Category: Food&Recipes

Two years ago, we invested in an air fryer. We thought it might keep the house cooler in the summer instead of turning on the oven. Who doesn’t love crispy foods without all the oil? Most of the folks we talked with said they were great to prepare frozen French fries so they turned out crispy. Very few people we knew actually prepared recipes from scratch. Our daughter also uses hers as a toaster!

We have a great toaster/oven we use all the time, so we didn’t think we would replace that appliance. We really don’t buy or eat frozen French fries. Most of the recipes I found started with a breading of some sort made with eggs and seasoned bread crumbs. Since I avoid coatings like that because of my allergy to eggs, I first tried making chicken “nuggets” by cutting up boneless chicken breasts, coating the pieces with oil and seasoning and cooking them in the air fryer. That worked well, but certainly made a mess inside the fryer. Too much oil! Broiling them in the oven on foil was much easier to clean up! Needless to say, storing the air fryer was a real pain! It was finally relegated to a cupboard in the garage.

Fast forward to today. We recently enjoyed veggies that were skewered and cooked outside on the grill (thanks Todd!). We love grilled vegetables! How could we get them more often? There are just two of us and we usually don’t bother firing up the grill for a quick meal. We wondered if the air fryer could be useful?

First, I had to locate the air fryer in the garage cupboard and figure out where to set it up. I have a small kitchen without a lot of counter space. Before the Pandemic I had just a table for a work surface in the kitchen. During the Pandemic, Bert stayed busy by building me an enclosed table/cupboard that was just the right height to knead bread…my main request.

This table/cupboard has a shelf that slides out so I can store three large appliances. I rearranged appliances and made room for the air fryer. I can move it to the table when I want to use it. (see the pictures below)

Our air fryer is called the Instant Vortex Plus. I think it’s made by the folks that made the original Instant Pot popular.

Our air fryer comes with two shelves and a rotisserie basket. It rotates as it cooks so I don’t need to flip foods halfway through the cooking time. I guess I could also use the long skewer and do a whole chicken or roast, but I’ve not tried that…yet.

I found the instruction manual and picked up a new cookbook that looked like it might have smaller portion sizes. Turns out, much hasn’t changed about air frying…most all the foods needed a batter of some sort, which won’t work for me. I did find two recipes online that sounded like what I had in mind: one was for air frying vegetables, another was for baking a potato with a crispy skin.

I could see the basket would be helpful for the veggies…I wouldn’t have to flip anything halfway through the cooking time.

Air Frying Vegetables

The first thing I noticed in the recipes was foods were sprayed with spray oil, like PAM. I think that would cut down on the drippy mess of too much oil. I didn’t need a lot of seasoning, so we started with salt, pepper and a simple Garlic & Herb Salt Free seasoning (from McCormick).

The first batch had green beans, asparagus tips and onion. The second batch had red sweet peppers, broccoli and zucchini.

We preheated the air fryer to 360 degrees (took about 4 minutes) and put the vegetables into the basket, one batch at a time. When the air fryer beeped to tell us it was preheated, we put the basket in and set the timer for 7 minutes. I tried to take a picture of the basket rotating…but obviously it’s a still picture. Haha.

The basket was a little awkward to open when hot, but it worked great!! Just perfect with our pork chops for dinner.

Now that I have a place to store the air fryer in the kitchen, and have figured out the details, I think we’ll do this more often. It’s great for just one or two servings without heating up the oven or the grill. I consider my experiment with the air fryer a success! Enjoy!

Notes:

–An air fryer with a non-rotating basket or drawer should work just as well. You will have to take the basket out about halfway and give it a shake.

–Next time I think we’ll increase the temperature to 370 degrees and give it about 8-9 minutes to crisp up the edges.

Please comment or email me directly at marykisner@comcast.net.

I finally found a recipe for a Vegan Banana Blueberry Walnut Muffin that actually rises and tastes good! I’ve tried adapting regular recipes by removing the eggs and substituting the milk with almond milk, but for some reason that just doesn’t work.

When I find a recipe online, I’ll print it out, put it in a plastic sleeve in a notebook. As I experiment with the recipe I’ll write directly on the printout and even write comments like I did on this one (Tasty).

