Maine Bicentennial, A Cookbook, and Me

 This is a perfect fall or winter vegetable dish to serve at a meal. Basic root vegetables which, when combined, are mighty flavorful! Potatoes, carrots, and a rutabaga. I mean, even just saying "rutabaga" is fun, isn't it? And eating it, mashed up with potatoes and carrots and butter and cream is even more fun. Ah, not only what the doctor ordered...good for you, but also good tasting. The rutabaga and turnip come from the same family, but I have to say that my taste buds choose the rutabaga over the turnip, every time. I like that these root vegetables are inexpensive, and easy to keep on hand. After I mashed the veggies up (using, I confess, way more butter than the recipe called for), a splash of light cream and a sprinkle of lemon pepper (my add, not the recipe), and it is ready to serve. You could probably dress this up with some onions and/or garlic, depending on your tastes, but I kinda like it simple. Enjoy! This completes the Vegetable chapter of the cookbook. A...

I have been on a mission to find chestnuts (not the canned kind you use in stir-fry) ever since I bought this cookbook. This recipe sounds so delicious, and that was the one hard-to-find ingredient. I just recently gave up hoping to find it locally and ordered it online. I ordered roasted chestnuts, peeled, for baking, and they arrived in foil packages. The whole chestnuts in each foil package (5.2 oz), chopped in a food processor, amounts to one cup, so I used two packages, between the crust and the filling.  The recipe calls for a rectangular tart pan with a removable bottom. As I had no idea such a pan even existed, I just followed the crust recipe (yummy chopped chestnuts in the crust!) and laid the crust in a glass pie pan. It is a heavy crust, but the perfect compliment to the squash filling. I chose two small to medium sized delicata squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into slices for roasting. The recipe calls for shallots. Now, one can always use a regular onion if need be. Bu...

 Baked beets, like cranberry sauce, have a mind of their own. They can be on the tart side, or the sweet side, and people tend to have a clear preference for one or the other. Myself, I like Harvard Beets, with a nice thick sauce.  This is the simplest of recipes, requiring only thinly sliced beets and onions, layered, with water to cover, then cover and bake in the oven. With salt and pepper and a little olive oil. I was surprised that the beets were not a deep red, like the jarred beets I purchase. The beets I purchased at the grocery were enormous. I might look for smaller ones another time.  My kids were a bit fussy about their vegetables when they were young, but I could always count on getting them to eat their beets. Odd veggie for kids to like, but they seem to have grown up healthy enough, in spite of the dedicated beet diet.

 Here's the thing. My family Thanksgiving gathering, with something like twenty plus people, always has mashed turnip. And I always passed it down the table. They didn't "do" anything to it. They just left it plain. And well, the flavor didn't appeal to me as a kid. So, when I discovered this recipe, with appealing additions (who doesn't love a veggie that has cream cheese?!), I was ready to to try it. *Sigh* To think that all those years, I could have been enjoying cream cheese mashed turnip at Thanksgiving. Ah well, now I can! One problem. Having never cooked turnip in my life, I grabbed one at the grocery and immediately dropped it. Yeah, dropped it like a hot turnip. Because it felt kinda wierd. I have since learned that turnips are coated with wax to protect them. I don't know, maybe they are fragile? Anyway, I had no idea how to cope with the wax. Do you melt it? Do you rub it off? What, exactly, does one do with a waxed turnip? Thank goodness for Fa...

 This recipe is popular in Beirut, Lebanon, where the recipe donor learned it. I have had lentils and rice and onions before, and I know how it lends itself to most anything one wants to add to it. So I fried some bacon and then cooked the onions in the bacon fat. I know, not heart healthy. But it certainly makes for a flavorful dish! It is a very easy dish to throw together, and keeps well, even improving in flavor over a few days.

This is not a recipe to be whipped up last minute. It takes two hours to bake in the oven.  And plan on a little time slicing up fresh veggies. It calls for a 9x13 pan, but I fit it all into an 8x8, which was perfect for the layering, potato on the bottom, then you just build up from there: onion, bell pepper, mushroom, celery, zucchini. A good way to use produce from your garden (or, in this case, a neighbor who coincidentally showed up at my door with veggies from his garden). The reason this recipe bakes so long is that the veggies are not prepared in any way beforehand. So, after layering raw veggies, pour water in "until you can see it through the vegetables." I did add significantly more cheese, since it only calls for a tiny bit. After the first hour, take the aluminum foil off and let it bake another hour. That's when I liberally sprinkled the top of the casserole with shredded cheese. It just needed more cheese! And salt and pepper.  This makes for a nice vegetar...

I am not sure why these stewed tomatoes are unique to the Shakers, except that they appear to have developed a special herb blend which they liked to use with their stewed tomatoes: "Shaker Bouquet Garni." Now, this is pretty much your basic Herbes de Provence. But Shaker style! I decided to just make this ahead, this evening, and have it in the fridge ready to pour over pasta and pesto for an easy meal. The weather is hot and quick and easy is what I'd like to be preparing for meals, except that I've got this goal to bake all of the recipes in this cookbook in the year 2020. Hah! Which means I'm having to double up recipes in the month of July, so that I can then cook only one recipe/day for the rest of the year. And there are precious few recipes that don't use the heat of an oven...but I'll get through the extra recipes in July, and then things won't be so hectic. Right now, trying to find time to get the right ingredients together for two recipes/d...

