Cold Sweet Potato-Ginger Soup

I like thick soup, even during the summer. But so many cold soups are more light and brothy, and I couldn't find any recipes for a cold soup with sweet potato. Mostly my searches turned up sweet potato soup to make when you have a cold.

So I took matters into my own hands, and put this soup together.

It is a simple recipe which has the thickness of a good hardy winter soup, but is great chilled, especially with a little cream over the top.

Ingredients

• 1 lb sweet potatoes
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 in ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 2 tbsp flour
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2-1 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup water
• 1-2 tbsp cream per serving (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350. Cut sweet potatoes into roughly 1-in cubes. Place in bowl, add olive oil, shake to coat.
2. Spread potatoes on a baking sheet in a single layer. Bake until soft and slightly brown, stirring occasionally (approx. 30-40 min).
3. Make a white sauce. Melt butter in saucepan. Slowly add flour, stirring constantly, until it forms a paste.
4. Add milk, ginger, and cumin, still stirring occasionally to keep the sauce from sticking.
5. After 2-3 minutes, add the potatoes and 1/2 cup of water.
6. Use an immersion blender, or a food processor to get soup to desired consistency. You may need to add more water at this point. I left mine fairly thick, and I used about 1 cup of water. If you want a lighter soup, add more water.
7. There was still a bit of texture after I used the immersion blender on my soup, thanks to the potato peel and the ginger that didn't get chopped up all the way. I personally like that, but it is a matter of opinion.
8. Chill soup for at least two hours. Letting it sit overnight gives the flavours even more time to combine. (Yay for leftovers, right?).
9. Serve with cream drizzled over the top, if desired. I like the depth cream gives the soup, but it's up to you. 

I like bread with my soup, and I use this recipe a lot. It's about an hour from start to finish, which means that I don't have to plan that far ahead. To go with the soup, I added 1 tsp of fresh, finely chopped ginger, and 1 tsp of turmeric.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Frosting

I decided a while back that I wanted to make peanut butter cookies. I love peanut butter cookies, but I don't have a specific recipe that I use. My Dad doesn't like peanut butter, and especially dislikes the smell of hot peanut butter permeating the house. So we don't bake them when he's home, or when he's going to be home soon. 

That being the case, I went on Pinterest to find a recipe to try. And I found this one. And it's a good one. It's for sandwich cookies, but I didn't make them into sandwiches. I did half the batch the other night, to take to a friend's house, and a few days later made the rest of the batch. This time, I decided that I wanted frosting on them. But the frosting in the recipe is only peanut butter and powdered sugar, which didn't sound that great. So I made up a frosting recipe. 

Chocolate Peanut Butter frosting 

3 cups powdered sugar

1 Tbsp cocoa powder

2 Tbsp butter, melted

1/4 cup peanut butter

Pinch salt

3-6 Tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix all ingredients together, adding milk slowly until frosting reaches the desired consistency.

This is the part of the recipe where it's very important to not inhale too deeply. Between the cocoa and the sugar, there's a lot of fine powder swirling about in the air. It's hard to follow a recipe when you can't breathe.

 You can mix it at this point, but the peanut butter will still be a little thick. It will ball up more like cookie dough than frosting.

 That's why you add the milk. As usual, with liquid in something like this, add it slowly, one Tbsp at a time. Some days, you may need more, some you may need less. If you add too much, put in a little more powdered sugar to thicken it up again.

 I was tasting the frosting as I worked on it, and it just wasn't working quite like I wanted it. You know how sometimes, you get a plan in mind for what you want, and it simply won't turn out the way you want? I was debating adding more cocoa, but didn't think it would actually work. Then I hit on the idea of vanilla. So many recipes have vanilla, even if it's supposed to be chocolate or some other flavour. I figured I may as well give it a go. And it was exactly what the recipe needed.

 The frosting has nicely balanced flavours. You can taste the chocolate and the peanut butter. It's great eaten right off the the spoon if you go for that. You can alter the texture as you like, adding more milk to make it a glaze, or more sugar to make it more solid. Heck, add a bunch of sugar and some walnuts, and call it fudge. Pretty sure it would be delicious.

