Three Things

9 Jan

Over on  http://ajoyfulchaos.blogspot.com Mary Ann has listed a collection of threes:

3 Names I go by:

Dani, Mouse, and Grand-mere

3 Jobs I’ve had:

Customer Service at a bank (which is where I met The Squire), receptionist for an international company, and medical receptionist

3 Places I’ve lived:

This is tricky, as I’ve lived in the same county – not even simply in the same state! – my entire life. Baltimore County, Maryland, but we lived in Arbutus until I was ten, Perry Hall until I married the Late & Unlamented, and The Squire and I bought this house in Bradshaw when we got married.

3 Favorite Drinks:

Coffee, unsweetened iced tea, and Mango-Papaya juice liberally diluted with water.

3 Places I’ve Been:

England and Wales, Mexico, and Yosemite Park

3 Favorite Foods:

Thai, Indian, and Greek

3 Things I look Forward to:

Christmas, Thanksgiving/our Wedding Anniversary, and a good snow storm.

3 pets I’ve had:

Oh, about a zillion, but three stand out – Brinks, a pit-boxer mix, a thirty-pound cat named Blitz, and Blazer, a pit/Greyhound mix. Yeah, I know. That one must have come with an instruction sheet.

And there you have it. Why not list your “3s” in the comments?

 

 

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Pea Soup With Butter Dumplings

7 Jan

I had mentioned over on GoComics that we don’t eat meat in our house, and that I made my Pea Soup without it. One of the regular readers requested the recipe, so here it is. Enjoy!

Dumplings:
6 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
½ cup flour
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon salt
4-1/2 cup water – see below
Soften the butter as much as possible short of melting it. Beat the eggs with the flour, salt, and nutmeg, then beat into the butter. Bring the water to a simmer, and drop the batter by half-teaspoons, four or five at a time.  (The eggs make the dumplings expand, so make them small. You don’t want barrage balloons here.)  When the dumplings have risen to the top, they will need another 5 minutes to cook before they are ready.  Lift out with a slotted spoon, and pile on a plate unto the soup is done

Soup:
Measure the water from cooking the dumplings and add enough to bring it back to 4-1/2 cups. Add to the water:
4 cups shelled peas (1pound bag of frozen peas)
1 teaspoon brown sugar

Cook the peas in the water until they are quite soft – about ½ hour.
In another pot, melt 4 tablespoons butter, and stir in 4 tablespoons flour. Let the roux cook over a very low flame for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

Put this in the blender for a few moments; you’ll probably need to do this in batches. Pour a bit of the first batch into the roux and whisk until smooth. Add the rest of that blender-full and continue with the rest of the soup. Stir in 2 tablespoons of dry white wine. Now carefully return the dumplings to the pot and simmer a bit until they are heated through.
Serves 4.

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Baking Challenge – Important Change

4 Jan

I had made a note in my old cookbook to use 9 x 5 pans for the Lemon-Honey Whole Wheat bread, but had NOT transferred that info to my new book.

Please use the larger pans! It will still taste good in the small pans, but it is “ Leaden Breaden” as it can’t rise properly.

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A Baking Challenge

2 Jan

One of the blogs I follow AJoyfulchoas.blogspot.com  is written by a delightful lady who  talks about her family, as well as growing up Amish. Recently, she posted her goals for the New Year, one of which is to bake 52 different kinds of pie.

I mentioned that back when The Squire was still working, I had sent him off to work every morning for a month – twenty working days – with a different kind of bread. Since each batch makes two loaves, and even with three growing daughters  we couldn’t eat all of it, so I gave the extra loaves to the girls in my carpool.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been making a rich white bread (see my post for November 20), but today I decided to make a Whole Wheat loaf that The Late and Unlamented claimed was ruining his stomach. Mind you, he said that about most of the stuff I cooked. I swear, it’s a wonder that man ever got off mother’s milk.

And so – Cool Rise Honey Lemon Whole Wheat Bread

I make this in my bread machine, but you can also do it the “old fashioned” way. When I first started baking, bread machines weren’t even dreamed of. You were lucky to have an electric mixer!

3-1/4 to 4-1/4 cups white flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 packages dry yeast (4 -1/2 teaspoons if you buy it in bulk)
1 tablespoon salt (yes, that’s correct)
¼ cup honey
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 tablespoon grated lemon peel
2-1/4 cup hot water

I put the water into a microwave-safe cup and add the honey. It’s easier than measuring the honey by itself. I also put the butter in there to soften while I heat the water.
Use the Dough setting on your machine and let the dough rest 20 minutes before you shape it into 2 9 by 5 pans.  Brush the surface of the bread with oil or use cooking spray, and cover the loaves loosely with waxed paper and then with cling film. Refrigerate for 2 to 24 hours. When you are ready to bake the bread, remove it from the fridge and uncover. Let it sit for 10 minutes while you preheat the oven to 400° F. Prick any surface bubbles with an oiled toothpick before baking. Bake on lower rack for 30 to 40 minutes, or until it reaches 190° internal temp. Remove from pans immediately, brush with butter or margarine, and cool on a rack.

Please note the change in the pan size.

 

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Biker’s Holiday

1 Jan

It’s hard to believe it is really January.  The high today was 48-f, more April than mid-winter.

Most of this beautiful day was shredded by the roar of motorcycles up and down our road. A warm day and not having to go to work brought out droves of bikers, racing along the street. Come summer, we can look forward to this every. single. Sunday.

