A Jeanne in the Kitchen

Just like our geese, our ducks are at various stages of growth.  There are some that are a little older and a little bigger, and then there are still some that are still pretty young.  I never get tired of seeing either the ducklings or the goslings.  I really enjoy them when they are all grown up too.

Two different duck families out for a family swim.  These are all on the same lake, just different angles and lighting.

After a long swim, it’s time to rest a bit.  Swimming with such little legs and little wings is very tiring.

Stay safe and stay well Everyone.  ‘Til next time.

Once again, Larry was rummaging through the freezer and pulled out some turkey breast that I had cooked for one of the holidays.  Even though it is late spring, almost summer, the best cookbooks to go to for using up leftover holiday turkey are the holiday cookbooks.  I found a recipe for turkey calzones that sounded just perfect.  Of course, I changed it up a bit and made it my own too.  I mean, after all, that’s just what I do.  🙂

The calzones were definitely a meal in and of themselves, but to make the meal more balanced, I roasted some garlic potatoes too.  Then I added my new favorite white wine, a barrel aged Chenin Blanc, of course from InVINtions, A Toast to InVINtions! to make the meal complete.

Turkey Calzones

The Dough

4 1/2 tsp dry active yeast or 2 packages

3 tsp sugar

1/2 cup warm water

1/2 cup milk or buttermilk

1 egg

2 TBSP olive oil

3 1/2 cups flour

2 tsp salt

Make the sponge first but adding 1/4 cup of water to the yeast along with 1/2 tsp of sugar.  Mix together and let set for about 10 minutes or until it becomes frothy.

Mix together the flour and all the dry ingredients and set aside.

Whisk the egg, milk, the rest of the water and olive oil together, then combine with the yeast mixture.  Start mixing in the flour mixture.  Combine it all well and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and a start kneading the dough together until it forms a smooth ball, amybe 3-5 minutes, or longer as needed.  Oil a bowl and add the dough.  Cover and let rise for 1 hour in a warm place.  Then punch the dough down and roll it out.

I cut my dough into four equal parts and made four calzones.  Roll the dough out into thin circles about 1/4 inch thick.

Preheat the oven to 400* F or about 200* C.

Line a baking sheet with cornmeal.

The Filling

3/4-1 lb thinly sliced cooked turkey (you can also use chicken)

5-6 bacon strips, cooked and crumbled

1 red bell pepper, roasted, peeled and seeded

1 apple, peeled and diced

1/4-1/2 red onion, sliced very thin

4-6 oz jalapeno jack cheese, or cheese of your choice

1/2 cup pesto sauce

egg wash

Once the dough has been rolled out, spread the pesto on about 1/2 the dough, leaving about 1/2 inch around the edges.  Add the cheese, then the turkey, a bit more pesto, and the onions, apples, and bacon.

Carefully fold over the dough and tightly pinch the edges and crimp to tightly seal the seams.  With a serrated knife, score the top of the calzones and brush with the egg wash.

Bake for about 30-40 minutes, or until golden brown.

Serve it up and enjoy.  Mangia! I like to have a little extra sauce on the side for dipping, well …. because I am a saucy kind of girl.  🙂

Stay safe and stay well Everyone.  ‘Til next time.

I love to paint, and I do so quite often.  I never know how or where my muse will lead me, but I follow her lead and end up where I end up.  This time my muse was taking me in a couple of different directions.  I started off wanting to paint something completely different than what it came out to be, but I scrapped it and started over.  I just did not like the way my original idea was coming out.  The energy just wasn’t right for that idea at that time.  Here is the result of my latest painting project.

Whenever I paint something, Larry always asks me what am I going to do with it or where am I going to hang it.  My answer is always the same “I have no idea”.  I just like painting them.  I don’t care about the rest.  🙂  I have a big house, but I don’t have a lot of wall space.  So most of my paintings are sitting in a corner, waiting for some place to hang.

Stay safe and stay well Everyone.  ‘Til next time.

Cubed steak is made from tough cuts of beef that have been pounded out to tenderize them, usually from top round or top sirloin.  It has been around forever, particularly in the Southern and Western parts of the United States, but it really became popular in the 1930’s and 1940’s as an inexpensive cut of beef, when mechanized cubing machines became readily available.  The name comes from the shape of the indentations left by that process (called “cubing”).

