Slow cooker.

If you don’t have one, get one. If you have one, get one of another size (the damn things come in every size from ‘makes enough dip for a small crowd’ to ‘small turkey’ size). Personally, as a working mom, I think slow cookers are one of the 2oth Century’s great inventions – right up there with electric toothbrushes and vacuum cleaners as far as I’m concerned. You can make literally everything from soups, stews and chili to baked goods, small roasts, and whole chickens in them. The only thing you can’t make in them are items like salads. Seriously. At this time of the year, when we are all running around either entertaining or running out to someone else’s house to BE entertained, being able to throw dinner into a slow cooker and set it on ‘low’ before you go to work is genius. No more ‘what’s for dinner?’ And if you have vast voracious hoards who come home from school in the afternoon before you come home, and you get that “Mom, we’re starving’ phone call at 3:30 – just direct them to the giant pot of all things good on the counter for just a little bit of sustenance until you do get home (of course, if you have a 16 year old boy, you might want to tell him to go outside and catch and eat a couple of ground hogs first, just as an appetizer – the family does want to have dinner when they come home).

But this is not about ‘168 things to do with a slow cooker during the holiday season’ (although I am fairly sure that someone has done a book with that title out there and if they have not, then after reading this last sentence, someone WILL). There are writers out there who are vastly superior in terms of providing that level of information; my favorite is: A Year of Slow Cooking

However. What I am going to discuss here is the report recently in the news about canned foods and BPA. BPA is a substance which has been in the linings of cans for quite some time. BPA stands for Bisphenol A, which is an organic compound used in making various plastics and resins. This substance, by the way, is banned in some European countries and in baby bottles in Canada. I’m not going to go into the dangers of ingesting this; there are plenty of stories in the news about this and have been for at least 5 years. But the most recent report in November, where research findings were described showing that people who ate canned goods had BPA levels thousands of times higher than people who did not, certainly has caused us here at Chez Siberia to think seriously about replacing canned goods with either home canned (that is, things end up in sealed glass jars) or frozen.

One of the items we use a lot is canned beans. One of the reasons we’ve used them is that a can of beans is such a convenient thing. Want chili or soup or burritos? Just open up a can of beans, rinse and use them. Over the years, Aunt Toby has tried various methods for cooking dried beans from scratch and has had mixed results; using canned beans was so much faster and convenient.

So, let’s circle around again to the slow cooker, shall we (you knew I’d get back to this sooner than later, right?)?

Let’s say you just want to make beans so that you have cooked beans ready to use. You are not trying to make anything in particular; you want beans ready for later. Here’s how:

What you need:
Dried beans (in this exercise, I’ve used black beans. This works for all other sorts of dried beans)
Water
Slow cooker
Dinner plate, pie plate, shallow dish
Bowl
Fine sieve

Tonight:
Step One: check the beans. Take your plate or shallow dish and put enough beans on the plate so that you can see plate in between the beans. Look through them and if there are any little pebbles, dirt, etc. pick that out. Put the beans into the bowl. Keep doing this operation until you have cleaned as many beans as you want to use (remember – when they are cooked, they become a lot bigger – I think it’s a ‘1 cup of dried to 3 cups of cooked’ ratio).

Step Two: Rinse the beans. A lot. And pour through the sieve and rinse again. Once the wash water is clear, then pour out one last time and put the beans back into the big bowl and cover with water and leave overnight.

Tomorrow morning:
Step Three: Is there any liquid left covering the beans in the bowl? This is almost magic. If there isn’t, carefully put more water into the bowl until you are just covering the beans. Then take the bowl and pour everything into the slow cooker, put on the lid and set on ‘low’. Leave it all day.

Step Four: it’s tomorrow night. Unplug the slow cooker and allow to cool down. Put your beans into containers and freeze. Voila – you now have beans that you can use anyway you want to. If you want to see directions on how to home can your own beans (this is for home canned baked beans, but it works the same way and I’d just replace the tomato sauce with the liquid in the slow cooker or some water. home canned baked beans

Now, a lot of recipes out there for making beans call for putting in chicken or beef stock, spices, bay leaves, etc. etc. and I cooked mine with onions and cilantro and soup stock. But, I’m going to recommend you put absolutely nothing in with your beans except for water. This way, when you are done, you have a completely neutral product. If you want to make black bean soup with them, you can. If you want to make black bean brownies or black bean cookies – ah ha! You still can.

