What I should be doing is not always what I do.

 I should be doing so many things right now other than an admittedly boring food blogpost. I set out ingredients earlier to bake cookies but haven't started yet. Instead, I started changing things around in my kitchen and then my bedroom and then the dining area of our great room. 

And then I came to a stopping point, needing RH to come home and help me with some of the heavy stuff--a large picture to move from the dining area to my bedroom, the upper open shelf in the kitchen for him to clean and move things around on like I had done the lower shelf. There are things sitting on my counters, the dining table has hammer, nails, dust cloths and polish sitting on it and a few final Christmas things I took down and need to be stored, the laundry  basket sitting in a chair by the dining table waiting for the table to be cleared so I can fold white things, the vacumn pulled out on the floor for him to use it on the top of a large armoir, a stepladder waiting for him to climb. And now he's home and wants to wait until tomorrow for his honey-do list. 

So I'm sitting down to rest and wanting to change a blog post here at Across the Way that has not been changed since December 9, that's December 9. 

And everything I wanted to blog on requires this little thing or that little thing to finish up first. So I am going to dump on my poor few readers one of the many food posts that I never got around to posting. And it's a ham based menu at that, Ham, on readers who include vegetarians and people who probably never fix ham because they always blog such beautiful healthy meals. 

All I can say is, please, please, please don't feel as if you have to comment, not even my faithful few who still come here. You are totally excused! This is just for my own family because we love ham. Or at least some of us do. About every three months RH buys one at Costco and we have ham and vegetables, and ham and eggs for breakfast, and ham sandwiches, and the ham bone goes in the freezer for flavoring dried beans.

And then the last scraps of ham go into a ham and potato casserole. And it is delicious!

I don't have a written down recipe but I cook the potatoes first in a pot till tender and slice them and it has sliced onions and milk and cheese and pepper and whatnot in it.

I serve braised cabbage with it.

And this particular time I had cranberry sauce in the fridge.

And that small bowl to the left was Silver Palate's Pineapple Bake, a bread pudding that is so good with ham.

Here's a link I found to the recipe that shows how simple the recipe is.

And I might as well include the recipe from Food & Wine that I use for ham broth that I make from the ham bone to flavor dried beans. Maybe you can read it if you're interested.

It's kind of fun to make, just as is any stock. At least I always feel thrifty and housewifely when I make my own stock. 

Now if tomorrow I can finish up all those little projects I started today. Anyone else ever do that? Oh I forgot, you're not supposed to leave a comment on this one!

One Writer's Way by Elizabeth Yates plus a dessert

 I've been interested in Elizabeth Yates ever since I added one of her children's books to my vintage Christmas book collection many years ago. If you collect vintage Christmas books, her Once in the Year: A Christmas Story, published in 1947,  would be a charming book to add. Here's an old blog picture of mine showing it, with apologies for the blurriness.

 

I was happy to find one of Yates' autobiographies, One Writer's Way, published in 1984, an autographed copy, about her life between 1931 and 1951. It begins with the time she and her husband, both Americans, lived in England where she tries to find her writing path.

They settle in London, in the Kensington area in an old Huguenot house. This interested me because RH's mother's people on her father's side were French Huguenots who came to the United States and eventually settled in Texas long ago.

Yates explains that French Huguenots settled in London in the 1800s and built houses with timber sash windows and decorative brickwork, living on the second floor, their weaving business products sold on the ground floor, and looms on the third story with floor to ceiling windows.

Do you know the doorknobs shaped like a hand? This was the symbol of a Huguenot weaver. I was entranced with this idea and searched for one for a possible gift for RH. How about this one that's only $700 on Etsy? Not going to happen but isn't it stunning?

By the way, I learned that the correct French pronuciation of Huguenot does not pronounce the ending "t" but rather "not" is pronounced "noh."

Elizabeth Yates and her husband William McGreal, also an author and published photographer illustrating books, loved England where they felt that the "national difference" between the United States and England was that "in America one must be doing, in England being seemed more important."

In 1936 when King George died, McGreal took a photograph of two mourners, one man who looked as if he were a duke and beside him a "shabby little man." McGreal won first prize for the photograph in a large newspaper's competition.

The couple went to Scotland for a photographic project on the island of Skye where they were enchanted with the scenery and the people. One local man assured them one morning on starting out that it was "a pet of a day." Don't you just love that? And naturally this reminded me of the British detective series Vera where she calls everyone, friends and suspects, Pet. Do you watch Vera? She's a favorite of ours. 

As war looms in Europe Elizabeth and Bill return to the United States with other ex-pats and they make their way to Peterborough, New Hampshire to search for months for an old farmhouse and as much land as they can afford. They finally buy a 1789 house and 67 acres of fields and woods. No plumbing, no electricity. 

