cookbooks – Page 2 – Peaceful Reader

Weekend Cooking; Food for Thought

I cooked routine, easy meals this week. Leftovers, pasta with some of my frozen-from-last-summer pesto, and hamburgers nourished us this week. Over the last few years our family meals have taken new direction. Change is good. I would say we’ve always been on the cusp of healthy eating but not over the edge. Many people consider us to be over-the-edge though.

I’ve eaten a vegetarian diet since I was a teenager. Teenage boy was raised vegetarian. (Except for Gpa Dean who kept taking him to McD for chicken nuggets on their manly Saturday wash the truck days!!) My husband, who spent time as a young boy in both Sierra Leone and Malaysia has a versatile palate and he’s a runner. He swayed easily with my vegetarian cooking. Every once in awhile he would come home with a package of ground turkey, shape patties, and serve them for dinner. I just ate the side dishes.

As Teenage Boy became well, a teenager, and more active he begged for meat. I’d read Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, where she talks about making responsible meat choices. Every foodie should read her book. After some local research I found a Gentleman Farmer who sells straight to the consumer for a reasonable price. Now I can purchase meat from him because he has the same ideas about animals that I do and I’ve introduced meat back in to our diet over the last three years. My veg friends are shocked and a little disgusted but I’ve enjoyed the journey. I like the idea of helping the farmer practice sustainable, healthy food production. It’s all about supply and demand.

We still eat vegetarian at home most of the time and when we venture out for food I always eat vegetarian. I want restaurants to think about what they serve and how whole groups of us are left out when only two veg menu items are offered, usually one of the items is a cheese quesadilla; not very healthy and I’m a cheese snob. Lucky for us we have a dairy that practices sustainable and wholesome farming where we can purchase hormone-free milk and local cheeses. Trust me there is plenty of eye-rolling going on at our table as I sweetly question wait staff on vegetarian eating options. Nachos with cheese SAUCE always riles me up and confuses the poor wait person.

Teenage Boy is now tackling our sugar habit. He is an athlete and has decided to cut out refined sugars. We don’t eat a ton of sugar at our house but I like to bake and Teenage Boy loves to have cookies or bars on hand to eat. He is super thin and needs multiple food choices throughout the day. We are soda free but the kids drink healthy-ish real juice. Cereals are another area where sugar is an issue but we do have a special way of serving cereal that deserves an entire post all its own. The search is on for baking recipes that use natural sweeteners other than refined sugar. I need to read more to understand my options. Obviously we all know sugar isn’t good for us but what kind of treats can I make that my kids will still think of as edible and not tree bark?

Sidebars:

1. I browsed through this book, Chloe’s Kitchen, online yesterday and am completely enticed. While we are not vegan I think this cookbook offers some great variations on everyday recipes. Why not throw it into our already jumbled randomness of food ideas? Has anybody experimented with this book?

2. I started watching The Future of Food on Netflix instant while Groovy Girl was in gymnastics class. I plan to finish watching today. Genetically modified foods scare me and we need to be wary of their existence on our grocery shelves. I discovered this list of food documentaries on Lettuce Eat Kale. I’ve watched a few of them (I highly recommend King Corn) but should probably watch all. I always feel disgusted and angry after watching but more involved as well. Sick but smarter…

3. I get this Rodale newsletter through email and found this must-read article about the over-used word, natural. It’s crazy that we’ve watched this word transformed from a positive into a meaningless word. Tragic. Someday I hope it will come back from the dark side. The bottom line is if you see the word natural on products-it’s not because food manufacturer’s have watered-down the meaning of the word-ON PURPOSE-to make more money.

With all that…
Stay positive.
What changes can you make if the future of food is important to you?

This post is connected to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. Click her link to see more food-related posts.

Weekend Cooking; The Geranium Farm Cookbook

by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton & 10,000 Geranium Farmers

(2006) 136 pages

At our church Christmas Bazaar we have a beautiful book table with used books from our members. It is a wonderful way to share and recycle the books we have read all year. We are a well-read and well-fed congregation as recipe books take up an entire table.

