Tried and True Family Favorites

Happy Cinco de Mayo to all who will be celebrating! The guy at the little post office that I go to reminded me this morning; I guess that instead of Shrimp Fettuccine we will have Shrimp Tostatoes and salsa for dinner. All three of my sons took Spanish, and since we're in the Great Southwest we enjoy all the food-related holidays. In fact, last year, my oldest son asked for Mexican food for his birthday. I was happy to make him enchiladas, guacamole and lemonade w/ limes, as requested. I'm not bragging here, but it wasn't bad for a cook from the Southeastern part of the country. What mattered was that Justin was satisfied with it.

Even if Mexican food is not your favorite, I think you'll enjoy the recipes I "brought to the table" today. They are ones that I use often. The first one is Blake's (the middle son's) favorite recipe for pork chops. If I cook them this week, he'll probably smell them all the way from Japan!
When we first moved from one end of the country to the other and our belongings hadn't been moved, yet, I had my friend, Christy, use my code on my garage door to get into the house and get the recipe from my file. She read it over the phone to me so that Blake could enjoy these pork chops for his birthday when he came home from OU for the weekend. Good friends always have your back!


Amish Pork Chops

1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 C ketchup
1 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
1/2 C chopped onion

Mix ingredients until combined and smooth. Pour over 1" thick pork chops. Bake 2 hrs. at 375 degrees. Serve with rice.

If you like to use the frozen rolls from the grocer's freezer for convenience' sake, take a morning and mix a batch of these rolls up and freeze them yourself; you'll save lots of money! Check the price on that bag of frozen rolls at Walmart and you'll see what I mean. Once these homemade ones are frozen and bagged, you can take out just the amount you need, just like the store-bought ones. (Ironically, my youngest son, Ben, who is the thinnest one of our crew is the bread-lover. If I make hot rolls I have to remind him that he is to put the other elements of the meal on his plate, too!)

Frozen Dinner Rolls

5 1/2 to 6 1/2 C flour
1/2 C sugar
2 tsp salt
2 pkg. dry yeast
1 1/4 C water
1/2 C milk
1/3 C margarine
2 eggs (room temperature)

In a large bowl, mix 2 C flour, sugar, salt and undissolved yeast. Combine water, milk and margarine in a saucepan. Heat over low heat until liquid is very warm (120 to 130 degrees) Gradually add to dry ingredients and beat 2 min. at medium speed w/ electric mixer, scraping bowl occasionally.
Add eggs and 1/2 C flour. Beat at high speed for 2 min. Stir in enough additional flour to make a soft dough.
Turn out onto floured board; knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 to 10 min. Cover w/ plastic wrap and let rest for 20 min.
Punch dough down, shape into desired shapes for dinner rolls. Place on greased baking sheets, cover, and freeze until firm.
Transfer to plastic bags, freeze up to 4 weeks.

Remove from freezer, place on greased baking sheets, cover, and let rise in warm place, until double in bulk (about 1 1/2 hours). Bake at 350 for 15 min. or until golden brown (flick the top of roll with your finger, if it sounds hollow, they're done). Makes 4 dozen. I like to brush the tops w/ butter while they're still hot. This is something that I learned from Mammam; it makes the rolls shiny and pretty.


Tip: Sometimes, I'll lay frozen rolls out on greased baking sheets on Sunday morning before church (and cover them w/waxed paper to thaw and rise). If the kitchen's not warm enough, sometimes they've not raised enough by the time I get home. Usually, I have something in the crockpot, too. I immediately take the top off the crock pot and place the baking sheet over the top of the crock; that will finish your rolls to a nice rise! By the time you've changed into your "Sunday- comfy clothes" and gotten the rest of the meal under way, the rolls will be ready to pop into the oven. This also works with setting your dishwasher's door ajar if it's just finished running and is hot; set your baking sheet w/ rolls on the counter above it.



My family will all be home by the end of the week, so I wanted to make a special dessert. We love lemon desserts around here, so I searched for Aunt Hazel's Lemon Parfait Cake recipe. If you're not a big fan of those cakes that have mounds of gooey icing, this cake might be for you. It's got a glaze over the top that gives it a fresh lemony zing.

Aunt Hazel Bell's Lemon Parfait Cake

1 box yellow cake mix
4 eggs
3/4 C oil
3/4 C water
1 box(reg size)lemon jello

Combine all cake ingredients and beat 2 to 4 min. Pour into a lightly-greased pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 min.

Topping:

2 C powdered sugar
rind and juice of 2 lemons

Combine topping mix and spread evenly over top of hot cake, after after lightly punching holes in top of cake w/ a fork. Place glaze-topped cake back in oven for 1 1/2 min. Remove from oven to cool. Good w/ vanilla ice cream!


Join me at BalancingBeautyandBedlam for her recipe swap today!

