Comfort Food #4

We are still alive and kicking here, and I haven't forgotten about my last few comfort foods!  I could actually use a few of those foods right now as we got about 8 inches of snow last night, and Jeff and Payton are living it up in Costa Rica, which means we have no snow shovelers around here!

Really, we are fine.  We spent the snowstorm with some great friends (Thanks Leatherwoods!) and today, a sweet neighbor and friend shoveled the driveway for us (Thanks Mark!).  Tomorrow, it's back to school and our routine.  Then Jeff and Payton will be back next Monday.  Jeff has sent a few emails saying they are having a great time, and that Payton got his machete on their first night there!  Not sure how they plan to get that home on the plane, but that was ALL Payton talked about before they went.  So now he's happy, and the trip will be deemed a success!

Comfort Food #4 is actually more accurately titled "Comfort FoodS" as I have decided to combine two of my mom's amazing "salads" into one post.  In my opinion, potato salad and chicken salad are two foods that a person doesn't universally like.  In other words, I LOVE potato salad and chicken salad but only if it's my mom's potato salad and/or chicken salad.  I don't know if it's just liking what you're used to or if I'm just picky, but I have never had either of these foods that tasted anywhere near as good as  they do when mom makes them.

From what I know (mom, correct me if I'm wrong), both of these recipes came from newspaper/magazine articles when my parents were newly married.  (I know the chicken salad recipe was titled "The Bride Makes Chicken Salad" so my guess is that it came from here, which was while my mom was pregnant with me!)  They really aren't anything super-brilliant nor do they require any exotic ingredients or hours of labor in the kitchen.  But they are THE BEST, hands down.  And my sweet memories of eating one or both of them at every family picnic or enjoying them on hot and muggy summer evenings when it was just too hot to turn on the oven in the avocado green kitchen make them taste even better as they years go by!  Enjoy!


Mom's Potato Salad

4 cups diced potatoes, cooked and drained
1 cup mayonnaise (NEVER Miracle Whip!)
1 tspn. mustard
1 tspn. salt
dash pepper
1 cup celery, diced
2 hard boiled eggs, cut up

In large bowl, mix mayonnaise (NEVER Miracle Whip!) and mustard.  Add salt and pepper then add celery and eggs and mix.  Add potatoes and stir to coat well.  Refrigerate for a few hours before serving.

* Above recipe doesn't make a huge amount of potato salad.  I always half it again or even double it.
* I love the eggs so I always add extra.


Mom's Chicken Salad

In large saucepan, place one 5-pound whole chicken, 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks, 1 large onion, 6 black peppercorns, and 1 quart water.  Bring water to a boil over high heat then reduce heat and simmer covered for two hours or until tender.  (After one hour, turn chicken over.)  Remove from heat and let stand uncovered for one hour or until meat is cool enough to handle.  Remove all meat from chicken, shred or cut into small pieces, and chill for one to two hours.

Mix the following in large bowl:

1 cup mayonnaise (NEVER Miracle Whip!)
2 TB lemon juice
2 TB milk
1.5 tspn. salt
dash pepper
2 cups celery, diced

To the above ingredients, add chicken and then chill all together for about 1 hour.

*  Also delicious with red grapes (halved).
*  Walnuts can be added as well. (but it's not quite so delicious, in my humble opinion!)

For the nephews......

I have seven nephews--Garrett, Chase, Addison, Noah, Wyatt, Spencer, and Lincoln.  (Yes, when you consider my boys, Payton and Sawyer, it's kinda like reading a phone book.  First-name last names are popular in our family!)

This post is for them.  I have no doubt that they will enjoy this video/song as much as my boys have enjoyed it--over and over and over and over.  I mean, it really IS funny but it's that whole "too much of a good thing" idea.

Enjoy guys!

Love,
Aunt Jennifer

Please overlook the video quality and just enjoy the song!  It's hilarious!

Comfort Food #3

I have to cheat a little for this one, but it's totally worth it, and a list of my comfort foods would never be complete without it.  Not surprisingly, Comfort Food #3, is courtesy of my mom, and it's not actually a food but rather a drink -- my mom's homemade iced tea.  (Does it bother anyone else that it is so frequently written and referred to as "ice tea" rather than "iced tea"?  grrr.........)