Once I’ve made the recipe several times and like how it turns out, I’ll retype the recipe into the format I’m most comfortable with (see below). This format seems to be common with the Joy of Cooking cookbook that I’ve been using for years. I can glance down the bold-typed list and easily see the ingredients I will use.

This morning, after I retyped the recipe I decided to make a batch.

First, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees. Because I could see (down the list of ingredients) that I needed bananas and blueberries, I got them out of the freezer first to let them thaw. Then I chopped the walnuts so they were ready to go.

Step 1: I put all the dry ingredients into a big bowl:

Step 2: In the small bowl with the smashed banana I put the oil and the almond milk and mixed them up.

Step 3: Then I added them to the dry ingredients and stirred them up.

Step 4: I folded in the walnuts and the blueberries.

Step 5: I divided the batter into the muffin cups.

Step 6: I put them in the preheated oven for 23 minutes. They needed that extra minute because the bananas and blueberries were still pretty cold when I mixed them in.

They are a perfect mid-morning treat! Enjoy!

Please comment or email me directly at marykisner@comcast.net.

Just a quick post about freezing bananas. Why would you even want to do this? I use half a banana and a handful of frozen blueberries in a breakfast smoothie. Since it’s a real pain to keep ahead of bananas to use them before they spoil, I’ve found that if I slice and freeze them, they make the smoothie even better!

I try to buy bananas that are about the same ripeness so I can cut them up all at once. Folks must think I run a restaurant or have a big family!

I get the small snack-size Ziplock bags and start slicing.

I have a bowl ready for all the peels and an extra paper towel to put all the stickers on. Since I will add these peels to the compost bin, the stickers need to be removed. One year I did not remove them and after we had put the compost into the garden, I was finding the stickers intact years later!

I slice the bananas into 3/4″ slices and lay them flat in the bag; one banana will fill two bags (approximately).

When finished, the stickers go in the trash, the peels go into the compost bin and the bags of slices go into the freezer!

These slices are great for my smoothies and they also can be used in other recipes that call for mashed bananas. They thaw quickly and are easily incorporated into baked goods…and no over-ripe bananas sitting around my kitchen! Give it a try! Enjoy!

Please comment or email me directly at marykisner@comcast.net.

Trying to find an energy bar that is safe to eat (for me that means no egg and no dairy) and actually tastes good is no small task! I have bought multiple assortments of bars that just try too hard to do everything…low carb, vegan, no sugar, high protein, etc. I’ve decided to just skip trying to find a commercial one that actually tastes good. I don’t need a bar for protein since I can eat meat and fish just fine. Actually, I’d like something that is not full of extra ingredients but will satisfy like a cookie. I just tried a recipe I found at this site, https://thepaleodiet.com. I think it will work!

Ingredients:

1 cup Cashew Butter (could substitute Almond Butter)

1 cup Medjool dates, pitted (I just got pitted dates at the health food store)

1/4 cup cashews, chopped

1 1/2 cup finely shredded unsweetened coconut

(Optional: Chopped walnuts, almonds or pecans; a dash of cinnamon).

Instructions:

1. Add the cashew butter, dates, cashews and 1 cup of the coconut to a food processor. (I also added 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts.) Blend just until a workable dough is formed.

I just couldn’t believe that the sticky dates would chop up, so I put the 1 cup of coconut in a bowl, added the chopped dates and stirred them up. Then, I put them in the food processor.

2. Use a tablespoon to scoop the mixture out evenly. Roll into 10 balls. Chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

This stuff was so sticky I quickly coated them with coconut just to get them off my hands! I ended up with 16 energy balls.

3. Roll the balls in the remaining shredded coconut.

Since they were already coated with coconut I didn’t have to do it again.

My assessment of these Coconut/Cashew Butter Energy Balls:

These tasted great and were a very satisfying snack. They took only a few minutes to mix up. It probably took longer to wash the cashew butter mixture from the food processor container than to mix them up!

If you need a handy snack this summer, I would highly recommend whipping up a batch of these no-bake energy balls! Enjoy!

Please comment or email me directly at marykisner@comcast.net.