This year a had this one in my stack and my intention was to give it to my mother as she is a true cookbook collector. I read through it one night though and fell in love with the uncomplicated recipes. I love to read through the vignettes interspersed throughout the book as well. I loved this quote from one

Baking Friday Afternoon

I could hardly believe my ears: Rosie requested that we bake a pie on Friday afternoon. Always say yes when your teenager wants to do something with you-anything this side of legality. It could be years before it happens again. (48) ~ Barbara Cawthorne Crafton

Words of wisdom there!

I’ve made these two recipes from this book so far-both excellent.

Curried Olive Spread

1 block of cream cheese, light or otherwise
1 cup pitted, chopped green salad olives (more or less to taste and you can use exotic olives if you prefer)
1 T. curry (more or less to taste)

Cube the cream cheese, then put cheese and olives in a food processor. Blend until mixture is slightly lumpy. Stir in curry. Can be served immediately, but sitting in the fridge for an hour or so allows the flavors to blend. Serve with crackers, celery sticks, or toasted bread squares.

My grandmother gave me this recipe when I entered the working world. She told me there would be many occasions where I would be expected to bring an appetizer to a dinner, and this one was quick, easy, and tasted delicious. After all, she mused, working women were busy and didn’t have all day to create fabulous food...(108) ~ The Rev. Laurie Brock, Mobile, Alabama

Can’t resist grandmother advice either! I served this dip with a loaf of my fresh homemade bread. The dip made enough for leftovers and I’ve been eating that as a snack with gluten-free crackers all week.

Corn Spoon Bread

1 cup (organic) milk
1 T. (unsalted) butter
1 cup cornmeal
1 can creamed corn
2 eggs, separated
1 T. (sea) salt
1 T (freshly ground) black pepper

Scald the milk in a saucepan. Melt the butter into the milk. Add the cornmeal and cook until thick. Stir in the creamed corn. Beat the egg yolks with the salt and pepper. Stir the yolks into the corn mixture. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Fold the egg whites into the corn mixture. pour into a well-greased quart baking dish. Bake at 350* for 50 minutes to 1 hour or until a wooden skewer inserted int eh middle comes out clean. Serves 6-8
This is a favorite recipe of mine from my Indiana childhood. ~The Rev. Gerald W. Keucher, New York, NY (123)

I have a thing about creamed corn-a childhood food memory-so this appealed to me on that level. I made it for a church potluck and by the time I made it through the line it was gone, bowl scraped clean just as it should be at a potluck.

Link for Geranium Farm. This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. Drop over and see what she is dishing about and many other food-related posts.

In other family news our new refrigerator has been ordered but is back-ordered. My hope is that it arrives somewhere in the vicinity of the first two weeks of Feb. Back order seems to happen with all appliance purchases now.
I’m reading Claire Marvel by John Burnham Schwartz – beautifully written, taking many post-it’s to mark my favorites.
I watched Burlesque last night and loved it-don’t know why it took me a year. Cher and Christina Aguilera were wonderful. I watched Eat, Pray, Love also yesterday and while it dragged in spots was uplifting to me. Made me savor my own loves. So decadent to watch two movies in one day-it was a “free” day in a way.

I did something revolutionary this week!

(photo courtesy of Chez Us)

Don’t you get tired of buying cans, boxes, jars or cubes of veggie, beef or chicken stock? On my ongoing quest to bring less “stuff” into my house, especially the kitchen, I started to re-evaluate my constant need for stock. While searching through my favorite crock pot book, Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson I ran across an easy recipe for stock and thought I should give it a try.

Maybe some people do this all the time but it was a revelation for me-how ding dang easy it was to make and how great it made my house smell. It made enough for me to use for the next two weeks with some to freeze.

Give it a try-here’s the recipe. I no longer have to worry about purchasing too salty or expensive boxes of organic stock. Thank heavens. I also set up my mise en place for this recipe which made me feel extremely cooking cool.

Light and Easy Vegetable Stock

A 5 1/2-to 6-quart cooker is best.

