Holiday cookies

Let's face it, holiday Christmas cookies aren't that healthy, physically. But they are a simple way of lifting Christmas spirits, especially if you have someone to share them with. I made these for a December 1 picnic (and am only now posting about it, my bad!). But there were other deserts and mine required the effort of decorating them, so I came back home with most of them.

These are from a 1975 cookie cookbook put out by Better Homes and Gardens. That's only about middle-aged for my cookbook collection. If I'd had that cookbook when it was new, I would have been making them as a junior high student in eighth grade enrolled in home economics. I remember that my seventh grade home economics teacher to a great extent, and my eighth grade home economics teacher to a lesser extent, wanted to teach us the newest trends in home economics. So we learned things like outdoor cooking, how to set up a household budget and how advertising tries to trick us. Great stuff I hope all junior high children have an opportunity to learn today. I don't think we did learn how to make sugar cookies.

I'm not so sure the women's magazines and books were encouraging our mothers to help us bake anything but the most traditional of cookies in 1975. However, this cookie recipe makes a not too sweet base for any cookie shapes or cookie décor you wish. I also thought the addition of orange peel and the option of substituting orange juice for milk were nice touches. I couldn't see not using the orange I had just grated the peel off of, so I did use that orange and added a very small amount of water to yield 1/3 cup of juice.

 I really can't say it's healthier than being not to sweet. Most more modern recipes will eliminate, at the very least, the shortening. In this day of gluten-free and keto, they possibly also eliminate the sugars and flours, substituting things like maple syrup, honey or coconut sugar for the sugar, and coconut or almond flour for the plain white flour this recipe calls for. Of course, on the keto diet, they may eliminate the peanut butter too.

PEANUT BUTTER CUTOUT COOKIES

1/2 cup shortening

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

12 cup granulated sugar 

1egg

2 teaspoons shredded orange peel

1/3 cup orange juice (or milk)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt ( I put less)

Cream shortening, peanut butter and sugars together. Blend in egg, orange peel and juice or milk. Sift flour, baking soda and salt into the creamed mixture. Stir. Cover the dough and chill it two to three hours. (I chilled mine overnight, about 12 hours, with no problems.)

Roll out the cookie dough to 1/8" thickness, cut into desired shapes. Place on greased cookie sheet to bake in 350 degree oven for 8 to 10 minutes. This recipe can make four dozen cookies if the dough is rolled thin enough.

I decorated my cookies with less than $10 worth of icing and colored sugars I found at the grocery store in between my house and this park. Ironically, I found another half-used container of red sugar in my cupboard after the picnic. I also later figured out that the tube of icing will flow better if microwaved briefly. I'm not sure I had time that day to make my own icing and color my own sugars, but even if so, such a recipe wasn't in this cookbook. 

If I make these cookies again, there actually is another recipe one page forward in the same cookbook I'll try next time. It has no peanut butter, but also less sugar (only brown) and no shortening. It does have honey and spices. Sounds delicious, and maybe - unlike the peanut butter cutout cookies - tasty enough to eat without décor. Or, since my husband is a huge fan of licorice, I'll try the recipe listed right after these peanut butter cookies called Anise Cutouts. Or, in one of my Sunset cookbooks, there is a recipe that has no peanut butter, but has both orange peel and anise. 

For decorating, other ideas I'll possibly try are spreading the cutout cookies with the slightly warmed icing, and topping that with peppermint or any kind of nuts. Maybe I also would find a good recipe for homemade icing and sugars.

But, I usually only make one holiday cookie recipe a year, if that. And, other than my personal favorite, Cocoa Drop cookies, I usually try new recipes. I may make cutout cookies one year, Cocoa Drops another year, sweet little jam-filled things another, bar cookies another, and I seem to recall that my one and only Christmas cookies last year were these buttery drop cookies, a recipe I can't even remember what cookbook I found them in.

I would have linked those cutout recipes I haven't tried yet so you could beat me to it. But most of what I have in my old and semi-old Better Homes, Betty Crocker and Sunset cookbooks aren't on those particular company's websites. So I'm not sure which of the universe of other websites has the best recipes.

However, this is a very close link to my old Betty Crocker favorite, Cocoa Drop cookies .  This link takes you instead to Betty Crocker's recipe for Chocolate Drop cookies. It's a very similar recipe, but in my cookbook, there is the option to use 1/2 cup of cocoa and 2/3 cup margarine instead of 2 oz. of unsweetened chocolate and only 1/2 cup of margarine. I also make the frosting that comes with this recipe, but tint it with food coloring instead of adding chocolate. This allows me to have bright green and red for Christmas, or other colors the rest of the year.


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Making another go at this

I have probably three or four blogs, maybe five if you count the one I did for a little while on GoodReads.com for the first in the series of books I'm writing. All of my blogs are hit and miss. I do them for awhile and then when I lose interest in that topic, I stop. I think my other blog on blogger I even was completely writing on a different topic than what I started.

But food has always been a passion of mine. And so is writing. So, I am promising to make another good effort on this blog, which I dedicated to food when I started it more than three years ago. I am still passionate about telling you how to find good, healthy and inexpensive food.

