After a recent visit to a grocery store, I noticed a vegetable that I hadn’t seen in a long time. It is something that I have eaten, as my dad worked in a grocery store and would occasionally bring home some unusual vegetables. However, while I know that Mother cooked almost anything he brought home, (one outstanding no-no was parsnips), this vegetable is kohlrabi, I don’t have any recollection as to how she prepared it, but chances are it was boiled until done and seasoned with salt and pepper and either bacon drippings or butter.
It is a winter vegetable, and the name kohlrabi is a German word that means “cabbage turnip” which describes its shape and the similarity in taste to cabbage. Kohlrabi is a cultivar of cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower as well as collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kale and Brussels sprouts. (This article that I found compares the taste to broccoli, but the one I found this morning compares it to cabbage)! Kohlrabi is a good source of many nutrients, mainly Vitamin C, and is a good source of fiber. It is a vegetable you can eat raw, as in a slaw type salad or cooked, as in a stir-fry dish. One of my daughters told me she had been given kohlrabi at one time and made it into a slaw. The texture of a raw kohlrabi, is pretty much the same as the texture of a turnip.
Many of the recipes I found looked as if they’d be tasty, but mostly they had a video to watch, which didn’t help. I tried pulling up several of the recipes, but was not successful, the ingredients would be listed, but the directions weren’t available.
Category: Did You Know? by Joyce Word
Great Recipes
Feast of the Epiphany
The holidays have come and gone, they were exciting while they lasted, and my family and I had a wonderful time. Now, the weather has changed, and many members of my family and various friends have the coughs, sniffles and whatever it is that seems to get into people’s systems this time of year. My youngest daughter was in this weekend. After attending a funeral in Hondo, she came here to spend some time with me, and we took down my Christmas tree, she did some cleaning for me, and as I had recently purchased shades for my sewing room, she cut them to size and hung them for me! We had a great time visiting and re-hashing the holidays, which we both decided had been a wonderful time.
January 6 was the feast of the Epiphany. This word is from Greek and means appearance. It is also called the Feast of Lights, Feast of the Three Kings and Twelfth Night. It concludes the period allotted in the church calendar to the Feast of the Nativity. In the West, Epiphany commemorates the visit of the Three Kings, or Wise Men, to the infant Jesus. It is a major Christian feast commemorating the appearance of Christ. The Nativity itself was celebrated on this day, but, in the fourth century A.D, it was assigned to December 25. What began as a most solemn feast, Twelfth Night became a time of revelry, especially during the sixteenth century in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Merry Christmas!
Good morning! Merry Christmas, I just looked at a calendar and realized that this will be my last column for the year 2024. The year has gone by so quickly and so many things have happened, good as well as bad. We’ve lost friends and family, and added to our families as well. By the time many of you get this edition of the paper, almost everything except the memories will be over for most families.
The week before Christmas was chaotic to say the least, however, I got almost everything done that I hoped to. My daughter and her husband came here and picket me up and we headed out to Devine. I was looking forward to having a fun time with family, extended family and friends, and I hope every one of my readers had a wonderful Christmas.
Recently when I attended a Market Days show in a nearby town, one of the vendors was selling hand-made glass spider Christmas ornaments, and a book that I had seen and read quite some time ago. The spiders were made of glass beads, and if you bought the book, you got a spider free. They were truly beautiful. The book is called “The Legend of the Christmas Spider, and it is a Eastern European folk story. One of the versions that is available on Amazon says that it is the story of the origin of the tinsel that we now sometimes use on our trees today. When my daughter came in before Thanksgiving, she put my tree up for me. We used mostly antique ornaments, and for the first time in many, years my tree has the old-timey tinsel icicles as well as four antique (very early 1900s) candle holders with candles!
Bake sale time!
My week was fairly busy as we’ve been doing workshop more regularly, because we give tray favors once each week in December, rather than once a month. The patients seem to like them. This year, we made one that could be used as an ornament, and the next one can also be used the same way. Saturday my sister and I did some Christmas shopping (mostly me), and she picked up stuff she needed for a Christmas meal at her home. This year, I only addressed about 20 Christmas cards as compared with the 50 or more I usually send, the price of postage has become ridiculous!