8 to 10 hours cook time

Low setting

Makes 8 cups

1 T. olive oil

2 medium-size yellow onions, quartered

2 large carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces

1 celery rib, cut into 1-inch pieces

2 or 3 garlic cloves, left unpeeled and crushed

Peels from 2 large well-scrubbed potatoes (I actually used the whole well scrubbed pots)

1/3 cup coarsely chopped fresh parsley leaves

1 large bay leaf

1/2 tsp black peppercorns

8 cups water

2 tsp tamari or other soy sauce (might be nice to make sure it is wheat-free)

1 tsp salt (I kind of thought this was unnecessary and didn’t add it)

1. Drizzle the oil in the bottom of a the slow cooker. Add the onions, carrots, celery, garlic, potato, parsley, bay leaf, and peppercorns, pour in the water, and add the tamari. Cover and cook on Low for 8 to 10 hours.

2. Allow the stock to cool slightly, then strain it through a fine mesh sieve into a pot or bowl, pressing the vegetables against the sieve to release all the juices. Store the cooled stock in tightly sealed containers where it will keep for 3 to 5 days in the refrigerator or in the freezer for up to 3 months.

As I came down the stairs that morning there was a delicious smell filling the house. Now I’m ready to make the several soup recipes from Moosewood that I was interested in as well as the No Hurry Vegetable Curry on my menu for this week.

How ’bout you? Do you make your own or buy the box, cube, jar or can of stock? Do you have a favorite stock recipe?

Moosewood Restaurant; Cooking for Health

I’ve spent my weekend joyfully running from store to store picking up items for my Secret Santa school family. I had to hunt down school uniform outfits (not easy since it is not beginning of school, I guess-who would know they would NOT stock all year). I bought the two-year old a wee baby that cries-my groovy girl said “can I just play with it for one night?” I must have picked a good baby. It warms my heart to shop for someone in need and I love participating in this program every year. It always makes me sad when under the mom’s wish list are things like this; any cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, toilet tissue, dish soap. So I got them all for her and a box of chocolates just because she deserves it.

In between shopping and Groovy Girl’s skating lesson I’ve been nourishing my food soul with Moosewood’s latest cookbook.

Packed full of goodness this one has me scribbling down ingredients and recipes. It also made me drop a HUGE hint to handsome husband that it was on my Christmas list. He is pretty health conscious and is always excited about me cooking him food so it is a win-win situation for him. With fantastic intro information the book begins with Organics, Eating Locally, Nutritional Analysis, and a wonderful chart showing pesticide levels for non-organic fruits and vegetables. Did you know peaches rank the highest?

As a runner my husband was most interested in “The Glycemic Index; Bad Carb, Good Carb, Fast Carb, Slow Carb section. Recipes include a wide variety of choices from vegan to gluten-free and food allergies are discussed as Moosewood as a restaurant now caters to many food choices beyond just vegetarianism. I was impressed with the amount of tofu recipes and the wide variety of grains they’ve chosen.

While I haven’t cooked anything from the book yet I will leave you with a sample list of what could become some new favorite recipes:

Scattered Sushi Salad

Ginger Tofu Soup (the veggie’s equivalent to chicken noodle soup)

Latin Corn Soup

Sweet Potato, Apple, and Chipotle Soup

Chunky Guacamole Sandwich

Curried Red Lentil Burgers

Spinach-Tofu Burgers

An Easy Baked Tofu (all my years of cooking with tofu-never have I baked it:(I’ve already bought the tofu for this one)

Quinoa and Collard Leaf Dolmas

North-South Chili

Oaxacan Green Mole Stew

Tunisian Chickpea Stew

See the list goes on and on and I haven’t even read through the dessert (Fig and Pecan Baked Apples, anyone?) section. There is a two-page spread made for busy nights here: “Fourteen Ways to Embellish Brown Rice.” Each one of these beg to be tried in my kitchen.

Don’t you want it on your Christmas list too??

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking hosted at Beth Fish Reads. Check out all the food-related posts over there.

