Defending Paula Deen

Big news!!!!  Earth shattering in fact....evidently, if you consider the amount coverage that this has been getting.  More important than the kudzu of deficits that are swallowing the earth's economies.  More devastating than Obama's gun running scheme. Fast and Furious.   Bigger than....well, you get the gist.

Paula Deen, the queen of butter and Southern Style comfort food, has diabetes and the food police are doing a happy happy joy dance.  AHA!!! That's what she gets for forcing all of her viewers to eat red velvet cake, fried chicken with gravy, macaroni and cheese and other such items that the food Nazi's despise.   

Serves her right!!  Right?  Right??  No.  Wrong.

People are attacking Deen because she has diabetes, has continued with her show and is now endorsing a diabetes drug.   "Anthony Bourdain is .....mocking the butter-loving chef for poisoning Americans with unhealthy food ... and now trying to profit off of their illness."

She is POISONING us!!!  OMG!!!!.  Run for the hills.  Be sure to dodge all those buttermilk biscuits, hams and sweet potato casseroles while you are making your dash to safety.

In defense of Paula Deen.   Come on people! it is just a cooking show.  Not a diet plan.  She is showing you how to prepare certain dishes that are the hallmarks of a certain cooking style.   Nowhere and at no time does she say that you should eat all of these things every day, three times a day.    

If you don't have the common sense or self control to eat sensibly...well, I don't know what to tell you.   Maybe you shouldn't be allowed outside and you should let other people make your decisions for you.   Oh.....wait.....that is just what the Food Nazi's want to do.

They want to control every aspect of your culinary life by eliminating ingredients. Demonizing certain foods and certain companies that provide food.  Can we all say McDonald's....hmmmm?   The want to force their ideas of diet and food upon you.  

Now, I don't think you SHOULD eat a pound of butter or stuff your pie hole with pie until you are fat and diabetic.  But, it should be your choice.  Go ahead. Eat your life away.  

It should also be my choice, our choice to not have to pay for your self inflicted health condidtion.  This is why I strongly object to Obama Care and Socialized Medicine.  But.....that is a rant for another day.

Let me make a disclaimer.  The Dumbplumber (my hubby) has Type 2 diabetes.  It runs in his family and he was diagnosed about 10 years ago.  We didn't know much about being diabetic.  We had to research and learn how to live.  So, I know what it is like to change your life, change your diet and be aware of what you are eating. at all times.  It is hard. It isn't always fun.

The keys to controlling diabetes are diet and exercise.  His condition is controlled by this and a minimal dose of oral medication.  Does this mean that we will never be able to enjoy a piece of cake or a favorite comfort food ever again?    Do we have to wear a dietary hair shirt and eat tofu daily?  

Of course not. 

I post many recipes on my cooking site [Recipe Junkie] that are certainly high fat, high sugar and would throw The Dumbplumber into a diabetic spiral if he ate them all at one time or more than just occasionally.   Leave Paula Deen alone.  She not only shows us how to make good food, she can now serve as an example on how to live a good life with diabetes.

We have learned that you CAN have your cake and eat it too.   Just in moderation.

Red Lobster Biscuits: NAILED IT!

Red Lobster Cheddar Bay biscuits are heavenly.   People have been looking for the recipe for a long time and as the Red Lobster web site says......the recipe is a secret.

Sure....they tantalize with some tips  "we will share a couple of well-kept secrets for making our much-loved biscuit: do not over knead the dough and make sure you use baking soda as one of the ingredients."

There are a lot of recipes out there that try to emulate the product.  Most use Bisquick or some version of that type of biscuit.  But.....they are wrong.


Reverse engineering the product, I realized that one of the main ingredients was missing from all of these recipes and that Red Lobster has been lying to us for years.  I don't blame them.....the biscuits are to die for.   What is the missing ingredient?   YEAST.  The texture of the rolls shows that they are clearly yeast raised, yet they do have the properties of baking soda and baking powder raised rolls.

What type of rolls have these characteristics......Angel Biscuits....So I went back to one of my old cookbooks and brought out a recipe and tweaked. Messing around in the kitchen, doing what I like to do.....cook.  I have nailed it.  

