Once again, I’m in charge of bringing the scalloped potatoes to our family Holiday meal, and once again, my husband and I both went shopping for the ingredients.  OOPS!  We have on our hands a pile of shredded cheese in all different styles and flavors.  My husband was none too particular when he chose his cheese variety, so we have quite an assortment with which to experiment. 

I would like to use up the cheese in a dish to bring to our Holiday meal so we can share it and make it disappear quickly, without there being yet another vegetable dish on the table.  I have this really incredible Cheese and Wine Spread which I’ll make.  It looks pretty and tastes wonderful.  I like it because it’s not another Cheese Ball covered in nuts.  You may want to give this a try even if you don’t have a pile of cheese to get rid of. 

Here’s how I make my Cheese ‘n Wine Spread: 

In a glass bowl, blend together with a fork 1/2 cup softened (NOT melted) butter, 3 cups of assorted shredded cheese (cut it up if it’s too coarse), 3 tablespoons of a heavy bodied wine, and a dash of cayenne pepper.  Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly, sort of mashing it until it looks spreadable and all the colors are mixed.  Spoon into a pretty glass serving bowl or container, cover the container tightly and store in refrigerator until time to serve.  Put out on table with small cheese knife or spreader along with some crackers or small bread pieces.  A pretty little piece of parsley is nice as a garnish when served.

I like those nice, new shredded cheese blends you can find now.  And now that we’ve got a mountain of them, I would like to do something creative with these delicious cheeses. 

If you have any tried-and-true uses for LOTS of cheese, I’d love to hear them! 

Stating the obvious, of course, is soup.  But, I’m stuck.  I’ve been making the same old turkey soup with vegetables and egg noodles for years.  What else can I make with it?  My family likes my standard turkey soup, but I’m getting tired of it.  Just in case you are looking for a plain ol’ turkey soup, here’s my quick and easy method:

In large soup pot, pour in a little vegetable oil (just enough to coat the bottom of the pot), throw in some nice bite-size pieces of celery, salt and fresh ground pepper and let cook a little until celery just starts to soften.  Then throw in some cut up carrots, and let those cook just a minute or until they start to soften.  (Don’t use baby carrots; use the real full-grown ones, peeled and cut.  Baby carrots don’t have enough flavor to stand up to soup.)  Now add some diced onion and some minced garlic.  Continue to saute all these veggies until onion is just starting to get transparent.  Pour in your turkey stock, taste for seasonings, and add a little more salt and pepper if needed.  Cover loosely and let simmer.  Don’t let it boil!  Meanwhile, cook some egg noodles in another pot according to directions BUT do not cook until they are soft.  They should be a little undercooked as they will cook a bit in the soup. Drain the noodles and add them to the soup pot.  Stir everything together, simmer for about 3 – 4 minutes or just until the noodles are done cooking.  It’s soup time!

You’ll notice that measurements for the ingredients are nonexistent.  This is one of those “make it as you please” recipes.  If you like a lot of veggies in your soup, add a lot.  If you’re a noodle fanatic, add a lot of noodles. 

What I’m lacking here is variety and ingenuity.  I would love to try an Asian inspired dish, like “Hot and Sour” soup, which should hold up very well against a rich turkey stock.  I’d also like to find out if anyone has ever attempted an “Egg Drop” soup.  What about some unusual vegetables in a turkey soup?  Are there some Autumn vegetables that stand out and are a little more inspiring than celery and carrots?  Any ideas are welcome!

It’s cookie and candy making time again, which means I’ve got a couple egg yolks in the refrigerator.  We make Divinity and Macaroons in our house, so the egg yolks tend to pile up after a couple days of baking. 

Faced with numerous egg yolks staring at me from my refrigerator shelves, I know I need more than a couple ways in which to use them up.  I do have a great Hollandaise Sauce that comes in handy over the Holidays because we like to serve our vegetables kind of fancy when company comes. If you’re stuck with extra egg yolks, you might want to give this recipe a try:

Simple Hollandaise Sauce

You’ll need:  3 egg yolks, juice of 2 lemons, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper, and 1/2 cup melted butter, and a trusty blender.

Here’s how I make it:  Put egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper in blender.  Mix on low until just blended.  Now, put the cover on the blender, and continue on low speed while you start to pour a little of the melted butter through the opening in the cover.  Once it’s mixed a bit, turn the blender to high speed and carefully pour in remaining melted butter.  Let blend on high until mixture thickens.  Serve over hot vegetables like broccoli, green beans, or asparagus.  Or you may want to treat the family to Eggs Benedict in the morning!

Some other ideas for using up egg yolks?  I’ll bet you can make egg nog with extra egg yolks.  My husband loves egg nog and would be amazed if I gave him a cup of real homemade egg nog!  Does anyone have a recipe for egg nog?  Or, how about homemade mayonnaise?  I heard it’s fantastic, but have never tried making it.  Then there’s always homemade egg noodles…

Any ideas?  I’d love to hear from you.

