Comfort foods

When I think of "comfort foods" I think of those early winter, late autumn foods that mom made frequently.

No recipes with this post, just a rambling recall of those dishes my mother made so often.

I would say first on the list was spaghetti and meatballs.  My did didn't particularly care for a meat sauce, but he loved meatballs.  So mom always made her sauce with meatballs.  She would complain from time to time that the meatballs were "tough".  Then she learned a trick, or rather Aunt Rita told her how to get a perfect meatball every time.  Don't cook it through, just brown it, and let the simmering sauce do the work of cooking the meat.  Soft, but not break-apart meatballs every time.

Mom also made a great meatloaf.  And she always served it was a brown gravy, never any tomato or ketchup in it.  Dad preferred it that way.  I loved it that way, and could never stand a meatloaf that had ketchup on top and peppers inside.  It's a personal taste thing.  I'm not saying that it's wrong to put peppers in a meatloaf, along with all the other things that one puts in meatloaves, I'm just saying we didn't like it that way.  When I started cooking for my own children I varied moms recipe by crushing barbeque potato chips and used them in place of bread crumbs, and then added a little bit of barbeque sauce inside, not on top of, the loaf.  If anyone wanted more bbq sauce they could have it straight from the bottle.

Comfort food number three would have to be chicken and dumplings.  I recently saw a Food Network program where the chef put the entire chicken sans head into a pot of boiling water in order to stew the chicken.  Exactly what mom did, including the feet.  Mom had an affinity for chicken feet.  Yuck!  After she stewed the chicken so that it was falling off the bones, she would scrape the meat from the bones, making sure no bones remained in the pot.  How she did that -- making sure no bones remained in the pot -- I don't know.  I haven't had much luck with that.  It seems I always miss one or two bones, and Alan gets them in his dish, even though I scour his chicken before I serve it.  Then she'd make dumplings as directed on the Bisquick box.  No additives to the dumplings.  I usually sprinkled in some parsley flakes and maybe some grated cheddar cheese before I put them into the boiling stew.

Another comfort food was shepherd's pie.  Mom made it whenever we had lamb.  She would take the left over lamb, get out the meat grinder, attach it to the table, and grind away.  Sometimes, she'd let me grind, which was a treat for me.  Now we would probably call it child labor, but I loved turning that crank and watching the meat spew from the tiny holes.  After she ground up the lamb, she would put it in a casserole dish, mix in the left over gravy, and top it with mashed potatoes.  Then all that would be put in the oven for about 30 minutes so that the tips of the mashed potatoes would turn a golden brown, like merangue. 

I think in our household -- that is my husband's and mine -- our favorite is tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches with chips and pickles on the side.  So easy to do, and so good to eat.

I would say that favorite is followed by chili.  In Cincinnati chili has a unique flavor, and it is always mixed with spaghetti, topped with onions, beans, and cheese.  I make a good chili, and I put the beans into the "gravy" with the meat.  I don't just put the beans on top of the chili.  I remember having chili when I was a child, and it was always served with Italian bread, crisp and fresh bread, never with spaghetti.  Different locales, different styles.

Now, it's time to go get Alan's lunch ready.  His favorite?  Grilled ham and cheese.  But today he's getting plain ham and cheese with Guilden's mustard on the bread.  Me?  I'll be having a salad -- honeymoon salad -- lettuce alone!

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What I did with left over roast chicken

I have to say that the original roasted chicken was absolutely delicious.  Moist as could be.  And the gravy I made was also excellent, if I say so myself.  I have found that even on cruises, most things I ask for, I prefer the way I fix better.  I realize I'm not making a dish for 2,000 people so I can take my time and care more about it.  No assembly-line food in my house, unless I want it (go out to eat or go on a cruise, or something like that).

Tonight I made something with the left-over chix from yesterday, and it was really, really good.  A surprise.

First I made the rice (1 cup water, 1/2 cup rice).  I boiled the water, put the rice in, and then simmer it until the water was all used up and the rice was cooked.  I did add salt to the water.
While the rice was cooking, I mixed one can of low-sodium/fat cream of chicken soup to 3/4 of a can of Half and half.  I stirred that all together to get it ready for the rice.

And while the rice was still cooking, I took 6 slices of American cheese -- which I had in the fridge for Alan's sandwiches -- and cubed it, or cut it into small pieces and set that aside.  I put 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese (grated) into the soup mixture. 

