crazychicknlady | Entries tagged with recipes

I figured out a way to use up a dozen eggs: french toast.

For the first time in a very long time S and C both have night shifts on a weekend day. That is the situation my package of bacon was waiting for, so add in a large batch of french toast and, voila, breakfast.

My french toast recipe is basically 1/2 cup milk to 2 eggs. Plus some amount of vanilla and cinnamon. Cook in a generous amount of butter. Scale up as necessary. Today was a 12 egg day.

I have a well established flock*, so unlike the rest of the country dependent on store bought eggs, egg scarcity is not my current problem. Quite the opposite, in point of fact.

Last week I made german pancakes to use up another 11 eggs.

*Knock on wood, so far the coyotes have not attacked my flock like they did my neighbor's.

Current Mood: cheerful

6 cups peeled and thinly sliced apples - fuji (or some other decently tasting apple, NOT Granny Smith).

1/2 cup sugar.

1/4 cup flour for thickening.

Dash salt.

1/2 tsp cinnamon.

Mix above ingredients together in big bowl, transfer to sauce pan, heat approx 20 mins on stove at medium low (4 on my stove).

Take off heat, mix in 1 TBSP lemon juice.
Put into uncooked pie crust, dot with butter (2 or 3 TBSP).

Lattice top crust*.

Preheat oven to 450.

Cook at 450 for 10 mins.

Reduce heat to 350, cook for additional 45 mins (approximately, judge by how the crust looks). Sprinkle granulated sugar on crust and bake an extra 5 mins.

*If desired, foil edges of crust, remove foil for last 25 mins.

ETA: This year (2021), I used the 10in pie pan. I left off the aluminum foil. I used 5ish cups of apples, mixing in a couple gala with the fuji. I forgot the butter till the pie had already baked 45 mins at 350, so I put butter in all the lattice holes, added sugar in the top crust, and baked it for an extra 10 mins. Best pie to date.

Current Mood: accomplished

C made us chicken tikka masala for dinner using this recipe, more or less.

It was pretty good.

Current Mood: impressed

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour.
1 tablespoon baking powder.
1/4 teaspoon salt.
2 eggs.
1 3/4 cups milk.
1/2 cup cooking oil.

Plug in waffle maker.

Mix together flour, baking powder, and salt.
Add eggs, milk, and oil.
Mix thoroughly.

Scoup batter into waffle maker. Waffles take approximately 5 minutes each to cook.

We usually eat waffles plain or with fresh fruit on top. My favorite is strawberries, but today we had peaches from one of M's trees.

I usually make a double batch.

Current Mood: accomplished

The original recipe called for about 3 cans of sauce to half a pound of ground beef. Those proportions have shifted and the size of the batch I make has grown as my children have grown.

The more ground beef you add, the meatier the sauce. When we were younger and broker, I would use less meat to sauce to add more food with less cost.

Now, usually:
9-11 cans sauce (8 oz). Salted and unsalted.
2-4 lbs ground beef. 15% fat is my favorite.
Garlic salt.
Garlic powder.
Onion powder.
Pepper.
Italian seasoning.

As usual, my seasonings are to taste.

Cook ground beef thoroughly, breaking it into mixed sized chunks. Drain fat. Add tomato sauce and seasonings. Cook for at least half an hour to get everything to cook together. Mix occasionally. Sauce can be left on low for hours if needed.

Generally use an equal number of salted to unsalted tomato sauces. If you decide on an odd number of sauces, the extra is usually unsalted (though if I taste the sauce after adding the seasoning and think it needs more salt and sauce, I'll add a salted one).

I used to hate sauce on my noodles as a kid. My favorite way to eat noodles was to fry them in butter after boiling, then add shredded cheese, or just salt. My kids still like them that way, and my husband still thinks that's weird. One of my grandmothers (Dad's Mom) used to serve her noodles in a casserole pan with the sauce mixed in. I hated how that tasted (choked it down anyway, because you didn't waste food in those days). It wasn't till college that I finally understood the point of spaghetti sauce. My now hubby, then boyfriend, made me spaghetti with meat sauce. I think in my entire life, up to that point, I had only ever tasted marinara. Meat sauce was magical.