Our Auxiliary is counting down the days until our annual bake sale. I’ve made a cake and two different types of seasoned crackers and have started a batch of the Rolos® with the pretzel under them. One more cake and I will be done, we have such a shortage of members that most of us have doubled up a bit and are making more. Tuesday, we will have a workday and put together some jar gifts, as well as Christmas mugs with hot chocolate in them. We’re working on the theory that more hands make light work and will be doing an assembly line. We will also pack the seasoned crackers the same way using the zip lock snack bags.
Here is a little bit of Christmas trivia for you. It appeared several years ago during Christmas week in the Victoria Advocate. They state that it is from Old Icelandic tales that give the following as the names of Santa’s elves: Askasleikir, Bjugnakraekir, Faldafeykir, Stekkjarstaur, Gattathefur, Giljagaur, Gluggagaegir, Ketkrokur, Og Kertasnikir, Pottasleikir, Skyrjarmur, Stufur and last but not least Thvorusleikir! (This is the source that was listed at the end of the article: Source, didyouknow.cd).
Since I haven’t given y’all any cookie recipes this year, here are a few that are tried and true and have been printed before. The following recipe for mini-muffins is from a friend of mine. She made them recently for the bake sale at her church and said they sold quickly.
Home-made Christmas gifts
Thanksgiving Day dawned bright and beautiful and just begged for people to be outdoors as well as indoors, with the weather being just cool enough for a light jacket or sweater, and many family members did just that.
My son got his large turkey-fryer out and soon had everything set up to begin cooking a turkey while the ladies were inside getting ham and dressing into the oven to heat and tables set up so everyone had a place to sit as we visited and compared notes.
It is always an interesting time for me, as we never have “just family” for a Thanksgiving Day at their home, it has always been family, extended family (from both sides), and basically anyone who decided they wanted to be with us. One year, we had Military members with us, and even though, technically, we were a little ways out of the distance allowed, (at that time, it was thirty miles from the base), since a family member was stationed in San Antonio, it was allowed, and we had an interesting and fun day.
This year, we were family members, and a couple of friends but we were missing several family members due their being with their spouses’ family. However, we still had another great and memorable day, sitting around the table playing games after the meal and dessert! This has become a tradition with this group and the amount of game players and the games change from year to year. All I can say is “Thank you, Lord for another great Thanksgiving with my family”.
Well, everyone, since Thanksgiving is over and done with, most of the leftovers eaten, and our memories made, the so-called Black Friday, (which to me, started early and was followed by Cyber Monday), with shops opening at all hours beginning on Thanksgiving Day, is over as well, and you either were up until all hours shopping, or like me, didn’t even bother to go, maybe it’s time to think about making some Christmas gifts.
Christmas is getting near
My trip to Devine for Thanksgiving was truly great, not too much traffic, as I left on Tuesday before Thanksgiving! While I was in Devine, I was able to see quite a few of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, at different times and in different locations. I was able to meet my newest great-grandson for the first time and see his cousin who is about 4 months old. The crowds were not quite as large as they were in years past, but it was still a fun time. I got home early on Saturday afternoon and managed to get everything in from the car and unpacked the perishables. Then it was time for a nap.
On Sunday, my niece invited me for a “Friendsgiving” feast she was having in her home. There were several of her neighbors present, as well as members of their church. Everything was delicious and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. She told me she had wanted to do this ever since she moved back to this area, but something always seemed to get in the way of her plans.
Here are a few tips to keep the food items you store in your fridge, safe for you to use.
It is really best to keep track of what you have in the refrigerator; especially the things that have a “use by” or “best if used by” date on them, and believe it or not, eggs are no exception. To check for the freshness of eggs, place one egg in a bowl of cold salted water, if it floats to the surface or turns the wide end up, dispose of it. Any eggs on hand for over five weeks should be discarded. It is really best if they are kept either in their own carton or another carton that fits in the fridge rather than on the door of the fridge. This storage space, sometimes having a container that is made for eggs is not a good place to keep them as there are too many changes of temperature with the door being opened and closed as many times as it sometimes is during a day.
