I used to be a regular coffee drinker. I actually started at age six. Yes, age six. My pediatrician told my mom to give me coffee with lots of milk so that the caffeine would help my asthma. I learned to love the taste of the bean very early in life.

I was never a coffee fiend. I was a two or three cup a day drinker. It was just enough to keep me happy. And, on the weekends and barely touched the stuff.

In 2000 I went off caffeine as a regular thing. I had read that caffeine helps with migraines, but only if you are not addicted. You may not think that 2 cups a day is a caffeine addiction, but when I went off of it, which I did slowly, I had headaches, gastrointestinal issues, and mood swings. I got sick to my stomach and tired easily. Yes, my body had been addicted.

So, here I am 8 years later. Days like to today quite literally make me have fantasies about yummy caffeinated drinks. I have a fiend who manages a Second Cup location Canada and she was telling me about some of their coffee drinks. I was nearly drooling on my keyboard. How pathetic is that? I’ve been a smoker and I have always been able to easily pass on alcohol. However, a good cup of coffee makes me want to jump off the proverbial wagon.

It’s getting hot outside here in Florida. In fact, now that it is June, it is getting hot in most of the United States. So, mind wandered over to some of my favorite recipes that are great for hot weather. Today, I started mentally planning some summer lunches for me and my daughter. The first thing that came to mind was the recipe my former mother-in-law gave me for Cracked Wheat Salad / Tabbouleh.

Tabbouleh

2 Cups cracked wheat (bulgur)
1 Onion, peeled and finely chopped
4 Large tomatoes, chopped
2 Bunched scallions, finely chopped (about 1 cup)
2 Small cucumbers, peeled and chopped
1/4 Cup olive oil
2 Juice of lemons (about 6 tablespoons)
1 Teaspoon salt
1/4 Teaspoon pepper
6 Tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
3 Table spoons chopped fresh mint or 1 tablespoon dried mint
6 Leaves romaine lettuce

1. Place cracked wheat in a colander and rinse under cold running water. Squeeze with your hands to remove excess water and drain for 1 hour.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine cracked wheat with all remaining ingredients except lettuce.

Hints: Line a salad bowl with lettuce leaves and add cracked wheat mixture. Chill before serving.

Are you getting ready for Father’s Day on June 15? Onething that won’t change is that grilling out is the perfect way to celebrate Father’s Day. Not only will it be smack dab in the middle of prime grilling season, it is also a tried and true fact that most Father’s are pretty skilled at outdoor cooking.

So, I have a couple of recipes for you. One comes from generations back in my father’s wife’s family in Southern Georgia. It’s a thin sauce called Hot Moppin’ that you spoon over pulled pork or beef. Holy cow, it’s good!

Hot Moppin 
• 1-teaspoon Black Pepper
• ½-teaspoon Salt
• 1-teaspoon Chipped Red Pepper
• 1-teaspoon Dry Mustard
• 1-teaspoon Yellow Prepared Mustard
• ½-teaspoon Sugar
• ½-cup vinegar
• ½-stick Margarine

Can add more red pepper to taste if desired.

Stir continually until a rolling boil. Use on Pork or beef as a vinegar based barbecue sauce.

This second recipe is something I love to whip up to use on the grill. It is also great spooned over pulled meats, but keep in mind that ketchup and the molasses is going to caramelize on the grill, and that’s half the divinity of BBQ.

Tangy Sweet Balsamic Barbeque Sauce
• In a 2-quart pan, combine
• 1 cup ketchup
• 3/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup dark molasses
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire
• 1 teaspoon garlic
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Simmer, uncovered, over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until mixture is reduced to about 2 cups, 12 to 15 minutes. Best warm or at room temperature. Makes 2 cups.

I have been pondering on and writing about the alarming rise in grocery prices for months now. My grocery bill and my gasoline costs are taking over my budget.

