Turkey Day Prep

I just finished making my yummy split pea soup. It's quite a process. First I soak the peas overnight. Then I chop the veggies -- onions, celery and carrots. Fill large stock pot with peas and 14 cups of water, add the veggies, honey baked ham bone, ham hock and seasoning and cook for 3 or so hours. Now is just simmering to thicken up. It should be perfect by T-day.

During the time the soup was cooking, I rolled out the dough I prepared yesterday for apple pie (bottom crust only -- top crust is for tomorrow). That turned out nicely. I was able to get it into the baking dish without tearing (I'm so proud of myself). Now it sits in the fridge until I'm ready to bake it.

Happy Cooking..!!

WooHoo..!

I found the recipes. They were in box in the garage. Now I'm going to sort them and get ready to start preparing them. In the meantime, I may post some of the Turkey Day food prep just to keep my busy (as though I'm not busy enough).

Happy Cooking..!!

Candy Corn from Hell

So . . . I was looking for my grandmother's recipes. They appear to be in a box somewhere. Where, I don't know . . . yet. I'm gonna have to search storage, the garage and any number of places we've stored things lately. In the meantime, I thought I would try this fun looking recipe -- candy corn. It looked easy enough. Some work is involved, but nothing too difficult -- so I thought..!! Well, this was way more difficult than I imagined. I followed the recipe to a "T." It seemed to be going well. Then it happened. I added the dry ingredients to the wet ones. I got this mass of dough that was too difficult for me to handle. I enlisted Tim to stir for me. Once it was mixed as thoroughly as possible, I divided it into three bowls so I could color them -- classic yellow, orange and white. First, they were too hot to handle. By the time they were cool enough to handle, they were too hard. After some kneading, the first -- white -- batch was ready to roll out. Roll, roll, roll, and more rolling gave me a 1/2" rope that was already very hard. When it was time for the orange dough, it was too hard to work with. I tossed it in the microwave for a few seconds to soften. And so on . . . Well, you get the picture. By the time all three ropes were rolled out, the dough was too hard to even cut, let alone try to squeeze together to form a candy corn-shaped candy. They don't even taste good. My hands are red and sore from all the rolling. Ugh..!! I'm tired. I think I may have over-cooked the sugar or had it on too high of a heat and that made the candy get harder than it should have. I may try it again, or not. In the meantime, the candy corn made its way into the trash. Oh well.

My Initial Thoughts

I was recenlty visiting with family and, as always, the subject of food and cooking came up. I mentioned that I had quite a few of my grandmother's and my mother's recipes from long ago. All those foods that we loved so much -- like farfel pudding for Passover, Aunt Sara's coffee cake, "wet spot" cake, brisket, etc. It was suggested that I pull them out, prepare them and blog about it. Sounds like fun, I thought to myself. Then I thought . . . what if, after I prepare the original recipes, I bring them up to date. What makes these recipes so good is the large amounts of schmaltz (chicken fat), butter, sugar, all the really bad stuff for us. What if I can prepare these recipes using more healthful ingredients? So, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna re-do these recipes and hopefully keep the great taste. I'll let you know how they all turn out.