Ypsi Cooks

Even better, ones made in crock-pots (slow cookers) that are ready to eat when you walk in from work. I made this lentil-vegetable soup for the family the other night, and liked it enough to bring it into the work “Holiday Potluck.”
6 c water
1/2 c red lentils
1/2 c bulgar wheat
4 carrots, 1/4-1/2 inch slice
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp (smoked) paprika
*1/4 tsp cayenne pepper *I just shook it in, so I'm only guessing on the amount
*1/2 tsp cumin
*1/2-1 tsp salt
2 tsp Better Than Bullion (or enough bullion to make 2 cups, or replace 2 cups of water w/stock).

Combine above ingredients in crock pot. Cook on high 3-4 hours or low 7-8 hours.
Add below items and cook for 15 min, or until heated through.
1/2 c cooked white beans (or increase lentils by 1/4 c and water by 1/2 c)
1 c frozen spinach
1/2 c chopped parsley
Finish w/lemon juice or soy sauce, if desired. (Also, the acid in the lemon juice will stop the lentils from further cooking, so that's helpful if keeping the crock pot on.)
Enjoy!

Last night we went grocery shopping and chiropracting. Somewhere in there we stopped by Senor Lopez for some chow. I haven't had Mole in a while. Whoever though that chocolate sauce on chicken was a genius.

This is the one holiday that it is about a meal, but somehow the entire long weekend became an endless meal only interrupted by sleep. We started on Thanksgiving with a waffle brunch, and then a lackluster turkey dinner at Leon's. Friday evening we had a nice traditional dinner. My mother did the usual fare, but some things were new. Bridgit made a pecan pie with apples and cut the sugar in half. The apples gave it sweetness without the gooey sugar layer that pecan pie usually has. My mother also did a sweet potato mash covered with sugar and nuts.

We had people over for breakfast on Saturday and we had some amazing food. We pretty much made it our Thanksgiving meal. Bridgit made a Cranberry Spice Bundt which was amazing. The most amazing thing to me was that she actually almost followed the recipe. The only thing she changed was some whole wheat flour in place half the regular flour. She also made a pumpkin fondue thing that was spectacular. The only problem was that one of the pumpkins tipped over in the oven and poured goo out and made a bunch of smoke. Holly made quiche florentine which had more stuff and less eggs then most quiche.

Then to wrap it all up we used the turkey carcass to make a turkey soup and had it for dinner tonight.

Now I need another long weekend to sleep off all the food.

Oh, and Amelia is now eating real food. Real food means rice cereal and sweet potatoes.

From Amelia Rose

Why do they call it canning when you use jars not cans?

Anyway, this week we canned a bunch of applesauce that we made up last week. We added cranberries to the mix to give it some pizazz.

Fall is upon us (actually it's almost gone). One of the best things about fall is apple cider. The only way to make cider better is to make it alcoholic. The easy way is to have warm cider with a but of whiskey, but we are talking about hard cider here. And now we have two different hard cider related bits:

1. The Corner Brewery is going to finally have hard cider.

2. We are going to give making hard cider a try. I saw this article and thought that it looks easy. The plan is to do a batch of 3 gallons. We are going to pick up the cider and the couple brewing items we need this weekend, so in a few months we should have some ready for consumption.

Bridgit brought home some a few days ago and we cooked a buttercup last night. I forgot how much I love squash. Properly prepared it is a wonderful comfort food. I usually prefer squash in the smashed form, but in cubes it is good as well.

Everyone loves butternut, but I think it is a little overrated. Buttercup is lesser known, but has wonderful nutty and smoky notes that make it great for blending into butternut.

And don't forget pumpkin! Pumpkin pie often gets a bad rap, but is one of my favorites.

Last night I tried the Stovetop Roasted chicken from the newest Cooks Illustrated. The advantage is that cooking a whole chicken (cut into pieces) gets moist chicken with crispy skin in about a half hour. The chicken was amazing, but required way more attention then a roaster in the oven.

I enjoy fire and forget cooking. It is the best kind of fast food. throw some stuff in a crockpot turn it on and 6 hours later your dinner is ready. Putting a roaster in the oven takes 5 minutes. Then you can get the kitchen cleaned, make a salad, pay the bills, and probably some other things while the chicken cooks.

