A Cold Morning

January is National Oatmeal Month, which is nice for a few reasons:

Oatmeal is hot, and January is cold.  Fact.

Oatmeal is cheap, and December is expensive.  I bought a 5 lb bag of organic steel cut oats from Outpost for $4.95.  I'm going to round that up to $5 for the sake of math.  A cup of oatmeal weighs 6.5 oz.  I'm going to round that up to 8 oz for the sake of math, and for the sake of "A Pint's a pound the world around!"  A cup of oatmeal makes enough to feed Jeff and me for 4 days.  So that means... crap... word problem...

Not kidding. I don't do
mental math...

(...just a few minutes and one scribbled notepad later...)

40 days.  Two people, 40 days of oatmeal, $5.  Which is 6 cents per person per serving.  I think.  Someone should probably check that, though.

Eating oatmeal is good for you.  It may help lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease, it may reduce the risk of diabetes, and the soluble fiber helps you feel full longer, which can help you lose weight.  (All from a "reliable" source, of course!)  January, for many people, is about setting resolutions to be healthy.

So I'm ready to celebrate National Oatmeal Month.  Which I'm sure my mom is very secretly (or possibly not secretly - she's fairly good at gloating) pleased about.  You see, I've spent about the past 31 years actively fighting eating oatmeal that didn't come in a single serve package with a terrifying white powder.  (The second ingredient in that stuff is sugar...)  And here's why:

Oatmeal is hot and January is cold.  Fact.  But bacon is hot too.

Oatmeal is cheap, which is generally food code for "nasty."

Oatmeal is good for you, which is also generally food code for "nasty.

But I made a discovery about oatmeal, which I believe I've discussed previously, in that I like steel cut oats, slow cooked overnight in the crock pot.  This is a great speed meal, because it takes just a few minutes to assemble the ingredients before bed, and then it's ready when you wake up in the morning.  It's also a good budget meal, because (see above on oatmeal math) you can just throw in whatever fruit you have around in the house.  Especially if it's a little bit past it's eating point.

This week, Applesauce Oatmeal

Before bed.

• 1 cup steel cut oats (they have to be steel cut for this to work.  Rolled oats will not be okay!)
• 3 apples, diced
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 pinch freshly ground nutmeg 
• 1 pinch orange zest (dried or fresh)
• drizzle molasses 
•  1 pint applesauce
• 3 1/2 cups water
• 1 cup milk

Combine all ingredients in a crock pot. Stir to combine.  Cook on low for 9 hours.

So the applesauce here was actually a last minute addition.  I had it going for about an hour, and as I was going to bed I walked past my pantry where last year's canning jars are still sitting and remembered that I still had a jar of applesauce.  Why not throw that it, I thought?

You probably could do without all the additional spices, if you were using a well spiced applesauce.  Or you could leave the recipe just the way it is, because it was pretty fantastic!  It was a little bit loser than my oatmeal usually comes out, because of the extra liquid of the applesauce, which I didn't mind at all.  I also liked that it was extra apple-y throughout, not just in the bites that had chunks of apples.  You might not think it, but the apples do actually keep their shape and a little bit of crunch, even after being cooked for nine hours.  I believe that the apples I had were good baking apples, which I'm sure made a difference.

In the morning.

Stupid Blog

I had almost a full blog posted, and it disappeared.  It was very thoughtful and deep and SO well written that it probably would have gotten me my own show on cooking channel.  And now it's gone and I am bitter.  Boo.  There goes my chance of fame and fortune.

Guess I am stuck being your plain, boring food blogger... for now.

I don't have the time or energy to re-craft the whole thing.  It's like when you leave a really ranty drunk-dial voicemail message, and when you're almost done you get the "If you are satisfied with your message, press one.  If you would like to re-record, press two."  No, computerized phone bitch, I am neither done nor do I want to re-record.  I want to finish my drunken rant uninterrupted, and then go back to being amused with how clever I am!

