Creamed peas and new potatoes

 Growing up, creamed peas or creamed new potatoes were a springtime treat.  We rarely grew green peas in the garden, but when we did they were well received.    We more often grew potatoes and new potatoes were considered quite special.    If we happened to have both at the same time, they were often fixed together as one dish and are so very good when done this way.   You can also add other vegetables, such as carrots or pearl onions.   In times past, creamed vegetables were a popular way to serve vegetables and old cookbooks have numerous recipes for making them, the main way was to cook the vegetables in water until tender, drain and add to a plain cream sauce.    I sometimes will use more than one vegetable when doing this dish, for example, green peas mixed with carrots and the potatoes.  If you want to switch things up a bit, you can add cheese to the cream sauce.   You can even make the creamed vegetables, put into a baking dish, top with cheese and bake until browned.    

4 tbsp. Butter

3 tbsp. Flour

2 cups milk or half and half

salt and pepper to taste

3-4 cups cooked peas

Heat the butter in a largish sauce pan and then add flour. Cook a minute or two, then whisk in the milk and simmer until it thickens. Add the cooked peas and simmer a couple more minutes over very low heat. Salt and pepper to taste, then serve.

If you wish to add the potatoes. Wash and peel, or leave unpeeled if you prefer. Simmer in water until tender. Drain very well, cover the pan and allow to sit for a few minutes while you prepare the white sauce and peas. Stir the potatoes into the finished creamed peas, taste for seasoning and serve.  Or just add the cooked potatoes to a cream sauce with out the peas.   

To make this a cheese sauce, add a cup to cup and a half of grated cheddar and a tablespoon or two of Parmesan to the hot cooked cheese sauce, stirring until the cheese has melted and fully incorporated into the sauce.   Use as above.    

German Chocolate Cake

My mom was well known for her German Chocolate cake and it was also one of the few sweets that my brother Steve really liked.   So Mama would make it for his birthday and other special occasions.  The rest of us all liked it too.  But, because it can be a bit of a pain making the frosting, we didn’t have it all that often.   After not making one for a long time, I have had the pleasure to make two in the past week.  And, everyone that ate them was very pleased in how it turned out.   You can just as easily make the cake using a mix, but here is a simple cake recipe that you can also use for homemade flavor.   As always, enjoy!
An Easy Chocolate Cake   (this is the traditional recipe from Hershey’s, but with a couple of additions of my own.  It is very easy, tender and moist.   Great flavor, too!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.   Grease a 9X13 inch cake pan and set aside.   In a large mixing bowl add the following:
2 cups white sugar
¾  cup cocoa powder, dark or regular
2 cups flour
1 ½ tsps. Baking powder
1 ½ tsps. Baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp instant coffee (unless using hot coffee instead of the hot water)
Stir well to combine.
In another bowl beat together:
2 eggs
1 cup milk
½ cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
Stir this into the dry ingredients and mix about 2 minutes or until well blended, scrapping the bowl once.  Then, all at once add the boiling water or coffee.  
1 boiling water (or coffee)
Continue to beat until well mixed, then pour into the prepared pan and bake about 35-45 minutes.   The cake will feel dry on top, pull slightly away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick in the center will come out clean.   Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.   

When the cake comes out of the oven, you can make the frosting.  

In a heavy pan, an enameled Dutch oven is perfect, beat together:

1 ½ cups white sugar
1 12-ounce can of evaporated milk (1 ½ cups)
5 egg yolks

1/2 cup butter (1 stick)

Cook over medium heat while stirring constantly.  Bring to a boil, add 1/2 cup butter and then cook until the mixture becomes very thick, about 9 minutes or so.    Remove from heat and add 1 ½ tsps. Vanilla.   Stir in 2 cups of sweetened coconut, lightly toasted is good, but untoasted is good too, and about 1 ½ cups chopped pecans, again lightly toasted is very tasty, but untoasted is good too.  
Allow to cool completely, then frost the cooled cake.    

Traditional Meatloaf

 

Traditional Meatloaf

2 lbs ground beef or 1 lb ground beef and 1 lb ground pork

1 cup rolled oats or stale coarse bread crumbs or cracker crumbs

½ cup milk

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 egg

¼ cup ketchup, plus more for the top

1 packet unflavored gelatin (optional)

1 tbsp Worchestershire sauce or soy sauce (optional)

other seasoning as desired (onion or garlic powder, paprika, salt and pepper)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat the egg with the milk, stir in the oats or crumbs and allow to sit for a few minutes. In a large bowl add the meat, the onion, soaked oats or crumbs, ketchup, any seasoning and the unflavored gelatin.  Mix quickly and well. On a well greased rimmed baking dish, for the mixture into a loaf and then cover the top with more ketchup or other sauce you like or no sauce if you prefer. Bake for about an hour, allowing the ketchup on top to brown a little bit. Cool in pan about 5-10 minutes, then remove to serving plate and slice.

