Monday, October 31, 2011

Chicken Salad


We love good chicken salad. And this is good chicken salad.

Ingredients:
1 12.5 oz can of cooked chicken breast
2 apples, cut up
2 large pears, cut up
2 C black grapes, halved
1 large medium onion, chopped
6 almonds, chopped
1 C mayonaisse
2 Tbs brown (deli) mustard
Salt and pepper to taste


Mix mayo and mustard to make dressing. Add salt and pepper to the mix. Set aside.

 

Cut up fruit and onion and put in bowl.


Drain chicken and separate with a fork. Add to fruit and onion.


Pour dressing over fruit and chicken mixture. Mix well. 

Shell and chop almonds.


Add almonds to salad.


If needed, add more salt and pepper to taste.

Chill. Serve on bread or with crackers. However you like chicken salad.


Thursday, October 20, 2011

Fresh Grilled Trout


And when we say fresh, we mean fresh. We caught these at Little Lyman Lake in the High Uintahs and grilled them at the lakeside. The meat fell off the bones.

Ingridents:
4-8 fresh trout
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 large onion, sliced
Juice from one lemon
1 lemon, sliced
butter
aluminum foil
salt & pepper to taste

Clean fish.

Tear off enough foil to surround all fish lying flat. Place fish on shiny side of foil. Dab butter on and in fish. Crush garlic into lemon juice and pour over fish.

Arrange onion and lemon slices evenly over fish.

Cover with foil and seal edges of foil packet.

Grill for 10 minutes on each side until meat flakes from bones.

Serve hot.

Cream Cheese Frosting


From the Kitchen of Carol Berlin

Life should always be this easy. I love easy. I love cream cheese frosting. This is a perfect combination.

Ingredients:
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/2 C butter, softened
8 oz. powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Beat for at least 3 minutes. Spread on whatever you want.

Sweet Carrot Bread


As we were harvesting veggies from our garden one day, my husband asked me if I would be willing to try the zucchini bread recipe with some of our home-grown carrots instead of squash. Carrot cake is his favorite, so he thought that carrot bread would be wonderful, because zucchini bread is really more of a cake than a bread, as we all know. I said, sure. And voi la! We had carrot bread. And we saw (and tasted) that it was good.

So, the short and simple is: make zucchini bread, but use carrots instead. And, if you're lucky and have a wonderful husband, he'll grate the carrots for you. (It was his idea, after all.)


Ingredients:
1 C sugar
1 C brown sugar, firmly packed
1 C oil
3 eggs
2 C grated carrots
3 Tbs vanilla
3 C flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
3 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 C nuts, chopped (optional)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream sugars, oil, and eggs. Add rest of ingredients. Mix well.

Pour into ungreased loaf pan or pans. Bake:
  • Large loaf: 1 hour
  • Small loaves: 20-25 minutes
Check with toothpick. Cool on racks. Wrap in plastic wrap and then foil. Freeze or refrigerate.


Monday, October 17, 2011

The easiest (and hardest) grape juice


Disclaimer: This blog is NOT about to become a canning/bottling blog. It's not going to happen.

However, this post is about bottling. I know that the picture shows grape juice AND peaches, but I'm only going to blog about the grape juice. It's wonderful, and it's simple (for canning/bottling).
A few bottling tips:
  1. One batch is usually seven bottles. Don't prep more than that at a time.
  2. Begin your next batch as soon as the last one is processing. It saves a lot of time.
  3. The grapes are sweeter if you let them sit in the box or bucket for 2-3 days after picking. Much longer than that and you'll find yourself handling a lot of fuzzy, growing stuff.
Enough of that.

Ingredients:
2 C concord grapes per bottle
1 C sugar per bottle
6 quarts boiling water
1 canning/bottling lid per bottle
1 canning/bottling ring per bottle

Wash bottles and rings in dishwasher. Don't remove them from your dishwasher until you are ready to put in the fruit. Seriously. Throw away any bottles that have chipped lips. Seriously. They won't seal, and it will drive you nuts.

Fill your canner a little less than 1/2 full of water. Start heating on high.

Place 1 C sugar in each bottle. It's best to use a bottling funnel so that the sugar doesn't spill all over your counter.

Wash the grapes. Remove them from the stems. Discard any withered or green grapes with the stems and leaves. Put 2 C grapes in each bottle. It's also best to use a bottling funnel for this step so that the grapes don't go everywhere.

Heat water and put one canning/bottling lid per bottle in the hot water. This is to sterilize the lids.

Fill bottles with boiling water to 1/4 inch from top. With a damp cloth, wipe the lip of each bottle. Place a lid, rubber side down, on each bottle. Screw on one ring per bottle.

Tighten the ring as much as you can. Then shake the bottle until the sugar dissolves. You may need to shake each one two or three times.

Place the bottles in your canner rack. Lower rack into the the canner. Add enough water to cover the top of the bottles but don't fill the canner all the way. Cover and bring to a boil on high.

Once it is boiling, reduce heat to medium high (if your stove dials have numbers, between 6 and 7). Boil for 10 minutes. Remove from rack and place on a cloth you don't care about. It's more than likely going to get stains on it. Allow to finish sealing. This can take anywhere from 1 minute to 12 hours. Be patient with them.

Allow to sit in your food storage room for 3-6 months.

For serving, strain water from fruit into pitcher (keep the juice, not the fruit). Add one quart of cold water. I usually pour it over the fruit in my sieve. Throw used fruit away. Chill juice. Drink. Enjoy.

Printable version

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Zucchini Bread


From the kitchen of Carol Berlin

I know that gardening season is almost over. And I really know that summer squash had its day in the sun. But I couldn't resist sharing my favorite zucchini bread recipe.

Ingredients:
1 C sugar
1 C brown sugar, firmly packed
1 C oil 3 eggs
2 C grated zucchini
3 Tbs vanilla
3 C flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
3 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 C nuts, chopped (optional)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream sugars, oil, and eggs.




Add rest of ingredients.



Mix well.


Pour into ungreased loaf pan or pans.


Bake:
  • Large loaf: 1 hour
  • Small loaves: 20-25 minutes

Check with toothpick. Cool on racks. Wrap in plastic wrap and then foil. Freeze or refrigerate.

Great with cream cheese frosting.


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