We had a chili cook off at work this Fall, and I was left with an abundance of kidney beans.  Making more chili to use up the kidney beans is out of the question, so I’ve been trying to create some different uses for kidney beans… and failing miserably. 

The classic bean soups just aren’t working for me right now.  If I add black beans, the kidney beans just sort of disappear.  Black beans do tend to take-over any dish of which they are a part; both in color and flavor.  So, avoiding black beans, I’ve tried navy beans, butter beans, and pinto beans, which were all okay with my kidney beans, but I still haven’t come up with an idea in which to use JUST kidney beans, and use them up in a big way. 
 
I do, however, remember a really fantastic salad that my daughter used to make when she lived on the West Coast.  She mixed up a salad of kidney beans (drained and rinsed well), some finely shredded medium cheddar cheese, chives or green onion, a little salt and pepper, and mix it all together with either taco sauce or her favorite salsa.  Then she peeled and halved nice, ripe avocados and sprinkled them with a little lemon juice and set them on small plates. To serve she just spooned the kidney bean salad mixture into the avocado halves.  That was yummy, indeed!  

There is also a fabulous Three-Bean Salad that I’ve enjoyed many times at potlucks, but, to this date have not gotten a recipe.  I would love to have a really great recipe for a Three-Bean Salad that I could call my own.  Any suggestions?

Back to my dilema… are there casseroles, soups, or salads that use a good amount of kidney beans?  I’d love to surprise my family by cleaning out the stack of cans of kidney beans that are piled in my pantry.  Your input is greatly appreciated!

I’ve discovered a new favorite vegetable at our farmer’s market.  Beautiful, bright green, crunchy Kale.  It took some doing to figure out not only what it is, but how to cook the stuff. 

Kale has a distinctive flavor.  It may look like turnip greens, collard greens, or mustard greens, but it has a very different flavor.  Kale is somewhat “spicy”; I wouldn’t say bitter, but it could be if not cooked correctly. 

The first time I cooked a batch of kale, I just pan seared it in a huge skillet with some oil, salt and pepper, until it was all wilty.  It was okay, but not good.  The flavor was a little bitter. 

The next time I cooked kale I basically boiled it in a big pot in chicken broth.  That was very disappointing because the kale was really limp.  I missed the crunchy texture I had by pan searing.  And the kale was still a little bitter, not spicy like they were before cooking.

Then I remembered some collard greens we had at a potluck one time.  They were fabulous and the lady who made them told me she just made them like normal, pan seared them with some bacon, salt, pepper, and a little touch of brown sugar.  Ah ha!  Back to the drawing board.

The results were perfect!  I put some cut-up bacon in a giant skillet and cooked the pieces down a little, but not until they were crispy.  Then I mixed just about a tablespoon of brown sugar into the bacon and bacon fat and piled the kale in, stirred it together a bit, added some salt and a generous amount of fresh ground black pepper.  I put on a cover and let the kale simmer for a good 15 minutes or more, until it was just nice and tender but still a touch crispy.  Yum!  The natural spicy flavor was somehow restored with the brown sugar and bacon combination.  Great!

Do you have a success story to share about cooking kale?  It’s an unusual green, but well worth the effort.  The crunchy green leaves hold up so well, I think that’s why I prefer it now to most other greens.  Are there soups or casseroles that you’ve tried making with kale?  Other than making kale as I have, are there some recipes and methods that you’ve had success with?

This may seem a strange problem, but I have way too much milk in my refrigerator after every Holiday.  You see, I buy gallons of milk for all the young family members that join us for our meals over the Holidays, and then end up with leftover milk.  I could just buy less, but I hate to run out and disappoint a sweet child who just wants a little more milk to dunk their Christmas cookie.  That would be just too sad.  So, I end up with extra milk.

My husband and I can drink a little in our coffee, and I can make some creamed soups, but I’d like to find a real knock-out recipe that would make me happy I had all that milk leftover. 

My last attempt at Oyster Stew didn’t turn out so good.  That’s really my big “use up the milk” strategy, but the recipe failed me.  There’s probably an old family favorite Oyster Stew recipe that is not in the cookbooks anywhere.  That would be a real find if anyone could share their own family recipe for Oyster Stew or even any other milk-based seafood chowder, soup or stew.

As always, I’d be grateful for any real great recipe you would be willing to share.

I need help!  I’m all turkey-ed out.  This is not normally a problem; I would ordinarily just stop cooking turkey.  This year, however, we have several reasons for cooking more than our usual number of turkeys. 

One reason we’re over-indulging in turkey is because we have more gatherings than we usually do over the Holidays.  With so many family members all over the globe, our Holiday meals are scattered throughout the season, trying to accommodate as many family members as possible.  And everyone likes turkey best.

