Apple butter, part 2

So if you read Saturday's post, you know I left off with a crock pot full of local apples.

Three hours later I had the best applesauce ever.

Five hours later I had runny apple butter.

At that point, I transferred it to the stove to boil off some of the liquid for an hour.

I processed in a hot water bath for ten minutes and have the equivalent of four pints of apple butter.

Really incredible stuff.

Today, I filled half the crock pot with apples with the same basic honey/spice recipe to get some more apple goodness.

Some spiced apples. Maybe applesauce. If some remain, apple butter.

Yield: 2 pints spiced apples and turkey sausage with apples in the crockpot for dinner.

Blueberry Cream Cheese Lemon Poppy Muffins

I experimented with some muffins that started life as blueberry, morphed into blueberry cream cheese and twisted into some lemon poppyseed.

All together.

Dry ingredients:
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 3 cups flour
- 1 pinch cinnamon
- about 1/4 cup poppyseeds
- 1/4 fresh squeezed lemon juice

Wet ingredients:
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup whipped cream cheese
- 1 1/4 cup soy milk
- 1/8 cup local honey
- 1/8 cup blackstrap molasses
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups blueberries

I got 20 small muffins

Bake at 375, for 20 minutes

Hurricane Chicken (in lemon butter sauce)

To get ready for the storm, we put the following in the crock pot:
- 3 pounds chicken thighs
- 2 pounds drumsticks
- juice of 2.5 large lemons
- drizzle of olive oil
- 1 stick of butter
- 1 bag snow peas
- fresh ground pepper
- water to fill crockpot

My husband liked it as is, but I would have preferred the water greatly reduced for better butter flavor.

Lemonade Smoothie

Are you sick of smoothies yet?

This morning:
- 1 Chobani lemon yogurt
- about 1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
- about 1/4 cup very vanilla soy milk
- about 1/4 cup seltzer
- one heaping teaspoon orange juice concentrate
- pinch of [food grade] lavender

Starlight yellow cake with lemon filling

I think it should be official that I can't have fun without food. We had dinner with people over the weekend whom we hope will become good friends, and one of them said something along the lines of "food should be an experience, one as good as something I can't say in front of the child. One where the wine blends with the appetizer and complements the salad and the main dish and it all goes together."

He's Italian, but it's the same theory the French have, without the copious doses of pasta.

Today, my daughter has off from school and we had plans to visit a friend. Those plans fell through. Such is life. Eventually, I was left with no choice but to fill the void with food. And not merely food-- but cake!

I consulted my Betty Crocker 25th anniversary cookbook and selected a Starlight Yellow Cake. In a fit of optimistic insanity, I decided to make a layer cake with the Betty Crocker lemon filling.

I used a jelly roll pan and a matching cake pan to make the layers, as I don't have multiple jelly roll pans or round layer pans or even a brownie pan.

This is my first layer cake. The layers are safely out of the pan and cooling in the kitchen and the filling is setting in the fridge, which doesn't even seem necessary because it tasted perfect and had a fabulous consistency while still in the saucepan.

Now the recipes:
The Starlight Yellow Cake
- 2 1/4 cups white flour
- 1 1/2 cups sugar (I usually reduce)
- 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/4 cups milk (I used 3/4 cup whole milk and 3/4 cup soy milk)
- 1/4 cup vegetable shortening
- 1/4 cup butter, softened
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 3 eggs

Preheat to 350. Grease and flour pans. Beat all ingredients on low 30 seconds, scraping sides constantly. Beat on high three minutes. Poor into pan. Bake 40 minutes for a rectangle cake, 25 for two rectangle layers, 30 for two round layers. Until toothpick comes out clean or cake springs back when touched.

Lemon filling
- 3/4 cup sugar (I only used 1/2)
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2/3 cup water
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
- 1/4 cup lemon juice (I used two small lemons)
- yellow food coloring if desired

This tastes just like the inside of one of those Hostess fruit pies.

Mix sugar, cornstarch and salt in saucepan. Gradually add water, mix and then heat over medium, stirring constantly until boiling and thickened. (mine thickened quickly and into lumps, lumps of a nice consistency that absorbed water without trouble, but lumps)

Boil and stir one minute. Mine thickened totally before one minute.

