Old Family Recipes, featuring miracle whip, merachino cherries, and crushed pineapple!

I was visiting my grandma and taking photos of any paintings my mom had done. When my mom was a young woman, she made the chapter pages for her future mother in law's recipe book. She used regular glue and regular paper, not the nice acid-free, archive quality stuff, so her cute watercolors are all stained from the adhesive. But you still get a sense of it. Maybe it adds patina!

Ina's English toffee

Great Grandma Johnson's Sour Cream Cookies and Mary Carter's Sugar Cookies

boiled raisin cookies

Recipe from Francis: Brownies! and Fruit Cake

Chocolate Shortcake, frosting, and peanut butter Brownies

Iris Beach Lake Powell Chicken Soup

Minestrone Nannette

Aunt LaVerne's 4th of July Chicken

Cornell Formula Bread and Soda Bread (Irish)

Grandma's Bread

Best Ever Banana Bread, from Kari (Stout) Zeeman

Scones, Easy Refrigerator Rolls

Banana Bread, Lucky Buttermilk Biscuits

Yvonne Egbert's Relief Society Luncheon Feather Rolls

Bars, Christmas Popcorn, Iris Rhubarb Pie, Bonnie Kofford's Frosting

Jam Sponge Pudding

Strawberry Dessert

Nougat and Frosting

Rancho Verde Bars, Berry Cobbler, and Cheese Cake

Grandpa Davis' Apple Brown Betty

No Bake Cookies

Great Grandma Johnson's Sour Cream Cookies, Mary Carter's Sugar Cookies

Dill Pickles, Superb Sweet Relish

Grandma's Chili Sauce

Francis' Recipe for Dill Pickles

Aunt LaVerne's Frozen Fruit Salad

Hawaiian Salad

Another Hawaiian Salad

Peach Cobbler

Abelskivers

German Mountains African Pancakes

Mrs. Field's Cookies

Quick and Dirty Coco-CocoaTruffles

Quick and Dirties
Throw into your blender:

half a cup of almonds
half a cup of shredded coconut
two big spoonfulls unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tablespoons liquid-- milk or water or rum or coffee would work beautifully

blend to a paste, then roll in finely shredded coconut, mush a couple of almonds in each one, then chill for a couple of minutes in the freezer.

They are so dark, so rich, so lovely.

monger. fish monger.

 My friend encouraged me to overcome my prejudice and buy some fresh fish on the side of the road. A few days later, I noticed a hand-printed cardboard sign just around the corner: FRESH FISH. I found the guy, shirtless, cutting the blocks of sweet-smelling pink meat right off of a 20 pound yellowtail. I bought three pounds and he gave me the carcass. It turned into tangy ceviche, hearty tuna steak, and seared tuna salad and about 8 quarts of fish stock. The fish stock is so gelatinous that it's basically an aspic. A deep sea jello! Here, friends, is the result:

the noble carcass

lemon cooked ahi ceviche.

Fish Stock in the Making.

Foamy, frothy, fishy goodness!

How has it taken me 5 years living in hawaii to ever buy fish from the side of the road?

The World's Best Ice Cream Ever: Black Cherry Goat-Milk Ice Cream

This icecream was so groan-inducing, so rich, so fragrant, so tart and sweet... dear Lord. The recipe is adapted from the Vitamix Whole Foods Cookbook's Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe.

Throw the ingredients into your Vitamix (or reglar ole blender, if you must):
1 c. half/half
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. dry goat milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 c. ice cubes
2 c. frozen black cherries

If you are of the Vitamix tribe, tamp the ingredients down, blend for 20-60 seconds until the four mounds form. Serve quickly! It melts! If you are of the reglar ole blender tribe, just blend it until it's blended, and then throw it all in the freezer for a while.

Sacred Holy Orange Rolls

Sacred Holy Orange Rolls:

From a well-used notecard

2 Cups milk

1/2 cups shortening (yikes! It was good with butter)

1/4 cup sugar

4 tablespoons yeast

1/4 cup lukewarm water

1/4 tsp sugar

3 beaten eggs

2 teaspoons salt

5 3/4 cups flour

 1 grated orange rind

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter

 1/4 cup melted butter for the tops

 Here's the instructions as they're written in my mom's handwriting:

"Melt shortening, sugar and milk (scalded)-- cool, soak yeast in water and sugar-- combine milk yeast eggs in big bowl-- stir in salt and 4 cups flour. Beat until smooth and glossy. Add rest of flour, mix well. Cover and let double [about 45 minutes] (quite sticky)-- punch down-- roll out to 1/3 inch rectangle (let the rectangle rest if it won't roll out again)."

