I Ham What I Ham and That's What I Ham

So I JUST did a post, but I have all this free time (well, at least I did... today is the last day of it for a little while) and I just want to share the fun things I've learn with cooking! In my previous post, I talked about cooking chicken ahead in the crock pot. I also wanted to tell you about the wonderful world of cooking ham ahead as well.

A couple years ago was when I REALLY started getting in cooking, not just baking. I was fairly fresh into the "real world" after graduating from college, and I actually wanted to learn things that actually interested me (crazy how that works out) in a non-classroom setting. Cooking has always been one of those things for me. Anyway, though I had a little more time than when I was in school, I didn't usually have time to cook still. So I made time!

Hanging out at my old apartment

Sundays were the only free day of the week to give me enough time to cook. I started with inviting a few friends over to eat what I would make, and it kind of grew to a family dinner time with my friends on campus. We would eat, play games, and chat the night away - I LOVED it!!

During these times, I began this relationship with the crock pot. She was so laid back, so caring to my food, and she didn't mind if I left food in her all day (and still is, by the way). Since dinners were growing to more people, I needed ideas on what to feed people. Two of the recipes I share today are from those times - so good and easy, I just keep coming back to them!

Easter Ham

(from cdkitchen.com)

Ingredients:

• 1 whole ham (that can fit in your crock pot)

• 1 20oz can crushed pineapple, undrained

• 1/3 cup maple syrup

If you want, start by lining your crock pot with aluminum foil - sometimes it helps with clean up. Put your ham in there, dump the pineapple and syrup on top, and cook on high for about 6 hours. 

Easy, right? And super good! I usually have us eat ham for dinner that night. One time I made homemade mashed butternut squash to go with it - Oh Mylanta, seriously SO GOOD!!!

After we have had our fill that night, I take the meat off the bone, stick it in a freezer baggie and freeze it for meals later. These are my favorites!

Potato Soup with Ham and Cheese

(from southernfood.about.com)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups red potatoes (which I usually use 3-5 potatoes, and not always red), peeled & cubed
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 small onion, chopped fine
• 3 tablespoons flour
• cayenne pepper (haven't used because I don't have any in the cupboard)
• black pepper
• 3 cups milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup cooked, cubed ham
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (at LEAST one cup - add more like 2 cups if you love cheese like I do!)
• fresh chopped parsley or chives for garnish, if desired (which I never have on hand, so I also haven't used yet)

Cook potatoes in boiling water until tender. Drain; reserve 1 cup of the boiled potato liquid for later. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add in your onion to cook, stirring, until tender. Stir in flour, then sprinkle pepper on it. Cook for about 3 more minutes, stirring. Add potatoes, reserved liquid, milk, and salt. Mix it good. Add ham chunks and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat and let cool for about 5 minutes. Add cheese and stir until melted.

Ham Sandwiches

(from allrecipes.com)

I've tweaked this one a lot, so here is what I would say for ingredients:

• Ham

• Mustard

• Brown Sugar

• Some sort of roll or bread

• Maybe cheese - like provolone slices

Here is what I did: I defrosted enough ham that would fit in my Little Dipper (a mini crock pot - kind of cute in a kitchen appliance sort of way, and this was my first time using it so I was excited). 

How cute!!

I started with 2 tablespoons of honey dijon mustard and 2 tablespoons brown sugar and let it cook for a while. I would keep coming back to it to taste and add mustard and brown sugar enough to thoroughly cover the meat enough. I had a hard time keep away! I kept eating pieces of the meat all afternoon!

I had it in the crock pot for about 4 hours, but you can do less than that. Everything is already cooked, so it's simply a matter of warming it all up and making the flavors blend together. The original recipe can give you a full crock pot of this you need to make it for a lot of people and don't have a whole ham already cooked up. But the Little Dipper size was PERFECT for feeding just Malcolm and I!

Pre-melted cheese on the sandwiches

Anyway, after it was all done, and Malcolm came home from climbing, I heated the oven to about 300º or so (doesn't really matter, it was just to melt cheese) and toasted slices of bread. I situated the bread on a cookie sheet, piled on the ham goodness, and added a slice of provolone cheese to each pile of ham. I bake them in the oven just so the cheese would melt, and then gobbled those piggies up! These are definitely up for tweaking to your delight, but a great recipe to use that ham up!

