Author: leora76

You know those times when you’re all wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket, the fireplace is on, you have a cat in your lap, and you’ve just snuggled up with your significant other, who has NEVER seen Clue in his whole life, and it was one of your favorite movies growing up, and you just love Tim Curry, even though you still haven’t forgiven him for making “IT” and traumatizing your childhood and inspiring a lifelong fear of clowns, and now you found it on Amazon Prime for free, and the opening scenes are just coming on, and then your love leans in and whispers those three little words: “What’s for dinner?”

No?  That’s just me?  Ok then…

An eerily similar scenario may or may not have occurred just this week on a cold and snowy night, when no one was venturing to the store for ingredients.  You know what that means, pal?  “Dinner” is going to be whatever I have laying around the house, requiring the least amount of effort, so we can get back to the movie!  Luckily I had been in a much better frame of mind the previous day, and had conveniently already prepared Poached Chicken Breasts.  

One of the easier “recipes” in the book, this is great option when you need a bunch of shredded chicken and have neither the time nor inclination to leave the house and pick up one of those roasted store-birds.  Also, it’s all white meat, if that sort of thing matters to you.  Personally I feel breast meat is often dry, but this cooking method saved them!  Believe me, I did everything I could to screw it up, and they still turned out moist and tasty.  It all started out well enough, using my frozen homemade turkey broth from Thanksgivings-past as a poaching liquid instead of Jo’s suggested chicken broth.  Po-tAt-o, po-TAH-to.  Lemon slices: check.  Bay leaf: check.  Salt and pepper: check.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer?  Ummmm…  So I got a little distracted!  I have absolutely no idea how long those poor chicken breasts were sitting at a rolling boil.  Quickly rectifying my mistake, I turned the flame down, covered the pan and set a timer with what I hoped was the remaining cooking time.  And then got distracted again…  I missed the beeper going off by what I would guess was several minutes.  Convinced they were now two pieces of shoe leather, I removed them from the broth, and like an idiot, threw the liquid down the drain.  Only after the last drop went into the sink did I realize I had just cooked poultry…in poultry broth…and discarded what was now probably even MORE chicken-y and could have been used in soup.  Did I mention I was distracted??  I tossed them in a Ziplock and put them in the fridge before they could come further harm at my hands.

Fast forward to the next day, and even though the meat was refrigerated, it shredded pretty darn well!  Color me shocked.  “Long story short… TOO LATE!” (A Clue reference! Remember I wanted to get back to my movie??) I had pre-cooked chicken hanging around.  I flipped through Magnolia Table looking for anything I could cobble together with what I had on-hand.  A ray of light suddenly shone down from the heavens onto a recipe I had previously misread several times as, “Black-Bottomed Chicken”.  Ugh…  Yuck.  Why would I want burned chicken?  Oh wait!  That says, “Baked Chicken with Bacon Bottom and Wild Rice“!  I can get down with that!

Here’s where getting creative comes in handy.  This recipe yields a 9×13 casserole, but since we weren’t feeding an army, I cut everything in half.  Leftover raw bacon from breakfast lined the bottom of the dish and was covered with slices of a partial onion I found in the fridge and the remains of a cube of butter.  The bacon was strictly for flavor, because way down at the bottom of all the layers, it just turned to rubber.  It totally did its job though!  Technically this recipe called for whole chicken tenders laid into a bed of rice, but I used a pile of the shredded chicken instead, which I liberally coated with Mom’s Seasoning.  Whatever.  The longest part of the prep was making the Uncle Ben’s Fast-Cook Wild Rice, which took all of five minutes.  The rice, sour cream, cream of mushroom soup and chicken broth were stirred into a delicious mess to pour over the onion layer and the chicken was smooshed into the mixture.  It wasn’t supposed to have cheese on top, but in this house cheese ALWAYS improves a meal!  One hour later, we were able to see whodunit with what weapon and in which room with a comforting, steaming bowl of YUM that the whole family complimented.  Score one for Jo (and mom!)

 

A moment of silence please, as we somberly appreciate what could well be one of the most delicious burgers ever created.  Behold!  The Gaines Brother Burger, named of course for Chip and Joanna’s sons who adore all things burger.  The photo on the left from the pages of the cookbook, the photo on the right from my own humble kitchen.  With frozen French fries…  I may not have achieved that picture-perfect cheese melt down the side, nor served it on a rustic plank of plywood, because…why?  But I assure you, this burger was executed as close to perfectly as you’d ever want!  Let me take you behind the curtain so you, too, can make this magic happen.

Every great masterpiece must begin with a solid foundation.  Bacon-Tomato Sweet Drip Jam is just such a cornerstone ingredient.  Otherwise you end up with essentially a pretentious cheeseburger.  I was not familiar with the term drip jam, but there are quite a few mentions of it throughout Magnolia Table.  Jo defines it as, “looser than regular jam, so it spreads beautifully”.  I’m not sure I achieved that aspect, but it “piled beautifully”, and that’s just as good!  The recipe is super simple once I eliminated the expensive part; pork belly.  I personally have a 1/4 hog butchered in my deep freezer, equalling well over 95 pounds of pork.  You know what I don’t have?  Pork belly.  So ham slice it is!  I should have read more carefully regarding the size the chunks should be, but even though my ham cubes were easily three times larger than she suggested, the end result worked and tasted great.  A pound of bacon is the other key ingredient, and you can go with thin-slice style here; trust me, there’s plenty of pig to go around!

I’m going to state an unpopular opinion here: bacon does NOT automatically enhance every dish it touches.  Please forward your hate mail to my manager, and he will be sure to send appropriate responses.

I don’t have a manager…

But seriously, I think bacon is far too much of a star to play a supporting role without being overbearing.  When wrapped around scallops and steaks it overwhelms, and has been known to, ahem, “hog” the spotlight if overused on a baked potato or in greens.  I realize I am in the minority here, but I’m just saying don’t overdo it with the bacon; let the tomatoes and onions get some action!  Along with brown sugar, butter, garlic and a little water, just let this simmer until the tomatoes and onions are caramelized and broken down into what becomes drip jam.

