Cookies for me, cookies for Asta

Coffee all day works against me if I'm not madly typing and clicking so I switched to green tea during the Ike days. I decided to make some cake mix cookies to go with my tea while I was cooking and Foodsaving 4 family packs of pig last Thursday. The recipe is 1-2-3 simple and we made them all the time since my now 17-yr-old granddaughter was 5 years old.
Cake Mix Cookies
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup oatmeal
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
3 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 box cake mix [any flavor]

Mix all ingredients together and drop by teaspoonful onto ungreased cookie
sheet. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.

The small cookie on the left is 1 tsp. Obviously, I used 1 tbsp for these. One thing about using the gas grill for baking is you can only use 1/2 the grill to bake at 350. This doubles baking time and I'm not patient enough for that... with all the other prep and cooking being done during this.
Asta patiently waited (and got her treat) but I decided this was a good time to try that recipe for dog cookies while I had the peanut butter out.
Simple Simon's Birthday Bones
from Three Dog Bakery Cookbook by Dan Dye and Mark Beckloff (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $12.95)
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup natural peanut butter
1 cup skim milk
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
In a bowl, combine the flour and baking powder. In another bowl, mix the peanut butter and milk. Add wet mixture to the dry, and mix well.Turn out the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead. Roll out 1/4-inch thick, and cut out shapes. (I made these way too thick and will correct for the next batch. She doesn't seem to mind the only cookie cutter I had that was in any way dog treat shaped was a snowman.)
Place on a greased baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes or until lightly brown. (Ah, here you can see I've switched from tea and cookies to red wine.)
Cool on a rack, then store in an airtight container. Makes 30 large bones.
Asta loves these so much when I ask if she wants a treat, she runs to me licking her chops over and over and over.

Cooking spree! Pork and Cabbage Soup

I was afraid to restock my Ike-emptied fridge for the first 2 weeks after electricity was restored. Catching sight of both doors open for 15 days never failed to give me a start... kind of like seeing a relative laying on the kitchen floor bleeding profusely would. Not sure I'd survive throwing away another freezer full. Not to mention the dread of cooking everything all at once again.

Good decision because 10 days later it went off for 24 hours (new tree-falls on my lines). But it knocked comcast out of order which took 5 days to fix. I decided the odds of electricity failing again were enormous, and I couldn't work with no internet access, so I went shopping. I purchased 4 family packs of different pig parts :O! None of them cost over $1.67lb so I drug out the Foodsaver and started cooking (Please, Brer Fox, please don't throw me into the briar patch - this time it was fun cooking everything at once.)

First start was a loaf of whole wheat bread. My courtyard table gives the best rises but I wondered how it would be affected when the current coldwave kept the temp below 80 even at high noon. No worry. This happened in just under an hour. And, by Jove, Jon Stewart's right. Karl Rove's face DOES look like a loaf of unbaked bread dough.
All three dishes were prepped at the same time, in 3 different areas of the kitchen, so I guess I'll separate them by dish. (Hope I don't have to say these were finished and eaten over 36 hours) First was getting the pork and cabbage soup started in the crockpot.

This was .99lb pork steak cut into pieces and sauteed. Under the top steak (both packages) the steaks were 25% pork fat so I guess I'll be rendering lard in the near future. Not sure what I'll use it for but everyone from Homesick Texan to the top chefs give how to instructions and recipes on their blogs so what the hey.
Tossed the pork, raw onions, celery, carrots, and cabbage in the crockpot with Italian spices and poured in a can of diced tomatoes. 8 hours later it looked like this and I sliced into the whole wheat bread.


Mmmmm. This is good even if it's not cold outside.

Cooking spree! Ratatouille

No pork here but I have a Musgovian eggplant half and have never even eaten the dish. Since even 2nd graders can pronounce the word correctly now, it's time.
It's pretty enough to eat raw.

And smells good enough to wait.
Excellent with a salad using homemade 1000 Island dressing and homemade croutons from the last loaf of bread. Consists totally of staples so this is a do-over.


Odd, Mom made this dish all the time but called it Eggplant Creole. Just googled that recipe and it's a legit modification of shrimp creole for vegetarians. Huh. Can't find it in Joy of Cooking so it must have been a clipped recipe.

