It's Fall, Y'all

I think fall is my favorite season.  I loved fall when I was kid growing up because it meant that school started which meant new clothes and new SCHOOL SUPPLIES!!!  I love school supplies, and that might have to be a topic for another time.  As a kid growing up in Texas, fall meant nice weather, but as I got older, fall meant HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL GAMES!  Ah, some fond memories there of a certain #34......  oh well.  And that WON'T be a topic of another time.

After I moved to West Virginia and discovered that there really are four seasons, fall became my favorite because of the beauty.  If you haven't watch a Sugar Maple's leave turn to bright yellow, oranges, and red, you have indeed missed something.



Fall is just now getting started here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, but there is enough that I need to do fall cooking today.  This Sunday evening supper consists of chili and pumpkin pie.  My mom has a wonderful recipe for Dallas Jailhouse Chili. In fact Momma's original handwritten copy is framed and hanging on the wall in Brett's apartment.  I didn't really want to go to all the trouble of measuring out all the ingredients, so I did the next best thing.

I found this stuff is pretty darn close.  I use the entire salt packet and the entire cayenne pepper packet.  I make a few other changes, too. I use a 15oz. can of tomato sauce, only 1/2 a can of water, and my secret ingredient,

 If this surprised you, you don't know me very well.

This pumpkin pie recipe is an old one.  It is the only on my mom ever used.  I'm not even sure how old the original copy is or where it came from.  I know it isn't my mother's handwriting; possibly her mother's.  I just don't know.

Pumpkin Rich Pie
2 eggs (slightly beaten)
2/3 cup sugar (One thing I like about this recipe is that it isn't overly sweet.)
1tsp. allspice (Usually, like today, I don't have this, so I substitute nutmeg)
1tsp cinnamon
1 3/4 cup pumpkin (I use one small can)
1/2 cup cream (I always use 1 1/2 cups of half and half instead of the cream and the milk)
1 cup milk
3/4 tsp salt
Combine sugar, salt, and spices.  Add eggs. Mix well, stir in pumpkin. Add milk and cream.  Stir until smooth.  Pour into pastry shell.  Bake at 425 degrees for 45 minutes.

As I've said before, I usually don't follow the order that the recipe suggests.  Again, I have an "everyone-in-the-pool" philosophy.

Ok, confession time.  I can't make pie crusts.  My mother could make the best, flakiest, most perfect pie crusts ever.  I can't make a good pie crust to save my life, so I use frozen pie crust.  They aren't as good as my mom's, but they are a hell of a lot better than mine.

Here's a trick to tell if a pumpkin, or any single crust custard pie is done.  Stick a knife in it.  If the knife comes out clean, the pie is done.

Carnivore Tortellini Soup

A little back story on this soup..... Every October Martinsburg hosts the

a fun-filled weekend that starts off with the coronation of Queen Pomona, followed by craft shows, pancake breakfasts, a ball, and a parade - small town living at its best.  One year, I had the honor of being the mother of one of the Apple Harvest Princesses,

but before Princess Brett, there were the parade parties at the Andersons'.  Tom and Beth live a block off the parade route.  The night before the parade, we would all drop our lawn chairs off at their house, and early Saturday morning Tom would take them over and set them up so that we all had great seats from which to watch the festivities.  After the parade we would all go back to the house and Beth would serve wonderful soups, sandwiches, snacks, sweets, and beer.  Some of my fondest memories are of those wonderful fall Saturdays.

One year Beth served Tortellini soup, and we all loved it.  We asked for the recipe and found out she got it from the back of the College Inn Chicken Broth can.  Since that weekend, I have made that soup many times, and over the years I've modified it.  The original recipe is meatless, but since I'm married to a serious carnivore... "It's not a meal unless it has meat in it"..... I've altered the recipe to create Carnivore Tortellini Soup.

1 pkg. mild Italian sausage

1 large can of chicken broth (today I used homemade chicken broth that I had in the freezer, usually I use a large can of chicken broth and a small container of chicken stock.)
1 package frozen tortellini
1 package frozen chopped spinach
1 can diced tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, chopped.


First, I brown the sausage and set it aside.  In the same pan, I add a little olive oil and the chopped garlic heated on medium low heat so as to not burn the garlic.  Overcooked garlic tastes bitter.  when the garlic is soft, I add the chicken stock, tomatoes, the tortellini, and half the package of spinach.  I bring everything to a slow boil and then let it simmer for 15-20 minutes.

You might be wondering where the sausage is?  Well, there are some days, when meat just doesn't sound good to me.  I'm not a vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination, but some days, meat just doesn't cut it.  Today is one of those days.  At this point, I ladled out a bowl of soup for me and two containers for lunch tomorrow and Tuesday, and left the rest on the stove.  I put half of the cooked sausage in a freezer bag to have later for spaghetti sauce of something, and the other half I put in the soup pot. I let the sausage and soup heat together for 5 minutes or so, and then dished some up for my darling carnivore.  I served the soup with cheesy breadsticks and beer, and Sunday supper was complete.

Enjoy!

Sunday Supper

When I was growing up the meal we ate Sunday evening was called Sunday dinner.  It was a big deal.  Usually it consisted of a roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, asparagus with cheese sauce, hot rolls, iced tea, and some kind of pie for dessert.  I'm lazier than my mother.  I don't want to work that hard on Sunday.  I would rather read, mess around the house, or on rainy Sunday afternoons watch TV with Matt, so the meal we eat on Sunday is called Sunday supper.  We usually have something easy that either is quick to prepare or cooks in the crockpot all day.  Tonight's menu consists of Taco Chili, cornbread, and cherry/peach cobbler.