I believe my mom got this recipe from a friend when she and my dad were newly married, and it is one for the ages, I assure you!  Payton and I call this iced tea the "nectar of the gods", it's THAT good!  It has spoiled me for all iced tea anywhere.  I can't even drink iced tea anywhere else because it's just "not right".  

In that avocado green kitchen I mentioned in an earlier post, there was always a saucepan of tea steeping on the stovetop.  When one pitcher of tea was made, the water was boiled and more tea was steeped.   I remember my mom adding saccharin tablets when that was all the rage in the 70s, but I'm pretty sure that phase was fairly short-lived and good old fashioned sugar became our sweetener of choice.

This iced tea was present at every family gathering, picnic, or meal we ever had.  When we got together with my dad's family on holidays, we always had a pitcher of "Lenhart tea" and "Hoppe tea"(my aunt's family), and even as kids we knew the difference (their tea was gross because it had no lemon!) and were very careful not to get a glass of the "wrong" tea.

Even now, some of my favorite snacks and/or meals just aren't complete without a glass of iced tea.  I drink iced tea with everything.  And I do mean everything.  I drink iced tea with french toast for breakfast, with crackers and peanut butter for snack, and with Chef Boyardee pizza for dinner.  And it's especially good with raw cookie dough and also with hard boiled eggs with lots of salt.  Yes it is.  

I don't remember exactly when I learned to "make" tea, but I'm sure I was fairly young. And, I am proud to say that all four of our kids know how to boil the water, measure the ingredients, and make a pitcher of tea.  We have trained them well.  

If you'd like to make a pitcher of this sugary (always decaffeinated) goodness, here's the simple recipe!  Enjoy!

Mom's Iced Tea

5 decaffeinated tea bags

1 cup sugar

Place the above in a 2-quart saucepan on stovetop and boil 2 quarts water in a tea kettle.  Pour boiling water over tea and sugar and allow mixture to steep for 8-10 hours.  (This time isn't set in stone.  It just depends how strong you like your tea.)

After tea has steeped, remove tea bags and pour tea into a 1-gallon pitcher.  Add another two quarts of cold water.  Then add 1/3 cup lemon juice and stir until mixed well.  Enjoy!

Finally, a few disclaimers:  you can't make this tea correctly in one of those silly iced tea maker pitcher things.  It won't be right.  Secondly, any powder that comes in a cardboard can and says "flavored with lemon" does not deserve to be called "tea".  Lastly, don't mess this tea up with hoity-toity additions like sprigs of mint or slices of real lemon.  It's perfect just the way it is.  Trust me.

For Sandy.......

The internet is an amazing thing--for many reasons.  But the friends that I have reconnected with and made via this big world wide web are very near the top of my list.

Sandy is one of those dear friends.  We "met" more than ten years ago when Jeff was pastoring in Grand Rapids and we were on a Pastorswives email list together.  Somehow, we started chatting off-list and have since emailed regularly and talked on the phone, sharing our hearts and lives, even though I am no longer a pastor's wife.  Someday, hopefully, on this side of heaven, we will meet in person.

This song is one of my very favorites.  I needed to hear it yesterday, and I thought of my friend, Sandy, because I know she needs to hear it now too.  May it encourage and bless Sandy and each of you as well.

Comfort Food #2

Well, I was going to save this for later but since my mom brought it up, I will go ahead and mention it now.  As strange as it may seem, considering all my comfort food "dislikes", my comfort food #2 is indeed meatloaf.

I'm not sure when I started liking meatloaf, although I do know it was after Jeff and I were married, and I was the one who was making the meatloaf.  Like my mom said, meatloaf was definitely not one of those things she made well, and so meatloaf definitely isn't a comfort food because of the great memories it evokes.  My mom remembers my Grandmom Lenhart making a delicious meatloaf, but Grandmom was one of those cooks who didn't have a recipe, per se, and so we've never been able to duplicate her meatloaf.

Honestly, I'm not even sure when I started making meatloaf, but at some point, early in our marriage, I was looking through a Zonta Club cookbook that Jeff's mom had given me, and I spotted a recipe for Ann Landers' meatloaf.  It caught my attention for two reasons:  it didn't include bread chunks or crumbs (I don't do soggy bread.) and it made two loaves--so I could make one and freeze the other.  Thus a "VeStrand classic" was born.

