Author: leora76

I am getting married! That may seem like a strange way to start a food blog, but walk with me for a minute, I’m getting to a point. My Other Half was not ensnared by my glorious cooking skills (at least not entirely!) but it’s fair to say it’s probably on his Top 10 list of reasons why he loves me. On my list of reasons he’s The One is the fact that he eats nearly everything I cook without complaint and doesn’t fuss that I am perpetually experimenting in the kitchen. So while we are simpatico on this topic, our waistlines over the past two years have grown right along with our love, and that my friends, does not bode well for form-fitting wedding attire nor a beachy honeymoon. So the point is (see? I promised!) we have been in the throes of the worst “D” word in the English language: DIET. The last thing I wanted to do was write all about these four wonderful recipes I made, but which will sadly not be on our menus again very soon! Alas, I have a commitment to my beloved Pioneer Woman as well, so I am going to finish this project despite the threat to my calorie count. Remind me to apologize in advance to my alterations gal!

Let us kick off the reminiscences of feasts past with an appropriately love-themed recipe that I’ve made on numerous occasions before realizing I should have been taking photos of it: Linguine with Clam Sauce. I say this is related to love because of Ree’s story behind it; this was the first meal she ever prepared for her then-boyfriend, Ladd. He hated it. And he ate it anyway. Ahhhh, l’amour! They laugh now about the big, burly cattle rancher choking down seafood lightly bathed in white wine and lemon juice only to spare his date’s feelings, but I think he was missing out by being culinarily biased against the poor clams. Flash forward 20+ blissfully wedded years and she’s never forced him to eat it again, but thankfully she still included it in her cookbook for the rest of us! What I love about it is the fact that all of the ingredients were already in my pantry (yes, I keep canned clams on hand!) and it presents as “fancy” without requiring much work. The pasta is just pasta, and the clams simply simmer in an inviting pool of melted butter, garlic, oil, white wine, lemon juice and cream, with a sprinkle of parsley and Parmesan at the end. How could he not love this?? We sure did!

I have to admit I felt a little betrayed by the name of recipe #19, Mocha Brownies. It clearly implies that I should feel like I’ve just enjoyed a strong cup of joe after eating one of these, and yet… There is no coffee in this brownie!! Blasphemy. All the coffee is in the icing, which quite frankly I don’t believe even belongs on a brownie. To be fair, this is a solid brownie recipe. And I do mean solid. Just look at it: dense, thick, and chewy. But for all that, I’d rather have just eaten it plain, ditched the “mocha” title, and made this frosting for a fluffy Devil’s food cake. Which is what I’ll be doing in the future, since the recipe made a gallon of frosting, almost as thick as the brownie itself! I went a little (lot) overboard with the coffee trying to amp up the flavor, but all I succeeded in doing was making it too runny. I even added more powdered sugar, but as this was a buttercream, I actually needed to use more softened butter which wouldn’t have incorporated well. Chalk one up for learning, and when I can afford to pack on a few pounds, this will be back in the rotation with a few modifications.

On to breakfast! If there is one thing I have limited patience for, it’s standing in the kitchen for an hour before any food hits my plate in the morning. I prefer meals that take 10 minutes or less, or just pass me the cherry Danish! Still, my Other Half has a thing for hot breakfast, so I oblige him occasionally with pain-in-the-behind meals like this one. The problem is simply that there is too much to chop up here, so I outsmarted the recipe by prepping far in advance. I shredded cheese, diced peppers and onions, mixed eggs with cream and seasoning all the night before while I was already making dinner featuring many of the same veggies, and in the morning I just had to dump it all together. Frozen potatoes O’Brien were my friend here, or you can make Ree’s fresh Breakfast Potatoes (hers are admittedly better!) Clearly the ones pictured are mine – doused in sour cream – while my love drowned his in hot sauce. I included jalapeño, but even I had to admit they could have done with a bit more spice. Since there are so many steps involved in creating this meal, you could (and should) pre-wrap several burritos and cover them in tin foil to be reheated in the oven as needed.

At last we come to a great big pan of comfort carbs. I mean, Lasagna! What can I say, it’s hard to mess this up! The one part that I wholeheartedly disagree with, yet didn’t ruin this recipe, is the substitution of cottage cheese for ricotta. Yes, I know a lot of people do it, yes I love cottage cheese all on its own. But no… I don’t think it belongs here to the exclusion of real Italian cheese. But I digress. My usual objection to cottage cheese is the lumpy consistency when it’s just plopped onto the noodle bed, but I whipped this cottage cheese with eggs, herbs and Parmesan, smoothing it out considerably. Fresh herbs (not dried) added a nice flair to the meat sauce too, and naturally I doubled the quantity of mozzarella called for, which is just about the right amount! I’ve made dozens of lasagna recipes over the years, and there are some that have you simmering sauce for eight hours and some that practically have you opening a can of Manwich and dumping it on uncooked noodles. Ree’s recipe splits the difference nicely, keeping it simple and inexpensive, but not shorting you on flavor. I’ll be making this again…when eventually “calories” won’t be mentioned in this house!

