Category: Cooking

Happy Monday everyone! Tomorrow is Election day and all of the political ads, emails, mail, phone calls and texts will END!

Wait, what? You are saying today is actually Thursday? Are you sure? I’m still seeing a lot of political things on social media and TV. Let me ask Alexa.

Huh, well you are right, today is Thursday! At least according to Alexa, I still say it feels like a Monday. So much for being on time for my “Monday” blog! While the politics still buzz around us for a while, (is it ever going to end?) I hope my little blog takes your mind off of everything else for a while and plants a little lopsided smile on your face.

Ok, so today IS Thursday which means I am now officially 5 days behind my NaNoWriMo writing challenge for this year. I signed up for it on the first and for the title I wrote in “Unknown” and that is as far as I have gotten! The daily word count you are supposed to be writing is 1,667. So I’m only 8,335 words behind so far. If I could just think of a good title that should hold me for a while.

There are other things distracting me from writing this year, and no, its not covid or political. They are fun things that I am enjoying doing but have been finding myself totally derailed by them.

One is my rock painting adventure. Who knew that I still had a little artistry left over in me? I thought it had all seeped out with the birth of each of my children and gone to them. I guess there is a teaspoon or so left in my fingers for now.

I am absolutely enjoying painting little creatures and things on rocks. The out-pour of delight from others has been so encouraging and even though I have resisted in selling them, I decided to go for it as so many were asking if they could buy some. I’m a people pleaser by nature so of course you can. That too has been going so well that most days see me sitting and painting tiny details on very small rocks. It’s been great fun but my writing adventures are lagging behind. Maybe the better talent is taking over, we’ll see.

My other adventure was a joke when my daughter Brittney used one of her phone filters and snapped my photo. We both laughed at how I looked like a “southern chef”, and so “Mama T” ended up with a page called Mama’s Southern Comforts which was a joke in itself because I’m not southern, I don’t cook southern comfort food, and I don’t really even like to cook! But the blonde “big hair” and my chipped front tooth suggested otherwise, so here I am posting recipes! Who knew.

If you know me even a little bit, you know what a horrible procrastinator I am. I am well known for leaving things until the very last minute and then pulling off a stunningly wonderful whatever it is. It’s all adrenaline and it’s how I’ve always operated. Don’t get me wrong, I am also a planner and list maker. I have an entire binder that is filled with planning lists for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s just the actual execution that I wait so long to do, but when I do, the check marks are flying on those to do lists!

So to be adding more things to do on my daily lists can be a bit overwhelming some days. I mean I have a dog to give affection to and feed and water, birds and squirrels I feed daily, oh and a husband that I am supposed to also be feeding, kids and grandkids that need attention, and when am I going to get all my naps in! All these other activities are making retirement exhausting – but fun.

Today I have 1,667 words per day to write for NaNoWriMo and I’m behind 8,335. I have lots of rocks to paint that are for orders and many are for “kindness” rocks that I will be giving away or hiding in various communities and towns. If I ever message you and ask you for your address, just give it to me and don’t ask silly questions, but also know that you are sworn to secrecy! Shhhhhh!

I am writing a weekly blog, (hopefully you are reading it) and I am posting recipes in Mama’s Southern Comforts. Jazzy aka the dog has been fed, watered and showered with attention for the day, she is currently ignoring me as usual.

I’m also supposed to be finishing cleaning out the basement so at Christmas the kids and grandkids can play down there (the pool table is hiding under my “to be sorted” items.) I have my bedroom to finish sorting through, but those things are for another blog possibly titled “Hoarding 101” or “How Emotionally Attached Are You to Your Stuff?” I haven’t decided yet on the title.

I’ve knocked off one thing from my check list today (you are reading it, or at least I hope you still are) and there are rocks sitting on the dining room table that are not going to paint themselves. I may sit here at the computer for a while yet and see if I can’t come up with a title for my NaNoWriMo project. I’ll let you know.

Until next time!

Stay safe, BE KIND, wear a mask and social distance!

We got this!

Toni

Remember those canned peaches I was looking for? To be exact the canned peach pie filling? The ones I made into a sort of “homemade” peach pie thanks to a friend finding me a couple of cans?

Well, last week I had to go into a store, something I try really hard not to have to do since as I’ve mentioned I have several of those pesky pre-existing conditions that make this Covid-19 virus not such a great thing, as in a death kinda thing. So best to avoid that when I can.

