love2cook

Save Those Scraps!

love2cook — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:39:53 GMT

A while back, I wrote about how DW and I save vegetable trimmings and use them to make stock during the winter. Now that soup season is over and garden season is in full swing, we have another use for those scraps: "instant compost."

If you're a serious gardener, you probably have a compost bin in your backyard. Toss your vegetable scraps in there along with garden waste...stir it all up...and in a few weeks you have great organic compost.

Composting isn't rocket science, but it is time-consuming. And I'd rather spend my weekends cooking or RVing than stirring up compost. So I appreciate this trick I learned from our friends at Birds & Blooms magazine.

Just save veggie peelings and trimmings in a resealable bag until you have enough to loosely fill your blender pitcher. Add a couple cups of water and blend to liquify. Then step outdoors and pour this rich, organic liquid right into your garden or around plants and shrubs. Instant compost!

Try it soon. Enjoy this Colorful Coleslaw (left) and then turn the trimmings into instant compost. You can feed your family and your garden!

Colorful Coleslaw recipe
Time to Stock Up
Birds & Blooms On-Line

Meals on Wheels

love2cook — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:48:59 GMT

Last summer, before the spike in gas prices, DW and I bought a small 22-foot motorhome. We had a great time exploring some of Wisconsin's state parks and campgrounds!

Despite the jump in gas prices, we're eager to "hit the road" again soon. (Lucky for us, the motorhome is a diesel van conversion that gets good mileage.)

We're also looking forward to making more meals on wheels. As you know, DW and I really enjoy cooking together, and that's true even in the tiny kitchen of our motorhome. With a small refrigerator, a 2-burner propane stove and a microwave/convection oven, plus a portable charcoal grill outside, we can prepare just about any meal we might make at home.

On our very first overnight trip, we enjoyed a dinner of grilled marinated lamb chops, asparagus with seasoned butter sauce and rice pilaf. Of course, on subsequent trips we also enjoyed Spam and beans or canned chili.

We bought a set of durable dishes and flatware just for the motorhome kitchen. But on each trip, we took along some of our favorite heavy stainless steel cookware from home. It worked great, but cleanup and storage was a challenge—the skillet barely fits in the motorhome kitchen sink!

Over the winter, I ordered a set of small "nesting" cookware designed especially for camping. I figured it would save some space and be easier to use in the motorhome kitchen. But when it arrived, DW and I were disappointed—the two pots and two skillets are very small and pretty thin.

We'll try them on our first outing this year. But I have a feeling that we'll end up using our heavy stainless cookware again. Don't want to crowd the Spam and beans!

Winter Warm-Up

love2cook — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:05:49 GMT

Here in Wisconsin, we've had a terrible winter with tons of snow and temperatures in the teens. Like many people, DW and I find some solace in favorite comfort foods like homemade soups or stews, baked chicken, meat loaf or country-style ribs with sauerkraut.

Nothing warms body and soul like fat, fork-tender pork ribs smothered in sauerkraut with onions, apples, capers and caraway. (A big blob of horseradish mustard on the side also adds warmth!)

Speaking of warmth, DW and I always take a moment to warm the plates, coffee cups and even the flatware before mealtime. The kitchen cupboards where they're kept is on an outside wall, and even though our home is well-insulated, the plates and flatware come out of the cupboard cold.

After simmering those ribs and sauerkraut all afternoon, it seems a shame to serve them on cold plates. So we pop the plates in the oven on the "warm" setting first. (If dinner was prepared in the oven, the plates go in for a minute after dinner comes out.)

Comfort foods are even more comforting served on warm plates. (The food stays hot longer, too.) DW and I enjoy that as we gaze out the dining room window at all the snow.

Time to Stock Up!

love2cook — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:52:03 GMT

Some people stock up by going to the grocery store and buying lots of canned soup. DW and I stock up a little differently--every month or so during the winter, we make a big batch of homemade stock.

