Sela Carsen's Blog, page 8

Friday Foodie: Colcannon

I'm kind of winging it on the history here, but Colcannon is an Irish dish traditionally made with potatoes and cabbage. Yep. That's it. Cheap and filling. I'm good with cheap and filling, but I had a pretty good idea that my family was not going to be too thrilled. Still, I happened across a recipe in Roz Denny's Ultimate Vegetarian Cookbook that used kale instead of cabbage.

Good. Because I don't like cabbage.

I wish I'd taken a picture, but I hadn't had my brilliant Friday Foodie idea yet, so just pretend there's a pretty picture here.

Preheat your oven to 375F. Spray a casserole dish with Pam.

Peel and chop 2 lb of potatoes. Boil in plenty of salted water, drain and mash with a bit of butter and milk.

Take 1 bunch of curly kale, tear the leaves off the ribs in bite-sized pieces. Bring a pot of salted water to boil, boil the kale for about 8 minutes, or until tender. Drain.

Mix the potatoes and kale together with a couple of chopped scallions (green onions), some freshly grated nutmeg and a bit of salt and pepper, and spread into the casserole dish. Now take your spoon and make 6…divots…in the mash. Indentations. Holes. Whatever you want to call them. You don't have to go all the way down to the bottom of the pan, but you're going to crack a whole egg into each hollow, so make sure they're just deep enough to accommodate an egg.

Sprinkle some kosher salt over the eggs and bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the eggs are set. When it comes out of the oven, sprinkle a generous handful of grated sharp cheese (I used a sharp white cheddar, but Parmesan will work. Use something with some bite) over the top and it's done.

There you go. 1 eggy section per person. You can dress this up by flavoring it with mashed roasted garlic, throwing some cayenne into the mix, whatever herbs you want. I can see dill working here, thyme, some fennel fronds, maybe basil. Whatever strikes your fancy.

So, low fat, high carb, meh on the cholesterol because of the egg, but the egg is good on protein. And of course kale is filled with vitamins, even though we boiled it. You could even do this without the egg and serve it as a side dish.

Next time, I'll remember to take pictures!

ETA: My family loved it! They were surprised because, really? Potatoes and kale with baked eggs on top? But they all told me I needed to make it again.

Let the blogging…begin! Today's topic: Food

Because everyone likes to eat, right?

Here's the thing. There are a ton of food bloggers out there. Pioneer Woman, Smitten Kitchen, A Year of Slow Cooking, Authors Kitchen…. And then there are the major recipe sites like Food Network, AllRecipes, Mollie Katzen (Moosewood, vegetarian) and my favorite – Cook's Illustrated. To get the really good stuff at CI, you have to subscribe. Best $4/month I spend.

Since all those people specialize and do food blogging much better than I do, I'll probably just limit my contributions to a Friday Foodie type thing. But it's Thursday, and since I feel like talking about food, here you go.

My mother was a great cook. I say "was" not because she's gone, but because she's pretty much retired from cooking. A lot of her meals were simple, but she's always had a liberal hand with the spices, so they were never bland. Also, she was a daring cook. She'd fry frog legs, host crawfish boils, make weird terrines, do a crown roast for dad's birthday…all kinds of stuff.

But she never taught me how to cook. I'd get in the way, I was too slow, too messy, too whatever, so I didn't spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Fast forward to the après-honeymoon phase of my marriage.

I couldn't cook. Anything. DH would ask what was for dinner and I'd go, "Umm, what cans do we have?" It was about that time that Emeril Lagasse started doing his "Emeril Live" show. Bobby Flay showed up on TV. Martha hadn't gone to jail yet. I started writing down recipes and tweaking things.

But it wasn't until we moved from Idaho to Louisiana that I really started working in the kitchen, though. I wasn't working anymore, wasn't going to school anymore, and we launched into the whole baby thing, so I had plenty of time to fuss around in the kitchen. We were buying cookbooks like we had room to spare and I discovered that the quickest way to make DH happy was to have the scent of onions and garlic cooking in hot oil when he walked in the door.

Honestly, what is it with men and food?

Long story short, I learned. A lot. Over the years we've hosted Gourmet Clubs, officer's wives meetings, neighborhood get-togethers, New Year's brunches, and countless holiday meals for the family.

Sure, sometimes it's pizza night. Sometimes it's a pre-made freezer meal. But mostly it's my cooking and I like to think I've gotten pretty good at it. I've gotten further and further away from pre-packaged things except for emergency situations.

I'm also working on switching to more organic/local produce, dairy and meat, but it can get expensive quickly. While pesticide residue is only one aspect of organic farming, I found that using the Dirty Dozen Food List is helpful in prioritizing which fruit and veg to buy organic and which isn't so critical.

Dairy was one of the first things we changed, and honestly, I still don't buy organic. I do, however, buy hormone-free. For years, I thought I was lactose intolerant. When we moved to an area that had a regional dairy, they made a point of only using dairy products that came from cattle that hadn't been treated with growth hormones to force more milk production. I decided to do an experiment for a week and drink the "new" milk and lo and behold! No digestive issues! I'm not lactose intolerant at all, but I'm wicked sensitive to that hormone. Now that I've solved the milk issue, the trouble is finding other hormone-free dairy products like yogurt, cheese and cream — that don't cost the earth.

Meat is by far the most expensive change, so we're still inconsistent. I mean, good grief. I recently saw a whole chicken that weighed 3 1/2 lbs marked at nearly $17!! That's crazy talk! Obviously, I need a more reasonable source for that sort of thing.