Some people like to add finely grated or chopped carrots and/or green peppers. And no reason you couldn't add cauliflower rice either. If you are wanting to up your fiber intake, a couple tbsps flax seed meal would work or use oat bran instead of the rolled oats. If you want some heat and to change up the flavor, add ½ cup roasted green chiles, along with some ground cumin to the spice mix. Leave off the ketchup on top and serve with some heated salsa or queso on each serving.

Baked Apples

Baked apples are an old timey dessert that you don't often see anymore, a shame too, as they are very tasty and easy to make.   When I was a child, every so often mom would make them for my dad.  They were always well received.  I tend to make mine on the simpler side of things, as some use chopped nuts, raisins and other things in the filling.     They are good served as they are, topped with ice cream or even some plain unsweetened heavy cream over the top.    No matter how you eat them, they are good!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.   Wash, halve and core apples, about one apple per person and place in a shallow baking dish that will just fit the number of apple halves.   Sprinkle the apples with a good quality cinnamon, then put about a tablespoon of brown sugar on top of each half, then top each one with about a teaspoon of butter.   Put a little water in the bottom of the pan and put it in the oven.   Bake about 45 minutes or until the apples are very tender.    Allow the apples cool slightly before serving and serve warm.    Top each serving with some ice cream or plain heavy cream.      And as always, enjoy!   

Instead of apples, you can also use halved and cored ripe pears or halved pitted peaches or apricots.   The peaches and apricots may not take as long to cook, so start checking for tenderness after 30 minutes for those.  

Miracle Cheese Cake

Miracle Cheese Cake

Until I was grown, this was pretty much the only kind of cheesecake that I knew. My mom found the recipe somewhere and made it often. It uses a can of Milnot, a type of evaporated milk that had the butterfat removed and replaced with vegetable oil. It was cheaper than regular canned milk for that reason. Mama used it a lot. If you have an aversion to that sort of thing, you can used regular evaporated milk instead. The taste will be pretty much the same.

1 3-oz package of lemon flavored gelatin

1 cup boiling water

1 8-oz package of cream cheese or 3 3-oz packages, softened

2 tbsp lemon juice

1 cup sugar

1 13-oz can of Milnot or evaporated milk, whipped

3 cups graham cracker crumbs

½ cup (1 stick) butter, melted

1 can cherry pie filling (or other fruit pie filling or just leave it bare)

Dissolve the gelatin in the boiling water, chill until slightly thickened. Mix the graham cracker crumbes with the butter and mix well, then press into the bottom or a 9x13 inch pan and set aside. Beat the cream cheese, suar and lemon juice until fluffy. Next stir in the thickened gelatin and blend well. Finally, fold in the whipped Milnot. Spoon this into the prepared crust and chill for at least 3-4 hours. When firm spread the top with cherry pie filled. Cut into squares to serve. You could also place the filling mixture into pre-made graham cracker crusts. This stuff is addictive!

Imperial Cake

Imperial Cake

This is another recipe that Bea Drury gave to my mom.  It was found on the box of Imperial Margarine and still may be as far as I know.   It was a favorite that my mom didn't bake all that often.  It is a very good one too.

Imperial Cake

1 lb softened Imperial stick margarine

1 lb. Sifted powdered sugar

6 eggs

3 cups cake flour

2 tsp vanilla

Beat the powdered sugar and Imperial margarine together until light and fluffy, then beat the eggs in one at a time, carefully fold in the flour and vanilla. Grease and flour a large tube pan and spoon the batter into the pan. Sprinkle the top of the cake batter with some powdered sugar and chopped pecans if you wish. Bake in preheated oven at 325 degrees for 1 ½ hours. When done, place the pan on a rack and cool completely before removing from the pan.

Bea Drury's Orange Cake

As I have posted before, growing up we had some wonderful neighbors, the Sielerts and the Drurys.   Bea Drury was a Sielert before she married Bill Drury.   (Bill also happened to be my godfather!). Bea worked for the phone company and was always sharing the best recipes with my mom.  The only banana bread recipe that I will ever use comes from Bea.   This is another recipe that she shared with my mom and I consider it the best orange cake I have ever tasted.   Like many recipes from the 60's and 70's it uses a boxed cake mix, it also uses a box of orange gelatin too.   For the glaze you can either used thawed orange juice concentrate or freshly squeezed orange juice.  I like to use the orange juice concentrate for two reasons, you get more orange flavor and it was what my mom always used.  As always, enjoy!

Bea Drury's Orange Cake

1 box orange cake mix

1 small box orange gelatin

¾ cup of vegetable oil

¾ cup water

4 eggs

1/2 can of thawed orange juice concentrate boiled with ½ cup white sugar

(or juice of three oranges boiled with 1 cup white sugar)

Beat the cake mix, gelatin, water and oil together, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Grease a 9x13 inch cake pan and spoon batter into pan. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean. When cake is done, poke holes all over the top with a toothpick and then drizzle the hot orange syrup over the baked cake and allow to cool completely before cutting.

