Cooking Journal: Sandwiches

Each month, I like to cook with a theme in mind.  This helps to provide me with some inspiration and also ensures that I don’t fall into the rut of making the same meals over and over.  Like most home cooks, I have a few favorites that I regularly serve.   But I also like to try new dishes and a theme helps me to do that.

In March, my theme was warm sandwiches.  I am a big fan of sandwiches because bread is involved and bread is my food love language.  This month, I made some old favorites, including this smoked turkey tartine with green peppers and Swiss cheese melted on top.  I serve it with homemade dijonaisse and it’s always good.  

I also made a Happy Waitress, a Jersey diner staple.  It’s American cheese, bacon, and tomato served open-faced and it’s delicious. 

I tried some new sandwiches as well. 

This one came from the Original Dish website and had smoked turkey, bacon, pickled red onion, melted havarti, avocado, and sprouts on rye bread with a spicy mayo.  It was delightful and will be making a return.

I mixed up a batch of house sauce, a recipe from the Jen Hatmaker cookbook, froze half of it and turned the other half into a saucy Italian sausage sub sandwich.  It was a warm and happy antidote for a cold and rainy March evening.

March has some days left and that means a few more sandwiches coming my way.  That’s happy!

Biscuit Magician

Though I’ve been making them for more than 30 years, I always love to stir together a batch of homemade biscuits.  My biscuit-making career started with the help of my now kitchen-stained Better Homes and Garden cookbook.  Using that recipe, I taught myself to make biscuits.  Over the years, I’ve read countless recipes and cooking magazine articles about the making of biscuits and then I’ve honed my technique accordingly.  I can make all sort of biscuits: sourdough, cheese, cornmeal, angel……but my favorite is the delicious old-fashioned basic: a buttermilk biscuit.

Buttermilk was not a regular part of my mother’s kitchen, but is was a part of my grandmother’s and it was certainly present in the Southern kitchens where I honed my biscuit-making skills.  I don’t always have fresh buttermilk on hand but when I do buy it at the market, usually to make fried chicken, blue cheese salad dressing, or chocolate cake, I always make sure to stir up some fresh buttermilk biscuits.

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I measure the ingredients into a big bowl and as I stir together the dough, memories of previous biscuits flow through my mind.  Biscuits cut into a heart shape for an impromptu Valentine’s Day celebration; biscuits served with bacon, cream gravy, and scrambled eggs on a cold Winter morning; biscuits made in a hot Summer kitchen to slather with a batch of freshly-made jam; the batch I made at JT’s request in the fleeting days before we loaded up the car and drove him to college…..my memory fills with an steady parade of warm biscuits.  

I cut them out and line them up on the baking sheet, taking care that they lightly touch one another and then carefully dimpling each one with a slight press of my thumb before I slide the pan into a hot oven.

12 minutes later, there is a basket full of steamy hot biscuits, ready for hungry eaters and stirred together with memories and loves as the unspoken but magical ingredient.  

Food Friday: Tomato & Arugula Salad

This salad is a warm weather staple at my home - arugula with pesto, tomatoes, burrata, and a smidge of olive oil and vinegar.

We have it often.  I usually serve it with pasta or grilled veggies and crusty bread, but in a big bowl on a hot day, it is a full meal on its own, the delicious taste of Summer.

Food Friday: Grandma’s Carrot Cake

My Grandma Mac was an amazing cook and her carrot cake was to die for - filled with raisins, pineapple, and nuts and frosted with the richest cream cheese frosting.  The cake is a winner.  My mother has the recipe and mentioned last week that she was going to bake it.  On Wednesday, I set to baking the cake.  The cinnamon-rich batter came together easily.

The cake baked up well and the frosting was amazing.

JT and I declared it health food and may very well have enjoyed a slice for breakfast the next morning.  

Food Friday: Chicken Supper - Home Cookin’

Early on in the pandemic lock down, there were chicken shortages at our local market,  Chicken is the universal favorite food among the inmates of this house and both JT and T got a little panicky about a poultry shortage.  However, as supplies evened out it became clear that we would be able to fill our freezer with chicken for some chicken suppers.  I am the primary cook and meal planner around here and in this season of anxiousness, I’ve made old favorites as a means of comfort.  We’ve had fried chicken.

And chicken tacos.

Not pictured is chicken noodle soup, cowboy chicken, peanut chicken, and chicken cordon bleu....among other family favorites.  Suffice it to say no one has gone hungry around here.  Family suppers are among the blessings of this crazy period of time.  I've been one to take them for granted and it's been nice to have this daily blessing.

