Recipes – Don's House of Fine Patisseries

December 16, 2024December 16, 2024

Making Bierocks (Stuffed Bread Rolls) — Photos

I came to enjoy a type of convenience frozen pizza in the early 1990’s while in residence at university; of course I enjoyed them then, and continue to occasionally enjoy them to this day. However, what really fascinated me was how the manufacturer managed to produce what amounted to a bun stuffed with a filling, in this case pizza toppings, without an apparent seam or other apparent entry point for the contents (such as the small hole one would see on the size of a jelly doughnut). While said fascination remained, it was not strong enough for me to actually try to figure it out.

Fast forward to late 2023, and a snacks table offered bierocks (here’s my archive), which immediately caught my attention. Before I even picked one up and looked at it, including inpecting its bottom, I immediately realized how they had been made. I definitely ate some, and asked the person who had made them for the recipe. Due to delays in setting up a cooking lesson with said person, I eventually just followed the recipe instead of waiting to be shown how to make them.

(And, I am assuming, the manufacturer of the commercial pizza treats uses some kind of mechanical method analogous to the relevant section(s) below, or, a precisely timed continuous dual extrusion system that minimizes seams, and in either case a dough recipe tuned to be susceptible to the process; ultimately, whichever process is used appears to assure that the edges stay sealed, and the filled units are moved along an Archemides’ screw or the like to the next step, in such a way that smooths out any seams.)

Note that in the following narrative, while the photos are principally from a single session, a few are from two other sessions in order to complete the narrative.

Making the bierocks:

One of the common ingredients in bierocks is chopped cabbage; so cabbage was taken out:

A piece of cabbage was cut off to make chopping easier:

Piece of cabbage placed on a cutting board

The cabbage was chopped up somewhere between coarsely to finely:

As the cabbage was chopped, it was placed in a bowl:

I continued to chop cabbage, and froze the excess for future use, since a typical cabbage is far larger than the roughly half pound needed for this recipe.

In the case of this session, frozen cabbage from a previous chopping session was used; as such, a plate was placed on a kitchen scale, and the latter set to zero, so as to only be measuring the cabbage:

Bowl placed on kitchen scale, which was set to zero

About half a pound (about 227g) of frozen chopped cabbage was placed in the bowl:

The cabbage was put aside in order to allow it to defrost.

Frozen ground beef was taken out, and weighed to make sure that the appropriate amount of two pounds (911g) would be used:

The ground beef was put aside to allow it to defrost.

The basket from my bread machine was taken out and cleaned:

Six ounces of water were measured out:

The water was placed in the microwave oven (1100 watts) …

… and heated for 45 seconds.

The warmed water was poured into the bread machine basket:

Warmed water poured into bread machine basket

Eggs were taken out:

The eggs were cracked into the bread machine basket with the warmed water:

Egg cracked on edge of bread machine basket

Eggs cracked on edge of bread machine basket

Flour and a measuring cup were taken out:

The measured out flour was transferred to the bread machine with the warmed water and the eggs:

Flour transferred to bread machine basket

Sugar and measuring spoons were taken out:

Six tablespoons of sugar were measured out …

… and transferred to the bread machine basket with the water, eggs, and flour:

Sugar transferred to bread machine basket

Salt and measuring spoons were taken out:

The salt was measured out and transferred to the bread machine basket with the water, eggs, flour, and sugar:

Salt transferred to bread machine basket

Oil and a measuring cup were taken out:

The oil was measured out (oops twice as much as I should have used):

The oil was transferred to the bread machine basket with the water, eggs, flour, sugar, and salt:

A little note at this point: Since this recipe calls for using a bread machine, I strongly recommend using bread machine yeast; standard bread yeast behaves differently — although not necessarily badly — and in a bread machine, will produce a strong yeasty odour and taste, no doubt due to different timing required for it to act properly. Should you be making bread dough another way, including using standard bread yeast, of course I do not have any advice on that front. 🙂

Bread machine yeast and measuring spoons were taken out:

Bread machine yeast and measuring spoons taken out

Two teaspoons of bread machine yeast were measured out:

The bread machine yeast was added to the bread machine basket with the water, eggs, flour, sugar, salt, and oil:

Bread machine yeast transferred to bread machine basket

The bread machine basket with all the ingredients was placed in the bread machine, and the unit was set to the dough only cycle, which in the case of my bread machine is setting #8, with a cycle time of 1h30:

The bread machine was turned on:

While the bread machine was preparing the dough, baking trays were taken out:

Parchment paper was taken out:

Sheets of parchment paper were cut off the roll and placed on the baking sheets:

Parchment paper placed on the baking sheets

The baking sheets were put aside for later.

An electric frypan was taken out:

The electric frypan was plugged in, and the ground beef was placed in the electric frypan:

Ground beef placed in electric frypan, and electric frypan plugged in

The chopped cabbage was placed in the electric frypan:

Chopped cabbage placed in electric frypan

Salt was added to the electric frypan:

An onion was taken out and weighed to be sure it was enough (“about” a quarter pound of chopped onion in the end):

The onion was placed on the cutting board:

The onion was trimmed:

The onion was cut in half:

The onion half was sliced into half coins:

The onion slices were chopped:

The rest of the onion was chopped, and the chopped onion was transferred to the electric frypan, and the ground beef was cut up with an egg flipper:

The ground beef was broken up further, and the ground beef, cabbage, and onions were mixed together:

Ingredients broken up and mixed together

Cheese was weighed out:

The cheese was grated:

The grated cheese was transferred to a bowl, and put aside for later:

Once the meat mix was cooked, the electric frypan was unplugged:

At this point, I took out a large serving plate and a kitchen knife in anticipation of the bread machine dough cycle completing:

The bread machine finished its dough cycle:

At this point, I started to preheat the oven, set to 350F, and one of the racks was placed in the top position (photo taken after preheating):

The dough was taken out of the bread machine basket:

At this point, to get 24 roughly similarly sized balls of dough, I am using what I call the “Jamie Oliver Method” because I saw Jamie Oliver use this method on one of his shows with bread dough:

Cut the dough in half (2 pieces);
Cut each half into three pieces (2 x 3 = 6 pieces);
Cut each “third of a half” into four pieces (6 x 4 = 24).

I concede that Jamie Oliver would have you roll the dough into a long log first to further help with estimating making the sizes relatively even.

