Month: February 2023

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Third “Tasty Tuesdays” Recipe

I am including Dutch recipes as part of my “Tasty Tuesdays” journal posts because I’ve become enamored with “all things Dutch” ever since I started researching the history of New York City, which arose from New Amsterdam, a settlement in the Dutch colony of New Netherland (once comprised of portions of the following “modern day” states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and, of course, New York). The more research I did for my second “finished” novel, the more fascinated I became with the colony of New Netherland and the Dutch in general. Because I want to represent this culture as historically accurate as possible, I’ve been studying everything I can find about the Dutch, including their cuisine. Consequently, I thought my “Tasty Tuesdays” journal posts would be a good (delicious?) way to share some of my research with you.

The first Dutch recipe I’ll be sharing with you is called “Patatje Oorlog” (which translates to Dutch “War Fries”. I came across it on a Web site called “Tara’s Multicultural Table”. As it turned out, the Dutch love “french” fries, too, as “patatje oorlog” is popular street fare in the Netherlands. Now, I doubt any of my Dutch characters will be enjoying “patatje oorlog” any time soon since I don’t think potatoes would have been available to any of them given the time period and location in which my stories are set. However, you can bet I’ll be enjoying them quite often, especially since I’ll be using my “InstaPot” to make the fries (recipe to follow). I was intrigued by the toppings the Dutch put on their fries, especially after enjoying “wet fries” from a restaurant chain called “The Hat” back in Southern California AND “poutine” up in Toronto, Canada. I guess I seem to like my fries topped with virtually anything but ketchup. I hope you give “Patatje Oorlog” a try and then let me know what you think about the Dutch version of “french” fries.

A now, without further ado, here’s the recipe for this Dutch street fare — along with a variation for making the “fries” part of this recipe. Eet smakelijk… OR Bon appétit!

Patatje Oorlog (Dutch War Fries)

Saté Sauce:

  • 1 Tablespoon peanut oil
  • 1/2 onion, very finely chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 teaspoons sambal oelek (something made from red hot chilis)
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
  • 1/2 cup natural peanut butter
  • 1 1/2 cups chicken broth, divided
  • 1 Tablespoon kecap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce)
  • 2 teaspoons dark brown sugar

Fries:

  • 4 large ruusset potatoes
  • vegetable oil for frying
  • salt to taste

For serving:

  • 3/4 cup mayonnaise
  • 1/2 onion, finely chopped
  • freshly ground black pepper

To make the saté:

  • In a medium saucepan, drizzle the peanut oil over medium heat. Add the finely chopped onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened. Stir in the garlic, sambal oelek, and ginger and cook just until fragrant, 30 seconds to 1 minute.
  • Once fragrant, add the peanut butter. Stir to combine, then add 3/4 cup of the chicken brothe, the kecap manis, and dark brown sugar. Allow to simmer for 5-10 minutes. Add more brothe if the mixture becomes too thick. Remove from heat. Refrigerate in an airtight container until ready to use on top of the fries.

To make the fries:

  • In a fryer or large pot, add 2-3 inches of oil and heat to 325 degrees F. Peel the potatoes and cut into fries. Soak the fries in cold water to remove any excess starch and pat dry with a towel.
  • Add the fries to the hot oil in batches, being careful not to overcrowd (keep the extra fries soaking in the water until their turn to cook). Fry until cooked through, about 5 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon to a towel-lined plate and repeat with the remaining fries.
  • Allow the first batch of fries to rest while the others cook, then fry again in 375 degrees F oil until crisp and golden, about 2 minutes. Repeat with the remaining fries.

To serve:

  • Sprinkle the fries with salt and serve immediately topped with the saté sauce, mayonnaise and chopped raw onions.

Crispy Air Fryer Potatoes

  • 1 pound Yukon Gold potatoes, halved
  • 2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
  • 1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning (optional)
  • Kosher salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • Lemon wedge, for serving
  • Freshly chopped parsley, for garnish

In a large bowl, toss potatoes with oil, garlic powder, Italian seasoning and Cajun seasoning, if using. Season with salt and pepper.

Place potatoes in basket of air fryer and cook at 400 degrees F for 10 minutes. Shake basket and stir potatoes, and then cook until potatoes are golden and tender, 8 to 10 minutes more. Squeeze lemon juice over cooked potatoes and garnish with parsley before serving.

So, there you have ’em: the recipe for “Patatje Oorlog” (which I found on “Tara’s Multicultural Table” Web site) AND the recipe for Crispy Air Fryer Potatoes (which I discovered at the back of the January/February 2023 issue of Mountain Telephone’s “Connection” magazine. I’m sure I’m going to be making both of these recipes often in the future! Just have to get the timing right for the homemade kecap manis since I boiled it FAR TOO LONG the first time and ended up with a solid mess that refuses to dissolve!