Last year, I decided I needed to lose about 30 lb and figured that I would sacrifice all that whole food goodness to try Jenny Craig. And it worked. I went through a few weeks and lost weight…and broke out in hives every night. I could NOT figure out what was wrong with me until I asked some friends and they pointed to the food, which is filled with preservatives and colors and chemicals of all kinds.

Damn. That food kicked my immune system into overdrive and I had to go on a really boring elimination diet to see if there were any actual foods I was sensitive to now, aside from the chemical garbage. I'm still working on that. So far, it seems to be mostly the food colorings and preservatives, but I might also have a soy thing. Which is particularly awesome since soy is in nearly everything. *sigh*

Anyhoo (I did tell y'all about my unfortunate 'anyhoo' habit, right?) tomorrow I'll be posting a recipe I found for a vegetarian dish that everyone in the family was surprised that they actually liked. Cheap, easy to find ingredients, and low effort. Yay!

Have to relearn blogging

It occurred to me yesterday that I may need a refresher course on blogging. Half the reason I haven't posted much since the site came back is that I have nothing to say. I could just keep repeating myself:

Wrote/Didn't write (Wrote)

Children fine/disease-ridden (Children fine. Mom has a cold. I wrenched my back, but it's getting better.)

Dinner was chicken/pasta (Dinner last night was Chicken Korma with rice and broccoli)

Had 1/2/3/too many cups of coffee today (On my first and quickly headed to my second.)

No. There's more to blogging than me just blathering about the same things over and over. I don't DO a lot of interesting stuff, but I know a hella lot of weird things. And my thought process takes me some … unique directions. So I'm going to spend a little time figuring out how to make my blog something fun to read for everyone.

Is it safe to come out now?

I totally would have done that SOPA blackout thing yesterday, but let's face it. The last time I tried to update my sidebar, I broke my website for over a year. I think it was safest for me to just not mess with anything.

Anyhoo (Can you believe I actually say that? I do. It's a little embarrassing.) what's up with y'all?

I'm surrounded by pestilence and plague. Monkey Boy was sick last week. Mom and the Monkey Princess are sick this week. I suspect that Monkey Princess's illness is conveniently timed to get her another day to work on an assignment, but she's also been feeling iffy for the last few days and is genuinely ill, bless her little heart.

I've been writing! I know I say that a lot, but after the drought of the last couple of years, I'm still kind of amazed by it. When I can't make another move on the Steampunk, I twiddle with other little bits and bobs of things I've done to see if they could use some sprucing up. It feels good to write.

So now that the one child is safely at school and the diseased ones are resting, it's time for me to write some more!

Slowly gearing back up

So all the bookshelf pages are done. I need to spruce up my About Me page and my Links page, but other than that, the site is good to go. Shawntelle The Amazing is still fiddling with my bloggy bits (ooooh, that sounds kinda dirty), but I can still post and the posts show up in the sidebar. New websites are so cool! Also, I like my cuppa coffee in the header. I'm drinking coffee right now. Coffee gooooood.

Sorry. Got distracted.

I blogged at the Samhain Blog the other day about finishing up my break from writing, if you'd like to go read it.

Now I'm going to do some writing. Because I can.

I'm baaaaack!

Yes, I'm back. The Hermit Cave was very hermity, but too far away from everyone. Which, I suppose is the purpose of a Hermit Cave, but it turns out that I'm not that much of a hermit. Or at least I'm not a permanent hermit. So I left the cave.

The cyber-sun! It burns my eyes!

I'm back. I'm writing, but I can't tell you what because it'll jinx the mojo.

And Shawntelle Madison is The Best Thing Since Peanut Butter. She's the one who's done all this sweet webby goodness and kicked my butt back into the light. Thank you, Shawntelle!

A request! A request!

From Kristin Nelson!! Woohooo!!! Now all I have to do is make sure my first 30 pages sparkle like, well, sparkly things!

Giveaway!

I'm blogging at Bitten by Paranormal Romance today and giving away a copy of CAROLINA PEARL. Comment to be entered to win!

Pearl talk – myths and my story!

I'm blogging at Beyond the Veil today about pearls in mythology and how I tweaked reality to suit my fiction.

These, by the way, belong to Elizabeth Taylor. The one dangling at the bottom dates from the 16th century and was owned by Mary, Queen of Scots. The week Liz received it, it was nearly eaten by one of her puppies!

Just for Julie

Every year, Julie Cohen, an ex-pat American living in the UK, asks what we're having for Thanksgiving at our house, so here goes.

Turkey, brined with citrus, seasoned with fresh herbs, covered with bacon and a cherry jam glaze. Trust me.

Pot Roast with potatoes, turnips, parsnips, carrots and onions

Herb dressing (I'm baking the bread today)

Mashed potatoes (maybe with roasted garlic, maybe not. haven't decided yet.)

Gravy

Sweet potatoes au gratin with chipotle cream

Roasted sweet potatoes and sprouts (the only way I can eat brussel sprouts)

Coleslaw

Green bean casserole

Homemade rolls

Cranberry relish

Desserts could be any two or three of the following:

Pecan pie

Pumpkin cheesecake

Apple crumble

Chocolate cake with chewy caramel topping

Black Russian cake

By day 3, what's left of turkey carcass will become Cream of Turkey and Rice Soup.

And that's just for 9 people. Who's hungry?