Food and Fellowship

Fellow Unitarian Universalists (along with many other church goers) are familiar with the coffee hour fellowship that follows Sunday services. This informal gathering is probably more important to some than is the formal service. Zoom church makes this difficult, and even our masked in-person meetings are happening without the "after" part, as we forgo eating and drinking together in the name of public health. Our first Sunday service of the new year (a "Zoom only" affair) sought to rectify this missing piece with "Breakfast Church". Since this had to be strictly BYOB we found a fun recipe to try with thanks to the New York Times Cooking Page. Although we had previously made Dutch Baby with Bacon and Runny Camembert, the simple Dutch Baby was, well, simpler. With just a few basic ingredients, a blender and a hot oven we had a tasty breakfast treat in about a half an hour - and it looked really cool, too. We sprinkled the puffy pancake with some powdered sugar, and added a few teaspoons of apricot jelly. We shared stories and enjoyed our respective meals via our online gathering. Breakfast at Casa Hayesboh is, of course, always paired with fresh roasted, fairly traded, organic coffee. For Breakfast Church we also imbibed some mimosas.

Dutch Baby hot out of the oven!

Two Thanksgiving desserts

A Covid Thanksgiving

Our usual Thanksgiving tradition involves dinner with friends. Typically three families get together, with occasional additions. Most years we arrive around noon and begin cooking and drinking wine until dinner is ready at 3:00 or 4:00. After our meal we take a walk and then have our dessert - a selection of pies, cakes and other delectables. This year we maintained our tradition with a much scaled-back version. It rained all day on Thursday, so we moved our celebration to Friday when the weather was better and we could eat outside. It was about 60 degrees out - let's hear it for global warming - so it was actually a nice day dining al fresco. Rather than spending the entire day together James showed up at our hosts' home with the turkey in the morning and he and Rob got it started on the grill, then James came back home and prepared the dressing and we went returned at 3:00 with our offerings.  I had planned on making some cranberry sauce but Lisa said they already had three different kinds, so I made two desserts instead. 

Just like the lunch lady used to make

Growing up and attending public school in Baltimore County in the 1970s I usually wasn't thrilled with the hot lunch offered in our cafeteria, and opted instead to bring my lunch. Exceptions to that rule were pizza day and open-faced turkey sandwich day. In the case of the turkey it wasn't so much the main course that I was interested in as the dessert that came with it - "peanut butter confection". 

I've often thought about how much I liked that crumbly, sweet dessert and it seemed this year was a good time to try to find a recipe (and, after all, we were having turkey). On a bag of confectioners sugar I found a recipe for Peanut Butter Fudge that seemed like it might allow me to create reasonable facsimile of what I remembered. It was a simple recipe with only four ingredients (confectioners sugar, milk, marshmallow fluff, and peanut butter) and I did end up with a super sweet '70s treat that was exactly as I remembered.

Is it cake or pie?

My second dessert came from the New York Times cooking page. I told our hosts that I would bring pumpkin pie, but this recipe is called "Pumpkin Skillet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting" It has no crust, and is made with flour, so it probably is more of a cake than a pie. Nevertheless it was delicious and baked right in our indispensable cast-iron skillet.

This year there were only six of us enjoying our Thanksgiving dinner together. Here's hoping that next year we will be able to return to our usual festivities with everyone in good health.

Buckeyes

 

Last year when I cleaned out my refrigerators (one at my primary residence, and the other at our beach house) I found one partially-used, expired jar of peanut butter in each. We'd already been empty nesters for a few years and this one-time staple in our household had apparently become superfluous. Our only child came to visit for a few weeks over the summer and requested that we purchase a jar. Unlike some of his other food requests he actually ate some of the peanut butter, but there was still quite a bit remaining after he left. I decided not to wait until this jar expired and instead went looking for a recipe to use it up. I found this recipe for Peanut Butter Balls on the New York Times Cooking page.

These were easy to make. The only "cooking" involved was melting the semi-sweet chocolate chips in the microwave.  A super-sweet, fun treat.

Apple Cake

 

Last spring the Bridgewaters' One Book One Community Read was Thanks A Thousand by A.J. Jacobs. This memoir recounts the author's attempts to thank everyone who brought him his daily cup of coffee beginning with the barista at his local coffee shop and ending with a trip to South America to thank the farmers. Ultimately he thanks about a thousand people, while realizing he didn't even get to everyone. 

As a children's selection along the same theme we found Dawn Casey's Apple Cake which features a young child thanking all the people, plants, and animals who provide the ingredients to make Apple Cake. A recipe is included in the book, so in honor of the start of fall I made it. I made my own almond flour by grinding almond slivers in the blender. The cake is dense and not too sweet although it has 3 cups of honey.

