The Mandelbear's Musings

Since today is Newtonmas, it seemed like a perfect excuse to make apple pancakes. These are a lot like the ones I remember my Dad making on Sunday mornings when blueberries were out of season, except that S has a dairy allergy so I made them with olive oil rather than butter.

Ingredients:

1 C. Flour
1 Tbsp. Sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
1 beaten egg
½ tsp. vanilla extract
1 C. apple juice
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 - 1 chopped apple
1 Tbsp. of peanut oil for greasing the pan

Method:

Mix the dry ingredients; I usually use a glass measuring cup.

Beat the egg, then mix it with the other liquid ingredients.

Chop the apple; this is easiest to do by first running it through a peeler/corer like this one, which turns the apple into a helix, which makes it easy to cut up.

Dump the liquid ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir just enough to break up the more obvious lumps. Fold in the chopped apple.

Grease a non-stick or cast-iron skillet (preferably with peanut oil, which has a high smoke point). Pre-heat it while looking for a gravy ladle.

Pour or ladle the batter into the skillet; cook on medium. Flip when you see the edge getting dry and bubbles staying open.

This made 12 roughly four-inch pancakes, cooked three at a time in a 10" pan. Your mileage may vary. My ladle appears to hold about an eighth of a cup, but the batter's viscosity makes it more like 3/16.

Obvious variations include using water, almond milk, or any other kind of milk for the liquid; replacing all or some of the apple pieces with blueberries, dark chocolate chips, or chopped walnuts; and using butter or any other fat for either of the oils.

From the kitchens of the Rainbow Caravan.

Yesterday involved a lot of food, so here are a menu and some recipes! These are in the order we prepared them.

First, my Mom's cranberry relish.

1. Start a day or two before -- it needs to sit in the fridge for at least 12 hours.
2. Use a food processor, or an old-fashoned meat grinder with a coarse plate, to chop up a pound of cranberries, one apple (cored and peeled), and one orange (not peeled).
3. Let it sit in the fridge until dinner time.

Next, the turkey. We got a 13-lb organic, fresh turkey -- the local Payless told us not to bother reserving one: they had plenty. I used the recipe on the wrapper with one slight mod from an earlier recipe.

1. Preheat oven to 400F. That's my mod -- the recipe said to use 325.
2. Coat the turkey with olive oil.
3. Rub with a mix of 2tsp each of ground black pepper, rubbed sage, and salt.
4. Put the turkey in the oven and turn it down to 325.

The skin came out wonderfully crisp and tasty.

Somewhere in there, the mashed potatoes.

1. Wash potatoes. Small Yukon Gold potatoes are best.
2. Cut them up if they're large.
3. Boil until soft.
4. Mash -- we used a hand mixer.
5. Optionally, add some broth.

Let people add butter, margerine, or whatever themselves -- everyone's taste is different.

Next, the dressing. This is Colleen's recipe. Measurements? What measurements?

1. Tear up a few pieces of bread. Sourdough that's almost but not quite stale is best; we used oat-nut, which was what we had.
2. Chop up an onion, a shallot, and some mushrooms. Saute in olive oil. (You can of course use butter, but one of us is allergic to dairy.)
3. Add some chopped roasted hazelnuts or walnuts, and a 1-pound bag of cranberries.
4. Pour in chicken, turkey, or vegetable stock and stir. Add the stock gradually so as not to make it too soggy.
5. Bake for about half an hour in an oiled glass baking pan.

Make the gravy.

1. While the dressing is cooking, chop up the neck and giblets, throw them into a small saucepan and boil.
2. After the turkey comes out, deglaze the roasting pan with a little white wine,
3. Combine with the giblets. It's simplest to dump the entire saucepan into the roasting pan rather than the other way around.
4. Thicken with flour, cornstarch, or arrowroot if desired.

That's my recipe; S actually made it yesterday, and cut lots of corners.

No prep needed for... Carrot sticks and pitted kalamata olives. We had jellied cranberry sauce, pickles, salad greens, fresh bread, and eggnog, but for one reason or another didn't use them.