The dough was cut in half:

One of the dough halves was cut in three:

One of the pieces was cut in four:

The rest of the bread dough pieces were cut up, resulting in 25 pieces, which eventually were reduced to 24 pieces:

25 bread dough pieces (which will be integrated into 24)

A bread dough pieces was placed on the cutting board, and flattened and stretched out:

Bread dough piece flattened on cutting board

Some shredded cheese was placed in the centre of the piece of flattened bread dough:

Shredded cheese placed on flattened bread dough

Some cooked meat mix was placed on top of the shredded cheese on the piece of flattened bread dough:

Cooked meat mix placed on flattened bread dough

I began to stretch the edges of the flattened bread dough, pulling them together and covering the filling:

Bread dough edges stretched and brought together

All of the edges were brought together and the edges were pinched together:

Stretched bread dough edges brought together

The resulting ball of stuffed bread dough was placed on the parchment paper on one of the trays, pinched edges face down:

Stuffed bread dough ball placed edges down on baking tray

The process was repeated with more pieces of bread dough and more cooked meat mix and shredded cheese:

Stuffed bread dough balls placed edges down on baking tray

The process was continued until there were 24 units:

Margarine, a bowl, and a spoon were taken out:

The empty bowl was placed on the kitchen scale, which was set to zero:

Kitchen scale set to zero with bowl on it

Margarine was weighed out, about five tablespoons’ worth, in the area of about 70g to 73g:

The bowl of margarine was placed in the microwave oven (1100 watts):

The microwave oven was set to 15 seconds:

The margarine was partly melted:

The microwave oven was set again for 15 seconds, and the margarine was mostly melted:

A food brush was used to brush the melted margarine on to the bierocks …

… until all units had been basted and all the melted margarine had been used:

The trays of bierocks were placed in the oven:

Baking trays with bierocks placed in oven

The stove timer was set to 22 minutes:

Cooling racks were taken out while the bierocks were baking:

Pot holders were taken out:

At about halfway through the baking, the trays with the bierocks were rotated back to front within the oven:

Baking trays rotated back to front part way through baking

At the end of the baking period, I turned on the broiler to brown the tops of the bierocks:

… and the oven timer was set to two minutes:

Here’s a photo of the bierocks as they were browning under the broiler:

After the two minutes under the broiler, the bierocks were taken out of the oven:

Baking trays with bierocks taken out of oven

The bierocks were transferred to the cooling racks:

A bierock was picked up to check the bottom where the pinched edges of the dough had been brought together to show how it baked (but … not seamlessly! 🙂 )

I bit into the fresh bierock … yummy!

A bierock was placed on a cutting board with a kitchen knife:

Bierock and knife placed on cutting board

The bierock was cut into four pieces:

Bierock sliced into four pieces for freezing

Several bierocks were cut up into quarters, because bierock pieces have become part of my usual breakfasts:

Bierocks sliced into four pieces for freezing

… and the cut up bierocks were placed in a freezer bag for freezing:

The bag of bierock pieces was placed in a freezer for future eating as part of my daily breakfasts.

I find these bierocks to be yummy!

October 8, 2024October 8, 2024

AI Generated Podcast About my Yoghurt Muffins Post

Note: I suggest that you read my recent post about making yoghurt muffins first for context before reading this post.

This past weekend, my brother decided to play around with the Google NotebookLM podcast generator, using my recent post about making yoghurt muffins as the podcast topic source material.

Here are the results: “Podcast 1“, the first one I listened to and chuckled at throughout (see below), and “Podcast 2“, which is longer than the first, and a slightly different approach (again, see below).

As a reference, according to Wikipedia (here’s my archive), NotebookLM is a tool by Google that has an “audio summary” feature has the “ability to condense complex documents into engaging podcasts”. As referenced in the article, some of the generated podcasts have indeed been making the rounds on at least the media local to me; the samples played on the radio had the “voices” of two artificial “hosts”, one male and one female, and appeared to greatly impress the real radio host. The real human host on the radio then proceeded to create their own samples with the tool using local news items as source material, resulting in stunningly … seemingly accurate (or at least faithful to the source material) content and banter between the two artificial “hosts”. The voices — and banter — of the artificial “hosts” that were created sounded so real that the “hosts” did not sound obviously artificial in almost any, let alone many, of the usual ways that usually betray the artificiality or synthetic nature of the voices. “They” seemed to bypass the Uncanny Valley (here’s my archive) as well, if only because they weren’t associated with artificially-created “speaking” faces or other cues that might suggest that “they” were artificial.

To wit: My brother came up with two podcasts: Podcast1, and Podcast2, based on the blog page about the yoghurt muffins: The first podcast was roughly what I would have expected, based on the samples I’d heard on the radio, in the form of “entertaining” banter from the artificial “hosts” about the overall post and subject, while the second podcast followed a play-by-play style review of the post and its pictures.

Especially while listening to the first, I was often incredulously guffawing at how “seriously” they seemed to be taking the subject, to the point of “their” calling me a perfectionist; despite, uhm, seriously having approached mounting the post with its pictures and processing the photos for presentation, as well as of course maintaining my recipe archive, and again of course being fairly serious on a hobby level about my cooking, for the overall cooking project I have always had a certain laid back, “enjoying the fun” pleasure to mounting the posts. Which, I must admit, intentionally include a lot of photos detailing usually every last step and even micro-step. I would estimate that the “hosts” got it better in the second podcast by calling me meticulous.

The end result of the two podcasts is so good that except for the knowledge that it’s totally AI generated, I would actually believe that the podcast was hosted by real people and put together by real people providing real feedback. As such, I have a few responses to some of the “comments” that the “hosts” made:

Shorter Podcast: (audio here)

I am flattered in a giggly kind of way that the “hosts” underlined the dirty oven window, which I myself had somewhat sheepishly admitted was the case in the original post;
The “hosts” seem to enthusiastically say it’s like a scientific document with no room for error; I would challenge anyone to compare the blog post against the recipe and say that the two are identical. 🙂
For the record: I did not lick the spoon. 🙂
The “hosts” spoke of how much care I took by freezing them … well, I will go into the “easy” column and say both that baking a half batch or a double batch is roughly as easy as a standard batch, and, that I often try to make recipes that are good for the freezer!
And finally … the “hosts”, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, pretty much suggested that I make a blog post on making the morning coffee, which I may just do sometimes in the future. 🙂

Longer Podcast: (audio here)

The “hosts” asked what does “easy” mean in my claim that the muffins are easy to make, such as is it the number of ingredients, the technique, or the cleanup? “They” initially conclude “Let’s find out!” “They” then go on to point out that the use of the paper liners, and the reuse of the measuring cup used to measure out the yoghurt to then measure out the oil without cleaning it in between, as examples of the “easy” part.
The “hosts” seem to insinuate at a couple of points that the amounts of sugar and oil used are “generous”, while of course continuing to state that the muffins’ crumb would no doubt be rather moist as a result; yet, when discussing the presence of the yoghurt, the “hosts” wondered whether the yoghurt muffins were just an alternative to the bran muffins I make for my mom, but ultimately seemed to decide that it was obviously a “health angle”. I perceived this as a lack of continuity in the “creation” of the podcast. And to be clear, having adopted this recipe was simply meant to be an alternative to the bran muffins I give to my mom, which is clearly stated at the beginning of the post; further, I am not trying to “match” the sweetness of bran muffins.
The “hosts” say that the kind of yoghurt I use is not identified, ie. firm yoghurt, stirred yoghurt, or greek yoghurt, etc.; “they” are correct that the tub does not say so, at least in the view in the picture. However, “they” do read into it by saying that this lack of information is part of the “easy” claim by letting people trying the recipe to use what they have on hand. Also, “they” did not pick up on the strawberry on the tub as an example of how the “relatively plain” was intentionally a loose interpretation.
The “hosts” say that the kind of oil I used was not identified; again, the photo of the jug plainly says “vegetable oil”, which should tell all bakers that it’s generic vegetable-based cooking oil.