As good as canned beans, only better.

But it’s not. Those went out to feed the chickens, frankly, an experiment that went really…really wrong. Sometimes, it’s just not worth trying. Recipes ARE, after all, recipes, but I figured what the heck. I wanted to see if I could make a rugelach with no gluten in it. Gluten is the form of protein found in wheat and many other grass-based grains. All proteins are not the same; nor are they created equal.

Now, I could make a rugelach with LOWER gluten in it by using cake/pastry flour (this flour uses a totally different wheat which has lower gluten in it, which is why cake/pastry flour is absolutely worthless for making things like breads; it’s the gluten which holds everything up in breads. It’s also, for some people, what gives them celiac disease and Crone’s Disease and makes their lives a living hell, with semi-permanent residency on the toilet, but that is another topic for another time). But, I did not want to make a LOWER gluten product; I wanted no gluten at all. Zippo. And I have to admit that I have absolutely no experience with no gluten baking; there are many people out there in Blogland and in the commercial baking business who have come up with recipes and baking mixes and Xanthem gum and arrowroot flours and all sorts of amazing stuff so that people can bake things that are fairly edible but which will not send them racing for the bathroom.

I, on the other hand, am a woman who is willing to throw caution (and a block of cream cheese) to the wind to see if, oh what the heck, I can substitute something for the flour.

And I can tell you for certain sure — you cannot substitute garbanzo bean flour (aka chickpea flour, aka gram flour – not to be mixed up with ‘graham’ flour which is an entirely different beast altogether) for wheat flour in cookies and come out with anything that looks, acts, crunches or tastes like a cookie, much less the cookie you were trying to bake. I basically ended up with something that was crunchy but had the taste of burned dried beans covered in nuts and cinnamon.

A waste of good nuts and cinnamon, I might add.

So, from the position of ‘first principles’, here is the basic recipe for Rugelach:

Dough:
4 ounces cold cream cheese, cut into 4 pieces (that’s the small square block)
1 stick (8 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces
1 cup all-purpose flour

So, you can see that if you want to double that, it’s easy-peasy – you use the big block of cream cheese (Neuchatel cheese will work just as well), 2 sticks of butter and 2 cups of flour.

You cream the butter, mix in the cream cheese, mix in the flour until you get a ball of dough, then wrap it up and put it into the fridge to chill. Then cut it into 2 (or 4 if you doubled it) pieces, take out one (leave the rest in the fridge), roll out on wax paper as thinly as you can without it tearing, into an oblong, cut it into triangles and then cover with whatever filling you want. The traditional ‘my sainted aunties used this’ filling is chopped walnuts, sugar and cinnamon, with added chopped raisins if you want to go crazy. So, you cover the triangles with the filling, roll them up wide end first, put on a greased cookie sheet, and bake for 20 minutes (plus or minutes 5 minutes)until crispy and browned. Some people go so far as to refrigerate the cookies on the cookie sheets before they are baked; I always figured that if my great aunties could turn out great ‘ruggies’ without modern technology, then I could too.

But then again, they never tried to substitute chickpea flour for regular flour…

So, why doesn’t this work (besides the Baking Gods not wanting anyone to break any of the rules?)? Let’s look at the nutritional info:

All-purpose commercial white wheat flour……….vs……….Chickpea flour
1 cup……………………………………………………………1 cup
Calories……………455……………………………………….356
Fat………………….1 gram…………………………………..6 grams
Carbs……………….95 grams………………………………..53 grams
Fiber………………..3 grams………………………………….10 grams
Sugars……………..0…………………………………………..10 grams
Protein……………..13 grams………………………………….21 grams

The carb to protein ratio in the white wheat flour is almost 7.5 to 1; for the chickpea flour, it’s about 2.5 to one and that’s the deal in a nutshell. Now, that is not to say that a baker who wanted to put a little oomph (or more protein bang for the buck so to speak) couldn’t substitute a couple of tablespoons of chickpea flour for a couple of tablespoons of wheat flour. That would work. Or even use something like dried dairy whey to do the same thing, but 100% one for one will…not…work. Not from a baking aspect and not from a taste aspect (these actually tasted quite horrible; I was surprised at how dreadful they really tasted, even covered quite completely with chopped nuts and cinnamon). The dough also did not behave well, even chilled – it stuck to everything because it did not have the stretch that gluten gives.

So, a colossal failure. But educational, nonetheless.

