Then I Thought of Home

My dear cousin Sonja shared this recipe with me. I made it and several of you asked for the recipe so here it is. I can honestly say I love it. It makes my toes wiggle with happiness. So thank you Sonja. It's so easy! Here's what you need: 3/4 cup smooth peanut butter 8 oz. Cream cheese ( I softened mine) 1 cup powdered sugar 1/4 cup milk Beat together until smooth. Sonja said it's great between the layers of a chocolate cake so that's what I did. Others said they use it to frost cupcakes or you could even fill cupcakes with it. Whatever you do however you use it you are gonna love it. Enjoy!

ENGLISH MUFFINS 1 1/2 cups warm water 1 tbsp. Sugar 1 tsp yeast 1 tsp salt 2 Tbsp. Oil ( flavorless oil) 2 3/4 cup flour Pour the warm water into a large bowl. Add the sugar and stir well. Then sprinkle the one tsp. yeast over the top of the water. No need to stir. Cover bowl and let sit for 10 minutes. Then add the oil and salt, stir. Add half of the flour stir then add the rest. Just mix with a spoon and knead with your hands. It's a fairly sticky dough. Flour a surface and knead 3 to 4 minutes. Lightly grease a bowl, place dough into bowl cover and let rise for an hour or until doubled in size. Before taking the dough from the bowl sprinkle the counter with flour, the dough is sticky so you will need it. In another spot sprinkle cornmeal. Not Jiffy mix but cornmeal. Knead dough in flour about ten times. Roll it into a log shape not real thin. Cut log in half. Slice four to five muffins from each side. Roll int...

A few of you asked about the yeast roll recipe so I thought I would share it. This is from my mother in law June. She always calls them yeast biscuits  but I tend to say yeast rolls. This is a very basic simple dough recipe. You may very well have one like it but if not here you go. Dissolve two packages of yeast in 1/2 cup warm water. Set aside. 1 cup scaled milk Set aside to slightly cool. Scalding means heating it just until little bubbles start to form on the side of the pan.  It will begin to sort of film up around the side then you know it's scalded. Don't boil it. In a large bowl add: 1/3 cup oil 1/2 cup sugar 2 tsp. Salt 2 eggs Whisk together then add the scaled milk, stir and add yeast mixture. Add all purpose flour a cup at a time mix well after each addition. It should take right around 5 or so cups to get the dough right. Knead for about eight minutes then place in a greased bowl and let rise until doubled. Probably a couple hours. Then ...

I shared this picture on fb and was asked for the recipe so I decided to just put it in a blog I first got this recipe from Shotgun Red. He has a YouTube channel with lots of good recipes and this is one I decided to try. Since Mark and I are cutting back on carbs and sugars this makes a great side. Here's what you are gonna need. 1 large head of cabbage 1 stick butter 2 tsp. Minced garlic 1tsp. Black pepper 1 tsp. Smoked paprika 1 tbsp. Olive oil Parmesan cheese Line a baking sheet with foil. Turn oven to 375 Remove outer leaves from cabbage Slice cabbage into at least one inch thick slices. Put them on the baking sheet in a single layer. Melt butter and all other ingredients except the cheese. Whisk well. Brush mixture all over the cabbage steaks covering well. Use all of the mixture. Bake in the oven for forty minutes. Remove from the oven and top with cheese. Return the cabbage steaks to the oven until cheese melts and is golden. I b...

Oh this is good pizza dough!! Oh it's good pizza dough that makes amazing pizza crust!! Years ago I always made my pizza crust. Then I stopped. I decided I was just as happy with the packages I would buy at the store and mix up and I still think they are good. Lately though I thought as good as those are I know making my own would be better for us and I would save a little too so I started making it again. This recipe is so so easy and so so good. Here is a tip I just recently learned. You may already know it but if not here it is...... always use a stone pizza pan if you can. I have had a stone pizza pan for years and I used to use it a lot but somehow over time I stopped and went back to my metal one. I won't do that again. A stone comes as close to giving you that fire oven kind of crust as we can get in a regular oven Another tip I've learned is to put the stone in the oven and preheat the oven and stone to 425 degrees. Now then once the dough ...

