Category Archives: My Kitchen

On Taco’s and Farmers Breakfast

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We are having Taco’s for dinner tonight. I’m not making them, the children are. I have recipes on this site, things I make up, and they use either that, or a printout of it to make dinner.

This is the recipe link … pastoralfarms.us/2009/09/18/taco-ground-meat-filling/

We still make it the same way, only I have a preference for pure ANCHO chili powder instead of “any old mix of chili and spices that is sold as ‘chili powder’ ” Ancho is a type of chili, not a brand.

I also put a healthy dose of Tabasco sauce in for a bit more zip. As time goes on we’ve grown to LOVE Tabasco sauce in Taco’s as well as in a breakfast that I call “farmers breakfast” which I am not sure if I’ve written it down in a post here or not. — I’ll have to write it down, it’s not something I’ve posted the recipe for (though I know my son did on his blog ;) )

It’s something that my eldest son and I enjoy having every so often, not every day, nor every other day. Basically something that many would have a problem with: potatoes, onions, garlic, olive oil, butter, sea salt, tabasco sauce, eggs, cream, tabasco sauce, tabasco sauce, and cheddar cheese. So it’s something we really like, and others would think “How strange for breakfast, garlic?!!” Yeah! :)

I’ll post a link here when I write a new post for it.

Roast Chicken & Stuffing

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I’m roasting two organic chickens right now, stuffed with white spelt bread stuffing.

The stuffing is my own recipe.

I made a loaf of bread in my Cuisinart bread machine on Friday for this purpose. 3+ cups of White Spelt Flour, 1 1/2 tsp. yeast, 1 cup water, 1 Tbsp. Honey, 1 egg, 1 tsp. salt, 3 Tbsp. butter. I added more flour as needed for the dough. I used the 1. White Bread setting, med. loaf size and med. browning.

The loaf was perfect, so much so I wished I had made it for sandwiches, but so it goes.

I’ll try to make it again and get the same result for other uses later.

I cubed the bread using a bread knife after the loaf cooled down, then put the cubes into a gallon freezer bag. I put that into a deep drawer until I needed it for the stuffing.

Today I diced 1 sweet onion, melted 1 stick (1/2 cup) of butter in a large saucepan, added the onion and let that simmer until softened. I also put in some celery seed (I guess about 2 tsp.) and a lot of dried rubbed Sage (1/4 cup or more!) then the bread cubes and a pint of Chicken Stock. Stirred it around well.

A little more than half of that fit into the chickens. The rest will be baked in a casserole dish later.

I didn’t add any salt to the stuffing since the bread was nice bread and I used commercial Organic Chicken Stock. To the out of the bird stuffing I did just add a little bit of sea salt, and a large handful of raisins and half an apple chopped. That’ll bake until it’s done.

I’ll make chicken gravy using more Organic Chicken Stock, butter & flour, and sea salt to taste. Basatmi Rice, and either peas or green beens.

We’ll also have white spelt yeast rolls, thanks to my daughter taking over that duty. She does an excellent job making clover leaf rolls, as I used to do when I was a teenager too. :)

Cinnamon Muffin Cake – Recipe

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On January 9 I posted about Muffin Cake. Today I am recreating that process of making muffins (ha ha!) on purpose.

2/3 c. butter, melted
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
2 c. milk

3 c. flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. Cinnamon

Sift the dry ingredients together. Set aside.

Put the sugar and eggs into a mixer bowl, then slowly increase speed and mix until smooth. Melt the butter and on slow speed drizzle the butter into the egg/sugar mixture. Mix well on a faster speed. Add the milk a little at a time, mixing well.

On a low speed add the dry sifted ingredients and mix gently until all the dry in incorporated into the milk/sugar/egg/butter mixture.

Butter a 13×9 pan, pour the batter evenly into the pan, pushing into all the corners using a silicone spatula.

Bake at 350 degrees F. for 35 to 40 minutes or until done (cake tester inserted in middle comes out clean)

Muffin Cake

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I was making muffins for breakfast yesterday morning and then something happened which made me hand the process off to my daughter. I was going to write the recipe down on an index card, but I got distracted by the other thing, and then my husband and I had to go to homedepot for the thing, so I wasn’t there when she put the recipe together. I’d gone over what I had done and what needed done (with her) but she goofed up and when I was there, I saw and flipped out (as I do when she’s got a great handle on what’s going on in the kitchen and goofs up anyhow.)

Finally I was able to tell her what to do to make it work (hopefully.) It did work, but it was almost a huge problem.

I had taken a recipe, and doubled it. I have showed my daughter how to double something, she has known for some years now, practiced it fine oft times. This time though, she took the ingredients and did everything right, except for the milk. She doubled the DOUBLED amount. Original amount was 1/2 cup. I don’t mess up that way (yes, other ways, not that way though!) and it’s part of what I need to do with all the children, go over measurements and fractions again, every so often.

So what did she end up doing? I had her put it into a 13×9 pan and bake it as a cake. It turned out well enough. We could do it on purpose, or not. Well, it’s something else she goofed up, I like to put cinnamon in the batter, and she added all that milk before the cinnamon, so she didn’t get the cinnamon into it, just sprinkled it on top, which isn’t the same effect when it’s baked as having it inside is. Even with it that way, it was good.

This isn’t a recipe. If I want to experiment I just might do so with this process and come up with a good recipe to post. Later of course.

Chocolate Syrup

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Makes 1 Qt. chocolate syrup (4-cups)

1 1/2 cups Cocoa
2 3/4 cups Rapadura (experiment with more or less, or substitute another sweetener)
1/8 tsp. Sea Salt
2 cups Spring Water (or filtered)
4 tsp. Vanilla (REAL vanilla, not imitation)

Combine everything except for the Spring Water and Vanilla into a medium saucepan. Gradually add the Spring Water to the dry mixture in the pan, stirring well, until smooth.

Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly, and once at the boiling stage allow the mixture to cook for at least 3 minutes (all the while stirring!) You can cook it longer if you prefer the syrup thicker. [I have used double the water once, and let it simmer for a long time to thicken, getting rid of the extra water, and it turned out really nice, without stirring it the whole time, though I'd not recommend doing this!]

Remove the sauce pan from the heat and stir in the Vanilla. Pour into a clean container that has a sealing lid. Like a wide-mouth Quart Jar (canning supplies) and allow to cool, uncovered. Once cool, cover well and refrigerate.

Use to make chocolate milk of whatever dark or light version is your preference. Also good as an ice cream topping. Yummy over homemade vanilla ice cream!