I am not ruling the process out totally, the first time with a new recipe is always a little hectic. I will give it another shot before I give up on it. It delivered as advertised and is pretty simple: sear, steam, sear. It just requires more attention but less overall time. Using pre-cut chicken would save on the prep time, but I couldn't harass my wife with the chicken carcass as I cut it up (the best part is the chickens we get have necks attached) or the noise of crunching bones.

The meal was great. We had friends over for dinner. The chicken was in a lemon herb sauce, served on rotkohl (braised red cabbage). We had fresh corn and broccoli and a brown rice pilaf to round the meal out. Dessert was pumpkin dip with apples and ginger cat cookies.

So we have almost the full collection of Nigella Lawson cookbooks, and they really are full of good recipes. She has had a few cooking shows in the UK, some of which have made it across the pond, but they are so strange to watch. Sometimes she cooks in a nightgown with the lights all down low. The camera work combined with everything else makes it what can only be described as cooking porn.

While the show is strange, the books are amazing. Feast has a chocolate cake hall of fame; The Guiness Cake is amazing. For Bridgit's B-Day I made the Zucchini Cake from How to Be a Domestic Goddess. For valentines day I did a variation on Slut Red Raspberries in Chardonnay Jelly with blackberries and Muscat jelly. We often use her pancake mix recipe, which Bridgit modifies until it is unrecognizable.

Below are some clips from youtube.
What brought the topic up is a clip from This Hour Has 22 Minutes, a CBC show similar to SNL. The scary thing is that it is only barely a parody.

Here are some others:
Chicken Soup

Doughnut French Toast

Raspberry Oatmeal Swirls

Who doesn't love drinking bubbly? Be it actual Champagne, Prosecco, or any of the sparklers and naturally effervescent wines out there people love popping open a bottle in celebration. I think it should be drank more often. There are a few problems though: cost, preservation, and education.

Unless it is New Years Eve it is hard for many people to find inexpensive options. Champagne is such a dominate name and you tend to pay for it. There are plenty of inexpensive sparklers, or near sparklers out there that are under $15. They aren't amazing, but for casual consumption they do the trick. If you were going to get a $10 bottle of wine why not get a $12 bottle of nice sparkler. People will think there is a special occasion. Also a good way to impress the ladies.

The problem with fizz is that it goes flat quickly, so people are hesitant to open a bottle of bubbly unless they know it can be finished off quickly. There are a few options to this dilemma. The first is to not buy full sized bottles. Sparklers can be purchased in magnum (1.5 litres), full (0.75 litre), half (0.375 litre), and quarter (0.1875 litre) sized bottles. A quarter bottle is a perfect for size for a couple people to have with some dessert. We recently got a couple quarter bottles of Cava, a Spanish sparkler for $3 a pop. For that price there is no reason not to have some. The other solution is to use a special stopper. Bridgit got me one for a wedding present. On our honeymoon a nearby table found out we were just married the day before (and it was New Years Eve), so they got us a bottle. We weren't able to finish it, so we took it to our room and Bridgit presented me with the stopper. It clamps onto the bottle so the pressure won't pop it off, and the one she got has a lever that opens a pour spout. We had fizzy drink and some wedding cake for breakfast New Year's morning. This week we opened a bottle on Wednesday, immediately put the stopper on it, and also drank it on Thursday and then again on Sunday morning. There was a pop as I opened the spout and it was still bubbly 4 days later.

People need to know that sparklers from all over the world are good: Spanish Cava, French Crémant (sparklers not from Champagne), Itallian Asti, German Sekt, American “Champagne”. There are also semi and barely sparkling wines that worth a try. They come also come in white, red, and rose varieties. There are also good options out there for under $15.

So this weekend open a bottle of bubbly, for reason but to enjoy it.

Last night I made a Summer Corn Soup from BA and it was good, but not as good as corn chowder.

To go with it I made a tart (I have been craving pastry lately) with tomatoes, caramelized red onion, and zucchini. The tart was all I had hoped for. Then later in the evening I was reading the new BA and found an article all about what I had just made.