Em & Laura Project Evolves –> Cooking With Laura Project

July 13, 2009 at 8:42 pm (Cooking with Laura)

little House cookbookSo I’ve decided that this whole “cooking my way through the Little House Cookbook” project would be a lot more fun (and a lot less daunting) if it were collaborative! I want y’all to cook with me, and to blog about the recipes. I’ll keep a running list of all the posts, and maybe between all of us, we can cover the whole book! I know *someone* out there has access to a wild turkey…

This is me, so of course, I’ve made a spreadsheet. (It’s shared in GoogleDocs; you might need a free account to see it and sign up.) This lists all the recipes in the book (over 100!), the page number of the recipe, and notes about which ones I especially need help with (most often for reasons of food allergies). Feel free to add your name to the “cooks” column if you want to volunteer to take on a recipe. When you’ve finished cooking, post a link to your blog entry about it. Pictures are encouraged but not required! I’m going to start this weekend, probably with a preserving or cornbread recipe.

I’ve also noted a rough estimate of the season certain foods should be cooked. Many are listed as “any,” which means the ingredients could be had easily year-round. Other foods must be prepared at certain times of year – dried apples, for example, or fresh tomatoes with cream. There are some things that are available to us year-round, but wouldn’t have been for Laura. Use your discretion about when you’d like to prepare those.

A note about recipes: I’m not going to be able to copy out recipes for everyone who wants to participate. You’ll have to borrow or buy a copy of the book, or see if you can find the recipe online.

So, onward! Who’s in?

7 Comments

Introducing the “Em and Laura Project”

July 7, 2009 at 12:47 pm (Cooking with Laura)

little House cookbookYou may be familiar with the blog, book, and movie about the “Julie and Julia Project,” in which Julie Powell cooked her way through the first volume of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about it.The book was a fun read, and I have even higher hopes for the movie. (Mom, it comes out August 7th…is it a date?)

A couple weeks ago, I was inspired to do my own take on the project. I’m calling it the Em and Laura Project, and I plan to cook my way through most of Barbara Walker’s Little House Cookbook, which collects recipes from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books.

I’m not going for 100% here; I’m not sure I can procure a prairie chicken, for one thing. But it will be fun to try to cook simple foods with simple pantry staples. Sometimes, I’ll use the stove and oven. Sometimes, I’ll try to cook in the fireplace (which is very differently-equipped than any of Laura’s fireplaces or cookstoves). Some of the recipes will require scouting or making some ingredients – salt pork, for example. I may just have to use bacon. On the other hand, we’re getting half a hog this year; maybe I’ll cure my own? I’ll try to stay true to the original recipes, though I will probably use my grain mill instead of a coffee mill for Long Winter Bread, and while I’ll try home-ground germ-in cornmeal for some recipes, by the fifteenth cornbread variation, I’ll be using store-bought.

I’m also not sure what I’ll do about beans and dairy yet. I’m allergic to them, but some of the bean recipes are the ones that appeal to me the most. Maybe I’ll have people over to help me eat them, and serve other things alongside. And I think there will be a fair few recipes that we won’t really *eat* much of…hardtack, anyone?

I’m aiming for a one-year timeframe, but I reserve the right to leave off if it just gets to be too much! I’ll probably do 2 days of cooking a month, with one or more recipes on each day.

So, who wants to come over for dinner?

10 Comments

Things I really should write about

June 7, 2009 at 5:13 pm (Cooking, Musings)

