Twice Baked Potatoes for the Freezer

Here I am, alive and well! I've been working on revamping my techniques for cooking ahead. Somethings, like lasagna, are really good when you freeze and then thaw and bake. But for the most part, I prefer to have things fresh-made. That does not quite fit with my current lifestyle. ;) 

So I have been filling my fridge and freezer with foods that are prepped for fresh cooking. It's a great time saver during the week. My veggies are prepped, my meat is butchered and brined, broth is frozen...you get the idea. 

Today I worked on a side dish. What you see below is one of the trays of twice baked potatoes that I made today. (I made 2 1/2 trays.) It was a lot of work, but I made enough for 6-8 meals, depending on how many are here for dinner. 

Leni's Notes:

~As I was making these, my family came along and put sloppy joes on top of them. Big hit! I'll have to remember that for later.

~I flash freeze them on these trays, then move them to ziplocs for long-term storage.

~The filling is very versatile. Make them with whatever flavors you like. But I recommend always using the cream cheese and sour cream, otherwise the potatoes tend to get kind of gritty when they thaw.

 ~I mashed mine down because I wanted mine level, so we can add toppings  You could mound it up if you want to. (If you make them level, you'll have extra mashed potatoes to enjoy!)

Ingredients:

10# Russet baking potatoes

1 8oz. block cream cheese, softened

1 lg container sour cream 

1 stick butter

2 tsp black pepper

2 tsp sea salt

2 tsp garlic salt

2 C shredded sharp cheddar

2 -4 Tbls dried chives

Instructions:

~Preheat oven to 350 degrees.(If you're eating them that day.)

~Wash the potatoes, and pat dry.

~Prick the skins, and rub skins with oil. 

~Place potatoes on a foil-lined pan. (I fit all of them on two large cookie sheets.)

~Bake until tender, 1 to 1 1/2 hours, depending on size.

~Let cool until you can handle them, then scoop the middles out, leaving a small layer of potato in the skin.

~Put the scooped out middled in a large bowl, and put the potato skins back on the trays.

~To the bowl, add cream cheese, sour cream, butter, pepper and salts.

~Mash or blend until desired consistency. 

~Mix in cheese and chives.

~Use an ice cream scoop to put filling back into the skins, and mash down. 

~Cover with plastic wrap, and freeze.

~When ready to serve, place desired amount of potatoes in baking dish. (Temp is variable, put them in with whatever you are already making.)

~If putting them in the oven frozen, cover with foil. If thawed, you can leave them open. 

~Bake until heated through and slightly browned. 

MasterChef Night

"The only thing worse than a cook that can't boil is a narcissist in full denial." ~Joe Bastianich

I love MasterChef. lol. It's the first cooking competition I ever watched, and I was hooked.

Cooking competitions are my version of sports. I cheer for the underdog, I yell at the judges, I have a big chart to mark off the losers as they are eliminated. How geeky is that?

I have to admit, it kind of cracks me up to watch the judges get so worked up their heads are about to explode. However, it also makes me realize I would never make it in a big kitchen like that. I'd smack someone the first time they screamed at me. And then I'd leave. Cooking is a tonic to me. It relaxes me, challenges my creativity and I love watching people chow down and enjoy a good meal. I'll stick to home cooking, thankyouverymuch!

OK, off to watch the end of the show and see who is going home tonight. I promise not to give anything away...spoilers! (Said in my best River Song voice.)

Hoping you have grand kitchen adventures, with no one yelling at you...

Leni

A Minor Rant about Quality Ingredients

Our little town only has a discount grocery store. Honestly, I am so thankful that we are finally able to support a grocery store! However, products are not always of the highest quality, so I try to be careful.

The other day I needed sour cream, and really did not want to drive to the next town over to get it. So I grabbed some from the local store. Fast forward to today. I was making a layered dip for the kids to take to a Christmas party. I was trying to spread out the sour cream on top, and that stuff just would not spread! It glopped. I finally added some milk to thin it out so I could evenly coat the dip without ruining the layers.

I have never had this problem with other sour cream (Great Value or Daisy.) Let's investigate the ingredients, shall we?

Discount Brand: Cultured cream, milk solids nonfat, modified food starch, sodium phosphate, sodium citrate, guar gum, carrageenan, locust bean gum and potassium sorbate.

Great Value Brand: Cultured pasteurized milk, cream, nonfat milk, enzyme.

First of all, the fewer ingredients the better, as far as I'm concerned. I'd also like to be able to identify them all. That first brand has four thickeners in it. No wonder I couldn't spread it! I did a taste test of both of them, and there is a huge difference. The discount brand looks and feels like sour cream, but has none of the sour cream tang.

