Recipe Review 12/10/07

So Sunday rolled around and I was on a mission! Suppers! Lunches! Munchies! I was chopping and mixing and stirring and baking...and doing a little knitting in between while watching the Packer game. It was chilly out so it was nice to warm up the house and infuse it with all sorts of good smells.

I also made some good progress on the pantry reduction project/challenge. Here’s what got used up:
1 bag (2 ½ lbs) frozen apples from 2004
1 bag cranberries from 2004
partial bag of frozen corn
bag of pinto beans from 2006
tube of ground turkey from the MIL’s

In order it was made:
Chunky Spiced Applesauce (CL Oct 07, pg 140) 7
It was my original intent to use up the frozen apples in apple butter, but I forgot. So when this recipe showed up I was like...hmm, I can also use the frozen cranberries! Since I had frozen apples I needed to modify the recipe just a tich and skip the first step of dousing in lemon juice. The cranberries were mixed with sugar, maple syrup and cinnamon and brought to a boil until they popped (that is so cool!) and then the apples are added and everything simmered till nice and mooshy. A slight application of a potato masher and ta da! Cranberry applesauce! I thought the sweetness was nicely balanced by the tart berries, and my only complaint was the little residual cranberry skins are a bit unpleasant in the mouth.

Harvest Creamy Corn "Choup" (Every Day with RR, Sept 07 pg 101)
What I like about RR’s recipes, or at least the ones I pick, is they are simple to assemble yet abundant in the flavor dept. This one was also easy to pull together. I had one modification right away - after frying the bacon, I removed them bits and drained some of the bacon grease off. I don’t like soggy bacon and I didn’t need nor want 1/8 cup of bacon grease for flavor.
Otherwise it was a pretty straight forward soup/chowder (ie "choup"). Saute onion, red pepper, zucchini and potato in bacon grease, add seasonings and flour, add chicken broth and bring to a boil and simmer. Add a cup each of cream and milk. This ended up being way to much liquid, so I cut back the milk to ½ cup. I should have also cut back the cream as I would have preferred it more chowder-y than soup. Still, I love these vegetable soups.

Pecan Topped Pumpkin Bread (CL Nov 07, pg 214)
I have not yet tasted this bread as it is nicely wrapped up and frozen for later this week. I thought I was going to miss the annual office party, but circumstances dictated otherwise. So, I planned ahead and made a couple loaves of pumpkin bread. Super easy recipe: mix wet ingredients, mix dry ingredients, combine and bake for an hour. Where I modified was I used 2 eggs for the ½ cup egg substitute. Smelled great, looked nice, and I over baked the loaves by about 5 minutes. Oh well! When all sliced up nobody will notice...

Pumpkin-Cranberry Muffins (CL Nov 07, pg 218) 8
Now I couldn’t very well make a pumpkin treat and not have *something* for the house! These muffins were the perfect thing and also super easy - wet ingredients meet dry ingredients add in cranberries and bake. What I like about both of these recipes was the minimal oil used. So often zucchini muffins, pumpkin breads, etc all use upwards of a full cup of oil and the end result is a greasy muffin. The pumpkin bread used 1/4 cup per loaf and the muffins were 1/4 cup for the whole recipe. These were moist, flavorful, and delicious (especially while still warm from the oven). I’ll be making these again.

Beef and Beer Chili (CL Sept 07, pg 216) 6*
*I will be the first to admit, I do not care for chili with ground beef in it. And I will also say, I do not care to eat anything that has come out of the MIL’s apartment. So thus it was the Hubby brought home a tube of ground turkey from the MIL’s and we now needed a way to use it up. I came across this recipe and thought perfect! HE can eat the chili for lunch! It was also my intent to make Green Chili Enchilada’s for dinner on Sunday but an emergency run to the Vet ended my cooking for the day. And so I found myself eating chili with ground stuff from the Mother in Laws.

The assembly was quick, I’ll give the recipe that. Saute the ground beef (turkey in this case) with onions and bell pepper. Add chili powder, cumin, cinnamon (my addition) and salt. Add beef broth and a bottle of beer and pinto beans. Bring to a simmer for 15 minutes then add corn meal for another 5. Serve.

A quick note about the pinto beans - I had a bag of dried beans in the cupboard and decided to use them up (I now have 2 tubs of cooked beans in the freezer waiting for a home). I soaked the beans overnight, then drained and tossed them into the slow cooker with ½ an onion, bay leaves and a clove of crushed garlic to cook on low for 6 hours. The last time I did this it worked great. HOWEVER, I forgot to get a gallon of bottled water this time and my beans ended up a bit firm. Using bottled water makes a huge difference for us, as our well water adversely affects the soaking and cooking.