Here is now revealed the super secret recipe for Cheddar Bay Biscuits from Dust Bunny Queen...posted on my Recipe Junkie website.

ENJOY

Cheddar Bay Biscuits ala Red Lobster

How Quickly It Turns: the weather I mean

Just a couple of days ago I was able to sit on the deck in the afternoon and sip a glass of wine in the sun in these fabulous Indian Summer Autumn days.  Waiting for the leaves to really begin falling so that we can rake and burn.  Suddenly, the weather has turned into our normal October/November fare.  Cold, windy, rainy and snowing this evening.

Sadly, I think I have missed the optimal rake and burn cycle, yet again on the leaves.  Just like last year we will have mounds of soggy leaves that can't be burned or that will create smudgy pillars of smoke. Ah well, compost material.

When the weather turns, so do my thoughts of cooking turn to warming meals. Long cooking stews, soups and casseroles.  So, while The Dumbplumber is napping after being out in the cold all day long; winterizing homes so they won't have broken pipes next spring,  I'm making Clam Chowder.  (check out the recipe on my Recipe Junkie blog) and will try to finish the next Chemo hat that I'm knitting for my friend.

I think that I'm really getting the hang of this retirement stuff.

Apples and Plums ...Oh My! Plus the spiritual side of life.

While still in the throes of dealing with nature's bountiful gifts this year of apples and plums, I decided to finish off the last 3 1/2 pounds of Italian Prune Plums with a batch of Chinese Plum Sauce.

Apples?  Oh YEAH we have apples this year.  Previously I made and froze apple pie filling for 12 pies.  Now neatly wrapped and stacked in the shop freezer.  A friend, who is also up to her eyeballs in apples and pears, gave me a super recipe for crockpot apple butter.  Fabulous!. Easy peasy!!  No standing and stirring and stirring over a hot pot.  Just put the peeled cored and chopped apples in the crockpot with the sugar and spices and go about your merry way.

Recipes for both are posted at my recipe blog RecipeJunkie   in this post.

So....What did I do today?

Finished up canning the apple butter which had been cooking in the crock pot since yesterday.  Canned the plum sauce.  All the while, listening to Cole Train, Ella Fitzgerald and Delbert McClinton.   While waiting for the product to cool enough to handle, decided all that was left for the early afternoon was to get some crackers, brie cheese, apple slices (did I mention we have a LOT of apples) and some wine so that I could sit on the deck in the magnificent Indian Summer sunshine and read a book for a while.

Apple Butter and Chinese Plum Sauce

On another blog a commenter made reference to how blessed and fortunate we, in the United States, actually are.  His comment was in reference to the Occupy [insert your city] movement that seems to be stressing how disadvantage the 99% (whatever) is and how oppressed we must be by the 1% who control all the wealth.  First of all.....none of that is true but I won't get into the political part of that.

It is the spiritual part that is of interest to me. We have freedoms that are unheard of in other countries.  Freedom of movement. Freedom of thought.  Freedom to chose all sorts of life paths that we might take.  Do we always make the right choices?  Probably not.  But, we have the ability to chose.

With that freedom also comes responsibility.  When you choose badly, as I have often done in my younger years, you either learn from those bad choices and make better choices in the future....or you just keep repeating the same mistakes.

We also live in a society that is caring. Some will say that isn't so because every problem, every person isn't taken care of from cradle to grave.  Caring also means sometimes saying "NO".  Charities and personal help for those in need are abundant.  No matter how bad things get, there IS someone somewhere who is willing to give you a hand up. To help those willing to better themselves and who want to be helped,  lift themselves out of the darkness.  Hand up is not the same as a hand out.  Entitlements and demands to take from others is a perversion of charity.

Looking at my life now, I am grateful for every moment.  Even these moments of what others would think of as drudgery (canning, cleaning, harvesting) are to me a blessing and a joy. I have the ability, the skill and the drive to create. Apple butter from raw apples.  Knitted hats for friends from balls of yarn.  Clothing from cloth.   Those moments of leisure following the drudgery: sitting on the deck with a glass of wine are also a blessing.  The drudgery and the leisure....they go hand in hand.  You can't appreciate one without the other.

