Apple Butter Baked Oatmeal

If Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, why does it seem like the busiest day of the week? Between choir practice, getting kids ready for church, church, church meetings after church, home (and visiting) teaching appointments, and family dinners it seems like it's go, go, go, with no rest for the Saints. (By the way, a good friend of mine, Cory Milligan, posted the other day about what a Latter Day Saint really is... a Latter Day Sinner who keeps on trying). So in the spirit of D&C 59:13 "...only let thy food be prepared with singleness of heart" I give you this recipe, Baked Oatmeal.

When you think of oatmeal what comes to mind? The slimy, soggy hot cereal you mom made you eat with milk and sugar? The slimy stuff that comes in those flavored packets loaded with preservatives and ingredients you can't pronounce? Or something different?

For the first 19 years we were married, my wife would make the first and occasionally we would would relent and get some of the second. She would add all kinds of things to get the kids to eat it, apple pie filling, cherry pie filling, peaches with whipped cream on top, pumpkin, cranberries, etc. You get the idea; it would all end the same. Our children would eat a few bites, pronounce they were full and the throw the rest away.

But in going through a new cookbook I got for my wife last year for her birthday she found this recipe for Baked Oatmeal. Not only did the kids devour it, but they wanted more. It was easy, just combine the ingredients, put in a cake pan in the oven and walk away (don't forget to time it or you'll have blackened oatmeal). We still add different things to the oatmeal, but now it's easy, fun and the children eat it.

Baked Oatmeal

1/2 cup Melted Butter

3/4 cups Brown Sugar

2 Eggs

2 tsp Baking Powder

1 cup Milk

3 cups oatmeal (old-fashioned, not quick cooking)

1 tsp Salt

Opt. your own "secret ingredient(s)" like dried cranberries and apples, cinnamon apples, peaches, cherries, blueberries, strawberries (I use freeze dried), etc.

In a large bowl mix oil, sugar, and eggs. Add remaining ingredients and pour into a greased 9 x 13 can. Baked at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Serve hot with with milk. Serves 5-6. We double when all six of our children are home. Enjoy.

(The recipe originally came from "Worldwide Ward Cookbook, Secret Recipes, by Deanna Buxton". The recipe was submitted by May Fitzgerald, Taos Ward, Santa Fe New Mexico Stake, Angle Fire, New Mexico). She writes, "This is the only way we make oatmeal at our house...[This] is a time saver and tastes so much better tan making oatmeal on the stove or in the microwave..."

English Scones

My youngest daughter has been asking me to make scones for breakfast for several days now. She's wanting the American / Mexican variety also know as Indian Fry Bread, Fried Scones or Sopapillas. However, I don't want to deal with the greasy mess frying up scones produces, so I opted for the English variety. This type of scone is more closely related to a biscuit (and in fact uses the biscuit method to mix) and in England is commonly found during tea time served with Clotted Cream or Jam.

We used to offer these on our catering menu and they were a big hit. Back then we could produce several hundred at a time for a large gathering, and so, we would buy them pre-made (but uncooked) and bake them as needed. So, of truth, I've never made these from scratch. But like many things we as a society now buy in a box or jar, they are actually very easy to make, taste better and take just about as much time and effort as the boxed mixes.

English Scones

Yield: 1 Doz Scones

Prep time 15 Minutes, Baking time 10-15 Minutes, Total time 25-30 Minutes

Ingredients

2 cups All-Purpose Flour

2 Tbsp Baking Powder

1 pinch Salt

1/4 cup Butter (1 stick), cubed and cold

2 Tbsp Sugar

1/2 cups Milk

2 Tbsp Milk (for brushing the scones).

Directions

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees F and Line a Baking sheet with parchment paper

1) Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl

2) Cut in the butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs (Biscuit Method)

3) Stir in the sugar and enough milk to mix to a soft dough

4) Turn onto a floured surface, knead lightly (don't over knead or they won't rise or be flaky) and roll out to a 3/4 inch thickness.

5) Cut into 2 inch rounds, triangles or squares and place on prepared baking sheet.

6) Brush with milk to glaze.

7) Bake at 425 for 10-15 minutes than cool on a wire rack.

Serve with butter, clotted cream or jam.

Note: Feel free to add your favorite spices and fold in your favorite indredients like Orange Zest, Strawberries (dried work great), Apples and Walnuts, Chocolate Chips, Blueberries, Raisins, or Cranberries.

Enjoy

Pictured: Cranberry Walnut Scone, courtesy AnjasFood4Thought.com

Chicken and Dumplings

I woke up this morning to Fall. Despite what the calendar says today is the first day of fall in Richmond. I know, the leave began to turn a week ago and it has been getting cooler for some time, but today felt different. I cleaned out the chicken coop and put new bedding in and got the garden beds ready to cover so I can eek out a few more weeks of tomatoes (I expect our first frost on Friday or Saturday morning). Fall (and Winter) means more soup in our house. Not that we don't like soup in the summer (borscht, gazpacho, mint cucumber soup, etc are great cold soups) but a nice hot bowl of soup on a cool, crisp day is somehow warm and inviting.

