Cook the Cookbook Project- week 13

 

This week the menu was a fun one featuring a meat and vegetable pie and a salad.

Overall the menu was excellent.

To start the meal the menu called for a glass of grapefruit juice to be served. My mom used to serve a glass of juice to start the meal off on a regular basis but her go to was always either plain tomato or more often some V-8. I don’t remember her ever serving a different juice than those at dinner. We did have grapefruit juice at breakfast a lot though.

The meat and vegetable pie took a while to make since it was basically just a beef stew (with no potatoes) that was then transferred to a casserole dish, topped with some biscuits and baked long enough to bake the biscuits. My only critic was that in my opinion the gravy portion needed to be thickened to make it a better dish. Over all I really enjoyed the dish and I think I will be working on a version of my own to post on here in the future.

The salad was really good and while I have made similar ones in the past I never think to do so. It was just a very basic green salad with some bacon tossed in. The dressing was then made using the hot bacon fat as the oil portion and poured hot over the salad. Very yummy indeed.

The menu called for more biscuits to be served alongside the meal. The pie recipe called for the cook to use the recipe on a box of Bisquick to make the topping and the rest of the batch to be baked alongside. I did decide to skip the jelly for the biscuit because I wasn’t really in the mood. Especially right after the tart juice.

The dessert this week was called a “Chocolate Blanc Mange” I was very intrigued because the name of the dish was unfamiliar to me. After looking over the recipe and then doing a Google search for more info I now know that it is a very thick pudding that is thickened with just cornstarch. It is very smooth and silky. It was very easy to make with just a few ingredients that are normally in my kitchen.

 

 

So what are my thoughts this week? I have to say this menu did not have the familiar feelings I’ve gotten from a lot of the others. I don’t think that other than the fact my mom did serve juice sometimes and she made Bisquick biscuits pretty often. I don’t remember my mom making the recipes that were in the menu this week. I still am finding most of the recipes to be very bland a lot of the time and these recipes were no different in that respect. Also the biscuits on the side in addition to the ones on top of the pie seemed like a lot, but also much like what my mom served back in the day.

Cook the Cookbook Project- week 12

 

Week 12 was a page out of my mom’s meal planning for sure. I know we ate a very similar menu on a regular basis when I was growing up. The only real difference would have been my mom would have just heated the green beans plain and not made a salad out of them. Other than that small detail this was so very familiar to me and took me back in time.

The macaroni and cheese was made the same way she made hers. I remember that so vividly from my childhood. It is very different from how I make the same dish though. And to be truthful I prefer how I make it. I mean it was cool to eat this version again but I will be sticking with my recipe in the future.

The “Mexican Green Bean Salad” was simply cooked french style green beans with a bit of chopped onion added and marinated in some oil and vinegar dressing. Since the recipe simply stated “cooked” I went with the canned version. My mom always had a couple of cases of canned green beans in the cupboard to serve. She stocked up whenever the grocery store had their case sales so we ate a lot of canned green beans. Back in the day like I said she wouldn’t have fussed with the marinating step she would have just heated them up.

Stewed tomatoes, another item she stocked up on at those case sales. I remember how much I hated those things. I made a discovery this week with this menu- I still hate them. Unfortunately for me growing up my parents loved them and they were on the table at least every other week…..

Of course the menu called for some bread, this time it just states a crusty bread and since I was lazy this week mine came from the grocery store. Mom always had bread on the table, every meal every day.

For dessert this week the menu called for fresh fruit in season. I did pick up a couple of options but by the time I made my way through the rest of dinner I was stuffed so the fruit will go with my meals the next few days.

Since this chapter in the book is all about eating cheaply the meals are fairly plain, even compared to some of the other menus in the book. But at the same time they are very filling. I think to cater to staying on budget and filling bellies. I did enjoy the menu this week (except those stewed tomatoes….LOL) and this I think more than any other menu struck that memory area of my brain. Like is said my mom would have served this same menu on a regular basis. 

Next week it looks like menu features a meat and vegetable pie so I am looking forward to that one too.

I do want to say thank you for reading my ramblings about this adventure in the this cookbook. I am having a lot of fun and I look forward to doing the menus each week and to sharing my thoughts about them with you.

