Another Experiment With a Tiny Casserole Dish

 Recently, I indulged myself in a kitchen experiment utilizing one of those little glass baking dishes I'd bought at Goodwill back in 2024.  For a while, I'd been toying with the idea of trying to make a small deep dish pie.  Because, while DH and I both love pie, we really don't need to eat an entire 9" pie between the two of us in the few days that a pie stays good.  If I could make a little pie in my little casserole dish that would enable us to still enjoy a pie now and then without overeating it (because it would be sacrilege to let a pie go bad). 

Finally I decided what the heck, I might as well go for it.  The great thing about kitchen experiments that involve desserts is that unless you burn them to a crisp, even the flops are usually still edible.

By my calculations if I halved my single pie crust recipe for a 9" pie, that should probably be enough dough to fit my little glass dish.

Pie crust:

2 Tbsp +2 tsp lard (shortening)

1/2 cup flour

pinch of salt

1 1/2 Tbsp cold water

Cut lard into the flour and salt until crumbly.  Stir in water until moistened.

Roll into an 8" circle on a lightly floured surface.

I gently eased the rolled out pie crust dough into the little dish, making sure it went all the way to the bottom, then trimmed it to about 1" more than the dish's opening.  After folding the excess under and fluting the edge, I poked the dough with a fork before baking at 475 degrees for about 10 minutes until lightly browned.

As you can see, the crust shrank during baking.  Next time I won't worry about trimming the excess; I'll try to leave more on the edge if I can get it to not flop down the outside of the dish.  Hopefully that way, even with shrinkage it will stay above the rim.

Once the crust had cooled to room temperature, I took a box of instant chocolate pudding from the pantry, and mixed it with 1 3/4 cup milk for about 2 minutes.  Then I poured roughly a cup (maybe a cup and a quarter?) of the pudding into the cooled pie shell--almost to the top of the crust--and put it in the fridge to set and chill.  

The leftover pudding was a nice snack for the baker during kitchen clean up 😊

At dessert time, I whipped up a little bit of heavy cream with about 1/2 tsp of sugar, cut the pie in half, and served it with a big dollop of whipped cream.

YUM!  Next time, I might try a tiny fruit pie; that will be more challenging to see if I can figure out how to adapt the cooking time so that the fruit filling (probably apples) is neither crunchy and underdone nor cooked to mush.  My current theory is that the cooking time won't be very much different than a regular sized pie, since the casserole dish is just as deep, or maybe a tad deeper than, a pie plate, so even though the diameter is smaller the thickness of the filling is about the same.

Aunt L's Cookies

 For over three decades, there has been an annual family reunion on DH's father's side of the family.  And, until the last six or so (because she's in her late 70s now), one of his aunts always made and brought hundreds of cookies to share.  They are simply known as "Aunt L's Cookies" because nobody else in the family makes them.

(And because she made literally hundreds of them, nobody else ever brought cookies to the family reunions, LOL.)

Thankfully, around 2010, someone compiled a family cookbook (of submitted favorite recipes), and the recipes for both of Aunt L's special cookies was included.  So, once in a very long while, I have made them myself for eating at home with my family.

It's been a long, long time though, since I had made either one.  Since this year I am trying to make lots of different cookies and not the same old three or four recipes over and over again, I thought what a great excuse to take the extra time that Aunt L's cookie recipes require and make those.

First up, her Magic Peanut Butter/Chocolate cookies

Dough:

 1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1/2 tsp baking soda

Combine above ingredients and set aside.

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup softened margarine (or butter)

1/4 cup peanut butter

Beat these together until fluffy, then add:

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg

Then add flour mixture and mix thoroughly, then set aside.

Make the filling:

3/4 cup peanut butter

3/4 cup powdered sugar

Blend well

To make the cookies, divide both filling and dough into 32 balls each.  Assemble by flattening a chocolate dough ball in the palm of your hand and place a filling ball on top, wrappinng the chocolate dough around the filling.  Place on a cookie sheet and flatten with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar.  Bake at 375 degrees for 7-8 minutes.

the magic peanut butter surprise inside

Then, her Orange Chocolate Chip cookies

1 cup shortening

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 Tbsp orange juice

1 Tbsp orange zest

2 3/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup chocolate chips, chopped

Cream shortening and sugars; add egg, orange zest and juice.  Sift flour, baking soda and salt, then add to creamed mixture.  Add chocolate chips.  Shape into a log and roll in waxed paper.  Refrigerate several hours or overnight.  Slice 1/4" thick and bake for 10-12 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

my slicing was a little generous on the width

(These are much easier to slice cleanly if you chop the chocolate chips.  If you get distracted [ahem, me, in the past, not this time!] and forget to chop them, it still works, just doesn't slice as easily.)

I'm Glad I Didn't Blink

 Strawberry season in my area was very short.  It's not typically a long season, only a few weeks, but this year it was unusually short.  Blink and you'll miss it short.

Partly because of the cold rough winter we had and the deer damage to the strawberry fields.  Partly because Spring was kind of cold.  Partly because Spring was also rather wet, with several spells of flooding all over the state.  And, partly because just as the plants which had survived all that were starting to get ripe berries on them, our weather got hot and humid, then very rainy again.  Like five out of seven days with some sort of rain.  Which made the berries ripen very quickly and then just as quickly, even if they weren't ripe, start to mold.

I'm glad I didn't blink.  If I had, I would have totally missed out on fresh picked local strawberries.

