Fix Those Cooking Blunders

A few weeks ago one of my friends made a big pot of chili.  When her husband tasted it, he said it was too salty - which got us to trying to figure out how to fix it.  Then the rest of us tasted it and thought it was just fine, no, better than fine, it was really good!  Which was a good thing because we never did figure out how to fix it if it was too salty.  I knew I had read it somewhere, I just couldn't remember where...

So, when I found this list - Fast Fixes for Blunders - in an old Family Circle magazine, I clipped it out.  Now we'll always know how to fix super salty soup as well as fix other cooking blunders or problems.

• To remove grease from stew, soup or gravy, drop a few ice cubes in the pot.  Spoon the cubes out once the grease sticks to the ice.
• Neutralize super-salty soup, stew or tomato sauce with brown sugar.
• To eliminate cabbage odors, place a small tin cup half filled with vinegar on the stove near the cabbage.
• If brown sugar gets lumpy, put an apple wedge in it and microwave on high for about 20 seconds.
• To absorb excess salt, drop in a peeled potato while cooking.
• Puree overcooked vegetables, add broth or milk along with seasonings, and you'll have delicious soup.

2 tips for taking care of too much salt!  I love the idea of ice cubes to remove grease, too.  Cabbage odors aren't something I usually have a problem with, but I have found that vinegar is great for taking care of all kinds of odors.  I don't know why or how, but it works.

I usually just put a slice of bread in my brown sugar canister when it starts getting hard and lumpy.  The bread dries out, and the sugar gets nice and soft again.  (Make that half a slice of bread - while the bread is nice and soft and can easily be folded a bit to fit into the canister, once it dries out, it's not so easy - and you don't really want to break it and get bread crumbs all in your nice, soft brown sugar.  Of course, this all depends on the style of your canisters.  If the top/neck/opening of your canister is smaller than a slice of bread, you'll want to use half.  Believe me, I know!)  The bread is not a quick fix, so if you're ready to bake, and your brown sugar is hard, that apple wedge and microwave tip sounds good.  Then put the bread into the canister so you'll be ready next time.

Do you have any good tips for fixing cooking blunders?

Cranberry Apple Pie Oatmeal (a la Mode)

I love oatmeal in the morning.  I usually cook my oatmeal with dried apples, dried cranberries, and cinnamon - and that's pretty much the perfect oatmeal, but I saw this recipe for Apple Pie Oatmeal on Pinterest, and it looked so good, I just had to try it.  Reading the recipe now, I see that I did not actually follow the recipe.  How could I miss the part about cooking the apple with nuts, butter, brown sugar and spices?  I will have to try it again, I guess.

Here's how I made my oatmeal, and it turned out quite good, too.  Maybe it doesn't actually qualify as an Apple Pie Oatmeal, but I'll call it what I want!

Cranberry Apple Pie Oatmeal (a la Mode)

• Bring to boiling 1 cup water with a dash of salt
• While water boils, cut half an apple into small pieces
• Reduce heat to medium and stir in 1/2 cup old fashioned oatmeal
• Add some cinnamon, the chopped apples, some dried cranberries and cook for 5 minutes or until thickened, stirring occasionally
• Turn burner off or remove from heat; cover and let sit for a few minutes

To serve: top with a little brown sugar and vanilla yogurt  (I used Yoplait Honey Vanilla Greek yogurt - that's the a la Mode part!)

Next time I'm going to try cooking the apples, cranberries, and probably some walnuts with butter, brown sugar, and spices and then cooking the oatmeal with that - like the other recipe - and see if that makes a difference.  If there's a huge difference, I'll be sure to update this recipe.

I'll also go back to using plain yogurt, because the vanilla was a bit too sweet to me.  I love plain yogurt on my oatmeal.

Related articles

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• Five-Grain Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal (themomcamera.wordpress.com)

Antioxidants - Follow-up

I posted a list of antioxidant-rich foods a few weeks ago.  I saw this image on Pinterest tonight, and I thought the pictures and additional information here would be a nice follow-up.  The list isn't exactly the same, but there's some good information about each of the foods listed here and why they're good for us.  I like that coffee is on this list!  I love my morning coffee...
 

Cranberries are really high on my list, too... and broccoli, and strawberries, and peaches, and...  The more healthy choices we have, the more likely we'll all find something we like that is also good for us!

