Home Cooking: Somen Noodles

For a month this summer we hosted a Japanese foreign exchange student, and when it came to meals, my husband and several sons were in food heaven. You see, Mike served a two year mission for our church in Japan, and while he was there he learned to love Japanese food. He cooks it often for our family, and we go to the Japanese restaurant at least a couple times a year for special occasions.

Two of our sons are part Filipino and they have always loved foods from the Orient. Some how the other kids have learned to love it as well. I’m the only one in the house who shudders when we have Japanese, although I have learned to like several Chinese dishes.

For this meal, I had to smile and pretend I loved everything about the meal that our foreign exchange student made for us. It was part of his assignment to prepare a traditional Japanese meal for the American family. Somen noodles are not something I normally eat, but the rest of the family loved it.

Since the exchange student did the cooking, I had to borrow a recipe for this blog from the internet, but it looks very similar to what I observed him do in preparation, so I think it’s likely the same.  

SOMEN NOODLES AND DIPPING SAUCE

4 bundles of somen noodles
2 ½ cups dashi
½ cup dark shoyu
4 tbsp mirin

Bring a large pot of water to a roiling boil. Prepare the noodles (each bundle is one serving), according to the package directions. Somen water is not used, so you can dump out the water into a colander and immediately run the somen under cool running water, tossing until cool. Serve with noodle dipping sauce.

As you can see in the photos, the exchange student made our meal a little more decorative by twisting the cooked noodles around his finger before putting them onto the plate. The dipping sauce was in a cup, so to eat you picked up the entire roll, dipped then popped it into you mouth.

Although there was nothing wrong with the food, I was tired of the flavor by the third roll, but custom and courtesy dictated I had to finish my serving. The boys loved it so much he made the meal a second time. I opted for something else.

Home Cooking: Watergate Undercover

Isn’t it interesting home some recipes get their names? Earlier in the month I gave the now renamed recipe for The Next Best Thing to Robert Redford, and today I’m talking about yet another recipe with perhaps a more suspicious name, Watergate Salad.

Of course, we know that restaurants often name signature dishes after celebrities, perhaps in the desire to increase purchase of an item despite the fact the person being named doesn’t even know about the dish. But this one was named after a national scandal in the 1970s.

Since our kids don’t get past studying World War 2 in most of their history classes, it makes me wonder if they would even have an idea why a salad would have the name Watergate to begin with, or how the salad itself would get such a name.

Well, actually, I’ve heard many an answer to that one. Some say it was served at a restaurant at the Watergate complex, the building made famous by the Nixon administration when G. Gordon Liddy (yeah, the Buy Gold guy) and those seven guys you may have seen depicted in All the President’s Men starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman decided to undermine the election, insuring that Richard M. Nixon would be re-elected.

The origin of the concoction itself seems to come from Jello who wanted to market their pistachio pudding. Originally called Pistachio-Pineapple Delight, this mixture was easy to make, tasted good, and served as either a salad or dessert for the home or party table.

Whether the name change was a result of a restaurant, the scandal, or the fact it was made up of marshmallow, pudding, and fruit like the Nixon administration itself, the name Watergate stuck and even today’s generation knows the name, as well as the flavor.

Toss this one together in under five minutes and serve it fresh or chilled.

Watergate Salad
1 20 oz can crushed pineapple, undrained
1 c. miniature marshmallow
1 package pistachio instant pudding
9 oz. container Cook Whip

Mix it all together and serve.

Optional modifications:
Add drained maraschino cherries as a garnish
Substitute Orange, Cherry, or Strawberry Jello for the pistachio pudding. When choosing orange, add a can of mandarin oranges in place of the pineapple. Even sliced, seedless grapes or coconut flakes add a nice zing to the dish.

Home Cooking: The Great Zucchini

Ah, the joys of spring. The homegrown vegetable gardens. The sweet taste of corn, tomatoes, and green beans. And the overabundance of zucchini.

I don’t know about your neighborhood, but it seems that the giving of zucchini has become an underground joke in my neck of the woods. (Almost as much of a Utah staple as the dreaded green Jello and carrots.) It seems that everyone who plants a garden always has more zucchini than they could ever possibly consume on their own or within their family, so the offerings begin.

“Would you like some zucchini?”

And that is the question. LIKE? Does anyone actually like zucchini?

Yuck! Now, I’ve been known to sit at the table and eat a peeled cucumber, but zucchini? You’ve got to be kidding.

That’s what I always thought until my sister, Sue, managed to pass off a zucchini to me once without my even knowing. No, it wasn’t raw. I can definitely tell the difference between a cucumber, which I live, and the texture and taste of the dreadful zucchini.

But my sister was a sneak!

The loaf of home baked dessert bread looked too good to pass up. How was I to know it was Zucchini bread? And the best zucchini break I have EVER tasted in my life.

Don’t think about your grandmother’s zucchini bread, and defiantly ignore the zucchini bread delivered by your neighbor, desperate to somehow use all that zucchini she grew in her garden. (Wouldn’t you think that someone would figure out it’s not necessary to grow multiple zucchini plants to meet their family needs?)

This is by far the absolute best zucchini bread you will every taste, and the most incredible part? You’ll forget it’s even made with zucchini.

