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Archive for the ‘Fruit’ Category

The frozen chosen chow down

Just some of the salad bounty on our groaning board. Maybe you can see the homemade corn muffins in the foreground.

Have I mentioned how much we like to eat at First Prez in Statesville NC? No more than 30 or 40 times? Well, it’s something we are REALLY good at.

When, for instance, we had an after-church salad luncheon to welcome our minister back from a three-month sabbatical, I was expecting lettuce leaves and not much else. Well, we had too many substantial salads to count, plus an ice cream sundae bar.

Who leaves a salad bar stuffed? Presbyterians, that’s who. One of my favorite people even brought a Snickers salad which sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s real and even contains a wee bit of nutritious stuff.  I took Patricia Cornwell’s (used to work at the Charlotte Observer with her) wild rice salad and my cousin Susan’s wheat berry salad with feta and cucumbers. More importantly, I got the Snickers salad recipe from Pam N.

My salads were good, sturdy and  healthy. (My friend Pat S. said the wild rice dish was her favorite of the day so I had to give credit to the creator of medical examiner Kay Scarpetta). The Snickers salad, naturally, if the one I intend to make for Thanksgiving.

BTW, I have a new system for filing recipes which maybe will work. All you need if a couple of filing cabinet drawers, lots of hanging files and labels. I cut out or reprint the recipes I want to try and file them, which almost always leads to me making yet another folder because I realize I’ve been collecting a new category without realizing it. I try to file two to three times per week. You can pack away a passel of paper in 10 to 15 minutes.

When it’s time to think about menus/recipes for the week ahead, I go into appropriate folders and pull out two or three to try. I’m actually using some of the saved recipes, and we’re eating some new dishes. Win-win.

Just now, for instance, while looking for the Snickers recipes I found an old Southern Living clip – a harvest salad with cider vinaigrette that looks wonderful (red pears, dried apricots and figs and raisins, red onion, jicama, fresh spinach, toasted nuts and blue cheese crumbles). Think we’ll try it in a few days. Meanwhile, what does it say about my eating habits that the fattest folder by far is CAKES?

Patricia Cornwell’s wild rice salad with cashews

1 cup uncooked wild rice

4 cups chicken broth

3 tablespoons olive oil

1-1/2 cups chopped fresh sweet peppers, the more colorful the better

3/4 cup cashews, coarsely chopped

2 green onions, sliced

Dressing: 3 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon dark sesame oil

1 clove garlic, minced

1/4 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground pepper to taste

In colander, rinse wild rice. Drain well. In saucepan, bring rice and broth to boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 45 to 50 minutes or until rice is tender. Drain any excess liquid. 

Meanwhile, in medium skillet, heat 3 tablespoons oil for sauteeing. Add peppers and cook for 3 to 5 minutes or until tender. Add cashews and green onions. Keep on heat for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring, or until nuts begin to brown. In salad bowl, combine wild rice with pepper-cashew mixture.

To make dressing, combine vinegar, oils, garlic, salt and pepper in jar with tight-fitting lid. Shade well and pour over salad, tossing to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Before you go hog-wild on this good-for-you (8 g protein, 3 g fiber) dish, know that a serving or one-sixth of the recipe contains 350 calories and 22 g fat (no cholesterol, though).  Of course, half of that (or even less) is what you’ll get at our church!

Despite the cost of wild rice, I could eat this every week

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snickers salad

1 8-ounce container whipped topping (use reduced-fat if you want to feel virtuous — hah!)

3 to 4 Granny Smith apples, washed, cored and diced

3 regulation-size Snickers bars, mashed into bits, which means some will fly onto your apron which means you’ll have to taste to make sure they’re OK

Mix the three ingredients and chill, covered, for an hour or two. Not much longer, though, or it can get runny.

Category:

Fruit, Organizing recipes, Potlucks, Rice, Salad, Simple foods

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September morn

We woke up this morning to the sound of war. Well, war if you’re a dove, one of those poor, silly, pink-footed boobies that don’t even know enough to fly out of the road with cars approaching.

Even the spiders are stocking up.

