Monday, July 27, 2009

Summer and my Hamilton Beach Slow Cooker

What a great invention... slow cookers.  This Tuesday night I will be fixing homemade apple sauce and homemade mac and cheese.  All I do is core and peel the apples with my Pampered Chef apple peeler, add brown sugar and pumpkin spice and let my slow cooker do the rest.  It is so so good.   For the homemade mac and cheese,  it's best to buy the blocks of Kraft cheddar cheese and then use my Cuisinart (purchased 22 years ago when starting my first cooking co-op) to grate the cheese - very moist.  The ingredients include mac, cheese, butter,egg, salt, dry mustard and milk.  With cooking co-op,  I can spend more on good quality ingredients since I am saving money by cooking in quantity, planning ahead so I am not buying  fast food instead- fast, yes but 2-3 times more expensive.  So what equipment is needed to start your cooking co-op?  This week I will use my slow cooker, apple core and peeler, a food processor with different blades, a large pot to boil the macaroni, and a very large bowl to mix the cheese, mac etc.  I will divide the applesauce in Glad-type containers and the mac and cheese will be in pyrex containers- ready to go straight in the oven.  Excite your taste buds this week!

Monday, July 20, 2009

McDonald's workers learn cooking,financial skills

That's the headlines in the business section of my paper this week.  This is the nation's largest employer-provided financial education program with McDonald's teaming up with Visa to teach money-management skills to it's 500,000 restaurant employees.  McDonald's sees this as a quality-of-life and productivity issue.  Job performance is affected by good and bad choices made in the home.  (See www.practicalmoneyskills.com)  Then see my June 15th chat- the need for cookery schools in America.  This past week I made a small step by starting a new cooking co-op at work including my manager ( I knew his wife was a great cook).  We are an experiment to show others in our office the benefits of cooking in quantity one night then going home with dinner in hand the other 3 nights- benefits such as cost and time savings plus greater camaraderie in the office.  I have posted our menus in our break room and there's a little buzz going on.  Hopefully, more companies will take McDonald's lead and teach cooking and financial classes.  It might be considered a small step to sit down to 4 family meals/week at home but its "one small step for man... one giant leap for mankind."

Monday, July 13, 2009

Julia, Julia, and Julia

Here comes a new movie about Julia Child starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. Julia Child wrote MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING. Time magazine in 1966 called her "Our Lady of the Ladle." She believed in "the importance of a meal, it's place in a day, in life, the at-table meeting of body and soul, and the pleasure of sharing that...I fell in love with French food- the tastes, the processes, the history, the endless variations, the rigorous discipline, the creativity, the wonderful people, the equipment, the rituals." Did she have a natural talent for cooking? No. The first meal she made for her husband was "messy to look at and not very good to eat." Yet she went on to inspire Americans to get in their kitchens and cook- not to just settle for inceasingly popular frozen dinners. Go watch the movie and get inspired to start your own cooking co-op. Get into a routine of cooking like Julia Child one night a week to enjoy the variety, creativity, and rituals of cooking in your own kitchen. To quote my longtime friend, another Julia, "If I am out of my routine, I'm not good for anyone or anything."

Monday, July 6, 2009

The Declaration of Independence

The 2nd paragraph begins: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.  And the document ends:... with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.  Abraham Lincoln held the Declaration in high esteem.  He said it was " the father of all moral principle."  Let's piece this together: Creator, Divine Providence and moral principle.  John Calvin, a humble revolutionary in the 1500's believed we are no better than animals if we do not give thanks to the Lord for His provision while partaking of food.  By blessing our meal before we eat, we show gratitude.  We have so much to be thankful for- our food, our freedoms and moral principles which define justice.  Did you know 3 of our first 5 presidents died on July 4th?  John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe.  Must be something very special about the 4th of July.  Read the Declaration at your next meal for yourself and give thanks.