Zucchini Bread
3 eggs
1 c. vegetable oil
2 c. sugar
3 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. vanilla
2 c. grated, peeled zucchini, drained
1 3oz. package of instant French vanilla pudding (or your choice of flavor)
1 c. walnuts Black or English (optional)

Mix all ingredients together and pour into 2 (9x5) loaf pans, lightly sprayed with PAM. Bake at 350∘ for 50-60 minutes or until a knife blade inserted into the center comes out clean.

Slice and serve warm or wrap and allow to cool for later.

My sister experiments with different pudding flavors, including coconut cream, strawberry, lemon, vanilla, and chocolate, but my favorite is the French Vanilla.

Whatever you decide, once you’ve tasted THIS zucchini bread, none other will ever suffice, and you probably won’t fear the unmarked bags of neighborhood zucchini left on your doorstep overnight.

Home Cooking: The Patient Noodle

When it comes to patience, I have none. Well, that’s not entirely true–I have plenty of patience when its something I don’t mind having to wait for, something that I personally want and will wait for it to happen without too much complaint. But when it comes to patience in cooking~nada!

Although I don’t remember my mother actually ever calling me into the kitchen so she could teach me how to cook, I do recall many time where I found myself stirring a pot, turning the meat, or measuring ingredients for whatever she was making for dinner. Most of the time I didn’t mind. I could usually walk away whenever I got bored or had something else to d and I knew she would be okay with it.

But when it came to making egg noodles, Mom somehow got the idea in her mind that I needed to learn, and learning to make egg noodles right meant I needed a lot of patience. Much more patience than I ever possessed it seems.

You see, the first secret to making good egg noodles is in how slowly you stir the flour into the eggs. Slow is perhaps too ineffective a word here, and stir might be somewhat debatable. The way my mother added flour to the egg could best be described as a single flake of flour at a time. I kid you not.

Mother started by putting the two cups of flour into a medium bowl then she would put one whole egg into the center of the flour. She never used a fork at this stage–no, instead she would sit on the stool next to the stove (her favorite perch from which to cook) and slowly rotate the bowl, encouraging the egg yolk to make a little track in the flour as it rolled around the bowl. Once the egg became covered in flour dust, the second yolk went in an started the same routine. All the while, egg one continued to let the flour slowly absorb. Yolks number two and three joined the flour race and the eggs went round and round and round for what seemed like an hour before she ever touched them with a fork.

By that time, most of the loose flour was gone from the bowl anyway, so she would use the fork tines to encourage the final path to hit those spots where the flour still remained, added the salt and water, and finished the mixing.

But that wasn’t the end of the patience game. Next came the rolling. I will admit, this was my favorite part. We would dust the counter top with flour, place the egg noodle dough onto the flour, and start to roll the mixture out paper-thin–no cheating here! That meant rolling first one direction, then the other. Turning the dough over and rolling again. Turning it again, re-dusting the surface with flour, over and over and over and over until you could hold up the now huge pastry and see the light through its surface.

And now, we have more waiting. Overnight waiting! The dough had to dry, completely. (Shouldn’t we have been worried about keeping uncooked eggs outside over night?) Maybe as much as twenty-four hours dry before we could touch it again.

Once we reached that milestone and Mother declared the noodles were ready, out came the knife. Slice, slice, slice until the huge pastry has been diminished to long strips, the chopped in halves or quarters to the desired size to fit the dish intended.

We usually had homemade noodles which were cooked in the broth of a pork roast, but the noodles could also be used with roast beef or chicken and noodles.

No matter that their final destination, those egg noodles sure were good. I’ve never tasted any from a package that came anywhere near the egg noddles my mother taught me to make, with a lot of patience.

Homemade Egg Noodles
3 egg yolks
1 whole egg
3 T cold water
1 tsp salt
2 c. flour

Home Cooking: Better Than Sex

Before I took the holiday break from blogging, I told a story about a dessert I once made for a holiday feast at Marie Osmond’s house. I referred to that dessert as The Next Best Thing to Robert Redford, which was what it was called back then.

Since that time, I’ve had people tell me they know the dessert buy its new name, Better Than Sex. Hey, what’s in a name, right? All I know it, this dessert is delicious and decadent! Don’t try to eat too much or the richness alone will make you sick.


Better Than Sex
½ c. butter, softened
1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
½ c. chopped nuts
8 oz package Cream Cheese, softened
1 c. powdered sugar
1 3oz package instant chocolate pudding
1 3oz package instant vanilla pudding
3 c. milk
16 oz container Cool Whip
Preheat the over to 350∘. In a medium bowl, mix butter, flour and chopped nuts. Press into 9 x 13 pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

While the crust cools, combine softened cream cheese and powered sugar in a medium bowl, beating mixture until smooth, the spread over completely cooled crust. If the crust is still warm, the mixture will almost melt instead of spreading.

In a large bowl, combine both pudding mixes with the milk, beating until smooth. Pour the puddings over the cream cheese layer and spread evenly.

Cover the entire pudding layer with Cool Whip, sprinkle with nuts. You may also use chocolate shavings or other garnish.

This dessert can also be made with all chocolate pudding or substitute pistachio for both puddings. Whatever you decide, you’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven over this yummy dessert.