Is this a fun tool? Sure. My brother and I have bandied about ideas — purely in the hypothetical — about using the tool to create large numbers of podcasts that could then be syndicated to AM radio stations for the overnight slot during which a lot of content is often recycled or of what we consider to be of dubious interest.

October 3, 2024December 21, 2024

Making (Simple) (and Relatively) Plain Yoghurt Muffins — Photos

These easy to make muffins are fairly straightforward, tasty, and, despite being labeled as “plain”, the term is used somewhat loosely since the yoghurt used may be any kind of flavoured yoghurt, which will come across lightly but distinctly in the final product. As well, small amounts of fruits or other flavouring agents could be added without substantial changes.

I had originally researched the recipe to allow me to serve a different kind of muffin to my mom, in order to contrast the bran muffins she likes as well; as noted elsewhere, she enjoys the bran muffin recipe I found on the internet more than her own bran muffin recipe.

Note that this yoghurt muffin recipe lends itself well to half batches (one egg only), as well as easy and quick baking in countertop toaster-ovens.

Update 20241008: Using the Google NotebookLM podcast generator, two podcasts were produced about this post, and, I made a blog entry about the podcasts. Podcast1 Podcast2

Making the muffins:

First, the oven was pre-heated to 350F:

A tray of muffin moulds, and correspondingly sized paper liners, were taken out:

Muffin moulds and paper liners taken out

The moulds were each lined with paper muffin liners:

The lined baking tray was put aside, and a mixing bowl, a spoon, and a fork were taken out:

Flour and a measuring cup were taken out:

The measuring cup was filled with flour:

The flour was transferred to the mixing bowl:

Sugar was taken out, and the measuring cup was taken out again:

Sugar was measured out:

The sugar was transferred to the mixing bowl with the flour:

Sugar transferred to mixing bowl with flour

Baking powder and measuring spoons were taken out:

Baking powder and measuring spoons taken out

Baking powder was measured out:

The baking powder was added to the flour and sugar in the mixing bowl:

Salt and measuring spoons were taken out:

Salt was measured out:

The salt added to the flour, sugar, and baking powder:

Using the fork, the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt were thoroughly mixed:

Flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt thoroughly mixed with fork

A tub of yoghurt and a measuring cup were taken out:

Yoghurt was measured out:

The yoghurt was transferred to the bowl with the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt:

Yoghurt transferred to bowl of flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt

Yoghurt transferred to bowl of flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt, with spoon added

Vegetable oil was taken out, and the measuring cup used for the yoghurt was reused, without needing to clean it since I’d only just used it moments before for the yoghurt :

Vegetable oil and measuring cup taken out

The vegetable oil was measured out:

The vegetable oil was transferred to the bowl with the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and yoghurt:

Eggs were taken out:

The eggs were cracked into the bowl with the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, yoghurt, and vegetable oil:

All the ingredients were mixed together with a spoon:

… creating a thick paste dough:

The muffin mould tray prepared earlier was taken out:

The dough was spooned into the paper muffin moulds:

The filled muffin tray was placed in the preheated oven:

A timer was set to 21 minutes:

Looking through the oven window (which admittedly could use a cleaning!), the muffins began to rise:

Muffins baking and tops beginning to brown

While the muffins were baking, cooling racks were taken out:

After the timer ran out and the muffins had baked, the muffins were taken out of the oven, and the tray placed on a cutting board:

The muffins were transferred from the muffin tray moulds to the cooling racks to cool down:

Freshly baked muffins transferred to the cooling racks

A yummy fresh muffin was served to my mom with another mini-muffin, with the paper linings removed:

… and the rest of the cooled muffins were placed in a sealable freezer bag, to be placed in the freezer:

Cooled muffins placed in a sealable freezer bag

Yummy!

March 27, 2024

Making Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Squares — Photos

This decadently rich and scrumptious dessert is another relatively new addition to my collection of recipes. Mom loves it!

Making the squares:

Before beginning, some cream cheese was taken out of the fridge and put on the counter to warm up to room temperature:

Cream cheese taken out before beginning in order to soften it

Parchment paper and an 8″ baking pan were taken out:

Parchment paper and baking pan taken out

A parchment paper larger than the baking pan was torn off the roll …

… and the baking pan was lined with the parchment paper, with a little bit left over the edges of the pan:

The pan was put aside for a few moments, and a countertop convection oven was set to 325F and turned on:

Graham cracker crumbs were taken out:

A cup and a half of graham cracker crumbs were measured out:

The graham cracker crumbs were transferred to a mixing bowl:

Graham cracker crumbs transferred to mixing bowl

Margarine was taken out:

Margarine was scooped out of the tub:

The margarine was placed in a bowl, previously placed on the scale and the tare set to zero:

The margarine was melted in the microwave oven, 15 seconds at a time:

Margarine being melted 15 seconds at a time in microwave oven

Once fully melted, the margarine was taken out of the microwave oven:

Melted margarine taken out of the microwave oven

The melted margarine was poured over the graham cracker crumbs in the mixing bowl:

Melted margarine poured over graham cracker crumbs

An electric blender was taken out and used to fully mix the graham cracker crumbs and the melted margarine:

Graham cracker crumbs and melted margarine mixed with electric blender

The baking pan with the parchment paper lining was brought back and the fully blended graham cracker crumbs and melted margarine were transferred to the baking pan.

Graham cracker mix transferred to baking pan

The graham cracker mix was flattened with an egg flipper:

Graham cracker mix flattened with an egg flipper

The baking pan with the graham cracker crust was placed in the pre-heated countertop oven:

A timer was set for six minutes:

While the graham cracker crust was baking, a cooling rack was taken out (and placed on my stove):

After baking for six minutes, the graham cracker crust was taken out of the oven and placed on the cooling rack:

Graham cracker crust placed on cooling rack

Another bowl was placed in the scale and the tare set to zero:

Small bowl placed on scale and scale set to zero

More margarine was taken out and measured out:

The mixing bowl had been washed while the graham cracker base was baking, and the margarine was transferred to the mixing bowl:

Margarine transferred to clean mixing bowl

Brown sugar and a measuring cup were taken out:

The brown sugar was measured out:

The brown sugar was transferred to the mixing bowl with the margarine:

Table sugar and a measuring spoon were taken out:

Table sugar was measured out and poured into the mixing bowl with the brown sugar and margarine:

Salt was taken out and measured out:

The salt was added to the mixing bowl with the two kinds of sugar and margarine:

Vanilla extract and a measuring spoon were taken out:

The vanilla extract was measured out and added to the mixing bowl with the two kinds of sugar, margarine, and salt:

Flour and a measuring cup were taken out:

The flour was measured out:

The flour was transferred to the bowl with the two kinds of sugar, margarine, salt, and vanilla extract:

Two kinds of chocolate chips were taken out:

Half a cup of milk chocolate chips were measured out:

Half a cup of milk chocolate chips measured out

… and half a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips were measured out:

Half a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips measured out

The chocolate chips were added to the mixing bowl with the other ingredients:

A hand held electric mixer was taken out and the ingredients mixed to make a powdery dough:

The cookie dough was transferred to another bowl and put aside:

Cookie dough transferred to another bowl

Cookie dough transferred to another bowl and put aside

The package of cream cheese placed on the counter earlier to warm up to room temperature was taken out and opened with a pair of scissors:

The cream cheese was transferred to the mixing bowl, the latter of which again was washed in between mixing jobs.