We used almost exactly half the turkey, so the stuff we forgot wasn't missed. The YD made dinner for her family.

NaBloPoMo stats:
  14989 words in 29 posts this month (average 516/post)
    512 words in 1 post today

(From a comment elsejournal:)

When I have left-over rice I make fried rice, usually for breakfast (egg, grain; it works). Cook garlic and any other non-rice ingredients in oil, add rice and stir until coated with oil, shove to one side and scramble two eggs in the pan, mix, garnish with green onions if you have them. Total time about 10 minutes.

I don't know how you feel about tofu, but half a block of tofu, cubed, drizzled with soy sauce and sesame oil, and some wasabi or horseradish on the side is a great high-protein lunch.

Melt some butter in a frying pan, grind some pepper onto it, add fish (I used red snapper yesterday). Squeeze half a small lemon on top, add more pepper, flip. Squeeze the other half of the lemon onto the top.

Brush chicken parts (I like skinless, boneless thighs; YMMV) with mustard or barbecue sauce; bake. This is the only recipe in this batch that takes more than 10 minutes, but it's under five minutes of prep.

We had a good Christmas weekend. And week, for that matter, though it had its major low points as well. Monday -- Christmas Eve -- was the worst, between Colleen's temporary crown coming off, her scooter battery not charging, the fact that I hadn't bought any stocking stufers... Add back pain, sleep dep from a long night Friday (don't ask), and general grumpiness.

At least I actually noticed that I was depressed, angry, disappointed, and anxious. (And that the anger and disappointment were largely directed at myself, as usual.) Things improved from that point, thankfully. The evening and Christmas were lovely, with Naomi and her kids, Chaos and Rabbit, and Chip and Eli on Christmas.

We had roast beef on Monday, and borscht on Tuesday. I think the borscht was my best ever.

1. Boil about 3 lbs of beef roast, an onion, two carrots, four peppercorns, and two bay leaves in water to cover for about two hours, until the meat is cooked and the veggies are nearly falling apart.
2. Meanwhile, cut the tops and tails off three or four bunches of beets, and roast them at 350 degrees until you can push a fork through a beet. This takes an hour or so.
3. While the beets are cooling and the beef is boiling, cut three parsnips, four turnips, and four carrots into julienne strips.
4. Set the meat aside, and toss the veggies.
5. Put the cut-up veggies into the broth, and start peeling and cutting up the beets. Expect to be caught red-handed.
6. Add the beets to the broth. Shred half a red cabbage and toss that in,
7. Cut up the beef and toss that in. Add a little more water if it looks like it needs it.
8. Serve with sour cream and dill.

Tasty. We have, of course, been eating left-over roast beef and borscht all week. Only the YD is complaining; Colleen and I are not.

Naomi gave me a lovely REI Quantum Shoulder Bag for Christmas; it seems to want to be called "Red". I think her real name is Veronica, but she won't admit to it.

Red is about half an inch too short for my 15" work laptop -- the two corners stick out like little silver ears. Terribly cute. It can be forced into the main compartment, but my plan is simply to put a waterproof flap over it in bad weather. Other than that it's perfect; I really like having a bag that zips on top instead of having a flap, stays vertical when I swing it around to the front, and holds 9x12 envelopes without crumpling them.

A reasonably productive, if short, week at work. I made several stupid mistakes, but was able to recover fairly quickly thanks to git.

The usual collection of good links. Cringely has a post on Reagan and Newtown, about how Reagan destroyed the country's mental health system. There weren't nearly as many homeless people before Reagan, either -- there were places where crazy people could go to be taken care of. I read that Monday morning; it added to my depression.

Every once in a while I want to take a vacation -- just me, and nobody I had to be responsible for. *sigh*

Melt 2tbsp butter in a large pan. Add about 1tbsp onion sliced into strips. When the onion is nearly cooked, move it aside and add fillets of red snapper. Flip them over while they're still uncooked on the top. If the fillets start coming apart in flakes, you've overcooked them.