It’s not unusual to find me in the kitchen baking something or other. There I was again yesterday, preparing to make bread while I considered what to write about for my next blog.

Bread baking is a weekly ritual in my house, and I often use the time to think about my next writing project. As I was taking ingredients off the shelf and deciding which to use this week and which to save, I realized, as I did a few years ago, how many similarities there are in creating a delicious loaf of bread and a fabulous story.

I’m embarrassed to say this, but in addition to being a cookbook hoarder I am also a Crockpot addict. That’s right. I can’t imagine a better use for the floor of my new pantry than for my bevy of slow cookers, right below the long, long row of cookbooks.

Have I told you about my frantic eBay shopping to find original Crockpots, not the new-fangled ones that cook at too high a temperature, but the originals, unused wedding gifts stored for years in somebody’s attic and ready now for a good home? I didn’t think so. I don’t often admit it. But I have four.

I’m very good at making excuses for my obsessive Crockpot behavior. When we moved to a two-house lifestyle a few years ago, I decided I must have had a premonition. Without breaking a sweat I had slow cookers for both houses. Big ones, small ones, a little one for heating chocolate, an oval one that overheats for presentation, a slow cooker wannabe with adjustable temperatures, a giant wannabe for cooking turkeys or jambalaya for a party. All I had to do was move some north and some south and I was all set.

Excuses are only helpful for a little while. Unfortunately recently I’ve realized that 90% of all slow cooker recipes require chicken. And while we still eat meat, it’s much less often. Fish has never been a big item for slow cookers, and vegetables? Well. . .  What was I going to do with all these Crockpots?

So now, instead of searching for slow cookers that do what they were meant to do, I’m looking for recipes. Vegetarian main dishes. Vegetarian side dishes. Recipes without meat or canned soups. Recipes with few ingredients and very little preparatory cooking. I haunt Pinterest.   I have several cookbooks on my Christmas wish list. I’m the Sherlock of Slow Cookery.

Last week I saw this recipe on Pinterest, and last night my patient husband assembled it in one of my oldies but goodies and let it cook all night. This morning we were thrilled with the results. Not only did this recipe make enough oatmeal for us both to enjoy this morning, it made enough for my favorite Oatmeal bread recipe, which followed quickly on its heels and is now baking in the oven.

Give this a try if you’re enthused about waking up to the smell and taste of delicious hot oatmeal some morning soon. You won’t be sorry.

Overnight Oatmeal in your Slow Cooker

• Slice two apples (preferably organic) and place in the bottom of a 3 quart slow cooker
• Add 1/4 to 1/3 cup brown sugar, amount depends on your tastes and how sweet your apples are
• Add 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• Add pinch of salt (optional)
• Add two cups of old-fashioned oats
• Add four cups of water and DO NOT stir

Turn your slow cooker on low just before you go to bed.  Your oatmeal will be ready in 8-9 hours.

Variations: While we haven’t tried these, I’m looking forward to experimenting with using maple syrup or honey instead of brown sugar, adding raisins or dried cranberries, tossing in a little ground flax meal or any number of other yummy, healthy ingredients.  We just ate ours with milk this morning, but I’m thinking chopped walnuts and fresh fruit would be a great addition once it’s cooked.

As I said, I have OLD slow cookers which actually cook slowly.  If yours does not, use a timer to turn it on or off, or adjust in other ways.  Ours was perfect in this time frame.

Whatever you try, let us know how it turns out.

T’is the CHUsday before Christmas, and I don’t have to peek in your windows to see how fast you’re running.  Whether it’s Hanukkah or Christmas, Kwanzaa or Winter Solstice you’ll celebrate this week, you’re rushing and wrapping and decorating to chase away winter’s shadows.

This is the time of year for fast food, for drive-in hamburgers or buckets of chicken.  Even vegetarians can find possibilities as they zip from school concerts to office parties.