Cook the Cookbook Project- week 11

 

This week I decided it was going to be necessary to move ahead in the book to another chapter. I know I have barely done any recipes from the “Regional Meals” chapter but I have had too many menus in the chapter that I can’t get the things I need to cook them from my little neighborhood grocery store.

I looked at several of the menus and currently key components were not available. Some of them I know will come in as the year passes. For instance one menu is based on a corned beef, my store will have those next month or possibly in a couple of weeks but not now. Same with the ribs from another menu, in summer no problems, middle of winter not a rib to be found.

Then there are the menus that call for things I know I haven’t seen since I moved here. Those I will try to find at larger stores in the area or online. I will probably have to skip some of them though.

I am going to sit down with the book and the notebook I keep in my purse and make a list of all the things I want to track down so I can keep my eyes open for them.

Now onto today’s menu, this is the first menu in the chapter “Pennywise Dinners” and I was so happy to make it. I love a good meatloaf! There was actually a choice to make right off the bat they listed it as meatloaf or ham loaf. Both recipes were on the page and I might have to go back and make the other one some day. But this meatloaf resembled the ones I my mom used to make when I was growing up so I went with it. The big difference from the ones she made and this one was the meat mixture was equal parts ground beef and ground pork. She always used just ground beef, probably because we grew our own beef and that was what was always in the freezer. I other than the meat change it was pretty much what I remember her making. And it was excellent and brought back a lot of memories for me.

The second choice in the menu was either a baked potato or scalloped potatoes. I am very much a fan of a good baked potato so I went that way.

Also on the menu was creamed spinach, something I don’t think I even tasted until I was an adult and yes I do really like it. I haven’t made it in years but I really should.

The menu was missing the bread component of the most of the other menus I have made. However, it did have apple wedges and celery sticks on the menu along with everything else. I admit that confused me a bit, I mean why we already had the spinach for a veggie. Maybe because this chapter is all about saving money and those are/were cheaper than meat and would fill you up to make less food be more satisfying. I’m not sure but that is what I am assuming.

For the dessert I was super excited, I know it is just a jello dessert but it is a variation of one my mom made all the time. For this menu it was made with raspberry jello, vanilla ice cream and frozen raspberries. My mom made the same dish but with orange jello and canned mandarin oranges. I am surprised she didn’t make this one since she loved raspberries so much. I know she would have loved it.

This menu was so much a trip down memory lane in flavors, some of these dishes I do make on a fairly regular basis but I have my way of making them that I have evolved over many years of cooking. The versions that I made for this menu could have come out of my mom’s kitchen back in my childhood. It was a wonderful way to revisit a simpler time when things seemed to make a lot more sense than they do right now.

I peeked at the next page in the book and one of my all time favorite dishes is the star of the show, Macaroni and Cheese, but the again the way mom made it and not the way I make it. So I am excited to eat that one next week.

Cook the Cookbook Project- week 10

 

After being basically stuck at home for a couple of weeks due to extremely cold weather I finally got to work on my Cook the Cookbook Project again this week.

So this week I decided to cook one of the winter menus from the Seasonal Specials chapter. I did get very lucky because I had already decided I was going to do one of the winter recipes, both are roast based, and it just happened that pork loin roasts were on sale at my grocery store when I could finally venture down there to get some supplies. I was lucky enough to pick up one big enough to divide so I have another roast in my freezer for later too. I really love roasts of all types and pork is one of my favorites.

So I would definitely call this menu a “Sunday Supper” since that would have been the day of the week my mom would have cooked something similar.

Roasts of all kinds were on our table often when I was growing up and I loved them then almost as much as now.

One thing about his menu I can say was it was labor intensive for sure. I actually ended up having to run my dishwasher 3 times the day I made this. I normally can get by with just once a day and on the rare occasions I run it twice its usually not packed. This day it was packed all three times!

So let’s talk about the menu items and what I thought about them.

Like I said already the star of the show this week was a pork roast. And although the seasonings were very basic (just salt and pepper) it was marvelous. I am looking forward to using all the leftovers in the weeks to come. I do need to get busy and get some of them into the freezer so I can use them for a while.

