A Mushroom Stuffing Recipe (Especially for Cheryl)

I promised this recipe at least a couple years ago to Cheryl from the joyful A Simple Life blog and am finally getting around to sharing it.  Cheryl, I know you are partial to your dear grandmother's stuffing, but I consider this  more of a mushroom side dish with bread cubes added than a "real" stuffing, so it need not compete.  :)  When I worked as a hotel cook years ago, my manager would encourage me and the rest of the kitchen staff to look for new recipes in the cookbook collection, and this mushroom stuffing was one of my best finds from those years.  I think it was in one of those little cookbooks printed by a church group or school organization, and this is a basic guideline, and this isn't the way it was originally written.  I don't measure anything anymore when I make it.  As I just told Mike the other day, finding this recipe and learning how to flip omelets are two of my favorite takeaways from that work experience.  :)  This is the only stuffing I make anymore here for holidays and other "stuffing occasions."  For all of us who like mushrooms, then, here's my favorite mushroom dish.  

Val's Favorite Mushroom Stuffing:

1/4 cup butter

1 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms

3/4 cup herb-seasoned stuffing bread cubes

1 cup shredded cheddar

1/4 cup Half and Half

~  Cook the mushrooms in the butter until tender.  They will "sweat" as they cook, of course.  Do not drain the extra liquid they make.  I think I cook them down maybe ten minutes.

~  Stir in the stuffing mix/bread cubes until they've absorbed the mushrooms' excess liquid and taken on their color.  I have been using fewer stuffing cubes each time I make this, which is another reason I think of it more of as a mushroom side dish than a stuffing.  Play with the recipe however you like, obviously, adjusting all the amounts to focus more or less on bread or mushroom.

~  Add half the mushroom/stuffing mixture to a greased baking dish.

~  Cover this layer with some of the cheddar.

~  Repeat by adding another layer of mushrooms, then more cheddar.  (Regardless of how many layers you make/which size baking dish you use, cheddar should be the top layer.)  Pour the Half and Half over it all.  Sometimes I'll add an extra tablespoon of butter to the top, as well.  

~  Bake 20-30 minutes.  Even twenty minutes seems to do the trick.  

Ohhhhhh, this is so good.  I haven't managed yet to get an impressive-looking picture of the finished dish--stuffing rarely looks pretty, it seems--but every forkful is an incredible combination of bread, butter, cheese, and mushrooms.  'So good.  ♥

You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day - unless you're too busy; then you should sit for an hour. ~ Sukhraj S. Dhillon

Well, today has been a relaxing day off.  Really relaxing.  Really off.  I slept in.  The first two Christmas cards came in today's mail, Mom's and Aunt Heidi's.  Mike had the day off too but went out to breakfast alone and then ran a few errands downtown, so I had most of six hours to myself.  I added the miniature pink gingham wreath to my little cottage planter, per somewhat new tradition.  I thought of one last little gift for my older brother and his family and ordered it with just enough time left for it to arrive by next weekend's early Christmas.  While watching The Shawshank Redemption, I touched up a few Christmas tree ornaments with some fresh paint, glue, and faux snow before rehanging them.  I made this year's batch of salt-dough ornaments while watching About a Boy, another of my favorite movies (and books).  (And let us pause here to admire the colorful holiday table-scene here:

Ah!  Love!  Every time I watch this--and it's become another Christmastime tradition for me--I remember that I want to look for a simple candelabra like that one, and then forget until the following Christmas.  Maybe 2018 will be Candelabra Year.)  I had made my last big bunch of salt-dough ornaments in 2011--

--but decorated the tree this year in just pink and white so wanted some pink candy canes and hearts instead of all these rainbow-hued ones.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand just now taken out of the oven and cooling a bit before I add them to the tree, then, is this afternoon's batch, along with a couple hearts formed from the last little scraps of dough.  (Salt-dough:  1/2 cup salt, 1/2 cup water, 1 cup flour-plus-more-mixed-in-as-needed. . .baked at 250°-ish for about four hours.  Katy Elliot's recipe--and are the snowflake ornaments in her post not the loveliest!--is the one I started with in 2011.  I usually need more flour than her recipe calls for, and I bake mine at a higher temp, but my recipe is otherwise her recipe--and a good one it is.)  Quite soon, then, the new candy canes and hearts will get hooked onto tree boughs and I'll loop some green thread or fishing line through the hearts to hang them and will declare the tree done. 