A few things have changed. I used to be a super strong advocate for the local pick-your-own produce farm, which unfortunately has gone out of business. So now I will have to advocate that if you want fresh organic vegetables you go to a Farmer's Market. I'm a big fan of the Patch Farmers' Market, which sets up shop at the Don Schroeder Medical Clinic in Rubidoux on Mondays, the Vernola Marketplace Shopping Center on the other side of Jurupa Valley on Saturdays and somewhere in Riverside (County Circle Drive?) on Thursdays. However, I find it difficult to get to all three of them, so I'm not a frequent shopper there. So, I tend to get most of my vegetables at grocery stores. I may on occasion get them at 99 Cents Only Store, which at least at the stores on Limonite in Jurupa Valley and Van Buren in Riverside, has perfectly acceptable produce on a regular basis. Dollar Tree, which otherwise would be my favorite (and closest) dollar store is not as good for food.

The other thing is that my recipes in the past were heavy on pasta. I was of the mistaken impression at that time that a vegetable lasagna, for instance, was perfectly healthy if you made it with whole wheat pasta and went heavy on the vegetables. Well, now I'm trying to worry more about carbs and cholesterol, so I'll be keeping that in mind as I write new recipes.  With that in mind, I will tell you that last night's leftover lasagna with both hamburger and salami, as well as some spinach and tomatoes is what's for dinner tonight. And that my next blog post will be about Christmas cookies, so not too cheap or healthy - but at least fresh.

But I hope to keep this going, so let's see!

Too much produce!

I love the fresh produce offerings available in my area, but sometimes it's a bit too much. Here is my current problem.

 I have produce on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator, which is a new refrigerator and not quite as big as my old one. The old one was 25 years old, so I took advantage of a Southern California Edison program to get one for free.

 I have filled the vegetable drawer of my refrigerator clear full. (Alleviated it a bit after this photo was taken by putting most of half a Farm Fresh to You cabbage in cabbage soup last night.

 The fruit drawer. I'll be alleviating the situation here soon by making pear bread.

But that will just make room for all this fruit that is still in my box from "The Patch."

Where to get fresh from the farm vegetables!

Fresh vegetables - and by that I mean usually organic produce as straight from the farm as possible - seem to have grown in popularity even since I made this blog about fresh produce a few years ago. For instance, at that time, my home city Jurupa Valley had only one option besides its limited number of local grocery stores. Now it has three. I'm going to review these here, and discuss options for the rest of you as well. However, option 1 is available to almost all Californians, and options 2 and 3 are open to anyone who can travel to Jurupa Valley at the appropriate times.

Our local options

1. Farm Fresh to You - This isn't just local to Jurupa Valley or a surrounding city, but it's the one option here that has been around longer than my blog. This is an online ordering service for a package of fresh, organic and often exotic vegetables and fruits. You arrange to have as many fresh fruits and vegetables delivered to your door as you want or need, once a week or even less. When I first started using the service, you had some choices about box size and contents. Now you have even more, and can even customize your box. Check out http://www.farmfreshtoyou.com/ for more info.

2. The Patch - This is the newest option in Jurupa Valley, having only started in April 2015 (this month as I write this). The Patch takes place from 9 a.m. to noon at the Jurupa Community Center (4810 Pedley Road, Jurupa Valley). It's a partnership between Adams Acres Farms in Rialto (including Gabriel, the former owner of Unity Farm locally) and Healthy Jurupa Valley's Gardens and Markets team. While just the two farmers using Adams Acres at this time, they are working on agreements with other farmers to bring even more in. With two farmers, they already both offer organic fruits and vegetables that are as good or better than Farm Fresh.  If you can make it to the Patch, you can pick up a box that you pre-ordered at least 24 hours in advance by calling Reach Out at (909) 982-8641, or you can pick and choose the produce while you are there that will meet your needs. The only drawbacks - no home delivery, and you must be able to come to the Jurupa Community Center during the hours the Patch is open.

3. Unity Farm - This farm is located on Crestmore Road in Jurupa Valley. Give them an hour or two notice by calling (951) 318-4261, then travel during normal business hours (weekdays only) to the farm at 4800 Crestmore Road, Jurupa Valley. (It is located on Rancho Jurupa Park, in between the campground and administrative entrances.) This farm has lovely organic vegetables, but the box they pick for you has been typically heavy on peppers since changing owners, and has never offered fruit.

If these options don't work

1. Farmers Markets - The Patch evolved from many Jurupa Valley residents' desire to have a local Farmers Market. Since it's only coming from one farm, it's still not quite that. But many cities do have Farmers Markets. Our nearest neighbor, Riverside, has one on Main Street by its convention center on Saturday mornings. It also has one on Arlington Avenue on Friday mornings, but why go there when you can get even better at The Patch? Many other cities offer Saturday morning or weekday evening farmers markets. I think the absolute best one I have seen is in Santa Monica on its Third Street Promenade, which is also a Saturday morning market. 

2. The grocery store - Jurupa Valley's Fresh & Easy has just closed, otherwise I would have listed it above for its fantastic organic produce. While I don't know that our remaining locals, which are Stater Bros. and Wal-Mart have quite as interesting a variety, they do actually have more fruits and vegetables than you will see in the boxes or at many Farmers Markets. If you still have a Fresh & Easy, a Sprouts or possibly a national chain store like Albertson's or Von's, even better chance of having a wide variety of produce. 

However, these fruits and vegetables aren't quite as fresh as even Farm Fresh to You's options, because there are middle men - the warehouses these grocery stores own, and then the grocery store itself. Their produce therefore is more like three days old, compared to about two days old for Farm Fresh, and picked just that same day or the night before for The Patch  and most other Farmers Markets, and within hours at Unity Farm. 