I’m not a big fan of fast food.  Sometimes it’s a treat, but most of the time I feel guilty.  I imagine my cholesterol and blood pressure charting new territory, and you have to admit, that sort of spoils the fun.  So to avoid the guilt as often as possible, I’ve developed a few recipes I can easily make from scratch and enjoy with just a bit of lead time and planning. (more…)

So how do you feel about fruit cake?  I see a collective screwing of faces out there.  But honestly this fruitcake, packed with chocolate chips, cherries, dates and walnuts  is hard to beat.  Did you get that?  CHOCOLATE chips in fruitcake?  Yum!

I learned to make this recipe in the 1970s, and I’ve made it every Christmas since.  The friend who gave me the recipe called it Bishop’s Cake, and why would I argue?  I’ve seen it called other names since then, but this one stuck for me.  It lasts a long time when refrigerated and it’s rich.  One small slice is plenty. (Don’t take the photo too seriously.  Bishop’s Cake is mostly nuts and fruits with much less batter than my illustration.)

So here’s a Christmas gift for you, an easy one to make once the ingredients have been assembled.  I guarantee you’ll be pleased. (more…)

Tina, who posted a comment on the CHU blog, Bread’s Baking in the Oven, is October’s CHU giveaway winner with a recipe she tried from The New American Plate: Recipes for a Healthy Weight and a Healthy Life.  

The recipe, Roasted Red Pepper and Corn Soup, was a hit at her house.  Tina says “it’s a real keeper.” 

I’ve provided a link to the recipe at a blog titled Zen Foodism, where you can read the blogger’s personal comments, too.  The cookbook comes from the American Institute for Cancer Research, and  Beth the blogger says the recipes aren’t bland but packed with superfoods.  Beth admits she could own a million cookbooks, and it wouldn’t be enough.

Ummm. . . sound like anybody we know?

Thanks, Tina, for pointing out a new cookbook that I may need to own someday soon.  Enjoy your Mr. Potato Peeler and autographed novel. 

Since autumn’s a great time for soup, I’m sharing two favorite recipes of my own. 

 The first is a vegetarian minestrone that we love at our house.  Vegetarian soups can be suspect, but I promise you won’t miss the beef broth in this version. Uncle Bill’s Vegetarian Minestrone is simple and quick, and I can almost guarantee you’ll be happily surprised.  For variety, try adding sliced cabbage instead of the zucchini, which is harder to find fresh, now that summer has ended.

The second was served to me this summer by a friend in New York.  Lime Soup, by Rebecca Rather and Alison Oresman,  is an absolutely scrumptious version of Tortilla Soup, and I was delighted to find it online at Epicurious.  My friend cuts the amount of lime in the recipe to one cup, and since hers was perfect, that’s my plan, too.  Lime Soup is a  full meal in itself.

It’s November, and time for new recipes in the giveaway.  I vowed to go through December, so that means you have November and December to pass your comments to me.  Rules are simple:

1. Make a recipe from a cookbook you haven’t used this past year (new or old) or “underused,” meaning you’ve made only a recipe or two from it ever.
2. Comment on ANY CHU blog and tell us what you made, the name of the cookbook, and how you liked it. 

More precise instructions here. 

This month’s winner this month will receive an autographed novel AND Piggy Wiggy Little Whisk, pictured above.   Everyone who has entered at any time during the giveaway will be eligible for the final prize, to be announced.  Remember EVERY new recipe you try and comment on is one entry.  You’re not limited to one a month.

Dig Out Your Cookbooks, and Start Your Ovens.

So, do you know what kind of “eater” you are?  Or have you ever even wondered.  Maybe you grew up with fried-green tomatoes, ham biscuits and red eye gravy.  Maybe you grew up with brown rice, tofu and bean sprouts.  Or maybe your family was eclectic and ate a little of this and a little of that.  Chances are, though, that there were only two real categories.  Vegetarian or ‘real food.”  The rest was immaterial.  And if you were a vegetarian, you’d better plan to eat a lot of macaroni and cheese, because wherever you went, that was the dish people made for you.

