For Sunday Dinner (afterwards). Served with Butter Pecan ice cream.
The Recipe:
http://www.pepperplate.com/sharedrecipe.aspx?id=2d2c91c6-478e-46b9-8ab5-29725fd27ebc
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I came across this Strawberry-Rhubarb Skillet Coffee Cake recipe from Southern Living and thought I would give it a try. I love cooking with my cast iron skillets and have recently started using them to bake. Cast iron skillets are the “bomb.” They are versatile, naturally non-stick (if seasoned and oiled regularly) and provide a good source of iron.
It turned out great and it was yummy (ask the family)! We added a scoop of vanilla ice cream to make it a special treat for Sunday Dinner dessert.
The recipe directions on the website were a bit confusing, but I have edited/adjusted them for you:
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Finally decided it was time to harvest the first crop of radishes. They are BIG and tasty! I’ll be planting my second crop this weekend. Going to use them in a salad with some of my leaf lettuce tonight.
Radishes planted 4/22/2012
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Ok. It’s been a while. I have been active in my garden and will do my best in the next few weeks to bring you up to speed on my projects. I’m hoping to have my sons Caleb and Koehler take over some of the editorial duties so that I can concentrate on being grumpy. Anyhoo, here is what I was working on this weekend:
Saturday morning I went over to my parent’s house to help pick strawberries and cherries. My mom, my sister-in-law, Val and I picked strawberries. We ended up with about 20 or so quarts.
Lots of Strawberries!
Now I know what it means to “cherry pick.”
Later, we picked cherries off the cherry trees (with the help of my niece and nephew). We ended up with about two big bowls. Unfortunately, I broke one of the large branches of one of the trees and we’ll need to put in a pin to keep it from breaking off.
My Dad and my nephew Boris pitted the cherries outside on the picnic table. Inside, my brother Adam and I stemmed the strawberries and my Mom sliced them.
After splitting the booty, I ended up with two tubs of cherries and 5 quarts of sliced strawberries. I mentioned to my mother that I wanted to make some jam and she suggested making freezer jam. She said it was much easier than making cooked jam and tasted just as good. I froze the cherries for a later date and decided to make strawberry jam my Sunday project.
After church on Sunday, I went to Menards to pick up pectin and jars. To my wonderful surprise, they wonderful surprise, Ball freezer jars were on clearance. I picked up some half pint and pint containers on the cheap. I was planning to use glass, but this would be better for the freezer since I would have to worry about it falling out of the freezer and shattering.
I decided that I was going to make a double batch since I had an abundance of sliced strawberries. The recipe called for 2 cups (4 cups) of mashed strawberries, 2 tbsp (4 tbsp) lemon juice and 4 cups (8 cups) of sugar. My mom recommended not using that much sugar because it was too sweet.
I cut back to about 6-7 cups of sugar. Which I think, by the way, is way too much sugar. I’m going to look for some recipes that have more fruit and less sugar. When you think about it, it has twice as much sugar as fruit. That is kind of crazy. I know that is how it is supposed to be made, but it bothers me nonetheless.
Mash them’ berries!
A little lemon juice.
Mix lemon juice with mashed berries.
SUGAR!
So you mash up the strawberries, mix in the lemon juice and add the sugar. Mix well and let stand for 10 minutes. (I put it aside thinking that the next step would take longer, but it didn’t). It only ended up sitting for about nine minutes. Next time, I’ll relax and let it sit longer before I start working on the pectin).
The fruit mixture.
Next I combined 1-1/2 cups water with two packages of Fruit Pectin in a sauce pan and brought it to a full rolling boil while constantly stirring. (Ok, I didn’t CONSTANTLY stir it, but I stirred it quite a bit. I was to boil for 1 minute. I let it go a little longer and turned off the heat and kept stirring because my strawberry mixture hadn’t sat for 10 minutes. (It probably wouldn’t have made a difference, but I was trying to follow directions!)
Mixing the pectin in the water.
Cooked fruit pectin mixture.
I then added the cooked pectin mixture to the fruit mixture and stirred for about 3 minutes.
The final mixture: Strawberry Jam.
Jam ladled into the freezer jars.
Next I ladled the freezer jam into the freezer jars and left (hopefully) ½ inch headspace to allow for expansion in the freezer. I put the lids on and put them in the refrigerator to set. After 24 hours, I am supposed to put in the freezer or use. According to the recipe, it can remain in the freezer up to 1 year and will stay good in the refrigerator up to three weeks.
The final product. Not bad for a beginner!
I ended up with 10 half pints, which what the recipe promised if you doubled it. I’m hoping Beth will make some homemade bread when she gets back from Missouri so we can try it out in style!
I ended up with two remaining quarts of strawberries, which I promptly froze. I did keep out a little so I could mix them in my breakfast shake on Monday morning.
Oh, I almost forgot. I picked about a cup of strawberries from my patch, so I worked them up and used them in the jam. I figured about a ½ cup of sliced strawberries came from the Grumpy strawberry patch.
Grumpy Strawberries.
