Joyful Abode

This is a guest article by Laura of The Golden Road.

If you are interested in being a guest author for Joyful Abode, please send an email to “contribute at joyfulabode dot com”, and I will contact you.

Hopefully, guest articles will become a bi-weekly event here, so step up and make it possible! (Come on… I know you’re out there!) It can be a recipe, a craft project, a home decor project you recently did, organization tips, some no-fail cleaning advice…

Laura writes:

I seriously love cooking and food. I’m addicted to the Food Network. As I (obsessively) check my email, I scan through the sponsored links that g-mail offers, to view several recipe feeds.

So, when my brother decided to cook today, I seized the opportunity for company in the kitchen, and sought out a recipe that looked somewhat easy and tasty for us to make together.

The recipe we ultimately chose was a Food Network gem: Farfalle with Turkey Sausage, Peas and Mushrooms. Don’t you just love descriptive titles?

We weren’t able to find turkey sausage in our grocery store, which the recipe obviously calls for, so I decided that we would buy some lean ground turkey and improvise. What’s life without a little excitement, hm? We got everything else that was required for the recipe, with the exception of the kind of cheese that the recipe calls for. We instead got a package of pre-grated “Italian” cheese (not, perhaps, the most quality way of cooking but it still tastes good!).

The cooking part was quite fun with my brother around to help (or man the camera, as the case was half of the time). We got our things together: put the big pot onto the stove with water in it for the pasta, and got that going.

Because the recipe called for turkey sausage, and the best we could come up with was ground turkey at our local grocery store, I improvised. After breaking the ground turkey into the pan, I sprinkled in some herbes de provence and a very small bit of red pepper. My family doesn’t like things very spicy, so I went very, very light on it. I went a bit too light, all things considered, because we found that the dish could have used a bit more “kick” in the end. I’m sure actually using turkey sausage would remedy this.

While the turkey was browning, I rinsed the mushrooms and began chopping them. I left rather large pieces of mushroom so that those in our family who are picky about mushrooms could easily spot them and pick them out. This didn’t seem to affect the cooking time or process at all. After the turkey was fully browned, I drained it (what little there was to drain - the wonders of lean meat!) and set it aside. Then, I tossed the mushrooms into the pan.

The mushrooms cooked for about five minutes, “until there [was] no water left,” and then we added most of a package of frozen peas. Sure, the recipe gives an exact amount, but who needs measurement?

I cooked the peas for another five to ten minutes, mostly to warm them, and then combined the mushroom and peas mixture with the ground turkey.

Here is where we ran into our one minor hiccup: we put our water on a burner that takes far too long to get the water actually boiling, so the mixture had to hang out for a little bit while we waited for the water to finish coming to a boil. Once it was boiling, it was just a matter of waiting for the farfalle noodles to cook fully.

After the pasta was drained, I mixed in the turkey, mushrooms, and peas. Then I added the rest of the olive oil and our shredded Italian cheese into the mixture. We stirred it together, and then served it!

(photo courtesy of Food Network)

The general consensus was that it was very, very good, but a little bland, which I attribute to not using enough spice on our ground turkey. Next time I make this recipe (and there will definitely be a next time!), I will add a bit more red pepper to the turkey if I am unable to locate turkey sausage. My whole family - even the mushroom hater - gave this recipe two big thumbs up.

This is a guest article by my mother, YaYaNaNa.

If you are interested in being a guest author for Joyful Abode, please send an email to “contribute at joyfulabode dot com”, and I will contact you.

Hopefully, guest articles will become a bi-weekly event here, so step up and make it possible! (Come on… I know you’re out there! This is the first guest article since July 15, 2007. It can be a recipe, a craft project, a home decor project you recently did, organization tips, some no-fail cleaning advice…)

Woo Hoo….After years of domestic slackness, I have begun working from home. Just not having to spend 2 hours a day in the car has been enough to inspire a domestic revival. That and the feeling of inadequency I have in the face of my domestic daughter’s blog. SO last Wednesday, David Reisman’s Bread Machine Challa bread recipe appeared in the paper (The State, SC). Since we have not 1 but 2 bread machines sitting unused in the pantry, I decided to act.

I bought yeast.

This morning, I threw all the ingredients into a bread machine and turned it on using the dough cycle.