These days categories have expanded greatly.  We have “pescatarians” who are vegetarians who also eat fish. ”Lacto-ovo” vegetarians who eat no flesh but do eat eggs and dairy products.  We have “vegans” who eat nothing associated with animals, including gelatin (remember Janya’s reaction to the gelatin in Wanda’s grapefruit pie?)  “Raw food vegans” who eat–no surprise here–only raw food. And the newest addition and my personal favorite “flexitarian,” which allows any foods but heavily emphasizes vegetables. 

I’ll confess I’m not, like Aggie and Ed in my mystery series, a vegetarian.  I’m a flexitarian.  And what a relief to finally have a word to describe my eating habits.  I rarely cook red meat.  The closest I’ve come this year was a chuck roast I divided into small pieces for soup stock.  We occasionally buy an organic chicken and use it sparingly, broth, taco filling, stir fry, pizza.  Turkey sausage makes its way into jambalaya and gumbo, and we eat lots of seafood along with at least twice as many vegetables as we once did.  I order whatever sounds good when we go out, but more and more find that beef and pork’s not high on my list, and I always avoid veal and lamb.

We slipped into eating this way when we began to look for healthy recipes.  As we became more and more interested in vegetarian alternatives, I began to look for cookbooks.  When I saw The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen was highly recommended, I asked for it for my birthday.  Then it sat.  Sound familiar?  That’s the CHU motto.  Buy a new cookbook to decorate your bookshelf.

This week I decided to pull out MVK and try a recipe for my CHUsday blog.  First, though, I’d thought about making my favorite Turkish red lentil soup from The Sultan’s Kitchen, but I only had green lentils, so I looked for a new lentil soup to try.  And am I glad I did.  The Turkish version is fabulous, but Egyptian Lentil Soup from MVK is exceptional, too.  Different, with cumin and fennel seeds sauteed with vegetables before the lentils are added, but equally good.

I’ll confess when I realized I now owned a “vegan” cookbook, I wasn’t overly excited.  Vegan?  Didn’t that require all kinds of odd meat substitutes?  I mean, I adore tofu, but ”fake” meat doesn’t appeal to me.  The good news?  Nothing in this cookbook is fake.  Just fabulous ingredients combined in new and delicious ways.  If this recipe is in any way representative of what I have to look forward to, I can’t wait to use it again.

Do you know what kind of eater you are?  Let us know.  We’re interested.

Don’t forget, CHUers.  Make a new recipe from an old or unused cookbook OR this month, make one you’ve found online and wanted to try.  Then comment here or on any of my Cookbook Hoarders United blogs and let us know what you made and how you liked it (plus where it came from) and you’ll be eligible for this month’s giveaway.  Details here.

Congratulations to Nancy Badertscher, who won last month’s CHU giveaway by trying a vegetarian broccoli quiche to feed her visiting vegetarian children. Nancy used a recipe from Pillsbury’s Easy Vegetarian Meals, and I’m providing the link to the same quiche, as well as the cookbook.  (more…)

We completed August with some great entries in the CHU giveaway.  Random.org chose Lee Ann’s entry–which was actually the first–a selection from the cookbook, Adventures In Cooking, from the Sunnyside Presbyterian Church in South Bend, Indiana and submitted by a Mrs. G.V. Swigart.

The book came to Lee Ann from Great-Grandmother “B,” and Lee Ann chose this recipe (see below) because she’d never used sour cream in a chicken recipe and thought it might be interesting.  Lee Ann was glad she did, and reading it, I can see why. 

Lee Ann said in addition to the cookbook, her “Mamaw” wrote a letter to go with it, which she pasted inside, and that some of the recipes come from her great-grandmother’s sister.

