Cooking thread, anyone?

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Nan made a chocolate cream pie Saturday for my birthday, which is November 5. Great recipe. Picture at post #312 in here last November, too. I make the pie dough for her.

She'll also make a yellow cake with chocolate frosting for my birhday this weekend. :)
 
I made up some black eye pea soup with green tomato's and I think I will be eating :"green tomato's" for the rest of my life...Tried to give away more to my neighbor but she says they have plenty..I froze some toooooo--had it with applesauce...lol sick of tomato;s but eating them "all" up..clancey

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Chip Scones yesterday. Work butter into dry ingredients by hand. Very easy. Nan had one last night with clotted cream. I may have them with jam. Recipe from the King Arthur Flour web site.


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Pork fried rice Saturday night. Will have it for a few nights.

Pork Fried Rice
Adapted from “Fried Rice,” Chinese Cooking Class Cookbook by the Editors of Consumer Guide, 1980.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups rice, uncooked, brown rice or. brown/wild rice blend
3 cups water, or rice cooking directions amount
4 eggs
cooking oil, peanut oil
1-plus pound pork, cut into bite-sized pieces
ginger root, minced
garlic, minced
pepper freshly ground
Carrots, diced
Peas, frozen, defrosted
green onions, sliced
soy sauce (reduced-sodium tamari)
Sesame oil
Chinese chili paste (spicy bean tea)

Directions

Heat oven to 325 ℉. Rinse rice. Bring water to boil. Add rice; bring to boil. Cover and place in oven. Cook per package directions time, usually 45 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand covered 10 minutes. Spread in 13- by 9-inch pan to dry.

While rice is in oven, cook eggs in one sheet in large skillet. Cool on cutting board and cut into strips and pieces with a wavy pastry cutter or pizza wheel.

Add oil to hot wok. Add garlic and ginger. Stir fry a few seconds until fragrant. Add and cook pork. Add carrots, peas, scallion, and pepper. Stir fry a few minutes. Season with soy sauce and sesame oil.

If having after cooking, add rice and egg to wok and heat throughout. Or add to cooled rice and mix for later. Top with additional sliced scallion. Serve with soy sauce, sesame oil, and chili paste.

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That.s sounds wonderful and I will leave out the chili peppers--too hot for me..lol although I love the taste...clancey
 
Apricot cream cheese scones. Very good recipe. Used 2 c. King Arthur Flour (KAF) A/P flour, 1 1/4 c. KAF cake flour. Brush the square with the wash and sprinkle with Swedish pearl sugar before cutting. Much easier that way.


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Bok choy stir fry. Add oil to hot skillet. Add minced garlic and stir a few seconds. Stir fry bok choy. Place in bowl and add reduced-sodium tamari, a little sesame oil, and Chinese chili paste. Yum!

Went to the Rutgers - UMass men's basketball game in Amherst on Saturday afternoon. Had two hot dogs at the game. Wanted something light for dinner.

Horrible game for RU fans. My wife went there. Double digit lead the whole game. RU up by 15, 72 - 57 with under 8 1/2 minutes left in the game. UMass switched to a zone, which completely befuddled RU. UMass won on a buzzer-beater three-pointer.

Geo Baker, RU's point guard sat out with a hamstring. Nobody else would try to drive the zone. Game flow scoring in the following.


My wife tried to get comp tickets through Rutgers. All 75 of the athletic department's tickets were given out. Geo Baker is from NH. Head coach is from CT. Assistant head coach is from MA.

Lots of RU fans at the game. Very few people at the game overall, being the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

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Butternut squash and corn soup yesterday. Very easy to make. Play with squash, chicken stock, half-and-half, and creamed corn amounts to get what you like. I use two butternut squash and cans creamed corn. No -salt-added chicken stock. Don't add the additional salt in the recipe as creamed corn contains salt. I reserve the bacon and serve as a topping, rather than having it in the soup. Top with sour cream, croutons, and bacon. Will have for several nights. Very good. Yum!


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Why that's different and I might try that--maybe it depends on my energy level...I bet it taste pretty good if you like corn...Anybody heard from DuaeGuttae lately and wondered what was cooked in her house over the holidays..clancey
 
I had no idea current butternut squash ... more specifically Waltham Butternut ... is a modern hybrid squash from a farmer right near here in Stow, MA in 1944. My wife and I thought it was an old squash ... like Pilgrim old. That explains why a friend visiting from Germany in 2014 commented that she never heard of butternut squash when she saw it on the menu. She ordered it and liked it.


 
Why that's different and I might try that--maybe it depends on my energy level...I bet it taste pretty good if you like corn...Anybody heard from DuaeGuttae lately and wondered what was cooked in her house over the holidays..clancey

I’m okay here, Mrs. Clancey, but I did have a bad GI bug that took me out of commission for about ten days earlier this month. I’m past the infection but still feel like I have more strength to gain back.

I cooked a very simple Thanksgiving meal: a turkey that I brined the previous day and roasted with a bread stuffing, gravy, cranberry orange relish, and green beans. We had a pumpkin pie for dessert (though my pie pumpkin needed a bit of supplementing with sweet potatoes). Normally I would have a couple more dishes (a pumpkin or butternut squash soup and mashed potatoes), but this was plenty and a lot less work.

