Category: Food&Recipes

Today was a day to experiment! Let me first say…if you like cheese, consider just cutting a chunk of cheddar or grab a mozzarella cheese stick. There are no carbs and they are easy to eat on the run.

Cheddar has no carbs:

Mozzarella also has no carbs:

If you’re looking for a crunchy cheese snack, I found these at Walmart…with 1gm or less of carbs! They don’t taste too bad if you like Parmesan cheese. Also quite carb free!

Then, I found a recipe to make a cottage cheese snack. It looked pretty easy and cottage cheese is also quite low in carbs…6gm for 1/2 cup. Here is the recipe:

I like cottage cheese better than Parmesan, so I thought I’d give it a try. Now came the experimenting!

My First Attempt:

In my first attempt I used my standard baking sheets with the silicone sheet on them. I scooped out a large spoon of cottage cheese (it called for 2 tablespoons) and even sprinkled a little grated cheddar on half of them.

I put them in the preheated 400 degreeF oven.

In 20 minutes they were flat, starting to burn around the edges and quite soggy in the middle. I could barely get them off the sheets…a real mess.

My Second Attempt:

Obviously, my silicone mats were not helpful. I got out my roll of parchment paper and cut two for my baking sheets.

This time I used less cottage cheese and turned the oven down to 350 degreesF. These were at least edible, but the oven was still too hot.

My Third Attempt:

This time I turned the oven down to 325 degreesF and timed them for about 30 minutes.

Then, I turned the oven off, opened the oven door and let them cool and dry out even more. They turned out much better!

So, I guess it is possible to make a cheese snack with cottage cheese, but frankly…it seemed like a lot of messy work. I might as well just eat 1/2 cup of cottage cheese for 6 gm of carbs!

My Fourth Attempt to Make a Snack:

While I was waiting for the last batch to cool, I tried something else. I pulled out 12 corn chips (one serving, 12 chips, had 19 gm of carbs).

I arranged the corn chips on a dinner plate and put a square of cheddar cheese on each one.

Then, 20 seconds in the microwave melted the cheese and I had a simple crunchy cheese snack. I think I’ve found a fairly low carb snack/lunch that was very easy to make!

Frankly, if I want a crunchy cheese snack, I’ll use corn chips and the microwave. If I want cottage cheese, I’ll eat it with a spoon! If I want Parmesan cheese…I can buy a bag of snacks from Walmart! So, that’s my experimenting for the day! Enjoy!

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

It really is a thick tomato sauce flavored with onion. From that, we each season the soup to our liking. I add salt, pepper and some coconut milk. Bert adds salt, more pepper and regular milk. When we have soup, we often comment about the big crackers we remember having with soup…oyster crackers. I have not looked for them lately in the store, but I have seen the “common crackers” sold through Vermont Country Store. I think they are pretty big.

Recently, I found a recipe in Bert’s muzzleloading magazine, “MuzzleBlasts” to make oyster crackers. I gave it a try and ended up with some really nice crackers for soup.

The ingredients are pretty simple:

Flour, Baking Powder, Salt, water, melted butter.

Warm water

Melted butter

Mix all ingredients together to make a soft dough.

Scoop out spoonfuls, roll into small balls of dough and put them on a cookie sheet. They rise a little but the next time I might make them a little bigger.

Bake in preheated oven 375 degrees for 15 minutes. Turn off the oven and leave the crackers in the oven until just warm. They make crunchy little globs that work great in soup! Enjoy!

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

I just realized I had not shared my Zucchini Bread recipe yet! We’ve had enough zucchini so I’ve been able to experiment with cookies and a casserole along with how I dehydrate the zucchini shreds. You can find those articles at the following links:

https://marykisner.com/marys-zucchini-chocolate-chip-cookies/; https://marykisner.com/making-a-zucchini-cornbread-casserole/; and https://marykisner.com/dehydrating-zucchini-shreds/.

Now that the zucchini plants are not producing so much, it was time to use up all the zucchini sitting around my kitchen. I put several of the small, misshapen ones in the compost bin. I saved two smaller ones and shredded the rest.