Yesterday was HOT! Not the best time to have the oven on all morning, but I had put a frozen chicken in the refrigerator to thaw on Sunday and decided today and tomorrow would be even hotter, so into the oven it went! My plan was to cook the chicken and take the bones, etc. and make a big pot of soup stock. Why not keep the kitchen hot all day!

While the chicken cooked, I pulled out my biggest stock pot (12 qt.) and started pulling assorted vegetables out of the refrigerator that could be used in the stock. I had celery ends, onions that were too strong to eat raw, and I even had a handful of dried apples that had been shoved to the back of the shelf. If I had planned ahead, I could have saved other vegetable trimmings over the last few weeks and put them in the freezer instead of the compost bin! Next time! Then, I added the giblets from the chicken (neck, heart, etc.). They will add to the flavor. I set this pot aside until the chicken was done.

Next, I picked off all the meat for other meals and put everything else (bones, skin, juices) into the stock pot. I added about 1/2 cup of vinegar to help get the nutrients out of the bones. Then I added water until everything was covered and put the lid on. I brought it to a boil and reduced the temperature until it was just simmering.

For the first several hours the vegetables all float to the top, while the bones sit on the bottom. I stirred the pot about every half hour. About 3 hours into simmering I added about a quart more water to keep things covered.

After about 6-7 hours most of the vegetables had lost their color and the bones were separated and soft.

Next, I started scooping out the juice a cup at a time and straining it through a colander. I tried to avoid scooping up the soggy vegetables. Any bits of chicken that made it through the colander will stay in the stock. If I wanted clearer chicken broth, I would line the colander with cheesecloth and strain it again.

When I finished scooping out as much juice as I could, the leftover vegetables and bones are pretty soggy looking!

On a cold day/night I would usually put the lids on the pans of stock and set them in the cool garage before packaging them up. I like to skim the fat off the cool stock before freezing. Last night was too warm so I just packaged it up as is. When I use a container of the stock I might have to remove a layer of fat, or not. It was more important that I get the stock into the freezer before I went to bed. Warm chicken stock sitting around for hours is asking for bacteria to move in!

However, I ended up with 12 pints of stock to put in the freezer with another quart left over to make chicken vegetable soup today! Yea!

I’m sure it’s easier to pick up a container of chicken stock at the store, but I just can’t waste the opportunity to make my own. I’m set for a while! Give it a try!

Please comment or email me directly if you have questions. marykisner@comcast.net. Enjoy!

Over a month ago, I bought a bag of nice small apples just to eat. The bag ended up in the garage temporarily while I was doing other things in the kitchen. I totally forgot to reach for them…out of sight, out of mind! Needless to say, they still looked OK but the they were getting soft. Before they were too soft to eat (that’s called rotten!) I thought I’d just dehydrate them. I know we’d eat them that way as snacks! Here are the 15 small apples:

First, I had to uncover the dehydrator. Most of the year I keep it covered and store it right outside the back door. It is already plugged in and ready to go. We keep a board on top to protect it from damage because that seems to be the place where we pile things…stuff to go out to the shop, packages delivered by UPS, etc. I went out to take a picture of it before I uncovered it…and sure enough, UPS had dropped off a package already this morning!

Then I pulled out the manual to check how long to dehydrate apples. They provide a color-coded map to help determine how long to dehydrate foods, based on location and season. Fruit should have 10 to 20% moisture content to store well.

For May in Pennsylvania, it said a range of 51 to 70% (indicated by yellow) or 71 to 80% (indicated by green) in the instructions. Then I look up Apples and find the yellow means 11 hours, and green means 13 hours. This is very important if I want to store them without refrigerating them.

So, curious challenge for today. It was already 2:00 p.m. when I finished peeling and I don’t like to leave the dehydrator running after I go to bed. At 9:00 p.m. I turned the dehydrator off and put the apples in a zip lock bag and put them in the refrigerator. They are still a little moist inside. In the morning I can always lay them out on the trays again and finish drying them for another 5-6 hours. I think we’ll just eat them!

Here’s the process to dehydrate apples:

After washing the apples, I made a bowl of lemon water to put the sliced apples into as I peel them. That will keep them from discoloring.

Then I laid the apples on the trays.

And put the trays in the dehydrator.

I set the temperature to 135 degrees.

After 7 hours, the apples were dry on the outside but still a little moist inside. They would need another 5 hours or so to be dry enough to store on the shelf.

