Breastfeeding

Yeah, so I said this was a cooking blog and not a personal things blog, but with the formula recalls, and all the breast is best posts I've been reading lately, I've been thinking about it.  And it does kind of fit in with a cooking blog, being as how it is about eating.

Today I ran into an old classmate who is about ready to give up on the whole breastfeeding thing.  I am going to go see her on Saturday, to help her, or at least see if I can, before she gives it up.  I find myself on the fence, because I know that not everyone can breastfeed as easy as I did, but you know when something comes easy to you, how you can't really see how it doesn't come easy to someone else?  And so I am having issues, with putting myself in her spot, in the spot of someone who can't do it easy, to whom it isn't clicking.

I have to figure out by Saturday how to try and figure out what may be the problem, if it's a latch issue, or if its just a problem of taking too much time, and effort, while a bottle is easier. 

When I have talked to people who have latch issues, one of the things I have noticed being a common factor is the waiting to feed.  The baby has been crying, or they are doing a feed on a schedule thing.  I need to find out if this mom is doing this.  I found that if there was ever a time I didn't feed on demand, or feed at the first signs, it didn't come as easy.

Breastfeeding for me was the easiest thing I have ever done in my life.  Doing something else just didn't even come into my mind.  I loved the bond, I loved the cheapness, I loved it period.  Though, by the end, with Ciera, I was beyond done, just because she wanted to nurse so much, and she was so big.

I'm hoping to help this mom, to help her find her breastfeeding groove.  To be honest though, I'm not doing it because I hate formula, or because it's recalled, or because I think it's best.  I'm doing it because this mom is poor, and formula is expensive.  I'm doing it because I want to be able to help someone who really wants to breastfeed.  And I'm doing it because I'm hoping someone else can find the joy I found. 

She has let me know the baby is fussy on formula, and gassy.  Hopefully this will help her with that as well.

Corn Chowder

Bart used my camera cord for his MP3 player, and so, I can't find it to upload my photos.  But I made corn chowder today.  And it turned out well.  It has no recipe though.  I can give the basics however.

I took about 5 corn cobs and took all the kernels off of them.  I tossed them into a pot of water, about 2 quarts, with a whole onion chopped up, and a handful of my dried garlic.  I boiled the cobs with all the rest of the stuff at a low simmer for about 4-5 hours. 

Once this was done, I removed all the stuff I boiled, luckily I have a strainer in my stockpot, so all I had to do was lift it up.  I remove this and added 2 cups of my frozen bacon, the stuff I use in my other recipes that I've shown here.  Then I chopped up 7 potatoes into small bite sized pieces and boiled them with the stock I made.  I boiled this for about 20 minutes, until the potatoes pretty much didn't exist anymore, but thickened the soup.  Every once in a while you got a bite of potato.  After this I added 2 cans of evaporated milk, a stick of butter that I mashed with a cup of flour(I whisked this in) and the corn that I had removed from the cobs.

After this came to a boil, I tasted it for salt content, added pepper, and added a little more garlic.  This is the point where you season it to your own taste.  It's a bit thin, not a thick stew, depending on how much water you had in the beginning, and how much it simmered down.  I had a lid on it, so it stayed pretty liquid and thin.

I added one more stick of butter, because I like the richness it adds, and then served it with bread.  It was yummy.  The kids liked it, though I added frozen mixed veggies to Ciera's to cool it down.  I am going to brain Bart tomorrow to get my cord back.  Then I will have pictures.

Break time over

Sorry about the break.  School started for Aiden, we went to Seattle, life got kind of busy, I ran out of batteries for my camera, and I'm about to start school myself, as is Bart.  Plus, we are looking for a new place to live.  All that combined led to lots of ramen noodles, and while I said I'd post everything, I'm not posting that.