The same browned potatoes that were on the menu a while back made a repeat appearance. I do love them and my mom made them a lot when I was a kid.

This week the menu called for making a gravy from the drippings from the roast.

As a vegetable the menu called for a simple buttered cauliflower. I know a lot of people don’t care for cauliflower but I have always loved it although I normally eat it raw the last few years. I really need to think to cook it more often. The cookbook just called for adding some butter, salt, and pepper to it.

Of course there was a bread on the menu, this time a batch of batter buns. Now this is possibly only the second time I have ever made batter buns. I am not a huge fan of the texture of them so I rarely make them. At least they are relatively quick as yeast rolls go.

The item on the menu that I was most curious about was the salad dressing this week. On the menu it says “lettuce with Lorenzo Dressing” I was not familiar with this dressing so I was intrigued. It is pretty simple, you make a basic oil & vinegar dressing and add some chili sauce to it. I have to admit it was not my favorite part of the menu but it wasn’t bad. I think I am going to use some of it mixed with mayo to make a fry dipping sauce. I that will be excellent. It was really fun to run into a recipe I had never heard of before though.

For dessert the menu calls for applesauce and Chocolate Cream Drops. This was a cookie recipe I know I had never made before. I was surprised though at how familiar how they taste. I thinking that my mom must have made them from time to time. They were a fairly basic chocolate drop cookie with a chocolate frosting on them. They did contain sour cream as one of the ingredients and this is a bit different giving both a tangy flavor and an interesting texture. They were supposed to have nuts in them and I thought that I had some in the cabinet but when I went to get them to make the cookies there weren’t any. So whatever. They were still good cookies.

So what did I think of the menu this week? I have to say it’s one of my favorites so far. It did conjure up memories of all the roast dinners we ate while I was growing up. And the basics of meat and potatoes with bread almost always on the plate does take me back to childhood.

Other that the fact that I normally don’t do bread with dinner as often as in the menus in the book the thing that really stood out this week was the cooking time for the pork roast. They really did cook meat, especially pork a lot longer back in the day.

Cook the Cookbook Project- week 8

After taking a short break for the holidays (and a some time because I caught whatever the nasty bug is going around) I am back with a post in the Cook the Cookbook Project.

This week we are finishing out the first chapter of the book featuring America’s favorite recipes from back in 1958. I know I have one menu that I will need to return to when I can get the meat for the main part of the meal. Other than that one menu I have now cooked my way through that first chapter.

Since the 2^nd

chapter is all about seasonal favorites I won’t be cooking straight through it but rather making the recipes as the seasons change.

This week the menu consisted of baked beans, brown bread, a salad, and for dessert a baked apple.

So one by one what did I think of these dishes?

The baked beans, this week it was a really quick version of baked beans. Basically it had me cook some bacon, and then cook some onions in the bacon fat. Then stir in a can of baked beans along with some chili sauce and a bit of mustard. Then it went into the oven for about 45 minutes.

I did have to substitute the size of the can of beans called for. Apparently can sizes of baked beans have changed over the years so the balance might have been off just a bit although I did my best to scale the ingredients to fit the size of can I was able to get.

I know on the rare occasion my mom made baked beans when I was growing up this was pretty much what she did. They were good, I’m not the biggest fan of baked beans but these were good and something I rarely eat.

The portion of this menu I was most excited about was the brown bread. The recipe directed me to bake it in a washed out can. The problem was I couldn’t find anything at the local grocery store in the size can called for. I decided that rather than make myself crazy looking for a specific size can I would just divide the batter in my small loaf pans. The recipe said it would make 2 loaves in the cans, I got 3 in my small loaf pans. The recipe does note that the bread freezes really well if well wrapped.

Growing up my mom served this type of bread often. She never baked this one though it was one of the few breads she would buy at the store. And yes, it came in a can. I loved that stuff and I remember I could eat most of the loaf myself back in the day. For this reason I have been looking forward to this menu for ever since I saw it when I set up to do this project. The recipe is interesting, I have never made it before and I have to say it does taste like the canned stuff I remember. It has a small amount of flour and a bit larger amount of either graham cracker crumbs or dry bread crumbs. It gets its distinctive flavor from a healthy amount of molasses which also gives the bread its color and will keep it moist for a while. I did add the optional raisins since I remember they were my favorite part.

