Rum Rasin Ice Cream

Rum Raisin Ice Cream

This is my favorite ice cream. In Utah it is very rare to get this flavor at the local ice cream vendor. Clearly, the local religion did not have "rum raisin" as a flavor of choice for their children.

This is a very simple approach to the recipe. Take the best available vanilla ice cream, mix in rum-soaked raisins and refreeze. (In the photo above, I give credit to photographer Penny de los Santors for the most tasty of photos ever.) The rum-flavored fruitcakes made by my grandmother made me a fan of the rum raisin flavor. A bottle of Bundaberg Rum was the only alcoholic beverage in my grandparent's home, and it was kept in a dark, secret place in the pantry.


Ingredients

1 quart of raisins. The typical box of 24 oz. raisins is a little over a quart

1 cup of dark 70-proof rum

2 quarts of vanilla ice cream (French vanilla is my preference)


First, place the raisins and rum in a half-gallon canning jar and let the mixture sit for a week. I turn the bottle over every day to help the mixing process. Most of the rum will be absorbed by the raisins. If you do not want to wait for a week, adding a little more rum and letting the mixture sit overnight in a sealed container will work.

Place the raisins and ice cream in a bowl and mix wel as the ice cream starts to get soft. Do not let the ice cream melt completely. Place the mixture in a sealed bowl in the freezer. The rum raisin ice cream can be served next day.


                       Our favorite dessert: rum raisin ice cream and Gran's peanut cookies.

The Bundaberg Rum I remember from grandma's cooking has a long and interesting history. Some of my mother's relatives raised sugar cane close to the town of Bundaberg. My grand uncle, Horsley Pashly, owned a sugar cane farm near Bundaberg. I visited the farm on several occasions as a young teenager. Uncle Horsley took considerable time to explain sugar cane farming. He also introduced me to one of the strangest ecological disasters in Australian history, the cane toad.

The Australian Museum reported:
"The natural range of Cane Toads extends from the southern United States to tropical South America. They were deliberately introduced from Hawaii to Australia in 1935, to control scarab beetles that were pests of sugar cane. .....Cane Toads are considered a pest in Australia because they:
Poison pets and injure humans with their toxins; Poison many native animals whose diet includes frogs, tadpoles and frog's eggs; Eat large numbers of honey bees, creating a management problems for bee-keepers; Prey on native fauna; Compete for food with vertebrate insectivores such as small skinks; May carry diseases that can be transmitted to native frogs and fishes."

 The sugar from the sugar cane was produced locally in the Bundaberg area and the byproduct was molasses, which was considered a waste product. In 1888, the local sugar producers combined their resources and started the Bundaberg Rum Distillery as a way to make money from the molasses. This new industry was a success. The patrons are often called "Bundy" drinkers. These patrons have a rowdy reputation in some circles. One recent Wikipedia observation stated:

"Bundaberg Rum has been labelled the drink for yobbos, after some bars reported that 'bundy drinkers are a lot louder, and more disruptive than other patrons.' In 2005, four bars in Brisbane banned the rum products, claiming it makes drinkers aggressive and attracts the wrong crowd."

"Yobbo" is Australian for the USA term "redneck."

Uncle Horsley died in 1982. In checking some of the facts on the Pashley family I came on the following news summary from July 1892. The following depressing series of events generates respect for the daily dangers our pioneers faced. The four-year-old Sydney Pashley was certainly a relative of Uncle Horsley, who was born in 1904.


Taken from The Queenslander: Saturday, July 30, 1892
Queensland News:
Herberton, July 26
"Michael HICKER, a stream tin miner, from Coolgar, left Herberton with his mate on Saturday evening on his way to camp, and when a short distance out on the Watsonville-road he was thrown from his horse, sustaining a fracture of the base of the skull. He was at once taken to the hospital, but died soon after admission.
Don't know where the following happened, paper damaged, in Qld though.
Mrs. Tremble, wife of a carter and wharf lumper, cut her throat this morning with a razor. She made two deep cuts into the wind-pipe, which bled profusely: and she is in a critical condition, owing to the blood suffusing the lungs. The cause of the attempted suicide was melancholy, arising from her being in an almost destitute condition, and a recent accident to one of her children."
------
Rockhampton: July 22,
"A young man named Richard SEALY, a son of ex-Constable SEALY, died last night from the effects of injuries received through a collision with another horseman at the racecourse on Thursday."
-------
Fatal Accidents at Bundaberg, July 25
"Two fatal accidents occurred on Saturday. A child named Sydney PASHLEY, 4 years old, was run over at North Bundaberg by a bullock dray, its head being severed from it's body.
At Fairymead a workman named Conrad RODEGER fell into a tank of boiling juice. He got himself out, but was fearfully burnt. He was removed to the Bundaberg Hospital, where he expired in fearful agony on Saturday afternoon.
Another fatal accident occurred to-day. A well known farmer named Joseph NEWELL, of Kalkall, was leading a horse which had been newly broken in to harness, when the horse bolted and threw him under the dray, the wheel of which passed over him, killing him instantly, his neck being broken."
--------------
The "tank of boiling juice" responsible for the death of Conrad Rodeger was almost certainly a part of the manufacturing of sugar from the sugar cane.