Great!  Now you have the basis for one of the most popular burgers on the menu at Magnolia Table restaurant, and here’s what you need for the rest: garlic, Gruyère, and ‘gula.  See what I did there?  Mince fresh garlic into melted butter and brush that onto your buns, which much like your nuts, you should always toast!  Brioche is so soft, you’ll want that crunchy barrier to keep the moisture from sogging out your bun as well as offer more support to what becomes a 6-inch high burger.  I took artistic license here and added a schmear of garlic-horseradish dip as a mayo substitute on one half of the bun.  The original recipe doesn’t call for any sauces except for the drip jam, but I trusted my instinct that it would taste amazing.  Nailed it!  On the other half of the bun, pile (or spread, if you did it right!) the drip jam, then top with thick slices of fresh tomato.  Now for what we’ve all been waiting for, the MEAT!  Well, calm down, it was nothing special.  Really, only salt, pepper and 80/20 beef.  However, I have never subscribed to the snooty proclamation, “just let the beef sing”.  Stow it, I want seasoning!  A little garlic powder and seasoned salt keeps this from being a boring patty, but you don’t need to get crazy with all the other taste sensations going on.  Enter overpriced cheese #1 used consistently throughout this book: Gruyère!  Honestly, they must make this stuff from their own cows, given how often she calls for it!  It costs an arm and leg for us non-farmer types.  I suppose you could use whatever cheese you like, but try this at least once; I can’t fault her flavor profile!  A tip from my kitchen: rather than risk overcooking the beef, put a lid on the pan for a couple minutes if your cheese is not melting fast enough.  I tried that method on my second burger, and achieved the pinup-worthy melty-ness I missed on the first go-round.  Place the patty on the tomatoes, add more drip jam, and then pile on the ‘gula.  Arugula, that is.  Out of my comfort zone for a burger topping, but it works.  Once I unhinged my jaw to get a bite with all ingredients represented, the expense and kitchen mess concerns disappeared from my brain.  Sheer perfection!

So… now what to do with all the excess drip jam??  Frankly I couldn’t think of a thing to do with it, so luckily I’m not the author of this cookbook!  Jo helpfully provided a few more ideas, such as serving it over baked Brie, with crackers, or on biscuits.  And we know all about her biscuits by now, don’t we?  Even more conveniently, she offered another recipe (which my son knocked out of the park) as an alternative for savory jams.

I absolutely love that both my kids take an interest in cooking, and I am more than happy to let my boy take over a recipe for this project whenever he comes for dinner.  For once the yield was reasonable, and we were able to make just enough Bacon & Gruyère Drop Biscuits for one meal with a couple left over.  Drop biscuits are the ugly step-sister to the rolled-and-cut version I made earlier.  They are sticky and blobby, and not meant to look perfect; they are therefore very forgiving when you just plop the batter on a cookie sheet.  You literally can’t mess it up, because it already looks a mess!  What sets these biscuits apart from breakfast is an all-savory seasoning blend of garlic, salt, and pepper, and the addition of bacon and (of course!) more Gruyère.  Does the bank offer a Cheese Loan??  All griping aside, the darn things tasted great, and the drip jam is a natural accompaniment.  I have no idea if it will freeze well, but I’m willing to give it a try.  There are more Gaines Brother Burgers in my near future!

 

What do you do when you have a goal to cook nearly 90 new recipes, a kid who hardly eats anything at all, and a boyfriend who is away for work frequently?  You force-feed your culinary experiments to friends!  Hot on the heels of discovering how many recipes I still have to knock out before my April deadline, I realized I was hosting Bunco night at my place this month.  Thank goodness!  Perfect excuse to go WAY overboard on the concept of “pot-luck”, without looking like I was trying to show up the other ladies by bringing too many dishes!

I decided it was completely reasonable to prepare a salad, a couple appetizers and a dessert, and conveniently enough, knock out four recipes in one day with a big enough audience to consume it all!  Fast forward to the day of the event, and a wrench gets thrown into the works.  Turns out you REALLY need to read the whole darn recipe in advance (as I’m sure they tell you in Culinary School 101) but I failed yet again to do more than an ingredients-list skim.  Jo had been so good up to this point about not over-complicating things, so I didn’t see the dreaded words coming: “Let stand for 24 hours.”   Well crap.  I had about 8 hours, so rather than doing a half-hearted job, I scrapped the idea of Beck’s Crackers.  Forewarned is forearmed, though, so now my poker group can expect me to force these… I mean… offer these next week!

Now for the success stories!  I generally make things for a potluck which wouldn’t be completely eaten by my family even if they turn out well, such as the Layered Arugula Salad with Pear Vinaigrette. First of all, we don’t eat much arugula in this house (we are Romaine people!) and second, I think pears shouldn’t exist.  They aren’t so much “bad” as they are a non-fruit in my opinion, lacking in any strong flavor and with a gritty texture I find off-putting.  Give me an apple any day.  Alas, that’s not what she called for.  Seeing as I had to use arugula last week on the Gaines Brother Burgers (stay tuned for the next post about THAT masterpiece!), I was really just looking for a way to use up the rest.  Because arugula is peppery and somewhat coarse, I added spinach to this salad to add sweetness and tenderness; other than that, I stuck to Jo’s specs.  That meant Buttered Walnuts, bleu cheese, pear slices, and pomegranate arils.  I won’t even pretend I knew the word “arils” before reading it in the cookbook, but I will henceforth be using it in Words With Friends!  Apparently they’re just the little edible fruit blobs that come from the otherwise useless pomegranate.

A word about nuts… Always. Toast. Your. Nuts.  It’s non-negotiable.  The flavor is better because toasting brings out the natural oils, and it smells good.  These could easily have been called ” sweet and spicy nuts” due to the cayenne pepper, which carried quite a kick, and the brown sugar.  A note about cooking nuts with sugar: when they tell you to pour them onto wax paper to cool, DON’T DO IT!  I followed the directions and ended up needing a chisel to get them off the pan.  It’s possible I *may* have caused the problem myself by putting the pan in the garage – currently about 13 degrees – and taking “cooling” too far.  Needless to say, you should probably cool sugared and/or buttered nuts at room temperature!  The pear vinaigrette dressing was a revelation.  Pear vinegar itself came as a surprise, first because a couple ounces was nearly $13, and second because it’s as thick as blackstrap molasses; I could barely pour it!  I was supposed to thin it out with walnut oil, but I’d spent just about enough money on this salad already, so I just used plain old extra virgin olive oil.  I’m pleased to report no one threw their bowl across the room in disgust upon eating this dressing, so I guess it worked!  Mission salad: accomplished.

For the Appetizer Round, I got to pull out an oldie but a goodie, Deviled Eggs.  Hey, 1962 called, they want their appetizer back!  Yeah, I know it’s an antiquated dish, but it’s still one of my favorites.  The honest truth is that my own recipe is better, but Jo’s isn’t bad!  With main flavors of dill and bacon, right off the bat it has to be pretty good.  On that note, a Public Service Announcement: if you haven’t already, buy yourself an Instant Pot immediately!  Even if you literally only ever use it for hard-boiling eggs, I say it’s a sound investment.  Five minutes of cooking in that thing followed by a five-minute ice bath, and the shells practically peel themselves.  The eggs were a hit with the bunco ladies, and the recipe only took about 10 minutes of effort.  If you insist on boiling them the old-fashioned way, it’s gonna take you a little longer!

