Food Wednesdays

   Hello everyone and welcome to Food Wednesdays.

This link up event is all about sharing food with each other. As promised I have an announcement to make, so instead of having you read all the way to the end of my post, as I know many of you are curious and waiting, I will just share at the top of my post. I am excited to tell you all too.

  I was messaging up and back with Rain one evening, and was sharing I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue with Food Wednesdays, do to the low participation and also since there are really so many link ups now almost every day. Many are art related which most of us love, but do we have time for yet another link up for food? I mentioned that I was seriously thinking of dropping it in September.  Rain says I would love to take it over if you don't mind that I do?  Thinking about that for a few minutes   "I would love that"  as Rain already has a wonderful community for her Rain's Art Date and she also loves to share food in her posts as well. A perfect pairing-art and food.

 Soooo starting July 14 Rain will be hosting Rain's Art and Dinner Date. She posts late on Wednesdays-so I think this will be perfect for us. Many of you that are linking up and sharing on Food Wednesdays also participate for Rains Art Date too, so I am hoping you will love Rain's Art and Dinner Date.  Also with Rain this will revert back to weekly. Art is also photography, however you inerperet art

  Thoughts? I am excited and hope you are too. 

Update: here is Rain's post about the new Art and Dinner Date link up

   I was so busy cooking up sides for our long weekend, that I totally forgot to take photos. I am bad about food photos.

  I wanted to share the bean recipe that I came across last year when I was posting for recipes using cast iron. This is from Taste of Home Root Beer Baked Beans 

  Photo from the site.

Reading through the ingredients wow it is heavy in carbs and sugar but it just sounded really good, so I copied and saved the recipe.  

   This came out really delicious, to save on a little sugar I used diet root beer, and I used no sugar apple pie filling-the Wal mart brand was really good, I think they may have used Splenda for the sweetener.  I didn't add the shredded cheese at the end, and I didn't have the ancho chili peppers on hand so I used hot red pepper flakes. 

  For such different ingredients added to the pork and beans this was really delicious. I also don't keep bacon around so I used the all natural dried bacon bits. For just the two of us I cut the recipe in half.  I would make this again, we both really loved the apples and you don't taste the root beer. I did add just a little bit of blackstrap molasses to my beans.

  Last week I also grabbed my cast iron grill pan and grilled a turkey tenderloin-these are so delicious grilled this way-always moist

Now it's your turn to share your Food Wednesdays

Please link up with your food wednesdays url and not your blog's url

Food Wednesdays & Art for Rain

  Hello everyone, and welcome to Food Wednesdays, where we share food posts in the link up below.

     Since this link up is all about the Food no rules except to post anything related to food-a recipe, a cookbook or food magazine you would like to share, a restaurant you enjoyed and would love to share, anything about Food.

   Also beginning today for the month of June we will have Food Wednesdays the first Wednesday of each month only, instead of every week. 

    With summer keeping many of us busy I think this will be easier. Summer months are busy too especially if you are a gardener and preserve your foods, or go on vacations.  We will re evaluate for September.

  Are you familiar with Mary Jane Farm's magazine?  I have gotten this magazine off and on for many years now. It's a magazine I usually read cover to cover. Being in my 70's I still enjoy the magazine and learn something new with every issue. This magazine is more for an audience of younger people I think, but I still enjoy it.  The magazine uses recycled papers which are great for making up your own handmade papers. 

   I couldn't find a current magazine cover but here is one older issue

  This latest issue had some totally new to me summer ideas for making cakes with melons and frosting. I don't get out anymore so maybe you are familiar with these?

  I was assuming that the recipes would also be online, so passed on the magazine and they are not there-sigh. I did find a few from other sites. You cut the melon into slices like a cake, rind off, and then frost it. Thinking this is a cake that would need to be made and served soon after. The Mary Jane magazine had several different recipes using also yellow watermelon, you may spot the magazine in a magazine aisle.

 Found this one online from a different site

Here is a recipe using whipped coconut milk  I think this would be a fun cake if you had several people over The Mary Jane's recipes used several layers like this one-made a prettier cake.

