Crock Pot Oats & Amish Style Baked Oatmeal

Oat-Cuisine
I am a big fan of oatmeal—no matter what form it comes in: whether it’s steaming from a bowl, baked in a cookie with raisins and cinnamon, or crumbled on top of apples and served with ice cream.

The good news is it’s good for you, and you can easily justify eating oats no matter what it’s iteration. I will concede that if you add too much brown sugar or butter the health benefits are somewhat diminished, but it tastes so darn good!

Because it’s winter, and it’s cold, and it’s not yet rhubarb, peach or cherry season, my love of oatmeal has been playing out on the field of breakfast. I have been trying different ways of making my warm bowl of courage, and have been pleasantly surprised at all I can do. I have found my two favorites.

Sure, you can always go the traditional salted water boiling route. It’s comfortable. It’s a known. Or you could walk on the wild side, and get wacky like the Amish do and make Baked Oatmeal with Apples, Raisins and Walnuts. Jenn Segal had me at “bread pudding-like consistency”. I’ve never met a bread pudding I didn’t like—this will be good. The downside? It’s not something you can throw together on a weekday morning.

Slow Cooker Steel Cut Oatmeal is the perfect solution for weekday mornings. There’s nothing like waking up to a hot bowl of oat-y goodness. I mess around with this recipe depending on my mood. I will add raisins, nuts, cut up apples and/or dried cranberries. Most times I leave the vanilla out and go with some combination of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. It’s a perfect way to make time consuming steel-cut oats during the week.

Amish Style Baked Oatmeal
Adapted from Once Upon a Chef
A traditional and comforting Amish breakfast casserole. There are endless variations—the recipe is easily adapted to whatever fruits and nuts you have on hand. Read more…

Irish Coffee

Christmas Cheer

I have always wanted to be one of those people who doesn’t stress out around the holidays. Visions of me sitting in front of the fire wearing velvet and sipping egg nog while I gaze contentedly at the wrapped presents under the tree have taunted me for years. And, alas, this year was no different.

It started out well. By December 13, I pretty much had all of the presents wrapped and ready to go with only a few stragglers. It was an incredible feeling but I wasn’t sure what to do with my time, which is always dangerous. (This is when the dreaded impulse buys occur…the “Just one more little one” syndrome.) Things were going so well that I tempted fate by thinking to myself that this had been the easiest Christmas ever. I should have known better.

First our TV blew up, which is bad enough in itself, but when the kids are home on winter break it’s disastrous. So we braved Best Buy on the Sunday before Christmas. This is not an activity for the faint of heart. I had moments when I thought I had been dropped in the middle of the Hunger Games.

And then, we found out the dog has an infection. Awesome. Not only does the dog feel horrible (which makes the rest us feel horrible for her,) but we have to follow her around with paper towels. Sigh.

So forget it. I accept defeat. I will no longer seek Yuletide perfection, for it is obviously unattainable. Instead I will just sit back and revel in the insanity and drink 5 or 10 of these.

Irish Coffee Read more…

Roasted Fresh Ham with Citrus and Rye

Meat The Challenge

As with most families during the holidays, mine likes to split duty for the numerous meals that happen in the 48 hours between midnight December 24 and midnight (or sometimes later) December 25. I am responsible for Christmas Eve Dinner.

I see Christmas Eve Dinner as a yearly challenge to see what off the wall, out of the box, totally different thing I can make for a party of 15. I think it’s fun. My Meat Department doesn’t always see the humor in making them hunt for the obscure at a time when they are so busy they just want to sit in the corner and drool.

All year long I throw little challenges their way just to see if they can pull it off. But I get even more creative during the holidays—just think Willy Wonka, but with meat. (You’re right. Bad visual!)

Last year I ordered a slab of pork belly, complete with the skin, to make a Porchetta. For obvious reasons, this is not something we normally carry. (I am that 1 in 1000 who thinks this would be super cool to make myself.) My guys in the Meat Department ordered it for me and it was awesome. The good news is that I’m not special. My guys will special order for all y’all…even whole pigs. We’ve sold a few of those recently.

Other wacky meals included whole sides of salmon (not much of a challenge), Ducks, Geese (for Christmas Dinner), and a fresh Ham (otherwise known as a Leg of Pork). This year I tried for venison, but it turned out to be a little too difficult and cost prohibitive. We are talking dinner for 15 and I do actually have limits to my mania, though my husband may disagree.

I am giving the guys a break this year, and going with the fresh ham again because it was really good. You have to plan ahead since its needs to cure it for 4 days. But once you have the spice mixture on the ham, you just flip it every day to make sure the flavor gets everywhere. The results are well worth the effort, and it is an impressive presentation for a buffet table. Read more…

Gam’s Apple Chutney

Interpretive Cooking

Every family has a Thanksgiving recipe handed down through the generations. Even if it just opening a box, it still counts as a family tradition (or at the very least, a funny commentary on whether or not your ancestors could cook). Case in point, my paternal grandmother was a disaster in the kitchen. In fact, my grandfather did all of the cooking during a time when it was definitely not the norm, and they always came to our house for Holiday meals.

My maternal grandmother was just the opposite. If you read my posts regularly, you will know about Gam’s recipes—she was a really great cook. I have come to realize that she was pretty bad at actually writing her recipes. When you consider she was a teacher for most of her life, it seems sort of strange that her recipe writing would be that “open to interpretation”. It may be more a generational thing than her inability to get her point across. Gam never had a problem getting her point across. She made her opinion very clear…often.

In my cookbook collection, I have some “antique” cookbooks that were written at a time when people, mainly women, did a lot of the cooking. Certain steps were implied, and were not written down—it was assumed the reader just knew. I would definitely put my grandmother’s handwritten recipes in this category, especially because they were written for her own use. She didn’t elaborate. That thought was underscored when I pulled out her recipe for apple chutney in anticipation of Thanksgiving leftovers.

My favorite part of Thanksgiving are the turkey sandwiches the next day and I really like them with some thickly-spread apple chutney. For me, Gam’s apple chutney is the best. But I had to read through her recipe a few times to make sure I understood her thought process. There were a few important pieces of information missing, but I managed to channel my inner Mary Jane, and figured it out.

Below is the revised recipe. Although cooking yet another dish this week might be the last thing you would like to do, keep in mind that a tasty little jar of homemade chutney makes a great gift for the hostess or that last minute gift for the person you forgot! Read more…