Lasagna!

I believe that everyone is allowed to have one food or another that they simply don’t have to like. One of my sons hates tomatoes and eggs. Another can’t stand rice. A daughter gags at raisins and peanut butter. For me, it’s pickles, mustard, and hot dogs. And in theory this sounds fine, until it’s time to make dinner—and at least one person doesn’t care for some part of what I’m fixing. I have to keep a mental tally of the few foods I make for dinner that everyone likes. The one in the top spot is lasagna.

I avoided it for years because it seemed so daunting to make, but a friend of mine clued me in to the fact that you don’t have to pre-cook the noodles. That simplifies things quite a bit. I like one-dish meals whenever possible. As my family has grown, I’ve had to make bigger and bigger portions so we have plenty to go around (though there are seldom leftovers). I’ve found that lasagna is actually not an exact science. I can just dump in whatever sounds good, as long as my spaghetti sauce to noodle proportions are correct (essentially one can to every 9-10 noodles), so that they soften enough to eat. So here’s the scoop on tonight’s version:

Ingredients:
2 cans (26.5oz) spaghetti sauce (Hunts is cheapest and runniest, which helps soften the noodles)
1 pkg lasagnae noodles (about 20 noodles)
Various cheeses
Hamburger (or other favorite meat) and/or various vegetables of choice.

Basically, it's easiest to think of lasagna as a noodle sandwich with sauce & noodles on top and bottom with extra fillings in between. First, I layer on about 1/3 of a can of spaghetti sauce in a 9 x 13 pan.

If you're cooking for a smaller group, you can cut the noodles & sauce in half--try a 7 x 9 pan distributing five noodles and half of one can on the bottom, with five more noodles and the remainder of the can on the top.
Next, place five dry noodles on the sauce (one may need to be broken to fit), and layer on another 1/3 of the spaghetti sauce. Add a second layer of noodles like the first, then spoon on the remainder of the can.
I like hamburger in mine, but I've made it without and it tastes good too. I'm also too cheap to buy ricotta cheese, so I've sometimes used cottage cheese that I've strained some of the liquid out of. But my favorite variation is a half-block (4 oz) of creme cheese. Hamburger cooks up beautifully in the microwave in about five minutes--a nice place to add in onions and peppers too--then I add the creme cheese directly to the beef so it is well mixed.

Then I layer it on top of the noodles & sauce.

I happen to have a five-pound bag of spinach in my fridge that we're trying to use up, so two or three cups worth (coarsely chopped) go into the lasagna. This is actually experimental for me--I haven't tried it with spinach before.

My family eats a lot of cheese. I always keep a five pound bag of shredded three-cheese mix in my fridge (that typically only lasts about ten days). I don't measure--I just take handfuls unil it looks like enough. I also sprinkled on some Parmesean.

Lastly comes the top of the noodle sandwich. Pour on 1/3 of the second can of spaghetti sauce.

Place five more noodles and another 1/3 of the sauce.

Then the last layer of noodles . . .

And the rest of the sauce.

Bake for 1 hour at 400, and it will look like this:

Which looks good, but not perfect yet. Topping the whole thing with a layer of shredded mozarella and putting it back in the oven for another five minutes gives it the final touch.

I actually loved the spinach and my kids did too. Surprise! Guess that ingredient is a keeper. We'll be trying out things like zuccini and yellow squash next. Never hurts to sneak in a few more vegetables. Especially with a dish that is more fat-indulgent like this one. The only disappointment was not having leftovers for lunch the next day. Guess I'll just have a spinach salad.

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Better than Mint Oreos

I’m a sucker for anything with chocolate and mint. A good friend of mine gave me two cartons of chocolate-mint ice cream for my birthday, and my sister gave me several varieties of cookies in the same flavor. They both know me well. But my mint Oreos ran out too soon. I had to make a special treat for a gathering of friends, and for my brother’s birthday, so I decided to try something new involving my favorite flavors.