Home Cooking: Boil That Cabbage Down

It’s January 1st, and if you don’t have some cabbage in the house, then you’ve jinxed yourself for 2011. It’s an old German tradition to cook cabbage before noon on the first day of the new year to bring good luck to you and your family. Failure to do so, well. . . you’re just tough out of luck!

This is a tradition I grew up with in my family, something my mother carried on from my Grandma Heffner. Boiled cabbage is perhaps the easiest recipe on the face of the earth, and the resulting dish is much better than you might ever believe. Even my husband has to have a bowl of the savory stuff once the cooking is done.

Boiled Cabbage
1 head cabbage (I prefer the darker green outside leaves)
4 slices bacon
Butter
Salt

Put a large pot of water on to boil. Be sure to include some salt to prevent the water from boiling over.

Chop the head of cabbage, including the heart, into large chunks. Drop these pieces into the water, making sure you have enough water to cover the cabbage. Add a tablespoon of butter, then let the cabbage boil until tender.

If you like the flavor of bacon, then add it at anytime to the boiling cabbage. You may choose to add the strips directly from the package or to lightly pan fry before adding to the cabbage. You may also decide if you prefer the bacon in long strips, half strips, or cut into bite-sized pieces.

When the cabbage is so tender than it falls apart on your fork, it’s ready to serve. Salt to taste. I often eat a slice of buttered bread to go with mine. Be sure to drink the leftover soup as well.

The only problem with boiled cabbage? The smell it leaves behind, but for someone of German ancestry like me, it’s an odor I’ve come to love. And the thought of good luck for the coming year doesn’t hurt either.

Home Cooking: Perfect for Teenage Boys

Who knew that when I was in junior high school, taking my required cooking class (yes, it was required clear back then) that I would add to my recipe files a casserole that would become a family favorite? As my boys have grown, I’ve gone from making this dessert in a small Corningware dish to now baking a 9 x 12 Pyrex to prepare enough for dinner, and even then, they sometimes complain there isn’t enough, especially for leftovers.

So what is this dish that teenage boys will love? Think about boys when they go to a party. What do they love to munch on the most? Well, my kids head to the chip bowl, and potato chips are the key ingredient to this Potato Chip Tuna Casserole that is simple to make and fills up the stomach of a growing boy.

How easy? Well, my ten-year-old can make this one pretty much on his own, although I usually remind him of the correct amounts for the ingredients. He’s been helping me make this dish since he was about five years old, so it’s a great way to get your little ones involved in helping fix dinner.

Depending on how many servings you plan to make, you may want to increase of reduce the numbers for the following ingredients. I’ve given you what I currently use for the 9 x 12 Pyrex, a meal that usually serves four teenagers with enough left over for me.

You’ll need:

Large bag of Lay’s Regular flavor Potato Chips
4 cans Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, undiluted
4 cans Tuna, packed in water
Milk
Margarine

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Lightly coat all four sides and the bottom of the Pyrex dish with margarine. Smash the bag of potato chips until chips are in corn flake-size pieces, then distribute enough of the chips to coat the bottom of the dish in a nice layer. You’ll want enough to also cover the top of the dish.

Open and drain the water from the tuna, then using a fork, flake the tuna on top of the entire baking dish, spreading out the meat to all corners.

Distribute the cream of mushroom soup in the same manner, then fill one empty can with milk and distribute that over the entire dish as well.

Cover the entire top of the dish with the remaining potato chips.

Bake for 30 minutes or until bubbly hot. If you bake it too long, the chips on top will become crunchy.

I serve this dish with bread and butter.

Note: The original recipe had shelled, unsalted nuts in the mixture, but I didn’t like it as well that way.

Not only do my boys like this dish, but my husband loves it as well. The boys have requested it several times in the last few months and we're having it again this week.

And who said real men don’t eat casseroles?

Home Cooking – Simply Delicious

This week’s recipe came by request from one of my best lifelong friends, Debbie Kerr Downey. She says she remembers my mom’s meatloaf and used to have the recipe, but says, “I had it once but lost it.”

Since my mother’s meatloaf recipe is a favorite around my house as well, I’m happy to share this incredibly simple, yet delicious recipe. We’ve tried others, adding all sorts of veggies, juices, and who-knows-what to the mixture, but this one still wins the “we-can’t-get-enough” Olympics when it comes to my boys and food.

Here’s what you need:
        2 pounds fresh ground beef (I’ve tried this with meat that has been frozen and thawed and it just doesn’t work as well.)
       Crackers (my mom used saltines; I use Ritz, my favorite!)
       Eggs
       ketchup
       milk
       salt

Set the oven to preheat to 350. Place the ground beef into a large mixing bowl. Crush a tube of crackers into fine pieces and mix into the meat by hand. Add two whole eggs and continue to fold the mixture. Add a splash of milk and a good-sized pinch of salt. Cover the meat with ketchup and mix again throughly.

Put the mixture into a 9x12 baking dish and form it into a loaf. Squirt a ketchup design over the top of the loaf and place in hot oven. Bake for an hour, or until inside of meat is completely cooked.

