Carrot Balls

I've started packing up the cookbooks. This is painful, as I've discovered a couple duplicates already, and forced myself to get rid of others. I did find this fun recipe, though, for Carrot Balls. I'm still on my carrot cake search, and this caught my eye, from the Southern Heritage set, the Vegetables volume. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through to ruin a perfectly good vegetable.

2 cups sliced carrots, cooked and mashed

1 1/2 cups soft breadcrumbs

1 cup shredded sharp Cheddar

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

Dash of hot sauce

1 egg white

1 1/4 cups coarsely crushed cornflakes

Combine carrots, breadcrumbs, cheese, salt, pepper, and hot sauce; toss lightly. Beat egg white until stiff peaks form; fold into carrot mixture.

Shape mixture into 2-inch balls; roll in cornflakes. Place balls on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes.

I have to wonder how this recipe came about...

Boston Brown Bread

I thought I'd continue the bread theme from Karen earlier this week. This is still from the Cooking American Style that I took from my friend's apartment in NY a couple weeks ago. I was interested as it is cooked in a CAN. I've posted that craziness before, and still marvel at it. This one has an even more unusual cooking method, though. Why would people do this?

Boston Brown Bread

1 cup all-purpose flour, or rye flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup cornmeal

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 cups buttermilk

3/4 cup molasses

1 cup raisins (optional)

Butter or margarine

Grease four 4 1/2 x 3 cans (16 oz. vegetable cans) (Who has those empty sitting around?). Beat all ingredients except butter 30 seconds on low speed. Pour into cans, filling each about 2/3 full. Cover each tightly with aluminum foil.

Place cans on rack in Dutch oven or steamer; pour boiling water into pan to level of rack. Cover pan. Keep water boiling over low heat until wooden pick inserted in center of bread comes out clean, about 3 hours. (Add boiling water, if necessary, during steaming.)

Remove cans from pan; immediately unmold breads (unmold breads? Ugh) Serve warm with butter.

Wow - this book seems to like this bizarre steaming method. See also the Baked Prune Whip recipe from a couple weeks ago for more of this.

Tonight I have CSI with the teens with fabulous mystery authors Michael Black and Dave Case, who are also policemen. It's one of my favorite teen programs, and I'm doing a mini recreation of it for the YALSA Preconference Friday with some of my teens. Should be fun!

Welcome Karen Syed!

This logo is for Echelon Press, the publishing company that produced the Missing Anthology. CEO Karen Syed has a big heart and a loyal following. Not many publishers in this economy are publishing titles with all proceeds going to charity like in the case of Missing. I've met so many new authors through Echelon as well as many great books. I asked Karen to guest blog because I'm impressed with her company and her new healthy eating habits. She brought an original recipe here for my readers. Enjoy!-Amy

Life is precious. I learned that in March 2008 when I was diagnosed in heart failure with an enlarged heart (three times its normal size). I was only forty-three years old. I couldn't imagine. Sure I was overweight, and I hadn't always eaten great, but heart failure? What the heck was I supposed to do?

Well, first I had to give up caffeine. Then I had to limit myself to 2000mgs of salt per day. ARE YOU NUTS?! I was easily consuming 5 to 6 times that per day. Of course I did not know that until I actually started looking at labels. That alone almost gave me a heart attack.

But I have a lot to live for and I decided I could do this. I could change my wicked salty ways and I could still eat food that tasted good. Just not bread-because bread has a lot of sodium in it. But a year later I found out that I am a Type II diabetic. Insult to injury, as they say. So what did I do?

I got down to work. I am now working on creating my own low sodium, low carb, and tasty recipes. This is my first attempt and it turned out great if I do say so myself. So give it a try and enjoy.
Karen's Cranberry Bread Machine Recipe:
Ingredients
When using your bread machine, put in the ingredients in the order they are listed. This is very important.
1 1/2 Pounds:
½ cup milk
¼ cup cranberry juice
3 cups bread flour
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter
¾ teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
1 ¼ teaspoons yeast
1 cup raisins
Once you have included all your ingredients, choose your settings.
1 ½ pound loaf
Light Crust
Sweet Bread

We got 12 slices put of this loaf and the numbers came up like this.
Per slice: 104 calories, 22 carbs, 1 protein, 2 fats, 5 cholesterol, 13 sodium

Maple Frango

This is also from the cookbook my friend gave me in NY, Betty Crocker's Cooking American Style. Frankly, I don't know what it is - it's not in the candies section, it's under the multiple page chapter on puddings. When is the last time you ate pudding that wasn't chocolate or rice? Puddings are hard to find. I suspect this is because they are hard to keep warm and still taste well.