Anyway, the point was that food mistakes are good.  Even if a meal is completely inedible, you can learn something from it.  Also, if a meal is inedible, you should order up some sushi, because you earned it. It was also about learning from your successes, and building new recipes off of those successes, and excluding based on the failures. 

Having to find interesting things to post every other day (it's my goal, even if it doesn't really happen) has made stray from my regular, go-to, top 10 recipes.  One way that I have stretched myself is by combining recipes I know into weird Frankenstein recipes.  Usually this works.  Sometimes it doesn't.

Taste wise, this recipe worked really well in my opinion.  Looks wise, it's pretty brown.  So I've got to work on that...  The recipe itself is a combination of two recipes from my regular repertoire: pork chops braised in apples and onions, and Coq a Vin.  The thought process goes like this: Chicken is good braised (Coq a Vin); things can be braised in apples and onions (pork chops), so lets braise chicken in apples and onions.

The failure here is in the color.  This chicken was delicious, but I ended up throwing some of it away.  I really believe that is because it wasn't a pretty color.  If I did this again, I think I might substitute red wine for the apple cider.  This would make the sauce darker, and the whole thing not mud colored.  Also, this could have used some potatoes or past or something to soak up some of that sauce.  But, otherwise, really good.

But, not as good as the awesome post that stupid blogger deleted. 

I used my stand by Coq a Vin recipe as the base, mostly to figure out how much liquid to use, and how long to cook the chicken.  Even though this recipe is more like my pork chop recipe, I didn't use that as the base, because I'm not cooking pork chops... if that makes sense.  Chicken needs a certain amount of liquid and a certain amount of time to braise properly, regardless of what the liquid is and what else you put in it.

 This is also a good use for apples that have gotten a little old and you don't really want to just eat anymore.  You could also just make them into a pie.  If you weren't completely stocked up with apple pie filling, that is.

Chicken Braised in Apples and Onions:
Served with roasted beets, wilted spinach, and goat cheese

• 1 3 1/2 to 4 lb chicken, cut into serving pieces
• 2 tbsp olive oil or (if you're feeling frisky) bacon fat
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 large onion, quartered and thinly sliced
• 2-3 firm apples, peeled and chopped
• 3 large cloves garlic, smashed and minced
• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 2 cups chicken cider, red wine, or a combination of the two.  (I think, next time, I will use 1 cup wine and 1 cup cider.  Hard, if you've got it and you're willing to put it into food as opposed to straight into your belly.)
• 1 bayleaf

Season the chicken generously with salt and pepper.   Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium high heat (or bacon fat.  Have I mentioned that I keep a jar of bacon fat in my fridge.  Every time I make bacon, I pour leftover fat from the pan into the jar and stick it back in the fridge.  Then, I scoop it out and cook with it.  Economical and DELICIOUS.)  Once the oil is shimmering, add the chicken in batches and brown on all sides.  Transfer to a platter and set aside.

Reduce the heat to medium and add the onions to the pan.  Saute until lightly browned and soft.  Add the apples and continue to cook until the apples are just tender, about 5 more minutes.  Increase heat to medium high, add the garlic, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant - about two minutes.  Please, for the love of god, do not burn the garlic or I will come to your house and slap you.

Add the stock and (hard) apple cider/red wine and deglaze the pan.  Add the bay leaf.  Bring to a boil, and reduce to a gentle simmer.  Carefully place the chicken back into the pan, cover, and cook for about 30 minutes, or until the thickest part shows no pink when cut into.

Serve over some sort of starch so the sauce doesn't pool all over the plate like mine did!

I Am Thankful...

Happy Belated Thanksgiving, everyone.

It has been a busy weekend/week for me.  I accomplished quite a lot with my extended weekend, albeit obviously not in terms of blogging.  And not in terms of work, either, which means I was completely burred when I got back.  Hence my not writing until a full week after Thanksgiving.

I am thankful for words like hence and albeit.  They are fun and make me happy.