As a meal, I often toss in potatoes to bake at the same time, and once the meatloaf goes in I’ll prepare macaroni and cheese to bake at the same time, only for 45 minutes instead of the full hour.

It takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to make the whole thing, and the boys devour it in less than five minutes, but I guess that’s a good sign. And the best part for me is that the whole meal is so simple!                                                                                                                                      

Home Cooking: Helen’s Homemade Pizza

As Chan, Zach and I were wandering the aisles of the grocery store this week, I kept asking, “What do you guys want to eat?”

For quite awhile the answer was the usual, “I don’t know,” then all of a sudden Chan said, “Can’t you make that pizza you make?”

“You mean my mother’s pizza?”

Yeah, that’s the one. I’ll go get the stuff for it.”

Before I could respond, he was gone. I continued with my shopping and moments later, Chan was back.

“Is this everything?” His arms were loaded with a boxed pizza crust, pepperoni packages, shredded cheese, and hamburger.

“You’ve got it all,” I said.

Last night, we made the pizza. The fun thing about this process is that the boys are old enough and usually willing to help, which means less prep time for me to try to do it alone, and dinner is on the table quicker than it might otherwise be. As a matter of fact, with this pizza we can be done in less time that it takes to deliver at Dominos!

The boys dug out two large, rimmed cookie sheets and sprayed them with Pam, while I made the crust thanks to Chef Boyardee. Letting the dough rise on the stove during the preheat, I started cooking the hamburger. I don’t know why it started, but my mother used hamburger in her pizzas. Maybe she did it because the meat was cheap, maybe just because we loved it, but that became a staple in my mother’s pizza recipe.

I browned a pound of it, then asked Kent to drain the fat while I spread the dough onto both 9x12" pans. Chan poured and spread the sauce then held up the tiny packet of Parmesan cheese. “This is it? This is it?” he said. “You’re supposed to add this and actually make a cheese pizza?”

“Yeah, that’s what the recipe on the box says, but you know better,” I said. “Kent, get the extra Pamesan from the cabinet. Zach, pull out the shredded cheese from the fridge. Be sure to get both kinds.”

Then comes the part that takes real crafting—placing the pepperoni on one of the crusts so that not a single inch of dough will ever be eaten without a full slice of pepperoni. The other pizza gets a layer of hamburger, and if there are leftover pepperonis from the package one pizza number one is complete, they go on top of the hamburger.

Then we cover the whole thing in cheese! We like sharp cheddar, but we will also use a pizza blend of cheddar and mozzarella if the mood strikes.

Into the over they go, following the boxed directions, and twenty minutes later, we are eating. One other probably strange trick I learned from my mother is to cut the pizza with a pair of scissors, just like cutting a bolt of fabric.

This is a pizza I like both hot from the oven and cold the next day for lunch, but I fully understand that cold pizza is an acquired taste, so I won’t be offended if you don’t like it that way. ou won’t be alone.

Here’s the complete recipe:

1 Box Chef Boyardee box mix for two pizzas
1 pound ground beef, browned and drained
1 large package of sliced pepperoni
1 large package Pizza Blend shredded cheese
1 large package Sharp Cheddar shredded cheese
extra Parmesan cheese, to taste

Follow the boxed directions for the crust. Sprinkle browned and drained ground beef over the prepared base for one pizza. Place pepperoni on the second one. Cover well with shredded cheese. Place both pizzas into the oven for 10 minutes at 425. Rotate top to bottom and bake another ten minutes until done. Cut clices and serve hot.
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Home Cooking: The Best Banana Bread EVER!

“Are they dead yet?”

I knew exactly what my boys were talking about when they asked this question. We had three bananas that we had been carefully watching as the skins got darker and darker. My boys know that once the bananas have turned really dark—what they refer to as ‘dead’—the pulp inside is super-sweet and that’s the best kind to make into Sue’s Banana Bread recipe.

“Yes, they’re dead,” I told them.

“Then make banana bread!” was the immediate reply. It was the end of a long day, up early, off to teach school, lots of errands run that afternoon, dinner fixed, and now at 7:30 they wanted me to make banana bread.

After some searching, Zach and I managed to find all the ingredients—why did someone hide the vanilla and baking powder in the top shelf of the snacks cabinet?—and locate the bread pan—no, that’s a cake pan. I stirred everything together, sprayed PAM on the bread pan, and used one of the bananas to finish the mixture, but before I could get the pan into the over to bake, Chan and Kent stopped me.

“What about the other two bananas?” they asked. “Can’t you make MORE banana bread?”

“I’m not sure we have enough butter or pudding to make two more batches,” I said, knowing I was too tired to put them together anyway.

“Sure we do,” Kent said, as he was off to the pantry to find the pudding boxes, Zach trailing along behind him.

“I’m tired,” I said to Chan who was still standing in the kitchen.

“We’ll help,” he said.

He came to the table where I was sitting and retrieved the mixing bowl, rinsed it out at the sink, and was ready to begin. Zach and Kent were back at this time, and Zach had already helped me make the first batter so he knew what to do. I called out measurements for a double batch and the boys put them all together.

Once the two new pans were filled, they put all three of them into the oven to bake. An hour later I thought, They will never eat all three of these loaves but before bedtime an entire loaf was already gone. By the time I got home from school they next day, loaf #2 two was gone, and last night I noticed #3 was also missing.