Ratatouille sandwich

If you have squash, eggplants, bell peppers, onions and/or tomatoes there's an easy way to use them up. Make ratatouille. This dish, which is like a vegan stew, originated in southern France and has kept the French name everywhere it goes.

Traditionally, ratatouille requires all four of these vegetables and roasting some of them for an hour. Traditionally, it is served over rice or noodles.But who cares about tradition?

I did not when I found a recipe for a ratatouille sandwich in my Panini cookbook. I knew that even though the recipe called for bell peppers and zucchini, I only had crookneck squash (and pattypans, which will hopefully be added to another recipe another day) and jalapenos, along with one eggplant. This recipe called for a single small onion, but unless you want to count green onions, I didn't have these either.

I further reduced my need for tradition, or even following a recipe, when I looked in the fridge and found that we only had three small, sorry-looking tomatoes left. We got good use out of the rest. And since I now wasn't following the recipe with four of the five called-for vegetables. The tomatoes and onions were eliminated all together, the squash and peppers had alternate varieties.

Further research into my refrigerator's contents made for yet another change to the recipe. We are beyond what is traditional here, since you usually don't add ham, cheese and sandwich bread to your ratatouille. Because this is what was in my refrigerator, I only added one slice of ham to each sandwich and a little Mozarella cheese. Also, since I didn't have any French bread (just wheat) but did have some sandwich rolls in the freezer, I left the panini maker in the appliance cupboard and toasted the buns in the toaster oven instead.

My recipe described this creation as as a ham and cheese sandwich with ratatouille. My sandwiches were more ratatouille sandwiches with a little ham (one slice each) and a little cheese. I have enough ratatouille left over to do this again, but I'm going to need French bread for another recipe. I also may get more ham, and some Gruyere cheese, which is closer to the obscure type of cheese the recipe called for.

As usual, most of my vegetables were from Unity Farm. However, my crookneck squash is from somebody's back yard garden. I don't have much room on the patio of my condo to grow stuff, but if you have a real back yard, you could have at least a few vegetables without even going to "the farm." Tomatoes, squash and peppers are all good things to grow in a back yard garden, and you might try eggplant too.

Vegetables Italianish

Chicken with tomatoes and basil

If you like pasta, and I do,  you can use up your fresh vegetables quickly by mixing them with your favorite noodles or other shapes. Here's a recipe using tomatoes, basil and green onions (*these three vegetables are in last week's Unity Farm box if you bought one), regular onions and mushrooms. This recipe also has chicken. 

4 chicken breasts (or equivalent chicken tenders, 1 to 1.5 lbs.)

1 small onion, chopped

1/2 cup sliced mushrooms

Lemon pepper

2 cups chopped fresh tomatoes

3 green onions

Your favorite pasta

Brown the chicken breasts. Add onion, mushrooms and pepper and cook 2-3 minutes. Add tomatoes and green onions. Simmer 15 minutes. 

Meanwhile cook noodles. Add to chicken and vegetables and serve. Makes enough for 4-6.

Pasta Primavera

As I probably have mentioned before, I'm a cookbook collector. As I may not have mentioned before, these days one place I shop for food is on a real farm. It's called Unity Farm, and it is an organic farm right here in Jurupa Valley, on the grounds of the Rancho Jurupa Park on Crestmore Road/46th Street. For me, that's only a little farther than right around the corner (I literally could drive to it without even going up to Limonite, although it's slightly shorter if I do take Limonite). For anyone living in Jurupa Valley or Riverside, it's worth the drive.

So, since I have referred a number of Riverside friends to Unity Farm, it's now become apparent that I need to share my ideas for what to do with those yummy vegetables. So here's how I used some of the ones in my last box. That box contained, among other things, squash, carrots, peppers and tomatillos.

So, really simple idea, although it's based somewhat on a cookbook. My recipes are for two people, but you can adapt for more.

Pasta Primavera

Chop up one of your squash, two of your carrots, at least one of your peppers and about seven or eight of your tomatillos from Unity Farm. Add about half of an onion you bought at the grocery store, unless you still happen to have one from Unity Farm (I haven't had one from there the last few boxes.)

Stir fry these in a little bit of oil. Meanwhile, cook half a package of pasta to the dente you like. (You could substitute spaghetti squash or maybe brown rice if you have vegan or gluten issues) Add the pasta to the stir fried vegetables and mix well. 

My cookbook, which was published in 1989, suggested adding Parmesan cheese to this mix. We like Parmesan cheese so we sprinkled it generously over ours, and we are glad we did.

Unity Farms

This is the produce I received in one small Unity Farm box. This smallest box is now only $17.

If you are my follower in the Jurupa Valley or Riverside area, I want to tell you about a resource that's even better than a Farmer's Market. Jurupa Valley has it's own farm!

Unity Farms is on Crestmore Road, which means it's right across the river from the City of Riverside. With a great view of the south side of Mt. Rubidoux behind it, Unity Farms grows lettuce, herbs, peppers and other vegetables on a full-sized family farm.

You must give this farm a call at (951) 318-4261 first. Then give them two hours, and they will  have a box of produce ready for you. Depending on the needs of your family, you can choose a $17 box, a $25 box or a $35 box. These prices are for boxes of assorted vegetables they choose. If you would prefer, you can work out a price for the vegetables of your choice.

