Unearthing Chowder

Yum!

I originally wrote this blog back in the middle of March, trying to be proactive (ha ha right, I know *sigh*). Unfortunately, it’s in a notebook at home and I am here at the day job, with nothing to do. (I’ve written myself into a quandary in Unearthing Magic, perhaps more on that later.) So what better way to amuse myself than to recreate my blog post, since I have the pictures already taken and ready for uploading. So may I present to you:

Corn Chowder: From Simple to Fancy

I know some of my readers may be going off to university soon, which means living on your own and, heaven forbid, having to cook for yourself. Now a person can live on ramen or pasta and sauce. And  they work great for the University student’s budget, but let me add another dish to your repitour (how in the world do you spell that?); Corn Chowder. Easy to make, and easy to impress the boys (or girls) with (as I did).

my favorite brands



The simplest version is three cans:

• 1 can, Cream Style Corn (I tend to use white)
• 1 can, Whole Kernel Corn, drained (I like the Fiesta because it adds a dash of color)
• 1 can, Evaporated Milk (E-v-a-p-o-r-a-t-e-d... not to be confused with Condensed with will give you a very, very sweet chowder)

1. Open the three cans. Be sure to shake the Evaporated Milk and drain the whole kernel corn.
2. Dump all three cans into one smallish sized pot
3. Heat until it just starts to bubble.
4. Serve and Eat!

Now, say you’ve got a family to feed now, but still want to fall back on a simple meal (and you’re tired of spaghetti and sauce), you can still make this dish, but add a few extra things to make it go further and fill up rumbling bellies.
 

(ham, peppers and onions not shown, sorry)

Before heating add:

• 1 can, diced potatoes, drained
• 1 pkg, diced ham ~8 oz (found in the meat isle)
• 1 cup, frozen, chopped, peppers and onions

And now I’ve got the fanciest version, that I’ll feature here. Use the ingredients above but:

Substitute:

• 3 to 5 slices of cooked and crumbled bacon for the ham cubes
• Fresh chopped peppers and onions for the frozen

Add:

• Dash of dill and white pepper to taste added at anytime
• 1 cup of shredded cheese of your preference

1. Add these cheese at the end (when the soup bubbles), otherwise it will melt in clumps rather than adding a smooth cheesy flavor to the whole thing. The other key is to stir it well.
2. Serve the Chowder with rolls (Pillsbury buttermilk –American- biscuits are what I like to use).

Now if only Unearthing Magic would be as easy to edit. Instead it’s thinking about rearranging itself as I delve deeper into my Antagonist’s motivations. That and my added perspective, doesn’t seem to know what route it wants to take to get to the end. Hopefully my fellow writers aren’t having such issues. *grins*

 

:} Cathryn Leigh

P.S. Us New Englanders call this dish Cohn Chowdah. ;-}

A Saucy Holiday

Inspired by some Holiday Cheer over at We Wanted to be Writers, I decided to share one of my holiday recipes. I promise you’ll be able to understand it the whole way through as there are absolutely no bottles of alcohol involved. :}

Now get ready and gather up; 2 cups (or 8 ounces) of Roe berries, 1 cup of sugar, 1 orange, and ground cloves, oh and make sure you have water on hand, you’ll need that too. If you can’t find Roe berries in your grocery store don’t fret.

Roeberries are Cranberries, harvested from the Family Bogs on Cape Cod. My great grandpa Roe called them barrels of Gold and I never make my sauce without them. They just taste better than Ocean Spray and it’s like thumbing your nose at the company that put the independent growers out of business until this whole organic thing came about.

So, now that you know the importance of where your berries come from let’s sort them. Don’t worry it’s easy. Ripe berries bounce. (They float too, but water picked berries are only good for juice because they spoil too quickly.) Now, unless you want your berries all over the room I suggest bouncing them in a pot with high walls. You’d be surprised at the bounce the ripe ones have. If they go splat (yick), toss them out the window! Let nature compost them.

Once your berries are sorted, add them, the sugar, and 1 cup of water to a nice 6 quart pot. The more room above the water line, the better, unless you love having sticky red sauce splattered about the room. Who knows, it could be the next rage in Christmas decoration. You only want the tiniest amount of cloves, it’s a strong spice, I’d say no more than 1/8 teaspoon or it will over power the cranberries.

Now, we’ll get the pot set over high heat on the stove to get it boiling while we mutilate the orange.  What you want to do is slice it in half so you can scoop out the yummy sections (without any skin) to plop into the pot. Just treat the orange as if you were eating grapefruit, only feed it to the sauce, which ought to be boil at this point.

It’s time to turn down the heat, set the time and relax. But don’t relax too much you’ll want to stir the pot every now and again. The timer should be set for about 20 minutes. You know the sauce is done when the berries are all popped (listen, you can hear them) and the sauce is a nice gravy consistency.

And Voila! You now have about 2 and a half cups of Cranberry Sauce for a feast. It’s yummy, it’s easy, so who are you going to serve it too?

:} Cathryn Leigh

It’s NaNovel Update Number 1!

Well NaNo has begun and I’ve set up a little NaNo update template to minimize time spent away from my NaNovel. So here’s what I have to say on Day 2 of NaNoWriMo.