Split Pea Soup

(from Yahoo! assiatedcontent.com)

Ingredients:

• 1 package dried green split peas

• 1 large onion

• 2 tsp minced garlic

• 3 large carrots, diced (Can I be honest? I admit I don't exactly know what "diced" looked like. I just kind of chop them up to fit my fancy. Kuddos to you who actually know!)

• 3 celery stocks, diced

• 5 cups (40 oz) chicken broth - which you can make yourself!

• 1 or 2 potatoes peeled and cut into small cubes

• 1 package ham hocks OR use the ham hock/bone thing from the ham you cooked up for the meat

• salt and pepper

Put everything in your crock pot and cook on high for 6 hours or low for 11 hours - go until the peas are very soft and falling apart. Remove bone, but keep the meat in there. To be honest, I haven't quite got how long everything should cook for down yet. I usually cook it all too long or don't add enough liquid or something because it almost always has turned out kind of pasty. Don't get me wrong, it's still good!

This was one of my discovery recipes for family dinners. I still make it! What good memories! It brings me back to seeing a glimpse of what the early church was like in Acts 2:42- 47,

"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." 

Did you notice how they devoted themselves to breaking bread (essentially sharing meals) together? That when they opened their homes to eat together as the body of Christ that they had glad and sincere heart, they praised God, and simply enjoyed one another? I think we all desire to have that kind of fellowship! I think, if we are honest with ourselves, we may not want to always be social or get outside of our comfort zones to let people into our homes (I know I'm not - I always put forward the excuse that my house it too tiny to have people over). But the reality is that, when we actually do let people come into our homes and into our lives for the purpose of sharing a meal and sharing our lives with one another, then our hearts actually expand to see the grander picture of Who God is, what He's doing, and actually be thankful for what He has given us!

Hebrews 10:25 says, "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching." We need to be in a habit of coming together and encouraging one another - why?

Hebrews 3:13, "But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." The reason we need to keep coming together is to keep us from being jaded to sin in our own lives! Maybe that's why the Church that I've seen developing all of America is one of "self-feelgoods" and focus on all those other non-essentials other than the reality of Jesus and what He has done for us. Maybe to fight the urge of the American dream, we need to eat more meals together! Okay, maybe stretching it a little bit, but you do get my point? God created us to be social people in need of one another - whether we think so or not - so we can encourage one another to running after our ultimate need of God.

So, a small tangent, but one that I think is important. Last fall I did a study on fellowship, and it opened my eyes more to what it really is. I suggest studying for yourself what the Bible has to say about fellowship.  Ask HIM what your next step to developing fellowship is. And if it's sharing a meal with some brothers and sisters in Christ, you at least have some ideas from here on what to feed them!

Okay, this is what my split pea soup looks like. Like I said earlier, it tastes better than it looks!!

The Chicken Crossed the Road to Get to my Crock Pot

With going on campus, and even with being home in Durango more consistently & making meals for the Hubbers and I, I've been looking into making easy, affordable meals. I've discovered the best thing for cooking on a busy schedule - precooked meat! But not precooked in the store, precooked at home.

Malcolm and I on vacation - I don't think there is a better picture that captures the true us!

Today I wanted to tell you about cooking chicken. I buy a whole chicken, which is usually around or below $5. At home, I stick the whole shebang in the crock pot, sprinkle it with paprika, then let it cook on high (or low) until it's done - which I usually peel away at the chicken with a fork: if the meat peels away easily and I don't see any pink then I call 'er done.

After it's all cooked, then I pick away the meat and stick it in a freezer baggie. After that I stick the chicken in the freezer and take it out when I need it. When I do need chicken for something, I usually stick the bag in the microwave for 1 minute increments until it has thawed enough to loosen enough chicken that I need. Then I stick the rest of the chicken back in the freezer until I need it.  

The bones and everything else (I mean EVERYTHING that is not meat) in a bag to save for later. The reason I keep the leftover stuff is so I can make my own chicken stock - and it's not difficult AT ALL!! 

