HAPPY DECEMBER BIRTHDAY BOY

and many happy returns. This cake is guaranteed nonfattening, low calorie, high fiber, power booster and tasty!.

Have a good one. Love the Coquillians.

RECIPE FOR CRANBERRY RELISH

The above pictures are the main ingredients for the cranberry relish.

And the food grinder and very large bread board are the methods employed by my mother because there was no other method to chop/grind items for food preparation.

1. Place large cutting board on kitchen table. Affix metal food grinder on cutting board. Place 50 to 60 pound child on cutting board to keep the food grinder from sliding around. Yell at child continuously while grinding up a one pound bag of fresh cranberries (after first having picked out the soft squishy ones).

2. Before grinding the berries, station a second child with a large bowel beneath the grinder to catch the juice that drips down the clamp of the grinder, this will be used as part of the liquid in the jello reciped. Do not forget to yell constantly at the child holding the bowl.

3. With the two children still in position, quarter one whole juicy orange and grind that up as well.

4. Remove the ground berries and orange mixture. Let the children go outside to play or take the clothes from the line and bring them inside or what ever other chore is to be accomplished.

5. Cover ground cranberry orange mixture with two cups of sugar, let stand one hour.

6. In between washing up the bits and pieces of the food grinder and the cutting board, Chop 1/2 cup celery into small slices and chop 1 cup of walnuts. The original recipe calls for half these amounts but I like the extra crunch.

7. Use the juice in the bowl and extra water if necessary to make 2 cups of liquid, bring to a boil, stir in one large box of black cherry jello, stir until dissolved.
If recipe on box calls for another two cups of liquid, cut it to one cup and this will make a the relish nice and firm.

8. Stir in the chopped celery and chopped walnuts into the ground cranberry and orange mixture.

9. When jello begins to slightly thicken, pour into the berry orange mixture and allow to set over night.

ALTERNATE PREPARATION METHOD:

Drag out shiny blender. Fill with 2 cups water, drop in half bag of whole cranberries, grind, drain in strainer, save juice in pan. Continue until all of bag is gone and quarter orange using similar amounts of water and draining.
I have found that over the years the old recipe of using a one pound bag of cranberries no longer holds true, the 2009 cranberry bags weigh closer to half a poundm, so purchase TWO bags of whole cranberries to get the same solid relish effect.

This has been a family favorite for years. The original recipe called for Lemon jello which makes a fairly tart relish. I sometimes have despaired finding Black Cherry jello. At some point in the future I may be reduced to shopping on Ebay for my jello.

Happy Birthday!

Sunday afternoon, we drove to Coos Bay to celebrate husband’s birthday. We had reservations at Bennetti’s, I ordered veal piccata with lemon and capers, husband ordered New York Steak with Gorgonzola sauce (My picture of that dish did not turn out at all). It was delicious. Dinner began with minestrone soup, then salad, then the main dish. The waiters were attentive. Even bought a take home bag. We had a table by the window and watched the beautiful day fade into twilight the three quarter moon shining overhead.

BLACK FRIDAY

Greetings from Albany, Oregon. We decided at the very last minute to join Tim's sister and brother-in-law in Albany for Thanksgiving dinner. We met Del's family and Tim's other sister Betty and her husband Benn, there were ten hungry people at her house. The drive from Coquille was lovely, it started raining near Eugene and the driving slowed down considerably.

Dinner was two turkeys, one ham, two different dressings, mashed potatoes, cranberry relish, green tomato pickles, fresh green salad, black olives, stuffed green olives,butternut squash oven roasted in maple syrup and Balsamic vinegar (tasty) apple pie, cherry pie, two pumpkin pies, pecan pie and brownies.
Good thing I have left overs at home, my pumpkin pie, butternut squash and dressing were totally eaten down to the plate!

The next day we went out to breakfast at Elmer's and I had the Dutch Baby, yummy!

We first went to Staples and purchased me a new ergonomic keyboard and husband got his birthday present and Christmas present a little early, an almost door buster special on a nifty laptop with (get this) 500 gigs of memory and 4 gigs of ram! Phew!
Then we went shopping at Freddy's. We then grabbed a quick lunch at Sizzler's. On the way home we stopped at Kohl's. They were having some great sales, we wandered through the store and didn't see any unusual activity until we noticed a long, long, long line of people.....waiting to check out! I think there were four stations and two... TWO of them were open. So we sort of snickered and left as quickly as possible.

Today we will have a leisurely continental breakfast, pack and git back home. Happy Thanksgiving. I am thankful for many things and am glad to see everyone I love had a good time.