Now here’s the good stuff…  Like, REALLY good!  Chocolate-Cola Cake attained almost mythical status for me when I read several books set in the south which referenced “Co’ Cola Cake”.  No one I know in real life has ever made one for me to try.  I couldn’t help thinking it sounded half intriguing, half gross.  In the books I read, this cake was often served after funerals or brought to families in need of prepared meals for some reason.  After tasting it, I can understand why it would bring a smile to people’s faces!  This thing ROCKS.  There is surprisingly little cocoa in the cake itself, only a 1/4 cup, but the cola (I used Coke even though I am a die-hard Pepsi fan) and the dark brown sugar really brought out the chocolatey notes.  The buttercream frosting had twice as much cocoa and even more cola.  I thought it was cute that the directions specified “not diet”.  Never you mind, Jo, there is absolutely no danger of running into a diet soda in this house!  It begs the question what would happen if you did use diet, because I can guarantee there is plenty of sugar in this recipe!  I don’t mess with science though…  Just use the regular!  The result is a moist, dense, flavorful and all-around amazing cake.  One of the best cooks in my bunco group took several slices home, and I can think of no higher compliment!  I’m chalking up the Bunco Buffet as a success!

I had an unwelcome reality check a few days ago.  59 days to deadline, with 83 recipes to go.  I thought I had plenty of time to semi-comfortably complete my Magnolia project on time, but April 7th looms a lot larger from this side of February.  Math is not on my side: I need 1.4 recipes PER DAY to hit my target!  Failure and I are not on speaking terms, but I’m expecting to become well-acquainted with “compromise” soon.  Still, I’m going as full-force toward my goal as our appetites and food budget allow!  Yesterday I made four new dishes, but it occurs to me that I have never told you the story of where it all began.  With that, let’s take a little Throwback Thursday journey to see some of the first recipes produced from Magnolia Table.

In 2019 I failed to sit down and document it, but I was most definitely cooking.  My new larger pants size can attest to that…  Now I have to look waaaaaay back to the day I first opened the book and remember what came first.  Luckily that answer is easy: BISCUITS!  JoJo’s Biscuits was in fact the very first recipe in Chapter 1, and it firmly set the hook for me to want to keep on cooking.

I have never been a “baker” by the true definition as one who creates her own recipes.  I’m always afraid of messing up the baking powder (or is it baking soda?) ratios and ending up with hockey puck cookies, or wondering if sifting vs. not sifting dry ingredients will irrevocably change the outcome of a dish.  (The short answer is YES, by the way!)  I simply follow what it says in the book, and luckily for me, “JoJo” did all that trial-and-error stuff herself using her family as guinea pigs so I didn’t have to!  And boy, did she do her research right, because these biscuits kicked Bisquick’s butt.  According to her introduction, Jo made more than 50 batches, once a week for over a year, before landing on the final masterpiece.  Even though it has been 13 months since I made these, I can still remember how fluffy the dough was (take a note, Syrian Donuts! -see previous post for details!) and how perfectly light and buttery they came out of the oven.  I needed to do the next two recipes in the chapter just to have a reason to keep consuming biscuits, but sadly failed to capture photographic evidence.  In a testament to good organization and logic, Pop’s Strawberry Jam, and Bobo’s Classic Gravy followed JoJo’s Biscuits.  No, I am not making that up, although it sounds like I was baking from a circus cookbook!

Pop’s Strawberry Jam:  I’ve never been much of a canner, but her directions made the process simple and I was able to produce eight pint-jars of delicious homemade jam, much cheaper than buying the same quantity from the grocery store.  The only thing I took issue with was the SEVEN CUPS of sugar to five cups of fresh strawberries.  That was not happening.  Anyone who knows me is aware that I have been guilty of eating sugar cubes straight out of the box, so I like my sweets, but that was just obnoxious.  I found the flavor to be a perfect balance of sweet/tart with only five cups of sugar.  But isn’t controlling your ingredients the beauty of making food from scratch??

Bobo’s Classic Gravy:  Just to be perfectly clear, biscuits and gravy is not something I typically go for.  I have a dear friend who makes this dish and knows how to impart good flavor and not “soggify” the bread, but she’s the exception.  Most of the time I think it is bland wallpaper paste dumped on a dense brick; not appetizing.  THIS stuff though… Simple, yet delicious!  With only four ingredients, you’d think it would be rather dull, but the gravy turns out flavorful and silky.  Sausage, flour, milk and pepper is all that goes into this; probably why it’s called “classic”.  Sometimes reinventing the wheel just complicates things without improving them, so I appreciate a recipe that just tells me how to make it GOOD.

Last but most definitely not least was Chicken and Dumplings.  Here I go again with the same old “soggy bread” argument, but I promise these biscuits hold up!  I had to step out of my Chapter 1 comfort zone to find this final use for JoJo’s biscuits, and it was worth the re-direct.  Again, simple ingredients ruled the day.  If you didn’t already make the biscuits (and really, why haven’t you??) refrigerated, store-bought ones will work.  I make NO guarantees regarding the flavor or sog-proof factor of those!  Dinner came together with just chicken broth, a rotisserie bird, flour, seasoning and half-and-half, and of course those delectable biscuits.  I’m a sucker for any food item that can be used in multiple ways, and JoJo’s biscuits delivered.  So do yourself a favor, pick up a copy of Magnolia Table, and leave the store-bought biscuits in the refrigerator case!

Pour one out for my homies.  A dream died today.  I have always fantasized about owning a little bakery or restaurant.  True story, my first “dream job” was waitress!  I would get to wear pretty dresses (they used to), I would work around those amazing dessert cases all day, and of course I would get rich with people just leaving cash RIGHT THERE on the tables for me!  Bless my heart…  Fast forward 40 years, and I learned, unequivocally, that a bakery is NOT in my future.  At least not one that serves donuts!