Weekend Cooking; Buttermilk Coffee Cake from La Jolla, CA

Okay, I’m not really there but one of my favorite cookbooks is Southern California Cooking from The Cottage by Jane and Michael Stern and Laura Wolfe and it makes me feel like I’m there. I whipped up this breakfast cake for overnight guests from a visiting church choir. I adore this cookbook and I remember purchasing it because of all the great breakfast recipes and I think it was the first cookbook I sat down and read like a book. It has great stories about how the restaurant was purchased by the Wolfe’s mixed with surfing and restaurant memories. I have several starred recipes with penciled in notes about when I made each and how it turned out.

The cookbook is divided into 10 typical sections (breakfast, breakfast breads, soups, salads, sandwiches, dressings and sauces, sides, dinner, and desserts) but the recipes that fill each are extraordinarily yummy!
We love breakfast at our house and I could easily make every single recipe from the two breakfast sections. Everything from Country French Toast, Breakfast Chiliquiles, 3 different eggs bene’s, to Laura’s Meatloaf Hash which uses leftover meatloaf. I’ve not made that one but now that I have several sources for good, local beef it could happen.

The sandwich section is my second favorite part of this book with recipes like the B.L.A.T (we love avocado here too), the Eggplant Panini, and the Brie, Avocado and Sun-Dried Tomato Melt. Yum! Who’s ready for lunch??

Here is the Buttermilk Coffee Cake recipe:

A great cake to serve in the morning or anytime during the day. Buttermilk Coffee Cake has been a staple at the Cottage since the beginning. We offer bites of it to customers waiting for a table when the place is packed on weekend mornings. (I love these little notes for their ability to place me right there, waiting for a table.)

1 cup canola oil
3 1/3 cups flour (unbleached)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/3 cups packed brown sugar
1 T. ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 egg
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 tsp. baking powder (aluminum-free)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I had pecans so I used them)

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 13 x 9-in pan. In a large mixing bowl combine the oil, flour, sugars, cinnamon, and ginger. the mixture should be crumbly. Set aside 1 1/3 cups of this batter. To the remaining batter add the egg, buttermilk, baking powder, soda and salt. Mix well. Pour the batter into the baking pan. To the reserved batter add the nuts and spread topping evenly over the batter. Bake for 25 minutes or until cake springs back to the touch. Makes 12 pieces of (warm, crumbly) cake. (52)

Weekend Cooking is hosted at Beth Fish Reads-click there to find many more food-related posts.
Some day I hope to take a food journey to La Jolla so I can sit at the cottage and enjoy the casual ambiance.I might even have a Sam Smith Organic Lager listed on their drink menu. Click here to see The Cottage website.

Happy Cooking!

Weekend Cooking; Mouth-watering Vegan Chocolate Pudding

My stepdaughter, Kaylee, has been here all week and anytime she is here I step up my cooking. This week I tried three new recipes; one from my Sept. Vegetarian Times and two from Alice Waters’ In the Green Kitchen. All were delicious but the most adored recipe was a Vegan Chocolate Pudding from VT. It was completely unfair to pit this mouth-watering chocolate recipe against two other very good choices so you can find their recipes at the end of this post. Several of us dreamed about the pudding that night after eating it and talked about it the next day.

(image courtesy of Seraphic Singles)

Velvet Smooth Dark Chocolate Pudding (Sept, 2011)

This warm stove-top pudding packs a punch of deep chocolate flavor. It’s the perfect recipe for a quick company dessert or a simple nighttime treat.

3/4 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
3 T cornstarch
2 1/4 cups unsweetened hazelnut or almond milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
8 oz vegan semisweet chocolate, chopped

Whisk together brown sugar and cornstarch in medium saucepan. Gradually stir in hazelnut milk, whisking constantly to combine. Bring mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, or until mixture thickens. Stir in vanilla, and remove from heat. Add chopped chocolate, and let stand for 1 minute. Stir until smooth.

Mine didn’t thicken as much as I thought it should. We called it chocolate soup but licked our bowls anyway. Now I have to try, try, try to make this again and see if I can perfect it! Oh, the tribulations!

Here is the Lentil Soup recipe.
Here is the Apple Galette recipe.

