Frozen Goodies

My popsicle molds get a lot of use. When I was a kid living in Texas, I remember always having frozen orange juice or grape juice popsicles, and a lot of times that's still what I'll have in my freezer. But I also need some chocolate now and then...

All the recipes I found for fudgsicles involved mixing up a box of instant pudding and then freezing it, which I was not going to do. Then I saw a recipe in Martha Stewart FOOD for vanilla pudding pops. I tried a batch (which I infused with cardamom pods - yum.) So then I took the chocolate pudding recipe I usually use, and tweaked it a little bit...then stuck it in the freezer. I think I have made it two or three times this summer.

Later in the summer my dad made some incredible strawberry jam. One batch didn't set, so he was left with some strawberry syrup. I immediately knew what I wanted to do with it...(see the picture above!) I used this recipe for lemon pudding, then swirled the strawberry syrup through it. I can't even begin to express HOW GOOD these are!

Fudgsicles

- 3 Tbsp corn starch
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup cocoa
- generous 1/4 tsp salt
- 3 cups milk
- 3 egg yolks
- 2 tsp vanilla

Combine sugar, cocoa, starch and salt in a saucepan. Whisk in milk, then yolks. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until first bubbles appear, then cook another minute (pudding will be starting to thicken.) Take off heat. Pour through seive, then add vanilla. Pour into popsicle mold and freeze.

Salmon Chowder

This is my first food post in a zillion years, and I don't have a photo! And I even have my new camera... But I made this soup late at night, then brought the left-overs to work for lunch, and that was that. But I want to remember this recipe, so I may as well store it here!

I am so bummed I went so much of the summer without a camera. I got to go to fabulous farmers markets in Santa Fe (I got pictures there, but they were still on the camera when it got lost) and Austin. And I ate in all sorts of good restaurants. And there was the posole I made. And the cardamom ice cream bars. And oatmeal blondies. And the homemade vanilla ice cream with strawberry-rhubarb cobbler. I would have loved to post all of that here! Any-hoo, nothing I can do about that now. The picture I ended up posting instead of soup is my favorite farmers market treat - french bread with lots of butter, sliced radishes, and sprinkled with salt. I could eat just that for several weeks and be content.

Coming soon (hopefully with pictures): more frozen summer treats...

But for now -

 

Salmon Chowder

 

Ingredients:

- leeks, cioppino onions, or some other mild onion

- 1 clove of garlic, chopped

- white wine

- 2-3 stalks of celery, chopped

- 8 small potatoes, chopped into chunks

- salt and pepper

- unsalted vegetable broth (TJ's organic in a box), aboiut 2 cups

- milk

- about 8 -10 ounces of smoked salmon

- half and half*

- dill

 

Cook the onions in the bottom of your soup pot, stirring constantly, and adding a small amount of white wine or vegetable broth when onions begin to stick to bottom of pan, scraping up the browned bits.  Repeat this several times, until the onions are carmelized.  Add garlic, celery, potatoes, and salt and pepper.  Continue to stir, and cook another few minutes.  Pour in enough broth to cover the potatoes.  Simmer until potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes.  Stir in the salmon, milk, and half and half over low heat - do not boil.  Stir in dill and serve.

 

*Next time I am going to try replacing the half and half with cream cheese.  In the past I have made a fish soup that had cream cheese in it, and it was fabulous, and I wanted a little bit of that flavor here too...

Tagged!

Good news - a camera is on the way! Yahoo! In the meantime, I was tagged by Brittany, the Pie Lady, for a non-food meme. I went a little bonkers with it - seven songs turned into ten. Sorry. But these are all songs that will make me think of this summer (yes, I'm pretty much stuck in another decade lately). Plus a few that just make me too weepy to leave out.


Hotter than Mojave - Iris Dement



Seeds of the Pine - Martha Scanlan



Waitin' Around to Die - Townes Van Zandt



By Your Side - the everybodyfields



The Coolin - Samuel Barber



Bang My Drum - Danielia Cotton



Like A River - Kate Wolf



Favorite - Neko Case



Tomorrow is a Long Place - Bob Dylan



Sundown - Gordon Lightfoot

Back soon, but...