Here is one using cool whip for the frosting

  I also wanted to share a watercolor page that turned into a mixed media page. I will link up with Rain's Thursday Art Day

   I began with a new to me wet on wet watercolor page--I liked it. Had thought of trying to paint a bird in the water, but was a bit leary of "messing up" my page that I liked.  So I added some trees and brush and some rocks in the water. A so so page, as there were elements I liked but not as a whole. I went into my saved magazine paper stash and found the butterfly I cut out, and I found this boy talking to a turtle.  I thought it came together pretty nicely so I added it to my journal book and I enjoyed making this page.

I liked these rocks with the water over them-a little better than the last time I attempted moving water

Now it is your turn to share your Food Wednesdays Post. Please link up with your Food Wednesdays URL and not your blog's URL thank you and have fun.

Food Wednesdays

Welcome to Food Wednesdays,  I wrote up this post over the weekend and then set it up to post on the evening of the 24th.  

  Over the weekend I am getting comments, how did that happen I am thinking-well searching I goofed and had it post on the 17th and not on the 24th-sigh. Since we already had a link up I left that post up

  and note: this post was not to go live til late today so not sure what is happening with scheduling posts here-oh well

  Please go here for this week's Food Wednesdays  thanks everyone

Food Wednesdays

 Hi Everyone,

   I wanted to thank all of you that commented on the post asking about your thoughts of continuing Food Wednesdays last week.

   Many of you mentioned that you really enjoy the food posts, and I have really enjoyed visiting everyone too and learning new things. The participation has dropped over the last two weeks so that is why I put it out there if you all were wanting to continue with our Food Wednesdays link up.  

   I do know that there are several art link ups already and other link ups many participate in so it was hard to choose a day. Wednesday can be rough after  T for Tuesdays, but then other days have link ups too, and there is only so much time we all have to participate in these link ups. 

  I have decided after May to set up Food Wednesday for the first Wednesday of each month, especially during these summer months and see if we like this and also if we can get more interest of others linking up and sharing food posts. We will decide this coming fall if we like posting once a month or if we would like to post every week again, and/or if you want to continue.

  OK enough of business and on to the Food. If you are a new visitor this link up is all about the Food-so no rules except to share anything about food and to be kind to one another.

   I didn't bake anything this past week and also we ate pretty simply last week. I did make a goulash one day. Larry has never been crazy about this dish but I have always liked it once in awhile.

   Very simple ingredients browned up a coarse ground hamburger and seasoned with below

Cooked up this gluten free pasta, drained added to the meat, and stirred in this sauce.  Simple and good tasting. I made us each a fresh salad as a side

  I ordered a new book that sounded interesting that came in the mail last week. I am really enjoying reading this book. Lots of gardening ideas, and many ideas for drinks either with a little alcohol or none  Amazon had this in a spiral book which would have been nicer to use-but high priced and I didn't find another one online, so i bought this paperback version

The author covers allot of topics, the plants with recipes, she even had garden layouts, and covered tea plants too-that may be interesting to look into for adding to my garden.

   Below is the table of contents-click to enlarge for better viewing

Now it is your turn to share your Food Wednesdays post.  Please share the url for your Food Wednesdays post and not your blog's url thank you  and have fun

Food Wednesdays

 Welcome Everyone to our Food Wednesdays

     Food Wednesdays is a link up to share food posts with each other. Being all about the Food, there are no rules except the topic is Food-recipes, restaurants, cookbooks, history of food-what ever you would like to share with us about Food

   This past week I made us biscuits and gravy for our main meal which I haven't made in some time.  I used to be a really good bread baker but I never have mastered beautiful biscuits.  I did pick up this book a few years ago and I like their buttermilk biscuits-but this time they did not come out as high as I would like.

 I usually use a gluten free bun of some sort for me,  but this time I thought I would use the same recipe for Larry's biscuits but with gluten free flour-they turned out edible, and I was tired when I baked these-so I would try again but change the temperature a bit so they can bake longer. They were pretty good except not quite baked through on some of them.

    To make the gravy I use Jimmy Deans regular sausage in the pound packages, fry up, add milk-I used organic 2% milk, and then I thicken with a slurry of milk and cornstarch. Add a few red hot pepper flakes and freshly ground pepper

These are the wheat ones and some of them I made too small

I add eggs on top to serve.

Last week for some reason I had a taste for a Cool Whip dish I used to make years ago. Cool Whip folded into a drained can of unsweetened crushed pineapple, and a can of sugar free cherry pie filling.  This is always refreshing when it's hot outdoors. I don't look at the ingredients on the Cool Whip label for this or I probably wouldn't eat it haha    An old treat I make once in awhile.