 And, of course, it's good on peanut butter cookies. Try the link I posted at the top of the blog, or use your own favourite recipe. I'm sure it'll taste just as good.

Eat them with a nice cup of coffee (how do you like that cup? An estate sale find...I love my coffee cups. Have I mentioned that it's a bit of an addiction?). The cookies aren't the best texture for dunking (a little too crumbly, and I don't like oats in the bottom of my coffee cup...), but they're good with coffee anyway, so just don't dunk them. 

My Life in Ruins Part 7---Jaded

I feel like every once in a while, I have to do something to sort of prove that I am not jaded. Prove it to myself, that is. I have no idea if other people think that I am jaded.
I have become very good at saying no to beggars and homeless people, even if it's a lady with a baby. I hate it when the rose seller ladies come up to me, saying that they'll give me a free rose, but if I take it, then they put a hand on their belly and say that they need 5 euros, and it's for the "baby". It's from the whole idea that you shouldn't give money to beggars, because the money may not even be going to them. And even if they get the money, it will often be used for drugs or alcohol, or something unwholesome, rather than food.
So when a man came up to me and asked for money for food, I told him no. However, we were across from a little cafe, and I'd been debating getting some food there anyway. I've been meaning to try it, and it just didn't happen. So I told him that he could go over there with me, and I'd buy him some food.

 He said no. He said he didn't like the food there. So I told him that it was too bad, and if he was hungry, he'd eat wherever.
He seemed like he was going to walk away, then asked if I would buy him a danish and milk at the cafe. I told him I would, and we walked over there. He ordered what he wanted, and I got the same pastry, and a cappuccino. He didn't want to stick around and chat, but took his food and juice (they ended up not having milk), and left after thanking me profusely.
It wasn't much. Less than $3 for both of us (I'm gonna have to go back there when I'm back in Athens. Good food, and cheaper than a lot of places), and a super easy thing to do. But it still would have been easier to leave it at "No" when he asked me to give him money in the first place, instead of inviting him to get food with me. Did I change his life? Probably not. He wasn't starving, and we didn't have a meaningful conversation as he didn't really want to talk and his english wasn't great. But did I do something good, and was it something I felt like I should do? Yeah, definitely.
So maybe I've not simply grown used to human suffering. Maybe I am being intelligent when I refuse to give money to beggars, rather than being lazy or cheap. Maybe I'm not completely jaded yet...

Garcia's Style Pizza Crust

This pizza crust recipe is the one that we always use. It's a variation of the recipe found in this book. In fact, instead of writing the recipe down somewhere else, Mom just wrote her changes in the book. It's a lot easier to find the recipe that way than to dig through the recipe box to find a card. 

 I think we may have tried a couple of other recipes from this book, but pizza is the one that is the most used. Look at what a mess that page is. The rest of the pages in the book are still pretty clean. I couldn't even tell you how many times I've made this one. Sometimes I'm away from home and I want to make pizza. I never remember to keep the recipe in a document on my desktop, and I usually don't want to hunt through old emails for it. So I call Mom, and beg her to send the recipe once more. This one, and the cinnamon roll recipe. Pretty sure that last time I asked for it, she said she'd never send it to me again. But I think she said that the last 3 or 4 times too...

I guess now I'll be able to scroll through the blog to find it...

2 1/2-3 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp active dry yeast

1 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar

1 cup warm water 

2 Tbsp cooking oil   

Make dough, either by hand or in bread machine.

Preheat oven to 425

Form crust. You can use a pizza pan, or a cookie sheet, or a pie tin. 

Whatever works for the shape you're after. We usually use 2 

rectangular cookie sheets, because when we make pizza, we eat a lot, and 

we also want leftovers. It's totally up to you.

The sugar is an addition to the original recipe. My folks have always loved Garcia's pizza, and Mom wanted a way to make it at home. She tried a few recipes to find one that was similar, but no luck. Then she realized that the crust was extra good, because it's a bit sweet. So she started adding sugar to this recipe. And voila! Success. It was just what she was looking for. It doesn't really taste like there's sugar in the crust, it just has a little bit of a tinge of sweet. And I've had Garcia's pizza. It's amazing, and the crust tastes like this crust.

And...from what I read online, Garcia's Pizza is no longer what it used to be (and it has gotten rather pricey...). So if you want to find out what it tasted like back in the day, or if you liked it, and want to make your own at home (or at least a pretty close approximation), this is the recipe for you.

I use a bread machine. It's the lazy way. I've also done it by hand, when I was somewhere that I didn't have a machine. It's pretty similar, it just takes longer to mix and knead to get it smooth. With the machine, you dump everything in, and you're done.
Quick note on the oil...I use regular vegetable oil. I tried sunflower oil once...learn from my mistakes...It was disgusting. Supposed to be healthy, but not a good oil for pizza.

 If you're using a bread machine, put in about 2 1/2 cups of the flour, start the machine and let it run for a few minutes, then check it. If the dough looks sticky, slowly add more flour. It should not stick the the sides of the pan, but should form a ball as it is kneaded. If you add too much flour, balance it back out by adding tiny amounts of water. Add everything in small amounts, or you could end up trying to get the right texture for ages, and by then, you've added so much extra flour and water that it's nowhere near what it should be.

I let the dough rise, then start the dough cycle over again to punch it down. I usually let it run for about 5-10 seconds. Then dump the dough and shape into your pizza crust.

You can use a rolling pin and get the crusts super uniform and thin if you'd like. In case you haven't already figured it out, I'm not usually that particular. Yes, I want things to look nice when I am making food for other people, but when I am cooking for myself, I'm not wildly concerned. As long as it tastes good and doesn't look like vomit, I'm happy. Actually, if I'm honest, some of the Indian recipes, and different soups I've tried have sort of resembled vomit. Ok, as long as it tastes good and doesn't make me vomit, I'm happy. :~)

When the crusts come out of the oven, they may be a little puffed. I should probably try stabbing them with a fork before baking. Perhaps that would prevent the uneven thickness. But I kind of like the different thickness. One bite is thin, with a lot of sauce and topping ratio. The next bite is thick, chewy crust. And trust me, this crust is good enough that it's ok to have a large crust to topping ratio. This crust isn't only a topping delivery system. This crust is amazing on it's own. You could take one of those crust rounds and eat it plain, and it would be delicious.
It's nice sometimes to not get too picky about the food we're making. Don't worry if the crust isn't even. Don't worry if sauce is pooling in that low spot. It's going to be wonderful no matter what, so just go with it. 

Squashed Bananas (Or, How to Make Banana Jam)

Bananas were 29 cents a pound at Aldi the other day. I deliberately got quite a few, wanting to make some banana bread and whatnot with them. I started thinking that maybe jam would be good too. I don't really know why that sounded like a good idea. Carla used to always eat mashed bananas when we were little, and I could not stand it. Most disgusting thing ever. Mashing bananas ruined them. Though, later, when I was in Brazil, I started eating bananas mashed with powdered milk and chocolate milk powder. Still thought plain mashed bananas were gross, even then. 

But, for whatever reason, my brain said "Banana jam? Sounds amazing!" I'm glad it did. It's super easy to make, and tastes amazing. I didn't do step by step photos, but I'll give the recipe. Maybe one day I'll do step by step. But I tell you what...it gets sticky. You don't necessarily want to touch your camera, because it feels like you'll never be not sticky again. 

You of course have to start by peeling the bananas. I fed the peels to ReMe. They're one of her favourite treats, though come to find, she doesn't like them as much when they're overripe. Spoiled much?

I've also had a bit of an obsession with adding ginger to things. Something else that I've always hated. But I added it to my banana muffins, and I've been drinking hot ginger water a lot lately. I do need to figure out a good balance for adding it to recipes. I think I need to add a lot more. So I'll get working on that :~)
Also...quick bit of advice. Don't lick your fingers after grating ginger. It feels like your tongue is gonna burn off.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup mashed bananas

1 cup sugar

1 Tbsp lemon juice

Mash bananas and measure. 

Measure out everything else accordingly (4 cups bananas means

4 cups of sugar, and 4 Tbsp lemon juice).

Grate about 1/2 inch of ginger for each cup of bananas.

Dump everything together in a heavy bottomed pan and bring to a boil

over medium heat.

