Zoey, arrived carrying a grocery bag of goodies. For her last birthday, I bought her an apron & several spatulas. She has brought them with her to bake! Good to know when a gift is appreciated.

Zoey's Apron & Spatula

We get started but it’s not a very successful session. It’s not Zoey’s fault. It’s just too difficult for me to get enthused. It’s not about Zoey; it’s about the hole in my life. On the one hand, I’m delighted to see her. She’s a precious child & very loving. On the other hand, she’s young enough that she doesn’t fully comprehend death & the finality of it.

In the innocent way of a child, she asks me about Jim, then comments on his departure. She was here when they carried his body out. It fascinated her. In spite of the efforts of her parents, she watched most of the journey of his body out of our home. Zoey is still trying to process the event in her mind & has no idea of the pain her questions cause me. With time, we WILL get back to baking! Now is not the time though.

Yep. Have to try this bread recipe. It was quite an adventure. Was going to get started making it when I discovered I had NO YEAST! No yeast. Didn’t seem possible in this house but there I was. Wanting to get a lot done so didn’t want to break the work rhythm to go get it. Picked yeast up in the evening when I was running another errand.

Mixing the dry ingredients together using the trusty Kitchenaid. No yeast was in here as I discovered later. Oops!

Innocently heating the milk for the English Muffin Bread!

Get home & decide to get this going. Mixes up super easy. Got the batter in the loaf pans. Set them aside covered with a damp cloth. Go back to check them about 30 minutes later. They haven’t risen a bit! Big failure! The recipe says it takes about 45 minutes to rise so baring a miracle these puppies are NOT going to rise enough. Glance to the side. There sits my brand new unopened jar of yeast! Oops! Maybe it’s not the recipe. Maybe it’s operator problem. Maybe I’ll retry the recipe in the morning.

Here I am adding flour still under the delusion I'm making bread.

The batter that I so innocently was going to rise & make a beautiful loaf of bread.

Nice & cool in the morning so it’s a wonderful time to retry a bread recipe. Again the English Muffin Bread batter mixes up easily. This time I try making it WITH the yeast. Suspect that will have a positive influence on the outcome. Check the bread in the loaf pans after 20 minutes and lo they are rising. Must be the yeast! The bread rises just as quickly as the recipe says & I slide the bread pans in the oven.

"Real" bread--you know, the kind that has YEAST in it.

Bread cooks for the required time. Pull out of the oven 2 beautifully browned loaves of bread. Oh yes, it is going much better today. Naturally, I have to give the bread a taste test. Slice off a piece as soon as the bread has cooled, butter it & share it with Sarah. It’s good! That’s our verdict. I have to be honest though & say that I’m not sure how often I’ll actually bake this bread. As delicious as it it, & it IS delicious, I prefer breads that can serve double duty. We enjoy using homemade bread for our sandwiches & this is not a sturdy enough bread for sandwiches. If you’re only looking for something to slice & eat or slice, toast & eat, you’ll be very happy with this bread.

All those beautiful airholes are what makes for wonderful toast!

If you’re an experienced cook, I’m sure you enjoyed my “little” mistake. Probably reminded you of a few of your own mistakes when cooking. If you’re a novice cook, take careful note. Doesn’t matter if you’ve cooked for 50+ years, there are going to be times when you make mistakes. It’s not the end of the world. Just try again. Sometimes when you make a mistake, you’ll like the results better, but not when you leave the yeast out of your homemade bread. Trust me on that one.

This is Geraldine's small fondant mat. It's the perfect size for this project!

Today is a great day for playing with one of the fondant molds I bought. I’m excited about it & quickly gather everything needed. Not sure what colors I want or what colors I already have, I grab some unopened fondant & the bags of leftover fondant. (Good fondant is very expensive & way too expensive to waste. Save any pieces you don’t use on a project. When you have time, you can make flowers, leaves or geometric shapes to use on a future project. Those are words of wisdom Norman Davis gave us at ICES.

Rolling out the fondant to use in the mold.

