New Year 2015 just knocked on our doors, boldly breezed in and is being most hospitably welcomed and joyously celebrated.
Here we go again into another new year!
We don’t yet have a clue what this new year might be bringing to us, but we are very much enjoying the all new fresh start and our celebration of yet another New Year’s arrival.
Working blindly, we cannot see what is lurking just around the corner of Time, but the little three-word phrase “starting over again” always is uplifting and inspiring, and surely our New Year 2015 will make good things happen.
This new year might get our stalled work projects progressing fast again. It might make great vacation and travels happen for us. Surely it will just get us back to finishing the reading of that good book we started on weeks ago with the reading too frequently interrupted and the book most reluctantly set aside.
Maybe our new year’s best starting all over again project brought by the new year will be the making and baking of some newly discovered spectacular pie recipes.
We’ve all had lots of starting all again times with whatever in our lives got interrupted or lost or just couldn’t quite get going, maybe an all-new work project, maybe planning and cooking meals until phone ringing or a knock at the door interrupted and delayed or even destroyed our culinary project in progress, requiring starting all over again re-creating whatever got lost.
Opportunities for the starting all-over-again experience, making an all new and fresh second start, can be common in cooking, especially for home cooks who really have fun experimenting with new recipes and all-new cooking projects for foods we’ve never cooked and maybe never even yet tasted but found in a good cookbook in which we have enough confidence to try its new and unknown recipes.
Enjoy this week’s recipes below from as many of our Apopka-area community cookbooks as can fit into this column space.
LIBBY NEWELL’S
HOPPIN’ JOHN
Recipe from Old Timers Athletic
Association’s Best Recipes
1 pound (2-1/2 cups) dried black-eyed peas
1/2 pound salt pork, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 pound boiled ham, minced
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
3 cups cooked rice
Tabasco sauce
Rinse peas and place in a large stockpot. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Boil for one minute. Cover pan and allow to sit for one hour.
Saute the salt pork until golden brown. Add onion and garlic and cook for five minutes. Drain peas and return to pot. Add four cups water, ham and the black and red pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook gently for one to two hours, until peas are tender. (Add additional water if necessary.) Heap the rice on a platter and spoon the peas around the edge. Pass the Tabasco. Recipe makes eight servings.
ETHEL MINER’S
CORN PUDDING
Recipe from First Presbyterian Church’s Treasures and Pleasures
1 (#2 size) can of cream style corn
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons butter
2 eggs, beaten well
1 cup milk
Stir together first four ingredients. Mix together the eggs and milk and stir that mixture into the corn mixture. Pour into greased baking dish and bake in 300 degree oven for about 25 minutes. Note: Ethel Miner’s daughter Mary Jo Miner Goodwin notes in this Treasures and Pleasures cookbook that “Ethel’s house was a favorite gathering place for young people who loved her for her witty, happy disposition and her congenial hospitality. She was “Ma Miner” to many of today’s ‘grown-up children’ who loved to visit with her at her daughter’s home.
BETTY BROOME’S
PARTY POTATOES
Recipe from Old Timers Athletic
Association’s Best Recipes
5 pounds potatoes, peeled, sliced and cooked (no salt!)
1 stick oleo (margarine)
1 eight ounce package cream cheese
1 cup sour cream
3 teaspoons onion salt
Pepper (amount your choice)
Mash the cooked potatoes. Add remaining ingredients and mash or whip the mixture. Put mixture in a glass ovenproof dish and dot with butter. Bake at 350 to 375 degrees until golden brown. Recipe can be prepared day before, refrigerated and baked when ready to serve.
NANCY BOMM’S
EASY EGGNOG
Recipe from St. Francis of Assisi Church’s A Taste of Heaven
2 eggs, beaten
3-1/2 cups milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 package instant vanilla pudding mix
In large bowl, combine eggs, milk, sugar and nutmeg. Add the pudding mix. Beat mixture with rotary beater until well blended. Chill. Serve topped with additional eggnog or chocolate curls.
TRUDY BERGSTROM’S
SUGAR AND SPICE PECANS
Recipe from
Errol Membership Recipes
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg white
2-1/2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon clove
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 cups pecans
Combine first eight ingredients in bowl and mix well. Add pecans and stir until coated. Spread on greased pan. Bake at 275 degrees for fifty to fifty-five minutes. Remove from pan and place on waxed paper to cool. “These are delicious and make great holiday gifts,” this recipe contributor noted.
HABITAT FOR HUMANITY’S
SPINACH AND BLACK
OLIVE SALAD
Recipe from
Partners In The Kitchen:
From Our House To Yours
1/2 cup oil
1/3 cup vinegar
1 teaspoon each dry mustard, oregano and basil, 1 clove of garlic, minced
8 ounces Colby cheese, cut into half-inch cubes
8 ounces corkscrew pasta, cooked
3 green onions, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1/3 cup sliced black olives
3 cups torn spinach
Combine oil, vinegar, dry mustard, oregano, basil and garlic in salad bowl. Mix well. Add cheese, pasta, green onions, bell pepper and olives. Mix well again. Chill for three hours to overnight. Add spinach at serving time. Toss and mix well.
YVETTE THOMAS’
CHOCOLATE CHIP PIE
Recipe from
Women On The Move Cookbook
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup self-rising flour
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 stick butter
1 cup pecans or walnuts
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 unbaked deep pie shell
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Mix sugar and flour. Add eggs and melted butter and mix together well. Mix together the sugar-flour mixture, eggs and melted butter. Add pecans and chocolate chips. Mix all together well and pour into pie shell. Bake for fifty-five minutes. Recipe yields eight servings.