I've modified his recipe over the years to what it is today. When I was pregnant I added the no salt cans. Laziness switched his chopped garlic to powder. Our friend R (old friend of M from his home town) introduced me to the concept of onion power, so S started being able to eat my sauce (she couldn't stand chunks of onion).

Today it is a staple in our house, and C's favorite thing I make. Extra sauce usually gets eaten as leftovers. It can, however be frozen if needed, or turned into a casserole, which I will cover in another post.

Current Mood: accomplished

Fill small mug, 3/4 full, with water. Nuke for 1 minute. Squeeze in juice from 1/4 lemon. Add in small spoon full of honey. Stir till everything is dissolved and evenly mixed.

I ended up making two batches of that at four in the morning after being woken up by the boy complaining that his neck hurt like crazy, but he couldn't say exactly where.

Given the confusion of unexpectedly finding myself awake in the middle of the night, and C's initial inability to answer questions like, "does it hurt to swallow?" with useful answers, I defaulted to going outside to pick a lemon and make him some hot lemon honey water. It helped him a little, and eventually I woke up enough to figure out how to ask better questions to narrow down the most likely sorce of his pain*.

This morning he woke up generally sick, but in better spirits. Plus, the specific pain had subsided.

*It didn't hurt when he clenched his jaw, it wasn't originating in his ear, it was the spot on the neck directly below the jaw line that I associate with "swollen glands". It helped C relax more, once we could rationally identify the likely culprit, so once he finished his hot lemon honey water, he took a shower and put himself back to bed.

Current Mood: tired

I have no idea if the origin of this recipe is actually German, they were, however, called German Pancakes by my Mother, and, as I learned how to make them from her, I continue to call them by that name to this day.

The basic ingredients are simple:
All purpose flour.
Milk.
Egg.
A little butter to cook them in.

As this is one of my Mother's recipes, the proportions are not precise, more of an until it looks right sort of thing.

Basically, it's one heaping scoop of flour, to some amount of milk, to one egg. Increase each part as necessary for larger batches. I tend to do a minimum of 5s*, but this morning I made three batches of fives for the family.

Heat a pan over medium heat while you prepare the batter. Make sure to mix the milk and flour together before adding egg(s); this will keep the batter from being too lumpy. You'll know you've added enough milk once it looks like paste or a little thinner. Then add the egg(s). Once completely mixed, the batter should be a thick, but pourable, consistency.

Add a little butter to the center of the hot pan, then pour some of the batter into the center of the melted butter. Pour enough to be able to tip the pan and spread out the batter to the edges. More batter equals thicker pancake, less batter equals thinner. Adjust the amount of batter for your preferences. After a few minutes, once it looks like the pancake is no longer liquid, flip it and cook on the other side. There should be some golden brown spots on each side of the pancake when you're done. If you flip too soon, just flip it back later to finish up on the first side.

Once done, we spread backberry jam on the pancake and roll it up. Sometimes they are rolled up and eaten plain. When I was a kid, sometimes we added honey.

*For egg amounts, since we have different types of laying birds: one chicken or small duck egg equals one, two large duck eggs equals three, one small goose egg equals two, and one large goose egg equals three. I will use a mix of whatever is available to total the proper number of eggs for each batch.

Current Mood: accomplished

12 oz cranberries.
1 cup sugar.
.5 cup orange juice.
.5 cup water.

Dissolve sugar in water and orange juice by boiling for 5 mins. Stir occasionally.

Add sorted and rinsed berries and wait for berries to burble, then cook, stirring, for 10 mins.

Reduce heat and simmer w/o stirring for 5 mins.

Chill overnight.

Current Mood: cheerful

Growing up I used to only like the insides of the cabbage rolls my Mother would make. I'd always give my Dad my cabbage. Now I love the cabbage and generally eat more of it than the rice and beef whenever I make Dolma. Funny how that works.