This is what I would normally think of as a winter comfort food. And here we are in the heat of July. But I've always had a soft spot for potatoes in any form. And while I've eaten twice-baked potatoes at restaurants, I'd never attempted it in the home. Wow, what we've been missing out on! I thought it was terribly time-intensive. Enter The Modern Master of Time Management, the Microwave. Those potatoes were cooked within minutes, and I was carving out the hot soft interior and mashing with milk, butter, salt, pepper, and shredded cheese in no time. Then it was too fun to create little whipped mountains of creamy goodness in the potato skins, sprinkle with cheese and paprika, and bake for fifteen minutes.  You'll notice in the picture that I chose thin-skinned red potatoes. It was all we had on hand. Russets would give you a proper skin, though, and to get the crispiness for the skin, you would also want to pop the potatoes in the oven for skin crisping time, after ...

This gravy is paired with the recipe for Pumpkin Seed Croquettes, but don't limit it's delicious flavor to vegan recipes alone. This would be great on a steak or with pork or chicken. It calls for hemp milk or other nondairy milk, and I use almond milk, but you could use whole milk as well. When you put herbs, tamari sauce, shiitake mushrooms, nondairy milk, and sauteed onions together (and a little flour to thicken), you can't go wrong! I've never encountered shiitake mushrooms prior to this cookbook. Call me a novice, but I'm sold on these mushrooms! They add a texture you can't get with the more widely available white mushroom, altho I'm sure those would do if you don't have shiitake mushrooms. I did find that this gravy thickens up as it cools, so just thin it with the almond milk or water. I'm reviewing this gravy as a stand-alone recipe in the cookbook, but you won't find it listed separately in the table of contents. Be sure to look for Pu...

Oh my, yummy goodness! When I first laid eyes on this recipe, I knew I had a keeper. My oldest stepdaughter and her husband are vegans. Even tho we are in the midst of COVID-19, should they be able to make visit this summer (socially distanced), this would be an excellent meal to offer. If you are not vegan, don't dismiss this recipe in search of something meaty. This is really delicious and will appeal to many different palates. The person submitting the recipe mentions that it is the dish she makes for Thanksgiving, with vegan gravy and cranberry sauce. I think it is great any time of year! Having a food processor is a must for this recipe. I had one in a former life, but have gotten by without one for years now.  Since a number of recipes in this cookbook require a food processor, I purchased one last week. What a difference! At the push of a button, grated carrots. Pulse, and you've got pumpkin seeds pummeled to a powder. I thought it would be hard to find pumpkin seeds thi...

This recipe was submitted to the Maine Bicentennial Community Cookbook by Doreen Duke. She writes, "My mother, Eleanor Hall, got this recipe from her local church..."  There is a lovely, smiling photo of Doreen's mother, Eleanor, next to the recipe.  Some of my favorite recipes have been found in church cookbooks, or asking for the recipe after a very satisfying church supper. I think the secret to this recipe is the way in which the roux lends depth of flavor to the carrot mixture. I only made a half-recipe, but we easily could have eaten more! A great recipe to put those tender garden carrots on the table!

It's been awhile since I was a Declared Vegetarian. That was during college, and I hung out with all the vegetarians on campus (we all ate together in the cafeteria, naturally) and it was a heady time of exploring how to balance your protein needs without meat. The cafeteria staff thought we were nuts, but they provided something edible for the vegetarians at suppertime. The rest of the day, we had to forage for our protein. I am now a sometimes-red-meat eater. But mostly chicken and fish. I do enjoy a totally tofu meal now and again. So I thought the Tangy Lentil Burger would be just the ticket on a hot evening in July. However, the cooking instructions for the lentils were completely different on the lentil package than what I found in the cookbook. I learned that you should trust both. In that you want to use lots of water (lentil package) and boil the lentils til soft (cookbook). It is a great veggie burger recipe, but needs more zest. It does call for red pepper flakes in a sa...

Day 3. Sunday afternoons in the heat of summer, there is only one thing on my mind. Potato salad. You know it! Such a food on a hot day is heavenly.  I try to prepare each recipe in the cookbook just as it is printed, the first time around. This recipe is something to be admired for its ultra-simplicity. If what you seek is a nice basic potato salad, this is it. I've always been partial to red potatoes, so I knew this recipe would appeal to my taste buds. It did not disappoint. Nana surely knew how to please her family with this recipe! That being said, I did try, second time around, a bit of dill, and sure enough, adding that little something extra was mighty nice. You might even say, it was perfection perfected!

In discussing the recipe with my husband, who is the real cook in the family, I mentioned my new personal challenge, to cook through the Maine Bicentennial cookbook in 2020, starting with this chickpea salad.  He complimented me on the salad. I explained that it was contributed by the mother of Astronaut Jessica Meir. He said, "Well of course she contributed a Chickpea salad recipe. If it was from a guy, it would be Guypea salad." Go ahead, groan. I'll wait. I live with his witty wordplay every day...It's a good thing I love that man so! I think what I appreciated the most about this recipe is the emphasis on fresh lemon juice, and good olive oil. I didn't have any dijon mustard, and substituted curry mustard, which was a surprisingly good choice. BTW, while recipes are traditionally shared friend to friend, and family member to family member, I will not be sharing any of the actual recipes from the book in this blog, since the book is copyrighted. But I encourage...