I started with a bag of chocolate chips and used the recipe on the back. Let me say here that most chocolate chip cookie recipes are pretty much the same. But there is one key thing to do to make them turn out well. Last year, my third-grade daughter did her science fair project on different types of fat used in baking. With five packaged cookie dough mixes, she tried using butter, margarine, soft-spread, shortening, and oil. Then she had her classmates rank them by appearance, taste, texture, and so on. By the vote of her fellow third-graders, the margarine cookies won. That was quite a surprise. By my own judgment though, the butter cookies tasted the best, but the shortening cookies were the prettiest. Since then I go half-and-half on the fat. They turn out perfect every time. Guess I won’t complain about helping my kids with the annual science fair—I actually learned something useful that time.

So here is my adapted recipe, courtesy of Hershey’s:
2 ¼ c. flour
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
½ c. butter
½ c. shortening
¾ c. sugar
¾ c. brown sugar
1 t. vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 c. chocolate chips

To this I added
1/3 c. cocoa
½ t. mint extract

Mix well, drop by small rounded spoonfuls onto cookie sheet, and bake 8-10 minutes at 350.

While they are baking, mix up a batch of cream cheese frosting (see Orange Rolls post http://intuitivehomemaking.blogspot.com/2009/11/orange-rolls.html), add ¼-½ t. mint extract (it's strong stuff) and some green food coloring. When the cookies are cool, spread frosting on the backside of one cookie and sandwich with a second cookie. If the cookies are still warm, it will melt the frosting and they’ll run all over (yep, I tried that and had to put them in the fridge to salvage them).

Just make sure you save enough for your family before you fill your party platter. I didn’t have any leftovers to take home.

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Orange Rolls

Recently we took a survey of our kids. It looked something like this:

Family Interest Survey
1. What is your favorite thing to do as a family?
2. What is something we’ve only done once or twice that you’d like to do again?
3. What is your favorite vacation memory?
4. What is your favorite family tradition?
5. What is your favorite holiday memory?
6. If you could have two hours with just Dad, what would you do?
7. If you could have two hours with just Mom, what would you do?
8. What is something new you’d like to try?

There were a few other questions, but you get the idea. The results were quite interesting, actually, and revealed to me something I really knew at heart, but absolutely confirmed to me afterward. It’s not the big things we do that make the best memories. It’s the little ones. Between ‘holiday memories’ and ‘family traditions,’ for example, every one of our five children said one of their favorite things was to have Orange Rolls on Christmas morning.

That tradition started with a coupon for Rhodes bread about eight years ago. I decided how nice it would be if, on Christmas morning, I could simply pop some ready-made bread into the oven that had been rising all night and not have to worry about making a big breakfast. I bought a package of orange rolls and the kids loved their special treat. I loved its simplicity. Now about a week before Thanksgiving, each child in turn will say, “Mom, don’t forget to buy orange rolls.” Somehow, I guess it wouldn’t be Christmas without them.

But I’ve recently been watching my food budget, and somehow it seems a bit extravagant to be buying two or three bags of frozen dough when I have a recipe that makes roughly three dozen cinnamon rolls for about $2. A quick look at my all-purpose cookbook enlightens me to the idea that the only difference between cinnamon-sugar and orange filling is, well, cinnamon and orange. Cinnamon-sugar is made by combining ½ c. sugar with ½ T. cinnamon. Orange filling is made from ½ c. sugar and one grated orange rind (which came to about a tablespoon).

Time for another experiment.

I got out my trusty cinnamon roll recipe that my aunt, Susan Smith, gave me when I got married. With her permission, I share it here:

1 T yeast
½ c. warm water
Place in bowl and let yeast rise.

½ c. sugar
5 T oil
1 t. salt
1 t mace
2 c. scalded milk (I microwave for 2-3 minutes)
3 eggs
7 c. flour (I’ll sometimes make 2-3 wheat flour)

Put sugar, oil, salt, and mace in large bowl. Pour hot milk in bowl. When lukewarm, add eggs and yeast. Add part of the flour and beat together. Then add the rest of the flour and mix well. Grease inner side of bowl and let rise until double. (About 1 hour). Spread dough out on floured surface (I use oil—just something so that it won’t stick to the counter). Spread into a rectangle. Spread dough with butter, and brown sugar & cinnamon. Roll up and cut into slices and place on greased baking sheet.
Let rise ½ hour. Bake 10-12 minutes @ 400. Frost and serve.

As of last month, I’ve also decided that homemade frosting is almost as easy, a little cheaper, and far superior to the store-bought tub variety.

