Our daughter Sara decided to take some time off from her family and come spend the day with us. We were thrilled, since we don’t get to see her very often because of the family business she and her husband run and two very busy children. Kids in sports. You young moms know all about that.

We decided we’d go out to dinner, so I wanted to fix something fairly light for lunch, but warm on the tummy (since it only got to about 50 as a high temp here that day, and that’s cold for Southern California). So I made some creamy broccoli cheese soup with some bacon and cheddar croutons on top.

Very easy soup. I had all the ingredients on hand (a good thing) and it took no time at all, really, to whip this soup together. An onion, a little garlic, chicken broth, 1 1/2 pounds of broccoli, a bit of heavy cream, a little bit of freshly grated nutmeg, some bacon and a bunch of cheddar cheese. Then I made some little croutons – thinly sliced baguette slices toasted under the broiler, then some more grated cheese and a little dollop of cooked bacon on top. Once those croutons were bubbling hot, I ladled soup into the bowl and floated two of those little hot toasts on top. Scrumptious. Easy to make. Even nice enough for a weeknight dinner. Perfect for a cold, blustery day.
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A year ago: Curry Pasta Salad (a recipe from Namibia)

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So, I was filing the other day. Filing recipes. You see, running a food blog gives the writer/owner free license to save infinitely more recipes than she ever did before. My stack of to-try recipes continues to explode, and if I don’t keep on top of it it would be out of control in a matter of a few months. At least I have a system. About 2 years ago I started a new regime – a recipe just HAS to jump out at me telling me it needs to be prepared. If it doesn’t yell at me that way, it doesn’t get clipped, copied or saved. I go through all the cooking magazines with scissors, pen and Scotch tape near me. If a recipe makes the cut, it’s clipped right then and put into the to-try pile. And the magazine goes out in the trash bin right away. The only exception to that rule is around holiday time when I might want to look at the magazine for ideas.

But, it’s only every couple of months that I get around to putting all those saved recipes into some binders I keep here in my kitchen. I save recipes from food blogs too. Lots of them, actually. This cooking community of food bloggers is a veritable treasure trove. And one learns that if you like one blogger’s recipes, you may like many from that blogger. I subscribe to Cook’s Illustrated, and one thing I really like is reading the commentary by the food developer about how he/she came to the final result. Like less salt, omit the sugar. Bake 5 minutes less. You know what I mean. And I like to read the final descriptive phrase about every recipe. If there’s not one – like “gee, this was a sensational dish at my dinner table,” “the final result was just perfect,” or “I’ll be making this again and again,” then I may go right on past.

Therefore, I’ve learned that I really like a lot of the recipes blogged by Cheryl Sternman Rule, over at 5 Second Rule. Cheryl is a food pro, and a very interesting and entertaining writer too. I always enjoy her stories. (I also admire her photography, but that’s another story.) So when I read this particular story last year I immediately saved the recipe. It went into the to-try file. So wouldn’t you know it, I was filing and this recipe just popped up in my hands and said “fix me today.”

What appealed to me about this recipe was that although these are pancakes, they’re composed mostly of protein (eggs and cottage cheese). The batter contains next to no binder (flour), so it’s a higher protein meal than a carb one. And the story, about how Cheryl came by this recipe (from a family acquaintance who attended her wedding, but it was passed on to Cheryl’s mother-in-law who prepared them often) just made these pancakes all the more endearing to me. They’re an Eastern European invention, called siriniki.

So, here’s the gist: you whip egg whites to stiff peaks with some cream of tartar, then set it aside. Then you mix the egg yolks, full-fat cottage cheese, a pinch of salt and a tiny bit of flour, then you combine the two. Carefully, since you don’t want to deflate the soft, tender stiff peaked-egg whites. Then you gently scoop small amounts of batter out on a nonstick skillet, slightly elongating each glob (you don’t want them to be too thick or they won’t cook properly) and cook them for 2-3 minutes per side. Then serve immediately with maple syrup.