I’ve loved paging through In The Green Kitchen and am thinking I might have to buy it. Waters’ has it set up with an informative opening about what a green kitchen is and how to stock a green pantry with a great list. Each featured chef has their own section, with their green cooking tip; something like David Tanis’ Simmering Beans advice followed by his recipe for White Beans with Garlic and Herbs, which I plan to make this week.

Weekend Cooking is a weekend meme hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Any food related post can join in-click on her link and take a look at all the other foodie-posts!

Midnight Weekend Cooking

Tonight we had friends over for a casual dinner. It’s interesting how you often make friends through your children…our children are all in the same third grade class and have been together in school since kindergarten. Even though it was casual I did clean my house. I made fresh biscuits and two pans of lasagna. And went to a two-hour 4-H meeting with G.G.

The lasagna recipe I’ve shared before (from The Grit)except this time I did make the tomato sauce but the biscuits were a new thing. The day passed so quickly I didn’t even take any photos which would have been sweet as Groovy Girl took cutting out the biscuits and dipping them in butter under her proverbial 8-year-old wing. There was flour everywhere!! I would make these biscuits again. It made a lot and according to the recipe the dough can be stored in the ice box for 3 weeks, which means you could break out a chunk of dough and make a coupla of them each night for dinner.

That recipe came from a book fair cookbook-on sale for FIVE dollars; Super Suppers Cookbook 2; More Everyday Family Recipes by Judi Byrd. I bought it because I was impressed that it had a vegetarian section and more than a few of the recipes had whole grains and beans. It also includes fun menu plans like for parties or well, um, casual dinners. Just like what we had tonight except tonight our friends brought the side dishes and I just took care of the main course. I did also make biscuits, endamame (our appetizer), green beans (kid-friendly veg.) and a spring mix salad. I have “become” my grandmother who never wanted anyone to leave her home the slightest bit hungry! We had plenty! One couple brought a rice pilaf dish with cranberries and the other couple brought cheesecake with fresh blueberries nestled on top a lovely layer of whipped cream. Yum!

Angel Biscuits

Makes 16 biscuits (I think more)

nonstick cooking spray
5 cups of flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/4-oz package yeast
1/4 cup warm water
2 cups buttermilk
Flour for rolling
1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled

One: Preheat oven to 375 degrees (okay, really you don’t need to do this until you are rolling out the biscuits, but that’s just me). Coat a 13x 9-in pan with cooking spray and set aside.

Two: in a large bowl combine the 5 cups of flour, the baking powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Use a pastry blender or two forks to cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Three: In a small bowl dissolve yeast in warm water, add buttermilk. (buttermilk can easily be made with a quick pour of vinegar added to reg. milk). Using a fork, stir until just moistened.

Four: Pat or lightly roll dough to 1/2-in. thick. Cut dough with a floured 2 1/4-in. biscuit cutter, rerolling scraps as necessary and dipping cutter into flour between cuts. Dip each biscuit in melted butter and place in prepared baking dish. Bake 12-15 minutes or until golden. Remove biscuits from baking dish and serve warm.

Plan Ahead: Prepare recipe through Step Three but don’t preheat oven or coat dish. Cover and refrigerate up to 3 weeks. (Bake when ready.)

Easy. I used a mix of whole wheat flour and unbleached white (KAF). I was a bit mortified by the dunking in butter so I tried one pan without dunking and they were fine but not quite as delicious/light and fluffy as the dipped. Duh.

Hope everyone’s having a marvelous weekend. Now for the rest of the weekend I plan on resting and finishing the two books I am reading; She Looks Just Like You by Amie Klempnauer Miller and Bright Young Things by Ana Godberson.

Weekend Cooking with Slow Food

Come To The Table; The Slow Food Way of Living edited by Katrina Heron with a foreward by Alice Waters presented by Slow Food Nation easily caught my eye as I browsed the new nonfiction at the public library. This book, filled with 12 California farm stories and a section of delicious sounding recipes, is packed full of information-all that and sage bits of wisdom from Alice to open the book. Heaven.