I knew I wasn't going to get any strawberries from the patch in my garden.  The deer and other, smaller, four legged critters had ensured that by eating off the plants just as fast as they began to grow.

I had hoped to do some u-pick strawberries, so I was keeping an eye on the Facebook page of the local strawberry farm.  Unfortunately they, and a few other u-pick places not as close to me, announced in early June that they would not be able to open this year for u-pick due to crop damage (aka deer and weather).

So I watched the Facebook pages of some of the small farm markets that have popped up in the area in the last handful of years.  Pre-picked strawberries wouldn't be as cheap (or as fun to get) as u-pick berries, but at least they'd be fresh (compared to grocery store strawberries from the West Coast) and they'd be those smaller flavor-packed berries that this part of Michigan grows.

When I spotted a post that was only two hours old stating that the closest to me farm market (of the bougie kind) had strawberries in, I practically dropped everything and drove over right away.  The whole nearly 8 miles from this little place here to there I hoped that they wouldn't be sold out by the time I walked in the door.

And thankfully they weren't.  $7.75 per quart later, I walked out with two quarts of fresh local strawberries.  Knowing that they wouldn't keep for long; some all ready weren't looking too firm, I started making plans for how to best enjoy them and use them up.

First up, strawberry shortcake for dessert that night!

Me and Betty (Crocker) got busy in the kitchen whipping up some homemade shortcakes.  Since DH was out of town, I cut the recipe down to only two servings.  Because as much as I like strawberry shortcake, this diabetic girl does not need to eat six servings of it in just a couple of days.

I'm so glad I didn't blink.

I also didn't share, either.  I mean, I couldn't, really, being the only one home and all.

In case you're wondering, here's how I cut down Betty's recipe: 

It says that it makes six servings.  I only wanted two servings, which was 1/3 of a recipe.  So I did some math (ok, quite a lot of math) and got busy translating cups into tablespoons and tablespoons into teaspoons and dividing all that by three.

This is what I came up with, and it cooked up fine and tasted fine with the usual texture of this recipe when made in it's entirety of six servings, so I feel pretty confident it will work for you too if you want to give it a try.

>About a cup of sliced strawberries and 1 teaspoon of sugar per shortcake served, mixed together and allowed to sit for about 1/2 hour while I mixed up and baked the shortcakes.

>1 Tbsp plus 2 tsp shortening/lard

>2/3 cup flour

>2 tsp sugar

>1 tsp baking powder

>generous 1/4 tsp salt

>1/4 cup milk

Cut the shortening into the dry ingredients until crumbly, then mix in the milk until blended.  On a lightly floured surface (my handy dandy Tupperware pastry sheet), knead 20-25 times.  Roll out 1/2" thick and cut with a 3" (biscuit) cutter.  Bake at 450 degrees F for 10-12 minutes.  Cool slightly, then split each shortcake in half and layer with strawberries.  Top with whipped cream.

A Cooking Experiment

 I'm not sure if anyone remembers, but a couple of years ago I got four little round glass baking dishes at Goodwill for a whopping total of $1.99.  My intent with them was to try to cut down recipes into individual servings sizes and/or take a normal recipe, divide it into four dishes, cook it then freeze the extra portions for future lunches, solo dinners, etc.

Honestly, I haven't done much with them since then, other than doing some baked spaghetti one time, which worked well.  For those little spaghettis I lined the dishes with pieces of foil, baked, then when cool lifted out by the foil, folded the (extra big) pieces of foil over the top of the spaghetti and froze.  Worked like a charm.

Ever since I made a cherry clafouti for the first time this summer, I've wondered if there was a way to downsize the recipe (since I don't think it would freeze and reheat well) to make an individual clafouti.  Especially since DH didn't care for it, and I certainly can't/shouldn't eat an entire pie pan of clafouti by myself before it spoils.

Fast forward to this weekend.  DH has gone out of town on a snowmobiling trip with friends.  I've willingly stayed home (not so fond of the whole group weekend experience).  In the fridge are some strawberries that aren't quite the most palatable; they are the less ripe orangish-pinkish ones in the container I bought from the store and ate all the really ripe ones first.  I'd like to make use of these firmer less juicy strawberries other than feeding them to the chickens.

Hmm.  Could I make strawberry clafouti?  Could I make it small enough to utilize one or two of those little glass casserole dishes?

The answer is yes, yes I can!

I adapted a cherry clafouti for two recipe, used my little glass dishes, and it worked great!  Tasted great too.  I ate both of them for lunch instead of using them as a dessert like the recipe intended (I had cut out some of the 'make it sweet' ingredients).

Here's how I made it, if you'd like to try with your own little baking dishes.  I imagine it would work with large ramekins, but possibly not the normal sized ones (I'd be worried about it overflowing as it cooked).

Strawberry Clafouti

About 8 large strawberries, cut in half.

1 large egg (or two smallish ones; I used pullet eggs that aren't quite up to normal size yet)

2 Tbsp sugar

1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

pinch of salt

3 Tbsp flour

1 Tbsp melted butter

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease two small baking dishes.  Divide cut strawberries equally between the two dishes.

2. In a small bowl, beat egg(s) and sugar together with a whisk until foamy.  Add the milk, vanilla and salt, whisk well.  Add the flour and whisk until smooth.  Add melted butter and whisk lightly.

3. Pour mixture into baking dishes.  Set dishes on a small cookie sheet and put into oven.  Bake about 25 minutes (mine came out a little rubbery, which I didn't mind but if you like it more custardy I'd check after about 23 min and adjust as needed).

