cooking – movingforwardslowly

Horseradish

All the pictures shown above came from the Wikipedia site.

I’ve been looking through my Treasury of Christmas cookbook and perusing online recipes. The holidays is definitely a time when I do more cooking than normal. I have a boneless leg of lamb in my freezer, so I have been researching lamb recipes. The lamb recipes in my Christmas cookbook all use mustard or horseradish in the cooking and serving. Neither of these spices appeal to me at this time.

I do remember horseradish from my childhood. The first time I tried it I ended up spitting it out. My father liked it and used it generously on some meats, specifically roast beef. I never ate it after trying it that first time.

I am interested in plants so my curiosity caused me to look up more information about it. Plus, I wondered how it got its name. It has nothing to do with horses, and it can be toxic for them. Linguists think that perhaps something got mixed up in translations. It is a root of the plant Armoracia rusticana. Thank goodness for scientific names. There is also a Horseradish tree which is a different plant altogether, and should not be confused with the horseradish condiment.

According to Wikipedia, “The root was used as a condiment on meats in Germany, Scandinavia, and Britain… and both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson mention horseradish in garden accounts.”

After researching horseradish I have turned my attention to other spices. A lamb leg will be cooked, using neither horseradish or mustard in the cooking or serving. I am still reading about different spices, and I have not decided definitively what spices I will use. I saw a Persian slow cooker recipe that used pumpkin pie spice (or a Persian spice blend.) I do have pumpkin pie spice I could use. This recipe also used saffron spice. My husband recently gifted me a bottle of saffron threads, so I am leaning toward using this. I might end up using a more traditional rosemary and sherry blend. We will see…

Right now, my house smells like corned beef. It has been cooked for a breakfast casserole I will cook this week.

Happy menu planning to anyone out there who might read this!

Happy Thanksgiving !

Miss Piggy and her friends give thanks for all their blessings. They will pray at the dinner table. (This is an IA generated image.)

My family and I are having a non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I cooked a turkey breast and all the traditional fixings about two weeks ago. I did not want to repeat it so soon. Today we are having Beef Bourguignon with Sopa Paraguaya (which is a hearty cornbread), and a few other dishes. The other day when I was shopping for a red wine to use for cooking the beef I was surprised to run across a cabernet with the name “Katherine”. I stopped with a strange feeling of serendipity. I was currently reading Dan Brown’s latest book, The Secret of Secrets. One of the main characters in this book is named Katherine. Also, the picture featured on the front of the wine bottle reminded me of a black cutout profile picture of me when I was very young that had been artistically framed. My black profile picture has a ponytail much like the one on the wine bottle. The resemblance ends there, though my name is Katherine also. I bought the wine on a whim. I bought another bottle of a different wine to use in my cooking.

This is the picture from the bottle I purchased.

You might be asking why I used a picture of Miss Piggy at the top of this post. I thought it was funny since “piggy” , possibly a relative of Miss Piggy, has been in the news recently. Of course, I was instantly reminded of Miss Piggy whom my daughter grew up with and whom we all love. She had a Miss Piggy doll that was so loved and played with so frequently that eventually I had to throw it out. I was able to find one book, which we still miraculously possess, featuring Miss Piggy.

Here is the book we own. The dirt in the bottom right must be from a pulled off price sticker.

Another interesting side note about Miss Piggy is that she has been featured several times at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I read that in 2016 she saved Tony Bennett from falling off the float they were standing on.

I hope anyone that might happen to read this has a fun and happy day.
I am thankful for many things. Too many things to elaborate here.

A Growing Appreciation of Okra

Another reason I love the fall is that I enjoy cooking soups and stews this time of year. It is getting cool enough to really enjoy a nice warm bowl of homemade soup. I have been experimenting with a variety of vegetables and cuts of meat with different combinations of broth.

I ate okra for the first time when I was in college. I attended a university in North Carolina, and I ate frequently in the university cafeteria. I first sampled fried okra there, and then became aware of it being put into soups that I would also eat there. After college I went for a long time without eating it because I did not see it in the grocery stores where I shopped. I noticed it years later in the canned vegetable aisle labeled hot pickled okra and it was packaged in a jar. I ate it crisp out of the jar and loved it. I could also find it in the frozen vegetable section in some stores.

In recent years I began to occasionally see it fresh at various farmer’s markets. Within the past year or two I have begun to shop at international grocery stores. I live within an ethnically diverse area, and I am fortunate to be able to choose between a selection of grocery stores that cater to these diverse populations. Two weeks ago I found a grocery store that had the longest freshest best looking okra I have ever seen. I bought a bunch of it and sliced it up and cooked it with a little oil and salt. Later I added some to a vegetable beef soup that I was making. It was delicious both ways. Today I went back to that same store and bought more of it. This time I took a picture with my cell phone.

Okra has an interesting history in the United States, and the reason I first became aware of it in the southern U.S. is because it has a long history there. I read that slaves brought seeds with them from west Africa. I read that the seeds were hidden within the black braids of the slaves. I will show you a picture of the seeds, and you can imagine how this might have been possible.

Recently I saw a picture of home grown okra from a garden blog newsletter. I also discovered that I can buy seeds from a variety of sources. Now, I have another incentive for trying my hand at vegetable gardening again next spring. The okra flower is beautiful which is another inspiration for me to grow it. I read that it is a member of the mallow or Malvaceae plant family. There is green and purple okra you can grow. I don’t think I have ever eaten the purple okra. Now I am curious.

As a side note that goes off the topic of okra, I will post a picture of lychee fruit that I tried for the first time today. I saw a display of exotic fruits and saw a man picking through the lychee fruit putting many into a bag to buy. I asked him about it, and he said that it grew in his backyard in Hawaii. I asked him what it tasted like, and he said sweet, and then he encouraged me to try one. I have never eaten anything without buying it first. However, I did not want to buy any without tasting it. He told me how to pick out the good ones. I tasted one for the first time with his encouragement. I ended up buying a small bag full. Here is a picture