My first attempt at post-surgery, “seated cooking” saw me making Syrian Donuts.  I chose this recipe because I was not thrilled with the fried donuts I made a couple weeks ago, and also I could take my sweet time.  If I moved slowly, no matter.  There’s no one here to feed but myself today.  I was surprised see this recipe when I originally paged through Magnolia Table.  Everything else had been all-American, midwestern food.  I got to the “Mom’s Bulgogi” later, but that made sense since Jo is half Korean.  If you had made me stake a bet on it, I would have guessed her nationality background was Native American, perhaps Lakota or Sioux.  Wow, was I way off!  Apparently her grandfather is Syrian, and she included some favorites from his side of the family.  I admit I have very little experience with Middle Eastern cuisine, and I can’t claim I was overly excited about trying it.  Plus it was a long, drawn-out cooking process, with a two-hour dough rising time.  I’m really selling this, aren’t I??  But trust me, it gets worse!

 

As always, I started by gathering up all the ingredients I would need, and again, I was *this* close to having everything.  I was equally certain I already had 100% of the ingredients on hand.  FAIL.  Since I still can’t drive, there is no “running to the store”!  Much like my lack of vanilla beans caused me to change gears on the Vanilla Cake Donuts, the absence of ground anise seed or star anise pods, or even a stray bag of black jelly beans kept me from following the instructions to the letter.  Not gonna lie, licorice is not my favorite flavor anyway, but I really wanted to see what Syrian food is supposed to taste like.  To the Google!  I looked up what was an acceptable substitute for anise seed, and came up with a couple options.  I didn’t think fresh fennel was the way to go for a breakfast pastry, so I decided the next best choice was Chinese Five-Spice.  Because when you want to make Syrian… you go Chinese…  Well, maybe not usually, but five-spice actually has been woefully underused in my kitchen.  It is a blend of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and TWO types of anise, so now that I know that, I will be reaching for it more often when I want to add a sweet/spicy kick.  The second swap-out was pistachios instead of walnuts.  I have no idea why, other than for some reason pistachios just seem vaguely Middle Eastern to me, and I had no walnuts on the shelf!  Other changes were for practical purposes; Jo wanted me to use EIGHT CUPS of flour, resulting in three dozen donuts.  Since that would be a dozen apiece for the members of this household and one of us doesn’t like nuts in his food, I figured I should cut the recipe in half at the very least!  Had I known then what I know now, I would have cut it into quarters…

As you can see, my attitude going into this was not the best; I wasn’t impressed by the cookbook picture, the ingredients list didn’t inspire visions of a tasty treat on the other side of the baking time, and I was already making substitutions that I hoped wouldn’t ruin the end result.  The only thing this recipe had going for it is that it did not require me to deep-fry anything!  Mixing dry ingredients together: easy.  Mixing wet ingredients: challenging.  How exactly do you add “half an egg”?  Well, I could have whipped it all up and poured half into a separate bowl, but I just allowed half the white to fall in and then poked the yolk and pulled half out with my hand.  Messy, but effective.  I now had something akin to half-mixed wet cement.  Her instructions said, “the mixture will be dry.”  No, Jo, I take issue with your description.  The Sahara Desert is “dry”.  The surface of Mars is “dry”.  This mixture was downright desiccated!  But did I panic? No, I did not!  I still had melted butter and milk to add, along with a packet of yeast.  In my head I pictured a soft, puffy cloud emerging in a couple hours.  You know what I got?  Sculpting clay.  The directions further stated, “the dough will be very dense.”  Ya think??  There was ZERO rise from the yeast, y’all.  I suppose it’s possible I murdered it with milk that was too hot, although I used a thermometer to make sure it didn’t get above 115 degrees.  The resultant lump of concrete in my bowl certainly argued that I did something wrong.  With an “it can’t get much worse” shake of my head, I set to shaping the dough into logs, which I would then attach end to end, uroboros-style.  (That’s the snake-eating-its-own-tail thing, for visual reference).  This was not to be.  While the dough was flexible, it was also so parched that it would not stick to itself.  I threw caution to the winds and added more whole milk until I could at least get a consistency that would hold together long enough to be baked.  And here they are…  Just as appetizing as I imagined!

Ugh.  They were in the oven for 15 minutes and in theory should have browned slightly on top, but clearly that did not happen.  The bottoms actually did turn a nice, golden color, but that was little comfort!  The only thing I thought might save these doorstops, er, donuts from total failure was the sugar glaze.  I heated up milk, sugar, vanilla, and butter and boiled it for the prescribed time.  Hey, guess what, that didn’t turn out quite right either!  Jo claims this concoction eventually turns clear, so since mine never did, it could be my fault for not just simmering longer.  Actually as I sit here typing this, I realize I forgot the additional cup of water.  So… definitely my fault!

I soldiered on, dunking the warm donuts into the glaze and laid them on wax paper to set up.  I think I made it to #8 before the sugar had just about completely re-crystalized and I was forced to abandon the operation.  RIP, extra donuts.

Ok, with all the whining and complaining I’ve done thus far, I’m sure you’re dying to know… how did they taste??  To be honest, they tasted just like a cinnamon spice… bagel.  Covered in sugar.  As in, “I felt the ‘diabeet-us’ coming on by the third bite” amounts of sugar.  I ate the whole thing because there was an interesting flavor to the donut itself, and it made me want to go back for another taste.  I came.  I saw.  I ate the Syrian Donut.  And now I’m happy to say I will never have to go through that again.  “Interesting” is not a high enough compliment for a recipe that I found to be fraught with difficulty from beginning to end, so I am cheerfully placing this one firmly in the rear-view mirror.  Here’s looking forward to the next recipe, which quite honestly can only go uphill from here!

 

We all know how that saying ends, right?  Well, I got a lemon, but instead I made a lemon pound cake!  Life threw me a curveball this month when I learned I was having surgery requiring more time off my feet than I have enjoyed since the birth of my kids.  That’s 12 years of go-go-go, and the prospect of all that “leisure” time looming on the horizon was a bit intimidating.  Don’t get me wrong, the chance to live at a slower pace (with a lot more sleep!) than what I’m used to is exciting.  But what to DO??  If I can’t lift, can’t exercise and basically can’t do anything I usually fill my days with, what’s left?  Netflix is great and all, but that’s not exactly a life…  The solution for me?  Time to WRITE!  And learn to cook from a seated position.

