Tag Archives: Recipes

Writers Workshop: A Revisit to the “Grossest Family Recipe Ever”

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Every family has its traditions. Apparently, one of mine is the grossest family recipe ever.

Originally published last year, talking about family food traditions was an important story to tell. With another year under our belts, Grandma’s Oyster Dressing is still part of my Thanksgiving tradition and it’s even more poignant when compared with others’ viewpoints of my favorite turkey day recipe. 

2012 has been a year of blessings. Our grown up kids are flourishing in their adult lives. Music Man and I are happily adjusting to my retirement and his more positive work environment. Our son is engaged to a beautiful woman whom we are eager to welcome into our family.  Libbie is now four, David is almost two, Jessie is expecting another family member in March, and I love being a great-aunt. Our band will grow and flourish and getting together at Thanksgiving is so very important to its health. Although it’s a pain in the neck to travel 600 miles, it’s worth it. We have a lot to be thankful for.

From November 19, 2011

As we enter our weekend of Thanksgiving and gluttony, I would like to pause and give thanks for the many creatures that give up their lives for us at this time of year.

Image Credit

 

Insert. Silent. Pause. Here.

My little family band gets together with my brothers and their families on the day after Thanksgiving. We have been doing this since 1976; I have not prepared a Thanksgiving meal in my own home since then. Every year, we drive the 600 miles round trip to be with our family to celebrate both Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year we decided to forego our gift giving to each other and donate to Heifer International instead. We’ll still be giving gifts to the young ones, and it will be fun to see them open their presents. We also sing Christmas songs — we are THAT family that could make our own Trapp Family Singers — and I’m looking forward to hearing three-year-old Libbie sing her part in The Twelve Days of Christmas.

For me and some of my family, it just isn’t Thanksmas without oyster dressing. It’s unclear where our family recipe comes from, but my mother started making oyster dressing for our holiday gatherings a long time ago. In fact, I can’t remember when she didn’t make it. It was just always there.

My mom passed away in June, and as the eldest child, it has become my job to bring the oyster dressing. I’ve been making it for events here in our Chicagoland home for a while, but no one loves oyster dressing as well as my brothers and I do. My niece Jessica wrote about our family recipe on herVanderbilt Wife blog, calling our treasured oyster dressing our “grossest family recipe.” I beg to differ, but as she is allergic to clams, I wouldn’t want her to get sick on oysters. I do, however, want to share the recipe for what I consider to be the crowning glory of our holiday buffet table.

And just we’re clear about the popularity of oyster dressing, even the fabled Ree Drummond published a recipe for Oyster Dressing on her Pioneer Woman blog. I’m not alone in my love for this succulent awesomeness. Ree’s is a little different from ours; hers is more like traditional tossed bread-cube dressing. Grandma’s Oyster Dressing is more of a souffle-like scalloped oysters. It might be fun someday to make both recipes and see which one we like better!

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Grandma's Oyster Dressing

Grandma's Oyster Dressing

Ingredients

  • Cooking spray
  • Four cans frozen or canned oysters (fresh would be fine, but not necessary)
  • Four ribs finely chopped celery
  • Four cans mushrooms
  • One box saltines crushed
  • one pound butter pats
  • About two cups of milk

Instructions

First spray a 4.8 quart (15" x 10" x 2") rectangular casserole dish with cooking spray, and then add a layer of crushed crackers. Begin layering the ingredients -- oysters, celery, mushrooms, butter, and another layer of crackers. After each cracker layer add some milk and the juice from the mushrooms and oyster cans. You should have about four layers of crackers and three of “goodies.”

Cover it with foil so that it doesn’t dry out and take the foil off for the last 15 minutes so the top gets a little crusty. Bake at 350 degrees for at least an hour until the texture is puffy like a souffle. It is okay to prepare it in advance and let the liquids sink in.

A large Pyrex casserole dish will serve eight people comfortably as a side dish.

