Whole-Wheat Bread * how to proof yeast * how to knead bread dough

2 packages (or cakes) yeast

½ c. warm water

1/3 c. honey

3 c. whole-wheat flour

1 Tbsp salt

1/4 c. shortening

1 2/3 c. warm water

3 1/2 to 4 c. bread flour or all-purpose flour

Dissolve the yeast in the 1/2 c. warm water and add honey. Mix, then set aside to proof (about 5 minutes).

In a very large bowl, mix whole-wheat flour and salt. Add shortening and 1 2/3 c. warm water and mix well with a fork. Add yeast mixture and mix well again. Add three cups of bread flour (or all-purpose flour) and mix first with the fork, then with your hands.

Flour working surface well and knead for a full ten minutes, adding more flour as needed (up to another cup). Grease a very large bowl and turn the dough until greased on all sides. Cover with a towel and let rise in a warm spot until about doubled in size. Punch down dough, then divide and shape by hand into two loaves. Place in greased loaf pans, cover with a towel, and allow to rise another hour or so. When dough has doubled in size again, place in 350 degree oven for 40 minutes.

Turn out on racks and rub tops with butter. Allow to cool for at least ten minutes before cutting. Makes two loaves.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make whole-wheat bread.

I’ve been planning this episode for a long time, because everyone should know how to make bread from scratch. It’s not hard, but it does take a lot of time because the dough has to rise twice. This will also be the final episode of Real Life Cooking. The old episodes will remain for you to listen to, though.

This recipe is my mother’s, and as you may remember, she wasn’t actually a great cook. But she could make bread and it was always amazing. I’d like to say this is a family recipe passed down for generations, but she actually got it off the back of a flour bag when I was a kid.

You’ll need two kinds of flour for this recipe, whole wheat flour, preferably stone-ground because it’s coarser and more robust, and either bread flour or all-purpose flour. You’re also going to need a lot of both, so make sure you have plenty. If you bought whole wheat flour during lockdown, thinking you were going to make bread, it’s probably pretty stale by now so I recommend you buy fresh. Just, you know, an observation, no real reason. Also, check the date on your yeast. You need ordinary yeast for this recipe, not quick-rise. You’ll also need a really big mixing bowl and two large loaf pans.

First, clean your working surface and give it a good scrub. Then get out your very biggest mixing bowl, the one you sometimes wonder why you own because it takes up so much space. Give it a wipe to make sure it’s clean if you haven’t used it for a while. You only need one giant mixing bowl even though if you read the recipe, it sounds like you need two. We’ll go over that in a minute.

Get out a small bowl too. A cereal bowl will do. Measure half a cup of warm water into the bowl. The water shouldn’t be anywhere near boiling but it also needs to be more than just lukewarm. Then add the yeast to the water and stir it in until it dissolves, more or less. It’s easiest to do this with a whisk if you have one, but a fork or even a spoon will do. Don’t worry if you can’t get it to dissolve all the way. Add the honey to the mixture and stir it in until it’s dissolved, then set the bowl aside.

This process of adding warm water and honey or sugar to yeast and letting it sit for five or ten minutes is called proofing. Sometimes a recipe will just direct you to proof your yeast, without any further instructions or amounts, or it might say to proof one package of yeast in X amount of water. Even if a recipe doesn’t say so, you have to add some form of su

Cranberry Coffee Cake * how to make substitute buttermilk

Cranberry Coffee Cake

1/2 c. half and half

1 tsp lemon juice

2 c. flour

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 c. butter

1 c. sugar

1 egg

3/4 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 tsp almond extract

2 c. frozen cranberries (do not thaw), plus a few handfuls more for topping

2 Tbsp turbinado sugar or other large-crystal sugar

Grease and flour 9x9 pan. Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit.

In a small bowl, mix half and half with lemon juice and set aside. (You can substitute 1/2 cup buttermilk for the half-and-half/lemon juice mixture.)

In a medium bowl, mix flour with salt and baking powder and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add egg and extracts. Mix well, then add flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with the milk mixture. Fold in 2 c. cranberries last. Spoon into prepared pan and top with reserved cranberries and turbinado sugar. Bake about 45 minutes. Cool in pan about 15 minutes before turning out.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make cranberry coffee cake. The whole reason I’m cooking with cranberries in May is because I discovered a bag of frozen cranberries in the freezer the other day, left over from fall. I found this recipe to use them up without needing to thaw them. If I had more frozen cranberries I’d tinker with the recipe and try to get it to work in a loaf pan, but it’s quite good as it is.

For this recipe you’ll need a 9x9 pan, two large mixing bowls or one large and one medium, and a small bowl. This makes it sound complicated but it’s actually not.

First, turn the oven on to preheat. Then grease and flour the pan. The initial recipe just said to grease it, but you’ll get a better result if you grease and flour it the way you would for a cake. If you’re not sure how to do that, check out the zucchini pineapple bread episode from August of 2019.

Next, measure the half and half into the small bowl. This can be a cereal bowl; it doesn’t have to be big to hold half a cup of milk. Add the lemon juice and stir it in. Basically what you’re doing here is making substitute buttermilk, so if you happen to have buttermilk on hand, you can use it instead of the half and half and lemon juice. Ordinarily a recipe that calls for buttermilk or its substitute also calls for baking soda, because soda neutralizes the acids in foods like buttermilk, but in this case those acids give a lovely sour flavor to the bread that goes well with the citrusy flavor of the cranberries.

Set the milk mixture aside. You may notice it getting kind of weird and clumpy-looking, but that’s fine. The lemon juice curdles the milk slightly, giving it the acidic tang you want.

Next, measure the flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium or large mixing bowl. Whisk it well or blend it with a fork, then set it aside too.

Next, cream the butter and sugar together in a large mixing bowl until it’s light and fluffy, then add the eggs and extracts. If you don’t have almond extract, you can use a full teaspoonful of vanilla, but almond really brings out the flavor of the cranberries.

Now you just need to add the flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with the milk mixture, just as you would for an ordinary cake. The batter will be thicker than cake batter, more like cookie dough. Once it’s blended, you need to fold in the cranberries.

Until now, you should have the cranberries in the freezer. You don’t want them to thaw out because they need to remain frozen until they’re in the oven. Measure them out now and toss them on top of the batter, but then—and this is important—mix them in as quickly as possible. You don’t need to be caref

Cream Cheese Tarts

8-oz package cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 c. sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla

6 vanilla wafers

1/2 can (21 oz can) cherry pie filling

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line muffin pan with cupcake papers. Put one vanilla wafer in each.

Mix the cream cheese and sugar together until fluffy, then add egg and vanilla. Beat well. Spoon the mixture into each cup on top of the vanilla wafers.

Bake for 20 minutes, then remove and allow to cool. The tarts will deflate and form a dip in the middle. Spoon cherry pie filling into the dips. Chill. You can double this recipe to make 12.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make cream cheese tarts.

Okay, finally, yes, this is the start of our third season. I’m going to try to release two episodes a month, but I can’t promise that I’ll manage it every month. We’ll see. The episodes themselves are usually pretty quick to record and edit, but it takes time to actually make the recipes and record all the details properly. Anyway, let’s learn how to make cream cheese tarts.

I have a vague memory of finding this recipe in a cookbook I got from the library, but I don’t remember which one. It makes a pretty and unusual treat that’s showy enough for office parties or holiday parties while being easy to throw together quickly. You just have to have enough time to let the tarts cool completely and then chill in the fridge after they’re done.

The recipe as listed in the show notes is halved from the original, since I rarely need to make 12 of these things. They’re rich, and since they’re made in ordinary muffin pans, quite large. They taste a little like cherry danishes and a little like cheesecake, but with a lighter texture. You can easily double the recipe if you like, in which case you’ll need a larger mixing bowl.

