To make recipe, read up. 

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup vegetable oil (such as canola oil)

1/3 cup honey

5 cups oatmeal

1/2 cup dry milk

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch salt

1/2 cup raisins

Mix brown sugar, oil and honey in a saucepan and heat until sugar is dissolved. Combine oatmeal, dry milk, cinnamon and salt in rectangular cake pan. Pour sugar mixture over dry ingredients to coat and bake at 375 degrees for ten minutes. Cool in pan, mix in raisins and store in air tight container. 

The fun part of this recipe is what you choose to mix into the cooked recipe to make it yours. I love dried cranberries and unsalted peanuts. Other ideas are sunflower seeds, tree nuts, shredded coconut, wheat germ, flax, chopped dates, dried apple pieces or chocolate chips. The only limit is your imagination. 

(Imagine courtesy wylio.com) 

Ingredients:

¼ cup butter

1 large Vidalia onion, thinly sliced

3 large sweet potatoes

6 cups chicken broth

½ teaspoon ground allspice

½ teaspoon dried sage

Cracked pepper to taste

Method:

Pierce potatoes with a fork, length wise and bake in microwave oven approximately eight or nine minutes until cooked most of the way through but still firm. Cut potatoes in half and scoop out meat from skins. Discard skins and set aside potatoes. If you would rather, you can peel potatoes, cube them and add to soup when you add the broth but I think baking them is easier and cleaner.

Melt butter in Dutch oven over medium heat and cook onion until soft and brown, stirring often. Add remaining ingredients. Continue heating until all ingredients are evenly heated and potatoes are tender. Remove from heat and blend in kitchen blender in batches. HOT LIQUIDS WILL EXPAND WHEN BLENDED SO BLEND CAREFULLY UNLESS YOU WOULD LIKE TO WEAR YOUR SOUP. Return to heat and heat until desired eating temperature. Enjoy. 

Addendum: 

As a variation to the original recipe I heated some of the soup in a ramekin topped with sharp cheddar cheese and threw this under the broiler to melt and brown as one would cook French onion soup. The results were out of this world and now my preferred method for eating this soup. 

1 cup baking soda

1 cup borax

1 cup table salt 

and six drops of your favourite essential oil for scent 

Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl, sprinkle with essential oil and store in an airtight container. If you don't have essential oil, you can skip this part. I happen to have plenty of essential oils since I make hand & body soap at home. I store my cleanser in an old tea canister I marbleized a while back. 

One thing I really like about this cleanser is, it is pet safe. This doesn't mean you should clean your pets with it but it should be safe to use around most pets. 

For a soft scrub with bleaching properties add hydrogen peroxide to desired consistency. I have used this cleanser on many different surfaces such as my tile kitchen counter and the cook top of my stove but you may want to test on a inconspicuous spot to make sure it won't scratch your surfaces. On shiny surfaces, no matter what kind of cleanser I use, I always do a final wipe with white vinegar. Vinegar will get rid of any excess oils or haze and the smell disappears once it is dry. 

Now that you see how easy it is to keep your home clean with everyday, natural ingredients you can get rid of all that poisonous junk taking up space under your sink! Happy cleaning. 

Even though I am under the age of seventy years old, I love rum raisin ice cream. I find it is difficult to find good rum raisin ice cream unless I go to small, boutique ice cream shops and even then, the quality is hit or miss. One evening I was on Twitter lamenting my lack of rum raisin ice cream when a friend sent me a link to a recipe for it. I used this as a guide but switched it up to try to create the best rum raisin ice cream I have ever tasted. I succeeded.

Ingredients:

1 cup organic raisins

2/3 cup Gosling's Black Seal Rum

3 cups pasteurized organic heavy cream

1 cup pasteurized organic half and half (half milk, half light cream)

½ cup evaporated cane juice (though it sounds liquid, this is in crystal form – you can substitute with sugar)

1 teaspoon Madagascar bourbon vanilla extract

4 organic egg yolks

Soak raisins in rum and set aside

Combine cream, half and half and evaporated cane juice in a sauce pan and heat over medium heat until evaporated cane juice is dissolved. Whisk frequently and watch the heat so cream does not curdle.