Notes

https://gotmyreservations.com/2012/11/22/writers-workshop-a-revisit-to-the-grossest-family-recipe-ever/

I’m linked up today to the Writing Workshop at Mama’s Losin’ It. It’s been a while since I’ve linked up because I’ve been converting my blog over to being self-hosted. If you have my old version on your blogroll (and I heartily thank you for your support), please change the link to gotmyreservations.com.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

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Dutch Cheese Soup

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Is going on a cruise all about the food?

For those of you who enjoy traveling by cruising, you already know that a cruise offers cultural and scenic delights as well as some well-deserved rest and relaxation. When I went on my first cruise to the Caribbean, I wasn’t particularly impressed with much about the food the cruise had to offer. I can barely remember what we ate, but I very clearly remember that formal dinners were difficult while traveling with two young children — even if they were well-behaved.

Fast forward twenty years and we took another cruise — just the two of us this time.

Well, just the two of us, our close friends from college, and 146-ish other intrepid travelers. And this time isn’t wasn’t a “fun ship,” it was a Viking River Cruise from Paris to Normandy. All the issues with reserved seating vanished and we didn’t have to decide whether to wait in the bingo game or the casino with the kids while the people in the late seating finished dinner. We had close to three hours every night of wonderful food, fabulous wines, great conversation, and attentive service. Now that’s the way to travel.

It’s not surprising, then, that I went directly to the Viking River Cruises web site to find a satisfying soup recipe for Soup Week. I’ve linked up both the Viking River Cruises site and another blog, A Spoonful of Thyme, where I found the photo. If you are a cheese soup lover, you will love this fall favorite!

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Dutch Cheese Soup

Yield: 4 Servings

Dutch Cheese Soup

Travel is wonderful when the food is wonderful. Originally published by Viking River Cruises, this is a yummy entry into your soup recipe book!

Don't forget that you need flameproof crocks to broil the cheese at the end.

Ingredients

  • A quarter cup vegetable oil
  • Two tablespoons butter
  • A half cup diced onions
  • One cup diced cauliflower
  • Two potatoes, cut into half-inch cubes
  • A half cup carrots, cut into half-inch cubes
  • Four cups chicken stock
  • Four ounces Canadian bacon, diced
  • Five ounces Gouda cheese, thinly sliced
  • Eight slices sourdough baguette
  • Salt & pepper to taste

Instructions

Heat oil on medium-high heat in a 1.5-quart saucepan. Add onion and sauté until softened. Add cauliflower, carrots and potato; sauté for 5 minutes. Stir in chicken stock and bring to a boil. In a small skillet, heat the butter. Add the Canadian bacon and sauté until lightly browned. Add bacon to soup. Reduce heat to low and cover, simmering until vegetables are tender (about 15 minutes). Pour soup into four individual flameproof crocks or bowls. Top each portion with two bread slices and one-quarter of the cheese. Place under the broiler until cheese is bubbly. Serve immediately.

https://gotmyreservations.com/2012/11/06/dutch-cheese-soup/

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Food Cult: Veggie Tales

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So we tried a new vegetable last night.

We’re trying to be both adventurous and healthy. I have heard rave reviews of braised fennel.

Indeed, fennel has an anise taste all its own. I love black licorice, so I figured, how bad could it be?

I followed the recipe directions.

I braised it in my trusty Le Creuset pot in olive oil. I even added cucumber slices to braise them, too, a la Julia C. I used white wine and sweet fruity vinegar to make the sauce. It should have been good.

Yet both were kind of boring. Meh.

Even Music Man, who usually applauds my attempts to give him healthy and low-calorie meal choices, said that it wasn’t a keeper.

On to broccoli dip. I promise I’ll use fat-free ingredients wherever possible. 🙂

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Provence Week: Two Food Network French Menus

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Anchovies. I love them but many people want to “list them.”

Apparently I’ve been watching too much HGTV while I clean my house. I can’t decide if I love or hate Love It or List It. I’ve also been watching lots of Food Network since I can’t abide the thematic approach HGTV is taking with daytime programming. I miss Joan Steffend. Remember her?

Anchovies figure large in the recipes of the Provencal region because they are fished from the Mediterranean and are commonly used in bouillabaisse, pasta dishes, salad dressings, and toppings for breads.