When I sent them to the grocery store, guess what they came home with? More pudding and bananas, and now we’re waiting on this bunch of bananas to die.
So, what’s the secret recipe for the best banana bread ever? Here you go:

1 c. mashed really, really ripe banana
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
½ t. baking power
½ t. vanilla
2 c. flour
3 T milk
½ melted margarine
3 oz. package of Instant Coconut Cream Pudding

Mix it all together, adding melted margarine and bananas last. Spray buttery PAM on a loaf pan and pour in the batter. Bake at 350∘ for 1 hour or until done. Poke the center of the bread to check, If a knife comes out clean, it’s ready. You can also use Banana pudding mix, but my boys LOVE the coconut cream the best.

I shared this recipe with the ladies in our church for a cookbook, and I’ve had many of them now tell me they use Sue’s recipe now instead of their mother’s–it’s THAT good!

Home Cooking: Family Favorite

When I was growing up our extended family used to get together quite often for meals. Sometimes these gatherings were for summer picnics, others for holiday meals. It seemed like every Sunday we had either Bob or Sue or Don and their families over for dinner. Mother seemed to do much of the cooking those early years, but as she aged Jan, Sue, and Sandra pitched in with their own specialties to add to the meal, and eventually they did most of the cooking. But that didn’t matter. Mom still had her hand in making at least one dish, one that was always a family favorite and something at least one grandkid would request—Grandma’s homemade Macaroni and Cheese!

Yep, good old mac & cheese. It got to the point that this dish was so popular, and there were so many grandkids, that Mom would have to make at least two dishes to even come close to satisfying the demand. Was that possible?

There really is no great secret to making my mother’s mac & cheese. I do it all the time with just as much success at my house. I’ve learned to bake mine in at least a 9x12 glass pan because my sons love it, and at least two of them get really upset if they can’t have third servings with a little bit left over for a late night snack.

So, here’s how easy it is to make my mother’s homemade macaroni and cheese.

Preheat the over to 350 degrees. I often put in a few potatoes to bake at the same time, and maybe a meatloaf as well.

Boil a large pot of water, adding salt to it to keep the pot from boiling over. Okay, the tough part here is knowing how much salt to add, I guess. It’s more than a pinch, less than a handful, and that’s as specific as I can get. There needs to be about a dime size of salt on the bottom of the pan when you get the water started. Add too much salt and you won’t be able to eat the macaroni because it will be too salty.

My trick for making this at home is to add 1 cup of uncooked macaroni for each person I plan to feed. Obviously if I’m taking this dish to a party, I just boil enough to make what I need for a baking dish.

While the macaroni is cooking (stir it occasionally), get out your baking dish. Mom used a deep, square piece of Corningware for hers in later years, but when I was young she used a set of blue baking dishes she had. As I recall, Connie has those dishes now and taught her own daughter, Madison, how to make this much-requested dish.

Coat the inside of the baking dish with margarine. If you’re still operating in the I-must-do-everything-myself stage, I hope you’ve already grated a big chunk of sharp cheddar cheese. If you’re like me, you need a pre-shredded bag of your favorite brand. (We once discovered too late in the game that we only had a bag of taco-flavored cheese at home. It was interesting, but likely not one we’d ever do again.) Sprinkle a solid coating in the bottom and along the sides of the buttered pan. The butter should help it stick to the sides.

Check the macaroni. If it’s really tender, then it’s ready. Drain the water as much as possible, using a strainer to get the majority of water off the macaroni. Then pour the macaroni onto the bed of cheese. If you’re making a deep dish then only put half the macaroni in, add a center layer of cheese and add the rest.

Once the macaroni layer is done, add a little salt to the top of the dish if needed for taste (you can check this by eating a single piece of macaroni). Pour 1 cup of milk over the dish, spreading the milk around as you do so. Then top the whole thing off with your remaining cheese. Be sure to cover all the macaroni so nothing burns. (Although Chan does like the edges of his macaroni crispy!) Sprinkle black pepper on the top if your entire family likes it. If not, people can add it once the food is on their plate.

Put the dish into the oven and bake for 45 minutes.

Once it’s done, serve it hot. If you’ve got leftovers, you can choose if you want it hot or cold.

One word of warning, if your family is anything like mine, this will become a family favorite and you’ll be making it regularly for Sunday dinner and bringing it to family gatherings. It’s a good thing macaroni and cheese is so easy to make!

Home Cooking: Hey, Good Lookin’

Whatcha got cooking? How about cooking somethin’ up with me?

My mother used to sing this song while she was working in the kitchen, a place she really seemed to love to be. That must have been a trait she learned from her own mother, and one that got passed on to my sister, Sue. Didn’t happen though with me, and honestly not with my aunt Leona either it seems. Some girls naturally inherit the “I-love-to-cook gene.” Others do not, and that’s where you’ll find me.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I can cook; I just don’t particularly like to. But just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean I can’t cook up a dish or two that rank as some members of my family’s favorite meals. And it’s not all just cake and desserts, either, although they do seem to like that too.