Gran's Peanut Cookies

Gran's Peanut Cookies

In my late teens I was fortunate enough to be welcomed into the Mavor family of Beaudesert in southern Queensland. The younger son, Ian, and I climbed many mountains together. His mother, Agnes, always made me welcome at the family dinner table if I was in the area. Gran, as she became known to children and grandchildren, always had her peanut cookies available ("peanut biscuits" in Australia). In her last years, Ian asked Gran to share her recipe for the "Peanut Biscuits."

In the photo below at a Mavor multi-generational meeting Agnes is standing third from the right with Ian on her left.

Gran's Original Recipe

Ingredients

1/4 pound of butter or margarine

1 teaspoon of Bourneville Cocoa

1 cup of sugar

1 pinch of salt

Vanilla essence drops

1 egg

1 cup of self-raising flour

1 cup of small unsalted peanuts that have been browned and skinned


Mix the ingredients well. Place scoops of the mixture on a baking tray and cook until the desired level of brown is reached.


Al's Adaptions to Gran's Original Recipe

Over time I have made a few adaptions, but the taste has not changed.

Ingredients

First, I doubled the mixture. The cookies never lasted long, and if they did, they kept well in a sealed container.

1/2 pound of non-fat margarine

1 level tablespoon of Hersey's Cocoa

2 eggs or a cup of Egg Beaters

2 cups of artificial sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

2 cups of self-rising flour. (Australians prefer self-raising flour.) If you want to use plain flour, add a level teaspoon of baking powder.

2 cups of small, unsalted, baked peanuts. I prefer the small peanuts to chopped peanuts. Most large grocery stores carry the small, unsalted, baked peanuts in bulk.

Mix all the ingredients well. I use a 1/4 cup measure to scoop the mixture and either bake as cookies or mini-muffins. Coat the baking sheet or muffin pan with olive oil.


Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. Let sit for at least 30 minutes before eating, if you can protect them for that long.

The mini-muffins are great as a desert with ice cream. Judy and I prefer the mini-muffins with rum-rasin ice cream. This is the greatest cookie with the greatest ice cream.




Ian on one of our many backpacking adventures in the mountains of southern Queensland.

I consider my adoption by the Mavor family in my late teens one of my greatest privileges and learning experiences at a time when I was setting life-long directions.

Corned Beef and Cabbage Soup

Corned Beef and Cabbage Soup

Corned Beef has nothing to do with corn, while it does relate to "grain." The link is to a grain of salt. "Corn is the Old English word for grain or pebble. Corned beef is salted beef and was a major commodity in 18th and 19th century trading between Ireland and England. Unfortunately, the Irish people did not benefit much because most of the beef was raised on land the English nobility had taken over in Ireland. As a child taken to the local butcher by my grandmother in a little town in outback Australia, I watched the corned beef being made as the butcher hand-pumped brine solution into the slabs of beef with a foot long needle. The end product was important at a time when there was little electricity and home refrigeration, and the non-perishable nature of salted meat made corned beef an important part of the diet. The corned meat also came in canned form such as Spam or "Bully Beef."

Ingredients

 2 1/2  pounds of corned beef. Chop the beef into 1 inch pieces. This should serve 8.

1 medium to large head of cabbage, cored and shredded.

2 large onions, diced

6-8 ribs of diced celery, include the leafy tops

1/2 cup of olive oil

6 cups of diced carrots

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

8 cups of chicken or beef broth

4 cups of cooked rice. The original Irish recipes probably used barley instead of rice so that is an option.