We had some cubed steak in the freezer that Larry pulled out to put into our meat rotation.  I have to admit, cubed steak is not one of my favorites, and I don’t cook with it too much, but it is still good if cooked properly.  To me it is like a combination of hamburger and steak.  If I want a burger, I want a burger, and if I want a steak, I want a steak.  I am not into this in between stuff, but it was part of what we got when we went it on a portion of a cow from one of Larry’s sisters.  Cubed steak is very popular as “chicken fried steak”, but I am not a big gravy fan, and I knew I did not want to cook it that way.  So I prepared it with mushrooms and onions instead and served it over wide egg noodles, but you can serve it over mashed potatoes too.  It came out very good.  This might be a new favorite way of preparing cubed steak for me.  It was very similar to a stroganoff, and I love beef stroganoff.

Cubed Steak with Mushrooms and Onions

2 lbs cubed steak

1 onion, sliced thin

1-1 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms

2 cups beef broth

1 TBSP garlic

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

salt & pepper to taste

salt, pepper and flour to coat the cubed steak

olive oil and butter to cook.

Mix the salt, pepper and flour together and completely coat the cubed steak.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a skillet and brown the meat on both sides, then remove it from the skillet, set aside and keep warm.

Add the mushrooms, onions and garlic and saute until the onions are translucent and tender.  Add salt & pepper to your taste.

When the onions are tender, add the beef broth and Worcestershire sauce.  Mix everything together well, and add the meat.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and continue to cook for about 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently.

I was quite happy to have my sauce like this but Larry wanted it a little thicker.  No problem.  Just add some on the flour mixture you coated the meat with.  Once the sauce is to your desired thickness, add some over either the noodles or the mashed potatoes, then add the meat, then top with more sauce.  Serve it up with your favorite side dishes, and some red wine, and you are good to go.

Stay safe and stay well Everyone.  ‘Til next time.

It doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago when I first wrote about our baby goslings.  They were so cute and adorable.  These were taken on May 6 and May 7, back when they were tiny babies.

But now, as summer approaches, our goslings are not so little any more.  Now they are teenagers.  They are getting so big and are still growing everyday.  They are beginning to flex their wings now.  It won’t be long before they fly the coop and are on their own.

The goslings are quickly losing all their yellow baby feathers to the brown and gray of the adults.  Soon, our goslings will be all grown up, getting ready to start their next cycle of life.  So enjoy the goslings while you can.  They won’t be around for too much longer.  This one was taken yesterday, June 10.  What a difference in just one month.

Stay safe and stay well Everyone.  ‘Til next time.

My four-legged fur babies are my children.  Just like any mom, I will do whatever I can to make my fur babies happy and content and to keep them safe and healthy.   I make the wet food for my dogs Lucie and Vinnie about once a week.  Every now and then, I even make them special treats as well.  This time I made them some fruity frozen pupsicle treats.  Just like kids who love their popsicles, my dogs love their pupsicles.  The pupsicles help cool them down when the temperatures are on the rise.  They are super easy to make and very healthy for our furry friends too.  Just like any treat, they are treats.  Don’t give them too many at a time.

Fruity Frozen Pupsicle Treats

1 large jar of fruity baby food – any flavor will do

1 ripe banana – the riper the better

16 oz fruit yogurt

3/4 cup water

Mash the banana until it makes a fine mush.  Then add the rest of the ingredients and mix together well.  Whenever I make something for Lucie and Vinnie, my “special assistant” Fritzie comes out to help.  She loves to help out and to supervise, making sure I make things just right.  I used a berry baby food and blackberry yogurt, but any fruity flavors will do.

Fill your cube trays and freeze.  I found these fun paw print cube trays a long time ago, and I think they are perfect for “the kids”.  I’ve never had any complaints yet, so I think they approve too.  🙂  I also had some star cube trays too, so I mixed them up a bit.

Once the pupsicles are completely frozen, they are ready to give to the pups.

Vinnie is anxiously awaiting his treats.  If I turned my back for just one second, all of these would be gone in a flash.

Anticipation.  Vinnie and Lucie have to work for their treats.  They are always motivated by food; especially Lucie.

Stay safe and stay well Everyone.  ‘Til next time.

It’s been a while since I have featured a guest chef.  I am always looking for someone to share their recipes with me, and therefore share them with all of us.  But sadly, not many people have been sending me their recipes and their photos lately, so there hasn’t been anyone to feature.  But guess what ….  We have a new guest chef now.

Our new guest chef is ……. Asha Batchelor.  We know Asha from her blog site sports, food,actives,life.  Asha is a little camera shy, and did not send a picture of herself, but she did send us a family recipe for Malaysian Fried Noodles with Shrimp, from Malaysia, where her grandmother still lives and still enjoys making this traditional dish.