4. Remove from oven.  Put dishes on wire rack and cool about 5 minutes before serving.

October Wrap-up

 With processing DH's latest buck, plus all the normal day to day things on my docket, I'm getting this post written up almost a week later than I'd hoped.  C'est la vie. This is a busy season.

The garden is done, as in everything harvested, for the year.  I still need to pull tomato cages, stakes, and my bean pole and get them stored in the shed for the winter.  Also need to disconnect hoses and sprinklers and likewise store those.  Hoping the weather holds long enough that DH can get the garden turned under before the Fall rains make the ground too wet for tilling.

Not the best potato year, but I'll take what I can get.  Definitely a better yield than 2024.

Also not that great for squash and pumpkins, but that was more to do with deer, raccoons, wood chucks and skunks gnawing on them as they ripened rather than low production from the plants themselves.  I'm going to have to get more aggressive with critter control in 2026.

My adherence to the walking challenge I wanted to participate in wasn't a whole lot better the second half of October than it was the first half.   Some of my walks ended up being in the dark, in the woods, walking slowly bent over with a flashlight in hand searching for blood trail.  Heart pounding, yes, but not in the calorie burning way of a steady tempo upright walk. 

Here are a few pictures from daytime walks:

We've had some hard frosts, which have taken out all my flowers with the exception of the very hardy chrysanthemums.  I managed to save the last of the dahlia blossoms and bring it into the house to enjoy for a few days before it, too, faded away.  Now I need to get the tubers dug up and in storage.

I used my biggest pumpkin from this year's garden as my jack o lantern pumpkin for Halloween.  It was still quite green when I harvested it a few weeks prior, and was not quite orange when I carved it on the 30th.  

Didn't really matter once the sun went down on Halloween and I had a candle lit inside of it.  Looked 'regular' then.  LOL.

When I carved it, I saved the pieces cut from the eyes, nose and mouth.  Those I peeled, diced, steamed until tender, then pureed.  It came to exactly one cup of pumpkin puree, and I used that to make a batch of a dozen pumpkin muffins for breakfast (DH cooked venison tenderloin in sauteed onions to go with our muffins that day).  Six were 'plain' for DH, and six I added mini chocolate chips to for myself.  Of course I forgot to take a picture of them until after breakfast, which is why there's only seven muffins shown.

Here is my recipe, adapted long ago from a Betty Crocker zucchini muffin recipe and then reduced to yield only a dozen muffins rather than 24 since DH and I definitely do not need to eat two dozen muffins between us!  (I used to make 24 muffins when the kids were little and all still living at home.)

Pumpkin Muffins
1 cup pumpkin puree
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup veggie oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 12 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves

(You can also add 1/2 cup chopped nuts and/or 1/2 cup chocolate chips/mini chocolate chips if you have them on hand and your family likes them.)

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease 12 muffin cups. 

Mix pumpkin, sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs in a large bowl.  Stir in the remaining ingredients until just moistened, you don't want to over stir or your muffins won't have those nice domed tops. 

Fill each muffin cup about 3/4 full.  Bake 20-25 minutes or until tops are light brown and spring back when touched lightly.

Cool 10 minutes in pan on wire rack, then remove muffins from pan and serve.

Apparently I'm the Weird One

 Indulge me in a funny little story, and I'll give you a 'custom' recipe at the end.  

Last weekend, I got a text from DD2.  (Which reminds me, I should do an update on DD2--big positive things have happened to her this year!)  She asked for my no bake cookie recipe saying "I thought I had it written down, but I can't find it anywhere.  And none of the ones online have coconut in them."

To which I replied "That's because coconut in no bakes is something I started doing many years ago at your Dad's request."

Then I told her that the coconut came from DH's fond memory of his childhood friend's (the friend with the appliance/home furnishings store at which we buy all our household brand-new big stuff) mother's no bake cookies.  Only she called them 'haystacks' and used no cocoa powder, but lots of peanut butter and coconut in them.  As an adult, DH had lost his fondness for peanut butter, and asked me once upon a time to add coconut to my regular no bake cookie recipe. (side note: all the haystack recipes I've seen use chow mien noodles, but DH insists these haystacks did NOT have chow mien noodles only oats.)

So, every time since then (looking back, I realized it had been definitely more than 22 years, and since DD2 is only 27, she doesn't remember any other way) I have put coconut in my no bake cookies unless we are out of coconut.  And since it's long been my goal to never run out of pantry staples, it's been pretty rarely that I've made 'normal' no bake cookies in this century.

DD2 then texted me back: "I can't believe the coconut is just a Dad preference.  I always thought that was normal for no bakes and have argued the point with friends before because no bakes without coconut are weird to me. But apparently I'm the weird one here."

Which gave us both a good laugh.  But, if you think about it, this is a great example of how our belief system is shaped by what we experience as kids. What we consider normal versus abnormal or weird.

I did let her know how much coconut to put in a to-everyone-but-her normal recipe for no bakes.  She made them for her new housemates and guests (they were having a moving in party), all of whom thought they were the neatest take on no bake cookies ever.  

Here's *my* (and DD2's!) no bake cookie recipe:

2 cups sugar

1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)

1/2 cup milk

pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup cocoa powder

3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

1/2 cup shredded coconut*

3 cups rolled oats (or quick oats, if you prefer less 'meaty'/chewy cookies

Top a cooling rack (or two if you don't have a large cooling rack) with waxed paper.

