In honor of the first day of fall

2 apple pies in the oven and making my house smell divine.  Missing my apple trees in England today!!

It Still Works!

Well, for the first time since I drank the Kool-Aid, I turned on my oven this week and am happy to report, it still works.  First, I baked this bread using whey from making yogurt.  I served it with a spaghetti squash dish...made in the Instant Pot of course!

And again to make Sweetness's birthday peach crisp and to caramelize some BBQ sauce on  the ribs that were first prepared in the Instant Pot.

A Sweetness special request dinner - no vegetables!  Happy girl!

And how does the cook feel about the use of the oven?  Well, I'm happy I have another month before the next birthday girl and the need to back a cake!  The kitchen was hot, hot, hot!

Cheesecake Factory of my own

One perk...or pitfall..of participating in the FB group with other Instant Pot fanatics, is the plethora of photos of cheesecakes made in the IP.  They are adorable and get rave reviews.  So I did what I usually do when faced with a new food to make...I jumped on the bandwagon...AND texted my BFF LFT and asked her for a recipe.  She sent me her favorite..a classic New York cheesecake from a blog called This Old Gal. (and for the record, that blog has THE BEST recipes!)

 I've never made a classic cheesecake before so I got organized and laid it all out to be sure I had it all

Classic graham cracker crust.  I got it a little too thin in the middle.  On the next one I made I shook the crumbs around for even distribution before pressing them down.

After mixing the cream cheese part, I covered the pan with papertowel and foil as directed.

Full disclosure...I am a blonde AND have senior moments.  In order to get the pan down into the Instant Pot, a "sling" is required.  I made this one out of foil.   However, I failed to fold it into the pot and ended up with a sealing failure.  Steam pouring out the sides was my first clue.  A frantic text to LFT set me to rights.  I turned it off and started over again.

Voila!! Perfectly baked cheesecake with no cracks!

Sour cream topping finishes off this classic New York cheesecake.

Pure Yumminess!!!

After making 2 of the classic cheesecakes (I gave the second to a neighbor), I attempted an Oreo cheesecake.  I did not have the same success.  It is tasty but the texture is not quite right.  A little Google research tells me my mistake was most likely in overbeating the eggs.  It cracked almost immediately as it came out of the IP.

It was however tasty, the texture was just off.  Serving suggestion was to top with whipped cream and crushed oreos.  However, I made the crust extra thick so skipped the Oreos on top.  It got a 4 thumbs up from my family...even from Sweetness who doesn't like Oreos.  (I didn't know such a person existed, must less in my own family!!)

Passion for pasta

Because contrary to what my current drinking the Kool-Aid-esque IP obsession would suggest, good food can be made in other ways.  Case in point, homemade spaghetti I made with my mama during a recent visit.  It was delicious!!  I own a Bosch universal and not a Kitchen Aid so this is not an option at my house without a new kitchen gadget or application of my cooking lessons for homemade pasta in Italy

Lessons in Italy by our fabulous host, Massimo.  Pasta the way his grandma did it every day of her life.  It was delectable...and so fun to make!

I guess the decision as to which version I attempt could be decided by Amazon!  Will they practically give away a pasta maker any time soon?

I drank the Kool-Aid on Amazon Prime Day

I didn't realize I was drinking the Kool-Aid.  I just thought I was finally following in the footsteps of my own personal kitchen guru and BFF "LFT" and taking advantage of a great deal by buying the Instant Pot she'd been recommending to me for several months.  I quickly learned I was just one of 215,000 that took advantage of the deal and have since entered the IP cult.

LFT has told me she has used hers every day since she got it.  I'm following in her footsteps on this one.

It arrived one hot sunny day and has been a workhorse since its arrival.

I joined the FB page for Instant Pots.  I'm pretty sure the membership was at 80,000ish when I joined.  Its now over 90,000.  That's a lot of Kool-Aid since Amazon Prime Day.  LFT shoulda bought stock!

I started playing immediately and did the water test to check the pressure.  All systems go.

 A sane person would start with some simple recipe like boiled eggs or steaming vegetables.  I've never professed to be sane...especially in the kitchen where I have no qualms trying out new recipes on unsuspecting guests or making alterations to recipes on first attempts...so my first attempt was a little more involved....Texan chili which I found on another blog.   LFT told me the IP would make my meat super tender and my dishes more flavorful. She was not kidding.  The meat in this chili literally dissolved in my mouth (which was awesome given my TMJ makes chewing big chunks of meat difficult!).  The chili was delicious straight out of the pot and just got tastier with each passing day.

It was love at first pot.

Day 22 - A favorite thing

A favorite joke in our family is to figure out who is the favorite child....

with 3 children on another continent, and Sweetness off on her very first youth retreat, Sunshine is experiencing life as an only child for the very first time in her life.  So today, by default, is her day.

Day 19 - Whole

Apple cranberry crumble pie - I want to eat the "whole" thing...warm with vanilla ice cream..thank you very much. 

Day 17 - Cooking

Pumpkin Corn Chowder was obviously a big hit.

This is what it should look like

Unfortunately, I did not take a photo of the "this is not what it should look like bag" before it got assimilated into this new batch.

MWC eats a lot of trail mix.  Not the store bought kind but the kind we mix at home ourselves.  Apparently, while I am, in his eyes, a stellar cook in all other areas, making trail mix is not my forte.  I apparently do not know how to ascertain the proper fruit to nut ratio.  And, even worse, silly me somehow thought banana chips would count as fruit.

So this week he kindly offered me instructions in making trail mix, complete with visuals.  I, being the mature, completely confident cook that I am, handled the lesson with grace...and laughed so hard I could not breathe for a full 10 minutes.  I obviously do not appreciate my husband's culinary talents.

Definitions

panic /'panik/
noun
the feeling you get when you are cooking dinner and realize you may be missing a vital ingredient and your Neighborhood Recipe Rescue Squad have all moved back to the U.S.

relief  /rɪˈliːf/
noun
finding said ingredient in the back of the cabinet BEFORE you head out to the store

A little improv here

So what does one do when one can't find the salad spinner ANYWHERE?

Improvises, of course.

Quite a different harvest this year

Well in another role reversal around here, my plums and apples are reversing roles this year.  This is a scene from my kitchen last fall.  It could have been any day within a few weeks span as it was almost daily for weeks on end.  I put up over 2 dozen quarts of applesauce, gave away BAGS and BAGS of apples, and baked many pies and cakes, etc. This year I will be lucky to get one or two pies out of my harvest.

However, unlike last year when I only got about 2 pints of jam from my plum tree, this year I've made multiple plum cakes, copious amounts of chutney, plum jam (which would be better named preserves given their runny texture), plum breakfast bars in addition to giving away bunches of plums and gorging on them daily.

Plum cake and chutney

An elephant never forgets...

and apparently neither do my children....unless it involves chores I've asked them to complete that is.

A gazillion years ago, I made lemon bars. Well perhaps I should say, I tried to make lemon bars.  There was just one problem...I forgot to put in the lemon so they were really just "bars."  Even though I've made them countless times since that fateful day back in the dark ages, my children have never let me forget about the lemon bars without the lemon.

Tomorrow is a full day out and about, we are having company for dinner, and I will be making lemon bars for dessert.  Lest my distraction leads to a repeat of that day so long ago, I have insured that this time I will not forget the lemon. 

Too bad none of my older elephants will be around to have any.