Tag Archives: recipe

Molasses Cookies

Food, Memories

Makes approximately 24 cookies

  • 12 T. Sweet Butter
  • ¼ c. Molasses
  • 1¾ c. Flour
  • ½ t. Ground Ginger
  • ½ t. Salt
  • 1 c. Granulated Sugar
  • 1 Egg
  • ½ t. Ground Cloves
  • 1 t. Cinnamon
  • ½ t. Baking Soda

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350° (F)
  2. Melt butter
  3. Add sugar and molasses and mix
  4. Thoroughly beat egg and add to butter mixture, blend well
  5. Sift flour with spices, salt and baking soda, add to mixture, mix. (Batter will be wet)
  6. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or alumunium foil and drop a tablespoon of batter on lined cookie sheet, leaving 3 inches between cookies. They will spread.
  7. Bake cookies until they start to darken, about 7 minutes. Remove from oven while soft.
  8. Let cool on parchment paper or foil

When Dean and I first moved to Alexandria we rented a house in the Beverly Hills neighborhood. Shortly after moving in, Ken and Pam, neighbors from across the street brought us a plate of delicious molasses cookies. This is their recipe. It’s good!

Pioneer Woman’s Perfect Pot Roast for an icy afternoon

Food, ,

I finally made my rounds of the folks whose blogs I read and saw a couple of posts about food. Apparently Mali suggested we post a favorite recipe or two and IB did just that. I have some recipes here and there, but I’ll post my favorite pot roast recipe here. It is not a foodie kinda meal, but it is warming on a day full of snow and ice like today. What I like best about this meal is that you make it early and leave it in the oven for 3 to 5 hours.

I don’t know how I first found out about the Pioneer Woman, but I’d already cooked many of her meals, bought her cookbook and seen her at a distance at the National Book Festival when I caught her on television making a pot roast. I don’t watch morning television, but I happened to be watching it the day she was on one of the morning network shows. She has since gotten her own television program — that I have yet to see.

I follow the directions exactly — except I use a cast iron Dutch oven to cook it in.

Pioneer Woman’s Perfect Pot Roast Recipe

Ingredients

1 whole (4 To 5 Pounds) Chuck Roast
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
2 whole Onions
6 whole Carrots (Up To 8 Carrots)
Salt To Taste
Pepper To Taste
1 cup Red Wine (optional, You Can Use Beef Broth Instead)
2 cups To 3 Cups Beef Stock
3 sprigs Fresh Thyme, or more to taste
3 sprigs Fresh Rosemary, or more to taste

Preparation Instructions

First and foremost, choose a nicely marbled piece of meat. This will enhance the flavor of your pot roast like nothing else. Generously salt and pepper your chuck roast.

Heat a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Then add 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil (or you can do a butter/olive oil split).

Cut two onions in half and cut 6 to 8 carrots into 2-inch slices (you can peel them, but you don’t have to). When the oil in the pot is very hot (but not smoking), add in the halved onions, browning them on one side and then the other. Remove the onions to a plate.
Throw the carrots into the same very hot pan and toss them around a bit until slightly browned, about a minute or so.

If needed, add a bit more olive oil to the very hot pan. Place the meat in the pan and sear it for about a minute on all sides until it is nice and brown all over. Remove the roast to a plate.

With the burner still on high, use either red wine or beef broth (about 1 cup) to deglaze the pan, scraping the bottom with a whisk to get all of that wonderful flavor up.
When the bottom of the pan is sufficiently deglazed, place the roast back into the pan and add enough beef stock to cover the meat halfway (about 2 to 3 cups). Add in the onion and the carrots, as well as 3 or 4 sprigs of fresh rosemary and about 3 sprigs of fresh thyme.

Put the lid on, then roast in a 275F oven for 3 hours (for a 3-pound roast). For a 4 to 5-pound roast, plan on 4 hours.

I serve this with mashed potatoes, but noodles would be good too. Tonight I am adding a turnip to the mashed potatoes just because I have one that needs to be used.

The original recipe is here with photos and detailed directions. You can also print a PDF of it here.

Groningse Mustard Soup

Food, , , ,

Back in December one of my Facebook and Twitter friends — a birdwatcher from The Netherlands — posted that she was going to have Mustard Soup for lunch. After a bit of discussion where I expressed disbelief, then awe, she posted a recipe and when I wondered where to find Groninger Mustard she offered to send me a jar and I accepted (and offered to send her a local spice in exchange — she chose Old Bay seasoning).

Before too long I received not one, but two jars of Groninger Mustard and set them aside until after wrestling season when we could enjoy the fat and calories with Andrew.

One day, a couple of weeks ago I purchased the ingredients for the soup and followed a recipe I found online (I’d lost the link that my friend sent, but assumed all recipes would be similar).

I was sure that I was going to love this soup, it sounded so delicious (mustard, bacon, cream — what’s not to love?) and even took a series of photos while preparing it à la The Pioneer Woman.

I know enough about cooking to become concerned when I saw how much flour in relationship to how much fat was in the recipe — of course I didn’t thoroughly read the recipe before I was well into making the soup (that would have been the prudent thing to do) — but plowed ahead anyway. I also knew, as I was pouring in the cream that I had not cooked the roux enough and that the soup would taste floury.

While the soup was lovely to look at, especially sprinkled with newly sprouted chives from our herb garden, it tasted more like it should have been the base for biscuits and gravy (a dish I dislike) instead of the delicate cream soup I’d envisioned.

I’m going to assume I used the wrong recipe and undercooked the roux and maybe try again sometime. We still have a jar and a half of Groninger Mustard left. I sent a FB message to my Dutch friend, asking her if it was supposed to be so thick, but she didn’t respond. She may have overlooked the message; she has a lot of friends. Either that or I insulted her by not liking the soup. Nah — Not Gwen.