3 cans of 16 oz. diced Italian tomatoes

1/4 cup of Worcestershire Sauce

2 12 oz. bottles of beer. I prefer Guinness Stout.

If the corned beef brisket came with a packet of spices use them and reduce the spices listed above by half. The spices are basically pickling spices. Typically they include:

•8 allspice berries
•1 teaspoon black peppercorns
•2 bay leaves, crumbled
•2 fresh thyme sprigs or about 1/2 teaspoon dried leaf thyme

Some will drop the spices in the soup pot, I prefer to drop the spices in the soup pot in a tea holder or wrap them in a cheese cloth. When cooking is over I remove them

Heat the olive oil in the soup pot and add the onions and beef. Stir for five minutes and add every thing except the broth, stout and tomatoes. Stir for another five minutes and add the broth, stout beer and tomatoes. Slow-cook the soup for at least 30 minutes.

To make a complete meal, serve with substantive slices of garlic bread. See the garlic bread recipe in the previous posting.

In the Irish pubs I used to frequent in Boston and New York, this was often the "Friday Night Special" and was served with bread at the bar. No St. Patrick's Day bar celebration was held without Corned Beef and Cabbage Soup on the menu.

Garlic Toast

Garlic Toast

A hearty soup can become a complete meal if it is accompanied by a substantive slice of garlic toast. The secret to a "substantive" slice of garlic toast is a tasty, large amount of cheese on a thick slice of bread. Thick slices of wheat bread or sourdough bread are excellent. A wimpy slice of standard white bread will not make a meal.

For two slices of bread, mix the following:

1 cup of grated Cheddar - I  prefer medium Cheddar. The Pepper Jack and Medium Cheddar is my favorite combination. You may  prefer another combination.

1 cup of grated Pepper Jack cheese.

4 tablespoons of Garlic Olive Oil  (olive oil with 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder will work)

a dash of salt and pepper to taste

Mix these ingredients well.

Toast the bread lightly, then add the cheese to the lightly toasted bread and return to the toaster. Continue to toast until the cheese starts to brown. Remove and serve.

Do not overdo the olive oil or it will pool up in the bottom of the toaster or oven and could catch fire. You could toast the bread then place the bread and cheese mixture on aluminium foil and place back in the toaster or oven.

The soup above is a ham and bean soup with chopped steamed potatoes, carrots and asparagus pieces. The beans are Great Northern Beans. See the posting for Senate Bean Soup (5/21/12) for an excellent basic ham and bean soup.

If you want serious garlic bread with an extensive history, take a loaf of french baguette bread, slice it down the middle and pile on the cheese mixture and toast. You do not need to lightly toast the bread first. With garlic bread made this way you can place the bread on some aluminum foil and place in the oven and bake for 15 minutes at 300 degrees.  Texas toast is another popular form of garlic bread that is often served with soup.

Tough Times Spam Chili

Tough Times Spam Chili



With tough times from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, many had to prepare food with modest resources. This recipe will deliver a substantial and relatively healthy meal with some canned goods and one cooking pot or dutch oven.

Ingredients

2 cans of Spam

1 large can of baked beans or two 12 oz cans

1 12 oz. can of diced tomatoes; Italian diced tomatoes are excellent and they reduce the need for additional spices.

1 can of condensed french onion soup

1 can of condensed mushroom or garlic mushroom soup

1 tablespoon of chili powder

1 teaspoon of curry powder

1 small, 10 oz. can of diced tomatoes and green chilies. This 10 oz. can reduces the need for additional spices, particularly if you lack the chili powder and curry powder.

4 slices of bacon if you have it. Dried bacon bits will help instead.

Heat the cooking pot and add some cooking oil or bacon, if you have it, and add the diced Spam to the pot and brown the mixture. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir as you bring to a slow boil. Stir and slow boil for at least 30 minutes. Rice stores well. If you have some, boil and add to the Spam chili when served. You should not need to add water. The condensed soup will give the dish an excellent chili texture. With the support of the rice you should be able to serve at least six and possibly eight people.

This dish should store well without refrigeration. If there is any question, reheat and bring to a slow boil for 20 minutes. Dried potato flakes store well and can be used in place of the rice. Just mix potato flakes with some of the bottled water. Old, dry bread could be used if you place the chili  on top of the bread. You will not notice if the bread is old and dry.



If Times Get Really Tough.