I’ve enjoyed paging through this book, looking at the earthy photographs of farming people, animals, and the fruits/vegetables of their labor. In each section I’ve found pearls of wisdom that I’m taking to heart. Sometimes it seems when our heart is into something we feel we know all about it. Reading this book made me realize I have so much more to learn about “organic” and sustainable-living. In “How-to: Store it/Saving from Scratch” I read this bit ” It seems obvious, but people forget: You can save a lot of money if you buy food you can store and use over time. For example, beans. Dried beans are far cheaper than the canned ones.”(11)

Reading about the 12 farms was enriching and made me ready to sow some seeds of my own. I can’t have chickens where I live but we do garden and these stories inspired me to try some new plants, to reach farther in my gardening quest. I read about Jennifer Greene, a grain specialist, who decided to see how many people one woman could feed…she says about 100. She grows grains the old-fashioned way in northern California in an idyllic setting. Now I like King Arthur Flour myself but I can only imagine what it would be like to buy flour from a woman farmer just down the road. That would truly be cool. Each farm family has an story worth telling and many have taken over family farms and turned them back to what they were years, and years ago. Funny that a big handful of people knew that what was once tradition would now be new.

At the tail end of the book live many slow food recipes I plan to try over time but not this weekend as Groovy Girl are on our own and we had take- out Chinese last night that did not muster up to what we can make ourselves. I was just trying not to have to cook after a very long day. Hmmmph.

Here is a short list of recipes titles that I’m interested in making:

Paul’s Best Biscuit Recipe (Sweet Home Ranch)
Spearmint-Stuffed Artichokes (Full Belly Farm)
Jennifer’s Chickpea Puree (Windborne Farm)
Battered Fried Zucchini (J & P Organics)
Pastaless Vegetable Lasagna (Tierra Miguel Farm)
Bean and Barley Stew (Redwood Roots Farm)
Eggplant Curry Soup (Vang Family Farm)
Okay, that recipe looks just so easy to type I’m going to share just this one:

Eggplant Curry Stew
2 or 3 Chinese eggplants, thinly sliced
1 T yellow curry paste
1 can coconut milk
3/4 cup sliced bamboo shoots
3/4 pound chicken breast and thigh, cubed in 1/2 pieces
3 or 4 lemon tree leaves or 1 stalk lemongrass can be substituted
Salt to taste
Place all ingredients in a medium saucepan and add cold water to cover. Bring the mixture to a low boil, then simmer until chicken is cooked to your preference. Add salt to taste. This thick stew can be served over rice.
Makes 4 servings(130)
[unless i’ ve recently cooked one of the few organic/local chickens from my freezer i would substitute tofu for chicken]

I’ve never read a recipe for Suckling Pig (Clark Summit Farm) but there is one listed and for dessert, let’s all have California Cloverleaf Farms Organic Cheesecake (Burroughs Family Farm).

Thank you to the library for such a feast of cookbookery!!
This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. Click to her to find a whole slew of other foodie folks blogging about what they’re cooking up.

Look for it at in IndieBound bookstore near you by clicking on the title/link:

Come To The Table; The Slow Food Way of Living

This book counts toward my Foodie’s Reading Challenge.

What a holly, jolly Christmas so far

The holidays started officially for us yesterday (thursday) as we hosted 6 young girls, ready to do some holiday baking. Groovy Girl had her first cookie bake-off. They poured, measured, cracked the eggs, learned the “scoop and sweep” flour method as she took them through her mini-baking lesson. This is the same girl who two years ago “hosted” her own cooking show, which I taped but never got uploaded to a computer because the dog ate the Flip camera.Yes, that was not a very merry moment. Her friends had a wonderful time as they made cookies and watched The Polar Express while they cut out, baked and decorated the cookies. Decorating and eating ranked the highest in fun factor. I think gumdrops were being eaten as fast as I could cut them up. I love to listen to children talk; they are generally so uninhibitated and yesterday was no exception as they shared their own baking experiences and knowledge with each other! Hopefully, we’ve begun a new tradition with this holiday party.