Now it is your turn to share your Food Wednesdays post. Please link up with your Food Wednesday url and not your blog url thank you and have fun

Food Wednesdays

 Welcome Everyone to our Food Wednesdays

     Food Wednesdays is a link up to share food posts with each other. Being all about the Food, there are no rules except the topic is Food-recipes, restaurants, cookbooks, history of food-what ever you would like to share with us about Food

     How are you all this week?  I didn't do anything exciting in the kitchen this past week, or anything new that was share worthy either. I thought with many of you having a garden or access to a market for fresh foods I would share a couple spring dishes that sounded good that I found online.

 This first one is Asparagus Risotto

This is a vegetarian dish that looks and sounds delicious.

Another vegetarian dish  Vegan Pot Pie with Spring Vegetables

   

I love soup so this next one sounded really delicious too

Spring Minestrone Soup with Chick Peas

Now it is your turn to share your Food Wednesdays post. Please link up with the url for your Food Wednesdays Post and not your blog's url-thank you  Have Fun

Food Wednesdays

 Welcome Everyone to our Food Wednesdays

     Food Wednesdays is a link up to share food posts with each other. Being all about the Food, there are no rules except the topic is Food-recipes, restaurants, cookbooks, history of food-what ever you would like to share with us about Food

     This week I wanted to share a video of an early 1800's dinner over the fire. Beef pie, greens,  macaroni and cheese.  I follow a couple of hearth cooking groups on facebook and this one was posted where she had prepared this meal recently I had never thought of macaroni and cheese being a dish back in this time period.

    If we would have decided to live on the east coast, which we wouldn't have, but if we did I would want an old home with this hearth cooking set up.  Years ago we met a couple where the wife did allot of re enactments of the 1700's and 1800's, so when they had their home built in Illinois she insisted on one of these hearths being built for her. I would really love a cooking hearth inside my home.

    

 I learned allot about using the Dutch ovens from reading old cookbooks from this era.

  April is a good time to look for morels here in Missouri, so I should have posted this one last month but perhaps others have this season now.  We would do that at the woods property for sure, along with other mushrooms in the fall. I ran into this James Townsend and Sons video about the morels. It is a good one so wanted to share.

Now it is your turn to share your Food Wednesdays post. Please link up with your post url and not your blog's url thanks

Food Wednesdays

  Welcome Everyone to our Food Wednesdays

     Food Wednesdays is a link up to share food posts with each other. Being all about the Food, there are no rules except the topic is Food-recipes, restaurants, cookbooks, history of food-what ever you would like to share with us about Food

  This past week was another one with very up and down weather, so I didn't really make too much for us out of the ordinary or something special.

  I did bake us an apple-blueberry crisp, it goes together well and easy to make gluten free and my husband loves these Instead of cutting up enough apples to fill the deep cast iron skillet, I filled it just half way this time. The crisp topping actually turned out allot nicer on top being not so full.

One of the few new purchase of cast iron pieces (most of my collection is finding pieces at sales that are vintage) that I have purchased and really love is the Lodge griddle pan. I love it and use it for grilling meat on the stove. (and makes using this electric stove top tolerable)

  I have recently found in the grocery stores near me turkey tenderloins-they are sooo  delicious and juicy tender grilling them this way

I also wanted to share my favorite way of cooking fresh sweet potatoes. We both really love sweet potatoes and for us healthier than regular potatoes. I am still finding nice ones in the stores.   Microwave cooking ruins a lovely sweet potatoe, baking in the oven takes too long, but steaming them is perfect.  No matter the size I cut them in half for faster cooking-usually takes around 45 minutes,

I was not familiar with these steamers until I met my husband who had a large one just like this, and I found this smaller version at a garage sale-perfect  These come with two steamer racks that will stack. The large one I use to steam homemade tamales with.

When I am blanching fresh veggies for the freezer I prefer steaming them over putting them in boiling water.

Now it is your turn to share your Food Wednesdays post with us. 

    Please link up with the url to your post and not your blog's url thanks, and if you have time please check back late Wednesday to catch all the link ups.  Have Fun

Food Wednesdays

 Welcome to our Food Wednesdays.