Those in the Occupy everywhere contingent who are focusing on the negatives, on money, on possessions and ignoring the blessed life and the opportunties that they have been given, compared to much of the rest of the world, are ignoring the spiritual side of life.  They are starving their souls and screaming into the void.

Forest Gump of Plums

I am the Forest Gump of plums. Last year it was cherries.  This year plums.

This year all of our plum trees have gone into overdrive producing.  So many plums.  So many types.  I feel like Forest Gump


Wild plums, Italian plums, Santa Rosa plums.

Plum jam, plum jelly, plum pulp frozen to make more plum jam and jelly, plum bread, plum cookies, plum crisp, plum tortes, plum pies, plum sauce, dried plums, frozen plums, canned plums, fresh plums.  

FREE plums.  Please take some of these plums.  Begging people to come an pick them before our deck is totally spotted with rotten plums dropping off of the tree.

I can't stand to see the fruit go to waste so I spend my time preserving, cooking, freezing and drying.

Here is a recipe that freezes well.  The bread is better after sitting and 'aging' for several days, otherwise, it is cakelike, crumbly and doesn't cut well.  The Italian plums are a pleasing blend of sweet and tart that doesn't make the bread gooey.

Camping out at home

Yesterday, the refrigerator died. It wasn't a sudden death. It had been ailing and giving us warnings for about a month, which we hopefully and delusionally ignored. "Maybe it is just a glitch?....Maybe it will get better if we just crank the dial to the coldest setting."

The first warning signs were the juice bars becoming a bit slushy. Or maybe the ice in the icemaker periodically slightly melting and reforming into a block of ice. The ice cream was soft....but .....hey.... I kind of like my ice cream soft.

Well, all the ignoring and pretending has brought us to this. We are camping out in our house for the next couple of weeks, until we can get to an appliance store or get the repairman to come up from the 'big city'.

After The Dumbplumber determined that the compressor was dead, dead, double dead, we had to move all items from the freezer to the big freezer in the shop and from the refrigerator side to the small refrigerator in the shop. Thank God we have backups. Once of which is an almost 40 year old Montgomery Wards upright freezer that hasn't missed a beat since it was plugged in. So much for our new and improved Energy Star pieces of crap that the government insists we have to purchase. Progress......my......ass.

In a way it was like an embarrassing archeological dig. "Wow....I didn't know we had THREE half filled jars of grated horseradish and two opened bottles of sweet pickle relish. And how old IS this cheese.???"

I guess this is one way to completely clean the refrigerator, however.....I can think of more preferred (and less expensive) ways than having my refrigerator die.

Because these next 12 days are completely booked with business trips and my mother-in-law's 80th birthday party in Oregon and the closest appliance store is about 90 miles away, we are just going to have to make do with ice chests on the back deck for items we need immediately and the back up appliances in the shop.

No more automatic ice maker for now, so we break out the trusty vintage West Bend Penguin Hot Cold ice bucket (also good for keeping biscuits hot.......how do it know!?!?) and fill it full of ice from the chest so we can still be civilized and have our cocktails.

Just like the good old days when all people had was an ice box.....with nothing but ice to keep things cool. When you lose an amenity like refrigeration, electricity or hot water on demand for a while, you do appreciate just how much we have in our lives. The luxuries that were unthinkable just a generation ago that we take so much for granted. Luxuries that are really quite fragile. We should be more grateful for our lives.

Big Nanny Is Watching You

Over the years there has been a gradual erosion of our right to make our own decisions about even the most mundane aspects of our lives. The State, has crept its way into almost every corner of our day to day living. For our own good of course. Spare us from the do gooders.... they do more harm in their zeal to help.

"The do-gooder leftist in all the various ideological incarnations--the antiwar crowd, the environmental crowd, the communists, socialists, and assorted collectivists--offers the rationale that he does what he does for the "common good" and for "social justice", "peace" and "brotherhood". His high-minded, self-righteous rhetoric justifies (to him anyway) imposing his will and beliefs on others for their own good; and he will not hesitate to use whatever coercive capablity he has at hand to get others to do what he wants and what he says."

