Tag: cooking

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I made a shopping trip to Arthur, Illinois (a largely Amish community) last week. Among other things, I bought three pounds of chicken backs, which I roasted for an hour and then put in the Instant Pot with an onion and some celery tops and pressure cooked on the “broth” setting for 2 hours and 45 minutes. Then I strained the broth and put it in the fridge.

Today I spooned out about half a mug of (super gelatinous) broth, added 1/16 tsp of salt, and poured boiling water to top up the mug and behold: a nice mug of warm drinking broth. Delicious, warming, and very healthy!

A mug mostly full of chicken broth

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For years now I’ve been fixing the same little feast for valentine’s day: rock Cornish game hen, Uncle Phil’s long grain and wild rice, and flourless chocolate cake.

It’s inspired by the very first meal I cooked for Jackie, just a few days after we started dating.

This year I made numerous mistakes in timing and measuring—kinda weird, since I slept so well last night. Fortunately, a modest amount of scrambling and fixing managed to make everything come out delicious!

A slice of flourless chocolate cake with whipped cream on top

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I was preparing a honey-mustard glaze to put on a ham. The recipe called for dijon mustard, honey, and dark brown sugar—that last, presumably, to make it caramelize nicely. The new jar of honey I opened had crystalized rather completely. So I skipped the brown sugar, and just put in twice as much honey.

It was delicious.

Now I’m trying to decide whether it’s worth updating the recipe, given that I can’t expect to have crystalized honey on-hand all the time.

Half of a small ham, sitting on a cutting board with just a bit of a slicing knife visible