You only need one mixing bowl for this recipe, and if you’re only making six you can use a medium mixing bowl instead of a large. You’ll also need a muffin pan and some cupcake liners. If you remember to get the cream cheese and egg out of the fridge a few hours beforehand to warm to room temperature, it’s much easier to make these.

Put the cupcake liners in the muffin pan and turn the oven on to preheat. Then place a single vanilla wafer into the bottom of each cupcake liner, flat side down. Yes, it looks too small. No, do not put more than one in each cup. The vanilla wafer just adds a little bit of texture to the finished tart and implies the existence of a crust without you needing to actually make one.

Next, cream together the cream cheese and sugar just like you would cream butter and sugar to make a cake or cookies. If you started with room temperature cream cheese, it shouldn’t take much time at all to get the sugar fully incorporated. Then add the egg and vanilla extract and mix it up thoroughly, until it’s light and fluffy.

Hopefully by this time the oven is ready, because you are done and just about ready to bake it. I told you this was easy. Fill each muffin cup with the cream cheese mixture, plopping it on top of the vanilla wafer. You’ll fill the cups pretty much all the way to the top.

Then put the pan in the oven and set the timer for 20 minutes. When the time is up, take it out and set the pan on the stove or sink to cool completely.

When you first take them out of the oven, the tarts are puffed up like little soufflés. Just like a soufflé, they’ll start to deflate and crack almost immediately, and that’s fine. They’re supposed to. They’ll form a dip in the middle as they sink, and once they’re cool, that’s where you’ll spoon the cherry filling in.

Cherry filling is canned cherries cooked down with sugar and a few other ingredients, like lemon juice, and thickene

Double Chocolate Cookies * cooking with cocoa powder

Double Chocolate Cookies

1 c flour

1/3 c cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/2 c plus 2 Tbsp butter

1 c sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 c chocolate chips

2/3 c. walnut pieces (optional)

Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla, blend well. Add the dry mixture to the butter mixture, mixing well after each addition. Dough will be thick. Add the chocolate chips and mix in well.

Bake on lightly greased baking sheets at 350 Fahrenheit for 9-11 minutes. Makes about two and a half dozen.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make double chocolate cookies.

I found this recipe online while I was looking for something else, but it made something like five dozen cookies. I don’t need five dozen cookies. I halved the recipe and made a few tweaks, and the result is a more manageable two or two and a half dozen.

You make these cookies the same way you make ordinary chocolate chip cookies, but you use cocoa in place of some of the flour. The cocoa in question is unsweetened cocoa powder. Don’t substitute any kind of sweetened cocoa mix or the result will be horrendous. These cookies are plenty sweet on their own, trust me.

For this recipe you’ll need two mixing bowls, one large, one medium, and at least one cookie sheet. You can use butter and an egg straight from the fridge, but it’s a lot easier to make the dough when all the ingredients are room temperature, so if you think of it earlier in the day, take a stick of butter and an egg out of the fridge and set them on the counter. You’ll actually need two tablespoons more of butter than one stick, but I’m assuming that you already have some butter out next to the toaster.

In the smaller mixing bowl, blend the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon with a fork or whisk. Be careful with the cocoa since it’s very fine and will poof everywhere if you try to handle it quickly. It’s hard to measure and easy to inhale. Once you get it mixed with the flour it will settle down some, though.

Set that bowl aside and put the butter and sugar in the larger bowl to cream together. This is also a good time to grease the baking sheets and turn the oven on to preheat. Once the butter and sugar are creamed together until they’re light and fluffy, add the egg and vanilla and mix them in well.

I’m going through this quickly because it’s so similar to my chocolate chip cookie recipe, which was our very first episode. If you need to brush up on how to measure flour or how to cream butter and sugar, listen to that episode because it walks you through the process.

Once you’ve mixed the dough except for the chocolate chips (and nuts, if you decide to add them), the dough will be extremely thick. You’ll wonder how on earth you can mix in those chocolate chips, but it’s actually not hard.

Place spoonfuls of dough on the cookie sheet. These cookies don’t spread very much so you can put them pretty close together without ending up with one big cookie. Pop the pan in the oven and set the timer for ten minutes, or nine if you made your cookies very small.

When the timer goes off, take the pan out of the oven and let it cool for a few minutes. You’ll notice that the cookies are a little puffed up when you first get them out of the oven, but they shrink and crack a little as they start to cool. After about five minutes or so, use a spatula to move the cookies from the pan to a wire rack if you have one.

Depending on how big or small you make the cookies, you’ll get between two and three dozen from this recipe, so it’s easier if you have two coo

Corned beef and cabbage * how to prepare cabbage

Corned Beef and Cabbage

about 2 to 3 lb piece of corned beef brisket

one cabbage, cut into chunks

1 lb carrots, scraped and cut up

1 onion, diced (optional)

some potatoes, peeled and cut up (optional)

peppercorns (optional)

Place the meat fatty side down in a very large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer about one hour per pound of meat. Add peppercorns if you’re using them. Add water as needed as it steams off.

About half an hour before the meat is done, add all vegetables except the cabbage. Ten minutes later, add the cabbage. Continue to simmer for about 20 minutes or until the cabbage is fork tender.

Cut the meat into thick slices against the grain. Serve hot with the vegetables.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make corned beef and cabbage.

I’m not officially out of the season hiatus but it is spring break and I’m taking the week off work. Since I was making corned beef and cabbage anyway, I thought I’d do an episode about it.

Corned beef is not to everyone’s taste, and cabbage certainly isn’t. I cannot stand cold corned beef on a sandwich, and I’m not a huge fan of cabbage in general, but for some reason I love the combination of corned beef and cabbage. The salty, fatty meat contrasts beautifully with the mild, clean flavor of cabbage. I also add carrots, and if you want to throw in an onion too I approve although I don’t usually bother. You can also add potatoes, but if you do, you’re going to need a really big pot, more of a cauldron.

For this recipe you need to be able to keep the meat submerged while it boils, while still having room at the end for the cabbage and other vegetables, so you need a really big pot. Try to find a piece of meat that’s under three pounds or so in weight, because while it doesn’t look so big in the store, once you get it home and stick it in the pot, you realize just how enormous that thing is. Also, just a heads-up, corned beef and cabbage is considered traditionally Irish although it’s actually not, so in the run-up to St. Patrick’s Day prices are high, but they often drop afterwards. I ended up paying $2 for a head of cabbage and that is just highway robbery.

Anyway, this is a really easy recipe to make. It just takes a few hours to cook, so about three hours before you plan to eat, you need to get started.

Open the package of meat and discard the little packet of spices that is usually included. I’ve used them before and found they don’t add anything to the dish and just get all over the cabbage, looking gross. If you like little seeds and crap stuck to your cabbage, that’s fine. I throw that mess out. The corned beef is already highly flavored as is and doesn’t need any help beyond maybe some peppercorns if you have them.

Put the meat fatty side down in the pot and add as much water as the pot will safely hold. Ordinarily I’d say “add water to cover,” but you’re going to have to add water as it steams off so start with plenty.

Turn the stove on high and bring the water to a boil, then turn it down to about medium or just above so it simmers briskly. Whatever you do, don’t turn it on to high and then wander off to hang pictures in your newly painted bedroom, only remembering the stove is on when you hear the violent sloshing and hissing as water hits the burner.

After you turn the heat down, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of gross whitish foamy gunk floating on the water. That’s just fat that has rendered out of the meat. Skim it off with a spatula or something and throw it out.

You want to boil, or rather simmer, the meat for about an hour per pound. My piece of meat is two and a half pounds exactly so

Grilled Cheese * how to use a broiler

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make grilled cheese two different ways: under a broiler and in a skillet.

I made grilled cheese for myself today and realized that not everyone knows how to do it. It’s really easy, so let’s go over it.

