Convenient Food 2, Enchiladas

Another way I use the freezer is to make frozen burritos with leftovers.

Take all of the mixin's from burrito night: cheese, meat, beans, even sour cream and leftover salsa, (hold the lettuce) and fold together.

Wrap the filling into tortillas and fold. Place them flat on a cookie sheet and freeze. Once they have frozen hard, transfer them to a ziplock bag.

Now the kids can use them as a quick microwavable snack or you can use them as a fast food dinner.

I have had luck pulling these out, setting them in a lightly greased dish to defrost awhile, then pouring a can of enchilada sauce over them before I bake them.

If you don't have a can of enchilada sauce here is a recipe:

Boil 2 cups of any broth with 1/2 onion, a clove of garlic, a pinch of oregano, one bay leaf, 1 tsp cayenne and 4 Tbl. Chili powder. Reduce heat and simmer about 30 minutes. Remove bay leaf, blend.

Now be careful, I use a hand held kitchenaid mixer. If you put it in your blender hot -- you might decorate the ceiling.

Pour over your burritos, top with cheese and bake till bubbly.

Convenient Food

The freezer is my favorite time saver. I am including my favorite modified cookie recipe.

This time, after I made the basic batch, I separated it into three sections, added nuts to one and dried cranberries to another. This way, every time I pull a cookie log out of the freezer I have a variation.

Chocolate Chip Cookies:
2 cups butter (sometimes I substitute butter crisco, this makes a softer cookie and is cheaper)
1- 1/2 cup each brown sugar and white sugar
2 tsp vanilla

Cream together. Then add:

2 eggs
4- 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Mix well, then fold in up to 2 bags of chocolate chips. 1 bag of milk chocolate and one bag of dark. (Sometimes I use 3/4 of each bag.)

Separate the dough into piles and roll into logs. Wrap each log in plastic and freeze well. Slice into 1/2 disks and bake in a preheated 350 degree oven approximately 12 minutes.

Preserving Herbs

Home grown herbs are so much more flavorful than store bought herbs it makes me wonder just how old some of them are.

My favorite way to dry herbs is to group the herb in three bundles. Make one slightly larger than the other two. Tie the larger one on one end, another one on the opposite end and one slightly offset from the center.

Then hang the herbs. I use my laundry room because the dryer keeps it warm. Just throw the large bundle over a bar. You can also use a closet rack or place the string on a hanger and put it pretty much anywhere.

For something like dill, I prefer to just lay it flat to dry. It is too delicate to handle dry.

Once they are thoroughly dry, snip the string and crush the herbs. Store them in a left over jam or mustard jars. Some jars are so pretty and after you have enjoyed the condiment you bought, it is nice to find a use for the jar.

Another option to save the flavor of summer is to blend the herbs in butter and scrape the mixture into ice cube trays. Freeze and keep them stored in any freezer proof bag or container.

Then when you want to make rye-dill bread: just pop out a cube and use it for the fat in your recipe. You can also use it to bake fish or melt over a steak. It is a quick dress-up for plain noodles as well.

If you want the butter a little more spreadable, you can blend equal parts butter and vegetable or olive oil, a little fresh garlic and your herb. This is economical too, butter can be expensive. It has the same amount of fat but less cholesterol -- whatever that is. It makes a great spread for garlic bread too. Spread it on the bread, sprinkle a little Parmesan and broil.

I once read that basil does not store well, it looses its flavor. But I go through my herbs in one year and I have never found any store bought basil to rival my own dried.

German Pancake

An easy weekend brunch item is German Pancakes. We serve them with real maple syrup or fresh squeezed lemon juice and powdered sugar. Although my boys have been know to put Tabasco or garlic on them. I don't recommend it.

Put 6 TBL of butter in a 9X13 pan and place in a oven set to 400 degrees.

While the oven is preheating, crack eggs in a blender until you have 1-1/2 cups. (from 6-8 usually). Blend. Add a pinch of salt a TBL of sugar (either brown or white), and pour milk until it reaches 3 cups. (Which is adding 1-1/12 cups)

By now the butter should be melted. Pour entire batter into the pan. Set the timer for 22 minutes and when you return it will have puffed beautifully.

I does flatten so have the table set because everyone oohhs and ahhs and calls out claims on the pools of butter.

I know, I need to post something healthy next.

