Lemon Seed Bread

Preheat oven to 325° F.

Grease a bread pan, I just used the wrapper off the butter I used in the recipe.

Cream together butter and sugar.

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• Zest from one lemon

Add

• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup milk

Mix together:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tablespoon caraway seed

Add to the liquid ingredients. This is a thick batter, almost like a cookie batter.

Put in the bread pan and bake for 30 – 40 minutes, until knife comes out dry.

Very tart and tasty. I love caraway seeds. This is a lovely old-fashioned pastry.

 

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Sausage & Lima Bean Stuffed Portabello Mushroom

Portobello mushrooms were just 1.99 per pound at the grocery store last week, so I picked up a couple, knowing how much I love them stuffed. Then I went and used the spinach I planned to stuff them with for something else and had this crazy idea I would try lima beans. I have some frozen lima beans from Harvest Share and thought why not? After all, lima beans are not super moist, so they might be great stuffing.

I preheated the oven to 350° F while I mixed the following in a bowl.

• 1 cup of lima beans (thawed in microwave for 1 minute)
• 4 links of half-cooked breakfast sausage, peeled and cut (I heated in microwave for 1 minute and drained off the fat, peeled off the skin and cut into small pieces.)
• 1 cup chopped parsley
• 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• stems from 2 large portobello mushrooms, chopped
• salt and pepper
• 1 egg

Mix all this together and stuff into the cleaned caps of two large portobello mushrooms. I had some left over, I will use it with scrambled eggs.

Bake at 350° for 30 minutes.

You can shred some parmesan cheese on top if you like, but it’s not needed. Lima beans are a great choice for stuffing as they don’t lose their shape or substance when cooked, so the stuffing does not become overly mushy. All the ingredients in the stuffing were chosen to remain their constituent selves while holding together. They worked. The stuffing was completely cooked, but not the least bit soggy or mushy…thanks to draining off the sausage grease and using ingredients with low water content. Paprika seems to be made for mushrooms and works well, too with lima beans and sausage. This is a very satisfying meal that takes care of all your umami longings while remaining relatively light and fresh. This makes two stuffed mushrooms which would serve two if accompanied by salad or soup, or one meal on their own.

Red Chard Salad with Red Onions, Parm & Poached Egg

I tossed some red chard with the Mustard Vinaigrette and let it rest, letting the vinaigrette “cook” it for about 15 minutes while I poached an egg. I sliced parmesan on top and laid the poached egg on the top of the salad.

I poach eggs in a a sauce pan with a few inches of simmering water. I add a bit of vinegar to the water. Crack the egg in a small bowl first so you can slip it into the water rather than drop it. You can stir around the outside of the egg to encourage the white to sort of spin together using centrifugal force. Turn off the heat and put a lid on the pan and let rest for 4 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to remove it from the water without bringing water to ruin your salad.

Break the yolk and stir the yolk into the salad, mixing it with the vinaigrette. It makes a creamy sort of vinaigrette.

Oatmeal Scones with Dried Cranberries and Pecans

These are incredibly easy scones that take less than 30 minutes from start to finish.

Preheat oven to 425° Fahrenheit. Most recipes start with preheat and your oven is heated up long before your recipe is mixed. Not with this, even starting to preheat before you mix one thing, you might have to wait to get to 425.

In a large bowl, mix the following dry ingredients:

• 2 cups rolled oats
• 1 1/2 cup white flour
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries

Combine the following wet ingredients in another bowl. Pour them into the dry. You can make a little well in the dry ingredients to pour the wet in as that makes it just a bit easier to mix.

• 1 egg, beaten until frothy
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 cup of melted butter

Note: This recipe is so forgiving it does not care whether you melt the butter and add it with the milk and egg or if you mix cold butter into the dry mixture by hand until it is crumbly. You can choose. Either method has the same result. It is just slightly easier and faster to melt the butter in the microwave for 45 seconds or so.

Mix the ingredients so all the dry is incorporated. It will be a wet, sticky dough.

Put parchment paper on cookie sheet.

If you are ambitious, you can flour a board and roll it out into two circles about 1/2 thick and cut each circle into 4 pie-size wedges. I think it is just easier to roll out eight balls of dough and press them into 1/2 thick little rounds. Separate them so they are not touching.

Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven, until risen and browned.

You can serve warm with some butter, jam or cream cheese, but I like them plain with nothing else, warm or cold.

Makes 8 scones.

Rustic Kale Salad with Poached Egg

I was making a soup and chopped up one bunch of kale. Seeing that I had chopped more than I would need for the soup, I decided to make a quick salad for lunch and have the soup for dinner. This salad is amazing and I know I will make it again and again.

Strip the stem and finely chop fresh curly kale. You will need about 1 cups of fresh kale. In a bowl, add 1/2 tbsp of walnut oil and the juice of 1/2 fresh lemon. Add a pinch of kosher salt. Crush and mince two cloves of garlic. Toss everything in the bowl and with your hands, massage the oil and lemon into the kale. This will break down the leaves and make them tender. When it was done, I grated about 1 oz of parmesan cheese and stirred it in.

Put into your serving bowl and set aside while you poach an egg.

To poach an egg, bring 1 inch of water to a simmer in a skillet. It should be right on the edge of boiling, but not quite. You need to acidulate the water so the egg white coalesces and normally you would add a dash of vinegar, but since I had fresh squeezed lemon juice, I simply put some water into the bowl I used to squeeze the juice and then put the water into the skillet – that transferred plenty of the lemon juice to the water. I cracked a fresh egg into a small bowl and then used that to transfer the egg into the simmering water gently. Using my slotted spoon, I pushed the white toward the yolk so it would form a tight poached egg. After 30 seconds or so on the heat, I put a lid on the skillet and removed it from the heat. In 4 minutes the egg was perfectly cooked. I used the slotted spoon to get it out of the water and drain it before putting it on top of the salad.

Yum!