I did have a food filled Thanksgiving.  I didn't get to cook, so it wasn't all local, but it was made by friends and family which makes it good.  I didn't make that much, and didn't stress myself out, and did all my cooking thanksgiving morning during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  And the start of the dog show afterwards.

I am thankful for the dog show, because I always try to pick out the kinds of dogs that my mutt is made up of.  I'm less thankful when my husband turns off the dog show to put on football, especially because neither of us really likes football.

I also did a little bit of black Friday shopping.  No, I am not a crazy person.  I firmly believe that Midnight is a time for getting ready for bed (or getting another round), not a time to start shopping.  I don't believe I actually ever left my house on Black Friday.  I may not have ever even put on real pants.  But I still got in just a smidg of shopping.  Only a present for me... but a really good present.

I bought a chest freezer!

I am thankful for my chest freezer, even if I don't have it yet.

I also spent the good part of Sunday cleaning my basement to make room for the chest freezer.  I am less thankful for that.

It doesn't get delivered until 12/10, but I am anxiously waiting.  I'm already making a list in my head of all the things I am going to buy/make to put in it.  My freezer has been so full that I haven't had room to make ice cream, and I LOVE making ice cream.  I'm thinking cranberry ice cream to start... 

For Thanksgiving, I made a cranberry apple chutney, and a sweet potato goat cheese dip.  Both were excellent, easy, and quick - which is important in a holiday food.  One of my biggest pet peeves is going to someone else's house for a food related gathering, and then having to beg for room in the oven or on the stove or whatever to finish up my food.  Worse is when people come to my house and do that, because I always have my oven space carefully planned out and I feel like I have to give it up to them or be a bad friend.

Remember that, people who come to my house for food.  If you need oven space, ask me for it ahead of time so I can plan!


Cranberry Apple Chutney

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 large onion, chopped (1 1/2 cups)
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 2 bay leafs
• 2 stick cinnamon
• 1 cup honey
• 4 cups fresh cranberries
• 1 cup dried apricots, diced
• 1 cup apricot nectar
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
• 2 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 large apples, peeled, cored, and cut in 1/2-inch dice

Melt butter in a large sauce pan, and add onions, ginger, allspice, bay leaf, and cinnamon.  Cook over low heat, until onions are translucent and soft - about 10 to 15 minutes. 

Stir in honey, cranberries, apricots, nectar, lemon zest and juice, salt, and pepper. Stir mixture to combine well, then bring to a boil over high heat; reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 25 minutes. Stir in apples. Continue to simmer 10 to 15 minutes longer, stirring once or twice, or until apples are tender yet still hold their shape.


Remove from heat and transfer to a serving bowl. Cover surface of chutney with plastic wrap. Cool at room temperature 30 minutes, then refrigerate several hours until well chilled and chutney has set up. (Chutney can be made up to 3 days before serving and stored in the refrigerator.)

 Sweet Potato and Goat Cheese Dip

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 whole head garlic
• 4 cups sweet potato, peeled and cubed
• 1 (11 ounce) log goat cheese
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• honey to taste
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut the top off of the garlic head and place on a square of aluminum foil.  Drizzle the olive oil over the garlic, and season well with salt and pepper.  Wrap the aluminum foil around the garlic and seal tightly.  Bake the garlic for about 45 minutes, or until soft.  Allow to cool, and then pop each garlic clove out of it's little garlic pocket.

Steam sweet potatoes until soft.  Place in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, and beat until whipped.  Add goat cheese, lemon, and spices.  Beat again until well combined.  Taste, and season with salt, pepper, and honey as desired.

I served this both with pretzel chips, and homemade graham crackers (recipe to come!)

Someday I might learn a lesson, but it's doubtful...

I make the same mistake every year.  Twice a year, actually.  Gardening is fun.  Gardening is a stress reducer.  Gardening is my hobby.  Gardening is an excuse to be outside, not working, not doing chores, enjoying fresh air.

Gardening is certainly not exercise.

