The spousal unit spent four hours today cutting wood, helping to ensure that no matter what kind of winter we're in for, the house will stay toasty and warm. I prepared him a dinner that was Norman Rockwellian in content and scale, to say the least -- Swiss steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, biscuits, and peach crisp for dessert.
It occurred to me that it would be of little use for me to post the recipes for any of these, because the chief ingredient in each dish is intensely local.
The beef comes from the half-cow we buy each year from the neighbors, and goes into the slow cooker with two cups of the tomato sauce that Brian makes every summer (tomatoes and basil pulled from the garden and pureed, then cooked down with a little salt. I throw in a bay leaf). The beans are also from the garden and canned in strict accordance with the Ball Canning Book and the booklet that came with our pressure cooker. Even the peaches are from a batch that Brian got this summer and "put up" for the freezer with a little sugar and some Fruit Fresh™.
If it weren't for the biscuits (from a can) and the potatoes (Idahoan), I'd be the perfect little 50's housewife.
6 comments:
YUM!! I've never made swiss steak, but now I'm hungry... Even tho' I'm So. Over. canning tomatoes...
I haven't had Swiss steak for decades. Brings back memories of the big old cast iron frying pan slow simmering supper on Sunday afternoons. And biscuits and peach crisp? FEAST!
Yeah but you could still give use the recipe for Swiss Steak and Peach Crisp...because you have made me very, very hungry. PLease?
Swiss Steak: take a 2-lb swiss steak from a corn-fed, hormone-free Black Angus slaughtered after 30 days consecutive cold weather. Put it in a crockpot with two cups of tomato sauce made by cooking down vine-ripened tomatoes out of a July garden with a few fistfuls of basil from the same garden and a little salt. Add a bayleaf and cook on low for 6 hours.
Peach crisp -- take two cups of home canned or home frozen peaches and put them in a baking dish big enough to hold them without slopping syrup onto the bottom of the oven. If you put up your peaches in sugar syrup you will not need additional sugar. Add as much tapioca as you think is required depending on how juicy the peaches are (I used 3 tablespoons), 3 tablespoons of butter, cut up, or more if that's what is left in the butter dish, a teaspoon of home made vanilla brandy, and sprinkle it with some cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. Make the one-egg muffin recipe from the back of the Bisquick box but use brown sugar. Drop in spoonfuls over the peaches and back in a 350 oven for 25 minutes.
I thank you for the recipes. We have had a good crop of local peaches but my sister's apple crisp topping is too much for the peaches. And ditto on the Swiss Steak.
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