Just a note to myself -- I must make Jamie Oliver's Pasta with Bacon and Peas for dinner sometime soon. I even have all the ingredients at hand! (Well, all but the cream, but that's easily got...)

This entry was originally posted at http://beckyzoole.dreamwidth.org/35608.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I am still getting used to the physicality of working at the mall kiosk. I'm not used to being on my feet and moving around for four or five hours in a row, so my feet ache at the end of the day. The next day, I feel it in the muscles of my legs and hips. If I've moved stock from the store room to the stand, I feel my shoulders and arms too.

This coming week I'll be working a full schedule, so I've planned meals that will not require any fussing with while I'm on the sofa with my feet up at the end of the day:

Sunday: Spicy polish sausages on a bed of hot sauerkraut; squash and potato casserole.
Monday: Magic Night -- order pizzas.
Tuesday: I'll be working very late. Woof will heat up a can of chili for himself.
Wednesday: Chicken pilaf.
Thursday: Roast pork shoulder in the crockpot; rice; mustard greens.
Friday: Pozole in the crockpot. Need to buy accompaniments of shredded cabbage, radishes, taco chips.
Saturday: Out to dinner with Woof at The Journey buffet restaurant in Swansea, not far from the mall where I work.

Note --
The squash and potato casserole was an amazingly successful experiment with leftovers: mash together the flesh of one roasted butternut squash, about three cups of leftover mashed potatoes and turnips, 1/2 cup warm milk, and 1/4 cup melted butter. Season with basil, thyme, garlic, salt and black pepper. Spread in baking dish and top with parmesan cheese (I might mix more parmesan into the mash itself, next time). Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 25 - 30 minutes. Wow! Flavorful, filling, delicious.

This entry was originally posted at http://beckyzoole.dreamwidth.org/33176.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I want to keep the recipe I used for buffalo wings last week, because it was excellent.

This is the original recipe from the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY, where they were invented (and where "buffalo wings" get their name). I tripled it, which served 8 guys generously with some tasty tasty leftovers.

( Click here for Buffalo Wings recipe )

The leftovers kept their crunch even after being refrigerated overnight in the sauce. Although you could just use a bottled wing sauce, I think the dash of Worcestershire really makes these special.

This entry was originally posted at http://beckyzoole.dreamwidth.org/31193.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Omigosh omigosh omigosh! Last night I made something so delicious, it has to become a regular recurring food item here at Winnebagend. I adapted a recipe I found online for mushroom pie to create:

Mushroom Pot Pie
serves 4 normal people or one hobbit
( Click for recipe )

It couldn't be simpler. The only tricksy part is stirring the flour into the butter, then blending that into the broth, which is not really tricksy at all once you've done it a few times and get the hang of it.

This pie is rich and surprisingly filling. The broth, wine, rosemary, and mushrooms all combine to make a wonderful meaty/mushroomy flavor. Woof licked the serving spoon as he cleared the table. The next time mushrooms are on sale for $2/pound, I'm buying two pounds of them and making several of these!

This entry was originally posted at http://beckyzoole.dreamwidth.org/28937.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I was looking for something new to make with sweet potatoes, and came upon many variations of soup/enchiladas/burritos made with sweet potatoes and black beans. By combining features of several other recipes, I came up with this one. It's delicious, cheap, and very filling.

The black beans and orange sweet potatoes make these look perfect for Halloween!

Halloween Burritos
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tablespoons chili powder
1 Tablespoon ground cumin
1 pinch cayenne (or to taste)
2 teaspoons ground mustard-seed (or you could use 4 teaspoons of prepared mustard)
4 cups (2 cans) black beans, cooked and drained
1 cup warm water
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
4 cups cooked sweet potato, peeled and cut in 1" chunks (I baked 3 pounds)
One dozen 10" flour tortillas
8 oz shredded Cheddar cheese
salsa and sour cream for accompaniments

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Saute the onion in the oil over medium heat until soft. Add the garlic, saute for a couple more minutes. Add the spices, saute for just one minute to get them to release their flavor. Now add the beans, and mash them all together with the onion and spices. Don't puree, just mash by hand with a potato masher or a wooden spoon -- you want some of them to still be whole. Add the sweet potato. Slowly stir in the water and the soy sauce, letting the sweet potato and beans meld into a slightly mashed, chunky whole. (If you're using prepared mustard instead of powdered, add that at this time, too.)

