2015 Wrap Up, Plus 4 Recipes

It seems like the thing I do most often with this blog is completely drop it for long periods of time.  This is, what, the fourth time I've just completely abandoned it?  At least it didn't take me three years to get back to it this time.

Anyway.

2015 was pretty awful.  We definitely had good times - lots of them, in fact - but also some pretty huge bad times, too.  Between us, my husband and I lost three Grandmas, leaving our son with only one set of Great Grandparents.  This necessitated two drop-everything-and-go-to-Spokane trips for me.  Randy and I both had some pretty serious health issues (although thankfully not long lasting).  In addition, he worked a lot of really long hours over the spring and summer, although with the downturn this year that's a little more like a good thing than a bad thing.

I'm really looking forward to a nice, normal year in 2016.  Good health, happiness, and low stress all around!  Oh, and a Powerball win would be nice, while I'm wishing for things.

I didn't get on just to whine, though.  I do have four recipes to share to close out 2015 and get 2016 started.

1.  German Red Cabbage  This is not really a new recipe for me, I've made it a couple times in the past, but I like it a lot and wanted to share it.  I fussed over this recipe the first time I made it, but have since taken a "throw it all in the pot and clean the kitchen" approach, which seems to work just as well.  This is a nice side dish for meat (I serve it with pork chops), and is very flavorful.  It's also pretty good for you, as proven by this nifty Self.com chart thing.  (Note, the serving size on that site is for one leaf, which has to be the most useless but still vaguely correct unit they could come up with).  Two things to remember about cabbage, though:  not everyone enjoys it (this is apparently a genetic thing), and it will make your house smell like poverty while it's cooking.

2.  Banana Bread Muffins   This was technically a new recipe for me, but it's basically "make banana bread batter, pour into muffin tins", so I won't waste much space on it.

3.  Turkey Soup with Sweet Potatoes  My husband requested soup from the leftover turkey, so I found this.  I tried to keep the ratios of things about correct, but didn't have green beans so I used the rest of the celery from Thanksgiving and threw in some frozen mixed vegetables instead.  I also left out the pasta.  I was a little worried that the sweet potatoes wouldn't cook, but I cut them into about 1/4 inch cubes, and they seemed fine.  Not amazing, but a decent use for leftovers.

4. Herb Roasted Pork Loin  This was a new experience for me, because I very rarely cook large pieces of meat in the oven.  I liked how this turned out, but somehow it took almost twice as long to cook through as the recipe said it would.  I did put a few carrots and potatoes in the bottom of the pan, but I wouldn't have thought that would do it.  I think now that I should have turned the meat over part way through, but I'm not sure that would have helped.  The sauce is very good, though, if you like sweet and salty.  I've made it since to serve with stir fry.

So, there you go.  A blog post only 8 months late.  I think the next one will be about craft projects I did in 2015, then I'll try to update once a week with either a recipe or craft.  I like having a blog, although I am clearly the world's least consistent blogger.

Happy Belated St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St Patrick's Day 2016?

Now that we have a toddler on our hands, we can really only celebrate with food, and this year I kind of failed. I didn't plan ahead, so we had corned beef the day after St . Pat's, and it was the saltiest corned beef I've ever made. However it did spawn this sweet double recipe blog update!!!! So, not a total loss.

Recipe 11:  Irish Soda Bread

The http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/16947/amazingly-easy-irish-soda-bread/?internalSource=staff%20pick&referringId=1452&referringContentType=recipe%20hub&page=0>
recipefor this comes from All Recipes, and through serendipity, maybe the very recipe my aunt offered to send me a few days ago.
As promised, it was pretty easy. Combine the dry ingredients, cut in the butter, add the wet ingredients. I used sour milk (1 Tablespoon vinegar in enough milk to make a cup) instead of buttermilk, but I also used butter instead of margarine, so hopefully I didn't lose much flavor.

Normally I would use a pastry knife to cut in the butter on a recipe like this, but my son was "helping", so I just used the stand mixer. I used the paddle instead of the pastry hook, but it worked fine and still did some of the kneading for me.  The dough was very soft, and not too sticky. I brushed the top of the loaf with semi-melted butter with a little milk in it (I got too lazy to try to make the real deal). I don't know why the recipe recommends checking the loaf after 30 minutes. For me, it was nowhere near done.

I don't think I've had soda bread before, and I really liked it. Fresh from the oven the crust was like a thick cracker, and the inside was soft and dense. It wasn't very flavorful, but that was actually a good thing since it was served with the world's saltiest corned beef and cabbage. Unfortunately, it pretty quickly became uniformly dry and crumbly, so if you aren't going to eat it the first night, be prepared for a little disappointment when you get into the leftovers.

Recipe 12: Colcannon




Because the corned beef was so salty, I didn't want to just reheat it, so I found this recipe. For some reason, I thought it would be a soup, which it most certainly is not. It is basically super rich mashed potatoes with boiled cabbage and corned beef.

I really don't know what else needs to be said about this recipe - if that description didn't make your mouth water, you are clearly a robot. The one thing I would note is that salting the water you cook the cabbage in is probably a good idea. I didn't (call me gun shy), and I felt like it was just slightly bland. This recipe is definitely going in the "things to do with leftover meat" file. I could see almost any leftover working really well in this, with the right added spices.



Alright! I think I am caught up! There have been twelve full weeks this year, and I've done twelve recipes! It has been a lot of fun to try new things, and it's been nice to see some views on the blog. If anything I make ever reminds you of a recipe, please send it to me! Maybe you'll see my attempt on these very pages.