4 oz. cream cheese
2 T butter
2 c. powdered sugar
1 t. vanilla
2-3 t. milk (next time I’ll try O.J. if I’m making orange rolls—I think it will give it the right color & flavor) Whip on high in mixing bowl.
Needless to say, my children were absolutely ecstatic about having our traditional Christmas fare before Thanksgiving. On your average Wednesday night, no less. I did freeze seven of the orange roll slices though. I’m still working on one more experiment before Christmas to keep one of my favorite traditions alive.

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Pruning

I’m not much of a gardener. Generally, I plant every year out of obligation—I tried leaving our garden space fallow one year, only to come back from vacation to find weeds four feet high. It took longer to pull them all out than it would have been to tend the garden all summer. And we’ve never quite negated that year’s effects. Lesson learned.

Similarly, I should have been tending my fruit trees with a little more care. Last summer, we noticed how dead some of the branches were looking, but pruning them ourselves was a task more daunting than any of us could take on. We hired a professional. But a professional can only do so much when your trees are already dying. The peach tree didn’t make it. Despite our best efforts last year, we got no fruit and only a sad stump remains. I missed having fresh peaches this year.

Our apple tree, on the other hand, did a little better. The pruner topped the tree and took off all the dead wood, but warned us we may not have many years left with it. Half of what was left died, but the portion that remains bore the sweetest, best, and biggest fruit we have had in the decade we’ve lived here. Sixteen quarts of applesauce and numerous pies and cobblers resulted from half a tree. All thanks to a little pruning.

So this year I got braver. Not wanting our apple tree to suffer the same fate as its cousin, I read up a little on how to prune a tree. It was a lot simpler than I thought, though considerably time-consuming. I’ve pruned back our raspberry patch every year, so I wondered why it never occurred to me that I could use the same clippers to do the same thing for my other fruit-bearers. I spent a couple of hours cutting away all the unnecessary wood that would inhibit fruit growth. By the time I finished with the raspberries and grapes (this year’s permanent garden addition), I could barely move my right hand. But I’m hoping for payoff next year.

The thing I always forget during the times in between dreaded bouts of yardwork is how it provides me a chance for self-reflection. Over the years, I’ve become much like my trees. In many ways, I’ve become overgrown—allowing unnecessary things to crowd out the good things simply because I haven’t taken a little time to cut them back. How many interests and hobbies do I have that, while they are enjoyable, are not really profitable? How often do I have half-finished projects because there wasn’t room in my schedule to accommodate their completion? The ground below my apple tree is often cluttered with fruit that didn’t quite make it. Sounds like my workroom filled with unfinished sewing jobs, almost-done or ready-to-be-started crafts, and piles of things to someday be added into a scrapbook.

Pruning is hard work, and even a little painful sometimes, but then again, so is everything that gives us the best fruit. Pruning allows more light and space for growing fruit to reach its full potential. And it applies to human beings as well as plants. How many of my “projects” crowd out room for scripture study and prayer? How many evenings spent browsing the internet could be more profitably spent actually catching up on those scrapbooks or doing family history? And how often do I spend time around my children without really connecting with them simply because I think dinner or dishes need to be done first? I’m beginning to see now that it is time for me to prune back the things that clutter my life and do not bring any long-lasting results so that I can make room in my life for the things that will.

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Sunny Day

I guess I'm feeling a little juvenile now because sometimes I don't have any more attention span than a three-year-old and get easily distracted. While doing a google search, this is what came up:
Being the Jim Henson fan that I am, (I was actually listening to John Denver & the Muppets earlier today), I clicked on Cookie to see what I could see. The following article was the first on the engine search.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gALnZVPAopb8hS40R1AgFXIrWyZA

This article is about Caroll Spinney, the man inside the costume. I marvel that a man who is 76 years old still loves his job after 40 years as an 8-foot-tall-6-year-old canary and a grumpy old green grouch named Oscar.

Despite my short attention span, sometimes I lose touch with the child in me. I carry the weight of such grown-up responsibilities like mortgage payments, grocery shopping, car repairs, and utility bills. My knees hurt if I kneel on the floor too long. And I find myself set in my ways and not always willing to learn or try something new. But this was a healthy reminder that we are never too old to sing the alphabet song or count to 40 just to know that we can. (I'll never be a decent mother now or grandma someday if I forget that entirely.) Like all of us, I occasionally just need a reminder that it's OK to be a kid at heart.