Let’s start with the slightly less bad for you version of grilled cheese. This one requires you to use your oven’s broiler, and there are a few specific things you need to know about how to do that.

Most ovens have a setting that says broil. What this means is that only the top heating element will turn on, and it will get very hot. It’s used for searing certain dishes, often to finish, but you can use it to cook steaks in a pinch. I’ve never been too good at that so pretty much the only thing I use the broiler for is to make grilled cheese.

First, before you do anything else, move the top rack in your oven up to the very top slot. Do not turn on the oven yet!

Next, get out your bread. I just use ordinary sandwich bread. Then get out your cheese. You can use presliced cheese meant for sandwiches, the kind my brother and I called smashed cheese when we were little, or you can slice thin pieces of any kind of cheese so that you have enough to nicely cover the tops of both pieces of bread. I’m assuming you’re only making two slices, but of course you can make more at once if you like.

Now you have a choice. If you like your grilled cheese toasted on both sides, it takes a little more work. If you’re fine with just toasting the top and having the bottom still soft, it’s easier and quicker. We’ll go over both ways.

If you want to toast the bottom first, slice your cheese but set it aside. Don’t put it on the bread yet. Instead, set your bread slices directly on the oven rack, but near the front so you can keep an eye on them. Do not shut the oven door all the way. You’ll notice that the oven will naturally stay propped open a few inches if you don’t shove it all the way closed, and that’s because it needs to stay open while you’re broiling.

Turn the oven on to the broil setting and for approximately two minutes, do something else while it heats. After just about two minutes, look into the propped-open oven door and look at your bread.

It’s probably starting to toast. Watch it like a hawk until it’s as done as you want it, then turn the broiler off and open the door all the way. Carefully remove the half-toasted bread, and I usually use a spatula or metal tongs because if you use a cloth to grab them, it’s easy to accidentally knock the bread through the bars of the oven rack so it falls into the oven.

When you’ve got it removed, set it down on the counter or plate or whatever toasted side down. Arrange your cheese on the untoasted side. Obviously, if you don’t want to toast the bottom you can skip straight to this part.

Once you’ve got the cheese on the bread, put it into the oven again directly on the top rack, cheese side up of course. Prop the oven door open again and turn the broiler on.

After a few minutes, the cheese will start to get melty and bubbly and the edges of the bread, where it’s not covered by cheese, will start to brown. Watch it carefully and as soon as it’s as done as you want it, turn the broiler off and remove the toast from the oven carefully. Tada, you have made grilled cheese! It makes a lovely snack on a chilly day, or the perfect accompaniment to tomato soup.

It does not keep at all, but only a monster or a very small child would leave grilled cheese uneaten.

You can use any kind of cheese you want, whether or not it’s supposed to be a type of cheese that melts. You’re basically just heating the cheese up and maybe toasting it just a bit. I usually use cheddar.

Befo

Chocolate Butterscotch Cookies * how to make butterscotch

Chocolate Butterscotch Cookies

saltine crackers

1 c butter, unsalted

1 c light brown sugar

1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips (12 oz, or about 2 cups)

1 c M&M candies (optional)

1 c chopped nuts (optional)

sprinkles (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with tinfoil and grease. Place crackers all over it in a single layer, touching. In a medium saucepan, melt butter and brown sugar over medium heat, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil and stir constantly while boiling for about four minutes. Pour evenly over the crackers. Bake 7 minutes.

Remove from oven and pour chocolate chips evenly over the pan. Allow them to sit for a minute or two to melt, then spread with a knife. Sprinkle with M&M candies, chopped nuts, decorative sprinkles, etc., as desired.

Allow to cool for several hours or until the chocolate hardens, then break apart and serve.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make chocolate butterscotch cookies. I don’t actually know what else to call them. The butterscotch does not taste like butterscotch flavoring, fortunately. It’s much, much better. [It may actually be toffee by the time it gets out of the oven, now that I think about it. Toffee is just butterscotch that’s been cooked longer.]

This is the recipe you make when you remember late at night that you promised to bring cookies for the office meeting the next day. You don’t have time to do anything fancy or run to the grocery store, but you want something everyone will like.

This recipe only really needs four ingredients: saltine crackers, butter, brown sugar, and chocolate chips. That’s it. You can put these together in half an hour, literally. The only drawback is that they need to cool completely before you can break them apart, which takes at least two hours. But they’re just fine sitting out overnight while they cool and while you sleep, and in the morning you just grab them and go.

For this recipe, you need a baking sheet and a pot. That’s it. No mixing bowls to wash. You don’t even really need to measure out anything but the brown sugar.

First, line your largest baking sheet with tinfoil and grease the foil. This is one time when it really is easiest to use the spray stuff, but you can also grease it with just a bit of vegetable oil, shortening, or butter. As soon as you’ve done that, get the saltine crackers out. Yes, just ordinary saltines that you eat with soup or chili.

You’re going to need at least one sleeve of crackers, depending on the size of your baking sheet. Mine fits 48 crackers. Place them on the tinfoil in a single layer so that they’re all touching on all sides. If you have the kind of crackers that are joined together in pairs, you can either keep them in pairs or snap them apart, it doesn’t really matter. Once you have the baking sheet covered, set it aside, but make sure it’s somewhere you can get to easily.

Next, turn the oven on to preheat. Then put two sticks of butter and a cup of light brown sugar into a pot. The recipe says saucepan, but that’s basically just a fancy word for a pot. Remember to pack the brown sugar firmly into the measuring cup. You don’t need to soften the butter before using it, because you’re about to boil the heck out of it with the brown sugar to make butterscotch.

Butterscotch is related to caramel and toffee, but it’s richer than caramel and softer than toffee. But don’t be nervous—you don’t need a candy thermometer or anything. Just throw the butter and sugar into the pot together and turn the heat on to about medium, or maybe a little higher. Unsalted butter is best but if you only have salted butter, that’s fine too.

Heat the butter and

Sugar Cookies * coloring dough * rolling out and cutting cookie dough * coloring sugar

Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 c. butter

3/4 c. sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

food coloring (optional)

cinnamon candies (optional)

sparkle sugar (optional)

Mix dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar, then add egg and vanilla and blend well. Add a generous squirt of food coloring to the butter mixture and blend it in well. It should be really green (or whatever color). Add flour mixture to butter mixture. Divide dough, wrap in plastic, and chill for at least half an hour.

Preheat oven to 350 F and grease two cookie sheets. Roll out chilled dough on a lightly floured surface and cut into shapes. Place on cookie sheets and decorate with sparkle sugar and cinnamon candies (if desired). Bake for 9-11 minutes. Makes about two dozen.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make sugar cookies! This is hands down the best sugar cookie recipe I’ve tried, and my family has made it for many, many years. We call them holly cookies because we use food coloring to dye the dough green, then cut them out in holly leaf shapes and decorate the tops with green crystal sugar and cinnamon candies like holly berries. I’ve included all the steps to make holly cookies, but if you don’t have a cookie cutter shaped like a holly leaf, you can use any shapes you like or just cut them out round.

For this recipe, you’ll need a large mixing bowl, a medium mixing bowl, a surface where you can roll out the dough and something to roll the dough out with, and at least one cookie cutter in a shape you like.

If you want to make holly cookies the way I do, you’ll also need some cinnamon candies, and that can be a problem. These are the small round pieces of red candy that are cinnamon flavored, usually called cinnamon imperials or red hots. You can get them specifically for baking, but those are actually not very good for this recipe. The best red hots you can find are sold by Brach’s, but they can be hard to track down. I was going to order them online this year and actually went to the Brach’s website to find them, but when I followed their link to buy, it took me to an Amazon page that said they were sold out. In the end, I lucked out and found them in a small grocery store I almost never go to. Brach’s are better than the ones sold for baking because they’re much cheaper, but also because they’re flattened instead of round. Those big round baking ones tend to just melt into goo in the oven. But you can use any kind you can get your hands on, or, of course, you can leave them out. But they do really contribute to the overall flavor of the cookie.