This was a lot of fellas with more money than sense blasting away as soon as the grayest peep of daylight crept over the horizon. So many of them crowd into such small fields we don’t understand why they don’t mow down each other rather than the birds.

But we haven’t heard any ambulances — just gunfire. As the day dwindles down, it’s starting up again.

We put on our brightest headgear and went for a walk this morning to find the kudzu blooming. If you’ve never smelled these purple blossoms, they have a sweet, fruity scent a lot like wisteria’s, only lighter. So even though the temperatures are still in the 90s, fall arrives in 19 days. Yahoo! Time for pork chops and sweet potatoes and fried apples and cocoa and holidays and (on Dec. 15) for the return of Dora the Explorer who told us today that she’s had three marriage proposals in her 9 days in Tanzania.

This rustic  tart or galette is so easy any of our grandchildren (aside from the 2-year-old steamroller) could make it. Something about the browned, free-form crust just looks like fall to me.  Even though I didn’t make the crust (lazy cook who also froze green beans this afternoon), it looks like something of the earth and smells celestial.  Top with whipped cream for some autumnal decadence.

More spider macrame.

Rustic peach tart

1 pre-made pie crust

1 pound fresh peaches, peeled and sliced

3/4 cup granulated sugar plus 2 tablespoons

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Raisins, slivered almonds, optional

Heat the oven to 425°. Spread piecrust in 12-inch circle on cookie sheet. In bowl toss peach slices, 3/4 cup sugar, flour, ginger, nutmeg, raisins and almonds if using (I threw in about 1/4 cup of each). Spread the peach mixture on the crust, leaving bare a 2-inch ring around the outside edge. Fold that edge over the peaches, pleating as you fold and leaving the center open. Sprinkle the pie with the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar. Bake the galette for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden, then reduce the heat to 350º and bake another 30 minutes until peaches are bubbling enthusiastically. Serves 4.

Let the tart rest for at least half an hour to allow the fruit juice to firm up.

Category:

Baking, Desserts, Fall, Fruit, Pie, Seasonal food, Simple foods

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Upside-down cake starts the weekend off right

Some of our sunflowers have as many as 20 flowers on a stalk.

The days dwindle down but not the garden. More and more and more tomatoes and peppers find their way into huge piles — like highway department de-icer in the winter — on the dining room table.

I made a thick, sweet pasta sauce today (7 pounds tomatoes in 4 servings sauce) that tastes of tomatoes, a few fresh herbs and the echo of garlic only. I made 2 quarts of applesauce last night, and that’s using only a fraction of the  hard little apples out there on the tree, hard little apples that have a big taste when simmered with cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and a pinch of salt. I also made a Deborah Madison summer squash soup with curry spices today, and it, too, has a big, sweet flavor, exotic and round without tasting anything like commercial curry powder.

But Friday was baking with summer fruit day. I made a peach-raisin-almond crisp and froze it for when the youngest is here in a week or so, and I also made a nectarine-plum upside-down cake from a King Arthur flour recipe. My husband Livermush would like one every week, please, from now on. He loves cake and this has a sweet, moist cake holding up a layer of soft, carmelized fruit in stained-glass colors.

King Arthur Flour fruit upside-down cake

Topping

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed

1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

As much sliced stone fruit as it takes to cover an 8-inch-square baking pan (24 to 28 ounces)

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Cake

1-1/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (I use, you guessed it, KAF)

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1-3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large egg.

Topping: Melt butter and mix with brown sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon. Spoon mixture into ungreased 8-inch-square baking pan. Heat over to 375.°

Cake: Slice nectarines 1/4-inch thick. Lay slices in prepared pan and sprinkle with lemon juice. Set aside.

In large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar, then beat in milk, egg and vanilla. Mix together flour, baking powder and salt, then stir into egg mixture. Gently pour batter over fruit in pan.

Bake cake for 45 minutes or until cake begins to pull away from side of pan and springs back from touch. Remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes in pan on rack. Invert pan onto serving platter and let it sit 1 minute more before removing pan. If any fruit sticks to pan, carefully scrape it off and replace it on cake. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream. Making 6 to 8 servings.

A simple buttery cake is the base for caramelized summer fruit slices.