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Second “Tasty Tuesdays” Recipe

One of the things that occupies my time when I’m not writing is being in the kitchen — and, NO, NOT only for the cleaning AND “counter creep”! I love to cook (and bake), especially trying out new recipes. Consequently, I also love collecting cookbooks and finding new-to-me recipes. So… Last year, I asked my family if they had any recipes that they’d like to share with me. At first, I didn’t get much of a response to this request, but that changed when I picked up a package from the post office recently. Not expecting anything (except bills, of course), I checked my P.O. Box and spotted one of the keys that indicated I had a package waiting for me in one of the post office’s larger boxes. When I retrieved it, I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a package from Auntie Pat (the eldest of Mom’s two younger sisters). I was even more surprised to discover that she had responded to my call for recipes — in a BIG way! She sent me not one, but TWO wooden recipe boxes! (Don’t see those boxes anymore! I’m old-fashioned, so I absolutely love ’em! Thanks, Auntie Pat!) Anyway… These boxes were chock full of recipes, and there were also a bunch of recipes that wouldn’t fit into the boxes. I’m telling you… It felt like Christmas that day!

Enthralled by the sheer number of recipes in that package, I started going through the recipes one by one. Some of them were handwritten on scraps of paper now yellowed and creased with age while others were typed (not printed) onto index cards — complete with mistakes, too. A veritable treasure trove of recipes! I don’t know how long I spent sifting through many of those recipes, but I suspect that doing so was what solidified my desire to resurrect the “Tasty Tuesdays” feature from back in my LiveJournal days. Because of Auntie Pat’s very generous gift, I’ve decided to share one of Auntie Pat’s recipes with y’all each month. The first one I’m going to share with you is one called “Eggless Spice Cake”, and eventually you’ll be able to see a photograph of the original recipe below.

It was the first word of this recipe’s name that immediately caught my eye, especially after having paid a veritable fortune for eggs during my last trip to the grocery story. (Talk about “sticker shock”!) Given the fact that the price of eggs continues to skyrocket these days, I thought I’d share the recipe for a dessert that does NOT require eggs.

As I’m sure you’ll be able to tell by the photo of the original recipe, I’ve had to modify it slightly — mostly by adding directions for baking. I’ve actually read somewhere that this kind of information was often omitted from recipes since it was just assumed that everybody already knew how to “bake”. Sadly, I don’t think that’s as true today as it was in “the good ol’ days” when this recipe was written. Because of this, I many need to “tweak” more of the recipes from Auntie Pat a bit in order to clarify the directions.

Here’s the first recipe from Auntie Pat’s VERY generous gift:

Eggless Spice Cake

  • 1/2 cup butter or “short’n”
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/3 teaspoon salt
  • 1/3 teaspoon cloves
  • 1/3 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit. Grease and flour two baking pans. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Pour into the prepared baking pans. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean — for about 45 minutes; cool. Frost, if desired.

NOTES:

Since I don’t have a 1/3 teaspoon measuring spoon or any cloves, I used 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg and 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon.

Because I don’t like raisins, I omitted them from “my” Eggless Spice Cake”.

I hope you give this no-eggs-required recipe a try, and if you do, I hope you’ll take a moment to let me know how your “Eggless Spice Cake” turned out for you.

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First “Tasty Tuesdays” Recipe

With this first “Tasty Tuesdays” post coming out on the 14th of February, the first recipe I’m going to share with y’all is going to be something sweet in honor of Valentine’s Day. A member of my family absolutely LOVES Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but he has been grumbling A LOT about “shrink-flation” when it comes to his beloved sweet treat. Every time he purchases any size package of ’em, he never fails to show me the size of ’em — “They’ve shrunk… AGAIN!” he’ll complain, adding “AND the price has gone up on ’em, too!”

Well… After hearing this so many times, I decided to give him a homemade version of his beloved sweet treat for Valentine’s Day — as a surprise AND With the hope that they’ll save us some money in the long run. So… I did a quick Internet search and found not one, but two recipes for homemade peanut butter cups. Because I liked part of one and a different part of the second one, I decided to combine the two. Without further ado, here’s “my” recipe for homemade peanut butter cups:

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Ingredients

  • 3/4 pound good quality dark or milk chocolate
  • 1 cup smooth or chunky peanut butter
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 1/3 cup graham cracker crumbs
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

Bottom:

  • Melt chocolate at 50% power in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds. The chocolate doesn’t have to be completely melted; as it sits, little pieces will melt into the mixture. Be extra careful not to overheat the chocolate.
  • Place about a teaspoon of chocolate into each well of a silicone mold, and with the back of a spoon, “pull” the chocolate up the sides, ensuring that the bottom and sides are completely covered.
  • Place in the freezer for about 30 seconds to stiffen up the chocolate. Afterwards, you can “re-pull” more or fill in any gaps.
  • Place into the refrigerator until cold.