Spam, canned baked beans, and canned tomatoes are the basics. Make sure you have several cans of each (for emergencies) along with bottled water. If you do not have a source of heat for cooking, the Spam, beans and tomatoes can be eaten directly from the can. Mixing the three cold ingredients in a bowl would make a more tasty dish. The acidity of the tomatoes helps with the storage of the food once the cans are opened.

Stuffed Potatoes

Stuffed Potatoes

A dish of stuffed potatoes, also called twice-cooked potatoes, is an excellent way to prepare a tasty meal with modest resources.

Ingredients

8 small to medium new red potatoes or the more traditional 4 large russet potatoes. I prefer the new red potatoes.

1/2  cup sour cream

1/2 cup melted butter or margarine

 1 cup chopped green onions or shallots

1 cup  bacon bits

2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

1 teaspoon Paprika

1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper


Boil the potatoes in their skins until cooked. You can bake the potatoes which would require baking at 400 degrees for about 60 minutes or more for large potatoes. Cut in half and scoop out the inside until about an eighth of an inch is left.
I  add  an extra potato to replace a potato I might mess up in the scooping process. The extra potato is added to the stuffing mix.

Prepare the stuffing mix. Combine all ingredients except for 1/2 cup of bacon bits, the paprika and the cheese. Mix well by hand or with a mixer.

Stuff the mix into the shells. Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes.

 Mix the cheese, the remaining half cup of bacon bits, and the paprika together and place on top of the stuffed potatoes.

Place the stuffed potatoes back in the oven at 250 degrees for 20 minutes until the cheese is melted.

Options

A range of tasty options exist. One of the easiest is to include seafood in the mixture. Use 6-8 ounces of canned crab meat, imitation crab meat, diced clams or tuna. Drain the seafood before adding to the mixture. Adding 1/2 cup of blue cheese dressing to the mixture is popular.


Campfire Stuffed Potatoes

A different form of stuffed potatoes in Australia is a simple and tasty dish. Take a potato, slice it into half-inch wide pieces and place buttered onion slices between the potato slices. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Wrap each potato in heavy foil and bury in the campfire coals. You can rest the potatoes on top of the coals. You can also do this with sweet potatoes. In my younger days the potatoes were buried in the coals and cooked without the foil. This was a basic aboriginal cooking method. If you do not have a campfire try an oven at 400 degrees for at least 60 minutes. If I have the time I mix half a cup of olive oil with a tablespoon of bacon bits, half a teaspoon of dried basil and a half teaspoon of garlic salt and bast the onion slices and potato slices before baking.

Beef Soup

Beef Soup

This beef soup recipe has an interesting ancestor - Irish Stew. Originally Irish stew was a complete meal made from low-cost locally available ingredients. The meat was usually from sheep. It was often called lamb stew, but I doubt the meat came from lambs and was probably from sheep too old for producing wool. Cutting the meat into small pieces and cooking for some time was a necessity. Potatoes were also a major ingredient along with carrots from the home garden. The Irish immigrants changed their traditional recipe and beef often replaced lamb or mutton. If you wish to change the following soup recipe to a thicker stew dish often served on a plate rather than in dish add a few tablespoons of dried potato flakes. The Gaelic term for this dish is "stobhach gaelach."

Ingredients

3 lbs. chuck steak diced into 1/2 cubes

4 slices of bacon

1/2 cup olive oil

1 tsp. pepper

2 tsp. salt

3 medium onions diced

1 8oz. can tomato paste

2 12oz. cans of Guinness stout. If you do not have stout or a similar dark beer, use beef broth.

3 cups diced carrots

1 can of peas

1/2 cup of olive oil

3 Tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce

1 teaspoon Italian spices

1 teaspoon garlic powder


Place the bacon and olive oil in the pot or dutch oven and brown. Add the beef then the other ingredients after the meat starts to brown. Slow cook for at least 60 minutes.


I often serve this dish with thick slices of sourdough bread or garlic bread.

Hungarian Stuffed Green Peppers

Hungarian Stuffed Green Peppers

These stuffed peppers are made in the Hungarian tradition with good Hungarian Paprika and slow cooked for 90 to 120 minutes at no more that 300 degrees. I have also prepared for multiple meals by making an excess of the meat and rice mixture used to stuff the peppers. This extra stuffing mixture is ideal for making meatballs or rissoles. My preferred use of the extra stuffing mixture and the tomato sauce is in stuffed eggplants. The tomato sauce can be replaced with a 50/50 mixture of bread crumbs and grated cheese. (See the last photograph.)