The table sugar was taken out again and measured out:

The table sugar was transferred to the mixing bowl with the cream cheese:

The electric mixer was taken out again to cream the cream cheese and table sugar together:

Eggs were taken out:

The egg was cracked into the bowl with the cream cheese and sugar:

Egg cracked in bowl with cream cheese and sugar

Vanilla extract was taken out again:

The vanilla extract was measured out and was added to the bowl with the cream cheese, sugar, and egg:

The egg and vanilla extract were mixed into the cream cheese and sugar:

Egg and vanilla extract mixed into cream cheese and sugar

The now-cooled graham cracker crumb base was taken out:

Cooled graham cracker crumb base taken out

The cream cheese mix was transferred on top of the graham cracker crumb crust:

The cream cheese mix was spread evenly over the graham cracker crumb crust:

Cream cheese mix spread evenly over base

The chocolate chip cookie dough was taken out:

A bit of the cookie dough was picked up in my hand …

… and the ball of dough was flattened between my two hands:

The flattened cookie dough was placed on top of the cream cheese mix:

Flattened cookie dough placed on top of cream cheese mix

… and repeated with more cookie dough:

Flattened cookie dough pieces placed on top of cream cheese mix

… until all the cookie dough was used and the whole surface of the cream cheese mix was covered:

Flattened cookie dough pieces fully covering cream cheese mix

The baking pan was placed in the still-hot countertop convection oven:

A timer was set for 30 minutes:

After the 30-minute baking period, the baking pan was taken out of the oven and placed on a cooling rack:

Once the dessert had cooled enough, it was removed from the baking pan using the edges of the parchment paper:

The dessert was first cut in half:

The dessert was cut into quarters:

The dessert was rotated 90 degrees, and sliced just left of centre (so that it can be cut five ways):

Dessert rotated and sliced left of centre

The slicing of dessert was completed (five slices along this axis), making twenty (20) pieces:

And a yummy piece of dessert was served!

February 2, 2024

malak.ca updates, random recipe link, recipe additions, and recipe updates

Just a little note to say that some minor updates to the malak.ca site were added this week:

there is a new (and fun, at least to me) feature to the main page at https://www.malak.ca : A random recipe link that randomly serves up a recipe (thanks to my brother!), including some of my recipes using my old format resembling a more traditional recipe card, while of course also serving up my recipes in my current, very detailed format;
a number of my recipes have been updated, ranging from minor details (such as for blondies), to correcting some spelling and grammatical errors, to adding the occasional missing instruction (such as with my bread machine white bread), to the addition of half-batch measurements (such as for my mom’s raisin bran muffins, and the plain yoghurt muffins), a result of playing with the new random recipe link on the main page;
a few recipes were added:

Enjoy!

August 13, 2023August 13, 2023

Making Stewed Rhubarb — Photos

I picked up making stewed rhubarb because my mom always liked using the rhubarb grown in her garden to make stewed rhubarb and rhubarb chutney. (Ironically, for this post, and often enough, I use rhubarb purchased from the grocery store!)

Note that this recipe effectively needs to be done over two days, or at least with a pause of several hours (roughly equivalent to a minimum of “overnight” ) between preparing the rhubarb, and beginning to stew the rhurbarb.

Note that I also am using the “packing in mason jars and heat-processing” method to preserve the stewed rhubarb, and to allow for the making of larger amounts of stewed rhubarb at once; once the heat-processed jars have cooled, the stewed rhubarb is ready to eat.

Making the Stewed Rhubarb:

Day one:

After buying some rhubarb at the grocery store, some mise-en-place was done by taking out a cutting board, a mixing bowl, a measuring cup, a kitchen knife, and a kitchen scale:

Cutting board, mixing bowl, measuring cup, kitchen knife, and kitchen scale taken out

To avoid confusion a bit later on, the tare weight of the mixing bowl was measured and noted (instead of using the tare function on the kitchen scale):

The rhubarb purchased earlier was taken out (yes, it is a bit shabby!)

The elastics and labels were removed from the rhubarb bunches:

I began to wash and rinse the rhubarb:

The rinsed rhubarb stalks were brought to the cutting board:

The rhubarb stalks were trimmed:

The trimmings were placed in a kitchen waste bucket for later disposal in a municipal composting programme:

Trimmings placed in bucket for composting

If the rhubarb isn’t completely fresh, or especially typical (in my experience) for commercial rhubarb purchased at the grocery store, sometimes there is some minor damage to the stalks to be removed:

The stalk damage was removed (and while my name can be found on my — this — website in several places, I have blacked it out from my knife, on which I had inscribed my name years ago):

The trimmed rhubarb stalks were piled up …

… and the rhubarb stalks were rinsed again to remove the last of the bits:

Some stalks were laid on the cutting board for chopping:

The rhubarb stalks were chopped using a slicing motion against the grain:

As chopped rhubarb started piling up on the chopping board, it was transferred to the mixing bowl:

Chopped rhubarb transferred to mixing bowl

The rest of the rhubarb was chopped, and transferred to the mixing bowl as it was produced:

The bowl of chopped rhubarb was placed on the kitchen scale and weighed:

The weight was noted, to be used in a moment:

A large pot and wooden mixing spoon were taken out:

The chopped rhubarb was transferred to the pot:

A calculator app was started, and the net weight of chopped rhubarb was calculated by subtracting the bowl tare weight from the weight of the bowl filled with the chopped rhubarb:

Net weight of chopped rhubarb calculated

Since my recipe is based on the Imperial system, the weight of 0.895kg (above) was converted to pounds, giving a result just barely shy of two pounds of chopped rhubarb:

Next, a multiplication factor for how many “recipe units” was calculated by dividing the weight of the chopped rhubarb by the base amount of three quarters of a pound:

The multiplication factor was multiplied by the required amount of sugar and lemon juice for per “recipe unit” of 3/4 lb of chopped rhubarb: Half a cup of sugar, and half an ounce of lemon juice, resulting in 1-1/3 cups of sugar, and 1-1/3 ounces of lemon juice:

Multiplication factor applied to sugar and lemon juice required

Sugar and a measuring cup were taken out:

Sugar was measured out:

The sugar was poured onto the chopped rhubarb:

Sugar poured into pot of chopped rhubarb

The chopped rhubarb and sugar were mixed with the wooden spoon:

Lemon juice was measured out:

Extra sugar was added to the lemon juice:

The lemon juice and extra sugar were mixed:

The lemon juice and sugar mix were added to the chopped rhubarb and sugar:

Lemon juice and sugar added to chopped rhubarb and sugar

The chopped rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice were mixed some more:

Chopped rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice mixed

A lid was placed on the pot of rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice:

Lid placed on pot of chopped rhubarb mix

The pot of chopped rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice was placed in a fridge overnight:

Pot of chopped rhubarb mix placed in fridge

Day two:

Early the next morning, I checked on the pot of chopped rhubarb:

As can be sort of be seen above and better in the following photo, a good amount of liquid had been drawn by the sugar from the pieces of chopped rhubarb:

The chopped rhubarb was mixed again with a spoon:

The pot of chopped rhubarb was returned to the fridge until later that evening (after coming home from work.)