Whisk egg yolks together in a small bowl and temper by slowly adding one cup of the hot cream mixture while continuously beating. This is to prevent the eggs from scrambling in the hot cream and turning grainy.

Add egg mixture to the rest of the hot cream mixture. Whisk often and continue to heat until mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Be careful not to let cream boil. The resultant mixture should be a little less thick than custard, about the consistency of syrup. Mix in vanilla. Pour into another container and chill for at least two hours.

Pour cream into ice cream maker and follow manufacturers directions. My ice cream maker is a hand cranked model which retails for about twenty US dollars and it does the job quite well. I discovered the hand cranking is a good activity to do while watching baseball, especially if your team is not doing well. Once the crank becomes difficult to turn, add the rum raisin mixture and continue mixing.

When nearly frozen, transfer to a quart sized container and freeze overnight. You may have a little left over that will not fit into the quart container. I suggest you take one for the team and eat this.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.

(Gosling's Rum knows nothing about my kitchen antics and has in no way compensated me for posting my recipe. They make the best dark rum I am familiar with and this comes from someone who used to tend bar professionally. You can substitute any dark rum that is native to your area or suits your preferences.)

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup softened butter
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sour cream

Filling:
3 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons chopped nuts
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Beat together sugar, butter, egg, & vanilla. In separate bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder & salt. Alternate blending dry ingredients and sour cream into wet ingredients until thoroughly mixed.

Pour half of batter into round baking dish. Sprinkle with half of filling. Repeat with remaining batter and filling. Cook in microwave on high for approximately six minutes until cake springs back to light touch. Cool ten minutes.

Icing:
2 tablespoons melted, brown butter (Melt in microwave on high two to three minutes)
I cup confectioners sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
approximately 2 tablespoons milk

Mix icing ingredients together until just smooth enough to pour. Drizzle cake with icing and wait a few minutes for it to set.

Enjoy!

{This post was originally posted February 28th, 2010 at therealpecan's posterous but moved to Pecan, The Recipes May 17th, 2010}

Every Thanksgiving the highlight of my day (other than recounting those things for which I am grateful) is Sausage Cheddar Stuffing at the York Harbor Inn in York, Maine. I can never get enough of it and have been trying to duplicate the flavour at home for the past several years. This year I've finally achieved a replica close enough to tide me over until I can have the real thing another 51 weeks from now.

Sausage Cheddar Poultry Stuffing

Ingredients:

4 cups seasoned cubed stuffing (i.e. Pepperidge Farms Country Style)

2 tablespoons Cabot butter

1 small onion minced

2 large stalks celery minced

1 1/3 cup turkey or chicken broth

1 pound bulk (casing-less) hot Italian sausage

1 ½ cup Cabot mild cheddar cheese

½ teaspoon Bell's poultry seasoning

I use a paella pan to cook the ingredients for my stuffing because it is high enough to avoid splattering and large enough to blend everything without creating a mess. Cook the Italian sausage over medium heat stirring constantly to brown and to break meat into a fine crumble. Remove sausage from pan and drain on paper towel to remove grease. Pour off extra grease from pan and melt 2 tablespoons butter into pan. Sauteed minced onion over low heat until tender. Add broth and heat until steaming. In a large bowl, blend stuffing, celery, and Bell's seasoning. If you are using unseasoned bread cubes instead of packaged seasoned stuffing you can probably increase the Bell's seasoning to one teaspoon but don't go over board because the sausage already has some seasoning. Pour stuffing mixture into broth/onion mixture and stir quickly to evenly moisturized stuffing cubes. Remove from heat and stir in mild cheddar. (I use Cabot Mild Cheddar because it's my favorite and I like supporting my local dairy farmers.) Pack stuffing into glass loaf pan, top with foil and add to oven for the last half hour of roasting your bird. If you do not have a glass loaf pan you can make a packet from foil. If you are not roasting poultry, place stuffing into 375 degree oven for half an hour.

Enjoy!

(The author received no compensation, monetary or otherwise, for the writing or posting of this recipe.)

{This post was originally posted December 3rd, 2009 at therealpecan's posterous but moved to Pecan, The Recipes May 17th, 2010}