The salad was just a simple one using equal parts chopped veggies (raw or cooked) and torn salad greens, then dressed with an oil and vinegar dressing. So simple and the perfect counterpart to the sweetness of the baked beans.

For dessert there was a baked apple, this one with maple syrup, hence the name Baked Vermont Apple. Growing up my mom served baked apples a lot probably at least one day a week in the winter. I haven’t had one in years and I was reminded that I really am not a huge fan of them. But it was still fun to travel down memory lane.

So what do I think overall about this menu. I will be honest and say it was not my favorite out of the chapter but it was okay. I am very happy to have made it and ate it.

 

Cook the Cookbook Project- week 7

 

This week I was both excited and apprehensive about the menu in the book. The main course is beef stew. I do love a good beef stew and I can’t remember the last time I made a batch for myself. So that was exciting. On the other hand the side dish/salad this week is made from lime Jello, the one and only flavor of Jello that I really dislike. I had promised myself that personal preferences were not going to dictate my doing this project and in reality there are very few foods I really don’t like. So I went ahead and made the lime Jello salad and it wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be.

 

 

So let’s talk about the menu then I have a few things to say about each item on the menu. The main dish this week was a pot of beef stew with dumplings. The side a lime jello and pineapple salad. And for dessert tapioca pudding with ginger cookies.

 

 

 

So the beef stew, I was really excited about this because it has been a long while since I have made myself beef stew. And topped with dumplings made it even more fun. I did cut back on the salt this week by a bit and it was a bit saltier than I would have normally made but much better than some of the dishes in this project have been. The thing that surprised me about the stew recipe was the lack of any kind of thickening agent to make the broth more like a gravy. This stayed as just a broth instead of the rich slightly thickened gravy like consistency I normally make. It was very good it just lacked that thicker texture that I was looking for. Also the recipe called for a pinch of ground allspice, which I am pretty sure I have never added and I want to experiment with a bit more in the future. I think it gave a really nice flavor to the stew and I will definitely be playing with allspice in other beef recipes in the future.

The dumplings directed me to use some Bisquick mix and they of course turned out wonderfully. There was a period of several years when my kids were young that I made dumplings a lot. They all loved them and they are so easy and make for a much more filling meal with little work.

Next was the Jello salad. If you are of a certain age you probably remember when green (lime) Jello was used all the time. And mixing in crushed pineapple was something that was done at a lot of “fancier” meals like for holidays or company. That being said my mom usually used lemon Jello instead of the lime most of the time. I was very worried about this part of the menu since lime Jello is about the only flavor I don’t like. But at the beginning of this project I said I was not going to let any of my personal preferences dictate changes to the menu. So I made the salad as the recipe was written. The only change I made was to make just one serving instead of the 2 the recipe dictated. It was actually better than I remembered it and it did make a nice accompaniment to the stew. It was definitely like stepping back in time a bit.

For dessert the book’s menu called for Tapioca Cream (pudding) which they directed the reader to make from a box of tapioca pudding mix. They did top it with some fruit juice which I skipped because I forgot to put it on my grocery list. Again a dish I haven’t made in many years. When she was growing up my daughter loved tapioca pudding.

Along with the pudding the menu called for ginger cookies to be made from a box of Betty Crocker Gingerbread Mix. My grocery store didn’t have any type o gingerbread mix on the shelves and since I have a batch of Christmas cookies that I just made a couple of days ago I decided to just have a couple of those in place of the gingerbread ones.

 

So overall this was a really fun menu with a wonderful main dish that I am very glad I made. The dumplings were a fun addition and reminded me how much I enjoy making them. I need to make them a lot more often this winter.

So up next week in the book is a menu based on baked beans and I am looking forward to seeing how they turn out.

Cook the Cookbook Project- week 6

 

This week I actually ended up skipping a menu (we will get back to it, I need to locate one of the called for items) and moving on to this burger menu.