Egg Cream

Yesterday an article from Gastro Obscura on the egg cream showed up on my Facebook feed, and so I got a bee in my bonnet that I needed to make some. I had heard of them before, and knew that they were made with neither egg nor cream, but had never had one. They are super simple to make at home, and we had all the ingredients we needed: fizzy water (made with our SodaStream); milk, and chocolate sauce. I used the egg cream recipe from Ina Garten and made my own chocolate sauce with the recipe from Barefeet in the Kitchen. I have discovered that we can make chocolate sauce faster than it takes to make a grocery store run to buy it, and of course these days we are avoiding grocery runs as much as possible anyway.

We weren't totally sold on the egg creams. They looked pretty cool with their frothy tops, but as James pointed out, they are essentially homemade Yoo-Hoo, and we both outgrew that about the time our ages hit double digits.

It will probably be a hit with children though and it is rather easy to make.

Applesauce!

My last post told of my adventures in apple harvesting and a simple bread-machine recipe using some of my bounty. Over the weekend I used some more of the fruit to make applesauce. I found an easy recipe in my trusty old Deborah Madison Cooks at Home cookbook. After peeling and slicing the apples I put them in a big pot with a bit of water, lemon juice, honey, brown sugar, cinnamon, and ground cloves. Madison suggested using sugar or honey, and cinnamon or cloves, but I knew more was better in this case. I let the ingredients cook on the stovetop until the apples broke down into a chunky sauce.

 We had some as a side dish for the tuna steaks with mushroom sauce James made for dinner, and also used it as a topping on our waffles the next morning.

The last bit of sauce was added as an ingredient to a big skillet cake that we shared for breakfast on Monday.

Mint Chocolate Chip Glazed Popcorn

I love the color combination of light green and brown. Ever since I first saw a house painted with this fun mix I have always wanted to live in a "mint chocolate chip" house. A few years ago when we did a small renovation on our house and added a half bath and I was able to at least have it painted in my dream colors, but it wasn't the same as having a whole house with the hues I sought. This summer when we bought our beach house (aka "whaling house") James suggested that I could finally realize my dream. And so it came to fruition.

Last week I found this recipe when I Googled "healthy popcorn recipes" and I knew it would be the right thing to try at our whaling house. It takes a bit longer than standard salt and butter popcorn, but with about 20 minutes more time you can have a much superior snack. This wasn't too sweet even though it used both chocolate chips and honey and it has a wonderful melt-in-your-mouth quality. James immediately dubbed it the "official snack of whaling house".

Syllabub

As a member of my town's One Book One Community Steering Committee I help to plan events around the theme of each of our chosen books. This fall we are reading The Remarkable Courtship of General Tom Thumb by Nicholas Rinaldi, and last weekend we held our opening event, complete with refreshments, of course. In addition to the juices, coffee, and pastries we served a drink mentioned in the Tom Thumb book - Syllabub. Tom and his bride, Lavina drank an alcoholic version made with wine, but we served a version made with juice. It was quite simple to make, and only required a few ingredients:

I mixed equal parts whipping cream and apple juice (I used 2 cups of each) with the juice and grated rind of one lemon. Everything was poured into a plastic container with a tight fitting lid and shaken until frothy (the recipe I used said to "shake until the sound changes from sloshing to muffled"). It didn't take long at all. I poured the mix into small sample cups with lids to take to the event. The juice and the cream separated a bit by the time we served it, but this is the way syllabub is meant to be drank. I found it to be a rather fun and tasty drink, and was, therefore, surprised that so few of the attendees tried it, especially since the sample cups were only about the size of a shot glass. Really, what's the worst that could have happened if they didn't like it?

James and I did try an alcoholic version at home later that evening. We used ginger-flavored brandy in place of juice and skipped the lemon. I might try it with a bit less alcohol next time.

Key Lime pie-wiches

Here's a simple summer treat that works as a breakfast, lunch, dessert, or snack-no cooking, or baking involved:

Put a schmear of cream cheese on a graham cracker, and add a dab of Key Lime jelly. Eat either open-faced, or put another graham cracker on top. Sweet, crunchy, and creamy. I invented this myself. Especially good with a nice cold glass of milk.

A-a-anything from the trolley?

Yes!
Pumpkin pasties, please!

Harry Potter fans are well aware that yesterday, July 31, was Harry's birthday - a day I usually celebrate by blogging about one of the HP books. I decided to add to the festivities this year by preparing a favorite food of Harry and friends. I chose pumpkin pasties because we had the ingredients on hand. The pasties were dessert following our early Lammas feast.