     I set up this link up so we could share food posts with each other

   I want this event to be all about the food so no rules except to be sharing posts about Food. Anything you would like to share with us-recipes, restaurants, cookbooks and more for us all to enjoy and learn new things.

      This past week I didn't do much cooking or any baking. It was cold and dreary (when I usually like to bake) but we both were not feeling well.

    I did make a really nice homemade chicken soup one day that I really loved-when I make my pots of soup I don't have a recipe-I just start throwing in hand fulls of dried veggies and lots of herbs and not salt spices.  My husband was having stomach issues too from eating too much cheese and I had made hamburgers last week for a treat for us,  so we ate bread  I looked up foods that were not constipating when I put this soup together. I made this different than I usually do.

Sweet potatoes and darker beans were  mentioned. Never thought of adding sweet potatoes to a soup. I peeled then cubed it and added in the last hour of cooking-really delicious I will do that again. For the beans Wal mart stores have a good organic no salt line now of canned beans. One I like for many dishes is their 3 bean-all dark beans. I added in zucchini cubed, and in this photo is floating the dried soup veggies I get at the Amish store. I also added in a pint of my home canned tomatoes-which I will need to can up again this summer as I just have about 6 jars left. I usually can enough for two years-something my farm girl Grandma taught me to do.

   

This is my go to canned chicken now-it does have salt added but I just rinse it with cold water

I started making Larry an omelet a couple times a week now for breakfast. Something different than yogurt and raw granola

I love these little cast iron skillets-perfect for eggs.  I saute veggies, add in a little meat left overs when cooked through,  I put a lid on and start the eggs in another little cast iron skillet.

My Mom always would lift the egg around the edges of skillet to bring down the raw egg for cooking. Makes the omelet a bit more fluffy too. When almost all the egg is cooked underneath, I then flip it over to finish cooking the egg-and then add the veggies and fold over. I will take the skillet off the heat and put a lid on for a few minutes to insure the eggs are cooked through. Larry then adds hot sauce or salsa to his omelet

   I was adding cheese to his omelets so I left that out this morning.

Now it's your turn to share your Food Wednesdays post.

  Please link up the url to your blog post and not the url to your blog site.  Also if you can please stop back again late Wednesday to catch up on any late link ups. thanks and have fun visiting.

Food Wednesdays

  Welcome to our Food Wednesdays.

     I set up this link up so we could share food posts with each other. I have enjoyed the posts so far very much. Have you too??

   I want this event to be all about the food so no rules except to be sharing posts about Food. Anything you would like to share with us-recipes, restaurants, cookbooks and more for us all to enjoy and learn new things.

   I did make another jar of the chia pudding and this time I added a bit more milk. It turned out perfectly this time. This is my new evening snack. Sometimes I add a little fresh fruit, or jam, or a little honey or agave. Also I use almond milk or other nut milks, but any milk will work perfectly in this recipe.(recipe posted last week)

  I made a big pot of chili during our cold spell and freeze last week, we love a hot soup or a bean soup or chili when it's cold outdoors. I have also been picking up some crackers for the both of us that are strong enough for a spread cheese.

  Monday I decided to bake up some chocolate chip cookies. I always make a wheat and also a gluten free version. Since I change up so many of the ingredients-the sugars to keto sweeteners, Splenda or coconut sugar and the flours, I also combine butter and coconut oil instead of only butter.   I try different recipes from time to time, as they will bake up a little different with these ingredient changes. This time I baked up  this recipe   the link takes you to the recipe and she shares a nice video too. 

    I made mine with coconut sugar and swerve brown sweetener instead of brown sugar, a keto sweetener for the white sugar in the gluten free cookie and Splenda for the white sugar in the wheat cookie. I also use quality dark chocolate chips-this company in the photo is gluten free. Nestle I need to read the labels to make sure. If I want a non sugar chocolate chip I love Lily's products. Their chocolate bars are amazing and sweetened with stevia They have come out with several chocolate products now for baking and eating.

  I did not like how the end of the recipe read so after making the cookie balls from the dough I flattened them out first before placing on to the cookie sheet. The gluten free cookies took 10 minutes to bake. Very soft and tender and delicious too.

  The wheat flour cookies needed less time to bake if I wanted to keep them soft like the gluten free ones. Those took 8 minutes to bake.  I baked these up while reading the T link ups Monday evening.