Those 15 apples made a small pile of dried apples.

Next time I want to dehydrate apples, I think I’ll get larger apples and use the apple peeler/slicer attachment on my mixer…much easier! At least I didn’t waste this bag of apples and we have snacks for a few days!

Please leave a comment or email me directly at marykisner@comcast.net. Enjoy!

You will find, after seeing a few of my recipes, that there are no eggs or dairy products in them. I have food allergies to both and have been egg- and dairy-free for several years. As annoying as it is to have to do without them, I feel so much better that it’s worth it!

Luckily, the Food Allergen Labeling Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) requires that foods are labeled to identify the eight major food allergens. These are: milk, egg, fish, crustacean shell fish, tree nuts, wheat, peanuts and soybeans. These 8 major food allergens identified by FALCPA account for over 90 percent of all documented food allergies in the U.S. If you look carefully on most packaged food, right after the list of ingredients you’ll see the list of allergens. When it says, “milk” that could mean they seasoned the food with Parmesan cheese or cooked it with butter. It may also say, “Made in a facility that uses those products.” Cross-contamination matters if you are deathly allergic to any airborne components, like wheat flour or particles of nuts.

I do not need to avoid wheat, soy, fish, shell fish, peanuts or tree nuts. And my allergy does not lead to a life-threatening result. However, I may experience a sudden bout of diarrhea if I ignore my allergy, so if I’m eating away from home, I’m pretty careful. I also can eat meat so if I ask how things are cooked, I can usually find something to eat. I’m certainly not starving to death!

One of the first things I missed the most was mayonnaise (and of course butter, ice cream and cheese!). I have found Smart Balance a good substitute for butter on toast and in cooking. There is coconut ice cream if I must have ice cream. I have not found a good substitute for cheese, so my days of a good toasted cheese sandwich and pizza are behind me. I have tried to order a pizza without cheese…just not the same!

According to the Federal Government, to be called mayonnaise the product must include EGGS. Therefore, the item I’m talking about today has to be called “Vegan Dressing and Spread.” However, it is found on the shelf right next to Hellmann’s Mayonnaise.

Here are some details on the jar of regular mayonnaise:

My salad dressing of choice was always Thousand Island dressing and I had been making my own for several years using regular mayonnaise. Once I found I could not have mayonnaise, I found Vegenaise.

This was in the Organic refrigerated aisle at the grocery store. It worked, tasted fine but tended to separate. I would make chicken salad and the next day I had to drain off some watery liquid and mix it up again.

By surprise when I was buying regular mayonnaise for Bert, right there next to the Hellmann’s Mayonnaise was Hellmann’s Vegan Dressing & Spread!

This turned out to be just what I’d been looking for. It tasted great, was creamy, mixed well with salads and DID NOT SEPARATE! Yea! It did not need to be refrigerated until being opened.

Here are more details about this product:

Now, to make my version of Thousand Island dressing, I use a cup or so of this Vegan Dressing and add a tablespoon of my home canned sweet pickle relish, a squirt of mustard and a squirt of ketchup (real exact measurements! HaHa!)

Finding this substitute for mayonnaise makes me not feel too bad when I have to restrict my other choices so much!

Please leave a comment or send me an email at marykisner@comcast.net. Enjoy!

Another round of snow today…about 3″ this time…and I decided it was time to bake bread! Since we hope to go see the Grandkids near Pittsburgh this weekend, why not make some of the bread into sticky buns! Since I wanted to make both that meant a BIG batch. Therefore…time for the BIG mixer!

Now, many of you know that each Christmas Bert bakes hundreds of chocolate chip cookies for gifts. If you stop by as they are coming out of the oven you might even get to try a few. Bert has been doing this marathon baking since before we got married, so over 50 years! For many of those years he did it all by hand with a giant wooden spoon and lots of muscle!

Several years ago, he finally decided to invest in a huge commercial mixer that he moves into the kitchen when it’s time to bake. Luckily, I get to use the mixer when I’m making a big batch of bread. Most of the time I mix bread in my KitchenAid mixer (I think it’s a 7 quart bowl). The big mixer has a 12 quart bowl. It is so slick to mix up a big batch of bread dough.

