Contributed by Marilyn Bennett
For those of you who are on tenterhooks wondering if I won a ribbon for my garden art this year, I did. It was third place, but as it was my first Fair ribbon, I am treasuring it and plan to be even more creative next year.
The other clue that it is Fall is that the rains have finally started. It is past time for rain to help our beleaguered fire fighters put out all the fires that are destroying so much of Alaska.
Then, there is the abundance of green coming into the house from the vegetable garden. This year, we had what would have been a prize-winning head of broccoli except that it matured two weeks early. We had a lot of broccoli for two people, so I decided to make broccoli cheese soup, as that was my favorite soup at Panera's Bakery. Since we don't have a Panera here in Alaska, I did my best to create that great tasting soup. Of course, I went up to the internet and found a recipe that said. "The Best Broccoli Cheese Soup (Better-Than-Panera Copycat)." Well, the soup was good but not as good as I remembered.
However, a part of the instructions were to use low-sodium vegetable stock rather than chicken stock, and make it healthier by using fat-free half-and-half. I used chicken stock and regular half and half. Also, I sent my husband to the store to get a clove of garlic and he came back with a bottle of ground cloves and another of ground garlic powder. I just sprinkled some of the garlic powder into the soup and let it go at that.
The recipe also mentioned that you could add smoked paprika, mustard powder, and cayenne pepper so as not to have the soup taste boring. I opted for boring, as I didn't know what smoked paprika was, only had mustard in a jar and was scared to death to add cayenne pepper. She also said to use unsalted butter, but I did not want to buy butter just for this recipe.
Perhaps the above changes are why my soup didn't taste like Panera's, or maybe whoever wrote the recipe knew nobody would follow it perfectly and so could never really challenge her claim to be better than Panera's. If anyone out there in Palmer has a great recipe for Broccoli Cheddar Soup that does not involve cayenne pepper please let me know, although as you can see, I do have some problem following recipes.
While I am on the subject of cooking, I would like to throw out an idea to all you grandmothers who ended up with the grandchildren for a day. Remembering all the wonderful days of my childhood helping Mom make cookies, cakes and other exciting culinary delights, I thought it would be fun to let my three granddaughters bake and decorate the birthday cake for Grandpa Doug.
The girls were all for it, so I took out the cake mix and luckily it needed three eggs, so they each got to break an egg. A small fight over who does the best job with the mixer and the cake was ready for the oven. By the time we got the kitchen cleaned up the cake was out of the oven and we traipsed off to Freddy's to get needed supplies to decorate the cake. I already had powdered sugar, butter and marshmallows to make frosting and fondant. We still needed a pastry bag so they could make fun flower designs. The youngest was more interested in lots of sprinkles plus the food coloring and candles.
They got to work in a very serious way. First, they divided the cake into three equal parts so each of them could be creative and not interfere with the others. It was a delightful creation and Grandpa Doug bravely had a piece from each section
I suggest this project only to those of you who don't mind turning over your kitchen to the grandchildren and are not adverse to lots of clean up after the creation is finished.
Happy time of year, I bought my tulip bulbs already, as last year I waited for October and most stores were sold out. Tulips and Daffodils make for such a cheery spring and planting them always gives me a good feeling of going into winter while planning for a beautiful spring. Hope all of you had a wonderful summer and are looking forward to a busy winter season.
