the chemist in my kitchen

Yesterday, my favorite chemist had a wonderful birthday suprise for me. He stayed home from church, recovering from a bad cold, and when I came home and walked into the kitchen, the smell was heavenly.
My dear husband had baked a cake from scratch for me. He had never baked anything in his whole life.  A previous attempt at making something had to be thrown out when he used a cup of salt instead of a teaspoon. But, this time, a miracle happened. With the help of a recipe he found online, the cake was edible, and in fact, quite good. He even made a glaze--from scratch-- to go on top.

Besides making this cake, this weekend, my chemist helped with  the rocket science of using a pressure cooker canner. (Steam comes out of a vent as pressure builds up inside and then a little thingy-majiggit on top of the lid starts madly rocking, as the pointer on a guage inches ominously upward -- and all you can imagine is the contents of the canner spewing all over your kitchen and the thingy-majiggit blasting a hole through your ceiling as it takes off for outer space.)
I hadn't used this canner for more than ten years, and was very nervous.  So dear hubby read all the directions, while I made the applesauce. He was in charge of operating the potentially explosive canner, so, as you can see, things turned out great.

This weekend, we also enjoyed the first harvest of broccoli from our garden. I planted it, but my science guy concocted the compost that helped it grow so well.

All this blogging about food has made me hungry.  I think I'll grab a piece of that cake.....

the last of the lemons

Before the big freeze hit this weekend, I picked the last of the lemons off the Meyer lemon tree in the backyard. These beauties are as big as oranges. Here's what I'm cooking with a small part of one tonight. Since I'm using just 4 pieces of chicken (thighs), I halved the marinade ingredients. I'm going to broil the chicken. Next week, when the boys are home from college, I'll make these. Looks like they'll be yummy.

fall harvests

The satsuma orange tree in our backyard is ridiculously overloaded with oranges. Last year, during hurricane Ike, a large branch bearing dozens of oranges got destroyed. This year, the tree produced with a vengeance. This is what we get to enjoy each day. The best tasting fruit, as well as juice, ever ....
My favorite fall vegetable is squash, any kind. Got some growing in the garden, but this is spagetti squash I bought at the store. Fix it like this for a seriously delicious dish (Grandpa and I like it even better than real spaghetti.)

• Cut the spaghetti squash in half lengthwise (easier to cut with a rocking motion of the knife). Scoop out any seeds.
• Cook in the microwave (or you could bake it, but would take longer) cut side down (I put it down on a sheet of parchment paper), for 13min. or til tender -- it won' t get mushy (test by poking it with a fork).
• When done, rake it (lengthwise) with a fork , and it will automatically produce these spaghetti like strands.
• While squash is cooking, prepare the sauce. For just the two of us, I browned up 1 gourmet chicken/ spinach/feta sausage (you could crumble up some tofu, or a bit of lean hamburger, or whatever), with diced garlic. Add a lo-salt pasta sauce or marinara. For a really great taste and lowest sodium, I used Classico "Spicy Red Pepper" Pasta Sauce. (only 300 mgs. of salt). It has just the right amount of zip from the red peppers. Enjoy! It is soooo good and you feel so healthy after eating it.