And I am happy to say that my meatloaf is one of Jeff's most-requested meals.  He and the boys love it.  I have experimented with other recipes, but none has measured up.  In fact, last week, I tried a new meatloaf recipe, and as we were eating Sawyer said "Mom, you should have stuck with the old recipe."   And, once, I put a hard boiled egg in the meatloaf before I baked it so that, when I cut it, each piece would have an egg slice in the middle.  I thought the kids would be thrilled to find such a fun surprise in their meatloaf.  Boy was I wrong!!!  You would have thought I baked a dead bug into every slice!  Now, every time I serve meatloaf, at least one child asks "Mom, you didn't put an egg in this one, did you?"  I don't think I will ever live that down!

So I guess I have to thank Ann Landers for this comfort food!  Sorry mom!

Ann Landers' Meatloaf

3 pounds ground beef (I use meatloaf mix from BJs)
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 tspn. salt
dash pepper
1 TB Worcestershire sauce
1/3 cup oatmeal
1/4 cup onion, diced
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese (my addition)

Mix all ingredients together and divide into two smaller loaf pans or one large loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes.

Optional:  you can top with one small can Hunt's tomato paste and/or two strips of bacon.

Comfort Food #1

I've said it before, and I don't think I will hurt her feelings or surprise anyone when I say that my mom wasn't an adventurous cook.  She will freely admit that she doesn't enjoy cooking and that's fine.  I wouldn't say that I enjoy cooking either so the apple doesn't fall far.........  However, although my mom wasn't very adventurous, a few things she did make, she made well!  And you will hear about several of those over the next couple days.

I have mentioned many times before that I was blessed to have had an almost idyllic childhood.  It was perfect in almost every way.  One reason it was perfect (to me) is that it was predictable--and predictable is very good for my "oldest-child, people-pleasing, Type-AAAA" personality.   Certain things in the Lenhart household never, ever changed--and when I say never, I mean never.  Daddy got up every day and went to work at Graco (yes, as in the children's products), wearing a tie and carrying a brown paper lunch bag, containing a sandwich with one--and only one--piece of lunchmeat and one piece of white American cheese, sliced thin.  Mom went to the grocery store (or actually three grocery stores), armed with her coupon box that Mr. Friedman designed just for that purpose, every Friday night.  We never (and again I mean never) ate out at a restaurant.  We never turned the heat above 65.  It didn't matter if it was 65 degrees BELOW zero out; the heat was never higher than 65.  We never made a peep--we didn't even breathe loudly--if the Oklahoma Sooners were losing the football game.  And......last but not least.......we had Chef Boyardee pizza from a box every. single. Wednesday. night. before we piled into the Bonneville station wagon (otherwise known as the "Big Car") and drove the 2.1 miles to church.

And that memory of those yummy pizzas every Wednesday night is why Chef Boyardee pizza from a box is my first "comfort" food.  Mom always made two pizzas--a square one and round one.  They had veerryy thin crusts and, of course, they were only cheese pizzas because, remember, we weren't "adventurous" at the Lenharts, and pepperoni would have put us awfully close to that "adventurous" edge of the cliff.  We couldn't have that!  I remember walking through the kitchen while mom was making the pizzas and taking a chunk of mozzarella cheese and dipping into the yummy sauce from the pizza kit and sneaking a taste.  It was soo good!  And the smell of those pizzas cooking was to die for!!

When I think of Chef Boyardee pizza,  I remember our little kitchen with green appliances and walnut cabinets and an avocado rotary phone, complete with a party line.  I think of how we probably inhaled it most Wednesdays because we had to get to church on time.  And I remember where every single one of us sat around the table as we ate that pizza-our assigned seats for twenty years.  All of those memories make me "comfortable", which is why that pizza is a "comfort food" for me.  Those list makers can have their chili and baked beans and, heaven forbid, shepherd's pie.  I'll take Chef Boyardee any day of the week (but Wednesdays are my day of choice!).

We recently had our very own Chef Boyardee pizza (but we added pepperoni because we're "adventurous" like that around here).  It's not Jeff's favorite, but he indulges me because I love it and it makes me happy.  And I hope that someday, something I have made will make my kids as happy as that silly Chef Boyardee pizza still makes me!

P.S.  Dear Mom, On the off-chance (ahem) that any of my recall is incorrect, don't tell me.  Ignorance is obviously bliss!!