I’m starting to think that one of the reasons those seedlings are still alive is their location, which is in the path between two beds. The DH, when he cleaned out those beds, added compost and dug everything into two long humped up beds, so those seedlings are actually rather protected. But that is not the reason for this post.

Very few of us have heated greenhouses at our disposal, so the best we can really do between now and when we can get back out to start gardening again, is a sunny window sill. There are a few things that actually are grow-able under those circumstances. Leaf lettuces are one type of thing if you have been able to hold onto some of your seeds from the warmer gardening season. Another thing you can do is to save onions (or their cousins, shallots, garlic, and so on) that might have sprouted in the bag in your closet or drawer, and put that into a pot. What you are seeing in the photo at the top is a cluster of something which is referred to as ‘multiplier’ onions. When we got these from the nursery (I am almost sure I got them from Territorial Seed), we planted the onion sets just like regular onions. As you go along with multiplier onions, they will start to throw off more bulbs. These will form green leaves which you can use as green onions or you can let them all mature, and then split the bulbs up and replant the smaller ones for next year. Multiplier onions are winter hardy, so literally you can plant them right after you dig them up, at the same time you would plant garlic cloves.

In this case, though, when I dug up one cluster, it had already started to grow green shoots, so I figured this would be a good way to get some green onions over the winter and have something growing on the window sill. At the moment, that pot is out in our unheated greenhouse at the back of our house (this one actually has the short side facing south, so it is not exactly the most solar-effective unheated greenhouse going, but I can tell you that once the sun turns the corner in February, that sunroom will get warm enough for us to open the windows and door into the house and it is extremely pleasant) and I’ll be bringing it in fairly shortly for a stay on a sunny window sill in the diningroom.

So. Check your onion bag or the drawer in the fridge – if you have onions, shallots or garlic that have started to sprout, don’t throw them away. Pull out a pot (or even re-purpose something like a big yoghurt or cottage cheese container with a couple of holes punched in the bottom with a knife), put in some potting mix, put in the bulb, cover with more potting mix and put it in a sunny spot.

Instant winter garden!

I have never, until this past weekend, made a kale dish that made anyone in the fam roll their eyes and make yummy noises. I admit it. I have always tried to be a good role model and would put it into my mouth and chew appreciatively. And I hated every bite.

And then I got lucky. Last weekend, we were all together running a mess of errands (the way most families do) and the last one was a trip to the grocery store (which in our area – and for a lot of people basically from Virginia north to at least eastern Upstate New York), this means Wegmans. Now, if you have a Wegmans in your area and you shop there, you can skip the next bit (or you can make yummy noises while you read – your choise). Wegmans has this amazing buffet/restaurant/take out area. You can get anything from Indian to Chinese, veggies, vegetarian dishes, desserts. Everything. And since we stumbled in there right..about…dinner time, we said, “oh, what the heck.” And one of the really great things about doing this is that you can try out stuff that you’d never do at home. This is how I found this amazing Indian chickpea and tomato dish that I just love. And this past weekend, on the hot veggie bar, they had something called Coconut Cream Kale.

Well, it’s easy to convince myself that the Wegmans chefs would not put something out on the veggie bar that did not taste amazing. And, I had seen the dish featured in their Menu magazine, so that was a double hit of credibility, so I scooped up what looked like a half a cup into my little take out container along with some chicken and other veggies and off we went to the sit down area. Once the DH and The Boy caught the fragrance of coconut when I opened the container, they clamored for trial tastes. And after that, I was lucky to get another two forkfuls – they got all the rest.

I think this is the first time that I have gotten a veggie there that I wished I’d bought more. So, I checked the recipe and got the parts we did not have in the bins or on the shelves. Here is their recipe: Wegmans Coconut Cream Kale

And here is my version:
2 pounds of fresh kale, washed, with the bottom 3-4″ of the stems cut off, chopped into 1″ pieces.
olive oil
3 onions about baseball size, diced.
3 good sized cloves of garlic, chopped fine.
1/4 tsp of crushed red pepper
1 13.5 oz. can of coconut milk

Now, here is the number 1, most important, “I am always going to prepare my kale like this from now on because it just removes that ‘ewwwwww’ taste factor” thing to do. I’m sure someone will tell me that it removes half of the nutritional value too, but I’m willing to go with it:
Take a big pot of water, heat until boiling and blanch the kale. Now, the recipe called for this to be done for 4-5 minutes; I’ll bet you cold get away with blanching this for 3 minutes. So, after 3 minutes, take the kale out with a slotted spoon or put a colander in a big bowl and pour everything through the colander. Save the blanch water for something else – we fed it to the chickens and turkeys. Set the kale aside and squeeze out the rest of the water.