Anyway, (notice no “s” on anyway – there is no such thing! There is not a plural of the word anyway. End of editors rant) while I was in this store getting a few grocery things that we really needed and I couldn’t wait four days to use the curbside option, I decided to wander into the baking aisle just to see if they had any peach pie filling on hand. I’m ever the optimist.

Glory Hallelujah! Not only did they have peach pie filling in stock but they had my favorite peach pie filling! I think I may have squealed a little and done a happy dance in the aisle. Thank goodness these masks make great disguises too! I haven’t seen this brand of peach pie filling in months! I was tempted to put about 8 cans of the stuff into my cart, but I kept a level head and not wanting to hoard so others couldn’t find it, I just took 2 cans.

I already knew I had a yellow cake mix at home, so now the stage was set to make my all time favorite cake in the world, peach upside down cake! I’ll include the recipe at the end in case you might like to make one too, and remember I left you some cans of peach pie filling at the store just in case. I’m pretty sure you can put other canned fruits on top if you don’t like peaches, but really, who doesn’t like peaches?

In this strange new world that we are currently living in with masks and social distancing becoming the new norms, finding a favorite food is back in stock is now one of those things that can literally make your day. Almost as good as finding toilet paper.

I got home and pulled out my trusty recipe binder and flipped open the page where I had scrawled out the recipe. It’s not pretty and it’s not in the correct order, so you have to be paying attention. I believe the original was from Betty C, but I’m not sure. It may have had pineapples on it originally, but I like peaches better, and I’m pretty sure it had real or canned peaches, but I like the gooey peach pie filling better. I almost goofed up by just making the cake mix as directed on the box, then I noticed that there were alternate instructions in the recipe, so I followed those. There is a lot of butter in this cake as well, 2 sticks all told. But who’s keeping track.

I mixed up the batter by hand using just a spatula that I had also used to scrape out all of the goodness from the peach pie filling cans, because I try to dirty as few dishes as possible when doing any baking or cooking. I poured the batter over the melted butter/brown sugar/peach pie filling bottom and slid the pan carefully into the oven and set the timer for thirty minutes. The cake pan weighed a ton I might add, but it was loaded with goodness.

The recipe had suggested it would take between 34-40 minutes, or something like that. I’m pretty sure the amount of times I reset my timer after that first thirty minutes equaled about an hour extra at least that it cooked, but the cake was still jiggly and who wants to go to all of that trouble only to have a partially baked cake. When I poked the toothpick in it seemed like it was dry, so to be sure I dug into the cake with the toothpick like a little mining expedition assuring that yes, the cake was cooked all the way through.

The great thing about a peach upside down cake is that you are literally supposed to eat it warm, or in this case hot. No letting it sit and cool down for hours to wait until you can taste its gooey deliciousness.

I grabbed a bowl and scooped a piece out. Then scooped out the bottom and dumped it on the top of the cake. You are supposed to take a flat platter and place it over the cake pan after its cooled a bit and tip the cake out so that the peaches and topping are on top of the cake. I did not. I can just scoop it on top and call it good, same effect. Later I kept taking little sample bites every time I passed by the stove. I’ll admit I passed by the stove a lot that day. So I basically ended up eating two pieces, but baking a cake is hard work!

In case you are wondering about the aluminum foil in my pan and I am sure you bakers were, here is the deal. My baking pan (I own just the one) rarely gets used. It’s a heavy pan but not a very good one because it has gotten rusty bits over the years and there may be a small hole in the bottom of it. So whenever I need to use it, I just line it with aluminum foil and problem solved. I don’t know if that adds to my baking time or not, but as long as the food comes out edible, I’m fine with it.

I’d invite you over for some tea and cake with me, but you know, the whole social distancing thingy. I guess I will have to work on eating most of this myself. I may share some with Jay and my son Josh. Brittney doesn’t like peaches, I know, I find that crazy too, and Jason lives at the other end of Missouri, so sorry Jason. Now I just need the Schwans guy to stop by so I can get some good vanilla ice cream to go with it.

Until next time…

Stay home and stay safe.

Toni

Peach Upside Down Cake

(original recipe may have been from Betty Crocker cookbook)

Preheat oven to 350.

Ingredients:

CAKE:

2 cans (Wilderness) peach pie filling (or 2 cans sliced peaches drained)

1 box yellow cake mix (the buttery moist cakes work best)

3 eggs

1 c. milk

1 stick (1/2 c) melted butter

TOPPING: (on the bottom of pan)

1 stick (1/2 c) melted butter

1 c. packed brown sugar

Mix the topping together -1 stick melted butter and 1 c. packed brown sugar and pour into the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking pan.