The second reason we’re cooking a lot of turkey this year is the budget.  Turkey is cheap, cheap, cheap.  Our budget can really use the help, and cooking a turkey seems like the best way to get the most out of our money at this time of year.  What with a-million-and-one leftover dishes and boiling the bones for turkey broth, turkey is our frugal choice; we can eat for another month for next to nothing.

Here’s my dilemma – I need to be creative when cooking yet another turkey. It won’t do to start suffering from turkey-fatigue too early in the season.  I would be very happy to find some great marinades, maybe some grilling tips, or any unique method of cooking a turkey.  I have considered buying two smaller turkeys to cook at the same time just so they can each have a different style or flavor.

What sort of flavors, spices, marinades, or glazes have you used to perk up your Holiday turkey?

My husband makes the most fantastic cranberry relish I’ve ever had!  It’s so easy and delicious; all he does is puts whole, fresh cranberries in the food processor with a cut up orange, peeling and all, with just a dash of sugar.  It’s so yummy!  But, he makes gallons of it at a time.  Okay, that’s a little bit of an exageration.  We still end up with a pretty big container leftover after every Holiday meal.  His cranberry relish is delicious, but I can’t eat that much.  I also don’t want to throw it away.  Help!

I did see a delightful recipe recently for a, believe it or not, grilled sandwich made with cranberry sauce or relish.  You take pumpernickle bread, butter one side of each piece of bread, then you layer some sliced turkey (presumably leftover as well) with some cheese (whatever you have, they recommend Brie, but I never have that in the house, so maybe Monterray Jack or Swiss) and, finally, a little cranberry sauce or relish.  Put your bread together and grill your sandwich in a skillet until toasted on both sides and cheese melts a bit.

I haven’t tried this sandwich yet, but the next Holiday meal we have, I’m sure I’ll have an opportunity to give it a whirl.  It will be interesting.

Have you ever used leftover cranberry relish or sauce in any sort of dish and had good results?  Let me know… Christmas dinner is coming soon and we’ll have plenty of leftovers to experiment with.

Over the Holidays, I stock my cupboards with a lot of tomato juice.  It’s a great mixer for drinks that our family and guests love.  Tomato juice is better than soft drinks, and it actually can be sweetened up a bit for the youngsters with pineapple or apple juice and served as a fancy “punch” for the kids.  They feel so grown-up when they’ve got their little punch glasses just like the adults. 

My problem is that I always have just enough leftover in my house after the Holidays to cause a bit of “Tomato Juice Fatigue”.  I really can’t drink that much tomato juice, but I’m not going to throw it out.

I’ve seen some recipes using tomato juice as marinades and in sauces for grilled fish.  Has anyone successfully used tomato juice in a recipe like that? How about soups and casseroles?  Can tomato juice be substituted for tomato sauce or paste and taste good?  Will the soup end up tasting like tomato juice? 

Does anyone have experience using tomato juice for cooking?  I’d love to hear your success stories.

The produce aisle is once again bulging with those big, beautiful, and inexpensive heads of cabbage.  I can NOT resist them!  Nor should I.  For one thing, the nutritional value and fiber in cabbage is astounding.  And considering the price for a head of cabbage, everyone on a budget needs to consider the under-appreciated cabbage as a new staple in their home’s refrigerator. 

Now comes the hard part.  How many ways is there to cook a head of cabbage?  I’ve tried a couple basic, simple soups that are great.  But, I don’t want to get tired of my same old recipes.  And I certainly don’t want to bore my family so they stop eating cabbage altogether.  Also, there is the always popular Cole Slaw, which needs an update at this point.

I’ll share my very simple, but delicious, cabbage soup here for you.  You can follow these easy steps, but I suggest you add your own touches to make your Simple Cabbage Soup uniquely yours.

You’ll need:

1 nice head of cabbage, clean and cut into about 8 wedges, then cut in half again.
1 – 2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp. black pepper, freshly ground
1 large can chicken broth
salt to taste

Basic steps:

In large soup pot, heat oil, add onion, garlic, and black pepper.  Heat over medium heat until onion just softens, adding a bit more oil if necessary.  Once the onion, garlic, and black pepper is nice and fragrant, add the cabbage.  Stir thoroughly, wilting the cabbage just a bit in the pot.  After the cabbage has cooked down a little, add the chicken broth.  Set pot to simmer, taste for salt, and cook until the cabbage is nice and soft, about 20 – 30 minutes.  You may need to add a little more broth, depending on the size of your head of cabbage.

That’s it.  The chicken broth gives the cabbage soup a real “buttery” taste.  With this basic soup, I create more substantial meals by adding a little fresh fish, or diced chicken, and maybe some carrots. 

What I would like is some recipes for casseroles, or some Asian inspired dishes that use cabbage.  I’d appreciate any ideas on how to use this gorgeous vegetable.