A beautiful breakfast

My sweet husband is our breakfast chef.  Every day he faces the challenge of cooking something healthy and delicious.  We eat lots of oatmeal, in various incarnations, and all good.  But when he makes what we call "French Pancakes", I am a very happy girl!  These are made from an old recipe from our college/grad school days (from our dear Barbie J!)  What a lovely way to start the day!  (See the recipe below!)

French Pancakes:
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup flour
3 TBS butter

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  While preheating, place the butter in a round cake pan.  (We use the non-stick, heavy cake pans from Pampered Chef and the cakes slide right out of them!) Whisk the eggs, milk, and flour together.

When the oven is preheated, remove the pans, swirling the butter to coat.  Pour in the batter and return to the oven for about 20 minutes.

Remove the golden brown deliciousness, slide onto a plate and cut.  Serve with lightly warmed, lightly sweetened fresh fruit or maple syrup or honey or anything else you like!

A Taste of Slovakia

These lovely items are the zemiakove placky (or potato pancakes) we made for out annual missionary dinner at church yesterday.  The "we" was myself, my mother-in-law, and friends visiting from Slovakia (thanks, Paula!)  The delicious recipe is below.  What fun it was!

Zemiakove Placky

• Grate 8-10 potatoes, and drain excess liquid..
• Add 1 egg, 6-8 cloves garlic, 1-2 TBS marjoram, and 1-2 cups of flour, and stir, until you have a fairly gooey mess.
• Put a little oil in a non-stick frying pan or griddle, and heat.
• Plop a large spoonful of the potato mixture onto the hot pan, and spread as thinly as possible.
• Cook until lightly browned and flip.
• Meanwhile, dice 3-4 chicken breasts and saute in a little oil. Add one chopped onion and chopped fresh mushrooms.  Cook until chicken is done and a little gravy is forming.  Add a little ketchup and mustard to form a bit more gravy, so it is moist but not runny.
• Pile the chicken filling on the pancake, fold the pancake over, and top with cheese.
• Eat and enjoy-- we certainly did!

Applebutter Adventure

My Mom and I had a lovely mother-daughter time on Saturday. Our goal was to recreate the apple butter my mother remembers her mother making. My grandmother died when she was just 50, my mother was just 25, and I was just 5. So, without a recipe, and only my mother's memories to go on, we set about our adventure. Not only did we make some delicious apple butter that seems similar to my Grandmother's, but it afforded us a day filled with family stories and memories. It was lovely!

I have been blessed to have my mother with me for these first 49 years of life. I am very grateful for her, and hope I never take time with her for granted!

And here is the recipe we came up with:

Grandma's Apple Butter

Combine in a large, heavy kettle:
5 quarts applesauce
5 Cups white sugar
5 Cups brown sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
Bring to a boil, then simmer under low heat for several hours, until mixture thickens, and when a spoonful is placed on a saucer, no water ring appears around the edges (yesterday this took us about 8 hours!) Stir occasionally. Fill sterilized jars, seal with lids and rings, and process in water bath for 10 minutes.

Vegetables, too...

Today, we turned to some vegetable garden produce. On the left you will see something on the order of 7 or 8 quarts of tomato puree. This is still cooking down on my stove, and will be canned after dinner. On the right is a bowl of steaming hot beets, which got sliced, pickled, and made into 7 pints of pickled beets. My pickled beets recipes is delicious: it was given to me by the mom of my best friend in high school. If you ever care to make them, the recipe is below. You can make the syrup and used already-canned beats, too, if you wish. However, using fresh-from-0the-garden beets is the best!

Ma St. Clair's Pickled Beets
~Boil, then cool and peel enough beets to make 12-14 cups of sliced beets.
~Mix together the syrup ingredients: 2 Cups water, 2 Cups white vinegar, 2 Cups sugar, 1 TBS cinnamon, 1 tsp cloves, 1 tsp allspice.
~Add the beets to the syrup, and simmer about 15 minutes, until at a low boil.
~Can in prepared jars. This will make about 7 pints.

Oh, and we didn't ignore apples today. We made another 5 pints of caramel apple jam, and an apple strudel-crisp for dessert tonight!

Coffee cake, anyone?

My friend, Valerie, recently shared a recipe with me for a quick but delicious coffee cake. I made it yesterday to share at Dave's end-of-the-year chemistry class, and it was a hit. I thought yu might enjoy the recipe, too, Gentle Readers. So here it is:

You need:
~20 frozen dinner rolls, partially thawed
~1 stick butter, melted
~1/2 cup brown sugar
~1/2 cup nuts of your choice (or no nuts if you live with a nut hater or allergy)
1 small box (4-serving size) vanilla pudding mix- the kind you have to cook, not the instant variety.

1. On the night before you want to serve the coffee cake, leave out the dinner rolls for about 15 minutes to partially thaw. Cut each roll in half.
2. Spread a little of the melted butter on the sides of a tube pan to coat it.
3. Mix together the brown sugar, dry pudding mix, and nuts. Sprinkle a little of this in the bottom of the pan.
4. Add one layer of the rolls. Sprinkle with a little more mix and drizzle with a little of the butter.
5. Repeat #4 until all the rolls are used evenly in the pan. Put the remainder of the mix and the butter on the top. (More on top is better, since it will ooze to the bottom as you cook it anyway.
6. Let the pan sit on the counter over night. Next morning, bake it at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes. Invert to put the coffee cake onto a platter, and enjoy warm!

I should have taken a picture of the cake, since it come out so pretty!

A new recipe

Tonight I made a fun and fast chicken recipe. I was pretty tuckered out after having a nearly full day of activity...something I've not done for a long time! So I wanted something fast, and this was a winner. I thought maybe some of you would enjoy it as well. It is called Chicken in Silver and is from a little out-of-print chicken book I have. This recipe is for two chicken breasts (two servings), but for more, just multiply. I made three servings tonight.

Make the following sauce in your blender or food processor:
1 tsp. minced ginger
2 small cloves garlic
2 TBS apricot jam
1 tsp. cider vinegar
2 tsp. butter
pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp dry mustard or mustard seeds

For each serving, take a 12 X 12 piece of foil, place a thick slice of sweet onion in the middle, and place one boneless, skinless chicken breast on the onion. Divide the sauce among your chicken breasts, just spooning it on top. Atop each breast spread several julienne strips of carrot and several snow peas. Then join up all the corners of the foil and seal.

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees (yes, 500 degrees). Put a cookie sheet in the over for the last dew minutes so it will heat up, too. Cook the pouches on the cookie sheet for 15 minutes, then remove from oven and allow to stand for 5 more minutes. Serve with rice or potatoes to soak up the lovely sauce, and a fresh salad.

It was a lovely meal!