Stop me if you’ve heard this one! It may sound crazy, but all these things were actually on the menu in my house last week. Let me start with the least threatening ingredient of the bunch: the humble tomato. I ask you, is there anything better than flinging open the pantry door and finding everything you need to make dinner right at your fingertips?? I think not. The nearest grocery store is within literal walking distance, yet its feels like a trek across the Arctic when I just don’t want to leave the house. #14 Tomato Soup and #15 Skillet Cornbread were two special recipes that allowed me to stay in my PJ’s, yet put what appeared to be a well-planned and coordinated meal on the table. If my kitchen actually had a door, I could have closed it and completed five minutes of actual work time, then spent the rest of an hour banging pots and pretending to slave away for the benefit of my family, all while sitting with my feet kicked up and reading a trashy romance novel. (You know, if I were into that sort of thing!) Tomato soup is NOT terrible out of a can, I’ll admit, but it’s so much better when you make it from scratch. “From scratch” in this instance just means I opened other cans and bottles, like ones of diced tomatoes, tomato juice, cream and sherry. Dump it all into a pot and let it simmer away while you stir corn meal and flour into buttermilk and a beaten egg for the picture-perfect cornbread you see below. Just don’t let your spouse and kids catch on to how little effort went into this meal while they are singing your culinary praises!

While it may not take much cajoling to get your family to chow down on soup and bread, there are other offerings that take, shall we say… convincing. Or lying. Lying might actually be necessary. But hey, I’m in good company! Ree deceived her beloved husband for years while she watched him eat slice after slice of the next recipe. The issue can be explained in two words: Prune. Cake. Doesn’t that just make your taste buds jump up and dance?! No? But just as it was at the ranch in the early days of Ree’s marriage, #16 Iny’s Prune Cake became a sleeper hit in my house among fussy husbands and picky teenagers alike. Personally I am a huge fan of the prune. Seriously! They are sweet, chewy, and they have other, er, benefits! My grandmother got me on the Prune Train back when I was a kid, and I have enjoyed eating the fruit that eats like a candy ever since; however, both my daughter and The Other Half hold very strong opinions that prunes are the Devil. Which is why I planned to lie through my teeth about what was in the cake until a certain nosy man came along, poking into the pot while I was boiling the offending fruit to soften it. I was forced to confess, and he gamely agreed to try it anyway, despite his grim expression. After boiling, I mashed up the prunes and mixed them into the batter, making it sweet and moist, and a little extra texture from the skins was an added bonus. Where I failed was in making the allegedly “fool-proof” icing. I followed Ree’s directions exactly, but apparently my definition of ‘caramelly brown’ and hers differs greatly. What should have set up into an opaque, pourable frosting turned out to be more of a sugary glaze. Still, it made a dang fine cake. Fun fact: this was listed as a breakfast food, but I would definitely recommend it for dessert! And yes, it still retains the star ingredient’s… benefits!

Last but certainly not least for this week’s Recipes in Review was the infamous Egg in the Hole. Or Toad in the Hole. Or Egg Toast. Or Frog in a Hole. Or Bird’s Nest. Or One-Eyed Monster. Whatever you call it, this thing actually IS breakfast! Now, I don’t get where frogs or toads come in to cutting a hole from a piece of bread, then cracking an egg into the center and frying it in a lot of butter, but this combo just works. I thought it would be overly simplified and fall flat, but it’s… perfect. I added a twist of pepper and a sprinkle of salt, but no other adornment was necessary. The only drawback was it wasted the big circle of bread that I’d removed with a biscuit cutter, though that could have been made into a crustless sandwich if I’d been thinking. Note to my future self! I regret I didn’t know about these when my kids were little, since I think children would get a kick out them, but I must admit that adults think it’s pretty great too! Just leave the toads out of it…

Pancakes are weird. To be honest, they’re not really my fave. I think anyone who claims pancakes are their #1 breakfast food really just likes to eat butter and syrup. Not that I find fault in that! What I mean by “weird” is that they seem like they should be very simple to make and to perfect. Nothing could be further from the truth! EVERY culture appears to have their own “right” way to make pancakes, and the variety of shapes is endless! Blinis, Dutch babies, bings, injeras, crêpes, latkes, æbleskivers… all basically a pancake! And then there are the mix-ins, from fruit to nuts to chocolate chips, people will toss just about anything into a basic batter and call it breakfast. So what am I complaining about? My issue is that I just can’t NAIL a pancake unless it’s Bisquick. I’ve made buttermilk pancakes, ricotta pancakes, created my own pancake dry-mix similar to Bisquick… but nothing ever fluffs up and browns as evenly as the reliable old box mix. And I take offense to that! Edna Mae’s Sour Cream Pancakes are no exception. I used the not-so-secret ingredient, but I was directed to “barely combine” it with the dry. Leaving great gobs of unmixed elements goes against all my baking instincts! Then it got worse when I added the beaten eggs: “Don’t worry about the mixture being totally combined; a little white and yellow swirling is fine!” Kill me now… Although these turned out “fine”, not quite round but tasty enough… I think I will stick with my happy yellow box! In fact, just give me hash browns and bacon!

Move over sports bars of the world, I’ve got the best hot, creamy Artichoke Dip right here! If you happen to read this blog often, you may recall that I made a similar dip from the last cookbook I worked through and was not overly impressed. That’s because I was mentally comparing it to THIS recipe. Technically Ree’s was “artichoke, hold the spinach” dip, but I didn’t let that stop me from adding the vitamin-packed super food to the final product. I mean, there has to be some redeeming nutritional quality, right?? Spinach and artichokes go together like peanut butter and carrots! Wait… that’s not right… Well anyway, they make a great pair! And when you add cream cheese, mayonnaise and Parmesan, you just cannot go wrong. The Super Bowl called, they demand you make this in two weeks!