Milk, cream, cheese, sour cream, margarine and butter should always be tightly covered in the refrigerator. A zip-lock plastic bag is great for sticks of butter or margarine. Most bottled milk has a shelf life of about one week after it is opened. If the expiration date is past, discard.
If leftover bits of jams or jellies in jars have turned grainy, it is time to discard them. (Everyone has someone in the family who will put a bottle of jam or jelly back in the fridge with about a teaspoonful left in it!).
What is really in that dish that is covered in green slime? Only the Shadow knows! Toss it; the tummy you save from e-coli might be your own. You can keep the dish; however, it should be washed really well and rinsed with hot water before being reused. If the dish is a margarine tub or whipped topping tub, I generally toss the whole thing.
Be sure to stay with your cooking and keep an eye on things instead of leaving the room. If something boils over, you want to be there to get the pot off the stove and clean up the mess. Don’t forget to use potholders when handling hot pots or pans. Always watch children closely if they are in the kitchen with you and be sure to turn the handles of pots and pans to the back or center of the oven. Children are very inquisitive and could grab the handle of a pot or pan and be burned badly by the contents of the container. Keeping the handles to the center or back of the stove is a good idea for yourself also, as you could accidentally knock something off the stove with a sleeve or elbow.
Another thing to think about is to keep your sleeves either short or rolled up when in the kitchen, especially if the sleeves bell out at the wrist. It is really easy to catch this type sleeve on fire if you are not careful. Be sure your curtains cannot billow out over the stove and catch fire, and always keep cup towels and potholders away from the burners as they can quickly ignite.
If you should ever have a pan of grease catch fire, cover the pan with a lid to smother the flames; do not ever try to put out a grease fire with water. Either baking soda or salt is good to use. A fire extinguisher is the best way to put out any fire. If you cannot control the fire with an extinguisher dial 911, those men have the proper equipment and know how to deal with a fire.
If something boils over in your oven (pie filling comes to mind), sprinkle the mess with salt until you can finish baking your pie, the salt will keep the burnt smell down, and the goop will be easy to remove. If you don’t really mind the smell, a little cinnamon sprinkled on it will help also.
And, last, but by no means least, have a smoke detector near your kitchen to alert you in the case you have left something on the stove and have left the kitchen for any reason and forget you have something cooking.
Here are a couple of recipes for making “A gift in a jar”, I’ve used both many times and, in fact, at the Craft Show the Auxiliary participated in (in the days before COVID-19) we sold all we could make for several years in a row.
Soup Mix in a Jar
1 package (1.61 oz) Pioneer® Brown Gravy Mix
2 tablespoons mild red chili powder
2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
1 teaspoon ground cumin (optional)
2 teaspoons dried minced onion
½ teaspoon garlic salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
10 regular-sized tortilla chips, coarsely crushed
1 to 1¼ cups uncooked, small to medium sized pasta (such as wheels, shells or elbow macaroni)
Pour gravy mix into a pint jar. In small bowl, jar or cup, place the chili powder, oregano, cumin, onion, garlic salt and black pepper. Stir or shake to mix well. Pour into jar to make second layer. Add layer of pasta, then crushed tortilla chips. Seal with lid.
Attach tag with the following directions:
Directions for making soup:
Additional ingredients needed: ½ pound ground meat, 7 cups water, 1 can (15-oz), corn with red and green bell peppers, and one can chopped tomatoes (16 ounce).
Brown ground meat in large saucepan or Dutch oven. Add contents of jar, along with water; heat to boiling, stir in corn and tomatoes. Reduce heat: cover and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes or until pasta is tender, stirring occasionally. Serve topped with additional crushed tortilla chips and shredded Monterrey Jack cheese, if desired.
