Capirotada for Dessert and The 27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders

Capirotada is Mexican Bread Pudding and traditionally eaten during the Lenten season but I learned about it in The 27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders. While it officially was written by mystery writer Nancy Pickard, the book was based on the notes of Virginia Rich who passed away after writing three of my favorite mystery books.

Virginia Rich's sleuth was Mrs. Potter, Genia to her friends, and Genia was older than me when I first began reading the culinary mysteries in 1982, The Cooking School Murders, and now I am older than she was in the books. That's how long I've been reading these culinary mysteries!

Rich, a chef and newspaper food writer, is credited with writing the first mystery book in the culinary genre unless we count Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe back in the early 1930s. When she passed away her family found folders of notes for future books, including for The 27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders. Nancy Pickard was asked to continue this one and went on to write two more Mrs. Potter mysteries. 

I tried the recipe for chili but honestly like my own better. This has been such a cold winter that chili has been almost a weekly staple here.

  But for the night I tried this fabulous bread pudding recipe I made my vegetarian tortilla soup.

 

That's basically where I chop onion, bell pepper, red bell pepper and garlic and saute before stirring in Rancho Gordo chili powder (absolutely fabulous chili powder), cumin, paprika (also Rancho Gordo and so pungent), and oregano (you guessed it, their Mexican oregano, excellent since I used all of the truly superb oregano from Crete that Poppy sent me). I add a box of low sodium vegetable stock, fill it again with water and add, canned tomatoes, some Bob's Red Mill pearl barley, rice, and frozen organic corn and green beans, and sliced frozen okra (that adds such a great consistency to vegetable soups), jar of Trader Joe's Salsa Verde, and as little salt as I can get by with, plus freshly ground pepper, naturally. 

Top with chopped cilantro, scallions, jalapeños, and lime juice. I don't even miss the meat but RH prefers meat in his so when I make chili I put plenty of beef or chicken in it.

I made this meal in January while our Christmas trees were still up. I didn't quite make it to February 2nd this year but took the trees down on January 25th. 

And of course the poinsettia was fitting with the dessert of Mexican Bread Pudding where I used my two favorite plates for Mexican food of any kind.

 

I've had this small tablecloth for decades and remembered to pull it out of my tablecloth closet--yes, I have one where they all hang.

And here is the scrumptious Mexican Bread Pudding that was in the book, where people seemed to eat it even as an entree.
 

I found other recipes for Capirotada online but the one in this book was the only one I found that used a loaf of raisin bread in the recipe. 

I'll type out Nancy Pickard/Virginia Rich's recipe as it is in the book. I'll be making this again and by the way, the book that takes place in Arizona near the border on Mrs. Potter's cattle ranch is full of interesting characters and I felt that Pickard did a nice job of carrying on Mrs. Potter even though I'm partial to Rich's first three, Nantucket Diet Murders being my favorite.

If you have a favorite culinary mystery author please tell me her or his name!

Capirotada;

To one quart boiling water add 2 cups brown sugar, 1 whole clove, 1 stick of cinnamon, and 1/4 cup butter. Simmer until a light syrup forms, then remove the clove and cinnamon.  Cut one loaf of raisin bread into cubes and dry in 250 F. oven until crusty. Rinse one cup of raisins in hot water, then drain. In a large buttered baking dish, continuously layer the bread cubes, raisins, 1 cup chopped walnuts, 1/4 pound grated Monterey Jack cheese and 1/4 cup grated longhorn cheese until all ingredients are used. Spoon the hot syrup evenly over the bread mixture. Bake in a preheated 350 F. for 30 minutes. Serve either hot or cold.

From The 27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders by Nancy Pickard:

Juanita's capirotada could pass for either a dessert or a full meal, depending on one's appetite. Made with half a pound of cheese (a quarter pound each of longhorn and Jack), one whole loaf of raisin bread and a full cup of chopped walnuts, it boasted everything from calcium to fiber, especially when made with multigrain raisin bread instead of ordinary raisin bread. Some people ate it straight, Ricardo liked it with real whipped cream, Lew Porter had preferred ice cream, but Mrs. Potter was always happy to slosh it around in plain old milk.

The recipes in Virginia Rich's Mrs. Potter mystery books always work and I make some from each of them often. I still want to try another one from this book, the Chili Rellenos, because it calls for using a can of condensed milk. I'm trying to picture how that would taste.

What do you think?