You don’t have to use any butter in the nonstick pan. You don’t need any butter on the finished pancakes either. They’re perfect just as they are, but add some real honest-to-goodness maple syrup and you’ll be transported. Cheryl calls these Cottage Cheese Pancakes, but I added the souffle part because these pancakes are ever-so light in texture. They rise quite a bit, actually, but they’re SO tender. These are a must-fix. So there’s my analysis. And if you read my blog regularly, then you can take my word for it. These are worth making, even though you’ll use more than a few bowls and things in the making. Well worth the effort. We had them for lunch, actually, but ideally they’d make a delightful family breakfast anytime.
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A year ago: About Epicurious’ 2009 food forecasts
Two years ago: Carrot-Ginger Slaw

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This week, amidst our thundering rainstorms, I received an email from a friend, Yvette. She informed me that she’d not known about my page of Favorites on my blog. And after finding it, she made a New Year’s Resolution to, over the course of 2010, make every one of my TOP favorites – I haven’t counted them, but perhaps there are 25+ of them. She also told me that some of the links were broken on that page. And sure enough, she was right about that. In between sweeping rain into drains and keeping an eagle eye on the back door that could flood, I worked on fixing all those broken links. Gee, there were a lot of them. And in the process I added a few new sets of asterisks to the list.

When I started writing this blog I never did establish a way to give myself marks, or stars, or a grading system for my own recipes. Over the course of the nearly 3 years I’ve posted here, there are very few recipes I’d never make again. There are a few, but I was upfront about it and told you a recipe didn’t meet my expectations. And why.

But meanwhile, I do have a BUNCH of recipes that far exceed my critical taste buds. The kind that I can’t wait to make again and again. So when I had a new design done on my blog, I decided to create a favorites page (if you go to my home page you’ll see a tab at the top far right that says “Carolyn’s Fav’s”). That’s the one. When you follow through on that link you’ll find a list of about 60+ recipes that are my favorites, with some of them showing asterisks ****** at the end of the recipe title. Those are my absolute all-time favorites. Better than 5-star. Requiring lots of superlatives.

The other day I received an email from a long-time friend, Joanne, who lives in Geneva, Switzerland (her recipe for Syrian Pita Bread Salad is one of my top favorites, by the way). She was planning a big party for a group of friends and asked my advice about some of my appetizer recipes she wanted to make. I gave her some ideas from my list.  She ended up making the Coriander Lime Shrimp and the Crostini with Blue Cheese, Apples, Watercress & Honey. She emailed me after the party to tell me that those two recipes were the hit of the gathering. Warms the cockles of my heart to hear that!

So, if you’re new to my blog, or in need of some new inspiration, I’d suggest you head over to my Favorites page and find something there to try. Then let me know if YOU liked it.

A year ago: Wild & Brown Rice (not one of my stellar recipes, actually, so see, I do have some that don’t make the favorites cut)
Two years ago: Roast Pork Tenderloin with Fennel

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If you’d told me even a few days ago that I’d make a tomato sauce (without meat) for pasta and I’d be head over heels, I’d have laughed. I’m from that school-of-thought that says for any tomato or vegetable-based sauce to taste good, it’s got to have some meat in it somewhere. I’m definitely a carnivore. But something about the write-up at the Smitten Kitchen blog made me rethink my position. The original recipe is from one of Marcella Hazan’s cookbooks, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (one I don’t own).

So, I actually made this a couple of days ago when we were in the midst of our rainstorms. I was inside the house, my DH was struggling outside for hours on end and I knew he’d be starving hungry for heavier fare than we usually eat for lunch.

Besides, I’d just read the blog post about this sauce. I had some canned San Marzano tomatoes in the pantry. I had butter. I had a yellow onion. And I had some Dreamfield’s pasta (the kind that’s a lower-glycemic carb). That’s all you need for this. The onion is peeled and halved, the large can of tomatoes and the onion are added to the pan, brought to a boil along with the 5 T. of butter and it simmers. The onion gets tossed out once it’s cooked (seems a shame, but it’s done its duty and out it goes). I happened to use San Marzano chopped tomatoes, but probably any kind of whole or chopped tomatoes would work here. The butter – well, obviously – that’s what gives it the supple smoothness.