Put the first four ingredients in a medium-large saucepan, and heat over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until butter is melted and the mixture comes to a boil.  Boil and stir one minute.

Shut off burner, and stir in vanilla. Then stir in cocoa and peanut butter until the peanut butter is melted and mixture is smooth.  Add the coconut and oats, stirring until completely combined with the hot ingredients.

Using a large table spoon (like you'd eat with), place cookie mixture by spoonfuls onto the waxed paper.  Let sit until firm and cool.

 * if I'm a little short on oats, I add more coconut to make up the difference.  This helps keep the cookies from being too runny, yet I can still make a batch rather than miss out for want of a half-cup or less of oats.

Cherry Clafouti

 Recently, I tried my hand at making a cherry clafouti.  I'd never made one, never even tasted one before, but it was something that had been on my radar for a number of years.  A few weeks ago, after learning that I have a tart cherry tree, someone asked me if I'd ever tried making a cherry clafouti with my cherries.

"No," I answered, feeling a bit guilty that I'd never made use of them that way even though I'd heard of it more than a decade ago (best laid plans of mice and men sort of thing).

About two weeks later, I was in the chest freezer retrieving some meat to restock the kitchen fridge's freezer, and I noticed that I had a bag of frozen cherries from the 2023 crop still.  According to the label, it was 3 cups of pitted tart cherries.

Well, that sealed it.  Time to try cherry clafouti.  So I took that bag of cherries upstairs to the kitchen and thawed it overnight.  Meanwhile, I looked up a likely sounding recipe using tart, not sweet, cherries--I actually have a recipe for one using sweet cherries but I've never been confident enough to translate the needed sugar amount to make it tasty with tart cherries.  Then I made a plan for breakfast the following morning.

I confess, I was a bit nervous not knowing how this clafouti would turn out.  Even if it turned out exactly as the recipe described (I was using thawed cherries rather than fresh ones that the recipe called for, and a slightly larger amount), would I even like it?  It's technically an egg dish, and eggs are something I either love or hate, depending on how they're cooked and the resultant texture.

So, how did it come out?  Did I like it?  Will I ever make another clafouti again?

It was delicious!  Definitely a recipe success!  Even though DH complained that it 'wasn't all that good', he ate a quarter of it.  Actually slightly more than a quarter, because, as you can see by the photo above, I cut it kind of off center.  Upon questioning, he said it wasn't great because he likes meat with his breakfast, and it wasn't meat.  Ugh. Hello, macho man, eggs are meat.

Myself, I ate the other quarter! I loved not only the flavor, but the texture was spot on for the acceptable egg dish category.  In fact, the texture reminded me very much of my favorite dish I would get when we would travel to the Upper Peninsula and go out for breakfast at a little local cafe (that unfortunately, isn't there anymore as it closed down a few years ago).  

This recipe is most definitely a keeper.  In fact, I'm thinking that with a reduction of the sugar, it would probably also be excellent made with blackberries.  I will have to remember to try that in August, when the blackberries are in season (out in the woods and in a corner of our field).

I do have to say, it was awesome fresh and warm.  Leftover the next day and reheated, it was still pretty good.  The third day, when I finished off the last piece, it had gotten pretty rubbery.  So, in the future, definitely eat it all right away, LOL.

Since I followed an online recipe pretty much exactly (except my cherries were pitted and thawed), I'm not going to type it out here.  I will just post a link to the original site that I got it from.

Cherry Clafouti

The Ugly Biscuit

 This is actually a post I'd intended to write years and years ago.  According to my drafts folder here, I wrote out the title (and didn't type any body) back in the Fall of 2020.  At the time I had made biscuits earlier in the day, was reminded of what my kids always called the last biscuit made in the batch, and thought I'd compose a post in regards to that.

So, life happened, the post didn't get written, and here we are in Spring of 2025.  I made biscuits and gravy for breakfast the other day, ate the Ugly Biscuit, and remembered this intended post of long ago.  

Indulge me in a bit of nostalgia, and I'll include my biscuits and gravy recipe, LOL.

For decades (3+ decades,) I have made biscuits from scratch.  And no matter how many times I've made the same recipe, I can never quite get it to come out with all biscuits the exact same diameter and thickness.  Being that I use a biscuit cutter, they are all uniform size/diameter until I get to the last bit of dough.  

But that last one?  It's typically hand shaped because it's a tad too little dough to roll to the same thickness as the others and be big enough around to use my cutter on. Or, sometimes, that last chunk of dough would roll and make a biscuit, but that would leave some dough around the edges that wasn't enough to make smaller biscuit that's big enough to not burn while cooking but if stuffed into the biscuit cutter with the just cut biscuit would make that biscuit too thick to cook all the way through in the same time as the others on the pan, so I just free form a slightly bigger around biscuit with my hands. Or, sometimes I can take the remaining amount of dough and gently pat it into the biscuit cutter so it is perfectly round and not too thick, but being that it was patted and not rolled, the top isn't smooth like the others.  

Thickness is important, so it cooks evenly and for the same amount of time as the other biscuits on the pan.  Diameter is not as essential. And so, in any pan of biscuits I make, there's always one a little smaller or a little lumpier or a hair larger around than the rest.

That's the Ugly Biscuit.  Probably not a politically correct term, possibly a biscuit body-shaming phrase, but there it is.