Boil for 5 minutes.

Seriously...Don't start counting the 5 minutes until it's really solidly boiling. It needs

that time to gel. The jam is already a thinner jam, not a jelly, and the less time you
boil, the less gelled it will be.You can boil it longer if you want, and simply keep

an eye on it to ensure that it doesn't burn.

Ladle into jars and can as you'd like. I did a hot water bath. If you choose to

do this, follow the directions that came with the jars.
Leave at least 1/4 inch of head room.

And really, if you're not making huge amounts of jam, you can just put it in a
container in the fridge. Once you taste it, it probably won't last too long.

In the cute little jars...I've discovered that I really loved making and canning jam. And of course eating it. That's the best part :~)

 There's something satisfying about putting the jars into the water. I think because it's basically the end. You've made the jam, and you set the jars in the water. All you have to do then is wait for about five minutes and pull the jars out.

 As you're cleaning up, there's the lovely sound of the lids popping as they seal. Another one of those satisfying jam making moments. You let them finish popping, and coming down to room temp, then go through and tighten all of the rings. And you're done. They're ready to go on the shelf and wait to be opened and consumed.

This jam goes along with pretty much anything. I didn't have bread when I made it, so I ate it with cream cheese and saltine crackers. That is, that's what I ate it with when I stopped eating it with a spoon...
I've since made bread, and it's amazing on a piece of bread with butter. Gave some to my Grampa, and he ate it on pringles, and on a baked potato. Apparently it was good on both. I made a dessert pizza with it a few days ago also. Oh my, was that good. The recipe will be coming along pretty soon.
One thing I love about the recipe is that it's so basic that you can add anything into it. You could add other seasonings, you can add some other kind of fruit to it, you can totally make the recipe yours. And it's amazing!
Let me know if you try the recipe, and what changes you make to it, or what you use it on. 

Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?

 Tried a new recipe...It was a recipe for delicious banana upside down muffins. I was a little surprised by how easy they were. The recipe looks like it would take more time. But it doesn't. So get some bananas, click on the link, and make muffins. Here's how mine went. This isn't the actual recipe. That's why there's the link to click on. But this is how I did it, and some of the changes I made, and suggestions I have, and of course, my photos.



You start out by making caramel. It's much easier than most caramel making. All you do is toss your 2 tsp of butter and 2 tsp of brown sugar in each space in the muffin tin, then put it in the oven for about 10 minutes.

I did more like 6-8 minutes.
I've burnt enough stuff that I usually at least start it out with a bit less time on it than the recipe calls for.
You don't even have to bother stirring the caramel as it cooks. You just leave it in the oven til it gets all bubbly.
The recipe says dark brown sugar, but I've never been wildly keen on the stronger molasses taste. So I used light brown sugar, and it was great.

Then you take your leopard bananas. Hahaha...when you're sleepy, it's hard to stop typing banananananananas...I got a bunch of bananas last week, and have been waiting for them to get to just the right level of ripeness for baking. I think they were pretty good. Super sweet, but not mush. I wound up only using two bananas instead of the 4 it called for (I was gonna just do a half recipe, decided to do full and forgot that I'd already halved the bananas), but there were complaints on the page of them not being good to eat the next day, and mine were fine, so that may have had something to do with it. They were pretty good sized too.

 Slice the bananas nice and thin. I know bananas don't necessarily need a sharp knife, but it does make them mush less, so I usually use one.

You let the caramel cool a little when it first comes out of the oven. And be really careful with it. If you get this stuff on your skin, it'll stick, and it'll burn. Didn't do it this time, but I have had stuff like this get on my skin before. Trust me...don't try it. Or do. It's a free country. But if you do, I will laugh at your stupidity because you ignored my warning :~)
I was a little concerned this went too dark, and it was close, but not burnt. I hate the taste of burned stuff, and this was just under burned. It was pretty much perfect

 I didn't add the rum that the recipe calls for, but I wanted some sort of extra flavouring aside from the vanilla extract. So I put in some ginger.
I used to hate ginger so much. Thought it was one of the more disgusting tastes in the world. Still don't like biting into a big chunk of it, but I do like it in a lot of dishes. Or tea. I think it was Indian cuisine that changed my mind.