That evening, a jar wrench, a jar funnel, tongs, a ladle, and a stainless steel flipper were taken out:

Jar wrench, jar funnel, tongs, ladle, and stainless steel flipper taken out

Mason jars, a few more than I expected to need, and new lids and lid rings, were taken out, but kept aside for the moment:

A pot and trivet were taken out, to act as a boiling water bath soon:

The trivet was placed in the bottom of the pot:

The pot was filled with water:

The pot of water was placed on a burner on the stove:

The stove was turned on:

… and the lid was placed back on the pot:

Since I had placed the pot of water on a smaller burner, which proved to be a mistake, I still waited a bit before taking out the pot of chopped rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice, and placing it on the stove:

Pot of Rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice placed on stove

After waiting a bit more, having gauged the heating up of the pot of water, the burner under the chopped rhubarb mix was turned on:

Burner under chopped rhubarb mix turned on

The lid on the pot of chopped rhubarb mix was removed:

As the rhubarb mix was heating up, I of course mixed it to avoid burning:

The rhubarb mix began to boil:

At this point, the rhubarb mix was taken off the burner, and since the water bath had not yet reached the boiling point, I brought it forward to the larger burner to bring it to a boil more quickly:

Water bath brought forward to larger burner on stove

Fortunately, it was obvious that the water bath was “hot enough” to dip the (clean) bottle funnel to sanitize it:

The bottle funnel was placed in the neck of a jar:

The ladle was dipped in the hot water to sanitize it:

I started ladling the boiled rhubarb mix into the jar until it was filled:

A lid and ring were brought to the jar, and screwed onto the jar (oops, I forgot to take a picture of this second part):

Lid brought to filled jar and screwed on

The rest of the boiled rhubarb mix was transferred into jars, and lids were screwed onto the jars:

At this point, the water in the water bath was finally starting to boil:

Using the jar wrench, the filled jars were transferred to the water bath:

Once the water had come to a rolling boil …

… a timer was set to 15 minutes …

… and the lid was placed back on the pot with the water bath and filled jars:

At this point, the water was boiling so vigorously, that water was splashing out of the pot!

Water splashing out of boiling water bath onto stovetop

After 15 minutes had elapsed, the filled jars were removed from the water bath using the jar wrench:

The now heat-processed jars were placed on the the cutting board:

Heat-processed jar placed on cutting board

Heat-processed jars placed on cutting board

Hot water collecting on the jars was soaked up with a towel:

The jars were moved apart from each other to allow for some ambient cooling for a few moments:

Jars separated to facilitate ambient cooling

Then, the still-warm jars were moved to a fridge to complete cooling.

At this point, I changed tack a bit and printed out some labels for the jars, modifying another label template I have for my pickled eggs:

Printed labels for jars of stewed rhubarb

Scissors, a hole punch, and some elastics were taken out:

Scissors, hole punch, and elastics taken out

Four labels were cut from the sheet:

A date code (in this case for 09 August, 2023, the day I filled and processed the jars) was written on the back / inside of each label:

The labels were folded over onto themselves:

I should note at this point at which the print is more legible, that I live in Montreal, where French predominates, hence the labels are in both English and French. As it happened in the picture above, the folded labels with the English showing were upside down because that’s how I inadvertently happened to flip them over. 🙂

I then picked up the labels, piled them one on another, and crimped the folds:

Labels brought together and folds crimped

A hole was punched through the labels on the end opposite to the fold:

On each individual label, the end near the hole was folded over:

Ah here, the English labels are right side up. 🙂

An elastic was threaded through the hole of a label:

The elastic was looped into itself, and loosely tightened to allow for it to at once hold the label, as well as have a loop to use to go around a jar’s neck:

… which was repeated for the other three labels:

The following morning, the cooled (and fully sealed) jars were removed from the fridge, and brought to the workspace where the labels were:

Labels were looped around the jars:

These jars will be kept to be donated to my church’s fall fair, along with a few jars of my pickled eggs! (And, Mom will receive any which don’t sell. 🙂 )

July 27, 2023July 27, 2023

Making Bagel and Cream Cheese Pieces Bites — Photos

This post is a bit of a gratuitous post to pass the time during my holidays, while showing a bit how I leverage freezers as useful tools for day to day cooking and eating, and highlight how, beyond the strictly obvious (or conversely, as an example of the obvious, whichever you prefer 🙂 ), my cooking efforts actually do fit into and serve everyday life — literally!

Yes, the breakfast shown at the end of this post is a very typical daily breakfast for me these days, barring the days, often on weekends or holidays, when I might choose to make other breakfast foods from my collection of recipes (or of course, something else completely.)

Note: I must confess that despite claiming to be a proud Montrealer, for these breakfast bites, I favour a commercial, industrially baked bagel typical of the fluffy, New-York style (here is my archive), instead of Montreal-style bagels (here is my archive).)

Making the Bagel and Cream Cheese Bites:

After coming home from the store and having bought bagels and a cream cheese spread flavoured with “herbs” and roasted garlic, I took out a cutting board:

A bagel slicer, basically a serrated edge attached to a wooden guide, and a table knife, were taken out:

A bag of commercially produced bagels, purchased earlier in the day, was taken out:

The bag clip was taken off the bag in order to open the bag of bagels:

The bagels were taken out of the bag:

The empty bag was kept and put aside:

A bagel was sliced (be careful, some industrially produced bagels may be partly pre-sliced):

… and the rest of the bagels were sliced:

A 227g (8oz) container of a commercially prepared cream cheese spread, in this case flavoured with “herbs” and roasted garlic, purchased earlier in the day, was taken out:

The lid was removed from the cream cheese container …

Plastic seal to be removed from container

… and the plastic seal was also removed from the container:

The knife was used to pick up some of the cream cheese:

A couple of bagel halves were placed on the cutting board, and the knife holding the cream cheese was brought to them …

… and cream cheese was spread on one of the bagel halves:

The two bagel halves were put back together:

Cream cheese was spread on a few more bagels, and after spreading cream cheese on half of the bagels, the container was about half empty:

I continued to spread cream cheese on the rest of the bagels; I scraped the last of the cream cheese out of the container, and I spread the last of the cream cheese onto the last of the six bagels:

Scraping the last of the cream cheese from the bottom of the container and spread onto last bagel

At this point, all six bagels were filled with cream cheese:

At this point, a clean knife was taken out, and a bagel was cut at a single point:

… and then the bagel was cut in two other places, resulting in three pieces:

The bagel pieces were placed back in the bag:

… and as I continued cutting up the rest of the bagels, I placed the bagel pieces in the bag:

… until all the bagel pieces were in the bag:

A tie wrap was taken out:

The tie wrap was used to seal up the bag again:

The bag of bagel and cream cheese pieces was placed in the freezer:

Bag of bagel and cream cheese pieces placed in freezer

The next morning, I took out a bagel and cream cheese bite, and defrosted it along with a mini raisin bran muffin, made earlier in the week using my mom’s bran muffin recipe, a pickled egg, some cheese, and some peanut butter scooped from the jar:

Yummy!

