Totally Trippin' Over Jello

Chloe and I went a little trippy with the Jello today.

Chloe says it smells amazing and swearers she can taste each individual flavor of Jello, but all I taste is a mouth coated with flagil fungus, which means everything tastes like cardboard. It's a bit scary to cook this way. Yesterday I made chicken burritos. I have to be extra careful not to over season. To me the burrito meet was tasting the exact same as my favorite lasagna sauce I made the day before, which also tastes exactly like this Jello. Overgrown taste buds, not a good thing.

Lucky for me my husband is not a subtle man. He never gushes over my cooking, ever. I'm lucky if I get an "oh, it's OK" out of him. However when he eats enough for three people, then right away goes back and makes sure he has some packed for his lunch the next day then you know you must have gotten it right..

Rainbow Ribbon Mold

Prep Time: 1 hour Refrigeration Time: 4½ hours

6¼ cups boiling water

5 packages (4-serving size) jello, any 5 different flavors

1 cup sour cream OR vanilla yogurt

Stir 1¼ cups boiling water into 1 flavor of gelatin in a small bowl at least 2 minutes until completely dissolved. Pour ¾ cup of the dissolved gelatin into a 6 cup ring mold. Refrigerate about 15 minutes until set but not firm (gelatin should stick to finger when touched and should mound). Refrigerate remaining gelatin in bowl about 5 minutes until slightly thickened (consistency of unbeaten egg whites). Gradually stir in 3 tablespoons of the sour cream. Spoon over gelatin in pan. Refrigerate about 15 minutes or until set but not firm (gelatin should stick to finger when touched and should mound).

Meanwhile, repeat process with each remaining gelatin flavor. (be sure to cool dissolved gelatin to room temperature before pouring into mold.) Refrigerate gelatin as directed to create a total of 10 alternating clear and creamy layers.

Refrigerate 2 hours or until firm. Unmold. Garnish if desired.

Makes 12 servings

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Jello

I am on a major jello kick lately. Mostly because it's cheep, and the kids love it. So for $2 I can get two boxes of jello and a tub of whip cream. I make Jello everyday and the kids sometimes mix it with the whip cream.

BTW did I mention that I'm not working again. The Crohn's is back very badly and I can't do anything but steroids for treatment, because of the histoplasmosis, and the steroids aren't working. On the Crohn's anyway. My house is clean, my garden is beautiful, I get a lot done. I have to stop a lot and work through the pain, run to the bathroom every few minutes, but as long as I don't have to work around people I'm good. This way if I mess myself only I know, I don't have to be embarrassed trying to excuse myself and still make it to the bathroom on time.

So the medical bills are piling up as I go every couple of weeks to Mayo clinic, and I'm out at our local hospital being poked on at least every other day.  Not working and all those bills have us looking for cheep food alternatives. Junk food is so expensive, and it's the 1st thing the kids clear out of the house. So the jello thing is working for me, even if I do have to make it every night before bed.

The other great thing about jello is it gives us Crhonies one more liquid form of calories. It's easy on the tummy and easy to digest, brings our sugar levels up if were getting depleted. It does a lot for a cheep little 49 cent box of sugar water. :)

Last summer I picked up this book for a quarter at a garage sale. It's called Jello Collections. I tried to find it online but none of them I could find is the same book. Anyway since I am making jello everyday anyway I thought I would work my way though a couple of the recipes. I had some fruit an the edge of going bad so I started with the 2nd recipe in called Sparkling Berry Salad.

Sparkling Berry Salad

2 cups boiling cranberry cocktail

1 package (8-serving size) or 2 packages (4 serving size each) jello any red flavor

1 ½ cups cold seltzer or club soda

¼ cup creme de cassis liqueur (optional) *I skipped this*

1 tea lemon juice

3 cups assorted berries (I used blueberries and chopped strawberries)

Stir boiling cranberry juice into gelatin in large bowl at least 2 minutes until completely dissolved. Stir in cold seltzer, liqueur and lemon juice. Refrigerate about 1½ hours or until slightly thickened (consistency of unbeaten egg whites).

Stir in 2 cups of the berries. Spoon into 5 cup jello mold. Refrigerate 4 hours or until firm. Unmold. Top with remaining 1 cup berries.

Chloe and I ate this for breakfast this morning, right after we photographed it. She picked the setting for this last photo, saying the hankie she picked out tied in the blue and red of the berries. She's so cute.

