Tag: cooking

Make Lemonade–or Applesauce

~ Crystal Sands ~ 3 Comments

I just finished grading two big sets of essays, and I am now waiting on a 7 x 10 thin sheet of butter to set up in the refrigerator. I’m making croissants, and it is a process. They won’t be finished until tomorrow, but I am having tea with one of my favorite humans tomorrow and wanted to make something special to go with the tea. I have only made croissants one other time, so I am a little worried that I will mess these up.

My pie crust failure at Thanksgiving has me a little off my game, but I have a great story about that sad, collapsed pie crust that I have been meaning to share.

Because I only use organic, grass-fed butter, butter is pretty expensive to me, and a lot of butter goes in both croissants and pie crusts. I think the cost of the butter makes me feel some extra pressure for things to turn out well. I mean, you just don’t want to waste that much lovely butter. So when my pie crusts collapsed at Thanksgiving, I did not throw them away. I was determined to find some use for them.

After my crying spell and Ron’s failed attempts at somehow unrolling the collapsed pie crusts, I baked them a little longer, so they were good and done. Then, I let them cool and wrapped them up to save before starting all over again with new crusts for the pies.

The next morning, I was trying to figure out something to put in the failed pie crusts when Ron suggested I make some of my homemade applesauce. It seemed perfect.

I learned how to make homemade applesauce when my daughter, who is now 27, was in Kindergarten. I had only ever had applesauce from the store, and I didn’t like it at all. One day, my daughter came home from school asking me to make applesauce because she had homemade applesauce at school. Her teacher made some for the whole class. I had no idea where to even begin. I grew up on Hamburger Helper.

I volunteered at my daughter’s school and just adored this teacher. Her name was Mrs. Alexander. I learned how to teach writing to little kids using a method she had learned in New Zealand. I adored her teaching methods almost as much as I adored her. I was just starting to each college writing full time at the time, but she would tell me I had missed my calling. “You should be teaching writing to young children,” she would say.

And, in the great story of my life, I was able to use her same method for teaching writing 15 years later when I started homeschooling my son. He was six when I started teaching him. Maybe I got to finally live my calling.

Anyway, the next day after my daughter asked for this apparently magnificent homemade applesauce, I asked Mrs. Alexander how to make it. She gave me the recipe, said it was so simple (and it was), and I have been making homemade applesauce ever since–only I swear it’s better now because I know where to get really, really good applesauce apples from a local apple orchard.

So I made the homemade applesauce Thanksgiving morning from seven leftover apples from our fall picking. They were nearly too old, but that’s just right for applesauce, isn’t it? While the applesauce was cooking, I made some homemade whipped cream, and when the applesauce was finished, I warmed the pie crust in the microwave, cut it into triangles, filled a triangle with applesauce, and topped it with the whipped cream. It was delicious and decadent, and, with the exception of the cream, it was made entirely of things I had saved from going to waste. I swear, that fact made it taste better, but it was so wonderful anyway.

Ron loved it so much that he ate two pieces and then was so full he was sorry he ate two pieces. When I took the first bite, I nearly cried. Here, my mistake was made into something so wonderful, so beautiful, so delicious. What could be better than that?

Ron and I had been so stressed the entire month of November, worrying before and after the election. We are peppers in our souls, so we have been trying to figure out the best course of action moving ahead..

“Make lemons into lemonade,” I said. And Ron knew exactly all that I meant with that.

“”Or applesauce,” he said.

***

I wanted to share with you Mrs. Alexander’s recipe for homemade applesauce in case you are looking for a way to get some simple, lovely comfort food into your rotation. Mrs. Alexander passed away when my daughter was in second grade. My daughter and I were so sad, but every time I make this applesauce for her, my daughter and I remember how much we loved Mrs. Alexander. Food is good for that kind of thing isn’t it?

Ingredients

6 large or 8 medium apples
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup water (this may need to be adjusted depending upon the juiciness of your apples)

Instructions

Peel apples and cut into chunks. I like to vary the size a little, so I get a mix of soft chunks with the traditional smooth applesauce when cooked. Put all ingredients into a saucepan and cook until you have applesauce. I can’t tell you how long it takes because it all depends on the apples you are working with. But taste as you go. When it’s proper, your heart will be happy when you taste it.

It’s best served warm.

Perseverance–and Happy Thanksgiving

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

I had decided not to do a super fancy dinner for Thanksgiving but that I was going to make everyone in our family their favorite pie. I am a pretty good pie maker. My family raves. The neighbors talk. One time, when I met my neighbor’s sister, she said, “Oh my gosh! You’re the amazing pie lady!”

