Category: Food&Recipes

Tomato season is just getting started and most of the ones we’re eating are the small “Raindrop” tomatoes

We had 3 regular tomatoes from the garden turn red, but each had a blemish that would need to be cut out. Then, Bert came home from camp with 4 tomatoes each in a plastic shell. They looked great but I knew they weren’t local and fresh. While we were eating the small tomatoes, I knew we’d ignore the big ones until they spoiled on the counter!

I wondered how hard it would be to make a small batch of tomato soup…I had a memory in mind of a lovely bowl of tomato soup my mother had made…MANY years ago. Somehow, the cans of condensed tomato soup just didn’t taste like my memory!

First, I looked up the recipe for “Fresh Tomato Soup” in my Joy of Cooking cookbook.

Sounded like the same procedure when I cook tomatoes in preparation for canning. I even had a fresh onion from the garden. I took the 7 tomatoes I had on the kitchen table and weighed them…almost 3 pounds! Good Enough!

NOTE: You can skip all the instruction below about preparing the tomatoes and just use several cans of diced tomatoes. Keep reading!

Next, each tomato needed to be trimmed and blemishes cut out. I cut an X on the bottom of each one. I got a pan of water ready to boil so I could dip each tomato into the hot water. In one minute, the skins would loosen so they would be easy to peel.

I lined the tomatoes up by the stove and put 4 and then 3 in the boiling water. After a minute I moved them to ice water. The skins were beginning to come off.

Of course, the steam clouded my camera!

I noticed the recipe said to remove the seeds. It wasn’t hard to just get rid of the seed pocket in the commercial tomatoes. Our tomatoes had hardly any developed seeds!

NOTE: If you have no interest in starting with fresh tomatoes, I think you could easily begin with a few cans of diced tomatoes and jump down to the step below that has the diced tomatoes cooking with chopped onion and go from there!

I had the onion ready to put in the pot with the cut tomatoes and simmered them on the stove.

After about 45 minutes everything looked pretty soft. I poured the whole pile into the blender and in less than a minute there were no chunks! Of course, I poured the pureed tomatoes/onions from the blender into a container before I took a picture of the blender! I put this container in the refrigerator until lunch time.

When it was time for lunch, I put the cooked pureed tomatoes/onions into a saucepan and started warming them up.

I added about a tablespoon of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, a sprinkle of pepper and a teaspoon of Basil flakes. I let this simmer about 10 minutes. Finally, I added about 1/4 cup of coconut milk. Bert added additional regular milk to his bowl.

Very tasty!!

I know it seems like it was a lot of work, but if I’m cooking tomatoes anyway, why not make a good meal out of them while I’m cooking! Even if you start with plain canned diced tomatoes, it will end up tasting pretty good! Enjoy!

ps. Just for fun, I looked up the ingredients in Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup. The serving size was 1/2 cup and was 90 calories! Here’s the ingredient list for that can of soup: Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), Water, Wheat Flour, Sugar, Contains Less Than 2% Of: Salt, Potassium Salt, Natural Flavoring, Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Celery Extract, Garlic Oil. Contains: Wheat.

I think my soup tasted just fine without the wheat and “natural flavoring!”

If you have comments or questions, please contact me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.

A few days ago, I experimented with a recipe for zucchini cookies. The recipe came from allrecipes.com. They didn’t taste too bad, but they were basically undercooked. I didn’t know how to trust my oven temperature and couldn’t tell by looking if they were done. I kept thinking they needed more flour and since I don’t really care for raisins, maybe chocolate chips would be better. I even wondered if I could add a little coconut to the mix! Here is the original recipe:

The cookies that followed the original recipe came out looking like these…kind of flat and undercooked.

So today, I tried again. First, shredding the zucchini:

Two zucchini made 2 cups of shredded zucchini…enough for two batches of cookies. The second cup of shreds I put in a zip bag with a paper towel to soak up moisture and stored it in the refrigerator.

Here are my notes as I modified the recipe as I went along:

The flour mixture has all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup of coconut (like for macaroons), baking soda, ground cinnamon and salt (I left out ground cloves because we don’t care for that taste).

Then, I melted a stick of butter and beat it with the sugar. I added 2 eggs and a teaspoon of vanilla. Next came the shredded zucchini, the flour mixture and the cup of chocolate chips.

At this point the mixture was really sticky, so I put it in the refrigerator for an hour. I tried making dough balls but it was still too sticky so I just scooped up dough with a teaspoon and put them on the cookie sheets. Timing was different from the original recipe…at 375 degrees, I gave them 6 minutes. Then I rotated the trays and gave them another 6 minutes. They were browning nicely so I took them out of the oven. They turned out great! They are more “cakey” but tasty and used up a zucchini!

