Photography
Cooking
Baking
I have been a cook and baker since at least junior high (after cooking even earlier from the Betty Crocker Cookbook for Girls and Boys). In Junior High I took cooking from Mrs. Ulrich, the cooking teacher beloved by generations of girls at Bryant Junior High in Minneapolis. Our cooking class was really a baking class, and Mrs. Ulrich taught us the techniques and methods for successful baking — muffin method, old cake method, two-bowl cake method, yeast bread method, and cookie method. Once you learn these methods, you can quickly identify the approach in any new baking recipe and swiftly execute it
Do you add the dry ingredients alternating with wet in three parts? (old cake) Do you add wet ingredients all at once to dry and stir just to combine? (muffin) etc. It’s a science.
Sample recipe from 8th grade–very popular even today with my guests:
Pecan Dreams
- 1 c. butter
- 6 rounded T. powdered sugar (plus more to roll cookies in)
- 2 c. flour
- 2 c. pecans cut coarse
- 2 t. vanilla
- 2 t. water
- Cream butter and add sifted sugar gradually.
- Add vanilla and water.
- Mix in flour.
- Work in nuts.
- Roll a small teaspoon full of dough in your hand and shape like a date.
- Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake in 350 oven until a light brown (10-13 min) Watch carefully! These burn easily.
- Roll in powdered sugar while still hot after taking out of oven.
Low-Fat Cooking
In the 1980s, I began collecting reduced-fat recipes from magazines and books. I added them to small three-ring binders and eventually accumulated 3 binders.
Popular in the family:
- Braised Brisket with Carmelized Onions and Prunes
- Reduced Fat Chocolate Cherry Chews Cookies
- Chicken with Lemon-Caper Sauce
- Spicy Sweet-and-Sour Chicken
Slow-Cooker/Instant Pot
I combined slow and instant pot cooking as in some ways the dishes you make are very similar–for one thing, you need some amount of liquid for both. For years I made slow-cooker recipes for Sunday dinner with our son and his girlfriend. Popular: Chicken Mole, pot roasts, chilis. I made chicken rice soup to take to work for lunch every day.
Then for Christmas in 2019, I got a Ninja Foodi Pressure cooker (an appliance that combines the Instant Pot type pressure cooker with an air fryer/broiler). It is HUGE, but it is so versatile that it is almost always on the counter.
You need good cookbooks to use a pressure cooker, as the method and timing are not intuitive.
My suggestions:
- Essential Instant Pot by Coco Morante (anything in any cookbook by her will be delicious)
- Ultimate Ninja Foodi by Justin Warner
Popular items today:
- Arroz con Pollo
- Salisbury Steak
- Pasta with Meat Sauce
- Baked Ziti
- French Fries in the Foodi using the pressure cooker and airfryer; lower in calories and just as good as the fried variety
- Rice (it substitutes for a rice cooker too!)
Books
I have been an avid reader since the age of 6. I remember my mother reading me a chapter in a book at bedtime, and then my reading the next chapter by the light coming in the window. This meant, of course, that the next night, I had already read the chapter. But never mind; I like rereading things.
The Minneapolis North Branch Library (pictured at the left) supplied me with 8 to 10 books every week or so. The children’s room was upstairs with the turret and those big front windows. I have been reconstructing the bookshelves in that library by finding books on the internet. Among my favorites were the Betsy-Tacy stories by Maud Hart Lovelace. I’m a member of the New York Betsy-Tacy Society, celebrating the noble tomes produced by that author.
I have read and continue to read a lot of mysteries: Dorothy L. Sayers, Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe), Susan Conant, to name a few.
I am currently reading the memoir by Barack Obama and rereading the trilogy about FDR at war by Nigel Hamilton.
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