We’re happy that you’ve dropped by. Pull up a chair and have a drink while we turn on the radio and fire up the grill. We can swap stories, recipes and memories of days gone by. If you’re not in a rush, maybe we’ll even light a campfire and get the guitars and ukuleles out. In any case, we’ll share some good food and great company.
Make yourself at home.
I first tasted an apple fritter as a young man in my hometown of Decatur, Illinois, at the Van Zetti Bakery. It’s been my favorite donut-adjacent food for fifty years since.
Recently, we ran across Kent Rollins’ YouTube channel, and I was delighted to find that he has a recipe. Despite my trepidation toward deep frying, I decided to try it out. We picked up a bag of Granny Smith apples and a bottle of Fireball Whiskey on Saturday, and made these on Sunday Morning.
The first step was to dice the apples and sauté them in a little butter. Once they start to get soft and a little golden, I added a couple tablespoons of Turbinado Sugar and a tablespoon of dark brown. Then came a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, and finally a good splash of Fireball to deglaze the iron skillet. This all got set aside to cool while making the batter.
I beat two medium eggs well to start the batter, incorporating 3/4 cup of sugar and a tablespoon of melted butter. The dry mixture (1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a little grated nutmeg) went in next, along with 3/4 cup of Ginger Ale, as we didn’t have Mountain Dew on hand. By then the apples were cool enough to add, and the dough was ready for frying.
I used a little over an inch of vegetable oil in the bottom of a Dutch Over for frying, dropping in four large spoonfuls at a time once the oil was hot. The recipe made about a dozen and a half fritters, and they were just the right size for an individual serving – although everyone ate more than one.
The glaze was a cup of powdered sugar and a few teaspoons of Fireball, with a little more of the Ginger Ale to get the right consistency.
You can watch the whole process on Kent’s YouTube video. The recipe is here.
These were as delicious as I had imagined and hoped, and the frying was a lot less daunting and messy than I had feared. It’s the cowboy way. 🙂
The first Sunday of Summer 2025 was HOT. Here in the South Suburbs of Chicago, we had temperatures in the 90s Fahrenheit all weekend.
Claudia had prepared a potato and green bean salad for a Midsummer party that we attended on Saturday Evening, and par cooked enough extra to grill on Sunday. She also made a nice green salad, and I grilled some Tofurkey Vegan Polish Sausages that we served with sauerkraut and mustard.
Claudia described it as “Summer on a Plate.”
I walked out back of the house to mow yesterday, and the violets and dandelions were so beautiful that I decided to wait a few days. 🙂
So I picked 108 violets to try Annabel Margaret’s violet syrup. Here’s a video with the recipe if you’d like to try it.
Let equal parts of violet petals and water (heated to boiling then left to cool for 5 minutes) steep overnight. Then add an equal part of sugar and heat very gently, stirring constantly until the sugar dissolves. Finally, add a squeeze of lemon juice.
I had about 3/4 cup of petals, and it made a little over half a bottle. Super fun to harvest and remove the petals with intentions for our happy, loving home. Also, watching the syrup go from blue to violet with the addition of a little lemon juice was just beautiful.
This recipe came from Rainbow Plant Life. I cheated a bit with the spices, opting for some pre-ground things instead of toasting them all from scratch. The meal still took a couple hours altogether to prepare, but it was well worth it.
I think I’ll try a double batch of the full fledged version one of these weekends.
For Sunday Dinner the day before St. Patrick’s Day this year, in addition to the traditional corned beef and cabbage I decided to try making a Jackfruit version. It was my very first experience preparing, cooking or eating it, and it exceeded my expectations in every way.
I had intended to pick up some prepared Jackfruit, but when I asked if they had it at our neighborhood Jewel, the produce guy said “sure – right over on that table.” Turns out there were two (humongous) whole Jackfruit at a decent markdown. So I grabbed the smaller of the two and headed to check out.
When I got back home, I checked YouTube for tutorials on how to prepare it, and was a little daunted but decided to give it a try anyway.
The first step was to cut the thing up into pieces, just about like you would when you’re slicing up a watermelon to serve. Except Jackfruit contains this white sticky substance inside that looks and behaves for all the world like latex. So I put some newspapers down on a table on the back patio, sprayed my knife with cooking spray, and went to work. It was messy, but not as bad as I had expected.
I boiled the pieces in a large stock pot for about twenty minutes, and once they had cooled a bit I removed the husks with a paring knife, and picked through the sections for the seed pods. They say that the seeds can be used to make Hummus, but this time around I just discarded them.
Once the sections were all picked clean, I put them back in the stock pot with pickling spices and some beet powder to marinate overnight. On Sunday Morning, I drained them, spread them out on a baking sheet, hit them with a little more seasoning, and baked them for an hour at 375 °F.