And while the rice was cooking, I took the left over chicken which I had ripped off the carcus last night and made the pieces a bit smaller.

When the rice was finished cooking, I put it into the soup and stirred it real good, then I added the cheese and the chicken, stirring them into the soup/rice.  On top of the whole thing I sprinkled  Stove Top Stuffing Mix -- just enough to cover it.

I put it in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 1/2 hour -- it was really bubbling away when I opened the oven, and the stuffing mix was really crispy.

I dished it up onto a plate, sprinkled some black pepper over it, and dug in.  I have to say, it was really yummy and the rice was cooked.

I think I finally learned how to make a rice casserole and the rice gets cooks through.  No hard kernels this time!

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Onion soup

My mom made onion soup.  She opened a package of Lipton's dried onion soup mix, and added the prescribed amount of water, and we had onion soup.  I'm not talking about that kind of onion soup.  I'm talking about the hearty onion soup that sticks to your innards, the kind they make at Panera's.   I told my husband that I was going to go over there today and get us some, but I changed my mind.

I have a really good recipe for onion soup from scratch which isn't too difficult to make.  This particular recipe serves 8 if you use onion soup ramekins, or 4-6 if you use the soup bowls that come with your dish sets.  Since we like the onion soup, I use the soup bowls, not the ramekins.

Ingredients:

4 large onions, peeled, and sliced into rings
1/2 stick of butter
1/4 C flour
4 bullion cubes
1 tablespoon Worstershire Sauce
6 cups water
Your favorite topping cheese (provolone, swiss, mozzerella, parmasan)
Italian or French bread slices

In a large, deep pan, melt the butter, add the onions and let them cook until they are transluscent.  At this point sprinkle the flour over the onion/butter mixture and stir.  Slowly add the water, stirring as you're pouring.  After the onions, flour, and butter stuff is stirred into the water, add the Worstershire sauce and the 4 bullion (beef) cubes.  Stir until the bullion is dissolved.  Turn down the heat to low and let simmer for about one hour with the lid on the pot.

Taste it before you serve it.  It might need some salt, but I haven't found that to be the case.

I've also made it using beef broth -- 6 cups.  Four large onions seems like a lot of onions, but they boil down.

Serve the soup in a bowl with a piece of Italian or French bread in the bottom.  Put some kind of cheese on the top of the bowl -- we like parmasan, but mozzerella, sliced very thin, and provolone work well. 

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New cutting board

I sent my personal shopper on an expedition today to find the biggest cutting board she could find.  And find one, she did.  It's big, and I love it.  My dear mother had only a very small board on which to chop veggies, olives (for cream cheese and olive sandwiches), etc., and I was given a very nice cutting board when I was married.  Then, several years later, we were told that wood was not a good thing to make a cutting board from and they came out with those mottled plastic numbers that ruin knives.  I have one of those, but I rarely use it.  Anyway, I got rid of the wonderful board I had for many years, and from which we never died of salmonella or any other harmful bacteria.

So now, I have a new board and I can't wait to use it.  I shall put away the mottled plastic board forever, I think, although it is light weight, and might be good to keep around for a while.  And I shall get rid of my small wood board which is almost broken in half, but which I wash every day and bleach often, thus causing it, I'm sure, to have had such a short life span.

Tonight for dinner, I think I'll make -- oh, no, that's right, I have to go to Bible study/prayer group tonight, so we're having Digiorno pepperoni pizza.  I'll get to use the board when I cut the pizza!  Then it will be christened and I can use it for as long as I am able to use a cutting board.

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I can smell it now

I can smell the smells of our house in Runnemede now.  It's Saturday afternoon.  That means mom has put on the roast for our dinner tonight.  We almost always had roast something (lamb, beef, pork, veal) on Saturday night.  Leftovers, usually ground up meat made into shepherd's pie, on Sunday.  The Sunday meal, was made after dinner on Saturday night.

Yes, mom's roast was something to taste.  She had a large, hammered aluminum pan which she used solely for making roasts.  She would put an onion, cut up into chunks, into the pot, after she had browned all four sides of the roast.  She simply salted and peppered the meat before she browned it.  Then she added the onions, and turned down the heat.  About half-way through the cooking process, she added two cups of water.  This became the gravy.

