Gone with the wind.........

I had decades worth of recipes written on scraps of paper and 3 x 5 cards that I had been gathering since my teens, my Mom's, and Gramma's, wonderful family recipes of all my favorites ... my Mom's Chili Verde, her amazingly easy, flavorful Chop Suey, Granny's Chicken and Dumplings, desserts, salads, and of course, recipes for those marvelous soups and stews that warmed us on the cold blustery days... anyway, I had always intended to put them all into a book, or to at least digitize them so that they could be saved and shared. I loved those scraps of paper and never got around to it. Those grubby bits of paper and card stock, spattered by ingredients, creased and worn, soft from years of being refolded after use, and smelling oh so faintly of spices, felt real to me. tangible and homey. My mothers familiar scrawl, her funny little notes........Pulling out those handwritten treasures was almost a form of therapy, certainly they were a touchstone for me. They lived in a beautiful wooden and metal scrollwork box on a shelf in my dining room.

We found what was left of the box after the fire, we kinda recognized a bit of the metal scrollwork... my son pried it open while we held our breath, hoping that the once lovely box had somehow protected those vulnerable pages......
Once he peeled back the burned layers of what was left, a few charred edges of my treasured "receipts" fluttered out, then they just disintegrated and disappeared on the breeze.

So my mission now is to piece together those recipes, add in more that I find along the way, and get a cookbook published for my Mom. I think she would have loved that.

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Soup Basics

How to make Beef Stock



1 head of garlic, peeled

2 medium onions - cut up

4 bay leaves

Tbl  dried thyme

3 stalks celery with leaves, cut up

3 cut-up carrots

8 sprigs fresh parsley

10 black peppercorns

4 lbs. meaty soup bones (short ribs or beef shank crosscuts) OR save scraps of beef, including bones, in the freezer until you have 3-4 pounds of scraps.

Put beef  on rimmed baking sheet and roast at 400 until meat is well browned and fat is cooked out. You can turn a few times, but it's not essential. This may take close to an hour, depending on how big the pieces are.

The Vegetables can be added raw to the stock pot with the beef, or they can be cut up and roasted at the same time as the beef if you like.  It makes for a deeper, richer flavor. 

Fill large stock pot (12 quarts or bigger) half full of water. Add browned beef, bones and all, celery, carrots, garlic, onions, Bay leaves, Thyme, Peppercorns and Salt. Simmer on low for 3-4 hours, adding more water as needed so pan is always full. After a few hours taste, add fresh Parsley Sprigs and correct seasoning if needed.

After 6-8 hours, remove pieces of meat and vegetables and skim off sediment. Strain stock through colander. Then strain through cheesecloth, fine mesh strainer, or yogurt strainer. If you can, strain it into a fat separator to remove fat, or you can remove the fat by cooling the stock before you freeze it.

Put strained stock back into saucepan and simmer over medium high heat until reduced. I usually reduce it by about half, but taste to see when the flavor seems right to you.

Pour reduced stock into freezer containers. Cool on counter top for about an hour. If you didn't use a fat separator, cool in refrigerator overnight and remove fat in the morning before freezing. If you used a fat separator freeze stock as soon as it is slightly cool.

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