Chocolate Chip Cookies in a Jar
1 cup flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1½ cups oatmeal
1 cup miniature chocolate chip
Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Spoon into 1-quart wide-mouth canning jars. Layer remaining ingredients in order given, making sure to pack down each layer firmly and clean inside of jar with paper towels after each layer. Decorate as desired. Attach the following instructions: Preheat oven to 350ºF. In a large mixing bowl, cream together ½ cup softened butter or margarine, 1 egg, and 2 teaspoons vanilla until everything is well mixed. Slowly add contents of jar and mix well. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on lightly greased cookie sheet. Flatten cookies with glass dipped in sugar*. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until very lightly browned. Makes 3 to 4 dozen.
*Lightly grease or spray bottom of glass, wipe off excess. Dip glass in sugar and flatten cookie. Repeat dipping glass until all cookies are finished.
You will need a wide mouth quart jar for this recipe, or if you have a decorative jar with a tight fitting lid that will hold a quart, you can use that.
Cinnamon Christmas Ornaments (non-edible)
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 ½ cups cinnamon
1 to 2 teaspoons cinnamon oil
Mix together in bowl with hands. Knead and roll out to about ½-inch thickness. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters. (Gingerbread boy shapes are cute with this.) Poke hole on top with drinking straw. Dry flat for 2 days, turning 3 to 4 times. Makes about 25 ornaments (3-inch diameter.)
Kids love to help with holiday preparations, especially those that let them use their creativity.
It’s Here! Happy Thanksgiving
If you don’t have your turkey thawed and almost oven ready…. you may have a problem!! I’m so very lucky my son and his wife do most of the cooking for Thanksgiving. All I need to do is one side dish, which as always is Sweet Potatoes and Apples, and make the dressing. My week has run away from me, I’ve messed up a recipe by having my butter too soft to cut into some cake mix, doubled part of a recipe and forgot to double the rest…and the list is not finished. Luckily for me, with the recipe using the butter, I remembered a bar cookie recipe I could use, the other recipe, I caught it in time to double the rest of the ingredients.
My daughter was here this past week, and we (mostly she) put my tree up and decorated.
The following recipe is fairly quick, just requiring several varieties of sliced apples. Just one word of advice, be sure to use the Marzettti’s Caramel Apple Dip, I made it using caramel ice cream topping and there was sticky caramel over several surfaces in my kitchen!
Green Jell-o® Salad
1 large or two small boxes lime gelatin
1 can (15-oz) crushed pineapple in juice
1 carton (8-oz) small curd cottage cheese
1 can whipped topping (i.e. Cool Whip)
Pour pineapple into pot: add gelatin, cook and stir until gelatin is completely dissolved. Remove from heat and chill or 10 to 15 minutes. Stir in cottage cheese. Place whipped topping into a serving bowl and gently fold gelatin mixture into topping. Chill before serving
Missy’s Apple Dip
2 blocks cream cheese, softened
½ cup sifted powdered sugar
1 carton Marzettis Caramel Apple Dip
1 to 2 cups Heath toffee bits
Apples to slice for serving (I used 1 Granny Smith, 1 Gala, and 1 other red apple)
Cream together cream cheese and powdered sugar, then spread this mixture onto an aluminum disposable pizza tin. Evenly spread the caramel apple dip over this and then sprinkle with the toffee bits. Serve with sliced apples of various types.
Sweet Potatoes and Apples
5 sweet potatoes or use 2 or 3 cans sweet potatoes
5 cooking apples (I use Granny Smith)
½ to ¾ cup of each Brown sugar, Cinnamon
½ stick Butter
½ cup Water
Preheat oven to 350º. Peel potatoes and cut into 1-inch-thick slices, set aside. Peel core and slice apples into ½-inch thick slices. Place a layer of sweet potatoes in a Dutch oven or stockpot, top with a layer of apples, sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon; repeat layers finishing with apples. Melt butter and pour over apples. Pour water into pot, put in oven and bake for about 1 hour or until potatoes are done or about ½ hour if you have used canned potatoes. Check the apples for doneness.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends!
