Ham & Cabbage Soup

So thanks to my share at The Canticle Farm in Allegany, I have plenty of fresh veggies that I am in the process of using.  Mad props to the folks there for their certified natural farm with lots of yummy fresh veggies.  Check them out!  Get a share!  It's good for you!  But anywho...  I have lots of fresh veggies, including cabbage.  That's right, I have six heads of cabbage in my refrigerator (well, down to four now).  So I decided to make one of my childhood favorites...  Ham & Cabbage Soup.


Ham & Cabbage Soup
2 T butter
1/4 c onion, minced (I prefer sliced)
1/4 c celery, chopped (I leave this out and double the onion)
1/4 c flour
1/2 t salt
1/8 t pepper
3 c water
2 c cabbage, chopped or shredded (I chop it coarsely)
2 c ham, cooked and diced
3/4 c sour cream

Melt butter.  Then saute onion and celery until tender.  Add flour, salt, and pepper, blending until smooth.  Add water and cook until boiling, stirring constantly (don't know why it says this, I never do).  Add cabbage.  Cover and simmer until cabbage is tender (10 minutes, 15 if you have big pieces).  Stir in ham and cook until heated through.  Blend in sour cream.  Heat, but do not boil.


So mine's almost done.  Just getting ready to add the sour cream.  It looks like it's on the way to yumminess.  :-D  One note:  It doesn't seem like an important step, but the blending of the flour until smooth is important.  If you rush through it (like I did today haha), then you get onion flour clumps that you have to mash out later.

And that's the recipe of the day.  No more cooking tomorrow, because of class.  And I have to finish all of my end-of-the-semester stuff.  Boo schoolwork!  But maybe "spoiled dinner" on Thursday to use more veggies (that's boiled dinner in the crockpot in Bob language).

Failed Yogurt :(

So...  the homemade yogurt didn't turn out so well.  I don't usually fail at new recipes, but this was a definite flop.  All you're supposed to need is milk and plain yogurt (just milk and cultures), and it's supposed to be easy. 


Homemade Leban Yogurt
Warm about a quart of milk until it's just bubbling.  Remove it from the heat immediately.  Let it cool about 15 minutes until you can stick your pinky finger in and count to 12.  Then mix a little bit of the warm milk into the yogurt to smooth it out and whisk the yogurt into the milk thoroughly.  Put the lid on the pan and wrap it up in a towel.  If it's cold out, put it in the oven to save it from drafts.  Let it sit for 5 hours.  Then put a dish towel right on the yogurt to absorb extra water and put it in the fridge overnight.  In the morning, if your yogurt is the right consistency, you're good to go!  If not, wring out the towel and leave it on for an hour or two more.  After you remove a half cup or so to start the next batch, you can flavor it however you like.


Sounds easy, right?  Not so much apparently.  I thought I was doing just fine until I checked it this morning.  The towel had soaked up just about all of the mixture!  There was no yogurt-like stuff, just milky stuff!  :(  And I was so looking forward to homemade yogurt, too.  I don't know if I'll try this one again.  If you want to try, let me know how it turns out.  If you end up with yogurt, then you can help me.

The Adventures Begin: Macaroni and Brie, Pickled Beets and Eggs

So I spent most of the day today cooking. Why? Because I could. Because I love cooking. Boiling, baking, slicing, dicing... Ok, so I've never been a big fan of making cookies, but in general, I like to cook when I'm sad, happy, frustrated, bored... Cooking makes me calm and happy. Sometimes I think I've missed my calling in life, that I should just open my own little cafe and cook forever.

Anyways, in the middle of my culinary hurricane, I realized that I happened to have "Julie and Julia" from the video store! Hurrah! I must say, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. And it ended with me thinking, "Now why can't I do that?" Not necessarily cook through Julia Childs' cookbook (especially since I only have "The French Chef Cookbook" and not the original "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" two-volume series). But why can't I write a blog about doing what I love to do: cooking! It would hopefully serve the dual purpose of giving me a blog topic that I will continually have new material for and give me yet another excuse to cook. Whether or not anyone will read it...  So here goes...


Today I started with making Macaroni and Brie with Crab. Brie, for those of you who don't know, is a mild soft cheese of French origin. I happened to buy a bit too much for my French classes' snack, and I also happened to have this recipe sitting around waiting to be tried. What a coincidence! It wasn't particularly difficult, and it turned out to be delicious! The only thing better than mac 'n' cheese is gourmet mac 'n' cheese! I'm not so sure I'm a fan of the crab in it. The sweetness clashed too much, but to each his own. (I must apologize that I do not have pictures today. Everything was packed up and put away by the time I decided to type. I will try to have pictures of the num-nums from now on.)

Macaroni and Brie with Crab
1 lb medium pasta
5 T butter
1 m sweet onion, sliced
1/3 c flour
3/4 t salt
1/2 t pepper
3 c milk
1 lb Brie, chopped
2-6oz cans of crab meat
bread crumbs (optional)

Preheat oven to 350F.  Cook pasta and drain.  In skillet, heat butter.  Cook onion until tender.  Add flour, salt, and pepper.  Cook and stir one minute.  Add milk.  Cook and stir until slightly thickened and bubbly.  Gradually add chopped Brie.  Cook and stir over medium heat until Brie is melted.  Stir cheese mixture into pasta.  Fold in crab.  Sprinkle with bread crumbs, if desired.  Bake in sprayed dish 20-25 minutes.


Adventure #2 for the day was my second batch of pickled beets and eggs as requested by my boyfriend.  I don't really use a recipe for this, as it's rather simple.  I boil about a dozen eggs and let them cool.  Then cut the tops off of about 4 lbs fresh beets and boil them 30 minutes until you can stick a fork in them.  After they cool, the skin should pop right off.  Slice the beets, peel the eggs, and mix them together in a large container (preferably glass, as we'll see later).  Take about 5 cups of the beet juice, 4 1/2 cups of sugar, and 3 1/4 cups of cider vinegar (and a stick or two of cinnamon if you like) and bring it to a boil.  Pour it right over the eggs and beets.  (This is where the glass comes in handy, because the heat will warp the plastic containers.)  Chill it for at least 4 hours, and you're good to go!!  Just a word of warning:  Fresh beets turn your whole world pink and purple!!!!!


That's all for now, folks.  The dog is begging for attention.  But I have a long weekend, so I may be back tomorrow with more fun stories from the kitchen.  I have some homemade yogurt in the works!