Filling:

  • Mix together peanut butter, powdered sugar, graham cracker crumbs, and salt in a bowl until well blended and free of any large clumps.
  • Using a tablespoon-sized cookie dough scoop or a tablespoon, scoop up some of the peanut butter filling, roll it into a ball with your hands, and then flatten it slightly into a disk.
  • Place the disks into each of the wells in the silicone mold that have already been filled with chocolate.

Top:

  • Spoon enough of the melted chocolate on top of the disks of peanut butter filling to completely cover them.
  • Once all of the wells have been topped off with the melted chocolate, put the filled silicone mold into the refrigerator to set for at least 30 minutes.
  • Enjoy!

NOTES:

I used a silicone mold that I purchased a while ago because I knew I was going to be making these eventually (also bought a silicone egg mold for a spring holiday), but one of the recipes stated that you could use cupcake liners — the foil ones, if I remember correctly, since they’re stronger than the regular paper ones.

When I made a batch for myself, I melted one of the Dollar General’s (“Literacy”) dark chocolate candy bars, and I was definitely pleased with the results. In fact, I much prefer melting the candy bar and then eating it as opposed to eating it straight out of the wrapper. Go figure…

After the success I had with the homemade peanut butter cups, I went on to use the same molds to make MY favorite kind of candy: dark chocolate nonpareils! Had to use rainbow nonpareils since I couldn’t find any of the all-white kind that is use predominately in commercial products. No biggie… Now I’ve just got to figure out how to drop the chocolate, so I can replicate “Sno Caps” (my favorite “movie” candy) at home! If you’ve got any ideas about how to do this, I’d love to hear from you!

Well… This concludes my very first “Tasty Tuesdays” post since my LiveJournal days. I hope you give this easy recipe a try, and if you do, I hope you’ll leave me a comment to let me know how it went for you!

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Second “7th of the month” Journal Post

Welcome to my second “7th of the month” journal post. I will be following the same pattern that I started in January’s “7th of the month” post by discussing events that fell into the following three categories:

  • Holler,
  • Personal, and, of course,
  • Writing.

Therefore, each of my “7th of the month” journal posts will focus on each of the above-mentioned categories – probably in that order, too – from the day the previous post was published (on the 7th of the month) to the day before the next post will be published (the 6th of the new month). Here goes…

Holler Happenings:

One of the first purchases made in the new year (2023) was of two big “herbies” (similar to the big trash cans that waste management companies in the big cities give residents to use for their weekly trash collection). Since the holler isn’t close enough to a city for weekly trash collection, we’re responsible for disposing of our accumulation of trash. I’m hoping that the two new “herbies” will let us go a bit longer between trips to the local dump. Only time will tell… Now, I’ve got to figure out where to store all of the trash cans. I’m thinking about building an enclosure for the trash cans – something similar to what I’ve seen in the back of a local fast food restaurant. The only trouble with this plan is that the price of lumber is still quite high.

With the price of food skyrocketing these days, the title of a book that I spotted while perusing Amazon Prime’s reading selections caught my eye: “A Year Without the Grocery Store”. I would LOVE to skip going to the grocery store for an entire year, especially since I experience something akin to “sticker shock” every time I go to the grocery store! I’ve only skimmed through the book, so I haven’t been able to put anything into practice yet. I’ll try to give you an update about this in future “7th of the month” posts, and if I don’t, feel free to leave me a comment to remind me.

Since winter is the time for making plans for gardens, that’s exactly what I spent some time doing this month – since I am bound and determined to harvest something one of these years! I managed to come up with a list of six goals for my 2023 (and beyond) garden, and here they are:

  • build more SFG frames AND covers for all of them;
  • use my new “grow tent” to start LOTS of seeds indoors;
  • reclaim the area between the peach trees (near the pond in the front yard) and create an “al fresco” dining area, a bean pole tipi (something I’ve wanted for a long time), and/or a medicinal garden;
  • learn how to can and preserve food from my garden (assuming I’m, indeed, successful at harvesting something from my garden);
  • turn the side porch into an outdoor kitchen (a space for the canning and preserving);
  • build/purchase a storage shed for all of my gardening supplies and seeds.

As I hinted at when I added “(and beyond)”, I have a sneaking suspicion that I probably won’t be able to accomplish all six of these goals this year, but they are always at the back of my mind – “the big picture”, if you will. Even though I may not be able to cross off all of these goals completely (especially the last two), I will be “taking baby steps” when it comes to them. For example, I’ve got to spend some time clearing off the side porch by organizing many of the gardening supplies that are currently located in that space, and by doing this, I’ll be just that much closer to accomplishing those last two goals. Every little bit of progress helps!