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Pumpkin Experiments

At the request of my friend Penny, I bought a small pumpkin to see if it was possible to do something constructive with all the cut-out pieces of Jack-o-lantern faces when carving pumpkins this year. I’ve saved the seeds for years to toast them (which my kids love), but I’ve never used the actual pumpkin pieces. Turns out, it wasn’t that hard. Ever cooked squash? Same thing—except pumpkin is sweeter, closer to a butternut squash than anything. We eat a lot of squash and I’ve cooked it in a number of different ways over the last few years—boiling, steaming, and baking—so I wondered which would work best for pumpkin. (By the way, it’s worth owning a pumpkin carving tool—I not only used it for my pumpkin experiment, but I keep it in my utility drawer all year long for seeding squash and melons; does the job way better than any spoon.)
I cut the 5 ½ lb pumpkin into thirds and tried one each way. Guess what? They all turned out the same. It just needs a little water of some kind to turn the pieces soft when they cook. Personally, I prefer steaming because the pumpkin doesn’t absorb so much excess water, but take your pick of what’s easiest for you. Once the pumpkin is soft and cool enough to handle, the edible part can be easily scooped out of the tough outer skin. I put all of it into a 2-quart bowl (that it almost filled) and used a potato masher to turn it into pumpkin paste. I thought it would be just like canned pumpkin then, but that’s where I was mistaken.
(Steamed Pumpkin)
(Boiled)

(Baked)

It takes one more step to be useable. It was a lot mushier than canned pumpkin—I figured it was from the water it cooked in to bake, so logically, I just had to strain it out. Into the colander went the pumpkin and I continued to mash until most of the liquid was gone. I still never quite got it to the point that it looked like canned, but even as-is, it tasted good, so I figured I was on the right track. I also saved the liquid to see if I could make “pumpkin juice” of Harry Potter fame, but it’s still in my fridge and probably ready to throw out by now. Guess I’ll do more experimenting next week on that one.

(Cooked pumpkin with skin removed)

(Mash and strain)

I made pumpkin pie from a can a couple of weeks ago, which, if you look at it, has one ingredient: pumpkin. http://intuitivehomemaking.blogspot.com/2009/10/easy-as-pie.html I had used a 15 oz can, so I followed the recipe I used then and added two cups of my homemade pumpkin paste. The color was all wrong. I added more pumpkin, and it was still a washed-out orange. Hmmm, still not quite right. I ended up adding the entire batch of pumpkin to get the color right. But now it was too runny. Well, flour is a good thickener—I was going for the consistency of cake batter, so I added enough to make it ‘look right’ a little more pumpkin pie spice for good measure. The batter tasted good too, so I poured it into two pie shells and baked them for about 45 minutes.

Much to my surprise, and my family’s delight, the pies were delicious. Because they had so much fresh pumpkin in them, the flavor was richer than canned. Both pies were gone by the following night. And even though there’s a lot of fat in pie crust and a little in the batter, I just got my kids to eat 2 cups of veggies without them suspecting it!

This probably seems like a lot of talk for a small process, but I suppose you might say this was like High School science class for me. “What would happen if . . . .” Probably nobody will be cooking up five pounds of pumpkin pieces, but I’ll bet if you cooked pieces from multiple pumpkins, you could get at least two or three.

So, long story short: when you carve up pumpkins next week, throw the seeds in a colander and the cut-outs in a pan. Cook the pieces until they’re soft enough for a fork to mash easily, then scrape them into a bowl and strain out the excess liquid. If you have anywhere between 3-4 cups of pumpkin, you’re set. Add 6 oz (1/2 can) sweetened condensed milk, 4 oz. cream cheese, 2 eggs, ¼ t. salt, ½ T. pumpkin pie spice, and enough flour to thicken it to cake batter consistency ( ¼ - ½ c. ). Pour into pie shell and bake for about 45 minutes at 350, or until the filling no longer jiggles inside the pan. Cool and serve.

