Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake (p. 718), Indian Ground Beef with Potatoes and Spices (p.515), Curried Chickpeas w/ Vegetables (p.257), & Beef Stew (p. 479

Since I briefly got off-track again, I posted three blogs at once. So if you are reading this one, go back and read the next two--they're new too!


I am going to be EXTREMELY busy this week so I decided to make a TON of food. That way, we can have leftovers all week with no need to cook. Other than all of the desserts we made, I also made three other dishes. And for some reason, I was on an Indian food kick

First, I made Indian Ground Beef with Potatoes and Spices (Keema Alu) (p.515). Josh and I have several sets of prep bowls. A lot of people don't use prep bowls when they cook but they really help me--especially when I have to add a bunch of ingredients in quick order. These bowls are cute little nesting zebra bowls and I used all of them while cooking today. This recipe uses a lot of spices--and I have a TON of spices so it was nice to use a bunch of them.



I used turkey. Why would someone who does beef research and comes from a pork background possibly use ground turkey in anything? It is curious, but I just happened to have some on hand for developing cooking contest recipes and it was going to go bad.

Doesn't it look tasty?!



I probably used too many potatoes...but is there any such thing? I love potatoes. I also didn't put the cilantro on the top. I like cilantro a lot but I think it can overpower a dish if you aren't careful.




Next I made Curried Chickpeas with Vegetables (p.257). I got a really cool wok/skillet for Christmas, so I was really looking forward to using it and this was the perfect recipe for it.

So I had ground cumin but no cumin seeds. I don't know if that is an important difference...I worried about this for a while and then sent Josh to the grocery store to get the cumin seeds. The first line says to cook until sizzling...which I did (I think--sizzling did occur but I didn't want the seeds to burn).



Then you add the garlic, ginger, and curry. As I always say about TJOC recipes, they are incredibly white bread, so I usually double the garlic and curry. At this point, the mixture started to smell really really good.



I like chickpeas, Josh hates them. So it was a good thing I was making more than one main dish. This recipe calls for chickpeas, sweet potatoes (I used ACTUAL sweet potatoes, which are white, rather than yams, which are orange), cauliflower, and green beans (the cauliflower and green beans were frozen because both veggies are overpriced at this time of year--I can't wait until summer!).


Then you mix in yogurt and flour plus a jalapeño.



It was DELICIOUS! I made some rice to eat with it and really wished I had some naan, but I wasn't feeling quite that motivated.

I also made Beef Stew (p. 479). I knew that I wasn't going to eat it on Sunday and the recipe says that it's even better the next day. TJOC adores browning meat. I'm not such a big fan--I think that it takes cuts of meat that are tough (the whole reason you are slow cooking them in the first place) and quick cooks them (which toughens them up). So I always barely brown the meat--which means that I don't pay any attention to TJOC's cooking times which are WAY too long. This recipe calls for you to season the meat, dredge it, and brown it. You make a mirepoix (of course). This is where I found another TJOC error. It discusses removing the meat from the pot. It never discusses putting the meat back in! So I assume you put it back in after the mirepoix but before respicing. Then you add broth, carrots, and potatoes (plus parsnips and turnips, if you wish--I didn't). OMG this was terrific! This was among the best stew I've ever had--the meat was the perfect level of tender--tender but not mushy. The fat on the meat was great, it was just delicious. It didn't give me much juice though--next time I'll use more broth.

I know this isn't a very exciting picture but I was tired of taking pictures by this point.




I have been complaining for months that I can't find a double broiler to buy. Not even a cheap one--one at all! They are available in sets but not by themselves, it seems. So the strangest thing happened when I was rearranging my cupboards...I found that I already have a double broiler! I swear I've never seen it before, and is possible that some sort of house brownie placed it there, but regardless, I have one!

Today was Josh's birthday and I wanted to make him a cake. He wanted a chocolate cake--I usually don't like chocolate so I figured I wouldn't be that into any of the cakes he was interested in. I decided on the Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake (p. 718). Personally, I think the title sounds disgusting but the intro says that it is so rich and moist that it doesn't need icing (great because I didn't want to make any). And I know some people use applesauce in cake, which seems equally strange to me...

You all know that I haven't been baking because of the elevation--it's ruined a number of cakes for me. You have to adjust a lot for recipes to work (baking soda, baking powder, liquid, flour).

The double broiler was necessary to melt the baking chocolate without ruining it.



