Friday Favorite: In which I highlight one of my favorite experiences from the previous week. No description, no commentary; just a simple photo. Enjoy!
:)
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So, here we are, in a recession. Let's eat!
I doubt this will be a weekly feature on these pages, but tonight we certainly got into the spirit of Taco Tuesday with some fabulous vegan “fish” tacos with all the fixins! We wanted a meal that would be hearty yet healthy, light yet filling – and these tacos checked off all the boxes and then some.
Often, we serve rice alongside our tacos, but tonight we decided to make the tacos the one-and-only star of the show and eschewed the rice. Neither of us were in particularly ricey mood, anyway, and we figured we didn’t need the extra calories. (Remember: Road to Fitness, people!) So when I got home from work, I put a package of vegan fish in the oven to bake, and then when they had almost finished cooking added in six taco shells to cook too. As they warmed, I heated up a can of refried beans on the stovetop – and as that cooked, I brought out some lettuce, washed some cherry tomatoes, sliced an avocado, and diced half an onion for add-ins. By the time I was finished with all that, dinner was ready!
We topped our tacos with all of the above, plus some homemade salsa that I canned this weekend as well as some vegan sour cream and Daiya pepperjack cheese. And then we dug right in!
Now, let’s get one thing straight: These tacos are not elegant to eat. But they’re so incredibly tasty that who cares about the mess we made in the interim? (That’s what plates are for, right?) The smoothness of the beans with the oceanic (really!) flavor of the fish blended so very well with the creamy avocado and fresh-from-the-farm cherry tomatoes. Top everything off with a little hot sauce and you’ve got yourself a winner.
The only drawback is that we’ve got no fish, nor beans, left for lunch tomorrow! But that’s OK, I suppose. We’ve still got plenty of yesterday’s pizzadillas (oh, I didn’t tell you about the pizzadillas? I’ll fill you in tomorrow!) to work through. I think we’ll be OK!
:)
First of all, I recognize that this point in the week is typically a Sunday Cookout day, not a Dessert day. But our usual Sunday cookout was preempted this week by visiting family – and, I should add, visiting family who treated LeeLee and me to dinner – so I don’t have much to report on that front. What I do have to report on is the double dose of pecan pie that has given the house a wonderful aroma and has led me to show amazing self-restraint (if I do say so) by not digging in to one of them by the fistful as they cool on the counter.
I can’t believe I haven’t brought you this pecan pie recipe before. It comes from LeeLee’s grandmother Hazel, and it’s by far one of the best dessert recipes in my arsenal. And it’s so very easy to make – a bonus when you’re short on time but have promised to deliver two pies to church tomorrow!
The detailed recipe is below, but the crux of the matter is thusly: Put butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer, and then cream them together until they’re fluffy. Then add a bottle of Karo syrup, a pinch of salt, six eggs, and two cups of pecans – letting everything blend together nicely before adding the nuts – and then pour the wonderful results into two pie crusts. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or so, and you’re golden!
Whenever I make this pecan pie recipe, I picture Grandma Hazel whipping up the same dessert in her kitchen. Now, I never knew Hazel – she passed away about two decades ago, long before LeeLee and I met – but through this recipe I have such a strong mental image of how she talked, moved, cooked. Though I’ve never heard her voice, I imagine it to be sturdy, authoritative, yet kind, with a North Carolina lilt to it. And her pecan pies? Well. I imagine them to be fantastic: silky smooth, teeming with flavor, just the right amount of sweet and salty.
Isn’t it funny how all it takes is a recipe to feel closer to someone you’ve never met? C’mon, we all do it, whether it’s an affinity for the Pioneer Woman or a kinship with a long-lost relative. Just reading recipes written in Hazel’s longhand makes me feel like I know her, like we would’ve been friends. Perhaps, through her pecan pie, we already are friends. Isn’t that a lovely thought?
What recipes bring out those sorts of feelings for you? Spill the beans in the comments.
Meantime, here’s the recipe!
GRANDMA HAZEL’S PECAN PIE
Makes two pies
What you’ll need:
½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 bottle Karo or other dark corn syrup
1 pinch salt
6 eggs
2 cups pecan halves
2 pie shells
Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer or large bowl until fluffy. Then, with the mixer on a low speed, add in the bottle of corn syrup and a pinch of salt until combined. Next, add the eggs, one a time, ensuring each one is fully integrated into the batter as you go.
Add the pecan halves and stir gently to combine. Then pour the batter evenly into two pie shells and bake at 350 for about 45 minutes (start watching the pies at 40 minutes and don’t let them go past about 50!). The pecan pie filling will usually rise pretty high and still be a little moist, but no matter. Take them out of the oven to cool and they’ll sink down and firm up in no time.
Slice into the pie and enjoy! And lift a fork to Hazel when you do.
:)
It’s that time again, friends! Time for the second biggest football game of the year (the biggest? Why, the college football title game, of course!), the good old Super Bowl. Some years, we attend friends’ gatherings; some years, we host our own. But this year, LeeLee and I are content to have an exclusive private party for two (well, three, when you count the Wonder-Cat). It’s not a bad way to celebrate, all told!
And what goes better with the Super Bowl than pizza? Not a single thing. And so it came to pass that yesterday I prepared my trusty dough and let it rest in the fridge overnight until we needed it today. As the game was nearing its kickoff, I spread the dough out on one of my pizza pans, heated it for 10 minutes or so at 450, and then topped it with pizza sauce, Daiya mozzarella shreds, mushroom slices, and diced veggie burgers. Then I baked the pizza again for about 15 minutes until the cheese had melted and the crust was browning nicely. I pulled the pizza out of the oven to rest for a moment (which makes cutting it much easier), and then turned my attention to the orzo salad, which I pulled from The Pioneer Woman’s blog.