2 ½ tsp dry yeast

4 C white flour

2 tsp salt

3T vegetable oil (I used corn oil)

1/3 C white sugar

1 C warm water

2 eggs

An hour and a half later, I took the dough out of the machine and shaped it into 2 loaves. The dough was very silky and not sticky at all, so I didn’t have to use any extra flour to handle it. Then I covered it with a layer of waxed paper and then a kitchen towel. That way the towel wouldn’t stick to the dough. I let it rise for 30 minutes. To keep it out of cool breezes or drafts, I just set it out on top of the stove.

Then I mixed an egg yolk with ¼ cup honey. I warmed the honey up for 20 seconds in the microwave first. Good thing too! If I hadn’t done that, I might still be waiting to get it out of the bear. A tip: spray the measuring cup with Pam, and the honey slides right out!

Next I brushed it all over the loaves and sprinkled liberally with sunflower seeds…because I didn’t have sesame seeds, which would have been more traditional.

I baked it for 25 minutes at 350. That sounded so short and not so hot…

…but it turned out perfectly.

Delicious!

This is a guest article by my sister Jessica.

If you are interested in being a guest author for Joyful Abode, please send an email to “contribute at joyfulabode dot com”, and I will contact you.

Hopefully, guest articles will become a bi-weekly event here, so step up and make it possible!

This summer, I decided to join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). I’ve been struggling with figuring out the correct grammar for conveying that, since it doesn’t seem right to “join an agriculture”, but it does seem right to join a CSA. Maybe I should say that this summer I support CSA? But then that’s too many
supports, so I don’t think that’s right either.

But however you want to say it, for $17 a week, I get a nice big crate full of fresh fruits and veggies straight from a local farm. Since my boyfriend absolutely hates onions, I asked the farm not to include onions in our crate, which meant I got TWO boxes full of strawberries one week, one to replace the onions. We just couldn’t finish them quickly enough, or we didn’t try hard enough to finish them quickly enough, and the strawberries started looking questionable. Not wanting to waste them, I tried googling things like “overripe strawberries” and “soft strawberries” and “bruised strawberries,” only to find websites about how you should make sure not to pick overripe, bruised, or soft strawberries, even for making jam.

Despite this, I threw caution to the wind, and decided to use my soft strawberries to make jam anyway. I didn’t want to invest much effort in making the jam since the jam gurus said only to use the freshest strawberries, so I picked the easiest online recipe I could found. It doesn’t even use pectin, just strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice.

I did the “not bothering with processing” part, and I halved the recipe. There was also an interesting footnote:

“To test for jelling:

Place three plates in a freezer… after about 10 minutes of boiling
place a tsp of the liquid of the jam onto the cold plate. Return to
freezer for a minute. Run your finger through the jam on the plate…
if it doesn’t try to run back together (if you can make a line
through it with your finger) it’s ready to be canned!”

I decided I was going to do this right, or at least as right as I do things, so I put one plate in the freezer, and got my roommates candy thermometer, and set off to make jam. First of all, I would recommend using a much larger pot than your ingredients. The rolling boil of jam can be messy, and the mixture expands and fills the pot.

This ended up being a problem for me. As the mixture got hot, It would froth and boil up, and I’d have to turn down the heat so it wouldn’t spill over. This caused the temperature to drop, and I couldn’t seem to get it to 220 degrees. I was at 200 at one point, but I never measured past that.

I pulled out the frozen plate and tried the finger test, but the jam ran back together, so it supposedly wasn’t ready. I rinsed off the plate, and realized I didn’t have time to refreeze it, which is I suppose why you were supposed to put 3 plates in the freezer to start with, so I decided I was done with the jelling test. I also never saw the temperature get to 220, but at some point, the boiling mixture seemed to change texture to something much thicker, and I decided that was probably fine, and I was tired of watching my jam boil.

I later learned that you should spoon out the froth, because it does just stay in the jam otherwise (I spooned it out of the jam later). I put it in a glass bowl in the fridge and hoped for the best… and it turned out to be delicious and surprisingly jamlike! I was so impressed with myself for making jam, that I had to tell everyone I knew about my big accomplishment, and they acted impressed with me too, so it was overall a huge success.