Spread the 2 cans of peach pie filling or peaches evenly over the top of that layer.

Do not follow the cake mixes directions on the box, instead -Mix together the cake mix, 3 eggs, 1 c. milk, and 1 stick of melted butter. Pour over the top of the peach layer.

Bake at 350 for 35-40 min and check that the middle of the cake is done. It may take up to an hour or so. After cake has cooled you can invert it onto a flat sheet. Remember the top will be runny! (I have inverted it and then slid it back into original pan so the peach topping is now on the top of the cake)

Eat warm, store covered in refrigerator. (Ice cream is optional)

As a child I hated tea. I had only ever been offered ice tea but I found the taste of it horrible to my young taste buds. My neighbor girl Debbie’s family were big ice tea drinkers.

I remember every summer when I was over at their house, which was most days, she’d pour herself a tall glass of ice tea into those multicolored aluminum tumblers that were so cool to drink out of. I refused every time and always wished I liked tea. It smelled good to me and to hear the clink of ice in those aluminum cups was such an invitation to drink, but not for me.

My parents were not tea drinkers either if I am recalling right. They were coffee people and I grew up a coffee person. Straight black coffee. Yum! Later when fancy coffee places became a thing I was introduced to a “white chocolate mocha latte” by my oldest daughter Torri. It became my new thing and I found a coffee creamer that when added to my home brewed coffee mimicked the fancy version almost perfectly. I was set for life, or so I thought.

During the time I was staying at Torri’s to help out for a while, she also introduced me to hot tea. I was very hesitant at first, recalling my childhood dislike of tea, but found I did like the pleasant flavors. The next thing I knew I was trying flavored ice teas as well and settled on peach tea as my number one choice. Well look at me, I was now a coffee AND tea person. Debbie would be proud.

Several months or more ago, as I age I lose track of time, my acid reflux disease decided to make a hearty comeback. No more coffee or tea or anything with acid, or fizzy, or minty or spicy. Most of the food and drink world were eliminated in one fell swoop. Now what was I to do?

Thankfully near me there is a sweet little “tea cellar” shop that sells all kinds of loose leaf teas. I had collected many various tea strainers and tea cups and saucers to have my teas in over the years, now I needed to find a tea I could still drink and not upset the stomach with too much acid.

Rooibos tea is one of those teas and this little shop had a few flavors I tried out. I had to eliminate several due to mint being an ingredient or a citrus being an ingredient, but then I found my golden tea – Bourbon St. Vanilla. Lightly sweet taste with just the right amount of vanilla. Add to it a good splash of my almond vanilla creamer and I am almost back to my long ago white chocolate vanilla flavor! Heaven in a cup.

I have learned a few things about making my tea. It’s ok just to nuke the water in your coffee cup, tea pots are optional, although they are pretty cool. You don’t need a special tea strainer to put your tea in, just go to the shop and buy a pack of their medium tea filter papers. I like about a tablespoon or more of tea in my filter rather than the teaspoon or two that the tea packs say. I also like to let mine steep for a bit longer than the usual five minutes.

If you go to a “home” goods type store for $3 you can buy a pair of “pot watchers” that work perfectly to “clip” your tea filter bag into your cup of hot water, and no tea leaves in the bottom of your cup. I also found I prefer the taste of almond vanilla creamer over regular vanilla creamer and can only find it at the big “T” store. I’ve included photos because I don’t get paid for advertising and can’t just throw out brand names willy-nilly, (hence all the ” “) but I think you can figure it out.

So while we may all be staying home for a while, I hope you will brew yourself a nice “cuppa”, enjoy a good book or re-watch some of your favorite TV shows. If you try my brand, let me know what you think. Stay safe.

Until next time…

Toni

Recently I have been going through my cookbooks trying to pare down a few. I have a TON of cookbooks, like a library’s worth. Some might think I’m doing what the Swede’s call “death cleaning” (they should think of a better term) or that I am decluttering. My children would call it thankful they don’t have to deal with it. I’m just culling the herd.

You would probably assume a person with as many cookbooks as I have, that I must be a pretty good cook and a darn good baker. You would be absolutely – WRONG. I dislike cooking and I HATE baking, mainly because I am so horrible at it, and have no patience for it. I have all of these cookbooks because I like looking at well cooked/baked food and I can still have dreams, can’t I?

Whatever genetic coding for baking I was supposed to get, I did not. My maternal grandmother was Danish and she was an awesome baker. My mother was a good cook and an awesome baker. My cousins are awesome bakers – oh and quilters! That was another gene that passed me by on my mom’s side. My children are all good cooks and great bakers (they can also quilt a bit), so why did it skip me?