Remove from heat. Stir in butter and lemon peel, mixing until butter melts. Gradually stir in lemon juice, and then food coloring. Refrigerate 2 hours or until set.

The recipe book suggests icing with White Mounting Frosting. I'll investigate.

Broccoli and fish, a quick dinner

Tonight I finally sat down and listed my recipes and my ingredients needed for Thanksgiving. I have quite the menu planned... but more about that later.

I had a Target dinner, their battered pollock filets and steam-in-bag broccoli. I made a garlic, lemon and butter sauce for the broccoli and mixed 1 part Archer Farm lemon-dill mustard to 2 parts sour cream, with one teaspoon Aldi country herbs. That was a pretty cool dinner...

I also discovered that Wegmans has new escargot appetizers in the shell. I am soooo serving these for Thanksgiving.

Honeyed Fruit

As I was prepping the fruit salad yesterday, at the last minute I decided to make white wine-honey sauce for it. It's a French recipe I found online for a dinner party, that depending on the dryness of the wine used to make the sauce can be enjoyable for children and adults alike. But that's if you use a sweet wine, like a Vouvray. I, in this case, used a dry Reisling made by a friend. (I save my old wine bottles for him and he returns one from the batch filled with home brew.)

My original experience with this recipe can be found here:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2009/04/fruit-salad-with-honey-wine-dressing.html

I thought yesterday's version was worth noting, in part because of the local nature of some of the ingredients. The honey was local honey and the wine, as I mentioned, came from a friend.

This is the list of ingredients for the sauce:
1/2 cup dry white wine
3 tablespoons plus two teaspoons honey
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon granulated sugar

It's all supposed to be mixed in the blender. I used a measuring glass and a whisk. And I didn't use as much sugar. I never do. After you mix it, you're supposed to chill it in the fridge for 20 minutes. I slapped mine in the freezer for ten.

My fruits, as mentioned in the earlier post about this meal, were the leftovers of a fresh pineapple, a banana and the last of my strawberries sliced.

What was leftover, I let soak in the fridge (with some sauce left in reserve and I'm thinking ice cream). That became my breakfast this morning.

Shrimp with broccoli

A friend bought a bag of shrimp for us to help celebrate my birthday. Tonight I made a shrimp, broccoli and egg noodle dish.

I sauteed the shrimp in butter, 3/4 clove garlic, and lemon juice. Sprinkled with it's a dilly.

Sauteed broccoli in olive oil and a touch of butter. Added that to the cooked pasta, added some extra virgin olive oil and a tad more butter. Mixed.

Added the shrimp. Mixed.

Added shredded asiago.

served.

Leftovers in lemon-butter sauce

Today for breakfast we had raisin bran and I forgot to have my second breakfast. That made the morning challenging.

It's cold and rainy so my multigrain pizza crust didn't rise properly (still tasted fairly good and kind of like a soft pretzel). But the pan pizza came out nicely.

The perfumed pineapple, well, my daughter over perfumed it and I over-buttered the crumbs again so it was far from perfect but edible.

But I made up for all of this with dinner.

I started with some white rice in the steamer.
Assembled the following:

• Le Creuset skillet
• 1 clove garlic sliced
• extra virgin olive oil (cold pressed)
• butter
• lemon juice
• 1 crown broccoli, chopped into bite-sized pieces (2-3 cups?)
• 2 chicken sausages with apple (from Trader Joe's), sliced
• 1 chicken breast prepared "chicken frances" leftover from the diner last night, chopped
  
• leftover rice from the diner

• 1 slice garlic bread from the diner

Okay, so I started with two tablespoons of olive oil and a slice of butter in the skillet as I dropped the garlic in on low. I added the chicken, because it came out of the fridge and was cold. Then the sausage. Then the broccoli. Every time the liquid got absorbed, I pushed everything to one side of the skillet (now at medium heat) and added a couple tablespoons of butter and equal amounts of lemon juice and blended them vigorously. Then I let the sauce seep to the other side of the pan and mixed everything up again.

I probably made this little batch of sauce three times and then I added the leftover rice from the diner and two heaping serving spoons of white rice from my steamer. More vigorous stirring.