Tea and Sympathy

My post title is misleading as there's no tea here--I don't drink it, wish I liked it. There may be some sympathy simply because you may understand that my mind is wandering and can't seem to focus lately. Maybe Miscellaneous would be a better title.

One of the highlights of my recent days was watching 1956's Tea and Sympathy starring Deborah Kerr and John Kerr (no relation) on Turner Classic Movies. 

Do you see that kitchen? 

The wall of copper? The wood dresser with white knobs? And there's a curtain under the sink and several other pieces of furniture in the room and pretty china in the cabinets and a darling white stove. 

Deborah Kerr was delightful as the wife of a house master at Chilton--get that? The prep school was named Chilton. I had to Google to see if it was real but no, it was made up just like Rory Gilmore's Chilton was. 

I won't go into much of the plot here but it was timely as to the prejudice there was in 1956 against people who were different as was John Kerr's 17 year old character who was hounded by the other teenage boys and called "sister boy." The house mistress's heart went out to him and she offered tea and sympathy on Sundays to the boy who was more interesting than all the other so called manly boys put together.

And talk about men back in the 1950s not being able to talk about their feelings, her husband is the poster child. But on to other things...

Old movies have been a respite from the news lately and so have family and dear pets. I'll try to write soon about the gift of seeing family again but for today, here are two pictures of new family pets.

Can you believe that head?

Dear Bridger, named for the Bridger Mountains in Montana, has visited us often the last few weeks. He is our daughter and son-in-law's Giant Schnauzer and he's only one year old! He and I fell in love with each other and I could look into those beautiful eyes for hours. My photograph doesn't let you see them but they're under all that fur. 

And here's my new grandkittie that I haven't met in person yet but my little granddaughters are so in love with her. Isn't that a sweet face?

Jumping to my next disjointed thought, if you read my bedroom post a few weeks ago you might remember that I hoped to find pictures for the blank wall behind my bed. I found the first one!

The first week that one of our local antique malls reopened I was there and spotted this beauty. The label said it was a watercolor and I thought I was stealing it as I handed over a Benjamin Franklin that was a birthday gift from my firstborn and his wife. I felt almost guilty leaving with it but when I was cleaning it before hanging I saw that it was a numbered print of a watercolor--in the 900s even.

Still not sorry I got her though. I think she's lovely and she holds a pink rose, just like the pink rose lamp on the table by her. I'm hoping next to slowly add a group of smaller pictures on the other side of the clock to make up my art gallery for this side of the room.

Here's two other antique mall pre-pandemic finds that were such a pretty blue that I had to show you.

  
These blue and white napkins are a perfect blue for my wedding china, Spode's Blue Bird. 

And I couldn't resist this blue pitcher that's a planter with a drainage hole to the attached saucer. Now if I can only find the right houseplant for it.

Next thought...

Here's how I used some of the olives from the recipe on my previous post--in Jan's recipe for Balsamic Pork Chops with Olives, found here at The Low Carb Diabetic blog. They were delicious! 

Every morning I take my clippers outside to deadhead plants in the garden but I'm saving those pictures for a post to show what my new gardeners have accomplished. They are Bridger's mom and dad and RH and I are so thankful for all the gardening help they've given us lately. 

But late in the afternoon, after I've fed BreeBree and James Mason, I go back outside just to stroll around with them and one day I went over to the far side where a large hydrangea has given us a beautiful view from our bathroom window. 

First I had to take a picture of the bark on our one large locust tree.

And here's the pretty hydrangea. We planted two more in the main garden but this one is only seen mainly from the bathroom window. 

And look who accompanied me on my garden stroll, Mr. James Mason, himself!

And then it's back inside to get supper on the table. My meals these days seem to be getting simpler and simpler. Here's a soup from the cookbook I featured in my last post, Judith Huxley's Table for Eight. 

Her Consommé Belleview is so simple and refreshing!

You just combine some chicken broth (I used two jars of homemade broth I'd made from chicken bones and skin I had in the freezer) and 2 8oz. bottles of Clam Juice, a couple of minced garlic cloves and a pinch of cayenne in a saucepan, simmer and cook for about 10 minutes or so. Then you add 2 tablespoons of dry sherry if you have it--sherry is good added to lots of soups. Serve with minced parsley and lemon in bouillon cups. 

I had a whole set of thin Austrian bouillon cups but only kept two when we moved. For some reason clear soups do taste better out of a thin cup, although I have to admit that the mug of leftover soup I had for breakfast the next morning tasted mighty fine, too.