In trying to be the Big Nanny and protect us all from harm, the government is smothering us with love. A parent who knows absolutely, with no reservations, they know best and who controls every tiny detail of the child's life, is creating a future adult who can't make decisions and is unable to take responsibility for their own actions. Some parents even permanently cripple the emotional growth of their children in order to become needed and indispensable. These needy parents are not doing their child or society any favors by creating adults who have never grown up.

The same can be said for a government that takes away the ability to chose and creates a dependent and infantile population. Maybe that is the intended effect, make the government needed and indispensable to a society who is functioning at a lower and lower level each generation. Like Mother knows best....the Nanny Government thinks it knows what is best for us...and we'd better behave the way they want us to or else.

The government controls what we wear... helmets when riding a bike, fire retardants in children's sleepwear whether you want it or not. They control what we eat....remember the mandate that we shouldn't eat eggs sunny side up? They control how we move about.... speed limits, seat belts, child seats until the child is the size of a small adult. What toys we can give our children..... small weeble wobbles and legos are too dangerous. We have ridiculous warning labels on products that warn us about using things in the way no one in their right mind would consider.

In the attempt to legislate away stupidity and personal responsibility New York wants to ban the use of cell phones and Ipods while walking. I say we let Darwin's laws do their fine work. We will all be better for it.

California wants to tell me, for my own good of course, what kind of light bulbs I can use in my home. What are they going to do? Set up a new bureaucracy to come to my home driving gas guzzling Chevy Tahoes and demand to inspect my closet to make sure I have the "correct" light bulbs?? I hope they give me some advance warning so I can at least pick up my dirty underwear! I don't need a lecture from the government on that topic. I heard enough about that from my real mother. I wouldn't put it past them.

They want to tell us how to discipline our children. A bill in proposed in California: " any striking of a child, any corporal punishment, smacking, hitting, punching, any of that.'' Lieber (who has no children of her own by the way) said it would be a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail or a fine up to $1,000, although a legal expert advising her on the proposal said first-time offenders would probably only have to attend parenting classes." So, if I decide to swat my temper tantrum throwing 3 year old on the bottom in the grocery store. I get to go attend classes held by someone who probably never had children (they heard about them though) to tell me how to be a better parent. Better yet, I go to jail and let a total stranger rear my child in our wonderful foster care system. There are already laws that punish child abuse and I applaud the enforcement of these laws. A swat on the behind and a 'time out' is not child abuse. Big Nanny doesn't always know best.

Now the final straw in the government's interference!!. Crisco is going to change their formula after 95 years to comply with the war against trans fats. The food police are now going to be rummaging through my pantry for contraband shortening. They are getting up and personal with me now. No more Crisco in chocolate chip cookies. No more Crisco in pie crusts. Don't MAKE me use lard. I will use lard..but don't MAKE ME.

I've had it with the food police, the fashionistas, the eco-nazis and Big Nanny government. I'm buying light bulbs, Crisco and gonna swat a three year old on the behind..... come and get me...I dare you.

And in that vein I hereby publish the very best coffee cake recipe I have ever had. Full of fat, calories and sugar....nyaa nyaaa to Big Nanny.

Italian Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

2 1/2 cups Flour
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda

FILLING
12 oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1. Mix together the first six ingredients until crumbly. Reserve 3/4 cup of this mixture and to that add cinnamon and walnuts. Set the 3/4 cup topping aside for topping.

2. In a mixing bowl combine the filling ingredients until smooth. Set aside.

3.In another bowl mix together eggs buttermilk, baking powder, baking soda. Combine with the crumbly mixture. Pour half into a greased 9 x 13 pan. Don't worry if it looks like your first layer of batter seems skimpy. It will rise up just fine. Pour or spoon the cream cheese filling over the batter. Then pour or spoon the rest of the cake mixture over the cream cheese layer and top with the crumbly walnut mixture.

4.Bake at 350 for 40 to 50 minutes