Stuffed medium Yellow Peppers

Hungarians like stuffed vegetables. Whether it is cabbage, kohlrabi or peppers, stuffed vegetables are on the menu in every household. Hungarian stuffed peppers aren’t really Hungarian. This recipe has Turkish origins and was adopted by Hungarians during the Turkish occupation in the 16th and 17th centuries. When the Turks invaded Hungary in the 16th century, they brought their cooking customs with them. These included the use of the spice, paprika. They also taught the Hungarians how to cook stuffed peppers and eggplants. The Turks also introduced coffee to Hungary.

Hungarian yellow peppers give this dish its distinct taste, although any kind of bell peppers can be used. Multicolored bell peppers, including green peppers, have thicker skin and may take longer to cook. In the recipe below we use large green peppers, not the traditional Hungarian yellow peppers shown above. In many ways the stuffed peppers of Hungary and Turkey were another adaption of rissoles, common in cooking cultures around the globe. A modest amount of the most expensive ingredient, meat, was well used to provide tasty and less expensive dishes. In many countries, bread served as the combination ingredient. In the case of Hungarian stuffed peppers, rice was the major combination ingredient.

This is an easy recipe to prepare and if you make extra stuffing mixture you can use the extra stuffing as the base for a number of other different meals.

Large Stuffed green Pepper

Ingredients

6 medium to large green peppers

1 lb ground beef

1 lb ground pork

1 lb ground mild Italian Sausage

3 eggs

3 16 oz.cans diced Italian tomatoes

1  12oz. can tomato paste

2 cups of chopped white onions

3 cups cooked rice

3 Tbsp. imported sweet Hungarian Paprika

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

1/2 cup sugar or sugar substitute

1/2 cup olive oil


Take the tops off the peppers, clean out the seeds and dice the tops of the peppers.

Prepare the stuffing mixture. Combine and mix the ground meat, rice, eggs, salt, pepper, paprika, sugar, olive oil and one cup of chopped onions.

Prepare the tomato sauce. Combine the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, diced green pepper tops, and one cup of diced onions. Note: Tomato Sauce may not be the most descriptive term. Salsa may be a better term. In Hungary the term would be "lesco"(LEH-choh). This is a traditional dish of peppers, tomatoes, and paprika and serves to enhance a range of meat, soup and stew dishes as well as serving as a side dish.

Place the peppers in a cooking pot. Add the meat and rice stuffing mixture to the peppers.  Add the tomato sauce until the peppers are covered.

Slow cook the stuffed peppers at 300 degrees for two hours.  With large peppers, a half pepper may be a single serving for most. I serve the peppers with the tomato sauce and nothing else.

Options. Some have placed the rice in the stuffing mixture uncooked. I prepare a rice mixture and combine a 6 oz.packet of Uncle Ben's wild rice with two cups of plain white rice. Slow cooking the peppers for two hours will ensure the rice is cooked. If you do not have diced Italian tomatoes, add a teaspoon of Italian seasoning to diced or crushed tomatoes, fresh or canned.

Some substitute ground turkey for the ground beef to make the meal a little more healthy. Cooks who have a good track record with this dish stress the importance of sugar to enhance the spices. They also stress the importance of slow cooking and the use of  Hungarian sweet paprika. A dutch oven makes an excellent alternative to the traditional saucepan.

Stuffed Peppers Ready To Be Covered In Tomato Sauce

From My Time In New York

I fell in love with this dish when serving as a lowly  beginning professor at Columbia University in the early 1970s. Three blocks from Columbia was a Mom and Pop restaurant, The Green Tree Hungarian Restaurant. Pop met you at the door and closely monitored and ensured quality service. Mom was very much in charge of the kitchen and often came by the table to make certain you were pleased with the cooking. While the restaurant is long gone, I have many fond memories of the tasty modestly priced food, great service and friendly family atmosphere.


The New York Times Dining Out Guide from May 1977, reported:

GREEN TREE HUNGARIAN RESTAURANT 1034 Amsterdam Avenue - New York


"Trim and spotless, the rough, white plaster walls are hung with colorful patterned rugs, glazed earthenware and garlands of dried red peppers. This is acuisine de femme, with women doing all the cooking ......  The food is hearty and warmly fragrant, and portions are large. Appetizers are unusually good; among them, stuffed peppers filled with rice and meat in a sweet-sour tomato sauce or sauteed brains, eggs and onions.........