I have a wad of yellow fondant a little bit smaller than a half dollar & a wad of orange fondant about the size of a quarter. That looks to me like a good place to start! Place both pieces of fondant in the microwave & heat them just a few seconds. Even after being carefully wrapped in several layers of Saran Wrap & placed in Ziploc bags, fondant will get stiff to rock hard. A few seconds in the microwave will soften it enough to knead. Be careful though not to heat for anything but very short bursts. It is sugar dough & will get too hot to safely handle. Heated long enough it will even start to melt.

Gently place the fondant over the mold. Be careful to cover all sections of the mold!

Butterflies are not a solid color so I knead both pieces of fondant together until they are soft & pliable but not completely blended. I then take my 6-inch fondant roller out & proceed to roll the dough out on my mat. (I will do another post on the mat. It’s that good.) Once the fondant is rolled out to 1/8 thickness, I pick it up & gently lay it on the bottom part of the mold. Previously, I had taken my finger & dipped it in powdered sugar & rubbed it on the inside of the mold. Then I shook the mold so almost all of the powdered sugar was shaken out. With my fingers I gently pat the fondant into the crevices of the mold. Once I have a pretty decent impression, I pick up the top 2 pieces & lay them on top of the fondant lining them up on the indented fondant. Then I take the roller & firmly roll the top pieces into the fondant & bottom piece of the mold. If this is done properly, you get an almost clean cut of the butterfly pieces. Pull the top pieces of the mold off & you’re ready to gently push the fondant out of the mold. Now you have two beautifully impressed butterfly wings. I’ll use them in the future on a cake or some cupcakes.

In this photo, the top of the mold has had gentle pressure applied to force the fondant into all crevices of the mold. Excess fondant was carefully peeled away.

You can see the impressions from the mold once you removed the top portions of the mold. Then turn the mold over & gently tap to remove the butterfly pieces.

After removing the butterfly half from the mold, use a tapered spatula to do detailed removal of small bits of excess fondant. Do NOT use a knife as there is too much danger of nicking your mat.

After making a few of these, I pull out a small piece of blue & a small piece of green fondant. Knead both of these into the leftover fondant from making butterflies & make some more butterflies. The mold only needs to be rubbed down with powdered sugar after the fifth set of butterfly wings. That’s how well this mold works. It’s been a good afternoon. Played with one of my new molds until I’m very comfortable using it. As a result of using the mold, I have several beautiful fondant butterflies to use.

A pair of orange & yellow butterflies drying on a wire rack.

A multi-colored butterfly half ready to have the excess fondant gently removed.

Notice the shy smile this fellow has.

After baking & cooling the cookies, it’s time to decorate them. The cookies are coated with orange royal icing and brownish green royal icing & outlined. Now the fun begins! I have made pumpkin cookies where I tried very hard to get each cookie to look alike, but these are going to be jack-o-lanterns. We all know that each jack-o-lantern is different from all the rest & has its own personality. That’s the intention with these cookies.

Hmmm almost a beatnik look. Remember beatniks? Doobie Gillis anyone?

I loaded the piping bag with brown royal icing & start decorating. As I pick up each cookie, I study it & it seems to tell me what it should look like. Some have faces only & some have hair. A few of them call for beards. Then there are the shy ones that hide behind their glasses. On it goes, until each one is finished. None of them look alike so I’m pleased. Not sure they’re fierce looking, but they definitely don’t look like any cookies my mother would have made.

The more traditional look

The Great American Cookie Cookbook

Today I have decided to try a new recipe. On page 44, you’ll find the recipe for Malted Dream Drops. This is the one I’ve decided to try. All the needed ingredients are in my cabinet so I’m good to go. The dough is easy to mix & not at all time consuming. It needs to sit in the refrigerator for an hour so I work on other things.

As you can see, this cookbook is held together by tape.

It’s 2 hours before I get back to working on the cookies. I notice that dough is still a very soft dough in spite of being chilled.  Fill the first cookie sheet & set it in the oven to bake. As I pull the baked cookies out of the oven, I see a potential problem. The cookies have spread out a great deal instead of being a nice puffy cookie as the photo in the book shows. The first thing I do is check the recipe to see if I made any mistakes. This could be quite a problem as the difference in spread will not only affect the appearance of the cookie but also the taste. The cookie dough goes back into the refrigerator for another hour.