Lee Ann has touched on my own fascination with cookbooks.  Each one seems to come with a story.  The torn-up copy of Joy of Cooking that my mother wrote a message in when she gave it to me one Christmas a few years before she died.  The Good Housekeeping Cookbook I bought at a rare bookstore on my fiftieth birthday, because it had been my mother’s favorite, and she had mourned its loss after a move.  Although she’s been gone for more than thirty years I feel closer to her having both with me now.

And what about all those cookbooks we’ve picked up at charitable functions or fundraisers (like Lee Ann’s great-grandmother did?)  Cookbooks we’ve picked up on our travels?  I have a Hungarian cookbook I’m determined to pull out soon.  I used it once, but it deserves better.

I love having the cookbooks, and now I love making time to use them.  I hope you will, too.  Pictured above is September’s silly kitchen gadget prize, the Yolky egg separator from Joie,  You simply clip Yolky to the side of your bowl and break your egg into the little cup, and the white runs through.  And of course, there’ll be an autographed novel to go with Yolky boy. 

I hope you’ll pull out that unused cookbook you’ve never quite been able to throw away, make a recipe and tell us about it by commenting on any CHU post.  Then you’ll be entered in this month’s giveaway.  And don’t forget, you have one chance for EVERY recipe you try, so increase your chances of winning and get busy in the kitchen.  Be sure to tell us about your connection to the cookbook you’ve used.

Thank you, Lee Ann, for this recipe and the story that went with it.  This sounds yummy.

I’m amazed at how many silly kitchen gadgets there are.  I had no idea.  This weekend I had the time of my life ordering enough to give away one each month for our CHU winners, along with an autographed paperback of the winner’s choice–if available.  This month’s winner gets the Joie Mashy Egg Masher, a hit on Amazon.  If you like guacamole, apparently it’s just the thing to mash avocados, too.  Can you resist a chance to win?

August’s giveaway closes tomorrow at midnight.  Here are the rules, in case you’ve forgotten.  In a nutshell–eggshell in honor of Mashy–you must make a recipe from a cookbook you haven’t used in a year.  Either a new one you haven’t tried before, or an old one that’s been sitting in a shelf, or worse, in a box.  You don’t have to send the recipe, just comment here with the name of the recipe and cookbook, what you did or didn’t like about either or both and anything fun you think we’d like to hear.  One entry per comment.  We’ll be doing this for the next several months at least, so you still have time to win.

August is a great month for ice cream.  Here in Western New York it’s also a fabulous month for fresh peaches.  Years ago I bought an ice cream freezer, not the easy to use countertop variety, but the one that requires rock salt and crushed ice.  Luckily I didn’t go further and buy the kind that requires kid power.  There are no kids in residence this month.  So ours requires electricity.  Still, this is surprisingly simple to do, and such fun.  It’s also, like many of my cookbooks, in need of more frequent usage.  In honor of CHU I used an old edition of Cooking Light, which I told you about before,  and chose Peaches-and-Cream Ice Cream, which made enough for approximately one million people.  Luckily this is a cottage community and there are always people sitting on front porches ready to eat any dessert a neighbor offers.

The recipe was yummy and surprisingly healthy except for the four egg yolks.  My only problem?  Peaches-and-Cream Ice Cream calls for almond extract, which enhances the peach flavor.  Did you know that extracts now come in plastic bottles?  I didn’t.  When I went to measure out the almond extract–foolishly over the container of ice cream–I mistakenly squeezed.  We had VERY almondy peach ice cream.  It wasn’t ruined, but it wasn’t improved, either. 

Watch these new extract bottles and measure over an empty counter.

So, if it’s still warm wherever you are, and you have ripe peaches and an ice cream freezer, this one’s for you.

Peaches-and-Cream Ice Cream, adapted from Cooking Light Cookbook, 2000–out of print.

Preparation Time: 45 minutes.  Chill Time: 1 hour.  Freeze Time: 1 hour

5 cups of 1 percent low-fat milk, divided.  I used a combination of milk, non-fat half and half and a little heavy cream, because that’s what I had.
4 large egg yolks
4 cups of mashed peeled ripe peaches (approximately 8 peaches)
2 Tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
2 Tablespoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon almond extract (watch out!)
2 14 ounce cans of fat-free condensed milk (this provides the sweetness along with the peaches.)

