After MUCH tinkering, altering, getting frustrated, starting over, redesigning, and general finagling, I’ve finally come up with something that I can be satisfied attaching my name to. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be continuing to tinker and mess with the new site, probably forever, but it’s ready enough to send folks over.

So don’t be shy, click on over!

very tasty

(I even changed the name, I hope you like it.)

And don’t forget to update your subscriptions (if anyone other than my husband subscribes, that is) as I won’t be updating Recipes and Ruminations anymore after this.

Jeremy’s Christmas gift to me this year was setting me up with my own domain name and hosting for my blog. While I could have just transferred my exact look over to the new site, I got rather excited about redoing my blog’s look. Since I’ll be redirecting traffic to the new site anways, why not take this opportunity to make it look just how I want it. (As an aside, I’m happy with the WordPress theme I’m using here, Black Letterhead by Ulysses Ronquilo, but I always chafe a little at using something that thousands of other people could be using too. I want to be original, dammit! I also want to lighten up the feel a little to reflect my writing style, and try my hand at designing my own mastheads.)

But I’ve quickly discovered that in order to customize my self-hosted blog on WordPress, I’ve got to geek out a little. So I’ve taken on the project of teaching myself enough html and css to do the job of making my blog look just like I want it to. And in the meantime, I’m not posting too much about food as I spend my evenings reading the tutorials at W3Schools and WordPress Wednesdays, designing mastheads on the Gimp, and experimenting with the coding of my new website.

Once I get the new site looking just right, I’ll be putting a link to it on this site. I’ve built up a decent referral base from google (people searching for mushroom gravy and Jamie Oliver’s salmon) and I’m hoping to transfer some of that love over to the new site.

In the meantime, if you’d like to follow my progress, and see just how SLOWLY I’m learning how to code, feel free to head on over to jannamo.com and have a look around. I’d love to hear any input or handy css tips you have to offer.

I’ve moved!

Please click here to view this recipe at my new home,

very tasty

I promise, it’s the same recipe, and it’s prettier!

Come on over!

I was invited to my first Cookie Party this year. What fun! Everyone brings 5 dozen of one kind of cookie, and leaves with a giant tupperware container filled with a cornucopia of cookie variety. The only danger for me is my drive to try a bit of everything.

I wanted to make something that I could count on no one else bringing, so I paged through my grandma’s old recipe book. As soon as turned to the potato chip cookies, I knew this would be the one. There’s something special about the combination of salty and sweet. My mom used to put salty peanuts on our ice cream sundaes to the same effect. Chocolate-covered pretzels have the same yummy combination.

Potato chip cookies remind me of the 50s, when jello was a reasonable ingredient for a salad, and cool whip could constitute most of a pie. These cookies translate well to the modern day however. The cookie is crumbly, a bit like shortbread, with the salty potato chip bits and the toasted pecans to add a bit of crunch. Definitely one of my favorite cookies.

• 1 1/2 C. butter
• 1 C. sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 C. crushed potato chips
• 3 C. flour
• 1 C. chopped toasted pecans
• 1 t. vanilla

Cream butter and sugar well. Mix in each of the rest of the ingredients in order. Drop by teaspoons on greased cookie sheets. Press each cookie once with a fork dipped in sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

I’ve moved!

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very tasty

I promise, it’s the same recipe, and it’s prettier!

Come on over!

The Gluten-Free Version.

When I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen, I just knew I had to make it for Thanksgiving. The first time I had brown butter sauce at a fancy restaurant, I was hooked. The flavor of good brown butter sauce is, in my opinion, one of the best flavors there is.

I wanted to make the recipe gluten-free, as well as remedy the problems that Deb reported with the recipe, mostly that there was more sauce than there should have been. To achieve those two things I decided to replace the flour with cornstarch, and to reduce the amount of broth, as well as watch the broth as I added it to make sure it thickened the way I wanted it to. I also just got lazy about the chestnuts, and didn’t use the fresh ones I’d bought, but tried out a can of French chestnuts in water, to see how they worked out. Also, Whole Foods was out of shallots the night before Thanksgiving, so I tried Cipollini onions.

The result was quite good. I overdid the cornstarch a little, resulting in a the brown butter flavor getting a bit obscured, and the canned chestnuts were OK, but I’d go to the effort of prepping the fresh ones next time. The Cipollini onions were perfect, and the brown butter flavor was oh so delicious.

See the last couple of posts for a picture of the Thanksgiving meal on the plate.

Here’s the recipe, as I made it.

• 2 pounds brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
• 4 T. butter
• 2 very thinly sliced cipollini onions
• 1 T. cornstarch, mixed with a few T. warm stock
• 1-1 1/2 C. hot chicken or vegetable stock
• 2 T. lemon juice
• Ground black pepper
• 1/4 t. nutmeg
• 1 C. roasted, peeled chestnuts, broken into pieces.

Bring 4 cups salted water to a boil, add brussels sprouts and cook 10 minutes. Drain and refresh under cold water. Drain again.