Here's a loose recipe for anyone who might be interested.

About 1/2 cup dried rice to 1lb ground beef. I add pepper, garlic salt, garlic powder, and onion powder (my grandmother used chopped onion) to the uncooked rice before thoroughly mixing it with the raw ground beef. Sometimes I add an egg.

To get the cabbage ready, cut out the thick bottom part and simmer, in a couple of inches of water, in a lidded pot. This is done to soften the leaves to make them able to wrap around the meat/rice. I keep the cabbage simmering as I pull out one leaf at a time. The leaves look brighter green when ready, but will fall apart if cooked too long.

I form elongated mounds with the raw meat/uncooked rice. Usually about twice as long as thick, but they vary in size so I can get them to fit nicely in each cabbage leaf. Place each mound into the center of a cabbage leaf, fold, fold, roll (kind of like a burrito with both ends folded in). Place in pot.

Loosly fill in the bottom of the pot making sure the cabbage rolls are not too tightly packed. Do a second layer if needed. I chop up the extra cabbage and layer it on top. Take the excess water from simmering the cabbage and pour it in. Add more water to just barely cover the rolls. Add garlic salt and pepper. Pour an 8 oz. tomato sauce on top.

All my seasonings are to taste, so I don't have exact measurements. When I make a larger batch (3lbs meat) I will add two cans of tomato sauce.

Lid pot, heat over medium heat until bubbling, then reduce heat and simmer. Cook for an hour or two. To check readiness, cut a dolma in half and see if the rice is cooked enough. The meat always cooks faster than the rice. I find the 85% lean ground beef is a good balance to achieve not too fatty and not too dry.

Current Mood: calm

S signed up to bring food to the 4-H Community Club meeting today. Yesterday evening we were tired enough to get creative with our cookie making. I have an old recipe written down on a lunch bag taped to my fridge. I actually have three recipes on that paper bag, but the only one I use regularly is my Christmas cookie recipe. The bottom one is probably fancy, since it involves powdered sugar and an egg yolk, but it is too obscured to fully read.

Instead, S and I decided to find out what the middle set of ingredients would create. I'm pretty sure I wrote it down back when I regularly spoke with my sister on the phone. So it's easily over 15 years old.

1 1/2 cups salted butter
2 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp baking powder
5 cups flower
Bake at 400° 6-8 mins.

There was no other information.

I realize we could have played it safe by halving the recipe, but if we were wise enough to take that precaution, we probably wouldn't have been adventurous enough to try a random recipe in the first place.

I did mention how tired we were, right?

So, we ended up with a very generous amount of cookie dough with absolutely no direction as to the size or shape of the pre-cooked cookie we were supposed to end up with on the pan heading into the oven.

We decided to test with a small batch rolled into balls for our first pan. We cooked them seven minutes at 400°. They weren't cooked through, but the bottoms were pushing past golden brown, so we flipped them and cooked for 2 more minutes.

They were ok, but not quite good enough to want to make more in that exact way.

Instead, we lowered the temperature to 375°, raised the pan rack to third from the bottom, instead of second from the bottom*, and turned them into thumb cookies.

We used blackberry jam.

The conclusion was, this is now our thumb cookie recipe. Use all the ingredients as mentioned above, but cook at 375° for approximately 11 minutes or until the jam is burbling. Also, when pressing in your thumb to make the indent for the jam, only do four or five at a time, fill with jam, then repeat the process till finished. Otherwise the indents start to puff out and get smaller before you can get the jam in place.

*I thought it worth mentioning, this oven has 5 rack slots. If this were a 4 rack slot oven, then second from bottom would probably be the better setting. We're mostly aiming for the center height.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Chickens and Unschooling

Learning through living

Entries tagged with recipes

French toast.

My Apple Pie.

June 12.

Waffles.

Spaghetti Sauce.

Hot Lemon Honey Water.

German Pancakes.

Cranberry Sauce.

Dolma

Thumb Cookies.