 Chicken Stock:

(original recipe I found at simplyrecipes.com)

Ingredients

• Chicken "leftovers"

• Water

• Salt

• Pepper

• Bay Leaves (I've done both crushed and full leaves)

• Parsley

• Carrots

• Celery

• Onion

You can add or subtract whatever you want to, but the point is to infuse the water with flavor. (You can't subtract the chicken carcass, however. If you take that out, then you don't have chicken stock. :)

What I do is put everything in a pot, then fill it with enough water that it won't bubble over when you start boiling it it won't get all over your stove top. Once you get everything in the pot, set it on high and let it boil for a while (to be honest, I have no clue how long I let it simmer/boil, but for at least a few hours).

Once it's been cooking for at least 3 hours, then strain it out. I usually set a big bowl in the sink, then a colander on top of that. I dump the whole pot through the colander into the bowl, then I strain the liquid a couple times to eliminate any major bothersome chunkies.

Bowl of broth... in case you were confused.

Following that, I can it. I've done both water bath and pressure canning, and pressure canning is suppose to be the safer route. Some sites say to freeze, then other don't say anything. So I'm trying with this new batch not freezing (I lost a few jars to the freezer last time). If we die of some sort of food poisoning, you'll know what happened.

FAIL

Chicken stock has become one of those things I need to keep on hand because it is SO versatile in cooking. My FAVORITE easy recipe that needs chicken stock is....

20-Minute Noodle Bowls (for about 2 people)

(from Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook 15th Edition - click here for a similar online recipe)

Ingredients:

• 14 oz chicken (or beef) broth

• 1/4 teriyaki sauce (the best is Veri Veri Teriyaki sauce)

• 1/4 water

• 2 cups frozen mixed vegetables

• 2 3oz packages ramen noodles (any flavor, cause you don't use the flavor packet)

Combine broth, water, and sauce in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil. Then add you veggies and your noodles. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for about 3 minutes. Then serve it up! That easy and they are really tasty too! 

I usually add chicken too. If raw, I let it marinate in a bowl with teriyaki sauce and a little apple cider vinegar for about an hour or so before I cook it up in a pan. I like to leave some of the marinade in the pan so it kind of does a boil/fry thing. Then, once the noodles and veggies are done and served up in bowls, I add the chicken on top. If precooked chicken, I douse the chicken in teriyaki sauce for a while, and then stick it in with the rest of the the noodles and veggies for the last minute of cooking (since the chicken is done, but usually not hot from coming out of the freezer - go figure).

With the rest of your already cooked chicken, you can make many a different meal. Our usuals around these here part are chicken enchiladas, homemade chicken and green chili mac n cheese, and this potato/chicken country gravy/ cheese thing (sounds weird, but tastes decent enough - and cheap). But you can replace it for various meals that need cooked chicken - like pot pies, pasta, etc.

Next time, I'll tell you about ham... oh so delicious! Sorry Israelites, you probably won't be able to eat those meals!

Much To Do About Apples

I know I just did a post about apple pie, but, if you know me, apples have been somewhat of a theme for the past month and a half.

For those of you who don't happen to know me that well, let me tell ya - apples have been a somewhat of a theme for the past month and a half! I actually had a HUGE box of apples, plus a regular size box of apples go through my house since we helped picked them off the tree and my dad's house. But to branch outside of my usual apple pie recipe, I found some AMAZING recipes to give some variety to the fun!!

I have made cupcakes, muffins, cobbler - but then I decided to branch out even more from there! My "homemaker" self was yearning to try something else, something more like Little House on the Prairie (I've never read the books, but I suspect that those prairie women did this too.)

I got into canning. Why? I cannot truly say, except for the prairie women inside me told me I could and I should.

(Side note: You know how women talk at times about being able to go through natural childbirth since women have been able to centuries without drugs? That's how I feel at times with cooking, baking, and canning. BUT, just because we can, doesn't mean we HAVE to! 

For example: In my opinion, making homemade pumpkin from your own pumpkin puree is just not worth it. It's a long wait to get the puree, and the pie ended up tasting too "gourdy" to me.

Another example: Child birth seems painful and exhausting. If drugs make the experience a little less so, I'm all for it!