Luckily I had a few weeks advance notice to allow me to get cooking, literally and figuratively.  I knocked out seven new recipes so I would have something to write about, and to eat while I’m down!  Let’s start with that aforementioned lemon cake, shall we?  True confession: I am the worst pot-luck attendee.  “How can that be??”, you might ask, when clearly I love to cook and share food.  The problem is simply that I panic!  I have so many new recipes to try, sheer idea-overload.  And then I overthink it; should I bring an old favorite, or make something we’ve never eaten?  Should I make it seasonal or holiday-themed, perhaps from one of my multitudinius magazines, websites, or cooking shows?  Dare I risk new flavors or techniques I’ve never attempted, or stick to the tried-and-true deviled eggs I know are always a hit?  I’m ashamed to say that in defeat I have picked up a bag of chips and dip more times than I care to admit.  But not this time!  For once I planned ahead, preparing my treat before I went to the hospital, one that would keep in its container for a couple days.  Jo’s Lemon Bundt Cake was the perfect solution!  She doesn’t call it a “pound cake” per se, but I can assure you it weighed several pounds.  Still, a dense cake full of butter and sugar holds its moisture well when kept under cover, and my daughter made the glaze the day of the event to prevent “soggage”.  I am always surprised by how little lemon actually goes into a lemon cake.  The color is largely a product of the butter and egg yolks, and only the zest from two lemons is in the batter.  The real citrus kick comes from the couple tablespoons of fresh squeezed juice used for the powdered sugar icing.  As always, don’t be cheap; if you are getting your lemon juice from a bottle, it will not taste as good!  This recipe took all-around high marks from the poker party, so if you are looking for your next pot-luck dessert, consider it found!

Now that you know my secret shame of bringing store-bought treats to parties, I feel Pandora’s Box has been opened, so while I’m at it, let me spill another closely-guarded secret: I am TERRIFIED of hot oil!  Bacon “kisses” strike fear into my soul.  Popping juices from searing meat cause me to recoil in fear.  I have been known to wear elbow-length oven mitts while stirring anything containing sizzling fat.  With this revelation laid bare, I present my next dish, Vanilla Cake Donuts, with an extra flair of pride.

Let’s be clear: I thought I was signing up for an oven-baked donut.  I’m no glutton for punishment!  When I saw “cake” donut, I automatically assumed there was no yeast, no frying, none of that complicated (scary) stuff.  Had I followed standard kitchen procedure and read the entire recipe before beginning, I would have noticed the clearly stated, “vegetable oil, for deep-frying” right there on the ingredients list.  Spoiler alert, I never read the whole recipe…  Serves me right then, I suppose.  Since I had nothing else planned for breakfast, I pulled out my 12-inch, 82-pound cast iron skillet.  (Side note: farm wives of yesteryear never needed to set foot in a pilates class because they had to wield these beasts around the kitchen all day!)

This recipe began to go off the rails almost immediately when I discovered I did not have the titular ingredient.  I specifically ordered a bag of vanilla beans for just such occasions, yet after tearing the kitchen apart I could not lay hands on it.  I’m sure to find it when I am making beef stroganoff or something equally undeserving of the discovery!  Since donut-making is outside my wheelhouse, I didn’t want to mess too much with the liquid/solid ratio, so adding liquid vanilla extract seemed unwise.  I do not own vanilla paste, which was Jo’s alternative to scraping fresh bean pods.  Frankly I didn’t know such a thing existed and I should probably add that to my Amazon shopping cart right now…  In the end I decided to turn this into a “Spiced Cake Donut” recipe, and added cinnamon to the nutmeg already in the mix. This part was fun, and easy in fact.  Nothing tricky about bringing together the dough, and it has a satisfyingly springy, squishy texture.  You have to be careful not to over-knead, because it’s easy to get carried away!  Next I got to bust out my oft-neglected biscuit cutters and create a baker’s dozen of perfectly shaped rings.  The bonus “holes” were not addressed in the book, but surely Jo does not allow them to go to waste!  Now for the moment of truth.  “Heat the oil to 360 degrees F on a deep fry thermometer”.  Three hundred and sixty degrees.  I’m pretty sure that’s average temperature of the surface of the sun.  Let that sink in; the boiling point of water is 212 degrees F.  Now let’s multiply that by more than 1.5 times, and give it explosive powers!  Nothing to fear, right?  I kept telling myself that, and got on with the business of transferring the dough to the pan.  Pro tip: if you can calmly, gently place the food into the hot oil vs. flinging it from three feet away, your chances of being splashed decreases a hundred-fold!

You’d think the hard part was over now, right?  All logic suggests that if it took quite a long time and continual bumps to the temperature dial to heat oil to 360 degrees, adding cold food would cause the temperature to drop.  At the very least, you might expect an initial decrease, and then to have to nudge the fire up to compensate.  You would be wrong.  In my kitchen, the thermodynamic laws of physics are somehow suspended, and my oil temp rose 40 degrees after adding the dough!  The two-minute-per-side cooking time suddenly seemed far too long as I struggled to bring the temperatures out of volcano-worthy heights while simultaneously flipping the now-burning rings of death over to the raw side.  Ok, so the first batch did not go as planned.  They looked very donut-like, but browner than your average tanned-hide purse.  I reduced the dial to half of what it took to get it to 360 initially, but never succeeded in lowering it under 380 degrees.  I braved the oil twice more to finish another batch of (much paler) donuts and all the holes, and it resulted in passable homemade treats.  Jo included a vanilla glaze recipe, but I opted for a maple/coffee frosting I already had from a previous scone recipe, which was a timesaver and tasted great with the spice flavor.  For the holes, I just threw them in powdered sugar and rolled them around until it stuck.

In the end, I faced my fear and had something that looked like what I claimed them to be.  At least half of them even tasted pretty good.  However, the next time I get a hankering for donuts, I’m driving to Dunkin’!

Last week may have been all about the chicken, but this week a new theme emerged: all things crusted!  Again, this was not a plan, but when I uploaded the pictures of what was cooking this week, I couldn’t help but notice a certain similarity in the dishes.  Also a serious shortage of pie plates in the kitchen!  I had unintentionally picked the same subject matter repeatedly, but luckily it yielded delicious results!

I live in Colorado, famous for its Palisade peaches.  The annual school fundraiser is a 20-pound box of these beauties, and supportive mom that I am, naturally I purchase one.  I love eating fresh peaches, but at some point enough is enough.  The excess gets blanched in boiling water for 30 seconds so the skins fall off like magic, and I slice and bag the remaining fruit, destined for the freezer.  I tell you this little background story so you can understand how excited I was to have something other than a hundred smoothies to look forward to.  Also, in my tart’s defense, the beautiful concentric circles of perfect peach slices in the cookbook picture was not achieved in my kitchen.  This was largely due to repeatedly bashing the Ziplock bag against the counter in order to break off a chunk of peaches that had frozen together.  And hallelujah, broken peach halves taste the same as whole ones!  Granted, Jo’s recipe for Peach & Almond Tart called for using fresh fruit, but a) it’s January, and b) she then does the same blanching and slicing operation I already did last summer, so basically I was ahead of the game.  The dessert comes together using essentially a light homemade cake mix, and it puffs up to cover most of those carefully layered slices anyway.  The final touch was a topping of sweetened mascarpone cream covered with toasted almond slices.  Two notes here: first, ain’t no one got time to slice almonds manually, so spend the extra buck and buy them pre-sliced.  You’ll save yourself a potential trip to the emergency room too…  However, you DO have time to properly toast them.  The only thing you can’t do is walk away.  Almonds are more forgiving than pine nuts, which will turn black the instant you blink, but you still need to keep an eye on them for the full five minutes it takes to get the brown on them.  Trust me, the taste and texture difference is worth it!  Secondly, mascarpone is expensive and unnecessary if you happen to have cream cheese in your fridge.  I love a good snobby dessert that is full of fancy ingredients as much as the next gal, but I didn’t feel like another trip to the grocery store just to buy $6 worth of soft cheese when I already had a perfectly acceptable substitute.  Believe me, no one complained!

