Cook Once...Eat Twice?

We all know the old saying, "Measure twice, cut once," well I like to do a version of that with cooking.

I LOVE to cook, but I am a really busy Mom with three young kids who all become needy little vultures between 4 p.m. and dinner time so sometimes it has to be easy.  Here is the thing though...often easy means bad and bad for you and I am not a fan.

How do I deal with it?

I find great recipes that freeze really well.  In fact, when I started to think about what kind of cookbook I wanted to write I often thought that maybe a freezer friendly cookbook would be the answer.

I will try freezing almost anything once and you should too...

How do we eat twice?  Some people do this with leftovers, but they are not very popular in my house so instead I make something for dinner one night and I either split the recipe in two (or sometimes three...that really makes me happy) or double it depending on how much I think that my family will eat.  I take the portion that is not for that night, cover it in plastic wrap and foil, label it and put it in the freezer.

Here are a few tips having to do with freezing...

1. Always remember to remove the plastic wrap before you cook it.  My lasagna recipe cooks with the pan covered for the first hour and once I left the plastic wrap on by mistake...when I discovered it the words that came out of my mouth were neither lady-like or appropriate for this blog.  Needless to say, the lasagna was ruined.  Do not do this to yourself.

2. Keep an inventory somewhere of what you have in the freezer.  I am too lazy to do this, but it is a really great idea.  It really irritates me when I have to throw out a tasty dish because I forgot about it in my freezer for a year.

3. Sometimes it is good to leave off a topping like bread crumbs or cheese and add it the night that you cook it.

4. Unless something specifies that it can go right from the freezer to the oven (like a lasagna or baked ziti) make sure that you thaw it overnight.  Thawing on your counter IS NOT SAFE.  That said, I have done it and will do it again because I am really forgetful (see comment re: being a busy mom).  Every time that I do it though I wonder if this is the time that we will all get really sick...plan ahead...do not be me.

5. Decide when the best "phase" of the recipe would be for freezing.  This requires some thought in some cases like with a lasagna (freeze it uncooked) and very little thought in others like a quiche (freeze it cooked).  There is a little risk taking in this step, but with time you will learn what works and what does not and your judgments will become better every time.

Here are some of my favorite freezer meals...try one this weekend...

Williams Sonoma Three-Cheese Manicotti (freeze before cooking, thaw before cooking)

Baked Ziti IV (freeze before cooking, thaw before cooking)

Pioneer Woman BBQ Comfort Meatballs (freeze after browning, thaw before cooking)

French Women Don't Get Fat Chicken Marinade (do this with many chicken breasts at a time and freeze in portions in Ziploc bags...we eat this at least once a week in the summer...thaw before cooking)

The Quesadillas My Husband Did Not Appreciate...

Let me start with this: my husband loves and appreciates my cooking. He has many friends with wives who either do not cook, or who do not cook well, so he knows that he has a good thing. As you might imagine though, he is my guinea pig and my first line critic, which means that he does not always get the best of what comes off of my stove. Usually, if he does not like it I probably do not like it either (with some exceptions because he is a picky eater: no fish, no food on the bone, etc.). However, sometimes he is just wrong.

Yeah, I said it honey, sometimes you are wrong. (Sorry).

One such instance: the BEST quesadilla that I have ever made/had.

These quesadillas were so good and so perfectly full of fall flavor that they literally make my mouth water every time I think about them. Brie, caramelized onions, apples, chicken...they were amazing! So, I am sharing the recipe with you. Cook them and enjoy them! If you do not think that your spouse/partner/friend will enjoy it as much as you will, do yourself a favor and invite someone over who will...