Apple Pie and Gingerbread
Apple Pie and Gingerbread
Parts of this past week were pretty busy, as my meetings that happen on the first Monday of the month were this week. This coming week is proving to be a busy one for me as various appointments are creeping up on me! We have still had no rain and it’s nearly as dry here as it is in Devine, and that’s pretty dry. I really have to water some of my plants every day. One thing that I did discover, was that my bougainvillea really kicked into action sprouting “blooms” when I put it out in full sunshine, that partial stuff just wasn’t doing the trick. It’s a beautiful color that looks like a combination of yellow and something, it’s not bronze, but it’s a really different color!
One of the most delicious smells to have in your kitchen is the fragrance of cinnamon as it bakes into something luscious and tasty. Some of the things to bake that come to mind are such as an Apple Crisp, Apple Pie, baked apples and of course let’s not forget good, old-fashioned Gingerbread. During the holidays last year, my daughter had stopped at a Brookshire Brothers store and came to the house with some really delicious oatmeal cookie. It was called Orange, cranberry, oatmeal cookies. There are dried cranberries rather than raisins in them and you can taste a faint flavor of orange, and maybe a hint of cinnamon. Yummy to the last bite. Any type of oatmeal cookie usually has a teaspoon or so of cinnamon amongst the ingredients, snickerdoodles are rolled in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar before baking and molasses cookies are full of wonderful smelling spices.
Did You Know?
Quince, a fruit My week was one of those that is semi-busy. My weekend with my daughters here was wonderful, we got a lot done, including defrosting my chest type freezer, hanging curtains, vacuuming, etc., etc. My house was pretty spotless when they left, and there wasn’t a dish in the sink, nor a bed that had not been changed and made over, and all towels were clean and in the linen closet! Girls, your work was truly appreciated. I worked two days in the gift shop, as someone was out Not too busy and I always enjoy working a different day, and seeing different people. Since we had a shipment of merchandise in, I was able to help price and get it displayed, and everything is nice and neat with new fall merchandise and lots of things for October, Breast Cancer Awareness month. When I left Devine and headed home, I had to stop for gas in Pleasanton, and since I knew company was coming, a trip to the HEB grocery store was pretty close to the top of my list. When I got to the fruits and vegetables, one of the first things I noticed was a display of what I thought was Golden Delicious apples, instead, I was looking at a fruit by the name of “Quince”. I had heard of these in the past by never seen them, also, since I read quite a bit, I’ve seen them mentioned in different books, but knew nothing about them. Time for an article! People often ask me where I get my ideas…this was one of those times.
“Graham crackers”
The one thing I really noticed during my trip to Devine, is that rain is needed in that area just as it is here. The only “green” that I saw was irrigated fields, everything else was sere and brown.
This past week has been busy to the max! I was in Devine part of the week, and had bunco, appointments and the usual things. Since I hadn’t seen some of the “greats”, we met at Castroville Regional Park for lunch Friday and had lunch together; salads were the order of the day for the grown-up and bean and cheese tacos for the smaller crowd. We had a wonderful time and the children were able to burn off excess energy running around and using the swings and slides. When I left there, I headed in the general direction of home with a stop off in Pleasanton at the HEB store since I already knew that some of the family would be there for the weekend, in fact, my one daughter and I both got to the house at almost the same time! The other two daughters arrived later in the day, and, yes, we had a wonderfully relaxing weekend. They are all such hard workers and my house is clean, beds changed, laundry done, etc, etc.
The following article is from a newspaper, possible from Chicago, (according to the movies listed on the back and the names of the theatres showing them), that was in a box of “stuff” given to me some time ago. I never had time to go through it and now have finally gotten to do so. There is no date anywhere on/in the article but judging from the condition of the paper, it could be from the ’50 or ‘60s. It struck me as interesting, as I had often wondered where ‘graham crackers’ and graham flour came from. It is being copied exactly as it appeared in that paper, headlines and all!