A Sandwich on Every Plate

I don’t spend all my free moments defining my political goals.  Sometimes I just seek to feed my family.  On Saturday night, already anticipating a busy week ahead, I set a pound of navy beans to soak overnight.  The next day, I made bean and bacon soup.  Together with an assortment of grilled sandwiches, this soup will get us through a busy week.  On Sunday, we had the soup with grilled pear, cheddar, and bacon sandwiches.

On Monday, I made a grilled ham, swiss, and red pepper sandwich and served it with the soup.

Later this week, there will be Camembert and apple sandwiches and then ham, apple, and cheddar.  Sometimes we’ll have soup with our sandwiches.  Sometimes we’ll have salad.  Always, we’ll have a delicious homemade meal without a whole lot of fuss during these busy days.  That’s happy!

Food Friday: Turkey, Brie, Cranberry Panini

I like Thanksgiving leftovers best when they can be turned into something new.  One of my favorite post-holiday treats are the turkey, brie, and cranberry panini sandwiches we enjoy after the holiday feast.

I mix the the cranberry sauce leftovers with dijon mustard and spread a thin layer on a slice of bread, add thin slices of brie cheese, and minced turkey.  I top it with another slice of bread, butter both sides, and grill it on a low flame so that the brie has time to melt while the bread sears.  The result is delicious enough to become a holiday tradition of its own!

Valentine Crafts

I enjoy paper crafts and the kits at Paper Source are just my speed.  The patterns and colors are splendid and the kits are comprehensive so that projects come together nicely.  I enjoyed making these mermaid and pirate valentines.

I don't have a need to hand out loads of Valentines so this kit will last me a while.  That’s happy!

Food Friday: Lemon Curd

Spring Break gives me the luxury of some unscheduled time.  I used some of mine to make things, including homemade lemon curd.

I followed this Simply Recipes version, altering mine to use just a tablespoon of lemon zest, which I left in the finished curd.  I’ve made lemon curb before and know that I should never stop whisking, but a strainer is a good idea if this is your first time.  I poured the finished lemon curd into small preserve jars.  

The recipe makes a cup and a half, enough to give one jar away and still have some of your own to enjoy.  We ate it with homemade scones and a cup of tea.  It looked and tasted like Spring.  That's happy!

Crafty Valentine

I made some homemade valentines for today, a tiny treat for others that reminded me of how much I enjoy making things. 

Crafts aren’t quite the same as art, but they do make me appreciate the importance of art in my world —— for beauty, of course.  Art also reminds me to look at the familiar in new ways.  Homemade items like these help me show the people I love that I care.

Time to create and daydream makes my life nicer.

That’s happy!

Family Traditions: Snacks & Sports

The backstory: This year, as JT prepares to head off to college, I’m writing about the traditions that spell love in our home.  I’m thinking of them more mindfully than usual as I prepare to send my bird from his nest.  For me, these traditions  were always about a securing a happy and well-loved childhood in preparation for a happy adulthood.  They are about creating memories that will endure and this year, writing about them is helping me to think about the next chapter in our lives.

Watching sports is a family tradition in itself and for as long as he’s been able to toddle around and help himself to food, we’ve celebrated major sporting events with an assortment of appetizers.  That’s my favorite food to make, because everyone’s favorite can be served.  I have literally dozens of recipes for this kind of food and I’m always on the lookout for additions to my repertoire.  Snacks like this instead of a meal always feels special and over the years it’s become a tradition in our home. For Super Bowl Sunday, we had an assortment of everyone’s favorites.  

There were little smokies in BBQ sauce; homemade boursin and garlic toasts; homemade salsa and chips; brie, olive cream cheese, and crackers; and chicken tortilla soup with avocado.  

It is plenty more than we need, of course, but we’ll enjoy leftovers later this week and JT will remember the tradition for far longer than that.  That’s happy!

Cookie Day

Baking cookies for my students is one of the holiday traditions I most enjoy.  I bake in advance of the annual day and freeze the fresh-baked cookies until I have have enough to supply all of the students in my classes with a treat.  This year, the whole of the 7th grade received homemade treats.  Frosted sugar cookies are the most labor intensive of the the lot; they are also the most popular cookie I make.  This year, the students ate acres of Christmas trees,

In addition to the frosted sugar cookies, there were chocolate peppermint cookies, molasses spice cookies, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and Tollhouse bars.  I share the treats with my students along with a sincere thank you to them for making my schooldays happy.  