Divide the bean mixture between the tortillas, topping with shredded cheese, and fold up burrito-style. Place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

Serve accompanied by salsa and sour cream. Careful, the filling will be Very Hot.

Yesterday I thought I'd make dal, to use up some lentils. That led to finding an Indian recipe to use the beautiful eggplants I'd picked up, too. And then we ended up with leftover corn after Labor Day, so I went looking for an Indian dish that would use that, too.

I combined two recipes for Bhutta Chaat -- "bhutta" is corn on the cob, and "chaat" is a generic term for any spicy snack (the word is related to "chutney"). I didn't have chaat masala or mango powder, but I did have black salt, which appears to be a key ingredient in chaat masala. I used powdered sumac for tartness. I don't know if it's an authentic taste, but it sure is good.

Woof liked it a lot, so I think this tart salad/relish will be made again:

Becky's Bhutta Chaat
5 ears corn on the cob, cooked
1 small onion, diced
1 tomato, diced
1 large mild chili pepper, diced (I used a pickled banana pepper)
4 sprigs cilantro, chopped (both leaves and stems)
2 sprigs mint, chopped (leaves only)
3 tablespoons lime juice
1/2 teaspoon black salt (has a nice smokey flavor)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon powdered sumac
a good grinding of black pepper
a dash of powdered ginger

Note: I used leftover corn that had been steamed in the husk. You could boil or grill your corn instead. Or you could use frozen or canned sweetcorn kernels. Just throw in whatever you have.

In your mixing or serving bowl, whisk the lime juice, spices, and chopped herbs together.

Scrape the corn kernels off the cobs. Add the corn, diced pepper, onion, and tomato to the dressing. Mix thoroughly; chill until serving.

Last night's improvised quiche made from leftover vegetables was so good, I want to save the recipe. The only thing I would change would be to add some cumin, I think. And more spinach wouldn't hurt -- I just threw in what I had left over.

( As near as I can remember, this is what I cooked: )

Serves four. Takes about two hours to get on the table, including prep time, cooking time, and the one hour cooling time. It was very good warm; turns out it's also good cold for breakfast the next day....

Woof came home for dinner at lunchtime today, since he has to work until 9:30 tonight. We just had some yummy chicken pilaf. I've posted the recipe over at Dreamwidth's thrifty cooking community. It's delicious, inexpensive, and easy to cook (especially if you have a crockpot).

I'll be glad when this semester is over. His schedule has been awfully hard to live with, for both of us.

OMG this is SO GOOD. You can make it with saltines or soda crackers, instead of matzah -- just eliminate the salt. But, wow, I think it would be dangerous for me to make it because it is just so good that I would do nothing but make and eat this stuff All The Time.

Edited to add: IMPORTANT NOTE! My pesachdik cookie sheet is small. For a regular full-size cookie sheet, use a couple more matzas and DOUBLE the amounts of butter and brown sugar.

Crunchy Chocolatey Matza Candy
parchment paper
4 matzas
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Cover the parchment paper with matzas, pushed right up next to each other (break some if necessary to fill gaps).

Melt the butter and brown sugar over medium heat while stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. It should take 2 to 3 minutes for it to come to a boil. Let boil over medium heat, still stirring constantly, for 3 more minutes. It's very important to keep stirring so this won't burn! Stir in the salt. Pour gently and evenly over the matzas. Use the back of the wooden spoon to gently spread the hot toffee around to cover the entire surface of the matzas, but you don't need it to be exactly smooth.

Put it in the oven. Reduce oven heat to 350 F. Bake at 350 F for 10 minutes. The recipe I followed warned to keep an eye on this while cooking -- if one side seems to cook too fast, turn the cookie sheet, and if all of it seems about to burn then reduce the heat. But mine cooked up just perfectly in 10 minutes without any problems, so all these precautions might not be necessary.