May 3, 2023May 3, 2023

Making Mashed Sweet Potato and Ground Roast Pork Casseroles — Photos

This is a relatively new addition to my collection of recipes, after having looked through an old community cookbook given to me by a neighbour. It is based on a near-identical recipe obviously (and expressly) intended to use up leftovers from a roast pork Sunday dinner; however, after trying the original recipe, which called for the use of brown sugar and apple slices, I decided to omit the sugar, which made the dish too sweet, and the apples, which didn’t suit us, and replaced them with cooked carrots.

This cooking session occurred in early April, 2023; for a variety of reasons, including the sheer number of photos to organize and prepare for this post — I went into overdrive! — it has taken a bit more than three weeks for me to build this blog post. Also, for the sake of the narrative, the photo progression presented here occasionally differs from the precise progression of when the photos were taken, either because of some mise-en-place activities, actual progression of the food preparation, photo shooting (and occasionally its impact on progression), several operations occurring concurrently, and the like.

Preparing the dish:

Firstly, a countertop convection oven was turned on:

Oven turned on and set to 350F — Countertop oven turned on

A roasting tray was taken out:

A package of (frozen) pork loin, defrosted prior to the cooking session, was taken out:

Scissors were taken out to open the vacuum pack sealing the pork:

The pork loin’s vacuum pack was cut open:

The pork loin, removed from the vacuum pack, was placed in the roasting tray:

Garlic salt was taken out:

Garlic salt was liberally shaken on top of the pork loin:

The pork loin was placed in the countertop convection oven:

Pork placed in countertop convection oven

A timer was set for an hour as a reminder for how long to cook the pork loin:

A pot was taken out for boiling carrots:

A scale was taken out to know roughly measure out the right amount of carrot:

Carrots were taken out:

About a quarter pound of carrot — in this case, a single carrot — was taken out of the bag:

The carrot was cleaned and rinsed:

The cleaned carrot was placed on a cutting board:

The carrot was trimmed:

The carrot was sliced lengthwise:

… and again sliced a few more times to make carrot spears:

Carrot sliced lengthwise to create spears

The carrot spears were chopped:

The chopped carrots were transferred to the pot:

Water was added to the pot of chopped carrots until the carrots were covered:

Salt was added to the carrots and water:

A stove burner was turned on:

The carrots were brought to a boil …

Once the carrots were boiled for about ten minutes, the boiling water was drained off:

A mixing bowl was taken out in which to transfer the carrots:

The boiled carrots were transferred to the mixing bowl:

Boiled carrots transferred to mixing bowl

The carrots were put aside for a bit.

A microwave-safe cooking vessel was taken out, ready for a few moments later when the sweet potatoes would be peeled:

A bowl was placed on the scale, and the scale set to zero:

A bit more than four pounds of sweet potatoes were measured out:

A potato peeler was taken out:

The sweet potatoes were peeled, with the peels placed in a bucket to keep for later disposal in a municipal composting programme:

Peeled sweet potatoes were placed in the microwave-safe cooking vessel:

Peeled sweet potato placed in cooking vessel

A kitchen knife was taken out:

The sweet potatoes were sliced and quartered:

… and placed back in the microwave-safe cooking vessel:

Sweet potato quarters placed in cooking vessel

Water was added to the cooking vessel …

… to about a bit below the surface of the sweet potatoes:

The vessel was covered …

… and placed in the microwave oven:

The microwave oven (1200 watts) was set to 18 minutes:

… and the microwave oven was turned on:

While the sweet potatoes were cooking, a package of dried gravy mix — turkey gravy, which is what I had on hand, and in a package that makes a cup’s worth of gravy, as called for in the recipe, was taken out:

The gravy packet was opened and its contents transferred to another pot that was taken out:

A measuring cup was taken out:

A cup of water was measured out:

The water was added to the pot:

The gravy mix and water were mixed with a spoon:

The gravy was put aside, since the time on the roast pork ran out:

A meat thermometer was taken out …

… and stuck into the pork, giving a temperature reading just right for fully cooked pork:

The pork was removed from the roasting pan:

… and the juices in the roasting pan were drained into the bowl with the cooked carrots

Pork juices drained into bowl with cooked carrots

The roast pork was sliced thickly:

The roast pork was cut into cubes:

A small blender with chopping blades was taken out …

… and the blender was plugged in:

Cubes of roast pork were placed in the blender …

… and the lid placed on top of the blender:

The pork was ground finely without creating a mush:

The chopped pork was transferred to the bowl with the cooked carrots and pork juices:

Ground pork transferred to bowl with carrots

Larger bits of pork which did not get ground finely enough were removed from the bowl, to be ground again with more pork cubes:

Larger bits of pork removed from bowl to be reground with the rest of the pork

The rest of the pork was ground and transferred to the mixing bowl.

Returning to the gravy, a burner on the stove was turned on, in this case, the smaller inner part of a larger burner which has two settings:

The gravy was constantly mixed while being heated, to avoid burning:

Once the gravy came to a boil, the timer was set to a minute …

One minute set on timer once gravy boiling

… while the burner setting was reduced to just about minimum to only allow for simmering:

Once the minute ran out, the gravy was poured over the ground pork and carrots:

Gravy poured into bowl with pork and carrots

The gravy, ground pork, and carrots were mixed with the spoon:

At this point, oven-proof dishes were taken out, for filling:

The meat mix was spooned into containers to about half full, and spread out evenly:

At this point, I came back to the sweet potatoes, which had long since finished cooking in the microwave oven:

Cooked sweet potatoes taken out of microwave oven

The sweet potatoes were checked with a fork to see if they were properly cooked through, which they were:

Cooked sweet potatoes checked for degree of cooking

The water was drained off of the sweet potatoes:

A container of margarine was taken out and opened:

A dollop of margarine was taken from the margarine container with a spoon:

Dollop of margarine taken from container

The margarine was added to the sweet potatoes:

A measuring cup and milk were taken out:

Milk was measured out:

The milk was added to the sweet potatoes and margarine:

Measuring spoons were taken out:

Salt was taken out:

Salt was measured out:

The salt was added to the sweet potatoes:

An electric mixer was taken out, to mash the sweet potatoes:

The electric mixer was plugged in:

The sweet potatoes were mashed with the electric mixer:

Mashing sweet potatoes with electric mixer

A plastic icing spreader was taken out:

Mashed sweet potatoes were picked up with the icing spreader …

Mashed sweet potato picked up with icing spreader

… and, back to the containers with the pork, gravy, and carrots mix, the mashed sweet potatoes were spread on top of the meat mix :

Mashed sweet potatoes spread on top of meat mix

Plastic bags were taken out and identified and dated:

The dishes were placed in the individual bags:

And finally, the bagged dishes were placed in the freezer:

This tasty dish is now a favourite!