A few hours before you start the recipe, it’s a good idea to get the butter out of the fridge and let it warm up to room temperature. You can do the same with the eggs too. If you forget, though, no problem.

These cookies follow the same basic method for most cookies, including the chocolate chip cookie recipe from our very first episode. If you haven’t listened to that one, you might go back and do so for basics about measuring flour and mixing dough.

First, grease your baking sheets and set them aside. I use a little butter to grease the pans, since I have a theory that greasing the pan with the same fat you used in the recipe gives better results, plus I already have the butter out. When you unwrap the butter, especially if it’s at room temperature, there’s often some left on the paper wrapping. I put the wrapper face down on the pan and rub it around as an easy way to grease the pan.

It’s best to use two pans minimum for this recipe. It should make just enough to

Cranberry relish * cooking cranberries

Cranberry Relish (small amount)

1/2 c. orange juice (or apple juice)

1/2 c. brown sugar

2 c. fresh cranberries

1/4 tsp allspice

Combine ingredients in a saucepan and heat to a boil. Turn heat down to medium low and simmer for 15 minutes. The sauce will thicken as it cools.

Cranberry Relish (large amount)

1 c. orange juice

1/2 c. white sugar

1/2 c. brown sugar

1/4 tsp cinnamon

12 oz fresh cranberries

Dissolve sugars and cinnamon in juice over medium heat. Stir in cranberries and simmer 10-20 minutes. The sauce will thicken as it cools.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make cranberry relish, also called cranberry sauce, just in time for Thanksgiving.

I know many of us grew up with the cranberry relish that comes in a can, and which comes out of the can can-shaped, at which point an aunt or somebody slices it carefully into thin discs and arranges it on a plate, where it looks festive on the table and almost no one eats it. But you can make your own cranberry relish very easily from fresh cranberries that’s not only delicious, but it looks lovely in a glass compote if you own such a thing. It also takes very little time to make and can be done ahead.

I’ve included two recipes in the show notes, because I have two recipes that are very similar but make different amounts. You can also half or double the recipe you prefer or just tweak it to fit your own taste.

First, you’ll need fresh cranberries. These show up in the produce section of the grocery store right before Thanksgiving and they’re pretty cheap, two dollars for a 12 ounce bag in my local Walmart this year. You can sometimes get them on sale. Keep them in the fridge until you’re ready to cook them. Before you start the recipe, pour the cranberries into a colander and give them a good rinse, and pick out any berries that are under- or over-ripe. Sometimes a bit of leaf or stem makes its way into the bag and you obviously want to remove that too. Fresh cranberries should be a nice red color and should be firm to the touch. If you cut one open, you’ll see that it’s mostly empty inside except for thin membranes that separate little round seeds.

For this recipe, you’ll need a saucepan. That’s it.

Start by deciding whether you need a lot of cranberry relish or just a little. The recipe that makes a lot uses the whole 12 ounce bag of cranberries, the recipe that makes a little uses two cups of fresh cranberries, which is half the bag. If you don’t have any use for the remaining half a bag, go ahead and make the larger recipe.

Measure the orange juice into the pot and add the sugar or sugars along with the cinnamon or allspice. One note about how much sugar these recipes call for: I think you can half it. I didn’t this time, but when I tasted the finished relish it was just so super sweet that I wished I had. Then again, as you know, I have been trying to eat a lot less sugar so everything tastes sweet right now. Also, one recipe calls for allspice and the other calls for cinnamon, but it doesn’t matter which you use. They’re both good. I think the allspice has a richer, more complex flavor, but cinnamon is always a winner.

Turn the heat up to about medium high and stir the orange juice and sugar as it heats, until the sugar has mostly dissolved into the orange juice and the mixture is starting to boil. Then turn the heat down to about medium and add the cranberries. Set the timer for fifteen minutes and let it cook, stirring occasionally. The liquid shouldn’t be at a full boil but at a brisk, energetic simmer.

An important thing to remember about cranberries is that they pop while cooking. Do not be alarmed, but do be careful, because they wi

Mashed potatoes * Cream Cheese-Garlic Mashed Potatoes * what “water to cover” means * parboiling

Cream Cheese-Garlic Mashed Potatoes

2 ½ lbs baking potatoes, peeled and quartered

4 oz cream cheese, softened

1 stick salted butter, softened

1 ½ tsp sugar

½ tsp garlic powder

½ tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

about 1/4 c. milk

Boil potatoes until tender. Drain. Preheat oven to 325 Fahrenheit. Add all other ingredients to the potatoes and beat until fluffy. Add the milk last so you can adjust the amount; the milk is just for consistency. The potatoes should be creamy enough that they won’t dry out in the oven.

Grease a 9x9 baking dish and spoon in the potato mixture. Bake for 30 minutes or until heated through.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make honest-to-goodness mashed potatoes from scratch. They won’t be lumpy, I promise.

Instant mashed potatoes are pretty good and they’re definitely fast, but homemade mashed potatoes are really easy to make. All you need is a few ingredients and some time. And a pot big enough to hold the potato pieces.

First, you need some potatoes. This is when you want to buy a bag of potatoes. White or yellow-fleshed potatoes are fine, but if you have red potatoes those will work too. Basically any potato will do. You can usually get a three or five pound bag of potatoes for a few dollars, and definitely go for what’s cheap. Don’t buy those individually wrapped potatoes meant for baking. They’re overpriced. Just buy a bag of cheap potatoes.

Bagged potatoes are usually pretty small, but you’re going to chop them up and then mash them anyway so it doesn’t matter. Generally, grab two small to medium potatoes per person to make mashed potatoes. If you ended up with big potatoes, more the size of ones you’d expect to get if you ordered a baked potato in a restaurant, then one per person will do. When I’m making mashed potatoes just for myself, I’ll usually use four small potatoes, since that gives me plenty for leftovers.

You need to peel the potatoes first. You can do this with a paring knife if you don’t have a potato peeler, but really, a potato peeler only costs a buck or so and will literally last you your entire life, so it’s worth buying one. That said, I did go through a phase when I was in my late teens where I wanted to feel rustic, so I peeled potatoes with a knife. It’s not hard, and you can pretend to be a pioneer woman or Cinderella or a captive of pirates who have put you to work in the galley, only the pirate captain is secretly a kind man who falls for your honest beauty and your cooking skills, and eventually you become a pirate too, but you only steal from bad people. Also, the pirate captain is super handsome.

Anyway, peel the potatoes using your method of choice. It’s easiest to peel them over a trash can or bowl so you can just let the peels fall without worrying about clean-up later. If you’re using a knife, you can go ahead and trim off any bruised or rotten places while you work. If you’re using a peeler, you’ll need to trim the potatoes once you’re done and have switched to a knife to cut them up.

Potatoes, of course, are roots of the potato plant that grow underground. That means they’re dirty. Don’t worry that your hand holding the potato gets all grotty and the potato gets covered in muddy handprints. Once you’ve finished peeling, take your naked potatoes to the sink and rinse them and your hands. Then cut the potatoes into pieces. The pieces shouldn’t be too small. You want chunks about the size of, I don’t know, an egg—several inches across, don’t dice them up tiny.

Drop the pieces into your empty pot as you cut them. Once all the potatoes are cut up and in the pot, add enough water to just cover the potatoes.