For toasted pumpkin seeds, rinse off the seeds until most of the mulch is gone, boil them in salt water for 5-10 minutes, then they will rinse clean. Melt 2-3 T. butter in microwave and add ½ t. salt for 2 c. seeds. (you can also add ½ t. Worcestershire sauce for a richer flavor). Stir seeds into butter mix until coated. Spread on a cookie sheet (it helps to use parchment paper) and bake at 300 for about an hour, turning every 15 minutes or so. Store in refrigerator when cool.

Happy Halloween everyone! (Hope that helps, Penny)

Patience is a virtue, right?

I believe that one of the reasons we have children is to remind us that temporal things don't matter. For nine years, we kept our table covered with clear plastic to protect it from food and fingerpaints--thus it was still pristine while all our chairs were demolished and sent out with this year's neighborhood cleanup.

Not long ago, we decided to ditch the ugly plastic. Our kids were mature now, right? Our baby has been in school for over two years now and knows how to treat things, right? Wrong! Our youngest child has a rather hot temper sometimes and has this habit of destroying things when she's angry--and she gets angry on a fairly regular basis. There are numerous examples of her explosive energy--like the hole in her bedroom wall, snapped-in-two pencils, and the countless almost-finished-but-not-quite-perfect art projects that have been shredded. (She can be a bit of a perfectionist too).

Well, I'm not even sure what made her mad this time, maybe she wasn't first-seated, but she had obviously dug a fork or knife into it and dragged it across the surface of the table for 2-3 inches. AACK! Luckily, John was there to calmly tell her that was unacceptable. I probably would have said something I'd regret later. Fortunately, I followed suit and told her how sad I was that she'd ruined something that's been nice for ten years.

She always feels badly for her misdeeds later, but what do you do when the damage is already done and often too bad to fix easily? She found me at my computer later that evening with a humble look on her face and two quarters in her hand--perhaps thinking that would fix things. We had a nice, long talk about how it never works to destroy things because you're mad. Lucifer destroys. The Lord creates. "Can't you find something constructive to do with all your angry energy?" We're focusing now on being creators vs. destroyers. As a visual image for her I quoted Pacha's wife when she gets upset in Emperor's New Groove: "I've gotta go wash something!"

It has made me think since then about President Uchtdorf's talk he gave last year called "Happiness, Your Heritage." He tells us that we can find joy in creating things. I believe it is because there is a real satisfaction in doing so. And like my seven-year-old (who I remind myself is still not accountable), only sadness can be reaped from anger because it leads to things that are destructive. And no joy can be found in following the adversary. How often do I get angry with my children because they're not quite perfect? How often do I wait it out until I'm calmer so I can deal with problems constructively? I have a lot of growing to do still, but slowly I'm learning that if I can be patient and deal with problems creatively rather than destructively, that my home is a happier place. I guess my baby and I will work on that together.

http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=ae484bb52a73d110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=f318118dd536c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

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The Wonders of White Sauce

I remember looking at my grandma’s recipe box as a little girl. I was always puzzled by a particular card labeled “white sauce.” What on earth is that? Though I’m sure I asked and I’m sure she gave me an answer, I can’t remember what was said. It was only years later, when I had to start cooking for myself, I realized why a card with a list of only four ingredients would be in her recipe box. It’s basically the foundation of any cream sauce. I realized this week that I’ve never actually written it down, since it’s so simple (and I don’t always look at recipes anyway), but it is definitely a staple of my kitchen. Here’s approximately what I do:

Melt 3-4 T butter on medium heat, stir in 3-4 T flour until lumps are gone. Add 1 c. milk, a little at a time to smooth out lumps, then add another cup of milk (or two, depending on how thick or thin I want it). Stir in ¼- ½ t. salt.

And here are my some of my personal variations:

*Cream of Tuna : add one can of drained tuna to white sauce and serve over rice.

*Macaroni & Cheese: melt 1-2 cups shredded cheese into white sauce and pour over cooked macaroni. Often, I will add several varieties of cheese at once—a slice of Swiss, a handful of cheddar, and a sprinkle of Parmesan, for example. But the real key to winning flavor is adding sour cream or cream cheese too.

*Clam Chowder: add two cans of clams to double batch of thick white sauce. Drain clam juice into stockpot, add 1 c. water and 1-2 t. chicken boullion. In broth, cook 4 large potatoes (diced), 5-6 stalks celery (sliced), and 1 large onion (diced). When vegetables are tender, pour in white sauce. Salt & pepper to taste.
[Note: I usually only have skim milk on hand, but his is one recipe that either needs more butter in the white sauce or a richer milk or cream for really good flavor.]