But I should still probably warm up first.   Maybe a nice stretch?

Add to that, this year, for the first time, about 15 hours over the next two days, standing in the kitchen, canning the contents of said garden.

It started like this:

It ended like this:

 

And I, walked away, with this:

That's not even all of it.  That's just Saturday's work. 

• Pickled green tomatoes (two kinds)
• Bruscetta topping
• Yellow tomato chutney
• Green tomato chutney
• Rhubarb mint chutney (with frozen rhubarb, to get it out of the fridge)
• Pickled peppers (not a full peck...)

There's more.  I could go up and check the shelves full of cans in the basement, but that would involve standing.  Which requires quads.  Which I no longer have.

So I will sit here and type. Ass on the couch.  Lap top on my lap.  Glass of wine in hand.  (The wine hinders my typing, but it's mostly worth it.)

I will save the story of my mass canning adventure for another day.  It almost didn't happen anyway.  Canning was my biggest experiment for this year.  It's been interesting, and fun.  To be honest, the experiment isn't really over yet.  Although I am officially done canning for the year, the experiment is really just beginning.  Will I eat all this food I spent hours canning?  Will it be good?  Did I even do it right, or do I have a mass of spoiled food waiting for me in the basement?  I'm excited to have the food in my basement, stocked away for the winter.  I even purchased a textbook on the history of preserving, and I'm hoping to learn more about how this crazy idea started in the first place. 

But it almost never happened. 

Most of the canning I have done has been on a very small scale.  Garnishes, pickles, relish, all stored in small jars.  An accompaniment to the meat and potatoes that will be sustaining me for the winter.

(Speaking of meat and potatoes!  I read in the news paper that I'm supposed to take a garbage can and bury it in the back yard to use as a root cellar - potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots, etc.  Sounds like a boy job.  Jeff?  You want to bury a garbage can in the back yard?!?)

Anywho - I've had one exception to the small jar canning.  Apple pie filling.  This seemed like a great idea in theory.  Apples, spices, and a little bit of sugar.  Put it in a jar.  Pies all year round!  The apples don't need to cook long, only about 5 minutes, and then they need to process for 25 minutes.  Seems like a good time.

Yeah, I forgot to take into account how long it takes to peel 20 lbs of apples.  Seriously.  Could someone buy me one of these for Christmas?  Really.  It's less than $30.  (Also, note that I linked to Sur La Table and not Williams-Sonoma.  My affair is getting pretty serious.)

So I started at about 8:00pm, after dance class.  I had my peeling done by 10:30.  Five minutes of cooking down the apples.  Of course, 25 pounds of apples don't fit into even my largest pot so I've got to cook them in batches.  I didn't take that into account either.  Okay, all the apples are cooked.  Now I have to try to keep them warm while I make the gooey part of the pie filling.  That gets mixed in with the apples.  Crap, wait.  How do I mix this with the apples, when all the apples don't fit in one bowl or pot or anything.  How am I going to keep my ratio of apples to gooey part intact?  Okay, split the cooked apples in half.  Half the apples fit in the biggest pot, but the other half doesn't fit in the second biggest pot.  Damnit.  Okay, half and quarter and another quarter.  Got it.  Pour in the gooey part.  Don't let it get cold; it's getting hard.  Keep moving.  Get them into their jars, and into the boiling water.

Of course, all the jars don't fit in my canning pot at once.  Two batches it is.  It's now midnight.

20 minutes in to processing the first batch and I realize, I didn't add the lemon juice.

Frack.

So I pull them all out.  I open them all up.  I throw away the lids.  I add the lemon juice.  Back into the boiling water.  Second batch in.  It's now 1:00am.  On a Monday.  I have to go to work tomorrow.

Here's the thing, though.  The second batch has been in for 15 minutes.  Which means the first batch has been out for 15 minutes.  And none of them have gone "plink."  Did I do something wrong?  They were in there long enough.  I put new lids on.  Adding the lemon juice shouldn't have changed anything. 