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Organized Religion is Overrated

29 Dec

Or, welcome to Resurrection.

I got a call last night from our Senior Warden (comparable to the President of the congregation, I guess) that while our rector was on vacation this week, we did not have a supply priest. A case of “Did you do it? No, I thought you did.”  And so – one of us had to do Morning Prayer.

Well, the Senior Warden is also our piano player, so guess where that left me?  Long ago, one of our bishops told me I was what she referred to as the D.E.A.N. of the congregation: Doing Everything As Needed. I put on my alb, and soldiered forth.

Any layperson can lead Morning Prayer, and one of the best things about the Book of Common Prayer is that everything is all laid out for you. No guess work. I am currently the secretary for another parish, so I cranked up the computer and used their template to run up a bulletin for Ron to print off this morning. I also dug around in my pile of “stuff” and found one of my dad’s sermons that I was able to adapt to use this morning. It was a Christmas Eve service, so very little needed to be changed. I always enjoyed MP when we used it in the past, so it was a treat to be able to do this today.

I got a lot of nice comments – what else could they say? – but one person did shake my hand and tell me I did a very nice job – for a woman.

Yeesh.

 

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Oh, MY!

23 Dec

We’ve always been able to let Blazer out when he needs to make a puddle (or anything else) and he will bark to come back inside.

A couple of days ago we discovered him out in the back yard, cavorting with a coyote. I put him out last night, and he barked to come in pretty quickly. When I didn’t hot-foot it to the door, he began barking again, almost frantically.  When I looked outside there was not one, but two coyotes out by the barn! No wonder Blazer wanted Momma to rescue him.

I think we’ll take the ol’ puppy for a walk at night, rather than let him have the run of the yard. We’re also going to stop feeding anybody out by the barn. No point in tempting fate.

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An Embarrassment of Riches

21 Dec

Although I enjoy a cup of coffee, The Squire doesn’t like the taste of it. (I could dab it behind my ears and he’d follow me anywhere, but that’s another story.) I don’t really care for instant coffee per se, but I do like General Foods Orange Cappuccino. A lot.

The only place you can find it now is at Walmart, so The Squire orders it for me, and has it sent to the house. I simply will not set foot in that place. So – because the more you buy, the less is costs, he just bought me forty cans of the stuff! Lawsy! I put a half-dozen cans in the pantry, and then stashed the rest under the stairs.

Where I found a Keurig machine, of all things.

Neither of us have a clue where it came from or how long it’s been there. I called Eldest Daughter to ask if she knew anything about it, but No. I dragged it out, wiped it down, and cleared a spot on the counter for it, where it took up an inordidant amount of space. It heated up nicely, but when I tried to make myself a cup of Jitter Juice the machine made a horrible grinding noise, and then leaked all over the counter top.  Aargh!

At the moment it is back under the stairs, and The Squire has promised to “take a look at it”. I’m not going to keep it, because I don’t really need it, but we don’t want to donate it to a thrift shop if it isn’t in working order.  We shall see.

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How to Make Three Big Messes . . .

20 Dec

. . . Out of a smallish one.

At the party on Sunday we needed some extra space for the hot food, so we unloaded what had been the microwave stand, and shoved it out of the kitchen into the dining room. I haven’t needed it a for the microwave since we remodeled the kitchen in 2013, so I’d been using it to store (i.e. pile up) cookbooks. The Squire put them in a carton and stuck it in the laundry room.

I worked at my “temp job” on Monday, so he stacked every thing on the end of the dining room table for me to sort out when I had the chance. Honestly, he was hoping I’d dispose of some of it, but I am genetically unable to toss out any sort of printed matter. Pass it along, Yes. Trash it, NO.

So now, it is spread all over the table. I tried just making stacks of things. I have cook books and pamphlets from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. A book on how to use your new electric icebox. Another on what to serve and how to manage a dinner party if you do not have a maid. Back in the day, Baltimore Gas and Electric used to have two-page giveaways, full of hints and recipes.  (I have several years worth of those, if you’d like some.) Wartime recipes from both my mum and my grandmother. Betty Crocker recipes from the 50s and 60s.  And we won’t even mention the newspaper clippings!

The Wartime booklet is interesting. Hospitality during the war was an important way to enjoy companionship and keep up your spirits, but with butter and sugar – among other things – being rationed, it was tricky. Cakes were made with honey or corn syrup instead of sugar. Mum told me that even wedding receptions during the war were more akin to covered dish suppers than the catered affairs we think of today.

Speaking of newspapers, I found a 32-page Baltimore Sun insert from December, 1973, full of international recipes and stories from Baltimore homemakers. Bavaria, Russia, Poland, Romanian, Venezuelan, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Estonia, and the West Indies. You can gain a couple of pounds just reading this collection. Not just cookies, but meat and vegetable dishes, customs and traditions.

I’ll probably end up piling it all back onto the microwave cart, no further along than when we started.

 

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Timing is Everything

17 Dec

Sunday was warm enough that we didn’t need to bother with coats.

Monday morning we woke up to snow!

The snow didn’t amount to anything – it didn’t stick to the roads or sidewalks, but the forecast was for dropping temps, freezing rain and sleet. The schools were originally opening two hours late, but they later decided to just close for the day. The outlook for today is a little bit warmer, but still grey and rainy. I think I’d rather have snow than this slop.

 

 

 

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