  1. TT Supper Club Saturday night. I don’t even know where to begin. So much fun. Such fabulous food. I really, really wish you’d been there.
  2. Adventures in Food Bastardization! It started by realizing that chicken salad, cole slaw, and potato salad are more or less the same idea, with different main ingredients. (And mayo need not be primary among them…) So…why not make a salad that combines all three? It worked quite well. Started with a base of finely-shredded cabbage and carrots and a bit of raw kraut, marinated in kraut juice. Then added diced cooked chicken and potatoes, chives, chive blossoms, and sage blossoms. Dress with mustard, a little mayo, and enough kraut juice to make it salty and not gloppy. Quite nice. Though in the future, I might just do chicken/potato or chicken/cabbage.
  3. Next bastard food idea…potato/zucchini pancake + meatball?
  4. The rye field is gorgeous.
  5. My brassicas have aphids. I shall cry now.
  6. I made chicken stock in the solar oven on Friday.
  7. Soon I will begin experimenting with schmaltz. (This chicken fat kind, not the other kind.)
  8. I whined about cooking dinner all week. Then today, I made soup, meatballs, veggie pancakes, and am about to go help the boy making dinner. Well, at least I know there’ll be good stuff to eat for lunch this week!

5 Comments

Stewed chicken and greens

May 15, 2009 at 8:50 am (recipes)

Dear sweet merciful gods. This was so good:

Stewed chicken and spring greens

  • Sauteed onion
  • Shredded chicken stew meat
  • Homemade chicken broth
  • Huge handfuls of fresh spinach, mizuna, lamb’s quarters, and baby kale leaves
  • Dashes of smoked paprika and smoked sea salt

Served with a little brown rice and a cabbage salad (like slaw, but with a vinaigrette instead of gloppy sauce)

Note: I made the chicken from an actual stewing hen – a “retired” layer that was no longer pulling her weight on the Amish farm where she’d put in her working years. She was a tiny, tough, stringy little bird, and it took about 5 hours in the crock pot to get her tender. About 3/4 of the way through, I stripped the carcass to try to get more goodness out of the bones, but still didn’t end up with a very gelatinous stock. Still, it was very good: rich, flavorful, and deep yellow. If you can’t find a stewing hen, roast the chicken, pull the meat off the carcass, and stew just the bones. Otherwise, the meat will be dry and flavorless.

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Yogurt and granola recipes from Preserving Traditions

May 12, 2009 at 8:54 am (Preserving Traditions, recipes)

yogurtJarSeven people joined us at the Preserving Traditions event at the Grange last Sunday to learn to make yogurt and granola. Yogurt, as a process, takes time but not much attention once the milk has come up to temperature. Granola is also easy, though you really need to watch the timer once it goes into the oven.

We made half a gallon of plain yogurt and three batches of granola: pineapple/coconut, sesame/currant, and “the kitchen sink” with wonderful crispy walnuts, sesame seeds, and several kinds of dried fruit. Even after our yogurt parfait buffet, there was plenty for each person to take home.

There’s lots of variation in recipes for both yogurt and granola. The instructions below are a good set of guidelines – don’t be afraid to play with them a bit to suit your taste.

Yogurt

  1. Heat one or two quarts of milk to 180 degrees. If you don’t have a thermometer, heat it until just before it boils. You want steam and a few bubbles, but not actual boiling.
  2. Cool it to 110 degrees – just barely warm to the touch.
  3. Take about 1/2 cup of milk out and dissolve your starter. You can use prepackaged starter or existing yogurt.
  4. Add the starter back to the big pot of milk and mix thoroughly.
  5. Pour into containers and keep warm for 4-8 hours. We used a cooler with a hot pack – you can use any method you can think of to keep the jars at around 90-100 degrees.
  6. Once it’s thickened, store in the fridge.

Yogurt notes:

  • You can use any kind of milk: skim, whole, creamtop, powdered, ultra-pasteurized, and even soy.
  • There’s a lot of variation using yogurt as starter. Best results come from homemade yogurt started with packaged starter, but you can also use Dannon plain yogurt – about 2-3 Tbl per quart of milk.
  • The thickening of the yogurt comes from keeping it warm during the incubation period.
  • The yogurt will reach maximum tartness (and lowest lactose levels) after 3-4 days.
  • It’ll keep at least 2 weeks in the fridge.

