Simple Chocolate Cake
1/2 c cocoa
1/2 c brewed coffee
1 and 1/2 c sour cream
1 tsp vanilla
2 c cake flour OR substitute 1c all purpose flour minus 2 Tbsp for each cup of cake flour (Here 2c all purpose flour minus 4 Tbsp of flour. It is better if you don't substitute.)
1 tsp soda
pinch of salt...
WWI War Cake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
1 c sugar
1/2 c oil (mild flavored, corn, canola, etc. NOT the place for virgin olive oil.)
1 c raisins (more fruit may be added if desired)
1 c water
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
pinch of salt
Boil ingredients together on stove top for...
I have a recipe for Crazy Cake:
Preheat oven to 350 F.
3 c flour
2 c sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 c cocoa
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 c cooking oli, mild flavored - corn, canola, etc.
2 c warm water
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vinegar
Put dry ingredients in a large bow and mix
Make a well, add liquids, mix...
Modern Strudel
This is a very, very, very lazy way to make a traditional BessarabianDeutsche dish, strudel. This is Bertha Biel's food processor method.
2c + 2 Tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
About 1c water
Put ingredients into a food processor, and mix until dough forms a ball.
Knead...
Altro Amaro Fine
This is an Italian dish known as Spaghetti Alla Carbonara - or Coal Miner's Wife's Spaghetti.
1 pound package spaghetti
4 eggs
1/2 pound cheapest bacon or turkey bacon or breakfast beef you can find. I have used as little as two slices breakfast beef. You may need to...
Mehr Bitter Endet
Rye Bread Soup
This is about as cheap as you can get - you may substitute any liquid suitable for soup for the extravagance of the cheap beer.
4 slices rye bread, preferably with seeds
The traditional housewife would use staling homemade bread so as not to waste it.
3...
The Bitter Ende
One of the problem with some Depression era recipes is that cuts that were once very cheap - flank steak - are now more expensive - whlle meats that were once very expensive - roasting chickens - are now comparatively inexpensive. Other old bargain items are simply no longer...
I've been trying. One hundred million things to do with eggs, flour, water, yeast, milk and {cabbage | potato | sauerkraut | chicken | bay leaf | onion | pumpkin | pepper | paprika | bell pepper} and {butter | lard | oil} various combinations of the aforementioned.
Even Blow Gents...
I've been known to use canned tomato sauce with a dash of molasses and some dried mustard (you can use prepared in a pinch) instead of ketchup. A zap of lemon juice or vinegar will help.
Some really great sources for cheap recipes are cookbooks and recipes from WWI and WWII. Any college that has, or had, a Home Economics school is sure to have these buried somewhere in the stacks or in storage.
Note that the German recipe involves browning the chicken in fat, and no sour cream.
The Hungarians actually brown the spices, using red pepper flecks instead of chopped green peppers, and canned tomatoes instead of tomato sauce and water and use sour cream.
Hungarian method: from...
More Germans from Russia Recipes - these from the Roll family, who I believe are now in Texas:
Chicken Paprika (Chicken Paprihash)
Ingredients: 1 cut-up chicken, 1-1/2 tsp. paprika,1c chopped green peppers, 12 oz. can tomato sauce, about 2-1/2c water,salt and pepper
Preparation: Brown meat...
Today at 6:39 PM
Forget fusion cuisine. This week I dragged out a KrautenSnouten aus Russland recipe and decided to play with some Bessarabian favorites in honor of my father's paternal lineage.
Bessarabian cuisine has some very core precepts. Just as the Inuits have many words for...
It is suggested that you do cut vent slits to keep it from inflating as much; but I don't. After forgetting to make slits on one occasion, I decided that the vent slits really weren't that necessary, especially if you cook the filling until there is no free liquid.
Baked Fleischkuchle
Make one recipe of white bread dough, choose a recipe that requires about 4.5 cups of flour. I like to use one that uses milk and maybe a bit of butter.
Begin to preheat oven at 350 degrees F
You will need one pound lean ground beef.
two medium onions, chopped fine,
and...
What's really weird is that thirty and forty years ago people tried very hard to keep mesquite out of their cooking and smoking fires.
If you're doing fish, try alder.
Hi - well I do know how to sort out some common edible wild plants - but I see way too many people playing the Euell Gibbons game - and too many "knowledgeable people" like the river guide who confused hemlock with wild carrot. Stinging nettle is delicious - and non-stingy - as a potherb. Quail...
There are lots of wild mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest, but no one we knew ate them because so many of them were deadly. One problem is that although the above ground fruiting body may appear and type out as safe, there can actually be a mix of two different kinds of mushroom below ground...
Prior to widespread home refrigeration, fruit generally came canned or dried and fresh was only available in season, often at rather high cost in areas far from fruit growing areas.
I realized that life in the Pacific Northwest was very different when I realized that to my mother, canning...