I have been cooking from scratch for so long now that I pride myself in being able to know what is going to happen as I put ingredients together. I know how to adjust even a new recipe to make it better, and I have been growing more confident in my cooking skills.

Yesterday, I had a busy day with work. I am working on some sports articles for my local newspaper, and I am not much of a sports person. The research has been intensive, but the articles are about girls basketball, which I adore. I grew up playing basketball, and I learned so much about myself as a person thanks to that sport. Anyway, I have been on the phone with girls’ varsity basketball coaches all over the state of Maine the last two days. I thought I could handle it though. I’m a good pie maker. I could finish my interviews during the day and make five pies in about four hours in the evening, I thought.

Oh, my arrogance! I decided to try a new recipe for butter pie crust that I had read about earlier in the year but hadn’t tried. I was also making key lime pies for my daughter’s partner and my teenage son. Fruit pies are my specialty, but I can usually make a pretty good key lime pie. The issue is that both of my customers do not want graham cracker crust, so I have to find a pie crust recipe that is “just right” for key lime pies.

It turns out that my new recipe wasn’t right at all.

I was in the middle of getting the blueberry filling ready when my timer went off for the key lime pie crusts, which have to be baked before the key lime filling goes in. They both collapsed! I was in a kind of shock for so long that I just stared. Then I swore. A lot. Then I cried.

Ron said surely they could be fixed, and he tried so hard to unroll them. Then he said, “well, just put the filling on top of them. It will be a unique key lime pie.”

But the Virgo rising in me would not allow it. I collected my humbled self and went online to find a better recipe for key lime pie crusts. I had to dig deep, as my old recipe was lost, but I found one.

And so I started again.

At 1:30 in the morning last night (or this morning, depending upon how you look at it), I finished those pies after seven hours of leaning over the counter. My back was on fire. I stretched before bed. Ron was already asleep. He had tried to stay up with me but gave up about midnight.

Friends, I am happy to report that the pies are beautiful! They will be beautiful gifts for my family. I want them to forget their troubles and the worries of the world for just a little bit when they taste a beautiful pie, their favorite, made with so much love just for them.

I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving. I am sending love and good energy. The holiday is problematic for sure, but I am not going to think about that right now. Right now, I am just going to think about how much I love my family and how lucky I am to have the ingredients, the skills, and the perseverance to make five beautiful pies–two key lime, two blueberry, and a pumpkin pie for Ron. That middle blueberry pie is for my daughter, and it’s so perfect. I can’t wait for her to see it!

Food Is Medicine: Part I

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

I was in my 30s before I began to realize just how important the quality of food you eat is to your overall health. I grew up on boxed dinners, and when my children were very young, I bought frozen dinners and processed foods at the grocery store. I worked full time and thought I just didn’t have the time to cook. I trusted the American food system to ensure the food they were selling and I was feeding my family was safe. I was very wrong to trust in this system.

Our system is so broken, like in a devastating way. It’s so broken that I use it as a measure in my life. There are times when I question myself for being too far out of the “norm” for our society. “Am I crazy?” I ask Ron, but before he can answer, I remind myself that I cannot measure myself against a society that allows its food system to poison its citizens. “There’s arsenic and lead in our baby food and glyphosate in our Cheerios–that’s crazy,” I say.

I still work full time, so we do not always eat the way I am aiming for; however, we do really well. This has never been more evident to me than in the last couple of weeks as we have been sick with COVID. There is nothing that makes me feel better than our homemade food. In fact, I think part of the reason I got so, so sick and ended up at the hospital the second time was that my immune system was attacking my nervous system and impacting my ability to move my limbs and my mouth. I couldn’t eat very well. I struggled to eat and drink without choking during the worst of it all, so though I was hungry, I just couldn’t eat. This meant no whole grain breads, no fresh eggs, no frozen organic vegetables from our garden, and I think it made the toll of everything even worse.

In the first two days after I was out of the hospital, neither Ron nor I could cook, so we resorted to take out. We got the best take out we could find, but I noticed I didn’t start to really feel better until Ron rallied himself and cooked homemade fettuccini from scratch. He made egg noodles from our eggs and organic flour, homemade organic sauce, and he steamed frozen broccoli he grew last summer. When he sat a giant plate of noodles and broccoli in front of me, it was the most beautiful thing I think I had ever seen. I ate every single bite of that good food, and I immediately felt better. It was after that meal that I turned a corner for the better.