When

Roasted carrots and parsnips * how to prepare parsnips * Shepherd’s Pie

Roasted carrots and parsnips

About 1 lb each carrots and parsnips, scraped and cut into sticks about 2” long

Olive oil

Salt

pepper

Preheat oven to 425. Pour olive oil in a 9x13 pan to just barely cover the bottom, then add carrot and parsnip pieces. Drizzle another Tbsp of olive oil over the vegetables and add salt and pepper. Stir with a spatula and turn over the vegetables until they’re coated with oil. Add more salt and pepper. Cook for 20 minutes, remove and stir. Return to oven and cook for another 15 or 20 minutes or until tender.

Shepherd’s Pie

Leftover vegetables

Leftover meat

Leftover gravy

Leftover mashed potatoes

Preheat oven to 350. Place the vegetables in a 9x9” pan with the meat on top (in bite-sized pieces). Pour about one cup of gravy into the dish and top with mashed potatoes. Bake for about 30 minutes or until heated through and the potatoes are starting to brown.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to cook parsnips. Specifically, we’re going to learn how to roast parsnips and carrots, which go well together and which make a fantastic accompaniment for turkey. Then we’re also going to learn how to make shepherd’s pie to use up your Thanksgiving leftovers.

Parsnips look sort of like pale yellow-white carrots, and they taste slightly sweet like carrots too but with a little more zing and a chewier texture that I really like. They also pair well with carrots. You peel them just like carrots, then slice the tops off just like carrots, and for this recipe you cut them into little sticks just like you do carrots. Parsnips often have much bigger tops than carrots of the same length do, though, which taper to a much thinner end.

For this recipe, all you need is a 9x13 pan with sides. Pour enough olive oil into the pan to just cover the bottom with a thin layer when you tilt it around, then set it aside.

Next, clean and cut up about a pound each of carrots and parsnips. You can cut these into sticks or pennies, but I think you get a better texture and flavor from the sticks. You can start with baby carrots, but you still need to slice them up. You want the pieces to be thin so they’ll cook faster. I typically cut the baby carrots in half lengthways, and cut the parsnips into pieces about the same size. This takes a while, but it’s not difficult and you can listen to a podcast or some music while you work.

When you’re about halfway done cutting the vegetables up, turn the oven on to preheat to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. By the time you finish the oven will be hot.

Once you’ve got the carrots and parsnips cut up, put them into the pan and drizzle more olive oil over them—not a lot, maybe about a Tablespoonful. Sprinkle salt and pepper over them, then use a spatula to carefully stir them around and turn them over until they’re pretty well coated with oil. Then sprinkle more salt and pepper over them and put them in the oven.

Set the timer for 20 minutes. When the timer goes off, take the pan out of the oven. You need to really give those vegetables a good stir and that’s hard to do while they’re still in the oven. Make sure to close the oven door so heat doesn’t escape while you’re working. Use the spatula to turn the vegetables over again and stir them around. They’ll still be hard at this point.

Put the pan back in the oven when you’re done and set the timer for 15 minutes this time. When the timer goes off, use a fork to test a few of the pieces. They’re probably not fully softened yet but they may be, depending on how thin you cut them. If they’re not tender, stir them again and set the timer for another five minutes. They should be done at this point unless you cut them pre

Roasting a turkey

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to roast a turkey!

This year (2020) has been endless and horrible, but somehow we are finally approaching the winter holiday season. In the United States we’re nearing Thanksgiving, a feast day celebrated with family and friends. The traditional main course for Thanksgiving is turkey, but a lot of people don’t know how to roast a turkey without drying it out. Hopefully this episode will help you roast your turkey perfectly every time.

As soon as turkeys start showing up in the stores in October I usually buy one and cook it for myself, because I love turkey. I always buy the very smallest one I can find, of course, because I am just one person and while I do have an astonishing capacity for eating turkey, I have my limits.

Don’t forget you need to have something to cook a turkey in, because even a small one is too big for ordinary pans. You can buy those heavy-duty foil roasting pans, but while they make clean-up easy, they’re also not great. You have to put a pan under them because otherwise you can’t safely move the roasting pan once the turkey is in it, because heavy-duty or not, no aluminum foil can stand up to the weight of even a small turkey. But since the roasting pan is also bigger than a typical cookie sheet, it’s still really hard to move safely. If you have room to store it, though, you can usually find inexpensive steel roasting pans this time of year. I spent less than ten bucks for mine and I’ve had it five or six years now, so I figure it’s paid for itself.

It doesn’t matter what brand of turkey you buy. They’re all pretty good. The cheaper ones sometimes have surprise bags of premade gravy tucked in the cavity, which you just paid for and they’re mostly water, but I can never feel too upset because it’s actually pretty good gravy.

Unless you’re cooking for a huge crowd, you’ll probably want to get a smaller turkey. Thirteen pounds is actually on the small side, but you can usually find turkeys that are a bit under ten pounds when you have a big selection to choose from. If you get a turkey that small on sale, it can cost less than a four-pound chicken.

So let’s assume you have acquired a frozen turkey and a roasting pan big enough to hold it. Four or five days before you plan to cook the turkey, put it in the fridge. It takes at least four days to thaw, or a day or two longer for bigger turkeys. If there’s even a slight chance you’ll forget to move it to the fridge from the freezer, put a reminder in your phone. Don’t thaw it on the counter, put it in the fridge to thaw.

Okay, the big day has arrived. It’s time to cook that turkey. People sometimes say that you cook a turkey for 20 minutes per pound, but that’s actually too long. It’s more like 15 minutes per pound, maybe even a little less. For a small turkey, up to about eleven pounds in weight, you can count on it cooking in about two and a half hours or just a bit more at 350 degrees F. My 13-pound turkey needed more like three hours. So if you like to have Thanksgiving dinner early, remember you’re going to have to get that turkey in the oven early. You also need at least an hour to prepare before the turkey goes in the oven, and at least half an hour afterwards. That’s why your grandmother was always up at dawn on Thanksgiving.

The first thing to do is clean out the sink. Wash any dishes sitting in it and give it a quick scrub or at least wipe it out with a sponge. Then set your roasting pan out so you can get to it easily. If it comes with a rack, you can use the rack. Otherwise, you’ll set the turkey directly on the bottom of the pan. I line my pan with foil because it’s a cheap pan with cheap nonstick coating, and despite my care over the years, the coating has started to peel off and I don’t want to accidentally eat any.

Carrot-Banana Bread * how to grate carrots * how to choose bananas for baking

Carrot-Banana Bread

2 very ripe bananas, mashed

2 carrots, grated

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/3 c. shortening

1/2 to 2/3 c. sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Grease a loaf pan and preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a small bowl, mix the mashed banana and grated carrots. In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. In another large bowl cream together shortening and sugar, then add eggs and vanilla. Mix well, then add flour mixture alternately with banana and carrot mixture. Batter will be thick.

Pour into prepared loaf pan. Bake for 45-50 minutes.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make carrot banana bread.

The weather here in East Tennessee is rainy and cool as I record, which has made me want to bake. But I’ve also been trying to cut back as much as possible on sugar. So I pulled out this recipe and tinkered with it to see if I could make it slightly more healthy. I like the results, so let’s get started.

First, of course, you’ll need some bananas that are getting over-ripe. They don’t have to be completely black, but they can’t have any green left on the skins. I’m not a huge fan of bananas, but I do eat them from time to time, and I like them very ripe. The two I had on the counter were to the point where they were perfect for eating, to my mind, and when I peeled them there were no places where they were getting gross. That’s ideal for banana bread too, personally, but if you have some that are getting really over-ripe, they’ll work just fine.

As for the carrots, peel and cut off the tops just like you would for any other recipe. Then you’ll need to grate them. I feel like we’ve talked about grating carrots before but if so, I can’t remember which recipe it was for. Possibly I’m remembering the zucchini pineapple bread recipe, where you have to grate zucchini. But let’s go over it briefly here.

Once your carrots are cleaned and ready to use, get out your grater. My cheese grater is just a piece of metal with holes punched in it that I set across a medium mixing bowl. If you have the kind that’s like a little metal house, you’ll just stand it on a clean surface.