The first thing I need to do is check that I have enough ingredients. I usually use my Oatmeal Bread recipe. We like it and it feels more nutritious with the oatmeal in it. Since I cannot have eggs or dairy, by baking my own bread I have control over the ingredients. You can use any bread recipe you like to make sticky buns…probably even frozen commercial dough!

Here is my recipe. You can make a 3-loaf batch or a 6-loaf batch. Not a lot of detailed instructions about mixing up the bread, but it’s what I use. If you don’t know how to bake bread at all, there are many cookbooks (like Joy of Cooking) and YouTube videos that will walk you through the process.

Just a Note: If you want to know approximately how many loaves of bread a recipe will make, add up the amount of liquid and estimate that each 1 cup of liquid will make 1 loaf of bread. To reduce the volume of the dough for a smaller batch, first reduce the amount of water (in the 3-loaf recipe, for example): Use 1 cup of boiling water on the rolled oats, 1/2 cup water on the yeast, and just 1/2 cup of water with the oil and honey. If you do that you will not need as much flour and yeast. You will have to experiment to see what works with your mixer. You can also skip the mixer completely for a small batch and just mix and knead it by hand. I did that all the time when I first started making bread (way back in the 1970’s!)

Here are the basic ingredients:

I use a loose dry yeast and measure it out with a measuring spoon. If you want to use packaged yeast, each package is a little less than a Tablespoon of yeast. I keep my yeast in the refrigerator in a glass canning jar, while the extra is kept in the freezer. Here are two example packages of the yeast I buy:

Instructions to mix up the dough:

Step 1: First, I put the rolled oats, sugar and salt into the mixer bowl. Then I pour the boiling water on it, stir it around and let it sit for about 10 minutes so it isn’t so hot (don’t want to kill the yeast!)

Step 2: After 10 minutes or so, I use a small bowl to start the yeast…yeast plus 1 cup of warm water and a tablespoon of sugar. Let it sit until dissolved and bubbly (about 5 minutes).

Step 3: Add cool or room temperature water to the mixer bowl. (That helps to cool down the rolled oats is it’s still too hot).

Add oil to the mixer bowl. Using the same measuring cup (now greased with oil) to measure out the honey…no sticking!

Add the yeast mixture to the mixer bowl.

Step 4: Begin adding flour about 1-2 cups at a time until most of the flour is added. Let the mixer run for 8-10 minutes to knead the dough. Add a little flour at a time if the dough is still sticky.

Step 5: Dump the dough on to a floured table/board and work into a nice smooth ball.

Step 6: Place the ball of dough into a large oiled bowl to rise. Cover with a cloth.

Step 7: When the dough has doubled in size (about an hour), leave the dough in the bowl and put your fist into the middle of the dough to deflate the big bubbles, fold in the sides and turn the ball of dough over so the smooth side is up. Cover the bowl and let rise another hour.

Step 8: Shape the dough…into loaves of bread or rolls or sticky buns.

Shaping Sticky Buns

Here’s how I shape sticky buns:

First, I prepare the pans by greasing them generously with butter-flavored Crisco. You can use butter or margarine.

Then I sprinkle about 1/2 cup of brown sugar over the bottom of the pan. I sprinkle that with ground cinnamon.

Then I take a chunk of dough and pat it out to a rectangle.

This gets sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon also.

Next, roll up the rectangle of dough into a log.

Slice the log into 1″ rounds and place cut side down into the prepared pan.

If you have a little roll leftover, just pinch the end shut and put it in a greased pan like a little loaf of cinnamon bread. Bake along with the buns at the same time.

Let the pans rest for about 20 minutes while you preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake about 25-30 minutes.

To Remove Sticky Buns From the Pans:

Flip the pans of buns directly onto a foil covered board or table top. Use a table knife to lift the pan off the buns. (Advice…fill each pan with soapy water immediately and let them soak while you clean up…the “sticky” topping is a real pain to clean up if you let it harden and cool in the pan!)

Loaves of bread will bake about 40 minutes in a 350-degree oven.

So that’s what I do on a snowy day! Wow, the whole house smells good today! Wish I could share it with you!

If you’d like to comment on this post leave a comment or send me an email at marykisner@comcast.net.