 The food is hearty and warmly fragrant, and portions are large. A friendly and convivial restaurant offering hot, lusty and well-seasoned four-course dinners with coffee for under $9. Reminiscent of the homey, Bohemian cafe-restaurants of Europe, the Green Tree is a favorite with students from Columbia and Barnard. Diners seated at oilcloth tablecloths are supplied with paper napkins and get familial concern from waiters and owners. Dishes that have held up over time are golden, aromatic chicken soup; cold beet borscht; potato pirogen, filled dumplings fried and topped with cool sour cream; stuffed roast chicken, beef or veal goulash. Beers and wines are moderately priced."

Making Use of Extra Meat and Rice Stuffing Mix

Try stuffed eggplant with bread crumb and grated cheese topping. 

Meat and Rice Stuffed Eggplant

Paprika

A small bowl of Spanish pimentón

The spice paprika is a common spice that comes in a range of versions. Paprika is mostly ground red chile peppers. Because red chili peppers range from very sweet to very hot, we must expect a range of tastes in paprika. We chose the sweet hungarian version of paprika. Spain and Hungary are considered the biggest producers of paprika and both countries produce both hot and sweet forms of paprika. In Spain paprika is known as "pimenton".

Tomatoes For Canning and Cooking

Tomatoes For Canning and Cooking

Tomatoes the Super Food.

It is Fall and the home garden is producing tomatoes by the bucket full. Every time I checked, the health  value of tomatoes has increased. A recent WebMD article reported on 10 reasons to eat tomatoes. Some of the reasons will certainly get your attention, such as a substantive reduction in the risk of pancreatic cancer. See http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/health-properties-tomatoes. My most recent effort to ensure that I have access to plenty of tomatoes all year is the canning of tomatoes as a salsa base. My most recent salsa recipe is a chili tomato salsa.

  Recipe:

 Chili Tomato Salsa

Ingredients

Half of a 5 gallon bucket of tomatoes, diced, with skin on.
                              
2 large green peppers.

1/2 cup of sugar or sugar substitute.

1 large sweet onion, diced.

1 packet Mrs. Wages Tomato Chili Base.
This chili base is easy to get from the Internet. If the Mrs. Wages Chili Base is not available, use 1 tablespoon chili powder, 1 tablespoon curry powder and 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce.

2 lbs. of medium tomato  salsa from the local grocery store

1 12 oz. can tomato paste

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup red wine or apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 cup dried potato flakes

Note: Many tomato canning recipes call for the removal of the skin. Wrong Move.  You substantively diminish the health properties of tomatoes when you remove the skin. If you have a problem with the skin, then dice the tomatoes very finely.

Combine all the ingredients in a large 10 quart-pot. Slow boil and stir for at least 30 minutes. Add the potato flakes and stir well just before bottling. This thickens the mixture.

This should make 7-8  one quart bottles.  With tomatoes you do not need to use a pressure cooker for the canning process. Steam canning will work fine because of the acidic content of the recipe. The vinegar certainly adds to the acidic content of the tomatoes.

Many Uses For Chili Tomato Salsa. 

This chili tomato salsa will provide the sauce for pasta and meat balls and similar pasta recipes. This salsa will provide the sauce for chili dishes. It will also serve as a salsa and chips dish. The sauce is great for use in a meat loaf recipe. For a quick tasty dish, brown one to two pounds of sliced Polish sausage, or bratwurst, with onions and green peppers, and a tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan.  Add a quart of the  salsa. Bring to a slow boil and serve. This should take less than 15 minutes.

If Times Are difficult.

If their is an emergency or you are traveling light and you need a quick meal for yourself or a group try the following. You need cans of Spam, bottle/s of Chili Tomato Salsa and a loaf of bread. Allocate a cup of salsa, half a can of Spam and two slices of bread per person. Dice the Spam, brown the Spam in the bottom of a saucepan or "billy", add the salsa and bring to a slow boil while stirring, then serve over slices of bread.

For many years I enjoyed riding my motorcycle on the mountain roads of Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. When camping by the roadside I made my meals with the aid of a "billy" and a campfire. The billy has been described as follows:

A billycan, more commonly known simply as a billy or occasionally as a billy can (billy tin in Canada), is a lightweight cooking pot which is used on a campfire or a camping stove.

See November 11, 2010 posting for more on cooking with Spam.