Yesterday I wanted meatloaf, and had no hamburger.  So I ground up some chicken in the food processor.  Then I thought, hmm, chicken with regular meatloaf seasonings might taste weird, lets season it like a baked chicken.  Worst idea ever.  Even smothered in chicken gravy, this was not a salvageable meal.  Hello McD's value menu.

So, time to get back to the basics of cooking.  Especially since I shopped wrong this month, and we are actually on a very limited amount of food.  I haven't figured out what I did wrong, but it's time to be creative.

Last night I got some nice ears of corn from my father, who got it from his boss.  So I shucked it, then I got all the kernels off, and put the naked cobs into a stock pot of water.  I chopped up an onion, tossed in some garlic, some salt, some pepper, and a little chicken base.  It is simmering away.  Later tonight, once I have gotten every ounce of flavor out of that, I will add the corn I got off those cobs, some chicken, a little green chile, and some potatoes.  It will be a chicken corn chowder.  Oh, and with my onions, I leave the skins on when I am making a stock, it makes the color nicer.

So, that will be coming along, and while I make it, I am taking pictures.  I will also have lots of new recipes and old recipes coming up here, because, granted she doesn't change her mind, I am going to be making all the food that will be fed to the people at my wonderful friends wedding.  I will be making appetizers, cupcakes, and I will be having so much fun doing it.  I am so excited.  I am using tried and true recipes, but I will be having a tasting for them at Christmas, so I get to make the recipes so they get to taste it all, and all will come up on this site.  So yay, lots of recipes to make.

Well, Aiden is about out of school, and I have to go meet his schoolbus.  Tonight, we have chowder.  And I am back.

Chicken Fajita Quesadillas

We had Ciera's birthday party last weekend.  One of the snack items we supplied were these little itty bitty sweet peppers.  They were so cute, I couldn't help but buy them.  However, they didn't all get eaten, and I didn't want them to go to waste, so I made fajitas.  Then I made the fajita filling into a quesadilla.

So, I chopped up a bunch of these little peppers into thin slices, no measurements here, its as many peppers as you want to have in it.  When I use normal sized peppers, I usually use one green and one red.  Then I slice into thin slices one large onion. 

I put these into my skillet with about 2 tablespoons of oil, and I cook until slightly charred and translucent.

After this, I take chicken tenders I have boiled in taco seasoning until done.  You can use as much chicken as you want here again, I used about 10 chicken tenders.  I chopped this into small bite sized pieces, and tossed it in with the onions and peppers.  Then I added half a cup of garlic lovers salsa, though you can use the salsa of your choice.

One this was all combined and blended, I took it off the heat and put another pan on the stove.  I put a teaspoon of oil in it, and waited until it shimmered.  Then I plopped a tortilla into the pan, gently, and spun it around to make sure it was all the way coated with oil.  Then I put a handful of grated cheddar cheese on the tortilla and spread it around the whole thing.  I then took about half a cup of my fajita mixture and spread it over half.  I wated for it to get crispy on one half, and then turned it over, and got it crispy on the other.

Once this was done, I let it rest about a minute or two so that the cheese stops being quite so gooey.  Then I top it with sour cream and homemade guacamole.

YUM!!

Cheesecake

So, I was asked to do a cheesecake recipe.  I did one, and then, realized, oops, I was supposed to take pictures as I did it.  So, I have a great recipe for a super creamy, yummy, cheesecake, which, I will leave the recipe here, but I'll have to make it again, in order to take picture.  My hips will not be thanking me for this one.  (Yes, I took a bite right before I took the picture.  I have no patience, it was so good.)

2 sleeves of graham crackers, crushed
4 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup sugar

4 (8 ounce) packages of cream cheese
1 1/2 cups of white sugar
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon vanilla
1/4 cup flour

2 cups sour cream
1 cup brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease a 9 inch springform, or spray the heck out of it with pam spray for baking, with the flour added( I love that stuff).  Mix graham crackers with butter and sugar.  I did this all in my food processor.  I put the graham crackers in, made the crumbs, then tossed in the sugar and melted butter, and pulsed it until it was all combined.  Once that is done, press it in the bottom of the pan and up the sides.  I had enough to go almost all the way up the sides.