Now comes the brilliant part! Remove the tray from the oven and immediately sprinkle chocolate chips evenly over the surface. Let sit for 1 minute. The chocolate will melt from the residual heat of the bubbling-toffee-crusted matzas. With the back of that wooden spoon, or with a rubber spatula, gently spread the melted chocolate evenly over the surface. Sprinkle with chopped nuts if you like nuts.

Let this cool a little, but not for too long -- about 10 minutes. You'll need to cut into 1" squares or break into uneven pieces while it is still warm. But after cutting, leave the whole thing on the cookie sheet until it is completely cool. If you have room in the freezer, it would be good to put the tray in the freezer now. If it's frozen, the chocolate doesn't melt on your hands when you break the pieces apart.

After you break the pieces apart, store them loosely piled in a closed container. Don't worry about how long they'll last, because they will not last very long. :-)

Sunday: Graze on leftovers
Monday: Magic Night. (Serve whatever I find on sale when I go grocery shopping today... maybe make-your-own sandwiches with a tray of cold meats?)
Tuesday: Chicken casserole; green beans; jello salad.
Wednesday: First Seder, at Mom's house. Bring a bottle of wine and an apple matza farfel kugel.
Thursday: Second Seder, at Mom's house. Bring more wine.
Friday: Chicken soup with matza balls; spinach salad.
Saturday: BBQ chicken thighs; baked potatoes; broccoli; apple/cranberry iced dessert.

Apple Matza Farfel Kugel
4 matzas, crumbled
3 eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins
2 apples, peeled and chopped

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease an 8x8 pan. Crumble matzas into deep bowl, cover with water, and let sit. Chop apples.

Beat eggs with oil, sugar, salt and cinnamon until light. Add raisins and apples. (You can add 1/4 to 1/2 cup nuts too, if you like.) Drain matza farfel but don't squeeze the water out. Add wet matza farfel to the mixture. Stir well.

Pour into pan and bake at 350 F for 45 minutes or until nicely browned on top.

So, last week we ended up not eating two of the planned meals. On Thursday, Woof and I met at 2:30 for a late lunch at a Chinese buffet; we stuffed ourselves and were too full later to have more than a little leftover chili for dinner. On Saturday, Woof judged a Magic tournament out in Edwardsville, so there was no time to cook -- more leftover chili, please!

What a good week to have plenty of surprisingly delicious leftover Pumpkin Chili in the house. Here's the recipe:

Chop one onion and one red bell pepper. Saute in a little olive oil in the bottom of a large pot until soft and fragrant. In the meantime, drain and rinse two cans of beans. (I used one can of pinto and one can of great northern, because that's what I had.) Add the beans to the pot, with:
4 cups water
1 can mashed pumpkin
1 can crushed tomatoes
1 can chopped chili peppers
1 cup uncooked bulgur wheat
4 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon salt

Stir, bring to a boil, cover, and simmer on low heat, stirring every few minutes, for half an hour or until the texture and thickness is just right.

We found that this is especially good when reheated, and even better when you mix a sliced spicy sausage or two into it when you reheat it. I'm thinking about making it again with hominy instead of bulgur, to make it a three sisters dish.

The two uncooked meals from last week will simply shift to new places. Here's what's cooking at WinneBagend this week:

Sunday: Reuben Casserole (layer the last of the corned beef with sauerkraut, thousand island dressing, swiss cheese, and rye crackers; cook in the oven for an hour)

Monday: Magic Night! I have three boxes of taquitos to heat up for tonight.

Tuesday: Fish chowder, using the lone perch fillet left in the freezer; and corn confetti salad.

Wednesday: Knit night. I'll eat out with the knitters. Woof will work late and take a frozen pot pie or two to heat up in the office break room.

Thursday: Chili cheese fries; veggie sticks with dip.

Friday: Chicken soup with matza balls; smashed potatoes; green beans; apricot squares.

Saturday: Eat up the leftovers. Make quesadillas and/or huevos rancheros if needed.

Heh heh. I have everything in the house needed to make all of these things. The only groceries I had to buy for this week's dinners were fresh produce (cucumbers, bell peppers, lemons), some swiss cheese, and two cans of chopped chilis.

