Pressure Cooker Tomato Sauce and Applesauce

It is Tuesday, and it is my usual day to blog a recipe.  I have been kind of lazy, and I don't have anything new.  I made the same old food this week.  Actually, I even bought a pumpkin pound cake at Walmart.  It was $4.19, and they charged me $91.40.  That's what I get for shopping there.  Of course, I had to stand in line for a while at customer service to get my money back.

Would anyone notice if I didn't have a recipe this week?  Probably not, but I feel I should come up with something.  A week or so ago, my daughter brought me a box of Roma tomatoes and a box of apples.  Yesterday, I still hadn't dealt with them.  I really didn't want to can them so I took the easy way out.  I washed the tomatoes and cut them up in chunks.  I put them into the pressure cooker with a little salt, one green pepper (cut up and seeded) and one small onion.  I pressured them for 30 minutes.  As many of you know, I love my electric pressure cooker.  http://www.thecabincountess.com/2013/01/my-favorite-small-appliance.html 
30 minutes in a pressure cooker is quite a while.  As a result the tomatoes were cooked thoroughly.  Then I put them into the VitaMix blender and pulsed until well blended.  The result was fantastic.  I avoided taking the skin off, and I didn't have to remove the seeds.  All the nutrition remains in the juice.  This sauce would be good for a lot of recipes.  I froze most of it, but left out a quart just to drink.

It's thick and tasty with no separation overnight in the frig.

It worked so well with the tomatoes, I did the same thing with the apples.  I took out the core but left the peels on.  I generally make chunky applesauce that is white, but this was so easy.  The Vitamix blended the cooked apples into a pink creamy sauce.  I added sugar and we had it warm for supper.  I still like the chunky version better, but this is good too.

That's it, that is all I can come up with this week.  Maybe next week I will be more creative, but at least I didn't waste this beautiful free produce.

Gigantic White Puffballs

They say you are never too old to learn.  That happened to me today.  Because I'm not very worldly, it happens to me more than many people my age.  Today I discovered some Gigantic Puffball Mushrooms.  Actually my son-in-law pointed them out to me.  We were visiting my daughter and son-in-law's new house.  In front, near the driveway were these big white balls.  I thought they were white pumpkins that had been tossed in the yard.  I was told they were puffball mushrooms, and they were actually edible.  I had fallen for that big huge mushroom/fungus thing once before.  http://www.thecabincountess.com/2013/10/its-hard-for-me-to-identify-mushrooms.html  As it turned out that one was insulating foam.  I walked over to the area and these are big white mushroom balls.  Kind of pretty.

I did a little research, and they are only edible for a short period of time.  If you find one, you should slice it open lengthwise.  The inside should be firm and white.  There shouldn't be any gills like you see in some mushrooms.  I didn't cut these open because I don't plan on eating them.  I'm not that brave to ever take that chance.  Very soon they will turn brown and give off trillions of spores. Folklore says that the spores were used for medicinal purposes, but again I'm not going to try that either.   I will look forward to seeing if these reappear next year.

Sometimes puffballs grow in what is called a "fairy ring".  This is a little one.

I learned about the Indian Pipe's earlier this Summer, in case you missed it.  Nature is amazing.
http://www.thecabincountess.com/2014/07/i-discovered-indian-pipe-plant.html

My Latest Thrift Store Find - An Electric KrumKake Iron

Most of my growing up and adult years were spent in Stoughton, Wisconsin.  I lived there from 1957 until 2002 except for a short time during the late 1960's when we lived in Madison, Wisconsin.  Stoughton was then and probably still is a very Norwegian community.  Norwegian heritage is very important to a lot of the families who live there or are from Stoughton.  I'm not Norwegian, but living in Stoughton gave me the opportunity to eat specialty Norwegian foods.  Some I liked and some I think you have to be exposed to from birth.  The lutefisk was not my favorite.  Lutefisk is dried cod that has been soaked in a lye solution for several days to rehydrate it.   Then it is rinsed with cold water to remove the lye, and boiled.  It is served with butter.  It tasted like fish jelly.  Lefse was another food that I never made nor cared for.  Lefse is a soft flatbread.   It is made out of flour,  milk or cream (or sometimes lard) with potatoes added and cooked on a special lefse griddle. It looks like a big tortilla.  I always said you could put butter and sugar on a toasted paper towel, and it would be about the same as lefse.  The one thing I loved was Krumkake.  Krumkake is a waffle cookie made on a special decorative two-sided iron griddle similar to a waffle iron.  When warm they are rolled into a cone or cylinder.  You can fill the cone with whipped cream or eat them plain with powdered sugar sprinkled on.  I learned to make them on a krumkake iron that fit over the stove burner.  The trick was getting the temperature just right so they browned but didn't burn.  I usually ruined the first few until I got it right.  Imagine the thrill I had a couple weeks ago.  We hadn't gone to a thrift store for a very long time, so we took a couple hours and went to a couple stores.  I found a brand new, still in the plastic, electric Krumkake iron.

 
I haven't used it yet, but I hope it works well.  It takes the guessing out of the process by putting the batter on the iron, shutting the lid and pushing a button.

 
When it is ready, the ready light comes on.  They sell for $50 on Amazon and I got it for $7.  I will post the recipe and finished product in the future (if they turn out).  I'm looking forward to trying.

Update:
http://www.thecabincountess.com/2015/12/my-krumkake-will-not-go-to-waste.html

Let's Turn The World From Pink To Multi-Color

I am going to deviate from my usual blog today.  The whole world has turned pink today.  For this next month it will be that Breast Cancer is the only cancer that matters.  While I agree that it is sad and unfortunate that anyone gets breast cancer, it isn't the only one.  There are many different types and each is just as devastating to the person who has it.  The Susan G Komen foundation has become a huge business with many paid fundraisers, and they have done a tremendous job of bringing awareness.  It's just too bad that breast cancer is singled out as the most important.  September is gynecologic cancer month, but I bet most people don't know that, or that November is lung cancer awareness month.  It is kind of like the ice bucket challenge.  It made all of us more aware of ALS.  It is great that people opened their hearts and pocket books for this cause, but there are tons of great causes and just because the squeeky wheel gets the attention, it doesn't mean it is more important.

I wrote about my cancer journey in a previous blog, so I won't go into that again.  I just want more attention and funding made for all cancers and diseases.  Let's turn the world MULTI-COLORED to represent awareness for all cancers.  Some say a lavender ribbon brings awareness to All Cancers.   Better yet lets make a ribbon that includes all the colors. 
http://www.thecabincountess.com/2013/04/cancer-has-many-colors.html