Posts filed under 'Bread'
In honor of the upcoming Houston livestock show and rodeo, I will be cooking up a few recipes from this book in the next couple of weeks:
The Texas Cowboy Cookbook
… which I borrowed from our local library recently. It’s so interesting and full of fascinating recipes, I might just buy myself a copy.
First up for tonight, Jalapeno Corn Bread, which will go nicely with a soup from Simply Recipes that I’d already planned on making. (It’s definitely a soup-kind-of-a-day; cold and rainy) Starting with my next grocery trip, I’ll be trying some of the more adventurous recipes from the Texas Cowboy cookbook. I’ll most likely make some changes along the way, like I usually do - substituting chicken, pork, or buffalo for the beef, since we are mostly off of beef these days.
Growing up as a Yankee, I’d never had cornbread much at all. Since my husband loves it, I’ve learned to like it and almost always make corn bread with chili and maybe now and then for other meals. This will be the first time I’ve put jalapenos in it, though.
My normal recipe for cornbread can be found here.
And special thanks to my friend Aly, and her blog, who always makes me feel good about my cooking.
February 11th, 2010
I love St. Patrick’s Day — one of the few holidays when there are no obligations for expensive gift-giving, or party obligations. The only requirement is to wear something green, so you can avoid getting pinched, which I find not to be a hardship at all. St. Patrick’s Day is simply fun! And it also involves cooking foods we don’t normally have, so for me, that makes it extra fun.
For more information about St. Patrick and this day, check out the History Channel’s website here.
For our St. Patrick’s Day dinner, I will be making:
Corned Beef
Boiled Potatoes
Fried Cabbage
Irish Soda Bread
I also saw a recipe for Lemon Curd Cake (suggested to go with your St. Patrick’s Day meal) in a magazine, but I’m not going to be making it since I really don’t need any more calories in my life or in this meal. 
If this interests you, do a quick web search, I’m sure something will pop up. I’m not offering any advice about lemon curd cake since I have never even eaten it, much less made one.
Corned Beef –> This time of year, it is easy to find a package of corned beef, all ready to be cooked, with a little spice packet included. I have found that these are very, very good. At my warehouse club, I can buy this all year round for about $2.39 per pound. Last week, my corner grocery had them for $1.79 per pound. I bought two and will cook both on St. Patrick’s Day, the leftovers make great sandwiches. To prepare, simply place the raw corned beef, with spice packet sprinkled on top, in the crock pot and cook on low all day.
Boiled Potatoes –> Simply cut potatoes into quarters, and boil gently for about 20 minutes or until soft all the way through. Then drain, add some butter, salt and dill and you’re done.
Fried Cabbage –> Also easy to prepare. Chop a head of cabbage into chunks, add some chopped onion or green pepper. Melt a generous amount of butter into a large skillet and fry for about 20 minutes until the cabbage is soft and caramelized. Yum. Cajun seasoning is yummy on this, too, if your family likes spicy food.
Irish Soda Bread –> Refer to this earlier St. Patrick’s Day post to see a recipe for Irish Soda Bread.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all of my readers!!
March 16th, 2009
We vacationed at a little cabin getaway this summer with our extended family. By that I mean MY family - Mom and Dad, my three sisters, two of my brothers-in-law, everyone’s kids plus my nephew’s new wife. When you do the math, (and we did have to do the math here) it came to a grand total of 24 people. We had an age range running from nearly born (my nephew’s wife was pregnant) to the sixties. A regular family reunion! We had a great time, hidden away in the woods, on the edge of a small lake, of the northern part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.
Coming from a family of cooks, where we take very seriously phrases like, “homemade”, “comfort foods”, and “from scratch”, we took turns cooking dinner for the entire family. (My dad even made curly fries over a propane burner 2 nights.) For breakfast and lunch, everybody sort of found their own food, usually by taking advantage of a stockpile of lunchmeat and hot dogs in the fridge and pounds of goodies that were prepared beforehand and brought up by my mother and sisters. I had the disadvantage of distance - we had to fly to Michigan so I couldn’t bring pounds of cookies.
The one particular baked good that became our favorite breakfast that week was my sister Sue’s Zucchini Bread. My, OH, My - was it good! She brought - I think- at least 6 loaves of it and I believe we had it all polished off by the end of the week. It became the perfect food to set out and let everyone slice off a serving as they got up and got ready for whatever activity we did that day.
Sue has graciously shared her recipe for Zucchini Bread with me and I, of course, am going to share it with you. A wonderful way to use that zucchini that is so plentiful.
ZUCCHINI BREAD
3 c. flour - I use half white and half whole wheat
1 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
1 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
1/4 t. baking powder
2 c. sugar
1 c. oil - but I use 3/4 c. oil and 3/4 c. ground flax seed
you can substitute 3 T. of flax seed for 1 T. of oil when baking, so you can play with this and use more or less flax seed
1 T. vanilla
3 eggs
2 c. shredded zucchini
1/2 c. chopped nuts (sometimes I use them and sometimes I don’t)
Sift together dry ingredients except sugar, set aside. In a large bowl using mixer at medium speed, beat sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs until well blended. Reduce speed to low, beat in dry ingredients until well blended. Pour into two greased loaf pans.
Bake at 350 for 1 hour or until done. Cool in pans 10 minutes, remove and cool completely on racks.
If taking on vacation, triple the recipe and bring copies.
September 29th, 2008
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