Somewhere along the way, one of my kids dubbed that runty or bigger or less-than-smooth (or both!) biscuit as the Ugly Biscuit.  The other kids (and DH) picked up on the moniker, and so forevermore, in every batch of biscuits I make, there is always an Ugly Biscuit.  

It cooks fine.  It has the same yummy texture as the rest of the biscuits.  It tastes just like the other biscuits.  But it's not the other biscuits.  It's the Ugly Biscuit.  And therefore it's special (and we must fight over it, LOL!)

Biscuits and Gravy

For the biscuits:

combine 2 cups all purpose flour with:

1/4 cup lard (or shortening)

1 Tbsp sugar

1 Tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt 

until all the lard/shortening is mixed in.  

Then add 3/4 cup milk and stir until a soft dough forms.  If sticky, add a little more flour.

Knead on a lightly floured surface 20-30 times.  Then roll out 1/2" thick and cut with a biscuit cutter (mine is not quite 3" around; you can also use an inverted glass of same diameter).  Place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake in 450 degree oven for 10-12 minutes until golden brown.

Meanwhile. . . make the gravy.  I usually get to the part of the biscuit recipe where all ingredients but milk are combined, and stick my pork sausage in a pan to brown while I do the rest of the biscuit recipe.

Sausage gravy:

1 pound pork breakfast sausage, crumbled into a skilled and cooked over medium heat until brown.  DO NOT DRAIN!!!

Then add 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter and heat until butter is melted.

Then stir in 1/2 cup flour, and about 1 cup of milk until the milk and flour are combined. 

Slowly add more milk, lots of milk.  I'd estimate 2-3 more cups of milk. I confess I don't measure it, I just add some, stir in, add some more until it's a certain depth in my pan which I know will cook down to the thickness I want.   

Season with salt and pepper to taste, and stir until it comes to a boil.  Then turn heat to medium-low and let simmer, stirring occasionally until it thickens to the desired texture.  Typically if I pop the biscuits in the oven just before adding the milk to the sausage mixture, the gravy is thickened and ready about the same time the biscuits are done cooking.

Soggy Morning

The forecast for Wednesday was WET with a good possibility of strong storms in the evening hours depending on if the sun ever came out that day and how much the temperature rose. 

Morning was definitely spot on; with pouring rain and thunder rumbling like the sound of a tractor pulling an empty gravity wagon back and forth on the road in front of my house.  Horses were going to have to stay in the barn, as the air temperature was hovering just above the freezing mark and it was going to be impossible to put the horses outside without them getting drenched to the skin in the rain.  I didn't want anyone to get chilled.

So, rather than turning them out after their breakfast had been eaten, I decided I would stay in the house and do some house chores in the morning, then go to the barn after lunch and (hopefully) turnout horses during the break in the rain we were supposed to get midday.  It's always easier to clean stalls while the horses are outside, so I just flip-flopped my typical stalls-in-the-morning, house-in-the-afternoon schedule.

DH had been hinting on Tuesday about wanting some macadamia nut cookies, and this rainy morning was a perfect time to make some.  Thankfully, Tuesday I had planned ahead and taken a stick of butter out of the fridge to warm up and soften.

The first step in making the cookies was to gather the ingredients.  So, I began by retrieving that stick of butter from the barn-shaped cookie jar on the counter.

"What?!?" you say.  Butter in the cookie jar? Huh?

Yeah, when I want to set out a stick of butter to soften, I've learned to put it in the barn cookie jar (which, as my overflow cookie jar, rarely gets used because I don't often make double batches of cookies since the kids grew up and moved to houses of their own).  Otherwise The Yarn Thief will jump up on the counter, no matter which counter I put the butter on (or try to hide it under a dish towel), and lick/eat it.  She didn't used to jump on counters at all, but in the last handful of years she has developed the bad habit of doing it when I'm outside, or at night when DH and I are sleeping.  Always when there's nobody nearby to discipline her for it.

Getting the container of macadamia nuts out of the pantry, I looked at the level of the contents and suspected I was going to be short on the needed amount of nuts.  Bummer.  What could I sub in for the lacking macadamias?  

Walnuts!  Walnuts I have plenty of on hand, and they sounded like they would go well with macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips.  So I altered my recipe a tad and made Macadamia Walnut Cookies instead.

In the process of making the cookie dough, I used up the last of the vanilla in the little bottle I use for measuring out of when cooking and baking.  And, oops, the cabinet where I keep my steeping jar of vanilla revealed that I forgot to start another batch a month or so ago when I bought the vodka to use to soak vanilla beans in thus making vanilla extract.

Well, while the cookies were baking, I would just make use of that time to get another jar of vanilla beans steeping.  And, heck, while I was at it, and because the bottle of vodka is enough to make two batches of vanilla and I had plenty of vanilla beans on hand, why not just get two jars going?

Which is how I, all by myself, went through an entire bottle of vodka that morning.  I'm practically a teetotaler, so DH of course had to tease me about that empty bottle sitting on the kitchen island. . . 

The sun never did come out on Wednesday, although the rain stopped for a couple of hours.  It resumed again around 8:00 p.m. in the form of thunderstorms and kept up most of the night.  Based on how much fuller the horses' water trough were Thursday morning than on Tuesday evening when horses last had access to them, I'm guessing we got somewhere in the range of 5-6 inches of rain in about 36 hours.

Macadamia Walnut Cookies

(For macadamia nut cookies I use the basic Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip recipe, but instead of chocolate chips I use white chocolate chips and add 1 cup macadamia nuts.)

