Mustard Vinaigrette

Today's Bennett Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette.

Salad dressing, why in the world should you make your own salad dressing? After all, there are hundreds of varieties of salad dressing to choose at any grocery store. If you have read this little old blog for any length of time, you will be able to guess the first reason I make my own salad dressing. Okay, you may be able to guess the first two reasons; I'm a tightwad and I'm a dork who likes to make all her own food. There are a couple of other very good reasons you might want to get out your blender (or a whisk) and a few items from your pantry and whip up your own dressing.

My sweet sister is struggling with gluten and soy intolerance. These are tough items to avoid nowadays. Once you start looking around you will be amazed at the variety of products that contain wheat and soy. It's in nearly every pre-made and processed food that is available in a regular grocery store. Not too big of a problem if you have access to a good natural foods store and are able to shop there. However, making your own dressing allows you to save time and money and best of all, you can tailor it exactly to your families needs and preferences. Do you want raw vinegar and organic olive oil? Go for it! No garlic? No problem! Sugar instead of honey? Get out that sugar bowl! That is the beauty of making it yourself, you can make it your way!

Mustard Vinaigrette

1/4 cup whole-grain mustard

1/2 cup cider vinegar

2 to 4 small cloves garlic (your preference, I like 4)

1 teaspoon honey

1/2 teaspoon salt

a few grinds of black pepper

1 cup olive oil or a mix of oil (I use half olive/half peanut)

Measure mustard, vinegar, garlic, honey, salt and pepper into your blender container. Buzz it a few times to mix. I have a covered hole in the center of my blender container lid that I can uncover and pour into, you probably do too. Remove the cover of the hole and slowly pour in the oil while the machine is running. It should emulsify and thicken up immediately. You can't fail with a vinaigrette using this method. Taste your lovely concoction and see if it needs more salt or pepper. When it's just how you like it, pour it into a jar and refrigerate until you need to drizzle it over your lovely salad.

Lookey there! You just made your own salad dressing. Good job!

Liz's Almost Naughty Green Beans

I have a friend named Liz, I just love her. When our youngest sone was born she brought us a lovely dinner. There was chicken parmesan and hot buttered bread, and then there were green beans. Oh my! The next day I called her and asked her how in heaven's name she made those green beans. They were the most fabulous green beans I had ever put in my mouth. If my memory serves me, I ate them for dessert. She laughed and said, "Oh, the naughty green beans?" Come to find out, they contained a stick of real butter and 1/2 cup of brown sugar! No wonder they were divine! I knew I couldn't live without those green beans in my life but I'm kind of stingy with my butter so I tweaked and adjusted to create Liz's Almost Naughty Green Beans. They have undergone further tweaking as I have been slowly removing sugar from our diet, honey makes pretty great green beans too.

Liz's Almost Naughty Green Beans

1 pound frozen green beans (look for long skinny beans, they work the best)

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons brown sugar

or

1 tablespoon honey

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 clove garlic, minced

Place all ingredient in a large saucepan with a lid and place over medium heat. After the butter and soy sauce are simmering good, reduce heat to low. Cook for about half an hour until the beans are quite tender and the sauce it reduced to a thick glaze. Taste and add salt and pepper if you think it needs it.

You are just going to love this simple side dish. Or of course, you can have it for dessert too!

The Bennett Salad

Today I give you The Bennett Salad. What can I say about the Bennetts. Two years ago we met a family and they have been a tremendous blessing to our family. The mother has been an inspiration to me in my homeschool and their intentionality in raising their children has helped shape our direction in raising ours. Their daughters babysit our kids, all six of them at once! In fact, a few weeks ago, when one of their daughters came to babysit she brought her salad with her, three of my kiddos who hadn't eaten the salad I had just served them lined up with plates to eat her salad. She brought a bigger salad the next week to share. We love the Bennetts.

And then there is this salad. Above you can see a Bennett Salad we enjoyed last week. Not the same salad we ate at their lovely home but a version. No recipe for it exists, only the rule of putting any fresh vegetable you have, finely diced on your fresh lettuce. There must be sprouts of some kind and nuts or seeds. Sunflower seeds always adorn their salad but I had eaten all mine so walnuts were the star of this particular salad. I loved the golden raisins on this too.

So check out your fridge, farmer's market, or garden and see what you have to make your own Bennett Salad. Really load it up. Grow some sprouts, it's easy if you have a jar and some seeds. Check out this cool website for sprouting info and even videos. You will feel healthier after the first bite!