The Food Network loves French cooking (or what purports to be French cooking).

Just this week there were two segments showing Ina Garten and Melissa Darabian making French meals. Although I haven’t yet made the full meals, they look relatively easy and something that I might attempt.

On the Ten Dollar Dinners show, Melissa Darabian presented a Provencal meal with a pizza, salad, and grilled pineapple. With the exception of the poached egg  (I don’t do runny eggs), this menu seems doable. And the pizza has anchovies on it, but I saw several different versions of Pissaladiere online, including this one which may also be vegan. I’m hoping that some of my friends actually want to eat this with me when I make it — will they love it or list it?

I couldn’t find a photo of Darabian’s pissaladiere, but this photo (Image Credit) is part of a blog story about a young man going to culinary school. Gorgeous photos of the food!

Our favorite Barefoot Contessa also created a French Bistro lunch in a segment airing this week. Her menu seemed within my ability to recreate and includes Roasted Butternut Squash, a French apple tart, and Sole Meuniere. No anchovies in these recipes, though. What initially caught my eye was how she set the outside table in anticipation of her French-inspired party.

So this gets us back to anchovies.

One of my summer goals is to learn how to make my favorite salad dressings at home with ingredients I can control. I watched Ina make Caesar Salad with Pancetta in another episode, but it got me thinking about cooking with raw eggs. It seems like there has been an awful lot of food scares recently so I researched alternates for the raw egg in the Caesar Salad Dressing. There are a lot of opinions on this issue, including that only raw eggs are appropriate, but this one by Alton Brown looks promising. It uses tofu instead of egg for the thickening agent. And this one just flat-out subs the egg with egg substitute. Will I “love” any of these recipes or want to “list them” down the garbage disposal?

Still no anchovies.

I’ve always bought my anchovies in the tin, but Costco had anchovies in the seafood case that actually looked like fish instead of sun-dried tomatoes with fur. Has anyone tried them? Do they actually have the “anchovy flavor” or is the flavor we expect from anchovies actually coming from the salt-curing process? I’m feeling as though I’m probably going to stick with the basic tin of salty goodness — and I can get them in a six-pack from Costco practically for free. 🙂

Adventures in Home Cooking continues next week — catch up with me then to see if any of these recipes actually worked — or try them yourselves and let me know what happened!

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Food Cult: Pasta Bake in the Grill

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This going back and forth between my two blogs is feeling kind of incestuous already…

On Saturday, my first full day of retirement, I made a nice dinner for Music Man (he actually did the grilling) and blogged about it here. Today’s post is to talk about using up the leftovers in our refrigerator for Sunday supper.

I decided to make a baked pasta dish using the leftover chicken from Saturday and some fresh mozzarella that was at the end of its useful life. I also had a pesto container that had a crack in it and I needed to get rid of the pesto. Voila! I had the beginnings of a really good supper.

Now that I’m on the cooking with the grill kick, I decided to try baking the pasta in the Weber. I remembered I had a cast iron skillet in the shed and cleaned and seasoned it. I put together the pasta dish, put it into the iron skillet, covered it with aluminum foil and baked it at 350 degrees for about an hour. Since the pasta and the chicken were already cooked, I was just melting the cheese and heating it all up. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of how cute the dish looked when served in the cast iron skillet. I was just hungry!

We also needed to use up a lot of bits and pieces of veggies, so I made a chopped salad and added the last of the spring mix. Finally, we topped off dinner with a mixed fruit salad.

Easy peasy once again! The whole meal took a little more than an hour to put together including pasta boiling time, and we enjoyed sitting outside feeling the breeze come through after a scorcher of a day. We also got two meals out of that lovely $5 chicken and used up stuff in the fridge that needed to be eaten. All in all, a win-win day.

