And yet more...

Christine recently asked me to share my recipe for hash browns! Is there anything that goes better with biscuits and gravy than golden crispy hash browns? I prefer making my own to store-bought, but I occasionally break down and buy them at the store when I'm feeling lazy. I have traumatic memories of making hash browns at my family's restaurant when I was young! But, that is a whole other story, LOL.

I simply cover 5 pounds of potatoes with cold water in my extra large pot. You can cook as many as YOU like. I put on the lid after the water boils. Boil the potatoes until you can easily push a knife into the potatoes. Underdone is better than overdone here. I gently drain the water my turning out the potatoes into a clean sink. Careful! Steam burns hurt like crazy!

Work quickly now and start peeling. The skins will come off in great big strips if you are careful. I hold the potatoes in a clean area of a tea towel in one hand. I keep turning the towel when it gets gooky. Place the peeled potatoes in a bowl or two and cover with a tea towel until they cool off. You can keep them in the fridge covered with a towel.

I grate the potatoes by hand as needed when they are cold. Plop them into a pool of butter or oil in a hot skillet and wait. Salt and pepper (maybe more butter on top!) but don't stir or turn them until they are crispy on the bottom. Voila!

Your refrigerated cooked potatoes come in handy if you want quick scalloped potatoes (cover in white sauce and top with cheese - done in no time!) or potato salad.

MomDot Blog Party Day 4

DAY FOUR QUESTION: What is your favorite Holiday recipe? Describe your Holiday table and your biggest holiday cooking disaster?

Day Four Blog Party Question is Brought to you by Bottlewise and Glow Mama

I love to bake. I love to make things from scratch. I always peeled and quartered potatoes for mashed potatoes until just a few years ago. I can't fit enough potatoes in my mixer now to keep all the big boys happy! I love to make my own bread stuffing and dinner rolls. But, I just had to give it up. I buy dressing mix, potato flakes and frozen rolls now and the world hasn't ended!

One thing I refuse to buy is pie. And Cool Whip, yuk! I prefer to make my own pumpkin pie and pecan pie for the Holidays. And REAL whipped cream is a must. This year I have a couple of gallons of cooked pumpkin in the freezer. I may try to make pies out of it. I'd share my recipes but my cookbooks are packed away from our move!

I'm a little sad because we had a glorious old pecan tree at our old house. The kids and I would head out when the nuts were beginning to drop and smack the limbs with a rake. Sometimes I would stand on the van to reach high enough. The kids would run around and pick up the nuts that rained down and put them in a plastic bin. After a few weeks of drying time, I would crack nuts whenever I had a few minutes to spare. After a while my fingers would be ripped up and sore. The shells were hard but the nuts were tasty. I guess I have to buy them from the store this year.

As far as Christmas sweets, I love to make peanut butter fudge, penuche, and anything covered in white chocolate. My favorites are dipped pretzels and peanut butter balls. For the peanut butter balls I mix natural (of course!) peanut butter with powdered sugar until it is very stiff. Then I roll the mixture into little balls and use a fork to quickly dunk them in melted chocolate. If they are not eaten up immediately I like to dip them a second time after they cool. Yeah, right.

My holiday table is the same as my regular table only we will use a tablecloth! I don't have china and my silverware doesn't match. We can't have candles in the house because the baby uses oxygen. We are traveling to my grandma's for Thanksgiving this year, so I know we will be eating on her pretty china and drinking from her nice water goblets that I remember from childhood. The little children will sit around the coffee table and eat.

My biggest cooking disaster is pretty funny since I'm always determined to make my own pies. One year I made a pecan pie that was impossible to cut into. I don't know what happened! I just remember the kids laughing at me trying to cut into this concrete pecan pie. I finally picked the whole pie up out of the pan and broke it in half with my hands. Now everyone is cracking up! It must have been 8 or 9 years ago, but the older kids still remember.

Pumpkin time!

After Halloween last year I was traveling to Kansas City for a memorial service. I stopped for gas in Olathe and noticed a pumpkin stand next to the gas station. There was a sign that indicated the pumpkins were free! I stuck 5 of them in the van and went on my way. When I got home the next day I surprised the little ones with a pumpkin of their own.

We decided to try to cook them and make some pumpkin treats of some sort. The best thing we made was pumpkin butter. I don't care what all the recipes say, a large carving type makes fine pumpkin butter.

I was hoping to find some pumpkins on sale this morning, but was surprised to find nothing left! Sure, they have the little pie pumpkins at the grocery store, but they are $0.78 per pound. Unreal!

Since we carved our jack-o-lanterns at the last minute yesterday, I thought I might still be able to use them. Since I delegated the cleaning and carving to my hubby, he naturally delegated the cleaning to the kids. They did a pretty poor job of cleaning them out. That's OK, though, because I was able to peel the outside and the inside and get a nice pot of pumpkin cookin'.

This pot is overflowing with one large and one small pumpkin. I add a little water and cook it to death. When all the chunks are soft I blend with a hand blender. Then I add 4 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp. allspice, 1 tsp. ground cloves and a couple of cups of sugar. It is almost midnight and the pumpkin butter is still cooking. I'm leave it on warm all night long and it will be reduced in the morning. I'll taste it then to see if it needs more sugar then let it cool. Some will go in the fridge in a plastic container and the rest will go in the freezer in freezer bags. Yum, enough for the rest of the year, I hope.

Bread Pigs

I have a habit of saving heels. You know, from loaves of bread. I probably learned this from my Gram. As a teen and young adult, I worked for her in her restaurant. She showed me how to make a couple hundred dollars out of a couple of chickens! We would save heels to use for croutons and breadcrumbs and bread dressing.

So, for years I have stuffed my freezer with heels from nearly every loaf of bread we use. Over the past year or so, I haven't had much time to cook yummy homemade dishes with my bread stash. The freezer was getting to be ridiculous. I almost posted a picture, but way too embarrassing. I'm all for keeping it real, but I have to draw the line somewhere!

The other day I was reading Christine's blog and found her bread pudding recipe. I started thinking it was time to introduce the kids to a old-fashioned dish and clean out the freezer at the same time. I actually made a dent in my bread stash! Christine's recipe didn't have cinnamon so I looked up some other recipes and ended up making up my own. It turned out pretty good.

Here is what I came up with:

Bread cubes - crusty and dry or stale
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
8 eggs
4 cups milk
2 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon

I buttered my 12 x 18 cake pan generously. I filled it with the bread cubes and sprinkled the bread cubes with the brown sugar. I blended the remaining ingredients together with a hand mixer and poured over the bread cubes. I pushed down some of the floating bread so that none were dry. I baked at 350 until a knife came out clean, about 25 minutes. If your kids like raisins you could just toss them in with the bread cubes, I'll bet.

This was supposed to be dessert for dinner, but guess what? The house smelled so good when the kids got home from school that there was no way it was going to last. I was even going to get a picture of my pretty brown pan of bread pudding, but it was gone in a flash. Ralph even ate some. It was sweet enough that no sauce was needed. Rose told me, "We are all just bread pigs!" How true.