This is my mom’s recipe, and I have no idea where she got it. She’s always made it at Christmas, and up until we moved to Maine and I made it for myself, I never liked it because my mom always puts nuts in hers. (I hate nuts in baked goods.) But after we moved, it was cold, I was lonely, and I wanted to bake it, so she emailed me the recipe and it’s been a staple for us during the winter ever since.

It is by no means healthy (the amount of sugar and oil make me cringe every time, although I have replaced some of the oil with applesauce with no noticeable change in taste) but it’s really, really good, especially when it’s still a little warm from the oven.

Enjoy, and let me know if you make it!

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Apple Pound Cake

• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups peeled, cored, chopped apple
• 1/2 cup raisins (optional)
• 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 325. Combine dry ingredients. Beat oil, sugar, and vanilla until well blended. Add eggs. Add dry ingredients to sugar mixture in three parts, beating well after each addition. Stir in apple, and, if using, nuts and raisins.

Spoon into a well-greased and floured 10-inch tube pan. Bake for approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes or until done; test for doneness by inserting a clean knife into the center area. If it comes out clean, the cake is done.

Cool in pan, remove to cake plate.

*My notes: It’s really easy to overcook this cake, and part of the beauty of this cake is in the way the top crust gets when it’s perfectly done, so you don’t want to burn it. I usually set the timer for 50 minutes and then check it every 5 minutes from that point; that way I won’t let it go too long and risk overcooking it. And, for what it’s worth, I always put raisins in mine instead of the nuts, although my mom considers adding raisins and omitting nuts to be a sacrilege.

Today, it’s this:

That’s everything I bought at the Farmers’ Market on Sunday. Amazing!

Fresh produce, flowers, food…it all makes me happy. And sharing the experience with my sweet girl on a sunny Sunday morning — well, so much the happier. (Not pictured: the amazing apple turnover we got from the French bakery that had a stand at the market, which we ate in about 27 seconds flat while buying the newly-picked first crop Gravenstien apples and the bunch of cosmos.)

I think it may have helped bump me up out of my cooking rut. I’ve got a menu planned for the week (two nights down, three to go) that I’m actually excited about, thanks to these amazing things I bought yesterday.

I really appreciate all your suggestions. I’d love the recipes all of you mentioned, so if you can, send them my way. And I really appreciate all the ideas. I haaaaate being in a cooking rut; hopefully it’s broken now for a while.

To keep me accountable, I’ll share my meal plan. It’s nothing super fancy. The only new-to-me recipe is the potato salad. The rest are tried and true favorites, but I guess that’s a good way to start. Only one night of pasta, and no taco/burrito meal, which is pretty amazing as that’s one of our primary fallback items.

Sunday: Lentilles de Puy, salad, bread.

Monday: Pesto, new potatoes and green beans, salad, bread

Tuesday: Vegetable Dinner: corn on the cob, green beans, roasted brussels sprouts, salad

Wednesday: Sesame Lentil Stir-Fry

Thursday: Garlicky Potato Salad with Greens, salad

I’ll let everyone know how it goes!

I’m having a hard time thinking of things I want to cook and am feeling unmotivated to try to cook much. When I do cook, I’ve been messing things up; recipes I’ve made over and over again, that I used to be able to make from memory, just aren’t coming out right. Also, I’m not really enjoying the process of cooking like I have in the past…I cook because we have to eat, not because I’m excited about a recipe or anything. It feels like just another chore, one that comes at the end of the day when I’m dealing with a tired toddler who just wants to be held and all my reserves of patience are very, very close to being empty. I hate feeling like cooking’s a chore.

So, basically: MEH.

Deep down, I really do like to cook, I think, but am having some kind of mental block about it. Not even reading my cookbooks or looking for recipes on foodie websites lately has inspired me. Usually that’s what I do when I’m feeling bored, but right now I can look at page after page of recipes and come away thinking there’s nothing interesting there.

Also, for some reason, I’m feeling like the food I usually make (like, basically, every recipe I’ve posted here…my standard 20 or 30 recipes that I usually love) is boring. Uninteresting. Uninspired. Bland.