So for my first hot soup of the season, I choose Chicken and Dumplings. No rhyme or reason, it just sounded good. This may not be an authentic dumpling but it was quick, easy, made from scratch and tasted darn right good. Just the thing for the first day of fall.

Note: This recipe is written just like I made it. There are not exact measurements, just like grandma used to cook. More people show up, add more water (and maybe a little more chicken base).

Easy Chicken and Dumpling Soup

8-10 cups water (just under the max fill line of your stock pot once all the ingredients are added)

3 - 4 lbs Chicken (older stewing chickens make the best soup, but I used frozen breasts, which once thawed, I diced up)

2 Tbsp Chicken Base

2 handfuls Diced Carrots

2 handfuls Diced Celery (I used Freeze Dried for convience and because it was what I had)

1 Red Onion, Diced

1 handful shredded yellow squash (it was there so I used it)

1 Tbs Minced Garlic

1-2 Tbs Fresh Tarragon

Salt and Pepper TT

Dumplings

(Becky made fresh bread today, so I used about a half of loaf of the bread dough cut into small pieces and flattened slightly)

1. Saute Onions, Carrots, Celery, Squash and Garlic until slightly caramelized.

2. Boil Chicken in the water with items from step 1 until the chicken is thawed. Dice up chicken and add back to the soup. If using fresh chicken just cook in the soup.

3. Add Dumplings to the soup and cook for 20-30 minutes, stirring the dumplings so they get cooked all the way through.

4. Add salt, pepper and tarragon for the last 2 minutes.

5. Ladle and serve.

Enjoy.

Becky's Slow-Cooker Chili

As many of you know, I was trained as a chef and owned my own catering company for over 10 years. I still love to cook (even more now that it's not a job) and my wife is often asked how nice it is to be married to a chef (assuming she doesn't have to cook much).

The truth is she does most of our cooking at home if for no other reason than I'm not home to do it most of the time. And another truth is that I didn't marry her for her cooking. But she has learned some basic culinary principles and has improved a lot over the last twenty years. She may not become the next "Iron Chef" but she also won't every appear on a season of "Worst Cooks in America" either.

With that said, one of the best dishes she makes is her chili. Chili is not difficult to make, but it can be difficult to make a really good chili and usually takes a lot of work and a lot of time. This recipe is an exception (although it still takes time). It is a homemade chili in every sense of the word. The easy part of this chili is that if you can chop up a few vegetables, brown off hamburger and open some cans you too can have really good chili.

This is made in a 5 quart or larger slow cooker and must be started hours in advance, but once it is going you can just about walk away and forget it. This is great for a day when you know you will be busy taking kids all over after school or in my wife's case, when you have some energy in the morning but knowing that you won't by afternoon.

Becky's Easy Slow-Cooker Chili

1 lb Ground Beef (can substitute chicken, steak or what ever meat you want)

1 Onion, chopped

1 Medium Green Pepper, chopped

1/2 tsp Salt

1 Tbsp Chili Powder

1 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce

29 oz Tomato Sauce

3 - 16 oz cans Kidney Beans, drained (feel free to mix up different beans)

14 1/2 oz can crushed or stewed Tomatoes

6 oz can Tomato Paste

4 oz Grated Cheddar Cheese

Sour Cream and Green Onion for garnish

1. Brown meat in skillet. Add onion and green pepper halfway through browning process. Drain. Put into Slow Cooker.

2. Stir in remaining ingredients except cheese and garnish.

3 Cover. Cook on High 3 hours or Low for 7-8 hours.

4. Serve in bowls topped with cheddar cheese.

Enjoy.

Note: This is wonderful to serve with fresh, homemade cornbread.

Cherry-Peach Buckle

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Well I say that dessert can be a meal in and of itself. So this morning I made a breakfast that could be a dessert or a dessert that could be a breakfast, a Cherry-Peach Buckle. By definition a buckle is a dessert which combines fresh seasonal fruit, a rich cake batter and a streusel topping. The result is a dense cake with a moist crumb, sometimes compared to a coffee cake.

My inspiration came for today's breakfast came from one of my favorite TV chef's, Alton Brown but with my own variations. It was also a good opportunity to teach my son, Josh about scaling recipes (basic algebra, fractions, decimals, and critical thinking) and my sweet wife about two different baking methods, creaming method and the biscuit method. I adjusted this for a 9x13 pan.

Cherry-Peach Buckle

Spray a 9 x 13 cake pan with pan spray and pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Batter:

13 oz Cake Flour

1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

3/4 tsp Salt

3/4 tsp Ground Ginger

3 oz Butter, softened

7 1/2 oz Sugar

2 Eggs

3/4 cup Milk

21 oz Fruit (your choice, frozen is best).

Mix first four ingredients in separate bowl.

In mixer (using the creaming method) mix butter, sugar and eggs.