What did you eat for the holiday?
My brother-in-law Jeremy grilled pineapple soaked in coconut milk and covered in sugar yesterday and it was fantastic. He also made a dip with salmon and ricotta which was very good.

If you know what this is, you can make it and eat it...
Maple Frango
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup maple-flavored syrup
1 cup chilled whipping cream
1/2 tsp. vanilla
Beat egg yolks in small mixer bowl until thick and lemon colored, about 5 minutes. Heat syrup just to boiling. Pour about half of the hot syrup very slowly in thin stream into egg yolks, beating constantly on medium speed. Stir egg yolk mixture into hot syrup in saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until slightly thickened; cool.

Beat whipping cream in chilled bowl until stiff. Fold in vanilla and egg yolk mixture. Pour into ice cube tray. Freeze until firm, at least 4 hours.
That truly sounds bizarre. I may have to try it when my kitchen things are unearthed again after the move.

My cookbooks along with other kitchenalia collections are featured this week at Collector's Quest, an online community for obsessed - er, enthusiastic collectors like myself:
http://www.collectorsquest.com/featured-week/Kitchenalia.html

It's all about perspective: I still don't know when we are moving - the mortgage folks are sorting it all out on both ends of the sale. Likely 7/15 - 7/20. I have a conference downtown next weekend that I'm sort of dreading. I'm speaking at a few things, which is never a favorite thing, I'm helping to run something where lots of the speakers have cancelled and at the moment the entire thing feels like a distraction I don't need. It's been 1.5 years since I've been to this conference since we adopted Owen and I realize I haven't missed it - just missed seeing my librarian friends! However, I'm bringing 4 teens with me to the event this year- a niece and three of my Teen Corps. One of them came up to me covered in paint Wednesday night during our Splatter Paint program and told me she could hardly sleep she was so excited about going with me; that she wished it was today already. There as so many things to like about working with teens.

Great guest blogger tomorrow - stay tuned!

Happy 4th of July!

This is from the Southern Living Progressive Farmer (as opposed to?) Holiday Cookbook, from the mid-60's. Not to be confused with my favorite Southern Heritage series. This one has a 3 page lecture on how having family reunions are so important to children and how Southern families have them on the 4th.

"Shouldn't your children have the opportunity to experience all the wonderment of a family reunion at least once in their lives?" Um, it's not Disney World. Also, some families are better experienced long distance, from what I understand. Lots of murder mysteries are set at family reunions... My family is pretty great, and we are now all in the Chicagoland area, though at one time my siblings were both on the East coast.

Suggested menu for these sacred family reunions in this book?

Anchovy stuffed eggs, green tomato pickles, spit-roasted ham, hearty potato salad, and jellied cranberry sauce cut into stars. That is seriously no reunion any child is going to want to attend. If they served the award winning cherry pie pictured, now, that's another story. However, as I paged forward, I learned that the pie is actually the 'State Fair Cranberry-Apple-Nut Pie'. Gross. Let's pretend it's cherry.

It's no wonder they also proved two pages of drink possibilities. I had to ask my Mother what a jigger is for measurement:

Sangria

2 jiggers unsweetened grape juice

2 jiggers pineapple juice

Dash of lemon juice

1 tsp. sugar syrup (?)

Soda water

No I've been to Spain, and I think that recipe is missing something. Something that would improve family get togethers.

I think I'll spare readers the recipes for the rest of that menu, and also for the Firecracker Cheese Jalapenos. Let's hope those reunions were not held outside with no access to washrooms...

Let's hope everyone reading this is eating better than this.

I finished Coulter's latest FBI thriller, and it was pretty good. I do like more scenes featuring the Savich-Sherlock husband-wife team, and it always amuses me that there babysitter is available to watch their 6 year old for days on end while they track down killers. But she has lots of humor and fast pacing, even if I forgot the name of the book...