What are you Cooking the Week of January 7, 2024?

[BakerAunt]

Oh, Navlys, being sick is no fun.

I had not planned on doing any cooking on Thursday, but this afternoon, I noticed that two of my butternut squash were starting to go bad, so after dinner, I roasted them, then pureed and froze the pulp. I was able to time it so that the squash went into the oven after the biscotti came out, so I only had to increase the heat.

While I probably could have put it off until tomorrow, I knew it would save energy to go ahead and do them tonight. We are preparing for single-digit temperatures that are to begin arriving on Saturday. We will spend the next two days preparing in case we lose power.

[Mike Nolan]

A couple of years ago I made my wife's mother's Swiss steak recipe, today I'm doing my own take on that recipe from my notes, more onions, adding some beef stock, carrots and celery. I did the browning and sauteeing on the stove top but I'm doing the slow cooking in the oven in my dutch oven.

The cold weather is here, a high of about 7 today with sub-zero lows and a few sub-zero highs for most of the next 4 days. Snow expected to stop in the next few hours, but we've probably gotten 6 inches since yesterday afternoon.

[Joan Simpson]

Bless you all that has all the snow...us southerners don't like it.

Tonight I made a steak with a salad.

[chocomouse]

For dinner, I made a shrimp stir fry, with broccoli, green beans, snap peas, carrots, red pepper, and onion.

We love the snow, but not all the other stuff, like freezing temps, wind, ice! We're predicted to get sleet, freezing rain, snow, high winds - "the works" - overnight and into tomorrow. We've cancelled my birthday party tomorrow; not a big deal, because The Box Truck where we planned to get fish tacos for lunch is not here this weekend - the staff is vacationing in San Diego!

[Mike Nolan]

The Swiss steak was very good, and we had it with mashed potatoes.

[RiversideLen]

Happy Birthday, Chocomouse!

Tonight I made rice and red lentils, brussels sprouts, and sauteed some ham. Not difficult but good.

[Mike Nolan]

Happy birthday, I hope you can reschedule your celebration. A friend of ours had his birthday in December but was working double shifts at the railroad repair shop at the time, so they just had it last night.

[Mike Nolan]

I had about 20 winesap apples left and they were getting a little soft for pies, so I'm making another batch of apple butter. It just filled the slow cooker.

[BakerAunt]

Happy Birthday, Chocomouse!

To give us a break from the Lima Beans, Rice, Ham, and Vegetables we have eaten for the past three nights, on Saturday I roasted a chicken breast, and I roasted, separately, sweet potato chunks tossed in olive oil. We had microwaved fresh broccoli as well.

Mike--I'll be interested to hear how the Winesaps work for apple butter.

[Mike Nolan]

Winesaps are what I made the first batch of apple butter from two months ago, I think they're a great cooking apple. The wine professor at UNL also taught fruits, and he says Cortland is even better, and is an all-purpose apple. Finding them in the stores is another matter, though.

[RiversideLen]

On Saturday, I made a 2 pound pork shoulder. I seasoned it with salt, celery seed and fennel seed and roasted it on a rack at 300 degrees for 4 and a half hours (internal temp was about 185f). It came out pretty good, much of the fat had melted away and it was fork tender. A little dry but nothing I can't live with.

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[Mike Nolan]

I wound up with 5 half-pints and 2 pints of apple butter, which I'm canning using the hot water method, because having a big pot of boiling water in the kitchen on a day when the high is 5 below just sounds good.

I tried something I read somewhere, since apple butter tends to be a little thick, I had a small amount of warm apple cider that I used to make sure the jars were full to the half-inch mark on the head-space stick, usually adding less than a teaspoon.

[BakerAunt]

Mike--When I made this recipe a while ago, I filled the jars to 1/4-inch for canning and that worked well.

[Mike Nolan]

I think most of them were closer to 3/8 of an inch rather than a half inch. I'm about to take them out of the water bath, we'll see how many of them seal.

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