Put a puddle of olive oil into a big frying pan and add the onions. Put on whatever setting your stove eye will saute but will not burn the onions (on mine, that is a 4; your mileage may vary). Cook until soft but not browned (mine got browned and still taste great). Add the garlic, the crushed red pepper and cook for another minute. Again, don’t let the garlic burn. That’s nasty.

Stir in the coconut milk and and bring to a boil, using the same range of heat as you used for the onions.l Cooking, stirring 4-5 minutes until it thickens up (mine actually took longer than 5 minutes, but you want this to be really thick). Remove from heat. Add the kale to it and cook for another 5 minutes until kale is tender.

You can season this up with salt and pepper if you like; we did not bother and it tasted amazing.

My son liked this a lot. My son is a rather conservative kid when it comes to food so I figure if he likes it, your kids will like it too.

And for the gardeners out there, here is another amazing fact about kale: this stuff will keep under the snow. We have grown this in the past and literally I have gone out in January and dug this stuff, frozen, out of the snow. It was perfectly good. Now that I have a great recipe that my family likes, I’ll be growing even MORE.

Now, one of the things about bushes and perennials is that if there is anything at the ends (like the seed heads on these grasses and the dried up papery flowers at the ends of my hydrangea bushes), the snow will weigh them down and pull the entire thing down to the ground. With a woody plant such as a hydrangea, we’d end up with deformed plants in the spring. So, I took out my clippers and cut down the grass and snipped off the flower heads on the hydrangea so that we won’t have that problem.

Not that I got it all done, but this week, weatherwise, is supposed to be very good in the Northeast, with nice warm temperatures, so before dinner, I will get the rest of these done. As a side note, the temperatures will be in the 60s, so anyone still looking at a bit of outdoor caulking or painting can still get that done over this week.

Another thing I happened to notice is one of the beds in the garden has some interesting stuff growing in it. Actually, this is in the path between two beds in the vegetable garden and it is very interesting to see that the whole thing basically is now paved with good sized seedlings. Considering that we have had night time temperatures between 15 and 20 degrees F., this is sort of astonishing. The ground must still be in the 40-50 degrees F. range for anything to germinate and even then, it has to be something really hardy.

Ding! We have a winner. Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close up: check out the shape of those seedling leaves. Heart shaped. Anyone guess what that is? Yes, you in the back? Mmmhmmm – that’s right. Cabbage Family!!!

If my memory serves, what was in the bed next to it were lots and lots of plants of various sorts of Chinese cabbages and mustards (which has been wonderful stuff; we still have some growing). Some of these DID bolt and go to seed during a dry period late in the summer, so these are the culprits. I could dig them up, I suppose but for the moment, I am more inclined to try another one of my experiments. I’ll mark these, mulch them with leaves for the winter and see what happens in the spring.

Another plant which we’ve been keeping our eyes on this summer and fall is the celery that we grew. This looks like celery but has a much stronger flavor and texture. I was very concerned when I went out after the snow and saw this: I tried to shake off some of the snow and some of the branches of the plant actually broke off in my hand. This plant was frozen SOLID. I walked away, thinking that we’d lost the entire thing and gave up on getting anything to save. A couple of hours later when I went out again, after the sun had come out and the snow had melted, I expected to see a pile of mush.

Instead, I saw this: The plant HAD been frozen solid but once the snow melted and the temperature started to warm up, it was good to go.

A good thing to remember.

Something I learned recently is that for those of us who have been discouraged from making dried beans because of the ‘sort/rinse/rinse/rinse again and again and again and then cover with water overnight and boil up and drain and replace the water’ stuff, lentils are the one exception to that rule.

How to make lentils:
Open package and measure out what you want.
Rinse.
Put into a pot with water or some sort of broth to cover.
Bring to a boil and boil for about 15-30 minutes (big window I realize but it all depends on how ‘al dente’ you like your lentils. If you let them boil a long time, they turn basically into lentil mush, which is great for lentil soup or lentil stew but not for other things that you want to deal with. Also, lentils come in various colors – red, orange, green and brown. The red and orange ones you can usually find in Indian groceries or in the ethnic foods section of your grocery store.

