Deep Fried Pickle Recipe

Ingredients:

-          Dill pickles – 1 jar

-          Eggs  - 2-3

-          Butter milk - 1 cup

-          Cornmeal – 2 cups

-          Pepper - to taste

-          Salt – to taste

-          Chili powder/cayenne – just a pinch for kick

-          Ranch dressing for dipping

-          Oil to fry

Drain the pickles and pat with towel to remove most of the juice, mix the eggs buttermilk and spices together, dredge the pickles through the liquid mixture then the cornmeal, let rest for a few minutes, and fry in hot oil for 2-4 minutes depending on size.  Remove to a cooling rack for a few minutes, serve with Ranch dressing and enjoy.

Cooking for Larger Crowds

I have found recently that cooking for a large group of people is a special talent.  There are many people that can cook a wonderful dinner that serves up to 8, but anything above can strike fear in their hearts.  Now don’t get me wrong these are perfectly lovely people, wonderful contributors to society, they’re just not made to cook “BIG”.  I’m not sure if it’s because we come from a large family, or if so much of our life is spent at some sort of potluck meal at church, but, I have been blessed with the knack of cooking good food for a high number of people.  I hope that this will pass down to the two of you my lovely children but, I wonder sometimes if it is a generational thing or built out of necessity. 

Next weekend marks the annual Homecoming carnival, I have been asked plan for and prepare most of the food items for the event.  Last year we had close to 500 people attend the event and most of them ate something while they were there.  The key to cooking for larger events is in the planning – I’ve had my main menu ideas together since the middle of December, this weekend I will (with your help) start prepping items that can be stored or frozen until the day of the event. New items have been tested and approved for large groups – new on the list this year – deep fried pickles, and jalapeno’s, and the every tasty funnel cake. If you work well on pre-planning the day of the event goes so much smoother. 

Key things to remember for a larger crowd:

-          Plan ahead

-          Prep as much as you can in advance

-          Be flexible with your plan and with the people that offer to help

-          Always accept help from others – you will need it

-          Remember it’s the joy of cooking good food that drives you to want to do this J

-          If you’re trying a new recipe – start small and test before rolling out to a large group

Canning Recipes

Best ever butter pie crust:

2 ¼ cups flour

2 sticks butter – cold cut into cubes

¼ tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

4 tbsp ice water

Mix flour, sugar, butter, and salt in food processor – use pulse setting and check every few seconds – mixture is good when the entire thing looks like sand – add the water and pulse until the crust forms a ball.  Split crust into 2 balls, flatten, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, mixture will keep for a few days in the fridge if you want to make ahead.

Canning

Well my dear little girls, this weekend officially marked the beginning of summer and for us our annual trek out to Brentwood for Cherry picking. I hope this is something we continue with your children when that day comes – way, way, way down the road.  What a wonderful time we spend with the family – Grandma Cookie, Grandpa Bob, Becky, Larry, Grandma Maude, and this year we even managed to convince your dad to get up early and go with us as well.  I think his reaction to the whole thing was the best, even if he doesn’t like eating raw cherries or blackberries, he was out there with gusto thinking of all of the things I could make for him from the fruit we were picking.  Pies, Jams, cobblers, anything with sugar and a crust would be perfect as far as he was concerned, the more he thought, the more he picked and we ended up coming home with almost 20 pounds of fresh Cherries and 10 pounds of blackberries.

Which lead me to my first dilemma, what to do with all of this fresh fruit that wasn’t going to last longer than the weekend if even that long.   With all of my gardening endeavors I realized that I wanted to learn how to preserve our crops in case we couldn’t eat it all before it went bad, so, I did what most people in their right mind would do, right?  I got on the phone  called my mother and asked if she still had all of her old canning equipment, once I got that squared away it was off to the hardware store to by jars and lids and pectin, and onto the internet to find recipes. 

Sunday started with Blackberry Jam – I now know why blackberry jam is so expensive – by the time you get through picking, cleaning and processing it takes a lot of work for a small amount of end result.  But oh my goodness does it taste good through the entire process.  With the left over berries I had just enough to make a cobbler, much to the happiness of you girls and your dad.

Sunday evening we pitted all of the cherries, mental note for next year – we need to invest in a better cherry pitter. And Monday (Memorial Day) I set to work on Cherry Pie Filling and maraschino cherries for Stevie.  By the end of this weekend, all told I have 9 jars of Jam, 2 jars of blackberry pie filling and 6 jars of cherry pie filling – canned and waiting to go into the garage for rainy days.  Hopefully this afternoon I’ll have another few jars of the cherries and we’ll see if that recipe is a keeper.

Things we learned this weekend:

-          Canning is a blast, but it is a lot of work, worth it though in the long run

-          Make sure you wear clothing that you don’t care about when working with berries, I think I washed 3 different shirts and a few pairs of pants this weekend from getting cherry and blackberry juice all over them

-          As always the best recipes are the most simple and food is always better when made and shared with the ones you love.

