Cast iron Fridays With Lots of Photos

Welcome everyone,

(I am posting a little early as we will be gone most of today)

              I have started up a cast iron sharing event. 
You are most welcome to join in with a post (new or old) just link up back to here to help spread the word. 
    If you no longer use cast iron but still have a favorite recipe or method please feel welcome to share. This is a learning and sharing event for all of us interested.
    Any of you that have used your cast iron at events or camping are most welcome too.
   This is for anything cooked, grilled, baked indoors or outdoors in cast iron. This also includes cast iron dutch ovens with the legs and special lids to hold the hot coals.

     I thought I would share a couple sources about cast iron.  Last year at a big box store-Sam's Club-I discovered the magazine Southern Cast Iron. I love this magazine. It is a bit pricey but I found a really good price around cyber week after Thanksgiving for a subscription. During this time they also have allot of their books and other magazines at big discounts too. Many of the recipes are on their site  as well. This magazine is sooo good in my opinion that it is like a mini cookbook-just filled with recipes and other good information.

   One does not need special recipes for our cast iron, as one can adapt many of their favorites to cast iron. However, Once you start using your pieces you will see how special they are especially for baked goods. Breads and pizza are awesome.

  I was looking around for blogs about cast iron and so far nothing really appealed to me but I did see that Lodge has a blog called The Chopping Block which I just signed up for. Lodge is an excellent source for products-made here in the USA still, recipes, how to's and more.

So what did I make this past week in my cast iron?

   First off we hadn't had biscuits and gravy for awhile so I made us enough for a couple breakfast/dinners. (we are eating at 2 in the afternoon now so I made a big breakfast for dinner)

    This post will have lots of photos so I kept them a bit smaller just click on them for better viewing-they will enlarge full size. (don't look too close at my stove - that needs a really good cleaning soon)

I am not always real good at making fried potatoes but these turned out awesome. I cooked them first-drained-and for the oil I used grapeseed oil. No sticking (smiles)

I also baked an Irish Soda Bread in my dutch oven this past week. Here is the recipe I had not tried this before and it turned out perfect. This a no yeast dough-just do NOT over mix and your bread will be perfect.  The recipe said a 10" dutch oven mine was 9 1/2"wide and baked up perfectly.

I highly recommend this bread-so easy and turns out perfect. It's a show stopper.

Wednesday I had apples that needed to be used. So I made up a deep dish apple raisin pie for hubs and for whom ever drops by.  
          For me I made a gluten free apple crisp.
   For the recipe I usually just "wing it" but I decided to read through a couple of recipes. I liked this one the best. simple and not allot of fat or sugar added compared to most others and I changed it to gluten free. 
   what I changed-for the oats I used half gluten free rolled oats and 1./2 slivered almonds. instead of brown sugar I used coconut sugar. For the apples I also used coconut sugar and about a tablespoon of agave, and I sprinkled in a little instant tapioca-it makes the apples nice and thick-like a pie.and instead of cinnamon I use apple pie spice-which has more spices in it.

After using my cast iron skillets I washed out the skillets and re seasoned. I love the spray olive oil-nothing else in it. I spray just a bit on the skillet, wipe around with a paper towel and heat for 5 minutes on my gas stove.

  I also roasted some green coffee beans for my Hubs in one of the cast iron skillets-I will share that next week and also a couple of books.

Now it is your turn if you would like to share a post using cast iron. 
Thanks so much for visiting.