The freezer is starting to empty out. This is a good thing. :-)

Sunday: King Ranch chicken casserole; Santa Fe rice; tomato and cucumber salad; home-made cherry-almond pastry
Monday: Meatball sandwiches for Magic Night
Tuesday: Vegetarian chili with cheese with cornbread on baked potatoes
Wednesday: Knit Night, eat out
Thursday: Fish chowder; corn salad
Friday: Elizabeth's party. Make wassail.
Saturday: Reuben casserole.

I call today's dessert "home-made", but it's practically cheating to do so. I thawed and rolled out two sheets of frozen puff pastry. Put one on a cookie sheet and top it with the contents of a can of sweetened almond paste, and spread a few spoonfuls of cherry jam on top of the almond paste. Cut slits in the other sheet of puff pastry and put it on top of the first one. Crimped the edges together. Baked it at 375F for 20 minutes, until puffy and golden. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the top, let cool. Cut and serve. So rich! So good!

Sunday: Eat up the leftovers. (They came out just right -- no need to supplement, nothing left over, both of us pleasantly full.)
Monday: Pizzas for Magic Night
Tuesday: Breakfast for dinner: pancakes, bacon & eggs.
Wednesday: Knit Night; eat out with the Tribe.
Thursday: Thanksgiving Day. Dinner at Mom's house with the whole family. We have been assigned to bring the rolls and the cranberry sauce.
Friday: Mom will probably send us home with T'Day leftovers, so I'll make something around them this evening. Or else we'll just have some canned soup and grilled cheese sandwiches -- anything else could be too heavy.
Saturday: Stuffed cabbage soup; noodle kugel with apples & raisins; rye bread.
(We were going to have this weeks ago, but ate sandwiches that night instead. The soup will be made from the leftover broth and cabbage from the corned beef I cooked in the crockpot some time ago, thawed and reheated in the crockpot with the last of the garden tomatoes, a little sugar, onion, garlic and a cup of rice.)

---

Here is my favorite and very easy recipe for cranberry relish. This is a strong-tasting relish, a little goes a long way:

Mix 1 large jar orange marmalade with one package sweetened dried cranberries (like Craisins). Cover and let sit overnight at room temperature, until the dried cranberries absorb the liquid from the marmalade.

And that's it! Sprinkle with finely chopped candied ginger, if you'd like -- I like the taste, but it does make the relish even more powerful.

I've promised some friends the recipe for the best pie in the world -- rich, chocolatey, and even vegan, it's VeganMania's Chocolate Pecan Pie with Booze.

Ingredients
Note: This recipe is incredibly flexible and forgiving, just like the perfect girlfriend. Make substitutions at will.

• 1 1/2 cups graham crumbs, or oatmeal cookie crumbs, or gluten-free digestive biscuit crumbs, or, or...
• 1/3 cup melted margarine, or butter if you want to use dairy
• 2 cups coarsely chopped pecans
• 1 cup non-dairy chocolate chips, or coarsely chopped chocolate bar
• 1/2 cup maple syrup, or brown rice syrup, or corn syrup, or treacle, or, or...
• 1/4 cup Kahlua, or Grand Marnier, or bourbon, or rum, or, or...(optional)
• 4 tbsp soy milk
• 2 tbsp cornstarch, or tapioca starch, or arrowroot
• 2 tbsp blackstrap molasses
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350. Mix the cookie crumbs with the melted margarine and press into a 9" pie plate, all along the bottom and sides. Bake for ten minutes, then remove from the oven.

While the pie crust is baking, whisk together the soymilk and starch until frothy. Whisk in the syrup and molasses, booze and salt. Add the remaining ingredients and stir well. Pour into the pie shell, and bake 40-45 minutes.

Let cool for at least 15 minutes before slicing and serving. Very rich, so slice thinly!