Very short update

I called on my regular call yesterday and spoke to Mom only a few minutes. She said she needed to get off the phone because she was very short of breath and shaky. She told me she called her FNP Jenice who came to the house and checked her oxygen and they called Norco. The Norco people came and the machine was plugged up. That got fixed and things improved. Mom told me that Jenice ordered Hospice for her. Hospice has come and helped her with some ointment she needed to have applied. She assures me that she is not terminal and that she can have Hospice if ordered by a practitioner. I didn't want to argue but I was always under the impression that Hospice was a more or less short term program. I am wondering if she meant Home Health. However she did say a pastor called her up offering his services so maybe it was hospice?

Review of Devil's Kitchen and some other stuff...

Friday I went to lunch with two co-workers. We decided to go eat at The Devil's Kitchen. It is a former brand name drive-in, there is adequate parking. Another co-worker raved about their breakfast menu. I ordered a slice of Quiche Du Jour(mushroom and ham), Gail ordered the Quiche with fruit and country fries, Sue ordered the Reuben. The food was delish. The Reuben looked wonderful, not over stuffed just the right amount of everything and just a hint of Thousand Island dressing. The Quiche was light and eggy, not too much meat or mushroom and the crust was done. Yummy,will do that again. I would skip the canned fruit as well unless you really LIKE canned peaches.

I reported the meal to husband and we went there for breakfast this morning.

I ordered the crepe with strawberry and whipped cream and husband ordered the chicken fried steak with rye toast, hash browns and scrambled eggs. I snitched some of his hash browns and chicken fried steak. Very tasty. Unfortunately there were two points off for lack of blackberry jam and no discernible public toilet. The price was excellent as well, under 20 dollars including tip. They are only open until 2 pm so go early, they were reasonably busy while we were there. Oh and there was a lovely gas fireplace fired up and putting out some seriously delicious heat.

My little grill came so I decided to try my hand at another casserole dish of Tamale pie. The grill worked beautifully, got some nice blackened action going on a red, yellow and green Bell pepper. I didn't have any paper bags to put the peppers in to steam a bit so I popped them inside my little insulated lunch box and closed the lid. By the time I had the majority of ingredients in the frying pan; Black Angus Beef strips, onion, black olives, hominy, garlic, one chopped jalaeno pepper, chopped tomatoes etc, the peppers were ready to be peeled, seeded and chopped. I saved some of the rinse water from the roasted peppers; used one cup water to one cup corn meal, 8 ounces of Moscarpone cheese and 2 beaten eggs. Mix it all together, let simmer for 10 minutes or so on the stove top. Pour into 10 x 13 casserole dish, bake 45 minutes at 350, when the timer goes off, top the casserole with bag of frozen onion rings arranged artistically or however many you can fit on top and bake an additional 15 minutes.

The Tamale pie is really better the next day but it tastes so good a little sloppy and hot the first day as well.

On a completely different note I have been working on an idea for a gift for my friend who makes necklaces. She packs her product around in a large zip lock baggie. I wanted her to have something a little classier, such as a black velvet carrying thingy. Well I found the black Not So Velvet dress at the Upscale Resale for dirt cheap and I also purchased some clear shower rings and sewed them to the dress and hung my necklaces off the shower curtain rings. What seemed like a real nifty idea in my head in actuality sucks pretty badly, looks like Gypsy meets Morticia. Yeach. Am rethinking this project and am thinking the I should purchase some radiator cover material, the perforated stuff, slip it inside the dress and hang the necklaces off of that. I can't quit bring myself to cut up this lovely size 12 dress, it's so pretty, maybe it would make a nice display for jewelry at a craft fair?

More cooking adventures..a cautionary tale and the solution.

This is how I would ideally like to roast my peppers when I am making Tamale Pie. However, I don't have a gas stove. I no longer have exposed electric burners, I have a flat top, which does not allow happy grilling of peppers.



I had tried roasting in the oven previously but it took forever. So I thought I would try an oven proof glass casserole dish on top of the flat top burners. Well, that worked fine for the first few minutes. The peppers were getting a few nice blackened areas. The glass casserole dish was rattling merrily away (huh!?), I turned my back and KABOOM SHATTER the dish broke into several large pieces. Shoot, spit and dirty socks! So I turned everything off, gathered up the big pieces with tongs and turned off the burners. When everything had cooled I cleaned the stove top and surround meticulously.


I completed the cooking process with my good old humongous frying pan to roast the peppers etc.

I have been thinking that I need something to really grill stuff, so I just ordered a flat stove top grill. It will grill peppers nicely and from the looks of things, I should be able to grill just about anything else as well. Steak, other innocent veggies.