Bawlmerese for Enjoy Your Meal
I was seriously excited to try the Ungourmet’s mini apple pies. To the extent that I made sure I put dumpling wrappers on my grocery list right away and clipped the recipe up in my kitchen workspace so that it was constantly in my face. Heck, I wanted to make them so badly that I even decided to throw caution to the wind and serve them, untested, to my father in law. Continue reading “The Ungourmet’s Mini Apple Pies”
Can you have too much of a good thing? Without moderation, I’m afraid the answer is yes. That’s why pancakes, bacon, waffles, and all sorts of breakfast treats aren’t served up each and every day here at BAH. But the thing about moderation is that you do occasionally get to indulge. Egg beaters, steel cut oatmeal, and fruit smoothies only get you so far. And when we reach that point, where we can’t look at breakfast without going “blah”, it’s time to make a detour.
Our most recent breakfast detour involved Orangette’s Oatmeal Pancakes. Yes, we do already have an oatmeal pancake recipe floating around the place, but that is a South Beach recipe that is heavy on the egg whites and cottage cheese – which I don’t always have enough of to sacrifice to the South Beach Diet gods. And if I squint my eyes really tight and pretend that I don’t see that there’s an entire stick of butter in this recipe, this one isn’t too diet wrecking every now and then. Darn that stick of butter. If it weren’t for it, I could have served up some lovely oven browned bacon to go with the pancakes. But my sense of moderation told me to go with some Canadian Bacon instead.
Orangette’s Oatmeal Pancakes
Molly says these are adapted from the Inn at Fordhook Farm
BAH Note: The oats need to soak overnight in the buttermilk. So these pancakes are a planned indulgence.
Stir together the oats and buttermilk in a medium bowl until well mixed. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit overnight in the refrigerator.
Remove the oat and buttermilk mixture from the refrigerator. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
Add the melted butter and beaten eggs to the oat and buttermilk mixture. Stir well to combine. Add in the flour mixture and stir just until blended into a thick batter.
Heat a large nonstick frying pan over medium high heat. Lightly grease the pan with vegetable oil and wipe out the excess. When the pan is ready, ladle in 1/4 cup portions of the batter. Cook the pancakes until the bottoms are nicely browned, the tops have bubbled, and the edges have set before flipping. Cook the second side until browned.
Cooking Light called this a simple recipe, and I agree. But I can’t quite figure how they based it on a one pound pork tenderloin. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a one pound tenderloin and the packages I buy always have two pieces packaged together. So instead of cussing out Cooking Light and going hungry, I decided to roll with it and scaled the recipe a bit to work with what I had.
What you see in that photo may not be your grandmother’s breaded pork with green beans, and it certainly isn’t my grandmother’s, but I like the retro vibe that my kitchen is giving off these days. Sometimes old school simplicity is what it’s all about.
Thyme Coated Pork Tenderloin
Adapted from Cooking Light
BAH Note: I really don’t recommend using bread crumbs from a can for this recipe. I think their texture is too fine for the coating. I break up a loaf of sourdough into chunks and blitz them in the food processor until they are coarse crumbs. These breadcrumbs can be stored in a zip top bag in the freezer. Just let them warm up to room temperature before using them. Cooking time will vary depending on the size of your tenderloins. Mine ran kind of large and took about an hour to reach an internal temperature of 155 degrees. I recommend that you check yours starting after about 30 minutes or use an oven safe instant thermometer with a temperature alarm.
Heat the oven to 400 degrees, line a sheet pan with aluminum foil, and place an oven safe cooling rack inside the pan.
Combine thyme, onion flakes, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper in a shallow dish. Place egg whites in a second shallow dish and beat lightly, adding about a tablespoon of water if necessary.
Dry pork with paper towels and dip into the egg whites. When completely coated, dredge the pork in the breadcrumbs, patting them on firmly.
Place the pork on the rack set inside the sheet pan and cook until the pork registers 155 degrees on an instant read thermometer.
