Cabbie’s Cooking

I’ve been raiding my mother’s (Ruthlace) recipe book.  There are several reasons for this: I love to cook,  she has so many wonderful recipes, and people are always looking for good, tried-and-true recipes.  I’m not sure where she got this recipe, but I’ve made it and it’s wonderful and delicious.  It’s a great recipe to make with children because there’s no cooking involved (except for melting the chocolate/paraffin coating mixture),  and it makes such a great presentation. It looks MUCH harder than it is.  Here’s the easy (and delicious) recipe for candy.  Easy Christmas Candy

Christmas (or anytime) Candy

1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk

1 box confectioners sugar

1 stick margarine or butter

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)

Mix together well.  Roll into balls (marble-size).  Place in the refrigerator to harden for an hour.  Stick a toothpick in each ball.  In a double boiler melt the following:

1 cup chocolate (baking chocolate - semi-sweet is good but you could also use dark chocolate or white chocolate)

1 cup paraffin (equal parts to the chocolate). 

Dip each candy ball in the chocolate mixture, hold in the air for a moment to dry and place on wax paper and remove the toothpick.  Once you’ve dipped all the candy balls, you can use a small spoon to add a drop of the chocolate mixture to cover the hole made by the toothpick.  They’re ready to eat immediately.

This is the chili that I grew up on.  My mother (Ruthlace) made it often.  It was a great meal for a large (or small) family.  The potatoes make it more like soup than chili.  I like the fact that it’s lighter and milder than typical chili.  Here’s the recipe.

Chili Soup

2 lbs lean ground beef

1 large can diced tomatoes (if you like tomatoes, you can add more)

4 medium potatoes, diced fine

2 large onions, diced fine

4 tablespoons chili powder

2 or 3 cans beans (great Northern, navy, pinto, pork & beans - whichever you prefer)

salt/pepper to taste

Brown ground beef in large stock pot.  Add the onions, tomatoes and potatoes. Simmer for about an hour.  Add the beans.  Simmer a few minutes longer.  Serve with crackers or corn bread.

My niece, Lyn, and her husband, Ricky, have a delicious sweet and sour chicken recipe. After making it a few times, I felt I no longer needed to look at the recipe. I could make it from memory. After I had the sauce mixed, I realized it didn’t look like it usually does. I checked the recipe. Oops! For some reason I thought the recipe contained mustard and I had already added some mustard to the sauce, but mustard was definitely not in the recipe. So I accidentally came up with a new recipe - because adding the mustard made it better than ever. So here is the recipe - with my own touch:

Ricky and Lyn’s Sweet and Sour Chicken a la Carol

8 boneless chicken breasts (I use frozen chicken tenderloins)

1 8-ounce jar peach or apricot preserves

1 8-ounce bottle Catalina dressing

2 envelopes onion soup mix

1/4 cup prepared Dijon mustard

Mix all ingredients except chicken breasts.  Place chicken in casserole dish.  Pour mixture over the chicken breasts. Bake covered for 1 hour at 350 degrees. Remove cover and bake an additional hour.

I serve it over rice.

I first tasted this fruit cobbler just a few years ago. Since then I’ve kept the ingredients in my pantry for a quick dessert. It’s delicious - the almond extract gives it a yummy kick.

QUICK ‘N EASY TAKE-YOUR-PICK COBBLER

Ingredients:

2 cans fruit pie filling (take your pick - cherry, apple, peach - your favorite)
1/2 box yellow cake mix
1 stick butter or margarine
1/2 cup chopped nuts (pecans are good with cherry, but walnuts seem to go better with apple)
1 tsp. almond flavoring

Spray a 9 x 13 cake pan with cooking spray.  Spread the pie filling in the pan.  Sprinkle the powdered cake mix on top of the pie filling.  Melt the stick of butter and pour it on top of the powdered cake mix, using a spoon to spread it over all the cake mix. Sprinkle the nuts on top and dot with the almond flavoring. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. (The butter and cake mix combine during baking to make a cobbler type crust).  Enjoy!

CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP

Put four or five boneless chicken tenderloins in a saucepan. Cover with water, add a chopped onion and some grated carrots. Season with salt, pepper, and poultry seasoning. Bring to a boil. When chicken is cooked, remove it from the pan and cool. Once it is cool, dice the chicken and add it back to the pot. Add a handful of egg noodles and cook until the noodles are done. You can add a little yellow food coloring to make it look nicer, you can also add some chicken stock if you need more volume, and you can add a little flour or corn starch to thicken it. Yum!  Simple and quick.

Last summer I picked blueberries with some other members of my family and froze about 14 pints of them.  Throughout the year I’ve used a pint here and there to make blueberry cobbler.  But I still had 7 or 8 pints  in the freezer.  What to do with them?  Sunday afternoon I decided to continue with my current canning craze and make jam out of them.  Blueberry-orange jam, to be exact.  It’s worth the trouble.  Here’s the recipe:

4 cups mashed blueberries

1 1/2  Tablespoons finely grated orange peel

1/4 cup orange juice

1 package powdered pectin (1.75 oz.)

4 cups sugar

I used a potato masher to mash the blueberries but soon decided that was too slow.  I got an electic hand blender (one of those wand-looking things), and that worked real well.  I measured 4 cups of coarsely blended blueberries into a large pot.  I added the orange peel, orange juice and pectin and brought it to a boil.  I then added the sugar, stirred it, brought it back to a rolling boil and boiled it for another three or four minutes.  Meanwhile in another very large pot I had boiled the jars and lids.  I used 8-ounce and 4-ounce decorative jars.  I ladled the jam into the jars, wiped the rims of the jars and put on the lids.  It made a LOT - next year I’ll do half that.  I then put the jars back into the boiling water and boiled them.  The directions call for 10 minutes of boiling.  I went overboard so I know for certain that everything is sterilized and well sealed and safe to eat.  So I boiled the sealed jars for about 30 minutes.  Folks, that jam is delicious.  The orange kick added to the blueberries is phenomenal. 

P.S. Don’t want to deal with sterilizing jars?  Just wash the jars well, fill with the jam mixture, leaving a half inch at the top, seal, and let stand at room temperature for 24 hours to set.  Them place in freezer until ready to use.

My daughter-in-law gave me this recipe.  It is one of my son’s favorite salads.  Now we all love it and make it often. It is scrumptious!

Easy Corn Salad

1 can white whole kernel corn, drained well

1 can yellow whole kernel corn, drained well

1/2 cup mayonaise

1/2 cup diced green onion

1/2 cup diced tomato (remove the seeds before dicing)

1/2 cup cooked and crumbled bacon (or use Bacon Bits)

Mix all the ingredients together well.  Salt/Pepper to taste.  Refrigerate. 

It is just about the easiest thing in the world to make - and it goes great with a summer meal.  You can use light mayonaise to cut down on the calories and fat grams.