Happy Mother's Day -- A Glance Back Over the Week

It was a busy week, aren't most of them, compounded by a head cold for my ten year old, myself and my partner. We slogged through it with our noses to the grindstone. On Thursday, Cinco de Mayo and my parent's 49th wedding anniversary, I decided we ought to celebrate with a Cherry Cobbler. This day demanded some celebratory act in the kitchen. I had some fresh frozen sour cherries -- they were pitted and ready to transformed with a bit of baking alchemy into the best cobbler ever...at least, that I have ever tasted.

Inspired by the events of the week and the day at hand, I whipped out my phone and googled "Cherry Cobbler." First one to come up was a five star rated allrecipes.com. Simple, less than 6 ingredients if we don't include the french bean vanilla ice cream. With a stick of butter melting in the 9x13 baking pan in the pre-heated oven, the recipe was a simple combo of flour, eggs, milk, maple syrup, brown sugar, and sour cherries. Easy! Delicious! Heavenly over ice cream straight from the oven. We all enjoyed it.

Just Making the Dinner Decision is Relief

So, once the decision is made about what to have for dinner -- partly based on what's stocked in the fridge or pantry or what needs to be prepared before it goes bad -- a great relief washes over me. Having been up more than half the night with a croupy 10 year old, I was happy for some relaxation that cooking offers me and needed to prep something before being overcome by the need for some sleep.

This past week I decided to cook up some more ribs having purchased from our local farmer both pork and beef ribs -- all grass fed, pasture raised. I had gone perhaps a bit overboard with my purchase of ribs this week. But the beef short ribs were defrosted and needed to be cooked up. So I concocted another recipe with an Asian inspiration. I put the short ribs in the crock pot along with a marinade of rice wine vinegar, low sodium soy sauce, maple syrup, black strap molasses, orange juice, crushed red pepper, fresh ginger and garlic along with hearty our of a store bought (from Wegmans) marinade and carrots and red cabbage.

Brewing all day, the short ribs and veggies were sweet, succulent and fall off the bone tender. I served them with steamed green beans and mashed potatoes. The gravy was a perfect combination of sweet and tangy with just a hint of picante. True comfort food for a cool spring day after a night of coughing and very little sleep.

Mama Jean's Kitchen Musings

Last weekend I needed to decide on a Sunday meal. No checking email, or blogging, or getting bogged down by machinery. Sundays are family days. That means coming up with ideas to be one with my boys and cooking up some healthy and delicious food. So as I watched my 10 and 13 year old boys run with 5 of the other neighborhood children, I got down to work in the kitchen.

First off, I whipped up some brunch of homemade waffles made of spelt and King Arthur flour with a handsome helping of black strap molasses in the batter. I peeled a pineapple for some fruit and sauteed bananas in local New York maple syrup -- the real stuff. My boys and two of their friends came in for a hot brunch. In Western New York we have had a grumpy wet and cold spring. So hot meal was good for the kids.

Then with pineapple available I threw together a sour cream pineapple cake. I had an organic box vanilla cake mix and added some chopped pineapple and sour cream and blended all until very smooth. I made a cream cheese frosting adding a tablespoon or two of pineapple juice. With that in the oven, I turned to the meal preparation for Sunday evening. I had shopped the day before at our local farmer and picked up baby back pork ribs. Using two separate crock pots, I simmered a barbecue sauce with more black strap molasses and real maple syrup as well as a smaller crock pot of ribs and sauerkraut and sweet onions. The aroma of these crock pots stewing all day filled our home.

My parents joined us for a feast and the ribs and pineapple, sour cream cake were hits with my family.