Then you mix the mayo into the chocolate. I found that to be a strange step...



After that you mix the chocolate/mayo mix (how often do you get to use that combination!?) into a egg, sugar, vanilla mixture. Then you alternate water and dry ingredients. At this point of the recipe I was concerned--the batter looked very water-y. But I poured it into the cake pans anyway.



The cakes were BEAUTIFUL! They didn't have the dent in the middle that elevation causes, they were not overcooked, they were awesome! It made two, so I brought one to work. The cake was really good...it was light and moist but not overly sweet. If you like a really really sweet cake, this isn't the cake for you. The best part of baking this cake is that it increased my confidence in Colorado baking (and I miss baking!).



Josh also made cookies and I made cupcakes (from a box) for him to bring to work. I find it strange--they bring treats in for their OWN birthdays (like in elementary school). I also have started down the road to DELICIOUS cake mix cupcakes. Josh beats the batter by hand and for some reason it seems to make the cupcakes much more light and airy. I figure it limits the batter from being overbeaten and adds more air to the batter--that might not be the case, but it makes sense.

Mashed Potatoes with Cabbage and Scallions (p.296) and Shepherd's Pie (p. 102)

First, how do you keep all of the blogs you like to read straight? I have a ton that I like to read but I forget about them! So are there any good gadgets to keep them organized? I kinda like igoogle but if there is something better, I would like to know about.

Second, some people were telling me that the pictures on this blog weren't showing up for them--I don't know why, they always show up on my computers...is anyone else having this problem? I recognize that I'm not a wordsmith, so the pictures are important :)

Third, you don't have to have a blogger username to comment, so comment freely! I love reading them :)

I decided that Josh and I were going to have "Pub night" so, obviously, that means some sort of meat pie. I was content with cottage pie, because I don't always like ground lamb, but Josh decided he wanted to be a purist, and go for lamb--so, shepard's pie (cottage pie is the same thing but with beef--obvious, you aren't a shepard if you don't have sheep!).

Although Shepherd's Pie (p. 102) is a complicated recipe, it isn't very difficult. First, you boil and mash some potatoes. Every time I make mashed potatoes I wonder why I don't make them more often--they are so easy and I like them so much! I also couldn't find my ricer so they had to be mashed with the smasher. I bought my ricer at a antique market in FL (there are dozens of awesome kitchen gadgets at antique shops), and it's about a billion years old, but it has character and I like it. That being said, it seems to have disappeared--maybe it went to find it's old family.

Josh is always in charge of the mashing, he really takes joy in it. I think he works out some aggression that way.



The next step is to make a mirepoix. I think a mirepoix is the base of at least half of the recipes in this cookbook. The recipe does say chopped instead of diced, so this isn't an example of my terrible knife skills (well, not this particular picture).




You mix in the lamb (you can use cooked lamb but I can almost guarantee that we will never have any leftover cooked lamb), add broth, and spices. When this is done, you have the base to the recipe! Again, the recipe has a lot of steps and produces a bunch of dishes to be washed but doesn't really require much talent (my kind of recipe!).




The meat mixture is put into a casserole dish, with the mashed potatoes on top. It said to make peaks in the mashed potatoes--I have no idea how to do that, so mine were peak-less. Mmmm....and butter on the top...





Now, this recipe looks pretty before you break into it but it doesn't cut easily. Even so, it was really good.

The recipe is online.

I also decided to make Mashed Potatoes with Cabbage and Scallions (p.296), which, if fried, is known as "bubble and squeak" which is a great name! Now, I have no idea how or why you would fry this concoction, so mine neither bubbled nor squeaked. If I ever go to the UK, it's first on my list of things to try (and fish and chips...I LOVE fried fish more than I should). I've learned during this cooking experiment (cooking through TJOC) that I really like cooked cabbage, which I didn't know. And cabbage is EXTREMELY cheap, which is awesome. And everyone likes mashed potatoes! But scallions--not only do I not keep scallions on hand but there weren't any at the grocery store.

I decided to cut them out (I know they're in the title but I wasn't going to search the town for the stupid things!) so I added some garlic instead.

One of the first instructions in the recipe is to core the cabbage. How does one core cabbage? Where is the core? I opened the cabbage up, looked into it, didn't see a core, and randomly cut some parts out of the middle. It didn't seem to matter or impact the recipe at all.