While we are on the subject of flawless recipes, I have to give a shout-out to the aptly named Perfect Pot Roast and Creamy Mashed Potatoes. But what makes it perfect? Is it 12 hours marinating in a multi-ingredient bath? Is it heirloom vegetables, picked at the peak of harvest? How about Kobe beef, flown in from Japan, after a lengthy dry-aging process at a carefully maintained temperature? Nah… It’s literally keeping it simple as can be, and sautéing every part separately. Ensuring a seared crust on your standard supermarket chuck roast and gently blistering the onions and carrots allows the flavors to shine. You don’t know torture until you’ve had to be at home the entire time this amazing pot roast is cooking, low and slow, for the 5-ish hours it takes to reach fall-apart perfection. The aroma is likely to make you swoon! And the mashed potatoes? Much like pancakes, you can throw just about anything into them and come up with your own unique twist, but I side with Ree that cream cheese and half-and-half is all you need, along with liberally applied seasoned salt and pepper to jazz it up. No gravy required!

If I were looking for a single cookbook to meet all my kale-preparation needs or open my eyes to new and improved ways to make cauliflower exciting… I would have failed miserably with this one. Between her young, picky children (at the time of its publishing) and her vegetable-eschewing husband, Ree didn’t give me much to work with of the non-meat variety. Considering she herself WAS a vegetarian when she met the cattle-ranching love of her life, I find that a little surprising, but she did throw me a bone (so to speak) with at least one salad. Literally just one… in the whole cookbook! It’s not exactly haute cuisine, but the Wedge Salad with Ranch Dressing is nonetheless one of my favorites so far! I have thrown untold amounts of Romaine lettuce and fresh spinach into the trash after it outlived its edibleness. I have unearthed the liquified remains of a deflated cucumber from the bottom of the crisper drawer more times than I can count. I have wasted endless bottles of dressings that just didn’t live up to their restaurant counterparts. All of that makes me irritable at the uncertainty of buying perishable salad veggies and annoyed that the bottled dressing manufacturers of the world can’t seem to get it right (Hidden Valley, you’re off the hook here!) Since Ree was preparing for the, shall we say, limited salad palates in her home, a good ol’ wedge of nutritionally-devoid iceberg lettuce was the answer. It ain’t fancy, but it gets the job done. The fact that it’s topped with shredded cheese and bacon means it was acceptable on the ranch. The RANCH! That’s actually the best part of this entire thing; Ree’s dressings are the absolute best I’ve ever tried, hands down. I’ve made her bleu cheese, I’ve made her chipotle, I’ve even made her sesame-ginger dressing, but nothing compares to the simple perfection of her basic Ranch. The secret is fresh garlic. Or is it fresh dill? Maybe the chives? Perhaps it’s the parsley… No, it’s the cayenne and Worcestershire sauce! Whatever it is, the combination she created is better than just about any restaurant I’ve been to, and easily making it at home with relatively common ingredients fills my soul with happiness. The fact that a head of iceberg lettuce costs under a buck doesn’t hurt either!

Some people recall the exact song playing on the radio when a tragic event occurred. Others remember what they were doing with excruciating detail at the moment they met the person they fell in love with. I can call up with staggering, photographic clarity the first time I made a new recipe; how I prepared it, and most clearly, if my children ate it. Such holds true as I look back over four years at the first recipes I ever made from The Pioneer Woman Cooks.

Macaroni and Cheese… This is sure to be a winner! EVERY kid likes mac and cheese. Right? Well, yes… and no. I somehow managed to raise kids who are connoisseurs of “The Blue Box”, if you know what I mean, despite having made a Herculean effort to expose them to real home cooking for the majority of their childhoods, not just the pre-packaged, American diet of dinosaur-shaped chicken and fish-shaped crackers. Ok, they ate a lot of that too, but it wasn’t the only thing on the menu! Ree’s mac and cheese was quite tasty, and as you can see from the picture, also quite cheesy. What it wasn’t is “creamy”. Or neon orange. The children wanted little to do with it. Melted cheddar on top notwithstanding, the overall appearance was lighter yellow and more like lasagna, cutting into even squares after baking in the oven to toast that top layer. Parent: 7/10, Kids: 3/10. (Confession; Mama likes a little more of the Blue Box influence herself!)

Now here’s a blast from the past that I am happy to revisit! With a title like “Beans“, I admit my expectations were low. How interesting could that be?? Well, as it turns out, VERY! Dried pinto beans had never had a place in my home before this, because I simply didn’t know what to do with them. My mother used to make navy beans with bacon or ham, which smelled pretty good and got my tummy rumbling, until she inexplicably threw vinegar into the pot. Ruined. With that bad taste in my mouth (forgive the pun), I wasn’t in a hurry to make beans for myself that weren’t of the “Pork ‘n” variety. Thanks to Ree, I discovered that what I was really making was a big ol’ pot of comfort. The recipe made enough to fill the freezer for nearly a year, and saved me from buying canned refried beans for any Mexican meal, or literally to just eat by themselves. To be clear, there was no “refrying” involved, just slow simmering with salt, pepper, and bacon, along with a list of “optional” ingredients: chili powder, cayenne, garlic powder and oregano. I used them all. So simple, yet amazing on the tongue. I opted to smoosh the whole beans slightly, much like making guacamole, so there would be two different textures. Since both kids ate the heck out of this, it’s a 10/10 for the whole family!