Finally, I pan fried enough portions for the three Vegetarians at our table just before serving to warm them up.
Even though it was quite a lengthy and involved process to prepare and cook the Jackfruit, I would definitely do it again. The texture was very much like corned beef, and the taste was marvelous and savory. I think that doing a long cook with it on a smoker and topping with Carolina Barbecue Sauce would be most excellent.
For many years, I made fun of the trend toward gluten-free foods. I would quip “I’ve only been gluten-free for three days, and already I’m a jackass.” I was convinced that unless someone had an actual diagnosed allergy, or a health condition such as Celiac Disease, that there was no health benefit in maintaining a gluten-free diet, and chalked it all up as just another dietary fad.
As time went on, evidence began to creep over, under and around my mental block. There is at least some reason to think that our grain-based manufactured foods are so high in gluten that they pose issues with digestion and inflammation to much of the general population.
So when I received an email not long ago touting the benefits of gluten-free sourdough (and, of course, offering to sell me everything I need to start baking it) I was intrigued. I decided that I would give it a try (although, sorry, I did not buy their kit).
This was my first attempt at developing my own sourdough starter of any kind. The artisan bread that I’ve baked over the past decade or so has all been yeast based. I researched online and settled on using the process described on the Bakerita site. I picked up some brown rice flour and Mason Jars, and got started.
Here’s the starter process in a nutshell.
Day 1: In the morning, mix up 50 g of brown rice flour and 50 g of water in the jar. Cover it with something porous (I used an inverted paper coffee filter, held on by the canning jar ring), and let it sit out on the counter. In the evening, incorporate another 50 g of flour and water.
Day 2: Feed again morning and evening, 50 g each of water and flour. I used filtered water that had sat in an open jug for a couple days to let any chlorine eavaporate.
Days 3-7: Remove and discard half of what is in the jar. I used an empty jar to tare the kitchen scale, and then placed the starter jar on the scale and removed mixture until it was about half of its original weight. After this discard, feed with 50 g flour and 50 g water. Continue to do this morning and night for the next five days.
This is how my starter looked the morning of Day Three, before discard and feeding.
The rubber band on the jar shows the level of mixture after feeding the prior evening. As you can see, it had nearly doubled in size, and had a lot of nice bubbles.
By the end of the first week, it was very active like this, and had a lovely sour aroma. I switched to once per day feedings, in the morning. The ratio was 100 g of starter, 100 g flour and 100 g water. By day 4 of the second week, I was ready to bake.
Baking Process
Mixing Preferment: This mixture of starter, flour and water is the basis for the bread’s rise. I put 150 g of starter, 100 g water and 100 g flour in a clean canning jar at 3 PM, covered it with a paper filter and ring, and let it sit out overnight.
Baking Day: At 7 AM I combined the following in a medium glass bowl, whisking until it was well combined.
20 g psyllium husks
20 g honey
300 g water
10 g olive oil
While this stood for a bit so the psyllium husks could hydrate, I combined the following dry ingredients in a large glass bowl.
80 g potato starch
60 g arrowroot flour
80 g sorghum flour
60 g brown rice flour
12 g sea salt
Then, I mixed the preferment and wet ingredients together well, then added them to the bowl of dry ingredients. I used a wooden spoon to mix it all together at first, then used my hands to mix and knead, until it was a nice, smooth, even textured ball.
The dough went into a small rattan basket (called a banneton) that had been dusted with brown rice flour. You could use a glass or pottery bowl if you prefer. I covered it with a cloth, and left it sit on the counter until time to bake, about 7 hours later.
Here’s how it looked when first placed in the banneton.
Here’s how it looked at 2:30 PM.
I pre-heated the oven to 450 °F, and gently turned the basket upside down onto a piece of parchment paper on a wooden pizza peel. I used a knife to score an x across the top, so the bread could expand without cracking apart.
I baked this on a pizza stone, since that’s the process I use for other breads – sliding the dough off of the peel onto the stone, and then pouring about a cup of water into a baking pan on a lower shelf. The Bakerita process uses a Dutch Oven instead.
Once the bread was in the oven and water in the pan, I pulled the heat down to 425 °F and baked for 70 minutes. This was the result.
The bread was excellent, with a crunchy crust, chewy crumb and classic sourdough tang. The only tiny complaint I would have is that it was just a tad bit gummy. This can be remedied by cutting back slightly (maybe 10 g) on the water for the dough, perhaps adding a little more brown rice flour to the mix, or baking for a few more minutes. When toasted, or used for grilled cheese sandwiches, the texture was fine.
I’ve baked several loaves since, and it’s been a lot of fun experimenting with the scoring to get a pretty design on top. There’s also a lot of satisfaction from taking a product like this from zero to table in a little over a week, and then maintaining, using (and sharing) the starter.