Now, for our last foray into ‘dinner for one(or two)”, I thought I’d put us all into the position where again, we have something to eat tonight, plus things to work with this coming week. So, this morning, I took a bit of time to rinse a cup of lentils, throw them into a pan with a can of low salt beef broth (veggie and chicken broth works too – even water will work), brought the whole mess to a boil, covered it and let them cook for 20 minutes. Then I took them off the light and let them sit while frankly the DH, our son and I went apple picking.

When I got home, that cup of lentils was now 3 cups of cooked lentils which I put into a container and put into the fridge.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I really need something good and nutritious at lunch at work or by 3 p.m., I’m ready to start eating the carpeting or anything that is laying around at the office (which is usually something that given my druthers, I’d rather not eat..). I also want a salad at lunch because then I can make sure I get my veggies too, but I hate paying $7 for a salad. It just galls me no end. But making salads in the morning before I go to work is sort of a pain, so here is my Rx for me (and for you) which will get the fridge stocked with stuff that will enable me to throw together a good salad literally when I’m going out the door. Additionally, with these particular items in the fridge, you can throw together dinner as soon as you get home without a second (or even a third) thought.

So, to get ready for the week, you will need:
1-2 big onions
1-2 big sweet peppers
The aforementioned 1 cup of lentils, already cooked
A cucumber
A head of broccoli that’s about 6 inches across (if you want to go with a bag of frozen broccoli, that will work also).
A small box of whatever sort of pasta you like. It doesn’t matter if it is low-or no-gluten, what shape it is or whatever.

You’ll also need a big frying pan and a sauce pan, and some olive oil and 3-4 plastic containers with lids.

Step one:
Slice up the onions. Put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil into the frying pan and put on low. Put the onions into it and start cooking them, stirring and tossing.

Step two: While the onions are cooking, rinse the head of broccoli, trim off the bottom and chop it up. Put into a saucepan with about an inch of water and bring to a boil. Let boil for 5 minutes and then drain and put into a container and put into the fridge.

Step three: While the onions and broccoli are cooking, wash, core and slice up the sweet peppers, and peel and slice up the cucumber. Put the sliced up sweet peppers into a container and put the cucumbers into a container. Put those in to the fridge. By this time, the onions will be finished as well. Take the pan off the light, allow to cool and put the cooked onions into a container and put into the fridge.

Step four: Make up half the box of pasta according to the directions on the box. Drain, cool and put the pasta in a container in the fridge. As an added precaution against it all sticking together in the container, toss with a tablespoon of olive oil.

OK, so let’s review: In the fridge now, you have the following in containers:
Cooked lentils
Sliced up cucumbers
Sliced up sweet peppers
Cooked, chopped up broccoli
Cooked sliced onions
Cooked pasta

So, here are a couple of ways to combine these (and sometimes add a bit of other ingredients too) to make other meals this week. I’d advise the you use up the sliced up cucumbers and peppers asap.

Dish Number One: Lentil Salad
Combine in your lunch container the following:
½ cup of cooked lentils
Some sliced up cucumbers, sliced up sweet peppers, some of the cooked broccoli, some of the cooked onions and a ½ cup of the cooked pasta. Add whatever is your favorite salad dressing, put on the lid, shake it up, and you are ready to go. Grab an apple and lunch is ready (and by the way, you don’t need to refrigerate this..).

Dish Number Two: Lentil Soup
You will need a can of some sort of broth – chicken, beef, or vegetarian will do.
Other ingredients: a carrot, diced finely.
Put a tablespoon of olive oil into a sauce pan and on low heat, cook up the carrot.
Add cooked onions, the lentils, and the can of broth and heat until boiling.
Add some of the cooked pasta and heat through.
Serve.

Dish Number Three: Veggie Taco
You will need a couple of tortillas for this and some grated cheddar cheese.
Take out of the fridge:
Cooked lentils
Cooked onions
Sliced cucumbers and sweet peppers

Combine these items on a tortilla, and add some grated cheddar cheese.
Yum.

As you can see, if you have some prepared items in the fridge, then you can combine them in different ways to make nutritious and fast meals.

Well, you have come to the right place.

I think one of the barriers to good eating for folks who are living on their own is perceived lack of time. They get up. They are late already. They jump into work clothes and run out the door, grabbing something on the way that will pass for breakfast and the rest of the day, nutritionally speaking, goes downhill from there. And then they get home and stare into the fridge and see what’s left from a take out or whatever and it’s just so damn depressing.