You might pay less for an item, but make sure you're paying for the actual item and not fillers that make it look normal but aren't the true product!

Newest Thanksgiving Catastrophe '12?

It's not even Thanksgiving day yet, but I'm thinking maybe I've already had my catastrophe of the year. Last night, as the kids were working on their recipes for Thursday, I opened up my laptop to find details and heard a horrible cracking sound. And with that, my screen flopped over backward! Yup, the hinges broke.

So my computer is still working, but is now rigged up on my husband's desk so that I can put a book holder behind it to prop the screen up. A little red-neckish, but it will work until we can get it repaired. This is a good thing, as all of my recipes are stored online! Years ago, I set up a gmail account just for recipes. Gmail has so much storage, and a terrific search feature. Makes it so easy to find what I'm looking for and share recipes easily. I also set up a family gmail account that all of my kids have access to. Whenever we try a recipe that we all love, we send it to that account so they will be able to access 'Mom's Recipes' no matter where they live or how badly my memory fails. ;o)

Last night, Seth whipped up the Spinach Artichoke Dip, and Noelle did the Refrigerator Mashed Potatoes. Today's work list includes a pie or two (cherry and blueberry cream) and working up a recipe for a Cauliflower Gratin. Never made it before, so I think I'll do a test run to make sure it's edible before I feed our company. I'd like to think I'll have enough energy to do the stuffing also, but I'm not sure I'll even get through the preliminary list! We'll see how it goes.

I hope all of your Thanksgiving plans are coming along nicely, and whatever you do on Thursday, you take a moment to count the many blessings in your life.

Leni

Quality Ingredients

Then there are the days that Leni does not cook. It's going to be in the 90's the next couple of days, and I'm recovering from heat exhaustion, so cooking is not a huge priority for me today! Thankfully, I have some meals stored up in the freezer and my family shall not starve. ;o)

I've been pondering for a couple of weeks the topic of Quality Ingredients. The conclusion that I've come to is that this means different things to different people. Certainly it has meant different things to me during various stages of my life. There are a lot of factors to take in. The amount of money available to spend, what is accessible in your area, culture (both where you live now and how you were raised,) and what you are trying to accomplish.

At this stage of life, my philosophy is to buy the best I can afford, because I want the best quality taste and the healthiest finished product I can manage. That doesn't always mean I can buy the best of the best, I still have a house full of teenagers to feed, and I could go broke just on food! But I can make simple changes like coconut oil instead of shortening, butter in place of margarine, fresh lemonade rather than soda. 

There have been times where due to my health, my major challenge was just to put a meal on the table. Any meal. Anything at all. During those times, I kind of wished I held stock in the Tyson Chicken company, because we were certainly doing our part to support their business! Not what I would picture as health food, but I felt like I made the best choice I could given the circumstances.

In the early years of our marriage, money was the driving factor. Let's face it, there are times when it really doesn't matter what we eat as long as our bodies register it as food!

When we were in Bible College, we had a teacher who had been a lumberjack in Maine in his early years. Mr. Lanpher never stopped being a lumberjack! He was the sweetest man. He used to work for local farmers, and one of the things they let him do was glean the fields. (Are you familiar with that term? They let him go through and gather what the machines had missed, and he could just take the food.) He supplied the students on campus with fruits and vegetables as long as he had them to give. He would stop by my house daily and pound on the wall next to the door so I'd hear him. By the time I got to the door, he was always gone, but there would be a bag full of produce. Money was tight in those days, but we ate like kings. We couldn't really afford meat, but we had a huge pot full of steamed potatoes, carrots and onions every night, with a side of cucumbers and tomatoes. He always kept us supplied with apples, also. Another teacher brought me bags and bags of rhubarb. I'd say we ate pretty well for starving college students!

So when a young cook asks me for tips, I always tell them to buy the best they can afford, and to shop around. You never know where you're going to find that treasure! Living in Western New York, we are blessed with weekly farmer's markets in local towns and the Public Market in Rochester. The last time we were at the public market, we found a company selling spices. I was thrilled to discover that he grinds all of his own spices! No fillers or MSG added. I found Lemon Pepper without food dye in it! "If you want something custom, just call my shop, I'll whip it up for you." The prices were great, the product was top quality. I sure wasn't going to find that at Walmart!

Same thing goes for meat. Honestly, I'd rather have one ounce of good quality meat than a pound of injected meat or additive filled goo. 

My children were raised on a diet free of preservatives, dyes, additives, etc. We did this to handle their ADHD symptoms. Hard? Yes. Beyond hard. But worth it. When they got older and were able to start trying some of the stuff they'd been missing out on for years, they all had the same reaction. "You can taste the chemicals in this. That's all you can taste!"  True enough. ;o)

"Real food tastes real good!"  

