The Pig and I

I have some loquat preserves in the fridge from the last season, and I always forget I have it so I never use it. When I woke up excessively early today, I decided it might be nice to make some jam muffins, and the loquats were open so I went with that. Y'all could use any sort of jam (or fruit) you wanted, though. Hope you enjoy! Whisk together: 1 3/4 cups flour 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 3/4 teaspoon salt In a separate container, whisk together: 1 egg 1/4 cup each: oil, yogurt 1/2 cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Preheat oven to 400F. Mix wet ingredients into dry. Put into a greased (or lined) muffin pan, then top with a dollop of jam or preserves. If your preserves are very thick like mine are, you may wish to push them down a little into the batter with your thumb. If they're thinner, they should disburse a bit on their own. Bake for 20 minutes. Makes 10-ish regular sized muffins.

I've been sick the last few days, with some awesome combination viral and bacterial upper respiratory infection. So, while I didn't particularly wish to cook today, I figured I would toss together a quick chicken soup for dinner while I strained some more yogurt. This went in the crock pot, since I figured I ought not miss three days of school in a row and I wanted it to be ready for when we got home. It was, again, very simple, but quite satisfying to both of us. If you're looking for more pizazz, you can easily modify this by adding other veggies or spices. Hope you enjoy! 2 large chicken thighs, deboned and skinned*, then cut into bite sized pieces 1 large carrot, sliced thickly 1 large celery stalk, sliced thickly 1 onion, roughly chopped 1 litre vegetable broth 1 handful wheat berries salt to taste 1 14-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, smashed a little with your spoon or ladle most of that 14-ounce can of water Combine all in a small crock pot and let simme

Along with the penne from yesterday, we also made a big cobbler. The dough I used is a modified pie crust recipe, with increased fat because I wanted to have a crust type that could work for either pie or cobbler. I used it initially for blackberry pie and pineapple-cranberry pie over Thanksgiving to test it, and it did seem to be great for pie and perfect for cobbler. For pie, it makes a soft crust, but not ultra-flaky like many prefer. For cobbler, it's pretty much the ideal texture. Soft insides, but crisp outer portion. You could use any kind of fruit for this dessert, though. Originally we'd planned to do peaches, but instead went with a mixture of pineapple, mango, strawberry and grape. If you don't need a gigantic dessert, you can easily cut this in half and still feed 4-6 people dessert. Hope you enjoy! Crust: 3 cups flour 1 tablespoon kosher salt (1 teaspoon iodized salt) 3-4 tablespoons of sugar, plus more for sprinkling 1 1/2 sticks cold butter 2/3 cup co

This is a pretty big recipe, making enough food for two 9x13" pans. We were making a batch of penne for ourselves, but also for a friend. It's a vegetarian version of baked penne (I think I have a couple meat versions in here somewhere already), and very, very cheesy. If you make this, my recommendation is to make the full amount of sauce and simply freeze what you don't need yet, so you can use the leftover sauce at a later time. Hope you enjoy! Marinara Sauce: 1 28-ounce can tomato sauce maybe 1/3 of the tomato sauce can of water 1 15-ounce can stewed tomatoes 1 15-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes 2 tablespoons lemon juice 3 big glugs of olive oil salt and pepper to taste 1 large onion, diced 6-8 cloves of garlic, chopped 1 13-ounce can mushrooms 1 1/2 tablespoons each: dried basil, dried marjoram (of course you could use fresh) 2 1/2 tablespoons dried parsley (likewise, fresh is fine) Heat onions, lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil in a large saucep

I figure since y'all have fresh yogurt now, you might want some granola to go with it. This is a pretty simple way to make granola, and it's tasty without being overly sweet. Hope you enjoy! 3 cups rolled oats 1/2 cup wheat germ (optional, but I like it this way) 2 teaspoons salt 1 cup chopped or sliced almonds 1/4-1/3 cup each: vegetable oil, honey 1 cup chopped dates Heat oven to 250F. Mix together the oats, germ, almonds and salt. Whisk together the honey and vegetable oil, then pour it into the oat mixture and stir until well incorporated. Put on a sheet pan (cookie sheet, whatever) and put in the oven. Give it an hour and a half or so in the oven, but stir it every 15 or so minutes so it doesn't burn. Once you take it out of the oven, let it cool a bit then add the dates. Cool completely and store in an airtight container. Makes about 5 cups.

We go through a pretty shocking amount of yogurt in this house. I eat it sometimes with honey (and occasionally a sprinkle of black pepper), or sometimes with jam. Of course, I also use it for baking and mashed potatoes and lots of other things. We also make a lot of labneh, because Ross will eat about a pound a week of that while he's at work. And since a good quality yogurt (for a pound or so) is around $4, I've tired of spending the money on it and have chosen to just make my yogurt. Consequently, I'm sharing the method I use with you, so you can do this as well if you like. This is more methodology based than recipe based, so just be aware of that since my writing format will be more prose than standard recipe. Hope you enjoy! Making yogurt is pretty easy. It's easier if you use a crock pot, but it's easy even if you use a pot/double boiler. Basically, however much milk you use is how much American-style yogurt you'll get (you have to drain the whey for

Several years ago, I was a judge in a chili competition. This was pretty awesome for me, since I love chili to no ends. One of the entries in the non-traditional category was a white chili, made by a guy named Alex. When I first saw it, I admit I thought I would NOT like this chili (as I lean more toward traditional takes on chili), but after tasting it I thought it was fabulous. So I asked Alex for his recipe. As often happens when you ask someone for a recipe that the person makes generally by feel or memory, the recipe you get mostly is a list of ingredients and you have to extrapolate what is meant by this list. So I extrapolated (and made some "changes" where a required ingredient wasn't really clear or where I thought another ingredient might be tasty too), when it came time for our Second Annual Chili Day (in which we also had our housewarming party, since we moved to a bigger place to accommodate the kid that's on its way). It was really interesting, since t