One pie, down, two to go!  With a full weekend schedule of basement clean-out in preparation for new construction AND a dinner party planned, I wanted to make sure I had meals prepped in advance.  Enter Brownie Pie.  Is it pie?  Is it a brownie?  Why would you need both?  Well, really no reason, except that you can cut it into wedges instead of squares, and I guess if you love pie crust, you get that too.  Mainly I was excited about this recipe because it would hold for a day or two, unlike the aforementioned fruit tart.  For that reason alone I decided to make this ahead for my dinner party; the fact that I didn’t have to buy anything special at the store made it even better.  The result was a not-too-sweet brownie dessert that of course was calling out for vanilla ice cream on top, and our company seemed to enjoy it.  It was made using unsweetened baking chocolate in the batter and semi-sweet chips (which held their shape inside) and chopped pecans, but you could swap those out for just about anything.  Think butterscotch chips and peanuts; peanut butter chips and pretzel bits; white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts; or whatever floats your boat.  Honestly I might make this again, sans useless pie crust, and try out a few of those combinations I just thought up!

Alas, from great highs, sad lows often follow.  Such was the case with my final pie of the week, Asparagus & Fontina Quiche.  First of all, I’m going to take issue with Jo’s obsession with costly cheese.  Perhaps in Waco, TX fontina and gruyere is cheap, but here in Northern Colorado they want $8-10 a pound for that stuff!  She seems to call for one (or both!) of these cheeses in most of her savory recipes, and I’m willing to indulge her only up to a point.  After that I’m filling out the remaining cheese requirements with cheap pre-shredded mozzarella or discount cheddar bought by the 2-lb block.  Thankfully the rest of the recipe was fairly basic (eggs, heavy cream, and seasonings, like any other quiche) and of course asparagus.  She proposed that I shave the asparagus length-wise with a vegetable peeler and retain the tips for aesthetic reasons, but I decided I was hungry and didn’t need to impress myself with such nonsense.  I broke off the bottoms of the asparagus spears wherever they naturally snapped to avoid getting the un-chewable woody parts, and chopped the rest into 1-inch pieces.  Problem solved.  The pieces went into a steamer basket over boiling water for a couple minutes to soften up while still retaining a bright green color, and then folded them into the egg mixture.  All went well until it was time to eat…

Normally I’m excited to share what I make with my family or friends, and 95% of the time I have never made the dish prior to unleashing it on unsuspecting people.  Usually everything turns out pretty well!  This was one of the rare occasions that I was the only one home and the sole taste-tester of a new recipe.  I pulled the quiche from the oven, let it stand for a few minutes to firm up, and was quite pleased with the overall doneness and presentation.  I’d even tried to flute the pie crust edge to fancy it up.  Feeling fairly proud of myself, I cut out a wedge, and (yay!), it all held together instead of collapsing into an under-baked mess.  I sat at the table with my cheesy, decadent breakfast pie that smelled so good and took a nice, big bite.  That’s where it all went downhill.  CRUNCH.  That wasn’t supposed to happen…  Several thoughts went through my head following that first bite, not the least of which was, “what the h*** is in my mouth right now??”  First, I considered that maybe the asparagus hadn’t been cooked through enough, but this was not a “raw vegetable” crunch.  Next I considered that maybe it was dirt I had somehow missed on the veggies, but they were definitely clean, so that was out.  I took another tentative chew, because while I could most certainly feel it between my teeth, I could not detect a taste from anything that shouldn’t be there.  Still crunchy, but less so, almost like there was sand in the food.  Thank goodness I hadn’t served this to anyone else, because I’d have been mortified!  I kept thinking, trying to determine if somehow the spices had clumped together and formed a ball of seasoning that didn’t mix in.  Nope; still no distinct flavor.  By this point, the grit had subsided to the point I thought maybe this was some weird result of the cheese melting wrong (I was really reaching by then!), and decided to just swallow the mouthful.  It TASTED good at least.  I looked down at the now-mysterious quiche on my plate, trying to decide if it was worth risking another bite when I spotted the culprit.  Nice big chunks of eggshell, perfectly baked into my slice!  Ugghh!  Ok, at least I wouldn’t die, but talk about a rookie mistake!  I must have really been in a hurry to get that food in the oven, because I missed several large pieces of offending shell.  Once I poked through the rest of my plate with a fork and a careful eye, I finished eating what turned out to be a delightful meal.  I’m also pleased to report that no one else fell victim to my oversight and we have since eaten the whole thing without anyone having to go through the trauma that I endured.  This should probably teach me to crack eggs into a separate vessel before adding them to the mixing bowl like we are taught on Food Network, but I think I’ll probably continue going rogue.  But just in case, I’ll always be the one to take the first bite!