I'm off tomorrow too and am trying to talk Mike into a game of Trivial Pursuit.  No takers yet, but I got a "We'll see" upon last mention, at least.  'Am at some point re-hanging the gingham apron "curtain" that has a home over the air conditioner now that winter's here. 

I still have my cards to get ready to mail, despite Wednesday night's best intentions, but returning to my book sounds better than cards and envelopes.  Sometime this weekend, I'll take some Christmas tree pictures.  Ahhh, well, one picture for now, because I just added the salt-dough pieces and this is all making me very happy.

Sweet little tree.  ♥  After all the stress and chaos this week, this Christmas tree is actually my favorite one ever.  Go figure.  Thank you all for your kind words on the ol' balancing act.  Maybe everything just had to get worse here before I could figure out how to make it better. 

Yellow Squash Roses & Ice Cube Misadventures: Easter 2017

It stormed here both while I was cooking and while we were eating dinner, so all the more reason to enjoy a colorful and sunny Easter table today.  I forgot to make the mashed cauliflower, my Daffodils from the grocery store barely opened before dying, the Dandelions wilted, the edible-flower-filled ice cubes melted almost instantly and became a loose-flower mess inside our water glasses, and in the last-minute rush to finish, I forgot both to season the quinoa and to add the leftover edible flowers to the salads, but--!--the meal came together, everything tasted good--even the quinoa once I'd seasoned it after our first couple bites--and the table was pretty enough to make me happy even if not quite as flower-filled as I'd intended. 

I was originally going to make tomato roses as garnish but then saw online on various sites that stripes of squash work too, and since the yellow of squash seemed more springy than the red of tomatoes, I went with the squash.  One yellow squash made four of these roses.  I just sliced the squash into thin strips of various lengths, microwaved the strips for about a minute to soften them enough to make them pliable, then patted them dry and rolled them up into the wells of a muffin pan, the shortest strip in the center of each soon-to-be-rose, and the other strips around it until the well was filled with the rolled-up strips.  I wanted to be sure to keep a nice golden color on each squash-rose so mixed some turmeric into a beaten egg and drizzled that mixture over each one too.  For the last few minutes of maybe a thirty-minute-total bake-time, I sprinkled some cheddar shreds between the squash strip-petals.  They kept their shape even after being transferred to the plates, which delighted me.  (It's the little things.  :)   )  I shaped spinach patties into leaves, although I see now that raw spinach leaves likely would have given me more of the look I was envisioning for these.  I have to think this would work with carrot-strips and any other vegetable or fruit that would soften enough to be rolled.  For a first attempt, I'm quite pleased.  ♥

I also made the balsamic carrots that I first posted here last year, ultimately-seasoned quinoa, a mushroom stuffing dish that seems to grace all our holiday tables and deserves its own post one of these days, although it's not remotely photogenic, green beans sauteed in garlic and olive oil, side salads, and our usual Easter dessert of robin's-egg-blue-colored peanut M&M candy "eggs" inside peanut butter/marshmallow/pretzel "nests." I dye my hard-boiled eggs inside too but left one uncolored to slice for our salads and added the blue and pink ones to our plates.  After years of eating my deviled eggs at Easter, Mike finally told me he prefers hard-boiled ones, and I don't have a preference, so I skipped the filling this time around and just left them plain.  Since I color the egg-white part regardless, they add a pop of color either way. 

I found the two red potatoes closest to being egg-shaped and fried slices of them to add to our salads, along with yellow, orange, and red grape tomatoes.  

The edible flowers that were supposed to dot the tops of the salads were forgotten and remain in the fridge to be used elsewhere this week.  Alas.  The last few minutes of holiday meal-preparations are always so chaotic, even with all the planning and list-making. 