I have planned entire meals for several weeks around my box, but you also will want to think about adding salads or steamed vegetables to previously planned meals if you have a Unity Farms box in your refrigerator. This is the only way you will use up the entire box before the food starts to spoil. It is organic, so it is delicious when first picked, but starts losing flavor and crispness after, at most, a week. You may be able to live with that if you are cooking the vegetables, but some more than others, and no one after awhile.

If you think a medium or large size box every week would meet your needs, you will have another option soon, at least you will if you actually live in Jurupa Valley. In September 2014, Unity Farm is expected to bring into Jurupa Valley a monthly co-op with at least one other farm. This will offer a greater selection of vegetables, and also fruit. Co-op participants will have to commit to purchasing a $25 or $35 box every week, but will be able to choose which fruits and vegetables they want. The potential downside, especially if you live in Riverside and not Jurupa Valley, is participants will have to pick up their boxes at the Jurupa Unified School District office, which is quite a bit further from Riverside than the farm itself. (This isn't really a drawback if you're one of my San Bernardino County followers though, because you can simply take the 15 or the 215 to the 60, go from there into Jurupa Valley, and exit Pedley Road. School district is at Pedley and Jurupa in Jurupa Valley.

The co-op is a development in my young city, Jurupa Valley. A year ago the city formed Healthy Jurupa Valley, which strives to improve the lifestyles of our residents. One aspect of this is to improve their access to fresh fruits and vegetables. It has been promoting Unity Farm since nearly the beginning, since organic vegetables fits in perfectly with this mission.

As a farmer's daughter, it is shocking to me that many children in Jurupa Valley and Riverside grow up not knowing where food comes from. Riverside Unified School District is working with Unity Farm on an educational awareness program, in which speakers from the farm come to the schools, or the children make an actual field trip to Unity Farm. Healthy Jurupa Valley leaders are working with Jurupa Unified School District to help Unity Farm provide the most local children a similar opportunity.

Healthy Jurupa Valley also has planted a demonstration garden at Granite Hill Elementary School, so that students at that school will have first-hand knowledge of where food comes from, and the rest of the public can see examples of how to grow food in their own back yards.

As a wanna-be serious food blogger, I have been somewhat following Healthy Jurupa Valley's efforts to make sure people in my city have access to produce. It has an action team called "Farms and Gardens" which advises the city on this. I haven't been as involved with "Farms and Gardens" to a great extent, and when I was serving as the Jurupa Valley Chamber of Commerce marketing manager, I was too busy to deal with Healthy Jurupa Valley at all. However, in the last four months, I have been more involved, and have been following the activities of Farms and Gardens a little more closely. However, I cannot say for sure if I will become more involved in Farms and Gardens, because Healthy Jurupa Valley is kicking off another action team, Economic Prosperity, at its meeting this Tuesday. For many reasons, it is my intention to give far greater energy to this action team. But you can be on two action teams, so I will, at the very least, promote our city's farm.

If you're not from Jurupa Valley, please do what you can to make your own city (or unincorporated place) a healthier place by promoting healthier dining choices, such as Farmer's Markets, community (of for-profit) farms, and restaurants that give you better choices than burgers and fries. And also any food education programs your community offers.

How I will make $15 in groceries last more than a week

Swedish meatballs in macaroni, using supplies I had on hand, created three nights of meals for me.

I posted on Sunday, March 22 in Facebook that I had only spent  just over $15 on groceries for this week. I'm happy for the positive feedback, and the amazement some of you have expressed on how I am doing that. What's even more amazing, folks, is that although there are a two quick meals at Carls' Jr. and one at IHOP, and three Tuesday nights of skipped meals, I have now made this $15+ in groceries stretch into enough meals to last me for almost three weeks.

And that's led me to pop back onto this poorly neglected blog to share my grocery shopping strategy. It's key to how I've made my food good, and cheap. And some of that $15 in groceries was fresh too.

But I start with what I have. And that may not be fresh, It may instead be a pantry staple, something from the freezer or something sealed in a jar or other container.

I have many of these items listed on my computer. For instance, when I started menu planning the other day, I had brown sugar, ground turkey, kalmata olives and pepperoncinis on the list, among other things. Three items I did not have on the list, but had in the pantry anyhow, were pasta, rice and beans. I also have a whole spice rack full of spices.

So, I then looked through my extensive collection of cookbooks to come up with some recipes. You probably could do this even quicker with some menu planning websites where you type in one or more of these ingredients and it recommends a bunch of recipes using them. Or, if, like me, you pinned a bunch of recipes to Pinterest, you can find something fairly quick that uses your ingredients on hand, I would bet. But I invested in cookbooks, so cookbooks it is for me.

Here's what I came up with:

Two-pepper stew (My planned meal for Sunday)
Salmon burgers with kalamata olives (My planned meal for Monday)
Swedish meatballs (My planned meal for Wednesday)
Brown sugar beans (My planned meal for Thursday)

I don't plan meals on Tuesdays because they are just too busy with Don at school and me in Real Healing at Sandals Church, and I don't plan meals on Saturdays because we eat dinner at church. This did leave Friday to plan for though, and my cookbooks weren't inspiring things with the ingredients on hand. So I turned to my coupons, found one close to expiring for Asian noodles, and came up with a recipe called Far Eastern Ginger Noodles.

To make these recipes, I had to purchase the bell peppers, beef chuck and tomatoes the stew required, a can of salmon for the salmon burgers, and just about everything I'll need for the Far Eastern Ginger Noodles. I ended up not using the coupon, because the brands at the store where I shop weren't the same.

In addition, my grocery purchase included one of my staples, Diet Dr. Pepper. Staple or vice? Gotta have it though.