Then, when the liquid disappeared and the rice started to stick, I moved everything to the coolest side of the skillet, reduced the heat to low, and added another couple tablespoons olive oil and mixed it up one last time.

And served.

I put the garlic bread in the skillet (once I pushed everything to the side, again) and fried each side a minute to get it warm without getting it soggy. Who says you can't reheat garlic bread?

All in all, I used 3/4 stick of butter and equal amounts lemon juice for the sauce. I love lemon-butter sauce.

Chicken and mashed taters

Tonight for dinner I'm making chicken in lemon-butter sauce (française) and roasted garlic mashed potatoes, a side salad, and Vouvray.

Except my husband grabbed the Bordeaux instead of the Vouvray.

For the mashed potatoes:

• about 1/2-3/4 cup chicken broth/olive oil/chicken "juices" from frying pan skillet
  
• probably 3 lbs of potatoes, mostly peeled
• About 15 cloves roasted garlic
• About 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
• 3 tablespoons butter
• About 1/4 cup sour cream

For the salad:

• greens
• shredded carrots
• raisins
• cashews
• zesty sprouts
• Ranch for him and child, red wine mist for her

And finally the chicken:

• About 1.25 pounds boneless, skinless chicken tenderloin (from the discount pile: $3)
• lemon juice
• extra virgin olive oil
• butter
• unbleached white flour
• four color organic peppercorns
• chicken broth

Place about one tablespoon extra virgin olive oil in skillet. Preheat skillet and oven (to about 250, will be used to keep the chicken warm while we make the sauce). Lightly dredge the chicken, sprinkle with pepper. Add to pan with one tablespoon butter. Cook about five minutes, flip. Cook about five more minutes. Add about 3/4 cup chicken broth. Cook until finished. Move chicken to oven.

Reserve juice in skillet into cooked potatoes for the mashed.

In the skillet, add about three tablespoons butter and about the same amount of lemon juice. Slowly bring to a boil, stirring often. Pour oven chicken and serve.

This looks to be a good guide on mashed potatoes:
http://www.reluctantgourmet.com/mashed.htm

Pork with black beans, egg noodles and broccoli

I had a craving for something different... A long time ago, my mother (Mimi) mentioned something about how good for you black beans are and she made a pork, black beans and egg noodle dish in beef broth that was pretty good.

I thought I'd make my own spin on it.

I started with two small crowns of broccoli, chopped into bite-size pieces.

In my Le Creuset skillet, I placed the following:

• Several tablespoons lemon juice
• one tablespoon butter
• Several tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 of one large clove garlic, sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon four color pepper

I cooked this for a few seconds and then placed the raw broccoli in the skillet and cooked it in the sauce. I sprinkled it heartily with It's a Dilly Seasoning (probably about two teaspoons, it came out fast) Don't cook too long. Want to leave it crispy.

I removed the broccoli from the pan. Then, I began a new sauce, the same, but more:

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons lemon juice
• less than 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• the other 1/2 of the large clove garlic, sliced

My husband sliced two thick boneless pork chops into stir-fry like pieces. I sprinkled them directly with the four-color pepper and added them to the pan. Cook about five minutes on each side, on low side of medium.

Meanwhile, cook one pound egg noodles. Open one can black beans. Rinse well.

Add broccoli and beans to finished pork, in skillet. Drain egg noodles. Add to skillet.

Finish with about 16 ounces vegetable stock. I use Wegmans. Let simmer in skillet until hot.

I thought this was fabulous.

Hot Lunch Again

Okay, choke one up for the doofus category.

I thought I made the spring vegetables with the citrus sauce. I didn't.

I made the steam-in-bag stir-fry vegetables from Giant.

So, I opted to try and make my own citrus sauce. Totally off the cuff.

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon roasted sesame seeds
• 1 teaspoon flax seeds
• 1-2 teaspoons garlic powder
  
• 1 tablespoon slivered almonds

Toast seeds and nuts in skillet. In a small bowl, mix:

• 1/2 cup apple juice
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch

Stir until corn starch is dissolved. Add to skillet, raise heat, stir, and bring to boil. When sauce is reduced and thickened, add vegetables and reduce heat. Stir well. After about a minute, add rice (about 2 cups cooked brown rice) on top but don't stir. Stir after another minute. Then, serve with chow mein noodles.