 

 

 

One week into 2020 and so far a raving success!  Celebrate the tiny wins, right?  The fact that I am writing these words RIGHT NOW is in fact a huge win over last year, when I managed only to start the same paragraph three times and never finish my thoughts.  My  self-imposed deadline of April 7th has inspired (read: scared!) me into actions perhaps a little more gung-ho than I normally would undertake.  Unfortunately for me, I crunched the numbers and now I know just how much work lies ahead of me in the next three months!  No matter, after seeing that I have 109 recipes and 92 days to accomplish them, I calculated a plan that produces a minimum of six new recipes a week without killing me or causing potential massive weight gain.  Luckily several of them are things like salad dressings, jams, or sauces, and can be knocked out as accompaniments for main dishes.  Without further ado, let me jump into what was cooking at my house this week!  In a word: CHICK

I like chicken.  Love it, in fact; such a versatile and inexpensive bird.  And it’s a darn good thing, because I had to eat a ton of it this week.  I didn’t plan on a chicken-heavy menu, but the meals that sounded best as I thumbed through the Dinner chapter were hearty comfort foods.  And nothing says comfort food like yard-bird!  First up was Dedication Casserole, which sounded along the lines of “Funeral Potatoes”.  (If you have never had that cheesy, crunchy, Midwestern hot-dish, don’t wait for a sad occasion; look it up and make the recipe immediately!)  Jo’s introduction said it was actually created for a church service reception dedicating a friend’s newborn triplets.  Naturally that woman was sleep-deprived as all get out, so her dish was a brilliant make-ahead that can be thrown in the oven a day or so after combining the ingredients.  That’s my kind of work-week meal!  In my case it was a way for my family to have “home cooking” on my Bunco night, and I didn’t have to worry about them eating cereal and cookies for dinner.  It happens…  So how did I make it?  Mostly I watched TV while stuff that I had stirred together cooked.  Brilliant!  The main component is simply boxed Uncle Ben’s Long Grain & Wild Rice Fast Cook.  As you can see from the picture, if you’re busy looking over your shoulder at the television a bit too much, you can even mess this up!  After I plucked out the paper wrappers from the seasoning packets, all I had to do was let the rice boil for a couple minutes, then stir in cream cheese, artichoke hearts, shredded white cheddar, and spices.  (I skipped the water chestnuts because they are dumb).  I weaseled out of cooking my own chicken, instead spending $6 on a King Soopers roast chicken, and that was the extent of my effort.  The mixture went into a baking dish and lived in the fridge for a day or two until it was time to go in the oven.  A tasty dinner for all, and mom didn’t break a sweat.  Win/win!

**We interrupt this post brought to you by “BIG CHICKEN” with a message from “BACON”!**

I needed to break up the monotony a bit, so our weekend lunch was BLT sandwiches with Herb Mayo (bonus, the mayo was a whole separate recipe to check off!)  What kind of kitchen novice needs a recipe to make BLTs?  Well, as it turns out, me!  Of course anyone who knows what the letters stand for can make a BLT.  It doesn’t mean “bologna, leeks and tahini”, so it should be fairly straightforward, right?  Wrong.  I’ve been doing it incorrectly my whole life!  Or at least I’ve made it not as well as Jo does.  Her simple tweaks made my bacon, lettuce and tomato sing.  The first task was to make the Herb Mayo and let it sit for an hour or two.  Conveniently I was cleaning out the refrigerator and found plenty of fresh herbs (parsley, chives) to use up and mix into plain old mayonnaise, along with garlic and some common spices like paprika and white pepper.  The result was so fresh and tasty, I’ll be using this mixture in place of plain mayo from now on!  Speaking of plain mayo, that was Jo’s second secret: spreading mayo on the bread instead of butter, and toasting it on the griddle like a grilled cheese!  Like most people, I always just put bread in the toaster, and then spread mayo on the toast.  This was a revelation.  When I saw how crispy and perfectly browned the bread turned out, I vowed never to use dry toast again for BLT sandwiches.  They deserve better than that.

Now back to our sponsor…  Remember that pre-cooked chicken so kindly provided by the grocery store?  It produced EIGHT cups of meat and allowed me to skip steps for my next recipe, King Ranch Chicken.  I must say this one threw me for a loop.  I thought ranch dressing would surely make an appearance somewhere, or perhaps dry ranch seasoning used as a rub; yummy!  Alas, Hidden Valley was nowhere to be found on the ingredients list.  Apparently one needs to be from Texas to know this secret, because Jo informed me that EVERY Texas cook has his or her own version.  Who knew?  Turns out this is a Tex-Mex casserole, utilizing lots of cans of stuff (cream of chicken soup, enchilada sauce, salsa verde, and black beans).  I’m a big fan of opening cans and calling it cooking on weeknights!  This whole project is centered around learning about and trying new flavors.  Well, I learned I don’t particularly love jicama…  It falls into the same category as water chestnuts (see above).

Nonetheless, I gamely made the jicama slaw with lime, avocado and cilantro that was supposed to be the perfect accompaniment to the casserole.  To be fair it was a nice texture contrast to the chicken dish, but mostly it was just “meh”.  My other half couldn’t get down with it either, even though it had cayenne seasoning and he LOVES spicy foods.  I think he tried to feed his portion to the cats under the table…

I rounded out the week with the meat I had foolishly thawed prior to choosing the recipes I would prepare, not realizing a whole roast chicken was the way to go.  You guessed it: chicken thighs!  Well you know what?  There is no better way to prepare a skin-on masterpiece like a juicy thigh than to sprinkle on my mother’s not-so-secret spice mix (Lawry’s Season Salt, granulated garlic, onion powder, black pepper) and sauté it in butter and olive oil, finishing the cooking in the oven.  Crispy-skinned perfection.  So the real recipe was the Mashed Potatoes.  Nothing creative to report on that front-just butter, milk, salt and pepper-but the dinner was well-received by the whole family.  And on that note, I’m going to go pluck these feathers that have sprouted lately…

 

 

Where did 2019 go??  I demand a recount… it can’t possibly be 2020 already!  Writing this blog started out as a 2018 New Year’s Resolution.  Funny thing about resolutions; they are made with the best of intentions, but then life has a habit of getting in the way and sabotaging you.  Most people decide they never actually wanted to lose those extra 10 pounds anyway…  And who really needs to read Oprah’s book list or see all the Academy Award nominated films?  Ain’t nobody got time for that.  But my COOKING resolutions were serious!  I refused to give up on the unnecessary, self-imposed time limit I gave myself to complete the Joanna Gaines cookbook, Magnolia Table, so 2019 saw a whole lot more calories coming out of my kitchen.  Granted, I failed miserably at actually meeting my deadline, but I darn well made (delicious) progress!

Seeing as it has been well over a year since I sat down to write, I just had to re-read my last few posts (not to mention THREE false-start blog intros) so I would know from where to pick up, and it turns out… at the beginning!  I can’t believe it, but I haven’t shared a single one of Joanna Gaines’ masterpiece recipes!  To date, I have made 30 of these gems, but I am ashamed to say I didn’t always get good pictures and just ate the food.  I guess I’ll just have to make some of them over again…  Tragic!  Without further ado, here are some of the first few dishes.