Hold the grater steady with your off hand. Then just start grating the carrots against the smallest holes in your grater. It actually goes pretty quickly. It’s easiest to hold the carrot perpendicular to the grater so that you’re grating the end of it right across, not grating it at a slant which will be awkward to hold as the carrot gets shorter and shorter. It doesn’t matter if you start grating at the thin end or the thick end.

Eventually you’ll get down to a little carrot nub that’s too small to hold without risking grating your fingers too. Just pop that little piece of carrot in your mouth and eat it. It’s a healthy snack.

As you grate, you’ll need to occasionally knock down the pile of grated carrot you’re creating, because you don’t want it getting so high that it touches the grater. Just shake the bowl. If you’re using a standing-up grater, stop occasionally to remove the grated carrot into the bowl you set out.

Okay, so that’s that. I kind of got ahead of myself so let’s start at the beginning and catch up.

You’ll need a loaf pan for this recipe and three mixing bowls, one of them medium-sized and the others larger. Use the medium-sized bowl for the grated carrot and mashed banana. It doesn’t matter what size loaf pan you use as long as it’s not teeny, but if you have a choice of sizes go for a medium-sized one.

So, grate your carrots first. You should have a good amount of grated car

Khuushuur (Mongolian fried meat dumplings) * basics of kneading dough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG4YbtfbkuE

Khuushuur (Mongolian fried meat dumplings)

Filling:

about 1 lb. minced meat (beef or mutton is traditional)

small onion, diced small

several garlic cloves, minced

Pepper and/or paprika

Cumin

1 Tbsp or more salt

a little water

oil for frying

Dumpling dough:

about 3 c. flour

about 1 c. warm water

Mix the meat, onion, and garlic and add plenty of spices. Mix a generous amount of salt with a small amount of warm water and add to the meat mixture, and mix it in well.

Make a well in the flour in a large bowl and slowly add water, mixing with your hand until the dough has a pliable but firm texture thicker than biscuit dough. Knead the dough a few times if you have trouble getting all the flour combined. Let the dough rest, covered, for 15 minutes before working.

Cut the dough into quarters or thick slices. Work with one piece at a time and keep the others covered so they won’t dry out. Roll into a rope and slice off pieces about two inches thick. Roll these pieces into balls, then flatten and roll out into little round pastries, ideally about 4” across. Roll only one or two at a time, since they become harder to work with as they dry.

Place a spoonful of the meat mixture onto the piece of flattened dough. Fold the pastry over and pinch the edges closed to seal them. This is traditionally done with a pretty pattern that makes the edge look braided. Gently flatten the filled pastry so that it resembles a taco that just ate too many tacos.

Place dough pockets into hot oil and fry until golden brown on both sides. Eat hot, out of hand. Makes about 25-30. This recipe can be halved.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make khuushuur, a traditional Mongolian dish that’s basically a deep-fried meat and onion pie, or fried dumpling. Hopefully I’m pronouncing the word right, since it’s 100% of all the Mongolian I know. I’ve seen it spelled different ways, sometimes with just an H at the beginning, more commonly with a KH. The sound seems to be a soft H that’s sounded in the back of the throat.

I learned about khuushuur because I’m currently obsessed with a Mongolian folk metal band called the Hu. Their music is amazing and I was supposed to see them live in May, but they had to cancel the rest of their tour because of Covid-19. I follow the band on social media and knew they had spent at least a while quarantined in Australia before they were able to return home to Mongolia.

At some point, though, I stumbled across a series of 14 videos called “Hu’s in the Kitchen.” I haven’t watched all of the videos because the earlier ones appear to be the band and crew eating at restaurants or at people’s homes, and it’s frankly kind of boring. But the last few videos are the band cooking for themselves, and the very last one definitely was recorded while the band was in quarantine in Australia.

I love these last few videos, because it’s just the band. They’re adorable and I admit that at first I was just interested in watching and listening to them, especially Gala who has the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen. But then I started paying attention to what they were cooking. And it’s that very last episode, released in July of 2020, that features khuushuur. Gala, by the way, is the guy who introduces the video at the very beginning. He’s so adorable.

I had to try making the recipe, and luckily my first effort turned out AMAZING. It wasn’t perfect and it definitely wasn’t pretty to look at, but it was delicious, which gave me the enthusiasm to keep working on my khuushuur-making skills. This episode is the culmination of what I’ve learned, both by

Roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon * how to prepare Brussels sprouts

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Bacon

about 1 or 1.5 lb Brussels sprouts, cut in half

2 Tbsp olive oil

1-2 Tbsp honey or maple syrup

1 tsp salt

about 1/2 tsp pepper

5 slices of bacon (uncooked)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Rinse, cut off stems, and slice Brussels sprouts in half. Place in a large mixing bowl and drizzle with olive oil and honey or maple syrup, then toss to coat. Add salt and pepper, mix well, and spread onto a greased baking sheet in a single layer. Cut up uncooked bacon into very small pieces and drop onto the sprouts evenly. Sprinkle with more pepper.

Place in oven and roast for 20 to 25 minutes, until bacon is cooked, stirring carefully halfway through.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make Brussels sprouts that you won’t hate. I promise.

I have hated Brussels sprouts for my entire life until last year when my uncle made them and they were actually good. It turns out that everyone has been cooking those things wrong all this time, so here’s how to do it right.

Brussels sprouts are little round green things that look like teeny cabbages, and they are related to cabbage. They taste like cabbage too. And it’s funny, because I will happily cook and eat cabbage in certain recipes, like corned beef and cabbage which one day I might cover on the podcast, and spring rolls which as I understand are mostly stuffed with cabbage. But Brussels sprouts, ew.

But instead of boiling Brussels sprouts, which makes them mushy and bitter, we’re going to roast them. We’re going to roast them WITH BACON. I’m not one of those bacon maniacs but it is hard to dispute that bacon tastes really good and imparts its flavor to any food it’s cooked with.

So, for this recipe you’re going to need a large mixing bowl and a baking sheet, preferably one with edges instead of the totally flat baking sheets. You’re dealing with little round things that roll easily and you need to turn them over while they’re in the oven, so having edges on your baking sheet will help keep the Brussels sprouts from burning to the bottom of your oven.

The first thing you need to do is prepare the sprouts. Throw them in a colander or run water directly into the plastic bag they’re in, and give them a good rinse. Then you’ll need to trim the stubby stem off and remove any outer leaves that look gross. Generally these leaves will come off by themselves when you cut the sprouts in half, which is the last step. Then toss the halved sprouts into the mixing bowl. Do this for all the sprouts, which actually doesn’t take too long once you get into the rhythm. You can also get them ready ahead of time, then cover the bowl of sprouts and refrigerate them for a few hours until you’re ready to cook them.

You can add other vegetables to the sprouts if you like, as long as they’re vegetables that can stand up to cooking at high temperatures, like broccoli.

Once your sprouts are ready and waiting in the bowl, turn the oven on to 400 F to preheat, and grease your baking sheet. You can use vegetable oil or shortening or the spray stuff. I have found, by the way, that using shortening to grease a pan that you then put in the oven at a high temperature, like 400 or higher, will cause the shortening to become super sticky and impossible to remove, and may discolor your baking sheet.

Next, pour two Tbsp of olive oil over the sprouts, then two Tbsp of honey or maple syrup. If you measure the olive oil out first, when you measure the honey or syrup with the same spoon it will just pour off the spoon without leaving any behind, just like magic.

