recipes – Page 6 – Peaceful Reader

Rocky Road Brownies

I did make the brownies. They are delicious. I groaned three times while eating my one little square. I forget all the time to photograph my cooking but this time I snapped two pictures as we were dishing them up. Here for your viewing delight…

They are yummy dense squares of chocolate delight. I will make them again. My kids ate them even though they had pecans on them. My daughter and I shared a second one quietly in the kitchen. It’s been a good day and now I’m going to bed, to read. See last post for recipe.

New Year's Day – Black-Eyed Peas

How many of you eat black-eyed peas, a symbol of prosperity, for the new year? It is a family tradition for us. Each year I’ve tried a new recipe and it isn’t always easy to find one that is meat-free. This one I found in a recent parade magazine in an article about Katie Lee from The Early Show. It was easy to make and tasted great.

Hoppin’ John

serves: 6

1 T olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 15-oz cans of black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained
1/4 cup vegetable broth or water
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley, minced
Cooked rice
Shredded white cheddar
Hot sauce (optional)

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, red bell pepper, and garlic. Saute until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes.
2. Stir in black-eyed peas, broth, salt, and pepper. Reduce heat to low; cook 10 minutes. Stir in green onions and parsley.
3. Serve over cooked rice and garnish with cheese and hot sauce.

My Tweaks: I soaked a bag of black-eyed peas from the bag instead of using cans. Like lentils, they are easy to soak and cook. I did not add green onions and I used parsley instead of cilantro (flat leaf parsley) only because I had parsley from another recipe. I didn’t add parsley to the recipe but put it on the table as a “condiment” so my kids could add it if they chose. Same with the cheese as Groovy Girl is not a cheese lover. I used brown rice and my husband and I added hot sauce to our bowls, which added just the perfect amount of spice.

Cheers to prosperity in 2011.

Teenage Boy said “why do we keep eating black-eyed peas for dinner?-it hasn’t worked yet.” This led to an interesting discussion of how many different ways prosperity appears in our lives if not in cash form!
Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and I’m late in posting because I took a three hour nap after church. It felt great and must be my way of shoving my head into the sand as my holiday break comes to a close. Tomorrow it’s off to work we go!
This is what comes up when you google the peas…

Do You Roast?

I’m not talking about temperatures or coffee but pumpkin seeds. We had a huge Fall festival yesterday at our church and many came to carve pumpkins and stayed for the chili cook-off. During the pumpkin carving I put out a large bowl to collect seeds and nobody wanted to take any seeds home! My mom always roasted our seeds and we loved to crunch our way throught them. The bowl was pretty big so now I have many, many seeds to roast so I thought it would be a good time to do some experimenting. I found this site, Pumpkin Patches and More, which gives several different recipes. I will sort through a few more sites tonight. Do you roast your pumpkin seeds? What’s your recipe?

Shiver

by Maggie Stiefvater

(2009)

390 pages

This is a story about Grace, her two friends, Olivia and Rachel, and a pack of wolves living on the edge of town. The summary from the verso page: “ In all the years she has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house, Grace has been particularly drawn to an unusual yellow-eyed wolf who, in his turn, has been watching her with increaseing intensity.” Intensity, yes, it is all about the intensity! Told in two person narrative, erratically flipping between Sam and Grace, which artfully presents this well-rounded love story. Some readers don’t enjoy alternating chapters but I like the duality of it and each person can see the same event differently-it depends on who’s eyes your looking through.

Grace is a strong female character, raising herself, as her parents keep busy with their own lives. She cooks and makes lovely dinners for her family and eventually for Sam. I’m always happy when a character has a close connection to food and I just knew I wanted to share this quiche scene. It illustrates how Stiefvater pulls her characters together over a simple common theme. Grace and Sam find themselves in a tight spot, needing to talk with Isabel. They are unsure of whether they can trust her or not and so Grace decides to invite her over to help make dinner~in this way Grace and Sam can judge Isabel’s character while they all work together! It’s brilliant and I love that Grace’s character turns to cooking in a time of crisis.