Since our family doesn’t seem to be sensitive to gluten, and the ingredients take up a lot of pantry space, I’ve decided to move on from this experiment in gluten-free baking. Happy to have learned how to do this, though, and will bring the experience to the next bread baking project. I may try to find an heirloom flour without the amped up gluten, but I’m going to try my hand at sourdough bread using Tartine Bakery’s recipe. Wish me luck!
We served this over spaghetti for Sunday Dinner last weekend. Onions, zucchini, and various bell peppers, seasoned with Kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper and some Italian herbs – nothing could be simpler or more delicious.
Apparently I am in my cake era.
I saw this recipe in the March 23rd issue of the Wall Street Journal and it looked cool. Figured it might be nice for Easter Sunday.
Just a few changes from the original recipe, and I was able to make it without eggs or dairy, just for fun. As luck had it, it turned out really delicious.
The original recipe was from Vallery Lomas. Here are her ingredients.
I used non-stick spray oil on the pan instead of butter, substituted 6 T of aquafaba for the two eggs, and made the buttermilk with a quarter cup of oat milk and a teaspoon of white vinegar.
The aquafaba, oil, curdled oat milk, vanilla extract, sugar and salt all go into a bowl for whisking until they are thoroughly combined and a bit thickened.
Next come the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon, and more whisking until it’s all incorporated into a batter consistency.
Finally, I added the carrots, coconut shreds and pecans and incorporated them.
I baked it for 40 minutes at 350 °F, but should have left it a bit longer. It was delicious, but still a bit too moist, and I had difficulty getting it out of the pan in one piece.
For the frosting, instead of using Lomas’ recipe for cream cheese icing, I found this one from the Roasted Root. I used honey instead of maple syrup, oat milk instead of almond, and added an extra tablespoon of lemon juice for extra tang. I also screwed up and only used 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, but I think that actually made it taste a little more like actual cream cheese icing.
This all went into the Vitamix and blended for about a minute until it was the right consistency.
Like in Lomas’ original, I sprinkled some toasted coconut shreds on the top after icing, and added some half pecans for decoration.
This is definitely one that I would make again. Other than having to get the cashews soaking the night before, it went together pretty quickly and since there’s only one bowl involved, and no need for a mixer, cleanup was quick too. The non-vegans liked it, and said that the frosting was indistinguishable from a full cream cheese version.
For Sunday Dinner this week, Claudia made a recipe she found on a Vegan Recipes Group on the Book of Faces. It was incredibly delicious and hearty.
She made a double batch, and it fed four of us nicely (we each had seconds). This was a huge hit with everyone at the table, and it was better than any Stroganoff I’ve ever eaten (including the decidedly beefy variety that we used to make).
We served this over wide noodles, and garnished with paprika and parsley.
Ingredients (for the double batch):
2 pounds of mushrooms, sliced (she used button and cremini)
2 onions, diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
olive oil for sautéing
2 cups vegetable broth
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 T tomato paste
2 t paprika
2 cups of cashew crème fraîche (see recipe below)
Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions:
Sauté onions and garlic.
Add the sliced mushrooms and cook until they release their moisture and start to brown.
Whisk together vegetable broth, cashew crème fraîche, soy sauce, tomato paste, paprika, salt, and pepper.
Cashew Crème Fraîche
1 1/2 cups cashews, soaked overnight then drained
1/2 cup water
3 T olive oil
2 T lemon juice
1 T nutritional yeast
1/2 t salt
1/2 t dried thyme
Blend for about a minute in Vitamix or other high speed blender.
The crème fraîche on it’s own would make a fantastic Alfredo style sauce for pasta.
We made a special cake in Claudia’s favorite color for her Birthday this year.
Almost every year since we have been together, Claudia has requested an Angel Food Cake with berries and Cool Whip icing for her birthday. Since it falls just after the holidays, she has said that she’s had enough of rich foods by the time her birthday arrives.
In October of last year, she shared a recipe from the Shaireen’s Delight Facebook Page, tagging me and our child, saying “My next birthday cake?”
I’ve only baked cakes from mixes in the past, and those only rarely, so I was thankful that I had a couple of months to review the recipe and work out my anxiety about before actually baking.
It turned out really good, although quite moist and dense – almost like the texture of brownies. I think this is because I overworked the batter, adding the purple food coloring a little at a time and remixing it each time. If I were to make the recipe again, I would just go for broke when first adding it, and hope for a little airier crumb.
Not bad for a first attempt at a scratch cake, though. Kid did the decorating, and it turned out right pretty.
We used sparkler candles, and they were quite trippy. Would probably opt for something simpler next time.
Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!
