Cookkatie's Blog

I have just written out my recipe for the Pilsbury Bake off.  Writing a recipe for other people isn't easy.

I also just found out that my friend is entering the contest too.  It is kind of fun to enter a recipe.  I am having a couple of my friends cook the dish also, using the recipe I have created.  They should let me know soon how theirs turns out. 

Things have been very busy for my family and me.  We are starting to get back on track. 

I am getting ready to enter a cooking contest.  I am preparing my mexican concoction for my coworkers tomorrow.  I hope they like it.  My husband and two friends really liked it.   I will have to keep you all posted.  Hopefully I will be keeping up more on my blog.

Two of my favorite foods are sausage and shrimp.  Put them together and you have a great meal.  I sauted garlic in olive oil, added white wine, chicken stock, cumin, chili powder, salt, pepper, and lemon, and cooked the liquid down.  I added cooked anduille sausagde, shrimp, and asiago cheese. After everything was heated through, I added parsely and the pasta.  I tossed everything together, added a little more asiago cheese and ate dinner.

It was a very good dinner, and it only took a few minutes to make.  There is nothing better than cooking a wholesome meal for your family.

Happy Halloween!!

What is your banjo?  Mine is my family, cooking, and writing.  For me cooking and writing are my ways to express myself.  Instead of saying I love you over and over; even though I say it all the time, I show my family in other ways.  I cook for them.  I try to give them the best food, prepared the best way I know how.

Chopping fresh herbs; using good ingredients; making up recipes; and amazingly enough, cleaning up are all things I enjoy doing not only for my family; but for myself as well.

One of the neatest aspects of canning is that I can have homemade food at the drop of a hat.  There really is no limit to the things one can can.  I have canned chili, jambalaya, tortilla soup, taco soup, clam chowder, and tortilla soup.  After gaining fifty pounds eating fast food while I was in school, it is great that I can eat healthy without much fuss at night.

What is your banjo? 

My canner is making noise as we speak.  I cooked 16 pints of chili and 5 quarts of jambalaya.  I usually cook my soups and chilis one day and can them another day.  This way any grease that is in the dish makes its way to the top of the pot, and it can then be scraped off.  This makes your dish even healthier.

Canning is one way I take care of my family.  I know what they eat, how it is prepared, and what goes into their food.  It is one of my little ways to let them know how much I love them.

On Sunday my friend came over and we made Jambalaya and chili.  The jambalaya turned out great.  She brought this great spicy sausage that really added a great flavor to the dish.  We chopped, sliced, diced, and generally made a huge mess in the kitchen.

My friend hadn't canned before, so this was a learning experience for her.  I think the canning process was easier than she originally thought.  Canning isn't that difficult. The really neat part is that you don't have to spend all day in the kitchen.  We did because we decided to make two different meals. 

My big tip for anyone wanting to can soups and chilis is to cook them one day and to can them the next.  The reason for this is the grease that will rise to the top after cooling off in the fridge for the night. 

We cooked a large batch of chili and while the flavor was great, I could taste grease in the chili I ate the day we made it.  After letting the chili sit all night, there was quite a bit of grease that had risen to the top.  Not only is this healthier for a person, I think it tastes much better with no grease.  I know.  You are thinking that I should just drain the meat, right?  I did, but the meat I used came from a split side of beef and some of it is greasy. 

For anyone who wants to know, canning chili is simple.  All you have to do is cook your chili, put it into clean, sterilized canning jars, add lids and liners, and place it in a canner with enough water so that 1/3 of each jar is covered.  Put the lid on the canner and adjust to 10 pounds of pressure.  Bring the canner to a boil and cook under ten pounds of pressure for 35 minutes.

Have fun canning!  It is a great way to have the good food you like any time you want

I love a one dish meal.  I took sausage, browned it and drained it.  In the same skillet, I cooked hash browns and added the sausage back to the pan with the hashbrowns.  When the two are done, I added eggs and scrambled with the sausage and hashbrowns.  I added a little salt and pepper for seasoning and it was yummy.

Tomorrow I am canning chili and jambalaya with a friend.  It should be very interesting and fun.  I will tell you about it.  Have a nice day.

Today I went to the Packer football game.  The best part of the game of course is the food and when one is in Green Bay, one eats a brat.  There is nothing I like more than eating brats in their native environment so to speak.  Lambeau Field is one of the best places for a football game. Tailgating there is fabulous.  The smells from the different tailgaters tickle the nose and create hunger where none exsisted before.  I love going to footall games here.

I took my students to a conference about journalism.  It had to be the best field trip I have ever gone on before.  All of the students had a great time and they all seemed to learn something.  We listened to the keynote address and I was a bit worried about my students not being able to sit and listen to one speaker for that long without getting bored. 

I needn't have worried as they all found something interesting in the speech.  One thing Eric Zorn - our speaker talked about was that even though you might want to be a journalist, you have to have something outside to help fullfill your life.  For Eric, it was the banjo.  He played the banjo for all of us and proceeded to tell us that we all need to find our banjo in life.  My students just loved that.

