I love listening to Live365, old time radio via the internet. The Fiber & Molly show is my favorite and it runs alternately with The Great Gildersleeve. These shows are the source of 99% of the commercials I hear and it’s amazing how different the commercials are from then to now. The ‘then’ commercials make me want to spend time in my kitchen. The ‘now’ commercials try to convince me I deserve to be out of the kitchen. I like my kitchen.
Here’s a few of the recipes I’ve fixed recently. Bear in mind, to me a recipe is a suggestion, not instructions written in stone. You’ve got to have leeway to change ingredients to use up anything that needs used up.
One-Pan Granola
Heat in a large shallow pan-
1/2 to 1 cup oil or 2 sticks of butter (or half and half)
1/2 to 1 cup honey, molasses or maple syrup (time to use it up after 3 years anyway!)
1/c cup water
2 teaspoons vanilla
Heat til butter is melted or all the ingreds are warm and thinned out.
The stir in
5 or 6 old fashioned rolled oats
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Up to 6 cups of a mixture of
wheat flour
dry milk powder
wheat germ
soy flour
coconut
unsalted nuts
sunflower, pumpkin, sesame seeds
Bake in a 250 oven for up to 2 hours, stirring every 20 minutes, til done.
After completely cool, add dried fruits and/or raisins. Don’t add before baking or you’ll have REALLY dried fruit. Don’t ask how I know but the first batch was very crunchy.
The real recipe is from the 1981 Whole Foods for the Whole Family
Ham and Spinach Soup
1 T olive oil
2 med onions, chopped
garlic
Saute onions and garlic in the oil for about 10 minutes, then add
8 cups chopped spinach
2 T sugar
Italian spices - Penzey spice company has the best Italian spice mix (guess where I got the receipe???)
Cook for about 10 minutes until spinach shrinks down. Stir as needed.
Add to cooked spinach-
8 cups chicken stock
and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and add
1 cup mini bow tie pasta
2 cups chopped ham
2 cups navy bean soup (how buys navy bean soup?? use soup left over from a prior meal)
Black pepper
Simmer for 20 minutes.
The ‘real’ recipe is at www.penzeys.com
Freezes well and goes great with homemade bread, such as …….
Five Herb Bread
1 3/4 cup water
3/4 cup undiluted evap milk (goat milk works great)
2 packages of yeast (2 1/2 t. loose yeast for EACH package)
1/2 cup Paramesan cheese
5 teaspoon of mixed herbs (I use the same Italian spices as for the Spinach Ham soup above) - such as chives, parsley, oregano, basil, sage - almost any of the ‘green’ herbs.
garlic - use as much as you’d like. I don’t count it in the 5 teaspoons of herbs above cause I really like garlic
1/4 -1/2 cup sugar
2 T. oil
2 t. salt
5 to 6 cup flour
Dissolve yeast and sugar in lukewarm liquids with the Paramesan cheese. spices and oil. Add in the flour until a stiff dough is formed. Knead for about 8 minutes, working the salt in as you knead the dough. After the dough feels as soft as a ‘baby’s bottom.” Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place (pilot light in the oven) til doubled. Punch down and form into 2 loaves. Place in buttered loaf pans. Cover and rise til doubled again. Carefully brush with melted butter and sprinkle a little more Parmesan cheese on top. Bake in a slow oven (325 degrees) for 30 - 35 minutes. Bread is done when the bottom sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on a wire rack if you can wait that long. I recommend slicing off the heels and slather on some homemade butter! Add some homemade mozzarella cheese sliced thin, sprinkle with Italian herbs and lightly broil.
This recipe came from a magazine that has since lost it’s cover …… not sure, maybe a Texas Travel magazine. The manager at Williams Buick in McKinney said I could take it. I found the recipe while waiting for a car repair many, many years ago.
That bread recipe makes good bread sticks or smaller loaves to pull apart at the table, dunking them in a garlic/herb oil.
It must have been a soup week as I also made Tortilla soup. I got that recipe from First Place cookbook but if you don’t already have a favorite, just google for a recipe and ad lib. BTW, true to form, I didn’t follow my recipe religiously and did not add the tortilla strips. Instead I buttered a couple of warm tortillas and we dipped them in the soup as we ate it. I knew we’d have left overs and didn’t want excessively soggy tortilla strips left in the soup. This soup does freeze well if you don’t want to mess with leftovers right away.