I am still struggling a bit and am very weak by the end of the day every day, but I am making really good progress. Tonight, I made minestrone using our homemade spaghetti sauce as a base. This sauce is made with tomatoes, onions, and peppers, all from our garden. We can it in the early fall each year, and tonight, it nourished me.

I thought I might write a little this week about how we eat and what we eat–and on the importance of eating organic and minimally-processed foods. It can’t save us from lead, but it can save us from glyphosate and dozens of other chemicals that are not good for us. Many common foods in our food system lower our IQs and may even (though I suspect most likely) lead to cancers.

Of course, it’s all a process. We didn’t just decide to change our eating habits and lifestyle and then, overnight, eat farm to table every night, but it’s a process that has helped me so much and may be able to help others. I’ll tell my story, and if I feel ambitious, I might tell other stories as well. We’ll see how I hold up.

Thankfully, there’s more minestrone for dinner tomorrow night.

photo credit: Ellie Ellien, Unsplash

Orange Is the New Dinner Color (+ a recipe)

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment

by Nicole Walker (guest blogger)

It was one of the battles my sisters and I usually hold. When my sisters and I get together, we choose a theme and have a contest to see who wins or who kills the guests by over stuffing them with too much food.

In June, we played Battle Yellow. I should have written down what we made because I forget the details of most battles. I think I made Elote. Valerie (my sister) painted a cake with gold flakes. Paige (my sister) made popcorn which, of course, won because popcorn is everyone’s favorite food group.

But this October visit, we planned Battle Orange. Paige stayed home in Salt Lake with the dogs since she had to work. We were all supposed to have driven to Mexico but Erik’s (my husband) passport didn’t show up in time for us to get our money back on the house we rented. Good thing we canceled. His passport arrived on Saturday–what would have been the last full day of our trip. Still, we made do here in Flagstaff, visiting Page Springs winery and eating dinner at Shift.

On Saturday, I wanted to host my friend Beya and her family, so my dear friend could meet my dear sister. Beya is mostly vegetarian, but she’ll eat fish sometimes. I saw the Arctic Char at Whole Foods. It’s a little pinker than orange but close enough. I had egg whites at home. We had mangoes. Butternut squash. Frank’s hot sauce. Oranges. Orange cheddar cheese.

Besides the Arctic char, we bought nothing besides carrots, cream, and chicken wings, which we sent our now-driving daughters to the store to pick up. My point? I didn’t leave the house except to watch Max’s football game all day Saturday, and yet Val and I made an pretty fine dinner for 11 for $32 plus whatever stuff we had in the house.

It turns out orange is the easiest color of food to imagine a menu. We’ve done Battle Green–which was also pretty easy. Battle White was great fun but trickier. I made hamachi crudo (again, remembering nothing else). Battle Blue was the hardest one because, as I shucked Blue Point oysters, I also shucked my own hand. Valerie took me to the ER even though she tells all of us she doesn’t do Emergency Rooms on the weekend, so you had best be careful. Battle Citrus was probably the winner. Paige made an excellent citrusy Cosmo, and Val made lemon capellini with caviar. I made duck with an orange sauce.

But the Battle Orange required very little effort of imagination. Butternut squash–what can we make? Ravioli with butter sage sauce. Mangoes and oranges? Add some jalapeno, onions, avocado, and strawberries and make a salsa topping for the Arctic Char. Of course, Valerie won with the Buffalo wings She cooked them in the oven for almost two hours, then she tossed them in a bucket of butter and Frank’s hot sauce. Beya, as a vegetarian, didn’t eat the wings, but they were the first to go. She has two teenage boys.

For vegetarians, I almost always make a souffle, so why not make a souffle? I already had separated egg whites in the fridge. The girls brought home the carrots–which are orange. Cheese is orange. Eggs are yellow and white, but we can work with that. I made a souffle from mostly memory.

The ravioli was the big project. I had to climb up and over the fridge to summon the pasta machine. I don’t make pasta nearly enough. Why don’t I? A holdover from Keto days? Flour all over the kitchen? Probably time, but with this recipe, it’s so easy. I stole the whole kit and kaboodle (I originally wrote cat and caboodle) from the Internet, as one does. I didn’t read until just now that the lady who makes this freezes half of the ravioli and the sauce is only enough for 4. But actually, I didn’t read how much sage-butter sauce to make. I just put a stick of butter in a pan, as I did for the souffle. I had planned to make an orange beurre blanc for the Arctic Char but sometimes, a stick of butter in every other portion of the dinner is enough.