I know I tend to get into recipe ruts, too, where the same, like, 8 recipes are in my rotation until Brett points out that we’ve had, say, black bean soup or macaroni and cheese five times in the past month. That’s definitely the case these days, too. I am sort of feeling tied to one genre of food and find myself only remotely interested in pasta recipes. And I know that drives Brett nuts.

So…help. I don’t know what to do. I am bored with the few standard things I’ve been making lately, but at the same time I have no motivation to get out of the box and try something new. And yet I’m getting really tired of Annie’s Mac. Not to mention we simply can’t keep spending so much on food.

How do you deal with this? Wait for it to pass? Force the issue and just make new and different recipes until the mood changes? I haven’t felt this way in a long, long time and I’m just at a loss.

Help!

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I never realized the sheer volume of laundry three people can generate in about two weeks, but it’s a LOT. When I walked into the Laundromat yesterday pulling our big red wagon piled high with dirty clothes, even the Laundromat attendant said, “Wow, you have a lot of laundry.”

Why, yes, I do. That’s what happens when you have a husband who works a job where he’s constantly getting covered in ground coffee and a baby who likes to smush chocolate Cats Cookies for People into her shirt and rub her hummus-covered face into my shoulder. It’s time to get a washer and dryer, I think. We have the hookups, I just haven’t done it yet. Having to go to the Laundromat is a great motivator, though. I think I’ll make it a priority for the week.

Since I’m on the topic of laundry, I figure this would be a good time to share the homemade laundry soap recipe that I use. Several people have asked me about it in the past, so here it is.

It’s easy to make, extremely cheap, and I think it cleans our laundry just as well as commercial soap.

Powdered Laundry Soap
2 bars Ivory soap, grated (about 4.5 cups)
2 ¼ cups Borax
2 ¼ cups Washing Soda

Grate two bars of ivory soap. (I use my food processor’s grating blade, but before I had a food processor, I used the small side of a regular cheese grater.)

Combine grated soap with Borax and Washing Soda.

If you have a food processor, process for about 1-2 minutes or until all granules are uniform in size. (If you don’t have a food processor, you can just stir or shake it up, but be aware that the larger grated pieces of soap may not dissolve well in your wash, especially if you’re using cold water.)

Use 2 Tablespoons per load. For best results, you should start the washer, add the soap, and then add the clothes, especially if you grated your soap by hand. (I don’t always do this and it’s fine now that I process it in my food processor.) Oh, and it doesn’t soap up really big like Tide or whatever. There are definitely soap bubbles, but fewer than with store-bought detergent.

Sometimes I add a little bit of essential oils (tea tree, lavendar) to the rinse cycle if I remember, or I shake a few drops onto a washcloth and throw it in the dryer with the clean clothes.

However, now that I’m used to this very low-scent soap that just makes my clothes smell, well, clean, and not Mountain Fresh or whatever, I find that adding a scent is completely unnecessary. When I’m at my mom’s or my in-laws and I do laundry using their soap, the scent totally overwhelms me, even after my clothes are clean and dry. I go to put them on and am blown away by the scent-y-ness of them. I guess I’m just more sensitive to it than I once was, especially since I tend to make a lot of my cleaners and rarely use heavily-scented products anywhere in the house anymore. My one throwback scenty product I do use is this Arm & Hammer shower cleaner that is supposed to be lemon-scented, and every time I use it I feel icky because of the strong smell. **shrug** But it works, so I keep using it because I hate scrubbing soap scum out of a shower.

I’d be interested to hear any iterations on the laundry soap you come up with if you try it. Let me know if you have any questions. I’m happy to answer them!

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There’s lots more going on that I should blog about: I’ve been knitting a bunch, we’ve been enjoying getting to know the city, Elanor’s changing and growing quite a bit, I’m geeking out over how organized my baking cupboard is with the new Tupperware storage containers Brett’s mom gave me for my birthday, I’ve been doing some freelance editing/design work, and I’m only days away from having a bike to ride.

For the most part, life is good. Sure, there are frustrations and annoyances that pop up but for the most part I’m really enjoying our new apartment, our new city, and the friends we’re meeting. I’ll try to expand on everything more in the near future!