We had a nice dinner of meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, and asparagus tonight.
 
Wood stove baked potatoes. These were big pots and took an hour. coals were hot when I put them on.

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We had a strong cold front blow in over the weekend, and it gave me a hankering for chili. I didn’t manage to cook it until today (with sides of cornbread and kale greens) when it was warmer, but it was a great dinner. I used the food processor with fresh garlic, fresh oregano, and a large, very hot pepper to make my chili seasoning. It was a hit.

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It will be even better for leftovers.
 
Been thinking about chili lately. Used to be a New Years' Day tradition. Will be sometime in January.
 
Polish night here. Damp, rainy day here, this meal warms your soul
Ingredients - Polish kielbasa, 1 bag of fresh sauerkraut, head of cabbage, sweet onion, garlic, egg noodles, salt & pepper
Chop whole onion up (I use a large onion) in a frying pan with some olive oil start cooking the onion until it becomes translucent, add garlic and wait for it to scent.
Chop approx 2 1/2 cups of cabbage, add to frying pan
Add half a bag of sauerkraut (about 16oz if using the canned stuff)
Salt and pepper, cook in pan approx 20-25min on low heat, stir every 5, you want the cabbage to cook and become soft
Boil water for egg noodles, once the water boils add 2 cups of noodles
Add cut up kielbasa to frying pan, cook additional 10min while egg noodles are boiling
After noodles are done in a large bowl empty frying pan, then empty drained noodles, I add about a tablespoon of butter, mix everything well and let it sit for 10 min (it will be piping hot)
Enjoy your meal, perfect for snowstorms and rain days

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Haluski and kielbasa. Yum!

I have a spaetzle, cheese, and kielbasa recipe I need to make this winter.
 
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@kennyp2339, that kielbasa dish looks really good. We occasionally eat kielbasa and sauerkraut (yum!), but I can’t say that I’ve ever combined fresh cabbage and sauerkraut in the same dish. I love both, but I’ve never thought of combining them.
 
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Christmas dinner of ham, scalloped potatoes with chard, and cranberry relish with orange and ginger. We had apple pie for desert, and I have to give my husband credit for doing quite a nice crust. It was a big help to me.
 
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Today we put back into use the family dough box. My grandfather was born in 1909 and remembered bread being baked weekly, mixed and kneaded in the dough box. Today we started with 15 pounds of flour and 19 cups of water and ended up with 30 pizza crusts. 8 were baked tonight the rest frozen. And a good time was had by all.

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Wow! I love cooking in batches and having food already prepared in the freezer, but I can confidently say that I have never done a batch of dough that large. It looks like it was great family time, too.
 
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Bought ingredients for chili on New Year's Day, tomorrow. My wife always made chili on January 1 when she was growing up. I make a variation of Perry Como's Favorite Chili from the International Chili Society Official Chili Cookbook. The 1981 cookbook is from a library book sale. It's readily available online.

ICS web site: https://www.chilicookoff.com/
 
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Wow! I love cooking in batches and having food already prepared in the freezer, but I can confidently say that I have never done a batch of dough that large. It looks like it was great family time, too.
Cooked five pizzas for dinner last night. Started the oven (only one oven and no wood stove at it was almost 80 out) at 5 and then prepped toppings. Pre cooked the crusts on hot pizza steel under the broiler. It was over by 6:30. I can say big dough batches save so much time. A batch this size will be a regular occurrence moving forward.
 
Cooked five pizzas for dinner last night. Started the oven (only one oven and no wood stove at it was almost 80 out) at 5 and then prepped toppings. Pre cooked the crusts on hot pizza steel under the broiler. It was over by 6:30. I can say big dough batches save so much time. A batch this size will be a regular occurrence moving forward.
How big are those pizzas?

I’ve been making three recently, using the three stones I have available, so it’s an assortment of sizes. I keep cooked pizza sauce in the freezer from when the garden was producing a lot this summer, but I make the dough in my breadmaker the day I’m baking. Sometimes I prebake, sometimes not. It depends on the toppings. Do your pizzas get customized for individual eaters? Mine tend to be all the same, though if I’m adding hot peppers, I do leave some without.

Yesterday we did hit 80 down here and did not use the oven as it was pretty warm in the house, especially as the day was sunny. My husband and I were rearranging some furniture (and cleaning), and it was uncomfortably warm. This morning we were down to 24 outside, so we lit a fire in the woodstove for the first time in a while and cooked bacon in the oven.

Last night’s New Year’s dinner was Whippoorwill cowpeas cooked with our leftover Christmas ham bone in the crock pot and okra patties fried in a large electric skillet. Black-eyed peas are probably the most familiar type of cowpea. Whippoorwills taste similar but are more reddish. The okra patties used okra, tomato, onion and pepper with cornmeal and a little flour and baking powder. It was my first time making them, and people liked them a lot.

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I use pizza screens. The get cooked on the steel an upside down, cast skillet and a cast griddle. 12” screens fit my wood stove and grill oven. I have 14” and a 16” That I can just close the oven door on.

If I want a mess I let them all add toppings of their choosing. Last night I didn’t want a mess. 2 cheese, 1 sausage, one sausage with onion and ricotta, once veggie and one salami with veggies on one half.
 
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