Best cake I ever made. Hands down. No competition. Frankly I don’t think my kids got to eat any of this because I brought Ree’s Chocolate Sheet Cake to work for a friend’s birthday. It did not make it back home. I had to take a picture of how the cake came out of the oven (in only 20 minutes! Sheet cakes have many advantages…) because I made coconut-pecan frosting out of personal preference instead of her standard icing. I plan to re-create this beauty with her chocolate pecan topping next time. I think the magic here came from melting the butter and swirling in the cocoa powder, then adding a cup of boiling water. I have never done that before in any other cake recipe, and I have no idea what function it is meant to serve. It’s the only “special” direction among otherwise ordinary ingredients and steps, so that must be the key. Seriously, I made this in 2017 and I still think about it today! From that moment on, I knew if Ree told me I had to stand on my left foot and hop in a circle while singing the national anthem backwards to make a dish, I’d follow her instructions, because clearly she knows some tricks that I don’t! 12/10!

Spicy Pulled Pork. Nothing fancy, nothing crazy; anyone can make this. Do yourself a favor, and do exactly that! The absolute best thing about this recipe is that you pretty much don’t have a role in making it delicious. Pulse the flavorings (fresh onion and garlic, a mess of dried spices) in a food processor until it’s a paste, then rub it on a pork shoulder to stick in a 300 degree oven. Turn on an extended-version “Lord of the Rings” marathon, and every time you swap out the DVD, flip the roast over in the pan. Eight hours later you will swear you can speak elvish, and you’ll also have a flawless pork roast ready to shred. It’s truly as easy as that, and by the way, it goes excellently with those Beans! (Side note: I think she used the term “spicy” very literally, as in there are many spices… Not one of them is “hot”, so if you want some fire in your pulled pork, throw in some cayenne!) Since we don’t care for “spicy”, 10/10 for us!

My kids are half-grown now, and it’s more difficult to get them to try all the new recipes constantly churning from my kitchen. They have “palates” nowadays, and one won’t eat fish while the other prefers snacks to actual meals. Though I miss the days of them being my little culinary guinea pigs, alas… we’ll always have Beans!

2021… You’ve started us off with a bang! But just for a few months, can’t you just sit down and behave, and let me enjoy a simple cooking blog?? I don’t have time to be glued to news reports. Not when I have the whole wide world of The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes From an Accidental Country Girl laid out before me. That’s right, after a brief online poll to select my New Year’s project, Ree Drummond emerged victorious (again), so this year will be dedicated to experiencing all the flavors from her very first cookbook!

This just in! “Independent Fact Check”: I have already cooked from this book! In fact, I have made MANY of the recipes included in this relatively short volume. Even if I wasn’t clued in by the fresh-faced and dewy 12-year-old photo on the cover, I would have guessed this was Ree’s first book because it holds a mere 63 recipes, and only about three feature vegetables. She has apparently since learned that just because her hubby disdains most green things, the cookbook-purchasing public at large needs new ways to prepare broccoli. And leeks… (see below!)

With a lucky stroke of forethought, while in the midst of cooking my way through Dinnertime (circa 2017-2018), I did my future self a favor by photographing and labeling most of what I tried out! Therefore, I am hereby committing to documenting ALL the recipes in “Accidental Country Girl”, even if some of them were originally prepared years ago. Admittedly, the first three photos are meals I have (so far) only made once, but #4… you have a special place in my heart!

Ok, first stop arguing that I clearly did not use penne pasta in my Penne alla Betsy! Substitution is the spice of life… Or something like that. Whatever pasta you choose to use, this riff on penne alla rosa is DE. LISH. US!! It all started when I was distractedly watching a Pioneer Woman rerun at 10:00 PM and Ree started describing an amazing meal her little sister Betsy always makes for her when she visits. She didn’t get much past sautéing the shrimp in butter and then onions and garlic before my mouth was watering and I was rummaging through the pantry to collect the necessary ingredients. The best part about this dish was that I did not need to go to the store for anything (did I mention it was 10 o’clock at night??) yet I ended up with Italian comfort food on my plate in under 30 minutes. Faster if I hadn’t needed to peel and devein the shrimp. But seriously, don’t skip that step… This is one of those dinners that I have suddenly gotten a hankering for out of the blue and have repeated several times. Once I might have even used penne…

One word I think I will use a lot throughout my journey across the remaining 40 or so recipes I have yet to try, is “simple”. In her debut collection, Ree highlighted the down-home flavors that cut the mustard, so to speak, with her less-than-culinarily-adventurous husband and small kids. That is not to say they aren’t GOOD, and she sneaked in a couple “foreign” options such as Migas and Sangria, along with seafood specialties no one else in her family would touch. More on that later… While I don’t expect to learn complex new cooking techniques during this go-round, I have every faith that I will find new family favorites to add to my rotation. In fact, I have a feeling “Betsy” is coming to dinner this week!

…And good riddance! The longest year in living memory is drawing to a close and it’s finally time to reflect on one positive thing that happened. It was the “Year of Magnolia Table,” and as the ball dropped (virtually) on 2020, so it did on this project! I feared accepting defeat due to the fact that there were simply no green tomatoes to be found in Colorado in December, but a Hail Mary, last-minute shopping trip provided the elusive ingredient, so I didn’t have to let myself off the proverbial hook. Not even 2020 could stand between me and my goal of successfully (and sometimes unsuccessfully) preparing all 139 recipes from Joanna Gaines’ inaugural cookbook! (Pats self on back, takes mental bow.)

