You Don’t Have To Be Martha Stewart – A Helpful Rant
(From the Misc Collection at emealsforyou.com)
Homemade Kahlua
In the next few weeks we will be posting ideas for making your own seasonal gifts for friends and family. These are fairly easy and inexpensive food and drink ideas that you will be proud to give and the recipient will be happy to receive.
Today’s gift idea is homemade Kahlua. Who doesn’t enjoy this great coffee flavored liqueur? It’s great in coffee, fantastic with a little cream added as an after dinner cordial and makes our Tiramisu a very special holiday dessert. We started with this recipe as it takes about 5-6 weeks to develop it’s deep, rich flavor. Spend 10 minutes mixing the recipe, hide it in a closet for 6 weeks , pour into a decorative bottle and then deliver it at the holidays.
A quick word of caution should you decide to consume this yourself. Regular Kahlua is 20% alcohol by volume, depending on the Vodka you use, this may exceed the 20% by a bunch. We made half a recipe which makes a quart of homemade Kahlua. We put ours in a container that can be used to store coffee after the Kahlua is gone.
Homemade Kahlua
| Complexity: | Easy |
| Serves: | 12 |
| Category: | Misc |
| Meal: | other (General) |
| 3.75 | cup | sugar, white |
| 1 | cup | water |
| 6 | Tb | coffee, instant |
| 1 | cup | water |
| 1 | medium | vanilla bean |
| 1 | qt | vodka |
| 1 | tsp | glycerin |
Dissolve sugar in boiling water. Cool. Dissolve instant coffee in boiling water. Place vanilla bean, broken into 3 pieces in coffee mixture for 3 minutes or use 1 tsp of good vanilla extract. Place all in large jug, add vodka and glycerin. Let stand in a dark place for 6 weeks.
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Pesto – A Happy Rant
(From the Misc Collection at emealsforyou.com)
Everytime I go back to New Jersey to visit family the one consistent request is for Sun-dried Tomato Pesto. This last time was no exception; the pesto was served on toast points with a thin slice of turkey as part of our appetizer plates. Most of us forget about the usefulness of a simple pesto in moving a meal or party snack to a higher level.
By simply mixing sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, pecans, olive oil and cheese in the bowl of a food processor yields a unique taste treat that can be served on crackers, spread on a sandwich in place of mayo or thinned out with a little more olive oil and give a boost to any pasta. Top off a chicken breast with a dollop and you have a gourmet meal that everyone will love.
Pesto can be made of many different herbs and ingredients. Using the last home-grown basil of the season, add it to your processor bowl with some pine nuts, garlic, olive oil and cheese to give you a great tasting sauce or spread. Any leftover can be frozen to be used in the dead of winter to add a surprise element to a dreary meal. The same goes for spinach, hazelnuts, garlic, olive oil and cheese. Give pesto a try, your family will love it, your friends will be amazed by your culinary acumen and you might find a smile on your face.
Sun Dried Tomato Pesto
| Complexity: | Easy |
| Serves: | 6 |
| Category: | Misc |
| Meal: | Brunch Anyone? (Distinctive Dinners) |
| 0.75 | cup | sun dried tomato |
| 0.75 | cup | pecans, halved |
| 1.5 | cloves | garlic, chopped |
| 0.75 | cup | cheese, Romano, grated |
| 0.75 | cup | oil, olive |
Toast pecans slightly. Place tomatoes, pecans, garlic and Romano in food processor, process until a paste forms, add oil slowly until you reach the consistency you desire. Should be spreadable, like peanut butter.
Note: The color will vary with the color of the sun dried tomatoes you use. Great on sandwiches, may be used on pasta. I spread it on toasted French bread, sprinkle with romano and basil and broiler slightly
Why We Cook – A Rant
(From the Dessert Collection at emealsforyou.com)
Espresso Gelato
Returning from an extended “vacation” in New Jersey, I sit here and remember some of the many meals I cooked and the people who attended those dinners. I had several conversations both with people who cook and people who just enjoy the food. Those that enjoy, I mean really enjoy the cooking, understand why someone would put that much effort into feeding others; those that just show up to eat, think it crazy that someone would put all that effort into making a meal.
