In The Kitchen

Hey everybody! Ready to roll up your sleeves and do some cookin'? If you would rather stay in your comfortable chair for the time being, read on and learn about some of our cooking adventures and fun, and also get a recipe or two for your own adventures!

Beka and I are the cooks in this house. I make breakfast and often make lunch as well. Beka usually makes lunch, and we both pitch in on desserts. I like making desserts but dislike making lunch and HATE making breakfast. The reason breakfast is low on my list is because I can never seem to find tasty, easy, make-ahead recipes for breakfast. I have begun making my own breakfast cook-book. Every good recipe I try goes in my red binder. I've got quite a few in there now, but it seems that every time I look in there I have just made everything in it a few days ago!

To keep you from the same problem, here is one of our favorite breakfast recipes. It is very tried and true; I have made it over and over! Indeed, this page in our cookbook is always full of flour, oil stains, and dough splatters, no matter how many times we clean it! This breakfast recipe is not too sweet and tastes so good warm from the oven!

Lemon Oat Scones

Ingredients

~ 1/3 cup firm stick margarine or butter (we substitute oil frequently)
~ 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
~ 1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
~ 3 tablespoons sugar
~ 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
~ 2 teaspoons grated lemon peel (we use dried lemon peel)
~ 1/4 teaspoon salt
~ 1 large egg, beaten
~ 1/2 cup raisins or currants (we are not raisin fans in this house so we leave them out)
~ 4 to 6 tablespoons milk
~ 1 large egg, beaten

Directions

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Cut margarine into flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, lemon peel and salt in medium bowl, using pastry blender or crisscrossing two knives, until mixture looks like fine crumbs. Stir in 1 egg, the raisins and just enough milk so dough leaves side of bowl.
3. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface. Knead lightly 10 times. Roll or pat 1/2 inch thick and cut with floured biscuit cutter, or pat into 1/2-inch-thick rectangle and cut into diamond shapes with sharp knife. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Brush dough with beaten egg.
4. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Serve warm if desired. Makes about 15 scones.

Note: These scones are not very sweet. We like ours with jam and butter. I make mine with butter and store-bought oats, roll them thick, and cut them out with fancy cookie cutters. That makes them like a nice biscuit, and I find them more appetizing made that way. However, they are still very tasty with oil and old-fashioned oats! The secret is to roll them thick. Rolled thin they get way too crispy. I like to make this the day before, lay the cut-out scones on cookie-sheets, cover the trays, and put them in the fridge. The next morning I put them in the oven which results in a hot breakfast without all the work. If you wish to do this, just increase the cooking time about 10 minutes.
Definitely my favorite part about this recipe is this: any leftovers from breakfast I put away in a basket on our counter. All throughout the day I see people sneaking over to grab a scone from the basket. They are inevitably gone by the end of the day, because these scones, once cooled, make a delicious, nutritious snack! I have eaten five of these with hot chocolate while doing school.

I have had some interesting experiences making breakfast. Once I made pop-overs, and, true to my motto 'Make breakfast the day before so you can sleep in as long as possible', I put the filled muffin tin in the fridge until cooking time the next day. The next morning, as I was sleepily putting the tin into the oven, I noticed something was wrong with my pop-overs. A strange clear yellow substance had risen to the surface, and a thick, gooey paste was layered on the bottom. Alarmed, I tried to decide what to do. Should I bake them and risk them tasting awful, or make a new batch? In a compromise, I grabbed a spoon and painstakingly mixed up each separate muffin-to-be. Hoping they would taste good, I put them in the oven to bake. They tasted fine, but it turned out that there was another problem. I had put the pop-overs in tin-foil muffin-cup liners, and that proved a mistake. When my family attempted to peel away the lining, all the muffin came with it, leaving the top of the muffin alone to be eaten. Scraping the muffin off the lining only resulted in tiny shards of tin in the muffin, highly discouraging to large appetites!

Timmy setting the table. Photo by me.

Our big meal of the day is lunch. Beka and I often spend over an hour preparing the meal, and everyone is always starving! One of our quick and oh-so-tasty meals is Chicken and Rice Casserole.

Beka received this newspaper-clipped recipe from our great-uncle Paul Aardsma. It became an instant favorite the first time she made it, and has been requested again and again! It's a great way to use up the leftover chicken from yesterday's roast.

Chicken and Rice Casserole

Ingredients

~ 2 cups chicken, cooked and cut into small pieces
~ 1 cup rice, cooked
~ 1 can of cream of chicken soup
~ 3 tablespoons onion, chopped
~ 2 cups celery, diced
~ 2 tablespoons lemon juice
~ 1/4 cup mayonnaise
~ 1 teaspoon salt
~ 1 teaspoon pepper
~ 1 cup potato chips, crushed (we have also used bread crumbs with success)

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients except chips in a large bowl. Mix well.
2. Place in a 2-quart baking dish.
3. Cover with crushed potato chips.
4. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in a preheated 350-degree oven. Serves 6 to 8.