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The French Press was one of the first methods of brewing so-called better coffee that I discovered when I moved to Seattle back in 2000. At the time, my coffee tastes were fairly generic. I had spent much time throughout high school frequenting the grungy coffee houses in northwest Portland, where I likely got some sort of sugared milk drink, with little coffee, and outside of that diner coffee with shelf stable creamer from the likes of places like Shari’s. Needless to say, my coffee experience was very sweet and creamy and tasted nothing like coffee as I know it now.

When I first moved to Seattle right out of high school, I lived a few blocks up from Pike Place Market, and through a friend at school, landed a job at the Tully’s in the Market. Like many people in the coffee industry, I started my career as a barista while in college, and while some would view working at a place like the big T fairly low brow, it was a great introductory experience into the world of coffee. I worked at Tully’s for over two years, and gained a good, however maybe unknowingly, bedrock for my future coffee career. I have very fond memories of going to open the café at 5 a.m., the city still asleep, but the market alive with the fish mongers setting up their stands with the fresh catch of fish, the artisanal food makers setting up their booths with bottles of wine and olive oil, cheeses, fruits and vegetables.

In between my classes and my shifts in the café, I would venture down to the Tully’s roastery, where we did coffee education classes, what I would later learn to be more or less a cupping of sorts, but these done by brewing the coffee in a press pot. It was here where I was initially sold on making really good coffee.

The first press I bought was one of the larger Bodum models. Although I have probably bought enough glass replacements over the years to warrant buying stock in the Bodum corporation, I still have that press, and actually my mom has it now, as I traded her my big one for the smaller guy she bought.

The press for me is a really easy, forgiving method of brewing coffee. It also has a very blue-collar aesthetic and personal history in my mind. I have made hundreds, maybe close to thousands of presses over the years. When I worked in the Zoka roastery, I regularly started every morning off drinking a press with my friend Thomas Hodges as we sat on the bags of green coffee and contemplated the day. Thomas and I drank a ton of pressed coffee, sometimes making two or three presses a day.

When I worked at the airport in Maine, I was constantly the source of many breakroom jokes, when I pushed my co-workers’ can of Yuban and their Mr. Coffee maker out of the way and threw my press and my brown bag of beans down on the counter and started making a press.

I am really drawn to manual brewing methods. I really enjoy cafes or coffee shops that make coffee in devices that can be simply replicated at home. It removes the mystique and sort of good coffee snobbery associated with high end coffee, in that brewing coffee in say a press pot or a Melitta or a Chemex demonstrates that it takes nothing more than good beans, a decent grinder, some fresh water and a thermometer to make an excellent cup of coffee. It shows that you don’t need an espresso machine, a $10,000 brewing device or even a piece of crap $150 Mr. Coffee home drip coffee maker to make a palatable cup.

The French Press is very easy to use and clean, takes less than about 6 minutes to make, and is fairly forgiving if you are too “lazy” to really pay attention to what you’re doing.

So anyways, enough of the blabbering, here’s the nitty gritty. I am going to give a really basic, step-by-step instruction. There are many extended techniques and practices that you can develop to make that press even more amazing, I’ll maybe make a short list at the end, but here are the basics to get you started.

Step 1: Prepare your equipment. You’ll need a digital thermometer, a press pot, a burr grinder, and some fresh beans and fresh, cold, water.

You want cold fresh water, and you don’t want to boil it to a raging boil, as boiling water depletes the dissolved oxygen in the water, and I believe it also damages the mineral structure of the water. However, I am not completely certain as I am not a super science kind of guy.

Rinse out your kettle and fill it up and put it on the stove to start warming up. I normally use a thermometer, which fits in a small hole in the spout of our kettle, but I was at the beach when I took these pictures, so I didn’t have all my normal tools. I sort of eyeballed and felt the water, and when it started to get some small steam bubbles rising up out of it, and seemed to be just under boil, I pulled the kettle. I usually shoot for a general temp of about 200 degrees.

Step 2: Measure out the coffee beans and grind them. I do this while my water is boiling. I recommend weighing out the beans so you can get an accurate dose of coffee, but if you don’t have a gram scale you can just use a measuring cup. We use about a ½ cup of beans for one of the 34-ounce presses.

