food

Discovery: Mason Jar Cocktail Shaker

January 10, 2014 by Cynthia Leave a Comment

I have become quite keen on a new cooking show on Food Network, Farmhouse Rules. Basically, anything with the word Farmhouse always catches my attention. In one episode, they made cocktails using a mason jar cocktail shaker. I was hooked…I had to have it. A little mining the internet and voila. I found the website: http://www.masonshaker.com/

With this new gadget, I am looking forward to experimenting with simple syrups and flavor components to create really great cocktails.

I hope in the New Year, you find some inspiration.

Always,

Cindy

Savory and refreshing.

Mason Cocktail Shaker.

Filed Under: Antique Finds, Uncategorized Tagged With: antique, cocktails, cottage, drink, farm, farmhouse, farmhouse rules, food, food network, house, jar, kitchen, mason, mason jar cocktail shaker, network, rules, shaker, the leaning cottage

Visits to Upstate New York and Spaghetti Sauce

June 21, 2012 by Cynthia Leave a Comment

Spending your vacation in the stockades.

I’m Italian and many summers were spent with my mother’s family in upstate New York. Upon arrival every summer, one ritual was to pay a visit to each and every household of our relatives. Every house was full of the sights (plastic slipcovers on all the furniture and butterscotch candies in a dish) and smells of a typical old world Italian family. The pungent smell of real parmigiana cheese and homemade sauce on the stove permeated every home without exception.

This recipe is one of my own but let’s give credit where it is due…my sister suggested some of the spices that eventually became the recipe. It isn’t a particularly difficult recipe and it gets better come serving time, if you make it in advance by a couple of days. The flavors meld really well together as each batch sits in the fridge.

The secret to this recipe is that I add some sugar which plays great against the red pepper flakes. That is why I think of it as the sweet and the heat spaghetti sauce recipe.

Simple Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

1 medium onion, chopped

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 pound of any ground protein of your choice (sausage, pork, beef, chicken, etc)

2 (28) ounce cans of Petite Diced Tomatoes

1 t. Fennel Seed

1 t. Dried Basil

1 t. Crushed Red Pepper

1 t. Dried Oregano

1/4 c. of sugar

1 t. salt

1/2 t. pepper

Warm 1 – 2 t. of olive oil in a saute pan; add onions and cook until translucent. Add minced garlic and cook for 1 – 2 minutes more. Remove from pan, set aside in a bowl and add ground protein into the saute pan and cook through.

In a separate bowl, mix the diced tomatoes, fennel seed, basil, red pepper flakes, oregano and onion/garlic mixture. Take the mixture and place it in a blender (you may have to do it in two batches, depending on the size of your blender or you can use and immersion blender) and puree the sauce just until the tomato chunks and onions are reduced in size. This should only take about 2 – 4 pulses with your blender.

Transfer the pureed sauce into a stock pot and add the ground protein of choice. Stir in the sugar, salt and pepper and cook over low heat, covered for about 30-40 minutes and it’s ready to serve!

Fresh from the garden parsley and REAL parmesan cheese.

Freshly cooked pasta in a vintage collander.

Old Fashioned Comfort Food.

Filed Under: Recipes, Uncategorized Tagged With: comfort, family, food, italian, new york, sauce, spaghetti, tradition, upstate, vintage

Pantry Pride

May 7, 2012 by Cynthia Leave a Comment

Food Gift Tags.

In my old kitchen, I had what I referred to as the “open concept pantry”, which is really a fancy way of saying “everything is out in the open.”

Tired of open concept, I insisted on closed door storage for the pantry. As luck would have it, I had an old hutch I had purchased on Ebay several years ago. I liked the look of it and the price was right, so I bought it even though I didn’t have a place for it at the time.

Some cleaning up and a few coats of paint later, tah dah…it is a righteous pantry! Right after the remodel, I pretty much just threw everything in there. I knew I wanted to reorganize it, but wasn’t sure exactly how at that point.

Like most things with me, if I live with something for a while, I eventually figure out how to make it fit the way I do things. The pantry was no exception.

Here are a couple of highlights:

Chalkboard Contact Paper. Found on Amazon, it comes in a roll and can be cut into any shape. I used my die cutter and cut labels in a vintage shape for the bail wire jars that hold various staples. I also sourced chalk pens and keep them handy for when I change the contents. A simple wet cloth wipes the old chalk off so I can write something new. For the pasta jars, I also have a chalkboard label on top of the jar that has a number in it to remind me how long to cook each kind of pasta.
Bail Wire Jars. I love these gems. Found at IKEA, they are extremely reasonably priced and because the seal so tightly, they keep things fresh longer.
Plastic Air Sealed Bins. In order to get maximum storage efficiency, no shelf space was tall enough to handle a common cereal box; this allowed me to have more shelves. The alternative was to use Better Homes & Gardens air sealed containers (found at Walmart) that were short and squatty, but large enough to handle the contents of a box of cereal. Actually these are much easier to access and close than a normal cereal box. And it keeps cereal fresh for alot longer than just a regular cereal box.
Canvas Bins. For the lower cabinet, I purchased (from Walmart), the white canvas bins, (3.99 ea). They help me access condiments, bread, extra baking items much easier. Instead of mining shelves and moving things around to see what is in the back, I just pull the bin and I see everything I have….without disturbing the rest of the pantry.
Vintage Enamel Trays and Basins. As you may know by now, there is a little bit (or a lot) of vintage in everything I do. I used what I believe to be old medical instrument trays to organize the drawers in the hutch to keep things in place and I have an old enamel basin to hold fresh lavender that I use through out the house. As a second benefit, the Lavender always makes the pantry smell lovely every time I open the doors.

The before and after pics are posted. Remember to click on the pictures twice to increase the size. Let me know what you think!

Love Always,

Cindy