I'm freaking out.  I'm freaking out, and I just want to go to sleep.  I'm getting sloppy, and that's when it happens.  I'm pulling the second batch jars out of the boiling water.  I'm tired, I'm rushing, I'm tired.  And then... I drop one.  I could see it happen, in slow motion.  I could see it slip out of the tongs.  I bobbled it, a couple times, and then dropped it on my foot.

I shouted, I cursed, and the cat ran away.  I hobbled off, brushed my teeth, and went to bed.  None of the jars had sealed.  I was convinced that the whole wasted night was for nothing.  And I was fully prepared to never can again.

But, in the end, that was all that happened.  I burned the outside of my right foot just a little, but I rubbed it down with aloe and it was better in a week or so.  The jar didn't break, which means I wasn't barefoot, surrounded by hot sticky shards of glass that my dog wanted to eat.  And, when my husband woke me up at 6:00 the next morning to tell me that all of the jars had sealed, it felt a little bit like Christmas.

It got me thinking about the science of why canning works.  The jars hadn't sealed because I was using quarts, which were bigger than anything else I had used before.  Also, all of my previous canning experiments were mostly liquid - vinegar and water surrounding whatever I was pickling or preserving.  This one was packed tightly full of apples, which made it cool slower.  The jar needs to cool, so the contents shrink, creating the vacuum that seals the jar.  Actually, the whole experience is what made my buy the history of preserving book, so, if I learn something new, I guess it was worthwhile.  Anyway, I didn't give up on canning, and now I've got pies through the winter.

I haven't had time to make a pie yet, but I did open up a jar and everything seemed perfect.  The apples were soft, the gooey part gooey.  Overall, a success.  An exhausting, infuriating success, but a success none the less.  The title of this post is "Someday I might learn a lesson, but it's doubtful..." The lesson I originally intended was to stretch before gardening, but maybe there's another lesson here, too.  To read ahead in my directions.  To think about what I'm actually doing, and what tools I need, and how long it will take me.  To not over schedule myself and think I can fit in "big projects" on a Monday night after dance class - just because that's when Jeff has band practice.

These are good lessons.  Maybe I might learn them.

But it's doubtful...

Apple Pie Filling
(From The Art of Preserving)

Makes 7 one-quart jars.  One jar makes one pie

• 19 lbs apples (L)
• 7 tablespoons plus 1/2 cup bottled lemon juice
• 5 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cup corn starch or Clearjel starch (I used corn starch, because I couldn't find the Clearjel not on the internet)
• 3 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tbsp fresh ground nutmeg
• 1 tbs ground cloves
• 5 cups apple juice or apple cider (L)

Have ready hot, clean quart jars and their lids.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

Put 1/2 cup of the lemon juice in the biggest bowl or pot you have.  Or, if you're like me, you'll need to use two or more bowls, and spread the lemon juice out evenly between them.  Peel, core, and slice the apples, dropping the slices into the bowl and tossing with the lemon juice to keep them from browning.  Add the apples to the water and blanch for one minute.  Drain the slices, and keep warm as best as possible.

In a large, non reactive sauce pan, stir together the sugar, starch, spices, and apple juice.  add 2 1/2 cups water.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring frequently.  Reduce the heat to medium low and simmer, stirring constantly, until slightly thickened - about 1 to 2 minutes.  Be careful, it thickens REALLY quickly.  It will be very thin, and then suddenly it will be so think you'll wonder if you should add more water.

Fold the apples into the sauce and stir until apples are re-warmed, if necessary.

Ladle the hot apple mixture into the jars, adding one tablespoon of lemon juice to each jar, leaving one inch of headspace.  Remove any air bubbles, and adjust the headspace if necessary.  Wipe the rims clean and seal tightly with the lids.

Process the jars for 25 minutes in a boiling water bath.  Sealed jars can be stored in a cool, dark place for up to one year.

I didn't get any pictures in process, as I was too busy flipping out...