Garden of Thought

Golly Moses it's hot today - 102+ at the moment and supposed to hit 106, unusually toasty for here. I've been working on replacing rotten boards on my back deck but it's too hot to be outside so I ended up learning to make quick no-corn-syrup marshmallows. These things Happen when I end up in my kitchen unscheduled.

Did a recipe mash-up and made it with 3 pkts plain gelatin softened in 1/2 c. cold water. Added a generous dollop of vanilla, a dash of salt and about half a cup of honey then 3/4 c. boiling water. Dissolved, cooled and whipped with beaters for 15 minutes - ta-dah!

Ate too many marshmallows. I regret nothing. Wish I had graham crackers.

Tonight our dancers are going to the local high school to teach the football teams some Greek dance steps, we go each year and the coaches swear it helps the teamwork and footwork. O-PAH! They sent us a message promising they'd have the A/C cranked up.

I don't know why it took me this many years to realize I don't have to hack apart a hard sugar-pumpkin, I can just poke some holes in it for venting and stick the whole thing in the oven. It's WAY easier to pop in half and scoop, puree, etc. after an hour or two in the oven.

My former Thanksgiving decorations are now on their way to being pumpkin pie, or soup or pancakes or something without the "argh!" factor.

My son said a discussion had come up on Reddit about what foods you missed from childhood, and he got nostalgic (or as nostalgic as an early-20s person can be)... said he decided that the garbagey food he'd enjoyed the most as a child was worth looking at again to see what it really tastes like, though I warned him it won't be nearly as good as he remembers.

He bought a small bottle of an overly sweet orange juice concoction called SunnyD, and two Kid Cuisine tv dinners, one with chicken nuggets in the shape of Hello Kitty's head and a side of mac-and-cheese, another with mixed nuggets and fries, plus "chocolate pudding with an edible cookie spoon!"  Added a cheap package of those chocolate covered mini doughnuts where the brown coating is barely detectable as "chocolate."   He offered to share, so it looks like we'll have Nostalgic Garbage for dinner tonight.

My eldest has always had a penchant for eating weeds, coming in with handfuls of chickweed and miners lettuce, etc. and bemoaning my spraying our driveway to keep the stuff under control.  This time I opened the fridge and found a bagful of...something...?  She came up behind me and said "Oh, those are dandelions! I'm making bread."

Sure enough, she found something based on an old Roman recipe and made a Dandelion Honey Cake using almond flour and the blossoms of all those dandelions.  It has the texture of pumpkin bread and is really, really good! My grandma used to pick young leaves for her salads, trying to get to them before my grandpa went out to work on the lawn, but I'd never eaten the blooms.  Strikes me as something they'd eat in Redwall.

Just an update on an event, so I can look back on it later I guess.

Still working on the two Afternoon Tea events I'm organizing for later this month, I've managed to accumulate about 30 cup and saucer sets from assorted garage sales and thrift stores over the summer, some tiered racks for serving, lots of assorted china salad plates, etc. etc. - and 15 teapots thus far. My house looks like a china shop, minus the bull.

Ticket sales have been anemic, everyone is interested in coming and gets excited but when it comes to coughing up some dough to purchase tickets they're a bit more reluctant apparently. Nevertheless, I have 30 for the first one (the one with kids) and 14 for the nicer adult's tea which is better than nothing - though 44 is long way from my max. number of 128. We're making some scones this afternoon as you can make the dough and freeze them unbaked ahead of time.

It's definitely "that season" again - coming from a Christmas party that had rockin' gingerbread cake with spiced whipped topping and cream-cheese-and-nutmeg stuffed dates to holiday events with everything from brandy beans to peppermint cookies going by it's hard to know what comes next.

We have our church Christmas event this coming Sunday, so I'm busy making marshmallow popcorn balls and green tree-shaped spritz for that, at the rate we're going I may not even need to make any Christmas cookies this time around as we'll already be full up on enough goodies to cause us to all roll out the door like that girl that turned into a blueberry in the Willy Wonka thing... but y'know... there's still those soft sugar cookies with lemon in them... and the peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate....and that amazing fruitcake with all the wine in it....

What are you making this year? Any extra good things orbiting past you?

I marinated some chunks of chicken last night and finally got them cooking in a pan. Going to wash the bowl that had the marinade in it, I industriously squirted it and other waiting items with dish soap and set to scrubbing while the chicken sizzled happily behind me on the stove. 