All I served to go with the consommé was open-faced tuna fish and pimento cheese sandwiches on luncheon plates of the French faience that I found one summer at a Goodwill store. Twelve plates taped together, marked Martres and France! 

Here's a picture of them from an old post. I use them constantly, just as I use all my vintage silver, even keeping it in kitchen drawers so I won't forget to grab it instead of the stainless. 

From what I read on Facebook, the younger generation is just going to get rid of all that stuff when we're gone so why not enjoy it myself, right?

And that's it, folks. No quotes this time, no inspiring message, no rough draft worked on for hours. Those days may never come again, or sometimes I feel that way. 

And no tea even though I'm so envious of the pleasure tea time gives many of you. 

Any sympathy out there? How does a regular day go for you now? Are you mingling in public much? I went to the grocery store with RH for the first time in almost three months last week. It was wonderful!

A perfect day for...

SOUP!

Have you had much rain in February? We may very well reach last February's record breaking rains here in Nashville.

And a cold rainy day is perfect for soup. Did you notice that the 1938 ad for Campbell's Vegetable Soup above says "a steaming plate"? I've noticed in many of my vintage magazines that a soup bowl is called a plate. 

I make a big pot of vegetable soup regularly, every time I want to use up everything in the produce drawer of the fridge before a trip to the grocery store.

We have to have a pot of chili once...

and chicken chili...

But vegetable soup appears at least once a week around here and is my personal favorite. We also have some type of legume soup every week, and chicken one night, and fish several nights a week.

But there comes a day when RH asks "Where's the beef?"

That's when only the old beer-braised roast beef from an old Bon Appétit recipe will do and I cook a bottom round roast.


After searing the roast I take it out of the pot and sauté a chopped onion and shallot in the drippings. Then I add a large can of fire-roasted diced or crushed tomatoes and cook 5 minutes. 

Then add one bottle of Guiness Stout, oregano, bay leaf and 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and freshly ground black pepper. Put the roast back in the pot and stir in beef stock to cover.

Bring just to a boil, cover, and reduce to simmer for about two hours. Add one cup chopped parsley and cook 30 minutes more, or until fork tender.
 

I made this last week and the first meal of it was delicious, as were the sandwiches I made of it for three people for lunch, but the best meal of all was the vegetable-beef soup I made from the sauce the roast was cooked in. I make two other recipes for roast beef but the soup made from the leftovers of this recipe is the best. RH even eats it leftover for breakfast.

A favorite easy bread we like to go with both the first meal and then oven-toasted for the soup are rolls made from frozen Bridgeford rolls. Have you ever tried them? I think they're the best frozen rolls you can buy. They need to rise at least 5 hours so I put them in a pan early in the day.

Last week I tried a trick I read in the February 1944 Woman's Home Companion. After putting the rolls in the pan to rise and brushing them with melted butter, I sprinkled celery seed and celery salt on them. They were delicious and reminded me so much of the salty yeast rolls I ate at Wednesday night supper at church when I was growing up, a little different from my mother's good homemade rolls recipe. 

I like to use Mikassa's Black Forest plates in winter after I put Christmas china away. I only have three plates of it, all from Goodwill, but it seems perfect for January and early February with my old USA soup bowls.

It's fun to use these old Arby's glasses with them too, with their Currier & Ives prints.

And I just have to show you my new green Staub Dutch oven with a pine tree etched in the lid. Isn't it cute? And it's just right for a small pot of soup or a small pot roast without having to get out my huge fennel green Le Cruset.

Has soup been on your table lately during a cold rainy or snowy winter day?

What is your most special soup? Will you tell us about it?

 Thank you!

 

Supper Thyme

Did you ever put thyme in pie?

If you haven't, consider putting it in blueberry pie now that summer is here. 

Here's the link to Southern Living's Thyme-Scented Blueberry Pie.

I added a cup of frozen cranberries to the recipe because I didn't have nearly enough of the

blueberries the recipe called for.

RH said it was the best blueberry pie I'd ever made, but maybe that had something to do with the crust. The recipe calls for refrigerated crusts, which I've been known to use, but I had been wanting to make a crust with vodka so tried it.

Oh, my word, the vodka does make it so tender!

Recipe here from Cook's Illustrated.

