Cooking!

Finally another beautiful day here in the heartland. Love it! I have a door partially opened and am listening to the birds singing - while the sun is shining. So nice, after all the rainy,stormy days we've been having. Haven't yet seen the weather reports today, but my body is telling me that maybe there is more stormy weather ahead. :)

I title this "cooking" 'cause that's what I do a lot of..... yesterday I baked with the duck eggs a neighbor has given me (they have three egg-laying ducks in the back yard). No, duck eggs are not "yucky" - they taste just like other eggs to me. I even made an omelette out of some the other day and it was good. My neighbor says she uses them mostly for baking - so yesterday I decided, since I had two dozen of them, to do some baking, too. My house sure smelled great all afternoon. :) I baked my mother's chocolate pound cake, a coffee-cake and made up the dough for yeast rolls, which I will be baking in a few minutes.

In case my readers (I DO have a few readers!) haven't noticed, I LOVE to cook and bake. I've always loved cooking - even as a kid, though I didn't do a lot of it then. Of course, during the years of rearing four kids, it wasn't always as pleasant as I would have liked.....cooking was a bit more stressful then, with everything else to be handled. Even so, our kids did usually come home to a house filled with cooking smells - usually good ones. ha! It's a lot simpler and more peaceful NOW, without the kids - but now I don't have them to SHARE my cooking with! :( But, have to say, my husband, John, is very happy that he has a wife who likes to cook.

"Cooking from scratch" has always been my way - but I'm not opposed to using some ready-made things every now and then. Like brownie mixes - but only those really fudgy kinds! However, I usually even make those from "scratch". That's the way my mother cooked and the way I learned to cook. I feel sorry for those who always "eat out", and especially always eat out at fast-food places. They will never know what an honest-to-goodness REAL meal tastes like! And if you always eat out, you don't have those wonderful cooking odors wafting through your home. (Granted, I've had a few BURNT cooking odors wafting though our home - but that's another blog. :)) I have tons of cook-books - they are great reading, not just for the recipes. And, no, I don't always follow the recipe - I usually use it as a starting point because I usually don't have all the ingredients called for. So, I will "ad-lib" the recipe - use what I have, switch something in or out, etc. It generally works. You can't be a cook and be afraid of "trying" something different! I generally follow the recipes for baking - even though I may add to them. My husband likes to say to visitors, "enjoy it now because she probably won't remember later just how she made it - it will come out different the next time". :) That's usually true, what can I say?

I especially love my mom's chocolate pound cake recipe.....not only because it tastes great (if you love chocolate) but because you can slice it thinly and freeze portions for later. I kept out a third of it yesterday and sliced the rest in thin slices, put them in small portions in freezer bags and popped the bags into the freezer. Easy. Did the same with the coffee-cake. It's nice having some home-made goodies ready to pull out of the freezer when the urge strikes you.

Here is the CHOCOLATE POUND CAKE recipe: (I use an angel-food cake tube pan)

5 eggs
3 cups sugar
1 cup milk
5 Tblspns. unsweetened cocoa powder (I always add more)
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 sticks butter (or margarine - I prefer butter)
1/2 cup Crisco
1 Tblspn. vanilla
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1. Cream butter, sugar and Crisco
2. Add eggs, one at a time - beat
3. Add flour, mixed with the cocoa and baking powder .... add this alternately with the
milk
4. Add vanilla
5. Pour into well-greased and floured tube pan
6. Bake: 325 ..... about 1 hour and 20 minutes
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ENJOY! YUM!