If you are like me you love saving money at the grocery store. Just a few years back it seems like it was the in thing to shop in the big stores that made you feel like shopping for groceries was an experience. Like you were in a nice place like you were somebody for being in there buying your groceries. We all know you are somebody buying your groceries no matter where you buy them. Now the tide seems to have turned. Now it's in to shop at Aldi or Save A Lot or whatever is in your area. Now we feel proud of how little we spend instead of how much we spend. I'm all about that. How do you go about making a grocery list? How often do you go shopping? How you answer those two questions will make a big difference in how much you spend. I hope this blog post inspires you and challenges you to cut back on your food budget. Sometimes we look through cookbooks or fb looking for recipes to make in the upcoming week. I do that too and I like doing that. It...

I was so excited to find this recipe! I'm not much on fresh salmon myself  I know it's crazy but I would rather have canned salmon than fresh. All of our kids really like fresh salmon and often order it when they go out. Olivia had told me she was coming out on Tuesday so I knew what I was going to make. I had found several recipes each a little different so this is what we came up with in the end. Well not this exact picture but ours did look like this. I was excited to see what Olivia thought. When she got here she asked if Lucas was coming to try it and I told her I didn't know  so she texted him and he came over. Later Jess came home from work and she tried it. Everyone considered it a success and said I should make it again. Lucas asked if I was going to try it so I did and I liked it too then Mark came home and he ate two large helpings. All right then without further delay here's the recipe. You will need four medium size salmon fillets You...

Oh my goodness you have got to try these!! Don't think they aren't good they are. Don't think you won't like them you will. It's a great way to get your kids to eat their carrots and it looks beautiful on the table. The orange just pops next to your green beans or your meatloaf or your fried chicken. I made these last night and we almost argued over the last one. The recipe calls for baby carrots but I don't ever buy baby carrots I always just get a bag of regular carrots. I don't ever peel my carrots either. The vitamins are in the skins and so I just go with it. This recipe is so forgiving meaning if you don't have the right amount of everything don't worry. I didn't have one - two pounds of carrots, I had about six carrots so I just adjusted the ingredients to go with that amount. I just took a shot and it hit the mark. It calls for honey and that's what I used but if I don't have it I  use syrup or brown sugar. ...

When we make kraut and pork, pork can mean anything. My niece mentioned in one of her comments they liked them with hotdogs and we do too. My mom often used hotdogs or pork wieners. We used pork chops, pork roast, smoked sausage and pork ribs. I most often use boneless pork ribs. That's what I used today. I always buy my kraut in a bag. It's in with the meats. I like it because it's juicy and I like that. I don't know why but my mom never liked to buy kraut in a can at the store so I don't either. I don't have a good reason other than mom didn't so I don't. Lucas buys his kraut in the glass jars. I bought the kraut I used today from Aldi's it was in a glass jar and while it tastes really good it was a little dry there wasn't much juice in the jar. Several asked for the recipe but I don't really have one so I will just try and tell you what I do. I use a couple of pounds of the boneless pork ribs. I put a little o...

Here's the recipe for the buttermilk biscuits. As you already know it's really important to have cold ingredients when you are making biscuits. Back in the day everyone used lard to make biscuits but today we tend to go to butter and its so so good. Make sure your butter is really cold and keep it cold until you are ready to use it. Same with your buttermilk if you don't have any buttermilk you can add a tsp of white vinegar to a cup of whole milk and let it set in a few minutes you will have buttermilk or the equivalent of. Some people freeze the butter and then they use a grater to grate it while its frozen into the flour mixture. I don't do that but it sounds like a good idea. When you are cutting or mixing the butter into the flour you want to work fast because the heat from your hands will start to warm up the butter and the cold butter hitting the hot oven is what's going to give you flakey biscuits. Also if you like the layers  like you get in s...

