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I recently purchased a half gallon of Delicious Orchards apple cider for chicken and dumplings. I only needed a small amount for the recipe, so what do I do with the rest of the cider? Besides drinking it, I prefer to use it in a recipe. I went through the New York Times Cooking app, which is very good resource for excellent recipes, and found a terrific one by David Tanis. The recipe is Pork Chops with Apples and Cider. Mr. Tanis spent a month in Normandy, France and discovered the region had an abundance of apples. It’s an area of France where there’s artisanal cider making and also the distilling of apples into Calvados, an apple brandy. Mr. Tanis came up with the following recipe based on the Normandy region where cider and cream are combined for a delicious sauce.
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I’ve noticed in recent months revised recipes for chocolate chip cookies that will give you crisp edges and soft chewy centers. My personal favorite is a totally crisp chocolate chip cookie similar to Delicious Orchards (Colts Neck, NJ) or Tate's Bake Shop. I have a note in my recipe file on how to adjust the proportion of white sugar and the use of light brown sugar instead of dark brown. White sugar makes your cookie both brown and crispy.  Brown  sugar on the other hand, makes the cookie retain moisture. The acidity in the molasses, (which is added to white sugar to make brown sugar) makes the protein in the cookie cook faster and, therefore, chewier. 
                                                                                                      
I’ve been making the O​riginal Nestlés Toll House recipe, but bake on a convection oven setting of 350 degrees and batch bake them for 14 minutes, but switch and turn the sheets half way through. Once I remove the cookies from the oven, I leave the cookies on the sheet for several minutes for carryover baking time. The cookies are kept in the refrigerator to stay fresher and retain their crunch. ​
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Oh, how I wish these damp, humid days left with the last day of summer.

I’m ready to start cooking heartier meals, more comfort food to be eaten on cool evenings. As we haven’t quite gotten their yet, I found a delicious recipe in my files for pork tenderloin that came together quite easily and was full of flavor. The recipe, roasted honey soy pork tenderloin, is from the Williams-Sonoma website and has a prep time of 10 minutes; cook time 30 minutes. I keep some Asian cooking items on hand such as sesame oil, soy, rice wine and, fortunately, also had some hoisin sauce in the refrigerator, all which were needed for this recipe.
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​During recovery from hip surgery, my neighbor very kindly prepared several dinners for my husband and I. To show our gratitude, I made dinner for she and her husband Sunday evening. Thank goodness the weather has cooled down as this played into my menu selection. I also wanted to have most of my dinner done before my guests arrived. After a bit of internet research, I found the perfect recipe at Williams-Sonoma, braised short ribs with creamy polenta.

Now that my entree was selected it was time to round out the menu with a few appetizers and salad. For appetizers, I selected two and kept them simple. I made basil pesto cream cheese filled tomatoes. While the recipe called cherry tomatoes, I opted for grape tomatoes. The cream cheese filling was a nice foil to the tartness of the tomato. My other go to easy appetizer is crab spread from Mr. Shrimp in Belmar. I serve the crab spread on Keebler Club crackers. 
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On Tuesday the weather was warm and humid. I’m trying to finish my annual cleaning, however, the weather so far this week isn’t conducive to cleaning.

Over the weekend, when it was cooler, I was going through my recipe files for inspiration for a food blog entry. I took out my Delicious Orchards file and found an apple recipe from the fall of 1985. On one side is an All About Apples report from Eastmont Orchards and, on the other side, four recipes using fresh apples. One recipe that caught my eye was apple bread. Despite the warm conditions, I’ve made the bread.
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Today is the first full day of autumn. What better way to start the season than with cinnamon apple crisp. My daughter and her family went apple picking last weekend at Wightman Farm in Morristown, NJ and I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of some apples. I don’t know what type apples she picked, so I chose ones that looked like they would be firm and a bit tart.
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​My husband’s birthday was the end of August and celebrated during Labor Day weekend. With the summer being so hot and sticky and company over the weekend, in lieu of his traditional carrot cake, we celebrated his birthday with ice cream sandwiches from Sundaes the Ice Cream Place in Manasquan.
 
Now that summer and our vacation adventure are done, our air conditioning decided to spring a leak. I felt I owed my husband his birthday carrot cake. However, I had something much easier to prepare and it didn’t involve an oven, carrot cake pancakes. The recipe for these pancakes appeared in the holiday issue of Southern Living Magazine in December 2012. I already tried the red velvet pancakes from the same issue and they were divine! 
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Once I came through my hip replacement surgery, my husband thought a little vacation would be good for us. With that in mind, he planned a trip to Charleston, SC from September 9th through 12th. As the hurricane season up until this point seemed quiet, he thought this would be a good time.
We had been to Charleston twice before and loved it. There are many lovely boutique hotels and larger hotels where to stay but we returned once again to the Francis Marion Hotel. It sits on the corner of Calhoun and King Street, which is at the top of the King Street shopping district.
 Needless to say, we arrived on the Sunday just as hurricane Florence warnings went into effect. As we were only in town until Wednesday, we felt comfortable knowing we would depart before the Florence would arrive.
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My granddaughter is turning one. As exciting as that is, my daughter asked me to make cupcakes for her and the young children at the party. Yes, there will be a beautiful layer cake made by Delicious Orchards, but my
granddaughter may have a peanut allergy and my daughter wanted to be sure there was no cross contamination with the cupcakes. I searched a few cookbooks that I had, my NY Times Cooking app and epicurious.com for a basic yellow cake recipe. I came across one on Epicurious from the baker Rose Levy Beranbaum. The recipe is All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake from Rose's book The Cake Bible, September 1988. Ms. Beranbaum is a known baker and I trust using a recipe from her.
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​My husband came home with 15 ears of corn last week. It put me into overdrive to find different recipes in which I could use NJ sweet white corn. While going through my Instagram feed a few weeks ago, Talula's, a restaurant in Asbury Park, had a blueberry cobbler with sweet corn ice cream on their dessert menu. I was intrigued, corn flavored ice cream, why not.
 


​meet donna

A former teacher, shop-a-holic, empty-nester redefining quick, family approved dinners.

​If you have questions or comments, click on the envelope icon above to contact me directly. 

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