A couple of weeks ago we had our first experience of receiving food commodities for seniors, and this afternoon we went to a different place for another one, also for seniors. This event, run by the Gospel Mission here in Silver City, NM, is monthly early in the afternoon on the third Wednesdays of every month at the Knights of Columbus hall, since moved to one of the churches, I think the Mormon one. I liked how this one went. My husband and I signed in and were given the number 55 as we were the 55th household to sign … Continue reading →

Why make sauerkraut? And if you are going to make it, why make sauerkraut in a jar? I’ve recently started keeping one jar fermenting as a regular thing, and here I’ll tell you how I have learned to make sauerkraut in a mason jar. It’s quick and easy to get it going, but not exactly quick until you can eat it… it needs to ferment for maybe a month. But it’s worth the wait. Now, there is sauerkraut as a side dish on the table frequently when we eat. Besides being tasty, it has health benefits in aiding digestion. That’s … Continue reading →

Recently some friends served brie baked in puff pastry with fig jam and pecans. Rich, you bet, but even a small bite was quite a lovely blend of flavors! I had to try making it myself. I got directions and it was really very simple. You can make puff pastry from scratch, but my friend and I used a frozen one. You just sprinkle a little flour on a clean counter and then roll out the pastry. I don’t have a rolling pin anymore but a quart canning jar worked fine. I spread the dough out to not quite a … Continue reading →

Cardamom is my new favorite spice, and it’s in both of these recipes for rich sweets from India. They’re called fudge by the Indian cooking teacher Mina Joshi, but they don’t follow the American usage of having chocolate in them. Both these recipes were from Mina’s site, and you can see them here: cashew fudge and Magaj. They were both big hits at my recent dinner party. I was glad because the second one didn’t turn out at all like I expected. I even wrote FAILURE at the top of my recipe printout, but I was quite wrong. Cashew Fudge This … Continue reading →

We had a dinner party the other night, and I cooked up a storm of recipes I had found and adapted from a wonderful Indian vegetarian website I recently discovered, Give Me Some Spice. After starting with soup, the Potato Eggplant curry was the main dish I served (here’s the original recipe on that website) and our friends raved. Even my husband said it was better than the time I had tried it out on him. Why? Spices! With sizzling in the cooking oil and  adding its exotic flavors, this was one flavorful  dish. Those links take you to Amazon… I … Continue reading →

I love cooking with spices and it’s a great way to make simple meals special.  Recently I came across a website which is giving me a lot of ideas about cooking with spices. Mina Joshi teaches vegetarian Indian cooking in the U.K. but you can learn a lot from her website Givemesomespice.com. I’m not a vegetarian but we do eat a fair number of vegetarian meals and I think we will eat more since I discovered this site. Die-hard carnivores could easily add meat to many of these dishes. Want to know more about Indian spices? She explains them at that link. … Continue reading →

Four years ago we bought a pair of Joyce Chen kitchen scissors and a pair of Henckel kitchen shears. Despite very heavy daily use on the scissors and plenty of use on the shears, both are still sharp and going strong. Here I’ll be talking about why I think they are the best kitchen scissors and the best kitchen shears respectively, and I’ll be mentioning some other good choices in each category. I’m left-handed and my husband is right-handed and both these items work equally well for each of us. In a hurry? You can get the and the . … Continue reading →

Is cooking with olive oil good or bad for your health? And do you know about the scandals related to the best kind, EVOO or extra-virgin olive oil? I started this article to research the benefits and possible drawbacks of olive oil and soon got caught up in scandal as well. I’m happy to be able to tell you that cooking with olive oil is good and healthy, provided you follow the few simple tips outlined below. I once lived for a year in Nerja, a seaside village in southern Spain with olive orchards around it. A favorite snack was olive oil drizzled over fresh bread bought … Continue reading →

Raw organic apple cider vinegar is one of my favorite vinegars, and not just for its strong flavor. Because it helps to alkalinize our bodies, numerous health benefits are claimed for it. I’ve just embarked  on a project of drinking one or more glasses of water daily, each with a teaspoon or two of ACV added. I only use raw and organic kinds, and you can see why in my picture here. Looking at the bottom of the vinegar bottle, you can see the cloudy “mother” which has a cobweb-like nature. You wouldn’t get this in a pasteurized version. By … Continue reading →

I learned how to vacuum seal jars over ten years ago, and I’ve done it ever since. By vacuum sealing, much of the air and thus the oxygen which encourages spoilage is pumped out. This makes it a good thing for longer term storage of grains, nuts, beans, herbs, spices, and a lot of other things. Vacuum sealing can be done with fresh foods to keep them fresher, but I haven’t developed that habit. Mainly we do this for the jars we use in our kitchen as airtight kitchen containers. This isn’t a substitute for canning. Here my husband is … Continue reading →

No, I don’t cook the rice in the hot tub. I call this the hot tub brown rice recipe because it allows us to get in the hot tub before dinner while rice is cooking — with no worries and no scorched rice or pans. I was cooking dinner a little while ago, and my husband Kelly was out, at a meeting with someone. I decided to cook up a big batch of long grain brown rice and I wasn’t sure how much water to add for long grain. So I googled “how to cook brown rice” and discovered a … Continue reading →

Like many people, I am a good bit overweight. And like many people, on January 1, I decided to do something about it. Unlike many of them, I am still at it and I have lost five pounds. But even more important, I sure think I have found a way of eating that will work for me from now on. It solves a lot of problems that I have had with food for a long time. An online friend posted before-and-after photos of himself after eating in this way since last spring. Those sure caught my attention! I read his … Continue reading →

Do you eat beans much? Here are some ways to work them into your meals more, while minimizing their famous side-effect of flatulence. We’re talking here about dried beans such as garbanzos, black beans, pinto beans, and dozens of other varieties. Split peas and lentils, while not technically beans, are related legumes with similar qualities. First, why would you want to eat more beans? Here are four reasons: Beans can be really delicious when cooked properly. They need to be thoroughly cooked to be most easily digested. They lend themselves to all manner of combinations with other foods, such as … Continue reading →

“If things get really bad, we’ll have to eat beans and rice,” I’ve heard people groan. Well, this isn’t such a terrible fate. It does take a little planning. Most evenings, I spend a few minutes considering what we might eat the next day. Often there is a container of leftovers from something Kelly or I have concocted,  and if we don’t have them for lunch, we’ll have them for dinner. If it looks like we’ll be cooking something for dinner the next day, then I consider my beans and grains. Usually I’ll get a feeling of a bean or … Continue reading →