Meanwhile, melt butter in a 3-quart saucepan. Add cipollini onions and cook over medium heat, stirring, until light brown. Pour contents of pan through a fine strainer into a dish, pressing to remove as much butter as possible from the onions. Place onions on paper towel to drain. Return butter to saucepan.

If serving immediately, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place saucepan over medium heat and cook until butter has a nutty aroma and is turning brown. Whisk in cornstarch and water mixture and cook until mixture is light brown. Whisk in stock and cook until sauce has thickened. Add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste, and nutmeg. Add chestnuts and brussels sprouts, folding ingredients together.

Transfer to an 8-cup baking dish. Scatter onions on top. Bake about 15 minutes. Serve.

I’ve moved!

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very tasty

I promise, it’s the same recipe, and it’s prettier!

Come on over!

I’ve got one more Thanksgiving recipe to post, but I thought I’d take a break for a day with a little holiday party hors d’oeuvres fare.

If you hadn’t guessed by now, I’m a big fan of salty pork products, like bacon, ham, and especially prosciutto. We were at a fancy holiday party last weekend where they served this dish, and I thought it was a great idea. Incredibly simple and delicious. I tried it at home, and it lived up to my expectations.

There’s really no recipe, just take a look at the picture.

I drizzled my asparagus with just a little olive oil before wrapping to help the prosciutto stick, baked for about 10 minutes in a 425 oven, and squeezed half a lemon over the whole thing after baking.

Doesn’t that make your mouth water?

I’ve moved!

Please click here to view this recipe at my new home,

very tasty

I promise, it’s the same recipe, and it’s prettier!

Come on over!

This item was a last minute addition to the Thanksgiving menu, as someone else had promised to make gravy with the turkey drippings, but I knew my husband wouldn’t be able to enjoy it, since it would be made with wheat flour. And then another friend joined the party who is a vegetarian, so I had all the more reason to make an alternative gravy. I checked with Gluten-Free Girl, who swears that “its absurdly easy to make gluten-free gravy”, with sweet rice flour. I decided to go with a mushroom gravy since I remembered it being tasty from my own vegetarian days, and I couldn’t imagine vegetable stock alone providing enough flavor. Here’s a shot of the production taken by my husband, who remembered to take pictures for my blog when I forgot.

You can see the Sweet Rice Flour from Trader Joe’s, as well as the Mushroom Broth, that made this recipe a snap to make.

Sweet Rice Flour actually works much like regular flour, added slowly to melted butter, it makes something resembling a roux, which then makes a nice thick delicious sauce as liquid is added. I’m not a purist about the roux step, so I go ahead and sprinkle the flour right on the sauteing mushrooms. It works fine.

You could use a wide variety of mushrooms for this gravy, it all depends how much mushroom flavor you want. White button mushrooms are going to give you a fairly simple gravy without too much mushroom flavor, while the more flavorful varieties (oysters, chanterelles, shitakes, porcinis) will of course make a much more mushroomy, and even meaty tasting gravy. I used a pack of Royal Trumpets, and a pack of a type that I think was called Velvet Pelliopini, but I’m not sure. The closest I can find on line is called Flammulina velutipes, and seems to look similar, but what do I know. They tasted mighty good.

Here’s the recipe.

• 4 T Butter
• 1 1/2 C Diced Mushrooms
• 1 t Italian Herb Mix
• 3-4 T Sweet Rice Flour
• 1 1/2 C Mushroom Broth

Saute the mushrooms in the butter with the herbs. Add salt and pepper to taste. When the mushrooms are nice and soft, sprinkle in the sweet rice flour, one Tablespoon at a time. Allow the flour to fully soak in to the butter before adding more flour. When you have a thick flour butter mixture surrounding the mushrooms, add the broth, a little at a time, allowing it to cook and begin to thicken before adding the next half cup.

That’s it! Easy-peasy.

I’ve moved!

Please click here to view this recipe at my new home,

very tasty

I promise, it’s the same recipe, and it’s prettier!

Come on over!

I think stuffing at Thanksgiving, with a little mashed potatoes and a lot of gravy, is one of the best food combinations. I don’t even need the turkey, although it’s certainly nice too.

I made gluten-free stuffing for the first time this year, and it turned out perfectly. My old stand-by is Pepperidge Farms herb stuffing mix, but this year I wanted to make something I could share with my wheat intolerant husband. Earlier in the year we found some incredibly light and fluffy gluten-free bread products from a company called Kinnikinnick Foods. Our local Whole Foods doesn’t carry a wide variety of their products, but what they do carry is great: hamburger and hot dog buns, and english muffins. No one cared that it was gluten-free. The texture was just little different, but still lived up to my expectations of being one of my very very favorite foods.

Bread stuffing is really simple, basically it’s just bread with some goodies, moistened with butter and broth, so please feel free to improvise. I usually use sausage and chicken broth, but this year I wanted to make it vegetarian friendly, so I left out the sausage and used vegetable broth.

