Peanut Butter-Apple Crisp

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A favorite episode of the tv series “West Wing” features a high school class stuck at the White House due to a security concern. They’re shuffled into the Mess –White House cafeteria– and fed apples and peanut butter for a snack. (I’ve seen the whole series 3 or 4 times now. I never tire of it.) Later on, the president, played by smart, savvy actor Martin Sheen, shows up to say, “I just came down for some apples and peanut butter,” only to find out the kids have cleaned out the entire supply! Just about everyone — including presidents — likes apples and peanut butter, though they’re maybe a little higher up on my husband’s list of favorites than on mine. I often cut an apple and serve it with peanut butter for part of his lunch if I really want a smiling table mate.

Recipes on cabinets–
works well for us.

After I had made a King Arthur Flour Apple Crisp last fall, I left the recipe taped to the cabinet in the kitchen to remind me to make it again instead of automatically going with my typical Fanny Farmer Baking Book version. We liked the new one a lot with all of its nuts and oats. As it sat up there — even through the holidays when it got moved over and ignored a smidge–I kept wondering how it would taste with peanut butter somehow stirred into the mix. This is one way to get recipes mulled over: to simply leave them right in front of my eyes for days, weeks, or months. Sooner or later, something happens.

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100% Whole Wheat Bread

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The bread that convinced me to bake more bread at home.

Alyce’s (aka Betty Crocker’s) cinnamon rolls.

I am the occasional yeast bread baker. You can look through my nearly 16 years of food blogging and while you’ll find beaucoup quick breads and muffins, biscuits, and other such deliciousness, yeast breads will not be terribly forthcoming. (Maybe my cinnamon rolls and dinner rolls are here somewhere? That would make my kids happy. My pizza is for sure on the blog.) It’s not that I don’t make yeast bread; I do. I just don’t do it every week and hence am not an expert in any way. I’ll admit I lived in Europe for a couple of years and became very used to incredible bread bakers nearly every block or two. (Why bake?) I’m also the sort of embarrassing yeast bread baker who still sometimes likes a bread machine for fun, easy bread. Truth in blogging here: I have the Cadillac of bread machines, a Zojirushi and — unlike many out there –adore it for more than just mixing dough–which is what a lot of good bread bakers use it for. I have gone through one bread machine (an Oster) and had to replace it. That’s an unusual claim to fame in today’s baking world. I also own a bread machine book by bread guru, the late, great Beth Hensperger. See: experts can like bread machines, too! (Today’s bread is, in fact, based on one of Beth’s recipes –not for the bread machine– adapted by KRISTEN BROWNING-BLAS in the Denver Post in 2014. I changed the recipe to suit my on-hand ingredients. Beth’s recipe called for both dry milk and buttermilk– neither of which I keep in the kitchen all the time. I do, however, always have plain Greek yogurt, which worked perfectly. Fun aside: my first copy of this recipe left out the yeast. I was an hour into making the bread when I realized it. I added it to the hour-old sponge and, while it took a while longer to double, double, toil, and trouble, it worked! Bread is forgiving. When I looked up the recipe a second time, the yeast was back in the ingredient deck. Hm….)

On a really special day, I’ll rev up both my slow cooker and bread machine and sit in my chair with a sleazy novel and an afghan til 5:30 when it’s time to uncork the wine and enjoy the fruits of my …non-labor. This is stretching the truth but not by much. Oh, how I love small appliances.

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Cranberry-Apple Whole Wheat Olive Oil Cake

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Because this not too sweet cake is a tweak of a tweak that even I have made a few versions of…. I’m including the introduction to my blogpost for an all-apple cake from last spring to provide background…