I thank them for learning with me, for making me laugh, and reminding me that our future is in very good hands.  Then I get the pleasure of watching kids eat homemade cookies.  That’s happy!

Food Friday: Spinach Soup

Spinach soup is one of the most delicious soups I make.  It comes together quickly on a school night and is amazingly good.  It can be served as is, or made fancier, with grilled shrimp or chicken; some roasted red pepper, or chopped fresh tomatoes.  As soon as the weather grows cold, this recipe comes to the top of my must-have list.  I made this bowl last night and I’m looking forward to enjoying the leftovers.  The recipe comes from Pioneer Woman, way back in 2010.  I don't use whole milk and it comes out just fine.  You should make it at once!

Food Friday: Cranberry Brie Turkey Panini

For me, one of the nicest things about Thanksgiving is the leftovers that can be turned into delicious meals.  My absolute favorite “leftover” is made using the turkey and cranberry sauce.  Behold the turkey, cranberry, brie panini sandwich.

For each sandwich, I spread two slices of bread with a thin amount of dijon mustard.

Then I add thin slices of brie cheese.

I add minced turkey.

Then I put a thin layer of cranberry sauce on the bread.  

The sandwich gets grilled on medium low so there is time for the heat to spread and melt the brie without burning the bread.

It’s delicious!

Strawberries

Last weekend, T and I made a batch of lemonberry jam, our favorite.  The smell of these berries being rinsed off in preparation to make jam is just lovely.  That’s happy!

Homemade

For the last few weekends, I’ve been seized by the desire to make homemade biscuits for our morning breakfast.  Making biscuits is always pleasing, one of those kitchen rituals that always makes me feel like a grown up, but in a good way, like I am part of something bigger than myself.  Stirring together biscuits feels like a timeless kind of cooking.  I cut the shortening in just as countless cooks have always done for many years before me.  Then I mix the dough together with a few firm stirs of the spatula against a bowl that has made my family hundreds of biscuits over the years.   I pat out the round of dough and make swift cuts with my biscuit cutter, patting out the dough until there are no more biscuits to be cut.

The biscuits are set to bake nestled against one another.

Twelve minutes later there is a platter of hot homemade biscuits to serve alongside jam preserved the summer before.

That’s happy! 

Not a Fan: Salsa in a Jar

The backstory: On Instagram, I follow a woman named Jen Hatmaker.  She lives in Austin, Texas and writes about her life as a wife, mother, and Christian.  On the face of it, we don’t have much in common, but I like her sensibility and her sense of humor.  From her, I’d adopted the idea of an occasional rant about the small annoyances in life.  She calls her “Not a Fan” and that rather sums it up, so my occasional rants will also arrive under that title.  Today's victim: salsa in a jar.

I am not a fan of salsa from a jar.  It tastes of the vinegar used to preserve it and it’s often weirdly chunky.  Homemade salsa is incredibly easy to make, cheaper by far, and so delicious that you will sneer at jarred salsa.  Salsa is a staple in my household and homemade salsa is the only way to go.  Lest you think this is just me being oddly snooty about homemade, I will defend myself by pointing out that homemade salsa takes less than 15 minutes to make.  I use an adapted version of this Pioneer Woman recipe, swapping out one can of Ro-tel for a can of El Pato tomato sauce and adding extra cilantro and cumin.  It’s out of this world.

Strawberry Jam

One of my local produce markets smells like ripe strawberries when you walk in the front door.  That’s the official cue: the jam season is upon us.

T and I piled our cart full of strawberries and lemon and set to work on Sunday and Monday  We make a lemon berry jam that is delicious.  Last year, we made more than a dozen jars and we ran out at Christmas.  This year, we plan to have even more jam at the ready for gifts.  

By the time we finished on Monday night, we had 23 jars of lemon berry jam just like these two jars.

Homemade jam is delicious.  Come a cold day in December,  this jam thick on a slice of bread brings back the delicious taste of summer.  That's happy!

Pop, Pop, Pop

I made apricot-pineapple jam last week —— 10 pots worth of delicious jam.

Making jam is one of the most pleasing elements of summer.  The smell of hot jam on the stove is heavenly.

When the pots of jam come out of the water bath to cool on the counter, the sound of the seals as they pop is one of the happiest sounds of summer.

These jars will be stored on the shelves in the basement, at the ready for warm slices of freshly-toasted bread, fresh scones, and Winter gift-giving.  That’s happy!