Lemon Ginger Tea

About 3 inches of ginger, grated

A small saucepan of water – 5 or 6 cups

3 lemons, juiced

¼ cup honey

Grate the ginger into the water; bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer for about 30 mins. Strain into a teapot. Add lemon and honey.

After tasting a lemon ginger tea at a restaurant, I searched and experimented for the perfect recipe. This is my version.

This makes a very zippy brew. Adjust to make it more mellow by reducing ginger and/or lemon if you please. It is also great iced. 

Waffling

We like waffles. We do not, however, own a waffle iron. Luckily, our friend Molly is out of town this week and allowed us to use hers! Not luckily out of town but luckily let us borrow. Dave, in his usual half-assed way, decided to simply use the recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook while Renee wasn’t looking. Several months prior, we watched an episode of Good Eats devoted to waffle making, and Renee wanted to try Alton Brown’s recipe. But it was too late, Dave had already begun. He was persuaded to sub some of the while flour for whole wheat. We started cooking and sampled the first one that came out. It was, in a word, horrible. Renee said she thought it tasted like ice cream cone, while Dave likened them to plain dry toast. They were way too crispy and flavorless. We continued cooking until we ran out of batter, but as we went on, the idea of eating these flavorless discs of death became less and less appetizing.

So the decision was made to start over using Alton’s recipe. This was a pretty major undertaking: facing the prospect of another batch was daunting when already faced a pile of “waffles” that were already finished and a messy kitchen. Not to mention the waste. But one taste of those communion wafer flavored  (and textured) waffles would have convinced anyone to do the same. We pressed on and made the new recipe. There were some pretty big differences – 3 times as much sugar and butter – destined to be better, right? -  an additional egg, 3 times less baking powder and some baking soda and whole wheat flour! These waffles were fluffy, sweet and all around delicious. Two hours after we started the waffle debacle we settled into eat our breakfast and watch Roseanne. It took forever but was well worth it for our exquisite brunch. Don’t worry, we fed some of the yucky waffles to the birds and put the rest in the compost.

Waffle Fail.

Waffle Win!

Mitten Cookies

It's December 24th and quite chilly in Colorado Springs. We decided to celebrate the holiday season by making some wintery cookies. We made sugar cookies from the Betty Crocker cookbook, cut them into mitten shapes 

and sprinkled them with granulated sugar. They turned out poofier and softer than we initially expected, but hit the spot regardless. 

We had a little extra dough and made a few special cookies. Renee made some thumbprint style cookies with raspberry jam. Dave made a snowflake - but of course you knew that from the picture! 

Tomorrow we are making chili and hope to blog about that as well.  

Why Buy Crackers?

A new discovery of ours is how simple it is to make crackers and how much more delicious they are than any cracker we have ever tasted before. We made this discovery out of necessity – we wanted cheese and crackers but didn’t have crackers so we made them. We cut bread in very thin pieces, less than a quarter of an inch, applied an oil, salt, and pepper mixture we made with a brush, and toasted until crisp. Another variation we have tried is to rub garlic on the bread for a garlicky cracker – YUM!

Roasting Chickens

We cook chickens fairly frequently, a couple of times a month. It is a perfect food for us because we crave meat but try not to eat too much of it. By choosing the whole chicken we can feel good about using most parts of the bird without much waste. We typically get several meals out of the chicken because we eat the white meat on salad or in sandwiches, save the dark for soups or pot pie, and use the stock for soups. The other benefit of the chicken is that it is so easy to cook it takes hardly any time or effort. And if we are one thing that thing is lazy! Here is how the chicken goes.

Buy a whole chicken

Mash up butter with tons of pepper and salt

Peel back the breast skin and smear most of the butter between meat and skin. Spread the rest on the outside

Fill the cavity loosely – usually we use citrus fruit, garlic and onions. You should cut this stuff in half or quarters but leave the skin and stuff on

Bake in the oven and baste every half hour

Take the meat off when the chicken is still hot

Throw the carcass in a big pot of water, bring to the boil, then simmer for an hour or so (probably while you are enjoying your chicken dinner) strain and freeze

Pot Pie

*Note - several posts will be made today, as we have been sitting on four or five entries that for whatever reason (laziness) have not been posted.*

This entry ties in nicely with the last one because it prominently features our homemade pie crust! Dave has always loved pot pie. It is possibly his dad's most favorite meal, and a point of bonding between them, as his mom and sister don't eat much meat. The recipe we use for the filling is from the Betty Crocker cookbook, probably slightly modified but not much. One major plus for this dish is that it requires little preperation the day of the pie. We cook chickens at our leisure and then freeze the meat, so you just need to take it out of the freezer and thaw.

Combine that with some onions, frozen peas and fresh carrots (we have found it is imparitive to cook your carrots first for a few minutes to soften, otherwise you end up with crunchy hard carrots and it is not pleasant) and then all you need to do is make the sauce. This is a flour/chicken stock combo.

Bake for a few minutes and then let it cool! We have pictures here from our most recent and probably most mammoth pot pie. We are also looking forward to making a turkey pot pie with some of our thanksgiving turkey.

Pie Crust

Pie Crust

I would say pie crust used to be the most intimidating thing to me. Scary stuff, right??? Not too dry, not too wet, don’t touch it!!! Lard??? Are you kidding? That is hardened animal fat. Now I know lard is yummy and crust doesn’t have to be scary. But it can be. I make a very easy all purpose crust that isn’t award winning but it works. I know many people are wed to their recipe and the type of fat they use. Here is the thing: if you use lard it will taste better and be flakeier but you have animal bits in the crust and that, for some, is a turn off. That isn’t really the reason I don’t use lard. I just can’t make the leap to buying it. It is a line I haven’t yet been able to cross. So here is the current recipe I use, it is inspired by a Laurel’s Kitchen recipe but modified for my preferences. I use 1 c white flour, 1 c wheat flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 10 tablespoons butter, and some ice water. Cut up the butter into 1 centimeter cubes (totally an estimate). Blend the flours and salt in your food processor. Did I mention that the food processor is essential and the reason I got over my fear of crust? Ok, blend the dry. Pulse in the butter until you have a mixture of fine crumbs. Then slowly add the icy water a tablespoon at a time until the mixture starts to come together. Then dump it on your work surface and smoosh it together, it should stick if you put enough water in. That is the end. You smoosh and then store or roll.

I am not a cook or baker so I don’t know about this really but I have something to say about this “don’t over work the dough” thing. I do fear over working the dough because a tough crust is disappointing. However, I have never over mixed the crumbs of flour and butter. My experience makes me think that the over mixing comes with the addition of the water. So I freely mix in the butter, unafraid of over mixing. Then I back WAY off and add in the water slowly, drop by drop, until I see the slightest change of the dough starting to stick together. Then I STOP. It seems like you could always add more drops when it is on the work surface if you needed to.

This crust recipe only takes a couple of minutes but I still make several crusts at once and freeze the extras. Make crust and be merry!