I’ve been baking this friendly cake for a few months now in one variation or another. First, I was just fascinated by the ingredients in the original Almond Cake recipe, which belongs to Molly Wizenberg and was adapted by Mark Bittman and Sam Sifton…and later by me along with a few thousand of my closest friends. It starts with boiling an orange and a lemon together for a half hour, removing the seeds, and puréeing the now softened peels. Nothing I’d ever done in my not-so-extensive cake baking career; still, I was sold. There’s no butter but there’s plenty of olive oil, making it taste and feel seriously Mediterranean or just Spanish… and keeping it moist for a few days right on the old proverbial counter. That’s even in Colorado at altitude where bread becomes crouton material in 15 minutes flat. The original “Tarta de Santiago” or St. James Cake (very similar to the almond cake I kept making) is a middle ages and Camino de Santiago specialty still baked each July 25, for the feast of St. James. One couldn’t have asked for a better plain cake or maybe even one with more spiritual flavor. Think gently citrusy and uber nutty pound cake only lighter. My dad, who abhorred all things frosting, would have inhaled it. Only thing my cake needed was a little barely sweetened whipped cream or a few berries, as you see in my photo (below the recipe in this post). Or just a cup of coffee if you were my dad. Maybe a small Armagnac if you were me. A wee dram or a cuppa if you weren’t.

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Cashew-Pecan Spice Bars

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Need an egg-free cookie? Here it is!
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In a galaxy far away, I was once the gift shop manager of the lovely historic property, Woodlawn Plantation/Pope Leighey House in Mt. Vernon, Virginia. Right up Rte 1 from my own home in Woodbridge, this was not only a most convenient work spot but a beautiful early-American house museum and a loving, learning place to work. How I adored my coworkers! Each winter, I traveled to attend a gift show to buy new merchandise for the shop and one eventful year, I was smitten (gobsmacked, really) by a company that baked and delivered the most delicious brownies and bar cookies I’d ever tasted at a commercial level. We began to carry them quite soon afterward in the shop and the Pecan Squares — dripping with honey and toasted Georgia nuts on a buttery shortbread base–were the standout choice of the short, but sweet menu. It sadly soon became evident we couldn’t sell enough of them to make a profit (there was quota to buy each month and they often went bad on us) and I sorrowfully canceled our standing order. But! I never ever forgot the taste of those pecan squares and was thus thrilled to later see a recipe for a similar cookie in the famed–and personal favorite– SILVER PALATE COOKBOOK (SP). I baked them myself (were they as good???) and sent them to my husband as he traveled with the Air Force band and while he went to officer’s training school. Fast forward nearly 40 years and I was about to summon the memories of those cookies to create my own 2023 holiday treat, Cashew-Pecan Spiced Bars (Chai Squares? Nutty Spice Bars? Spicy Chai Nut Bars? What’s in a name?!), for this very blog. A new Christmas cookie is something I’ve done for a number of Decembers now and I was a little late to the gate getting started this year despite best intentions. Let’s not talk about the construction zone that is our house right now or even about the big-mess Christmas kitchen.

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THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS: Perky Turkey-Vegetable Lentil Soup and Cranberry-Cheddar Biscuits

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There is simply nothing like Thanksgiving leftovers. Nothing so fun, fast, and fine as raiding the fridge late at night for a bowl of cold cranberry sauce and stuffing or getting up before everyone else for a snack of pumpkin pie and whipped cream on Friday morning. I’m especially fond of a complete blow by blow repeat of the dinner the next night, scraping everything into oven dishes and heating it all at once for 40 minutes at 350F. And like the rest of the U.S., I totally wait all year for the post-holiday turkey sandwich —with mayo, of course. (Did you know that turkey is America’s favorite sandwich??) But at some point, there’s that last cup or two of shredded or chopped turkey sitting sadly in the back of the middle shelf with nothing else to keep it company. That’s when it’s time for turkey soup if you haven’t already done it, that is. And you can make good, old-fashioned turkey noodle or turkey-wild rice — sure you can — or you might try my Perky Turkey Vegetable-Lentil Soup, which along with sounding sort of silly, combines the filling pairing of lentils with root vegetables but also adds a splash of red wine vinegar in each bowl– hence the “perky” part.

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KIDS BAKE THANKSGIVING: Ginger Cranberry-Blueberry Muffins

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Ginger and cranberry? You betcha!

Need other Thanksgiving dishes? Click on THANKSGIVING in the word cloud or click on/type into the search box individual words like TURKEY, BROCCOLI, PIE, SOUPS AND STEWS, PUMPKIN, etc.