Joy of Cooking did have a recipe for Grilled Ratatouille Salad, very similar to this one on epicurious.com, but Joy includes grilled fennel, tomatoes, and a head of garlic. Yum. I even bought fennel last week (to make Italian sausage) but need to pick up some feta... and another eggplant!

Cooking spree! Pork and Broccoli Stirfry

This one I did after starting the cabbage soup and sauteed it and the ratatouille at the same time. One of the best parts of my Vacuumsaver is using the vacuum to marinate meats. The vacuum sucks all liquid into the meat and what used to be a one-hour marinade is done in 5 minutes. This consisted only of soy sauce and garlic powder.

When garlic was sauteed to golden (Supposed to take it out at that point but I don't. Everything added afterwards cools it all down for a while.), I added the pork.
When pork's half done I added diced carrots, onion, and celery.
When they're cooked, I stirred in frozen chopped broccoli and the sauce: 1/4 c soy sauce, 1/4 c rice wine vinegar, 1 tsp grated orange zest, and 1 tablespoon cornstarch. When the sauce thickened I added a cup of day old rice.
Could have used a splash of sriracha but the vinegar was tangy enough. After this I vacuum packed the rest of it because I have a lot of food coming up!

Most Bang for the Buck Appetizer

Unique, fast, and easy.

Bought Rosa Bianca eggplant seeds (heirloom, Italian) on a whim, not knowing they take so long to ripen. They're softball size and the blooms are, too!

These should have been picked before IKE. Every morning I'd see four of them from my kitchen window getting older and older but who has time??? I did have time with no electricity for 15 days but unable to google a recipe. Finally peeled, cut into chunks and roasted them last night then mixed with olive oil, red wine and balsamic vinegar, green onions, capers and mint leaves. Wish I'd remembered the mushrooms in the fridge. This was delicious and so quick to prepare.

But everyone roasts eggplant. The topper is the Crisp Rosemary Flatbread I found on epicurious.com (be sure to read the reviews for other ideas). I've been searching for a cracker-like bread recipe since I first tried it at Sorrento years ago. This one is so easy, takes no yeast/kneading and even the first time was super simple. (I don't use parchment paper, just oiled the baking sheet and cooked it on the grill which may be why it took an extra 10 mins to brown.)


I have a fresh old-fashioned eggplant in the fridge and am making it again tonight with the addition of sliced mushrooms and chunks of roasted carrot. Wish I had Parmesan or goat cheese but there's only so much lost food you can afford to restock per month. Plus, I have this nagging feeling the electricity will suddenly go off again and I'll have to start all over. When does that end?

First Meals Post Ike

After more than a week of Dinner Impossibles - entrees and sides dictated by what's going bad the fastest instead of compatibility - Fiesta had the brand of NO olive salad I saw at the restaurant trade show and assumed I'd never find retail. Grabbed it and the rest of the fixings for a muffaletta... on a bolillo roll.
Saved a recipe last month from NPR which stated the olives go on one side only. Compounded that error by trimming meats but using both pieces on the tiny bolillo.

Tasted swell but next two made with those bolillos will have one layer of salami, olives on both sides, cheese on both sides. Will heat it in a cast iron skillet with another on top instead of using the microwave as well.

Made a loaf of whole wheat before grocery shopping thinking I'd only have sandwiches for a day or two while catching up with work. Couldn't wait to dig into it so this was breakfast the next morning.

Breakfast Sausage

SCORE! Fiesta had .99 lb family packs of pork sirloin. Made a batch of Homesick Texan's Breakfast Sausage on Day 3. I've tried four different online recipes and hers is by far my favorite. Only used 2lbs of the pork for this recipe so have enough left to freeze for stirfries, to grind for a freezer stock of dumplings,* and make more sausage.

So glad to have access to my food processor again.

Grind the pork, mix in the spices and it's done! I add 4 T water, as Nathan Lau suggests. He actually says water or wine which will be an interesting experiment.

Delicious, preservative free, and half the cost. I think this is what my Mommy and Daddy ate as breakfast sausage when they were young. Tomorrow is biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast.

* Did you assume, like I did, that wonton skins must be refrigerated because they'd get moldy? Ike taught me THIS is what happens when they're not refrigerated!