The last thing I want to mention in the “Holler Happenings” section is placing a Pampered Chef order. My darlin’ daughter has recently started hosting Pampered Chef parties, so I thought I’d support her efforts by placing an order through her party – to give her an opportunity to earn some of the benefits for hosting parties. So… I spent some time perusing the Pampered Chef Web site, and while doing so, I came up with a list of a dozen possible items to purchase. After prioritizing the items on the list, I then had my daughter help me place my order – to make sure that she received the credit for my order. Without further ado, here’s a list of the items I purchased through my daughter’s most recent Pampered Chef party:

  • Mix ‘N Chop (to help “Sweet Thing” when he makes his meat sauce and taco meat);
  • Can Strainer (to help him when he makes his big batches of chili);
  • Burger & Slider Press (something we’ve been wanting to get for quite some time);
  • Apple Wedger (an all-metal one to replace my cracked plastic one); and
  • Salt & Vinegar Seasoning (to put on fries cooked in our InstaPot).

My daughter threw in a jar of “Everything Taco Seasoning” (since she knows that we eat a lot of tacos), and I selected an avocado tool (even though I don’t really like avocados) since I didn’t really like the other “free” offering. Overall, I’m very pleased with everything I purchased, and I’m looking forward to her next party, so I can order the remaining items on my list.

Personal Events:

The first thing I want to mention in this category is that I created a “Winter Bucket List” – a list of things that I want to accomplish this winter. Because I know that “all work and no play” isn’t good, this list contains both things that will require some effort (read: work) to accomplish and things that can be used as rewards for getting the work done – in other words, activities that I think are fun. I’ll have to type it up, print it out, and post it somewhere prominent, so I’ll be able to tell how close I am to accomplishing everything on this list. This was an idea I first came across in one of the newsletters I receive from Maria Gracia, the founder of the “Get Organized Now!” Web site.

In addition to this list, I placed another order – for the 2023 edition of the original Lunar Phases Calendar, a tradition that I started quite a while ago. I’ll use this calendar to determine when I’ll be digging out our telescope for some “moon watching parties” this year! Some of the other things that fall into the “Personal Events” category are as follows:

  • tried a new recipe for “InstaPot” fries (the main reason I purchased the Pampered Chef’s Salt and Vinegar Seasoning). By the way… Even though that appliance is now called the “Instant Pot”, I’ll always know it – and refer to it – as the “InstaPot” since that’s what it was called when it first hit the market. It just has a certain ring to it that I like. So, yeah… I love my “InstaPot”, and I always enjoy trying out new ways to use it. The next thing I think I’m going to try to cook in it is a rib-eye steak.
  • had more enjoyable phone calls from my darlin’ daughter, who calls to “check to see how we’re doing” – though she invariably calls when I’ve just sat down to eat, I always enjoy her phone calls.
  • listened to more UK games – when I remembered to do so! Until I got used to their Tuesday and Saturday schedule, I ended up forgetting about some of the games until afterwards. OOPS!

Writing

As far as my writing is concerned, I spent some time finalizing my writing goals for the first 100 days of 2023. Given how distracted I can get, I’ve found that having a list of such goals helps me stay focused – and redirected should I find myself distracted. As with my “Winter Bucket List”, I’m going to have to print out and post my writing goals somewhere prominent in my office, so I’ll be able to do periodic progress checks to find out how productive I’ve been. In addition, I started organizing my two writing spaces: “my wall” in the office, where my desk is located, and the area at the end of the sofa in the front room, where I go for some peace and quiet. I spent much of January doing research for – and developing – a story (historical romance) that will be set in the Dutch colony of Curaçao (a Caribbean island that has family ties). Like most of my ideas for stories seem to do, this story quickly became yet another trilogy. By doing this research, I guess you can say that I spent part of my winter enjoying a beautiful Caribbean island! A wonder way to spend some time – even though it’s just been as an “armchair traveler”!

One more thing… Beginning this month (February 2023), I’m going to start a new feature on my Web site. Every Tuesday, I will be publishing something called a “Tasty Tuesdays” post. These “Tasty Tuesdays” posts are a throw-back to my LiveJournal days when I enjoyed sharing some of my favorite recipes. Since I miss posting on a weekly basis, I thought “Tasty Tuesdays” would be an excellent way to get back into doing so. At this point, I’m planning to follow the following schedule for these “Tasty Tuesdays” posts:

  • First Tuesday of the month = a favorite recipe of mine;
  • Second Tuesday = a recipe for something sweet;
  • Third Tuesday = a Dutch recipe of some kind (in honor of my fascination with the Dutch);
  • Fourth Tuesday = a recipe from my Auntie Pat’s collection (that she recently gifted to me);
  • Fifth Tuesdays = a barbecue or picnic-related recipe

All right, I think this sums up the month of January for me quite well. I’d love to hear what y’all did last month, so please take a moment to leave a comment! Looking forward to hearing from you! In the meantime… Take care.