Chili Encore

Spread cream cheese on a soda cracker or a cracker of your choice, top with a dollop/ spoonful of cold chili. A great late night snack.

Chili with Polenta

A great companion to your favorite bowl of chili is 1 /2 inch cubed polenta strewn on top. Add plenty of garlic and cheese of your choice to the polenta when boiling it. Place in an oiled pie pan, chill, cube and top your chili with it. It looks great and tastes great. Cold cubes in the hot chili is a nice contrast.

Polenta is just corn meal mush which you can flavor in any way you like. You can use regular corn
meal like Quakers in the cylindrical container. There is a recipe for corn meal mush on the can.

On a Cold Minnesota Morning

One of my favorite breakfasts is twice toasted bread with Brie and orange marmalade. Use your favorite bread, toast it, butter it w/ cold butter, toast it again on a short cycle - it gets really hot when you toast it with butter, which in turn warms and softens the Brie, top w/ orange marmalade or apricot preserves.

The double toasting changes the texture of regular toast - softer interior, crunchier perimeter. A duality of textures which becomes even more when you add the cheese and jam. Exquisite. Yoghurt and hot tea on the side.

Simple pleasures can be great pleasures. This is one of those.

Dadi and Nati's Meatloaf

Meatloaf is better than you think. Use equal amounts of finely diced onions( 1 / 2 med) and finely diced mushrooms, 2 eggs, 1 /4 c milk, 2 tblespoons worcestershire , 1 /4 c ketchup, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp black pepper, 1 tsp crushed red pepper, 1 tsp granulated garlic, and a half tube of crushed soda crackers per pound of ground beef. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, cover w/ ketchup or BBQ sauce and bake at 350 degrees for the remaining 20 to 30 minutes until cooked thoroughly.

Serve w/ baked potatoes, carrots and cabbage; butter and ketchup on the side. Yum .

If you finely dice the onions and mushrooms and saute them before you add them to the meat mixture, your 12 yr old daughter, who hates onions and mushrooms, won't even know that they are there, and will say" great meatloaf, Dad." Lucky me and lucky her.

Rat- a- Tat Touille w/ Polenta And More

Polenta is corn meal mush. You can use the same cornmeal that you use for cornbread, but cook it like you would cream of wheat for about 20 minutes. Use a whisk in your sauce pan and add water as necessary. Add salt, pepper( red and black), garlic, parmesan cheese and Herbs De Provence or basil.

Serve the polenta with a red or marinara sauce or a spaghetti sauce of your choice. It is an excellent substitute for pasta.

If you turn the polenta into an oiled( olive or vegetable) pie pan and chill, you can slice it into pie like wedges and fry in oil in a pan or heat it in a microwave and serve it with appropriate( any) Italian sauces or even ratatouille or chili. Yes. It is great. Add accompaniments like sour cream, cheese, green onions, etc... .

Oil Strike!

If you have a dry face and hands and more and if lotion is not working for you even with successive applications, try vegetable oil. You do not need a lot. It is initially very oily on your skin, but will be mostly absorbed in 10 to 15 min. Blot with a cloth or paper towel if necessary. One application lasts all day.

I have been using soybean oil. Any oil would work - peanut, olive, safflower, canola etc... you could do the girly thing and flavor it w/ herbs and essences and aromatics.

If you have struggled with dry skin, I think you will like it. Plus it is cheap.

Choke Cherry Juice, Reduced, w/ Wild Game

Harvested the last of the wild rice today. Got some roasting in the oven and choke cherries boiling on the stove.

Googled choke cherries and found wine and jelly recipes, which seemed involved and intricate w/ all kinds of discussion about jelly bags and cheesecloth and pillowcases and muslin and hanging and dripping.

Use a colander and a strainer or " china hat" . If your jelly is not perfectly clear, call it jam. Add sugar to taste.

I added a cup of sugar to a gallon of choke cherries and boiled it about 20 minutes and strained it and intend to use the juice like wine in any sauce or gravy based wild game recipe. It is darker even than Cabernet or Bordeaux and you could use it in any Bordelaise recipe or Coq au Vin, which means w/ venison, beef, chicken or wild fowl.