I cooked up the pasta and spooned a glob of this sauce on top and sprinkled it with some freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and this was a mighty-fine meal. We really don’t eat pasta very much (not that we don’t love it, it just doesn’t love us), but oh my goodness, this may have to become a regular on some one of our menus. My DH loved it – really loved it. He asked questions about how I’d made it, so I knew he enjoyed it a lot.
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A year ago: Pork Loin Roast with Apricot Glaze

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Last night, as my very D (dear) H (husband) was out in the rain almost continually sweeping drains, plugging in the sump pump and unplugging it when it ran dry (so it wouldn’t burn up) I did need to feed us something.

I didn’t end up having to get out in the rain and muck very much yesterday. He did, and got himself thoroughly soaked from head to toe about three times. My job was to keep an eye on the one out-of-the-way back door where it can fill up fast if a sudden downpour occurred. We ended up using the sump pump in another location, so that back door needed to be watched. But I was able to do that from the warmth and comfort of the indoors. I kept my other eye on the Doppler radar screens on my computer, telling us when the next onslaught was due. We managed to get through yesterday’s storms without any more damage and the rains finally subsided about 7:00 pm. But the rains expected today are supposed to be the worst yet – 2 to 3 inches. So, I’ll report in tomorrow and let you know how we fared.

Meanwhile, last night, what I craved was comfort food. I had some natural, hormone-free ground beef to use, and finally settled on the casserole you see pictured above, a recipe I’ve made before. It’s a favorite, and just so – well – comforting. I’m delighted we’ll have leftovers for at least 2 more meals. This time, instead of buttermilk biscuits, though, I used a packaged dry mix for sweet potato biscuits that was at my local grocery store. They were quite good. I also used a combination of Jack and cheddar cheeses. But otherwise I stuck to the recipe fairly closely. And I managed to get dinner made and on the table in about 45 minutes. I wasn’t in the mood for any long food prep last night. We’re both tired from the stress. During one of the lulls yesterday I plopped down in front of the TV and actually fell asleep.

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A year ago: Sugar Snaps & Peas

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Oh my goodness gracious. Rain. You’ve probably heard we’ve been having rain here in Southern California. It’s unbelievable. On Monday we had such a torrential rain that it overwhelmed the area drains around our house. The dozens of small 3-inch drains around the exterior of our house work fine under normal conditions. But not with the downpour that occurred. Water began pouring in a back door because our driveway (which is above the level of our home) just funneled water towards the house and the drains just couldn’t handle it. Too hard to explain, but water poured in our back hallway (underneath the door, pictured below), down into our wine cellar, and flooded into our family room about 6-8 feet. I was busily shoving pool towels everywhere I could, but it couldn’t begin to staunch the water flow. I took this picture above from inside our living room. At that moment in time this morning it wasn’t raining. We also had water seep into a downstairs bedroom (where we’ve had a problem before). We spent thousands of dollars getting a water barrier put in so it wouldn’t happen again. Uh, well, something didn’t work right because we did have more water, although nothing like it was before the repairs were done some years ago.

At right is a photo of our back hallway door (a door we never use). Those are dry towels waiting for the next onslaught. During the worst of it on Monday, I had dozens of towels by the door, which hardly made a dent in the flow. The water was up the door about 6 inches, so if I’d opened that door we’d have had a much bigger flood. Now we have a sump pump ready to operate during the next storm, expected today.

When we bought this house about 6 years ago, I can’t say that I gave much thought to rain/water/drain issues. We live in a desert environment, and although we do get rain every winter, it hardly makes a blip most of the time. We knew from the home inspection that we could have a problem, and tried to rectify the specific areas as best we could. We have our drains cleared fairly regularly (hmmm, not often enough, obviously). What we didn’t know was that an end cap on one of the gutters had come off so water from our roof was pouring down into a small flat pad just outside this door pictured. We’ll get that fixed as soon as we can. We’ve plugged the gutter end with a towel. Won’t stop the flow, but should force most of the water to flow to the other end where it might go out the drains.

Here’s a view from our front door looking west. The pool is out past the opening there. During the worst of the rain, water was coming towards the front door like a small river because our next door neighbors had a flood too, and water seeks its lowest level, so it poured over to our side. Unfortunately the ground here is not level, but tilts back toward the house. Don’t know if it’s always been that way or not. Surely that’s not what  you’d want. We’ve never had a problem with THIS before.