Rock salt and ice for ice cream freezer, if you’re doing this the traditional way.

Prepare mix:  Combine 2 1/2 cups of milk and egg yolks in a heavy saucepan and whisk constantly over medium heat.  If you have a thermometer, heat to about 180 degrees, if not, cook until it thickens, perhaps as long as 20 minutes.  Don’t let it boil and don’t stop whisking.  This is not the time to make a phone call.

Combine slightly cooled egg yolk mixture with remaining ingredients and chill.  You want this nice and cold and of course, you can make it early in the day and freeze it in your ice cream maker later in the afternoon.  Just be sure you allow enough time for an additional hour or so in your refrigerator’s freezer, too.

Once chilled, pour into the freezer can of your ice-cream freezer and follow your manufacturer’s directions.   You can eat it now, but it will be a soupy soft-serve consistency.  If you prefer a more traditional ice cream, spoon this into a freezer container and freeze in your refrigerator’s freezer for about an hour.

This fed my neighborhood, or  more accurately, about 24 1/2 cup servings–a gallon plus.

This may be your final taste of summer.  Enjoy!

Remember Joan, the pie prize winner whose daughter made a fabulous blueberry pie and won a prize at the fair, only to have it disappear before the second round of judging?  I received so many requests for the recipe after I ran Joan’s story, that I begged her to ask her daughter if she would part with it.  Graciously, she agreed.

I had lots of blueberries, so today I decided to “do a Wanda” and make the pie.  I followed the instructions with two deviations.  I used frozen crusts I already had, plus I cut the sugar in the filling to 3/4 cup.  You can see my masterpiece below. I have to say, with complete sincerity, this pie was absolutely fabulous.  Everyone at our table said so.  Without having to make crusts, it was easy, as well.  No wonder this won a prize. 

As a thank you for making the pie in the first place, Joan shared one of the prizes in her box with her daughter.  My thanks to both of them for taking the time to share the recipe and the eating pleasure.  My family thanks them, too.

Joan’s Daughter’s Wonderful Blueberry Pie

For the double crust:

3 cups flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/4 cup shortening
Ice water

Add 3/4 cup shortening to flour and salt, and using a pastry cutter or two knives, cut until resembles coarsely ground cornmeal.

Add remaining 1/2 cup shortening and this time cut until it resembles small peas.

Add cold water, 1 tablespoon at a time until dough forms a tight ball. Divide in half and chill.  Roll dough for bottom crust and fit into pie plate.

For the filling:

4 cups fresh blueberries.
1 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons of flour
2 Tablespoons of tapioca
1/2 teaspoon of lemon peel
1/2 teaspoon each of nutmeg and cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of salt

Add sugar to the blueberries, then combine flour, tapioca, lemon peel, spices and salt, and mix with blueberries.

Fill pie shell and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and dot with 1 tablespoon of butter cut into small pieces.

Roll out the other half of crust and cover pie.  Be sure to vent by cutting holes or pricking with a fork. Seal the edges.

Bake at 425 for 35 to 40 minutes.

(A printable pdf is available here.)

Joan says she makes hers with blueberries picked from Pertic’s.  Mr. Pertic was the developer of the Blue Crop blueberry, which is particularly huge and sweet.  Care to find a pick-your-own place near your house?  Double the fun of making your pie.  Be sure to bring a child or two along if you can.

We plan to eat ours with frozen vanilla yogurt made in my husband’s new ice cream maker.  How about you?

I’m sure Wanda is hovering in the wings so she can steal this recipe for Wanda’s Wonderful Pies.  BTW, if you’ve yet to buy and read Sunset Bridge, then you’re missing out on an exciting development at the pie shop–among other things.  But my lips are sealed–except when I’m eating another slice of pie.