I debated how to approach this new project, since this is now officially my third “rodeo”; should I pick my favorite thing that I’m most excited to cook?  Start on page one and complete the recipes in order?  Or do what I did: tackle the thing I was LEAST interested in, because then it would be out of the way!  My love/hate relationship with peppers (I love to hate them) is still going strong, despite having met a couple applications I could grudgingly appreciate.  I wish I could say this Sweet Pepper Frittata made a believer out of me, but not so much. Basically I liked everything EXCEPT the peppers.  Okay, also not a huge fan of feta…  But on the plus-side, there’s pancetta!!  The best thing I can say about this frittata is that all the ingredients were fresh and simple, and therefore easily malleable to become a recipe I like better.  Eggs, cream, herbs, cheese and vegetables; make your own winning combo!

Now we’re talking!!  I adore potatoes.  Mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, baked potatoes, hash browns, you name it.  I never met a potato I didn’t like.  The thing is I like them so much sometimes I buy way too many, and I end up with shriveled up brown rocks or a small bamboo forest growing in the bag!  This was a great way to use up the gnarliest looking potatoes that would not have produced a beautiful side dish to a ribeye, and again, used fridge staples like cheese, bacon, and cream.  I would wager that 80% recipes in this book use at least two out of those three ingredients!  Can’t go wrong there.

Last but not least (for this post anyway), I wanted to pay homage to one of her amazing desserts.  Lemon. Pie.  Just look at how the slices hold up!!  It was a revelation.  Best part?  I didn’t have to go out and buy a thing at the store, because these recipes so often are created from foods lying around nearly everyone’s kitchen.  It didn’t turn out technicolor-yellow due to the fact that lemon juice is in fact the only colored ingredient in here, and no Jell-o pudding nor gelatin was required to get this gorgeous lemon curd to stand firm.  That’s what I’m aiming for, folks.  No frills recipes that nonetheless look like they cost $8.99 at a restaurant, but you order them anyway even when you’re full because they taste AMAZING!  This pie fit the bill.  

I could go on and on (and on and on) with all the other great dishes this book has introduced to me so far, but this post would be 12,000 words!  Instead of covering everything I cooked in 2019, I am going to rededicate myself to process of working my way through weekly recipes, and sharing my successes and failures with the WordPress community.  So here I am, kicking off 2020 with a handful of new resolutions (limit food waste! The ever-popular “lose 10 pounds”…) and the Magnolia Table cookbook under my arm.  This week will bring King Ranch Chicken, Mexican Rice, and Dedication Casserole.  I don’t know what that is, but I can hardly wait to find out and share the results!  I have a new deadline too: April 7th.  Why so specific?  Because that’s when Magnolia Table: Volume 2 come out!

I have a serious girl-crush, y’all…  It’s been coming on for awhile, but it started small.  At first it was a simple, “wow, that lady is so pretty!”  Then it was, “I’ve never heard of shiplap, but I think this woman is a genius!”  More recently, I read her biography and learned she is also an amazingly inspirational human, with the patience and heart of a saint.  But what really got me was her latest offering, which I picked up at the library a few weeks ago.  Magnolia Table established her as not only a brilliant interior designer and entrepreneur, but also a cook after my own heart.  Joanna Stevens Gaines, if you ever divorce Chip, will you marry me??  Well, maybe it would be better if you just stayed married to him but adopted me.  That would work!

Some of you already know exactly who I’m talking about.  My fellow HGTV connoisseurs will have instantly recognized her at the mention of “shiplap” (for the uninitiated, it’s basically boards running parallel to the studs in a wall, typically covered in drywall or wallpaper in older homes), and coincidentally my new favorite interior feature!  Even if you don’t watch home improvement shows, you’d almost have to be living under a rock not to have heard of the program “Fixer Upper” and its hosts, Joanna and Chip Gaines.  If you DID happen to live under a rock, Jo would be able to offer you some tips to make that rock cozy and unique, replete with homey touches!

But what does any of this have to do with cooking?!  Isn’t that what this blog is all about?  Well folks, turns out Jo is a triple-threat.  Not only does she run multiple successful branches of the Magnolia empire, she’s also a brilliantly creative interior designer AND spends her “free” time cooking next-level comfort foods.  She clearly owns a time-warping device.  That’s the only way to explain how she has managed to develop so many recipes which seem simple but delicious, and appeal to me with every page-turn of Magnolia Table.  I returned my copy to the library and purchased my own personal edition to add to my cookbook collection immediately after flipping through it.

Joanna Gaines did not wake up one day and decide to be a cookbook author for a living, as she very clearly already has a booming career.  She did not attend culinary school (that I am aware of), and she works a whole lot more than a 40-hour week.  Yet somehow she made enough time in her schedule to teach herself to cook nourishing meals for her family of 6 (recently expanded to 7!) on a daily basis.  I am one of those weird people who actually READS cookbooks, not just the recipes themselves for ingredient lists and directions.  I love to read the introductions to each chapter, and the little stories the author offers up before giving the basic facts of how to make something.  When I picked up this book and started to read her opening pages, it was like coming home.  There were parts that really spoke to me, such as our shared love of the act of putting on an apron.  Even selecting which apron I’m going to wear is part of my process when tackling a new recipe.  She also mentioned a cake dome on her counter that she never likes to see empty.

As I read those words, I looked up at my own kitchen table, which sported a brand spanking new Pioneer Woman cake platter, purchased just weeks earlier.  It had some store-bought pastries in it at the time, but I had already begun fantasizing about the cookies, Bundt cakes and pies I planned to fill it with in the future.  Joanna seems like a kindred spirit.

I looked through roughly 150 recipes in the book and came across such familiar American classics as chicken pot pie and biscuits and gravy, but also bulgogi and Syrian donuts.  I love that she put in nods to her own Korean roots and her grandfather’s Middle Eastern heritage.  It’s going to be so fun trying out her versions of foods I’ve made previously under the tutelage of Alton Brown, Ree Drummond and my own mother.  I’m always amazed at how the same dish can be interpreted in so many ways, and I’m still learning what I like best.  Another theme Joanna has running throughout her book is the idea that her recipes are “jumping off” places, not dictates.  When I studied Alton Brown, I felt strongly about sticking strictly to his instructions, and I did NOT deviate.  While studying Ree, I adhered to 98% of what she said, a much simpler feat since her ingredients were pretty commonplace and her directions straightforward.  For these Magnolia recipes, I feel like I’m already being encouraged to take them and run with them, putting my own spin on things.  It’s exciting!

So here I go, jumping into another culinary “course”, taught by a woman I’m pretty sure would be an amazing bestie if we ever met!  In fact, I think I will reward myself when I complete this project by making a graduation pilgrimage to Waco, TX to visit the Silos, which houses the Magnolia Table restaurant.  And when I get there, I’m looking forward to seeing what’s featured on Joanna’s cake plate!