Rain filled up this area (and further back from where I’m standing) like a lake, and rose, and rose, to the point that it began seeping into our front door (up about 3-4 inches above the brick entranceway). The rain was so heavy we couldn’t begin to help. I stood in our doorway, in tears, knowing there was nothing at all we could do. Thank God, the rain subsided just as I was moving in more towels, pulling our Turkish rug out of harm’s way, pulling furniture out of our front hallway. Trying to find more and more towels. Trying to protect the hard wood flooring from damage.

The French drain shown at right looks so innocuous there. But debris can so easily fill it up when you have a lake covering the drain altogether.

There are people in the world, like Haiti, who are suffering terribly, and would probably welcome rain. Our problems are trivial when you compare the two.

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A craving hit me – chocolate. (A sign that I’m feeling better, I think, since I haven’t had any such cravings in weeks.) I could have made chocolate chip cookies (our favorites as well as half of the western world) but decided to dip into the to-try file and see what I could find. This recipe, from Dorie Greenspan, from her book, Baking: From My Home to Yours, that appeared in Bon Appétit in November of 2006 just sounded right. These cookies are on the dry side. Or then, maybe I baked them a tad longer than I should. I don’t know. They’re awfully good, though. Note the spices – cinnamon and cloves – which added a grace note to the taste – unless you know those spices are there – you’d have a hard time identifying them. And yet I could taste the cloves. As I say, there’s not enough of either to distinguish, really, but because I knew they were there, yes, I could taste it. You or your guests probably couldn’t identify the flavor.

I used to make a crackle-topped chocolate cookie years ago, that was totally different – it was a much softer and moister cookie. They were rolled in powdered sugar, so when the tops cracked, you could really SEE the fissures in the cookie tops. But I can’t find that recipe, so don’t know how they differ from these. The calorie and fat aren’t all that bad with these, even though there’s 10 ounces of chocolate in the batch. I didn’t get 50 cookies – more like 40 at the most.

These are good. Really chocolaty. Crumbly. But good kind of crumbly. A bit hard to form – that was the toughest aspect of making these – the dough balls were a bit hard to make – smash them too much and they fall apart before they’ve even entered the oven! The dough does need to be chilled – or at least it did for me. But they’re altogether tasty. And ideal with a small glass of milk.
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A year ago: Radicchio Salad
Two years ago: Chinese Meatloaf

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If you’re looking for a low calorie, but special kind of dinner, this is it. Pork tenderloin is a very low-fat meat – do note that there’s only 6 grams of fat per serving. And some of that comes from a single slice of bacon. But do read on. This was from a Phillis Carey cooking class for lighter and healthier meals. Phillis hit the mark here. I don’t know about you, but when I’m really trying to cut fat and calories, what often is lacking is flavor. Read the rest of this entry »

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My friend Norma, for whom I’ve been making puddings and other soft foods for some months as she recovers from chemo and radiation, asked me if I’d make her a chocolate cake. Sure, I said. She had a recipe she wanted me to try from a magazine. It was a Joanne Weir recipe – I found it in my copy of Joanne’s cookbook, Joanne Weir’s More Cooking in the Wine Country, and also online. According to the story, when Joanne was growing up, her mother (a professional caterer) would ask her daughter what kind of cake she’d like for her birthday. Always, Joanne craved this chocolate cake with frosting. Read the rest of this entry »

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Aren’t these cute? I bought a new silicone pan the other day – I probably should have placed something in the picture so you could see the relative size of these little guys. They’re small – about 1-inch square. A little bigger than bite-sized. These are lemon and ginger mini-muffins. With a tart lemon glaze on top. The recipe is from an old Bon Appetit, but is credited to the Baldpate Inn in Estes Park, Colorado. I made a couple of changes to the recipe – I added some minced crystallized ginger to the batter and I added the lemon glaze on top. An easy recipe, really. A mixer is not needed, as everything is stirred up by  hand. They’re good. Maybe not sensational, but tasty. My only caution is to not overwork the batter – you know how muffin batters are – they don’t like to be over-handled. Just mix it up until the streaks of flour have disappeared. You can make these in regular muffin tins (in a paper liner) too – that’s how the original recipe makes them.
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A year ago: Turkey Meatballs
Two years ago: Gingerbread Pudding Cake

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