Finally, here is my revised recipe. Enjoy! If you have questions or comments, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.

I now have a folder full of zucchini recipes to try…and we finally have some zucchini! I just couldn’t make myself buy zucchini when I saw the plants in the garden a few days ago. In three days since I took this picture, I picked two that were about 8″ long.

Of course, I forgot to take a picture of them before I put them through the shredder! This little hand-operated shredder worked just great for two zucchini.

The recipe came from https://allrecipes.com and I didn’t retype it yet. I’m starting to like the way allrecipes.com formats their recipes.

When I looked at the ingredients, I saw I needed a dry cornbread mix, 8.5 ounces. Interesting. I thought that must be a small mix. Sure enough, it was a Jiffy cornbread mix!

I started by shredding the zucchini and chopping an onion.

Then I added two eggs and mixed in the 4 oz of cheese.

Then I added the cornbread mix.

I put this mixture in a casserole sprayed with oil, and sprinkled the rest of the cheese on top.

I put the casserole in a 350-degree oven timed for 55 minutes instead of 60 minutes as called for in the recipe, just in case my oven temperature was still unpredictable. After 45 minute the cheese on top was very brown. I took the casserole out of the oven, worried that the top layer of cheese was baked too hard even though the inside could probably bake another 10 minutes.

The casserole tasted fine, but next time I’ll wait until the last 15 minutes to put the cheese on top. Here’s what it looked like after we’ve eaten most of it. It really was pretty tasty!

I will count this recipe a success and will make it again! If you have a question or comment please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.

My adventure into making scones has persisted for several weeks. I had never eaten or baked a scone before April, 2025. I had read about them in many novels set in Ireland and Scotland. Many folks seemed to love them. However, with all the baking from scratch I’ve done, I had never even tried to make scones! Pretty embarrassing!

With the need to provide some products for the Ladies Auxiliary to the Fire Company bake sales, and various ads from the King Arthur Baking Company, I decided it was time to give it a try. I was sure the scone mixes would make the whole process fool proof! Haha!

I ordered 5 different flavors of scone mixes. The mixes just needed an egg, 1/2 cup of milk, 1/2 tsp. of salt and a stick of butter. That was the easy part. Then came mixing up a VERY stiff, sticky batter. My hand muscle strength is not very good, so I’m sure the batter did not get mixed well enough. Then I had to struggle to pack the sticky batter into the ceramic scone pan.

When I baked them, the scones raised up and made a solid mass above the dividers of the pan. I ended up having to add minutes to the baking time…up to 30 minutes…and the bottom of the scones still wasn’t done! Gee…maybe something was wonky with my oven!

(Bert got an oven thermometer and is working on “calibrating” the oven temperature today. We’ve had this oven for 20 years and never knew we could do that!)

By adding time, I was able to get the scones cooked enough to get them ready for the bake sale! It didn’t seem to matter…people loved them and we sold out two days in a row at the Yard Sale (about 70 individual scones) and again at the Memorial Day bake sale (another 70 scones). Holy cow! I think we’ve got a hit…but now that the sales are over until September, I need to figure out a better way to make them!

I had an extra Cherry Almond mix (my favorite) so today I assembled the ingredients.

The jar of “sparkling sugar” from King Arthur gave the tops a nice sparkle.

First, I cut up the butter and worked it into small pieces before adding the egg/milk mixture.

Then, I added the egg/milk mixture. Since the mixing process is tough with my hand strength (or lack thereof) I decided to mix the batter up in my stand mixer. I ended up adding a little more milk than it called for just to get it to mix.

The dough was still VERY sticky, but I dumped it out onto the floured table and gave it a few quick kneads.

Then I patted it into a thick circle…about 3/4″ thick.

I used a pizza cutter to cut the circle into 8 pieces and put them on a cookie sheet. I sprinkled them with the tiny bit of sparkling sugar I had left.

Note to self: Next time use two cookie sheets to give them room to spread out.

I still had to add a few minutes, but I could get them off the pan without breaking apart…much better compared to the ceramic pan.

They tasted delicious, but now that Bert has the oven calibrated, I hope it’s a little more consistent with time. I’ve also ordered silicone scone pans to try. Maybe when I get the baking part figured out, I’ll try making them from scratch! Stay tuned!

I should know better! When a recipe says, “20-minute Homemade Bread” I should be careful. It’s never 20 minutes! That’s the bake time. And of course, the picture looks nothing like what I produced. I’m always looking for new easy bread recipes…however, the lovely picture of a loaf of bread and the 20-minute headline seemed too good to be true.

Here’s the recipe that I found on Facebook:

I was able to mix it up by hand and made a round loaf like it suggested. It tasted OK but because it did not have yeast, it really was just a huge baking powder biscuit! It fell apart like a biscuit and did not rise very much.