So, what have I learned from this experience? In classic “Marie Kondo” fashion, does this knowledge come with me into the future as something which sparks joy, or do I leave it cheerfully in my wake? The answer is, not surprisingly, both. I found dishes to include in our regular rotation as well as ones that will never again darken my doorstep. If you are considering undertaking a cookbook odyssey of your own, please allow my experiences to inform your decision. After three visits to this particular rodeo, let me save you some heartache. And cash. Lots of cash… Let’s start with the last few recipes which dragged out forever, repeatedly foiling my attempts to wrap this project up weeks ago. (I really want to make something of the “foil” and “wrap” pun, but I’ll just leave it right here!)

Lesson 1: Cook your recipes IN SEASON!

This seems obvious, but as we all know, life gets in the way, the best laid plans, yada, yada. Whatever excuse you throw at this lesson, it will do nothing but sit back and laugh at you while you scramble about, trying to locate the ingredients you need after procrastinating until “off-season”. I had a FULL GARDEN for crying out loud (who didn’t this year?!), yet I never got around to making Jo’s Quick Table Salad when I had the vegetables literally growing at my fingertips for “free”. Of course, as anyone with a garden knows, there are plenty of expenses that go along with the benefit of fresh veggies. Even the dirt costs money! So long story short, I wasted funds many times over by avoiding this uninspiring recipe (I don’t care for orange slices in salad, nor most vinaigrettes) until the dead of winter. I threw money down the drain once by failing to use my paid-for homegrown lettuces, and several more times by repeatedly purchasing store-bought bagged salad, which inevitably went into my crisper to die a slow, slimy death. I failed to adhere to Lesson 1 with the aforementioned Fried Green Tomatoes With Quick Remoulade. I had to make do with tomatoes which were riper than ideal, but it was my only option. That was a true embarrassment, since my abundant tomato crops literally handed firm, fresh, green tomatoes to me on a daily basis for weeks! In the end, cooking recipes off-season means being forced to use subpar ingredients, and potentially robbing yourself of the chance for a new dish to impress you.

Lesson #2 Deep fry at your own peril… but check that oil temp!

As the photographic evidence suggests, deep fat frying is not my forte. Whether it’s donuts or chicken, tomatoes or tortillas, I hate doing it. I do excel at eating fried foods; Colonel Sanders, your business is safe with me! This last round with the hot oil ended in much the same way as other recipes this year: temperature way too high in the beginning, then dropping way too low by the end of the batch, with too much breading falling off in between. You can follow the path of my exact order of frying the mostly-green-but-not-completely-unripe tomatoes from the level of “charcoal” to “anemic” coloring. At no point did I quite hit the sweet spot of “golden brown”, despite my best efforts. Two pointers to help the novice fryer: use a candy thermometer, and choose the right oil for the job. Using a candy thermometer can stop you from frying too cold (turning your food into oil sponges), or letting it get too scorching hot (turning food to blackened hockey pucks), but beware taking the temp in the wrong place. If the thermometer touches the bottom of the pan or is raised up too high, your reading will be wildly off! Unless you have an allergy, I found frying in peanut oil to be the most forgiving. The smoke point is 450 degrees, so you won’t risk flashover fires or accidentally filling the house with smelly smoke, a real concern if you fry in olive oil or butter (smoke points of 320 and 302 degrees respectively). Vegetable oil almost as good, coming in with a smoke point of 428, but I find the flavor lackluster. Regardless of my dubious skill in the field of frying, the tomatoes turned out tastier than expected. If they had been truly green through and through, the lower water content surely would have produced an even better result. Refer to Lesson 1 for how to fix this…

Lesson 3: Brush up on multiplying and dividing your recipe yields!

It happens almost every time. I flip to a new page in my cookbook, see a scrumptious-looking plate of (cake, veggies, roast beef, etc.) and start gathering ingredients, gleefully anticipating my next meal. Often I’m halfway through mixing the batter or marinade or what-have-you when I spot the problem: “Yield-12 servings”. Well, crap. There are only three people in my day-to-day household, and they’d generally prefer not to eat “Groundhog Day” style for a week. Doubling a recipe is pretty easy even if you don’t do any math at all; just repeat each ingredient amount twice. The challenge comes when you halve or quarter a recipe. What’s one fourth of 1 and 2/3 cups?? I lived this nightmare in high school, don’t make me go back there! There are two ways I tackle this problem when I catch it in time… or when I just don’t expect to enjoy the results! Stuffed Bell Peppers, yield 4? I think not. I’m making ONE, and only taking a single obligatory bite before pitching it in the trash or “graciously offering” it to someone else. One solution for avoiding a gallon of soup or meatloaf for 10 is to only concern yourself with the wet/dry ratios, and eyeball the supporting characters to taste. For example, make sure you divide the flour/milk/broth measurements exactly so the mixture comes together correctly, but you can often fudge on things like how much cinnamon or cheese or how many chocolate chips to stir in. (Preferably not all those in the same recipe…) For more precise division, put your faith in the trusty kitchen scale. If you weigh the full amount, then pull back until you reach exactly half the ounces, you can be sure the ratios will all be accurate. I wish I’d employed that technique in the above recipe, Chocolate-Orange Bread Pudding, because while we shockingly all seemed to enjoy it well enough, it just made too darn much. Also, I failed to use the required one pound of bread, yet proceeded to make the full quantity of egg/cream mixture, resulting in a veritable lake of liquid. By estimating how much fluid to pour off, I managed to avoid a soggy mess…but it was a waste of those precious eggs, and whipping cream ain’t cheap!

Lesson 4: Get creative with your leftovers!