End side note.)

ANYWAY...

Since I have made SO MANY different recipes, I'll just post a couple now, and then maybe some more later, and, if I decide I still like blogging about baking, I'll just post different ones next fall.

Apple Butter in the Crock Pot:

(from Stephanie O'Dea's blog "A Year of Slow Cooking")

Ingredients:

Enough apples to fill your crock pot (15-20 apples)

1 Tbsp vanilla

3/4 cup white sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

Peel and core apples and put in crock pot. I've done both with quartering apples and doing it with an actual apple peeler. Both are fine. 

Add the vanilla, and let it slow cook for 8 hours on low.  I usually would stay up late and turn it on as close as I could to midnight, so I would wake up at 8 am with it ready to mix the next ingredients.

(Really, if you let it sit longer than 8 hours, I don't think it matters.)

After 8 hours, I usually mush up the cooking apples a bit and then add the rest of the ingredients, and then stir again. I actually used my pastry cutter to mush them real good like.

Let it cook on low for another 6 hours or so, occasionally checking, stirring, and mushing it. It shouldn't be too chunky, otherwise I would think it to be applesauce rather than apple butter. It may need to go longer than 6 hours, and that's fine. It should look fairly velvety and smooth. If you want it SUPER smooth, you can put it in the blender. I haven't done that because 

a) I don't have a blender

and

b) I like it a LITTLE chunky

and

c) honestly, I'm lazy at that point, and just want to eat it!

(Hey, after smelling this deliciousness for 14+ hours, you'll be just as eager to stuff your face with it!)

Before you do anything else at this point, put some bread in the toaster, put a nice layer of butter on the toast, top it with your AMAZING creation, and DEVOUR it!! AH! Just thinking of that taste of warm toast, warm butter, and warm apple butter is making my inside snuggle each other!!

Serious YUM factor!!

(Oh boy, getting cheesy...)

You can can this too, but PLEASE don't ask me how to can! I am really not that great at it, and I suck at explaining. I literally looked up Youtube videos on how to do it.

Applesauce in the Crock Pot:

(This recipe is from my stepmom's mom, Joyce - who, in my opinion, knows how to make the best apple ANYTHING!)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup water

Enough apples to fill your Crock Pot (15-20)

2 Tbsp lemon juice

sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar (Joyce has a shaker of cinnamon and sugar and uses that to sprinkle on top. I just sprinkled separately.)

Put water in bottom of crock pot, fill with apples, pour lemon juice over apples, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, then cook on high for 3-5 hours (just depends). Not terribly sweet, and yet not incredibly tart either. Seriously, it's golden and beautiful - will bring a smile to your face!

I canned this too. Joyce actually told me you can put this in gallon sized bags and freeze them. Lay them flat in the freezer so your space isn't all taken up by applesauce. To use them when you want, take out a defrost, and they should be good to go (to my knowledge, but if I'm wrong on this, someone should correct me).

Apple Tea:

 (From the Finding Joy in My Kitchen blog)

I got REALLY tired of tossing all the apple peels away. So I Google for recipes and found this! I honestly wing this recipe. I got the ingredients from the blog, but I "wing" as follows:

Ingredients:

Apple peels

Water

Lemon Juice

Cinnamon 

(She used cinnamon sticks, and if I had any I would have tried that. But ground cinnamon is just fine.)

Honey

Add enough water to you apple peels to... maidunno... what will be sufficient. (Seriously, I filled my stock pot with apple peels, so I just added water to where it wouldn't completely boil over.)

Add some cinnamon and squirt lemon juice on top.

Bring to boil for 10 - 15 minutes, or if you're doing as much as I was, it may take 20 - 30 minutes. Just let it go until it gets to a pretty pinkish color.

Remove apple peels. Add honey. 

I would always forget the honey at the end. Not to mention I canned this too, so adding it later I think would be just fine. 

I really think this recipe is up for tweaking to your taste. More honey, less honey, more cinnamon, less cinnamon, etc. But it is a delightful, warm drink to have! I haven't tried the canned stuff, so I guess that's still up for debate if it still tastes good later.

So, if you happen to still have a lot of apples that you need to use up, these are some great recipes to try!