Demeter Made

Green Beans with Cashews

It all started with a rice cooker. . .my love of preparing Asian-inspired food that is.  David and I got an electric rice cooker as a wedding gift and if you don't have one, please do yourself a favor and go get one right now!  The rice is cooked perfectly every time, fluffy and delicious; no more guessing about the magic water to rice ratio or burning the rice on the bottom of the pan.  Of course, rice is the type of food that  doesn't like to be alone, it needs playmates, and the flavors of crisp vegetables, soy sauce, and sesame are a natural choice.  There is also the fact that many Asian dishes are very quick and easy to make, which is fabulous when you just don't feel like making a full-length, Broadway production out of dinner. 

So I got the juicer. . .now what do I do with all this pulp?

Happy New Year, everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and are now off to a great start with all your New Year's resolutions.  As a Christmas present to ourselves and as part of our New Year's resolution to get back in shape (I know, how cliche. . .) David and I bought a Breville Compact Juice Fountain and we've been juicing like crazy for the last week or so.  The juice is certainly delicious, but now my cup and freezer overflowth with wonderful, fiber-filled fruit pulp that I am just too frugal to throw away.  So just what do you do with all this squished up fruit?  Well, I made muffins.  Orange-Strawberry Muffins.  They turned out to be a great tasting, nutritious little snacks.  They get better the next day and they freeze well for a quick breakfast on the run. 

Little Pumpkin Loaves

To continue my love affair with the flavors of the Christmas season, today I bring you a recipe for pumpkin bread topped with mini-chocolate chips and nuts.  I made little individual loaves, but you can certainly make one or two large loaves out of this recipe.  The smaller loaves are perfect for last minute gift-giving, which is exactly what I made this batch for. 

The bread has a cake-like texture that is incredibly moist.  It is sweet and filled with the warm, spicy flavors of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves which fill the house with a wonderful aroma as the bread is baking.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas from my kitchen you yours!

Snowball Cookies

A cookie by any other name is still. . .delicious.  These simple little, sugar covered gems are commonly called Mexican Wedding Cookies, but in my family we know them as Snowballs.  The cookies are crisp and light and just sweet enough.  Although often overused, the phrase "melt-in-your-mouth" describes the texture of these cookies perfectly. 

The ingredient list is very simple; butter, powdered sugar, flour, good-quality vanilla and pecans are all that go into these cookies.  I was excited to finally get to use my homemade vanilla extract that I started a few months back, as it had aged long enough to develop a nice, smooth vanilla flavor.  Using good quality butter and vanilla is especially important due to the simplicity of the flavors that make these cookies so unique.  I like using pecans, but they are equally good with chopped almonds or walnuts.  

German Gingersnap Cookies

Happy Holidays everyone!  I'm sure most of you probably have  your Christmas cookie baking finished.   But for those of you that might still need some ideas for the cookies you'll be leaving out for Santa on Christmas Eve, I'd like to share a few of my favorite holiday cookie recipes over the next few days.  Today it's German Gingersnaps.  A wonderful, spicy cookie sweetened with brown sugar and dark blackstrap molasses.  This is a great recipe for the holidays as it fills the kitchen with the traditional holiday aroma of ginger and cinnamon.

What is your favorite holiday cookie recipe?  

Pear Dumplings with Cinnamon-Vanilla Bean Glaze

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and you all are now fully engulfed in the holiday spirit.  I was busy decorating our Christmas tree this evening and I wanted to make a festive dessert that would use up the two pears that I had sitting in my refrigerator.  I also wanted to make the pastry dough recipe that I had used for this year's Thanksgiving pie.  Until this year, I'd alway had trouble with pie crusts, I had never been able to get that wonderful flaky crust that you actually want to eat.  This year, I tried a recipe that was printed in the little booklet that came with my Cuisinart Food Processor and it was just perfect.  I did my usual substitution of white whole wheat flour in the place of some of the all-purpose flour and the crust was tender and flaky.  The touch of baking powder and the proper ratio of butter to shortening really did the trick. 

"The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever"

So, I'm a little slow to get on the New York Times "Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Ever" bandwagon.  The recipe, originally adapted from Jacques Torres, was published in the Times on July 9, 2008.  Since I don't subscribe to the NY Times, I first heard about the recipe that was shaking up kitchens everywhere on a Slate Gabfest podcast.  Yes, chocolate chip cookies made the topic cut for a political radio show in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign—these had to be some seriously good cookies and according to David Plotz and Emily Bazelon somewhat subversive.  Apparently, some people think that the time spent coming up with the perfect cookie recipe could be better spent solving the problems of war and political strife.  They felt that the special ingredients and extra steps are representative of the hedonistic society that we live in today.  Maybe they are right. . .or maybe the perfect chocolate chip cookie is just what the world needs to achieve a little balance.   A little sweetness, a little extra care and love, and things seem just a little more bearable.

Soup's On! Creamy Corn Chowder

One of my favorite things to make for dinner when the weather is cool is hearty, homemade soups.  My all-time favorite to cook and eat is corn chowder.  This recipe is quick and easy to make and all the steps are  completed using only one soup pot.  The later of these qualities makes my dish-washing hubby very happy!

Pecan Topped Pumpkin Pie

Earlier this week I had a craving for pumpkin pie.  Maybe it was the cool weather or the fact that Thanksgiving is just a few weeks away, but whatever it was, I was feeling experimental.  I've always struggled with traditional rolled out pie crusts and so I decided to take the easy way out and use a pat-in-the pan whole wheat shortbread crust.  It is buttery and rich and a good base for the pumpkin custard.  I adapted the classic pumpkin pie recipe from the Libby's Pumpkin label, adding nutmeg and a touch of almond extract just for fun and then topped it with a mixture of pecans, brown sugar, and cinnamon.  I figured you really couldn't go wrong with a pumpkin and pecan pie.  Why segregate your flavors, when they are so good together?

Sweet Buttermilk Corn Muffins

When I was in elementary school, we had a big wind storm one winter that left us without power for a day or so.  This was an unusual occasion, because I grew up in the Northwest which is known for its mild weather, so anytime we had a major storm it was a big deal.  Anyway, being a kid, I thought that having no power was just the coolest thing, we got out the candles and my mom and I used our wood stove  to cook dinner.  It was like we were playing pioneers!  I don't remember what we had for the main meal, but I vividly remember baking corn bread in a dutch oven slid under the stove.  It is one of those  good food memories that I carry around with me and is probably the reason I still love making corn bread to go with any kind of hearty soup or stew.