Bishop's Bread-Our Fruitcake

That is exactly how it is written in one of my most prized posessions- A handwritten little cookbook my mama gave me when I moved out at 18. It is full of recipes that are unique to our family.
This post will probably be sentimental, and not a lot about baking techniques. So read on if you like.

I have to preface this recipe with some background.  My entire childhood (and maybe into my late teens) I always heard people bashing fruitcake.  It was always the dreaded gift around the holidays that no one wanted.  I just could never understand this! I always thought-

"What is wrong with fruitcake?  My mama's fruitcake is SO amazing!"

Each and every year of my life I looked forward to so many things at Christmas, but there were a couple of things that definitely meant Christmas was upon us. My mama's Santa's whiskers cookies, and fruitcake.  It wasn't until later that I realized I had been deceived (not purposely) by my mother!
GASP! OUR FRUITCAKE IS NOT FRUITCAKE.
It's real identity is Bishop's Bread, and it's so amazing. It's got some fruitiness to it, but from what I understand is nothing like fruitcake.

I wouldn't know. I've never had real fruitcake.

So here we go. This is my cookbook recipe written by my mama.  The following are the changes I made to it including egg replacer and such.  One thing I can't change is the maraschino cherries.  There is nothing else in the world that equals the weirdness of maraschino cherries, so don't try. It's probably the only thing I buy that has that much food coloring and high fructose corn syrup... but... this is a once a year thing people.

First of all. When preparing these ingredients, you have to know a secret. You have to cut the maraschino cherries with kitchen scissors. I tried chopping them once and the chunks were not right. I don't really know why this is how it is, but... it is.  My mama did it this way, and when I tried it differently, it was not right, and that is all I know. So if your fingers aren't stained when you are done, you did something wrong.

Second of all.  We always used the packaged dates that are already cut and all sugary. You can find them on the same aisle as raisins.  Now that I cook all the time I often have weird things like whole Medjool Dates.  They are giant dates that are naturally extremely sweet. So I just cut those up (with my trusty kitchen scissors).

Also, to keep with the theme of this blog I replaced the eggs with egg replacer.  The following is my updated recipe.

One more thing! This recipe is the BEST with pecans, but they are very expensive right now, so walnuts were a great replacement!

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

4 1/2 tsp Ener-g egg replacer + 6Tb water (equivalent of 3 eggs)
1 1/2 c sifted flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt
6 oz vegan chocolate chips
2 Cups chopped pecans (or walnuts)
1 Cup chopped Medjool dates
1 Cup chopped Maraschino cherries

Grease and flour loaf pan. Line with waxed paper or parchment paper (if you have the patience).
Combine egg replacer with water, and beat until foamy.
Combine egg replacer mixture with sugar and beat well.
In a seperate bowl combine flour, salt, and baking powder.
Add dry ingredients, including flour mixture, chocolate chips, pecans, dates, and maraschino cherries to wet ingredients. Mix well. 

It will be a big thick sticky mess.

Press into three small loaf pans.
Bake for 1 1/4 hours- 1 1/2 hours.
Remove from pan.
Cool completely on wire rack.

These freeze well wrapped in seran wrap after completely cooling.

Farmer's Market Spaghetti

So... I finally got around to using those homegrown tomatoes the other day that Greg acquired from the farmer's market.  I wanted to make one last spaghetti sauce with fresh tomatoes before the summer bounty is over!

I made this up as I went along, but I wrote everything down, because it was SO delicious.  I froze the batches I made, and we thawed one and had it over whole wheat spaghetti tonight with a salad.  I was too excited to take pictures of our delicious feast! 

I cooked my spaghetti sauce in the crockpot all day, but this would be even better if you could simmer it on the stove for an afternoon to reduce the water a little.

Warning: this simply will not work with store bought tomatoes.  They have no flavor.  If you want to make spaghetti sauce with canned tomatoes see this post.

Spaghetti Sauce:

Ingredients
20ish  medium homegrown tomatoes
small amount of olive oil
1 small-medium yellow onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
8 oz mushrooms, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried basil 1/4 cup red wine

• Get some water boiling on the stove.
• Prepare your tomatoes:
• Mark an X with a knife through the skin on the bottom of each tomato
• In batches of about four, blanch the tomatoes for a couple of minutes in the boiling water
• Once cool enough to handle, peel the tomatoes with your fingers. If the skin does not come off easily, you did not blanch them long enough
• Dice tomatoes, and remove excess liquid and seeds (don't worry about doing this perfectly, I just let the extra run off of my cutting board into the sink..  a few seeds won't be a big deal)
• Meanwhile you could start the onions, red pepper, mushrooms, and garlic:
• Saute onions over medium with a small amount of olive oil until they start to sweat a little.
• Add the red pepper and mushrooms and saute until softened (about 7 minutes), not browned
• Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute more. Remove from heat.
• At this point you can add all of the ingredients to the crockpot and cook it on low for 5-7 hours. If you are cooking it on the stove: combine all ingredients, and bring to a light boil, then turn the heat down and let it simmer.  You could simmer this for a little as 30 minutes, but a couple of hours on very low would be perfect. 20 minutes before you are done cooking, add 1/4 cup of red wine.
• Transfer about half of the mixture to a blender and blend until the big chunks are gone. Return to pot.
• Serve over spaghetti, spaghetti squash, or any other favorite!

Too much goodness! Spaghetti Squash with Spaghetti sauce!

Here's the short story.  I have been wanting to start a food/life blog for awhile now but never seem to have the time.  Now that school is getting underway again I am sure I will have even less time, but the problem is I have made SO much fun food this week that I felt I should share some ideas.  I don't have the pictures I would like for these, but it's a start and I will update and revise later. 

First of all, if you have never had Spaghetti Squash you MUST try it ASAP.  It's healthy for you and so easy to prepare.  A couple of nights ago, I made it with homemade spaghetti sauce.  I like to make spaghetti sauce from fresh tomatoes, but no salt added canned tomatoes work well too.

You can google many ways to cook a Spaghetti Squash and pictures to see the magic of it, but I don't have any this week. So the short answer is: Cut in half, rub with olive oil, roast with cut sides down for 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees.   After it cools for awhile, use a fork and run it across the flesh. A magical thing happens and suddenly you have hundreds of spaghetti like strands to set aside and use for your pasta.

Here's my basic, quick, spaghetti sauce.  You can cook this in the slow cooker for a few hours for a more complex flavor, but 25-30 minutes will do on a simmer.

2 tsp TB olive oil
1/2 small onion diced
2 cloves minced garlic
2  14oz cans organic-no salt added diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 red wine

Saute onion in olive oil over medium heat until translucent.  Add garlic and saute a minute more.  Add remaining ingredients. Use a potato masher to mash up some of the tomatoes.  Bring to a gentle boil, then turn down to a simmer and simmer for about 30 minutes (or however much time you have).  About 5 minutes before you are done simmering, add the red wine.  It should have a little time for the alcohol flavor to cook out.

That is how easy a basic spaghetti sauce is.  It gets a little more complicated if you use fresh tomatoes, but not much.  Also, you can add whatever you like. Suggestions: saute some green pepper and mushrooms with the onions.