I ended up with about 5 cups of shredded zucchini. I decided to make two batches of zucchini bread…which would use up 4 cups…and froze the last cup.

Making a double batch of zucchini bread made sense and it was a lot easier if I measured everything out in pairs. I wouldn’t start mixing until I had everything ready.

Here is the recipe!

First, I measured out the Baking Powder, Baking Soda and Salt.

Then, I shredded and measured out the zucchini.

I chopped the walnuts:

Here are all the prepped ingredients:

Then, I was ready to follow the instructions.

1. In a large mixing bowl whisk the eggs, oil, sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg (I did not use) and vanilla. Whisk well to break up the eggs and get everything well incorporated.
2. Blend in the baking powder, soda and salt, so they are mixed in thoroughly, then stir in the flour.

3. When the flour is almost all incorporated, fold in the zucchini and nuts. Stop mixing as soon as there is no dry flour left and the zucchini and nuts are evenly dispersed. Do not over-mix this batter.

4. I poured the batter into 3 pans, instead of 2. I’m always concerned my oven isn’t the right temperature, so I thought these loaves could be a little smaller and get cooked through.

I let them cool in the pan about half an hour (mostly because I forgot about them!) and turned them out to continue cooling.

Result…I had three loaves of zucchini bread…delicious!

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

What in the world is an ANZAC biscuit? These cookies (or “biscuits” as they are called in the UK and Australia/New Zealand) are considered a traditional cookie to honor ANZAC day in Australia, New Zealand and Tonga.

“Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia, New Zealand and Tonga that broadly commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders ‘who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations’ and ‘the contribution and suffering of all those who have served.’ Observed on 25 April each year, Anzac Day was originally devised to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who served in the Gallipoli campaign, their first engagement in the First World War (1914-1918).” (See more at https://anzacspirit.com.au/blog/the-traditions-of-anzac-day/)

Several sources online suggested wives and mothers would mail these cookies to their soldiers in ANZAC, because without eggs and being quite sturdy, they traveled and kept well. Other sources said, “contrary to legend, Anzac biscuits weren’t sent to our troops serving overseas in WWI. However, they were commonly sold at church fetes and galas to raise funds for the war effort. They didn’t get their name until peacetime, with the first Anzac recipe appearing in about 1919.”

You can see, the history of the Anzac biscuits has been around for over 100 years! Whether they were popular because they traveled well, or they made a good baked item to raise funds, I might have to bake some to sell at our Boalsburg Fire Company Auxiliary Yard Sale in a few weeks (September 19-20, 2025). If I include the recipe and a little history, they might generate some interest and sales!

Because they were popular in Australia, they are called biscuits…like cookies are called in the UK. However, they are basically a simple Oatmeal Coconut Cookie. They are sturdy, travel well and taste good!

Here’s the recipe I followed. I added vanilla and cinnamon to my recipe just because!!

The ingredient list is pretty simple. After making 2-3 batches and reading several variations of the recipe at various sources, I think you could add other ingredients of your choosing…walnuts, chocolate chips, etc.

Making the ANZAC Biscuits

1. Assemble the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly.

2. Melt one stick of butter and add 2 Tbsp of honey and mix well. (This is when I added the vanilla.)

3. Put the baking soda in a small cup and add 2 Tbsp boiling water. This was a real pain in the neck…next time I’ll add the baking soda and water to the melted butter and just mix it up.

4. Combine the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients to make a moist batter. Scoop about a tablespoon or two into your hand and form a ball. Place on cookie sheet and flatten gently with your fingers. They will spread and flatten as they cook.

5. Bake at 325 degrees for 12-14 minutes (to make a firm chewy cookie) or about 15-18 minutes to make them a little crunchy. Rotate trays as needed halfway.

This batch made 14-16 cookies…each 3-4 inches across! They can be made smaller and the recipe can be doubled. Might be the perfect cookie to sell at our bake sale! Enjoy!

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

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.