It turned out well, some bites were very zesty and citrusy, others salty, others a nice blend.

Hummus

I hope I already posted my normal hummus recipe because today's was a thrown-together affair. I threw into the food processor:

• one can chick peas. They should be drained well. I apparently did not drain mine well enough. So my hummus is a tad runny.
• roasted red peppers. I added close to a cup
• fresh parsley from the garden. Yeah, it's now November and I still have parsley growing in my backyard.
• one large clove garlic
• one tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• two tablespoons, or maybe a little more, lemon juice. The juice of half a fresh lemon might be perfect, but I don't have a lemon
• one heaping teaspoon cashew butter. A whim.

And normally one would add tahini or toasted sesame seeds but I forgot them.

Broccoli pasta dinner/ Husband does groceries

My husband went grocery shopping. I haven't looked at the receipt, and the kitchen looks okay. At least there's food...

For dinner, I'm making a broccoli pasta dish. We had some fresh broccoli that's been in the fridge for a week.

So, in a saucepan I combined:

• Four or so tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• One clove fresh garlic
• One tablespoon butter

Heated that. Added fresh broccoli, two smalls heads, cut bite sized and blanched in the microwave. I sprinkled about two tablespoons lemon juice over that and sautéed while the pasta cooked (whole wheat penne and some white wagon wheels, it's what was there) and since no one bought sprinkle parmesan cheese, and we're not very hungry because we've been eating a lot of junk, voilà, dinner.

Tuna pasta with lemon sauce

At one point I mentioned I planned to recycle the lemon sauce from the chicken the other night, a French style recipe that included lots of butter, fresh herbs and wine (though I used grape juice.) We did end up eating it on whole wheat spaghetti, with tuna and peas and garlic pepper.

Baked chicken with lemon basil sauce

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1939,148187-237202,00.html BAKED CHICKEN IN LEMON SAUCE

Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. Makes 6 servings. 4 whole, boneless chicken breasts (about 12 oz. each) 1 tsp. onion powder 1/2 tsp. garlic powder 1/2 tsp. leaf basil, crumbled 1/2 tsp. leaf tarragon, crumbled 1/4 tsp. lemon pepper 1/4 c. (1/2 stick) butter 1/2 c. chopped shallots or green onion 1 1/2 c. heavy cream 1 c. dry white wine 1/2 c. lemon juice 2 tsp. lemon rind 1 tbsp. sugar 1/2 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. white pepper 3 tbsp. cornstarch Lemon slices Cooked French green beans (optional) Preheat oven to moderate (375 degrees). Pour oil into large casserole or baking dish. Turn chicken in oil to coat, rubbing all sides; arrange skin-side up. Sprinkle with onion powder, garlic powder, basil, tarragon, and lemon pepper. Bake in preheated moderate oven (375 degrees) for 30 minutes or until chicken is tender and browned on top. Meanwhile, melt butter in medium-size heavy saucepan. Saute shallots in butter 1 minute or until softened. Pour in heavy cream, 1/2 cup of the wine, the lemon juice, lemon rind, sugar, and salt and pepper. Bring to boiling; boil for 15 minutes or until reduced by half. Dissolve cornstarch in the remaining 1/2 cup wine in small cup. Stir into sauce. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes or until sauce thickens. Keep warm. Overlap chicken breasts on warmed serving platter. Place lemon slices between chicken breasts. Pour some of the sauce over the chicken; pass the remainder. Serve with cooked French green beans, if you wish or browned mushrooms. I promised my family I'd make chicken for dinner so I started with this basic recipe. I used chives instead of shallots and herbs from my garden instead of tarragon. I used white grape juice instead of wine, and soymilk instead of heavy cream. (Which meant I reduced the amount of soymilk used from 1.5 cups of cream to less than 1 cup milk.) It smells fabulous. My husband made his famous vegetable-heaped baked potatoes with sour cream, cheese and broccoli. (Which after I ate all the goodies off mine, I then topped it with the incredible sauce from the chicken. Tomorrow we'll each be taking chicken with some leftover mac and cheese with peas and probably Thursday I'll use the sauce leftover to make some sort of pasta dish.