I’m okay as a cook. I am not a fancy cook and as I explained in the last blog I only get to cook about six different meals, so no chance to hone those skills. It’s baking that hates me and the feeling is mutual. Once in a great while by some miraculous occurrence I will turn out something great when I bake, but the odds are against it.

When I was first married I baked a “from scratch” apple pie, crust and all. My mother-in-law who was also a great baker, even said it was a really good pie. But it was a one time fluke. My next attempts at pie baking were disasters and I shut that down immediately. I know when I am beaten.

When my children were little and had to bring treats to school they were always sent with store purchased cupcakes or cookies. I was never one of those over-achiever moms. At Christmas only, I can make the best sugar cookies ever, it’s my absolute one thing I am proud to bake, but I’ve goofed those up many times over the years as well.

Another thing that has a fifty-fifty chance of turning out ok for me are chocolate chip cookies. I don’t like the puffy ones, or the crispy ones, or the ones with lots of stuff added to them. I like the flat chewy ones like my mother-in-law made, hers were my favorite. I finally got so I could get that result most of the time and it’s because I don’t measure things accurately.

My children cringe when I am making something that requires actual measuring. I rarely use a liquid measuring cup, I just grab one of my plastic cups out of the drawer, the ones they tell me are for dry ingredients. A cup is a cup I tell them. My kids measure with precision, some even measure by weight, but that’s getting just crazy. This isn’t science after all….

The whole problem with baking is precision. I am NOT a precise person. Almost everything I do is by the seat of my pants including cooking. It has led me to some adventures in my life and my cooking has had some interesting outcomes. Quite often when I am cooking I have not checked for all the ingredients first and so I am also trying to substitute something, at varying degrees of success. Ah but baking, apparently you have to use all the correct measuring tools and measure each and every teaspoon or cup exactly. You also need all of the correct ingredients. I don’t have time for that.

If I want a cake or a muffin, I usually go buy one. I’ve learned my lessons over the years. Doing all that fussy measuring and mixing in just the right order just to end up with a disaster, who needs that? I know where to go buy my favorites, I’m good, thank you.

When I do attempt to bake something it is usually a last minute decision and never a wise one. For instance, last night at eleven-thirty I got the idea to bake a box of brownies that had been sitting in my cupboard for weeks. Yes, ever the optimist I do buy baked goods mixes. The idea came because my daughter Brittney had baked these beautiful brownies and had given me two earlier that day and now I was longing for more gooey chocolate goodness.

I heated the oven to 350 degrees and mixed together the box mix as instructed. Luckily brownies are not too complicated, eggs, water, vegetable oil. I did not have any vegetable oil and was thinking of using applesauce because I thought I’d read somewhere you can substitute that for oil in baking. I remembered Jay had this buttery vegetable oil that he uses when he makes hash browns. It had the words “vegetable oil” in it, that will work.

I also don’t have a 9 x 13 pan (because I don’t bake) so I used this smaller pan that looks like it’s 6 x 10 or something. I buttered the bottom of the pan as the box said to “grease it”, poured in my mix and popped it in the oven for thirty minutes because the box said forty for a 9 x 13. About ten minutes into the baking I got the sudden notion that maybe some mini chocolate candies would be good in part of the brownies. You can never have enough chocolate.

Now here is where it turns ugly, you bakers may want to turn away. Instead of taking the pan out of the oven and sprinkling part of the brownies with a few candies like a normal person would, I grabbed a handful of candies, opened the oven door, and tried to chuck a few on top of the brownies without burning my hand on the top oven rack. Brilliant, right?

A few fell onto one corner of the brownies, the rest landed on the bottom of the stove or on my new pizza stone that was on the rack under the pan. Before you judge my thinking remember it is now after midnight. Needless to say all the missed candies were then burning up and smoking the entire rest of the time. I was truly amazed that the smoke alarm did not go off when I opened the oven door later to retrieve my brownies. My smoke alarm near the kitchen gets a good work out, we never have to test those batteries. I was also worried my brownies would taste like smoke, I am happy to say they did not.

The thing about brownies is that it is hard to tell when they are done. I did what the box said about the toothpicks and they came out clean, I touched the top of them to see if they bounced back, I read that somewhere too, but maybe it only applies to cakes. I think they were done, I wasn’t chancing any more candies smoking away anyway, so I shut the oven down and called it good. Brownies are so naturally gooey it’s hard to tell. I’m eating them regardless. They’re chocolate.

Until next time…

Toni