Pasties

I was recently reminded of pasties by one of my friends, who is from Montana and hasn't had them in a long time. Not the pasties that you wear, but the ones that you eat. :) They are a meat-filled pie, that was passed down from Cornish miners, and are very prevalent in most areas with mining history. The miners would take a pasty with them, and heat them up on shovels using a candle for heat. The area that I lived in Minnesota was on the Iron Range and mining is a big industry there. I only had pasties a few times while I was there and helped to make them once. So I didn't have a very strong foundation to go from. But the internet is a wonderful thing, and I found this web resource that had a bunch of recipes:
http://www.wideopenwest.com/~awesley5155/pastie.html

I combined elements from several of them, and used a picture from http://www.pasty.com/ to see how the pastry should be folded. Pie crusts have never been my strong suit, but Madelyne Lawry's recipe on the first link had a very good pie crust. It even survived my fumbling around with it, and for the most part turned out really good. This is in spite of the fact that I realized that I left my rolling pin up in North Carolina, so I had to use the bamboo utensil holder in the kitchen to roll out the dough. Just goes to show that you don't need to have a lot of high priced equipment to make good food. :) Needless to say I stopped by Linens N' Things and picked up a new wooden french rolling pin for future pasty needs. :)

A Time for Reading

Every year I re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Almost every year anyway, I did get oversaturated while the movies were out and all of the propaganda was flying. But usually in the fall time of the year I get the urge to read them again. This year I plan on reading them all and then watching the movies when I am finished. It'll give me something to do in my free time anyway. I've been so tired on the weekends that I haven't been leaving the house except to get groceries.

I did get some cooking in this weekend though, made the above pictured Caribbean stew with maple cornbread. The stew turned out pretty good, very flavorful and smelled wonderful. I made some rice crispie treats using almond butter and brown rice syrup, they turned out really nice and nutty flavored. The best though was the pancakes that I made for breakfast yesterday morning, they were light, fluffy and had a wonderful taste to them. I got halfway through eating two of them and couldn't finish. Definately know which ones I'm making from now on. :)

Heaven on Earth

This is the first weekend since we've moved here that I actually had energy and wanted to do something. We have some plants to put out before it gets too cold, so we were wanting to check out one of the local nurseries that we've driven by a couple of times. I have been to some nice nurseries in NC, but NOTHING compared to this one. The name of the place is Bennett's Nurseries, and it is located right next door to a water gardening store called Across the Pond. Bennett's is a huge nursery, and the areas in between the greenhouses are almost like a botanical garden. They serve free drinks to their customers, and have live music on Saturdays. ;) Across the Pond was almost as good. They have a koi breeding facility and a huge variety of fish. They have everything that you would need to start a pond, pallets of stone that you can buy, and a very large section with bird feeders and garden statuary. I didn't want to go home, but we had plans for the evening!

I was having a chili cook-off with my friend last night, and we were going to have a bonfire. So I went home to start cooking. The recipe that I made was Tigua Indian Green Chili from James Villas' Stews, Bogs and Burgoos cookbook. It's a really hot and spicy chili that makes your nose run. It turned out pretty good, I was happy with it. We ate chili and then went outside to burn stuff. :) The evening was beautiful. It was really chilly out and it was clear so you could see all of the stars in the sky. We were there until late last night, so I'm still a big groggy this morning.

Today I think we are going to hang around the homestead til later, I brought some work home with me so that I wouldn't be so far behind on Monday, so hopefully I can make some progress. We'll see anyway. :)

Honey Bunny

I've been trying to figure out some healthier snacks to have around the house and to take to work. So I found a recipe that sounded interesting on one of my favorite food forums, and it was for Honeybee No-Bakes. Basically almond butter balls shaped like bees. I almost had a heart attack at the price of a jar of almond butter so I used peanut butter instead. I'd really like to try it with almond butter, but $13 for about 1 cup is a bit steep for me right now. I guess if I factored in how much I spent on other junk food though it could probably be justified. ;)

So here is a link to the original recipe. My bees ended up looking more like rabbits, so I have officially changed their title to Honey Bunnies. They tasted pretty good, they were a bit sticky so I have them in the refrigerator. They could use some more oat bran or something.

Recipe: http://shmooedfood.blogspot.com/2006/04/honeybee-no-bakes.html

I'm thinking that mine turned out a bit sticky because her recipe called for a honey substitute, and while they might taste similar they probably don't have honey's ability to stuck moisture out of the air and into the food. So maybe adding a bit more oat bran would do the trick. Not sure, but I was pretty happy with them. :)

Oh-Em-Gee

I've been wanting to start a new fantasy series for a while, but hadn't found one that caught my attention. We were at the book store on Friday evening and my eye was caught by a book with a very lovely cover, and the description looked very interesting. The name of the book was "The Iron Tree" by Cecilia Dart-Thornton. OMG. I ran a bath in the whirlpool tub tonight and settled in to a good read. I finished page one and was baffled...hubby came in and I started reading him some of the paragraphs and couldn't stop laughing. It has to be the most pretentiously written book that I have ever read. It's like she wrote the whole thing using a thesaurus or something, using words that just don't fit the story/setting at all. Things that might seem okay in a sci/fi book where a geeky scientist was talking possibly, but not a fantasy book with a young protagonist. Finally after reading the second page I threw the book down and vowed to take it back to the store tomorrow. I don't know that I have ever not made it past the first two pages before giving up, it's a new record. :)

First Meal in the New House

Tonight I cooked my first meal in our new house. Since I've been working late most nights since we moved in we've either eaten out or my husband has cooked. Tonight was the first time I've actually had enough time and energy to make anything. So since I've been craving it, and looking for an excuse to make my favorite gravy I made a veggie loaf and some mashed taters and gravy. It turned out pretty good except that it's hard to make the loaf with the correct consistency. As it is written it tastes really good, but is a bit mushy. I tried to make it a bit firmer by reducing the potatoes and adding more oats but that didn't win rave reviews from the home team. Maybe if the oats used were those that are cut finer it would have worked. Anyway, here are the recipes:

The meatloaf can be found at http://www.recipezaar.com/148722.

I've been experimenting with healthier mashed potatoes, and tonight I boiled the potatoes in vegetable stock, drizzled them with some olive oil and whipped it with some soy milk. I missed the tang that I have been getting by using buttermilk, so next time I make them I'll probably mix a tablespoon or so of lemon juice with the soy milk first.

The best part of course is the gravy. I adapted a recipe that I found in cooking light, which was for a Thanksgiving turkey with a molasses/sherry glaze and the gravy was made vegetables cooked under the turkey and the drippings. Since I don't really want to make the turkey I needed to figure out how to make it without. The result is a very healthy low-fat gravy that tastes nothing like a low-fat gravy. The way that I make it is actually vegan, but you'd never know it. Here is the recipe:

Harvest Vegetable Gravy

2 Tbs. canola oil
1 carrot, chopped in small pieces
1 celery stalk, chopped in small pieces
1/2 c. onion, finely chopped
2 Tbs. molasses
2 Tbs. cooking sherry
2 Tbs. soy sauce
2 c. stock (I use vegetable)
3 Tbs. flour

Heat the oil in a small saucepan over medium heat, and add the carrot, celery and onion. Saute until the carrots soften and the onion caramelizes and begins to brown. Add the flour and toss to coat. Mix the stock, molasses, sherry, soy sauce and stock. Add the stock mixture to the saucepan, and stir until thickened.