Sunday: Chicken adobo, rice, green beans
Monday: Pizzas for Magic night
Tuesday: Steaks, sweet potato casserole, green salad, sherbet
Wednesday: Chicken fajitas w peppers and onions, buttered corn, chopped salad
Thursday: Pancake supper fundraiser for the Kirkwood Police Benevolent Fund
Friday: Chicken fingers, french fries, crudites, blueberry cobbler
Saturday: Sausages, mashed potatoes with fried onion, green salad, jello with fruit

I had planned to make chicken adobo last Friday, which I had never made before. I ended up eating at my Mom's house instead. So I started it for Saturday night, but we ended up going to Wei Hong with a whole lot of friends. So this afternoon I reheated the chicken adobo for a late lunch and ZOMG IT IS SO GOOD.

( Here's the recipe I followed, and it was delicious! )

This week so far we've done:

Monday: Bagel pizzas for Magic night
Tuesday: Roast chicken, baked potatoes, brussels sprouts
Wednesday: Pozole, corn tortillas
Thursday: Western omelets, buttered toast

This is what I have planned:

Friday: Chalupas, corn tortillas
Saturday: Plomeek soup, celery with cheese (Went to trivia night and noshed instead)
Sunday: Plomeek soup, cornbread
Monday: Magic night: chicken fingers, stuffed celery, radishes, carrot sticks, chips & cheese dip
Tuesday: Breakfast for dinner (bacon, eggs, waffles, fruit compote)
Wednesday: Lasagne, garlic bread, green salad
Thursday: Chef salad with ham, cheese, bacon, hardboiled eggs
Friday: Family dinner at my brother's house
Saturday: I'll be in Arkansas helping my Grandma move, Woof will graze on leftovers

Pozole is, at its most basic, hominy stew. It's a staple of Mexican country cooking. Hominy is corn that's been treated with lye, making the B vitamins and proteins more accessible. (So that's how the Aztecs and Mayans were able to live on a corn-based diet without developing pellagra!) I think pozole is going to become a staple in our house, too. ( Here's the recipe I used: )

This is the recipe for the baked beans served at the Queen's Croquet this year. My mom liked them so much, she asked for the recipe. Turns out it's from the TV show "Good Eats" with Alton Brown. I thought I'd save it here. They're good beans:

The Once and Future Beans

( Ingredients: )

I made this on Monday and it's soooo good! A cake usually lasts a long time at our house, but bbwoof ate the last of this one at lunch today. It uses cream cheese instead of butter, which makes it very rich and gives it a nice tangy taste too. I'm saving the recipe here for future use, feel free to try it yourselves. (Adapted from Your Guide to Southern Cuisine.)

Rich Banana Bread
( Read more... )

Chicken Soup with Matzah Balls for two seders

Ingredients
( Read more... )

Makes 48 servings, with one matzah ball each. For every additional matzah ball per serving add two boxes of mix, eight eggs, and 1 cup oil.

The secrets of success for this soup are using olive oil, letting the matzah ball batter sit for at least ten minutes before cooking, and not overcooking the carrots.

"What is this soup called?", bbwoof asked.

"It's spinach and sausage, no special name", I shrugged.

"I hereby declare that spinach plus sausage equals plomeek", he said.

"Sounds familiar... Star Trek, right?"

"It's the soup that Nurse Christine Chapel served Spock at the beginning of Amok Time. Since Vulcans are vegetarians, we know that plomeek is a plant."

"But sausage is not vegetarian."

"Ah hah! Thus we know that plomeek tastes like sausage!"

( Recipe for Plomeek Soup )

Serve with hot corn muffins on the side... mmmm, good.

ETA: Use five cups of water. Five. Not two and a half.
(I doubled and modified a base recipe on the fly when I made this soup; forgot to double the amount of water as I wrote it down.)

From the inside of the label of Solo brand poppy seed filling, it's the really really good Poppyseed Cake:

1 cup butter, softened
1.5 cups sugar
1 can Solo Fancy Ground Poppy Seed filling
4 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup full-fat sour cream
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
confectioners sugar

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour 12-cup bundt pan and set aside.
Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Add poppy seed filling and beat until blended.
Beat in egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition.
In separate bowl, lightly stir baking soda, salt and flour until mixed.
Add flour mixture to poppy mixture gradually, beating well after each addition.
In separate bowl, beat egg whites with electric mixer until stiff peaks form.
Fold beaten egg whites into batter.
Spread batter evenly in prepared pan.
Bake 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until cake tester inserted in center comes out clean.
Cool in pan on wire rack 10 minutes.
Remove from pan and cool completely on rack.
Dust with confectioners sugar just before serving.