So, to begin, you pretty much put some potatoes (I used Yukon Golds, of course) in a pot, add water, cut some cabbage, and layer it on top. Then you boil this for a while.


It's really hard to fit that many potatoes and cabbage pieces into a pot.



I used heavy cream instead of half-and-half or milk, plus a full stick of butter (obviously not a low fat recipe) and the recipe was a little runny. It was delicious anyway. You end up mashing the whole mixture, which is fairly easy. Apparently cabbage mashes down easier than potatoes so the whole thing is fairly easy.



It was great although it made a huge amount which we ate for about a week afterwards.

Peanut Dipping Sauce (p. 570)

When we went to the grocery store we found pork stew meat BOGO free--so we got a couple packages. I didn't know what to do with it, so I decided to cook it up and coat it in a sauce that I found in TJOC. I read through the "Savory sauces, salad dressings, marinades, and rub" chapter and was highly interested in the Peanut Dipping Sauce (p. 570). I knew that we had most of the ingredients!

I immediately ran into a problem. First off, our peanut butter was so old, I think it may have been in the cupboard when we moved in. And the recipe says to use chunky, unsweetened PB...not only was this PB creamy (I don't like chunky!), it was honey roasted (so in all actuality, it was double sweet).

It seems like a waste to buy a new piece of ginger every time I cook and throwing half of it away, so I bought a tube of ginger. I also feel no there is no point juicing limes every time, so I used canned lime juice. I wasn't confident that this was going to be the same. Here is a picture of the three offenders:




The first step of this recipe is to brown the ginger, red pepper, and garlic (I used extra) in vegetable oil. Yum! It was already looking great.





You then add the rest of the ingredients. You wait for the peanut butter to mix in. If it's four hundred years old like my PB, it takes quite a while. It was already smelling delicious though.



The peanut sauce looked just like peanut butter, but it tasted GREAT! It was sweet and spicy and had a nice kick to it (likely from the red pepper, ginger, and garlic). I didn't add any peanuts or mint to it.





The sauce was GREAT on the pork. And I half-expected the pork to be tough, since it was "stew meat" and that can mean anything--but it was tender and delicious. The sauce even kept well, which was more than I expected.

I threw out the ancient PB and bought some new stuff--it's funny because I don't like PB and Josh likes the fresh stuff from Whole Foods so we only use the jars to cook with :)

Chicken Enchiladas (p. 104), Vegetable Soup (Soupe Paysanne) (p. 128), and MY TRIP TO JAPAN!

First off, I'm pumped! I seem to have readers--and some of them aren't family members! Hooray! And I was mentioned on Jennifer's awesome knitting blog, www.pieknits.com , which is one of my favorite blogs (even though I'm far, far too uncoordinated to knit). I'm not going to mention that she is one of my extremely good friends, who I've known since 2nd grade...so she kinda has to read the blog...but she doesn't have to mention it to others!


I had a rotisserie chicken that we bought from CostCo, so we had a lot of extra cooked chicken. I decided to make Chicken Enchiladas (p. 104). This is a relatively time consuming process. You make the enchilada sauce (which you don't have to do--you can buy it--but I wanted to be authentic), make the meat mixture, heat up the shells, dish out the meat, roll them up, cover in sauce, and bake. Not difficult, but time consuming.

Sauce, pre-puree:







Sauce, post-puree. Remember, I have the smallest food processor in the world, so this took about five batches:





And I thought they were bland...but maybe I'm just not an enchilada fan. Are chicken enchiladas typically bland?


Corn tortillas are amazing. I had some in the refrigerator that were so old, I swear they came with the fridge. But they still tasted good and rolled fine. Any cracking was due more to my lack of ability than to the tortillas.

Tortillas. pre-roll and post-roll:







The finished product (cheddar on top):






I made Vegetable Soup (Soupe Paysanne) (p. 128) while I was making the enchiladas. It was a simple recipe, make a mirepoix, add stock (I used store bought vegetable stock), tomatoes (I used canned--it isn't like "fresh" tomatoes are that fresh this time of year), potatoes (no turnips, I'm not a big fan), and spices. Later I added some cabbage and pepper.

This was a delicious soup that heated up extremely well. The cabbage was a really good addition--it's cheap, has a lot of flavor, and is filling. The soup is tomato-y, but not overwhelming, and has a great pepper bite. I have been thinking about this soup for the last few days so it is going to be re-made--but I think some peas or corn added would be even better.