The answer is very simple, we cook to watch people enjoy, truly enjoy, what we have prepared. We get our “fix” watching their eyes and watching the smile that follows as they put a bite into their mouths. They challenge our sanity but then they open their mouths like baby birds and allow us to place a dollop of this or spoonful of that onto their tongues for them to taste. Recently I made Espresso Gelato for dessert for a dinner party, the machine was noisy, the effort a little more than they would do… but when I gave them a spoonful to taste, just to see if they wanted some, they readily said “bring it on.”
The bottom line is for those of us “nutcases” who enjoy making others happy with our food efforts keep up the good work. For those who simply want to enjoy our efforts and think we are a little crazy, try making something, it may grow on you.
Dinner Parties as a Lost Art Form – A Rant
Summer Dinner Party
For those of us who enjoy cooking, dinner parties are the best way to showcase new recipes or highlight old ones. They are a chance to get together with old friends and to meet new ones. A chance to share ideas and thoughts with like-minded people and on some occasions a chance to hone our debating skills with those that don’t exactly agree with us. This is true whether inviting another couple for a summer dinner or large sit-down parties for the roving hordes. The conversation is the reason… the food the enticement.
So it is with sadness that I find holding a dinner party has become almost impossible in today’s rapid-paced, everyone-going-in-different-directions world. It used to be deciding on the menu was the hardest part of the planning; now just finding enough people to invite has become the most difficult part.
Obstacles include those with kids’ sport programs that conflict with the party, and those who are consistently on a diet; there is nothing like preparing a great meal only to find someone picking at their food like a kid forced to eat eggplant. Then there are the people who add nothing to the conversation, remember this is why you have the party in the first place. Filling a table of eight has become harder than making Julia Child’s Hollandaise while in a body cast.
Bottom line is I hope that I have not lost my touch, hope the dinner party isn’t a lost art; maybe it is only a sign of the times. For those few of us left let’s raise our glasses in hope of a swing back to what we would call better times.
Your Refrigerator Door Can Kill You – A Rant
I went to get something off the shelf of my refrigerator door the other day and noticed a partial can of pumpkin sitting there. Now thinking back to the last time I used any canned pumpkin I realized that it had been on the shelf for about 8 weeks. This got me thinking about all the other condiments, jars and containers that were in my fridge and had been for quite a while.
We buy stuff all the time and simple store the opened containers in the fridge. I remember years ago my wife was home recovering from some surgery and decided to make herself a salad; she reached for the Ranch dressing bottle and poured it over the salad. A very few hours later she was in tremendous pain and realized that the dressing was way beyond its limit. Luckily, hers was a mild case of food poisoning and she was only sick for 24 hours.
Here is what we should be doing… take a good look at the jars and bottles that are in our fridges. Check out the buy by date on everything, if it is beyond that date; throw it out. If you are probably not going to use it again; throw it out. Those few ounces aren’t going to make or break you but they could give you a good dose of food poisoning. And oh yeah, next time your visit your mom, take a look at her refrigerator door. Chances are she has something that resembles a “chia pet” growing on her shelves.
Size Matters – A Rant
Since the early 1960′s the nations of the world have accepted the Metric System as the unit of measuring everything from distances to the size of kidney stones. The United States has lagged behind the universal efforts and remains one of three, joining Burma and Liberia to fight the conversion.
There are however a few companies in this country that have embraced the metric system; mostly to their benefit. Take the soda industry, can you think back to the time you bought a half gallon of pop? Booze is the same way. Without our knowing we now buy less for the same amount of money or even are paying more. We purchase liters of our favorite beverages; 1.75 liters of Jack Daniels, do the math… a liter is only 30 ounces, not the 32 we all learned made up a quart. That 1.75 liters of Jack is only 55.5 ounces, somehow we gave up our right to the other 8.5 ounces. Maybe the booze manufacturers were worried about our livers and imposed a safety valve of less is better.