When I started this series some time ago, I had people asking me for some of my favorite recipes, so today I’m going to share one with you. Others will come as the weeks follow. These are tried and true and my boys gobble them up like they haven’t eaten in weeks. Oh, for the days I used to have leftovers for sandwiches or a lunch to take to work!

The main course dish that I’m going to share actually has a story to go with its history.

In one of my early years teaching at Payson Jr. High School, we were having some sort of pot luck meal in which members of the faculty were supposed to bring a favorite dish. I knew I couldn’t make desserts to equal those my sister could make, rolls were out of the question, and the salad I might have made took overnight to prepare and I didn’t have that time luxury, so I decided to make up some breaded tenderloin to share.

This is something I knew how to cook without even thinking. Breaded tenderloin was probably the first thing my mother really taught me to cook, and I know it was the first dish I was asked to prepare all on my own for a family meal. I followed my mother’s exact recipe.

Buy pork tenderloin, sliced as thin as you can get them. Cut off any fat, place the tenderloin between two sheets of waxed paper and pound on the meat until it is paper-thin.

Dip the meat pieces into a well-beaten egg until it’s covered, then press each side onto a waxed paper where you’ve crushed crackers into nearly powder. (I use Ritz crackers; my mother used saltines.) 

Heat an electric skillet to 350∘. Slowly place the cracker and egg-covered pieces into the skillet and let them begin to cook. When the side nearest the heat has started to turn golden brown, gently turn the meat over, cooking until the other side is the same color. Do NOT salt the meat at this time.

Repeat the process, allowing the meat to cook through and the coating to continue to brown on both sides. The third time you turn them, you may lightly salt each side.

At the end of t his final turn, the meat should be completely cooked, but cut open a tiny part in the center of the thickest piece of meat. If all looks good, then you are done and the breaded tenderloin is ready to serve.

Now, back to my story. I had made the tenderloin and brought them to this party at school. My humble offering was sitting on the table amid all sorts of fabulous looking dishes and I wondered if anyone but me would even want to eat any of this lowly meat. It didn’t take long in the line to find out.

Layne Blatter, our German teacher, was not far ahead of me, when I heard him exclaim, “Wienerschnitzel!”

Now the only time I had ever heard that word was when someone was referring to that hot dog place in Orem that served the best coney dogs I’d had since I stopped going to the Madison County fair. I wondered if someone had brought coney dogs to the party.

“Who brought the wienerschnitzel?” Layne asked, looking around for who might be the person responsible for this dish. All of us shrugged our shoulders, and no one claimed the be the cook. “I love wienerschnitzel,” he added.

We continued to go through the line, and I filled my plate, taking a piece of my own dish of meat. Then I took a seat at a table, only finding out a few minutes later when they came back from getting drinks that Layne and his wife would be sitting with me.

As Layne sat, he looked at my plate and saw my meat. “Did you make the wienerschnitzel?” he asked, pointed at my breaded tenderloin.

“That’s breaded tenderloin,” I said, a little confused.

“Not in Germany it isn’t,” he said before he took his first bite. He savored it like he had never tasted anything so good. “And you made it just right—just like I remember from Germany.”

A few minutes of conversation and I discovered that this dish that my mother used to make—one she had learned from her mother—came to us from our German ancestry, and that in that country what we knew as breaded tenderloin was known as wienerschnitzel.

 “All those hot dog stands are wrong,” Layne told me.”Now, can you give me the recipe?”

I shared the same information I have given to you, and Layne went home a happy man. As a matter of fact, several times throughout the rest of the school year he stopped to tell me, “My wife made me wienerschnitzel last night, and I have you to thank!”

And I hope any of you who decide to try this recipe will feel the same. I know my boys do.

Home Cooking: The Most Successful Un-Diet Ever

Clear back at the beginning of the year, I started what I hoped would be a regular Saturday feature here on my blog. Although the stories I told were about food, I hadn’t quite focused on where I wanted these entries to go. I’d been inspired by the movie Julie & Julia, and I knew I wanted to tell about my own family food traditions, but after three entries, I wasn’t sure exactly where I needed to go.

The past few days I’ve been considering what I should do with several aspects of my blog. Trying to clean up the horrendously long list of labels among them, I decided to revisit the regular features I wanted to share. (If you read this blog on Thursday, you’ve already figured out that I came up with an entirely new series directed toward my family and genealogy.) When I looked at the feedback from my earlier postings for Saturday, I discovered that people really were interested in my stories about home cooking, so that’s where the new name for this blog feature has come from, and that’s where the focus will be.

Sometimes I’ll share stories. Others I may offer favorite recipes. I hope that somewhere along the way I’ll offer something that will whet your appetite. btu with that said, I think I need to say that I understand anyone who has a need to be careful about what they eat.

Back in April, I offered a post for another blog where I occasionally write (Pushing Past the Pounds) about the most successful un-diet I’ve ver been on. I thought maybe I should share that here with you, my regular readers, as well, so here goes.

ve known for a long time that I needed to be losing weight. My clothing size had grown. I could hardly walk from my car into my classroom each morning. When I looked into the mirror, I found a truly round face to match my round belly. I felt like Santa Claus, without his jolly.