Fried Chicken and Mashed Potato recipes

Fried Chicken

1lb boneless skinless chicken breast cubed

1 egg

½ cup milk

1 cup flour

Salt and pepper to taste

1-2 cups oil
cooling rack

Paper towels

Fill a skillet with oil 1-2 inches deep depending on height, heat the oil in the skillet until the oil looks wavy, Wisk the egg and milk together in a shallow bowl, combine salt, pepper, and flour in a second bowl.  Dip the chicken in the milk mixture, then dredge through the flour and place gently in the oil (gently because the oil is hot and it’ll get you good if you burn yourself).  Cook on each side for at least 5 minutes flipping occasionally so as not to burn it.  Place on cooling rack with paper towels to drain the excess oil.

Surefire Mashed Potatoes:

Who can have fried chicken without mashed potatoes and they’re the easiest things to make from scratch.

1 potato for each person plus one for the pot so for a family of 4 – 5 potatoes pealed and diced

Salt

Water

Butter

¼- ½ cup of Milk

Salt and pepper to season

Place the pealed and diced potatoes in a pot and fill with water – potatoes should be covered by at least an inch of water, add a pinch of salt for flavor, bring to a boil and cook until when tested the potatoes are smash able with a fork (about 20 minutes).  Once cooked drain and place back in the pot with about a ½ stick of butter – you can use more or less depending on how buttery you like your potatoes, once the butter melts add the milk – again depending on how much butter you use will depend on how much milk you’ll want to add.  Use a fork or pastry mixer to mash everything together – I like my potatoes a little lumpy, if you want them smooth, use a stick blender instead, salt and pepper to taste and enjoy.

Sunday Dinner

I’ve realized recently that the Sunday Dinner Meal either late afternoon or early evening is an important tradition that I like keeping in my family.  Although I do have to say to my loving daughters this week it was missed for more “interesting” endeavors, but, as soon as you got home there were plates made and food reheated to partake in the more thoughtful meal.  And by thoughtful I mean time consuming, Sunday dinners tend to be more intricate just because I have the time to make them.  A roasted chicken dinner with all the fixings is almost unheard of during the week, with the short hours returning from work and before going to bed, but Sundays, all bets are off, we get home from church and after a short rest there’s a long afternoon to slow cook my way into food ecstasy.

This last Sunday was no different, there’s something about hitting the farmers market on Saturday morning, or the weekly romp down to Trader Joe’s with their fresh produce that get my creative juices flowing for fresh light meals, incorporating the veggies and fruits of the spring and summer, and when I have a little extra time to put some love into the dish the really great flavors of the food stand out better than I expect. Now I know that Fried Chicken is not at the top of the list of healthy meals, but,  I think there has to be a balance between healthy and tasty and sometimes they fall into the same category, sometimes not, and when I feel like having fried chicken I want it fried, not in an oven, not with a little oil and some flavorless covering, really coated, battered and fried in a skillet, the fact that it usually takes at least an hour for that process to occur on it’s on, not including the accoutrements makes it a meal less often had and every once in a while a good old fatty main dish meal is a good thing.  Remember that dear girls, in this era of light and low fat pre-packaged fast food grayness, a home cooked meal either healthy or not has to be better for you than some processed meat by-product you pick up anywhere else. 

So to make a long story longer, Sunday dinner – Fried food and all is still a good thing to have with your family sitting around the table that we had to clear off from the weekly clutter and weekend projects, make sure when you forage out on your own to make that a tradition of your own, either coming home like we used to do going to grandma and grandpas, or have your family over – Lord that I live to see the day!  Just remember that food made with love always tastes better when shared with the ones you love.

Toasting to Germany

With all of the events we having going on in our lives I’m surprised we eat at all sometimes. This week Frannie you had a report due on Germany, and to my surprise you blindsided me with having to cook a German dish for about 100 people. After trolling through a few recipe books and the internet AND convincing you that although black forest cake is a wonderful treat, it’s not the best thing to make if the cherries are not in season. Moreover, since beer was definitely off the menu for grade school kids, you and I decided on a very lovely German apple cake recipe. 

I think this might be the first time I’ve had you try to cook anything on your own from scratch – aside from peeling the apples, but don’t worry that will come in time or you can always get one of those really fun peeler/slicers we see on the cooking shows. I thought you did a great job getting the ingredients together and even the calculations for doubling the recipe, and if our oven would ever cook things in the time it’s supposed to it would be a miracle but even that didn’t slow us down. It was nice to have an afternoon with you in the kitchen, talking about life and teaching you how to read a recipe, and the smell of the apples and cinnamon as they were baking, was to die for. I only hope it tastes as good as it smelled coming out of the oven.

So what did we learn this week? Well, you and your sister still need to work on communicating things to me a little sooner than you normally do. You learned that depending on the dish, the tartness of the apples makes a huge difference in the flavor of the dish – Granny smiths for this cake definitely. In addition, I think I learned that spending an afternoon in the kitchen – planned or not – with my daughters has got to be one of my favorite things to do. I need to be reminded of that from time to time.

Tips for making this cake:

-          Use tart apples and slice them small

-          I think I might try to add nuts next time – maybe pecans

-          This is definitely more of a coffee cake than a dessert cake and it did call for a cream cheese frosting that neither one of us is fond of so don’t worry about topping it unless you want to

Next week we are going south of the border, I will be planning for the Coaches dinner and figuring out how to make Carne Asada and Fajita Chicken for 200+ people.