  

I like this better than Swerve's white sweetener. Much more affordable and Swerve's white always gets hard as a rock in the bag before I get it used up and it's expensive too. I do like the Swerve brown allot-stays moist

I picked up this vanilla extract from the Amish store. Great flavor with the additional vanilla bean extract in it Vanilla extract seems to have gotten expensive again too, this large bottle was around $16.00 I am a label reader so was not sure what ethyl vanilla was. So I needed to look this up. I probably won't buy this again as it is a compound of some sort-I am no scientist and it is toward the end of the ingredients so that is good --Ethylvanillin is regarded as a very safe molecule to be used in flavors and aromatic compositions, and has been for decades [2]. The only danger there is to alter an otherwise genuine vanilla extract, which is more precious.

     

The gluten free cookies

I have two these lovely ceramic crocks with lids. I had bought them for my sourdough starter when I was baking up allot of breads. I had a rye starter going, and another white flour starter that was a fast riser

   Since I am no longer baking breads-I do miss that-I now use these for small batches of cookies and freeze about half the cookies to keep them fresher. I mark on a piece of tape wheat or gluten free

The wheat cookies

  these were to be rolled in balls of a little over a tablespoon, and then I flattened them before adding to the baking sheet.

Now it is your turn to share your Food Wednesday post.  Please link up with the url of your Food Wednesdays post and not your blog url  Thank you

Food Wednesdays

 Welcome to Food Wednesdays.

      Everyone is Welcome to join and link up with your Food Wednesdays Post. 

   No rules, as this is all about sharing Food, anything you wish to share about Food--a recipe, restaurant, cookbook, and more

  This week I thought I would share a couple things I have not made in awhile. Chia pudding, and Japanese veggie pickling

   I had a taste for chia pudding, so I grabbed almond milk and the chia seeds. When I first tried making this it turned out so lumpy that it was awful.  I found a recipe that fixed that for me

The "secret" is to combine the milk and chia seeds stir well, wait for a few minutes and then when it has started to thicken stir well again. Pour into your covered container and place in the frig.

    I used half water and half almond milk, the chia seeds, and a little stevia

In just a few minutes it will thicken up-stir well again

This  batch was a little thicker than I like, sometimes that happens, so I just stirred in a little more almond milk   Fruit makes a nice addition.  I am always dealing with digestive issues from time to time, and chia pudding is suppose to be good for that. If you check online there are lots of recipe ideas for this pudding.

   I still had most of the small head of cabbage left over from our St Patrick's day meal last month, that needed to get used up.  

    Just after we purchased our lake home, around 2 1/2 years ago my husband needed a heart valve replacement. One of the new medicines he has to take now is not friendly with healthy veggies-anything high in Vit K, so it makes meal planning a challenge sometimes.

   Cabbage is one of those veggies but if I turn this into a sauerkraut  type dish it greatly decreases the Vit K  When I was dealing with some major digestive issues years back, I learned about the Japanese veggie press, that gives a fresh fermented veggie pickle. One can combine all sorts of different veggies that you like and add different spices too. 

   The simple version is hand cut the cabbage, I also added a few radishes thinly sliced.

Sprinkle salt over each layer as you add it to the press I keep this salt around for the few times I use salt in cooking

There is a knob on top of the press that you turn to squeeze down the veggies

After just a a couple hours or less you will see the liquid cover the top of the veggies, if you don't see it then you need to add a bit more salt.

  This will be ready to eat in as little as 24 hours, but Hubs likes it to ferment longer. One time it turned into a kimchi that he raved about-of course I haven't been able to duplicate that again.

Tuesday morning update with the cabbage. I should have sliced the cabbage a bit thinner so it would get soft faster. It is good crunchy too but Larry likes this more like a kimchi.  So this morning I poured this into a colander and rinsed well with cold water. Rinsed out the press and then re layered it with more salt on each layer. Squeezed it down and will watch for the liquid to cover the top

and just for fun Larry spotted this cute little snail on our steps

after the photos I moved him over to the soil so he wouldn't get stepped on

Now it's your turn to link up and share your Food Wednesday's Post. Please link up with your Food Wednesday url and not your blog url thanks.  

Since this is still a new link up, if you can please check back again late in the day on Wednesday to catch everyone that has linked up through out the day thanks.