Granola

You can mix an match any flavor combination you like, but keep these proportions roughly equal:

  • 5 cups dry ingredients: rolled oats, other rolled grains, puffed grain cereal
  • 1 cup nuts or seeds
  • 1/2 cup oil plus 1/2 cup honey or other sweetener
  • 1 cup dried fruit and/or coconut

Method of assembly:

  1. In a large bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients and the nuts.
  2. Heat the honey and oil until it’s very liquid.
  3. Pour the honey and oil over the dry ingredients and stir to coat thoroughly.
  4. Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes, stirring every 5-10 minutes.
  5. When the nuts start to get toasty, or the oats start to brown, remove from oven.
  6. Stir in the fruit and coconut while it’s still warm.
  7. Cool and eat!

2 Comments

Buncha stuff

May 10, 2009 at 7:44 pm (Musings, Preserving Traditions, recipes)

busyI’m not going into the details here, because this is not a “dear diary” kind of blog, but oh my, has a lot of Life Been Happening lately. My main task has been to keep my head above water, and if I have any left, those of my loved ones, so blogging…not so important lately.

In lieu of writing full posts on all the things I could be writing about, I give you a List of Stuff. Details may be forthcoming on some of them; if one intrigues you, let me know and I can bump it up in the queue.

Listiness:

  • Lentil pie: carrots, onions, and broccoli (pick a different 3rd veg next time) topped with seasoned lentils (not very soupy) and a layer of diced potatoes. Sprinkle top with salt, pepper, paprika, and garlic and a good spray of olive oil. Bake at 400 for 35 mins. Nummy.
  • Preserving Traditions continues to rock. We made yogurt and granola today, and it was intensely gratifying when we got to the sampling part of the day that the only noise was the clanking of spoons and the occasional grunted “Mmmm, tha’s good!”
  • A local cooking angel will be doing a small fundraiser dinner for PT in June. Details as they become available…
  • Found a 17-piece Farberware set for $99 after rebate today. Bought one and will split with the Grange.
  • Food allergy testing is a pain in the neck, but going ok.
  • I still have candy left from the awesome schmawesome Easter basket I got this year.
  • This town is full of brilliant, visionary, hard-working local food entrepreneurs. Soon, there may be local sauerkraut, kimchee, kombucha, and other fermented wonderfulnesses!
  • The peas in the greenhouse are up to my HIP. Spinach, lettuce, and a couple leaves of kale have been harvested.
  • In 2 hours this morning, I got the screenhouse and the strawberry bird netting up. They both need some tweaking, but they’re mostly ready. The number of garden infrastructure projects is down to 1 necessary and 4 would-be-nice projects, so that’s a huge relief.
  • I can plant the rest of the garden (almost) any time now.
  • I can now tie a bow hitch knot with one hand, thanks to a workshop at the cool weekend event I went to. It was my first NRA-subsidized event, but I didn’t learn to shoot because all those workshops were full by the time I registered.
  • I made my first solar-cook-while-at-work dinner: split pea soup. Just set everything up before work, and it was soup when we got home. Amended with a couple quick sides and dinner took 15 minutes and almost no cleanup.
  • There are volunteer squashes growing in the new middle garden. I think they are from the jack-o-lanterns that were composted out there last fall!
  • Gonna frost tonight; we’ll see if those Contender beans I’ve been saving are as frost-hardy as they seemed to be two years ago.

4 Comments

Egg Roll Wrapper Vegetable Lasagna

April 24, 2009 at 6:32 pm (recipes)

lasagnaThis recipe changes several things I don’t like about regular lasagna. I’ve never much liked ricotta cheese, and I’m avoiding most dairy these days, anyway, so this is a dairy-free lasagna. It’s also got a lot of vegetables, and can be made as a vegetarian lasagna. Finally, it eliminates the need to cook noodles before assembly, and it’s way cheaper than using store-bought fresh lasagna noodles. You can even make it a low-carb lasagna by using single layers of noodles instead of the double layers.