Confession Time

I had a nice visit with a group of ladies from our church last night. We were at a cooking demonstration,  and my daughter asked a question about how much the demonstrator cooked from scratch. She mentioned that she makes all of her own spaghetti sauce. I casually commented that spaghetti sauce was something I had never managed to master. My friend sitting next to me gasped and looked at me in wide-eyed disbelief. "What? You don't make your own sauce? You?!"  Who knew that I would be the cause of such disillusionment? ;o) 


Yes, it's true. While I'm sure there are many, many things I do not know about cooking, there are two things I know for certain that I am not good at. Spaghetti sauce and beef broth.  


I have never made a beef broth that was in any way palatable. I have followed every recipe, researched the modern wisdom of every Food Network Chef that's out there...I just can't pull it off. Lucky for me, Rachael Ray has done it for me, and after she's gone to all that trouble, it would just be rude to leave it sitting on the shelf!


To be fair, I have managed to make a spaghetti sauce that the family assured me was great, but I didn't think it was spectacular. And for as much work as I had to put into it, it needed to be spectacular for me to want to do it again! I see spaghetti sauce as my back up plan on any given day. When my day suddenly goes out of control and there is no time to cook, I can always open a jar of sauce, boil a pot of water for pasta and take some browned meat or meatballs out of the freezer to make a hearty meal that requires virtually no work. It's my cheater meal. 


So now that my cat's out of the bag, what's your deep dark secret? What stumps you in the kitchen? Is it something you wish you could master, or like me, are you totally fine with never learning how to make it? Leave a comment, let me know I'm not the only one!


Here's hoping that my buddy can get past the shock and still love me. Maybe I'll cook her something to restore her faith in me. 

I would like to thank Classico spaghetti sauce for helping me through my toughest mom days. ;o)

Let Your Kids Make a Mess in the Kitchen

A word to families with younger kids. If you're anything like me, you'd really rather they NOT make a mess in your kitchen. I will admit that cooking with the my kids stressed me out in ways I didn't know were possible. I knew it was a good thing to do, and I knew it was the homeschool mom thing to do. But I still hated it. So I compromised a little bit.

When my children were wee, I focused on kitchen safety. I taught them how to properly mix, measure, cut and handle the stove and oven. I taught them how to follow a recipe (and subsequently ignore it completely!) And then I left the kitchen. Turns out, what was stressing me was watching the process and fighting the urge to take over.

When it was time for them to play in the kitchen I would step out and let them go to it. I was always nearby for questions and to step in if there was any kind of emergency. Pretty much, I was a security blanket. As you would expect, they regularly destroyed my kitchen. And then they learned how to clean it up. They made some fantastic disasters along the way. They made amazing discoveries. They learned how to cook!

When my oldest got old enough to babysit, they would always make something adventurous while we were gone. The girls still do this with the kids they now babysit. Sometime I must get and share the recipe for Sugar Delight. Helpful menu item if you were hoping to go into a diabetic coma.

Fast forward to the current day. My kids are now 19, 17 and 15. My oldest is going to college and preparing to get married, my middle is graduated and trying to find work so he can afford to go to college. My youngest is working, working, working and seeing what amazing thing she'll tackle next. (Have to throw my daughter's fiancé in the mix, because while I didn't raise him, he's family and cooks just as much as everyone else around here does.;o)

In addition to continuing to homeschool our youngest, I work part time at the library and battle daily health issues. Sometimes life is great, and I can do it all. Sometimes not, but still everyone needs to eat! As I was hobbling through the grocery store this weekend, I knew that I probably had another difficult week ahead of me, pain wise. So I shopped with that in mind, and basically just stocked the kitchen with enough meat, veggies and fruits and work with and hoped for the best.

When I got home from a late doctor's appointment last night, I was hurting, but what a sight to come home to. Everyone had gotten home from work/school and gotten started on dinner. They were on the porch grilling, and it smelled wonderful. They had raided the kitchen and come up with fresh grilled burgers served with whole wheat bread, fresh grilled pineapple, sautéed mushrooms and onions, some romaine and for the brave, guacamole. Wonderful meal!!

It really pays to have kids that aren't afraid of the kitchen, and who don't see food as magically appearing on the table.

Whatever your 'Kid in the Kitchen' time looks like, make it happen. It will benefit everyone, and with any luck they won't move out and eat nothing but microwaved frozen dinners.

Brine is My Friend - And Yours Too!

Let's talk a little bit about brining meat, shall we?

