Did you know that I used to be a smoker? I just passed my one year non-smoker anniversary. One of the things I have noticed since I stopped smoking is that I taste more, and taste diferently. I no longer taste just the top tones of a spice or flavor, but the undertones and aftertastes as well. It’s kind of interesting to know now that most of my life I wasn’t tasting what I ate. Which is kind of amusing, considering how much I love to eat, LOL!
I called this paprika eureka is that the first spice I re-discovered was paprika, and I was reminded of that when I wrote my review of The Spice Merchant’s Daughter today.
Consider this post the cyber equivalent of me passing around the bottle and saying taste this! Try it in dry beans, on chicken and fish, and also on popcorn!
Friends, meet Uber Griddle. Uber Griddle, meet my friends. Here you see it full of sausage patties that eventually became Egg MomMuffins, but I use it for a great number of things. It will hold 9 pancakes at a time, and also 9 eggs, though not together. I can fry up to three pounds of bacon or chicken breast on it. Sometimes I fry bacon on it, scrape almost all the grease off, and then throw some scallops or shrimp on it for a few minutes. That’s tasty!
One of the great side benefits of using the griddle is that it makes short work of what would otherwise be a Herculean task. Making pancakes for nine people 2 or 3 at a time takes an hour. With this thing, I can do it in 15 minutes, just three griddles-full.
The other benefit is that it seems to keep the kitchen cooler. I know that seems incongruous, since it is an overall bigger heat source, but it’s true, none the less.
Do you guys drink wine with your meals? I have to admit that I usually don’t have wine until the evenings after the kids are in bed. I’ve never really bothered to figure out what goes with what, and my folks never served wine, so it’s just not something I know how to do. But I’d like to. I guess if I ever get around to throwing an actual dinner party, I will make the effort to put it all together with the right wines for the courses. I am actually kind of proud of myself for moving out of my white zinfandel comfort zone in the past half-year. There are some really nice wines out there, yes, even at Wal-Mart and even at less than $10 bucks a bottle if you can let your tongue do the tasting instead of your “palate”.
In the meantime, since studying wine is not on my official agenda, I can cheat. I read Rachel Ray’s mag, and in the back of every issue, she suggests wines to go with the recipes. That works for me, for now. Only most of them aren’t available at Wal-Mart, nor are they under ten bucks. Also, Boone’s Farm still burns my tongue. Just sayin’
In fact, I have been lusting after them for months. The only reason I don’t have them yet is because I haven’t dragged my lazy bum out to Target to get them, and I refuse to pay the $10 shipping on them. But red happens to be one of my absolute favorite colors, and I want them. Really I do. Don’t you think they would look so pretty with food in them on this blog? Yes. Yes they would. But not at that price for shipping. Although the blue set is also nice. I wonder how much the shipping would be for both sets?
I want to give a good shout out to my friend, Retta. She’s a good egg, and really smart. Back when this blog was a glimmer in my eye, I asked he to make a theme for me, and she worked head down for a bit and came up with this one for me. I loved it! But in the meantime, you can’t have a naked blog, so I had installed another one. Inertia took over and I just left the other one up because my attention had wandered. However, when I decided it was time to renew my passion over here, I went and found this theme, filed away at easywahmwebsites.com, just waiting for me, as if Retta knew I would come back for it.
Anyway, that’s the story, Morning Glory. Retta blogs over at Just Not Martha. Go read her. She’s a keeper.
My mom and I have spent a lot of hours so far this summer shelling peas and butter beans. The ones we have gotten have not been the best as far as being easy to work, and it’s been mighty tiring and aggravating sometimes. OTOH, all that frustration kinda melts away when you put a bite of these in your mouth.
These are snap peas, and you can relax, because that white stuff is just congealed bacon grease. That’s a food group, you know, bacon grease. I brought these to a boil, added a generous dollop of the grease and salted them. Then I let them simmer about 30-40 minutes, and they were just about the best thing I’d ever eaten. It had been a very long time since I had had field peas. Worth the aggravation, for sure!
you probably ought to check out one of my other blogs! Each Thursday, I run a segment called “Cass in the Kitchen” over on Cass Knits! I do cookbook reviews, talk about the occasional cooking website, and share some of my best recipes, along with mouth watering pictures to tempt you into succumbing to my culinary magic. Seriously, it’s good stuff!
I try to be a reasonably frugal cook, but one thing I have learned is to not skimp on is kitchen tools. Good tools are a gift you give yourself that keeps on giving. And it’s not always the spendy tools that are good ones. This spoon, for instance was about $4. As you can see, it broke right off! And before that, it leaked water out of that band into my pots and pans. Blech!
These two are better spoons. Surprisingly enough, I only paid about a buck a piece for them, one at Wal-Mart, one at Dollar Tree. The dark blue one is the DT one, and it’s made of melamine. Truly an awesome spoon, BUT. That little black dot is rubber and it was attached to a larger rubber piece on the back of the handle. The glue was apparently not dishwasher safe, because that back piece came off. This doesn’t effect the way the spoon performs, though, and they also have holed spoons and spatulas and pancake turners at Dollar Tree. The next time I go there, I will be getting a few more, I think.
Next up is what may possibly be my favorite spoon ever, and these hands have held a lot of spoons. I got it in a pack for different tools for $4 or $5. We love them all, and they are the first ones we reach for. Come to think of it, I would almost rather have more of these than more of the melamine ones.
WOW: you don’t want to get caught by surprise with a wooden spoon.
I was looking through my photo cards trying to find some pictures I had taken for this blog of various kitchen utensils that I have burned and mangled beyond recognition, and I found this photo I took for SPS of me frying bacon early on Sunday morning. Good thing I at least found this, because I think I deleted the others. Too bad, because they were worth a giggle at least. Oh well. I guess I can re-take them.
You know, there are many, many reasons to cook. The very least reason is because someone’s belly is hungry. Truly. They sell boxes of stuff at the grocery store that you just have to pop in the microwave and heat, and lo! behold! the belly fills. Shoot, the other day, I even saw cans of soup that heated when you opened them, no microwave needed. What’s the cooking in that? There isn’t any, that’s what.
I cook today because my Grandmother taught me to love to cook. You’ll notice I say Grandmother, because in truth, my mother hates to cook. For many years it was because she wasn’t very good at it, but now she is a good cook and she still doesn’t like to do it. It was my Grandmother who taught me to make biscuits from scratch. It was my Grandmother who taught me that fried chicken is done when it doesn’t sizzle up when you turn it over. It was my Grandmother who taught me that a cake is done when it starts to pull away from the sides of the pan. I’ve never ever been able to replicate her beef gravy, though.
The biggest thing she taught me is that you cook because you love people. And that is why my mother cooks, even though she hates it. She loves the people who eat with her. Every time I cook, I remember the lessons Grandmother taught me. I remember because each time I walk in my kitchen, I get a good visual reminder of them. I see her popcorn pot and her apron on top of my fridge. That’s her sifter and cracker tin, too.
