Home Cooked Meals

Spinach and Mandarin Orange Salad

This could easily be a meal.

• spinach -- fresh, washed and cut into bite-sized bits
• mandarin oranges -- segmented and cut into bite-sized bits
• vinaigrette dressing 
• slivered almonds

That's it. Toss it all in together or serve the dressing on the side. If you want to raise the protein count a bit, add sliced hard-boiled eggs or diced, cooked chicken.

Jan's Grandmother's Bread

I think this is the most wonderful bread in the world. My dear friend Jan re-created it from bits of a recipe used by her grandmother (who never wrote it down) and lots of trial and error AND adapted it so it could be prepared in a bread machine. It is delicious and rich. It will go straight to your waistline or hips or wherever you store carbs, so you probably will want to save it for special occasions. Alternately, you can make it fresh every day and limit yourself to one slice...if you have more willpower than I do. In my family, this seldom gets cooled before it is sliced and consumed.

• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 cube butter
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 5 tsp yeast
• 1 egg
• 5 1/2 cups flour

Combine the first 6 ingredients and allow to sit until it is foamy. This takes a different amount of time depending on where you are and what the weather is like.

Add the egg and then kneed it all into the flour. Let it rest and rise in a nice warm, breeze-free location: like inside the oven with only the light turned on. Once it has about doubled in bulk, punch it down and place it in a loaf pan. I like a stoneware loaf pan, but any will do. You can also just put it on a cookie sheet for a free-form loaf. Cover it and let it rise again.

Bake it at 350°F for about 35 minutes. The crust should be nicely brown and sound hollow when thumped.

Let it cool on a wire rack. The longer you let it cool, the easier it will be to slice. If you want to use it for sandwiches, you will just have to let it cool. We like to wait until we can just barely stand to touch it, then slice it in nice thick slabs, and put butter on it...watching the butter dissolve rapidly into the hot bread...and then devour.

IF YOU'RE USING A BREAD MACHINE: you can put everything in the machine in this order (be aware that different machines use different quantities, though, so you may have to adjust...) and then either let the machine bake it or you can take it out after the 1st rising and put it in your own pans for the 2nd rise.

In the unlikely event that any of this survives the day and gets hard, slice it into cubes. Drizzle the cubes with melted butter and garlic and then bake them at 350 degrees Farenheit until dry. Once cool, you can store these in an air-tight container at room temperature and use them as croutons...assuming THESE survive the cooling process.

Magic Crust Fudge Pie

• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup baking powder biscuit mix
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Melt the chocolate and the butter together in a saucepan and cool slightly.

Mix everything else except the nuts in the blender. Add the chocolate mixture to the blender with the machine running. Blend thoroughly.

Pour into a 9" grease pyrex pie plate. Top with nuts. Bake at 350°F for 30-35 minutes. Cool.

Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

Toni's Fruit Crisp Mix

Whenever you have extra fruit to use up, try this recipe.

• 1 cup butter
• 1 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 1/2 cup oatmeal
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 3 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup wheat germ

Blend all of this in a food processor and store it in your refrigerator.

To make crisp:

• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 4 cups fruit
• 1 1/3 cup topping mix

Grease an 8" pyrex dish with all of the butter. Sprinkle the butter with the sugar. Add the fruit. Top with the topping mix. Bake at 350°F for about 40 minutes. Serve warm with whipped cream.

Sourdough Oatmeal Pancakes

These are a special variation on both oatmeal bannocks and sourdough pancakes. I like to pretend they are healthier for me. The flavor is unusual and rich.

• 2 cups sourdough starter (click the link to see how to make some - easy and cheap!)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp melted butter or oil or applesauce
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/4 tsp baking soda dissolved in 1 tsp water

Mix everything together except the oats and the baking soda. Add the oats and the soda mixture and stir. The batter is going to be lumpy. Let it sit for about 15 minutes to rest and for the oatmeal to absorb the moisture. This resting period is the hardest part of the recipe for me.

Heat your griddle to about 400°F and then butter the griddle well. Ladle the batter out in small quantities and allow to cook like regular pancakes, allowing the bubbles to pop dry on the surface before turning them over and browning the other side. Like other sourdough pancakes, these tend to be a little browner than "normal" pancakes.

The same addiitons and mix-ins can be used as you would with other pancakes, but I find I tend not to add much to these. I also find that the rich flavor of the oatmeal makes me not want as much syrup.