I lost my camera! I never, never, NEVER lose things. But while in Santa Fe, with my camera full of photos of the farmer's market, my aunt June's surprise 90th birthday party, and a fabulous lightening storm, well...

I think I'm over my heartbreak. Now I just have to face the fact that I have to replace the darn thing. If you have any tips, please send them my way!

Blog Break

I didn't plan on this, but here it is - a month since my last post! Lately, almost all of my creative free time has been directed elsewhere (see photo above). (I think I have also gotten tired of trying to photograph food in the dark - it is almost May, and still cloudy and COLD.) I'll be back before too long. In the meantime, I will still be lurking around your blogs!

Lemon Pudding, and my sorry excuse for a sink.

I've been meaning to show you my kitchen sink for awhile, but I'm not sure this photo even does it justice. It is shallow to start out with, and then the divider down the middle makes it even less functional. Did I mention that I do not have a dishwasher? What I am saying here is that it is a wonder that I ever make anything BESIDES pudding.

I've been making pudding a lot lately. It is so easy, doesn't dirty a lot of dishes, and satisfies my sweet tooth without making me feel ill. I usually make chocolate, but I recently got the bug for lemon pudding. I wasn't even sure there was such a thing outside of the world of Jello. I finally found a recipe on the Food Network. It was just like any other pudding, only you cook the milk with lemon zest, then at the end you stir in a bunch of fresh lemon juice. This fascinated me - I thought for sure it would cause the pudding to curdle. But it didn't! It just made it taste really lemony, and not at all heavy.

Lemon Pudding - from the Food Network.

- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 2 1/2 cups milk
- 3 egg yolks, lightly beaten
- 2 Tbsp lemon zest
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup lemon juice
- 2 Tbsp butter
Whisk the sugar and the cornstarch together in a medium saucepan. Add milk, stir until smooth. Add the egg yolks, zest, salt and cook, stirring frequently at first and constantly towards the end, over medium heat until thickened enough to thickly coat the back of a spoon.
Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the lemon juice and butter. Pour through a strainer. Cover and chill.

Aunt Arlene's Chicken and Tough Noodles

Some background: I have been mostly vegetarian for fifteen years. During that time there have only been a few things that I missed eating - one of them was my Aunt Arlene's Chicken and Tough Noodles. This year I have made a few exceptions to my vegetarianism. I had some Christmas turkey for starters. Then a few weekends ago I made a trip to Bonners Ferry, Idaho, for a mini family reunion, AND to get a tutorial in making Chicken and Tough Noodles!

Here's the thing - you know how over time, your memory can kind of exaggerate the greatness of things from your childhood? The opposite was true of these noodles. They are pure heaven. Dense and almost chewy. The closest thing I can compare them to is spaetzle. The best part is that they are SUPPOSED to be tough, so you don't have to worry about over-working the dough!

I was hoping to try making a batch on my own before I did this post, but life has been interfering. However, my stepmom gave it a try the other day, and reported great success!

Here is the general gist, because of course, there was no recipe used:

Day 1:
Boil a whole chicken.
Save the stock; chill, then skim and discard the fat off the top.
Save the meat from the chicken.

Day 2:
Put an egg or two into a food processor. Add flour until a ball forms. If a ball is not forming, add a small amount of milk. Set dough aside and repeat - one egg's worth of dough will make approximately enough noodles for one person.

On a HEAVILY floured surface, roll out a ball of dough to approximately 1/8" thick. (The extra flour on the noodles will help thicken the sauce later.)

Sprinkle with flour, then roll the sheet of dough into a jellyroll shape. Slice off noodles at 1/4" increments.

Bring the stock to a simmer. Unroll noodles and drop into broth.

Add cream of chicken soup and/or chicken bouillon, depending on your mood, and what you have around. Add chicken. Simmer until done (I think about an hour? The longer you cook the noodles, the less tough they are.)

Eat, eat, and eat some more.

The final spread included Chicken and Tough Noodles, mashed potatoes, two kinds of jello salad, green bean casserole with onion topping (yay!), and green salad. Followed by chocolate cake with milk chocolate frosting, which you will be hearing about at another date.


Eleven people, four dogs, and a cat squeezed into this house for Chicken and Tough Noodles!

The view of the Kootenai River from the downtown Bonners Ferry bridge: