Cooking!

[kellan_the_tabby]

Tonight I'm making montuos's Tomato Bread Soup, which I haven't had in ages and which I'd nearly lost the recipe to -- it's safely printed out, now.

This time I have Italian sausage, mild stuff, so I've got that right, but it's ground not links -- easier to deal with, I figure,and the taste if not texture should be the same. We shall see.

Last week I made her potato soup, which I cannot find the link for (help?), so I'm glad I did write that one down. I messed with it some -- started out with a turnip, chopped pretty fine and sauteed for a while in butter, before I added the onion and garlic; I also tossed in a bunch of paprika at about this point. I don't think I did anything else very differently though I can't be sure. It was awfully, awfully good and made happy work-lunch-leftovers for a while, too.

Also last week was my first solo attempt at Swedish meatballs. Despite the addition of a couple of eggs to the meatball recipe the meatballs fell apart anyway but tasted absolutely delicious as usual. I have since heard that the recipe I have calls for cooking the meatballs too long, so I'll try it again sometime and put them in later; we'll see.

In other news, the new place is shaping up great, and I'm going into business. Well, kinda small scale, but.

Also, there's a cat in the laundry.

Comments

[shrieking-ell.livejournal.com]

Hey look! You're on LJ again

yay!

[kellan_the_tabby]

Hi hi!

*giggles*

[fabricdragon.livejournal.com]

glad the new place is going good. if there is a cat in the laundry its home all right.

business is good. keep us posted, ok? also, you may or may not have any ides on my current post about clothes...

[kellan_the_tabby]

Thinking more about sewing clothing than buying it -- have a lovely (but short) swishy skirt I got from the lady I worked for last summer, and I want to use it to derive a full-length pattern. Also considering a long-sleeved dress pattern, out of fine wool, from one of those sleeveless summery rayon dresses...

[pedropadrao.livejournal.com]

What kind of business?

[kellan_the_tabby]

I'll be selling (or hoping to sell, anyway) jewelry, bath salts, skin creams, soap, and other herb-y stuff. Working on both an etsy.com shop and a personal site. Had a lot of fun today playing with wax, oil and herbs, a camera, and The Gimp graphics software -- but not at the same time!

Further announcements as events warrant (mostly I need decent pictures).

[montuos]

When in doubt, check my tags. I also have some good stuff in my memories.

Ok, one thing you have to learn about my recipes and the way I cook in general is that recipes are just a springboard for experimentation. I don't buy cookbooks to follow recipes; I collect them for ideas. When I write down a recipe, that's just what I did — this time. It may not be the same the next time, or even ever again. (You'd understand that better if I'd written up the different potato soup I made the other weekend, exactly the way I did it...but I've forgotten half of it now; oh well!) A recipe is just a place to start. So, if you make substitutions because that's what you have on hand, or that's what you like, go for it! And when I say, "This is a very flexible and forgiving recipe", that's exactly what I mean.

Ground Italian sausage instead of links is a luxury I don't have ready access to. I would actually rather use sausage that's never been mashed into a casing; that does evil things to the texture of the meat. I use links because you can get them damn near anywhere, but the only place I know of that I can get uncased sausage is Wegman's — which I try not to go to anymore because I can't seem to shop there and spend less than $100... :-/ Although I did discover recently that if you slice half-thawed previously-frozen sausages, you don't burn your fingers, and the bits cook faster, and you can see when they're done all the way through...

I've also discovered that there's actually a difference between "mild" and "sweet" Italian sausage — which goes a long way towards explaining why I hate some sausage pizzas, and love others. But, hey — use what you have; use what you like; it doesn't really matter that much whether it's hot, mild, or sweet Italian, or brats, or Irish O'Garlic...or even polska kielbasa!

Something else I've discovered since I recorded that version of the Tomato Bread Soup recipe (I originally found it in The Fanny Farmer Cookbook!) is that throwing in a bag of baby spinach is a really great way to add leafy greens to your meal.

Turnip and paprika in potato soup sounds really, really nummy!

One other thing to consider about your disintegrating meatball problem is whether the recipe might include too much in the way of breadcrumbs and/or other liquid for even eggs to hold together. In my experience, cooking too long usually turns meatballs into hockey pucks, not rubble. Post the recipe, maybe, for further discussion?

[kellan_the_tabby]

Durr tags. Been too long since I've seriously messed with LJ.

I do take your recipes as a base point -- I do like recording what I did differently, though, so next time I (or someone else) can look back to see what worked (or didn't).

Ray went off to the store and came back with the ground stuff unprompted -- I guess it's easier to get out here; I assumed he'd come back with links. Maybe they're more of an East Coast thing? Anyway, the taste was about the same and the texture different but good. I might go with links next time just to compare again, though, especially if they're cheaper. I do like sliced link sausage.

And see, if you use the hot I can't _eat_ it -- but maybe I'll look for the sweet next time, just to see.

The meatballs cook _in_ the sauce, so I can't see them turning into hockey pucks (though I could be wrong). Might also be that the oatmeal is a little big for the meat to close around it, and I'm pretty sure I didn't dice the onion small enough...

Ah, well. _Tasted_ good anyway.

[montuos]

Oh, yeah — onions too big — that'll do it every time! I have problems with that with meatloaf, for God's sake! Fortunately, there's a trick to get around that: if you don't have the patience to mince them fine enough (like right down to nothing, to be honest, for small things like meatballs), you can use a grater on 'em instead of chopping.