If you failed to heed Lesson 3 and ended up with six quarts of recipe #132, Party Queso for instance, you’ll need to repurpose some of that product or kiss your hard-earned money goodbye when you grow weary of eating it in its original form. I made this dip for a small party a few weeks back and didn’t question the proportions until I saw just how full the pot was. Then I panicked. A crowd size not seen since pre-Covid days was necessary to chow through it all, and needless to say, our small gathering did not justify that much Velveeta. The solution is to put the cookbook away and look at what you have through a different creative lens. On a recent episode of “Pioneer Woman” (shout-out to my girl Ree!) she used up leftover frittata by slicing the cooked egg into a square chunk and placing it between two English muffin halves with some cheese. Instant breakfast sandwich! The same concept applied when we took the “dip” and turned it into a topping for individual nacho bowls, complete with leftover pickled jalapeños from another erstwhile recipe. Similarly, I made enough remoulade to accompany the Fried Green Tomatoes to sink a battleship (even with cutting the recipe in half!), so instead of trashing the excess, I’ve used it successfully as a mayo substitute for deviled eggs and chicken salad. Today it might become the spread in a turkey sandwich. The possibilities are nearly endless if you use your imagination!

Lesson 5: Let yourself be amazed!

I can be a judgmental jerk in the kitchen. Certain ingredients always “trigger” me into believing that I will not enjoy a particular recipe, and I struggle every time with sampling the food with an open mind. Take the Chicken Spaghetti recipe, which included two kinds of peppers (gag) and mushrooms (my daughter turns up her nose at all fungi). Nonetheless, the entire family devoured this dish with nary a complaint! It’s a lesson I have to remind myself of repeatedly, but if you let yourself be open to a flavor experience, you just might discover a new family favorite hiding in “overly picky” clothing.

January, 2021 has now arrived and with it comes exciting prospects for my next cookbook journey. I’m looking forward to celebrating the completion of Magnolia Table with a trip to Magnolia Farms in Waco once this pandemic is behind us, and selecting a new kitchen experiment to share with you. Happy New Year, and I can’t wait for you to join me on the next adventure!

As you near the end of cooking through an entire cookbook, you are destined to encounter a few recipes that just aren’t going to be your favorites. Honestly, why else would they be pushed to the end of the project? Conversely, this is also where you can run into some of the tastiest surprises! Such is true for Magnolia Table, where I have a mere THREE more recipes to try out before I mark this journey complete. Whether it was due to a hard-to-find ingredient or a complete lack of enthusiasm for the recipe, there are a few that will never again see the light of day in my kitchen, and some that fought through uncertainty to become revelatory hits! Let’s start with a positive, shall we?

The concept behind #138 Broiled Honey-Thyme Peaches just didn’t appeal to me. Call me crazy, but I wasn’t really interested in hot peaches in the summer. Yes, that includes a low opinion of such things as peach pie and peach cobbler too. Several times I bought peaches, intending to get this over with. It’s a popular crop in Colorado, though the orchards faced a stunted growing season, because, 2020… Since they were harder to come by, I always chickened out at the last minute and opted not to “ruin” my peaches by cooking them. I considered using some frozen holdovers from last summer, but had a bad feeling about their ability to caramelize due to the high water content. When I finally took the plunge, I opted for a chokecherry-flavored honey, pear-flavored balsamic vinegar (instead of aged, reduced balsamic), matcha ice cream (instead of vanilla) and fresh thyme plucked from my garden. Technically it was still the same recipe, right?? I’m pleased to report that the fresh peach juice and butter formed a sweet, syrupy crust under a carefully watched broiler, and the fruit retained a lot of its firm texture. Somehow matcha married with these flavors beautifully, and a new favorite dessert (or breakfast) emerged!

Another surprise? Peaches and mozzarella plus fresh basil is a REVELATION. Whodathunk? Apparently Jo, because #127 Peach Caprese was one of her highly recommended summer salads. Again, I opted for a fruit-flavored balsamic vinegar instead of aged balsamic to drizzle over the top of this simple dish, and I think it would have been delicious with no dressing at all. This will be on the menu early in peach-season next year!

From unexpected highs, sadly we must descend into unfortunate lows. I consider myself a pretty accomplished cook, what with literally thousands of recipes under my belt by now, but I have to admit, I’m still learning. Disastrous recipe #129 Grilled Havarti, Tomato & Basil Sandwiches taught me a few things all by itself: 1. Grilled cheese really doesn’t require too much tinkering; leave it alone already! 2. If the recipe calls for French bread, it probably won’t do to use potato bread. 3. Mayonnaise and Miracle Whip are NOT created equal! Ok, so that last one I already knew from a purely flavor-related standpoint, but come to find out, Miracle Whip absolutely does not react well to being heated! I have taken Jo’s advice to used mayonnaise instead of butter on other grilled sandwiches and was pleased to find the result was crispy, crunchy, and delicious. On the fateful day I tried this recipe, I had zero intention of going to store, even after realizing I was out of mayo. Darn it, I had fresh basil and tomatoes from the garden, what I thought was a suitable substitute for French bread, and I’d finally bought the Havarti needed for this sandwich. Normally I wouldn’t have Miracle Whip on hand either, but there is a singular use I wanted it for (a tuna pasta salad that is out of this world – no, really!) and I figured “it’s close enough”, right? WRONG. What started out beautifully ended tragically.

I was prematurely excited about how tasty the combination appeared when I laid out the raw ingredients, but I quickly learned that potato bread was far too absorbent and soft to stand up to the moisture released by the veggies. And that Miracle Whip? It doesn’t “brown” so much as “blacken”.