(I used an 8" angel food cake pan instead, which increased the baking time to 1 hour 45 minutes.)

ETA: Woof had a piece, and pronounced it "a superior example of poppyseed cake". I asked him if he liked poppyseed cake, and he said, no, not particularly -- but he could tell that this was a superior example of the type.

I can't decide whether to make it again or not. I really like it, but it's a lot of work and it makes a lot of cake for just me to eat. Maybe if I ever have the Hobbit Tea Party that I've talked about for years, I'll make it for the seed cake.

Yesterday I made parkin, an English ginger cake traditional for Guy Fawkes Day. I followed one of dakiwiboid's links to a recipe tweaked for American kitchens. It is good, but not really what I'd expected. It's more cake-like and less sticky... I suppose I thought it would be like gingery brownies. Would someone who "knows" parkin let me know if this recipe sounds like it would make an authentic cake? Is there a better recipe I should try?

Parkin
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ginger
1/2 cup sugar (optional -- I did not add it)
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup milk
1/3 cup margarine (I used butter)
1 cup molasses and honey mixed (I used 1/3 cup blackstrap molasses and 2/3 cup honey)

Soak oats in milk for 1/2 hour. Mix together the flour, baking powder, and ginger as well as sugar if desired. Melt margarine and add molasses and honey. Combine wet ingredients and add to dry. Pour into a 9" x 11" pan. Bake at 325F for 45 minutes or until it starts to come away from the sides of the pan. (After 50 minutes it still hadn't come away from the sides of the pan, so I took it out of the oven.)

Yesterday morning bbwoof and I hosted the Mensa Brunch SIG at the Bristol, a luxurious buffet for $18.95, that gives you crawfish and trout and smoked salmon and chicken alfredo and eggs florentine and fruit salad and what-not to pass on the way to the chocolate fountain at the end.

Oooo, they had pecan pie, too. I'm usually impressed by the Bristol, but although the food was as good as ever, the quality of the service yesterday was markedly less than usual. I hope they're not going downhill.

On the way there, bbwoof and I were talking in the car about parallax, as one does on a Sunday morning before coffee, and I learned that the word 'parsec' comes from 'parallax second'. It's the distance an object has to be from Earth for its apparent change in position due to parallax, from one end of earth's orbit to another (six months later), to be one second of an arc. That's about 3.26 light years. This is incredibly cool, due to the combination of geometry and astronomy. (Trust me, it is.)

After brunch and a quick visit to the book store, we went to see my brother Mark perform in Tartuffe. A couple of years ago he'd played the part of the wealthy dupe Orgon in a community college production. But in this production he was Tartuffe himself, playing him as an oily lech. He was great, and the production was very funny, but bbwoof, in agreement with most of the reviews, didn't like the way the rhyming translation was handled. The actors unsusccessfully tried to make the verse sound like prose. A good actor can do that with Shakespeare's iambic pentameter, but it's a lot more difficult to do with heroic couplets. It sounded awkward too many times.

I've seen four different productions of Tartuffe, with two different translations. I think that the first one I ever saw was actually the funniest. It was put on by a community theater group in St. Charles on a tiny stage, and was farce at its best: doors opening and closing, split-second timing, a Dorine who acted her heart out, and a cheerful embrace of the artificial verse form of the language. (I saw it with maiabee8, and we spent the drive home talking to each other in rhymed couplets.) It used the exact same translation as this production did, but they did not try to make the verse sound like prose.

What I really did like about Mark's turn as Tartuffe was the way he portrayed him as a rather true-to-life conman, so glib and attractive that Orgon's infatuation is almost understandable. The stage business was wonderfully funny, too.

That's about it for the weekend. We'd had so much for brunch that we just had wine and cheese for supper. (bbwoof also polished off the last leftover pork chop with sauerkraut.)