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened

1/2 cup shortening or lard (I use lard since I'm very sensitive to soy as I get older and soy is now in just about all brands of shortening)

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup white (granulated) sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 1/4 cup all purpose flour (I use unbleached)

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup white chocolate (vanilla) chips

1/2 cup chopped mac nuts 

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Mix together sugars, butter and shortening/lard until creamy.  Stir in the eggs and vanilla.  Add in the flour, baking soda and salt, then stir until combined.  Next add the nuts and white chocolate chips and stir enough to evenly distribute through dough.  Place on to ungreased cookie sheets by rounded spoonfuls.

Bake at 375 degrees for approx. 9-11 min until edges are browned. (Baking time varies by oven; my old one was 10-11 minutes, the newer one seems to get it done in 9 minutes.)  Remove from cookie sheets and cool on wire racks.

Yeehaw, Hang on to Your Hats!

 We had quite a storm blow through yesterday evening.  Not unexpected at all, in fact, it hit just about the exact time the meteorologists had been predicting for two days.  So we were ready for it.

As dinner was cooking in the oven (Husband's Delight, I'll put the recipe at the bottom of this post), I ran out to the barn and put evening feed in the horse's stalls, anticipating that I would need to bring them in a little early.

Ran back to the house as the timer on the oven was just finishing up.  DH and I sat down to salad and Husband's Delight, me keeping an eye on the darkening sky to the south.  

I gulped down the last few bites on my plate, then jumped up and headed out to the barn.  Just as I got there, my phone went off in a tornado warning alert.  Of course it said to seek shelter immediately, to which I replied (yes, out loud) "I will, just as soon as I get horses in." Because that's how it works when you have a farm.  Livestock first, then yourself.

I was to the mares' pasture gate (as the Poetess is always the first horse to come in--alpha mare that she is), where both mares were standing to meet me, when I heard the storm sirens in the village (6+ miles away) go off.  And then the wind kicked up.  Oh boy, here we go!

DH met me part of the way to the barn and took the Poetess from me so I could run back and get the LBM.  By the time I got to the same spot with her, he met me again with both of the geldings' halters.  I went to the their pasture, and quickly haltered one, pulled him through the gate and DH was back again, ready to receive the lead rope.  The last horse was anxious to get in by then, looking worriedly off to the south and waiting practically smashed at the gate for me to come in and grab him.

We got all the horses in their stalls and the barn shut up tight, then speed walked into the wind back to the house.  I had just pulled my muck boots off in the garage and decided (fool that I am for a good storm), to head out onto the front porch in my stocking feet to watch the front roll in, when it hit.

And man, did it hit good!  Straight line winds right out of the south and driving rain coming completely sideways.  Forget going on the front porch, it was like walking into a firehose!  So I went into the house instead, just in time to see (through the kitchen windows) the little side table go scooting across the entire length of the front porch (about 30') driven by the wind.  

Looking out the other windows, you couldn't see hardly anything the rain and wind were coming so hard.  I did notice that we were missing the little plastic toddler sized playset that sits in the backyard closest to the house.  It had been in the yard a few minutes ago, when DH and I entered the garage, but now it was missing.

The electricity blinked off and back on twice, then went off for good.  As of this writing (over 17 hours later), it is still off.  

About fifteen minutes after it hit, the leading edge of the storm had passed and the wind let up enough that we could see through the rain, I located that playset.  In pieces, starting out near the chicken coop and ending towards the field, about 50 yards from where it had originally sat.

playset pieces scattered from the backyard to the shop

Later, once the wind had died off and the rain slowed to a drizzle, DH and I went out to check on the horses and chickens (stubborn chickens had not wanted to go into their coop before the storm), and to assess damages.

Horses, horse barn and fencing: Fine.

Chickens and coop: Fine (all chickens huddled on their roost by then, LOL).

DH's shop: lots of water inside because the south facing door had been damaged by the wind hitting it full force.  South door has a huge dent and was raised about 10" by the force, and the east facing door is bent outward from the pressure inside the building.  We're going to have to put in our first ever claim on our homeowner's insurance.

House: lost a long piece of fascia of  the peak of the South gable.  Also several pieces of soffit partially ripped off on the front porch and the piece of soffit closest the door that goes from the garage to the front porch is all mangled and punched up into the garage attic (again, extreme air pressure).  A window screen ripped off a living room window is bent up and seems to have a piece of the window edging itself still attached.  Add that to the insurance claim.  A wooden chair that lives on the front porch was thrown up against the railing by the wind so hard that the backrest broke off.  All other porch/deck/patio furniture moved around, some flipped, but nothing else damaged.

Shed and garden/grape arbor: Fine

Trees: all the trees around the house and yard look fine, including the dead one leaning towards the utility pole that the electric company was supposed to have their contractor remove last Fall. In the northeast corner of the field, near the entrance to the 'north road' in our woods, a very large, tall, tree has the top completely broken out of it.  We'll have to examine it close up to determine if we need to take the entire tree down or let it be and see if it recovers.

This morning, the temperature is almost 40 degrees cooler than it was yesterday, with winds now coming from the north.  We have the generator on at the house so DH can have internet to work from home, and we have heat, lights, water, and the fridges and freezers can stay cool. We'll run the generator all day (or until the power is restored) then shut it off at bedtime to save fuel and have quiet for sleeping.  