The edible-flower-filled ice cubes looked gorgeous in the trays but melted almost as soon as water hit them.  'Not impressive.  Maybe if the water had been ice water kept in the fridge, the cubes would have lasted a bit longer, but I doubt they'd have lasted long enough even then to make me want to try this again.  With mint leaves or lemon bits frozen into the cubes intended for iced tea, sure.  With flowers specifically chosen to complement the flavor of the drink they'll be going into, yes.  Flower-filled ice cubes for bowls just to chill bottled drinks, of course.  But not like this again.  

I added oats to the recipe--such as it is--to the nests this year to make them more like healthy no-bakes than candy.  Two microwaved marshmallows, a few broken pretzels sticks, about two tablespoons of peanut butter, and maybe a fourth-cup of rolled oats were enough to make these three nests come together.  The bags of pastel-colored/Easter peanut-filled M&Ms always include a few gorgeous aqua ones that already look like little  eggs, so they're my go-to for this dessert. 

'A sweet end to a sweet weekend, and a colorful Easter after a rather dreary and depression-filled start to this year.  Here's to flowers and faith and life's many other lovely blessings.  

♥

The First Ten Days of the Year

The new year is beginning with a flurry of book-buying for my former elementary school.  I will have donated about six hundred books by the end of this month so am very much on-track with my goal of donating a thousand by my fortieth birthday in May.  "Did you know that all media's now half-off on Sundays?" the thrift shop cashier asked me last week as she rang up my stack of books.  I did not, and the new prices will make my goal even easier to reach this spring.  'Fifteen like-new hardcover books last week for practically nothing--like a wink from the universe.  ♥  I also did not know that Mary Poppins dolls existed--!--and lo and behold, this one, complete with carpetbag and umbrella, will soon be flying off to the school with the related books. 

Mom's January 4th birthday proved tricky to get a package out in time for since there was no mail here January 2nd for the New Year's postal holiday and I didn't want to mail it the Saturday before and have it--with cookies inside--sit in a post office or postal truck over the three-day weekend.  With a few little wrapped gifts nestling them inside the box, gluten-free nut roll cookies ended up being Mom's birthday treat this year.  I used a bag of Bob's Red Mill-brand gluten-free pie crust mix and was completely charmed by the packaging.  This would make a darling print.  And it's pink!  ♥

My original plan had been to make rugelach, but the dough was too sticky to roll properly and I hadn't remembered to leave myself enough of the flour for that purpose, so after a messy attempt at the rugelach, I ended up making a dozen nut roll cookies for Mom instead.  Had I put a bit more thought into my Plan B, I'd have made a tidier thumbprint cookie with the nut filling so they would have looked prettier.  Next time.  These turned out, though, with the nut-mixture mixed right into and around the dough, and they tasted good.  

The nut-mixture was about 7 oz. of walnut-meal, maybe 3/4 cup whole milk, a cup or so of sugar, an egg, and most of a stick of butter--cooked until boiling, then just kind of rolled into the pie crust-cookie dough.  Next time I make these, I'll add some of the walnut-meal to the flour so there will be more nut-flavor throughout. 

I baked them early in the morning on January 3rd--the day before Mom's birthday, so. . .cutting it close--practically ran to the post office with the package as soon as I'd finished wrapping it all, and was told that it likely wouldn't reach her until the day after her birthday.  Bah! to postal holidays!  And no, it did not arrive in my parents' morning mail delivery on Mom's birthday, which made me sad.  (She did not care--"Getting mail tomorrow will just extend my birthday, Vally!"--but I very much did.)  We talked just a few minutes that afternoon since she and Dad were on their way out dinner and a movie.  She called me before I left for work the next night to let me know that just as they'd been leaving for dinner, a postal van had pulled up to drop off her package--an unprecedented second mail delivery in a single day for them--so she had received it on her birthday, after all.  ♥  And yes, she loved the cookies.  :)

As the temperature outside has bounced from a painful 8° one day to now-raining-and-near-40° a few days later, I have mostly been a homebody, contentedly sorting books and puttering around the apartment, save for walks to and from work, the thrift shop, and the post office.  'A peaceful and most satisfying first ten days of the year. 