In 1980, Elizabeth Yates gave the house, outbuildings, and land to a trust for the Shieling State Forest, with money for its care.

During the years in Peterborough, Yates wrote many books, consistently writing 2,500 words before noon each day, in addition to  being a plane spotter in WW II. One book that won the Newberry Award was her Amos Fortune, Free Man about a resident in Jaffrey, New Hampshire who had once been enslaved.

I loved the stories in this book about her writing years and also about her husband who lost his sight during those years in New Hampshire but gave so much of his life to teaching the blind. To give you an idea of the woman, Elizabeth Yates, here is a touching tribute written by her husband:

Elizabeth is tall and slender. She has a stout heart and a strong body. Her hair is as brown as her eyes. She likes tweeds, salads, mountain climbing, reading aloud, spaghetti, lively discussion, animals, house guests. She dislikes frills, waste, taking taxis, gossip. She has no feeling for arithmetic and her interest in domestic mechanics is nil. She has plenty of courage, a strong faith and a native expectancy of good. Living with her is a high adventure.

Now that is a fine tribute from a husband.

Here is a recipe I made after reading the autobiography, French Huguenot Torte, not from Elizabeth Yates who was not interested in domestic mechanics but from one of my Eugene Walters cookbooks, American Cooking: Southern Style, a large beautiful book full of the history of Southern cookery and recipes.

 Walters writes of the French Huguenots influence that remains in Charleston, South Carolina, port of entry for many of the emigrants. In the Battery you see architecture reminiscent of the Huguenot influence, "overhanging balconies, stuccoed walls, hipped roofs, convex roofing tiles, all common features of the Huguenot centers in France."

Walters admits that the French Huguenot Torte is a recipe that many first called Ozark Pudding. All I know is that it is very good. Rather than type out Walters' recipe, I found a link to one very similar except for some slight change in amounts of ingredients. 

See Sara Moulton's recipe here. 

Here's a picture of my Huguenot Torte, chock full of Granny Smith apples...

Have you ever made this or eaten it somewhere? I am a lover of apple desserts. Are you?

I hope you have a pet of a day!

 

Nectarines or Peaches?

 

I'm an unabashed lover of nectarines. Whenever our local markets have organic nectarines, we buy a small sackful. 

Here's an easy and delicious nectarine dessert that was in the September 2020 issue of the UK Country Living. Sorry, but I couldn't find an online link to the recipe.

 Baked Nutmeg and Rosemary Nectarines

Oven 400 F (200 C) -- I guessed at the conversion.

1. Lay sprigs of fresh rosemary on baking dish and top with 4 nectarines halved and pitted, cut side up.

2. Grate 1/4 of whole nutmeg over the fruit and sprinkle on 2 tablespoons brown sugar on top and a pinch of sea salt. (I also sprinkled on a little of the Lemon Juice powder that I got from Baker's Catalogue.)

3. Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil over (I used the Greek olive oil my daughter brought me that I use sparingly in special recipes.)

4. Bake 25-30 minutes at 400 F.

5. Serve with Greek yogurt, porridge or rice pudding. 

I used my favorite mascarpone with a little honey stirred in on top and the flavor was intensely delicious. We didn't eat the rosemary with the fruit but it did add an amazing scent.

 

Here's another wonderful nectarine dessert I make, with pictures from two years ago. I never included it in a blog because my crust looked pitiful. Here is a link to the Garden & Gun recipe for Nectarine and Berry Cobbler.

Their picture:

My picture:

 See what I mean? But it is a yummy recipe.

 I wrote down the following quotation about nectarines some time ago but failed to note the author. I suspect it was either from one of my Richardson Wright books or James Beard's.

Edward A. Bunyard [1878-1939], an English gourmet of the highest flight and one of the most brilliant essayist on fruit (did you read his "The Anatomy of Dessert"?) confessed that blindfolded he couldn't tell them apart [peaches and nectarines] if peeled. He finally agreed that the peach had it all over the nectarine for the texture of the flesh--a smooth, butter-like flesh--and the nectarine had it all over the peach for flavor.

RH prefers peaches. I prefer nectarines.

What about you?

Oh, for a good right arm!

 

Do you ever not get around to baking something meant for Christmas until after Christmas? This Tennessee Jam Cake was meant for December but now I better claim it's for St. Valentine's Day. (Google sent me the picture above, animated but I can't make it dance for you.)

When RH's mother was alive she used to make Jam Cakes for Christmas and he loved them but I don't have her recipe. Instead I used Alabama author Eugene Walters' recipe for the cake but ditched his icing recipe as it has raw egg whites in it. 

I never can pull off pretty baking styling  pics because I always seem to make a mess while I'm cooking but I do have a gorgeous view to the pond outside the window where my pretty blue mixer sits. 