Your grind should be fairly coarse. As a general rule, I usually go a step or two finer from whatever the recommended press grind is on the grinder. Your grind should look a tad finer than, say, turbinado sugar.

You’re also going to have to adjust your extraction time at this point. So generally speaking, we’re looking for something like coarse sugar, steeped for about 4 minutes.

As far as grinding goes, it’s absolutely imperative that you have a burr grinder. Our conversation ends if you don’t have a burr grinder. I ground some coffee the other day on a blade grinder, and it was like giving a blind man a dull knife and some carrots and telling him to chop. It was messy as hell and the coffee particles were not even close to being consistent. We had gotten to the point were a majority of the grounds were super fine, but there were these giant halves of beans that kept missing the thin, dull blades. Terrible.

Get a burr grinder. it doesn’t even have to be super fancy; I think you can get a cheap one from Target for around 30 bones. The one I am using in these pictures is a hand crank grinder from Sweet Maria’s, which cost about 80 bucks. It takes about 2-3 minutes to grind the coffee, it has conical burrs as opposed to a flat burr set, and for the traveling sort of person, works really well. The better the grinder, the more uniform your grinds are going to be, and the more uniform your grinds are, the less sludge and uneven extraction will result in the cup.

Get a burr grinder, you can thank me later.

Step 3: Beginning the extraction. So now I have some fresh, ground coffee, and some fresh water nearing a boil. I usually watch for the temp to rise to about 200 degrees, and then I pull the kettle from the stove and let it sit for just a second or two, and then I pour it on the grounds. I put the grounds in the press pot, and I start pouring the water on top of them. When I pour, I try to give a consistent and gentle swirling pattern to make sure all the grounds are covered. I fill the press up to a little less than an inch below the top of the glass.

Once all of the water is in, I hit go on the timer, and start letting it brew or steep for 4 minutes. After 1 minute has expired, I break the nice crust that has formed on the top of the press. At home, I have a wooden chopstick I use. I am using a wooden spoon in the pictures; it doesn’t matter, just don’t stick a metal spoon in there and start banging around inside the press till you break the glass, because it does happen.

Breaking the crust helps to release all of the C02 that is developed in freshly roasted beans, and it also helps to ensure that all of the grounds are equally wet and you’re getting an even extraction. The crust-breaking ceremony should happen about a minute or two in, and you should get your nose down in there and really inhale some of those nice aromatics that are released from the wet grounds.

Step 4: Ending the extraction. Once I have broken the crust, I put the lid and plunger on and wait out the last couple minutes. Once the time is up, I slowly start pushing down. Sometimes a finer grind will make the press hard to push down, or the seal will get tight. Giving it a little lift up and then resuming the downward thrust helps if it becomes hard to press. Once the press is down all the way, I pour a little out to clear any sediment that may have become trapped above the plunger, then I fill up my mug and sit back and enjoy my coffee.

Step 5: The aftermath. The press is a relatively easy device that requires some basic cleaning at the end of use. Most presses should be able to unscrew the three filter elements, so you can flush out and trapped grinds or oils. I rinse out the press and then wipe it out with a paper towel. I usually try to clean it with soap and water every so often. However, make sure it is rinsed well, and maybe steer clear of using a fragrant soap as you don’t want your next press tasting of lemon or lavender. Anything that comes in contact with coffee should be cleaned after each use, as coffee is a very oily, acrid substance, and it will be hard to remove the odors and tastes of old coffee oils left on utensils for a prolonged period of time.

So that’s basically it, as you can see, most of the effort is in the preparation.

As I mentioned earlier, the press is fairly forgiving, as long as you’re in the ballpark and paying attention to what you’re doing, you should be able to make a good press. I wasn’t at home, so I had none of my usual tools and had to make this press nearly blind, without a scale or measuring cup or my usual grinder, and without a thermometer. But it still turned out pretty darn good.