Malted Dream Drops are flat & spread out instead of puffy like they should be.

When the first batch of cookies cool off, Sarah & I taste them. This is our sworn duty & we take it seriously. The Malted Dream Drops are ok but nothing spectular. They have a nice malt taste but just don’t impress. We decide to reserve judgment until tasting the next batch. After an hour is up, I throw another batch of the cookies in the oven. The dough is a bit stiffer but still pretty soft. Again, no surprise here, they spread out on the cooky sheet. Again the taste test shows them to be an alright cookie. Our definition of an alright cookie is one that tastes as good as you get out of the box or bag off the grocery shelf in the store. If we’re taking the time to bake them, we expect more!

They didnt come out quite like they should have & still were decent, so eventually Ill come back to them & try again. If I can figure out why they were spreading too much, I know it would make a lot of difference in the taste. Perhaps then, Sarah & I would have a different opinion of them.

Sarah cooking bacon

If you haven’t fixed it before, you need to do so. It’s one of the super easy things you can fix. Like fixing scrambled eggs, there’s no need to measure things. You want a good quality bread to fix French Toast. Something like French bread, a good bakery bread or the Pepperridge Farm sourdough will make an excellent dish. A bread of substance is needed. If you use your normal sandwich quality bread, the bread will get too soggy as it has too much air & will soak up too much of the egg mixture. Then the end result will be a piece of bread that is toasted on the outside & soggy inside–not an attractive or tasty dish.

Turn your stove on to medium heat & heat your iron skillet while mixing your eggs. Usually when I’m fixing it, I’ll fix a larger batch than necessary to have French toast mixture handy for another morning. There’s 3 of us in my family living at home so if I crack 4-6 eggs, I’ll have extra egg mix leftover. How many eggs I use is based on how many times I figure we’ll have French toast in the next few days. Lightly whip the eggs & add some milk, approximately a tablespoon and a half for every 2 eggs is how much I usually pour in the bowl of eggs. This is a guess as I eyeball it. Then I add around a half teaspoon of cinnamon & half as much nutmeg. Some people add a dash of salt. I prefer to leave it out & nobody has ever complained. Lightly whip the ingredients until the spices are evenly distributed.

Whisking egg & milk mixture for French toast.

Cracked eggs in bowl

Pour the mix into a shallow container. Place a slice of the bread in the egg mixture & gently push it down until the mix flows over the top. Using a fork, I lift the bread up & turn it over so both sides are well coated. Lift it up using the fork & let the excess mix drip back into the container. Gently drop the coated bread into the hot skillet. After it has cooked for 3-4 minutes & is toasted on the bottom, use a pancake turner to flip it over. Let the other side cook until it is grilled to your satisfaction. Using the pancake turner, slip the piece of French toast onto a plate.

French toast cooking in iron skillet.

Depending on your family’s taste, the French toast can be served with a sprinkling of powdered sugar, syrup, applesauce or a warm fruit puree. After fixing however many pieces I need, I store the leftover mix in the refrigerator. I would not suggest keeping it more than a couple of days before using it.

Finished French toast with an egg

Drained macaroni

With all of Jim’s health problems, it’s no wonder I’ve been craving all kinds of comfort foods. Sarah’s been wanting me to fix some macaroni & cheese for awhile now so I’ve decided to get to it. I have several macaroni & cheese recipes I use depending on the cheeses I have onhand & which one I feel will suit my tastes better at the time. Some of them are very simple & easy with only 1 cheese involved; some are more complicated & use several cheeses. Today, I don’t want to have to pick up more cheese & just want a simple basic macaroni & cheese. As usual, I have cheddar cheese onhand.

Layered macaroni, cheese, & cracker crumbs just needing milk poured over them.