After only a minute or less, the soggy bottom was already charred-looking, while the inside had barely begun to melt. The bread basically disintegrated, but with frequent flipping, I was able to achieve some semblance of grilled-ness. I could only choke down about half of the sloppy mess, which at least did not taste as burned as it looked. Still, it was a disappointment and moves this recipe solidly to the bottom of my list.

Another “thanks, but no thanks” recipe was #139 Toasted Pepitas. I’ll admit, I was a little prejudiced against pumpkin seeds to begin with, as I’ve had them a couple times before and was never impressed. Also, it is near impossible to find UNROASTED pepitas in the grocery store to begin with! I found plenty of varieties which were already cooked or processed in some way, but that would not have proven the effectiveness of the recipe. My solution? Grow my own pumpkins, of course! I’m nothing if not committed.

The garden came through for me once again with this sugar pumpkin, which not only will yield me some muffins this week, but also the requisite raw seeds. I dutifully harvested, washed, dried, seasoned and toasted the pepitas according to directions, but I didn’t find that they added anything to the sweet potato and parsnip soup I sprinkled them on. They never got crunchy, and retained a chewiness that was off-putting. To give them a fair shake, I decided to dump the seeds onto a baking sheet and give them a longer roast under a 425 degree burner. This sufficiently dried them out and gave them a better texture, but the fact is I just don’t think they taste that great! I relegate this recipe to the “we don’t need to do that again” file.

No one likes to end on a sour note, so instead let’s do it on an unexpectedly sweet one! I had every intention of hating this recipe on sight, and planned to let everyone else eat all but one bite of it. What is this dish that I avoided until the bumper crop in my back yard made it unavoidable?

# 133 Jalapeño Drip Jam. That is just… pardon the pun, “not my jam”! Alas, so many jalapeños grew on my solitary plant that I just had to get this recipe out of the way. I happened to have a birthday party I could bring this to at a house full of spice-lovers, and I was relatively certain others would enjoy it. What shocked me is that I also wanted more than one taste! I sliced up a dozen peppers and some white onion, added a copious amount of brown sugar along with some stone-ground mustard, and let the slow simmer do the rest. I served the not-terribly-attractive mixture over a block of cream cheese with crackers, and voilà! A star was born! It may not have been pretty, but it was a pretty tasty appetizer!

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: If you grow your own peppers, wear some dang gloves when you slice! My fingers (and eyes!) throbbed for days after making that mistake!

Before there was Beef Tenderloin with Jalapeño Sour Cream, there was my 100th recipe. I meant to write about it immediately, since it was not only a milestone number, but also a supremely delicious meal.  Yet somehow it always got put on the back burner… so to speak.  As I close in on the final four recipes in Magnolia Table, I can put it off no longer!  Without further ado, I present to you the story of #100 Mom’s Bulgogi.

Just look at it… Can’t you already taste the tender, flavorful beef and the sticky rice??  Smell the the mouthwatering aromas of the marinade with its brown sugar and soy sauce base, seasoned with fresh garlic and sesame oil?  I’m smacking my lips all over again thinking about it.  I started with a large leftover ribeye, which happened to be one of the cuts Jo suggested.  Using  good quality beef set me up for success, and all I had to do was slice it across the grain to ensure proper “chewability”.  My patience was tested when I saw that I had to let the meat marinate for 4-5 hours, but that disappointment was tempered by knowing that it would only cook on the grill for about 2-3 minutes per side.

This meal was FANTASTIC.  With no exaggeration, I can say it will enter the standard meal rotation in my home, because every one of us inhaled our portion and fought over the leftovers.  I lost that battle because someone beat me home… Embarrassingly, I must admit I was not psyched about making this.  For one thing, I had only eaten bulgogi once in my life before seeing it in Magnolia Table, and that was a “meh” experience.  Not bad, but not memorable.  It also seemed out of place among the other recipes, but it was the only one which paid homage to Jo’s Korean heritage.  She’d made a nod towards her Lebanese and Syrian roots, and those were not my favorites.  Thanks to this recipe opening my eyes, I can now say I have enjoyed Korean barbecue and even tried and loved *GASP* kimchi!!  Miracles never cease.

   

The next beefy entry into my log was #135 Beef Enchiladas.  I must be clear that I have never particularly liked enchiladas of any variety.  I think the fault lies with the fact that I don’t care for enchilada SAUCE, so the filling doesn’t really make a difference.  The one exception was when I worked my way through Ree Drummond’s Dinnertime cookbook, wherein she taught me how to make my own enchilada sauce from scratch.  Surprisingly, even though it was chock-full of ingredients I don’t like separately, the blended mixture was quite tasty.  Still, that was an additional process I did not undertake this go-round.  The second thing about enchiladas that I find irritating is they seem to cause an inordinate amount of kitchen disorder.  Frying up the corn tortillas (when I prefer flour!) means I have to clean the stove, an oily pan and surrounding countertops on the way to making what should essentially have been a one-dish casserole meal.  Then there’s the filling process: Pick up greasy tortilla; soak in yucky enchilada sauce; fill with seasoned ground beef; reach into a pile of cheese with sticky fingers and attempt to sprinkle; roll up the oozing mess and place in the pan.  What a pain!  Of course, if I loved enchiladas, I wouldn’t complain about any of this, so there’s that.  However, the family seemed to like them, and I thought it was a solid recipe, regardless of not being to my taste.          