Now, for the yummy part.  Mix cream cheese and sugar until all creamy and smooth.  Then add in sour cream and vanilla.  Once this is all combined, add in the eggs one at time, just until incorporated.  At this point, yo don't want to overmix.  Add in the flour, and once again, go for creamy.  Once this is all nice and done, pour it gently into the pan with the graham crackers, because you don't want them coming off the sides of the pan.  Put this into the oven for an hour, or until a knife inserted comes out mostly clean.  Once that happens, and yes, the cheesecake should be coming almost out of the pan, mix the brown sugar and sour cream together.  Spread it carefully over the top of the cheesecake(this hides the cracks).  Turn the oven off.  Leave the cheese cake in the oven for the next hour.  At this point, I put it on the counter for an hour, and then into the fridge, because I wanted it to hurry up and set, so I could eat it.

It was good.  The top is slightly tan in color, due to the brown sugar.

Try it.  It's wonderful.  It's to die for.  It's not dense like some cheesecakes, but its not fluffy.  It is incredibly creamy.

Amazon

Hi.  You might have noticed the huge amount of Amazon.com links on my site.  That's because it is a way for me to make money.  Yes, that icky word, money.  I am not going to ask for you to help me out money wise by putting up a tip jar, or begging, or letting you know just how bad my finances are(you don't want to know, it's too scary.)  I will, however, ask, hey, if you use Amazon.com to buy anything, maybe you can think of me, and come to my site, get to Amazon.com through one of my links, and then you are shopping at my Amazon.com store.  I then get a very small percentage of the money you spent.  That way, you are getting what you were going to get anyhow, and you help out me and my family.  It's a win win situation.

Thanks.

Cinnamon rolls

Ok, this is an easy one.  I'm going to need to repost my simple bread recipe, but I don't have the pictures at the moment, so use you imagination.  I will make a whole post about the simple bread in a day or two.

So, make the simple bread recipe, and let rise for an hour.

3 cups warm water
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon yeast
1 teaspoon salt
6 cups of flour

Mix everything but the flour together in a large bowl.  Let sit for 10 minutes.  Then add in the flour, a cup at a time, stirring after each addition with a wooden spoon, until its too hard to stir.  Then flop it all out on a floured tabletop and knead until smooth and elastic, adding flour as needed, about 5 minutes.  Put in well greased large bowl, cover with a tea towel and let raise until doubled, about an hour.

Ok, once you have your dough, choose how big you want your cinnamon rolls.  I was taking mine to class, so I made mine small, 2-4 bites each.  So, I took my dough, and seperated it into fourths.  I took each fourth and rolled it out.

I mixed in a separate bowl 2 cups of brown sugar, 1 cup white sugar, and 4 tablespoons of cinnamon.

On each rolled out fourth, I took half a stick of soft butter, smeared it all over the fourth.  Then I spread the cinnamon sugar mixture over it.  Then I rolled it into a tight roll, and sliced the roll into even pieces.

I put this then into a greased pan.  I didn't want to do too many more dishes, so I used a disposable pan.

Then I let them rise another hour.  After that, I put them in the oven at 350 for about 8 minutes, then I mixed 1 part brown sugar to one part heavy whipping cream, and for this batch it was 4 cups of each, and poured half over each pan, since I had two pans.  You would just want to pour an even amount over each batch of rolls.  Then I put it back in the oven until the top was golden brown, about 10 more minutes.  Then let it set 30 minutes before flopping it over, like an upside down cake.  Gooey carmely cinnamon rolls.

No cooking

Ok, I wanted to not have a lot of days where I didn't post, but wow, Aiden got sick, and I forgot about the blog completely.  A little bit later today, I will be posting my cinnamon rolls.  I made them for class on Wednesday.  It's finals week, so I'm having time constraints there too.