The Taco Chili I already had in the freezer.  I got it from a wonderful web site called Baked in the South, Crockpot freezer meals part 3.   The only thing I have to add is that I will not use my crockpot without Reynolds Slow Cooker Liners.  It makes clean up so easy.

Probably one of the things that my mother made that I loved the most was cornbread.  When Matt and I were first married, Momma's cornbread recipe was one of the first ones I copied down and started using.  I still have the original that I wrote out almost 30 years ago.  I've used it so much that the bottom half of the card is missing.

The recipe calls for 
1 cup of flour
1tsp. salt
3tsp. baking powder
2 tbl. sugar ( but I only use one, because cornbread in the South is not supposed to be sweet)
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal (you can use white, but I think it looks weird)
2 eggs
1 cup of milk
(yes, I see the 1/4 cup of melted shortening, but I don't put that in the batter)

A crucial part of a making good cornbread is using a well seasoned cast iron skillet.  

This is mine.  I don't know how old it is.  It was Momma's, and it may have even been her momma's.  I guess Wesley and Brett will have to flip for it when I'm pushing up daises.

Now, remember when I said I didn't put the 1/4 cup of melted shortening in the batter?  Well this is what I do with it instead. This is strictly something that Momma taught me to do. Before I start mixing up the ingredients, I pour just enough canola oil in the cold skillet to cover the bottom and put it in a cold oven.  I turn the oven on to 400 degrees and let the oven, the oil, and the skillet all heat together.  If you don't have a cast iron skillet, any oven-proof baking dish will do.

The official recipe calls for mixing the wet ingredients in one bowl and sifting the dry ingredients together in another bowl and then adding the wet to the dry.  That's too many steps and too many bowls for me.  My method is called "Everyone in the pool together".

When oven has heated to 400 degrees, I leave the skillet in for about 5 more minutes to make sure that the oil is good and hot. Then I take the skillet with the hot oil out of the oven and pour the batter in it.  You should see little bubbles around the edges as the batter hits the hot oil.  This step gives your cornbread a crunchy edge and bottom crust.

Bake the cornbread in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes.  It should be golden brown when you take it out.

Now for dessert, the cherry/peach cobbler is just something I make up as I go.  You can use any kind of fruit in any form.  I've used cherry or apple pie filling; I've used canned peaches; and I've used fresh peaches. Today I happen to have a package of frozen peaches and a package of frozen cherries in the freezer, so that's what I'm using.  You can also use any kind of cake mix for the topping.  I've used white cake mix, yellow cake mix, butter pecan cake mix, but wouldn't you know it, today I didn't have any cake mix at all.  I didn't want to go to the store, so I looked around in the pantry to see what I could substitute.  I found a package of Snickerdoodle cookie mix, so I used that.

I put the cherries and peaches in a bowl and tossed them with 1/2 a cup of sugar and 2 tbl. of flour and then transferred them to a pyrex baking dish.  Next, I spread the cookie mix on top of the fruit, and since the snickerdoodle mix had this nifty little packet of cinnamon and sugar, I sprinkled that on top too.  

Finally, I melt a stick of butter and pour that over the top.  I cover it with foil and bake it at 375 degrees for about an hour since the fruit was frozen.  If it was fresh or canned, I bake it about 30 minutes.  When the covered baking time is up, the juices should be bubbling up through the topping.  Then I remove the foil and let it back for another 5-10 minutes to get brown.

Enjoy!

A Trip Down Memory Lane

I came up with the idea for this blog when I kept seeing posts from my daughter like this:

Brettney Cole ☀‏@ayo_B Protected Tweets

Microwaving a bowl of pretzels with chocolate chips do NOT produce chocolate covered pretzels

It will however produced intensely burned mess that smokes up your whole microwave and sets off the alarm.

Anyone who knew my mother knew she was a good cook,

but good food is so much more than nourishment for the body. Good food is nourishment for the soul. From as far back as I can remember, gatherings of friends and family always centered around food and the kitchen. My mother definitely knew how to put dinner on the table,

but her kitchen was also the heart of our home.  

I would sit on the kitchen stool and talk to her while she cooked supper. I learned by watching her, and when I got married and had my own kitchen, I realized that I knew how to do a lot of things that I didn't know I knew how to do. I also discovered that I really liked to cook. When we lived in Houston, Matt worked for NASA at the Johnson Space Center, and the back gate was literally half a mile from our house, so Matt would come home for lunch. In the summer when I was off from school, I would fix lunch for him everyday.

Sometimes I would surprise him and have something grilled up .

When we would entertain, the party might start out in the living room, but eventually it always migrated to the kitchen.

And not just at my house, no matter where we all were we found our way into the kitchen.

I want my children to have these memories as well. I know they have memories of being in the kitchen with me. I still have a kitchen stool and my children sat on it and talked to me while I was cooking, but what I don't know is if they learned by watching the way I did. In case they didn't, this blog is dedicated to them. In it I intend to show them how to cook all those good things my momma cooked and some of those things that I have discovered since she has been gone.

Welcome to Momma's Kitchen! Enjoy!