I put my "save money" radar out on one recipe. The recipe for the salmon burgers I'm following calls for fresh salmon and fresh dill. The thing is, it also calls for both of these ingredients to be put in the food processor and ground together along with the olives. I just can't see paying $9 or $10 for a filet of salmon vs. $2.25 for a can of ground salmon on this. I also don't know if my grocery store had fresh dill, but I don't have any idea why the dill in my spice rack wouldn't work for these burgers.

I discovered an interesting thing on this grocery store trip though. There are two kinds of canned salmon, red and pink. Red salmon is the Alaskan salmon, and it costs more than twice as much, about $6.50 a can. I REALLY don't know why you need to pay that much for a CAN of salmon, but if you are curious, give it a try. I'm sticking with pink.

That's why my whole bill was under $16.

I should also issue a disclaimer or two: The day before I bought these groceries, Don bought eggs, olive oil, peanut butter and bread, which would have added about $12 to my breakfast/lunch grocery bill otherwise. Also, we have a lot of cereal and juice on hand, so we saw no need to buy more the first week. Milk, more bread and more eggs did also have to get purchased for breakfast and lunch meals as time went on, but the total grocery bill for March was only $80.

The two-pepper stew lasted two nights. I served it on rice one night and pasta the other. The next night was Tuesday, so as planned, I had a fiber bar for dinner. Then after determining that Friday night, for a variety of reasons, had to be a night of dining out, I made the meatballs on Sunday instead, and they're lasting for three meals.

We had meatballs on Sunday, March 30 and Monday, March 31, and will now finish them up on Wednesday, since Tuesday is the night we skip dinner all together. We'll move onto the beans this coming Thursday, and I suspect they too will also produce at least one night of left overs. Which means I won't have to go grocery shopping again until next week! Technically, not until next Thursday, as the ginger noodles won't be needed until Monday, April 7, Tuesday, April 8 is a skip meal day, and Wednesday, April 9 is a Carls' Jr. day.

I don't know if I'll be able to pull off $16 for another three weeks of groceries then, but I am looking forward to telling you what's next.

One new recipe for spaghetti

This is my most pathetically maintained blog of four. I'm not posting most of my recipes because I'm not going to be a food blogger. I thought I was going to have a culinary client, an Orange County caterer, at my new public relations business, but that client turned out to be a flake. So no culinary PR or any other culinary writing for now.

However, cooking is still a favored hobby. I do it more than paper crafting. But I do it mostly for myself and Don, and sometimes share cupcakes or other good things with a few people at church or here in Jurupa Valley. So, I'm not usually seeing any reason to share my recipes online. I already have them written down in the cookbook collection, and I have a cookbook organizer to track my favorite recipes within these cookbooks.

Except for times like tonight. I ended up making up a recipe for spaghetti after I was inspired by a side dish in one cookbook and an actual recipe for spaghetti in the other. I didn't 100 percent follow either one of these recipes though. I took one short cut (jarred Ragu spaghetti sauce) I am sure this cookbook author would NEVER have approved of, and one (plastic jarred Kraft Parmesan cheese) I don't think he would have approved of. But we loved it! For us, the anchovies are a crucial addition. It will not be the same without it. But if you for some reason don't like anchovies, you can have this vegetarian style. If you're vegan,  use spaghetti squash noodles, your favorite sauce (Ragu might have cheese in it)  and leave out the Parmesan cheese.

So here is my recipe for spaghetti. It must be posted here, because until I hit the "publish" key, it will never have been published anywere!

2 carrots
1 zucchini
1 Tbsp or so of olive oil, only enough to lightly coat your frying pan
1 can of anchovies
About 8 oz of Ragu spaghetti sauce
1/2 cup of Kraft Parmesan cheese
About 2 cups of cooked spaghetti noodles

Julienne the carrots and zucchini. Heat the oil, and saute vegetables in pan until they are tender
Cut the anchovies in half, separate them and add to pan. Add cooked noodles. Pour in enough Ragu to coat vegetables, anchovies and noodles to your taste. Add Parmesan cheese and stir to coat the noodles completely. 

Serve with more Parmesan cheese. A salad, bread and a glass of white like Chardonnay would be good with this too, but I served it as the only meal item.

Two today!

I'm going to link here a recipe 24 Carrots posted in its own blog for Chilled Fava Bean Soup.

It's not the kind of food you would normally see on this blog, even if I maintained it. While 24 Carrots makes fresh and good food, you've got to be blessed like me to get it cheap. My first exposure to this company was that for awhile, it was donating catered food to the attendees of Sandals Church's Tuesday program. It quit doing that, and I quit going to the Tuesday program, so I miss it. But I've already had one opportunity to have it again, and I hope I have more.

You can't even really make fava bean soup cheap. Fresh Good and Cheap relies on a military commissary for most of its food. The rest of it is purchased locally at Fresh and Easy or the Rubidoux (old town) Stater Brothers. Neither one f thoe stores have a lot of fancy food, although I might find fava beans at Fresh and Easy if I looked hard.

If not, the fava beans aren't likely going to be included. My other local options are some Latino markets. That's it. I'm, for the most part, boycotting all stores in the City of Riverside, so that means I don't shop at my nearest Trader Joes, nor my nearest Sprouts. The next nearest of these, and the absolute nearest Whole Foods stores are kind of far, like Orange County, or maybe, Rancho Cucamonga. Getting there is doable, but not when you have to share a car with your husband, who is not at all into fancy food. And  not when you can barely afford what you do eat.