The problem was that I was too tired to do much of anything about it. Ever since I had the radial head replacement surgery two years ago, I was having trouble making myself move. My arms hurt; my knees and legs still hurt from the fall; and my back was a constant source of ache and pain when I stood for longer than a few minutes.

My doctor told me to lose weight—but she didn’t have any advice how I could do it when I couldn’t walk, exercise, or breathe without thinking I was in the middle of a serious heart attack.

Then I found the answer. I’ve long been a fan of Dr. Wayne Dyer so when I saw him on QVC, offering an incredible price on his new book, DVD and CD series The Shift, I placed my order immediately.

Three weeks ago I was driving our sons to Big Water, Utah, to visit my husband on the set of a film he’s working on. Forget the advice we are given to spend time in the car talking to our kids. Mine don’t even consider it, and within seconds of starting the drive, DVD players and iPods were turned on, headphones in, and kids either watching, listening or sleeping, so I took advantage of the time and starting listening on my own to Dr. Dyer.

Much of what he talks about has to do with finding joy, creating spiritual wealth, and releasing our need for owning things, but one of his stories struck me as especially important. Dr. Dyer has recently been diagnosed with leukemia, and he felt it was important that he lose some weight to help with his treatment. He had spoken with a friend about a way to change hiss eating patterns and in less than 30 days, Dr. Dyer has lost 25 pounds.

Lost 25 pounds? That sounded like a great way for me to drop at least part of what I knew I needed to lose, so once home from the trip, I started the most simple and successful un-diet I’ve ever been on. Are you ready? Here it is:

Keep your sugar intake to less than 25 grams per day.

All I do is write down how many grams of sugar the food labels say are in a serving of a product, make sure I really am only eating one serving, and when I’ve gotten to 25 that day, I stop eating anything with additional sugar.

That doesn’t mean I’m necessarily done eating. I can still eat fresh veggies, fresh fruit, meat, cheese, eggs, and lots of things. I just don’t eat anything else with grams of sugar.

The result? By the end of the first week, I was walking into school without feeling exhausted. I could stand longer without my back killing me. My slacks weren’t quite to tight anymore. There was suddenly definition in my cheeks and neck, and my wedding ring could actually come off my finger without me having to pry it.

In the second week, my tummy was flatter and the upper portion of my arms weren’t as large and didn’t feel so tight. I could feel the bones in my cheeks and my thighs looked smaller.

You have to know, this had started to happen without any exercise. The only thing I had changed was counting the grams of sugar, and that in and of itself had been a surprise. The first day I had picked up my usually cup of healthy yogurt for lunch, only to discover is had 33 grams of sugar! WHAT?! Bread? 3 grams per slice. I looked at the skim milk I drink—6 grams per cup. I won’t even tell you what a glass of chocolate milk contains.

Just how much sugar had I been taking into my body that I hadn’t been aware of? I’d seen Dr. Oz haul out a wagonload of sugar on the Oprah show and say, “This is how much sugar we now eat in a year,” but I didn’t really believe him. I was trying to imagine adding that much sugar to my cereal in a morning and the thought made me sick. But once I started looking at the grams I was secretly taking, I was amazed.

And that alone was enough to convince me to stick with this program. But the bonus came when I visited the doctor.

I had been experiencing some symptoms that pointed to Type II Diabetes. My father had it; my mother had it; and both my older brother and sister had been insulin dependent. I was at a huge risk. Four weeks ago I had gone to the lab for a series of fasting blood tests. The results were not good and the diagnosis was in—I had also become a diabetic.

Of course, I didn’t know that yet until my actual appointment last week when my doctor had the blood tests rerun while I was in her office. And guess what, two weeks into my new way of eating, and all my levels had dropped enough to take me back into the pre-diabetic stages, and I’d lost at least 10 pounds since my last appointment in November.

With the addition of an hour a day exercise (okay, so I’m working up to that, but I’m already doing much more than I’ve done for the past two years!), and the continued change in my diet, my doctor thinks I’ll have this situation under control.

And I’m sure it certainly won’t hurt my figure!

It remains to see if I’ll make Dr. Dyer’s 25 pounds in 30 days, but so far I feel like that’s a reasonable goal, and after that—who knows!

That was my posting in April.  Now, here’s the good news. The un-diet worked! At my latest visit to the doctor, we discover that I had not only lost and kept off over 40 pounds, but my sugar levels, cholesterol, and blood pressure had all returned to the levels that were normal!

And I’ve done all of this while still eating plenty of food. So, I know we can do it, if good healthy eating habits is what we actually choose to do. More thoughts on that in the weeks to come.

Home Cooking: Helen’s Famous 30-Minute Meals

My mother was talented in many ways, but I think one of the most amazing things about her was her ability to make a complete and delicious home-cooked meal in thirty minutes. I suppose this is a talent she developed after all those years of working at the Camera Shop all day long with my dad, then coming home to feed him—and me—a hot meal.

In any case, some of my favorite meal memories are the things she whipped up as though on the spur of a moment, with no pre-planning required. Of course, I now know that she had likely been thinking about her menu since at least Monday night—the day before her weekly trip to the grocery. But when I was still a child, living at home, those meals seemed like a little bit of magic.