In terms of extended technique, I make sure everything is pre-heated before I begin. The coffee will cool down fairly dramatically in the glass press, so I find pre-heating the press with some warm water to raise its temperature helps, as does filling your mug up with hot water, and rinsing the plunger with boiling water before you press it down. If the coffee is naturally processed, or even a lower grade of washed process coffee, I hand sort the beans, taking out any defective stinker or quaker beans. If you are using a single variety bean, not a blend, you want all your beans to be as uniform as possible in terms of size and color, and a quaker is going to be much lighter in color than others. If you have ever cupped a pile of quakers, you’ll know exactly why you don’t want them in there.

I frequently mess around with my extraction by adjusting the temperature of the water, the extraction time, or the dose or the grind. This is usually done in experimentation, and often results in finding that certain coffees taste better brewed slightly more precisely and differently than normal. Sometimes I’ll use a significantly finer grind and short steep time. Or if the grind becomes too fine, I’ll pour it through a tea strainer to get any sediment out of the cup. Many people dislike the press because of the sediment and sludge that can result, and straining it this way is a great way to clean the cup up a little bit. If the coffee is washed, and from, say, South America, it can be very light and tea-like, and I’ll use a slightly larger dose than normal.

In fact, the Colombia from Stumptown that I used in the pictures seems fairly light in the cup, and I think I would prefer it with a little bit more coffee in my dose. This is where having a gram scale really helps, as you can start to dial in your press to say x grams versus y grams. I usually pour my water in pretty consistently, filled right up to below the top, but many people do it half full, and then finish filling after the break. I’ve also tried slowly pouring in the water, so slowly that it takes the entire 4 minutes to fill it up.

Before I grind my coffee, I usually toss a small handful of beans through the grinder to purge any old or stale beans or grounds still trapped in the burrs from the last time I used it.

Whatever you do, though, do it as consistently as possible, that way if something is tasting slightly off you can change one variable at a time till you get it right. If you use inconsistent amounts of coffee every time, and different grinds, and have no idea what temp your water is, you’re going to have very differing pots of coffee, and will have a harder time making a good pot that you like, and then being able to replicate it.

Have fun and happy pressing!!

Some notes, first, before I get started. First, this plan will pertain to dinner only. In general, we eat simple things for breakfast: yogurt, toast, granola, or, if Brett’s feeling fancy on the weekend, he’ll make some eggs or waffles or something. Same goes for lunch; we generally eat a lot of leftovers, although I try to keep a few boxes of Annie’s Mac stocked in my cupboard for Elanor and me to share if we don’t have leftovers. I rarely make something special for lunch; the fanciest I get is something like a baked potato or some roasted winter squash or something.

My general approach to meal planning is that I have a few staple meals or convenience items that are easy and don’t really have a recipe. I try to have the ingredients for at least one of these on hand at all times, and usually plan at least one easy meal a week. These are things like pasta with red sauce, burritos, frozen pizzas, and Annie’s Mac, essentially they are very simple things that require little to no effort to cook if we’re tired or it’s late and we don’t want to follow the meal plan. While each of those meals can be made more special or fancy, something I hope to highlight in future posts, at the basic level they are quick and simple and don’t require a lot of cleanup.

I also try to include a new recipe every week or two. I love sitting down on a weekend with my cookbooks and reading them to get ideas. I try to mark recipes that I’m interested in with a sticky note, or, if I’m looking at recipes online, I bookmark things that look good to a folder in my bookmarks called, well, recipes. I find that if I go through those recipes every couple of weeks, I can usually find some really good things. True, some are duds, but more often than not, I find really tasty things that get added to the regular rotation.

One more note before I dive in: I’ve had a bit of a conundrum with how to organize the meal pan and shopping list, so if you have a preference or would prefer something different, let me know. I’m open to suggestion. As it stands now, I’ll do this: I’m going to list out the recipes, including a link to a PDF of each one that you can print. I’ll then include a PDF of a shopping list for the week’s meals. This will NOT be broken down by meal, and it’s a complete list for all meals for the week, so if you are going to be selective about which meals to make, you’ll have to keep that in mind as you shop and as you view the amounts of things.

