~ firefly-dreaming a virtual home to learn (or teach!) alternative methods of solving problems we find facing us each day. By sharing ideas & knowledge on living with less stress, more joy & embracing tolerance & compassion we are working towards building a sustainable future for all living beings.
Okay, here's what's for dinner for the next few nights:
Farfalle in cream sauce. Or tomato cream sauce.*
1 lb. farfalle
1 head cauliflower
1 lb. frozen peas
half & half (Sav-a-Lot didn't have cream)
crushed red pepper
butter
two tomatoes
shredded parmesan (again, Sav-a-Lot didn't have it; I got the Italian mix instead)
I am in the process of making this now; will describe more below the fold:
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*Not my photo & no cream but it's farfalle & it has peas, lol.
Well, toss me your beef stew recipes, anyway. Here's the one I'm planning to make today:
1 1/2 lb. stew beef
turnips
carrots
onions
portobello mushrooms
barley, well-rinsed
beer (wine would also work)
Basic method: brown the beef cubes, saute the mushrooms a bit, then add everything to my Dutch oven & bake, covered, for about two hours. I will probably add a bit of water in addition to the beer. I'd probably also add a beef bouillion cube if I had one. Or beef broth, if I had any of that. Which I don't.
I thought these might be of interest to people here. (Newp, as always, feel free to pop up and give us the benefit of your expertise! We miss you, sweetie!)
I won't translate the name of this sauce for you, you will have to watch the video for that! But it doesn't get much more Italian: everything has been translated into English:
Nigella Lawson's take on Huevos Rancheros -- not exactly south of the border style, but it would make a marvelous lunch or light supper if you (like me) have no ambition for cooking in the morning:
10pm~
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
LOL, Alma, I read your chicken pot pie recipe & it's a lot like the one my mother made, except she always made gravy to add to it after it was done cooking. (My gravy is superior to hers mainly b/c I start with a roux and tend to use cream or half&half, plus chicken broth.)
But that's not what I'm writing about tonight. Nope. I'm talking about one of Dad's favorite dishes: Pennsylvania Dutch (really, Deutsch) chicken pot pie (really, bott boi -- it was anglicized).
You probably can't get bott boi noodles where you live unless you have a strong Amish/Mennonite community nearby. They tend to be square and kind of thick. I suppose some people make them at home, but around here, most people buy them the same way as pasta or egg noodles: dried. I think lasagne noodles, broken into squarish pieces, would work just as well. Or else, really BIG egg noodles.
Bott boi is, iow, a type of noodle stew, with chicken, peas, onions, carrots...and saffron. Preferably LOTS of saffron. The Amish & Mennonites grow it -- typical weather here is what saffron crocuses like -- wet autumns, winters, and springs, and hot dry summers. (I did a Google search some years ago on the subject, curious what climate conditions we have in common with Spain.)
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
I've found a REALLY old kitchen gadget to share this week! Can you figure out what this relic was used for?
Image courtesy the National Museum of Wales under a Creative Commons License
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
Mark Bittman's piece today -- he writes a cooking column for the Sunday Times Magazine -- was about cooking with beer.
I'll link to it later. The caveat about his recipes is, he consulted with a brewer, and while I have no doubt that the results are wonderful, you don't have to have access to world-class beers to achieve superior results. Although, you should probably stay away from stuff like Bud, Miller Light, and Coors. (And even Bud will do in a pinch.)
I have a little Imperia pasta machine at work and I amuse myself with pasta experiments whenever I have the time - which happens to be in short supply these days, as extra work duties seem to have multiplied to cover up for the inevitable loss of income we all seem to be going through, worldwide.
Still, there is always a silver lining in the darkest of cloud and this economic downturn allows most of us to go back to the basics, prudently economize and utilize less, and it forces us to come up with a better and more efficient menu at home. Case in point: you can purchase the above machine for less than $50 on Ebay or Craigs (mostly unwanted gifts) and make fresh pasta at a fraction of the cost you'd pay in a supermarket.
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
This week's mystery gadget with both a top and bottom view:
Apologies: I had a brain fart & screwed up the "publish" time. Without checking my calendar, I was thinking tomorrow was Sept. 1. So this wants to post as the Thursday Open, despite my efforts to change the publish date/time. Am posting a few hours early rather than a day late. Yes, you can laugh at me now...
A New Yorker after my own heart...
Ms. Fain, a seventh-generation Texan who grew up outside Houston and has lived in New York for 15 years, writes the Homesick Texan blog, which gets 15,000 page views daily.
snip
But homesick Texans still despair at the paucity of RoTel canned tomatoes and chiles. Ms. Fain once took a train to New Jersey and walked an hour to a store she thought might stock them, but didn't.
BTW, I can attest to the quality of Ro*Tel. I bought a case at a discount grocery a few years ago & fell in love. Sometimes Sav-A-Lot has them, sometimes not: but when they do, I try to stock up, no matter what the expiration date is. Delicious!
