My family isn’t really into traditional tomato pasta sauce… we love Alfredo Sauce. Tonight I threw together what I had in the fridge and every person at my table raved and my youngest even had 2 helpings of pasta… this is a kid who HATES pasta night. So I will take that as I did really well.
My kids LOVE tacos and I am constantly making Fish, Shrimp, Calamari, Ground Beef, Ground Turkey whatever kind of tacos. You name it, they love it!
The other night they wanted tacos and I was out of taco season, but not a problem, I just whipped up a new batch in minutes!
Here is a wonderful homemade Taco Seasoning recipe that will end up replacing those pre-made packets you end up buying.
Well my gravy was a disaster yesterday. I have no idea where I failed, but the darn thing never thickened and looked like thin au jus unfortunately. Since I have a lot of leftovers because I cooked a 25 pound turkey, I made a new batch of gravy today — and it is perfect!
Never give up, today is a brand new day to try at it again!
Ingredients
Directions
I was making Spinach Salad for dinner and wanted to make a Poppy Seed Dressing but only had Black Sesame Seeds… so I improvised. And was happily surprised it came out really yummy.
I have never tried making Black Sesame Seed Dressing before and usually buy Poppy Seed Dressing, however this dressing was very easy to make.
My husband was going to barbecue fish for dinner the other night. However, the kids begged for me to make the fish into tacos. Yeah, why not? Totally sounded great. Except there was a problem. We were out of our Mild BBQ Rub. So I improvised and made my own. And you know what? It came out really good!
Ingredients
Directions
Sometimes a recipe calls for raw eggs and while I love these recipes I don’t like the idea of consuming raw eggs. I’m not the only one, many cooks shy away from using those recipes. However, my solution is to pasteurize my fresh eggs before adding to the recipe so they are slightly cooked but still have the raw consistency.
Pasteurizing eggs basically reduce the risk of food-borne illness in dishes that are not cooked or are only lightly cooked.
Pasteurizing eggs in their shells are achieved through a technique that uses precise time and temperature zones within a pot of water. To Pasteurize eggs you are briefly boiling your eggs at a high temperature and then cooling them off with cool water. The yolk must reach a temperature of about 140º F.
Adapted from Baking Bites
Curing is a month-long process of drying down your onions to prep them for storage. Once properly cured, onions will store for a very long time.
When your onions are growing, their stems are succulent and green.
When your onions have finished growing, you’ll notice the lowest stems start to yellow and wilt. Soon after, the green stems will flop over at the neck. You want to wait for most of your crop to flop over as well before digging up your onions.
Carefully pull each onion out by the bulb, or by digging around it. Pulling the weakened stem could cause it to pull off entirely, and you want the stem intact to reduce the likelihood of mold. Later you will lay the onions out on the ground, or in another open, sunny area, for a day or two to dry out the roots.
Next move your onions into a shady spot so they can start their month long curing cycle. You don’t need to clean off the onions until after they are cured. (I strung my onions out to dry on a clothes line. I then left them there for 4-weeks. Downside of not laying them out is your stems will completely dry out and you might have a few of your onions fall off the clothes line due to their wilted, dried out stems.)
Over the next 3-4 weeks as the onions are curing, their necks will gradually wither and the papery skins will tighten around the bulbs. Once the necks are completely tight and dry, and the stems contain no moisture, you can use scissors to trim the roots off the bottom of each bulb if you so choose. I just left the roots on.
Next you want to place your onions in a well-ventilated space like a brown paper bag, mesh bag, milk crate, a rack, or any kind of storage shelf.
Remember that even after curing, onions are still alive and really need a cool, dry place to stay dormant. If there is any change in temperature or humidity, it will cause the onions to break dormancy and start sprouting stems again. So you need to check your onions every few weeks for green shoots that might emerge in storage. If you have onions that sprouted, you will need to use up those onions first.
Enjoy your onions!
Today the kids didn’t have school and everyone wanted dippy eggs with waffles and of course I was low on syrup. Which isn’t a big deal since I can whip up a batch in 10 minutes or less. But I wanted to try something different and not use corn syrup. I decided to substitute the corn syrup with honey and go from there.
The honey has a strong flavor so I added more maple flavoring to compensate. Needless to say — the syrup came out very tasty!
One weekend I was making pancakes for everyone then I realized I didn’t have enough pancake syrup for all of us to share, so I decided to make my own syrup.
After cooking a batch, the syrup was watery but very flavorful. However, it will totally thicken up once it cools down. And after you make a batch of syrup, you won’t want to buy syrup from the grocery store again!
And don’t try to double this recipe, because the recipe won’t work… the ‘chemical magic’ unfortunately will be against you. So one batch at a time, only.
Small Town Living in Maryland 