There's no power in the barn though, so I strapped on my handy headlamp and cleaned stalls by its meager light.

selfie with headlamp

not the greatest stall cleaning light, but it does the job

(note shadow from my phone while taking the picture!)

HUSBAND'S DELIGHT

(recipe originally found in a magazine by my aunt in the early 1980's)

1 pound ground beef

6 ounces sour cream

3 ounces cream cheese

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp sugar

15 ounce can tomato sauce

1/2 cup chopped onion

10 ounces wide egg noodles

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Set cream cheese out in a small bowl to soften for an hour (or soften on warm setting of microwave)

2. Cook ground beef and onion until meat is browned.  Meanwhile, cook the egg noodles until tender.

3. To the meat and onion, add seasonings and tomato sauce.

4. Drain noodles.

5. Add sour cream to the softened cream cheese and mix well.

6. In a greased 9" x 13" baking dish, layer half the noodles, then half the meat sauce, then half the cream sauce.  Then layer remaining meat sauce, remaining cream sauce, and remaining noodles.  Top with the shredded mozzarella.

7. Cover dish with foil and bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

 It's been ages since I posted a recipe on here. Clicking on that category, apparently it's been more than 5 years(!!) since I posted a recipe.  Waaaay too long.  I still cook, every day, from scratch, but somewhere a few years ago I lost my cooking mojo and it has been a chore rather than a fun thing.  So much so that when I list how many hours in a day I do 'work' at home, I include cooking time in the same way as washing dishes or doing laundry or mopping the floors or cleaning the bathroom.  You know, the chores.  Not the fun and relaxing stuff like reading, sewing, knitting, picking flowers to bring inside to make things pretty. . .

Every now and then I do feel a little adventurous in the kitchen, and I have added some new things to my cooking repertoire, but not like it used to be.  This recipe that I'm about to share isn't actually new.  It's really one I've had for years, but haven't actually made in several years for some reason.

Recently, however, I got the hankering for a strawberry cream cheese coffee cake.  Totally not the right time of year, in Michigan, for strawberries.  But, thanks to preplanning while they were in season, I have a stash of them down in the chest freezer (along with cherries, blueberries, rhubarb. . .)  So I didn't have to tell myself "that sounds good, but it'll have to wait for June 2024 to get here before I can make it."  Nope, I grabbed a pre-measured baggie of sliced, frozen strawberries out of the freezer and made myself a yummy coffee cake!

The recipe is an adaptation of one for Blueberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake from the 2005 edition of Taste of Home's Quick Cooking Annual Recipes.  I just swapped out strawberries for the blueberries.  It's also delicious with blueberries, and, if I remember next summer, I want to try it with mulberries too.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

2/3 cups sugar

1/4 cup butter

1 egg

2 cups plus 2 Tbsp flour, divided

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2  cup milk

1 cup fresh or frozen strawberries (don't thaw first if you're using frozen)

3 ounces cream cheese, cut in small cubes

Topping:

2 Tbsp sugar

2 Tbsp flour

1 Tbsp cold butter

In a medium to large size bowl, cream the sugar and butter.  Beat in the egg.

In a separate, small bowl, mix the 2 cups flour, baking powder and salt.

To the larger bowl with the creamed mixture, alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk, stirring well after each addition.

In the now empty small bowl, toss the strawberries in the 2 Tbsp flour.  Add the strawberries/flour and the cream cheese to the batter in the large bowl, and fold together. Pour into a greased 8" x 8" baking dish.

Mix the topping ingredients in the again empty small bowl (like how I'm not giving you 2 extra bowls to wash by reusing the small one?) until crumbly, then sprinkle over the batter in the baking dish.

Bake in a preheated 375-degree (F) oven for 40-45 minutes until cake tests done.  Let cool slightly, then eat!

I was actually in such anticipation of that first, warm, fruity bite, that I forgot to take a picture of the finished coffee cake.  I remembered much later, after it had cooled off and doesn't look quite as mouth watering.  That's one thing you can count on at this little place here: what you see is what things actually look like; there's no staged photos or perfectly cleaned/decorated settings.  It's life in it's hectic, messy glory. If I have a coffee cake sitting on my (stained by grape juice) kitchen island that I just remembered to take a picture of, you get a probably not perfectly lit picture of a coffee cake in it's pan (missing a quarter of the cake) on my stained island.  C'est la vie.

Some Frugal Things

 With prices jumping mightily in the past year, and some kitchen staples really skyrocketing lately, I thought it might be a good time for me to talk about some frugal things that I do.  Some of which I've been doing for so long that I don't even think about them as being frugal.

If you look at the sidebar to the right, there's a whole category for frugal things, but to save you sifting through almost 12 years of content, I'll highlight and direct link to a few.

I typically make my own bread.  Here's a post from way back when the blog was  new and I talked about how I make my bread.

Also make my own laundry soap.  That's been going on for over 20 years, and with the newer washing machines, I use even less soap per load than when I wrote the post.  (Just skimmed that post and apparently my photos disappeared.  Sorry for the lack of illustrations, but the info is all there.)

We don't go through nearly as much paper towels and other people do, apparently. I'd always bought them in large 8 packs, and didn't really keep track of how long they were lasting.  But I never ran out, at least not until when DS1 & family lived with us from late 2014 to early 2016.  When they moved out it became very apparent that DH and I don't use paper towels much; suddenly a roll of paper towel lasted over a month instead of barely (and sometimes not even) a week.  I wipe up lots of spills with washable towels or rags.  And the rags are either old t-shirts, cut up, or old bath- or hand towels that have gotten thin or ripped or otherwise retired from use in the bathroom.  If I'm wiping up really gross stuff, there's no guilt in tossing the rag into the trash; there's always more rags as things get worn out.  And when they're not gross, all rags just go into the laundry to be cleaned for reuse.