I think the rest of the loaf will be crumbled and dispersed for the birds! I don’t plan to make that bread again!

I still wanted to make a single loaf of bread. So today I pulled out my recipe for English Muffin Toasting Bread. I wrote about it in November, 2023. It is not a complicated recipe and does not require kneading. It’s more of a batter bread with yeast. If you compare bake time…this bread takes 22-27 minutes. It tastes so much better!

Here is the recipe:

The instructions above are pretty clear. If you’d like the step-by-step pictures, please see my post…https://marykisner.com/making-english-muffin-toasting-bread/

This loaf turned out great and really tastes good!

I think I’ll stand by my tried-and-true recipes that I know taste good and aren’t too complicated. It’s a waste of ingredients and a waste of my time to experiment. (However…I’m always a sucker for words like “simple” and “quick.”) I’ll try to resist!

I seem to be a collector of recipes. By now, almost every other post I read on Facebook is a picture of some delicious-looking dish or baked good. Since I open these posts to read the ingredients, Facebook offers me more recipes! Of course.

I have found recipes in cookbooks written by various community and church groups as fundraisers. Recipes are in every newspaper and magazine I read. Sometimes the recipes are easy to follow; others have complicated steps or ingredients. Some cookbooks focus on a specific topic, like low-fat or vegan ingredients. I seem to gravitate to recipes that use basic ingredients…flour, eggs, sugar, etc. Other cookbooks focus on a kitchen appliance, like recipes for crockpots, air fryers and instant pots. I have those appliances but they are stored in cupboards. It has to be a recipe I really want to try to pull the appliance out to the kitchen counter.

I just found a link to a huge list of recipes compiled by two women for their church…The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints…the Mormans.

https://safelygatheredin2.blogspot.com

https://safelygatheredin2.blogspot.com/2008/11/alphabetical-recipe-list.html

It is similar to many other cookbooks offered by church groups with breakfast, main dishes and desserts, but the focus is on recipes that use the ingredients that can be found in long-term storage, like flour, sugar and rice. The church guides their members to store basic ingredients for 3-months, 6-months and beyond.

Their advice to have a stockpile of food and supplies is now a common suggestion for non-church members who just want to be prepared. Even the government suggests a 72-hour store in case of an emergency. It sounds unnecessary, unless you remember all the shortages we just went through with the Covid lockdowns!

The website also has links to how to store the ingredients, how to store enough water for emergencies and a list of tutorials that show How to Pressure Can, Make Whole Wheat Bread and Plan Your Garden, among other topics.

It appears the whole website was written in 2008 and 2009, but because the recipes are timeless…meaning they use basic ingredients and simple cooking appliances…they won’t go out of style when a new appliance is developed.

I searched the internet for the guidelines for food storage and I think the label “prepping” must have been first attributed to the Mormans as they suggest food storage. Now we can learn from their advice.

I think I’ll start experimenting with the recipes in the list. I’ll cite the website so you’ll know the recipe came from that blog. Enjoy!

I seem to be on the lookout for Apple Cake recipes. I’m interested in recipes that use apples without having to roll out pie crust for apple pie or cut butter into tiny pieces like apple crisp topping. So far I’ve written about French Apple Cake (https://marykisner.com/making-french-apple-cake/) and German Apple Cake (https://marykisner.com/making-german-apple-cake/).

This recipe for Cinnamon Apple Cake looked easy but the recipe was not in my preferred format. The ingredients were not even listed in order of use so I ended up having to search the list of ingredients at every step to confirm amounts. When I was done mixing and put the pan in the oven…I realized I didn’t measure out the brown sugar correctly! No problem. The cake was delicious with less brown sugar so I corrected my recipe.

Here is my version of this recipe:

Here are the steps to make this delicious cake.

1. In a medium bowl, whisk 2 eggs and 1 cup of oil.

2. Measure out the cinnamon, white and brown sugars and vanilla extract. Add them to the bowl. (Original recipe called for 1 cup of brown sugar. I used 1/2 cup.)

3. Measure out the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder and add to the bowl.

4. Chop 1 large apple (I had two small ones) and 1/2 cup of walnuts. Fold into the batter. This made a VERY stiff batter. Using a spatula, press the mixture into a round 9″ pan (sprayed with PAM).

5. After baking for 45 minutes, here is the cake! It obviously didn’t rise very much but it sure smelled up the house with cinnamon!

The directions said, wait 15 minutes to cut…but I will tell you…wait a little longer! The first piece sort of fell into crumbs when cut while warm:

When the cake was cool, it was much easier to cut!

This is when I knew I didn’t need that extra half-cup of brown sugar…it was sweet enough! I think this recipe for Cinnamon Apple Cake is a winner! Enjoy!