I put up the last of the jalapenos in sherry instead of pickling them, and cleaned the pantry. bbwoof took down the air conditioners and window fans. We did a little grocery shopping, a little laundry, a little tidying up.

Tonight we may get our first freeze of the season. I'll need to pick all the green tomatoes as soon as I get home, to make green tomato relish out of them. I still need to pickle the bell peppers that fill the bottom of the fridge. Tonight we'll also need to drain and store the garden hoses. And I've got a box full of Halloween decorations to put up. I love getting ready for winter, it feels so snug and cozy.

I am thankful for:

1. The internet, which allows me to waste time in so many entertaining ways.
2. Hand lotion.
3. A mate who is reasonable. Such a good thing.
4. A good Mexican chili recipe that we both loved. Authentic chalupa is very, very good. (Only without the fried corn tortilla shell, 'cause we don't need the calories, and also with some extra chili peppers added, because they are tasty.)
5. Prevacid.
6. A pretty sukkah.
7. Cold weather killing off the bugs.
8. Lots of room in the garage.
9. Daughters that I fall in love with over and over again.
10. Canned soup.

ETA: ( Chalupa recipe behind cut )

I cannot find my recipe for hamantashen. I got it off a miscellaneous synagogue sisterhood website a few years ago, and googling for it gets me nothing now.

This is my very favorite hamantashen recipe. It has no dairy, no lemon zest, no orange juice, no honey. It's made with oil, not margarine. You don't need to roll out the dough, just make balls and press them flat. The hamantashen are slightly sweet, neither crisp nor particularly soft, and hold good amounts of filling without leaking or popping open.

Does anyone have a recipe like that? Please help me out here!

Ah, here is the recipe for my Mom's party pasta salad. She got it from a nurse named Mary that she used to work with at Jewish Hospital, back when it was Jewish Hospital. This recipe is easily halved or quartered, and easily doubled or quadrupled too. I've never known anyone to dislike it. Sometimes I've known people to protest in disbelief that it can't have blue cheese in it, because they hate blue cheese but they love the salad.... but, yes, it is a blue cheese salad that blue cheese haters love.

Mary's Matchless Macaroni
serves 24

Make the night before. First combine in one large bowl:

6 oz crumbled blue cheese
5 to 6 cups seedless green grapes, halved
2 8-oz cans pitted black olives, halved
1 bunch finely chopped green onions (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 pound small pasta, cooked, drained, and cooled (I usually use medium shells, but the original recipe calls for macaroni)

In a small bowl, whisk together the dressing:

2 cups (one 16 oz jar) mayonnaise (real mayo, not Miracle Whip!)
3 oz lemon juice
1 teaspoon garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste

Pour the dressing over the salad, mix, cover, and refrigerate over night. Mmmmmmmmm.

By request, here is the recipe for the tastiest way to eat matza:

1 big jar (or two 26-oz jars) spaghetti sauce with vegetables and garlic
2 cups (16 oz) ricotta or small-curd cottage cheese
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
4 cups (16 oz) shredded mozzarella cheese
1 to 2 lb. ground beef or Italian sausage, optional
2 to 4 cups chopped spinach, zucchini, or other yummy vegetables, optional
2 eggs
8 pieces or so of matza
Chopped fresh parsley

If you are using meat, brown and drain it.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a large baking dish (or use two 8x8 ones, which matza fits very neatly).
Stir together the ricotta, parmesan, and eggs.
Spread half the sauce in the bottom of the baking dish. Cover with half the matza, then spread half the ricotta mixture evenly on the matza. (Top with half the meat, if you are using it, and/or half the vegetables.) Sprinkle with half the mozzarella.
Repeat the layers, ending with mozzarella.
Top with chopped parsley.
Cover pan tightly with aluminum foil. Bake at 350°F for one hour. Let sit for 15 minutes or so before cutting and serving, so it will not fall completely apart.
Serves anywhere from six to eighteen, depending on how hungry they are and what else you serve with it. Mmmmmm, good.

I must try these ice cream recipes posted by brisingamen on food_porn!