Homemade Cranberry Sauce

Did you know you could make your own cranberry sauce? No, really - it's incredibly easy and the flavor is amazing! Here's how:

You'll need a cup of sugar, a cup of water*, and a bag of fresh cranberries. Wash the cranberries and pick out any soft or shriveled fruits. Mix the water and sugar (believe me, you want ALL of it - cranberries are tart!) in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add cranberries, reduce heat to medium, and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

There you are - whole berry cranberry sauce, bursting with flavor, from scratch! If you want the smooth kind, you'll have to press the sauce through a sieve. Enjoy with Thanksgiving Dinner or anytime you crave tart, juicy cranberries.

* I'm thinking that replacing part of the water with orange juice could have great results.

Cornstarch Chocolate Chip Cookies

A few months ago Pinterest was buzzing with the 'best chocolate chip cookies recipe ever'. I like my chocolate chip cookie recipe, so I never looked it up, but I did notice that the 'secret ingredient' was supposed to be cornstarch.

Last week I went to make a double batch of chocolate chip cookies (seriously, who makes a single batch of cookies? Stop!) and realized halfway through that I was short one egg. Three thoughts simultaneously went through my head:

• I was not going to give up my cookies!
• Cornstarch can be substituted for eggs in some instances,
• And here was my chance to see what it did to cookies!

So I threw in a heaping tablespoon or so of cornstarch for the missing egg. It wasn't exactly scientific, but here were my observations:

• The cookies were very cakey. They didn't spread much. If you like flat cookies, you'd have to flatten these before baking. (A glass bottom dipped in sugar does the trick.)
• Straight out of the oven, they were amazing! Crunchy on the outside, soft and moist inside. Wow.
• As they cooled, they got hard. Like, you know, packaged storebought cookies. (I wondered if this was why some people liked them so well?) I didn't care for this stage, but if you like crunchy cookies, here you are.

As they aged, they got soft again. And amazingly moist.

Sooo, if you want to try it, a few tips: flatten the cookies if looks matter, don't overbake (they dry out easily) and they get better with age.

What's your favorite kind of cookie?

Easy Ice Cream Pie

This is one of those non-recipes where I seriously doubt you can go wrong. Your texture might not be as creamy as you could wish, but it's still going to taste oh-so-good.

The idea behind this frozen pie is to blend your favorite ice cream and fruit combination to make a refreshing summer dessert. Try vanilla and peach, chocolate and cherry, butter brickle and apple - you get the idea.

This is a prepared-food dish. What you will need:

• One pie crust - either graham cracker or pre baked pastry.
• One can pie filling or about two cups chopped or sliced fresh fruit (fresh fruit should be soft and ripe).
• About three cups of softened ice cream.
• Half a container of whipped topping (save the rest for the top of the pie!)

Gently fold together the ice cream, fruit or pie filling, and cool whip. Spoon into crust and freeze until ready to serve. Serve with additional whipped topping.

 Note: I actually made my own peach pie filling for this pie and it was still too warm when I mixed it with the ice cream. The texture ended up a little more crystallized than I intended, and it was still delicious. Next time, I'm sticking with cool stuff.

Favorite Summer Salad

Summer is the perfect time to savor lots of fresh-from-the-garden (or farmers' market) veggies. This salad is one of my favorite ways to enjoy the tastes of summer, and it definitely benefits from freshness! If you don't have access to fresh, plant-ripened tomatoes, you are missing out. But, you can still try it. :)

This salad can be broken into three components: tomatoes, other vegetables, and the dressing.

Tomatoes: Fresh is best! Chop up tomatoes (about 1 cm pieces) until you have about half the amount of salad you want to end up with. Throw them in a bowl.

Other vegetables: Some go in fresh, and some should be cooked briefly (just until the colors are bright) and then plunged in cold water. In either case, chop small like the tomatoes.
            Vegetables to go in fresh: cucumbers, sweet peppers, mild onions
            Vegetables to be cooked: carrots, squash, corn
Use whatever veggies you have around or like best. It's up to you! A variety of colors makes for a pretty salad. Add these to the tomatoes.