That’s why I went with the simplest & most basic one I have. Once again, I’m using one of my great-grandmother’s, Mama Bobo. Cook 2 cups of macaroni in boiling, salted water until it’s tender. Drain the macaroni. Grease a 2-quart casserole dish. Place 1/4 of the macaroni in the casserole dish  & pepper it to taste. Taking 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese & 2 cups of crushed cracker crumbs, layer a 1/4 of the cheese over the macaroni & cover with 1/4 of the cracker crumbs. Continue this until all ingredients have been used. Then pour 2 1/2 cups of milk over the layers in the casserole dish. Place in a 350 oven, uncovered & bake for 50 minutes. Try to refrain from eating it until it has cooled enough you won’t burn your tongue!

Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers with parmesan cheese

Tonight I did something different. I usually use the whole wheat Ritz crackers for the cracker crumbs. We have some Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers that are made with parmesan cheese. Nobody in the family has liked them that much. Not wanting to waste them, I decided to use them for making the macaroni & cheese. You wouldn’t think such a small detail would matter, but frankly, we liked it even better than usual. I have some more of those crackers left so will try it again & see if they do work better or if it was just we were so hungary.

Oops. Somebody has already been in the mac & cheese!

Mama owned the boarding house in town & ran it for years. In 1908  she & her husband, Jack (Lacy Jackson) bought & opened the Bobo Hotel. As far back as I can remember, it was always referred to as the Hotel, but it was a boarding house not a hotel. For many years, Mama fed guests of Jack Daniel’s Distillery there at dinner time. The dinner bell would be rung & everybody that was eating would go in to sit down. The tables of distillery guests always had a woman from Lynchburg as their hostess. She would encourage talk, answer questions, make sure everybody had plenty to eat & make it a pleasant experience. Meals were served family style with a waiter keeping full dishes on the table. The food was excellent and in the summer the vegetables came from a garden for the hotel.

We always sat at a round table in the corner in the dining room closest to the kitchen. Quite simply, it was called the family table. The only way you were seated there was if you were a relative, friend or invited guest of Mama’s. Quite simply, us kids loved it. When we finished eating, we would run into the kitchen to tell Mary Lou, Dill & the other cooks that it was good & off we would run. A favorite spot of mine was Mama’s private quarters “playing the piano”. I put that in quotes because I didn’t & don’t now play the piano. In actuality, I banged away on it. But it was grand fun.

Lynchburg Courthouse

Brown Foreman, the current owner of both Jack Daniel’s Distillery & Mama’s boarding house, just finished restoring the boarding house. That was one of things I wanted to see. First, I parked downtown & Sarah & I walked around the town square & wandered in a few shops. It has changed so much from when I was young & was allowed to walk to town by myself on visits. In fact, the only thing on the square that is still there besides the courthouse is Farmer’s Bank! Nothing else remains from my childhood.

The Bobo Hotel as it has been restored by Brown Foreman.

After that, due to the cold, we got back into the van & drove to the hotel. From the outside, I can only say they did a beautiful job. It looks grand. It was open so we wandered inside. I was overwhelmed with memories. However, I will admit that I was very upset to find Mama Bobo’s private living quarters a gift shop. I have to admit that business-wise it made good sense, but it did make me a bit sorry I had gone inside. That’s what’s wrong with going back to important places from our past. What is important to us, probably isn’t to others & may well be totally changed or changed in ways we don’t like. I have to say though that I am grateful to Brown Foreman for restoring the hotel.

My grandparent's home & I have many happy memories of it.

Ground Sirloin

Hamburger steak is one of those comfort foods that Jim really likes. It’s also a very simple food item to fix that doesn’t require being accurate in measurements.

I always start with at least 1 pound of ground chuck. If I can find it reasonably priced, I go for ground sirloin for more taste with less fat content. Add salt & pepper to your taste. Those are the basics. Then I add chopped onion; how much onion depends on the mood I’m in. Some nights I add just a couple of tablespoons of onion for just a hint of onion. If I’m really in the mood for onion I’ll add ½ cup of onions. You don’t want the taste of onion to be overwhelming so I don’t suggest more than that amount. If your ground meat doesn’t seem to want to stick together to make a patty, add 1 egg. Then divide into 2 to 4 patties depending on the number of patties you want. Lightly pat the ground steak together into an oblong shape. Place in a heated iron skillet on medium & cook to your preferred degree of done. Jim likes his more well done than I do so I always start cooking his before mine. That way both patties finish cooking at the same time & we both get our hamburger steak fixed to our taste.