We ate the jam on toast, bagels, croissants, and finally, biscuits.
I of course turned to Emily for her favorite biscuit recipe, and they were the perfect accompaniment to the jam. The jam was at it’s prime right after the initial refrigeration. After that, it thickened quite a bit, but was still tasty and spreadable. The biscuits (and these pictures) came two weeks after the jam was made, and it was still in great shape. The jam is also quite sweet, and although I think you should be able to make it with less sugar, I’m not sure if it would affect the texture too much.

Play around! Have fun! Eat jam!

This is a guest article by my dear friend Meagan.

If you are interested in being a guest author for Joyful Abode, please send an email to “contribute at joyfulabode dot com”, and I will contact you.

I would LOVE to have a weekly or bi-weekly guest article here, so step up and make it possible!

One of the quirks I share with my boyfriend is an inordinate fondness for buying iced-blended coffee drinks at bookstore cafes and, drink-in-hand, wandering around the store for hours. He likes the late-day caffeine buzz, while I enjoy the icy-chocolaty goodness. However, those prissy coffee drinks can be expensive, and the cost really adds up when it becomes a habit. So, I broke out my blender and experimented with a recipe for a homemade version so we can enjoy this nice treat at home for a lot less!

Before I begin: I learned to cook from my mother, who has a recipe-less “everything-AND-the-kitchen-sink” philosophy on cooking. I follow in her footsteps, so this recipe is written to include everything my taste buds enjoy. It’s perfectly adaptable to whatever you can think of that you’d like to add to a coffee drink, as long as the ratio of coffee : cream : frozen stuff : “filler” stays roughly the same. It can also be increased or decreased to the number of servings you want; this recipe makes roughly 3 servings.
Here’s what you’ll need:

~ 2 c. coffee
~ 2 c. ice cream (I used cheap grocery-store brand cookies ‘n’ cream for $2 per 1/2 gallon)
~ 1 square or packet unsweetened chocolate
~ 1 tablespoon or so of vanilla extract/flavoring
~ a few shots of Kahlua (but only if you have a D.D.)
~ some ice

Brew some coffee ahead of time and throw it in the fridge or freezer to chill. I’m a massive chocoholic, so I even used chocolate-flavored coffee for this. You don’t have to add cream or sugar to it, since we’re going to add plenty later on. Once it’s cooled down somewhat, add two cups of it to your blender.

Add about the same amount of ice cream to your blender. I used 2 cups of coffee, so I added about 2 cups of ice cream as well.

(If you prefer icy drinks to creamy ones or are dieting, you can absolutely substitute ice for ice cream. But in this case, you’ll have to add some cream or milk to your mixture, probably a cup or so, to cream-up your milk and add some sugar content to sweeten the chocolate you’ll be adding later. I’ve also heard that sweetened condensed milk can be used, although I haven’t personally tried it… I’d love to hear from someone who’s willing to experiment!)

Add a tablespoon or so of vanilla extract, as well as your unsweetened chocolate. Don’t worry that it’s not sweetened; the sugar in the ice cream will more than make up for it. This step is optional and/or can be amended to your tastes.

(A lot of my friends don’t know about this, so I thought I’d throw it in: For the novice bakers out there, Nestle makes unsweetened chocolate that comes pre-melted in packets instead of squares. These are a godsend and a staple of any baker’s kitchen! You don’t have to melt them before using them, and therefore you don’t have to worry about scalding your chocolate in the midst of your baking. Also, 1 packet = 1 square, so it’s mathless. Trust me, it’s well worth keeping a box on-hand at all times if you do any cooking at all!)

A combination of a warm kitchen and already-soft ice cream made my mixture a little runny, so I added some ice to the blender. Not much, maybe 2 handfuls… just enough to make it icy again!

Now, here comes the fun part! If you want an alcoholic drink, add a few shots of a liquor of your choice to your blender. I used Kahlua on the first round, but mixed Kahlua + Bailey’s Irish Cream + a touch of Malibu (because dear god, I love Malibu in everything!) on the second round later on in the evening. These guys don’t add a lot of liquor-flavor to the drink; they just help make the existing flavors a little richer.

Once you tweak it to your tastes, pour into a glass and serve with a straw!

And there you go…A tasty, caffeinated, chocolicious beverage for those warm summer evenings!