Four days ago I needed to make a treat for my daughter’s school party; luckily we still live in a school district that allows homemade snacks and that no one in her class is allergic to peanuts because we whipped up these delicious Double Peanut Butter Cups thanks to Kathy at Bermudaonion. I didn’t take a photo of mine (there is one with the recipe at Bermudaonion) but the Christmas platter came home empty and she told me several students had seconds.

In my family it is tradition to have oyster stew on Christmas Eve but my husband is allergic to certain types of shellfish so when I got married I had to throw the tradition out. We’ve done clam chowder for the last few years but I’m never quite satisfied with what my clam chowder tastes like compared to what I’ve eaten on my travels to the East Coast. This year I tried a brand new recipe from Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook, which I also discovered thanks to a Weekend Cooking post at Bermudaonion. As soon as I read her post about this cookbook I knew it was the perfect Christmas gift for my mother-a cookbook collector and brunch lover. I found one last copy sitting on the shelf at my local Barnes and Noble, which, sadly, is our own local bookstore. Local trumps indie when your making that last dash for gifts. My family is totally okay with receiving books for gifts that have been “test” read by the giver so I spent hours perusing the contents of this fabulous book. I still plan to give it to my mom with the straight up knowledge that I may have to borrow it from time to time. I’ve already tried two recipes from it-both were delicious and I just ooooh’d and aaahhhh’d as I looked through it. This will be on my list of must-eat eateries when I visit NYC. Thank you Kathy for brightening my holiday cooking TWICE!

If you missed out on getting yourself something merry this season, buy it here-Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook

Enjoy the ~~video~~ (never did get the video to upload after three days of puttering with it)now, photos of the baking party. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good day, filled with roasting fires, a few perfect presents, time to read and a dinner table filled with good food. Don’t you just love a young girl who bakes in a huge string of pearls.

No Hurry Vegetable Curry

What a catchy title for a recipe! My in-laws are in town to see Legend of Sleepy Hollow and I love having them here. My mother-in-law, Phyllis, is a reader, knitter, master quilter, makes wonderful meals, drinks wine with me and is lovely with my children. My father-in-law is very, very smart, loves to talk politics, and loves his son, my husband, deeply. I scored well in this regard.

Having them come to town is a good time to try new recipes. My husband’s family spent time in Malaysia and Sierra Leone as part of the Peace Corps. so they enjoy a wide variety of cuisines and are happy to eat vegetarian. A few years ago, Phyllis, gave me Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker; 200 recipes for Healthy and Hearty One-Pot Meals That Are Ready When You Are by Robin Robertson. I’ve made several recipes from this book and they’ve all been easy and tasty.

This one is my second favorite from this book. My fav. is a sweet potato chili.

No Hurry Vegetarian Curry

1 T peanut oil
2 large carrots, sliced diagonal
1 med.-size yellow onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 T curry powder
1 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 large Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
8 ozs green beans, ends trimmed and cut into 1-in. pieces
1 1/2 cups slow cooked or one 15.5-ozs can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
One 14.5 can diced tomatoes, drained
2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed
1/2 cup canned unsweetened coconut milk
Salt

1. Heat oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the carrots and onion, cover, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, curry powder, coriander, and cayenne, stirring to coat.

2. Transfer the vegetable mixture to a 3 1/2 -to 4-quart slow cooker. Add the potatoes, green beans, chickpeas, tomatoes, and stock; cover and cook on Low for 6-8 hours.

3. Just before serving, stir in the peas and coconut milk and season with salt. Taste to adjust the seasonings.

I used small potatoes from my mother’s garden, cut into fourths and I didn’t peel them. I added a second can of chickpeas because we love them. I served it over Jasmine rice with sprinkles of cilantro on top. It was yummy-everyone loved it, even the teenage son!

Check it out; the author has a food blog, Vegan Planet. Right now she is hosting a giveaway of cookbooks!

I hope everyone is having a peaceful Saturday…it is 80 degrees here and I’m going outside to either read or knit!

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads…pop over and see what other delicious food-related posts she has listed.