But if you can find and can afford fava beans, please feel free to enjoy 24 Carrots recipe.

With four blogs

I am sure this one is neglected way too much. But as a foodie, I can't help but be excited about the new project I am taking on. I will be promoting one of the largest catering companies in southern California, 24 Carrots. I know one of the owners from church, and I have experience getting people's news into the news. I have worked for a public relations agency, and I've done it on my own. They believe, as do I, that we can work together to promote 24 Carrots in media all over the place, especially Orange County.

For 10 years, I've had a name for what I do, which is Pen Porter. There wasn't much need for me to use that name at first. Until 2006, what I really did was write stories for media. That started back in high school, and was my full-time job for most of the time from 1984 to 2003. When I couldn't wok in journalism anymore, I came up with the idea for Pen Porter. But at that time, my idea was to market stories to national magazines. I did not have much success. Because I lead a fairly boring life, and because I haven't focused much on this aspect of my work much for seven or so years, I've only sold onestory to one national magazine. I have been published in two, but that's because the second one turned a Dameron Communications press release into a feature story, and gave me byline credit, but no financial renumeration.

Even up until last year, most of my paid work has been because of my journalism experience, not my PR experience. I was paid very well in 2012 to write a series of articles about California government for a news-focused website. And that led to another opportunity to do a well-researched, and well-compensated report for another client. I also changed the focus of this blog to food in 2012, somehow thinking it could become a fantastic well-followed food blog. Yeah, right.

My well-paid writing opportunities haven't been happening in 2013. Instead, I have been blessed to be able to promote a few local businesses through media releases. It became clear though that I can do that more effectively if I am an official business. So, on May 6, Pen Porter went from an idea to a business officially registered with the County of Riverside and the City of Jurupa Valley. I was busy with two clients since then, but now I'll be even busier because 24 Carrots needs and deserves a lot of PR!

Cornish pasties, the easy way

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One of my cookbooks, Tastes of Liberty, features cuisines from much of Europe including Great Britain. Since a large part of our ancestry is from there, Don and I are fans of British food. We are especially fond of pot pies. (Ah yeah, so fond we had them for our 10th anniversary three years ago, but that's another story.)

Normally, when we have pot pies, they are the kind that are made somewhere else, frozen, then baked in our oven. Tonight, they were baked in our oven, but they definitely required some assembly beforehand. And that was such a good change, I'm blogging my version of them to have for future reference.

My version is simple. It uses just two ingredients. Because we still have half of both of them, I'm going to post directions that will serve four people.

One two-crust package of pie crusts
One 24-oz can of beef stew

Cut each pie crust in half. On one half of your now semi-circular piece of pie crust, place up to 6 oz. of stew. Fold crust over, and pinch every edge to seal. Bake in 400 degree oven for 20 minutes, turn oven down to 350 and bake for 30 more minutes.

My recipe is inspired by one I saw in Tastes of Liberty. Some food from Great Britain comes from a region called Cornwall, so that food is known as "Cornish." Cornwall is probably best known for its game hens, but it's also home to the original version of these little pot pie tarts I made tonight, and is known there as a Cornish pasty.

The original way, as described in Tastes of Liberty, would be to make your own pie crust  and hand roll it into three 7" circles, to make three tarts serving six people. To that you would add fresh beef round chopped finely by you (not your butcher), potatoes, onions, turnips and carrots. This recipe would have you put all of this into the pastry raw and let it cook as the crust bakes, but I'm really not seeing how that would work, when my precooked, canned stew came out so good. So, I would at least partially cook the meat and vegetables into a stew.

But, the reality for me is Don and I right now have to rely sometimes on canned food. That's a whole lot more canned vegetables than canned meat, so Don hopes these tasty little pot pie tarts appear on the table again, but next time with fresh, cooked meat (he probably would prefer chicken) and canned vegetables.

Turn pork chops into juicy "carnitas" tacos

These are my original recipes, created by slightly modifying one of my cookbook's pork chop recipes and then majorly modifying another cookbook's recipe for carnitas. You will get at least two nights of meals from this. Since we are a family of two, we started with eight pork chops and were able to stretch the second night's meal into leftovers on a third night. If you eat light, make side dishes, or start with more than eight pork chops (or larger pork chops) you can feed more people, or have leftover pork chops before you move on to the "carnitas" tacos. You also can make a two-for-one meal by roasting pork according to your favorite pork roast recipe, then using the taco recipe here.

Spicy Pork Chops with apricots

8 pork chops

2 teaspoon each ground cumin seed, coriander and ginger

1 tablespoon olive oil

3/4 cup slivered dried apricots

3/4 cup orange juice

Mix the spices and coat each pork chop with the mixture

Heat the olive oil in a 12" skillet. Fry four of the chops for five to seven minutes on each side. They need to be not just brown on both sides but in the middle too. If you fry them on too high of heat they will not be moist on the sides, or they will not be done in the middle. The thicker they are, the lower the heat needs to be.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine the apricots and orange juice. Bring to boil, then simmer for about five minutes. You will have a thin syrup. Remove the pork chops, and place four them on up to four plates. Leave the pork chop fat in the pan, and mix in the juice/apricot mixture. Boil for one minute, then pour it over the plated pork chops.

Do not wash or rinse the pan before moving onto Step 1 of the next recipe. You will be refrigerating the four remaining pork chops after they're cooked unless you plan to eat both dishes at the same meal.