On the other hand, #41 Beef Stew, was right up my alley!  There was nothing groundbreaking on her ingredients list, with the standard onions, carrots, peas and potatoes, but it culminated in a comforting, savory meal.  She added a slight twist with corn and diced tomatoes, which is not unheard of, but I docked her points for suggesting garlic powder instead of fresh minced garlic.  For shame.  All in all this is a great way to use up the raggedy veggies you might have lurking in your fridge, and you can get away with using cheaper stew meat.  I made this truly one-pot wonder last winter, and looking at it is making me wish the cooler days would get here faster so I can make it again!    

The final entries in the beef category were also made some time ago, but never made it into the blog.  #39 Sheet Pan Nachos featured wonderfully quick and easy prep, and “dinner”, such as it was, made it to the table in record time.  Possibly it’s more appropriate as an appetizer, but really all the elements are there: beef, fruits and vegetables in the form of lettuce, tomatoes and avocados, (olives if you live with someone who doesn’t hate them!) cheese, and carb-y tortilla chips.  It was basically a deconstructed tostada, and we loved it.  Only downside is you have to eat it all in one sitting, because reheating it is impossible.  #48 Sunday Dinner Beef Tips was everything I love about convenience-food cooking.  Dump cream-of-whatever soup into a slow cooker with stew meat and onion soup mix, throw in some mushrooms and carry on with your day.  Dinner will be ready at 6:00, and you’ll have nothing to do but cook some egg noodles and maybe open a can of vegetables while you’re at it.  We all need this kind of recipe in our arsenal!  

And so ends the “Dinner” chapter of this cookbook.  Inside its pages I found only nine recipes featuring my favorite protein, BEEF, but I can confidently report that six of them will make their way routinely to my dinner table in the future! 

 

It’s a question that demands an answer, so let’s get into the serious meat dishes! I am a carnivore by nature. I love seafood; I love chicken; I adore desserts. But nothing – I mean NOTHING – compares to a slab of beef on my dinner plate for making me swoon! In over 300 pages, Magnolia Table only dedicates 11 recipes to the delicious cow. But that’s only one reason I saved #131 Beef Tenderloin (With Pickled Jalapeño Sour Cream) for the end of my journey with this cookbook. Actually, I had quite a few qualms. For starters, this is one of the very few recipes Jo snuck in that required me to think about dinner well in advance before diving in. Most of her dishes lean towards the grab-and-go, dinner-on-the-table-in-less-than-an-hour style. This had “PRE-PLANNING” written all over it; not one of my stronger suits. Because of this, I had several false starts trying to make this meal over the past year. Secondly, I had to make a whole other recipe that goes INTO this recipe: #40 Pickled Jalapeños, in order to concoct the sour cream topping. Adding insult to injury, the pickling process required an additional three days at a minimum… We’re now talking about a week’s advance thought to make dinner!

I actually made the pictured batch of jalapeños months ago during an aborted attempt at the tenderloin, so I had to use those for an alternate dish, #47 Jalapeño Corn Bread. This was good, and I always love a cast-iron skillet recipe, but honestly I’d have been just as happy to leave the peppers out.

But I’m not finished with my list of objections! When I finally buckled down and made a fresh batch of pickled peppers and let them sit for the appropriate length of time, I went to the store with my trusty cookbook in hand and started searching for a three pound beef tenderloin. Easier said than done, my friends. Referring to the picture, I knew I was looking for a roast, similar in size and shape to a pork tenderloin. All I could find on the shelves were small cuts of steak. I inquired with the butcher, and he pointed me back to where I was already looking. After explaining I needed a three-pounder, he gave me a skeptical look, and with a shake of his head, went to the back of the meat department. I understood his reluctance when he returned, asking, “Are you sure?” as he presented me with a $113.00 piece of meat. I thanked him for his trouble and walked my happy butt back to the steak-cuts! I have to take a moment to ask Jo… What WERE you thinking?? I know where she gets the money to afford such an extravagance on a random Thursday, but for those of us without publishing, merchandising, remodeling and television empires, the $25 package was far more reasonable. (Side note: my beloved Pioneer Woman recently released a Labor Day cookout menu featuring a SIX pound roast, but I’ll give her a pass considering she lives on a literal cattle ranch and probably couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a fresh tenderloin. But we can’t all be so lucky!) Finally, much like Arby’s, I “has the meats”, so now I was ready to marinate overnight in a heavenly melange of soy sauce and Worcestershire, the pickling brine from those (homegrown!) jalapeños, and some Montreal seasoning. You could get creative here and season with whatever you want, or maybe add some fresh minced garlic to the mix, but I kept it pure for science! The hits just kept on coming for the “preparation” phase though. Once it was marinated I had to drain the liquid, pat the beef dry and let it come to room temperature for one hour, all while keeping a horde of cats at bay, before slathering the steaks with softened butter. You’re killing me, Jo!

Here’s where things got tricky: her directions assumed I was a Rockefeller relative and had indeed purchased the obscenely overpriced cut. Luckily she included a cooking breakdown of three minutes per pound in a 500 degree (!!) oven, then with the door remaining closed, turn off the heat and let the pan sit in the hot box for another 20 minutes. You guessed it; mine only cooked for three minutes, as my paltry half-pound steaks barely required even that long. Was it done yet? Heck no! Next the meat had to rest another 15 minutes while I again defended the kitchen against feline thieves. With fingers crossed and a short prayer uttered, we cut into what I hoped would not be a giant disappointment after such a labor intensive process. I needn’t have worried. If I’d made this dish on “Beat Bobby Flay”, I would have annihilated him. It was FLAW. LESS. The moral of this story is: if a meal takes a week to make it right, it’s probably worth it! So suck it up, take out a loan, and go make this beef tenderloin!