Mix the sprouts around well so that they’re all coated with a thin layer of oliv

Drop Biscuits * how to fry bacon * using bacon grease * what “make a well” means in a recipe

Drop Biscuits with Bacon and/or Cheese

2 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

4 Tbsp shortening

1 c. milk

1 c. shredded Cheddar (or other cheese) (optional)

5-7 slices cooked bacon, cut up small (optional)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut shortening into dry ingredients. Add cheese and/or bacon pieces. Add milk and drop in large spoonfuls on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake 12-14 minutes. For rolled out biscuits decrease the milk to 2/3 cup. If you leave out both the cheese and bacon, increase the salt to one teaspoon.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make drop biscuits, with or without cheese and/or bacon!

I’d like to say this is an old family recipe passed down through generations of women, but in fact I got it from an old cookbook called Good Recipes for Hard Times that I owned in my 20s. I’ve regretted for years selling it in a yard sale but through the magic of the internet I just ordered a paperback copy. Maybe it’ll turn out to be the same copy! Actually, my copy was hardback and would be worth a whole lot today, although by the time I sold it, it was pretty battered. Like, literally battered because there was batter on some of the pages. *rimshot*

Okay, so, we’ve talked about biscuits once or twice in past episodes, but we’ve never actually featured a biscuit recipe. This recipe doesn’t make the most delicious biscuit, but it is the easiest and most adaptable recipe I’ve found. I primarily use it for making bacon and cheese biscuits, or sometimes just cheese biscuits. We’re also not going to bother to roll these biscuits out. This is a recipe you can whip up quickly when you need something filling and cheap. I will warn you that if you leave the cheese and/or bacon out, the biscuits sort of taste like glue. But put enough butter and jam on them and they’re fine.

For the purposes of this episode I’m going to assume that you want to make cheese and bacon biscuits. That means we need to talk about how to cook bacon before we do anything else, because you need cooked bacon for this recipe.

First, of course, you need the bacon. It doesn’t matter what kind you buy, but thick cut bacon takes forever to cook. I tend to shop by price so I get the cheapest, fattiest bacon I can find—but I don’t buy bacon often these days, maybe just a few times a year. I’m also trying to cut back on the amount of sugar I eat, so this time I bought bacon that was cured without sugar, honey, or any other sweetener. It tasted fine. It tasted like bacon.

Cooking bacon is messy, so when I do cook it I typically make the whole package at once. In this particular case I didn’t since I needed five strips raw for a different recipe that we’ll talk about soon. You’ll need a large, heavy skillet and make sure to either wear an old shirt or put an apron on to protect your clothes from grease.

Heat the skillet to about medium low. Place the strips of bacon in the skillet while it’s still warming up, and try to position them so that as much of the bacon as possible contacts the bottom of the pan. If you’re cooking the whole package of bacon, though, you won’t have enough room, so once I fill up the bottom of the pan I just layer the rest of the bacon over the first layer but facing the other direction, so I have a criss-cross pattern of bacon. I’m not sure that makes sense. Don’t stress about it. Just separate the slices and lay them out as flat as possible.

As the skillet heats, the bacon begins to cook, and as it does it releases a lot of grease and begins to shrink and curl up. After a few minutes use a spatula to loosen the bacon from the bottom, because you don’t want it to burn. Specifica

Marinated Tuna Salad * how to prepare cucumber

Marinated Tuna Salad

1 medium-sized cucumber, peeled and diced

2 celery stalks, sliced

1/3 onion, diced (optional)

1/2 tomato, diced (optional)

1 c balsamic vinaigrette

1 can tuna in water (drained)

mayonnaise

feta cheese (optional)

Place the diced vegetables into a medium-sized mixing bowl and pour the balsamic vinaigrette over them. Cover and place in fridge for at least one hour.

Drain the tuna and mix with a little mayo—just enough to combine. Scoop the veggies from the vinaigrette with a slotted spoon or fork and add to the tuna mixture. Stir and serve as a wrap or pita with feta cheese sprinkled on top.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make marinated tuna salad. This recipe is from my friend Jennifer, a science fiction writer who you may know by the name J.B. Rockwell. If you’re looking for something new to read, I recommend her Serengeti trilogy, which is about an AI spaceship. I’ll put a link to the first book in the show notes. It’s also available as a really good audiobook.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29006650-serengeti

Anyway, Jen sent me this recipe a few weeks ago and I’ve made it several times already. It’s easy to make, and marinating the vegetables gives them a delicious tang. You will need to start the marinade about an hour before you plan to eat, though.

For this recipe you’ll need a medium-sized mixing bowl and a small mixing bowl. You’ll also need a cucumber and a few celery stalks. You can add any other vegetables you like, but the cucumber and celery are the heart of this recipe.

If you’ve never made a recipe that calls for cucumbers before, you may not know how to prepare them. Choose small to medium-sized cucumbers that are dark green in color and firm to the touch. Also make sure you’re buying a cucumber and not a small zucchini, which I almost did without thinking, because they look a lot alike at first glance. The larger a cucumber is, the more seedy it is, and you want to minimize the seediness. Peel the cucumber just like you would a potato, then slice the ends off. Then just cut it into thin slices. For this recipe you’ll want to cut the slices into quarters too, because you want the pieces bite-sized.

Put all your diced vegetables into the medium-sized mixing bowl and pour about a cup of balsamic vinaigrette over them. This should cover the veggies; if it doesn’t, add a little more. On the other hand, if you didn’t use that many veggies you may not need a full cup of the vinaigrette.

You buy balsamic vinaigrette in the salad dressing section of the store. Jen says you can make your own with 2/3 c balsamic vinegar mixed with 1/3 c olive oil and Italian seasonings, but if you do end up making your own you’ll probably want to make it a few days ahead of time if possible so the seasonings can flavor the other ingredients properly.

Cover the bowl with foil or plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge for at least an hour. You probably don’t want to leave this marinating overnight, but a few hours is fine.

After an hour is up, or when you’re ready to eat, get out your small mixing bowl, or a small serving bowl or a big cereal bowl. Drain a can of tuna well and put the tuna into the bowl. My cats would like to remind you that you can drain the tuna onto a saucer and give them the tuna water. Then mix the tuna with a little mayonnaise—just enough to stick the tuna together, basically. You don’t need a lot.

Then take out the bowl of marinating vegetables. You want to add the veggies to the tuna, not the other way round, because you don’t want all that vinaigrette in your salad or it’ll be more like tuna salad soup. You can scoop the veggies out of the marinade with

Cream scones * how to bake with whipping cream

Cream Scones

3 ¼ c all-purpose flour

½ c sugar

1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

1 c. nuts (or chocolate chips)

1 c. dried fruit

2 c. cold whipping cream

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add one cup of dried fruit (not fresh) and one cup of nuts or chocolate chips.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the cream until froth forms. Fold into the dry ingredients until just combined. Form into one or two balls and pat out on a lightly floured surface until the dough is about an inch thick. Cut into wedges.

Place wedges on greased baking sheets and bake for 17-19 minutes. Makes about two dozen scones.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make cream scones! This is another recipe I got from my cousin Molly, and I think she got it from a friend or maybe online. Either way, she calls these “the best scones” and they certainly are.

The reason I don’t make these scones more often is that the recipe calls for heavy whipping cream, and the only time I have whipping cream is when I buy it for a specific recipe. But occasionally I buy it just for making these scones.

Before you start thinking, “Hmm, I bet half and half would work and I’ve got some in the fridge”: no. Nothing works except heavy whipping cream. I know because I have tried everything from half and half to whole milk to evaporated milk, and the result is always a dense, flat mess. If you look at the ingredients, you’ll see that the recipe doesn’t call for butter or any other fat. It needs the fat in the cream to become scones instead of doorstops, and because cream is so light compared to other fats, the scones are light too.

In addition to the heavy whipping cream you’ll need a cup of dried fruit and a cup of nuts. If you can’t eat nuts or don’t like them, you can substitute chocolate chips. Don’t use fresh fruit, though. I like using chopped pecans and dried cranberries, which is the combination you’ll see in photos in the show notes, but chopped walnuts and dried cherries are great too, or whatever you like. I like the texture of the nuts so much that I’ve never tried the recipe with chocolate chips.