Now we come to the real reason I am writing this: someone, somewhere has been playing with the size of my ice cream packages. We went silently into the night when the 64 ounce, half gallon became the smaller, metric version. Just when we got used to that they switch on us again. Last week, reaching into the cooler at the local grocery I grab a ( half gallon, downsized to about 50- some ounces) Breyers vanilla. WAIT!!!! Something is not right!!!!! The new size is back to the old system of weights and measurements, to my chagrin the new 1/2 gal. is now 1.5 quarts.
Enough, give me back my “lost” 15 ounces. Mess all you want with the 2 X 4 being only 1.5 inches by 3.5 inches but keep your greedy little hands off my ice cream.
Will your kids pick healthy? – A Rant
cheese and mac
Traditionally when someone in our family and close group of friends has a birthday we ask them to select the food for the celebratory dinner. My wife reminded me the other day that it was interesting to go back and look at the choices the kids made over the years… looking at the progression from kids’ food to adult food. Because we cooked good food and because they were always welcome at the adult table they learned to try new food and develop an appreciation for food. It helped them understand what they liked and disliked, and it helped them to begin to understand decision making.
Kids today are inundated with an assortment of fast foods, frozen then microwaved foods and snack foods. The few meals prepared in the home are typically put together on the fly, with very little forethought. So, now we come to the nexus of this post. Ask your kids, probably age 9 and above works better here, to name their top ten favorite meals. Write these down, stack ranked, top favorite first. Now assign a number next to each favorite; stack ranking their choices by nutritional value.
Evaluating the evaluation: Look, if your kid puts something at the top of his/her list it means that they probably have this meal on a regular basis. If this meal ranks high on the “good for them” scale then you are doing things right. If, however, this meal and most of the other meals rank low on the nutritional ranking, then you have some work to do. You should be preparing good, healthy and tasty meals so that your kids get used to and begin to like better meals. If you say that you are unable, due to economic means, to create good-for-them meals I would have to say you are not trying hard enough. Some basic chicken dishes, hold the creamy, fatty sauces and some salad cost little and goes a long way toward healthier meals.
I suggest you do this exercise, complete with evaluation and save it. Six months from now, let’s say December 1st, do it again. If the same foods and types of foods reappear then you are not doing your part. Change just a few of their choices and you are on your way to a healthier future for your kids and for you as well.
The Julia Child’s Weekend – Lessons Learned
Happy Birthday Julia
Cooking “with” Julia for us began almost 35 years ago. At that time were we young,easily impressed and searching for avenues of socialization. Our group was mostly young professionals, moving up and striking out toward the future. Dinners were challenges to be met head on, who could make the best dishes, who could make the most courses. We had lots of by-standers back then, friends who would stand by the sidelines and wait to enjoy the spoils of the challenge. A few of us grabbed the opportunity and ran with it, and I believe we’ve still “got game” today.
As I said in the previous post, our friend Jeannie, one of those who readily accepted the challenge back then, came out to Ohio to celebrate all things Julia with us. Back in the 70′s Jean was a methodical cook, reading the recipe, rushing to the stove and rushing back to give it one more look before committing to the process. The meals always followed the book, always done just right and Always wonderful. This is pretty much how she continues to cook today and although she claims not to cook anymore, her skills belie this.
I, on the other hand read an entire recipe, get the gist of it and then have at it. Over the years I have developed my own style and as in life, have figured out the short cuts and methods that will yield the same results but with less detailed work, not sloppy or lazy, I am just impatient. My meals, others have told me, always turn out great, unlike Jeannie, I cook everyday.
So back to the lessons learned. I like to cook alone, you could easily lose a body part walking through my kitchen when I am in deep throws of getting the food to the table. I don’t apologize for this, it is the way I am and even my kids knew to “stay on their side of the counter ” when I was cooking. Jeannie, being the methodical one, doesn’t mind cooking alone or with someone, she will check her recipes over and over again just to make sure.