*Chicken Tetrazini: cook 1 diced onion & 1 diced pepper in butter before adding flour to white sauce. Add 1 c. cheese until melted, 1 can Cream of Mushroom soup, and 1 can chicken chunks (undrained) to white sauce. Stir into cooked spaghetti or angel hair pasta.

I’m sure there are dozens more variations out there. Anyone willing to share?
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Going Green vs. the Worst Messes

I think I'm a pretty environmentally friendly person. We downsized our 90-gallon garbage dumpster for a 40-gallon one, have a compost bin in the back yard for organic waste, and recycle just about everything else. While the city does't take cereal box liners in the recycle bin, I at least reuse them for things like crushing bread crumbs, rolling out pie dough, and transporting the compost from the kitchen to the outside bin(they typically don't leak). I even take my reusable bags to the grocery store now. However, there are just some messes that it's really greener to not go so green.

Tonight, Chris made spaghetti & marinara sauce for dinner--yet another recipe he'd gotten from school (I'm loving this cooking class of his). Unfortunately, the pan was desparaging. Tomato paste leaves a thick residue like no other. To set that in the sink to soak would then stain the whole sink and everything in it red, not to mention the amount of soap and water I'd need to clean that out too. Then there's the sponge I'd have to throw away afterward. Still holding out for a new dishwasher.

So paper towels are my friend. Fortunately they can easily solve many of the worst cleanup problems. I go for the big, thick, slightly pricier ones because it only takes me a couple to handle a really horrible job. Three paper towels later, that 12-inch pan won't even need to soak tomorrow. Sometimes we end up trading one type of "green" for another. Living green has its place, but so does just living.

Grandma's House

My family just returned from a reunion of my great-grandparents' descendants. My great-grandfather, Willard Smith, died before I was born. My great-grandmother, Florence Grant Smith, died when I was about two. Obviously, I don't remember them at all, but I love to hear stories about them and what remarkable people they were. One of their eight children was my grandfather, Briant Grant Smith. He passed from this life in early 2004, about a year after my grandmother.

Now my children are the ones with great-grandparents they barely remember. What kinds of things do I tell them? What is the essential part of their legacy they passed on? When I was nine or ten until I was in my later teens, my grandparents, Briant and Cecile Smith, invited my brother, sister, and me to their house nearly every weekend to spend the night. It was there that I learned to grind wheat for pancakes and bread, roll out cookie dough for gingerbread men, sew doll clothes and patchwork quilts, and play games that are still favorites today. They also passed on a love and devotion to the Lord that is now such an essential part of my character and my home.

I have thought a lot about the term “homemaking” and something my cousin said at another family gathering. He and his wife lived with and cared for my grandparents while my grandma was failing from cancer: “I always planned to buy their house when they were gone, but we lived there for several months after they both had passed. I realized the feeling in their home didn’t come from their house, it came from the spirit they brought to it.” The beloved house, filled with several generations of memories, no longer belongs to anyone in the family.

Homemaking is more than dusting and vacuuming; cooking and sewing aren’t quite it either; scrapbooking and crafting are nice but not essential; and I’m not likely to be found decorating for any holiday except Christmas. Really, the true art of homemaking lies in the ability to create an environment of love, peace, and unity within the members who live there. Generations from now, I hope that is the meaning that my posterity will attach to my life when they describe what I did for a living.

Time to Floss

One of the most helpful sewing tips I ever received was from a friend who was taking a sewing class. I was probably in the middle of several Halloween costumes and mentioned how much I hate gathering things--two basting stitches that I could never get quite straight, then having your thread break halfway through the process. What a pain.

She told me about a special kind of cording that you can zig-zag over, then just pull the fabric to the correct size. "Or," she said, "you can use dental floss too." That little trick has saved me literally hours of time over the years. I've also learned that once your pieces are sewn together, you can pull the dental floss out and use it for the next project (reduce, reuse, recycle)--if you haven't sewn right through it, that is. Dental floss has become a staple of my sewing room.

I also keep a roll of floss in my kitchen. If you're feeling especially ambitious and want to make cinnamon rolls, once you've rolled up your log of bread and filling, wrap the floss around it and pull. So much slicker than a knife, which only squishes the log into an oval-type shape, and much, much faster.