In Malaysia, fried noodles and shrimp is known as Hokkien mee.  This dish is popular all throughout Southeast Asia, but especially so in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.  The dish originated back in China’s Fujian or Hokkien region.  There are three distinct types of Hokkien Mee. The Singaporean variant consists of egg noodles and rice noodles stir-fried with egg, slices of pork, prawns and squid, and served and garnished with vegetables, small pieces of lard, sambal sauce and lime (for adding the lime juice to the dish).

Here is Asha and her grandmother’s recipe for Malaysian Fried Noodles and Shrimp.

The other day Larry and a friend were playing golf down in Castle Pines, which is about an hour south of us.  They had a special visitor watching them play.  They had a deer out on the golf course with them, cheering them on.  Although, I think they were much more impressed with their visitor than she was of them.  I apologize for the poor quality of these pictures.  Larry took them on his cell phone.  They are very grainy and blurry, but sometimes, you just have to work with what you have at the time and not worry about the rest.

Stay safe and stay well Everyone.  ‘Til next time.

Green onion or scallion pancakes are an ancient Chinese dish that was actually one of Marco Polo’s favorite dishes.  When he returned back to Italy from his far Eastern travels, he had a chef try to recreate these delicious pancakes for him.  The result did not come out as remembered them in China, but instead was the beginnings of modern day pizza, although an older, different version of pizza was around long before the days of Marco Polo.

Green onion or scallion pancakes are known as cong you bing in Chinese.  They are savory pancakes or Chinese flatbreads.  You can find them as Chinese street foods or at restaurants, or you can make them at home like I did.  They are very easy to make and only call for a handful of everyday, simple ingredients, and they go with just about anything.  You don’t have to serve them with other Asian foods, but they certainly go very well with other Asian dishes.

Green Onion Pancakes

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

1 egg white

1 tsp sesame oil

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1 cup water

2-3 TBSP canola or peanut oil

4-5 green onions, sliced thin

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped fine

Mix all the dry ingredients together, including the green onions and cilantro.

Mix the egg, egg white, sesame oil and water together, then add to the flour mixture.

Combine everything together, mixing well, then allow to set in the refrigerator for about an hour before cooking.  Some people prefer to add the green onions and cilantro immediately after the batter is already in the hot skillet, but I found it works better to mix them into the batter.  Play around with it, and do what works best for you.

Heat the oil to about 350-375* F and add 1/2 cup of the batter into the hot oil.  Cook the pancake for about 2 minutes per side, or until it is golden brown on each side.  Remove the pancake from the pan and repeat until the batter is all cooked.

Cut the pancakes into wedges and serve immediately.  These are best when served hot.

Stay safe and stay well Everyone.  ‘Til next time.

The other day when I made my Thai green curry fish Something Thai I also made some Asian side dishes to go with the fish.  One of those dishes was an Asian cucumber and carrot salad.  Once again, it was very easy to make with just a few simple ingredients, which is perfect, especially in these dog days of summer.  This salad was refreshingly cool and colorful on a hot summer’s day.

Some basic ingredients that are almost always found in Thai cooking are cilantro, coconut milk, garlic, ginger, limes, curries or curry pastes (Even in Thailand, most people use pre-made curry pastes rather than making their own, although they are easy enough to make.), peppers of all kinds and chiles.  Nuts are also widely used in Thai cooking and Thai recipes.  Most commonly, you will find peanuts, cashews, almonds, walnuts and pumpkin seeds or pepitas.  This salad had quite of few of these ingredients in the mix, as you would expect when making a Thai or Asian salad, since a lot of the same ingredients are prevalent in many other Asian recipes from different cultures and countries.

Cucumber and Carrot Salad

1 1/2 cups of cucumbers, seeded

1/4 cup carrots, cut into thin, small matchstick size strips

1/4 cup red onion, sliced very thin

1/2 cup shredded lettuce or wakame salad

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

1 TBSP garlic

1 TBSP ginger

1 TBSP sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp Thai green chili paste

1 TBSP sesame oil

1/4 cup cilantro, chopped, + more for topping

Mix all the ingredients together to make the sauce and set aside.

Toss the carrots, cucumbers and onions together, then add the dressing and toss again to combine everything together well.  I kept the skins on my cucumbers and cut them in thin matchsticks like I did my carrots, but these are optional.  If you prefer to skin the cucumbers, that’s fine too.

Once everything has been combined, line your serving dish with the lettuce or salad and then top the carrot and cucumber mixture on top.  Add a little cilantro on top and chill or at least one hour before serving, but no more than 3-4 hours or everything will get soggy and mushy.  If you like, you can also add some toasted sesame seeds on top as part of the garnish as well.

Stay safe and stay well Everyone.  ‘Til next time.