Why Buy When You Can Bake

I have to confess something. I'm broke. It's a well known fact to us people with chronic illness but something most people don't think about. When you get sick your cost of living goes up, and I mean way up, especially if you have an on going illness like I do. Where sometimes my co-pay left on my meds is over $1000 a month. A $1000 that was not in the budget! If that wasn't enough to break you your ability to make a living may go WAY down.  I just can't go out and do location shoots and half the time I can't do shoots in the studio without having to run to the bathroom. I'm down by over $100,000 from what I used to make because my doctor told me to quit or die. Those were his exact words. I didn't quit, I love what I do, but I did slow down a lot.

This year after getting Disseminated Histoplasmosis during a photographers most busy time of year, the fall when the trees are pretty. I missed all those family photos people do just before Christmas. This makes things even tighter then they have been in the past, so it's onto frugal cooking here. No packaged cookies at the store, not when you can make your own for 1/4 of the price. This weeks cookie is a family favorite, especially during the holidays when we can add chocolate stars to the tops. No chocolate stars in the stores this time of year, and I won't pay for chocolate kisses, besides the wrappers take forever to peal off. So just a plane old favorite warm from the oven and served with a cold glass of milk, better then prepackaged any day.

Peanut Butter Cookies

 

Ingredients

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

Directions

1. In a large mixing bowl beat peanut butter and butter with electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add granulated sugar and brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in egg and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Stir in any remaining flour. Cover and refrigerate dough about 1 hour or until easy to handle.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Shape dough in 1-inch balls, roll in sugar. Place balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten the cookies by making crisscross marks with fork tines, dipping fork in sugar between flattening each cookie. Bake about 8 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Transfer to wire racks. Cool. Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

This recipe came from the better homes and gardens cookbook



The Best Leftovers

Most people tell me the best part of Thanksgiving is the leftovers. Well I soooooo agree. A few days after Thanksgiving when we have all had our fill of turkey sandwiches and the rest of the leftovers are about gone, then it's time to pull out my most favorite leftover meal of all. Turkey Pot Pie. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

I used AR's Chicken Pot Pie IX recipe with a few minor adjustments, the biggest being I used leftover turkey instead of chicken. 2nd I used a frozen peas/carrots because that's what I had on hand, I just doubled up the peas only measurement and skipped adding chopped carrots. Also I was out of chicken broth so I had to use water and two chicken bouillon cubes. I also never cut away the extra crust on my pot pies because that's my favorite part! I break mine all up and stir it together and those big chunks of baked pie crust are just so good! Here's the original recipe

Chicken Pot Pie IX

Ingredients

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cubed
1 cup sliced carrots
1 cup frozen green peas
1/2 cup sliced celery
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon celery seed
1 3/4 cups chicken broth
2/3 cup milk
2 (9 inch) unbaked pie crusts

Directions

1.Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C.)

2.In a saucepan, combine chicken, carrots, peas, and celery. Add water to cover and boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, drain and set aside.

3.In the saucepan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent. Stir in flour, salt, pepper, and celery seed. Slowly stir in chicken broth and milk. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Remove from heat and set aside.

4.Place the chicken mixture in bottom pie crust. Pour hot liquid mixture over. Cover with top crust, seal edges, and cut away excess dough. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape.

5.Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.



Just before I put the top on the pie Mr K. walked by and told me that it looked really pretty with all the pea/carrot colors showing through so I decided to use a cookie cutter on the pie crust so more of the colors showed through when it was done. I didn't have a turkey but found a small chicken in my grandmothers old cookie cutters that I inherited. I think it turned out so cute, If the smell wasn't making me wildly hungry I would have never been able to cut it!


The Colors of Christmas

I usually put our a cheese and meat tray for Thanksgiving. After this years Histo hospital stay and two months of not working money was a little tight this year so I decided to do a cheese ball instead. Only when I asked for everyone's favorite cheese ball recipe on AR I got this cheese ring recipe recommendation. The recipe looked fantastic, it had a little kick and a little sweet so I decided to give it a try. I'm so glad I did. My cousin and I loved it.