I did not actually use pumpkin, but rather a squash that looked like this

Received in this week's CSA pick up

Inside the squash is very light green, almost white, rather than orange. I cut it into pieces and roasted it until it was soft, then pureed. Once I added the spices (way more than the recipe calls for) it didn't matter that it wasn't pumpkin.

This was rather time-consuming, as I had to made the pumpkin custard filling and the pastry dough (the recipe said store bought pie crust pastry could be used - I think not!). Neither the filling or the crust was really that difficult to prepare but cooking time was quite long as the filling had to bake first, then was placed into the pastry, and then everything went back to the oven again. The recipe also said not to bake for more than 10 minutes once the shells were filled. I had to bake for about 25 minutes before I saw any kind of crustiness that I was satisfied with.

These were sweet and creamy - like single-serving pumpkin pies. We had some vanilla ice-cream with butterscotch chips along with it.

Yum!

Pigs in Blankets

This week we've been enjoying a visit from some Wisconsin cousins. Extending our table with friends and family makes mealtime an especially relaxing part of our day. 

We revived an old favorite recipe at the request of our former vegetarian daughter. The last time we made this kid-pleasing dish was probably almost a decade ago, and we surely used Pillsbury refrigerated crescent dough. I wasn't about to do that at this point in my cooking journey, so I got out Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (with emphasis on Everyone) and prepared some biscuit dough. 

I sifted together 2 c. flour; 2 t. baking powder; and 1/2 t. each baking soda and salt. I cut in 6 T. of butter, and then stirred in 1 c. of plain yogurt. I rolled out the dough and cut it into strips. My cousin assisted with assembly by slicing the hot dogs and wrapping a slice of cheese around them. We then wrapped a strip of dough around each dog. There was just enough dough for one pack of 8 hot dogs. I placed the wrapped hot dogs on a baking stone and baked for 16 minutes at 400 degrees  They turned out perfect! I put out some mustard and ketchup for dipping the "pigs". The adults enjoyed this with sangria.

Tutti-Frutti-Ice-Sparkle

Things that come from the house I grew up in are referred to as "Crosby road relics". Such things are now scattered across at least four households. I was delighted to learn on a recent visit with my sister that a relic I believed to be long lost was in fact shelved amongst the cookbooks in her kitchen. The Better Homes and Gardens Junior Cookbook ("for the Hostess & Host of tomorrow") was used a lot when I was growing up, but mostly for the same three or four recipes. As this photo demonstrates the page with the Eggnog recipe was well used (those are vanilla stains, folks).

Wooden fruit is another Crosby Road relic!

  

We made this recipe quite often. It is for a single-serving of 'nog and we generally had all the ingredients needed on hand. We really had no idea that most people thought of eggnog as a Christmastime treat. We drank it. All. The. Time. Readers will note that just beneath the eggnog recipe is a recipe for a very beautiful beverage called "Tutti-Frutti Ice Sparkle". We could only dream of making this as it required three different favors of "summer drink" as well as a lemon-lime carbonated beverage - things we might have had one of at any given time on Crosby road, but certainly not all four. We also knew better than to ask. 

So, it dawned on my sister and I that we were grown ups now, and could make whatever we darn well pleased. So off I went to buy several flavors of "summer drink". Luckily, my sister already had a case of Sierra Mist on hand. 

I wound up purchasing these little "Happy Drinks" because they were cheap, and came in lots of colors.

The "Happy Drinks also allowed us to step up the original recipe by making four different colors of ice cubes. The drink did look pretty, but my sister pronounced it "vile" upon tasting. Not even our children would finish their servings. Granted, her children are 23 and 21, and mine is about-to-turn-17. They, like us, probably would have been thrilled to drink this if their ages were still in the single-digit range.

Although ours did not turn out quite as beautiful as the pictures in the book, adding a mint sprig gave it a bit of class.

We also tried putting the colored ice in sangria. DO NOT try this! You will absolutely RUIN your beverage.

Banana Chocolate Milkshake

Because we have a vegetarian daughter, we have a variety of kid-friendly vegetarian cookbooks on our shelf. Mollie Katzen, the guru of vegetarian cooking, has written two such cookbooks, both of which we own. Pretend Soup is written for preschoolers and has some easy and fun recipes. I was looking for just such a recipe when I decided I wanted dessert last night. This yummy milkshake filled the bill. I adapted it just a bit to adjust for things I had on hand. I didn't use the ice the recipe called for, since my banana slices were already frozen, and I used Mexican Chocolate pieces from Taza Chocolate, rather than powdered hot chocolate mix. The bananas and the chocolate chunks were put into the blender along with a cup of milk, and blended until smooth. Refreshing and delicious.