Category: Food&Recipes

While I was rearranging the jars on my shelf in the kitchen, I pulled forward the jar that was filled with dried chickpeas. I had forgotten they were there. It’s always so easy to just open a can all ready to eat! I knew I would be in the kitchen that day so I thought I’d make a batch and try a recipe to make a chickpea snack!

I measured out 2 cups into a sauce pan and covered them with water to soak. An hour or two later…when I remembered they were there, I turned on the burner, brought the chickpeas to a boil and turned down the heat to simmer for a while. I tried covering the pan, but even a low simmer bubbled up and almost overflowed with “bean suds.” You know what I mean!

When they were cooked, I drained them and let them cool in cold water. Of course, the skins started to separate so I gently rubbed them together with my hands to loosen them. So easy…NOT! I probably had at least 2 cans worth of chickpeas so I spent a good half an hour getting the skins off. Quite a mess!

Finally, I had two containers of nice clean chickpeas! I started by using a handful in my salad for lunch!

Then I spread them out on a paper towel covered tray and let them dry.

My first snack recipe used about 1 1/2 cups of chickpeas. I put them in a gallon bag, added olive oil and salt and shook them up until coated.

Then, I spread them out on a baking tray and put them in the oven…425 degrees for about 20 minutes. They weren’t crunchy yet so I gave them another 10-15 minutes. Now I had a snack I could eat!

This is the recipe I found on the internet:

The second recipe was supposed to make a sweet snack:

This was a little more complicated, with a mixture of coconut oil, cinnamon, vanilla and maple syrup. I ended up baking the chickpeas for 10 minutes, then dumping them into a gallon bag, pouring in the oil/cinnamon mixture and shaking it up. I poured the chickpeas back on the baking pan and put it back in the oven. There has to be a better way!

This might have made a sweet snack, but frankly it didn’t taste very good. I think I’d have to tweak the seasonings the next time.

So, that was my adventure into making a chickpea snack from dried chickpeas! Next time I’ll start with a can of chickpeas and save myself half a day! If you have a better way, or a better tasting recipe, I’d love to hear about it!

One of my major concerns when we planted zucchini in the garden in the spring was the potential for too many zucchini. Luckily, thanks to dry, hot weather the zucchini plants have produced an underwhelming number of zucchini to deal with! We’ve picked them when they were just 6″ to 8″ long so we’ve been able to keep up.

Here’s another recipe we tried a few days ago: Zucchini and Potato Fritters. It turned out to be delicious! If you can eat eggs, this would make a great “hash brown” addition to breakfast! (Note: if you can’t eat eggs, make “flax eggs” by combining 2 Tablespoons of ground flaxseed with 6 Tablespoons of water, let the mixture sit for 10 minutes.)

Here is the recipe:

I started by shredding the vegetables and putting them in a large bowl. Sometimes, zucchini recipes suggest squeezing out the water from shredded zucchini. Instead, we decided to try dehydrated minced onion…thinking they would help soak up the extra water.

My hand crank shredder did well with all the vegetables.

We added the minced onion, seasoned bread crumbs and eggs to the pile of shredded vegetables. We decided to not add the cheese…I’m not able to eat cheese at this time. Bert compared it to making meatloaf!

Next, I took handfuls of the mixture and tried to make patties. I squished each handful together and carefully laid them on a foil covered tray.

(While I was making patties, I was thinking this mixture might be good as an egg roll stuffing. Hmmm. May have to try that!)

When I had the first 6 patties made, Bert transferred them to the frying pan with a spatula.

Amazingly, as they cooked, they stuck together just fine. We ended up with 15 “hash brown” patties. They were delicious hot out of the pan. Great addition to our supper! Sweet & Sour Sauce worked great but I imagine creamy salad dressing, maple syrup or honey could work too!

I was able to put the patties in quart bags (2 to a bag) and put them in the freezer…ready for a quick 2 minutes in the microwave (1 minute per side)!

Another zucchini recipe to add to my cookbook! Enjoy!

Now that I’m searching for recipes using zucchini, I notice I’m hearing from friends that Zucchini Bread is something I should try. I found the following recipe on https://www.allrecipes.com. Of course, I had to reformat it into my favorite layout (which is based on the layout from Joy of Cooking). Instead of a list of ingredients at the beginning, the ingredients are listed as part of the instructions. With a glance down the recipe, I can see the list of ingredients in the order they are needed.

This recipe made 4 mini loaves of bread. The first time I made the recipe I tried muffins. That worked great, but I baked them about 5 minutes too long and they were pretty firm. Luckily, they still tasted great!

Here is the recipe:

First, I usually preheat the oven just as I begin assembling the ingredients. I did spray the mini loaf pans with oil (after baking I discovered the bottom of the pans really needed parchment paper to keep it from sticking). Muffin papers in the muffin pan really helped too.