♥

The Sallie Mae Pay-Off Cake (This Year's Best Accomplishment)

After sixteen and a half years making payments toward one of my student loans, I finally paid it off last Friday morning.  

And made myself a celebration cake to beat all prior celebration cakes.  :)  A glittering rainbow,  some shiny coins, a goodbye scroll, a few smiley faces, a bluebird of happiness?  OHHH YEAAAH, it's got it all.  :)

I first took out this student loan in the summer of 2000, a month or so before starting grad school at New York University.  That is so many lifetimes ago now, it seems, so all the better to have all the payments for it finally completed.  

Even with jobs, grants, and scholarships, the student loans were also always necessary for me throughout college and grad school, but the debt is quite a burden to carry, and as with everyone after a certain age, if I knew then what I know now and could redo it all, who's to say. . . .And I still have an insane amount of student loan debt, but let us celebrate today what we can, right.  Never again having to pen into my journal my new-and-improved Sallie Mae balance is an accomplishment. 

I have been keeping diaries and journals since I was nine, and while looking through some of my old ones late this summer, I soon grew tired of seeing how many times I'd written "My Sallie Mae balance is now down to $[whatever-amount]" or "Another payment today.  New balance:  $[whatever-new-amount]."  Blah blah blah, entry after entry, year after year. . . .When I was twenty-three. . .Thirty-three. . .Thirty-nine. . .Until I got sick of it late this summer and sat down with pen and paper to figure out how much I'd have to work to pay it off by the end of this year.  THIS year, finally.

I calculated my wages, my usual number of hours/week and hours/month, what overtime would maybe be available throughout the fall, and how much extra I'd need to do in order to make the final payment on this loan by New Year's Eve.  I came up with the number of extra hours I guessed I'd need to work--and I worked them.  And worked them, and worked them. . .days and nights, going back to work after just a few hours of sleep from the shift before, giving up days off to get a few more hours. . .the past three months. . . .And I ended up working only one hour more than I'd estimated that I'd need to and actually paying it off two weeks early, so all my estimates were spot-on.

I gave up what was to be my second visit to Boston, in October, for this.  I had already booked the flight and gotten the days off work but decided to be a grown up and do this instead.  'The  right thing to do, but I so wanted to be there in the fall. . . .It was to have been the weekend of David Ortiz's final game with the Red Sox and of an Oktoberfest-themed 5K race I'd intended to run.  My designated "Boston days" found me back at work here instead.  Life goes on, and I'll get back to Boston sometime, and now the loan is paid off. . . but the trip would have made for some sweet autumn memories. 

I made the final payment last Friday morning, hours after returning from a week of "merry early Christmas" with my family and set out for the grocery store for cake-baking and cake-decorating supplies soon after.  ♥  The cake was the classic Hershey Celebration Cake but with hot coffee and buttermilk replacing the hot water and milk per an Ina Garten recipe.  Candy-tape made the rainbow, I dolled up a few yellow gumballs for the smiley faces, the coins were easy to find with Hanukkah candy this time of year, and I crafted the bluebird and scroll out of homemade marshmallow fondant.  It is not the most prettily-frosted cake, but I was too tickled by the cause for celebration to care.  :)

And I called my dad--who had warned me in summer 2000 not to take out this loan in the first place, but I had just turned twenty-three so knew everything and didn't listen to him, of course--to tell him the good news. ♥ 

Stuffed was unimpressed and remained on his warm radiator-perch all afternoon.

