catching up in the kitchen

to understand what has been going on in the kitchen, i must first tell you about a few of the goodies i acquired over the holidays. twice we stopped at a lodge cast iron outlet and bought a few pieces of cookware. three pieces to be exact. a small skillet, a 10 inch round griddle, and a two quart serving pot which i have nicknamed "mini dutch." (i so wish i had pictures to share with you, but the battery in my digital camera was dead.) also, ever since i started making bread, i've been on the look out for a bread box. i wanted a vintage one, but i still needed it to go along with the current kitchen decor. not an easy task i must say. but at christmas, i remembered that my grandmother had a pretty darn cool silver one in the garage that she offered to me a long time ago when she gave me the matching canisters. but the bread box seemed pretty dirty, and since i really didn't have need for one at the time, i declined. but now it is mine. i was going to get navel jelly to help with the rust, but once i got it home, it clean up pretty nicely considering where it had been living over the last decade or two.

grandma's old chrome bread box and my new cast iron cookware. ray and i have decided that we are going to, piece by piece, replace all the current cookware with the lodge cast iron. also i am very much hoping to go to the cornbread festival over in tennessee this year.

since returning home i've been putting the new cast iron to work.

here we have morning oatmeal with pecans from my nannie's yard.

the griddle gave us some of my best pancakes thus far.

buttermilk pecan pancakes.

although i could get four pancakes on the griddle, it worked best with just two or three at a time. these babies needed room to grow.

all that, plus the good fortune soup, a loaf of traditional irish soda bread, and two batches of cookies that were ravenously eaten before i could photograph them, bring us up to today. a lazy sunday. so i started the day off by making a new batch of local raw milk yogurt. again i must give props to the yogurt maker.

isn't she pretty.

then i decided that today was the day to make the chicken and rice soup that i had been thinking about for the last few days. for some mysterious reason i have been obsessed with soup lately. i know the weather has turned cool again, and i am a lover of the soup, but lately the soup urge has been overwhelming. i couldn't figure out what was going on. but then, yesterday, in the bathroom at earthfare, it all became clear. there on the calendar of events taped to the back of the stall door.......january, national soup month. well there you have it folks. that explains the good fortune soup from the post a few post ago, the wonderful batch of mushroom and wild rice soup from last week, and today's lunch.....homemade chicken soup with left over collard greens and sweet brown rice. not only is soup a good way to use up left over veggies in the frig, but it gives me something to take for lunch all week long.

mushroom soup with wild rice.
this soup lasted forever and got better and better as the days went by.


time to get this soup party started.
garlic, carrots, onion, celery, sweet brown rice, and although the container says seven stars yogurt, it is really homemade chicken stock. i saved a bunch of the yogurt containers back in the day when we would buy our yogurt at the store. they work great for filling up with stock and putting in the freezer. which reminds me, with only one container left, the carcass of the chicken i used in the soup today will become homemade stock next week.

also, this week at work i got some of the coolest garden advice. i've been sad, since the disappearance of nicki's pig, at putting all my perfectly good veggie scraps in the garbage can. since i can't put a compost heap in the yard (damn those neighborhood convents) and i have yet to buy one of those stupid plastic bins you can turn and turn and in 14 days have compost, the garbage can was the only other option. that was until the genius that is our client who works at a gardening store, and i hear one heck of a home gardener herself, gave me this most awesome of awesomeness's tip. she told me to save my veggie scraps and then little by little bury them about 4 inches deep all around my garden in little veggie graves. by the time you make it all around the garden, the first area is ready for more. sounds simple i know, but i would have NEVER thought of this. GENIUS!!! so today was the first day of saving my scraps. i also found a spare coffee tin that i am now filling with my used coffee grounds. i know, i know, i should have done that long before now.

making soup and saving the veggie trimmings in my super cool vintage bowl.


crap..... i almost forget the left over collards.
they were the whole reason i was making this soup to begin with.


all done!!!!
and what goes better with soup than a nice loaf of crusty bread?


what the F#*@&^K!!!!
no bread!!!!!!
no worries i will just whip up some of my new favorite bread.....
IRISH SODA BREAD


what's cool about this bread is it is SO EASY. and since yeast is not involved, you don't have to wait all day for the bread to rise and then rise again. just mix the ingredients in a bowl, kneed ever so slightly, pop it in the oven and about 30 minutes later.....bread!
here i'm making a white flour loaf with rosemary and pepper.
not a true traditional irish soda bread according to this website, but the brown loaf i made earlier this week was.


and not only is it easy, but when i baked it in mini dutch, the outside was wonderfully crusty and the inside was so tender and moist.


a wonderful lazy sunday lunch.

"gotta use up the left over collards"
chicken and sweet brown rice soup

3 cups homemade chicken stock
about the same amount water
1 cup apple cider
1 cup white wine
fresh thyme from the garden
copious amount of chopped collard greens
6 carrots
1 onion
6 stalks of celery
3 cloves of garlic
1 cup sweet brown rice
some chopped chicken

(notes: i didn't have that much thawed chicken stock, and afraid the rice would soak up a lot of it, i added some water to give myself enough liquid. but then i was afraid of losing flavor, even though the veggies would give off a good bit during cooking, so i also added some apple cider. also my chopped chicken came from the dismembered locally raised lemon pepper roasted chicken that i bought at earthfare.)

saute onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and thyme in some butter and olive oil. add cup of wine and cook till most of the wine has cooked off. add chicken stock, water, and apple cider. bring to boil and throw in collards. about 10-15 minutes later add rice. cook until collards and rice are tender. add chopped chicken and continue until chicken is heated through. then enjoy.

don't forget!!!! while the soup is simmering, make your easy as pie irish soda bread. i followed the recipe found here for the white soda loaf, but strayed from tradition a bit by adding in fresh rosemary from my garden and cracked black pepper. yummy!!!!