Like I said in the last post, I didn’t get any good photos of this meal, but you can see it here again on the plate.

Here’s the recipe:

• 6 C cubed bread (here’s where you can go with wheat or gluten free)
• 1 stick of butter
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 1 1/2 C mushrooms, sliced
• 3 or 4 ribs of celery, sliced
• 1 bunch fresh sage
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Other fresh or dried herbs
• 1 apple
• 1 small can water chestnuts
• 1-2 C broth

If your bread is not stale, put it in a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes until it’s dry. (Fresh bread makes mushy, textureless stuffing.)

Melt 1/2 a stick of butter in a large dutch oven. Add the onions and celery. In another pan, saute the mushrooms in the other 1/2 stick of butter. Add some chopped fresh sage to both pans as they saute. Add other herbs and salt & pepper to taste. When the onion and the mushrooms are both beginning to brown and carmelize, add the mushrooms in with the onions. There should be a nice layer of herb-y melted butter at the bottom of the pan. Add the bread cubes and quickly stir to coat evenly.

Add the apple and the water chestnuts, and a cup of broth. Add more broth, just a little at a time, stirring it in, until the stuffing is about the texture you like.

Cover the dutch oven and put it over low heat for about an hour, or until the apples get soft.

If the bottom begins to dry out or burn, add more broth (and/or butter) to keep it moist.

Serve with mashed potatoes and gravy. That’s a must.

I’ve moved!

Please click here to view this recipe at my new home,

very tasty

I promise, it’s the same recipe, and it’s prettier!

Come on over!

I’ve been taking a little blogging hiatus since Thanksgiving. I think I got a little overloaded with cooking, and the dark, dark nights are getting me down. I mean, what’s the point of cooking anything if there isn’t enough light to get a good picture of it? The non-blogging streak began with Thanksgiving when I missed all sorts of good photo opportunities, what with the chaos of Thanksgiving, with people around, not to mention the wine. I did remember to capture one good photo of the meal, via my friend Abby’s plate. Here it is.

We had a potluck Thanksgiving at my folks house this year, which worked beautifully. (And you know I like potlucks.) Everyone contributed something, and no one had to stress out and get up at the crack of dawn to prep a dozen dishes. I’ll post about my contributions, namely the stuffing (gluten-free), the mushroom gravy (also gluten-free), and the delicious brussels sprouts with chestnuts in brown butter sauce from Deb over at Smitten Kitchen.

There’s a couple milestones to acknowledge today.

First, my husband and I have now been married for 6 months. That’s half a year. And it’s been great. I’m glad to be married to you, honey. You’re the best man I’ve ever known.

Second, my blog just reached 500 total hits! YEEHAW!!! I know that’s lots and lots of clicks from just a few people, all of whom I know personally, but there’s some of you I’ve never even met that are reading this thing. How awesome is that!

I’ve moved!

Please click here to view this recipe at my new home,

very tasty

I promise, it’s the same recipe, and it’s prettier!

Come on over!

Lots of people have a good refried beans recipe, and for good reason, it’s really pretty simple. I’d never made them from scratch, as I always thought it must be a complicated process. I mean they are fried once, and then refried, right? Actually, wrong. Turns out the term refried beans is just a mistranslation of frijoles refritos, which doesn’t mean RE-fried at all, just plain fried beans.

It’s easy to make vegetarian refried beans by starting with oil, but refried beans are well-known (infamous?) for containing lard. And, for good reason, it’s darn tasty. Some recipes call for rendering some bacon for the lard and then removing the pieces, but since I always love me some bacon, I left it in.

One thing I don’t understand is why all the refried beans I’ve ever had from a can or in a restaurant have such a uniform brown color. When you cook a pinto bean, the outside loses its pinto spots and turns that pinkish brown color, but the inside of the bean is white. So my refried beans always turn out a bit pale and washed out and bit unappetizing in photos. Ah, well. They sure are tasty though.

• 3 C. dried pinto beans
• water
• salt
• 8 oz. bacon, chopped (or 2 T. vegetable oil for a vegetarian version)
• 1 medium onion, small dice
• 1 T. chili powder

Soak the dried beans over night in a large pot, filled to the top with water. After soaking, drain the beans, cover with plenty of fresh water add some salt, bring to a boil, and simmer for about an hour, or until the beans are very tender and splitting open, but not disintegrating.

While the beans are simmering, in another large part, cook the bacon until crispy. Removing the bacon at this point is optional. (If you are making vegetarian refried beans, heat the oil for a minute or two in a large pot.) Add the diced onion to and cook on medium low heat until very soft. Add the chili powder.

Ladle off and reserve a spoonful or two of the bean broth and drain the beans. Add the drained beans to the cooked onions, and go at ‘em with a potato masher. Leave the beans on the stove as you go, allowing them to continue cooking, and add bean broth as necessary to get the consistency you want.