Orange carnitas

Fry the four remaining pork chops. You can grate some orange peel or add a little more cumin. You can also add orange juice to the pan if you wish, or more olive oil.

Slice the cooled pork chops.

Slice a small onion and fry them in olive oil until translucent.

Add the sliced onions and pork chops to a can of black beans and 3/4 cup of orange juice. Boil the mixture until the pork chops are fully heated, and the entire mixture is the desired consistency.

Place the mixture into up to eight warmed tortillas.

Add toppings. I added green onions, salsa, cheddar cheese, sour cream and radishes. Lettuce, carrots and black olives - whatever you like on tacos - would be good.

Can this become a well-read food blog?

I apologize to any faithful followers (if there are any left) for how much I have neglected this blog. Maybe about a year ago or more, I had high hopes this blog would become something of a more professional blog. If I am going to make it as a well-known niche blogger, I expect it to be this niche blog (my food blog) because I actually have more expertise in cooking than I do in paper crafting (the main focus of my other blog.)

However, for the last 10 years (this month) I have been very involved in TwoPeasinabucket.com, which is one of the largest online communities for scrapbookers. I have been a scrapbooker for 12 years. So, in my (too much) leisure time, I spend a lot of time online with other scrapbookers, learning, growing in my expertise, and sharing what I know with others. That sharing is primarily through Two Peas, and now Facebook groups for two art journaling communities I belong to. But it is also somewhat through the other blog. Which means that blog is the one that is getting attention, while this one is neglected.

I had been meaning to come here for several days, because this blog is still my go to place for when I create an original recipe and need to store it somewhere where I won't lose it. If it were not my original recipe, that place would be Pinterest for online recipes, and my "cookbook organizer" for those recipes I saw in one of my cookbooks. But this recipe I will be posting (next entry now) is for a combination of two cookbook recipes. I have to put "see my blog" in the cookbook organizer.

Today, I am toying again with what it would take to make this blog into something that pays money. I realize I probably won't become a celebrity blogger, but I think I have some REAL friends who could be persuaded that this is the blog they want to read. And I think if I work hard at it, I can make it good enough that they will tell their friends. So here's to my new dream of being a food blogger.

I like fruit

I know it has been forever since I wrote anything on this blog, but this is the food blog, and I want to write about food today. Just because of a fun little hobby I have picked up over the last six months or so. It's very related to scrapbooking, in that they are both paper crafts, but it's much more random. So random, I just follow prompts placed almost every day on a website called daisyyellowsquarespace.com. And that's more prompts than I can take in, since life, scrapbooking, and yes, sometimes cooking and even things I find less interesting get in the way.

The prompts are a little slower than usual right now, because the usual host is on vacation. But one of her partners in art journaling is posting prompts about making lists of things for her. Although I  have been participating in the weekly "list prompts" posted by the usual blogger or her guest, one week is just simply a list. Another week started out that way, but I have added doodling, mist and glitter glue and it looks OK. Two of the lists were immediately interpreted in more artistic ways. But, I have only photographed the last of these, because it's the only one of the four lists I finished soon enough to feel right about sharing it. So, here is - in somewhat keeping with the prompt on daisyyellowsquarespace.com - my illustrated list of sweet and fruity fruits.

Beyond oatmeal

I am a fan of healthy eating, and one person whose opinion about this I respect is Bob Harper, the veteran fitness coach on the NBC television show "The Biggest Loser." Bob also gives tips for those of us who don't need to lose 50, 100 or more pounds but still could benefit from more exercise and healthier eating. On the side of healthier eating, one thing he recommends is starting your morning out with oatmeal. I don't know if he's gone Paleo, but this is an especially good tip if you are Paleo, because most breakfast cereals are not part of a Paleo diet.

But oatmeal doesn't have to be eaten by itself. You can top off your oatmeal with fruit, brown sugar or maple syrup. Buy a box of the variety instant oatmeal, and you have that already. I prefer the Quaker oatmeal in the round box. The quick-cooking variety takes no longer than instant oatmeal to cook. You can add fresh fruit and the other toppings.

I recently came upon a collection of recipes in one of my cookbooks that had a lot more than these toppings. Nuts. Chocolate chips. Coconut. I did something like this. I added pecans, chocolate covered raisins and coconut that was past its prime (tastes very good soaked in oatmeal and milk.). This was one of the tastiest bowls of oatmeal ever, and definitely the crunchiest.  I don't know if Bob Harper would approve, but i don't think there is anything bad in my toppings, especially since that chocolate on the raisins was dark chocolate. Yum.

Los Angeles County Fair time!

For several years now, I have been thinking about entering my banana nut bread into the Los Angeles County Fair. That's because even before then, Don has really praised this bread of mine. What has stopped me? The fact that I haven't entered ANYTHING into a county fair since I was in high school, and no home ec projects since I was in junior high school. (My junior year in high school I entered a science project.) I kind of thought entering county fairs were for kids and retirees. The fact that the Los Angeles County Fair is larger than even the California State Fair didn't change my mind. I just figured there were lots of kids and retirees in southern California entering stuff.

But a few things have changed my mind in the past year. First of all, in 2011 a former friend of mine, Sarah, entered something. I can't remember what, and we didn't go to the fair. Sarah is a 30-something who is into all kinds of culinary coolness. I especially like her Asian food creations, (she is the American born child of Chinese immigrants) but I don't think Asian Food is a category you can enter at the fair.