Grace barely seemed to notice her [ mother] leaving. She gestured at me. ‘Isabel, eggs and cheese and milk are in the fridge. Sam, we need to make plain old piecrusts. Would you preheat the oven to four-fifty and get us some pans?

Isabel was staring inside the fridge. ‘There’s, like, eight thousand kinds of cheese in here. It all looks the same to me.’

You do the oven, let Sam get the cheese and stuff. He knows food,’ Grace said. She was standing on her tiptoes to get flour out of an overhead cupboard; it stretched her body gorgeously and made me want in the worst way to touch the bare skin exposed on her lower back. But then she heaved the flour down and I’d missed my chance, so I traded places with Isabel, grabbed some sharp cheddar and eggs and milk, and threw it all on the counter.

Grace was already involved with cutting shortening and flour in a bowl by the time I’d finished cracking eggs and whisking in some mayonaise. The kitchen was suddenly full of activity, as if we were legion.

‘What the hell is this?’ Isabel demanded, staring at a package Grace had handed her.

Grace snorted with laughter. ‘It’s a mushroom.” ….’Saute those in there for a few minutes till they’re nice and yummy.’

“How long?’

‘Till they’re yummy.’ I repeated. (262-263)

Can’t you just feel the pie crust and hear the butter sizzling, ready for the mushrooms? I can hear Sam whisking the eggs together, everything clicking and snapping into place. There is something so sexy about couples cooking together-something Stiefvater must know about in her own happy author life. I wish I wasn’t obligated to share the quote’s page number so you could be surprised when you do come upon this quiche-making moment. And what is a book, a good story made up of but wonderfully tailored moments shaped and fit perfectly together. In Shiver, she has created a harmony of words mixed with likeable characters immersed in a odd yet believable story. I anxious to read Linger, #2 in the Mercy Falls series. I can’t buy it yet (my reading from my own bookshelves challenge), our public library doesn’t have it so I’m left waiting for more about Sam and Grace.

If I cook while I wait I would whip up this delicious quiche from Kim’s Easy French Food site. I should make this for my husband as an anniversary dinner-maybe I can talk him into helping me!! He’s so cute in an apron! I also discovered this great stuffed eggplant dish-I adore eggplant. Eggplant has so much flavor when cooked just right.

Check out other tasty reviews of Shiver-someone may actually write less about the food obsession and more about the actual love story! This post is part of Weekend Cooking over at Beth Fish Reads. Pop over there and see what else is cooking…

Maggie Stiefvater’s blog.

Tarie at Into the Wardrobe.

Anne at Book End Babes.
Laura at Reading and Rooibos.

Happy eating and reading!

Baked Goods

My family loves baked goods and I’m not talking about the kind you get at the big box bakery or even the small local bakery, although they do eat those if you put them within reach. The kind of baked goods I’m referring to are the ones whipped up in our own kitchen. My family feels “cheated” if there isn’t something freshly baked. I’m not even a pro at baking but they don’t seem to mind, at all.

The question every week is do I actually make them something sweet to eat or do I get by with a package of Matt’s Cookies? What do you do? Do you bake, buy or completely abstain?

Tonight I was in the process of making a long time family favorite, Alice Bachman’s Chocolate Cake. Yes, it has always been called that-even growing up-my mother made it and we always referred to it as Alice Bachman’s CC. Alice was a family friend and while I don’t think she “invented” the cake she brought it to many potluck functions thus the cake became hers. My older brother, Mike uses it for many of his own family celebrations. I tend to just make it on a whim. I do make it with as many organic ingredients as I can-a change from the original but it is not exactly “healthy”-it has two sticks of yummy butter. Hmmm! Good thing I have an active family! Click on Alice to find the recipe.

Trader Joe’s shopping spot.