The only real challenge I have with dental floss is remembering to use it in the bathroom.

Last-minute Fajitas

Last night, I couldn't think of a single thing that sounded good for dinner—or that I wanted to take the time to fix. But when I went to pick up my daughter from a friend's house, the smell of cooking peppers was heavenly. I went home and chopped up a large pepper (that my friend had given me from their garden), a large yellow onion, and a half-dozen tiny tomatillos that had come up unexpectedly in our garden (a serendipity plant from last year's crop).

I never have the right kind of meat on hand for fajitas, so I hardly ever make them, but I had purchased five pounds of lean hamburger during my shopping trip earlier in the afternoon. So into the mix went a pound of it. The hamburger cooked at about the same rate as the vegetables, and the veggies absorbed a lot of flavor. I always keep tortillas and cheese in my fridge, so no troubles there. It was surprisingly good for a no-recipe, last minute, desperate attempt at a quick dinner, and it was a whole lot better than having cereal. I actually plan to make it again soon because there were no leftovers at all, and it only took me about 15 minutes to do.

Admittedly, two of my five children looked into the pan and said, "Ewww, peppers, gross!" (They got leftover spaghetti.) The other three loved it. Hey, if I can get 60% approval on any recipe, particularly when the other 40% are the ones who won't eat anything anyway, I figure I'm doing pretty well.

Easy as Pie

I don't know who came up with that phrase, because pie is certainly not the easiest thing that I know how to make. Nevertheless, I sometimes find that I need to make a pie for one reason or another. The first time I made pie, I used a recipe that turned out to be a complete disaster. Next time around, I went straight for my Lion House cookbook. I’ve never made anything in there that’s been bad. But the list of ingredients was a bit daunting:

¼ c. butter
¼ c. margarine
1/3 c. vegetable shortening
1/3 c. lard
1 T. sugar
½ t. baking powder
1 t. salt
1 T. nonfat dry milk
3 c. unsifted all-purpose flour
½ c. cold water

Hmmm . . . all the margarine I had was soft-spread, and lard? My grandma kept that in her pantry, but not me. I could feel my arteries clogging up just from reading this. Time for emergency substitutions. ½ c. butter and 2/3 c. shortening would have to do. And it has worked great ever since.

Last time I made it though, I swear the pixies in my house that hide things from you at the most inopportune times had made off with my baking powder, so I used baking soda instead. It just needs something to help it fluff up a bit while baking. And if you don’t have dry milk, all that does is help it turn a lovely golden brown. I put too much in last time and it got rather more brown than I would have liked, even though my baking time was the same as always.

PUMPKIN PIE:
Last week, I was taking dinner to a friend that had just had a baby. I also had a couple of extra teenagers hanging out at my house for the afternoon. How to accommodate everyone without making my kids mad? I pulled out my mini-muffin tin and made tarts. I didn’t have time to go to the store, so I rummaged through my storage room and found a can of pumpkin. The list of ingredients didn’t sound too bad either:

1 15-oz can pumpkin
1 12-oz can evaporated milk
2 eggs
¼ c. sugar
½ t. salt
1 t. cinnamon
½ t. ginger
¼ t. cloves

But when I reached for evaporated milk, all I found was sweetened condensed milk. Well, I guess they’re not that much different. One’s a little sweeter than the other, so I simply omitted the sugar. I also remembered my aunt made the most spectacular pumpkin pies, but I never did get the recipe. All I could remember was that she used cream cheese. So to offset the missing sugar in volume, I put in 2-3 oz. of cream cheese. I really was afraid this time that I’d overdone the substitutions—especially since you really shouldn’t experiment when feeding people besides your family. But I got lucky, and my kids pronounced it “the best pumpkin pie we’ve ever had.” (OK, not that we have pumpkin pie more than once a year).

APPLE PIE:
The following day, I found myself elbow-deep in canning applesauce, as my tree had outdone itself this year. For the first time in the decade I’ve lived here, I had a huge pile of non-wormy apples—perfect for pie. My pastry cutter and all the ingredients were still on hand from the night before, and we had a party to go to that evening, so I set my husband to work with my peeler-corer-slicer and decided to do tarts for the party and use the rest for a big pie for our family. 1 apple approximately equals 1 cup, so he must have done about 8 apples.