Breaded tenderloin, fried potatoes, cornbread and beans, chili soup—the list went on and on of the dishes she prepared and had on the table almost quicker than I could drop off my book bag, turn on the television news, and come to the table.

Sometimes I would sit on the stool next to the stove and watch her work. An electric skillet on one side of me; the stovetop on the other, Mom would pull together a full course meal with hardly an effort. I suppose this is how I really learned to cook, despite the three years of mandatory home economics classes I took in junior high and high school—back in the day when girls were being raised to be housewives.

“Turn the tenderloin, Lu Ann,” Mom would say when the time was right. “Can you help me peel the potatoes?”

I became an expert at using a paring knife. Give me a potato, an apple, or even a pear and I can skin it in almost one smooth curl—something that can’t be accomplished with a potato peeler.

Years before I was old enough to wield the sharpened knife, Mother had taught the same skills to Sue, who eventually taught them to her daughters, just like I’ve been teaching my sons. Society hasn’t changed its rules only for the girls, you know. Boys need to know their way around a kitchen the same way girls should know how to care for their car.

So, while my husband was off at work two weeks ago, my boys were called to duty to assist in the kitchen as I pulled together those thirty-minute meals my mother was so famous for. Pulling out their family favorites, we made biscuits and gravy, macaroni and cheese, tuna and macaroni salad, ham salad sandwiches, tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches, chili soup, and potato soup, as well as a few of Sue’s recipes that perhaps took a little longer, but were so good.

This past week my husband has been home and once again taken charge of the cooking. We’ve had some great meals, but somehow I’ve found that cooking the things my mother made was more satisfying to the taste buds, keeping me away from those late-night snacks I always look for after eating steak or chicken. I’m almost convinced my children think so, too. None of my meals had leftovers, with the boys heading back two or three times to refill their plates or bowls.

Yep, those thirty-minute meals my mother taught me have remained successful. Even my youngest has noticed the difference. “Mom,” he said to me one night earlier this week, “it doesn’t take us as long to eat the stuff you make, but it sure is good.”

And I’d have to agree.

Thanks, Mom, for teaching your 30- minute cooking secrets to me.

Home Cooking: Cooking with Susie B.

My over-indulgence recently with Julie Powell and her grand blog experiment with cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking must have influenced my sudden desire to cook.

Now you have to know that cooking has not ever been one of my passions. As I’ve mentioned before, my mother taught me how to make several dishes, but she did most of the cooking. It’s not that I can’t cook, because I can. The meals I make are very simple. Most of them can be pulled together in less than half-an-hour, a trick my mother learned because she worked at the Camera Shop with my dad, closed the store at 5:00, and had a full meal on the table no later than 5:45 each evening.

Of course, growing up with Miss Betty Crocker as an older sister didn’t give me much room to experiment in the kitchen either—although I do remember a few huge messes I made at Grandma Heffner’s kitchen, learning how to make pie crust with lard, peeling apples from the trees in her yard for pie, and smashing others through the colander to make homemade applesauce with Red Hearts candy.



You think I’m kidding about Sue being Betty Crocker, don’t you? Well, I’m not. When she was a senior in high school—the year I turned ONE—she passed a test in her high school home economics class and was awarded the “The Betty Crocker Award.” And she deserved it—I’ve never known anyone who could bake as well as my sister. Her desserts were to die for!

So, here I am—completely possessed with the idea of cooking, and having the ability to do it since my Grand Chef Master and former Craft-Service husband is working out of town—considering the recipes from Sue’s own repertoire, organized into a family cookbook by her daughters, Connie and Melissa, to honor their mother after her death in 2003.

The holiday foods are here—cranberry salad and creamed eggs, check—and even the world-famous Grandma Brobst’s macaroni & cheese. Breakfast, Main Dish, Salads, Breads, Rolls, and the DESSERTS! Yum!!!! The desserts which somehow managed to fill over half the volume of the cookbook—the same desserts I used to want to start the meal at Sue’s house because there were always so many and every one of them delicious.
And that brings me to my project. Like Julie Powell, I’m going to cook my way through a cookbook—but my cooking will be much more special to me. I’m working my way through a cookbook by Susie B.

This past week we concentrated on soups—the chili and chicken noodle were both homemade, the tomato came thanks to Campbell’s—with a grilled cheese or buttered bread on the side. The boys ate like they had never been fed before, with every pot so clean in the end they already looked liked they’d been washed. I did find it interesting that I wasn’t nearly so hungry later in the evening. Is there something about being homemade that satisfies my appetite in an entirely new way?

My trip to the grocery store this afternoon was planned to help me continue along the planned course. Potato salad, ham salad, Watergate salad, Breakfast Casserole, and Dried Beef Gravy with Biscuits are all on this week’s agenda. I’ll let you know next week how this new fare went over with my houseful of boys.

Onward and upward, as the saying goes—let the challenge officially begin. And if I’m ever going to make it through the cookbook in a year, I’d better get started on those desserts. The plan for tomorrow? Texas Sheet Cake. Double-yum! I can almost already taste it.

But for now, it’s time to stop thinking of food and move on to other things. Oh, but on an interesting side note—I got word this week that I will have a BYU student as an intern next semester in preparation for her becoming my student teacher next year.

Her name? Julia Powell.

It must be kismet!