Jim's (least favorite) Quesadillas (makes 2, double to make 4)

1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1 Tbsp. plus 2 tsp. of butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 small wheel of brie cheese, sliced
1 cooked chicken breast, shredded
1 apple (preferably something crispy like honeycrisp or granny smith), sliced
4 large flour tortillas

Heat a skillet over medium high heat and add 1 tablespoon of butter and olive oil. When the butter is melted, add the thinly sliced onions and toss to coat in the fat mixture. When fully coated, add the sugar. Stir the onions occasionally until they become very soft and deeper in color (20-30 minutes). Place the onions on a plate and wipe out the skillet with a paper towel.

Return the pan to the heat.

Melt 1 teaspoon of butter in the pan. Place one tortilla in the pan and swirl around in the butter. Remove the tortilla and set aside. Place a second tortilla in the pan and top with the cheese, chicken breast, apple, and caramelized onions. Place the first tortilla on the top and press down on it with a spatula. When the cheese has begun to melt and the bottom tortilla has become a light brown, carefully flip the quesadilla and cook on the other side until it is also light brown. Remove, and repeat with the remaining ingredients.

When both quesadillas have been removed, slice each into four pieces and serve.

I Am Still Here!

It has been a long time...too long...I apologize.

Here is the thing... When you become pregnant (again) things shift. My priorities changed overnight. I did not want to cook, I preferred to sleep. I did not want to eat meals, I preferred to snack. Soon I was repulsed by food. I was unable to sleep. Then the baby came and things changed even more.

The important thing...my food blog is back!

With three little ones, my priorities have shifted slightly (as mentioned above) so you will have to roll with it. I have abandoned my cookbook dream for now (not forever) so the voice of this blog will change a little...it will now just be about the joy and pain of cooking.

Leave your comments and let me know what you think! I am excited to be back!

(Next blog topic: The Quesadillas My Husband Did Not Appreciate)

Hello Again...and Candy...

So, I have been on an extended posting vacation. My two young children and I seemed to have been sick for most of the winter and it has really slowed down my cooking. However, I am back! (For now at least).

As I sit at my computer with a tasty strawberry ring pop attached to one of my fingers it reminds me of my love for candy. Ever since I was a young girl I have loved candy. There were times in college where that and nachos were all I ate...small budget. Here is the thing though...I do not have what I call the candy touch.

I have several dear girlfriends who make AMAZING candy during the holidays. My sweet friend, Laura, never fails to bring me delish caramels that are always perfectly chewy and gooey. My darling friend, Nicole, sends me her incredible toffee and caramels from California and my mouth literally starts watering when I see the box arrive. (Nicole likes to mention on occasion that one couple actually got divorced over her candy--it really is THAT good!)

I am a good cook and a great baker...why does making candy usually end in failure for me?

I have thought about this question at great length and still have no good answer. I burned one batch of caramel so badly this year that I spent (literally) a month scrubbing the bottom of an All Clad pot (eventually resorting to the ever taboo steel wool, which I might add worked like a charm and left no scrapes). Here is what I have decided to live with for now...Martha Stewart aside, no one can be good at everything in the kitchen, and candy making is best left for those who have the aforementioned candy touch. Plus, getting it as a gift means no clean up for me.

I will continue to practice my hand at candy occasionally, but in the meantime, perhaps some of my dear friends who are so good at this craft will consider being guest contributors to the cookbook and will share their secrets for making some of the best candy these lips have ever tasted...

Where did it start???

People often asked me where I learned to cook and where my love for cooking came from. While to regular readers the obvious answer would be my Grandmother that is not the full truth.

My Grandmother taught me wonderful things about cooking...how to measure ingredients properly, how to finesse a recipe, how to feed people with love. She also taught me how to entertain beautifully...linen napkins, silver, china, crystal, and a smile. What she did not teach me was how to do the heavy lifting of the everyday monotony of cooking. I learned that during a semester at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS).

I have to take a moment to give credit to a friend and classmate from my high school days who writes for epicurious.com. She had a blog posted today about how cooking really started for her at NOLS and it reminded me that I too should give credit where credit was due. Here is her post if you want to see it.

Moving right along...