Second of all, I have won a cooking competition in the past year. The Sandals Cupcake Wars competition gave me the opportunity to win the "best cake" award.

Thirdly, somewhere in between the last county fair and the Cupcake Wars, or maybe shortly before or after, I knew I wanted to make myself more well known as a foodie. If I have food on display at this very well-attended fair, perhaps with a ribbon on it, that would help!

So I am going to enter the banana nut bread, at long last. Since those wonderful cupcakes were based on a pumpkin bread recipe, I am also going to enter pumpkin bread, with the same secret ingredient (fresh pumpkin instead of canned) my winning cupcakes had.

I have until August 3 to figure out if I want to enter anything else. I would really LOVE to make the pumpkin bread as cupcakes again and enter it into two other cooking contests the Los Angeles County Fair is having this year. That's the pumpkin recipe contest and its own version of Cupcake Wars, the Cupcake Baking Contest. But, I think having already been entered into Sandals' competition, I would be breaking the rules if I entered the exact same cupcake into either of these fair competitions. But I'm keeping an open mind. If I stumble upon another fabulous pumpkin recipe or another fabulous cupcake recipe, and can prove to myself either is so wonderful I have to share the finished creation with complete strangers, I will enter one of those contests too. Or maybe one of the many others.

If you live in southern California, and would like to enter something in the Los Angeles County Fair too, here is more information.

Macaroni without cheese

This is not for vegans or paleos, but for anyone who just wants a low-calorie pasta in a creamy sauce, I present to you pasta without cheese. This is modified from one of my older cookbooks.

PASTA WITHOUT CHEESE

Cook 1/2 package of pasta, (i.e. macaroni, rigatone, shells, penne) according to package directions.

Make white sauce by blending 1 Tbsp. flour, 1 Tbsp melted butter in skillet. Add up to 1 cup milk, until your white sauce is desired consistency. Add a little salt and pepper, and a squirt of brown or Dijon mustard.

You may add the pasta after blending a little milk and the seasonings into the sauce, or you may add your cooked macaroni into the finished sauce.

You can add other things. I added ham. You can even add cheese if you want to, but then it's more like a traditional macaroni and cheese, especially if you used macaroni.

Chicken and olives with pine nuts

Allrecipes.com's chicken and olives -

which has key differences from the one I made

Don and I just enjoyed what I had hoped would be our Valentine's Day dinner. I actually had great ideas for this dinner, and I actually had planned on serving it not one, but two days ago. First, I'll share the recipe. Then I'll explain why this ended up moving from Monday to Tuesday, and finally, Wednesday on my menu plan.

Chicken with Olives

For Two

1/2 cup pine nuts

1 Tbsp. oil

4 chicken thighs (or two chicken legs)

1/2 cup of green olives

1/2 tsp of sage

1/4 cup water

Toast the pine nuts over medium heat in a 10" skillet, shaking often. Remove from pan.

Heat oil, brown chicken on all sides. It should take at least 10 minutes. Remove from pan, drain fat from pan.

Return chicken and nuts to pan. Add olives, sage and water, continue cooking over medium heat for 30 minutes or until meat closest to bone is not pink.

I was cutting a cookbook recipe down to one-fourth for this, but the pine nuts I only cut from 2/3 a cup to 1/2, because I wanted to use all of the pine nuts in my small package. I wasn't sure if this was going to make too many pine nuts, but I ended up pleasantly surprised. The pine nuts absorbed so much chicken juice, what I ended up with reminded me of quinona, a grain I have had the pleasure of eating once. (I've had pine nuts before, but not so much in one serving.)

Delicious! I served it with cranberry sauce, because this was our Valentine's Day dinner, and something reddish seemed good.

So why didn't Don and I celebrate Valentine's Day yesterday like everyone else? Because he had school last night. So we knew Tuesday wasn't going to leave us time for a romantic Valentine's Day meal. That's why I had initially planned this meal for Monday. Monday was supposed to have been a less busy day than today, as we have church small group tonight and will be leaving for that soon. Sooner than usual, because we are going to hold it in a Riverside hospital to pray for the seriously ill daughter of one of our members.

Monday ended up not working out either. I made some homemade soup for dinner last Saturday, and had leftovers. I had another bowl for lunch on Monday, but Don insisted he wanted to have his bowl for dinner. I thought we had enough for two more bowls, so when Don didn't want dinner right away, I decided to wait. And wait I did until 7:40 p.m. At that time, he came into the kitchen, heated up the soup, and poured it all into one bowl!

I didn't really want to start cooking at 7:40 p.m., so I ended up going out for take-out Chinese. Don pleaded very hard that I would instead go to his favorite takeout, Subway sandwiches. He even wanted me to get him a sandwich "while I was there." Luckily, Chinese is in the same shopping center as Subway, so it wasn't hard to go both places.

I am a little disappointed how Monday's dinner ended up. But not surprised. There have been many years where I wanted to do something romantic for Valentine's Day or another holiday. But Don just doesn't tie romance to meals. I could go on and on about that. At least he does appreciate my good meals, when I get a chance to make them.

Addendum: I just checked the emails one of my favorite recipe websites, Allrecipes.com sends me on a regular basis. They were sending their favorite Valentine's Day main dishes, and one of theirs is a different chicken and olives recipes. Theirs calls for chicken breasts seasoned with garlic and tarragon instead of red meat seasoned with sage, but it seems yummy too. Because photographing dishes has some challenges for me right now, I'm sharing a photo of their dish instead.