Baked Pasta with Chicken and Fresh Mozzarella

1 bag whole wheat pasta (any shape will do)

1-2 cups cubed cooked chicken

1 onion, caramelized (I used the leftovers from the roasted chicken)

8 oz. fresh mozzarella cut into cubes

4 tbs. basil pesto sauce

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

1/2 cup chicken broth

Directions

Cook the pasta to al dente and drain. Combine all ingredients in a baking pan, cover with foil, and bake for about 1 hour at 350 degrees. Remove aluminum foil for the last 15 minutes if you want a crispy top. Recipe serves four with good-sized portions, but we split it into two halves and froze the rest for another meal in the empty nest.

I’d also be forever grateful if you also stopped by Retirement 365 and give me some follow and comment love! Since I get about 80 hits on Got My Reservations every day because of this photo which I did not even take myself, my poor new blog is feeling very lonely over there. 🙂

The Irony of the Muffins

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Over the weekend, I decided to make a batch of mini muffins, using a recipe featured by my niece on Vanderbilt Wife. I already had frozen zucchini and some leftover chocolate chips, as well as amaretto cocoa that came in a Christmas gift basket. Woot!

Unfortunately, the first batch I baked got too crispy on the edges because I baked them a tad too long. You should have seen Music Man’s face when I dumped them into the trash bin. I decided I HAD to make another batch, since we were entertaining a Cordon Bleu trained chef for dinner. I mean, really! How embarrassing to serve crispy muffins.

The next batch got the addition of wild dried blueberries, so we ended up with zucchini-blueberry-chocolate muffins and they were delish! I was careful about the time in the oven, and I had enough batter left over from the mini muffin trays to create three full size muffins. From thence comes the irony.

Tonight, as I opened the oven door after turning on the broiler for the chicken breasts, I discovered the pan of three muffins that had been forgotten in the frenzy to make a second batch of mini-muffins and then get on with our dinner. I had turned off the oven when I took out the minis, and the big muffins were only a little bit the worse for wear for a couple of days in the oven and a blast from the broiler. They were only a little crispy on the outside and still moist on the inside — a welcome treat with our dinner tonight.

In the words of the immortal Alanis Morrissette —

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out

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Grandma Lill’s Spaghetti Sauce with Meatballs

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I didn’t know my grandparents very well. My father’s parents were both gone by the time I was old enough to remember them, and my mother’s parents were pretty remote in their interactions with the rambunctious children of their youngest daughter. They were retired and moved back to their hometown by the time I spent any time with them, and I would not say it was quality time. My grandfather came to live with my mother and father when he was no longer able to live alone, but I was out of the house and long gone by then. So, when I see my friends grandparenting their own grandbabies, it makes me happy to see how involved they are with these precious children.

Recipes passed down from my grandparents? I don’t remember any, but I’m pretty good at appropriating other people’s family recipes . Over the years I have gathered together other families’ recipes and made them my own. We have only one “family recipe” that I know of, our famous Scalloped Oysters, but I don’t know where this came from.

Today’s recipe was not stolen, however. I’m lucky enough to be friends with Linda, whose mother we remembered on June 24. Everyone knew her as Grandma Lill, and although she’s not actually my grandma (she’s not even in the right generation to be my grandma), her recipe was freely given to us.

As I reread my niece Jessie’s post on Vanderbilt Wife which honors my father and her grandfather, it seems totally fitting that I honor Grandma Lill today. We paid tribute to Grandma Lill  at her memorial service and Jessie wrote her post on the eve of my dad’s memorial service just a year ago. At both events, there were new great-grandchildren who will not remember their great-grandparent, but life renews itself through the cycles of birth and death. We are also renewed through the memories we share with our children and grandchildren and that includes our recipes.

Grandma Lill embraced Italian cooking and passed her recipes down to her children. Her meatballs are famous — and I hope you will enjoy them yourself in her memory.

Lill’s Spaghetti Sauce with Meatballs

Meatballs
2 pounds ground beef
1/2 medium onion — chopped fine
2 eggs beaten
1 cup Progresso Italian style bread crumbs
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Small amount of oil for browning meatballs
Mix all ingredients together and form into “golf ball” size meatballs. Carefully brown meatballs in oil on both sides in a Dutch oven. Remove meatballs.
Add to pot:
1 medium chopped onion
1 sliced garlic clove
Sauté until tender.
Then add:
3  12 oz. cans Contadina tomato paste
1 14 oz. can Hunt’s basil and garlic diced tomatoes
5 cans water
2 tablespoons each of dried parsley, basil, and oregano
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and add meatballs. Cook uncovered 2 hours — stirring occasionally.