Note: We quickly found that one dish was not enough for our ravenous appetites; a double batch fed us all with few leftovers. If you hate onion, leave it out! We do if we don't have any on hand and love it either way.

I never was much of a hand at making mashed potatoes. We make ours from scratch: starting with planting the potatoes! I love to eat mashed potatoes, especially lump-free ones, but I have never mastered the art of making them. Beka, who makes some of the best I have ever tasted, has given me at least ten lessons. I have watched her make them time and time again, but whenever I get the bowl of hot potatoes in my own hands, I just can't seem to do it. During the summer, when I did ALL the cooking, I had one very bad experience with them. I set out to make just a small bowl of mashed potatoes to go with some sweet-and-sour chicken I had made. Trying to act confident, I added the milk, butter, and salt, and turned on the beaters. To my horror, my mixture turned first to mush, and then, as I beat it some more, into a pasty, wilted mess that slid off my finger when I tried to taste it. It tasted worse then it looked, and that's saying something because the potatoes were a dull, muddy gray color. Defeated and crushed, I carried the bowl to Beka, who stared at the bowl in shock and cried out, "What did you do to them?" We ended up throwing the potatoes away and eating bread with our chicken instead. Since then, I have let Beka handle all mashed potato meals and comfort myself that I can make better dumplings than she, most of the time.

Beka making orange juice for lunch. Photo by me.

And what's a good meal without a dessert? Absolutely nothing, in our minds! We have many favorite dessert recipes, but pie ranks high on our list. All kinds: apple, pumpkin, cheesecake, cherry, mulberry...yes, we love 'em all!

Poor Man's Pecan Pie

Ingredients

~ 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch single crust pie
~ 4 eggs
~ 1/2 cup butter, melted
~ 1 cup dark corn syrup (we used light corn syrup with no problems)
~ 1 cup white sugar
~ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
~ 1 pinch salt
~ 1 cup rolled oats
Directions

1. Beat the eggs. Stir in melted butter, syrup, sugar, salt, and vanilla. Mix thoroughly. Stir in oats. Pour filling into crust.
2. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 35 to 40 minutes.

Note: We made one of our pies with oil so Dad, who can't eat dairy products, could have it. We actually liked the pie made with oil better than the pie made with butter because it wasn't so sweet! We decided to make any future ones with oil.

I like to experiment with recipes. One of my favorite things to make is desserts. One Sunday afternoon, I got ambitious, and looking through on old cookbook, I struck on a recipe for Ginger Candy. It was described as light, delicious, heavenly, and melt-in-your-mouth candy. A strong desire for Ginger Candy immediately hit me. I pulled out the ingredients, and began to cook. Everything was going fine, and I could just taste that candy! In the last stage of many boilings, coolings, stirrings, beatings, and mixings, I was supposed to add the ginger. Undecided whether I should stir or beat the ginger into the rapidly cooling and hardening candy, I grabbed the beaters and beat away. My candy crumbled! As I beat it, it literally became a bowlful of crumbs. Surprised, I decided I could not waste all that butter, milk, etc., and pressed the crumbs into a greased pan. I left it, after a few tastes that told me my recipe was neither light, heavenly, or melt-in-your mouth, and that it also tasted very strongly of ginger! I hoped that time would make my candy what the recipe had described. It didn't. The crumbly, ginger stuff was thrown out after each person made a small attempt to eat it. I never tried that recipe again.

Despite failures, I think I have made some good things in the kitchen. Be that as it may, my whole family is still alive and flourishing, and most of the comments I get back are encouraging.

The Weekly Bible Verse

Matthew 16:24-25: Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it."

Bits and Pieces

Well! Here we are officially in 2008! We had a small New Year's Eve celebration at our home. Mom bought some party crackers, and we donned some paper hats, played games, ate special snacks, and sang songs. We attempted to sing 'Auld Lang Syne' at the close of our evening, but ended up laughing too hard to sing because we weren't quite sure how it went!

Us five fooling around on New Year's Eve. Photo by Mom.

A Word About The Weather

A Word of Wisdom

Never jump into a catfight, even if your pet is being chewed up. Once one of our outdoor cats got inside through an open door, and an immediate and severe fight ensued between my fiercely territorial cat and the outdoor one. At my yell, Timmy came running, dove into the fray, and grabbed my cat out of it. He escaped with just a few scratches and cuts, but he knows never to do that again!