Mama's Cornbread

Don't you want some cornbread? I thought so. Every southern food book I've ever read (and that has been a few, believe me) shares memories of their mama's cornbread. In the south, cornbread usually means unsweetened cornbread baked in a sizzling hot skillet. Super sweet cornbread baked in a pyrex pan was cake not cornbread. If my Mamaw had set a plate of that down in front of my Papaw he would have thrown it out to his hound dog. No offense to lovers of yankee cornbread but "real" cornbread is a serious thing in the south, impostors could be shot!

My Mama is famous for her cornbread. I love love love it and must have it at least once a week. Her crispy, buttery cornbread is one of the only things I have a deep craving for year round. It goes with everything, beans, soup, salad, butter, anything really. I make it for breakfast sometimes and there is never a crumb left. Now I make two pans of it so everyone can have plenty. Made with fresh ground cornmeal and flour, you can't beat it for a healthy quick bread.

I will now ask my Mama to look aside while I tell you that I have slightly modified her recipe to fit my cooking so it's not her exact recipe. Honey instead of sugar, fewer eggs and less butter. Okay Mama, you can look back. So get out your skillet and let's make a pan (pone as Mamaw used to call it) of cornbread.

The first step is to preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Set your iron skillet in there to heat up too. A hot skillet is the secret to good crusty cornbread. Measure a cup of flour, cup of cornmeal, 1 tablespoon baking powder and a teaspoon of salt into a large bowl. Stir it to mix all your dry ingredients together.

Enlist a handy kid to mix up 1 and 1/4 cup of milk, 2 eggs and 1 tablespoon of honey in a measuring cup or small bowl. If there are no handy kids, just beat it together yourself. All the same and you probably have cleaner hands. I hope so anyway.

When your oven and iron skillet are good and hot, set the skillet out on your stove and melt 2 tablespoons of real butter in it (Don't you like my square pan? It was Grandma's.). Pour the wet mixture into the dry and give it a few stirs, then pour the melted butter quickly into the batter. Stir it up to mix the butter in. Be sure to not burn yourself with the skillet, it's super hot! Pour the batter into the skillet.

Can you see what's happening? Look at the edge of the skillet and see how the batter is foaming up. It is searing in the hot skillet and that is what gives you the magical golden crust. Bake it for 20 minutes in your hot oven and then flip it out onto a big platter. Flipping it out of the pan is a bit of a trick, I still catch myself holding my breath every time I turn do it. Just have faith and go for it.

Then all that's left is to cut it up and serve wedges or squares of hot golden goodness to all the lucky people sitting around your table. You'll be glad you did.

Oh Me, Oh My, Sesame Noodles!

These were on the menu the other night to accompany some Soy Glazed Salmon and I have to say, it's one of the best things I've made in a long time. Joe had taken the kids to the park so they could run a bit and I was able to cook in peace, a rare thing indeed around here. I whipped up the sauce and poured it over the noodles, gave it a stir and then made the mistake of putting a bite in my mouth. I couldn't stop. They were divine! It's all I want to eat. I have a feeling there will be a bowl of these residing in my fridge very often this summer. The original recipe called for linguine but I happened to have some soba noodles in my pantry so I used those instead. All I can say is, if you can get your hands on soba noodles then use those, but if not just use linguine. Whole wheat would be great with this recipe. Just don't not make it if you can't find soba noodles. It would be a crying shame to miss out just because of that!

Sesame Noodles

8 ounces of linguine or soba noodles

3 cloves of garlic

3 Tablespoons oil

3 Tablespoons vinegar (rice vinegar would be great but I used regular white)

3 Tablespoons sugar

3 Tablespoons soy sauce

1 Tablespoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon chile sauce (Asian chile sauce would be ideal but I used the stuff you find by the ketchup)

2 or 3 green onions

1 teaspoon of sesame seeds, toasted if you have time

Boil the noodles following the package instructions, drain and rinse to cool them. Soba noodles always have to be rinsed. Combine all the other ingredients except the onions and sesame seeds and simmer a few minutes. What you are aiming for is to cook the garlic a little. Raw garlic a bit much. When the noodles are drained fairly well, stir the sauce into them in a roomy bowl. Mix in the onions and sprinkle with the sesame seeds. Taste at your own risk unless you are lucky enough to be making them just for yourself otherwise there won't be any left to share. Don't say I didn't warn you, these are addictive!