Pesto

I have had an extremely successful basil year. All of my basil was grown from seed. I used left over plastic tree tubs to hold the bagged dirt. The bottom half was filled with mulch to economize. I think the black plastic has helped keep the dirt warm since we've had such a cool summer. Where is global warming when you need it?

I have been able to harvest several times as well as frequently pinch off a little here and there for meals.

Homemade pesto is not a health conscious but we love it!

For years it has been "date food" for my honey and me. We would put the kids to bed and watch a movie with a bowl of pesto and a hunk of crusty sourdough. Now that the kids love it as much as we do we can't get away with that.

Store bought pesto is expensive and, like everything else, a mere shadow of the homemade stuff.

Making it is simple in a food processor. We use walnuts because we typically have them in abundance from my grandparents. Pine nuts are preferred by many.

Place 1 cup of soft nuts, several cloves of garlic (depending on your taste -- one may be enough), one cup of shredded Parmesan and one cube of melted butter. Process a few seconds and add by the handful, 4 cups of fresh basil leaves and the soft green stems. The exact amounts can vary slightly to suit your taste.

You can remove the leaves from the stems completely but I use the stems if they are not woody. Sometimes I have to add a little olive oil if it is too thick.

You can actually replace the butter with olive oil or a combination of both. Extra virgin olive oil gives it a different flavor and a softer texture. When you refrigerate pesto made with butter, it hardens.

I have made several batches to keep in the freezer this year. The other night we had friends over (waving at DeeAnn) and pulled a ziplock bag from the freezer to make pesto pizza. It was so convenient. The recipe above filled two quart sized bags.

If you want to eat it as a dip, either heat in an oven safe bowl while you heat your bread or microwave it about 30 seconds until the green color deepens and the cheese is bubbly.

Leftovers keep about a week in the fridge and if used as a spread, turn boring sandwiches into gourmet meals.

City-Hippie Oregon Grape Jelly

I was driving to pick the kids up from the water park and as I drove by a subdivision with front entrance landscaping I noticed a new development. Purple-blue berries clustered in dark green leaves. I heard almost audibly, "Oregon Grapes." I say that because I had never actually seen any before, but I do peruse herb and garden books so I may have seen pictures. At the water park I looked up Oregon Grapes on my iphone to verify on Wikipedia. I know, I am a walking contradiction of terms.

Only one kid was ready to come home so he and I stopped and inspected the plants. Look how many we picked!

I think he was pretending to be grossed out by the purple blood color on his hands. There were so many bursting cluster we would get excited and prick our fingers on the leaves. People gave us weird stares as they drove by.

I remembered eating Oregon Grape Jelly once when my aunt sent us some, so I knew the flavor. We normally don't like jelly because it is too sweet so the tart flavor of this is perfect for us. Here is the recipe I used:

Oregon Grape Jelly (makes 6 half pints)
3.5 lbs of washed, stemmed Oregon Grapes
3 cups of water
5 cups sugar
1 pkg liquid pectin

Crush the grapes and add the water. (I used my kitchen aid hand blender.) Boil for 10 minutes. Place mixture in a colander lined with two layers of cheese cloth overnight. Here is where pre-reading a recipe comes in handy!
Discard cloth, seeds and skins. Measure 3-3/4 cups of juice and place in a pan with the sugar. Bring to a rapid boil, add pectin. Return to a full boil and boil 1 minute. Place into prepared jars and process 10 minutes. It has a tart, earthy flavor and a beautiful dark color.

Avgolemono Soup

This Greek soup is light yet surprisingly satisfying. It is perfect for a summer lunch.

Avgolemono means egg and lemon and is used for all kinds of sauces. This recipe has orzo, a rice shaped pasta. I have also substituted rice but we like the pasta better. You could also subsitute any small pasta, even broken spaghetti.

Boil 8 cups of chicken broth and 1/3 to 2/3 cup of orzo for five minutes. (When I make it for myself I use less pasta because I like broth soups but when I make it for the kids they usually like more pasta)

While the broth is simmering, whisk 3 eggs, the juice of one lemon (about 3 TBL bottled juice) and a Tbl of water. Pour a little broth and pasta into the whisked egg mixture while you continue to whisk. Add it slowly or the egg mixture curdles and the texture is not so nice. Continue to add broth until you have added at least as much broth as there was egg, doubling the egg amount. Add all of the egg mixture to the broth and heat one minute more, taking care not to boil the liquid.

Salt it to taste and add lots of cracked black pepper.