Well, Bunkie, Aunt Toby is here to tell you that it does not have to be this way. As a matter of fact, you can make sure that it is not this way.

First, and we’ve talked about this before, is getting yourself organized so that you have some stuff in the fridge or the freezer that you can feed yourself with. And second, you can make some decisions over the weekend that will make your life more tasty and more nutritious. But for the moment, we are going to do a little magic with the slow cooker. Now, I can hear the eyeballs flipping over from here, but bear with me. Slow cookers come in all shapes and sizes now – I even found several in the .65 quart range at Target. Now, those are really meant to be used for dips and things like that but I’ll bet with a little thought, someone could use them to make some nifty soups. However, I think a slightly larger size would be more useful. Here are two inserts from crockpots. The one on the left is my trusty wedding gift crockpot from (cough) 1978 (you do the math), which is certainly not as big as some crockpots you can get today but certainly makes a whole mess of chili. There are no identifiers on it but I’ll bet it is in the 4-5 quart range. Big enough for a family of 4-6 but definitely much too big for a singleton or even two people who don’t want to end up eating the products thereof for the entire week. This is not meant to end up being this endurance contest of how long you can eat something night after night.

The insert on the right is a two quart crockpot insert. Now, I have seen on the web a 1.5 quart crockpot (made by Proctor Silex); however, I was not able to find one of those in any of my local stores (see what I do for you?), so I went with the next size up which is 2 quarts. The advertising on the box says it will do a two-pound roast, which is good enough for me because that’s a nice size to give someone not only several good meals but also sliced meat for sandwiches and so on. So this is, IMHO a good size.

Combine this with one of the comments I got on the poll (I got so many interesting comments) which was that the person wants to make vegetables a larger part of the diet. And this is something Aunt Toby can not only get behind, but in front of and with side impact air bags as well. All of us should be eating more veggies. One of the barriers to this, though is that some people feel that veggies take too much time and trouble, or their idea of veggies consists of corn and potatoes.

So, tonight’s Dinner for One (or Two – hey, invite the neighbor in…):
Chicken Pot Thighs
You will need:
2-3 chicken thighs (hopefully defrosted)
2 big carrots
2 stalks of celery
An onion the size of a baseball (or your fist, whichever is bigger – onions are good for you)
2 big potatoes
1 can of cream of something soup (the low salt variety – and it doesn’t matter which one you use)
Whatever spices you can grub up in the house – rosemary, oregano, curry powder, but just choose one.
Note: If you have some frozen veggies in the freezer, put a cup of a combination of those into this too.

Equipment:
Frying pan
2 quart slow cooker
A can opener to open the can

Step one:
Sprinkle the spices on both sides of the chicken thighs
Put a little vegetable oil in the frying pan and, on low and covered, brown the thighs for five minutes on one side, and then flip to the other side and brown that side for five minutes too.

While the chicken is browning, chop up the celery, carrots, and onion into big chunks and throw into the bottom of the crock pot. Open the can of cream of whatever soup. When the chicken is browned on both sides, take out each piece, shake off a little bit and put on top of the veggies in the crockpot. Put on the cover. If you are doing this in the morning and then going off to work, set the crockpot on LOW. If you are doing this on a weekend afternoon, set the crockpot on high. Either way, it will be done at dinner time, ok?

Step Two: At close to dinner time.
Peel and cut up the potatoes into big chunks.
Open up the crock pot and take out the thighs. Take off the skin and take out the big bone in each piece. Put the meat and the potatoes back into the crockpot and turn it up to high.

Step Three: As the potatoes are cooking (and this should not take very long at all – just check the chunks after about 20 min. with a fork), make up this recipe for biscuits:

Biscuits for one or two:
1 cup of flour
2 tsps of baking powder
½ stick of butter
1/3-1/2 cup of milk

Put the flour and baking powder into a bowl. Cut up the butter into little pieces and work in either with your fingers or a pastry blender (there I go with the pastry blender again). Add the milk and stir up the mixture until it makes a ball of dough. Roll out into a log that is about 8” long and cut in half. Cut one half into four pieces. This will fit on top of the chicken pot thighs in the crockpot if you want something that is more dumpling like. If you these to be more crispy, then I have other directions for you.

