In Praise of Breakfast Casserole

Our son is coming in tonight for the weekend. He says he will put a phone jack beside my bed, and maybe one in the dining room for my work station. I want to move my computer station closer to the dining room table that I use for a desk.

Now it follows that I must feed him in return for these services. Trouble is, I don’t know when he’s getting here. Will he want supper? Breakfast casserole warmed up with melted cheese works. Will he be late and want breakfast in the morning. Voila’!

I found a crowd-sized recipe that I can halve. That ought to do for the three of us. It called for sausage. Our other son, the hunter, has left his excess ground and sausage venison in our freezer downstairs. I have hash-browns in the fridge freezer, eggs, cheese, baking mix, milk, everything it calls for. I also have some sliced mushrooms that are about to expire and an excess of scallions: His Majesty went out for some. I neglected to say, “Only one, only one”, and he came home with four. His rule of thumb is “If a little bit is good, a lot is better.” Just so you know.

In Praise of Ingredients, Great and Small

Sometimes you’ve just got to take shortcuts, and try things just for the fun of it. Biscuit mix, baking mix, whatever you call it has been around a long time. When I was a young mother, rather than buy the mix ready-made, I used the largest Tupperware cake-taker (upside down, as a container) to mix my own. I don’t remember all the measurements, but it started with five pounds of flour, the requisite amounts of baking powder and salt, blended with shortening (not today’s all vegetable shorting, but Real Shortening) using a pastry blender — a hand tool, not an electric one! I still have one.

I made biscuits, pancakes, muffins, shortcake, all from my own baking mix. Today I bought the premier brand of baking mix and tried a new recipe. It sounded good and I had all the ingredients: ham (luncheon meat), pineapple tidbits (love to drink the juice) shredded cheddar, eggs and half & half.

Blog Update

This blog has mostly to do with family and activities with our grandchildren. Then a few articles about cooking emerged from my fingertips. Maybe I should start a separate blog for those, hmm? No matter, I will try to catch up on family activity, with the help of a notated calendar and much help from Gwen.

My last post about family was at the end of January, with pictures of all the tornado damage in our grandchildren’s neighborhood.  February is always a grim month for me… maybe it’s Seasonal Affective Disorder, my daughter offered.  There’s a name for everything these days!  Anyway, February was 29 days long this year which was adding insult to injury.  I dragged myself through February and when March arrived, wasn’t feeling any better, in spite of the bright light that I shone in my face two hours every morning.  I had promised to take Gwen to see “Wicked”… promised without knowing what it was.  Turned out to be the Broadway production at the BJCC Concert Hall downtown.  Felt weak as a kitten, but still, had to do it.  Our children were keeping a close eye on us then, as their father recovered from pneumonia in December, so I asked our youngest if he would put off his return trip home and ferry Gwen and me to and from the BJCC.

I had gone downtown a few days before to refresh my memory on drop-off points, and route through the BJCC to the Concert Hall, and that’s when I   noticed they had installed a ramp from the upper to the lower level in compliance with the ADA.  We arrived just in time, not too early.  Gwen had a great time.  We had seats in the Grand Tier (Thanks, Julie) right in the middle.  There are no bad seats in the Concert Hall.  Gwen loved seeing a full-fledged Broadway Musical.  She takes Musical Theater in Dance, and has been in a school production of Music Man, but this was the Real Thing. The stage setting included a dragon’s head clock, with wings and sometime-glowing eyes, above the stage  She loved that there was an orchestra in the pit; being in the Grand Tier we could see the musicians.  She loved the story and the characters as portrayed, even the always-scary flying monkeys. Yikes! Gwen tutted in disapproval that her grandma was not familiar with the books set in the universe of “The Wizard of Oz”.  No matter. I napped through the first act, but enjoyed the second.

In Praise of Ingredients, Part III

It was a dark and stormy afternoon…. and what better to do than whip up a batch of the best comfort food in the world… Beef Stew.  No, make that Vegetable Beef Stew.  But I’m not Superwoman and the only fresh produce-type ingredients we have in the house are grapes, bananas, strawberries, apples, and pears.  Can’t make a veggie stew out of that.  But I’m not Stupidwoman, either: there are always, I mean always, onions in the house.  One cannot cook a meal without onions.  In this case I lucked out and spied a clove of garlic, in the hanging basket.  All is not lost!

Beef stew meat from the freezer, chicken broth and diced tomatoes from the can cabinet, onion, garlic, dried basil, a beef boullion cube, Kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper…. let’s see, what else?  Olive oil is a given.  The world would come to an end before I would run out of Olive Oil.  Oh, yes, vegetables. Well, now, wouldn’t you know it?  Half a ‘family size’ bag of frozen soup vegetables is just waiting for such a moment…. Your Time Has Come, little soup veggies…. Come to Mama! 

Then it was Decision Time: Would the starch be cubed potato?  No, I don’t have any potatoes.  What about rice? Ugh, no! It gets nasty looking when over cooked, and a stew must be better the second day than the first, that’s The Rule.  Pasta it is, then. Orzo or Ditalini?  I went with Ditalini.  Both these hold their shape the second day and look good, too, swimming among the vegetables.  Almost there.

Okay, Time to Cook!  First, heat up my beloved big red La Creuset pot with a generous amount of Olive Oil to cover the bottom.  Next, sharpen the favorite kitchen knife. Chop, chop, chop, those onions.  Smush the garlic. Discard all peels, skins and other detrius into the garbage strainer in the sink. (I finally wised up to that ‘garbage bowl’ business. It not only cuts down on trips to the big garbage can just out of my reach, but keeps the sink cleaner.)  Aha! The pot is hot, the beef has browned… well, enough of it has, and the onions and garlic have been added, the heat lowered, and the flavors are mingling.  The kitchen smells fantastic.  His Majesty comes through to ask if the stew is ready.  No, it’s not… you go make yourself something for lunch,  This is Supper and will be ready at Suppertime.

The onions looked done enough to me.  Stir ‘em up, stir ‘em up.  Add diced tomatoes and chicken broth.  Rinse out both cans and add water.  Add that boullion cube.  Did we sprinkle in the dried basil yet?  Now’s the time.  And now is the time to let it stew.  Lower the heat and do something else.  His Majesty had fixed himself a chilidog and saurkraut, with grapes for dessert.  Dessert is on my mind, too.  Almost without thinking about it, I grabbed two bowls, one for wet ingredients and one for dry, preheated the oven and mixed up a batch of brownies. Scrabbling in the freezer, muttering to myself, “Nuts, nuts, I must have nuts…”, I pushed aside the Ginger Root, and the baggie of Slivered Almonds, until not one, but two bags of chopped pecans surfaced.  I took the opened one and dumped it into the brownie bowl, gave it one last stir and poured it into my green Pyrex baking dish… the only square baking dish I own.  Popped it into the oven and went off for a well-deserved rest.

The timer went off, just when I was at one of the “good parts” of my current romance novel. Time to add some more Ingredients!  The soup veggies were thawed out by now, and would not slow down the cooking process, and by that I mean, it wouldn’t stop simmering, so into the pot they went.  Shortly thereafter, the pasta went in to make it a full meal: meat, starch, green and yellow and red vegetables, beef flavor, s little basil, and it’s Soup, it’s Stew, it’s Supper!  With hearty, flavorful, whole grain bread to sop up the juices!

The Brownies beg for attention.  They’ve been out of the oven long enough to cut well, and not tear up.  It’s not suppertime yet, and I’ve worked up an appetite.  What better way to satisfy it than with a Romance Novel and Brownies?

Um… you can tell some brownies are already missing… sorry ’bout that!