Butternut Squash Ravioli

Ingredients

PASTA

  • 1 ½ cups Semolina Pasta Flour
  • 1 ½ cups all-purpose Flour
  • 4 whole eggs
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 4 tablespoons water
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt

FILLING

  • 2 ½ lbs butternut squash (peeled and roughly chopped)
  • 8 whole garlic cloves
  • ¼ cup olive oil
  • ½ cup parmesan cheese
  • ½ teaspoon dried sage
  • salt and pepper (to taste)

SAUCE & GARNISH (SEE NOTES BELOW)

  • 4 tablespoons butter ((½ stick))
  • 10 whole fresh sage leaves
  • ¼ cup toasted pine nuts
  • freshly grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

TO MAKE THE PASTA DOUGH:

  • Combine all pasta ingredients and mix together to make a stiff dough. Knead by hand or in a stand mixer with the dough hook on medium low speed for 10 minutes or until dough is elastic. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and let rest for at least 20 minutes. On a lightly floured surface roll out to desired thickness and cut as desired.

TO MAKE THE FILLING:

  • Toss the squash with the garlic in a bowl with just enough olive oil to evenly coat everything. Roast on a baking sheet at 400oF for about 45 minutes until soft. Remove from the oven and mix in a food processor to combine – slowly pouring additional olive oil into the mixture until the consistency is smooth. Add parmesan, dried sage, and salt and pepper, to taste. Use this filling to make the ravioli.

TO MAKE THE SAUCE:

  • Combine butter and fresh sage leaves in small sauce pan. Heat over low heat for at least 15 minutes to infuse the butter. Then, increase the heat just a bit (take care not to burn) and stir continuously until the butter browns slightly and the sage leaves crisp. 

TO PREPARE:

  • Use a ravioli press to add and seal one teaspoon of filling in between each pasta sheet. Dip finger in water and wet edges of pasta before adding second sheet to allow for a nicely sealed ravioli. Use a roller, gently pressing down, to seal them up. Be sure to heavily flour the outside of your pasta to enable easy release.
  • Boil the ravioli in plenty of salted water until just done. This will only take a short time! The ravioli will float on the surface of the water when they are finished. Carefully remove and drain. Serve with sage butter, a sprinkle of toasted pine nuts, and a generous amount of grated Parmesan cheese.

NOTES:

 recipe makes 6 dozen ravioli

  • To cook: toss the ravioli in salted boiling water for just a few minutes until they float.
  • To freeze: line a baking sheet with parchment paper and add a single layer of the homemade ravioli. Set in freezer and once completely frozen, they can be added to a resealable plastic bag. Be sure to squeeze out as much air as possible to prevent freezer burn.
  • Making the pasta: I prefer an even mix of semolina flour to all-purpose flour. It gives the pasta great texture and chew, plus it’s insanely easy to work with. The addition of olive oil to the dough can be tasted in the final pasta – YUM! You must kneed your pasta dough for a solid ten minutes. If you want to do this by hand, more power to you, but pasta dough is not a soft dough like bread dough, so you’re in for a workout. I highly recommend using your Kitchenaid mixer. You have to be sure to cover the dough and allow it to rest. This process allows the gluten to do whatever gluten does to make pasta wonderful.
  • To roll out the sheets of pasta dough to make your homemade ravioli, you can roll it on the counter by hand, but I highly recommend using a pasta roller. I’ve used the KitchenAid pasta attachments before, and while they certainly are easy to use, there is something so satisfying about rolling pasta dough in a quality made in Italy pasta roller. Just be sure you use enough flour to avoid any sticking in your pasta machine.
  • When forming the ravioli, be sure to have floured all of your dough generously so that it releases easily from the mold.
  • Sauce amount – Since I typically don’t cook all of these ravioli (I cook some and freeze the rest), the amount of sauce in this recipe is perfect for my family of four. If you’re planning on cooking ALL of the ravioli at the same time, you may want to double or triple the sauce amount.

If you made it to the end of the recipe, fine reading work, friends. You have been indoctrinated in the 14-page essay before the recipe. Also, because I’m not a pure plagiarist, I linked to the original ravioli recipe. But one of the goals of this blog post is to get you to Valerie’s mustard-selling website, The Curvy Spoon, because Battle Mustard is coming, and we want you to be prepared.