If you are looking for dumplings, take those four pieces of biscuit dough and evenly space them on top of the mix in the crockpot. Put the lid back on but stick something like a chopstick under the lid so that the condensation will escape and the tops will firm up. Leave on high for about 15-20 minutes until the tops of the biscuits are firm. Serve it up. If the sauce in the bottom of the pot is a little bit thin, you might want to serve this in bowls.

If you are looking for dumplings, take those four pieces of biscuit dough and put them on the little baking sheet that came with your toaster oven. Set the toaster oven to the highest temperature setting before it says “broil” or “toast”. This is about 400-425. Bake for 13-15 minutes until golden on the top and bottom. Serve with the chicken pot thighs. If you’ve got a bag of salad fixings in the fridge, pull that out (it’s fresh, right – the stuff is still crispy so it’s ok…), put some of that in a bowl with some salad dressing and say, “Oh what a good (xx) am I.”
That’s good eatin’.

That’s right, this weekend is ‘Dinner for One (or two) Weekend’ (cue trumpets). And, as is my wont, the first recipe is dessert (in holding with the ‘life’s too short; eat dessert first’ philosophy). I can’t think of any dessert other than dipping into a box of ice cream which is easier than this one but it has a twist: You will end up with something in the fridge which will enable you to make other versions of this several times over into the future basically whenever you feel the urge, as long as you have some fruit someplace (because this works with fresh, frozen, or canned fruit).

One of the tricky parts of the request is that this person does NOT like to use the oven. The appliances in this person’s kitchen consist of a microwave, a toaster oven and a slow cooker. So, whatever recipes I come up with this weekend have to not only fit the size serving, but also fit the appliances (I really wish this person also had an electric fry pan because I think actually you can do a lot more with an electric fry pan than with a toaster oven but … whatever).

So, here is the big part of this project. This will take all of about 10 minutes to do and at the end of it, you will have something in the fridge you can use in the future. And this is:
Crisp Topping
You will need the following:
1, one gallon ziplock™ plastic bag
A pastry blender (if you don’t have one, that is ok; there will be directions for what to do sans pastry blender)
A bowl
1 stick of unsalted butter
1 cup of quick cooking or other type of oatmeal (not Irish, please)
1 cup of brown sugar (medium or light; the dark stuff is very strongly flavored)
½ cup of all purpose flour
1 ½ tsp. Of ground cinnamon (and if you want to walk on the wild side, you can add ½ tsp of allspice too, but I don’t usually do that)

Put into the bowl:
The flour, the sugar, the oats, the cinnamon and with a spoon, mix it up.
Take your butter and cut it into little chunks and put into the bowl with the rest.
Take your pastry blender and chop the butter into the dry ingredients until it’s all worked into the dry ingredients.
That’s it. Take your ziplock™ bag and put all the topping mix into the bag, squeeze out the extra air and zip it up. Store in your fridge. This is the topping for any fruit crisp. And you can use any fruit, from chopped up rhubarb and canned peaches with this to make a fast, yummy dessert.

Now, let’s say you don’t have a pastry blender (which is that thing in the picture of the bowl with the black handle) – no problemo. For those people do this: Put all the dry ingredients into the bowl and mix up. Then take the stick of butter and either zap it for a minute or two in a glass or ceramic bowl in the microwave or melt it in a little pan. When it’s melted, carefully pour it all over the dry ingredients in the bowl and work it in with a spoon. And then YOU are done and can store this in your plastic bag in your fridge too.

Here’s the fast dessert in this example:
Baked Apples a la Microwave (and that is the photo at the top)
You’ll need:
A cereal bowl
A cutting board
A big hard-ish apple, like a Cortland or an Empire. Do not use Macs for this as they turn into mush.
Some crisp topping
A small sharp knife like a paring knife (for those unfamiliar, a paring knife is the little sharp one that came with the knife set, with the 4” handle and the 3” blade).

How to:
Wash your apple well and take the knife and core the apple. To do that, look down at the top and imagine a circle, like a bullseye, about 1” out from the center. Stab (safely – we’re not trying to kill the apple or your kitchen counter here) the knife in at that 1” mark and work your way all the way around until you complete the circle. Then turn the apple over and do the same thing to the bottom side. Then put the knife back in and loosen everything in the center so that you can get the core out so that the apple looks like the empty one in the picture.

Now, put your cored apple into the cereal bowl and with a spoon, fill up the center with crisp topping mix. If some spills out that is ok.