 

One reason I loved the way this cake recipe turned out is because it called for separating 5 eggs and beating the egg whites stiff before incorporating them into the final cake batter. That step makes a lighter cake. Then again, I love a dense cake too... I guess I just plain like a homemade cake, however it's made and this one was delicious!

 

That's RH icing the cake for me. He also had to beat the icing for me because I've been having a lot of trouble with my right arm since Christmas when I hurt my left wrist and started overcompensating using my right arm. These things seem to take a long time to heal.

RH claims that his mother used her coffee icing with the jam cake and I do have her recipe for that because I have her Devil's Food Cake recipe.  So yummy coffee icing went on this.

I tried to find a similar jam cake recipe to link to rather than trying to type out this one but rejected every one until I found a recipe for it from one of our favorite Nashville restaurants that is very popular with local country music stars. RH and I and our daughter and son-in-law had our Thanksgiving dinner there one year, such good Southern food, the walls covered in autographed photographs of the greats of country music and often a few live ones to see too.

So here's a link to the Loveless Cafe's Big Momma's Blackberry Jam Cake! 

And Big Momma's recipe looks so good that I'm going to try it next time, especially since I think this cake needs caramel icing instead of coffee. (Not that I couldn't sit and eat a bowl of my mother-in-law's coffee icing all day.)

I should have taken a picture of my fabulous cake pans. If you love to bake cakes please check out Chicago Metallic Professional Lifetime Non-Stick Cake Pans. I bought two of them from Chef's Catalogue years ago when Cook's Illustrated magazine recommended them. I don't know if the ones sold on Amazon are the same quality as my original ones that I paid $16 a piece for (you only were allowed to buy 2) because they are super heavy and I see some complaints on Amazon that theirs aren't as heavy as the old original ones. And Chef's Catalogue sold all their inventory to Tuesday Morning but say they'll be back soon. I hope so because I furnished my kitchen over the years from that catalogue.
 

RH took big slices of cake to family the next day and we really need to send more because it's taking up so much room in our small fridge. I think most cakes are so much better cold, don't you? 

RH has had to help with a lot of my cooking lately as my elbow and wrist just won't do chopping and slicing and opening jars right now. I won't include a recipe for the dish in this next picture because I've posted about it in the past and almost no one likes canned sardines the way we do but here's a picture of my lunch the other day, Sardine Rotini Pasta Salad. I washed all the produce in my fridge and RH chopped it and opened the cans of sardines for me and stirred, another thing that's hard for me to do right now, and by golly, this is a good salad. 

A big container of it went to our first born who likes sardines too, and my recipe for that is promised to his wife because mom just might be past the point of a lot of chopping anymore. And dad's not too thrilled with chopping vegetables right now. 

Not with me standing over him saying "No, not that way, you're getting the pieces too big! Slice them thin! And you have to cut the cilantro in small slivers! I won't be able to eat big pieces of onion, you'll have to chop it extra fine."

Oh, for a good right arm!
  

Our Valentine's Day Breakfast (a little late)

 

I'm a week behind but here is RH cooking bacon for our Valentine's Day breakfast. 

He's wearing a special hat for the Daytona 500 race planned for later in the day.

James Mason is keeping him company in the kitchen.

He knows the kitchen is a good place to be.

BreeBree darts in and out of the room, skittish around kitchen noises, loud noises of any kind.

I mix up the buttermilk pancakes and cook the first one for our bird friends outside while RH fries an egg for himself and one for BB and JM.

Next come three pancakes for ourselves.

With lots of batter left to freeze for another Sunday.

RH gave me a large vase of purple tulip bulbs from Costco that have been beautiful growing this past week.

And I baked him cookies. 

These might not be "pretty" cookies but they were a big hit at Christmas with all three of our sons and I had extra of the special ingredients--Andes Peppermint Crunch Pieces and Andes Creme de Menthe Baking Chips. I had to order them from Amazon as we couldn't find them in local stores and they come two to a pack. Those combined with chocolate chips make this a delicious cookie. 

Here's a link to the recipe. I'm pretty sure another blogger recommended these but I can't remember who. My cookies are darker than shown in the link, maybe because I always use dark brown sugar. I also used grapeseed oil for the vegetable oil called for in the recipe.

Our snow is starting to melt here. It's been beautiful and I've enjoyed it so much, but I've watched the news from Texas and other parts of the country where the snow, ice, and freezing temperatures have brought heartache and so much trouble. I hope those affected by it get help promptly.

Apple Cranberry Crisp

 

A recipe from October 2003 Bon Appétit is a favorite standby dessert in our house. I doubled the recipe and tweaked it by macerating the dried sweetened cranberries and dried sweetened cherries and using whatever apples were in the fridge, and finally adding a whole bag of cranberries from the freezer.