For example, if three recipes call for onion, I’ll just list Onions, 3, in the list. So if you know you aren’t going to make one of those, just note that you only need two onions. (Sorry if I’m overexplaining this…it’s been kind of a lot to wrap my head around as I’ve tried to figure out how to organize it. Call it Mommy Brain, I guess.)

So, without further ado, here is the meal plan, week one.

• Sunday: Burritos
• Monday: Channa Masala
• Tuesday: Ginger-Roasted Veggies, Fresh Herb Dinner Rolls, Salad
• Wednesday: Black Bean Soup & Cornbread
• Thursday: Potato Soup and Whole Wheat Beer Bread
• Friday: Sundried Tomato Risotto
• Saturday: Waffles, Hash Browns

Here’s the shopping list: Shopping List, Week 1.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments. I hope you enjoy it!

So last night, after looking at the budget and proclaiming our food expenses to be too high, he looked through our cupboards and declared, in a very Brett-like manner, (I’m sure if you know Brett, you can totally picture him stomping around the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards and the fridge/freezer and saying all of this), “We have SO much food in here! This is absurd! I’ll tell you what we’re going to do! We aren’t going to go grocery shopping until after Christmas, or maybe even until after January 1st! We’re just going to get creative and eat what we have! It’ll be fun!”

This went on for about ten minutes, and of course, every time he’d say something additional about how it would be “creative” and “fun” I would just look at him with raised eyebrows and nod. I finally just told him that if he wanted to do that, then fine — he’s on dinner duty for the duration. He agreed, and that was that.

Regardless of who is making dinner, I did agree to the idea that I will try not to grocery shop for a couple of weeks, despite some major reservations. I’m sure most of you know how it is; you have 95% of the ingredients for a meal on hand at any given time (hence the fullness of the cupboards) but you are missing that crucial 5%. That’s how our cupboards are. I have enough stuff to make maybe four complete meals — after that, I told him all bets are off and I might have to buy one or two things here and there.

He protested and said that we’d just have to make do. I just smiled and nodded, and figured I’d at least get a couple of things out of it: he’d make dinner a few times, and I’d get to make a lot of lentils in the next few weeks. (He doesn’t like lentils much, and I love them, so consequently we have a couple bags of them that just sit in the cupboard, not getting used up since he doesn’t really like them.)

Fast-forward to tonight. I proposed making potato soup for dinner, the recipe for which I’ve put at the end of this post. We’ve eaten it a lot lately, because I like it, it’s easy, and it’s filling, and with the potatoes and the milk it’s a great comfort food item.We have everything I need to make it, and it’s easy, and a good cold weather food, so I figured it would be a winner of a meal.

Brett hemmed and hawed and said he didn’t want potato soup. So I came up with several other options: burritos, homemade mac and cheese, baked potatoes, or some other potentially cheesy/creamy/garlicy potato dish.

He rejected all of them, getting grumpier and grumpier as he kept asking if we had something and I said no, or that it was frozen and would take hours to defrost.

The ingredients for pizza? Nope. No mozzerella and the dough is frozen.

Spaghetti? Nope, the sauce we have is my mom’s homemade sauce and it’s frozen, too. And since Brett doesn’t believe in microwaves (that’s a topic for another post) it would take hours to defrost.

Frozen pizza? No. I haven’t bought any in weeks.

Annie’s Mac? We’re out.

So finally, I gave up trying to find something he’d agree to and went to give Elanor a bath. When I came out from the bathroom after bathing her, he was gone. I had no idea where he had gone. Honestly, it scared me a little, but I trust him so I didn’t freak out too much.

He walked in the door about 20 minutes later, with two packs of specialty organic pasta in hand, and said he’d gone and gotten dinner.

His amazing new grocery regime?

Lasted less than 24 hours.

I had to laugh a little, although I could have predicted it. When it comes right down to it, Brett is too much a food snob and an impulse eater to be able to just eat through the cupboards. When he wants something specific, he wants it, and he’d sooner not eat at all than eat something he didn’t want just because it’s there and it’s food.

It felt like a little victory, knowing that he couldn’t even handle his own proclamation. (Seriously, dude, no grocery shopping for three weeks? Probably not so realistic.)