I had posted on the fb page about the Breakfast Pie and our sweet niece Whitney requested the recipe so I'm sharing it here. Some people call them Quiche but Mark acts funny about eating quiche so I started calling it a Breakfast Pie. Here is a list of the ingredients. 5 eggs 3/4 cup of milk 1/2 cup frozen spinach (thawed and drained very well. you will have to squeeze it with a paper towel several time to get all the water out) If you don't like spinach you can omit it. 1/3 to 1/2 cup shredded cheese ( I used cheddar but I've also used swiss just use what you like) 1 TBSP. minced onion 1 TBSP minced chives 1/8 tsp. salt pepper to taste 1 unbaked eight inch pie plate or a bigger pie plate is fine it will just be a little thinner pie I cup diced cooked ham or cooked, crumbled sausage of choice In a large bowl whisk eggs and milk. Stir n the next seven ingredients. Carefully pour into a pie crust or even tart tins if you like. Bake in a preheat...

I found this recipe in an old Rival slow cooker cookbook. It's old and yellowed, the book I mean. Since Mark really likes Chinese I decided to give it a try and he and Lucas both really like it and besides that a poultry producer has to push poultry.. It doesn't call for any salt but we added more soy sauce when we had it in our plates and it was perfect.  I also added a few more red pepper flakes to mine. Here is a list of what you are going to need. 1 tbs. oil 1 1/2 lbs skinless, boneless chicken breast cut into 1 inch pieces 4 carrots, thinly sliced 4 green onions, sliced ( I didn't have green onions so I used a sweet onion but I'm sure green would have been better) 3 stalks celery, sliced 1 cup chicken broth 1 tbs. sugar 1/3 cup soy sauce 1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes or more if desired 1/4 tsp. ground ginger 1 clove garlic, minced 8 oz. bean sprouts, I couldn't find fresh so I used canned 1 eight oz can water chestnuts, ...

First off I want to tell you that this is not a photo I took. I don't have a photo of this soup so I googled one that looked like it I don't know who to give the credit to but didn't they make a fine looking soup? This is another recipe I got from my sister in law Karen. She brought this over after I had one of the kids. It was so good I wrote the recipe in my handwritten cookbook journal. When the house burned I of course lost all those recipes so Karen got another journal and wrote some of the recipes she knew I had asked her for before and this one was one of them. I received journals like that from several people and I treasure them all. I adore soup. I adore broth. I make a lot of soups and with it being winter and since we have snow on the ground I thought I would share this today. It's a common soup  so you might have this recipe already but if not I hope you will try it I'm pretty sure you are gonna like it. Here is what you are goi...

I told you all I would post the recipe for the Turkey/Chicken Corn chowder but then everything happened with mom and I forgot so here it is now. Unless you froze some of your leftover turkey from Thanksgiving it's probably to late for you to try it but you might keep it in mind to help use up leftover Christmas turkey 3 cups cooked turkey breast, diced (can use chicken) 3 pieces of bacon 3 Tbsp. butter 1 onion, diced Two 14.5 oz. cans of turkey/chicken broth 28 oz. jar of salsa 16 oz frozen white corn (thawed) 2 cups milk 2 Tbsp. cooking sherry grated sharp cheddar cheese Fry bacon in a large pot. Remove bacon and set aside Saute onion in bacon grease and butter until onions are soft. Add four and stir until mixed well and starting to brown. Add turkey/ chicken broth, salsa, corn and turkey. Simmer over low heat for 20 minutes. Add milk and cooking sherry. Heat back up and serve. Crumble fried bacon and shredded cheese over the top of bowls...

When I was a girl we always had what we called glazed sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Mom made a glaze to go over the potatoes. She always used drained canned sweet potatoes or yams. In later years when they came out with the sliced frozen sweet potatoes she took to using those. I always like moms sweet potatoes. When I came into the Gray family they did sweet potatoes too. June always used real sweet potatoes, she cooked, peeled and made a glaze to go over them. I loved it. Now at Gray dinners Karen, Marks sister always does the sweet potatoes and the dressing she is the only one who can do it like her mom. For a long time I made sweet potatoes like June even thought they neve were as good as hers we liked them. Then I heard people talking about Sweet Potato Casserole. I had never had it but I had just got the Westview Christian Church cookbook. They named it A Taste of Heaven. I was going through it and I saw Reta Haub had a recipe for a swee...