Prepping Ingredients

When I look at a recipe like this and glance down the ingredient list, I see I’ll need to have 2 cups of shredded zucchini and 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts ready to go. I end up prepping them before I begin assembling the recipe.

Next, I assemble the dry ingredients in a separate bowl:

Mixing Up the Batter

I now continue with Step 2…assembling the wet ingredients…eggs, oil, vanilla and sugar. (This is when I preheat the oven.)

The zucchini is prepped and ready to fold in:

Dry ingredients are ready to mix in also (see bowl above).

Finally, I pull the frozen blueberries out of the freezer, measure 2 cups and mix them into the bread…still frozen. Fresh berries are fine also but when they are frozen, they are not as delicate and I can really mix them in.

(NOTE: Walnuts are added last (or not at all!) I love them, but not everyone can eat them. When I make bread where I know I’m going to gift it to a neighbor who can’t have nuts, I measure out their loaf or muffins first, then add the walnuts for the rest of us.)

Finally, I spoon the thick batter into the mini loaf pans or muffin cups and bake the bread about 50 minutes. Muffins will probably be done in 45 minutes.

FYI…this is what happened when I tried to get the bread out of the pan (thus the suggestion to also use parchment paper on the bottom):

Luckily when I turned them over, they didn’t look too bad from the top! And they tasted great!

I think I’ll stick with muffins! Of course, in my quest to find ways to use up zucchini, this recipe used only ONE zucchini, but made 4 loaves of bread or 24 cupcakes!! Enjoy!

In anticipation of an abundance of zucchini in our garden, I’m experimenting with recipes to find ways to use them. In the past, when we did not grow them, zucchini just appeared on our patio table as the neighbors tried to find ways to distribute their garden overload! This year, I’ve heard friends and neighbors say they would NOT be growing zucchini this year! Maybe I can sneak a few onto their patio tables!

Obviously, it will be a few weeks until we have zucchini to cook and share, but I want to be ready with ideas so I don’t waste the produce. In the last week or so I’ve actually had to go to the grocery store to buy a few zucchini to experiment with!

For this experiment making zucchini fries in the air fryer, I picked up 2 medium zucchini. I ended up using only one. The recipe came from https://www.allrecipes.com. I retyped it into a format I prefer and went to work.

Anticipating this recipe, Bert had ordered a simple cheese grater for the Parmesan cheese (basically, simple enough for me to use and it will also slice and shred vegetables.) It’s lightweight and easy to clean compared to my food processor!

Prepping the Ingredients

First, I grated the cheese and set it aside.

Next, I measured out the bread crumbs and added the cheese and seasonings.

I used this general seasoning along with the dried basil.

Next, I got the eggs ready in another bowl. I used a fork to gently beat them.

Making the Fries

I cut the zucchini into “fries” as described in the instructions and dipped them into the egg mixture. Then I rolled them in the bread crumb mixture.

Then, I laid them out on my air fryer trays and sprayed them with oil.

These “fries” used up only one (1) zucchini!

The trays went into the air fryer. About 12 minutes later, I had a plate full of zucchini fries! They were pretty good. Not sure I’d bother if I had a pile of zucchini to use up!

I now have ONE recipe that I know tastes pretty good and isn’t too hard to make. I think if I had the grandkids here for a meal, I’d need to make several batches!

My Oatmeal Bread is my go-to favorite recipe…to make, to eat and to share! I have never had a bad batch of this bread (that I can remember!). You can read about my recipe in this previous post (https://marykisner.com/marys-oatmeal-bread/).

In the last several months I’ve been unhappy with texture of the bread. At least it still tasted OK but the bread was a little dry and crumbly when sliced. Each time I tried a batch I changed something, hoping to hit on the magic ingredient or process. I started making batches of only two loaves. We ate one and froze the other. I now have 5 loaves of bread in the freezer that are just experiment rejects!

I started with the knife. Maybe the serrated knife we used was not as sharp and seemed to shred the bread instead of cutting it. We switched knives…made no difference.

Time to investigate the ingredients. This recipe is simple…flour, rolled oats, yeast, olive oil, honey, sugar and salt. So, one at a time, I substituted ingredients.

Then I used the original recipe, but changed the flour from King Arthur All-purpose flour to Pillsbury All-purpose flour. The new flour felt “thicker” or more compact. This made a heavy loaf and tasted fine, but it still made crumbs as it was sliced. The next batch I added Vital Wheat Gluten to the mix…this changed the taste a little but didn’t fix the crumbling texture.