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Thanksgiving breakfast gets short shrift in our world but it doesn’t mean it should. I mean, people are hungry on Thanksgiving morning, aren’t they? Or is it just a sad human bean thing to hold on for hours on holidays with nothing but coffee sloshing around in our tummies until mid-afternoon feasting? Surely we don’t need huge egg and cheese casseroles or piles of pumpkin pancakes with butter, syrup, and pork sausages (or maybe we do), but a small something like a perfectly perfecto muffin would, I think, go over a treat. Ginger Cranberry-Blueberry Muffins, based on my best blueberry muffin, can be prepped the night before by kids (or adults) — see below MUFFIN TIPS — and quickly baked long before it’s time to slide the pies, rolls, and your sweet turkey bird into the hot oven. If you’re the planning sort, they could be baked and frozen this weekend and taken out to thaw on the counter next to the big butter dish and a pile of cute napkins on Wednesday night. A little Greek yogurt with a honey drizzle would round out such a simple meal and, I think, keep you from dreaded coffee tummy. I mean, who wants that?

Just in case you want choices, I’ll include a few other muffins for you.

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Slow Cooker Black Beans with Chorizo + Ham

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Thinking ahead to Thanksgiving? Click here for ideas for the meal and the leftovers.

Thanksgiving Music: Wednesday – Sunday

Need a gift for your Thanksgiving host? Make some cranberry-apple-nut granola to take along!

It’s been a crazy sort of few weeks around our house. Which made it a great time to work on a new slow cooker meal that’s up and cooking a big pot of dinner in not too many minutes at all. Isn’t that how slow cooker recipes should be?! Welcome SLOW COOKER BLACK BEANS WITH CHORIZO AND HAM….just in time for November football games and holiday gatherings…or for just the two of you with a few quarts in the freezer for later. Move over chili, there’s another great pot in the house easy to customize with your very favorite usual suspect toppings, including crushed tortilla chips, red onions, queso fresco or Cheddar, lime crema, tomatoes, avocado, sliced jalapeños, or….

But….why has it been crazy? For quite a while, we’ve barely held our heads above water. Good pun, but you’ll need to know the story. Sad, but true.

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Plum Clafoutis

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Shown here baked in a Le Creuset 2-qt stoneware casserole.
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I know. I can’t believe there’s another plum recipe on the blog but, really, I just can’t help myself. For one thing, I had a huge windfall of plums a couple of weeks ago from old friend Helen Brockman — they’re still chilling and willing. For another, this was my week to teach the Frolicking French Fall Dinner Party cooking class and — what could be a better, nearly instant, homey French dessert than clafoutis? (cluh-FOO-tee) I had never heard of a plum clafoutis as they’re typically made with cherries and a just sweet enough custardy batter, though I make them with rhubarb, too. Purists would offer the opinion that it isn’t a clafoutis if it isn’t made with cherries but this is my kitchen, isn’t it?! And, of course, when I googled plum clafoutis, other able and thoughtful cooks have gone before me. (I shouldn’t have done it and let myself believe I’d invented the dish. Story of my life but I’ll still give myself the private credit.)

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Cornmeal Plum Scones with Almonds

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Scones do not keep well. Best the morning they’re made, it’s better to make/eat them at home.
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Here in the U.S.–as opposed to the UK and Ireland where scones are a little more demure– we happily load scone dough with big chocolate chunks, any sort of fruit on hand, coconut, nuts, citrus, and often a little more sugar just because. Icing or at least a drizzle–vanilla, lemon, orange, maple, dark chocolate with salt– is not out of the question on top! And we STILL could gild that lily with a little more butter. What?? We seem to always go big or go home on this side of the Atlantic. I’ve made them every which way over time, though not yet with icing, (scroll down to IF YOU LIKED THIS… to see other More Time scones ), and being an American of Scots descent, I like to consider my options. With a big box of ripe Italian plums resting in my fridge, I opted to 1. freeze most of them for later–hello, Thanksgiving desserts and 2. make some decadent, American-style scones. Had I heard of or made plum scones before? No, but that wouldn’t stop me, would it? I just might be more American than Scots.

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Wild Goose Breast on Smashed Potatoes and Peas with Bacon and Mushroom Sauce (Icelandic Memories)

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Use this recipe for turkey, pork, chicken, or duck if wild goose breast isn’t in your freezer!
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When I told one of my besties, Sue Hall, about this recipe and sent her a first photo, she said, “And so where in the h-e-double hockey sticks are you getting wild goose?” I said, “I have someone shoot them for me.” “Of course you do,” said she.

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