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This Christmas, my family decided to do something we had not done for nearly 20 years: paint cookies. Instead of using our traditional recipe for painted sugar cookies, one of my sisters purchased ready made dough. They tasted a little better, but were harder to paint than I remember.
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I had been meaning to make some egg noodles and use the hamburger in the fridge to make some beef stroganoff. I hadn’t yet bothered to go to the store to replace the flour I used up cooking for Christmas Eve dinner, so I decided to improvise before the beef went bad. Here is what I came up with:
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My parents had a fun gift for each of the kids this year, K-Tec blenders. These are the same basic blenders that you can see doing crazy things as the Blend-Tec Blender on Will It Blend? On this site they blend up things like 50 glass marbles, a video camera, glow sticks, etc. It is fun to watch them go at it, but I wouldn’t do it with mine.

I’ve learned over the years that you wind up not spending much more to just get a good product at first. Unfortunately, that usually cost some money. In this case, a Champ HP3 is around $330. I figure that I’ve spent around $150 for the various blenders than never really worked over the years. What I’ve been using lately is an immersion blender, because I could force it into the thick smoothies. Regular blenders just peel out. Well, the peel out is over.

What will this blender do? Well, I was out of flour and needed to thicken a soup. So I dumped in a half cup of uncooked rice and blended it into a rice flour. I put in a cup of milk, a little sugar, and two cups of frozen strawberries. Hit cycle 4 and then scoop out the ice cream. (Really an ice milk.) Smoothies are completely blended in under 40 second, silky smooth, even from frozen fruits.

In short, this blender ROCKS. I’m sure you will hear more about it as I play in the kitchen.

The first step of fixing any problem is to admit it. I have a cooking problem. Me cooking, itself isn’t a problem. I have a problem following recipes. This is something I learned from my Mom. To make a dish, you need to look at a half dozen recipes on the subject, then go in the kitchen and cook.

My sister, Ruth, is the exact opposite. She prefers the nice guide of a recipe. Some of Mom’s recipes that I will post on this site were translated by Ruth from watching Mom make them. I’ve often told my Mom that she needs to keep a kitchen lab book. There are times that a dish is just superb. We enjoy it, because we know there is no chance of recreating it. Even Mom didn’t know exactly what she did.

I am going to attempt to keep track of my successful experiments on this site. It will be a lab notebook for all to see and an easy place that I can reference again when I want to make the same type of dish.  These experiments won’t be as detailed as a recipe.  Just a log of what I did to make the dish.

This is the stuffing that Marilyn makes (my sisters’s mother in law.) Since Ruth is allergic to wheat, substitute spelt bread as needed.

Serves: 6
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This came from my sister’s Holly Hobbie Cookbook. I remember making it as a kid. it is probably like any other meatloaf recipe out there, but it is somewhat nostalgic for us.

Start 2 hours before serving time.
Serves: 5
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This pie is a family tradition, always present at Christmas and Thanksgiving. It is similar to a Pecan Pie, but with a little more body.
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My mom has owned a red Betty Crocker cookbook probably longer than I have been alive. I’ve had this book for a few years, because I have been doing more and more cooking. The book isn’t all about the Betty Crocker recipes, because let’s face it, they all aren’t that good. The things that are important are recipes and modifications written in the margins by mom.

The problem with me having the book is I am in Indianapolis and my mother and both sisters are in Jeffersonville. I’ve fielded calls from them at times, when a recipe is required. Putting them on the web will eliminate this problem. It will also give me a place to pull them up on any computer. My electronic recipe software runs on Windows and I’ve been using Linux for a year now. Solves that issue. As a fringe benefit, anyone coming to my site can use the recipes. Enjoy.

I came across an interesting page about common truths people hold regarding cooking which are not. I’m familiar with many of these myths, which were disproved in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by McGee (a brilliant book on the science of cooking.) Some I had not considered, such as baking soda absorbing odors in the fridge or freezer (which is a marketing ploy, according to the site.)

There are some things I don’t agree with, such as the microwave hurting nutrients in foods. There has been proof that microwave degrades milk into harmful components after microwaving. Either way, read the article and make up your own mind.