. Many African and Asian peoples can’t produce the enzyme lactase, which breaks down sugars in milk. Yet lactose intolerance is almost unheard of in European populations – people with traditions of herding and milking.
Where this leads us is that eventually every one of us will have our own food type (like a blood type). Hence the photos throughout the Gourmet article of people’s name tags – they said things like Joe – I am pumpernickel negative (meaning he can’t stand to eat it); or Stephanie – I am broccoli positive (meaning she adores it, I suppose); and lastly Frank – I am truffle negative.
Food companies are scrambling to find additives (see, this is where I don’t like the sound of this) that might improve or block particular flavors. Guess who’s paying for the research? Nestle, Coca-Cola and Campbell Soup. They want to know how to enhance the taste of sugar or salt in their packaged foods. For products that would trick the taste receptors into perceiving ingredients that aren’t there. Like sugar (expensive, and not so good for us) and salt (definitely not very good for us in the quantities most food processors use). And because the amount of this additive would be so small it could be listed on the label as “artificial flavors,” and the label wouldn’t tell you that it contains these bio-products. That part worries me a lot.
So how did the author do on the tomato juice taste test? He knew right away which one was the full-sodium V-8. The 2nd one with potassium chloride had a tinny, artificial taste, he thought (I agree, and I don’t buy it; I don’t buy V-8 either because of the high sodium). The other two, containing the bitter-flavor blocker, tasted more satisfying. The scientists can even figure out in the laboratory exactly how we’re going to like products containing these blockers. No taste tests needed – they do it all with test tubes and droplets of things.
The proponents of this (including many famous chefs like Ferran Adria at El Bulli in Spain and Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck near London) use chemistry and biology all the time in their chef-ing. At the London restaurant Blumenthal serves beet jelly and bacon and egg ice cream. He’s really into savory ice creams and sugar is a vital ingredient. So if the scientists have their way, the sugar would BE there, but they’d put in a sugar-blocker so we wouldn’t TASTE the sugar. Hocus-pocus, with chemistry. I’m just not convinced we should be doing this.
At the end of the article they included a short explanation about the human genome project:
Humans are 99.9% identical to one another – and to the archetype mapped and sequenced by the international Human Genome Projects (which had nothing to do with genetic engineering). The nucleus of each cell in our bodies (except mature red blood cells) contains the entire genome, and the genome’s DNA (composed of 3 billion chemical components) is arranged in 23 pairs of chromosomes, which in turn contain 20,000 to 25,000 genes. Genes only comprise about 2% of the genome; the rest serves other functions, including regulating the production of proteins, the molecules that perform most of the work of the cell. By isolating each taste receptor of the human genome, scientists can now begin to see how they react to every flavor known to humankind.
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And, I do happen to be peppermint negative. Almost makes me sick to my stomach. No red and white striped candy canes for me! Or mint chocolate ice cream either. And I’m mostly liver negative too – except duck liver (foix gras).
Recipes, from my archives, having nothing whatsoever to do with genomes or genes, or flavor-blockers:
A year ago today: Steak (beer marinated) with creamy peppercorn sauce
Two years ago today: Mace Cake
My friend Linda, who came up to visit last week, was telling me all about Tyler Florence, and about how much she enjoys his cookbooks (I bought her one for Christmas), his Food Network programs, and his recipes. Naturally, I had to go check him out. It’s not like I didn’t know who he was – I did – or that I’d never watched his show – I had – but somehow I’d never tried any of his recipes. So, I’ve started to Tivo his programs now, and I’m subscribed to his blog (through his website). And in the process I came across this chocolate banana bread recipe.
At a local restaurant we go to now and then, they offer a tart that always rocks my boat – it’s a very small pastry shell filled with chocolate pudding, with sliced bananas on top, then some whipped cream on top of that, with more bananas. It’s been a year or two since I’ve had one of them, so I thought maybe this chocolate banana bread would sort-of satisfy that flavor need.
The bread is quite easy to make – you just have to have some very ripe bananas. I think Tyler mentions it in his blog piece – gotta have ultra-ripe bananas or it just doesn’t have the flavor he knows it can have. The bread calls for both cocoa – I used Penzey’s natural (which is extra dark), not Dutch processed, which weakens the flavor – and semisweet chocolate (I used some Ghiradelli chocolate chips I had in the stash). Otherwise, the bread is typical (butter, flour, baking powder, sugar, eggs). It requires little mixing once you get everything all together and it’s baked for a little under an hour. I should have rapped the pan once on the counter (see the air bubbles in the top half of the bread in the photo above), but otherwise it was easy to remove and slice. The taste is really good – I mean really, really good. Very chocolate-y and moderately high on banana flavor too. I like it very much and would definitely make it again.
Recipe By: Tyler Florence (on his website)
Serving Size: 12
NOTES: You won’t need to butter the pan if you use a nonstick bread pan. The bread develops deep cracks during the baking process, but it does flatten some once it cools.
1/2 cup unsalted butter — (1 stick) softened, plus more for the pan
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate — melted
2 large eggs
3 whole bananas — ripe
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan. Mix together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In another bowl, cream the butter until lightened, then beat in the chocolate, eggs, bananas, and vanilla. Stir in the dry ingredients just until combined and no streaks of flour are visible; do not overbeat.
2. Pour the batter into the loaf pan. Drop the pan on the counter from about 2-3 inches above it (to pop any air bubbles in the batter) and bake until a toothpick stuck into the center of the bread comes out almost clean, 50 to 60 minutes. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for at least 15 minutes before unmolding.
Per Serving: 286 Calories; 14g Fat (42.2% calories from fat); 5g Protein; 39g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 56mg Cholesterol; 233mg Sodium.