Category:

Cake, Desserts, Fruit, vegetables

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Spring is not for sissies, strawberry crisp

Somehow we associate baby pastels with springtime, yet when I look outside, I see primary colors: The sky, of course, is Carolina (ick, go NC State!) blue and the baby maple leaves, red before they’re green. The intense yellow of the wild mustard and forage turnips, blanketing Iredell pastures as well as the meadowlark breasts turned to the sun as they pinwheel out of the emerald small grains.

Red, red, red is the color of these beautiful berries.

Local strawberries will be here momentarily. In the meantime, someone gave me four pints of foreign ones that actually smelled like ripe berries! I made this simple, wonderful recipe from thebuddingcook.com and, again, wondered why anyone uses red food coloring. You can see how vivid these berries are, and they tasted as good as they look.

Simple strawberry crisp

Fruit: 1 quart strawberry quarters (I hulled and trimmed 2 quarts to get this amount)

1/4 cup sugar

Juice of one lemon

3 tablespoons cornstarch

Pinch of salt

Topping: 2/3 cup all-purpose flour (King Arthur, of course, is there any other?)

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup quick (not instant) oats

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

5 tablespoons melted butter

Pinch of salt

Heat oven to 375°. Mix berries, sugar, lemon, cornstarch and first pinch of salt. Put berry mixture in buttered 8-x-8-inch baking dish.

In bowl you used for mixing fruit, stir together topping ingredients (flour, sugar, oats, walnuts, cinnamon, butter and salt). Spoon over fruit. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until crumbs begin to brown and fruit bubbles through topping. Serves 4 to 5 and is ab-fab, served warm and crowned with a scoop of frozen vanilla yogurt.

The young beloved missed the crisp, insisting that they needed to return to school and finish the semester!

Category:

Desserts, Fruit, Rural life, Seasonal food, Simple foods, Spring

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Roasting/sauteeing produce just past its prime

 

The pitbull's idea of sharing a chair

Nothing like a nice relaxing 20 minutes of yoga on the floor with a 70-pound pitbull who thinks I’m down there to play and a brain-damaged, chatty cat who thinks I’m down there to play pillow.

The yoga and 15 minutes of weight work, plus a 30-minute bike ride in the freezing rain let me tuck into salmon-soy-ginger patties and whole wheat Israeli couscous with currants and toasted pine nuts for supper. Exercise is the surest way I know to avoid snacking in the late afternoon, and the earlier in the day I do it, the more likely I am not to squander that work on some refined carbs.

While I was “relaxing” in savasana (corpse pose), I was remembering being a gleaning coordinator for the Society of St. Andrew, a hunger ministry, and how the gleaners and I used to talk about we knew “how to use a paring knife.” Bruises and blemishes, in other words, didn’t deter us from using the produce we picked from farmers’ fields and orchards.

But without playing fast and loose with food safety, there’s another trick to using produce that’s just past its glory, and that is roasting or sauteeing. Baby carrots, for instance, which so often taste like chair legs

Carrots are charred in spots, tender and sweet.

or fire wood. Heat the oven to 425°, toss in a bit of olive oil, a little salt and pepper, on a rimmed baking sheet, roast, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 15 to 20 minutes, and then add a couple tablespoons balsamic vinegar, along with 1 packed tablespoon brown sugar. Toss again, and you’ll forget you thought those carrots didn’t taste like a thing.

Or apples.  I had 4 boring Granny Smiths that were beginning to soften and shrivel. I put 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter in a saute pan and peeled and sliced the apples. When the pan was warm and the butter melted, I added the apple slices, along with 1 packed tablespoon brown sugar and a generous half teaspoon of apple pie spice. Had the apples been even more boring than they were, I’d have added the juice of half a lemon. Stir fry over medium-high until the apples soften. Technically, these are fried apples, but I choose to ignore that. They are wonderful. Apple pie without the crust and ice cream.

Now all I have to do is clean off the cat hair and dog spit so I can go to choir without smelling like a pet shop.

Cat in search of padding

Category:

Exercise, Fruit, good food, healthy cooking, vegetables, Weight loss

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