Josh was disappointed by the lack of meat but I like my vegetable soup vegetarian.


Only one picture of the soup--there wasn't much to photograph.






So, I'm sorry I was out of commission for a few weeks--I WAS IN JAPAN LAST WEEK! How cool is that? So, some food related photos from the trip (not all of them, don't want to bore you!).

1. Although Japan has a lot of their own foods, they have interesting versions of brands that are common here. I had a delicious green tea doughnut from Starbucks (I know, I know, but it was next to the Hotel Okura, where we were staying), for example. And there are green tea versions of almost everything, such as Green Tea Kit-Kats:





2. Shabu-shabu! Delicious. So is tonkatsu (which I don't have a picture of) which is essentially fried pork that you dip in sauce. But shabu-shabu...you take raw pieces of highly marbled beef, swish them around in a pot of broth (apparently the sound is supposed to sound like shabu-shabu), dip it in sauce, and eat it. Yum! My father brought a whole set home from Japan, so I had eaten it before, but it was amazing to eat in Japan.

Raw beef, sliced thin, and the sauces, seseme based and soy-sauce based:




Getting dipped:




3. The Tokyo fish market, which is getting torn down soon (or so I hear). Well worth the trip if you're in Tokyo, even though you have to get there really early (like 4 am). They auction off tuna, both fresh and frozen, the size of which is AMAZING! HUGE fish...and then you can walk through the market and see an incredible assortment of fish.


Tuna ready for auction:




Giant clams (mussels? What's the difference?):



Octopi--Yum--We eat these every Christmas!:






4. I thought that it was just a stereotype that Hello Kitty is popular in Japan. Apparently not, because I saw her EVERYWHERE. Including (during a trade show) in a bento box display, made out of both rice AND meat, with little sausages that are imprinted with Hello Kitty on the side. I adored it...Hello Kitty rocks!







5. I ate the most expensive meal I've ever seen. A former grad student's father treated us to a meal, six courses, and the main was Kobe beef, with black truffles, drizzled in truffle sauce. It was delicious and I was excited to try both Kobe beef and black truffles! They lived up to my expectations BUT I still think that American Corn-fed Prime beef is every bit as good.

Italian Pot Roast (Stracotto) (p. 477)

This is not a roast. It is in a pot, but it is not roasted, it's braised. So I actually find the name fairly annoying.


I also want to introduce my beautiful Cuisinart Stock Pot/Dutch Oven that my godmother, Judy, bought me. It is an awesome piece of equipment and this was it's virgin use! I'm kind of turning away from teflon and nonstick coatings. I hate the constant worry about scratching them and I want the ability to stick them in the dishwasher if I want to. I got mostly kitchen equipment for Christmas, as I hoped for--thank you Mom, Dad and Vickie, Judy, and Charlotte!!!

My beautiful new pot...notice my cute blue salt pig behind it...





This recipe pretty much boils down to this--prepare the meat, make a mirepoix, mix wine and tomato paste, reduce, mix wine and beef broth, reduce, and then mix wine, broth, and tomatoes. Cook it forever. This recipe honestly took me 4 hours. It was a strange choice on a Monday night.


First, you make a herb mixture. I doubled the garlic. Half of this gets stuffed into the meat:




Stuff it into the meat (in this case, a blade roast):




Brown the meat. This was a challenge. The meat did NOT want to cooperate and it kept collapsing and splashing me with boiling oil. It was not pleasant. I thought that browning it for twenty minutes was a really bad idea. I've always heard that the idea that browning meat keeps the juices in was an urban legend--plus this is getting braised--there would be no way for it to be dry. So if it's just for aesthetic value, I don't want to brown it too much. Even with this concern, I think the pan was too hot and that I browned it to much.

I'm sure you are pondering our ugly plates at this point in the blog. I really need to buy a plate to photograph on. The clear plates were Josh's...I'm not sure why ANYONE would want to see their lap while they were eating but maybe that's just me.





So then you take the meat out of the pot, add the mirepoix, mushrooms, a bay leaf, the rest of the herb mixture, and eventually some wine and tomato paste. It's then cooked down until almost dry. This takes forever. Each reduction step is time consuming. I'm beginning to think this is a weekend roast I'm working on.




After a bunch of reductions, the browned meat is added and cooked for about 2.5 hours. And it smells wonderful. So you will start to get starving hungry with no food in sight.




