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recipes

And the pressure is on

Pressure cookers that is, yesterday while surfing the internet, I ran across an article on Mother Earth News about cooking with pressure cookers. It reminded me of how much I love mine, I have a 6 quart stainless steel Presto pressure cooker. Some of my favorite meals to cook in it are pinto beans, potatoes (baked potatoes), chicken soup, other soups, stews, rice, veggies… lots of different foods.

One of the benefits of using a pressure cooker, is it takes so much less time and fuel to cook with, the fuel factor is big with me since we have limited fuel (propane), I just can’t afford to let something simmer on the stovetop all day. Foods cook faster, retain more nutrients and just flat out taste better.

Some folks are afraid of pressure cookers, who hasn’t heard the horror stories of someone’s grandmother (or aunt, or neighbor, you fill in the blank) who was cooking in a pressure cooker and it exploded, beans all over the ceiling? Well I’m here to tell you the pressure cookers you buy today have many safety features built in, you’d have to try pretty hard to get one to actually blow on you. I had a “worst case scenario” happen to me when using a friend’s older aluminum pressure cooker. I was cooking chicken and didn’t put in enough water, it wouldn’t come up to pressure, then it made a loud BANG! Sounded like someone shot a gun off in the kitchen, I went over to it, the seal had blown out. No big deal, the pressure was relieved, so I opened it, reseated the seal, added more water, put the lid back on and continued cooking, lesson learned, make sure you add sufficient liquid for the time you will be cooking.

The other things you can do is make sure the vent hold is clear-not clogged, make sure the rubber parts are in good shape and properly placed, make sure you add enough liquid, don’t overload your pot, just use common sense and you will be perfectly safe using a pressure cooker.

One dish I love making in my pressure cooker is chicken soup, here is my (more or less) recipe…

2-4 raw chicken breasts
enough water to come up at least an inch or two in the pan
2-4 carrots, chopped
2-4 celery stalks, chopped
1 onion, chopped
seasoning

I put the chicken in the pot, add enough water to bring it up at least one or two inches, I bring it up to pressure then time it for about 15 minutes. I let the pressure off, remove the chicken, shred it and place it back into the pot, then I add the veggies, you add what you like, I put in enough water to bring it to the top of the veggies, replace the lid, bring it back to pressure …

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Meatless sausage

meatless-sauage2

I’m not a vegan, a vegetarian or anything remotely like that, I have nothing against anyone who chooses not to eat meat, they have more willpower than I do :)
That being said, in the past, I have tried some of the meatless burger and sausage patties, honestly they tasted OK, just OK, but each time I tried them I ended up with stomach issues, quite frankly it was bad enough that NO ONE would want to be around me for the rest of that day into the next… most of those meatless products are made with soy, something I avoid like the plague, most soy is GMO now, plus the fact that soy mimics estrogen so for most of us, that is not a good thing.

I’ve seen recipes for meatless burgers, often made with TVP (which is soy based), beans, rice, various other grains, quite frankly none of them looked very interesting or good, not enough to get me to try to make them, I’m just not that on board for substituting for meat products…

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Community

Keep your cool with warm weather cooking methods

thermometer-11029029I live in the high desert mountains of far western Texas, the summer days are hot, fortunately the evenings and nights tend to be cooler, I would like to have an outdoor kitchen, cooking during the day in the heat of summer is miserable at best, a kitchen out on the covered deck would make summer cooking so much better… until I get that outdoor kitchen set up, I found this article all about keeping your cool when cooking in the summer:

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As the mercury in the thermometer starts to climb, you may be looking for different ways to keep your home a bit cooler without an exponential increase in your electric bill. That battle starts in the kitchen.

The one thing that adds the most ambient heat is cooking.  Your choice of cooking methods can greatly increase the warmth that your air conditioner must then overcome.  And if you have no air conditioner, it can make your home humid, muggy and miserable.

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Canning other goodies

canning crackersThere are many ways of preserving foods, dehydrating, freezing and canning. Today we will discuss canning. There are many foods that can be canned, meats, vegetables, fruits and such… but did you know you can can other foods as well? How about crackers? Breads?

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Community

My favorite recipes

Food, it’s something I really REALLY love, I love cooking and eating. As a young child, while my little sister was busy playing with her dolls and tea sets, I was in the kitchen watching my mom cook and bake. My mom was great in the kitchen, she could take a few basics and whip up a grand meal, fortunately that rubbed off on me. :)

I have a few old standbys, one is a tuna casserole, this recipe always makes me think of my mother in law, she makes a similar one and is quite the good cook herself!

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Baking without Eggs

Since I live so far from town, it’s a 40+ mile round trip to go to the nearest town that only has one grocery store, it’s 80+ miles round trip to go to the next closest town that has 2 grocery stores, and we don’t have our own chickens, yet! I sometimes find that I am short an egg or two when I want to make something that requires eggs. It’s just not worth it to drive to town just to pick up a carton of eggs. I ran across this article with lots of good info about how to substitute other things for eggs, and the good thing is these are things you probably already have in your pantry. :)

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How to save money on food

Saving money, everyone talks about it, everyone wants to do it, but it’s hard to do. With most of us on tight budgets, it’s more important than ever to save every penny you can.

The main reason saving money seems hard to do is it usually means having to give up something that you would normally want to buy or do. My hubby and I live off-grid, we budget ourselves tightly, that includes food, but we still eat very well, the trick is to find ways of saving that doesn’t hurt so much. Here are some of the ways I save money. Let’s focus on food, something we all have to have to survive.

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Cooking freeze dried style

Lots of things are going on today, the one getting the most news coverage is the president of the US being sworn in today, I read recently that the inauguration ball was going to be scaled down in respect of the bad economy and unemployment numbers being high, then today I read that it’s going to cost over 300 million… THAT’S CUTTING BACK? So, in light of this, today I’ll write about something really important, cooking and eating! A few weeks ago, we were snowed in, fortunately we had enough provisions to get us through.

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No knead bread

I love making and baking bread, who doesn’t enjoy eating fresh, homemade bread hot from the oven? The problem is the time it takes to make, the mixing, the kneading, the rising, the kneading again, the shaping, the rising again… it just takes too much time and attention.

 

About a year ago, I started seeing books and recipes for no-knead breads, it looks almost too good to be true, this method makes what is often referred to as “artisan breads”, the kind that cost a small fortune in the specialty bakeries, who knew how easy these breads were to make?

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Food-recipes-memories

Chicken Fried Steak with lots of gravyFood, it’s one of the things we can’t live without. It’s a necessity to be sure, but it is so much more than that. It can bring families together, it can bring a smile to your face when you remember a special meal, food or recipe and the memories associated with it. Food is often regional too, to my fondest memories are of chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy (lots of gravy), fried okra and biscuits (with lots of butter, and no, I’m not talking about cookies). If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m proudly from Texas.

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