Egg Roll Wrapper Lasagna – Makes two 5″x9″ loaf pans or one 9″x13″ baking dish (8 servings total)

Noodles/sauce

  • 1 package egg roll wrappers (about 20 wrappers)
  • 1 jar or large can prepared tomato sauce (28 -32 oz )

Meat layer, variation 1 (use only one variation per recipe)

  • 1/2 lb ground beef (use soy crumbles, or omit and add another can of beans for vegetarian version)
  • 1 can (2c) black beans, drained
  • 1 small onion, diced
  • Dried Italian herb blend (oregano, sage, rosemary, etc.)
  • Salt to taste

Meat layer, variation 2

  • 1/2 lb sausage crumbles (use soy crumbles, or omit and add another can of beans for vegetarian version)
  • 1 can (2c) white beans, drained
  • 1 small onion, diced
  • Dried Italian herb blend (oregano, sage, rosemary, etc.)
  • Salt to taste

Vegetable layer

  • 6 c vegetables, including any of the following
    • Shredded carrots (I usually use at least half carrots)
    • Shredded cabbage
    • Diced cauliflower
    • Diced eggplant
    • Shredded zucchini
    • Onion
  • 2 Tbl olive oil
  • Salt and spices to taste

Assembly

  1. Cook all the ingredients for your meat layer in a frying pan. If you’re not using meat, bump up the spices and salt. This should be tasty on its own – in fact, the white bean/sausage stuff would make a meal on its own, or tossed with pasta or rice, and served with a nice salad.
  2. Lay out your lasagna pan(s) and sauce. Lightly coat the bottom of the pans with sauce.
  3. Add a layer of egg roll wrappers one layer thick. (In a loaf pan, just fold the edges of the noodles over to make them fit.) Top with more sauce.
  4. Spread the meat mixture for the next layer, and top with a double layer of noodles* and sauce.
  5. Now use the same frying pan to lightly cook your vegetables. Leave them a little crisp, since you’ll be baking this later. And remember to adjust the seasonings so this mixture tastes good on its own – don’t rely on the sauce to give all the flavor.
  6. Spread the vegetable layer and top with a double layer of noodles* and sauce.
  7. If you have ingredients left, you can make a third layer – perhaps a mixed meat/veg layer. Or, if you must have cheese, add it here.
  8. Top with a final double layer of noodles and sauce. If you can, be extra generous on the sauce on top to keep the noodles from drying out.

By some magic, this uses up all the ingredients and doesn’t leave me short…most of the time. YMMV.

Baking

If you made two lasagnas, cover one with foil and put it in the freezer at this point. Bake the other one at 350 for about 45 minutes until it’s heated through. Also works very well in a solar cooker at 250-350 degrees – check for doneness after an hour at 250. If you’re baking a frozen lasagna, best let it thaw 2 days in the fridge first and then bake, or the middle will be frozen when the outside is done.

* Use only one layer of noodles for fewer carbs and calories

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Sprouted bread: round 1

March 16, 2009 at 10:07 am (recipes)

sproutI’ve been wanting to learn to make sprouted grain bread for a while. It seems to agree with me really well; easy to digest, and doesn’t spike my blood sugar like even whole wheat bread can. I used this recipe, which my Aunt sent to me a couple weeks ago.

It was an interesting process. First of all, I don’t know if I got some weirdo mutant wheat, but my 3 cups of wheat and rye and lentils made about 10 tightly packed cups of sprouts instead of the expected 4.5. I do think I let them “over-sprout” – they were supposed to have just the tips of sprouts starting to show, and mine had legs and arms and even small leaves. And possibly drivers’ licenses. But this took only 2-3 days, which is what the recipe said…

The over-sproutyness might also explain why step 2, blending the wheat berries in a food processor, smelled like I’d stuffed a salad into a blender. Fresh and green, but…are you sure this is going to turn into bread? I was dubious, but pressed on.

I had so many sprouts, I did two loaves. One as per the recipe (over 1/2 a cup of gluten? Seriously? And is it true that 99% of our gluten comes from China? Should I be worried about melamine?) and the other I used spelt flour and molasses instead. The spelt one did eventuall turn into something like “dough,” but the other one really looked more like batter even after raising.

