Buttermilk Scones

I've been going to an ongoing Bible study at a nearby church for many years, actually since my older daughter was about 1 1/2 years old. I started going for a number of reasons:

1. I felt the need for talking with other adults at least once a week after having been a stay-at-home mom for a while.

2. I thought Bible study would enrich my life and help me get to know God better.

3. The group of people I joined had lifted me up and prayed for me when pregnant with my first daughter.

The other day, I volunteered to bring a little something to nibble on for fellowship time and picked a recipe for scones that I found in my present church's cookbook. So here it is. Adapted from the cookbook, "Real Lutherans Cooking":

Buttermilk Scones

Ingredients:

3 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 Tbsp. aluminum-free baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup butter

1 cup buttermilk

2 tsp. orange zest

1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional

1 cup dried blueberries (or other dried fruit), optional

white sugar to sprinkle on top

Preparation:

Drop tablespoonfuls of the batter onto a greased cookie sheet. Sprinkle white sugar on top before baking. Bake at 400˚F for about 15 minutes. This is a great recipe served with lemon curd, jam and/or clotted cream (or just plain whipped cream in lieu of clotted cream!).

Variation:

Instead of making the scones with walnuts and dried blueberries, try dried cherries, or craisins and white chocolate chips. It's so good!

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

It's late, but I'm still waiting for a loaf of banana bread to finish baking in the oven (the bananas really had to be used tonight), so I thought I'd write down our favorite preparation for fingerling potatoes as I'm reliving the wonderful flavors of tonight's dinner that we prepared for our guests, Jazz musicians Jana and Adam Meckler: grilled top sirloin steak, roasted fingerling potatoes, and green beans Asian-style.

Fingerling potatoes are quite literally the size of fingers and are sold in stores as small gourmet potatoes. Some stores sell a variety of different kinds in one bag, others sell just one kind. Either way, they are delicious and very easy to prepare. We like them roasted and very simply prepared. The following recipe was enough for six servings:

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes:

2 lbs. fingerling potatoes, washed and dried

olive oil

kosher salt

Preheat oven to 400˚F. Spread fingerling potatoes on a cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil. (I used pure olive oil because it has a higher smoke point than extra virgin and virgin olive oils, but I realize that I have to do more research about cooking with olive oil and which olive oil to use for what temperature.) Then use your hands to cover the potatoes with olive oil from all sides, sprinkle liberally with kosher salt and roast in the oven at 400˚F for about 40 minutes. Enjoy!

Vanilla Bean Ice-Cream with Blueberry Sauce

Dessert tonight was simple and delicious: store-bought vanilla bean ice-cream covered with warm, homemade blueberry sauce.

To make the sauce, combine in a saucepan:

2 cups fresh blueberries

2 Tbsp. water

3 Tbsp. honey

Heat everything on medium heat until the berries are soft, about 5 minutes. Remove and purée in a blender. Serve over ice-cream. Store left-overs for up to a week in the refrigerator.

By the way: this sauce is also good over pancakes and waffles for breakfast!

The consequences of living well…

You know how I can tell that I've put on a little extra weight? You may think it's because the pants don't fit the way they used to, and that may be so to a degree. But, no, I notice weight-gain when my sunglasses hug my temples just a little tighter, almost as if the frame of the glasses squeezes my face ever so slightly. I felt that squeeze on my face this morning after dropping off my older daughter at high school, so she can rehearse with all the choirs for next week's big concert. At home, I stepped on the scale, and confirmed what the fit of my sunglasses had already told me: I had lived a little too well the last couple of months.

Time to get back in shape. With spring and Lent fast approaching, I'm wondering if I should try something new this year and actually give up something for the time of Lent. I've thought about the concept of giving up something during Lent for several years, but have never had the discipline or will-power to do anything. I have yet to decide, but here's my list of things that I could be challenged with giving up:

1. Late nights up. (That'll be a tough one, since I got a double-whammy to be a night-owl from both sides of my family…)

2. Coffee. (I've heard people who gave up coffee actually start feeling better. Mmh.)

3. Sugar. (Chocolate is one of my favorite food groups…)

4. Meat. (Giving up meat wouldn't be a problem for me, but since I'm cooking for the family, it could be a serious problem. Got to think about that one.)

Homemade Oatmeal Bread

I have one daughter who loves Brownberry's Oatnut Bread for sandwiches and toast, and another daughter who will not eat a sandwich to save her life, unless it's made with homemade bread.