According to the list at the beginning of the chapter burgers had the 10^th spot on the list of favorite foods. I wonder where they would fall on a similar list today. I think they would rank in the top 5 what do you all think?

The menu I worked with this week was: Broiled hamburgers, Cabbage Salad (coleslaw), and hot potato chips. This was to be followed with Canned Apricots and store bought cookies for dessert.

This is a very simple menu with virtually nothing needing to be prepared ahead of time. The little paragraph explaining the menu did say to be sure to chill the can of fruit ahead so I just put it in the fridge when I took it out of the grocery bag after shopping.

I did have to make a couple of changes to the instructions this week and I will talk about those as I discuss the places they occurred.

So the star of the menu was a Broiled Hamburger. First this was the strangest recipe for a burger I have ever made. I would love to hear if any of you have ever run into the following. The burger ingredients called for a ½ pound of ground beef for the 2 burgers, pretty normal and just what I expected. This was to be seasoned with salt and pepper with a little bit of chopped onion, again exactly what I would expect. Here is what was/is strange to me it also called for ½ cup of either water or milk to be mixed into the meat. I’ve checked several of my other vintage cookbooks and I didn’t see this addition in any of them. I found it strange and I am not sure if I liked what it did to the texture of the meat patty or not. It seemed heavier in a way and way too moist. I guess if you know you are going to be over cooking these it might be a good idea, I’m pretty sure you could cook these to death and they would still not dry out. I am glad I tried this but I doubt I will do it again. It wasn’t bad just not a change I think is necessary.

I did change a couple of things about the burgers however, first the recipe didn’t really give any toppings and I almost always add cheese to my burgers so I did add a slice of sharp cheddar and a couple of lettuce leaves to mine. The other change I had to make was the cooking method. The book called for broiling the burgers and I tried to do this but my oven broiled just was not hot enough to get the job done. So after several minutes of not getting my burgers to even look like they were thinking about getting cooked I switched them over to my cast iron skillet and they were done in a normal amount of time. Pretty if I had stuck with the broiler I would still be waiting for them to cook.

The first side dish listed is cabbage salad, or as we normally call it coleslaw. I ended up getting a bag of coleslaw blend since the cabbage display was pretty much empty and the ones there looked like they should have been tossed a few days before. I also opted to use just purchased mayo instead of making the dressing in the book which was basically just a version of mayo anyway. I had forgotten to pick up a couple of the ingredients I would have needed to make it.

The other side dish was hot potato chips. I have a couple of vintage cookbooks that talk about heating potato chips in the oven to make them taste fresher. I had never tried it so I gave it a try. They did taste really nice immediately out of the oven but by the time I took a couple of pictures and got sat down to eat they were back to room temperature and tasted just like they did straight out of the bag.

For dessert with this menu the suggestion was some canned apricots with store bought cookies. I do love canned apricots although I seldom buy them so that was almost a treat. Since I still have some of the chocolate chocolate chips cookies I made last weekend I had a couple of those rather than buying a package of cookies for just me.

So what are my thoughts this week on the menu. It was very comforting menu I do love a good burger so that was good. Again the biggest thing I am missing in these menus is some kind of seasoning other than just salt and pepper. This week at least the salt levels were more in control than last week and the portions didn’t seem so large.

I am still enjoying this journey through the cookbook and I hope you are enjoying going on the adventure with me.

I am excited for next week because the menu is centered around beef stew.

Cook the Cookbook Project- week 5

 

 

This week’s menu for my Cook the Cookbook Project featured Spaghetti with meat sauce, a salad, and garlic bread. The dessert for the menu was a simple fruit and cheese plate.

So let me be totally honest here, as much as I love pasta I am not a huge fan of pasta with a red (tomato) sauce. Don’t get me wrong I love tomatoes, just not a huge amount of them cooked. For me the perfect pasta has a creamy sauce of some kind or a pesto or any number of other choices. Even a pasta where fresh tomatoes are featured not cooked down into a sauce so I was not looking forward to this menu as much as some of the others in the book.

