When the cooking bug bites, it's best to scratch where it itches or itch where it scratches or get out the mixing bowls, I'm gonna run outta room today.
It started with yesterday's muffins. It was a new poppyseed muffin recipe and it turned out very good. It made a lot and they are now frozen to be grabbed when I'm late for work. I've always had a problem with muffins making more than the recipe says they will. That's technically not a "problem", per se, except I wonder if I'm doing something wrong when the recipe says, "Makes 12" and I have 16. I think I finally have the "Mix just until blended" understood, after several score years of baking.
The only thing that frustrates me is the lack of the small 2 - 3 cup bowls like the metal bowl you see. Cereal bowls just aren't the same for mixing in small quantities. You need to beat the eggs and add the milk to the beaten eggs before adding alternately with the flour. A cereal bowl sloshes the beaten egg milk mixture over the sides because the sides are sloped. In a mixing bowl, the sides are vertical. That mix you just made isn't going anywhere unless you get really rambunctious with your whisk.
This morning, I had a hankering for pancakes. That's another item I can freeze after I've had the two I want for breakfast. So, I wandered over to the cookbook shelves, yes, there are two of them, not counting the stack on top of the bookshelf and all the little flyers shoved on top of the cookbooks AND the box in the office with all the recipes I want to try, and I pulled out this book.
I'm a sucker for cookbooks. I have far too many of them. I love to cook, but it's just me and unless I'm absolutely positive it can be frozen to eat later or will make tasty lunches and suppers for the next couple of days, I don't want to cook and have food left over. I just tossed something that was white and green and fuzzy and had integrated itself with the plastic container in which it was stored.
I don't remember where I got this cookbook. The copyright is 1939 and the side is tabbed with regions of the country with distinctive cuisines. New England, Pennsylvania Dutch, Mississippi Valley, Southwestern, Wisconsin, are some of the tab names. It reflects a time, the end of the Great Depression, where making do with what you had or could get was how you lived. Yes, I have a Joy of Cooking, a Betty Crocker Cookbook, a Fanny Farmer Cookbook and dozens in between, but I thought, "Let's see what pancake recipes are in this."
I found several sections but this page was what I wound up making, the recipe at the bottom and adding whole wheat flour to the pancakes.
They came out very well. I also added a tablespoon of maple syrup to the batter which I'll need to remember as that was superb.
As I had butter softening for cookies to be made later I had to get my big Jewel Tea mixing bowl down. This is the "Autumn Leaf" pattern.
Tonight, I made a pasta, sausage and pea combo which is good but would definately benefit from a light covering of Alfredo Sauce. I can't make that. Some things, I've just given up on. I will stop by Dominicks tomorrow and pick up a container of it. I made enough pasta sausage that I will have that for at least 3 meals.
I am thinking about meatloaf. I haven't made meatloaf in ages. I have a great recipe for Italian Meatloaf. It has a layer of shredded mozzarella in the middle. I could make that, carve it into quarters and freeze it. Right now I'm not going anywhere for Thanksgiving. I could have meatloaf and sweet potato dressing and a salad and something chocolate for dessert. I could. I could seriously do that. I'm out of cracker crumbs however, to use as binding for the meatloaf.
Alfredo sauce and saltines now on the list. Might as well pick up some bananas and another box of Cheerios while I'm there. I could make those chocolate banana muffins! I haven't had those in ages. Or banana bread or use up this can of organic pumpkin or get some apples and make sauce or...
I stop for the day when there's no usable counter space. Tomorrow, I have to do dishes again.
Beverage: Grape Juice
Deb
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