While you’re at it, try the scalloped oysters. It may seem weird, but for those of you who love oysters, this recipe will just melt in your mouth.
MANGIA!

Losing It: Week 7

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I’m going out on a limb here and say that I don’t think most of us lost much weight this week. I’m not ashamed of my week, however. It was one of the best food weeks of my life. And, to prove my point about how difficult it is for me to lose weight, I didn’t lose or gain any weight. I’m exactly the same today as I was last Friday, even after a week of celebrating. Perhaps I celebrated more carefully because I’m more aware of what I put in my mouth because I know I’m going to be held publicly accountable.

Let’s get real. I enjoyed every minute of it, and I didn’t think much about the consequences.

First of all, we went to a friend’s 60th birthday party on Saturday night. She is from England originally,  so her daughter ordered her favorite Indian food from a local restaurant, Himalayan. It’s hard to find a pretty photo of lamb curry because it just kind of looks like red stew, but here’s a recipe for it if you want to try it at home. For those not quite as adventurous in your cooking, go to Trader Joe’s, buy a bottle of curry sauce and put it in with the lamb.

We had a lot of fun at the party, what with the sixties costumes and the love beads and the dancing — it was really hard to imagine that we would be getting up at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning to go to church. But we did; we had inspirational music,  my husband’s brass ensemble played well, and then it was time for another restaurant.

You would never know from the outside that the food at Retro Bistro is so amazing. It’s in a strip mall in a Chicago suburb.

We had the special prix fixe Easter menu which included lamb chops. I have had other items on their regular menu; the crab and shrimp cakes are to die for. This time, instead of dessert, I topped my Easter meal off with escargot in a puff pastry hat. This photo isn’t exactly what I had at the restaurant; Retro Bistro had dishes with little depressions in them for the escargot to lay in the lovely butter and garlic. I got this picture from a blogger that I ran across and will follow from now on. Great recipes! Thanks, Thibeault’s Table.

After two days of eating and having too much fun, I came back to the house, camped out in my chair, and watched three movies on cable! It was a luxury knowing that I did not have to go to work on Easter Monday.

On Monday night, we had Book Club where were served Italian beef and a chopped salad from Buono (the restaurant formerly known as Buono Beef). It was also very good and hit the spot after all the rich food of the last two days. I found this photo of a classic Chicago Italian beef sandwich at Amazing Ribs.com, another blogger who reviewed various Chicago purveyors of Italian beef. Buono didn’t win his taste testing, but it sure was good when we ate it Monday night!

We discussed Winterdance, by Gary Paulsen, which I will review on another post. Good food, good conversation, good friends. What else do you need in life?

And then, unbelievably, we went out AGAIN (and on a school night) on Wednesday night. I drove into Chicago at rush hour in the rain (90 minutes) and met up with my sister-in-law who is in for a convention. We had a family dinner with our daughter and other friends from Washington state and Washington, D.C. at Carnavale.

I have been wanting to go to this restaurant, which specializes in Nuevo Latino cuisine, for quite a while, but was afraid we would be clearly suburbanites coming into the big, bad city for a thrill and treated poorly.  That was not the case at all; we had fabulous service and the atmosphere was very welcoming for a mixed group of ages.

We had a cheese flight, with five good size cheese servings, and a ceviche flight of five seafood offerings. They were both outstanding and unique.

Then we shared a lamb chop on polenta special, Mama Mendez’ Arroz Con Mariscos with Sofrito rice, shrimp, mussels, clams, squid, chorizo, peas, chicken, lobster broth, and the daily fish special. All were fabulous! Yelp’s reviews of this restaurant are not all positive, but our experience was excellent.

I didn’t title this  “Things I Love” originally, but after reading this hymn to restaurants, the post probably doesn’t belong in the “Losing It” category either. If you’re in Chicago, try these places out. You won’t be disappointed.

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