So, when I saw a headline proclaiming that sales of Spam are up due to consumers looking for less expensive ways to fill out their cupboards, I was…well, I’m not sure what I was, but I stopped to read the story.

When I was a child, in the 70s, Spam was around quite a bit. We did not actually eat it all that often in my household, but when I would spend the night at my friend Carol’s house, one of the biggest treats was when her mom would make us slices of friend spam along with buttered noodles for dinner. For me, Spam was right up there with Vienna Sausages as those mysterious foods I only got on what seemed like special occasion. Little did I know my parents just did not share my love for processed meats and served them seldom to avoid having to eat them.

Spam has been around since 1937 and due to amazing increase in sales this year; Hormel is planning the first national advertising campaign for Spam in years. They are even going to roll out new Spam products, like individually wrapped slices.

Overall food prices are up 4% since last year. White bread is up 13%, bacon is up 7%, and peanut butter is up %. And, if food prices keep going up like they are right now, it will mean that 2008 will see an overall increase of 6.1%.

My mother is a child of WW2 and her parents grew up in the Great Depression. I admit that my daily household habits are much more wasteful than what I have been taught by my family and I need to take a step back and implement what I have been taught. Meals can indeed be made for just a couple of dollars. I can put in a bigger garden, can fruits an veggies, save more cans and jars and bags, re-use foil, eat is restaurants a lot less often, and hundreds of other things.

It all startds with Spam, but it marches onward from there.

Our whole family loves this recipe. We picked it up during a visit to Williamsburg, Virginia when we ate in the Tavern one night. I have made it often for us.

1 1/3 cup boiling water
1 1/3 cups fresh milk
1 cup cornmeal
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 teaspoon sugar
4 tablespoons butter
3 eggs
1 Tablespoon baking powder.

Preheat oven to 350û.

Grease two-quart, shallow baking dish.

Mix sugar, salt, and cornmeal. Pour boiling water over mixture, stirring constantly. Add butter and let stand until cool. Beat eggs with the baking powder until light and add to mixture. Add milk and stir.

Pour into prepared dish. Place dish in a shallow pan of hot water and bake at 350û for 35 minutes. The texture should be soft and custard-like. Serve with a spoon.

In honor of the apples that are finally getting ripe in the back yard, I want to give you my mother’s apple pie recipe. I know it seems like a funny time of year to have ripe apples, but here in the sub-tropical region of Florida, the only apples that grow are a couple of varieties of Israeli apples and they are finally coming into their own this month.

We have five trees planted in massive pots out back and each tree is positively loaded with apples. So, what better than a decadent apple pie?

My mom prefers to use Ida Reds or Winesaps, at least three pounds. There need to be enough apples to slice and make a heaping 9-inch pie plate full.

1 1/4 – 1 1/2 cup sugar
3 – 4 Tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
dash of salt
2-3 tablespoons butter, in small pieces

Combine all ingredients, except butter, well with sliced apples. Put apples onto bottom crust in a 9-inch pie plate and top with the butter pieces. Place top crust, crimp edges, cut air vents and bake at 375º for 45-50 minutes or until crust is golden brown and the juices are beginning to peek out of the slits. Juice should begin to look thick.

If you have a microwave, you can put the pie in and cook on high for 2 1/2 minutes. Rotate a quarter-turn and cook 2 1/2 minutes, etc. until you have turned the pie three times and cooked about 10 minutes.

Then, put the pie into a preheated 375º oven and bake 20-25 minutes until the crust is golden brown and the juices are thick. I really like this method, as the apples are tender and the crust is crisp without overbaking.

My mother and I have spent years trying to recreate my great-grandmother’s recipes for Chicken and Dumplings. The problem is that my great grandma never used a recipe and when questioned on her techniques, she would say cryptic things like use two fo the blue scoops full of flour. She was a country cook from the coal mine fields of southern West Virginia. She was a cook to end all debates – hands down one of the best cooks I have ever met. But, most of her techniques have been lost to time.

