What are you Cooking the Week of October 15, 2023?

[Mike Nolan]

Half way through October already, and cooler weather is here. We haven't had a frost yet, might get one tomorrow.

I'm going to be processing apples today and will make that parsnip-apple soup that I posted about the other day.

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[Mike Nolan]

Well, the parsnip-apple-coriander-cumin soup was a disappointment.

Let's start with the recipe. It says it can be made in 35-45 minutes. It took me about 2 hours and I'm not sure the parsnips were cooked enough when I blended them.

I don't think the coriander/cumin spice mixture was really to our taste, others might like it, though.

We tried adding some cinnamon, that helped. Adding some apple cider helped even more. I thought about adding some brown sugar, but sweetness wasn't really what it needed.

I finished my bowl and then finished Diane's bowl, but there's a lot left over. Diane will take some of it to the wine teacher who recommended the recipe later this week. (Monday and Tuesday is fall break at UNL.)

Followup: After sitting in the fridge for a few days, the spices in the soup have mellowed and the parsnip-apple flavor is more prominent. I'd probably want to play with the spice blend a bit (less coriander and probably less cumin) but the soup is something I might actually make again now.

[BakerAunt]

I'm not sure those spices would be to my taste either, Mike.

With the arrival of my elder bonus son, who had an overnight flight, I wanted to make scrambled eggs for brunch on Sunday. I have always been hit or miss on scrambled eggs, but I bought a Green Pan 10-inch skillet at Home Goods on Friday, so I thought that I had a better chance of success. I also pulled out my copy of Kenji Lopez-Alt's The Food Lab and followed his directions. The scrambled eggs came out perfectly! My only changes were to use 1% milk and to cook them in avocado oil rather than butter. I will be following this recipe any time I make scrambled eggs.

For Sunday dinner, I made roasted chicken breast, which we had with the leftover noodles, mushrooms, turkey, and peas from last night.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm going to be curious to see how it tastes cold, potato-leek soup served cold is very good, AKA vichyssoise. I'll also be interested to see if the flavor improves after a day like chili does.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a batch of apple butter using 5.5 pounds of winesap apples in my 6 quart slow cooker.

Smells pretty good already and it's been maybe about an hour, it cooks for at least 10 hours, by which time the peels will have pretty much liquified.

I looked at a number of apple butter recipes, this one seemed pretty simple, core and chop the apples, add brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon, salt and clove. One of the recipes called for a full teaspoon of ground clove in 6 pounds of apples, this one only called for 1/8 teaspoon.

I also found a recipe for apple scrap jelly that's made from the peels and cores, so I'm saving them in the freezer and will make that after I finish off making things with the winesap apples.

[BakerAunt]

I'll be interested in how your apple butter--and apple scrap jelly--come out, Mike.

It was a busy Monday in the kitchen. I cooked a batch of chickpeas and used some of them to make a big container of hummus. It goes well with the flatbread crackers I baked yesterday. For dinner, I made Maple-Glazed Pork Tenderloin and muddled mashed potatoes, which we had with a container of our green beans that I froze this summer.

[Joan Simpson]

I've been running around all day visiting friends and with my sister in law so we had a big lunch at a local Chinese place,really good and I had enough for tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

I wound up adding a bunch more cinnamon (probably 2 more TB) and another 1/8 tsp of clove to the apple butter, although I liked it, Diane thought it needed more spice. I'm letting the additional spices cook into the apple butter for an hour or two, then I'll start canning it.

[skeptic7]

Mike;
Do you peel the apples before making the apple butter? I am going to look around Kentucky for some Winesaps and other interesting apples.

[Mike Nolan]

This recipe did not call for peeling them, by the time they had cooked for 12 hours the peels were pretty soft and an immersion blender finished the job of disintegrating them.

I also wound up adding around a teaspoon of nutmeg and a teaspoon of allspice to the apple butter, Diane says now it tastes right.

Apple butter is usually made with softer apples than winesap, but I would not use Red Delicious because the peels on those are inedible these days. (And they're not the only over-bred apples with inedible peels, I think Granny Smiths are that way, too.) Golden Delicious is a good cooking apple, but just about any apple that is used for applesauce should work.

I used 5.5 pounds of winesaps and wound up with 7 half-pints of apple butter for the canner.

Here's the recipe I used:

Apple Butter Recipe

And here's the apple scraps jelly recipe that I'll use after processing the rest of the apples, maybe over the weekend.

https://www.thespruceeats.com/apple-scrap-jelly-1327811

[BakerAunt]

We had leftover pork tenderloin, applesauce, and mashed potatoes from last night for Tuesday's dinner, along with roasted chunks of honey nut squash--the first we have eaten from our garden.

[Joan Simpson]

I had the leftover Chinese food and I made some refrigerator pickles.I have cut out most sugar for me so I used 24 packs Splenda= 1 cup of sugar.I was surprised they taste as good as when I made them before with sugar.Win win for me.

[Mike Nolan]

We had macaroni and cheese tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

5 of 7 jars sealed, I didn't have the band on properly on one jar and it leaked a lot, so there was apple butter on the outside of most of the jars. I carefully washed it off, hopefully I got it all. I might also have processed it in the pressure canner too long or at too high pressure.

It looks like there's apple butter stuck to the underside of the lid:

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[Joan Simpson]

Apple butter looks very good.Haven't had any in a long time was a staple in our home growing up.

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