The recipe called for the crust to be made in a food processor. I had never done this but I bet many of you have. I am directions-challenged but read the recipe over and over and finally did it.

You can't possibly know how proud of myself I was to do this instead of using my trusty old pastry blender.

I'll tell you one other thing I did last week for the first time in over a year--I drove myself to the grocery store and shopped alone, carried in the groceries alone when I got back home.

And I was so proud of myself! You see, part of what I've been doing the two months I was on my blogging break was going to physical therapy two times a week, three times a week the first month.

I've had bad knee pain since January and was diagnosed with patella femoral pain syndrome, similar to runner's knee. The therapist also discovered I had tibialis anterior tendonitis. 

Since I had felt this winter that I was soon going to need a walker to get about, I have been faithful to my PT appointments and doing the exercises at home. And next week, God willing, after almost three months, I will be finished with PT but of course must continue the exercises at home--if I know what's good for me.

So that, combined with my computer being down for three weeks, made it easy for me to almost drop out of blogging. 

But a blogger I am and so to blogging I returned in my last post. Just as once again driving gave me a renewed sense of independence, so blogging gives me that indefinable unexplainable feeling of accomplishment too.

Those of you who blog or are on Instagram, etc., do you feel this way too?

No one may really care what we had for supper except ourselves, but isn't it fun to share?

The organic vegetables above went into Jacob's Lentil Stew, recipe here. I also added a couple of turnips to it as we really like the tang they add to vegetable soups.

Thank you for reading my rambling supper post. What are you having for supper?

Here is supper. It smells good.

It looks good. It tastes good.

It is good.

All good things come from You.

Gunilla Norris in

Being Home 

 

It's All About the Chili Sauce

I was in the kitchen and it was all about the chili sauce.

For the first time in years I was going to use homemade chili sauce for the first pot of chili of the season, not the bottle of chili sauce found on a grocery store shelf loaded with HFCS (high fructose corn syrup).

The onions and garlic had been sautéed and were in the soup pot, and ground round was browning in the iron skillet. I added the can of Muir Glen Fire Roasted Crushed Tomatoes to the onions and garlic and let them cook 5 minutes.

Then it was time to open the homemade chili sauce--oh, did you think that I had made it? No, but it was Gram's Chili Sauce from Murphy Orchards; they made it. It was a fairly reasonable cost, even though it cost more to ship than the cost of the products themselves.

Would it be worth it?

Dear Lord, thank you, thank you!

What a heavenly scent!

I was transported back to the early 1970s when I used to pickle, preserve, and can. When I made my own chili sauce. And even further back to the years Mama made chili sauce from bushel baskets of ripe tomatoes Daddy bought home.

I poured the chili sauce into the pot, wishing I could have just eaten it with a spoon.

Heavens to Betsy, that was the best chili I've had in years and R.H. agreed.

I have 5 more jars of Murphy Orchard's Gram's Chili Sauce put away for 5 more pots of winter chili. (Along with some jars of what look to be delicious jams, but I'm saving them for homemade bread and will let you know how they are.)

Just in case a grandson or granddaughter someday decides to make their own chili sauce, here is the recipe I used to make, long before Mr. Arthuritis and Mrs. Very Close Veins appeared.

You don't know Mrs. Very Close Veins? I loved reading about the Italian restaurateur in Helen Macinnes' Friends and Lovers who was in the habit of waving customers to the second floor of the restaurant instead of personally accompanying them because he had "very close veins."

Old Hundred Chili Sauce (4-5 qts.)

1 peck ripe tomatoes
2 green peppers
2 hot red peppers
1 1/3 cup brown sugar
10 medium size onions
1 teaspoon cloves
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon nutmeg
3 tablespoons salt
6 cups vinegar

Scald, peel, and chop tomatoes. Grind onions and peppers very fine. 
Mix dry ingredients together and gradually add vinegar to prevent lumping.
Add to tomato mixture and boil very slowly from 1 1/2 to 2 hours until thick.
Seal in scaled hot jars.

So pass it on, family. I have several grandsons who are good cooks, and a granddaughter who loves helping in the kitchen. Maybe they'll be the ones to bring back homemade chili sauce in the family chili.

I had a little help myself in the kitchen. Hallmark Channel was playing its first back to back Christmas movies of the season.

Between spices in the air and a good Hallmark movie I am definitely in the holiday mood now.

Here's a link to the fabulous Murphy Orchards products in upstate New York.

Because it's all about the chili sauce.