When I was growing up we always said yeast rolls. When Mark was growing up they always said yeast biscuits. I can hear his mom saying it now. June always made yeast biscuits when she had the family for dinner. She would most always make them ahead of time and freeze them. That helped her out a lot and we couldn't tell the difference. When she brought them to the table they tasted fresh from the oven. Not long after we married she shared her recipe with me. I made them and made them and made them. Or I should say I tried and I tried to make them. We rented a house from James and Melba Denny at that time it was near Shorts Corner Road, the house is no longer there but if you went over there and looked over the fence I'm pretty sure you would find a stone hard pile of failed yeast rolls. I did eventually learn to make them and while I would never say I could make them like June I could make them. Then I  got into making sourdough brea...

Sometimes we think everyone knows so we don't bother to tell. But not everyone does know. There is always a new wave of people coming up who haven't done what so many take as ordinary. So today we are going to tell you how to freeze persimmon pulp. First of course you have to gather the persimmons. Now persimmons cannot be picked. They aren't good when they are all pretty and perfect on the trees. When they are ready and sweet they fall. When they fall it's not unusual for them to get a little banged up, don't worry about that. A banged up persimmon with a little dirt or a twig on it are the best ones. If you gather very many persimmons and can't work them up right away keep them in a shallow dish, don't pile them up and put them in the fridge. They will keep a couple of days this way. When you are ready to freeze them you want to sort through them and pick out any bits of leaf or twigs or dirt or maybe even a little bug.  Don't...

I'm tired today. I've had it with Retroperitoneal Fibrosis. I'm ready for it to pack up and get out of here. When I was first diagnosed I didn't feel bad. I wouldn't have really know anything was wrong. Once I started getting treatment everything changed. I know that's common with several different types of illness's and treatments. There is a group of people who have this disease and they have a page you can follow. They all tell about what they are experiencing. I don't like the page. I looked at it and everyone went on and on. It seemed like a down place to me and besides that I wasn't having any of the things they were complaining about. Several of them talked of pain. They talked about having a hard time coming off the medications. Well now I know. Now I could post on that page. I have gone from no pain to pain. I have gone from a high dose to a low does and it's hard to adjust to. I swell like crazy. M...

You know how they say gossip grows when it hits the ears of a fool and stops when it hits the ears of the wise? Well that is true.  I have been the fool at times and at times I've been wise. I was thinking this morning that fb sharing is a lot like gossip. Something comes up on our newsfeed. We don't know if it's true or if it's false. But we hit share. For all we know someone sat down to their kitchen table and make the whole thing up then hit publish and the whole world starts sharing it. This even happens with missing children stories. Then we share them and eventually people become immune to them. We need to know what we are sharing before we share. The same is true with politics. Know it's true before you share it or again there will be so much stuff out there no one will pay attention to what you are trying to say and you will again be a part of keeping something going that you think you want to stop. In a nutshell we need to be caref...

Well after a year it's finally here, the cookbook is done and ready to order. It was a lot slower process than we anticipated. Lots of starts and stops. Sometimes I wondered if we would ever get here. I hope you will enjoy the book. It's very simple, and it's small. I pretty much sat down with my cookbook the one I have handwritten all of my favorite recipes in, the one I use all the time. My girls say it is the only thing they will fight over when I'm gone but to avoid that problem I plan to make them all a handwritten one and even though he didn't say he wanted one I'm going to make one for Lucas too. Anyway, I copied several of the recipes in this  cookbook right out of my handwritten book. With some of them I'v included a story about the recipe. I've tried to make the book be more about the time spent around the table than about what's on the table. I want you to be as inspired to make memories as you are to make food. The b...