Category Archives: Vegetarian

PUMPKIN GINGER BREAD

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I found these vintage Czech spice jars on ebay.  I love the clean lines and neat lettering.  I actually have quite a little collection of black and white Czech pottery, which I started collecting unintentionally about 15 years ago.  I’ll share it with you one of these days.  But today, three of these spice jars have my full attention:

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These, along with cinnamon, are the spices that make up pumpkin pie spice, and are the inspiration for today’s recipe.

What’s that?  August is too early to be posting a recipe for pumpkin bread or thinking about fall?  Oh silly you, have you been living under a rock?  Here’s a photo I took at Michael’s on July 5:

Michael's fall

Pumpkins, pumpkins, and more pumpkins

Alright, I can cut Michael’s a little slack for jumping the gun.  After all, it is a craft store, and crafters do need to get working if they are going to have their creations ready for fall. (You haven’t started?  What are you waiting for?)

But how do you explain this photo taken at Randall’s grocery store on July 29?

Randall's pumpkins

Scary to see jack o’ lanterns in July

Yes, like a cheap pair of underwear, pumpkin spice season is slowly creeping up on us.  I’ve already seen articles about how we will be introduced to pumpkin spice Peeps this season, and Starbucks is going to use — wait for it — REAL pumpkin in its Pumpkin Spice Lattes, along with removing the caramel coloring and artificial flavors. (Starbucks is largely credited with creating the pumpkin spice craze when it introduced the now-famous pumpkin spice latte, or PSL, in 2003).  In fact, it was pretty much a full-blown assault at the grocery stores this weekend, where I saw everything from pumpkin spice room freshener to pumpkin spice whipped cream in a can.

Keep calm

Last year my friends (real and virtual) got a laugh out of poking fun at pumpkin spice mania, and they sent me lots of photos of products — some intriguing, some gross. Hunting down pumpkin spice flavored or scented things became almost like sport.  This year, starting in September, Tag Sale Tastes is going to have its own Pumpkinpalooza, with  reviews of pumpkin spice products, recipes, and other pumpkin-related things.  I’ll be trying out the products on friends, family, and co-workers.  So be on the lookout — let me know if you see something that merits review or mockery.

Maybe you’re wondering how I have the audacity to post a recipe for pumpkin spice bread, after making fun of all things pumpkin spice.  Because I want to be FIRST!!  You know what I mean, right?  Urban Dictionary defines “first” as a word that is said when you are the first one to post a comment on a video, picture, or article on the internet.  I want to be like all those obnoxious people on Facebook who wish you happy birthday the day before your birthday, just so they can be FIRST!  So here’s to beating out all the other bloggers in the whole world this year with what I hope is the FIRST! pumpkin spice bread recipe of Fall 2015.

Inspired by the Czech ginger, cloves, and nutmeg jars, here is a great recipe for Pumpkin Ginger Bread.  This is a favorite recipe of my family’s — moist, dense, and spicy. Although I usually disregard the advice from people like Martha Stewart who say to replace your spices every 6 months (what am I, made out of money?), this time of year you would do yourself a favor to buy, if nothing else, a fresh jar of ginger and cinnamon — it really makes a difference in your holiday baking.  Your house will smell amazing as the loaves bake.

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PUMPKIN GINGER BREAD
Author: 
Recipe type: Breads and Muffins
 
Ingredients
  • 4 eggs
  • 3 cups sugar
  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 3-1/2 cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons ground ginger
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1 teaspoon ground allspice
  • ⅔ cup water
  • 16-ounce can pumpkin
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a Bundt pan, or two loaf pans.
  2. Place eggs and sugar in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until fluffy. Slowly add oil and continue beating until combined. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice. Add dry mixture to egg mixture alternately with water. Beat in pumpkin. Pour batter into prepared pan(s) and bake approximately 1 hour, until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean. Cool in pan at least 15 minutes before removing from pan. (If necessary, run a knife between the edge of the bread and the pan, in order to loosen it.)

 

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Mmmmm — the house smells just like pumpkin spice candles, or is it air freshener?

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Y’all will fall for this pumpkin bread

HOT JALAPEÑO CORNBREAD

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The inspiration for today’s recipe comes from this Texas magazine, a Sunday insert to the Houston Chronicle, dated September 13, 1970, which I found among a stack of cookbooks at a recent estate sale.

IMG_5767 On the cover is Ann Criswell, the Houston Chronicle’s first food editor. IMG_5766

Ann was the Chronicle’s food editor from 1966 until she retired in 2000.  I still have tons of recipes I clipped during her time as editor, mostly from the ’80s and ’90s.  The Chronicle’s food section was the first food section in Houston, and the Houston Post followed suit a week later.  The food section, which featured an average of 60 recipes per week, was largely geared towards middle income families.  One of Ann’s most significant contributions (in my opinion) was arranging the recipes so that they could be cut out of the newspaper in one piece — a practice I wish Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, and other food magazines would adopt.

In an interview last fall, she reminisced about what a different world it was when she started the food section in 1966.   She said that she was constantly discovering and researching new foods that came on the market — things like arugula and starfruit.  As the recipes in the magazine reflect, there was a heavy reliance on canned soups.

In the section of the magazine on vegetables, she shares a secret:

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She goes on to advise that “[c]anned vegetables serve a purpose, of course, and can be company best . . . .  But no woman should consider herself an accomplished cook until she has mastered fresh vegetables.”  I found it kind of amusing that of the 14 vegetable recipes, half of them called for canned or frozen vegetables.

I found some of the ads interesting too, particularly this one, for the Trim Gym:

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My, how exercise has changed!  This looks like exercise that even I could do, which doesn’t look much harder than lying around on a broken ironing board, and I don’t think you need a Lululemon outfit to use it:

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Seriously — if you know where I can get one, please let me know!  (I’ve also been considering taking up bull riding, because even if you’re really, really good at it, it only takes 8 seconds, and that’s about my limit for exercise.)

I had a really hard time picking out a recipe from the magazine to make.  Although they might have been awesome in 1970, they sounded awfully unappealing today — dishes like “Tomato Wine Sauce” made with a can of condensed tomato soup, and “Swiss Shrimp Fondue” made with frozen condensed cream of shrimp soup, Swiss cheese, and small frozen shrimp.  But then this recipe for Hot Jalapeno Corn Bread called to me:

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With the exception of the addition of 1/4 cup corn oil, the recipe is pretty much the same as the one you can still find on packages of cornbread mix today.  It bakes up dense, and moist, and goes really well with barbecued anything.  My husband heated up a few slices in a skillet the next day, and they were perhaps even better, with their lightly toasted bottoms.

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HOT JALAPEÑO CORNBREAD
Author: 
 
Ingredients
  • 3 eggs
  • 2 cups milk (can use low-fat)
  • 3 cups yellow cornbread mix (I used three packages of Martha White)
  • ¼ cup corn oil
  • 1 cup canned cream-style corn (the recipe calls for a No. 303 can, but I couldn't figure out what that was)
  • 1 cup grated Cheddar cheese
  • l large grated onion (optional -- I omitted)
  • 1 4-ounce can jalapenos, chopped (I used jarred pickled jalapenos)
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
  2. Place eggs in a medium mixing bowl and beat slightly. Blend in remaining ingredients. Pour batter into a well-greased 13x9-inch baking dish. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, being careful not to let it dry out. Cut into squares and serve.

Easy and delicious

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 Here’s to you Ann — thanks for the memories!