Two Easy Homey Cakes

Honestly. I started on pinterest this morning...went over to Katie's and if she found out how much I like to see hers and not so much other people's she'd feel like I was stalking her. I'm not. I just love her taste. She has amazing stuff there. So to keep from continually finding her stuff to post to my own site, I thought I'd look up some blogs. If I'd known months ago that I'd be doing this pinterest thing (which I'm doing half-heartedly to say the least), I would have pictures from any number of random blogs I've read and looked at and envied. My life is just not that amazing that I feel like taking pictures and posting them, to tell the truth. And the rest of the world is apparently living a magazine-worthy life. Whatever, are they for real? I don't know, and I don't think I want to know. Anyway, in my search for my own choice of blogs to choose appetizing pictures from, I googled "food blogs." 


The second one that came up was Martha Stewart, and even though her stuff is so insanely perfectionist and all about appearance, I went there anyway. And I think by then I'd had it. Pinterest, I guess today is not the day for you...because I'm sad that gone are the simple days when you could make a chocolate cake or an apple cake and feel like you'd made a fabulous, happy dessert time. No. According to what Martha Stewart would have you believe, it has to be "Caramelized Apple Spice Cake" that looks like it came from a fancy bakery, complete with little pumpkins artistically molded out of some homemade edible putty...and of course it looks like it's 5 layers high, and it's perfectly frosted so it looks like it could be made out of plastic. Would my family rather have that than just a cake in a 9x13" pan, or even than a regular layer cake, or cupcakes? I don't think they'd want to hear all the ranting and raving that would go on in the kitchen, or have the mess of dishes that would end up in the sink for a few days because I'd be too exhausted to do them by the time I was finished. No, I revolt! I am insisting on simplicity. Simplicity is simply beautiful for family life, for reality. 


(It wasn't just that one cake that sent me over the edge. It was their whole line. Okay, they did have one that looked like it came from one of my cake pans. But the rest..."White Chocolate Sweet Potato Cake" with 4 layers..."Saffron-Scented Pear Upside Down Cake"..."Honey Cake with Caramelized Pears"...wait...did I lose you? Ha...okay...see you later...


Well, in case you're still here, I'm sharing my "Fresh Apple Cake," one of my favorite recipes that I found about 25 years ago, and it was probably 25 years old when I found it. It goes together in a 9x13" pan and doesn't need to be frosted. And a similar one, "Fruit Cocktail Cake." Easy and simple, homey and good with ice cream or whipped cream. So there you go, Martha. Ease up and enjoy!

Fresh Apple Cake

Super use of apples! Easy!

2 c. granulated sugar

1/2 c. vegetable oil

6 med. apples, peeled, coarsely chopped

2 eggs

2 c. all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. nutmeg

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 c. chopped nuts

Cream sugar and oil together; add eggs and apples. Stir in remaining ingredients. Pour mixture into a 9 x 13" well-greased pan. Bake at 350F for 40 min. Serves 12. Don't need to ice or frost this cake. Good for snacks and lunches, and with vanilla ice cream!

Fruit Cocktail Cake

Rave reviews!

1 1/2 c. sugar         

2 c. flour

2 c. fruit cocktail (16 oz. can), undrained (I use lite)

2 eggs

2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 c. firm-packed brown sugar

1/2 c. chopped nuts

Mix 1st 3 ingred. in lg. bowl; add eggs, soda, and salt, and mix well. Pour into a 9 x 13" pan. Sprinkle top w/ sugar and nuts. Use a drizzly vanilla icing on top (mix a little powdered sugar with a very little milk and vanilla, adding a little of either the sugar or milk to get the right consistency).

My Answer to Hamburger Helper

I can cook 40 homemade meals in a row...and hear nothing particular in the way of comments from my husband (and I don't suffer a delusion, I do know how to cook). Then the one thing that I can be sure will break this string of silence is to make...drum roll please...Hamburger Helper. Any flavor will do. 

I find it disturbing and ironic. I comfort myself, though, that it's impossible to compete with the comfort of childhood memories. Gary's mom worked as a teacher and fully embraced all the convenience foods that were so new on the market in the years he was growing up. So prepackaged, instant, frozen, or fast food are like mother's milk to him. Even though for the most part I detest the predictable and mysteriously chemical-laden taste of Hamburger Helper, I am also thankful for it on the days that I am exhausted from working out in the yard or doing major projects around the house; I am thankful on those days that the very thing I use for an emergency measure is guaranteed to please. 