CHEESE RING

Ingredients

1 pound shredded Cheddar cheese

3/4 cup mayonnaise

5 medium green onions, finely chopped

1 pinch cayenne pepper

1 pinch garlic salt, or to taste

1 (10 ounce) seedless strawberry jam
1 (10 ounce) package thin wheat crackers

Directions

1.In a medium bowl, mix together the Cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, green onion, cayenne pepper, and garlic salt until well blended. Coat a ring shaped gelatin mold generously with cooking spray. Spoon the cheese mixture into the mold, cover, and chill for 2 to 3 hours to set.

2.Unmold onto a serving plate, and pour raspberry preserves into the center. Arrange wheat crackers around the outside of the ring.

The green onion and the strawberry jam just add such great holiday color to the table. I just love it with this $1 green bamboo place mat I got from the dollar store. I think it really pulls out the color of those onions!

Hope you all had a great Turkey Day! I got a few photos of the food before it was all gobbled up. :) Hopefully I'll have some more to share with you later this week!

Old Mother Hubbard

I have been a little lax on my meal planning lately. How lax? Lets just say I'm supposed to be having Thanksgiving at my house this week and I still don't know what I'm serving, besides the turkey. So last Wednesday when it was time to make dinner I was in a bit of a crunch.

I had sat out a pound of ground beef  thinking I had all the ingredients to make lasagna, I didn't. I also decided I wasn't up to working that hard. :) I didn't really have a lot on hand to make anything! Beings a search on AR seemed to turn up mostly hamburgers, lasagna, and meet loaf I decided dig a little deeper. Both in my pantry and into AR's database. I found dry onion soup mix and decided that might have some nice possibilities. After doing an advanced search where I listed ground beef, and dry onion soup mix as ingredients to search for in a recipe. I found this:

Martha's Vegetable Beef Soup

1/2 pound ground beef

1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes

1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce

2 cups water

1 (10 ounce) package frozen mixed vegetables

1/4 cup dry onion soup mix

1 teaspoon white sugar

Directions

1.In a large pot over medium high heat, sauté the ground beef for about 5 minutes, or until browned. Drain off excess fat.


2.Add the tomatoes, sauce, water, vegetables, soup mix and sugar. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

TIPS for the Crohnies:
I know  lot of us Crohnies have trouble with veggies so here are a few tips to help you get through this recipe.
1. Don't use a bag of mixed frozen veggies. Just use the ones that are OK for you to eat. I actually only had a half a bag of mixed veggies on hand so that's what I used. The rest is part of a bag of peas and carrots and a partial bag of lima beans.
2. Celery - throw it in the food processor and chop it fine then remove any strings the processor doesn't chop up. This is also how I hide both celery and onion from little Mis C in most my cooking.
3. Boil the heck out of them, yes they will be a bit mushy but it will be easier for your gut to digest them. Also all the flavor and nutrients go into the soup broth, so it's not like boiling them in plain water and straining it out. Your going to eat the broth with the soup so you still get both the flavor and nutrients.

Happy Eating!

Food For Thought

Warning this post involves Potty Talk!

Well the blog is called Diary of a Crohnie so you got to sort of expect potty talk don't you. Anywho here's today's Food For Thought.

Did you know canned pumpkin is recommended to help stop diarrhea in dogs.

Farmer B brought me some pumpkins before Halloween. Two of them the kids carved and I roasted the seeds, sorry no photos the Mr. ate them faster then I could get the camera out. We gave one pumpkin to my mother in-law and the Mr. said we were keeping the last one so HE could make pumpkin pie. Then it just sat on my kitchen counter for weeks.

A small confession. I HATE things being on my kitchen counters. When I am sick I am forced to live in a cluttered mess of a home. When I am feeling well I clean like a mad woman because you never know how many days you have before your down again. Right now I'm feeling really well and my house shows it. Leaving something on my counter will nag at me though, it makes me absolutely crazy. So after a few weeks I threw the dang pumpkin in the oven myself and made up a pumpkin pie, even though I hate pumpkin pie, and I thought about dog poo the whole time.



I used Paula Dean's recipe over at food network but substituted my pumpkin puree for the canned stuff. Because of the extra water I baked it a lot longer, putting a pie saver on the edges after the 1st hour to keep them from burning. I also did NOT put in the ginger as I can't stand ginger, and for the first time ever I ate a pumpkin pie that I liked. Beings my Crohn's is in remission right now I have no idea if the pumpkin theory will work for us people, but I did enjoy trying to find out.