So I did the kneading, raising, loaf-forming, and second rise, then baked. I was still dubious; while one loaf looked like a loaf, the other looked like zucchini bread. And they still had that distinctly vegetable smell.

I baked them for an hour and did, in fact, check that their internal temps  were 200 degrees. Pulled them out, let them cool, and sliced them. The wetter loaf was…wet. Sticky. Like, Boston Brown Bread, steamed toffee pudding sticky. Erm. On to the loafy loaf. Same thing.

Ok, so I’m out a couple bucks’ worth of ingredients and some electricity for the oven. Big deal. But hey, might as well nibble a corner and see if it tastes like sprouts.

And no. It didn’t taste like sprouts. It tasted like Grape Nuts.

Whuhhhh?

And…I kinda couldn’t stop eating it. My husband and I agreed: this was the most oddly compelling bread either of us had ever eaten. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say it was *good*, but … it really invited nibbling.

I’m definitely going to try again, and I’ll blend the sprouts up before they turn from “grain” into “grasslette.” But hey, if you want to experience something that can turn from salad to Grape Nuts, give it a try…

3 Comments

Yogurt custard for the win

March 13, 2009 at 4:01 pm (Cooking, recipes)

custardSorry. No photo. It’s all in mah belly! *mmmm*

Last night, I was in a cooking mood. After dinner, I roasted bones and made beef stock, and I made a fruit custard dessert inspired by seeing the beautiful peaches and blueberries from Locavorious in the freezer next to the stock fixins.

A couple times a year, I really crave custard. I wonder if they’re all this time of year? Winter’s been full of starch and beans…kind of low on richness still cold enough that stick-to-the-ribs sounds perfect. So I cruised the Joy of Cooking (mid 70s edition) until I came upon a dessert that combined custard and fruit. It was originally a fruit and sour cream custard pie, but I pulled it apart a bit and got yogurt-based custard with fruit. It was also astoundingly easy to make.

  • Beat 3 eggs
  • Add 3/4 c yogurt (plain)
  • Add 1/2 c sugar (or less; this was pretty sweet)

That’s it for your custard. You can bake this in a water bath and just put the fruit on top, or:

  • Make a crust of some sort. I used 1/4 c flour, 1/4c oatmeal, a pinch of baking powder, and enough oil and coconut shortening to hold it together. This was pressed into a baking dish about 10×6.
  • Cover the crust with the fruit.
  • Pour in the custard. I had a ramekin of custard left over.
  • Bake at 325 for 40 minutes. I had to poke the top of mine because the top had cooked solid and the inside was still liquid, probably because I was baking it in the toaster oven and thus too close to the heating element.

It was amazingly good. Custards often taste “thin” to me, and with my dairy issues, I’ve tried using soy or rice milk. (Don’t ever bother with rice milk custard, trust me…). Yogurt’s much easier on my system, and I really like the tang it adds to the custard. At times, I’d swear a spoonful was lemon, vanilla, or maple-flavored, but I hadn’t put anything in but eggs, yogurt, and sugar.

And it’s funny:  I hadn’t thought about this at all, but I had some serious dental work done this morning, and custard was the perfect food for me today! Sadly, it’s all gone now, and I will have to find something else to eat.

Or just make another one… *grin*

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Meat as a condiment

February 17, 2009 at 2:29 pm (Changing habits, Cooking, recipes)

steak mealSomething I read quite often these days is “We really just eat meat as a condiment.” I know, in theory, that this means meat is not the center of every meal, but what I want to know is, what does that look like? If you perceive yourself as “not eating a lot of meat,” how many ounces are we talking about? Four ounces per serving? Two ounces in a six-serving casserole? Six ounces instead of ten, and lots of vegetables on the side? A shaving of prosciutto sprinkled on like parsley?

Tell me – or better yet, show me – what you consider to be “not very much meat.” Actual weights and number of servings would be much appreciated. What kinds of meat work best for this manner of omnivory?

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