01.01.70

Turkey Day is a favorite holiday, probably because the focus is food and more food and being thankful for said chow. Here’s the kicker: If you’re a ranch wife, you get the fun of preparing mountains of vittles. Sometimes you even have the ultimate privilege of personally murdering, scalding, plucking, singeing, de-gutting, preparing sage, onion, carrots, raisins and celery stuffing and shoving it into the appropriate bird-body cavities.

Taking a walk down memory trails, I fished out “The Ranch Woman’s Manual,” the book I wrote way back in 1975 in which I offered ranch-woman advice for getting ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas food consumption. Read on for an abridged version of how things used to be — and still are if you’re a country woman.

The thinking Ranch Woman will evolve an attack plan to cope with Holidays. Organization and stamina are the keys to success. During this season of the year, avoid colds and flu. Even if you come down with something, you’re not allowed to take time out to be sick.

Source: Fence Post

by Janis

The 1/2-pound Tahitian vanilla beans that I ordered from Amazon just got here a few days ago so I decided to use it on the dessert I made for last Sunday's Gutsy Cooks Club dinner. I chose to make Rose Levy Beranbaum's Heavenly Vanilla Bean Angel Food Cake from her book Rose's Heavenly Cakes (can you tell this is my favorite cake book? LOL) which is the vanilla version of her Chocolate Tweed Angel Food Cake. The cake makes use of the scraped seeds of one Tahitian vanilla bean that you process with half of the sugar (yum!) and since I was left with around 16 egg yolks because of this cake, I decided to pair it with Creme Anglaise, from RLB's Chocolate Raspberry Trifle recipe (also from the same book) which is flavored with even more vanilla beans! I then added blueberries and raspberries, the tartness of which made everything perfectly balanced....

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by the purple spoon

Cake recipe from The Modern Baker by Nick Malgieri, filling is my adaptation

*Read all of the steps before starting as the frosting and filling need time to cool.  You may not want to make them in the order I have them here.  You can make the frosting a day ahead of time and beat it right before you need it.  Same goes for the filling.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour 3/4 cup sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (F).  Liberally butter and flour the bottom and sides of 3, 8 inch round cake pans and set aside.

2. In a medium bowl stir together the flour, 3/4 cup of the sugar, baking powder and salt.

3. Place the 1 1/2 cups heavy cream and vanilla in the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment (or in a large bowl and whisk by hand), and whisk on medium speed to soft peaks.  Remove the bowl from the mixer and whisk in the eggs and remaining 3/4 cup sugar by hand (I found it doesn’t fully incorporate when using the standing mixer-you’ll get better results by hand at this point).  Add the dry ingredients in three additions, whisking only until each addition is completely incorporated.

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