Biscuits and Gravy

This is a hard one, because:

• I don't measure with my gravy
• I phoned it in with the biscuits, and used canned ones
• I don't measure with my gravy
• I didn't take as many pictures, this was my bad day, the day my car broke down, and I was focused on getting dinner on the table, not pictures.  Oops.

Ok, so I'm going to try to do this anyhow.  Normally we make homemade biscuits, and oh how I wish we had this time, because the refrigerated kind were wrong.  Wrong flavor, wrong texture, just wrong.  I need my flaky, made with lard or butter, yummy, drop biscuits for this recipe.  Though to anyone who asks, no, you didn't see me using lard, nope, no way, not me.  (I only use lard in biscuits that are for a savory application.  If people are going to be eating them sweet at all, no way, it's butter all the way.)

So, I had a pound of sausage left from our trip to the butcher a few months ago.  We didn't go this month, and I am regretting it, so I have big plans for the butcher in September.

Ok, so 1 pound of sausage, and I add to that a half a stick of butter.  I find that the sausage I get from the butcher is a little too lean for making the roux later on.  So, I fry up my sausage with a little butter, breaking it up as I go, so that it is in little pieces.

Once the sausage is cooked, I add the flour.  It's supposed to be an equal amount of flour to grease, so I add about 6-8 tablespoons of flour.  I played with the recipe this time, and added half regular flour and half chicken flour.  Chicken flour is something you can buy in bulk if you have a store with a huge bulk section, like we do at Winco, just know that it is a little salty, or you can buy chicken flour by Bisquick.  I did the latter, put it in one of my storage containers, and then added regular flour to it, diluting the salt content.

Ok, so at this point we have sausage, butter, and flour in a pan.  I make sure the flour has soaked up all the grease, and that the sausage is well coated.  If you have used the chicken flour, you will see it is a little yellow in color.  I cook this on high heat for about 3-5 minutes, until it kinds of melts and is less flour like, and more paste like, this way the flour taste is gone.  I suggest most people do this on med to med-high because it can burn really easy.  My high isn't very hot.

Once you get to this point, you need to add milk.  I add whole milk, but that is mostly because whole milk is what we keep in our house.  I will pour in about 2 cups of milk at this point.  Then I cook it, constantly stirring, letting the flour get off the sausage and into the milk, and all the stuff that stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Now, once it comes to a boil, you are at the peak of its thickening.  If it seems really thick, add a little more milk, about 1/4 cup at a time.  Wait for the boil, and see where you are.  If you like a thick gravy, stop adding milk when it's as thick as you like.  If you like thin gravy, keep adding milk until it is as thin as you want.  Never add too much, because while you can always add, you can never take away.

Once you get to this place, where your gravy is as thick or thin as you like, I'm a medium girl, I want it thick enough to be smooth and creamy and thick, but thin enough that it drips down the sides of my biscuits.

Ok, back to subject at hand.  Here is where you add salt.  I start with a teaspoon and move on from there.  Taste constantly.  Add salt slowly, remembering that the chicken flour, if you used it, has salt in it.  One it is salty enough, I move to the pepper.  I like to use a course grind on my pepper grinder, and put about 2 teaspoons of pepper in.  Then I put about 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne in.  After that, because I love garlic, I add a teaspoon or so of garlic powder.  At this point, gravy is totally your own, it's the way you like it.  Sometimes I will add sage, because I love sage and sausage.  Other times I want it to have extra zing, so I use more cayenne.  I always add dried parsley, because I like the way it looks.  Sometimes I will add onions at the browning of the sausage.  Gravy is unique.  Once you have the basic recipe, its all yours to play with.

Well, that's it.  That's my gravy.  Like I said, I phoned it in with the biscuits, but the gravy, that's mine, all mine, 100% authentic.

Enjoy.

Slow cooked Beef

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, between school and my serpentine belt going out on the freeway while I was driving to school, I didn't feel like doing anything.  I made biscuits and gravy, and I think I can do that recipe tomorrow.