Jim

If you want to add toppings, it’s a simple thing to saute a mixture of onions & green peppers, onions & mushrooms or just mushrooms while the hamburger steaks cook. After the hamburger steaks have cooked, use the drippings to make gravy to top them with if you’re a gravy fan. As you can see, it’s easy to dress this comfort food up several different ways to suit anybody’s taste.

Hamburger steak ready to serve, just add vegetables.

The onions for the batch of chili are sautéing.

One of my favorite cookbooks is The New York Times Cookbook. I’ve pulled it out to get started as 2 of the recipes I want to fix are in it. I follow the recipe in the book for chili except for the green pepper. If I have some on hand, I chop it up & add it, but I never go get it just for making the chili. This will be a no green pepper time. Get started chopping the onions & discover that they are very fresh onions. They aren’t making my eyes water too much but they have a potent smell. While the onions cook in the olive oil, I add a pound of ground chuck to another large pot to get the spaghetti sauce going. A full pound is used because I’m going to make a double batch of spaghetti sauce so I’ll also have some for the freezer.

As the onions for chili cook and the meat browns for spaghetti sauce, I start chopping the onions for the spaghetti sauce. I have the chopped garlic in oil so add it to both pots. Once I add the onions to the spaghetti sauce, it’s time to brown the ground chuck for the chili. I spend a little time going back & forth between the two pots stirring the ingredients. I add the chili powder & cayenne pepper to the chili mix first as experience has taught me that they will cling to the meat & give a spicier taste to the chili. I then add the rest of the spices and cut up the tomatoes that go in it. Add the water & the chili is ready to simmer for several hours.

A close up of the Shepherd's Pie mixture simmering

The chili is in the pot on the front left burner. The spaghetti sauce is in the pot on the back burner. The mixture for the Shepherd's Pie is in the iron skillet.

Once again, I’m cutting onions as I need them for the last dish I’m fixing, Shepard’s Pie. I have never fixed it before, but Jim has a recipe from his mother & it looks pretty straight forward. While my fat melts for it, Jim peels potatoes for it. I add the onions & ground chuck to the skillet to cook & turn my attention back to the spaghetti sauce. Add tomato paste, cut up tomatoes & water & I’m ready for the salt & pepper & a couple of bay leaves. The spaghetti sauce can now be left to simmer until it’s almost done. When it’s almost finished, I add oregano, basil & thyme.

The layer of mashed potatoes in the bottom of the casserole dish.

At this point, I’m free to concentrate on the Shepard’s Pie. While my potatoes boil, I add 2 cups of chopped tomatoes to the sliced onions & beef that have been cooking. I salt & pepper the mixture & wait for the potatoes to get tender. Once they are tender, they are mashed. The recipe calls for a 1-quart casserole dish, but I can tell by looking that there’s no way all that will fit in that size dish. I pull out a 2-quart dish & put a layer of mashed potatoes on the bottom. The meat & tomato mixture is poured on top of the mashed potatoes. The rest of the mashed potatoes are used to cover the meat mixture. I put it in the oven at 350 degrees & let it bake for 30 minutes. Jim happily has Shephard’s Pie for lunch.

By working on the 3 dishes together, I have only spent

The meat mixture added on top of the mashed potatoes.

approximately 90 minutes more than if I had just fixed a pot of chili. In return, I have Shephard’s Pie that serves as Jim’s lunch & supper, a batch of chili that makes 2 meals for us, and a double batch of spaghetti sauce that will provide 5-6 meals. All of these meals will come in handy to quickly serve a hot supper.

Nellie’s Shepard Pie

1 tablespoon fat

1 onion, sliced

2 cups cooked meat

2 cups tomatoes

salt & pepper

Shepherd's Pie ready to go into the oven.

2 cups mashed potatoes

Melt fat; add onions & brown. Add next 3 ingredients. Simmer 10 minutes. Put in a 2 quart casserole, 1/2 of the potatoes on the bottom. Add the meat mixture. Cover with mashed potatoes. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until brown.

What the Shepherd's Pie looks like coming out of the oven.