My parents are going to New York next week and we’ll have to pick strawberries next Saturday. Maybe I’ll try the cooked method next and give it away. I think that we will be hard pressed to eat all 10 freezer half-pints in a year. I’m learning that strawberries can go a long way!
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I ordered this book because I read an article last year from Mother Earth News about planting potatoes in an old trashcan and was intrigued by the idea of doing it. I’m looking forward to planting the potatoes and attempting other projects from this book. I’m going to have to make sure I double check the city codes since my neighbor is one of Dubuque’s Finest and may disapprove of some of the more interesting endeavors contained in this tome. I’ll keep you informed as I plan out my Spring and Summer projects.
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My new book to read, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking came yesterday and I am excited to finish reading it. Around here Mrs. Grumpy is the baker of bread. She has an awesome Honey Wheat Bread recipe. Someday, she might let me share it with you.
However, I’ve been intrigued by making homemade bread, especially Artisan bread. Everyone oohs and ahhs over bread from Panera, but golly, I don’t ooh and aah over the price! The ingredients are cheap, but they get away with charging what they do because most folks are lazy and don’t want to make it themselves.
I love the smell and taste of good fresh baked bread. This book tells you how to do it yourself, but not have to spend a lot of time making it. I’m eager to read the book and try some of the recipes. I’ll keep you in the loop when I do!
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INGREDIENTS
3 (12 ounce) packages refrigerated biscuit dough
1 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 cup margarine
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease one 9 or 10 inch tube/Bundt® pan.
2. Mix white sugar and cinnamon in a plastic bag. Cut biscuits into quarters. Shake 6 to 8 biscuit pieces in the sugar cinnamon mix. Arrange pieces in the bottom of the prepared pan. Continue until all biscuits are coated and placed in pan. If using nuts and raisins, arrange them in and among the biscuit pieces as you go along.
3. In a small saucepan, melt the margarine with the brown sugar over medium heat. Boil for 1 minute. Pour over the biscuits. (NOTE: I usually used the leftover white sugar/cinnamon mixture plus enough brown sugar to make 1 cup)
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 35 minutes. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a plate. Do not cut! The bread just pulls apart.
Posted in Recipes
Some mornings I don’t want to go to all the trouble of making a big breakfast, so I make the boys Monkey Bread. Monkey Bread is so easy to make. All you need is three tubes of cheap refrigerator biscuits, sugar, brown sugar, butter and cinnamon. If you want to be creative, you can add nuts and/or raisins.
First you begin with a sugar and cinnamon mixture. (I’ll give you the recipe, don’t worry). You can put it mixture in a bag to shake, but I prefer a big bowl.
Take your biscuits and using a shears or scissors, cut your biscuits into fourths. Every once and awhile, dip your shears in water to make sure the cuts are clean and don’t stick to your shears.
Once you have a good number of cut up biscuits, shake your bowl to coat the biscuit pieces real good.
Pull the coated pieces out of your bowl and place into a well greased bundt pan. Continue cutting, coating and placing pieces in the pan until you and finished all three tubes. Make sure you are evenly spacing them while you build up in the pan.
Here is what they will look like when you are finished putting them in the pan.
Next, pour over your brown sugar/butter mixture and put in the oven.
After baking for 35 minutes it will look like this. Make sure you cool for 10 minutes in the pan, turn over onto a plate and . . .
Homemade Monkey Bread!
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Saturday was Caleb’s birthday. Originally we were going to have a party for him at the house with homemade pizza. Unfortunately, sickness was visiting most of his cousin’s, so we opted to postpone his party to another day.
Instead of going to Applebee’s with the family, Caleb decided that he wanted to have homemade Chinese for supper.
Unfortunately, I forgot how long it takes to make homemade Chinese from scratch, so instead of starting in the afternoon, I started at 5 pm. We didn’t eat until 9pm, but it was darn good!
Here is a the boys’ plates before they dug in.
I made fried rice. I did have a seasoning packet to make it, but it really isn’t that hard even without a mix. Pork egg rolls. Caleb and Koehler made assembled and Caleb deep fat fried them.
Homemade cream cheese won-tons “crab rangoons.” Beth likes them a little sweeter so I add some sugar to the cream cheese. Again Caleb & Koehler assembled them and Caleb deep fried them. Steam rice. Ho Hum.
General Tao’s Chicken and Orange Chicken. The General Tao’s was from a recipe, but I doctored up the Orange Chicken from scratch. It was ok, but I think I’ll look for a good recipe.
Sweet & Sour Chicken without the sweet or sour. I made some sweet and sour sauce, but Beth doesn’t like it with the sauce. Also, I didn’t have any chunk pineapple. Basically, I used the same fried chicken for all of the dishes, just added some different veggies and sauces. Last time (the first time) I used a recipe for some batter for the chicken and it was a mess. This time I used my southern fried chicken coating with a milk/egg wash and then fried in a pan with oil. Worked much better! And tasted much better.
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This is my first time baking cod. Usually, I bake tilapia. Used a variation of my from-scratch breading. I had some left over corn bread from Sunday dinner and mixed it with some of Beth’s bread. Baked it for 25 minutes at 400 degrees. Here is the results:
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