March 4, 2023January 28, 2024

Making a two egg, ham and cheese omelette — Photos

I picked up making omelettes for Mom a few months ago out of the blue, because they’re easy to make, and Mom seemed to appreciate them right off the bat. As of this post’s writing, I don’t have a formal recipe written up, but I imagine I could soon; hence for the moment, this post *is* The recipe can now be found here! 🙂 (20240128)

Making the omelette:

I normally keep ground ham in the freezer, divided into serving sizes in small containers, so I took some out, about 15g to 20g (about half to three quarters of an ounce):

Should you not have ground ham on hand, here’s how I make the ground ham:

Deli-style sliced “old-fashioned smoked ham”, in this case purchased at the grocery store in the pre-packaged deli meats counter, was taken out:

… and a coffee grinder was taken out:

The package was opened up, and a couple of slices of ham were placed in the coffee grinder …

… the coffee grinder was closed …

… and the ham was coarsely ground (though not turned to mush!) a few pulses at a time:

(… and, the rest of the ham in the package was similarly ground and placed in a couple of containers, divided up into individual serving sizes, and frozen.)

The frozen ham taken out earlier was placed in the microwave oven to defrost it:

Frozen ground ham placed in microwave oven

… and the microwave oven (1100 watts) was set to about 30 seconds, just enough to mostly defrost the ham:

Microwave oven set to 30 seconds (1100 watts)

The microwave oven was turned on:

Chopped ham defrosting in microwave oven

Finally, the defrosted chopped ham was broken up with a fork:

Defrosted chopped ham broken up with fork

The chopped ham was put aside for a few moments.

Again, normally, I keep cheddar cheese sliced off the block in the fridge, so I took some out:

Container of cheddar cheese sliced off block

Should you not have sliced cheese on hand, here’s how I slice the cheese: A block of cheddar cheese and a cheese slicer in the form of a slotted lifter, where were the slot has an edge intended for slicing the likes of cheese off of a block, were taken out; normally we like mild cheddar, but you can choose any kind of cheese you like that will slice, shred, or crumble nicely:

Block of cheddar cheese with cheese slicer

The block of cheese was unwrapped:

Unwrapped block of cheddar cheese with cheese slicer

Cheese was sliced off the block:

… and as the cheese was sliced, it was placed in a container:

The cheese slices which were produced for this demonstration were put away in the fridge, while the cheese slices taken out earlier were put aside on the counter for a few moments.

Back to the omelette, a mixing bowl was taken out:

Two eggs were taken out:

Two eggs were cracked in the mixing bowl:

Milk was taken out, and about an ounce of milk was measured out:

The milk was added to the eggs:

A bit of salt was added to the eggs and milk:

The mixture was beaten with a fork:

Beating eggs and milk and salt with fork

For this amount of egg mixture, I use a 6 inch / 15 centimetre non-stick frypan:

Also, an aluminum pie plate was taken out:

The stove was turned on to a low setting, but, crucially, given that I was using a larger burner and that this burner can be set to only use a smaller, inner circle, I should have only set it to that smaller, inner circle.

Cooking oil, in this case olive oil, was taken out and added to the frypan:

The olive oil was spread over the cooking surface of the frypan:

The beaten egg mixture was poured into the frypan:

The aluminum pie plate was placed over the frypan as a means to cook the top of the egg mixture somewhat more quickly:

A few slices of the cheese was taken out of the container, about enough just to cover half the surface of the omelette, twice, with a not too thick layer of cheese, especially since there will be two layers (see below):

The aluminum pie plate was taken off the frypan, revealing that the egg mixture was cooking through:

About half the cheese slices were placed on half of the omelette (in this case, on the left hand half of the omelette!):

The ground ham was spread over the cheese on the omelette:

The rest of the cheese slices were placed on top of the ground ham:

The aluminum pie plate was again placed on top of the frypan, in order to help melt the cheese and warm the ham:

A few moments later, the pie plate was removed, and half the omelette was flipped over onto the other half:

A bit of water was drawn from a tap and into a glass …

Some water was poured into the frypan, in order to create some steam:

Water poured into the frypan to create steam

The aluminum pie plate was again placed on top of the frypan to capture the steam to continue cooking the omelette:

Aluminum pie plate placed on top of frypan

The aluminum pie plate was again removed from the frypan, and the omelette cut in two:

At this point, the two halves were quickly turned over (oops, I forgot to take a picture) and cooked for another very small moment.

Half the omelette was served on a plate for Mom to have right away, and the other half was placed in a container to place in the fridge, for Mom to have at a later time:

Ketchup was added, and the omelette was served to Mom:

To my pleasure, Mom yet again found it to be tasty!

December 19, 2022December 19, 2022

Freezer Cooking and Lunches

In mid-2006, my employer at the time was acquired by another company, and my new employers required me – rightfully so – to take some basic training that I should have taken several years earlier. The training was after work hours, two evenings a week, for a few weeks.

Normally, my eating habits were (and still are) such that a given day’s lunch was composed of leftovers from the previous evening’s supper; in fact, normally supper meal plans at the time and still to this day usually intentionally include cooking for one more serving than the meal would call for, so that I would have a lunch the following day.

The training course, however, had the effect of not only requiring me to improvise for my supper plans, such as eating fast food, but also required me to improvise for the following day’s lunch too. My memory of this period is that there was a snowball effect on much of the week’s meals, although it probably was not quite as dramatic as what my mind has woven into my memory.

One of the solutions I came up with — but never quite fully implemented at the time — was the idea of a cooking weekend, targeted at being done at the cottage. My ambition at that point was to stock the freezer with a variety, as well as a large stock, of dishes and prepared meals, including lunches, so that the above situation wouldn’t be a problem moving forward. I had notions that were fairly ambitious, both in terms of the variety of meals to be made during the weekend, as well as the sheer amount of food that I suppose I expected to make over such a hypothetical weekend.

I developed the following planning table:

The table I created with basic plans for such a cooking weekend

As can be seen, one of the goals was to make a number of dishes based on a common ingredient, my spaghetti sauce, which I had begun making in the early 1990’s.

As also can be seen, although there were a few numbers of dishes to produce, overall the list is rather vague in what I would end up with in terms of numbers. Among other things, while I did have rough ideas of how much of most of the items I would make (or at least envisioned making), for instance, I didn’t start planning out the required amounts of each of the ingredients and sub-ingredients needed to make the dishes and components.

Overall, it seemed — and still seems to this day — rather vague and all over the place, and overly ambitious to the point of being daunting. Critically, although I knew that I would be making about seven to eight quarts of my spaghetti sauce, I didn’t plan out its ingredients, determine just how many of each of the other dishes for which it would be used would be produced from the seven to eight quarts, or whether some of the “larger” dishes were to be prepared for their own sake and the freezer, or to be ultimately cooked and divided up into lunch containers. Except as an afterthought, I just about didn’t even insert the making of the spaghetti sauce into the weekend’s already ambitious cooking plans!

Before coming to this last realization, I realized that my plan would only produce two or three servings’ or meals’ worth of each, which might all be eaten in short order.

Unsurprisingly, the planned weekend was never executed, and after a few weeks, my evenings freed up, and my regular lunches returned.

Years later, I realized despite the usefulness of the intentions behind my plans for the cooking weekend, at least for me, it suffered from not only being too ambitious in its own right, but from being even more ambitious than I thought. At the same time, the overall plan suffered from being a bit too wide in its intended scope given what would be a limited amount of base (the spaghetti sauce). As such, the plan was likely to produce — should I accomplish it all in such a weekend — merely an amount of food, especially the lunches, that would be consumed far more quickly than I had hoped.