Mama's Chop Suey

The holidays are a time when many of us remember and try to recreate family traditions.   This is one of my family's traditions, that was much loved and looked forward to at large family gatherings.   I grew up in a small town in southeast Missouri.  When I was a kid back in the 60's any kind of foreign foods were a rare and unusual treat.  For us pizza was bread dough covered with plain tomato sauce, ground beef, onion and grated American cheese on top.  Somehow my mom was given a recipe for something called chop suey.  It was unusual, it was tasty and something easy to make for a crowd.  It may have been faux Chinese, but we didn't know any better and we all loved it.   We still do, although we hadn't eaten it since my mom died 20+ years ago. 

This weekend my older sister is passing through town on her way to my brother's in southeast Missouri.  She and her husband are stopping in Topeka to spend the night at my younger sister's.    I told my local sister that I wanted them all over my place for supper and asked what I should make.   Jokingly I said, mama's chop suey?   My brother in law immediately said YES!!!!  So that is what I am making.   My sister had the recipe so she emailed it to me.   I tweaked it a tiny bit (a lot less black pepper than mama used, fresh mushrooms instead of sliced, a can of bamboo shoots, she didn't drain the canned vegetables, I do to cut down on sodium).     But I did want to share this recipe.     "Real" Chinese it isn't, but tasty it is.   And for me and siblings, it brings back those days of innocence when we were all young and excited about mama making something exotic.   Enjoy!

Mother’s Chop Suey

1 pound cubed lean beef
1 pound cubed lean pork
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
2 cups diced celery
1 lb. sliced mushrooms
3 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tbsp. bead molasses
4 cups water or broth (I used unsalted vegetable stock)

In a large Dutch oven, brown the meats in a small amount of oil, then add the remaining ingredients and simmer until the meat is tender.   Then add the following:

2 cans drained bean sprouts
1 can drained sliced water chestnuts
1 can drained sliced bamboo shoots
1 small jar diced pimentos

Heat all together until boiling.   Thicken to taste with a slurry of cornstarch and water.    Serve with either rice of chow mein noodles. 

Mama's (and Grandma Casey's) Cornbread Dressing

I love good dressing.   My family never stuffed the turkey or chicken when roasting, the dressing was always either cooked in a separate pan or placed under the mostly cooked turkey.   I always preferred it in a separate pan, as I liked the crusty top, bottom and edges.   Mama's dressing was always done the same way and was very simple.   Stale cornbread, stale white bread, onions, eggs, celery, sage, black pepper, chicken/turkey broth and lots of fat, either butter or chicken/turkey fat.   It was always delicious.    I never asked my mom how she made it and it has taken me several years to figure out her secret.   The most important part is the correct balance of cornbread and white bread, which I learned (by trial and error) is 4 parts stale cornbread to 1 part stale white bread.  Here is what I came up with, this will make enough for a 9x13 inch pan of dressing.   Oh and the difference between stuffing and dressing?   It is the same stuff!   Stuffing is stuffed inside the turkey (well, duh!) and dressing is when it is baked separately. 

I bake a pan of cornbread the night before and after the oven has cooled off, just leave the pan in the oven overnight or until whenever the next day you are making the dressing.   An 8x8 inch pan of cornbread gives you just enough for this recipe.   As for the stale white bread, I often buy a bag of rolls from the discount shelf at the store.  They are usually just right for this recipe.

8 cups stale cornbread, crumbled
2 cups stale white bread, crumbled
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
about 1 1/2 cups celery, chopped (I like to use the inner core with the leafy greens)
2 eggs
1 tbsp. crumbled dried sage (finely chopped fresh sage if you happen to have some) or to taste
1/2 tsp. black pepper  or to taste
1/4 cup butter or chicken/turkey fat or mixture of the two
chicken or turkey broth, 3-6 cups, as you like

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.  

In a large dutch oven heat the butter or fat and then saute the onion and celery until lightly browned, do not allow to scorch.   While that is cooking, take a very large bowl and add the cornbread, white bread, sage and black pepper.   When the vegetables are done, add about a cup of the chicken broth to deglaze the pan, then pour it all into the breads and seasoning.   Add another 2 cups chicken broth and the eggs, then stir to mix well.   Add more broth until you get it to the correct consistency, this will depend on if you like a dryer or moister dressing.  I like mine very moist, so I add enough broth until it is very wet and slightly soupy.   Spoon or pour into your greased baking dish and smooth out the top.   Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour or until it is well browned and crusty.   Allow to cool slightly before serving.

One thing I like to do for a main dish when I don't want to go to the trouble of roasting a chicken or cook a turkey, is to make chicken and dressing in one dish.   I will buy a deli roast chicken from the store, take the meat off the bone and reserve.   I put the bones and skin in a dutch oven and simmer with packaged chicken broth (about 2 quarts), an onion (washed and halved, but skin left on), a couple carrots and some celery.   After simmering for 45-60 minutes, strain and discard the solids.    I make up my dressing mixture, using the broth (saving back 2 cups for gravy) from the bones.   I put half of the dressing mixture in my baking dish, then top with the chicken meat, spreading it out evenly, then top with the rest of the dressing mixture.   Bake as before.   I then make some gravy with the reserved broth (3 tbsp. oil or butter heated, then adding 2 heaping tbsp. flour, make a roux, brown lightly, then whisk in the 2 cups chicken broth, cook until thick.)