So, tonight I attempted to make a new oatmeal bread recipe that I hope my dear daughter will like. I've made breads with kamut, spelt and quinoa flours before and she's liked them, but this recipe uses none of the ancient grains. I just took the loaf out of the oven and it smells wonderful, but I'll have to wait and see what my daughter says. In any case, here's the recipe I made tonight. It's slightly adapted, but pretty much the way I found it in "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison. As usual, I used the bread machine to mix the dough and let it rise and then baked the loaf in the oven.

Homemade Oatmeal Bread

Add to the pan of a bread machine:

1 1/4 cups water

2 Tbsp. canola oil

1/4 cup raw honey

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup wheat bran

2 cups all-purpose white flour

1 cup white whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp sugar

2 1/4 tsp yeast

1 1/2 tsp salt

Process on the dough setting and let rise. Remove from the bread machine when dough cycle is done, remove dough, shape and roll in a mixture of wheat bran and oats, grease a 9x5 loaf pan and put loaf inside. Let loaf rise for about 30 minutes, then bake at 375˚F for about 45 minutes.

The Annual Sweetheart Dinner

Sixteen years ago, when we had a newborn daughter, no babysitter, and no reservations for a table at a restaurant, we decided to make a really nice dinner at home and invite the grandparents to come, too. This was one of the best decisions we ever made: we didn't have to think about Valentine's Day until the day actually happened, we didn't have to think about which restaurant to reserve a table at, we didn't have to dress up unless we wanted to, we didn't have to schedule a babysitter and pay her, we could eat and drink whatever we wanted and could afford, and, best of all, could spend it in the company of people who really mattered to us, playing music that we thoroughly enjoyed. Sixteen years ago today was the day we "invented" our "Sweetheart Dinner." 

I think this year we actually copied what we made 16 years ago, even though I don't recall what side dishes we served. The main dish, though, was pork tenderloin in yogurt sauce, a dish that was very tasty, but that I haven't made since. I lost the original recipe, but pieced together something from varying sources and this is what I came up with:

Pork Tenderloins in Yogurt Sauce

Ingredients:

2-2.5 lbs. pork tenderloin

1/4 cup+ butter

8 oz. grated gouda

1/2 onion, minced

4 cups whole milk yogurt

2 tsp Hungarian paprika

4 tsp instant chicken bouillon

salt to taste

Preparation:

Wash pork tenderloins and cut off skin, liberally salt and rub with paprika. Turn tenderloins in flour to dust and sear in butter all around.

Combine onions, yogurt, grated gouda and chicken bouillon and add to meat. Cover and simmer for 40 minutes until meat is done. Add chopped fresh parsley and finish sauce with a little corn starch or flour if desired.

We served this with oven-roasted fingerling potatoes and steamed green beans. Delicious!

Tip: The sauce will very easily curdle, even if you're very careful not to bring it to a boil. If curdling happens, just remove the meat and put the sauce in a blender and purée it until smooth. No one will know the difference and the taste is very nice and flavorful.

Morning Rush

As a kid, I remember a Heinzelmännchen cartoon on TV that depicted a little sleeping Heinzelmann that woke up when the alarm rang, hit the snooze button and proceeded to sleep with a smile on his face while a speech bubble above his head read, "only 15 more minutes." Or something like that. (Heinzelmännchen are, according to legend, little Black Forest gnomes that would come into the city of Cologne at night and do all the work for the people, so they could rest and be lazy during the day.)

This morning I had that kind of morning and overslept royally! Awakened by the soothing sounds of my wind chimes buzzer at 6 a.m., I hit the snooze button to stretch out for only one more minute and continued to sleep until 6:46 a.m. That spelled trouble! Of course I had planned on being up early and baking fresh rolls for the kids while making their school lunches, but with all the lost time, I had to make a new plan–and quickly.

The quickest breakfasts, and in all honesty some of the most nutritious, are fruit smoothies made in a high-speed blender. I use a VitaMix and love it. It can turn anything into a smooth puree. In any case, a quick look into the freezer and I found some frozen wild blueberries. The idea of a fruit smoothie was born. Bananas? Check. Yogurt? Check. I toasted two slices of whole grain bread and whipped up the following recipe in the blender:

Blueberry-Banana Smoothie:

2 bananas

1 cup yogurt

1 cup frozen blueberries

a good squirt of flaxseed oil

Blend everything until very smooth and creamy. Pour into two glasses. Makes about two 10-oz. servings–the perfect amount for the whirly-birds before school.

School lunches had to be done quickly, too, so I made sandwiches for the girls with ham and baby swiss cheese, cut up a whole orange for each one and filled their waterbottles with fresh water. Well, that was my rushed morning in a nutshell.