Today is my husband’s birthday, so I’m baking a German chocolate cake and we’re going out to dinner at a really good restaurant tonight. Mmmm. :) I turned in the copy edits for SHAMAN RISES last night, which means the Walker Papers directory is one final edit pass from being moved into the Finished Projects folder. Pretty strange, after 14 years of working on them. Just, wow. I note that the 28th of January is the 201st anniversary of the publication of PRIDE & PREJUDICE. This may be relevant to…
Category: Food
Catie’s Ham & Bean Soup
Start by roasting a big ham with a lot of fat on it. Ideally roast it in a cast iron pan, so you don’t have to pour the melted fat into another pan when you take it out of the oven, but whatever works for you. Make an egregious amount of ham gravy. Three cups or more. (You’ve never made gravy? It’s easy. Take a half cup of flour or so and put your sautee pan of ham fat on a decently high heat. Sprinkle in some of the flour.…
the uses of ham
On Sunday I cooked a rather large ham. I made ham gravy, because there was all that lovely juice and it seemed a shame to waste it. There was a *lot* of gravy, so on Monday I took a chunk of the ham, all of the gravy, two cans of beans, and some oniongarlicbutter and made ham and bean soup (which is OMG good). Ted made ham and mushroom and cheese omelettes for dinner with another chunk of the ham. Today I have taken the remains of it and am…
Guest Post: On the Making of Jam
All y’all know I like to make jams and things and although I can’t find a post talking about it, I did an experiment with my last batch of peach jam where I used about 30% less sugar because the stuff I’d made was So Sweet and So Stiff and because it had been years and years since I’d made jam and I’d *thought* that looked like an *awful* lot of sugar and the reduced sugar version turned out beautifully and not too sweet although I thought I could cut…
the jamming of peaches
So Mom made a batch of peach jam a few weeks ago, and to our interest, it turned out exactly as the peach jam I’d made years ago did: super, super stiff, almost crystallized. She thought it needed a couple more peaches, and since I love peach jam with an unholy passion and peaches are available right now, I got some and yesterday made a batch with two more peaches than Mom had used. It’s unbelievably pretty and very tasty, but still surprisingly stiff. Not as stiff as Mom’s or…