4-5 c. apples, peeled, cored, and sliced
¼- ½ c. water
¾-1 c. sugar
1-2 T flour
½ -1 t. cinnamon
1/8 t. salt
1 T. lemon juice
2 T butter

Again, I turned to my Lion House Cookbook, and while the ingredients were simpler this time, the instructions were not. Cook the apples . . . sift together dry ingredients . . . layer them in pie shell . . . add in cooking liquid. That wasn’t going to work for tiny tarts. What difference would it make if I cooked all the ingredients together first? I’d know if the filling tasted good first, that’s what, especially since I had more than 5 c. apples and they gave me a range of measurements too. I set the apples cooking in my stockpot and threw in the rest of the ingredients. All it really did was reduce my cooking time from 30 minutes to 20.

Perhaps pie really is easier than I tend to give it credit for.

Pizza, Breadsticks, and Scones

I have now successfully thrown three birthday parties without having to deal with a stack of gifts afterward. How? Tell them we're not doing gifts, then throw a pizza party and let the kids watch a movie. Any time left over is easily consumed by the Wii until parents come to collect their charges. They don't even miss the gifts. Although I do confess, we've been working up to this for a while, and my boys are all in their double-digits now.

I think these parties cost me all of $20--$10 for the pizza dough & toppings and $10 for the ice cream and Betty Crocker cake. The kids also don't need a prize bag to take home if they didn't bring anything. Nice.

Here's my recipe for pizza dough, which I originally found in Family Fun magazine. I always triple the batch though.

1 1/4 c warm water
1 T yeast
1 t sugar
2 t olive or veg. oil
1/2 T salt
3 to 3 1/4 c flour

Combine first three ingredients until yeast begins to proof. Add remaining ingredients. Mix & let bread rise. I usually give each of the kids a tennis ball-sized glob and let them pound it out themselves. That's half the fun. And use tomato paste for the sauce. It isn't runny and has a stronger flavor than tomato or spaghetti sauce. Cook the pizzas @ 350 for 12-15 minutes.

This also reminds me about the chuckle I got from my son telling me how the "proper" way to measure flour is to spoon it into the measuring cup and level it off with a metal spatula (not a knife, as it's not completely flat on one side).

Oh sure.

Grab a cupful and dump it in. If the dough is too sticky, you have to keep adding more flour anyway. Bread is not an exact science. You just keep mixing until it looks right and doesn't stick to your hands.

And I always have leftover dough. Sometimes I'll just roll it out onto a cookie sheet, slather butter across the entire surface, and sprinkle with garlic salt, parmesean cheese, and parsley. Then slice into sticks with a knife.

I don't own a deep-fat fryer, so it's only been recently I realized that a deep stockpot works fine for scones. I dump in about an inch of oil and heat it on medium until it begins to bubble a little. Roll out the dough and use a pizza cutter to cut into 2" squares. The thinner the dough, the less chewey it will be inside. The oil should be hot enough to start browning the dough on contact, but not so hot that it melts your favorite unmeltable Pampered Chef cooking spoon. I tend to learn a few things the hard way.

Stir Fry

Two nights ago, my eldest son wanted to make dinner--the recipe being one that he had made in his foods class at school. But he hadn't written down the ingredient measurements. "Just tell me what was in it and I can go from there." Brown sugar, soy sauce, cornstarch . . . We mixed and dumped until it looked right, and though it may not have been identical to the precicely measured school variety, it was awfully close. It's good to know how to measure correctly, since you have a greater chance of things turning out with the same result every time, but honestly, who has time to do that? I think the real reason we need recipes is so you can remember aproximately what you did last time and not leave something important out. So here's my reference for later:

Sauce:
1 cup loosely packed brown sugar
1 T cornstarch
2-3 T soy sauce
1/4 c water
1 t ginger

Fry 1-2 lb cubed chicken in 1/2 teriyaki sauce until browned

Slice up 3-4 carrots, 3-4 celery stalks, and anything else that sounds good, and fry up in pan with remaining sauce.
He had peppers in the original, which I didn't like, so I substituted the celery. I also threw in a can of sliced water chestnuts. Next time I need to add some onions too.