I did a semester in the Southwest when I was 17 years old with NOLS. This meant living outside for 88 days and enjoying everything about the great outdoors...rock climbing, riding the rapids, camping, mosquitoes, dirt in our food, and packing everything out that you brought in.

Sounds terrible...

It was.

But it was also incredible, and I can remember the night that it turned from one extreme to another...you guessed it, it revolved around food.

I was about 3 days in and was sitting thinking to myself that I had made a mistake of epic proportions when one of the leaders came up to me and told me that it was my night to cook for my group and he was going to show me how to make fried mac and cheese...hmm, sounded worth checking out.

Still to this day, I cannot replicate the meal that Pete and I made that night, for all I know, I never will be able to. I am pretty sure that it tasted so good due to the mix of hunger, exhaustion, and a longing for some nasty store bought goodies. All I can say is that the crowd went wild! We made that meal at least 20 more times during the 88 day trip and although I never thought is was quite as good as the first time, it was always a hit with my fellow students.

I remember the first time I made it for my parents...my mother said that she had never smelled so much garlic in one place and it made me smile.

I cooked many nights and mornings during my NOLS trip, there were other people that enjoyed packing the fly (tent) away, doing the dishes, setting up the campsite...cooking was my niche. I thought about what I would make each day during the treks with the limited ingredients that I had...

How would I make something taste different from the day before? We ran out of butter yesterday, what will I use as a substitute? Will people like it?

I would fall asleep with similar questions, and from that grew meals to feed the masses. Cinnamon rolls, spice cake with sugar sauce, spiced malto-meal. The possibilities were endless.

Why do I bring this up? Well, I cook like I will for the cookbook 1-2 nights a week and we usually eat out 1 night a week...that leaves 4-5 nights a week that I am cooking for the masses with the totally uninteresting ingredients that I happen to have on hand. I never had home economics, I had a mother who did not enjoy cooking, and I had a Grandmother that had taught me how to do the fancy stuff...without NOLS, my family would probably be eating a lot of pizza.

The Aunts Cookbook...

Imagine my surprise when I received a cookbook this Christmas season that was written by my great-great aunts for my great grandmother and great aunt. We are not talking the usual family, plastic bound Kinko's version cookbook--this thing of beauty was hard bound and looked like a "real" cookbook. In fact, when it was first handed to me as part of a stack of other cookbooks there was nothing to indicate that it was any different than the any of the other old volumes. It was not until I opened it to see the publishing date that I realized that this was different, this was a gem!

I was so excited that I flipped through the pages immediately, reading the most peculiar recipes aloud and keeping the most delicious sounding to myself. There were a glorious 151 pages worth of my family recipes.

It was incredible.

When I had finally finished my lavish journey through the volume, I returned to the beginning to again study the note from my great-great aunts that read in part:

"This slight evidence of materteral affection has no inherent right to be called a cook-book. It contains, as will be seen, no general rules for cooking. It is conspicuously lacking in directions how to bake, boil or brew, and is eloquently silent on the frugal themes of the trying-out of fat, the making of soap, etc. It makes no claim to being either through, economical, scientific or systematic. It is merely a collection of family recipes."

I love this passage so much that I am considering including it in my own cookbook and giving them credit.

I guess what thrilled me so deeply about the discovery of this piece of family history is just how deep my love of cooking is embedded in my genes. I always knew that my paternal grandmother's family loved to cook, and that my maternal grandmother was a good cook, but this is evidence of relatives spanning several generations cooking and enjoying feeding people. In fact, the last section of the cookbook is recipes from my Great-great-great-great Grandmother...that is a lot of greats.

If you love to cook go out and find those family recipes--sure some of them may call for crazy ingredients and refer to cooking over a fire instead of on a stove--but they will bring you joy.

I leave you with one of my favorite recipes in the book (mind you I have never made it so I am literally referring to the recipe) from my Great-great-great-great Grandmother...