All the meals for the Julia Child’s Weekend turned out great, no I really mean this. They were probably the best of each recipe I (we) have made in the last 10 years; although I have made the same meals many times and they are just short of these results. I am willing to sacrifice that minute difference to facilitate making them more. Even when we changed cooks in the kitchen the recipes came out just right. My wife and Jean made spectacular lamb chops and potatoes the first night. Jeanie and I, mostly Jeanie put together the very best Beef Bourguignon and homemade noodles the next night. Although there was a high traffic volume sneaking in to the kitchen to lower the flame on the pot (me) or raise the flame on the pot (Jeanie) the end result was true Julia. The Steak Diane on Saturday was as Jeanie, an east-coaster would say, to die for. The ladies put together a Pear Tatin, complaining the whole time, that was wonderful and left you thinking about it long after the crumbs were gone. Today is the last full day of the food fest. I will ask Jeanie to finish us off with one of her and Julia’s Roasted Chickens. Jeannie says you have to move the bird every so many minutes but the effort is worth the energy spent. Hopefully she will add some of those stuffed, baked tomatoes from one of Julia’s cookbooks.
My final thought is that I stick to the theory that if you need to have a meal come out perfect then reach for one of Julia’s cookbooks, follow it to a tee and you will not be disappointed. So if we do another of these weekends I will understand each person’s role and why. Jeannie wins on points though as she does a better Julia saying, “dribble, dribble, dribble ” while applying just the right amount of butter to the finish.
The Julia Child’s Weekend -Snatching Victory From the Jaws of Trouble
From Julia Child's Kitchen - Julia Child
I have been remiss this last week in getting the posts onto the blog. It was not my choice to “go silent” but but with friends here, food purchased and the weekend begun; my health decided to through me for a curve. Mid-night on Saturday brought a kidney stone into the equation, my first and hopefully my last. Nothing 6 hours in the E-room and then prescribed drugs couldn’t fix. Surgery on Thursday took care of the problem but we still had the much planned for and looked forward to Weekend of Julia Child.
For our regular readers (rr) you will remember that last weekend and this weekend were to be company weekends with lots of conversations and good food. Last weekend our friends the Knupps, came in from Virginia on their way to both of our previous hometowns of Chicago. Jim has contributed several recipes to our website at emealsforyou.com, mostly under the name of Capt Jim so we were looking forward to it being a cook’s weekend. We got through the Saturday night meal, Chicken Cacciatore with pencil points and homemade espresso gelato for dessert. My troubles began that night and luckily we arrived back from the hospital just before breakfast on Sunday. Thanks to the prescription drugs I was able to get through the breakfast of quick breads, sticky buns and date nut bread. Lunch was small plate sandwiches of grilled bread, spread with goat cheese, red peppers and ham. I will add the recipe in the near future. Dinner on Saturday was pan-roasted sea scallops with brown butter sage sauce and some beef medallions au poivre. A Lemon Tart finished the meal. The Knupps got on their way on Monday after a breakfast of pumpkin pancakes with syrup and ginger pancakes with pumpkin butter.
Thursday was the day our friend Jean came in to our much anticipated Julia Child’s weekend; a weekend of cooking everything “Julia” and going to see the new movie Julie and Julia. I have spent the last 20 years or so figuring how to make the recipes Julia Child’s would cook but with a few less steps and quicker to the table methods to make them more accessible to the average cook. Jean told me that we should do only Julia Child’s recipes and would be staying true to the recipes, no short steps. We unloaded my 9 or so Julia Child’s cookbooks and began. The first real snag in our plans was that the surgeon had scheduled me for kidney stone surgery at noon. Jean’s plane was due in at 12:30 but luckily was late by some 50 minutes. This just allowed my wife to drop me off at the outpatient surgery and make it to the airport to pick up Jean. They scooped me up on the return and then home where my wife and Jean put the first Julia dinner together without my help. Everything turned out great, garlic mustard breadcrumbs hugged the perfectly cooked lamb chops, accompanied by Julia’s Gratin of Potatoes alla Savoyarde. Being more myself on Friday I spent the day in the kitchen slowly, ever so slowly cooking Julia’s Beef Bourguignon, with homemade Julia’s noodles and Caesar Salad, also Julia’s recipe. Tonight we are onto Julia’s Steak Diane, mashed potatoes and Pear Tart Tatin.
I will endeavor over the next few weeks to get these recipes on the blog; all are available on our emealsforyou.com website. The photos is of one of the many cookbooks that were flying about this week; don’t want to stray too far from the wonderful Julia Child’s recipes.
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