 Keep the fingers out of the way of the grater...
I did maybe half an inch or so of ginger, with the finest part of the grater. I didn't want to steep the ginger and add the liquid, so I grated it very fine so as not to end up with huge chunks of ginger. Didn't want these to be culinary land mines...

Fresh Nutmeg...Yeah...This nutmeg has been around as long as I can remember...Can you tell we don't use it much? This is not a huge tin.We just really don't use nutmeg very often at all. Oh well, still seems to work tolerably well.

I almost always substitute applesauce for oil. Except for frying. Applesauce does a rubbish job of frying things...But as far as putting it in cakes or whatever for moisture and as a binding agent, it works very well, and is way healthier than oil. Especially if you get unsweetened. Or, even better, make it yourself. I've done that once...It was delicious, but took forever.

Eggs...I had a ton of eggs to choose from. I need to start eating more, as well as selling them $2/dozen if anyone is interested). The girls have been laying very nicely for me. I could have used a blue egg, but they tend to be a bit smaller.
Fun fact...the pigment in blue eggs is added early on in the formation of an egg, and cannot be scraped off. It is incorporated throughout the thickness of the shell. However, the brown pigment, whether dark, or simply tan, is added later in the making of the egg, and can be scraped off. And now you know...

I almost always crack my eggs into a separate cup. Have since I cracked an egg that had been frozen into a dish I was making. It looked like a melon ball, and I could stab the yolk with a fork and pick it up. It was thawed by then, but was still kinda messed up. May have still been ok to eat, but I didn't think it was smart to try. And after hearing stories of rotten eggs and various gross things, I figure it's better to not risk ruining a whole dish.

Thought I'd checked my recipe and had everything, but I forgot to buy milk when I was shopping the other day. Luckily we had a couple tins of evaporated milk. And, I count it fortunate that this was still usable, as it expired in 2011. Tasted fine. Baked up fine. I'm not too worried about dying from it.

Once you figure out what milk you're using, mix all of the wet ingredients, and the brown sugar together. I guess brown sugar counts as a wet ingredient.
It looks kinda cool before it actually mixes together, especially the milk and egg, but once it's mixed together, it kinda looks like vomit. Yes, I know that I probably should not talk about vomit while doing a food blog...Part of the reason I don't do food stuff that often :~)

Mix the dry ingredients together, then pour the wet ingredients in, and mix til moistened.

I put half of the mixture into the cupcake tin with the caramel and bananas, then put the grated ginger in with the rest of the batter. I didn't want to put ginger in the whole thing just in case it didn't work out taste wise.

I put the gingery batter in the remaining cups, and stuck it all in the oven.

You can see a few pieces of banana sticking out of the batter in this photo, and I don't think it would matter too much. The banana mush down, and the batter rises, and it should be ok. I did push them down though, just in case. 

Don't those look amazing? The caramel sort of went all over the place, but that was ok. This is one reason though that I would recommend using a non-stick pan. I was actually pretty impressed with how well the caramel came out of the cups, and even off of the top surface. And you won't want to waste any of the caramel :~)

As good as the non-stick pan was, the muffins did not want to come out just at first. I shook the pan over my cookie sheet, then just let them sit there upside down for a little while to see if they'd loosen up.

Finally grabbed a spoon and ran it around the edge of each muffin. Apparently it was only the baked caramel that kept them from coming loose, and as soon as that was cut by the spoon, they fell right out, with their caramel on the bottom.

A bit of a mess. And, in getting them out, I mixed up which were the ginger muffins and which were plain. The only way to really tell is to eat one. I do think that next time, I'll do all of them with a little ginger. It adds a very pleasant note to the banana flavour, and all of the sweetness.

These muffins are amazing with a cup of coffee (though, I must say, I don't

know that I have ever had a muffin that would have been bad with

a cup of coffee...). Just found this mug at Goodwill :~) 

Coffee cups are an addiction for me.

The muffins are definitely best straight out of the oven, but stay good for a while. 

I made them on Wednesday, and just had a couple today (Friday), 

and they're still great. I wouldn't suggest keeping them long though, as they are 

incredibly moist, and I feel like they would mold in very little time.