Anyway, I am definitely going to be trying to cut our grocery budget down; we agreed on that much and I do think it’s reasonable to at least try to shoot for a lower number. I guess a little belt-tightening is inevitable for us right now, but it will be hard for me to shop really frugally. I did it for so long (while we were in Maine, while Brett didn’t have a job) and I got so tired of it. Lately, I’ve taken great pleasure in going to the grocery store and picking really yummy, often organic food. I hope I can still buy a lot of the yummy organic stuff and stay within the budget. I suppose I’ll just try to view it as a game and do my best. I’ll keep everyone posted on how it goes. I am sure I’ll have to make some sacrifices, but hopefully I can do it as painlessly as possible.

Anyway, here’s the potato soup recipe. It’s the one my mom has always made, so it’s really just from my memory. I don’t have it written down anywhere, and I just do it by the seat of my pants every time. Definitely fiddle with the spices if you like; it is definitely the kind of soup that can handle some variation.

I really like to make this with the beer bread I posted a few days ago. Yum!

Potato Soup

• 10 medium-sized baking potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 2 T flour
• 2 T butter
• 2 C cold milk
• Garlic Salt
• Pepper
• Oregano
• Thyme or other savory spices

Peel and cut potatoes, placing them in a heavy-bottomed soup pot with enough cool water to cover them while you are cutting them. (This prevents them from turning brown.) When they are all cut, drain the water and add new water, just to cover. Place the pot on the stove and bring to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, reduce heat to a simmer and cover. Cook for about 15 minutes, or until potatoes are tender.

Meanwhile, while the potatoes are cooking, start a roux by putting butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When it is just melted, add flour while stirring constantly with a fork or a whisk. When all the flour is added, stir briskly until it forms a thick paste that sticks to itself and slides away from the sides of the pan. I continue this until the flour just starts to brown. (The flour browning is more something I can smell than see…sorry, that’s really vague. It just starts to smell kind of nutty and flour-y and yummy.) Slowly add cold milk while constantly stirring to prevent lumps. Let this simmer for a few minutes or until the mixture begins to thicken.

When the roux has begun to thicken, dump it straight into the pot with the potatoes and water. (I know! This sounds weird — adding it in with the water — but it works, trust me.)

Let it cook for five minutes or so, while adding garlic salt, oregano, and pepper to taste. Sometimes I also add thyme, or other savory spices — really, whatever I have lying around and whatever sounds good at the time. I imagine rosemary would be good, and sage, dried parsley, and dried basil as well.

Once the mixture is thick and the potatoes are falling apart, taste for seasoning, adjust spices, and serve.

It’s easy, relatively quick, and yummy and rich. Enjoy!

This recipe was just about enough for Brett and me to have a bowl and a half each, so if you are a big eater or if you are making this for more than two people, you might consider making a one-and-a-half batch or a double batch. I made a few changes; I added more garlic, basil, and black pepper, I didn’t add parsley, and I only added about 3/4 t of salt. And even that much salt was almost too much with the saltiness of the broth I used.

We ate it with some crusty bread with butter, and a salad. It was fantastic! As always, let me know if you make it and like it!

Sundried Tomato Risotto

• 3 cups stock or broth
• 3 cups water
• 3 T olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 cup risotto
• 1/2 cup oil-packed sun dried tomatoes, drained and chopped
• 1 1/4 t salt
• 1/4 t pepper
• 1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
• 1 T fresh parsley, chopped
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan

Combine three cups broth with three cups of water, set aside. Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic, and saute until translucent, about five minutes. Add risotto and continue to saute for about two minutes, until rice is crackling and brown. Add 1 cup of liquid, salt, and pepper, stirring constantly until liquid is absorbed. Add the sundried tomatoes, basil, and parsley and continue adding the liquid 1 cup at a time until it has all been absorbed, stirring constantly. The risotto should be tender and slightly firm in the center with a creamy sauce. Stir in parmesan cheese and serve.

Elanor’s sick again, or is sick still, if you prefer. I feel really sad for her. She’s got a cough and is all sniffly and is getting about four more teeth (yes, again) and is just generally kind of clingy and miserable. She hasn’t been sleeping much at night, either, which is really hard on me. For the first time in our parenting career — not to mention our marriage — Brett slept on the futon downstairs this week, just because Elanor was so wakey and restless that she was keeping both of us awake, and, well, one of us might as well get some sleep, right?