Slowly add flour mixture and milk 1/3 at a time.

Fold in fruit and put into your greased cake pan.

Topping:

5 oz Brown Sugar

2.2 oz Flour (About 1/2 cup)

1/2 tsp Ground Nutmeg

3 oz Butter, cut into pieces

Blend topping ingredients by hand (don't warm butter) to a crumbly texture.

Cover cake mix with topping

Bake for 35-40 minutes

Best served warm with Vanilla Ice Cream or Whipped Cream.

Enjoy

Cold Spaghetti Salad

It's been quite a while since I posted and I'm done procrastinating. Sorry to my six loyal fans. Starting tomorrow I do better. No, really.

Well today I have to give thanks to the young men and women of the Cherry Creek ward, who donated their leftover spaghetti to us (maybe because we have the most kids in the ward). Anyway, today my sweet wife wasn't feeling well so I volunteered to make lunch. With a fridge full of food what to make? I see a ton (actually only about 10 lbs) of cooked spaghetti. It's flowing everywhere like snakes in an Indiana Jones movie.

As I search, I find a small about of freeze dried chopped broccoli (not enough to use for a side dish) left in the bottom of a can, about a cup of FD red and green bell peppers left in another can, a bag of Italian cheese blend (from last nights dinner) and some tomatoes. Forget the tomatoes, I have dozens of cans of fire roasted tomatoes from last months case lot sale at Smiths.

Now I know what I going to make, cold Spaghetti Salad. So here is how I did it. (Amounts are approximate and based on what I had on hand). There will be plenty of left over even for 6 hungry teenagers.

Spaghetti Salad with a Sun-Dried Tomato Vinaigrette

5 lb Spaghetti, cooked, chilled and oiled.

1 Cup FD (Freeze Dried) Broccoli, reconstituted and drained

1 Cup FD Green & Red Bell Peppers, reconstituted and drained

2 cans Fire Roasted Tomatoes, drained (reserving the juice)

8 oz bag Italian Cheese Blend

Feel free to add your own touches like diced cucumbers, spinach, feta cheese, etc. A sprig of fresh Basil would make a nice garnish.

Sun Dried Tomato Vinaigrette (makes about 7-8 cups) -

approx. amount as I eyeballed the ingredients.

2 Cups Vinegar (I used red wine and apple cider because that is what I had)

2 Cups Water (reserved tomato juice and water)

1 TBSP Italian Seasoning

1 tsp Onion Powder

1 tsp Minced Garlic

2- tsp Sun-Dried Tomatoes

2 Cups Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Puree the tomatoes and garlic in the food processor. Add all the ingredients (except the oil) to a blender. Turn on high and slowly drizzle the oil in until well blended (emulsified).

Drain FD vegetables, mix all salad ingredients together with about 2-3 cups of dressing. You can serve immediately or let sit in the refridgerator for 1-2 hours for the flavors to blend. If chilling, re-toss prior to serving.

Enjoy.

Pancakes with a Mandarin Orange Reduction Sauce

I woke up this morning with Mandarin oranges on my mind (yes I'm strange). Becky had called out to everyone that pancakes were cooking and to get up or eat them cold. She had told me last night that she was going to fix pancakes for breakfast, and is often the case, they were the 'normal' variety that you put sugar or syrup on.

Not being normal, I guess, is what caused my creative side to emerge from the cobwebs of sleep and inspired this morning's breakfast variation. Mandarin oranges are a staple in our house, and many time the kids will open up a can and eat them one by one. Oranges in general are also high in vitamin C and with several kids down with colds this seemed like a fun way to incorporate today's secret ingredient (I guess I watch too many cooking shows).

I have to thank a good friend, Lisa Luke with DoTerra Essential Oils, for giving me the Wild Orange Oil I used. If you don't have any, you can use an orange extract, orange zest or just omit, but for the health benefits and fullness of flavor, I do recommend finding some food grade essential oil.

Pancakes with a Mandarin Orange Reduction and a Wild Orange Cream

Make your favorite pancake mix or waffles according to package directions.

Mandarin Orange Reduction Sauce:

2 (11 oz) cans of Mandarin Oranges (including juice)

1 (11 oz) can of Mandarin Oranges, drained and set aside

5 drops DoTerra Wild Orange Essential Oil

1/8 tsp Nutmeg

1/8 tsp All Spice

1/4 tsp Cinnamon

2 Tbsp Agave Nectar (you can substitute honey or sugar)

Combine all ingredients (except 1 can of oranges) in medium sauce pan and boil on med-high heat until reduced to a syrup (about 7-10 minutes). Add remaining can of oranges. Chill and reserve.

Wild Orange Cream:

2 cups Heavy Whipping Cream

8 drops DoTerra Wild Orange Essential Oil

1 tsp vanilla

2 Tbsp Splenda (or Powdered Sugar for non diabetics)

Whip until peaks form.

Ladle Mandarin Orange Sauce over Pancakes and top with Wild Orange Cream for a delicious morning breakfast. Enjoy.