Back in 2006, I posted quite a bit about brining turkeys, but have since found a much easier way to do so. Dry brining has to be the the most brilliant thing to ever happen to a piece of meat or poultry. Makes for a moist, tender final product.

So on my meat recipes, I will always note if I have brined the meat, because it impacts how much salt you'll want to add to the rest of the recipe.

Wet Brine 
There are two ways to do a wet brine.
Slow Brine: Dissolve a lesser amount of salt in water, good if you have a longer time to let it sit.
Quick Brine: Higher amount of salt in the water, especially good for if you need the meat quickly.


Either way, when you're ready to cook, you need to rinse the brine off before cooking the meat.

Dry Brine
Place meat in bag, add salt, leave it alone until you're ready to cook.

Much easier, and much less messy.


You do NOT need to rinse the salt off of this meat before cooking.


Essentially, you are putting the salt on the meat and allowing it to draw the moisture out, then allowing the meat to reabsorb the moisture. Ideally, this is a three day process. Remember, salt helps preserve the meat, so you don't need to be concerned about raw meat in the fridge for three days.

For a turkey, roaster bags work wonderfully for the brining process (though you don't need the bag for roasting!) You can start the process when the turkey is still frozen, but it tends to take longer than three days, so plan accordingly.

When we bring a package of meat home, we divide it up into large tip-top plastic bags, and sprinkle it with kosher sea salt. When you're doing a turkey, it's a tablespoon of salt per five pounds of meat. When I'm working with smaller amounts, I kind of eye-ball it. A teaspoon or two of salt per bag. If we're eating it in the next 24 hours, I leave it in the fridge. If not, I throw it in the freezer as is, and it will brine as it thaws.

Brined meat tends to cook faster, so you'll want to check it a little sooner, and possibly lower your cooking temp.

Anti-Philosophy

I plan to get more into my philosophy of cooking a little later this Spring, but if you've known me for 5 minutes, you know that I believe in real food. Wholesome, natural food that sacrifices none of the yum factor. Some day I'll get into Food as Medicine, because that is a favorite topic. But not today. Today is sunny and warm and I have much too much to do to get started on those topics today.

Today, my topic is anti-philosophy. Sometimes you just have to throw philosophy out the window and enjoy a greasy pizza from your favorite joint, you know? I truly believe that as long as you don't live on junk food, a little isn't going to kill you.

And so today, I bring you Pistachio Salad. I think every family has some version of this dish, but I've never seen our family's exact recipe listed, so I thought I'd share. Even though it is loaded with not-so-good-for-you ingredients. But there are a couple of good ones in there!

The real controversy with this dish is categorizing it. Is it a salad? A dessert? More importantly, why is Jello EVER considered a salad? This is a question that rages every time we have a fellowship dinner at church. I always vote dessert. I always lose. ;o) But I submit to the wishes of my cohorts on the Social Committee. There's a lot of combined wisdom there, and these ladies know how to cook! If they say it's a salad, it's a salad.

This is a go-to for summer picnics and buffet tables. It's also very helpful when Grandma is in the nursing home and refuses to eat anything, but thinks she's getting away with something by demanding to only eat Pistachio Salad. Fooled her, it's loaded with protein! ;o)

Today I will go buy the ingredients, and enjoy some this weekend in fond memory of my Grandma. Many thanks to my mom for actually having measurements for this one. And here's a nod to what I affectionately refer to as the Jello Generation. They sure knew how to combine box mixes to come up with something yummy.

Leni's Notes:

~For some not-so-yummy treats from the Jello Generation, you have got to pick up The Gallery of Regrettable Food. You will laugh until your stomach hurts. But then you can eat some jello to make it feel better.

~I don't think I have ever in my life made a single batch of this stuff. Great for a large group, everyone loves it, and it's pretty!

Pistachio Salad

1 (24 oz.) cottage cheese
1 (9 oz.) whipped topping
1 (20 oz.) crushed pineapple, undrained
1 (2 1/2 oz.) pkg. pistachio instant pudding

Dump it in a bowl. Mix it up. Cover and refrigerate.

Best eaten by snatching a spoonful as you pass the refrigerator.

Back to Basics

In thinking about what I enjoy putting out there in the blogosphere, I realized that food is it. I like gathering and testing recipes, talking about food, planning events, sharing my own recipes. So that's where I have decided to concentrate my efforts.

So much of the internet is full of people who finally got a platform, but really don't have much to say, and I don't really want to add to the din, you know? I've recently found a ton of terrific recipes via Pinterest, so as they are tested, I'll post here about them and link back to their original authors.

Here's a place to pull up a cozy chair, see what looks good (or maybe what went horribly wrong...) and decide what's going to get served up.