I have also spent untold hours trying to recreate my former mother in law’s chicken curry. She learned from her mother in law, back in India. The order and quality of spices is important, as are how you still and the heat of your pan. It’s something I was never able to prefect, even after taking meticulous notes. My daughter and I had dinner with my ex mother in law the other night and it was like a slice of Heaven to sit down to some of her curry – that curry I cannot seem to replicate.

Some of the very best cooks and their very best dishes shall forever remain unique, simply because the recipes only seem to work if handed down orally and by example.

OK, I know this is traditionally a Christmas dish. An old co-worked told me how to prepare it and when I came to work the next day and told him I had baked it the night before, he was actually baffled. He associates the dish with Christmas in Venezuela so solidly that making it any other time of the year seems odd to him. Me, I just make it when I crave it.

Thaw a loaf of white bread dough and let it rise. Then, lightly coat it with olive oil and press it out flat and large.

Top the bread with as much as you want of the following:
cubed, sweet ham
bacon in small pieces
slices of green olives
white raisins
black raisins

Then, sprinkle about half a handful of powdered sugar on top of the whole mess and press it all into the bread.

Roll into a loaf, let rise an additional half hour, coat outside with egg yolk and bake at 375 for 25-30 minutes.

The latest flack in the McCain campaign surrounds a handful of family recipes that were placed on the John McCain campaign site and attributes to Cindy McCain.

Yesterday, the recipes were removed from the website. It seems that some members of the blogging community noticed that some of the “McCain Family Recipes” were identical to recipes on the Food Network website.

Of course, it would have been much more impressive had all of the recipes on the McCain website genuinely been recipes that had been passed down through the family for generations. Or, perhaps recipes that Cindy developed over her years as McCain’s wife.

It seems a tad picky, though, to let this get to you. How many of us find a great recipe online, give it a try, and add it to our own collection? This is how the majority of us accumulate recipes, rather than developing them all on our own.

It was a clumsy move, but ultimately forgivable.

My mom and I were talking about my aunt Elaine, mom’s sister, today. We were lovingly joking about how much Elaine loved zucchini and how she would go into full zucchini mode when her garden came into season. She would make zucchini bread and zucchini relish and a host of other zucchini recipes.

Elaine died in 1994, at the age of 45, from leukemia. I miss her.

In her memory, please enjoy her infamous zucchini relish recipe.

10 cups zucchini
4 cups onion
1 or 2 green or sweet red peppers
3 Tablespoons salt
4 cups sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 1/2 cups vinegar
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons celery seed
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon turmeric

Grind zucchini, onions, and peppers. Add salt and let stand overnight.

Drain the veggies the following morning. Dissolve cornstarch in the vinegar and add spices, veggies, and other ingredients.

Boil 3 minutes.

Pack hot mixture into hot, sterilized jars and seal. Process in a water bath per canning instructions.

This will also keep in the refrigerator for a few weeks unprocessed.

I am posting this recipe is celebration of the fact that the blueberries we have growing in the backyard are finally ripe and ready to eat. We have the bushes in massive, terra cotta pots. That way we can move them in and out of the sun at will. Also, everything in my backyard is organic. The only thing we have used on any of our planst is a feed to help with growth, as well as Neem Oil (we grow the Neem tree for its leaves) to help with pests.

On a side note, the tomatoes are ripening every day. The Israeli apples are ripening in droves, too. I will have to post some of my favorite tomatoes and apple recipes soon. Not tomatoes and apples together, though. Ew.

I got this recipe off of PickYourOwn.org, a site I use all of the time to find local growers. That’s where I found the strawberry farm where we went picking a little over a week ago.

Ingredients
3 to 4 cups of Blueberries – fresh or frozen (without syrup)
7 Tablespoons corn starch
3 Tablespoons water (or grape juice)
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
One 9-inch pie crust
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
2/3 cup Sugar (OR 1/3 cup sugar and 1/3 cup Splenda)

Crumb topping:
1/4 cup sugar (OR 1/8 cup sugar and 1/8 cup Splenda)
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup butter or margarine

Rinse blueberries well, taking care to remove stems.