You’ll also need two large mixing bowls, or one large and one medium mixing bowl, and some baking sheets. This recipe makes a lot of scones so unless your baking sheets are larger than usual, you’ll probably need two.

First, preheat the oven to 375. Then put the smaller mixing bowl in the fridge to chill. Just trust me on this. Then grease the baking sheets and set them aside. Then make sure your working surface is clean, because these are scones you have to pat out and cut.

In the large mixing bowl, the one that’s not in the fridge, mix the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. The recipe calls for a lot of baking powder but don’t worry, you won’t be able to taste it. Once you have the dry ingredients mixed up nicely with a fork or whisk, add the fruit and nuts and mix them in too. I actually ran out of all-purpose flour when I made these today, and the new bag of flour in the cupboard that I thought was all-purpose turned out to be bread flour. So I used almost a cup of bread flour to make up the difference. Bread flour is a little heavier than all-purpose so I was worried, but it worked just fine.

Next, it’s time to get the mixing bowl out of the fridge. It should be cool by now, which will help keep the whipping cream cool. Pour the whipping cream into the chilled bowl. If you bought a pint of whipping cream, that’s two cups so you don’t have to measure. Then use a whisk or a fork and beat the whipping cream briskly for about a minute. You’re not trying t

Baked citrus spice fish * what “white fish” is

Dave M’s Citrus Spice Baked Fish

2 white fish fillets

oil for pan

salt and pepper

about 1 Tbsp mayonnaise

1-2 tsp citrus spice mixture (I use Badia Mojo Rub “citrus blend”)

1 tsp garlic powder (if spice mixture isn’t garlicky)

bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 400 Fahrenheit. Oil a baking sheet lightly. Salt and pepper the fish fillets on both sides. Mix the mayonnaise and spice mixture in a small bowl and spread on the fish (both sides). Mix the bread crumbs with garlic powder (if using) and more salt and pepper if desired, and sprinkle mixture over the mayonnaise. Bake for 15 minutes. Serve immediately.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to cook fish! I don’t eat a lot of fish because I’ve never cared for ocean fish, and until my friend Dave gave me this recipe, I never knew how to reliably cook fresh water fish so that it had consistently good flavor.

Dave lives in Scotland so he uses something called Sumac, which he describes as a citrusy spice. I only know sumac as a poisonous shrub that grows wild on hillsides, and while I’m sure I could order the spice called sumac online, my local Walmart definitely doesn’t carry it. I bought a spice blend called “Badia Mojo Rub Citrus Blend” to use instead and was happy with it. If they want to give me money for advertising their spice blend I will accept it with dignity.

This recipe is really easy. I’ve made it a couple of times now and it turns out great every time. The fish is tender and flavorful and prep time only takes a few minutes.

You’ll need a baking sheet and a small bowl. First, turn on your oven to preheat to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Then rub a little vegetable oil on the baking sheet so the fish won’t stick.

You will also need fish, of course. White fish just means any inexpensive, mild fish. It doesn’t have to be a particular kind. I buy tilapia because it’s a readily available, inexpensive river fish (and I didn’t know it was a river fish until I started fishing them up from rivers in Animal Crossing), but if I can find locally caught trout or catfish I’ll definitely try them too. The recipe also specifies fillets, so don’t get whole fish unless you know how to fillet them. I do not know how to fillet fish. When I was 16 I made a pest of myself asking my uncle Sean to teach me how while my family was at the beach, but he never got around to it. He did teach me how to clean shrimp, though.

Anyway, get out the fish fillets and salt and pepper them on both sides. Then, in your small bowl, mix about a Tablespoonful of mayonnaise with whatever citrus spice or spice blend you have. The citrus is the real trick, because it goes so well with fish and enhances the mild flavor of the meat. The mayo helps the spice stick to the fish and keeps the fish from drying out in the oven.

Spread the mayonnaise mixture on both sides of the fish. I usually just work on the baking sheet, but if you want to put the fish on a plate and then move it to the baking sheet when you’re ready to put it in the oven, that works too. I use the back of a spoon to spread the mixture on the fish.

Next, you will need bread crumbs. I use Panko crumbs because they stay crispy. If the spice mix you used isn’t garlicky, or if you just love lots of garlic, mix about a third of a cup of bread crumbs with about a teaspoonful of garlic powder, and you can also add more salt and pepper if you like. As it happens, the citrus blend I use is nicely garlicky so I don’t mix anything with the Panko. Sprinkle the bread crumb mixture generously over the fish, then flip the pieces over and sprinkle the other side. Then, if the fish isn’t already on the baking sheet, move it there because it’s ready to go. Look how easy that was! The oven may not e

Coconut chocolate chip cookies * how to measure coconut flakes

Coconut chocolate chip cookies

1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 c. butter, softened

1/2 c. light brown sugar

1/4 c. white sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 c. sweetened coconut flakes

1 c. chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and lightly grease baking sheets.

Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, cream together egg and sugars until fluffy, then add egg and vanilla and mix well. Add flour mixture to butter mixture alternately with coconut flakes. Mix in chocolate chips. Scoop onto baking sheets and bake 11-13 minutes. Makes about two dozen.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make coconut chocolate chip cookies! It’s been a while since we had a cookie recipe and this one’s really good.

If you’ve listened to our very first episode, you should know the basics of how to make cookies. This recipe is almost the same as that one but with the addition of coconut flakes. Some people hate coconut, but those of us who love it know that it helps retain moisture in a cookie and makes it chewy too.

I have no idea where I got this recipe, but originally I wrote “optional” after the chocolate chips. Then, later, I scratched “optional” out. These cookies are so fantastic with the chocolate chips I can’t imagine leaving them out.

It’s a pretty straightforward recipe. You’ll need a large mixing bowl and a medium mixing bowl, and a couple of cookie sheets. Grease the baking sheets lightly with butter or shortening, then set them aside. Turn the oven on to preheat. In the medium bowl, mix the flour, soda, salt, and cinnamon with a whisk or a fork.

Then, in the large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and both kinds of sugar. Remember that when you measure the brown sugar, you pack it down hard into the measuring cup.

Once the butter and sugars are thoroughly combined and the mixture is creamy, add the egg and vanilla and mix well. Then add part of the flour mixture to it and mix it in well. The recipe says to alternate adding the flour mixture and the coconut, but honestly, you can combine the flour mixture with the butter mixture and then add the coconut.

But wait, how do you measure the coconut? Is it like brown sugar where you pack it down, or is it like flour where you scoop it into the cup lightly and level off the top?

You measure flaked coconut like you do flour. Scoop it into the measuring cup, press it down very lightly and add more if you need to, then level it off. Then just dump it into the batter and mix it in well.

I’ve made this recipe using sweetened coconut and I’ve made this recipe using unsweetened coconut, and I’ve made this recipe using a mixture of the two. I usually use a mixture, but all three work just fine and the cookies are plenty sweet. Just use whatever you have. Make sure to seal the rest of package of coconut well or put it in an airtight container so it doesn’t dry out before you use it again.

Once you’ve mixed in the coconut and flour mixture and combined it all thoroughly, add the chocolate chips and mix well again. Then you’re all set to bake your cookies. I try to make these fairly small, but if you like big cookies that’s fine too. Scoop batter up with a spoon and drop on the cookie sheet, leaving an inch or two between cookies since they’ll spread a bit as they cook. Then pop the pan into the oven and set the timer for eleven minutes.

In my oven, with fairly small cookies, eleven minutes does the trick. If you make your cookies bigger or if your oven tends to run a bit cool, you might need another minute or two. When they’re done, the coo