The finished meat product, sliced. Admire the tasty pockets of herb mixture:



Finished product with sauce. I reduced the sauce (without the meat) at a boil for about fifteen minutes.





This is one of those recipes that has a lot of leftovers. So far, Josh ate it for about four more meals and said it was great for every one of them.

TJOC said that the sauce can be used on pasta, so I tried it. Wow....it was really good. Tomato-y, beefy, wine-y...really good. And it makes A LOT of extra sauce, so you have to use it for something. I mix a little minced garlic in with it, but it's really good. The sauce has (so far) yielded two additional meals, and will probably yield two more.

So, all in all, this recipe has served us 8 meals (2 orginal meals, 4 leftover meals for Josh, 2 pasta meals for me) and probably has around 3 more meals to go. That is a lot of value out of an $8 piece of meat.

Josh declared this his favorite recipe that TJOC has produced thus far. Better than crepes, better than curry mayo, better than all of things that we make often...I can't recommend this recipe enough. I'm SURE that we will make it again.


In other cooking news, when I was in Des Moines, I stopped at Penzey's (http://www.penzeys.com/), which is a spice store. I LOVE this store. It's a dangerous place for me to enter because I drop a ton of cash every time I go there. I got in an very interesting discussion with the manager about ricers (I think I sold him on one! I should get a kickback!). I lusted after high end curry and bought about fifteen spices, along with their DELICIOUS minced garlic that Josh and I use in large quantities, and three differant types of salt. I also bought juniper berries. I have no idea what to do with these. When Josh asked what they are used for, I told him gin production. Since he knows full well I'm not going to make gin, he asked what else they were used for. I told him they are common in Albanian cuisine (I seem to remember that from the placard in front of the spice). He was also aware that I don't even know what Albanian cuisine consists of. So do you know what to use them for?

Split Pea Soup (p. 134) and Ham Salad (p. 164)

I really like most of the recipes in Joy (of course) but some of the foods are foods that I really don't like. This is a problem. The whole point of this project is to make ALL of the recipes and I don't want to start down the slope of not making recipes for any reason. On the bright side, some of the stuff that disgusts both Josh and I the most are dishes that my mother really likes. So I've decided to make some of the foods that I do not want to eat every time I visit her. This has the additional positive of giving my mom food to eat when I'm gone--she's still tired from chemo and is usually unmotivated to cook, even though she is getting way too thin.

The first recipe I made her was Split Pea Soup (p. 134). Did you know there were two types of split peas (yellow and green)? There is just something about pea soup that turns my stomach. Maybe it's The Exorcist. Maybe it's the hidious color. But I can never motivate myself to eat it, much less make it. Even so, it's a hot, filling soup. Perfect for mom!

The ham hocks called for in the recipe were not easy to find in the white-bread mega-grocery I went to. I knew that I wanted them, though, because ham (like bacon) is one of the signs that a higher power exists and loves us.

A ham hock, water, and peas:


The recipe was easy but WAY too thick. It was more of a porridge than a soup. I recommend using more water or broth or something...I ate a bowl and it was extremely filling. It would be good with a good crusty bread.


Why would anyone eat something that looks like this?? And sadly, I think that's how it's supposed to look!





I also made Ham Salad (p. 164). I HATE ham salad. There is just something gross about the pink sludge. Yuck. But for some godforsaken reason, my mom loves it. She buys it at the grocery store disturbingly often. And, of course, there is a recipe for it in TJOC.

So I bought a slice of ham and made ham salad. I almost forgot to include the mayo which would have made for a real strange, dry salad. It's really pretty easy to make--other than the ham, she had everything in the refrigerator. This itself was bizarre, considering that my mom idolizes Old Mother Hubburd and likes her cabinets bare. The ham salad looked as good as was possible but was too chunky for mom, so we pushed it through a food processor at the end...just like the grocery store. Yuck!

Pre-food processor. Hard boiled eggs, ham, pickles, mayo, spices:





I stand by it...why would anyone eat these items???

Waffles (p. 646) and Raspberry

So the relatives wanted waffles. Never mind that we are low (or empty) on milk, eggs, and butter, three of the main ingredients of waffles.