True confessions: I actually made this salad yesterday for a dinner party we attended last night, but it made so much that we had plenty to take back home after the fact! So it’s been resting in the fridge all day, which allowed the flavors to mingle even more. And it’s a wonderful substitution for the normal tossed salad I like to make! It certainly added an air of festivity to the evening.
Speaking of festive foodstuffs, I decided to take some liberties and make a dessert for tonight’s meal as well – a rarity in our household, because I do love sweets and I’ll eat every last morsel if it’s in my house. But I enjoyed these vegan Rice Krispie treats so much when my friend Jill hosted her Super Bowl party last year that I just had to make them for myself this time around! They were a cinch to make, and they look (and taste) just like the original recipe. Love!
And with that, our dinner was complete! Paired with a lovely appetizer of chips and salsa, as well as a frosty beverage from our friends over at Port City Brewing, it’s been a perfectly wonderful evening, no matter how the final score ends up!
:)
A new doughnut shop opened in Alexandria, Va., last weekend. Normally, this would be the cause for little more than a raised eyebrow in recognition — fine, fine, a new Dunkin has broken ground and cut the ribbon. But this shop is a private affair, one based just down I-95 in Richmond, the third franchise of its kind. This, friends, is a specialty, gourmet, high-end doughnut shop. And immediately my interest was piqued.
I have a pretty good reserve of willpower built up — that stubbornness has served me well in that regard, at least (even though it has gotten me into trouble in other parts of my life from time to time). But all the willpower in the world goes out the window in the face of a doughnut. And not just any doughnut — not cake or a cronut or what-have-you — but a light, airy, glazed circle of dough with just enough toppings to make life interesting.
I recognize that this sounds completely ridiculous, but doughnuts give me comfort. Doughnuts give me peace. And only last weekend, as I went back to the Sugar Shack — that’s what the new shop is called — for the second time in as many days, did I realize why this is so, why one bite of a doughnut can settle my soul more than anything this side of a church service.
When I was 4 years old, my maternal grandmother, Mama Ease, was gravely ill. I didn’t know that at the time, of course; I only knew she wasn’t feeling well, and Mom and Dad were spending a great deal of time at the hospital in their hometown of Panama City, Florida, staying by her bedside and keeping her comfortable. While they were with Mama Ease, I was stationed at one of my favorite places in the world – my paternal grandparents’ house. Mom and Pop were – are, even though they have now departed this life – two of the people I loved most on this earth, so being with them all alone, with no parents, no cousins, no aunts and uncles to share them with, was quite a treat. As the baby of the family, with two big boy cousins lined up ahead of me, I didn’t often get to enjoy quality time with just Mom and Pop. Suffice it to say, I was in heaven, despite the circumstances.
Though I was only 4, I have a lot of memories of that time at Mom and Pop’s. Staying up later than usual watching TV. Snuggling into their cushy Ethan Allen sofa (I still miss that sofa terribly!), resting my head on the armrest while Mom scratched my back. But what I remember the most are the doughnut runs with Pop.
I’m sure I’d had doughnuts before; it doesn’t seem that I could have been born a red-blooded American, to say nothing of having attended a weekly church service, without tasting one. But when I think back to that time in my life, all I remember is the sweet, sweet taste of a light and airy Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut that had come straight off the assembly line and into a box Pop and I picked up while we were out riding around. He would buy a dozen at a time, and together we’d ride home, the box perched in my lap, heat emanating from the bottom of the cardboard and soaking through my Osh-Kosh B’Gosh overalls.
“Now, we can only have one doughnut apiece,” Pop would warn, glancing over to see me staring intently at the 12 little O’s before my eyes. My face would fall, saddened that only one these would be mine.
“… in the car,” he would add, and instantly my heart sang with joy as I grabbed two doughnuts – one for him, one for me – and we munched away as the car took us ever closer to home.
And that’s the key, really. Home. The feeling of home I get whenever I bite into an airy doughnut, the feeling of comfort and peace and togetherness that washes over me whenever I take a taste of that sweet fried dough. That feeling – almost a high, really, though it sounds strange to say – is one that I chase, one that I didn’t even realize the origins of until very recently. Until the Sugar Shack came onto the scene.
Mama Ease passed away a couple of months later, in October 1984. Though I was quite young, I was fully aware of the gravity of that situation, even though I couldn’t understand how it had happened or what, frankly, happened next. And during that time of uncertainty and mourning, I clung to those mainstays I was certain of: My mom and dad. My Mom and Pop. My home – not so much a place, but a group of people, wherever we all happened to be, within Panama City or without.
I think Pop would like the Sugar Shack. I think that if he were here – and isn’t that what we spend so much time thinking about, what lost loved ones would do if they were here, what they would think, how they would react, what we would say – he and I would incorporate the shop into our routine. I like to think it would be our new special place. I like to think we would still drive around town, me in the passenger’s seat, him at the wheel, both of us munching on a still-warm doughnut, both of us basking in the comfort of being together.
Love through doughnuts. It’s not all that novel of a concept when you get right down to it. And there’s no doubt in my mind that Pop knew exactly what he was doing when he steered us to the Krispy Kreme all those decades ago. Those memories, those feelings that are still evoked every time I come face-to-face with the crispy, chewy fried doughy circles, have imprinted on me for a lifetime, and I’ll be grateful for the rest of my life. The taste of home is never far away.
:)