I should have followed his lead, as it turns out, for I came down with the flu Friday evening and was sicker all weekend than I'd been since early 2012.  But until then:  happiness and cake!  :)

Even if fatigue ultimately caught up with me, I reached my goal and have kissed this debt goodbye.  And the fresh new journal I begin next month will be the first in almost seventeen years that won't mention it.  And the flu has now mellowed into a cold, and there are still two slices of cake in the fridge.  :)

♥

Garden Party with Mom and Aunt Laurie

And this photo is just how I will always remember Mom and Aunt Laurie.  Can you feel their sweetness right through this picture, or does it seem this way to me because I know them?  Well, they are that sweet, and this image from yesterday afternoon captures them perfectly.  And o' the fun we had!  ♥  Just to see Aunt Laurie again, period, after her health scare earlier this summer. . . And to get to share with her and Mom one of this summer's rare afternoons with a nice breeze. . . . I could still cry thinking about it.  And LAUGH thinking about it too, since right after Mom and Aunt Laurie had arranged the pretty tables and chairs and dainty tea party supplies out in the yard, one of my parents' neighbors decided the time was right to pull off his shirt and take care of the field behind their house on his riding mower.  'Not quite the ambience they been going for, so while the neighbor zoomed back and forth on the mower across the lawn behind them, they began moving the festivities father away into Mom's actual garden.  I was finishing decorating my frog cookies--I had to include frogs for Aunt Laurie, of course--when Mom came into my room to recount the Tale of the Topless Interloper.  Then Mom couldn't get my bedroom door to reopen.  Aunt Laurie was on the other side, and we all began howling as we imagined our sliding a cookie under the door for Aunt Laurie and of her somehow trying to jimmy a window open to rescue us.  As we laughed, the door popped free, and we set off--finally!--to enjoy our party.  And found, of course, that the neighbor had since finished his lawn-mowing and Mom and Aunt Laurie had moved everything for nothing.  :)

We hadn't coordinated our tea party plans with each other pre-visit, so each of us literally just brought something to the table and we made it work.  It ended up being a yellow, red, and pink affair with mismatched florals and ginghams.  I had kept it simple by buying a package of gluten-free sandwich cookies and decorating a few as frogs for my (long-suffering) aunt.  I combined lemon and lime-flavored mini marshmallows with a handful of sweetened coconut flakes, a can of fruit cocktail, a can of pineapple chunks, a little whipped cream, and a few spoonfuls of pistachio-flavored pudding mix for a quick take on ambrosia, one of Aunt Laurie's favorites. 

Mom had a similar idea and simply mixed together sliced strawberries, whipped cream, and a little strawberry-flavored gelatin powder for an easy strawberry salad.  (You can make these salads with any flavor of pudding or gelatin mix, of course, adding whatever fruit complements the mix-flavor. 'No waiting for gelatins to set or puddings to cook or chill.) 

Aunt Laurie gifted me with these cute little paper plates, but I just had to use the first three during our party, of course.  She gave Mom this new tea pot, brought Hershey Kisses candies in pink wrappers, and baked gluten-free blueberry and cranberry muffins in red gingham liners. 

 Aunt Laurie loved her little scrapbook I'd made her--  :)

--and she looked at it and a couple other little gifts I'd found her while we ate.  Dear Aunt Laurie.  ♥

The afternoon would grow hot, but we were outside early enough to enjoy warm-but-not-too-warm weather and even a good breeze.  The rain held off another day, only falling this morning as Dad and I made the trip back to the bus station. 

And while the table and chairs would have looked sweet beside the bunny shed and field too, Mom's garden ended up being the perfect spot for our little party, with Mom's flowers in bloom all around us, a bit of shade from the Sumac tree that stands nearby, and a bit of privacy from Dad's grape arbors off to one side. 

Aunt Laurie showed me sketches she had made of dreams and experiences she had had while in the hospital during her sepsis care this June. . . .She was visited by her and Mom's dearly-missed grandmother and by their beloved aunt Ann.  Aunt Laurie said that even at her sickest, she was never afraid because she could feel like a protective force around her all the prayers and good energy we were all sending her way. 

Hearing that from her was itself an answered prayer for me, as was this entire get-together, of course. 

'One of our favorite times together, and that it could have so easily not happened at all--due to illness and weather and lawn-mowers and locked doors--made it, ultimately, all the sweeter. 

I captured eighty seconds of it on video too, but I will remember the gentle breeze, pretty flowers and goodies, and these sweet hearts even without it. 

Ah, love!  ♥  Blessed, blessed, blessed.