Next, I went to the local Health Food Store and picked up a small bag of organic rolled oats. They appeared to be smaller and softer than the ones I was using. I also picked up a 5 lb. bag of Organic All-Purpose flour. Finally, I brought out a fresh package of Dry Yeast from the freezer.

Finally, the new ingredients seemed to make the difference! At this point I’m going to say the new rolled oats incorporated better into the dough when mixing.

Now that I have a freezer full of 5 loaves leftover from my baking experiments, all labeled OATMEAL BREAD, for the last loaf that turned out right I made a different label:

Nice rise!

Great texture!

Now, what to do with 5 loaves of bread in the freezer that need to be recycled into something else? How about croutons!!

Making Croutons

I did a search for “How to Make Homemade Croutons” and found a simple recipe. This link has lots of information about making croutons:

https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a33462622/homemade-croutons-recipe/.

I simplified the recipe for my use:

I pulled my loaves of Experimental bread out of the freezer and let them thaw enough to cut them into cubes. Because it’s homemade bread, I kept the cubes a little larger and let them finish thawing after cutting. I was crumbling enough!

I put 1/4 cup of oil in a larger bowl and dumped in the cubes. I tossed the cubes in the bowl to coat them with oil and sprinkled herbs on the pile and tossed them again.

I spread the cubes out on two baking pans and baked them for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. I let them sit on the tray until they were coo. They turned a golden brown, crunchy on the outside, but soft enough inside so they would work on a salad. Some commercial croutons are so hard they can’t be stabbed with a fork! As I make more, I think I’ll store them in zip bags in the freezer.

I feel so much better about my Oatmeal Bread! I counted it to be the bread I could take as a gift…now I can!! Enjoy!

Every time I roast vegetables, they come out differently. After this last batch, where I thought I understood how to get them tender in the middle and crunchy on the outside, I decided it was time to do some research!

The first article I found online was, “Everything You Need to Know About Roasting Vegetables.” Of course, after I read the article and took notes, I was unable to find it again! Phooey! However if you type that title into your search engine, you will find many more articles to search through!

This article was a good review of things I already knew, like how to cut the vegetables, what temperature to roast the vegetables (400 to 425 degrees) and how to not crowd the baking sheet. That third suggestion seemed to be the crux of my problem! When I chopped up vegetables the other night, I did separate the potatoes from the vegetables. They came out great!

I found a great YouTube video from a woman in Australia (I think) with details about what kind of potatoes work best, the benefits of parboiling, and what kind of oil (or butter, lard, duck fat) gave them the best flavor. It was a very informative video! (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pigPB9xE4j4)

But then I chopped a whole bowl of assorted vegetables…kind of like I do when I’m making vegetable soup! I ended up with a bowlful of “assorted vegetables” that were too thick on the baking sheet.

The vegetables could not be separated from each other (too crowded) and so some steamed while others burned at the tips!

I can see I need to work a little harder to roast fewer kinds of vegetables at once. My mindset that I can combine vegetables on one tray needs to change! I finally found a chart that could help me remember. I think I’ll post this someplace handy:

________

How Long to Roast Vegetables at 425 degrees/F

Root vegetables: 30-45 min. (beets, white and sweet potatoes, carrots)

Winter squash: 20 min. (cubed) 45 min. (halved) (butternut squash, acorn squash, spaghetti squash)

Cruciferous vegetables: 15 to 25 min. (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts)

Summer squash: 10 to 20 min. (Green & yellow zucchini)

Thin vegetables: 10 to 20 min. (asparagus, green beans, snap peas)

Soft vegetables: 15 to 25 min. (Cherry tomatoes, eggplant, bell peppers)

(From: https://www.thekitchen.com/roasted-vegetable-cheat-sheet-2655019)

_______

Obviously, my major issue is that I try to do more than one kind of vegetable in the same pan. Of course they don’t all turn out great!

I’ll try to roast vegetables in groups with the timing suggested above. MAYBE my next batch will be more successful! Enjoy!

On our trip last weekend to southern Pennsylvania, we enjoyed a delicious addition to our breakfast spread…Apricot Bread! I knew about banana bread, blueberry bread and raisin bread but had never had apricot bread! It was a delicious, colorful bread!

I was told the recipe came from a cookbook written by James Beard…Beard on Bread. I just so happened to have that book on my shelf!

I typed out the recipe because the small paperback would not lie flat and I couldn’t weight it down without covering the recipe! (It’s on page 175, if you also have the book.) I’ll include a photo of the recipe below.

When I start a recipe like this…with several ingredients needing additional preparation, I try to prep them before I start…in this case chopping the nuts and soaking the apricots.

I did not take pictures of mixing the bread up. By the time I thought of it…it was mixed! It was really pretty simple and made the whole house smell good!

It made a pretty loaf. Perfect for breakfast or dessert! Give it a try! Enjoy.