Month: December 2010

Posted on

crumpets with local jam

More Crumpets?? CLICK picture for recipe

Don’t you love it when folks ask for more of what you just made? It is certainly satisfying to make something that everyone enjoys and our Crumpets are a family hit… I tweaked my recipe a bit to fine tune the air bubbles so popular in what we call ‘English Muffins’… but sometimes ‘rediscovering’ old secrets can be fun… even tasty!

Our Crumpets with Mama's Blueberry Preserves... YUM!
Our Crumpets with Mama's Blueberry Preserves... YUM!

At our local Farmer’s Market , I found a very nice vendor who produces a very superior Jam and Jellies called “Mama’s Preserves.” What drew my attention are two of my favorites… one was a blueberry and another a Plum Jam…. we don’t often find these out here and I couldn’t resist trying them out!

BTW. I prefer to find Jams and Jellies that don’t use HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP…. and , unfortunately, most of the labels of the large commercial companies, even many gourmet jams and jellies use it.  Although it may be a coincidence that America got ‘fat’ at exactly the same time this stuff hit the market… I don’t like what I read about it… and what’s bad, they now want to change the name.

Posted on

Crumpets or English Muffins are delicious with butter and jam

crumpets
Crumpets or what we call English Muffins is an easy and fun treat to make! CLICK on the picture for my recipe

Frankly, I don’t know anyone who makes crumpets or English muffins from scratch… and I do know a lot of folks who cook! Naturally, I thought with so many English folks raving about their own crumpets that there must be something special going on….. and my investigation said there was!

Wikipedia says the following:

“Crumpets may have been an Anglo-Saxon invention.In early times, they were hard pancakes cooked on a griddle, rather than the soft and spongy crumpets of the Victorian era which were made with yeast. The crumpet-makers of the Midlands and London developed the characteristic holes, by adding extra baking powder to the yeast dough. The term itself may refer to a crumpled or curled-up cake, or have Celtic origins relating to the Breton krampoez meaning a “thin, flat cake” and the Welsh crempog or crempot , a type of pancake. However, since many English words share a heritage with other languages, it may be cognate with the similar German word krumm (from Middle High German krump, krum) which means “bent”.“

In any event, it is a wonderful snack , toasted in the toaster and then smothered with butter and jam! For me it is perfect with a cup of coffee!   CLICK here for our recipe

Roger

Posted on

holiday cookin’ and fun

Some -- but hardly -- all of the fun foods we will be cooking this holiday season! CLICK on the picture for our abridged family favorite foods!

Laura passed an article to me that I found a little sad. It had to do with the tendency of young women to lose contact with their poor ol dads. After reflecting on it a bit I realized that this is probably true of all people who lose common interests. Fortunately, all of my daughters are foodies and cooking is what we do together! It isn’t too unusual for them to give me a call and say, “Dad, you left something out of this recipe… what is it?” or “How do we make (this or that) again?” I feel fortunate.

As long as they enjoy cooking… we’ll be in contact!  😉

Posted on

dumping the local newspaper

dumping the local newspaper

I made a rather crude graph, but it does make a startling comparison between the growth statistics in the U.S. population and the falling circulation rates of our nation’s newspapers. There may be some logical reasons that might explain some of the discrepancy, but if I were guessing, I would say than many local newspapers have worked overtime to lose a great many of their core users…. and attracted few if any young subscribers. Newspaper circulation today is little more than it was in 1940…. what does that tell you?

To be frank, maybe I felt sorry for their pointy heads and kept my subscription going for years… but no more. Our subscription runs out soon… and it’s already not missed.

So, what goes in it’s place on our breakfast table?  2 iPads! I just went out and bought a second one and we now have two. I have to say that although the cost of an iPad would pay for dirty-ink-on-the-fingers copies of the local rag for a number of years… this newspaper has nothing for me.  Plus, I will not miss the aggravation.

I feel more relaxed already!

Posted on

a better pumpkin pie

there is nothing like a real pumpkin pie... make the pumpkin from scratch is even better!

Actually, I wanted to place a picture of the pie I most recently made with this recipe, but with a delicious Butternut Squash… but alas … it disappeared all 12″ round of it! I think what made the Butternut squash pie so wonderful was not the precooking in a pressure cooker, but it was pureeing the mixture infused with a collection of spices and then setting it for a month to blend in the freezer… delicious! Of course the heavy cream substitute for the condensed milk is a superb improvement! (Why was refrigeration invented if people still use condensed milk?)

Here’s the recipe