Did anybody notice anything unusual about any of the pictures? (Click the graphic to view full-size)

No More Freezer Burn

When I go shopping, I always check the meat case to see if there are any markdowns.  When an item is getting close to it's Sell By date, the store will usually mark it down to encourage customers to buy it.  Walmart makes them really easy to spot with bright yellow stickers.

Buying this marked-down meat is a good way to save money.  The key is to use it or freeze it by the date on the package.  I usually buy several packages when I can get a good deal - whether it's chicken breasts, steaks, hamburger, or anything else I normally use.  Then the next day I break the large packages down and freeze them in single-use packages, usually in zipper bags, like in this post - Freezing Hamburger.

It wasn't until recently that I found a great way to avoid freezer burn - which happens when you freeze a lot of stuff and don't use it in a timely manner.  It's so simple, I can't believe I didn't think of it myself!  I was thinking maybe I needed one of those Vacuum-Sealing Systems - and one of these would be nice.  But, I was talking to the man who works in the meat department, and he suggested wrapping individual pieces of meat in plastic wrap and then putting them into the zipper bags.

Individually wrapped steaks in my freezer

Wrapping serves two purposes - the plastic wrap protects the steaks from freezer burn, should I not use them right away, and it's so easy to pull out just the number of steaks I need - even though they're all in the same zipper bag.  You know those individually frozen chicken breasts you can buy in the store?  Yes, I buy those too, but if I find a great deal on chicken breasts in the meat department, I can individually freeze my own now!

Also, a note: the best plastic wrap I have ever tried is the Great Value Premium Wrap - Professional Strength you can buy at Walmart.  I never even liked plastic wrap before I tried this stuff.  Seriously, it's great!

Lentil Barley Soup

I found this soup recipe in my Sunday (or Wednesday) paper - at the same time I found the Sweet Potato Chickpea soup that we loved. 

Lentil Barley Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 T olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 ribs celery, diced
• 2 medium carrots, diced
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
• 1/4teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cups lentils (about 16 ounces)
• 3/4 cup barley
• 8 cups broth (vegetable, chicken, beef, whatever you have or like)
• Salt to taste

Directions:

1.  Heat olive oil in large saucepan (6 qt.) over medium heat; add onion, garlic and celery and cook until onion begins to soften and become translucent.  Add carrots and continue cooking 1-2 minutes; add seasonings (except salt) and stir to coat vegetables; allow to cook for a few minutes, until fragrant.
2. Add lentils, barley, and broth; bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, 45 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally until lentils and barley are tender. Add additional stock or water to reach desired consistency, if needed. Add salt to taste.

Alternate (original) Directions:
Place all ingredients, except salt (and olive oil - there was no olive oil in original recipe), in a large soup pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, 45 to 55 minutes, stirring occasionally until lentils and barley are tender. Add additional stock or water to reach desired consistency, if needed. Add salt to taste.

To prepare ahead: You can prepare the soup up to two days ahead. Cool, cover and refrigerate. Reheat when ready to serve.

Yes, I know the original directions sound simpler, and I'm sure the soup will turn out just fine following them.  I just think it adds some extra flavor to cook the vegetables in olive oil first, and to cook the seasonings with them for a couple minutes.  If you're in a hurry or just don't feel like messing with it - don't.  Just toss everything in and cook!

With most soups it is best to prepare ahead, cool, cover and refrigerate, and reheat before serving, but this is one you can serve right away!  It turned out really thick, so I'm thinking I might need to add additional water when I reheat it, but it was perfect tonight.   The flavors were just so good!  Part of the flavors come from whatever broth you use (I used half broth from a deer roast I had cooked and half turkey broth) - so if your broth is good, your soup will be good - but the seasonings in this are really good themselves.  I loved the texture - barley is one of my new favorite things!

I wasn't sure what to serve this with.  Soup usually calls for crackers, bread, biscuits, cornbread, something - but I wasn't sure what this particular soup needed.  I went with toasted whole grain sourdough, which was good, but I'm not sure this soup really needs anything.  It was good all on its own.

I definitely plan to make this one again!

Update: This soup really thickened up after being refrigerated, so I needed to add a cup of water when I reheated.  It also needed a bit of additional salt once the water was added.  I still think it's really good.  My husband said it was 'OK' so I don't think he's a huge fan - but he did eat it.