First, we have the Statistics*:

Total Word count:  6327

Total Page Count:  22

Total Time Spent:  5.31 hours

Average Words per minute:  20

Average Pages per hour:  4

*Don’t worry I’m not calculating that every time I post. Nope, I already have a spreadsheet that I log my start and end time, as well as the total words and pages. Then Excel does all the calculations for me. If you think that’s organized you should see my Nueri binder...

Second, we have the Write-Ins:

There are five weeks to NaNo this year, so I’m giving myself a goal to attend four Write-Ins AND the TGIO Party. I’ve already made it to the Kick-Off party, which was a blast. Being at my mom’s for this first week I’m going outside my region (and taking my Mom with me) to attend a Write-In on the south shore of Boston. We’ll be attending that tonight.

Lastly, we have my notes

I won a binder at the Kick-off party and spent the last week filling it with my map of the galaxy and the starships I’ve designed. Funny part is next year I’ll start work on designing one for my mom’s story that I’ve just about convinced her to do for NaNo next year.

Now as to how my story is going. I am having a blast. So is Stowaway, the large tabby feline, who gets to do the Cheshire Cat act because he knows he’s in a novel (this is Dare 1) and he’s decided that’s his purpose for being there (double dare) and he’s going to be trying to convince them they are in a novel (double credit). Only I think he’s doing that more for his own entertainment than anything else.

Oh, I’ve also managed to find a way to mention a few trilogies that my friends and I have written *grin*

Rachael let out a swear as the deceleration made her mess up her course.
“Have you down loaded anything new to my tablet?’ Michael asked.
“Death and Fairies, Aeserion and The Phoenixes of Vervell.” Rachael spoke responded with out paying much attention to what she said.

That’s right through out the story I get to make references to these three book as Michael works on translating the ancient Latin alphabetic texts to the oriental like character language now used. Apparently, Rachael’s father used to read these trilogies to his kids. She can’t read the Latin alphabet and translation keeps Michael out of her hair while they’re out in space.

Now, should I start counting the number of times Rachael beds someone? I could include Michael too, to increase the count. He’s not nearly as bad as her though and only beds others out of necessity. (What happened to those anti harassment laws? I have no idea!)

And now I’m off to do some old fashioned cooking on a wood stove. *giggles* It’s back down from the year 4000 AC (after Colonization) to 1800 AD. I’m just a century hopper!

Oh and how are you NaNovels going?

:} Cathryn Leigh

Poetic Excuses

I'm sorry blog,
I've ignored you so.
My momentum has been shot.

I've skipped a week,
nearly made it two.
I forget an awful lot.

You see we've come,
To that time of year,
When we're busy as the bees.

First October and its spooky night.
Two children's costumes, what a pretty sight.

Next is November, that writing spree.
A whirlwind of words to be set free.

Then comes December with its celebration.
Can I send my baking to more than one nation?

And should I also dare to mention,
That I’ve gone and volunteered?
To help lead my daughter’s troop,
Of Daisy scouts so dear.

There’s also this class I’m taking,
For the writing mother.
Volunteering for the church
No wonder I’m all a flutter.

And last, but certainly not the least,
Phoenix Triumphant goes on,
Some writing and some edits,
Until the story’s dawn.


:} Cathryn Leigh

Feeding the Family

One of the big time sinks I do is cooking for the family. Okay it’s not a time sink, but it’s a tough job. I have to provide delicious and nutritious meals that satisfy my husband’s need for variety. When you consider that the kids are 3 and 5 it’s a tall order to make something that everyone loves.

Thankfully my mother-in-law gave me a subscription to Everyday with Rachael Ray. Normally I take out that weekly menu and use it one week of the month. That usually works for about a week and a half because her recipes feed four plus and my kids barely eat ½ a recipe together! (I know that’s going to change when the teen years hit, especially for my son.) But, in her September of 2011 issue, she had an article, twenty dinners, One Day.

The premise sounds good. You make five base, long time cook, dishes in one day and portion them up to freeze. Then you pull out what you need, the night before or morning of, the day that you make the dish. The dishes have other, quicker cooking, ingredients to add variety to the meals; salad one day, then tacos, then a quiche.

Well I’ve finally gotten to testing that premise. Yesterday I spent all Day (okay technically half a day) working on those five main dishes. I started sometime around 1 pm and didn’t finish until 10 pm. Mind you I had a brief rest for dinner (plain old mac-n-cheese, a quick go to for tired nights). But, I got it all done!

Eighteen cups of pulled pork, twelve cups of tomato sauce, eight cups of roasted peppers and onions, eight cups of roasted squash, seven and a half cups of pulled chicken and fourteen cups of rice pilaf.

That was yesterday, and let me tell you all that cooking tired me out. I was exhausted. But you know what? So far, in my one night’s experience it’s paid off. Got home around 6:30 pm and dinner was ready before 7 pm! (Normally on nights like that it’s a lot closer to 8 pm, good old bedtime, before we eat.)

Holy cow I hope that’s the trend for the rest of the month. I like having time to play with the kids after dinner. We even managed include sight words as part of their game. Fiona knows them, mostly (we didn’t do the greatest job at continuing education at home, me especially) but Brendan is just starting.

So if the rest of those twenty meals goes as well as tonight. I’ll sacrifice another day. In fact, I’ll make it two days; Pork, Sauce and veggies on day one and chicken and pilaf on day two.

I know my followers don’t have to cook for themselves yet, but hey, now you know you’ll get feed well when you come to visit. *grin*