Roasted and Grilled Baby Potatoes

Roasted and Grilled Baby Potatoes


It is Fall, and potato harvest time. We grow red potatoes and store them in the root cellar. As we harvest the potatoes we set aside the small or baby potatoes. These are often disregarded by the commercial growers. We love them. My wife, Judy, waits with salt shaker in hand, washes these small juicy potatoes and eats them raw. Most of these potatoes are from 3/4 to 2 inches across.


Roasted Baby Potatoes

Ingredients

2 to 3 pounds of baby potatoes
1/2 cup of olive oil

Al's Quick Fix Spice Mixture


1. First, clean the potatoes and dice them into approximately one inch pieces.


2. Second, place potatoes, olive oil, and 1 tablespoon of  Al's Quick Fix Spice Mixture in a bowl and mix well.

3. Third, spread the potatoes on a cookie sheet.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Roast for 30 minutes until lightly browned.

What is Al's Quick Fix Spice Mixture?

This is a multipurpose mixture to save time. I first started using it when time was short and I has to serve mashed potatos or mashed squash.

The ingredients.

1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon pepper
1 tablespoon of Mrs. Dash Tomato,Basil and garlic blend
1/2 teaspoon ginger powder
1 teaspoon Paprika
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 tablespoon of dried parsley

Typically, I use 4 times the amount for each item listed above and place in a quart canning jar, so there is plenty of room to mix and shake the ingredients well.

If making mashed potatoes or mashed Queensland Blue Squash, I add 1 tablespoon of Spice Mixture for each quart of mashed potatoes.

Grilling Potatoes

If grilling the larger potatoes, mix the Spice Mixture with olive oil and rub the potatoes in the mix. For grilling the diced baby potatoes, prepare as above for baking and then wrap with aluminium foil and place on the grill

Leftover Roasted Baby Potatoes

Place the leftovers in a bowl sprinkle some cheese (or a 50-50 mixture of grated cheese and bread crumbs) on top and bake for 30 minutes at 300 degrees. If I had some bacon bits I sometimes mixed the bacon bits with the potatoes. Leave the lid off to keep the potatoes crisp.

Grandpa  Had It Easy.

Growing up in Outback Queensland I had pleasant memories of the home grown potatoes being available all year without any great storage facilities such as a root cellar.  In Northern Utah we get one growing season. In Springsure Queensland we were very close to the Tropic of Capricorn and Grandpa could grow several crops at different times to ensure a continuous supply for most of the year. In truth it was not that easy because the warmer climate did generate more pests and diseases. Grandpa did move the potatoes around to ensure the pests and diseases could not move easily from one years's potatoes to the next.  Baked potatoes, with the Sunday roast meat, often chicken prepared by Grandma were a constant and I counted on them every Sunday of the year.

Recipe: Cucumber Vinaigrette

Recipe: Cucumber Vinaigrette

1 cup Balsamic Vinegar

1 cup Red Wine Vinegar

1 cup Apple Cider Vinegar

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons of pepper

2 tablespoons of Apriva (artificial sugar)

1 teaspoon garlic powder




Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well

Can be used with sliced cucumbers and diced or sliced tomatoes for salads.

An ideal solution for bottling sliced cucumbers and sliced or diced tomatoes. Use 1 cup of the vinaigrette per quart of tomatoes or cucumbers. Turn the bottles upside down every few days to keep the contents well marinated.

Shake the vinaigrette well before placing on cucumbers or tomatoes – the pepper goes to the bottom of the container. Adding a sprinkle of pepper to the vegetables will also solve this problem.

Tomato marinade and salsa

Take the quart of tomatoes soaked with a cup of vinaigrette for a few days and puree the mixture and you will have a great marinade and bar-b-cue sauce. The combination is tasty and healthy.

 You can also take the same combination of tomatoes and vinaigrette; add two cups of chopped sweet onions and two (2) teaspoons of Italian spices. Mix well and you will have an excellent salsa for dipping. This salsa blended with ground meat (beef, turkey and chicken) makes a great hamburger. I use two heaped tablespoons of salsa with every cup of ground meat.




Most of these ideas came from watching my grandmother. At that time all I remember was two types of vinegar - a black vinegar and a white vinegar.

