Ingredients:

• 3 cups milk
• 1/3 cup molasses
• 1/3 cup corn meal
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ginger

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
2. Bring milk to almost boiling (but not fully boiling) on medium heat.
3. Stir in corn meal and molasses
4. Continue to cook until mixture thickens and expands.
5. Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients: sugar, salt, ginger, and cinnamon.
6. Pour into 6 6oz bowls.
7. Place bowls in a pan with an inch of water and place in oven.
8. Cook for 1.5 hours.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup butter (unsalted)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease and flour tea cake or mini muffin pan
3. Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt
4. In separate large bowl, melt butter and fold in sugar, egg, and vanilla.
5. Add dry ingredients to wet, stir until smooth.
6. Spoon batter into mold (2/3 of the way)
7. If desired, press blueberry into batter.
8. Bake 10-15 minutes (10 if tea cake pan, 15 if mini muffin pan)

Well, onto the recipes!  This is my all Greek dinner, consisting of chicken kabobs and a Greek “salad” (Greece doesn’t have lettuce).  If you want a Greek starch as well, try having some orzo on the side.

Kabobs:

1. Pre-heat oven on the “broil” setting.
2. Use short skewers and skewer chicken tenders.  Defrost them ahead of time if necessary.  I usually use the ones you can buy individually frozen in 4 lb bags.
3. On each side of chicken tender, sprinkle salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and oregano.
4. Cook on each side for 4 minutes, or until surface starts to brown.

Salad

1. Cut up 2 large tomatoes and 1 medium sized cucumber.
2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Squirt a fair amount of lemon juice over the top and toss.
3. If you like, you can augment this by crumbling feta cheese over the top.

Ingredients:

• 3-5 apples (3 if large; 5 if tiny)
• 1/4  cup salted butter
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• pinch of nutmeg

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Peel and core apples, cutting them into cubes (slice thinly if you want it to cook more quickly).
3. To make crumble topping, melt butter in a small bowl and use fork to combine with sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
4. Place crumble mixture in the freezer for 5-10 minutes.  This will make it much easier to crumble over the top.
5. Dump apples in your pre-made crust that you probably bought from the grocery store, because making pie crust is really hard.
6. Using a fork, scrape the frozen topping with it until it’s in small pieces, and then evenly distribute it over the top of the apples.
7. Bake for 1 hour.

• 3 skinless/boneless chicken breast halves
• 1 small chopped onion
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon flour

Directions:

1. Whisk together sour cream, water, flour, salt and paprika.
2. Place chicken breasts and chopped onion in crockpot and pour sour cream mixture over it.
3. Cook on high for 4 hours. Serve over egg noodles.

Ingredients:

• 1 16 oz can of pumpkin (plain!)
• 10 oz of evaporated milk (2 5 oz cans)
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• pinch of ground cloves

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Mix everything up in a large bowl.
3. Pour into 6 oz glass cups.  Should fill 6-8 cups.
4. Place on baking sheet and bake in oven for approximately an hour.  As with pie, they are ready when a knife comes out clean.
5. Let cool at room temperature, then refrigerate.
6. Add a dollop of ice cream or whipped cream to the top to disguise any cracking .

Ingredients:

• Pork chops
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Thyme

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Brush pork chops with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and thyme.
3. Cut aluminium foil into squares and wrap each pork chop tightly.
4. Place wrapped chops in baking dish.
5. Bake for 30 minutes. (45 minutes if thickness is >1 inch)

Ingredients:

The beef. I try to buy the cheapest beef per pound.  This usually means that I look for a thick, cheap cut that is nearly about to expire!  Usually they’re not quite iffy yet at that point, and even if they are, 4 hours in a slow cooker takes care of it.  From there I either make it immediately, or more often than not, I cube it (easier to do it now than later) and toss it in a ziplock bag and freeze it.  Again, after 4 hours of slow cooking, you’re not able to tell the difference between frozen and not.  Note: when using a frozen block of pre-cubed beef, I usually tack on another hour in the pot.

The tomato base. You don’t HAVE to use a tomato base in a stew, but most people do, any you wouldn’t want to be that weird one person, would you?  I’ve tried using Campbell’stomato soup, diced tomatoes, and tomato paste.  In my opinion the tomato paste produces the best results; I’ll use up to an ounce/cup of water.  The Campbell’s tomato soup is tasty, but I think it drowns out the beef flavor too much.

The root vegetables. This is the fun part.  I love exploring my grocery store for root vegetables.  The classic, is, of course, the carrot.  This belongs in any stew.  Next up is the turnip, that round white and purple thing.  Love ‘em!  My next favorite is the rutabaga, which tastes like a cross between a turnip and a cabbage.  One downside is they’re terribly hard to cut.  And of course, then there’s the parsnip.  It kind of looks like a carrot, and it has this weird bitter taste that you can taste in carrots that are really big or not very sweet.  I think of the parsnip as the carrot’s inferior but very similar cousin.  And last, but not least, the potato.  Well, actually, least, because my husband refuses to entertain a potato in his beef stew.  But most people like them.  He’s that one weird person.

Celery. Why celery is the lone none-root veggie to make it into stews I’ll never know.  Well, actually, I do… most root veggies hold up to intense cooking.  So does celery.  I buy this “Michigan Grown” celery which is more bitter and tough than normal celery, but people buy it because it’s “local.”  I buy it because the bitterness disappears in the stew and the toughness is an advantage in that context.  Also because it wilts less quickly.

Directions: Throw everything into a crockpot on high and cook for 4+ hours.  Oh, and you should probably add AT LEAST 2 cups of water, but probably more depending on what kind of base you’re using.  Serve over egg noodles.

All you need to make homemade, delicious chocolate pudding is cornstarch, milk, and something chocolaty.  The traditional recipe calls for sugar and cocoa powder, but that’s not all you can make it with.  You can also make it with any chocolate drink or hot cocoa mix!  Here are some various concoctions I have tried.

Ingredients you always need:

• 2-3 tbs cornstarch
• 2 cups milk

For the chocolate flavor you can make it from scratch…

• 2 tbs cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup sugar
• pinch of salt

or you can use this…

• 1/2 – 3/4 cups Ovaltine

or this…

• a similar amount any other chocolate powder!

Directions:

1. Dissolve cornstarch in a small amount of milk
2. Add the remaining amount of milk to the mixture
3. Stir in remaining ingredients
4. Cook in pan over medium heat burner
5. Keep stirring!
6. When mixture begins to boil, the pudding is done.  Pour!

If you get sick of this concoction, try adding some almond or orange extract.  My husband makes me make this so often I’m completely sick of it!

• 1 lb ground turkey or pork
• 5 cups chicken broth
• 3 tbs rice flour
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 lb baby bok choy or chopped bok choy
• 1 package ramen or rice noodles

Directions:

1. Boil broth.
2. Using your hands, mix together the ground meat with the 3 tbs of rice flour.
3. Form mixture into small balls and add to broth.  Cook for at least 10 minutes.
4. Rinse bok choy and add to mixture.  Bok choy has a lot of volume, so you actually may want to remove the cooked meat balls and cook the veggies in the remaining broth.
5. Add the noodles last, especially if using ramen, or else they’ll get slimey!  If you’re using ramen and don’t want to waste the packet, you can use 3 cups broth, 2 cups water, and the packet.  It can mix up the flavor a bit.

Vegetarian option:

Replace the chicken with vegetable broth, and the noodles and bok choy will make a filling soup.  Adding finely cubed soft tofu or bean sprouts to this soup is also quite tasty.