I had never really thought about it too much before.  I love my family tremendously, and I love my job, but my "banjo" has to be writing and cooking.  Have you all found your "banjo?"

The weather is supposedly getting chillier; it was 90 degrees today.  Thoughts of comfort food fill the brain.  It is that time of year.  I was talking to my neighbor the other day and we decided that we needed to be more like her fish.  When the weather cools down, her fish start their hibernation process.  They move less and of course, they eat less.  We should do the same, but it seems as the weather cools down, our food intake increases.

No matter, this is a great time of year.  Cold frosty weather, warm comforting food, the combination is delightful.  I look forward to creating new dishes for my family and friends.  Since I have canned just a litle chili, I have an urge to do more.  More soups, chilis, and jambalayas are on the canning horizon.  My friend will be here next week for a major canning day.  I am very much looking forward to it.  I am also looking forward to filling my pantry with my home canned goods.

Happy eating!

Well, I am finally canning the chili.  It is on the stove as I type this post.  I was able to get two dinners, two lunches and six quarts out of this batch.  I always get a sense of satisfaction out of canning.  I feel like I have really accomplished something

I am working on a recipe for the Pilsbury bake-off.  Who knows?

I made very good linguini with clams tonight.  I am trying to cook using fresh ingredients vs. out of a box.  It turned out very well.  I used anchovies as a base for the sauce; and no, it didn't taste fishy.  I should really call the dish linguini with shrimp and clams.  I marinated the shrimp in some olive oil, white wine, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper.  The sauce was very good, not greasy or very fattening.

I know I was supposed to can the chili tonight, but I got busy and will do it tomorrow night.  I usually don't procrastinate, but I just did tonight.

I was also thinking about entering a recipe in the next Pilsbury bake-off.  What do you think?

Well, I made the chili I talked about in my last post.  I did a couple of things differently than the last time.  This time I cut down on tomatoes, added beef broth, and used fresh garlic instead of powdered.  I also used mexican chili pepper versus regular chili pepper.

Thsi past spring our family decided to split a side of beef with another family.  It is the first time I have used that ground meat for my chili.  I also used ground sausage.  Even though I drain my cooked meat, the chili was very greasy.  Before I can it I will definately have to skim the fat off the top.  That is if my husband doesn't forget to carry it to the frig downstairs.

I will let you know how the canning goes.  Have a great night. 

My husband and I really like Mexican food. I made tacos tonight.  Grating cheese is so much easier if one lets the cheese set out for a bit before putting it to the grater.  I love using fresh ingredients, they add so much more flavor.

My husband ate 5 tacos, count them, 5!  I ate 2.  The kids liked the beans and cheese, but they aren't much for tacos yet.  I am really trying to plan a week''s worth of menus at a time.

Tomorrow night we are having linguini with clam sauce.  I will probably add some shrimp to it to make it yummy.  I used to make it from a jarred sauce, but I now make it from scratch and it doesn't take very long. 

What do you all want to see on a cooking blog?  People seemed to like the recipe I put on the website.  I like to read about cooking tips.  I really like to learn about ingredients that I don't normally use.  I guess my ultimate goal is to publish a blog that helps other people.  I don't have all the cooking knowledge, but I would be happy to share what I do know with you all. 

Cooking for me is like a journey, as I gain more experience and learn to cook different dishes that make friends and family happy, I feel that I have made great strides somehow in my life.  I don't know why I feel this way, but I do.

Has anyone looked at chili food labels lately?  Each serving of chili has around 20 grams of fat and tons of words I don't know how to pronounce.  Growing up we used to can all kinds of things, tomatoes, tomato juice, grape jelly, grape juice, soups, and all kinds of good treats.  The time we spent canning was great family time.  We actually picked the grapes we canned from my grandpa's grape arbor.  Grampa has since passed on but his memory is very much alive in my kitchen.

When I went to my parent's house one time, I remember seeing the canners and rows and rows of canned goods.  For whatever reason, it was then I knew I wanted to get married, start a family and prepare great food for them.  That Christmas, after my dad met the man who would become my husband, he bought me my first canner.

These days I use my canner to makes soups and chilis.  My husband loves my chili and jambalaya.  Both dishes are labor intensive and time consuming.  Canning them was a natural progression for me. Not only can we have chili whenever we want, we know exactly what is in it and how it is made.  I also know there isn't anywhere near 20 grams of fat per serving in my chili. 

Some people tell me there is no way they are taking that much time to can, but in all actuality, it doesn't take much more to can than to just cook it.  I make chili using 6 pounds and ground meat and 3 pounds of spicy sausage, so I end up with a very large pot.  The usual yield is around 6 quarts.  I make the chili one day and can it the next.  The entire canning process takes around 1 1/2 hour.  Unless I take an entire weekend, I can this way about twice to three times in the winter.

Try canning sometime.  It is great fun if you like cooking.

/Someone asked for the recipe- here it is.  It is a great winter potluck dish!