 Combine the orange rind, 1/2 cup sugar and butter. Spread orange rind mixture on rectangle.

Roll the rectangle up. Cut rolled dough into 3/4 inch slices, and twist them into knots or blobs or bows. Place them in greased muffin tins or on a greased sheet, and let them rise for half an hour. Drizzle melted butter over the top. Bake at 375 for about 25 minutes.

Haupia Pops

So at costco, the source of all light and goodness on our island, you can buy hefty bags of instant haupia mix. The instructions start, "boil 24 cups of water. Add entire bag of haupia mix."
It makes great, springy, coconutty haupia pudding heaven. Sprinkle some toasted coconut on top as its setting in the pan-- tres ono.
And also--
pour the still-warm and running mix into popsicle mold and freeze 'em-- they make drip-free haupia ice cream pops! Hooray!

Po' man's lazy garden gumbo

So, just ignore that it's been Many Moons since my last post.

From our garden I picked a handful of okra and a mess of collards and brought it in to stew up. In spite of having no ingredients, this turned out tasty enough to write down for later:

Brown in a soup pot:
1.5 tbsp oil or butter
1.5 tbsp flour
salt and pepper
add chopped onion and chopped okra-- brown a bit
add a can of stewed tomatoes and 2 c. of broth
simmer for a bit, then add the collards and some herbs if you've got em.
Voila! TASTY!
I made a pot of Quinoa to go with-- add enough olive oil and salt and that stuff is quite tasty!

Sorry, Becca HATES food

Don't even talk to me about that four letter f-word right now. I'm sure that in several months, I might be able to tolerate things like, yiccchhhhh, onions, or, godforbid, GARLIC.

But for now I'm going to wallow in my 2nd trimester misery, choking down string cheese and mocha protein shakes (half milk, with ice, please) and enjoy the luxury of having Matt be the Food Guy.

So... sorry for the long and depressing silence. Believe me, you don't want to know what I'm eating these days. Think bland colorless high protein unflavored kid food and you'll get the idea.

So I'll see you in a couple, well, maybe lots of months, when my creative energies turn again to the gourmet rather than to incubation.

Artisan Olive Oil Dough

Olive Oil Dough
From Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
The recipe is introduced with: "This versatile, rich dough works nicely in pizza, focaccia, or olive bread. The fruitier the olive oil, the better the flavor."

2 3/4 c. lukewarm water
1 1/2 tbsp yeast
1 1/2 tbsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
6 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour (okay, I'll confess. I subbed in two cups of whole wheat flour-- I just can't make an all-white-flour recipe! It seems like a sin or something. Anyway, it turned out wonderful.)

Mix everything but the flour together in a big bowl, then add the flour using a spoon, and finishing with your wet hands.
Cover (not airtight) and let it rest at room temp for 2 hours, or until the dough rises and collapses.
Use right away, or refrigerate covered for 12 days.
To make a pizza, preheat the oven to 500, dust the surface of the dough with flour, cut off a chunk of dough (orange to grapefruit sized), dust with more flour and shape it into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball as you go.
Flatten the dough into an 1/8th inch thick round (or square, if you're into that).
Quickly add the toppings, (herbs, fancy cheese, chopped garlic and olive oil (with possibly some sneakily grated cabbage) throw the thing in the oven (on a pizza stone is good, but I don't have one so I just use a greased cookie sheet and it works for me) and cook it for about 8 or 10 minutes. Drizzle it with balsamic vinegar. Enjoy. You're welcome.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

I checked this book out from the library last year and after three days I had made a small mountain of carmel-crusted, fluffy crumbed toothsome baked goods. Two olive-oil soaked flatbreads, three loaves of crackly wholesome wheat and oat bread, and a pizza dinner later... I was convinced. I promptly returned the library book before all the pages got gummed together and Amazoned myself my own copy, now floured and gummed without fear of library fines.
I love that the authors streamlined the bread-baking event-- which I LOVE in any form-- but this just gives me an excuse to do it even more. Nearly every recipe I've tried has been show stopping, even with my piddly dink no-flash camera.
And the "five minutes" thing-- it's a teeny bit exaggerated. What it really means that the recipes are all no-knead and can be made in big batches, stored in the fridge, and baked up easily one loaf at a time. A beautiful ideal-- suggesting a life of daily fresh baked breads and pastries. The cookbook also includes other recipes that make the breads into complete meals-- soups and salads and savory grilled meats. I recommend you keep a hankie on hand as you read this book to mop up all the drool.