Here are the pictures of the slow cooked beef.  I got sliced beef for carne asada this time, and next time, I'm just going for a full chuck roast.  The reason, the meat seemed a little too dry, because there wasn't enough fat in it.  A good chuck roast has plenty of fat, and therefore more tender, moist beef.

I put the beef into my crockpot, then tossed in some of my dried sliced garlic, a package of dried onion soup mix, 2 coffee cups of water, some alderwood smoke salt, and some pepper.  You can use regular salt if you like, I just like the hint of smokiness it gives.

I then cooked it for 10 hours in the crockpot, and when it was almost done, I mixed 4 tablespoons of cornstarch into a coffee cup of cold water, and poured it in, so that the gravy would thicken. 

I served it with mashed potatoes, but I forgot to take pictures of the potatoes, nor did I pay attention to the ingredients as they went in, I just tossed and pinched, and tasted.

I also served it with my bacon onion green beans.  I took half a cup of the precooked bacon I keep in my freezer, 3 tablespoons of dehydrated onion, and 4 cans of green beans, all drained except for one. Heat in a frying pan until hot.  YUM!

Aiden's Dump Cake

I didn't make cheesecake tonight, I actually let Aiden make his dump cake.  I also forgot to take pictures of my potatoes, but I did remember my slow cooked beef.  Here are some old pictures of Aiden making Dump Cake with the recipe.

• 1 can crushed pineapple
• 1 can cherry pie filling
• 1 box yellow cake mix
• 2 sticks butter
  
  Preheat oven to 350. Add pineapple and cherry’s to casserole pan. Sprinkle evenly with cake mix. Top with cubed butter. Bake until golden brown on top.
  
  
  

Chicken pot pie

I got so busy making this, I forgot pictures.  I will have 3 pictures up when the meal is done, but it's not the step by step I normally do, it's more all in the casserole, then with the biscuits on top, then cooked.

Basic white sauce
Frozen mixed veggies
6 boiled chicken tenders
1 package of scalloped potatoes
2 packages of  refrigerated southern style biscuits

View full recipeMix basic white sauce (1 tsp of chicken stock concentrated base added while making it, plus the package from the potatoes, making it kind of cheesy), chicken, veggies, and potatoes. Pour into a 9x13 casserole.  Top with biscuits.  Cook until biscuits are cooked and potatoes are soft, about 30 minutes.  About halfway through, you will notice the biscuits are browned.  This is the only "hard" part of the recipe.  You need to flip all the biscuits over, so they get brown on the other side.  Makes it super yummy.  We had no leftovers last night.


White sauce

4 tbs butter
4 tbs flour
1½ cups milk

View full recipeCombine 4 tablespoons butter and 4 tablespoons flour in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in 1½-cup milk and cook over medium heat until thick and smooth.

Tuna Salad Sandwiches

I made tuna salad sandwiches for lunch today, so here's the recipe.

I start by grating a small onion into a bowl.  I add 1 can tuna, half a cup of shredded cheese and mayonnaise to taste.  I grate the onion because I don't like big harsh bites of onion to come at me when I eat this,  the mayonnaise, this you have to experiment with, either you like mayo or not, and you want a wet sandwich or a dry one.  I like mine wet, with lots of mayo.  I use about 3/4 a cup.  Then you toss in three hard boiled eggs, chopped.  Mix it all together, and YUM!

Once you are done, just spread it between two pieces of bread, I use white bread, because this is one of those yummy comfort foods to me, and wheat bread would ruin it.

I'll be posting the cheesecake recipe a poster asked for on Sunday, when I make it and my slow cooked beef sandwiches.  That will make for a full Sunday dinner.  Slow cooked beef sandwiches, mashed potatoes, green beans with onion and bacon, and cheesecake.  I'll post the recipes over a matter of days, not just all on Sunday however.