When I cook normally, meaning not when I am doing this project or trying to cook a dish for the blog or to share a recipe otherwise I don’t normally measure things like salt, pepper and other seasonings. I do a lot more by eye and taste. Even in a lot of the recipes on my blog I tell you to taste and adjust the seasonings to suit you. For this exercise I am trying to do my best to follow the recipes as they were written in this vintage cookbook. This was not a great idea this week because the predominant flavor of most of the menu was SALT, not salt, but SALT. Everything tasted way too salty and there was a lot more salt in most of it than I would have normally used.

So let’s look at each dish separately. The meat sauce took the longest to prepare and it was the “star” of the menu so we’ll start with it. The first thing I noticed when reading the recipe was that there was a lot of salt and not really much else in the way of seasoning. The ingredient list was onion, ground beef, tomato sauce, canned tomatoes, salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. A very short list for a homemade sauce in my opinion. No herbs, no garlic so I would call it bland in a way. The sauce was also only cooked for about an hour total, which on the rare occasion I do make a red sauce I use a lot more seasonings and cook mine for a lot longer, like all afternoon. So we aren’t starting on the best foot here.

The instructions for the spaghetti called for cooking it way longer than I normally do and since I really didn’t want lump of mush in the end so I used the instructions on the box of pasta. So I think that was a fair change.

 

The salad was the same as the salads that have been in previous meals from the book and it was good as always. I do love a good simple oil and vinegar dressing on a salad and this one is really good. The funny thing is they do call for fresh garlic in the salad dressing so why not in the other dishes in the menu?

 

Now for the garlic bread I remember my mom making garlic bread this way when I was a kid. Normally when I make garlic bread I combine some softened butter with some grated garlic, really simple and tastes wonderful. On the rare occasions I am out of fresh garlic I use garlic powder. In the instructions for the menu they had the reader use butter mixed with garlic salt, again way more salt than I would have normally used.

For the dessert the fruit and cheese gave no guidelines as to what fruits and cheeses to use. I had planned to get some grapes but when I got the grocery store the grapes looked iffy at best so that idea went out the window. Frankly, I have been very disappointed in most the produce at my grocery store so I stuck with a safe apple and used some dried fruit that I already had on hand. As for cheese I used some of the sharp cheddar and some Swiss I had on hand and added some peanuts to round out the plate. It was really nice and probably along with the salad the highlights of this menu.

So my thoughts, it was a fun menu despite the downsides and I feel like I am seeing how differently we eat now than we did 65 years ago. We are definitely using a lot less salt and more other seasonings to make things taste good. Again the portions were a bit on the large side and after making 2 servings from the menu (as stated in the book) I had about a third of the sauce left over. I think I
will use that on a pizza/flatbread in the future so I put it in the freezer.

I am not sure what next week’s menu yet because I have been having problems finding the main part of the next menu in the book. So I might be shelving it for a while until I can pick up the needed items.

Cook the Cookbook Project- week 4

 

 

This week the menu was a braised pork chop, candied sweet potatoes, Waldorf salad, rye bread, and baked custard.

For the braised pork chop I had been keeping my eyes open at the grocery store for any chops on sale for a couple of weeks. I had come across a package of 2 thick cut chops (labeled as “princess cut”) and had stashed them in my freezer for this meal. They were very thick but wonderfully tender and they tasted really nice. I don’t often braise my pork chops but these were very nice. I did the recipe as written, which is the whole idea of this journey. So I only used the salt and pepper called for so that was a bit limiting. Normally I would have seasoned them a little differently. Also the recipe did not have me do anything with the liquid left in the pan which I think was a true loss. I could have made a wonderful pan sauce with just a few additions but that would have been straying from the project.

The candied sweet potatoes were very nice but very filling. The recipe called for 2 or 3 sweet potatoes so I only used 2 and picked the smallest ones available at the store. It was still way more that 2 servings I could have gotten away with just using 1 sweet potato and would have had enough to make two servings in my opinion. The recipe called for cooking the sweet potatoes then cutting them into slices and coating them with a syrup before baking. Normally when I cook sweet potatoes I stick to a more savory angle so this was a departure for me in that regard.