Oh crumbs - I missed a piece!  There's a piece of chicken still in the corner of the dish. *efficiently flips the last chicken piece into the pan on the stove and starts scrubbing again*

Oh crumbs - that chicken was in the dish I just squirted soap into. That means it has soap on it! *whirls back to stove*

Oh crumbs - now I can't tell one raw chicken bit from another! Arrrgh!  Which one is it??? *experimentally fishes out random portions that kind of resemble the vaguely-remembered shape of the one flipped into the pan and rinses them off hopefully*

I have no idea if I got it or not. None of them seem to be making "too many bubbles" as they cook - I guess now it's just soapy-chicken-roulette for whichever family member gets That Piece.

I seem to have fallen back into the belief that nothing in my life is interesting enough to bother posting it, which is stupid as I always enjoy reading other people talking about everything from making sandwiches to walking their dogs.  Life sure is busy for someone who is apparently doing nothing, heh.  Spent a good part of today in yardwork, trimming fruit trees and various other whacking that is needed as spring is already springing along.  My daffys are 6 inches up and the snowdrops and crocuses are fully blooming and here I am with still one more plum tree to do.

My folks finally found a home to buy down in the middle of the valley near my old alma mater, Western Oregon - it was a 'college' when I was there, since then upgraded to a 'university'.  There are renters in the place, though, so they have to wait until April to be able to actually get into it and have gone off in their camper to the coast in the meantime. so at least it's quiet here again.  I'll drive down tomorrow afternoon and check out the town, I'm sure it's different than it was in the late 80s when I was last there, it will be interesting to see what's changed.

So. Life. Made a big pot of meaty spaghetti sauce with plenty of olives and mushrooms for dinner, topped off with whole wheat oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  We didn't mean for them to be whole wheat, that was a flour-bin mixup, but they're pretty good that way.  Time to go watch another ep of 'Riders of Berk' - enjoying catching up on those.  There must be hundreds of black cats named "Toothless" out there by now.

When I went out to a local farm seeking an "autumn fix" I soaked up the happy harvesty atmosphere and also came home with a jack-o-lantern type pumpkin (which we dutifully carved) and 2 sugar pie pumpkins.  One sugar pumpkin is for pie, but the other was for a favorite autumn-time easy dinner we do, to wit:

Dinner in a Pumpkin

1 4-5 lb. pumpkin
1 lb. ground beef
1 sweet onion, chopped
1 c. uncooked instant rice
3 T. butter or margarine
1/2 t. salt (optional)
1/2 t. pepper
1 t. thyme
1 can diced tomatoes (undrained)
2 c. beef broth
1/2 c. grated cheddar (optional)

Wash the pumpkin and cut a nice wide lid on the top (you want to be able to scoop yummy things out later).  Scoop out the seeds and stringy bits.  Brush the inside of the pumpkin with the butter and sprinkle it with a little salt if you like.
In a skillet, saute the beef and onion until browned. Drain fat. Add the rice and remaining ingredients except the cheese. Put your pumpkin in a shallow dish (I use a casserole dish) and fill it with the meat mixture. Put the lid on the pumpkin and stick the whole thing in a 350 degree oven.  Bake for 1 1/2 hours or until the pumpkin is tender.  You can add more broth if needed.  Take off lid and sprinkle with cheese while hot. 
Serve right from the pumpkin, scooping out pulp with the beef mixture. 

For lower sodium people like me, just use no-salt tomatoes and unsalted beef broth and reduce or even eliminate the table salt too. Still very tasty and homelike.  This is the only time of year I buy instant rice, just for this, and sometimes use dried minced onion instead of fresh, though fresh is always better if you have one handy.

Enjoy!

I posted this at homeeconomics101 and thought I'd toss it out to the rest of my flist in case anyone else finds it useful.

Just a tip if you happen to be, as I am, a person who really dislikes the taste of commercial dried onion powders or flakes yet still wants onion in their cooking.

I watch for sweet onions to go on sale and then buy 5-6 big ones at a time. Take them home and slice thin (you can slice them in your sink under a little running water and your eyes won't sting, btw) and then cook the whole heap in a big pot with a drizzle of olive oil. I cook it with occasional stirring and draining off excess liquid until they begin to carmelize.

Cool the resulting batch and then divide it up into about as many portions as you had onions. I keep them in either little tupperware cups or in ziploc sandwich baggies labeled "1 Onion, Sauteed" and pop them into the freezer. They keep great and when you need one for cooking it's a real time-saver to just pull one out and zap it in the microwave for a moment. The flavor is a big improvement and there's no more problem with onions sprouting in my pantry while I get around to them as a bonus.