But I still hate the thought of making something full of mysterious reconstituted dried powder, and so I go for an ironic twist: on my better days, I take something instant that was made to imitate full-fledged home cooking, and I imitate that imitation. I have a number of skillet meals that can make my life a little saner, my family a trifle healthier, and my husband as happy as if I'd made it out of a box. 

I will share four of my skillet delights below; I don't remember where I got them, but these are the first four skillet dishes I ever had that bore any resemblance to the mixes:

Family Quick Lasagne Casserole

1 ½ lb. ground beef                                                               

Small onion                                                                              

3 stalks celery, chopped                                                        

1 16 oz. can tomato sauce                                                    

2 c. small lasagna noodles 

    (or other suitable for casserole)

 Spices: garlic, basil, oregano, salt and pepper to taste

1 can chopped tomatoes (opt.; if mixture’s rather dry)

1 c. cottage cheese

2 c. grated mozzarella cheese

Brown ground beef; drain fat. Add chopped onion and celery; cook until translucent. Cook noodles and drain. Add tomato sauce, noodles, spices, canned tomatoes, cottage cheese, most of the cheese, reserving some for top. Serve with garlic bread and a salad.

Family Quick Taco Casserole

1 ½ lb. ground beef                                                                         

Small onion                                                                                        

3 stalks celery, chopped                                                                 

1 16 oz. can tomato sauce                                                              

2 c. macaroni noodles (or other suitable noodles)                     

Spices, taco, enchilada or chili seasoning to taste, or garlic,   

        Cumin, and chili powder to taste                                          

 1 can chopped tomatoes (opt.; if mixture’s rather dry)

 1 c. corn (opt.)

 Sliced black olives (opt.)

2 c. grated cheddar cheese

Corn chips or made-up cornbread mix

Sliced or chopped tomatoes

Sour cream, salsa (opt.) 

Brown ground beef; drain fat. Add chopped onion and celery; cook until translucent. Cook noodles and drain. Add tomato sauce, noodles, spices, canned tomatoes, corn, sliced black olives (reserving some for top), most of the cheddar cheese, reserving some for top.  On top, place corn chips or made up cornbread mix; sprinkle remaining grated cheese over (pat tomatoes dry and place on top of cornbread mix) and bake. Serve with sour cream, salsa, chopped tomatoes, and sprinkle each serving with a few black olives.

One-Pan Curly-Roni

½ lb. ground beef                                                                             

½ c. chopped onion                                                                         

1 clove garlic, minced                                                                      

1 ½ c. water                                                                                       

1 c. beef broth                                                                                 

1 ¾ c. (15 oz. can) tomato sauce                                                   

2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce                                                       

1 Tbsp. ketchup        

 ¼ tsp. prepared mustard

 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley

½ tsp. chili powder

 ¼ tsp. dried basil leaves

 ¼ tsp. dried oregano leaves

 3 ¾ c. (10 oz.) rotini noodles, uncooked                                                                           

 Grated Parmesan cheese 

In a 4-qt. saucepan, cook meat, onion and garlic until meat is brown and onion is tender; drain. Stir in water, broth, tomato sauce, ketchup, Worcestershire, mustard and seasonings; heat to boiling. Add uncooked pasta; return to boiling; reduce heat to med.; cover. Cook, stirring frequently, 12 min. or until pasta is tender. Salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with cheese. Serves 4-6.

Santa Fe Stove-Top Dinner

¾ lb. lean ground beef

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 med. onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 med. Bell pepper, seeded, diced

Salt and pepper to taste

1 Tbsp. chili powder

1 c. corn

14 ½ oz. can stewed tomatoes

½ c. long-grain rice, uncooked

1 c. water

1 c. broken tortilla chips

1 c. cheddar cheese, shredded

In a 3-qt. casserole dish, brown the ground beef over med. heat with garlic, bell pepper, salt and pepper, and chili powder about 10 min. Stir in corn, tomatoes, rice and water. Cover. Reduce heat and simmer mixture undisturbed 20 min. Preheat the broiler during the last 5 min. of cooking time. Remove the lid from the casserole, sprinkle with broken tortilla chips and shredded cheese. Broil about 3 min. until bubbly and brown. Serves 6.