The Waldorf salad was the other side dish which to me really didn’t fit the menu all that well. I can think of dozens of other things that would have been better. The main problem for me was this was sweet on top of the sweet potatoes being extremely sweet and it was just too much sweet. I mean I do like a Waldorf salad from time to time but I usually wouldn’t serve it with another sweet side dish.

The rye bread was a nice counterpoint to all the heavy sweet parts of the meal. I always forget how much I enjoy rye bread. I did take the easy way out and bought a loaf of pumpernickel which is so nicely bitter and goes so well with so many other foods.

For dessert the menu had me make a baked custard. This is the exact same baked custard I have been making all my life. It is also the same recipe my mom made on a regular basis and I know from what my mom told me growing up it was a recipe my grandmother made a lot also. The book wanted me to un-mold the custard onto a plate, but mine would not budge from it’s dish so I just ate it in the dish like I always do. The book also said to top it with either thawed frozen raspberries or grape juice. I went with the raspberries since I already had some on hand. It was okay but I think I will stick with just a sprinkle of nutmeg in the future.

So my thoughts on the menu, most of which I’ve already stated today. It just had way too much sweet and not enough savory for me this time. Again the portions were much bigger than I would normally make but I am getting to the point where that is my expectation.

I will probably make braised pork chops more often since I have been reminded of them but believe me I will be making a delightful pan sauce to pour over them.

For next week I am looking forward to Spaghetti with a meat sauce.

Cook the Cookbook Project- week 3

 

This week the menu was for one of my all time favorite dinners, fried chicken. And it was specifically oven fried chicken which is how my mom always made hers and how I normally make mine. Along with the chicken were some traditional mashed potatoes and gravy. To round out the meal there were “French-style” green beans, some cranberry-orange relish and strawberry shortcake for dessert.

A couple of observations I have about the menus and I assume the way Americans ate 60+ years ago. First off the portions are huge! I used slightly less of both the chicken and the green beans (weight wise) and the amount of potatoes called for and I was stuffed half way through the plate. I ended up covering the plate and re-heating it for lunch the next day. Secondly there is a much heavier emphasis on starch and protein in these menus than I think i see in more modern cookbooks.

So let’s talk about the items in today’s menu one by one.

The oven fried chicken, I love oven fried chicken and it is my go to for how I make mine. I did follow the recipe in the book so this batch was a little less seasoned than how I normally do mine. The book only called for adding salt, pepper and paprika to the flour. I normally add more herbs and spices than that and I normally add a bit of cornstarch to my flour to make the coating even more crispy. This really did remind me of the chicken my mom made though and it was wonderful. The only thing I did differently from the recipe was to dredge the chicken in a dish rather than shaking them in a bag with the flour.

Of course there were mashed potatoes with pan gravy along side the chicken. That was exactly what my mom would have served most of the year with it also. As much as I love mashed potatoes and gravy I don’t make it for myself very often and it was such a wonderful treat.

The book called for cutting the green beans “French-style” as in 4 thin strips from each green bean. That was a very tedious job so I ended up cutting mine a bit differently. The beans at my store were not in great shape this week (we lost our wonderful produce manager to another store and the department is not the same) so my beans were a bit limp and very curvy. I ended up cutting them all in half crosswise and then just once lengthwise. I don’t think I have ever cut my beans in this style although I have gotten them this way both frozen and canned. I think I’ll stick with not doing this in the future.

The cranberry-orange relish was a raw dish and I was not sure how it would turn out. I used some frozen cranberries that I had on hand and I think that is what saved the dish. I have made raw cranberry relishes in the past and not cared for them. I think because the berries had been frozen and then thawed they were softer and juicier which made for a very nice side dish.

For dessert the menu called for making strawberry shortcake. For the biscuit portion it just had me make a half batch of the shortcakes on the back of the Bisquick box.

We are well past the season for strawberries and the ones I got were not very good. I really wished I had skipped them and went to the frozen aisle. Again the fact we lost our wonderful produce guy is partly to blame along with the season.

So there we have it another menu under my belt and a bunch more to go. I am loving this journey and having a great time both with the cooking and eating of the foods but also with the memories they bring up.

I peeked ahead and next week the menu is for pork chops so I am really excited about that one also.