desserts, health, scratch cooking, Uncategorized

Brown sugar

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All commercial brown sugar is is molasses and sugar. If you ever need brown sugar and you normally purchase it, that’s good to know. If you have molasses.

Me, I would rather have sugar and molasses on hand and just use that. But those days you want brown sugar straight, it’s nice to have it on hand.

But I can’t bring myself to purchase it. We buy molasses by the gallon and sugar in 25# boxes. So, I have started to simply make some in advance.

Since I recently learned that not everyone knows this, here’s a how to.

I am going to start with 6 cups of sugar. No reason. I have my two cup measure out, so that’s where I am. Now, I know I am lucky to have have a kitchen aid, and not everyone does. It is 30 years old, though. if you can find one, please consider it. This is still possible, just not as easy.

I love playing with molasses. It’s a cool non Newtonian fluid!

I can’t say it’s my favorite, because whipped cream, ketchup, and nail polish are all up there.

Anyway, that’s 2 tablespoons of molasses to six cups of sugar, or 1 teaspoon per cup. Let the mixer work for 6 minutes and viola! Brown sugar! Want it darker, add more. Lighter? Add less. Baking cookies? Remember 1cup + 1tsp to simply add while creaming. And you never need to rely on commercial brown sugar again.

Food, whole grain

Popcorn!

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Happy National Popcorn Day!

In honor of this day that is so close to my heart, I will share a few toppings that we love.

And I will make popcorn. Lots of popcorn. 🙂

The ways we love our popcorn. All are guessing 6 quarts popped (about 1/2 heaping cup of kernels) and salted popcorn. If melted butter is mentioned, it’s 2 T of salted butter.

Plain: With Kosher Salt and melted butter. About 2 tsp of Kosher salt.

BBQ: With about 1 heaping Tablespoon leftover BBQ rub and melted butter. We don’t salt this one first.

Pizza: 2 Tablespoons Parmesan or Romano, 1 tsp dried oregano, 1/2 tsp tomato powder (we got ours from Amazon (affiliate link))

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Italian: 2 Tablespoons Parmesan or Romano, 1 tsp dried oregano, 1 tsp garlic powder

Wings: Don’t butter! Mix 2T of hot sauce (like Franks or Durkee’s) with the melted butter before you pour the butter over. Add 1 T blue Cheese powder (again, from Amazon (again, affiliate link)). This powder also makes a good instant blue cheese dressing if you are desperate and don’t have the time or  ingredients to make real Blue Cheese dressing.
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(Our vegetarian friends really love this one. 🙂 )

Curry: 1 tsp Curry  powder, 3/4 tsp each  tumeric and ground ginger and a pinch of cayenne

Old Bay: 2 teaspoons of Old Bay Seasoning!

 

Wet toppings:

pour on carefully or spritz onto salted popcorn

Worchestershiresauce

Malt vinegar

 

Special popcorns:

Sugar popcorn: This one you have to cook differently. Heat your oil in the popping pot with three kernels of popcorn. When the third one pops, add the 1/2 cup of popcorn and 3 Tablespoons of white sugar.  Cook as usual.  Serve as is, no butter or salt.

Happy Popcorn Day!

 

 

 

 

 

Food, soup, Uncategorized

Italian Onion Soup

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So, two days ago, I made a batch of caramelized onions, because Hex was getting a tooth pulled and wanted onion soup. Today I am using a third of the onions to make the soup.

I don’t know what makes Italian onion soup different from French, except this does not have gobs of cheese and toast in it. But it does have brandy.

Here is the soup stock. It’s a mix of chicken carcass soup and store bought beef base, to make it richer and tastier.

This is the base I like if I have no stock:

And here is my collection. Mmmmmm…

Anyway, there is about two quarts overall of stock in here. I will add the two and half pounds worth of onions I caramelized earlier.

That will simmer for 25 minutes. After that, it will be hit with a quarter cup of brandy and cooked a couple of minutes more.

(This is my cooking and liquor making brandy.)

And served with a spoonful of grated cheese in the bottom of the bowl. Romano in our house, what ever you want to in yours.

And that’s it. Simple, rich, and easy to throw together if you have the onions on hand. 🙂

 

Affiliate link: Amazon does carry the base! I get it locally, though.
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Surviving independently in a city.