Dressing: You can use any vinaigrette dressing, or you can do what I do and just throw stuff in. Basically, stuff consists of

• a few glugs of salad or olive oil
• a splash or two of vinegar (play with different kinds!)
• salt and pepper to taste
• a bit of sugar, if you like your dressing sweet
• any fresh or dried herbs you fancy (basil is great)

Stir, taste, and adjust. When winging something like this, always start small and add more of whatever seems to be missing. You can't ever take out too much salt!

Refrigerate for a few hours to blend the flavors, stirring occasionally so all the veggies get acquainted with the dressing. This is great served with anything just like it is, or spoon it over a bed of fresh greens. Perfect way to enjoy summer!

Pasta Made Simple

That title is so misleading, because you don't need to do anything to make pasta simple. It is simply one of the simplest things you can make! And it's so versatile; you can make it light, hearty, basic, or fancy, for any occasion. So make friends with pasta!

To cook pasta (the normal store-bought dried kind) you need only water. And salt, if you're not restricting your sodium. Start with a large pot of cold water, about 2/3 full to leave room for the noodles. (If you are making a pasta dish for 3-4 people, you'll want at least a large saucepan and about 1/2 lb of pasta. But you'll figure the sizes out pretty fast.) Add some salt, a pinch to a spoonful, depending on how salty you like your food and the size of your pot.

Turn the pot on HIGH, put on a lid (this just speeds up the boiling), and wait for the water to come to a full rolling boil. We're talking really big bubbles rolling and breaking constantly!

Now you can add your noodles. Add them all at once and stir them up a bit so they don't stick into one big clump. DON'T put the lid back on! Set your timer for the lowest amount of time on the pasta box.

Give the pot of boiling noodles (yes, leave it on HIGH) a stir every few minutes to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pot and each other. When the timer goes off, fish out one noodle to test. Folk lore has it that if the pasta is cooked just right, a noodle flung against the wall will stick. If you want noodles all over your wall, go ahead; but it's easier, in my opinion, to just stick the noodle in your mouth (as soon as it's remotely cool enough) and see if it feels right. It should have just the slightest bit of resistance to your teeth, with no hardness. Keep in mind that if you will be soaking the noodles in anything for any length of time (ie. pasta salad) they will get softer, so it's important not to overcook!

If the pasta passes the bite test, go ahead and take it off the stove. Pour it into a colander and let it drain; if you'd like, you can rinse it. (Run water over the colander of pasta while stirring; hot for hot dishes, cold for cold salads. This removes any excess starch on the outside and is absolutely not essential.)

There you are! Put the pasta in a bowl and add the sauce of your choice, or, if you like your noodles separate, a splash or two of oil to keep the noodles from sticking together. (If you haven't noticed, pasta is just edible glue.)

Your options are limitless! Traditional tomato sauces, white sauces, butter and oil, cheese sauce, any meat, seafood, or poultry, your vegetable(s) of choice, cheese - all go great with pasta. For cold salads go creamy or vinaigrette and add whatever munchies - steamed vegetables, bits of meat , cheese, and egg, anything pickled - you like.

The possibilities are endless! I've even heard of people using pasta for dessert...

A Tasty Thumb

I don't have a green thumb. Plants and their well-being are a mystery to me. But I do have whatever the green thumb's equivalent in the kitchen might be called. I love to cook. I love to create. And while things don't always turn out just right, they turn out great often enough to keep me going back.

This blog is dedicated to people who feel about cooking the way I feel about plants. You'd love to cook, but it all seems like a big mystery to you. Hopefully I can decode some of the secrets of the kitchen for you while sharing my experiments, my successes, and even the occasional failure, as well as some of my fail-proof favorites.

Don't expect frequent postings here. I'm mommy to three three and under and they obviously come first. But feel free to send me your questions and I'll build a future post around them!

Until our first adventure,

Trudy