My spaghetti sauce — and what I do now for tomato sauce based dishes

My spaghetti sauce was a bit of a marathon sauce to make. Based on canned tomatoes, it also included an inordinate variety and amount of chopped vegetables for a spaghetti sauce, and — especially the end product — was not unlike my current vegetable soup recipe, which I have been making since about 2013. I had a prideful joy in making it, partly as a result of it being so chock-full of vegetables, but, to a degree than I didn’t care to admit at the time, also borne of a stubborn pride resulting from it being a showcase of all the vegetables it contained and a desire to show off a certain (naïve) cooking acumen.

My chili recipe recipe from the early 1990’s, which is essentially my spaghetti sauce with the addition of the red kidney beans and the chili powder (image scanned from my church’s cookbook, published in 1996)

However, one of the things I realized in looking at my big cooking weekend, both early on without realizing it, as well as more formally just recently, was that I just wanted to make, say, lasagna, chilli, beef rolls, pasta dishes, or my eggplant dish (as well as a few lunches not involving my sauce). The “without realizing it” part (early on) was overshadowed by the prideful notion that it made sense at the time to want to use my spaghetti sauce to then make all these other dishes.

Except … I have come to realize that the effort to make the sauce to begin with, as well as my pride in wanting to use it, was perhaps core to the difficulty in implementing the cooking weekend. While the dishes were meant to be a showcase to myself for my spaghetti sauce and as well as my cooking in general, I realized that all these dishes were about showcasing the whole dishes, and not so much meant to showcase my spaghetti sauce.

As such, for a long time now, many of the tomato sauce dishes I make call for commercially prepared tomato / spaghetti sauces, as opposed to, specifically, my home-made sauce.

(As a side thought, were to I make spaghetti sauce again, I have a few vague notions about simplifying it somewhat, as well as chopping the vegetables much more finely, to the point of grinding them, instead of the coarse chopping I favoured for the “sauce” in the 1990’s.)

How things have evolved to today:

Despite the fact that the above weekend plan never materialized, I soon took to often planning cooking weekends when I went to the cottage, especially during the off-season (it’s a family cottage, so there always have been occasional scheduling issues which haven’t always allowed me to do what I would like, when I would like. 🙂 )

However, the first thing that should be mentioned, since this post is at least partly predicated on a period of time in which having ready-made lunches handily available in the freezer was essential, but was not the case, is that … I haven’t since planned out cooking weekends dedicated to cooking ready-made lunches for the freezer, or form a cooking club with a few friends in which we fastidiously make a week’s worth (or more) of lunches and other meals every Saturday, or otherwise come up with a systematic method of stocking the freezer with ready-made lunches.

In the intervening years, the principal approach I have taken to rectify unforeseen needs for prepared lunches is to hoard lunches and leftovers in the freezer; in addition to routinely making extra food for the following day’s lunch, I would occasionally also, at random opportunities, zealously make an extra lunch to place in the freezer. As such, my supply of extra lunches at any given time ebbs and swells according to how many lunches I have managed to hoard at that point in time, versus how many I have needed to eat recently. Fortunately, some of my recipes somewhat ease mounting full lunches in the freezer by being pair-able with odds-and-ends leftovers, such as bacon wrapped chicken, meatballs, and stuffed potato skins.

What I do do is plan “big” cooking weekends many times while I am up at the cottage, including quite often during the off season in winter, incidentally without running water. This is done in conjunction with weekend afternoons in the city with similar objectives (including a cook-through-my-collection-of-recipes project I did mostly in 2021, accessible off my home page at https://www.malak.ca ). Depending on my desires and ambitions, I usually concentrate on single projects, per day anyway; during a week over Christmas to New Year’s, for instance, I usually plan for almost as many large cooking projects as there are days – to cook various large cooking projects to fill the freezer.

I had begun large, more focused, cooking weekends not too long after my above planned weekend should have taken place, continuing a certain tradition I had started years earlier of occasionally making large quantities of my recipes, from a then-limited recipe répertoire, typically focusing on large freezer quantities of one, or perhaps two, recipes from my collection.

Therefore, early on — at this point, exactly “when” being lost to the sands of time and the multiple computer upgrades over the years, during which dates of creation, or at least the last edit, have been lost several times over — I had put the following list together. I tried to write down what my aims and guidelines had become. Note that the text of the list has been slightly edited to fit the current narrative:

A dish needs to be just as easy to make several units of the recipe as one unit – if not easier, and as such not more difficult to make because it’s in quantity (barring the extra time and labour merely due to extra quantity – taking advantage of economies of scale);
A dish needs to be easy to make in large quantities, using a repetitive production line process;
A dish must be appropriate for freezing – for instance, my zucchini dish is not appropriate for freezing, although its sauce is appropriate for freezing!
A dish should be something that just needs to be defrosted and reheated / cooked in toaster oven or regular oven;
A dish should be “convenience food” — the operative notion being “convenient because it’s made in advance and ready to eat” (or brown and serve), not as in “junk food” or like industrially produced, store bought frozen lunches;
A dish should not be something at its core easy enough to make any day of the week fresh (looking back, I suppose that this is barring a notion to make multiple units of otherwise easy to make lunches to stock the freezer, were that have been a priority at the time);
A cooking project should not just be components for other dishes – ie. projects should be to make full meals, not just cooked hamburgers or burger meat, nor just cooked chicken pieces, etc.

Given that over the years, my objectives have evolved, changed, and widened, I have long since abandoned at least a part of the guideline regarding making meal components or single items, because I now regularly cook large quantities of breakfast sausages for freezing, have in the past cooked whole packages or more of bacon for my mom, and I regularly make bacon wrapped chicken, meatloaf, meatballs, stuffed potato skins, as well as cooked ground beef frozen in ice cube trays to keep in the freezer for other times calling for small amounts of cooked ground beef.

Of course, it would only be appropriate to show a recent planning table for a week’s stay at the cottage over Christmas , 2021 (regular meal planning blocked out):

Yes, there are still a lot of details missing here from this list, such as specific numbers, arguably allowing for somebody besides myself to look at both lists and wonder, beyond the more relaxed pace and the specific list of foods and ingredients to bring, what the difference between this 2021 table and the 2006 table are. However, each entry is based on, normally, the standard amounts in my various recipes, plus often slight excesses. And, according to my notes, I also made stuffed potato skins, bran muffins for my mom twice instead of once, and the chocolate buttercrunch twice, as well as, as intimated in the “bring” list, a container of cheese sliced off of the block for my mom to consume the following week.

These days, my freezers are usually full of many tasty dishes from my collection of recipes, individual servings of many foods both from and beyond my collection of recipes, and various lunches made up of leftovers, some consisting of components from multiple meals and cooking sessions. This is actually served by a certain hoarding instinct; I often fill containers with bits of leftovers from a given meal to freeze, and as possible I add to them with other little bits already in the freezer as they are produced.

And … do I run out of lunches? Usually not! However … managing the freezer is a work in progress and a continuous project, sometimes a daily project beyond simply preparing tomorrows lunch; I sometimes grab opportunities to make a second lunch or portion thereof!