Assembling a Family Favorites Cookbook

It used to be that a woman's prize possession was her recipe box. When my mother-in-law died, we received hers, and I typed up the recipes and shared them with all of her family. They were on recipe cards and papers torn from magazines and note paper from friends. Some you could tell were favorites and some might never have been used. The recipes represent a time when the one version of a recipe was the only one a woman would ever see; she didn't have internet access. If she lost the recipe, that was the end of it.
Slowly over 27 years of marriage, I have compiled my own set of favorite family recipes into a Family Favorites cookbook. I know I've tried many recipes and failed to keep track of what they were and where I got them; but just lately I've attempted to find all those I commented on in my huge collection of cookbooks and incorporate the best in my family cookbook. My collection increases often enough that at this point I don't have the whole thing printed. It's about 70 pages and has a huge variety of recipes. I also keep recipes that interest me in various word processing documents categorized very specifically; some of these I have tried, and some not. My "favorites" cookbook document is helpful for sharing these recipes; they are quick to access, and easy to send via e-mail or facebook to friends; I've also sent my entire cookbook to my now-married daughter Katie so that any happy childhood food memories are probably included in the cookbook I e-mailed her. 
This seems like a good thing for any family to do with their recipes; it's great for quick access to the foods that comfort us most readily, and for sharing with others. And it's not that hard, especially if you add recipes one at a time as you find them. I keep recipes not only on my computer but also printed up and put in plastic page protectors in binders on my kitchen bookshelf. It keeps them clean and I can write notes on them and adapt them as needed. I have made various theme binders in addition: one for hospitality, one for wheat allergy, and various holiday binders. I don't have a laptop computer, but this would probably even be better just kept on disk and cooked from the computer screen; I think that's what Katie does with hers. (I think if I did that, though, I'd have a problem with food crumbs, splashes and smears on my computer...I'm pretty sure I'm better off with the plastic page protectors!) Maybe someday I'll have great-grandchildren who might not remember me, but who will still have access to my cookbook. Maybe they'll even use it. 

The Good Side of Wheat-Free Cooking

As I watch the young moms at our church and hear them talk, even seeing the amazing photos they post on facebook, I find that they take a healthy and almost obsessive care to find the best foods for their children and to make them as appealing as possible. It's a wonderful thing to see, and I know that the community that they have together not only encourages all of them to do their best, but enables them to learn and implement new ideas as they support one another. They are an amazing bunch of women! Every young family should have such a community around them.
They take such care in part for the basic nutritional needs of their kids and to avoid additives and pesticides; but they do also because food allergies, sensitivities and just plain strange symptoms are now so common from the foods that seemed normal and harmless just a few years ago. Now it's almost a sure thing that someone at any gathering will be avoiding wheat...or milk...or peanuts. When my son has all his friends over, out of 12 kids there are two who can't eat wheat. And even though we avoided wheat for one year at our house, since we're not doing it any more, it's hard to remember what a poor allergic kid can eat! I need to keep a list of possibilities handy for those days.
When my son and I were avoiding wheat (it wasn't for celiac, but to eliminate some symptoms of sensitivity), I decided that rather than focus on the wheat we weren't eating, I'd focus on all the normal recipes I could assemble that already don't have any wheat. I made a list of my son's favorite foods and put the wheat ones at the bottom. I put together a binder that started with all the online resources I could find, all the charts and lists of types of flour; I maintained a list of the various flours I'd found at stores in the area and how much they cost (too much!). You wouldn't have to do this; I'd avoided wheat for a couple of years before my son without any special effort just because I don't find bread or noodles that important, and I just left them out for my own purposes. I can't afford to devote a lot of money to specialized eating, and so for that as well as to make the transition less painful, I tried as much as possible not to use things that took special ingredients; still, for my son who would crave bread and pasta, I had to put out some special effort.
I put dividers in my binder and printed up pages and pages of recipes by category, mostly things I'd collected online and put in MS Word documents. Some were just copied from books I'd borrowed from the library. Overall, even once we stopped avoiding wheat (since we found that until just recently our symptoms had subsided), I had found some wheat-free recipes that we still would use even in normal eating. One other benefit is that in using alternate flours, it struck me that almost surely the nutrition was better-rounded than with just eating wheat. For that matter, while avoiding wheat products, I lost some weight just thanks to that one aspect of my diet. Not a lot, but a few pounds. An amazing side effect that I didn't expect was that the plantar fasciitis I had completely subsided and hasn't been back. It had been so bad that the doctor was starting to talk about surgery on my achilles tendons. I'm so thankful that we went through the wheat-free diet even just for that one benefit!
I relate this whole method that I used and the benefits because I know there are many people who are stymied by the food allergy problem. If you look at it from the point of view of what you can have instead of what you can't, you may find your diet a lot more doable and beneficial than if you are focusing on being deprived. It will also help you to reach out to others who are having difficulty. I have shared many of the recipes I discovered and the stores and websites with friends when I heard that they had to start on it; you will be able to help others as well in just a short time. In fact, I think I will be relating some of them in the near future in my posts on this site.