A. Hofmeister

Judy's Spacken Chili

Memories from a Childhood in Outback Queensland

In the place of an absent father I was fortunate to spend many of my childhood years with my grandparents. They lived at the end of a rail line in outback Queensland, Australia, in the pioneer town of Springsure with about 300 people. The large house with verandas all around had no electricity and no indoor plumbing. Drinking water came from rainwater and "hard" water came from a well and windmill. Between grandma's chickens and grandpa's huge garden watered by the windmill, food was plentiful. Grandma's cooking on the cast iron wood stove is still a strong and very pleasant memory of the sights and smells.

Judy - My Wife - My Best Friend - My Mate

Grandma's dishes often came in phases. Phase 1 might be a Sunday dinner roast chicken with baked potatoes, onions, carrots and pumpkin (Queensland Blue Squash) and green beans. All the meat and vegetables came from home. Phase 2 might be a chicken soup made with the leftover chicken and vegetables and possibly some added rice. Sometimes there might be a Phase 3 in which these leftovers were transformed into a curried chicken dish loaded with added raisins and served with rice. The refrigerator space was limited. It was a relatively small refrigerator powered by a kerosene flame. The kerosene, which had travelled hundreds of miles by rail and steam trains, was expensive. Leftovers were usually kept for a short time in a suspended meat "safe" on the coolest back porch.  In its simplest form the "safe" was a metal frame cube with sides 2 to 3 feet long and covered with fine metal mesh to keep the flies out and allow any breezes to cool the content.

This dish, Judy's Spacken Chili, is a Phase 2 dish and was designed to wife Judy's requirements. If the sunday meat was finished then canned meat from the pantry could be used with the leftover vegetables from the Sunday meal"Spacken" my recipe in which I replace chicken with Spam. You can of course use either Spam of chicken. Cans of Spam or Bully Beef, a reserve food in most outback pantries, were often  needed in times of floods and bush fires. Spam is a favorite dish from Judy's childhood. For more information on Spam see previous blog.




Phase 2: Chicken, Rice and Vegetable Soup.

Ingredients

2 quarts of chicken broth - Grandma made it from long, slow boiling of leftovers on the back of the stove.

1 quart of water


4 cups of chopped chicken leftovers

2 medium chopped onions

2 cups of chopped celery

2 cups of sliced  carrots into 1 inch pieces

1 small Uncle Ben's 6 oz. Long grain & wild rice original recipe packet.
This rice packet adds both white and wild rice as well an excellent selection of blended spices.

1 teaspoon each of salt,  pepper, and garlic powder, or in place of the garlic powder use (my preference) one teaspoon of Mrs Dash's  Blend of Tomato, Basil and Garlic.

Add all the ingredients to a pot and slow boil for an hour.

This should serve 6 people.


Phase 2: Judy's Spacken Chili

Ingredients


2 - 3 quarts of leftover Phase 1 soup

3 cans of Spam

1 can 28 oz. Bush baked beans - Country Style (includes bacon and brown sugar)

1 can 19 oz. Cannellini beans

1 can 16 oz. diced Italian tomatoes

1 bell pepper

2 medium onions

1/2 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons of chili powder.

1 teaspoon curry powder

1/4 cup Worcestershire Sauce

4 packets of Equal (sugar substitute)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon garlic powder or 1 teaspoon Mrs. Dash blend of tomato, basil and garlic (my preference)

1 cup Spicy Hot V8 Juice

1 can 12 oz. tomato paste

Chop the Spam into 1 inch cubes. Brown in a pan with the olive oil, add the chopped onions and bell pepper and saute.

Combine all ingredients in a stock pot and allow to simmer for at least 45 minutes while stirring well.

Place the contents in 8-10 one-quart canning jars. This makes a great meal in a hurry for guests who arrive with limited notice.






This is not a thick chili. Judy prefers her chili "brothy" or soupy. The tomato paste does make the mixture thicker. Add a cup of dried potato flakes to make the traditional thick texture. Simmering on a slow boil for at least an hour does reduce liquid. You will need to stir well.

 Grandpa Hofmeister's Windmill and Vegetable Garden - 1949

In this photo Sandy Creek is flooded. The present generation looks to solar and wind power to combat pollution. Grandpa's generation used wind power, which provided the water for bathing and the home garden produce, which then supported the family food supply and provided much of the chicken food. I described up to 3 phases in the reuse of meals. There was also a fourth phase. Any leftover food became chicken food and contributed to the ongoing supply of chicken meat and eggs. There was virtually no garbage. Between the chickens and the wood cookstove, leftover food and paper products were taken care of. Some paper products, such as newspapers and the Sears Catalog, were needed in the outhouse.