The following originally appeared on 10/25/07 at Exit 51
Thing Globally, Act Locally
I spent a few hours the other day on the hunt. The hunt for a solution to my lighting troubles. And in the end, I was reminded of the value of acting locally and how customer service really makes a difference. Continue reading “Flashback Friday – Thing Globally, Act Locally”
In 2009 Pigtown Design and Easy and Elegant Life teamed up to raise awareness of the challenges faced by food banks across the nation in these challenging economic times. They called their mission April Food Day. 365 days later, the need is still great. People are still unemployed, underemployed, and financially overwhelmed. Food banks are a lifeline for a growing percentage of the population.
It’s been a year since I wrote my post for AFD2009. In that time, The Mistah and I became intimately acquainted with the recession and unemployment. We looked for ways to save money. And honestly, one of the first things to get cut was the food budget. It was a challenge. It was psychologically bruising to go from grocery shopping at Harris Teeter, Safeway, and (sometimes) Wegman’s to food shopping at Target and Walmart. But when your income is cut by 60%, you do what you have to do.
It’s about survival. And for some people, grocery shopping at Walmart, or Target, or at the local off brand grocery store is a luxury. While I know that eating can be luxurious, it should never be considered a luxury. Here are a few things to chew on:
If you are able to, I hope you will consider making a donation to Feeding America through the link that has been set up for April Food Day. Even if you can’t make a donation, I hope you will participate in AFD by spreading the word.
As I may have mentioned once or twice, my grandmother embraced convenience foods. TV dinners, box cake mixes, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese…these were foods I grew up with. But she had a secret. She had been sitting on a gold mine of retro recipes from random cookbooks. One day, long before I developed an interest in cooking, she handed them over to me. Maybe she knew that eventually I would embark on my own adventures in the kitchen. Or maybe she thought these might spark an interest in me to stop eating out of boxes. Whatever the reason may have been, those pages got tucked away in my three ring binder as more of a curiosity than anything. Many years, and several moves later, I finally took a look at them and realized that I had been given a window into the past. Continue reading “Retro Recipes”
Four times a year, I am a Lady Who Lunches. I get together with two friends and we spend hours engaged in chit, chat, and chow. We started out with three dates per year to celebrate our birthdays. But that left a gaping hole in our calendar from June to January. So we decided to add a Very Merry Unbirthday Brunch in the fall. In addition to being an Unbirthday get together, it’s the only one that we don’t go out for. Birthday Brunch always involves a buffet…how else could we spend hours at a table without getting the evil eye from a server? But VMUBB is a home cooked affair. Continue reading “Ladies Who Lunch”
I’m spring cleaning the recipe folders. One of the challenges to this is deciding when it’s time to say that I’m just not going to make a recipe and get rid of it. Admitting that I’m never going to get around to making something is like admitting defeat. And I don’t like to lose. So I find myself hanging on to some of these recipes out of pride more than anything else. But is that any way to live? Is it better to be bogged down by the weight of things untried because it’s easier than letting them go? I think not. So Belgian Brownies and I finally gave it a go. And in an unkind irony, we realized that we really didn’t get along so great after all. After almost four years of hanging around, biding our time, and waiting, we didn’t click. Now that we’ve gone our separate ways, there’s room in my folders so I can jump into The Sweet Life In Paris recipes without feeling like a complete jezebel.
I can’t say enough wonderful things about this Food Memory contributor. Josey has been my pal longer than I can remember. She knew me during those awkward adolescent years, and doesn’t hold it against me. Yes, I may have been a willing participant in the hijinks but SHE was the one that got us kicked out of the library. To this day, I’ll never understand how it came across that I was the bad influence.
That moment aside, we balanced each others personalities. I was loud and hasty, rash and a wee bit reckless. She was quiet and thoughtful, focused and more reserved. And we both were addicted to watching the Solid Gold Dancers. We usually did it while on the phone together so that we could accurately critique the gold lame, big hair, and Marilyn McCoo. See what I said about not holding my past against me? Not only is she forgiving like that, she’s a superb story teller with her own blog (when she gets around to writing), an excellent travel companion when you decide to throw caution to the wind and fly across the Atlantic because you need to shake things up, and she’s got a recipe for the Best Damn Pancakes I’ve Ever Eaten. I’ll let her tell you about them. Continue reading “Food Memories – Aunt Jeanie and Mom’s Pancakes”
Bon Appetit Hon by Wendi Mosteiko is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Bon Appetit Hon 