Menu Plan for the Week

I've been linking to the Menu Plan Monday at Orgjunkie.com for a while now. It's a way for everyone to get and share menu ideas, because I got tired of rotating the same five menus week after week. I've got lots of recipes to try, and it just takes a little planning on Sunday afternoon for my cooking week to go a lot smoother.
I have my "travelers" coming back on different days this week (sometimes, it's like an airport or train station around here!) so I'll plan my menu accordingly. As usual, I make snack and lunch items ahead on Monday, too. This Monday on "Laundry Catch-Up Day" I will be making Chinese Coleslaw, Egg Salad, Chocolate Chip Cookies and Macaroons. Since everyone will not be here at the start of the week, I will not be roasting a large piece of meat, as I usually do, however, I will prep vegetables and salad items and make the base for my Pasta e' Fagoli Soup. The Ham and Potato dish will use up leftover ham from the freezer, and I'll be thawing pork chops, ground beef and French rolls from the freezer in the refrigerator.

Monday, April 4
Cheddar Omelets w/ Bacon
Cinnamon Fried Apples
biscuits

Tuesday, April 5
Shrimp Fettuccine Alfredo
Romaine salad w/ Balsamic Dressing

Wednesday, May 6
Pasta e' Fagoli w/ Parmesan
Toasted whole wheat mini loaves
(bake Lemon Parfait Cake)

Thursday, May 7
Ham and Scalloped Potatoes in Crock Pot
Carrots/broccoli/cauliflower medley

Friday, May 8
Amish Pork Chops
Wild rice
Tossed salad

Saturday, May 9
French Toast
fruit

Grilled Chicken w/BBQ sauce (Travelers' Homecoming Meal!)
mashed potatoes
corn on the cob
green beans
hot rolls
iced tea
Lemon Parfait Cake


Don't forget that tomorrow's "Tuesday's Tried and True Recipes" from my family recipe box; You know that you want to try my Aunt Hazel's Lemon Parfait Cake!

Cookbook Has Connections to Literary History

I'm excited to present our cookbook choice for today. The book is Cross Creek Cookery, written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings who wrote The Yearling, a Pulitzer prize winner. This cookbook is a more personal look at the author, and her home in Florida where she wrote and managed a 72- acre orange grove. She gives stories about her life and family through the background profiles of the recipes.

In this unique and charming cookbook, which was published in 1941, Rawlings even makes references to her dairy cow, Dora (i.e. Dora's Ice Cream). Any recipes that came from her mom or grandma, or aunt are given titles such as Mother's Sunday Night Salad or Grandma Traphagen's Sugar Cookies. She adds little stories, such as the way she used to bribe her mother to make her favorite fruit salad by offering to pick out the nut meats for it.

The author was ahead of her time in using and featuring locally-grown produce; as an orange grove owner, I'm sure that she saw early-on the importance of this. You will find that she includes many recipes with kumquats, Malaga grapes, grapefruit, avocados, pecans, and mangoes. This made the salad section a little exotic for my taste. It had such dishes as: Tomato Aspic and Artichoke; Beet and Cabbage Salad; and Grapefruit and Avocado Salad. However, I would make her Mother's Sunday Night Salad, as well as, Mother's Fruit Salad Dressing.

Through Rawling's writing skills, the reader gets a sense that , although she's from the North and has lived in Florida for 10 years, she loves and appreciates the cultures and foods of her adopted home. Her eclectic mix of recipes reflects both worlds; there are recipes for both Alligator-Tail Steak and Boston Brownies!

The Main Dish section is also varied; there's a wide variety of great seafood recipes, some French, but there's also Cheese Grits, Dumplings and her family's Spaghetti and Meatballs recipe. One section is devoted entirely to " Wild Game Recipes" such as venison, bear and dove preparation.

The dessert section in this book is my favorite. It will absolutely make your mouth water! Typically-Southern desserts are the stars here: Sweet Potato Pone; Peach and Strawberry Shortcake; Pecan Pie; and Syllabub. After all, does it really matter what you had for dinner if the dessert is a show stopper?! If there's no dessert, though, her Shrimp Newburg might make up for it (or Chicken and Dumplings). I think I gained weight just reading this book.

I will warn readers, in advance, that there are some references from that period that might be offensive, and that would not be acceptable in writing today. I believe they are made in passing, with an innocent, unpretentious tone. After all, you have to take into consideration that this is written in the South in 1942. In one such passage, it talks about a kitchen servant making Sweet Potato Pone using butter instead of the usual bacon grease because the children are coming home to visit. As she churns the butter she chants:
"Come butter come. Grandma waitin' for the chillen to come." It's a look back in time, and I believe it adds to the flavor of the book's authenticity, just as her stories of friends and family do.

Cross Creek Cookery reads more like an autobiography than a cookbook. The drawings of an earlier time in Florida's history are well-done by Robert Camp and add to the book's charm. This is one of my favorites from my collection, and I wish you luck in finding it; to my knowledge, there was only one printing.


P. 61 Fried Asparagus

Large-sized can of asparagus, drained
Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper.
Dip in flour, then slightly-beaten egg, then in bread crumbs, and fry until golden. Yellow summer squash is good this way, too, but cut crosswise in quarter-inch slices.



P 180 Utterly Deadly Pecan Pie

4 eggs
1 1/4 C Southern cane syrup
1 1/2 C broken pecan meats
1 C sugar
4 TBSP butter
1 tsp vanilla

Boil sugar and syrup together two or three minutes. Beat eggs not too stiff, pour in slowly the hot syrup, add the butter, vanilla, and the pecan meats, broken rather coarsley. Turn into a raw pie shell and bake in a moderate oven for 45 min. or until set.


I'm participating in Grocerycartchalleng's Friday Recipe Swap!