Avocado Grapefruit Salad

Ah, wintertime with it's citrus fruit! This is one of our top salads to brighten those gray winter days. It's not even really a recipe but more of a divine combination of flavors and textures. Cover a platter or large bowl with fresh baby spinach, scatter ripe avocado slices over the spinach then top that with pink grapefruit sections. Grind some fresh pepper over all and serve. The juice from the grapefruit makes a perfect light dressing and keeps the avocado from turning brown, not that this salad last long enough for them to turn brown anyway.

My only note is about sectioning the grapefruit. I cut the top and bottom of and set it upright on the cutting board. With a sharp knife, slice down the side of the fruit, removing the peel and the white pith. Do this all the way around until you have a naked pink grapefruit. Holding it over the salad (or a bowl if you are just sectioning it) slice right next to the membrane between two sections. Do this for both side of each section and a neat slice of fruit should come right out. In a few minutes you should have a handful of grapefruit membranes in your hand and a luscious pile of juicy sections. Obviously this works for any citrus fruit and makes a special addition to a fruit salad. Yummy!

Fun Food Friday!(on Saturday) Egg Rolls

I have a confession. I am a compulsive menu planner. I can't help it, it's been 3 years since I started planning weekly menus and I can't stop. A year or so ago, just to make the planning easier, I assigned a type of food for each day. Monday - Mexican, Tuesday - pasta, Wednesday - stir-fry/vegetarian, Thursday - crock pot, Friday - Fun Food, Saturday - something new, Sunday - something easy. I know. Welcome to my compulsive world. Now, I don't stick to that rotation all the time. And I am likely to cook a new recipe any night of the week. Also, I try to use whatever meat is on sale at our local grocery store (unless it's gizzards or frog legs, there I draw the line) so if I planned to cook a beef roast but faint when I see the price tag at the meat case then I will substitute something a little more budget friendly. All that to say that on Wednesday there is nothing that goes with a stir-fry like egg rolls. However, in my little town they are hard to find at the grocery store and the ones I unfortunately found were not fit to eat. Mystery meat substitutes are not something I'm eager to try. Thus began my journey into egg roll making. The main change I made to the recipes I found was to bake them instead of frying. You don't get quite the same crunchiness but you also don't have to fry 25 egg rolls and then deal with grease. And I don't know about you but I can do without eating deep fried anything. They are crisp, hot and delicious, I think you'll like them!
First of all you want to marinate a pound of ground pork or turkey with 3 Tablespoons of soy sauce, some minced garlic and ginger and a bit of salt. Brown that while you chop up a head of cabbage, shred some carrots and mince some more garlic. Or you could use a bag of cole slaw mix and be done with it. I've never tried it but it would work.
Throw the vegetables in with the meat and saute until the cabbage is soft. Season with more soy sauce and salt. You need a good amount of salt even though you have all that soy sauce. Pork and turkey can be pretty bland and cabbage is bland's middle name. Be brave and season it up! You want to taste it when the cabbage is done and then you can add more soy sauce or salt if it needs it.
Here is my filling, the egg roll wrappers and a dish of cornstarch and water to seal the wrappers. I buy my wrappers at Walmart in the produce section. Look in the refrigerated case with the tofu. About the cornstarch stuff, you can seal the wrappers with water but this cornstarch and water "slurry" works best. It's just a teaspoon of cornstarch in 2 Tablespoons of water.
So, let's get crackin'. Put about 2 or 3 Tablespoons of filling on the wrapper like this.
Fold the bottom corner up to cover the filling.
Dab some of the cornstarch/water mixture on the bottom corner you just folded up and fold the two side in and seal the tips to the moistened corner.
Moisten the top corner and tightly roll up the egg roll and seal to the top corner. There, you've made your own egg roll! Wouldn't your mama be proud?! Now pour about 3 Tablespoons of oil on the baking sheet and spread it around evenly. Set your egg roll on the oiled sheet and roll it over to coat all sides with the oil. Repeat with all the wrappers and filling. Slide the sheet into a 425 degree oven and bake for about 30 minutes, being sure to turn them every 10 minutes or so to brown all sides.
The most important thing is to not eat all of them yourself, try to share some with your family, it's hard but you can do it! And even if you do eat them all yourself they are really good for you with all those cruciferous vegetables and other stuff. Eat up!