My dear mother was so strong.  She had to have been.  She did so much on Saturday night.  And as I think of the things she did, I wonder where the energy came from after contending with four children all day.  But she did a lot after dinner each Saturday, and one was to get the meal ready for Sunday.

She would get out the grinder, and it came with a "C" clamp, and clamped onto the edge of the kitchen table.  She would stuff the left over meat, little bits at a time into the meat grinder while I or my sister held a bowl under the place where the meat came out, and she would add that meat to the left-over gravy from the roast the family had dine on shortly before.  Then she would have already cooked extra potatoes at dinner time, and took out enough for mashed potatoes to put on top of the ground up meat/gravy mixture.  The mashed potatoes were spread over the ground meat, and she would then wrap the bowl -- an oven proof bowl -- in plastic wrap, and it was ready for Sunday dinner.  All she had to do was pop it in the over at 400 degrees for 1/2 hour, and we were set to go.

About 1/2 hour was all my father could wait for dinner.  He came home after church every week, hungry, hungry, hungry.  But we all were hungry, and were so glad when the "pie" was finished, the peas (we always had peas with shepherd's pie) were cooked, and the salad was fixed.  If we were on schedule, dinner was served at 1 PM.  It usually took dad about 1/2 hour after he finished preaching to get away from people and get home.   Mom got home only about five minutes ahead of him, so the food would be in the oven and he knew it was cooking and would be ready in about 1/2 hour.

Back to Saturday -- I talked about my mom's strength.  Well, she also always made a breakfast cake, baking it on Saturday night, so it would be available on Sunday morning.  I'm afraid, the Sunday morning thing wasn't such a good idea, as it was usually dried out some, and not very good, but my father liked it, and that's what was important.  I never did like those coffee cakes she made. 

And then came the scrubbing and cleaning.  Everything was moved out of the kitchen (the table mostly) and mom scrubbed the floor, down on her hands and knees, and then wiped it with a clean wet cloth.  No one could walk on it until it dried. 

Then, and only then, did she head to the bathroom and give my brothers their baths, and make sure my sister and I had taken our baths.  After which she scrubbed the bathroom floor. 

Finally, after we were in bed, she studied her Sunday School lesson -- the one she had to teach on the morrow.

Now, if you've read this BLOG you will find that there is a recipe embedded in this story.  If you find it, and use it, you will enjoy it.

Another yummy broccoli dish

This is a made-up -- or from scratch -- type dish. 

All you need is a casserole dish and the following ingredients:

broccoli (I'm using 1/3 of a large bag of frozen broccoli, barely cooked and drained)
two chicken breasts, cooked and cut into chunks
two cans of cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup rice
Swiss cheese

Put all ingredients into a casserole dish, stir to mix, and top with the cheese to cover the dish.  Put in 350-degree oven for 1-1/2 hours.  Test to see if the rice has cooked (I sometimes have trouble getting the rice to be soft rather than crunchy (yuck).  If the rice is cooked, then the dish is ready to eat. 

As for me:  after I take it out of the oven, I grate some fresh parmesan cheese over the top of the already cheese-topped dish.  It just adds a little spice to the dish.

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Potato salad

Today is a holiday. Every warm-weather holiday we had potato salad. I think my mom made the best potato salad ever, and I have faithfully preserved her recipe. No muss, no fuss, just plain potato salad.

I use:

10 medium size potatoes
5 eggs
several stalks of celery
mayonnaise
mustard
vinegar

My mom's potato salad had no sugar, and rarely would she add pickles. If she added pickles, they were of the dill variety. I prefer potato salad straight, no additives.

So I boil the potatoes and eggs in the same pot. I do not peel the potatoes before cooking them. And if they are thin-skinned potatoes such as the red potatoes or Yukon golds, I don't skin them after I cook them either. I leave the skins on and just smash the potatoes with a potato smasher, or I cut the potatoes into small pieces, depending on how pretty I want to make the salad, and how much time I have. The potatoes have been salted when they are cooked. I put a tablespoon of salt in the water.

Then I put into this two cups of chopped celery. And I chop up the eggs (after I peel them).

I add enough mayonnaise to moisten the potatoes, a tablespoon of mustard, and a teaspoon of vinegar.

That's it. Tastes delicious if you like a non-sweet potato salad.

One variation I've tried is to use bottled ranch dressing with the mayonnaise and omit the mustard and vinegar. That tastes good as well.

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