To Make Cowslip Wine

To 2 gallons of water add 2 1/2 pounds of powdered sugar, boil them 1/2 hour, and take off the scum as it rises, the pour it into a tub to cool, with the rinds of 2 lemons. When it is cold add 4 quarts of cowslip flowers to the liquor, with the juice of 2 lemons; let it stand in the tub two days, stirring every 2 to 3 hours, and then put it in a barrel and let it stand 3 weeks or a month. Then bottle it and put a lump of sugar in every bottle. This is a good wine against the consumptions or any inward complaints.

Not A Recipe To Share...

Sharing recipes is an act that has taken place for as long as people have been making food. It is a simple concept...you figure out how to make something really well, you write it down, and you pass it along to your friends. There are variations of this...you find a great recipe in a magazine, you copy it, you pass it along to your friends is a popular one. So here is something that might surprise you...

I hate to share my recipes.

I know, this goes against everything that I have said about loving to feed people and really makes no sense since I am writing a cookbook, but hopefully by the time you finish reading this post you will understand.

Whenever someone takes a look at my electronic recipe file the first question always seems to be, "Why do all of the recipes say 'NOT A RECIPE TO SHARE' in bold accross the top?" No one notices my maticulous organziation, my attention to detail, or my consistency in termonologoy. No, it is always the fact that I, being someone who otherwise is a giver and a sharer, have plainly written across 95 percent of my recipes a statement of selfishness.

Please understand...

My dislike of sharing recipes revolves around three distinct issues...

1. I worry that people will change my recipe or make it incorrectly and then the people that they are feeding will think that I am a horrible cook.

2. Sometimes, people will pass my creations off as their own.

3. Genetics. (Confusing, but you will understand...read on).

Issue One: It has happened to me more than once that I have passed along a tried and true recipe to a friend or family member and have had one of two things happen: 1. They tell me that it was great, they made eight substitutions and told everyone that it was my recipe (better yet, it was horrible, they made eight substitutions, and cannot understand why I thought it was good in the first place); 2. They make it for me, I taste it, and it tastes nothing like when I make it...being that I am a perfectionist I spend the rest of the night wondering if it is their cooking or my recipe that caused the problem and likely do not sleep for at least a few days.

Issues Two: It really drives me crazy when people do not give credit where credit is due. Here is a great example..."Wow, Suzy, this cake is amazing!" (I gave Suzy the recipe for the cake). "Thanks, Janet, it is just something that I whipped up from an idea I had this afternoon." Really? For those of you that know me you know that this is followed by me shoving a glass of water in my mouth and taking a long, slow sip to keep me from saying what I am thinking. Note to self: No more recipes for Suzy.

Issue Three: My grandmother's housekeeper, let's call her Kelly to avoid revealing her true identity, had worked for my grandmother for over a decade when she mistakenly gave my mother the infamous Veggie Casserole recipe without first consulting my grandmother. When I say World War III in describing what went down when my grandmother discovered this, it is not an exaggeration. Kelly nearly lost her job that day, I nearly lost my mother, and no one EVER gave away a recipe of my grandmother's again without consulting her first or at least making sure that all involved could be trusted to keep thier mouths shut.

This post came to mind because I was just making some amazing pretzel treats that my friend Nicole recently passed along the recipe for. I had been asking her for the recipe for over a year. Some people might have been annoyed that it took so long to get it to me, but I completely understood. I worked the angle that others have worked with me, slow and steady until I broke her. She finally gave me the recipe for Christmas on the condition that I do not share it, and I was probably one of the few people that COMPLETELY understood where she was coming from. I love her for not wanting to share...

So, please know that I write this cookbook with strong reservations...sometimes the thought of sharing all of these recipes nearly puts me over the edge. However, in the end I feel that it is worth it and I can just hope that people follow directions, give me credit if I deserve it, and that I can buck the genetic part of it along the way.