We do use tissues, although I prefer, if I'm having a really runny nose like from allergies or working outside, to just tuck a handkerchief into my pocket and use that.  It can hold a lot more than a tissue, is quickly made from fabric (some I all ready had), and is easy to toss into the washing machine with other laundry.  Here's a couple posts I did years ago on making handkerchiefs.

As far as cleaning solutions go, white vinegar is my cleans everything.  There's a spray bottle kept under the kitchen sink that is 50% white vinegar and 50% water.  I use it for not only counters and walls and doorknobs and switches, but also for windows and mirrors.  

With the cost of eggs being astronomical at the moment (and it's winter, so my hens are barely laying), I'm digging out my egg subsititute options to use in baking in order to save the actual eggs for breakfast omelets.

The vast majority of our meals are cooked from scratch.  Check out the recipes category for recipes that mostly do not use 'a box of this and a jar of that'.  Speaking of jars of that, I so rarely buy anything in a jar that I recently came to the end of my stash of commercial jars I'd saved for using as grease jars and had to beg an empty jar for DD1.  

We have a small tv antenna mounted in the attic and watch what comes over the air 'for free'.  We don't subscribe to cable, satellite or streaming tv services.  Occasionally I will borrow a dvd from the library if there is a movie we are interested in watching.

Speaking of library, I don't often buy books.  The vast majority of books I read are borrowed from the library at no cost (free, if you overlook the fact that funding the library comes out of our property taxes).  

That's just a quick off the top of my head list.  Like I mentioned earlier, check out the sidebar for more posts under the topic of frugal.  There are lots of things I forget not everyone does, just because they've been my lifestyle forever.

Pickles

This appears to be a good cucumber year in my garden.  I planted several rows, as I typically do, hoping for enough productive plants to allow me to make at least a dozen quarts of dill pickles. This year, unlike most, the majority of the cukes I planted not only sprouted, but they grew.  Not only did they grow, but they have been prolifically blooming, with apparently awesome pollination rates based on the numbers of  pickle sized cucumbers I have been harvesting pretty much every other day for over a week and a half now.

Which means I've been canning pickles nearly every other day for more than 10 days now!  It takes more than a handful of cucumbers to fill a quart sized jar, so most canning batches have been in the two or three quart range.  After not picking cukes for three days straight, I did fill not just FIVE quart jars with dill pickles, but I also sliced the overly large cucumbers into rings that tallied up to 9 pints of hamburger dills.

So far I am totaling 13 quarts of dill pickles, plus those 9 pints of hamburger slices.  And the cucumbers are still coming!!  Thankfully the pickle recipe I use is pretty simple and quick, if you don't count the overnight soak in lime water and the three hours of soaking in fresh water after that.  After a few years of experimentation with different recipes, and a few adaptations of my own, this is the recipes I have come up with to make the flavor of dill pickles that my family likes:

Dill Pickles

freshly picked pickling cucumbers 3-5 inches in length
1/4 cup pickling lime
1/2 gallon water

Wash the cucumbers and remove the blossom from the end.  Put into a large non-metal bowl--metal will react with the lime.  (I use a plastic bowl, as the lime will leave an ugly but harmless film on glass). Mix the lime in to the water (be careful not to breathe in the lime; it's not good for your lungs) and pour over the cucumbers.  Make sure all the cucumbers can be submerged in the lime water; depending on how many cukes you have, you may need to mix up a bit more lime solution.

Let the cucumbers soak in the lime water overnight (or about 8-10 hours).  Drain off the water, rinse out the bowl, and rinse the cucumbers thoroughly to remove lime residue.  Then put the cucumbers back in the bowl, and cover with fresh, cold water.  Let soak 1 hour and repeat the drain-rinse-soak cycle twice more for a total of three hours of soaking in fresh water.

fresh water soak

Near the end of the third round of soaking, fill your water bath canner about 3/4 full and put it on the stove on high heat.  Also, in a separate large pan or pot, make a solution of

1 cup vinegar
1 cup water
1 Tablespoon pickling salt
1/2 teaspoon turmeric

for each quart jar of pickles you will be making.  (In other words, if I have enough pickles to fill 2 quarts I use 2 cups each of vinegar and water, 2 Tbsp salt and 1 tsp turmeric.  6 quarts would need 6 cups each vinegar and water, 6 Tbsp salt and 3 tsp turmeric).

Heat this mixture to boiling, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, into each quart jar put

2 heads dill
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
as many cucumbers as you can stuff in the jar leaving 1/4 inch head space.

Let the filled jars sit in a sink of very hot water while your vinegar solution simmers.  Once the simmering time has been met, and the jars are warmed from being in the hot water, ladle the vinegar solution into the jars, removing air bubbles and leaving 1/4" head space.  Put on lids and rings, and load into your now boiling water bath canner.  Make sure jars are covered with at least one inch of water.  When canner resumes boiling, process your pickles for 15 minutes.  Remove from the canner, and let cool for at least 12 hours before testing seals.

To develop proper flavor, your pickles should age at least two weeks before eating.

Today is going to be another pickle making day; I picked 52 more little cukes yesterday afternoon.