Put into your microwave for 3 minutes. The apple should start to be squishy; if not, set the timer again for a minute but don’t let it stay cooking in there for any longer.

Take out and let sit for a moment and then eat with a spoon. Very yummy. If you want to go totally crazy and have vanilla ice cream in the freezer, then put a spoonful of that on top.

Heaven. In three minutes (ok, so I’m not counting the time to assemble the crisp topping mix but you will end up with a big bag of that in your fridge which you can use for numerous desserts. So you can amortize the amount of time you spent over those desserts – so…let’s call it 5 minutes, total.

Not bad for a dessert.

One of the major differences about applying high heat to the protein in eggs (that is, producing ‘hard boiled eggs’) is that unlike soft boiled eggs, where the white becomes solidified but the yolk is still in at least a semi-liquid state (the better to dip pieces of buttered toast in, my dear), raising the temperature and the time spent in that temperature solidifies everything but again, the egg cooks from the outside in. This produces (and you all know this – I’m sure there are people who are already hitting themselves in the forehead figuratively and saying, “No duh!”) something that can be sliced, diced, mixed up with tasty bits like pickle relish and mayo to produce socalled ‘devilled eggs’ and so on. So, let’s look at boiling water:

Now technically speaking, at least at sea level, water boils at 212 degrees F (or 100 degrees C). Again, if you are located either way up in the Rockies or way down below sea level, this can be different so it’s much more important to look and listen. It’s also important to remember that all proteins react in a similar fashion to boiling liquids (whether it’s water, soup, stew, chili, the liquid in the pan for pot roast, a piece of meat in a frying pan and so on): It hardens up. With meat, what happens is that the protein fibers just snap into place and frankly stay that way. With eggs, that’s why hard boiled eggs have the look, flavor and texture that they do. With meat, high heat can turn the best piece of beef, chicken, pork, etc. into something resembling and old boot.

Boiling water is for tea, sterilizing and hard boiled eggs. For stuff going into your mouth and stomach, simmering is the trick: it helps break down vegetable matter without turning it into mush; it helps animal based proteins soften up, release collagen, and become soft enough to eat without pulling out your bridge. It also preserves a lot more vitamins and other nutrients.

So, now that I have firmly seduced you to the low heat side of the spectrum, here is another egg trick with simmering water, poached eggs. Now, for folks who have FOPE (fear of poached eggs), let me tell you: It’s ok; you can come out now. I have FOPE too. There are all sorts of hints, tips and tricks (using rings made out of tuna cans in the bottom of the pot, getting a specialty piece of equipment, putting the egg in a bowl in the bottom of the pot, putting vinegar in the pot, and so on). I’ve tried them all, including the ubiquitous “whirl the water briskly around the edge of the pot and slide the egg into the center” trick (which produced for me this sort of egg sludge that looked a bit like egg drop soup without any soup).

The trick with poached eggs is this: Stop worrying about this gorgeous, perfect, patty-like white thing. OK? Just let that go.
See, isn’t that better. Just tell Martha to take a hike, ok? The trick is to get everything else you are going to serve with the poached egg hot and ready. Then make the egg, slide it onto the plate with a slotted spoon and serve with everything else (and yes, the folks in the UK do serve it with baked beans. I have no idea why but my mom used to give that to us when I was ill as a child and I have to tell you that that combination used to make me feel better almost immediately. I also think that it was because she used to give us a cup of coffee with a lot of milk as well so it was probably the caffeine). Just gobble the whole thing up while it is hot, no matter what it looks like.

And finally, shirred eggs. Why they are called shirred is beyond me. In France they are referred to as “oeufs en cocotte” which I think is translated as ‘eggs in little dishes that I don’t have any other name for”. This is one of those dishes that can become a really neat ‘I just got home; I’m staring into the fridge and I have no idea what to do” sorts of dishes especially if you have left over bits of ham, cooked veggies and so on to combine in the base of a greased ramakin or other shallow dish (little pyrex(tm) bowls work also). Here you go:

So, there you have it.
The goals for today were to talk about:
The differences between simmering and boiling water.
What those differences do to protein.
Another couple of ways to cook eggs in water.
A way to bake eggs in the oven.

Next, how to get that egg to the soft boiled stage:

And then, how to serve it up.

So, the point here is two-fold:
First, what simmering actually looks like so that image can be stashed in your brain for the future.
Second, how to cook a soft-boiled egg and how to serve it.
There you go.