What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Feb. 1, 2012

Well this week I have two heads of cabbage to cook and five mouths to feed. Normally I’d just fry it all with bacon and seasonings or butter and seasonings. Today I think I’ll fry one head of cabbage and use the other to make stuffed cabbage rolls. I have hamburger and a package of seasoned rice. I’m all out of plain old rice, but I hope I’ll figure out something that works. In the meanwhile, I searched online for different ways to make the rolls and found the following. I’m pretty simple. Normally I’d soften the cabbage and fill its leaves with a seasoned hamburger/rice mixture. To finish it, I’d dump a can of diced tomatoes over the top of the rolls before baking it in the oven. These recipes are not the same at all. How do you make cabbage rolls?

Good Food: Braised Stuffed Cabbage Recipe

Taste of Home's Stuffed Cabbage

Smitten Kitchens': Alex's Mom's Stuffed Cabbage

Closet Cooking's Lahanodolmathes "Stuffed Cabbage"

I Made Pear Bread

Yummy, pear bread.

I finally started using that bag of pears I was telling y’all about. I was up early, so I started pealing and dicing them. I found several recipes for pear bread, but decided on one from the Taste of Home website.

The recipe called for the basics: flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, salt and nutmeg. I didn’t have nutmeg, but I did have pumpkin seasoning which is what I used. I cut a stick of cold butter (the real stuff) into the flour mixture. In a separate bowl, I combined eggs, buttermilk (milk with vinegar that had set for 5 mins.) and vanilla nut butter flavor.

I mixed my wet and dry ingredients together, but got a tad bit lazy. How? Well, the batter was stiff so I added more buttermilk instead of muscling it into a stiff dough. I then stirred in a the diced, fresh pears. The “bread” cooked for over an hour.

I pulled it out of the oven and ran a butter knife around the pan’s edges, waited 3 or 4 minutes and dumped it on a rack to cool. Dummy me. The bottom of the bread stuck inside the pan. Duh. It would have been perfect. The outside of the bread was golden and sweet. The inside was warm, moist and delicate. It was more like a cake than bread.

I think I’ll make a couple more loaves. Maybe one for a friend who is letting me borrow a computer and my sister who has MS and is not feeling too great.

Three Great Magazines

As a kid I loved to read magazines. There was something special about flipping through the glossy pages and seeing a whole new world that was so different from the one in which I lived. Back then it was all about Tiger Beat and 17. Then life kicked in and I stopped reading them. They lost pull factor with me. Recently that’s changed.

Now, I love three magazines for very different reasons. The first magazine is All You. It’s sold exclusively at Walmart or by subscription. Full of coupons, money-saving tips and inexpensive food and decorative ideas, it is a pleasure to read. Every month you can expect to find a variety of ever-changing coupons. My person favorite is the $5 of any Just For Me item of clothing. Earlier this year the coupon was in All You two months back-to-back. I was able to take the coupons to Walmart and buy a camisole and tank top. The best part? Well, both of the shirts only cost $5, so I got them for FREE. If you want to know what coupons are in the magazine, flip through it before paying the whopping $1.66 it costs.

Another magazine caught my attention for a completely different reason. I like the sophistication and dreams found between the pages of Bon Appetit. The magazine is a foodie’s fantasy put into pictures and articles. From recreating high-end meals to detailing how to choose seafood, the magazine is filled with interesting, intelligent and stomach growling information. It even highlights different locations by telling you what the location is known for and what to eat if you ever go there. The magazine costs $4.99 an issue, but if you subscribe you it you can usually find a deal. I lucked out when I purchased a three-year subscription to it for $2.99/year from Tanga last year. (With Tanga you need to sign up for an account to view the actual discounted price.)

The final magazine I subscribe to is Taste of Home. I love the down to earth, variety of recipes included in the magazine. Taste of Home also has tons of recipe contests which last all year. As a subscriber you get access to additional online supplemental content. It’s a great magazine for those times when you want something a little different while avoiding gourmet, time-consuming, money sucking meals. I bought my subscription from Tanga for $1.99/year; it’s cover price is $3.99 and the magazine is regularly released bi-monthly with the exception of holiday issues.

Are you a magazine lover? What do you read and why? What would you recommend?