Sunday Potluck

Happy Sunday y'all!  Hope you had a great weekend filled with lots of yummy stories to share with me!  Sunday is my favorite day of the week.  Why?  Because I get to spend the day in the kitchen at church with family and friends.  See, at our church, we have potluck EVERY SUNDAY.  Sometimes we have folks to bring a dish, but most of the time we have them bring the ingredients and me and a handful of teens to 50 somethings get busy in the kitchen creating a feast for the rest of the congregation.  It can get quite interesting back there, especially if we have folks who may have forgotten to bring their ingredient or happen to miss church for some reason.  We have had many a triumph, mishap, and complete tragedy back there.  But it's always fun and it always comes together!  A time or two we have even pulled off a fish and loaves miracle.  However that was not the case today.  Today we had well more than enough to go around.  This week, a big ol' down home country breakfast was on the menu.  We must have had 20 dozen eggs, 20 pounds of sausage, and about 35 cans of biscuits.  Oh and let's not forget the gravy made from scratch!  At first we weren't sure if we were gonna have enough to go around.  I had to throw out quite a few farm fresh eggs that had turned green, P.U.!  And for a moment I thought I was going to have to make biscuits from scratch and let me tell ya, that's NOT my greatest kitchen accomplishment for sure, LOL!  But as the time passed people kept bringing their promised ingredients.  I even had a spare 3 lb roll of sausage that i browned and threw into the eggs we beat.  When the scrambled egg and sausage mixture hit that flat top grill, woo wee, did that smell good!  Everything was ready at just the right time to take out to the buffet table and breakfast was a hit!  One nice lady even brought in some packages of flour tortillas.  It's Mexican next sunday! 

See ya in the Kitchen!

Cookie Jars

I was perusing Pinterest today, looking for some DIY homemade Christmas gifts for our Dirty Santa game that we play every year at my husband's grandma's house.  We all bring a wrapped gift within the confines of the set budget, then draw names out of a hat to see who gets to pick a gift first.  Then the next name drawn can either pick a gift from the gift tabel or steal the gift someone else picked. Lots of fun!  Especially when you throw in the gag gifts such as a huge skull chain "wrapped" in 2x4s!  So we kinda switch it up between gag gifts and normal gifts.  So...back to Pinterest!  I'm doing a search and come across these beauties!  Christmas cookies in mason jars!  I absolutely love this idea!  I'm a Kentucky girl and I love my mason jars!  I also wanted my gift this year to have a certain rustic look to it as I've been leaning that way in the kitchen here recently.  With these mason jars, you can dress them up or dress them down, which is the look I will give them.  I love antiques and rustic country, primitive decor, so that will be the look that my cookie jars will take on.  Set the jar in a pretty Christmas bowl, attach a spatula and recipe card, and VOILA, I've got a thoughtful, unique, culinary gift to take to Christmas this year!  I've noticed these in stores around the holidays and have always thought they were pretty to look at, but they are also pricey.  This year I'll do my own!  I'm so looking forward to buying the mason jars and the fabric to go on top!  Not so much looking forward to googline and figuring out how to fit the recipe on a downloaded recipe card, but it will probably be better than writing it out myself, especially if I make several of them.  After writing out all those Christmas cards, my hand will be ready to fall off!  What traditions do you have around your house at the holidays? 

See ya in the Kitchen!

CIN-fully Delicious

I bought some yeast at the store last week.  I buy it every year with the best of intentions, but I never seem to get around to using it before it goes out of date.  I think I'm just a tad intimidated about making breads because I know that temps have to be just right or the dough won't rise.  But I decided that this was gonna be my year to tackle a recipe I found many years ago for cinnamon rolls.  I haven't worked with yeast since I worked at a steakhouse about 15 years ago making yeast rolls.  But I decided to go ahead and try this recipe today.  I almost didn't and then I found my candy thermometer!  Score!  I could make  sure that my water temp was just right before adding it to the yeast.  After adding the water to the yeast and letting it sit for five agonizing minutes, I prayed to the baking gods that it would do exactly what it was supposed to do in that time.  Hoping it had done its thing, I began adding the other ingredients to Big Mamma.  That's what I've named my red Kitchen Aid stand mixer.  So Big Mamma is doin her thing and then she starts to s-l-o-w down.  I remembered a story my uncle told me about his son in law killing their mixer making a bread, so I turned her off.  Then I remembered...dough hook!  Quickly I swapped out the flat beater attachment for the dough hook and strarted her back up.  Worked like a charm!  So after the dough looked like I thought it should look, I took it from the mixing bowl to my floured surface.  I've got a wonderful friend who recently gave me a pastry placemat that's got all sorts of sizes and rulers on it.  I set the kitchen timer on my microwave to make sure I didn't over work the dough and went to work kneading the dough.  It felt so good to have my hands back in dough!  I can't even explain it to you, it just makes me feel so creative!  After I shaped my dough into the nearly appropriate sized rectangle I smeared the room temp butter on.  I'm sure they make a politically correct utensil for that job, but I just used my hands.  PC is lost on this girl, LOL!  Then on to sprinkling it up with the cinnamon mixture and rolling it up.  Now, I make about 25 roll cakes every year through Thanksgiving and Christmas, and sometimes they roll up just right, and other times....well, not so much.  I'm always careful because my motto is "presentation, presentation, presentation", but working with this raw dough, I was even more gentle. Too gentle on the first roll, and I realized this when I began cutting it and it was falling flat.  So I was a little rougher with the second roll making sure I pinched the seam real good, no matter how loud it squealed.  The first roll turned out great, but the 2nd roll turned out fantastic!  they plumped up so nice in the pan and both rolls tasted scrumptious!  Now that I have my first cinnamon rolls under my belt, my next yeast based project will be Amish bread.  I don't have a bread machine and neither did the good women of this great country 200 years ago and neither do the Amish!  Not sure when I'll attempt Amish bread, but it will be before Christmas I'm sure!  Hope you enjoyed a peek into what's going on in my kitchen today!  What are some techniques, recipes, or utensils that have caused you some trepidation in the kitchen?  Did you attack them?  How did that work out for you?  Share your story with me. 

 

See ya in the Kitchen!

 



 

 

Welcome!

Welcome to Jodi's Kitchen!  I'm Jodi!  I'm a born and bred Kentucky girl living in Indiana, hoping to one day move back to God's Country in the Bluegrass State.  I've been married to a wonderful man for nearly seven years, which is why i crossed the mighty Ohio River into southern Indiana.  I'm 39 years young but have only been cooking and baking for about the last twenty years, as my mom wouldn't allow me to cook much more than a boil-in bag of a single salisbury steak or box macaroni and cheese at home.  Or maybe nuke a can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee ravioli.  However, I come from a long line of awesome country cookin' Grannies and aunts!  I have great memories of my Granny's kitchen being filled with mouth watering aromas and busy bees cooking old fashioned, made from scratch recipes that were, of course, never written down or even measured.  To this day I find myself always calling on one aunt in particular to learn the secrets of Granny's recipes.  She can always help me out because even though she couldn't tell you what she had for breakfast, her long term memory knows no bounds.  What my momma always said about me being in the kitchen is true.  She said, "You're not afraid to try anything, are you?".  The answer is a resounding "No!"  Whether it's a new recipe, technique, or ingredient, I'm not afraid to try new things in the kitchen.  Most of the time I succeed, but sometimes I fail.  What's the worst that could happen?  I'd have to order a pizza?

See ya in the Kitchen!