Combine the 2/3 cup sugar (or sugar/Splenda blend), corn starch, and spices in a bowl, mixing well. Then, stir the lemon juice and water (or grape juice) into the dry mixture.

Put the cleaned blueberries into the bottom crust, and then pour the mixture you just made on top of the berries.

Now, for the crumb topping combine the 1/4 cup sugar (OR 1/8 cup sugar and 1/8 cup Splenda), 1/2 cup flour, and 1/4 butter or margarine together in a small bowl and sprinkle it over the pie.

Bake at 375 F (or 190 C) for 1 hour. The pie should be golden and pie is bubbling. If it is not, bake at additional 3 or 4 minute intervals until it is.

…or, the merits of a good White Sauce. 

I was just out in the kitchen putting together a casserole. I had some hamburger that needed used, so I browned it with salt and pepper. Then, I began to aimlessly move around the kitchen adding whatever we had to the dish. I placed a layer of thinly sliced potatoes in a small casserole dish, layered hamburger on it, placed another layer of potatoes in the dish, and then another or hamburger. Then, I sprinkled in some tiny pinches of fresh rosemary and fresh parsley, as well as a finely diced lipstick pepper I found in the refrigerator.

I did not want the casserole to be dry and I knew I was not in the mood for a tomato-based sauce, so I turned to the internet for inspiration.

I found hundreds of variations on the hamburger and potato casserole and every single one said to use a can of Campbell’s cream of celery or cream of mushroom soup.

Ew. Not to mention salty.

It is simpler, less expensive, and much tastier to just whip up a Béchamel (white sauce). This basic sauce is made by just whisking scalded milk into a white flour-butter roux. It is easier than it sounds and I have full confidence that anyone who has milk, butter, and white flour in the house can make it without incident.

Try it. I am willing to wager you won’t want to keep using Campbell’s cream of celery in your recipes anymore.

Do you ever wonder why some of the fruits and vegetables you buy at the supermarket last so long? I have to wonder how much of our produce is irradiated.

I just went yesterday to pick fresh strawberries. I know that none of the berries were over ripe or even close to rotten. Yet, by this afternoon at least a dozen of the berries out of 6 quarts were rotten to the point of being liquidy mush covered in mold. And yes, we have th air conditioner running so it is not hot in here.

Since I know the strawberries I picked were not irradiated, it makes me almost sure that those I buy at supermarkets are irradiated. I know the irradiation process prolongs the shelf-life of food where microbial spoilage is an issue. But, how safe is it? Are our foods that are irradiated always labled as such, even though the government says they should be? The lables do not indicate the level of radiation and that is a huge issue in my opinion.

I was in the mood for something with oatmeal in it and not really in the mood to watch batches of cookies in the oven, worrying about remembering them so they do not overbake. So, I pulled out my mom’s old recipe for No Bake Cookies today and in a few minutes I will whip up a batch.

2 cups sugar
2 squares unsweetened chocolate or 5 Tablespoons cocoa
1/2 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 1/2 cups oats

Bring to a boil sugar, cocoa, and butter. Add the vanilla. Pour mixture over oats, mix well. Drop by spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet and chill.

Some recipes use chocolate chips in place of the other chocolate. This assures that they will set firmly.

We are awash in Girl Scout cookies in this house, but I was in the mood for something less sweet and more classic, so I made Applesauce Cake. The recipe is old. I found it not only in my grandmother’s recipe box, but also in my great-grandmother’s.

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 cups applesauce
1 box raisins
1 cup crushed walnuts
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 Tablespoons cinnamon
1 Tablespoon ground cloves or allspice
2 eggs
pinch of salt

Cream first three ingredients. Add remaining ingredients.

Bake for 1 hour at 350º in a bundt pan.