There are JUST enough eggs, slightly under a stick of butter (but I can't use it all because I need some for the top of the waffles) and no milk. The relatives want me to use creamer in the waffles. I don't know about you guys, but that seems like something that you would do if you were in wartime, and seems gross. So I looked in the back of the book and figured out how to use evaporated milk. I don't like evaporated milk. I think it tastes tinny and metallic. But my mom and aunt like it more than real milk. They were convinced it was a 1:1 substitution. That doesn't make any sense. The evaporated has to mean SOMETHING. You don't have to look very far--even wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporated_milk -- to know that you have to mix it with an equal amount of water to use it in place of milk.

The waffle mix--in a bowl that is probably twice as old as I am:




So we get out the waffle iron. It's filthy dirty. Whoever used it last didn't clean it. It doesn't take an aerospace engineer to know that you should clean kitchen equipment before putting it away, but apparently that's beyond my grandmother's caretaker's abilities. So we cleaned it (well) and sprayed it with plenty of oil. The waffles worked, but I think they tasted way too much like evaporated milk...


This is my first time making waffles. I don't even like waffles. Why would you bother with a specialty iron when you can just make waffle's more delicious cousin, the pancake? And I have a moratorium on equipment in my house that is only for one purpose. We have a few pieces that have snuck through the cracks--an ice cream maker, namely, but our kitchen isn't big enough for pieces that one do one job. We need multitaskers. I'm sure I'll inherit the pizzelle maker eventually.

The waffles being cooked:



The finished product. I think waffles pretty much require someone to be in the kitchen, making them, while everyone else eats. And I'm not into that.



My g'mother's caretaker had organic maple syrup for the waffles. I have two main problems with this. First, isn't all plain maple syrup organic? I mean, really, I doubt they spray the maple trees. So you are paying a premium for nothing. I understand if you don't want the syrup with all the preservatives and such, but I'm guessing all plain maple syrup is the same. Second, the syrup was Grade B. Josh assures me that the highest grade of maple syrup is AA (apparently his parent's collected sap one year), so this super expensive syrup is third-tier. And people pay a premium for it! Amazing.


This blog is dedicated to our dear Rottweiler, Raspberry. Raspberry lived a hard life. She was used as breeding stock (which was no surprise--she was a gorgeous dog) until she could no longer whelp, and then was set "free". When the shelter found her, they found a microchip, but when they called the owners, they were told that she was no longer wanted.

Her teeth were broken and worn from chewing on her cage. Her nose had a scar across it from pushing it through the bars. She didn't walk upright for the first year Josh had her. But she was a loving dog (almost TOO loving at times--she was definitely needy). When she moved to Colorado and adopted Duchess, she blossomed.

She was a great dog. She and Duchess were my constant cooking companions, always looking for food I may have dropped (accidentally or on purpose).

Josh noticed that she didn't look so good on 12/30. By 1/2 she had to be put to sleep. She had gotten a clot in her stomach, which punctured it and rotted her stomach away. She lost twenty pounds in three days.

May she rest in peace and get all the attention that she deserves until we meet her at the Rainbow Bridge.




The rainbow bridge poem (collected from www.rainbowbridge.com)
Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor. Those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent. His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

Author unknown...

Leftover Potato Cakes (p. 301)

So it's the day after Christmas and we have a bunch of leftovers. I made the mashed potatoes for Christmas dinner and they were delicious--but there are some left over, of course. I spot the recipe for Leftover Potato Cakes (p.301). I giggle about the name for a while. It sounds like the potato cakes are leftover, not that leftover potatoes are made into cakes. I'm such a dork.


For this recipe, you pretty much take mashed potatoes, mix in some of whatever you want, fashion them into cakes, dip them into flour, and panfry them. I mixed together some garlic and a few eggs, which when mixed into the potatoes was gross and mucous-y. Even when dipped into flour they were sticky.

This picture shows the garlic egg mixture in the upper left hand corner, plain mashed potatoes on the left, and the mucous-y mixture on the left. TJOC is visible in the far left of the picture. Isn't the marble counter nice? I really should have made candy while I was there and utilized the table...



The little cakes frying. Flour did not stick to them as well as you would have expected...although they did fry up an attractive golden color:



They were fairly pretty when cooked but fairly bland. I smeared butter onto them and they were still on the bland side. I think that maple syrup or something would be better on them...

Even so, they were really easy. And the recipe has a LOT of room for interpretation so you could really get creative. It's nice to use leftovers in a new way...

They apparently didn't excite me enough to make me take a picture of the finished product!