Italian Style Chicken

I found this recipe in the Food section of my newspaper. It's a keeper!

Italian Style Chicken

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken thighs
• 1-1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning
• 3/4 tsp. garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp. coarse salt
• 1/4 tsp. black pepper
• 1 large thinly sliced onion
• 1 can (14.5 oz.) diced tomatoes
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 2 T quick-cooking tapioca
• 2 cans (15 oz.) rinsed cannellini beans
• 1 10-oz. pkg. frozen spinach, thawed
• 1/2 cup fresh basil torn into small pieces

Directions:

1. Place chicken in a 4-quart or larger slow cooker and sprinkle with Italian seasoning, garlic powder, salt, and pepper.  Scatter onion over chicken.
2. Stir together tomatoes, broth and tapioca; pour over onions.  
3. Cover and cook on high 4-1/2 hours or on low 6-1/2 hours.
4. Stir in beans and spinach; cook 30 minutes more on low.  Stir in basil and serve.

The flavors in this were so good together!  It turned out soupier than I was expecting, but I think that was because I used pearl tapioca instead of instant - it's what I had - and I think I messed it up by soaking it in hot water instead of cold.  Looking back on it, I could have just mixed the tapioca with the cold broth and tomatoes and let it soak in that overnight - since I mixed this up the day before and then cooked it in the morning.  Either way, I'll try it again, whether with instant tapioca or the same kind - to see if there's a difference.  It didn't really matter, because it tasted great.  I just cooked up some fettuccine and served it with that and some sliced sourdough bread.

The original recipe called for bone-in chicken thighs, but I read it wrong and got the boneless thighs out of the freezer.  I don't really like boned chicken in crockpot recipes because it ends up falling apart, and you always have to be on the lookout for bones.  So, I stuck with the boneless.  It was great, because it did fall apart, and there were pieces of chicken all through.  I cooked it on high most of the time, and probably got closer to the 6-1/2 hours than the 4-1/2.

I used Great Northern beans, which I cooked in my crockpot, instead of the cannellini beans - because that's what I had.  The original recipe called for 1/2 cup sliced black olives instead of the spinach, but at least one of the people who would be eating this doesn't like olives, so I left them out.  And the spinach?  The original recipe didn't call for it, but it just seemed like it should have spinach - so I added it.  I didn't actually measure, but a 10-oz. package ought to be about right.  You can add olives instead of the spinach or along with the spinach.

I Need Better Food Pics

In some cases, I just plain need pictures - good or not.  I've been using Pinterest for a while now, and I started thinking that it would be a great way to handle the 'table of contents' on this blog.  Currently I have the tabs at the top linking to all the different categories - using Blogger labels.  And that works OK.  You click the tab for soups, and you get a page with all the posts I've labelled 'soup' - simply scroll down through the posts to find a recipe that looks good.

I thought it would be nicer to create a Board on Pinterest for each of my categories.  Clicking the tab would give you a page - like this one I created for Soups - with all the recipes in that category.  The only problem is that it's not quite that easy.  Why?  Because I don't have pictures on all my recipes, and that means either I can't add those recipes to the Pinterest board, or I have to use my header, which doesn't quite convey the idea.  It's that yummy picture of the recipe that is going to make people look in the first place.  I know I love the pictures in a cookbook - whether I'm cooking or not, I can still get a lot of enjoyment out of looking at the pictures.  Of course, my favorite cookbook - The Best of Mennonite Fellowship Meals - has no pictures at all, but...

Anyway, I have been trying harder to take pictures of everything I make, but I don't always remember - sometimes not until it's half gone, and sometimes not at all.  And, my husband has been known to laugh at me for taking pictures of food.  My problem is that I don't really know what makes a good food pic.  I know one when I see one, but I don't really understand why it's good, and how do I go about taking some of my own?  So it's time for some research into food photography and getting better food pics.  I found a couple posts to start with:

1. Food Photography Techniques and Tips
2. 25 Food Photography Lessons You May Have Missed

and most of all, I just need to remember to take some shots of everything I make - good or not.  Practice makes perfect, right?

In the meantime, what to do about those Pinterest Boards?  Do you think it's a good idea for the 'table of contents' part of this blog?  What do you use to organize your recipe posts to make them easy to browse?