Apple and Cranberry Crisps with Ginger-Pecan Topping

(I doubled this recipe.)

I macerate the 1/2 cup dried sweetened cranberries and 1/4 cup dried sweetened cherries in 2 tablespoons of Calvados but you can sub apple brandy or even water for 20 minutes.

For filling: 4 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, chopped into 1/2-inch cubes.

Add the macerated dried sweetened cranberries and cherries.

Add half a bag of frozen cranberries, if you have them.

Add 1/2 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons minced crystallized ginger and 1 tablespoon all purpose flour.

Let stand about 5 minutes until juicy. 

Butter a baking dish or individual custard cups, pour filling in and bake at 20 minutes for the individual cups or 30 minutes for large baking dish.

While filling is baking, prepare topping:

In large bowl stir together: 

1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/4 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup old-fashioned oats

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves 

1/3 teaspoon salt

Rub in 1/2 stick chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes until coarse meal forms.

Mix in 2/3 cup toasted pecans, coarsely chopped. 

Spread topping over hot filling and bake until topping is golden brown, about 20 minutes.

We didn't have any vanilla ice cream in the freezer but it is wonderful with this dessert.

This dessert is pure comfort food, something we all need now. And it has a lot of fruit in it so that makes it healthy, right? 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it! 🤭

Don't forget the forks.

Could you stand it if I just rambled along in this post without much focus? 

Did I hear someone say, "Isn't that what Dewena does in every post?"

Well, it's going to be worse than usual because I'm in that marvelous exhausted  state of loopy euphoria that means we've just had a whirlwind but wonderful visit from our granddaughters--oh yes, their parents came too.

It was only for one night this time but we crammed as much talk and laughter in it as possible. However, I didn't get one single picture of our darlings. Hence the picture of the vinegar bottle above, another Sparrow Lane Vinegar, this time their Gravenstein Apple Cider. I could drink this stuff!

I had meant to think of a clever way to talk about the simplest salad recipe possible. Took the pictures, coming up zero on the clever. So here it is anyway...

When you have a handful of ripe little sweet tomatoes a day, go pick some.

 Don't forget to check the volunteer vines from last year's plant, growing in the gravel. They're the sweetest, for some reason.

How they've survived with BreeBree and James Mason trampling on them, I'll never know.

"Who, me?"

Cut a jalapeño, snip some chives, cut a few cukes--or confess that you bought them at a local farm stand. 

 Slice and snip and toss them in a pretty bowl that you've first poured some of that marvelous apple cider vinegar in, with a little special sea salt stirred in. Do you know this one from Trader Joe's that they carry during the holidays? 

 I ration it all year long.

This salad is so easy and it looks like I'm about easy at this stage in my life. Even my simple Ismail Merchant recipe for the salad below, link here, I've only made once this summer.

Oops, recipe Here!

What was my menu going to be the one night we were expecting our family in Friday night? It had to be easy and nothing's easier than a pot of spaghetti sauce you can let simmer all afternoon.

Ever tried this tomato basil sauce?

 We love it and watch for it to go BOGO at Publix.

Here's something you can't find at Publix, it came all the way from Crete to me on my birthday and it's the most heavenly aromatic herbs I've ever used (sparingly of course, want it to last).

And then you naturally set a pretty table to welcome your guests, don't you?

Sorry, that picture above is several years old. The truth is we served ourselves right out of the pots, from the stove on everyday Fiesta plates.

And our salad for the meal? I triple washed a beautiful head of organic ruffly lettuce, spun it dry and then laid it all out on tea towels, washed a bell pepper, cucumbers, scallions and tomatoes and plopped them out of a towel too.

And our beautiful daughter-in-law had barely stepped out of the car before helping me assemble last-minute individual salads for everyone. Some French bread toasted in the oven and we were ready to sit down at my plain old everyday table and eat.

I didn't take a picture of my fabulous dessert--a recipe I think I saw last week on Facebook, or somewhere. A box of Angel Food cake mix and a 20 oz. can of crushed pineapple stirred into it in a bowl and let it froth, all the way to the top of the bowl. Pour in a greased 9 x 13 pan and bake for 30 minutes. 2 ingredients. Now that's easy and you know what, that cake was not bad at all. If I ever make it again though I think I'll pour melted butter all over the top of it when it comes out of the oven. I mean...butter, right?

I have got to get my pretty table setting groove back though. What's the use of having all these pretty dishes if I don't use them? And I kind of feel like I'm letting the house morale down by not going to much trouble. 

I think about all the old movies where the British dressed for dinner even while on safari, whatever happened to that way of thinking? 

Do you find yourself making things easier and easier on yourself as time goes by? Or am I the only one?

At least I had a fork for everyone.