Having stock on hand means we can cook up a great homemade soup anytime we want in less than an hour. (Last week, DW made ham and white bean soup with carrots, celery and onions. It was delicious!) When we have leftover beef or chicken--even fish--it often ends up in a hearty soup the next night. Sometimes the soup tastes better than the original meal, thanks to that rich homemade stock.

Making stock is not rocket science, but it can take time. DW and I have figured out a way to speed up the process. As we prepare our meals together, we save all the vegetable peelings and trimmings (except potatoes, which are too starchy) and all the meat scraps and bones. We toss 'em into a Ziplock and keep it in the freezer until it's full.

When the bag is full, we dump the contents into our big pressure cooker. We add 9 cups of water and pressure cook for 45 minutes. After the pressure has dropped, we strain the stock through a colander lined with cheesecloth. In about an hour and a half, we have 8 cups of rich-tasting, dark-colored stock. We freeze the stock in 2-cup containers.

We've found this "kitchen sink" stock is great in any recipe that calls for stock (whether it's chicken, beef or vegetable stock). Of course, if you prefer chicken stock, you can make it using vegetable peelings/trimmings and chicken bones.

If you don't have a pressure cooker, you can simmer up a stock the old-fashioned way. It makes the house smell great!

Here are a couple of recipes:

Homemade Chicken Stock

Homemade Turkey Stock

Cookie Cheaters

love2cook — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:39:23 GMT

Last Tuesday was DW's birthday. I took the day off and promised to take her to IKEA to shop for kitchen gadgets. (Ever been to an IKEA store? Ours is a 2-hour drive away, so we don't get there often.)

Unfortunately, the weather was lousy, with sleet and snow all day. We decided to hang out at home instead, and, as usual, we spent plenty of time together in the kitchen.

DW hasn't had much time for holiday baking because she's been helping her mother, who recently moved into an assisted living facility nearby. So we decided to make Christmas cookies.

We do most of our cooking from scratch, and we don't mind spending a lot of time on elaborate preparations. But on Tuesday we didn't feel like making a big mess and cleaning up afterward. So we "cheated" a little on the cookies.

We had a couple tubes of sugar cookie dough and a package of ready-to-bake chocolate chip cookies in the fridge. We cut the chocolate chip cookies into bite-sized chunks, sprinkled them with red and green sugar and popped them in the oven. While they baked, we rolled out the sugar cookie dough and started cutting with our favorite Christmas cookie cutters. We had fun trying to fit the shapes together like puzzle pieces to get as many cookies as possible.

While the sugar cookies cooled, we tinted some canned cream cheese frosting in red, green and gold.

How did the cookies come out? Well, the bite-sized chocolate chip cookies sparkle like little red and green jewels. And the frosted sugar cookies look a lot like the ones DW and I decorated when we were kids in our moms' kitchens.

What could be better for Christmas?

Not Really.

love2cook — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:49:16 GMT

No, I didn't cut off my finger in the Cuisinart as it says in my profile. In fact, DW and I hardly ever use our Cuisinart—we prefer to cut and chop by hand with our good (and very sharp) Henkle knives.

Here's a tip: If you really enjoy cooking, invest in a good set of knives. Sharp, well-balanced knives make preparation quick and easy.

And yes, it's easy to cut off a finger with a good sharp knife—even easier than with a Cuisinart. So be careful!

How to Add a Link to your Blog

love2cook — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:32:00 GMT

To create a hyperlink in your blog (or in a forum post or reply), first type the words or a sentence that describes the link, such as:

Here's a link to the recipe.
or
For more information, click here.

Next, highlight the words or sentence that you want to link somewhere by dragging through them. When you highlight, link icons will appear in the formatting toolbar above the text window (these look like chain links or "broken" links). Click on the link icon (chain links) and a window will open where you can add the URL for your link. You can also choose whether the link opens in the same window or a separate window.

Type (or paste) in your URL and click INSERT.

If you typed links directly into the text of your earlier blog posts, you can go back and edit them using the instructions above.