Aside from that, I’ve just been enjoying having Brett home. Thankfully, he’s done traveling for the next while and should be working regular hours, which is quite a treat.

I had a post written about how I’m feeling sort of crumudgeonly and Scrooge-ish this Christmas, but I didn’t post it because I read it again and it was just whiny. I’ll try to figure out in the next couple of days how to write more about how I’m just not feeling the Christmas spirit without being whiny.

Let’s see, what else?

Oh, yes! I have been talking with my sister about eating, and recipes, and meal planning. As a working, single mom to three kids, her time to do things like meal plan is nonexistent. She wants to eat better, both simply for her health and her kids’ health, but also to lose weight. We got to talking about it while she was here for Thanksgiving, and I offered to email her every week with our meal plan, recipes, and a shopping list. I’ve actually been thinking that perhaps I’ll just post it here, meal plan, recipes, and shopping list. Is that something anyone would be interested in seeing on a semi-regular basis? Leave a comment for me if you’d find it useful, and if there’s interest, I’ll post it here.

And, speaking of recipes, I’m going to post one for my sister-in-law, Amy. I’ve been meaning to give it to her for a while, but she’s having guests from out-of-town this week and wants to make it while they’re here.

So, Amy, here you go — the beer bread recipe. I should, however, give credit where credit is due and say that I found this on allrecipes.com. I made one change, which several people suggested in the comments on allrecipes: adding butter on top before it goes in the oven. It’s best fresh, but if you don’t eat the whole loaf at dinner, it makes really good toast the next day.

Whole Wheat Beer Bread

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 (12 fluid ounce) can or bottle beer
• 1/4 cup melted butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a 9×5 loaf pan.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt and brown sugar. Pour in beer, stir until a stiff batter is formed. It may be necessary to mix dough with your hands. Scrape dough into prepared loaf pan and pour melted butter over the top.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

I copied this recipe from there, although I should note while most of the text is verbatim, I did change a few things, primarily some simple Americanizations that I made because the author of the blog is British.

Channa Masala

• 2 T olive oil
• about 1 tsp each of Cumin seeds and Onion seeds
• 2 16-oz cans of chickpeas rinsed in a colander
• 1 16-oz can of chopped tomatoes
• 1 large onion, chopped into long thin strips
• 3 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped into bite-sized chunks
• 3-4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1-2 T minced ginger
• 1 minced pepper (I usually use jalapeno or serrano, depending on how spicy I want it)
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 2 teaspoons of ground coriander
• 2 teaspoons of garam masala
• 1.5 teaspoons of haldi (turmeric)
• water
• fresh cilantro, chopped

Heat the oil in the pot until hot. Add the onion and cumin seeds and watch them pop and fizzle for around 20 seconds. Then add the chopped onions and fry until they are lightly browned. Then add the ginger, garlic and chili. Stir fry on medium heat.

Then add the can of chopped tomato and stir-fry for about 5 mins on medium-to-high heat until the oil starts to separate from the onion/tomato mixture – and then add the salt, coriander, garam masala, and turmeric. Stir it all thoroughly on medium flame.

Then add the chunks of potato – stir until well coated in spices. Then add around 3 smallish glasses of water [Leen's note: I usually just eyeball this, so I can't give you an exact amount] into the pot – and put the lid on and bring to boil. Let it simmer on a very low flame for around 20 mins with the lid on. This will soften the potato.

After about 20 mins – check to see that the potato chunks are soft – and then add the drained (already-boiled) chickpeas. Stir it all up – and add another small glass of water to the pot. Bring to a fierce boil and then turn the flame down to simmer the pot for a while – with the lid partially on.

After about a further 15 mins of simmering – add some freshly chopped fresh cilantro and stir it all in. Keep it simmering for about 10 mins more. After that – turn off the heat – put the lid on tight – and let it it stand for around 15 mins while you make some basmati rice – or warm some pita bread etc.

Enjoy! As always, if you make it, let me know what you think!