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A year ago: Corned Beef Dinner
Two years ago: Fumi Chinese Chicken Salad
Posted in Pork, on March 15th, 2010.
It’s been years since I even thought about this meatloaf recipe, but I had about a pound of leftover ham roast in the refrigerator that needed using and this ham loaf popped into my head. It goes back – way back – in my culinary history. It came from my mother’s friend, Nan, who served this for dinner one night when we visited her home. This would have been back in the early 1960’s. I was a young adult then and just getting into a bit of cooking, and once I tasted it, I asked Nan all about it. Nan gladly gave me the recipe.
The mixture is ham (I ground up my leftover pieces in the food processor), some very lean hormone-free ground beef and I had a package of organic ground pork. It’s mixed with a couple of eggs to hold it together, and some saltine cracker crumbs (minced up in the food processor also) plus a bit of pepper (the ham was salty enough). I made one larger loaf (put into a bread pan) and 3 smaller loaves that I put into small ramekins (that’s what you see in the photo above). Before putting it in the oven you baste it with a brown sugar/vinegar mixture, which definitely gives the meatloaf a sweetish taste. Nan always served it with a sour cream/horseradish/mustard sauce that takes all of about 30 seconds to make. I used low-fat sour cream, which works fine.
It’s delicious. A good old-fashioned kind of comfort meal. Serve with mashed potatoes (I served the Green Potatoes I posted yesterday) and a bright vegetable. It reheats well, and can also freeze (uncooked) for awhile too. If you want to make it easy to freeze, prepare the basting mixture too, and put it in a small plastic bag and insert it IN the larger freezer bag holding the meatloaf before you freeze it. Then all you have to do is defrost it, bake it and make the sour cream sauce.
Recipe By: From 1971 from a friend of my mother’s, Nan Watson.
Serving Size: 8
Notes: The basting liquid is sweet, and serving the sour cream sauce with it makes this a rich tasting dinner. Serve with a green vegetable, a salad, and an easy carb like a baked potato or rice. The proportions of beef to pork to ham can be altered a little bit – ideally, though, you’ll have more beef than either of the other two. If you bake in ramekins, they’ll bake in about 35-45 minutes.
1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork
1/2 pound ham — ground
2 cups saltine cracker crumbs
1 cup milk
2 whole eggs — beaten
salt and pepper — to taste
BASTING MIXTURE:
2 teaspoons dry mustard
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup cider vinegar
SAUCE:
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon horseradish — or to taste
salt and pepper — to taste
1. Preheat oven to 350°. Mince up the ham, or use a food processor. Combine the ham, beef and pork, then add cracker crumbs, milk, eggs. Since ham is often salty, be very gentle adding additional salt. Season with pepper and shape the mixture into a loaf shape and place in a baking dish. Pour the brown sugar mixture over the loaf.
2. Sauce: combine the sour cream, mustard, horseradish and seasonings. Cover and refrigerate for several hours before serving.
3. Bake for about an hour and fifteen minutes, basting the loaf several times with the liquid in the baking pan. Remove from oven and allow to sit for about 5 minutes. Serve with the sour cream sauce drizzled over it.
Per Serving: 595 Calories; 37g Fat (57.2% calories from fat); 30g Protein; 33g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 170mg Cholesterol; 785mg Sodium.
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A year ago: Cabbage Patch Stew (one of my fav’s)
Two years ago: Pumpkin Praline Custard (easy, low calorie too)
Posted in Veggies/sides, on March 13th, 2010.
There’s nothing quite like a big mound of mashed potatoes with a little pool of melted butter in the middle. I only melted that little bit for the purpose of the photo – normally I don’t add more butter – there was butter in the potatoes already, although not much. But doesn’t that make you want to dip your spoon there and take a big mound – and snag a little bit of butter? Good stuff, this.
Fresh spinach hadn’t quite gotten used up, so I hunted for a recipe that included it. Sure enough, found one in one of my holiday cookbooks, Welcome Home for the Holidays (Gooseberry Patch)
This would be a great way to serve potatoes, which everybody likes, but make it more healthy with the addition of spinach. You could easily add even more spinach – I used half a pound. It would serve as a really nice bed for chicken, or steak, or a pork chop. Or even fish too. So, it’s very versatile. Nothing fancy. Just plain cookin’ and delicious.
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Recipe By: Inspired by a recipe called Swedish Green Potatoes in a
cookbook – “Welcome Home for the Holidays”
Serving Size: 4
NOTES: These do stiffen up a bit if refrigerated. Just add a bit more buttermilk or milk and reheat in the microwave. And if using regular spinach, it will need to be cooked rather than just added into the hot potatoes.
1 1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes — peeled
1/4 cup buttermilk — or milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 ounces boursin cheese — cut into 1″ cubes
3 cups fresh spinach — baby type, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary — chopped fine
1 tablespoon fresh chives — chopped fine
3 tablespoons Italian parsley — chopped fine
Salt and pepper to taste
Reserve a few of the herbs to sprinkle on top
1. Cut each potato into about 2-inch pieces and place in large pot with water to cover. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10-15 minutes until potatoes are tender, but not falling apart.
2. Drain and allow to sit on the stovetop (no flame) for about 3-5 minutes so they dry off.
3. Pour them into a bowl suitable for an electric mixer and whip the potatoes until they’re light and fluffy, adding the buttermilk about halfway through.
4. Add the Boursin cheese, spinach, rosemary, chives, parsley and salt and pepper. Taste for seasoning. If they’re too stiff add a bit more milk or buttermilk.
Per Serving: 318 Calories; 18g Fat (50.7% calories from fat); 7g Protein; 33g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 49mg Cholesterol; 235mg Sodium.
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A year ago: Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookies with Rum
Two years ago: Beef Tenderloin in Puff Pastry
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