Today I mastered the art of making the best Southern fried chicken livers. I exhausted a quart of coconut oil doing it. It's so delicious my children are asking for more. And I believe a certain person has just announced that she's blessed with a little one. She knows she is free to beg for some livers whenever she is in the mood for it. :)

Here's the recipe I used.

Southern Fried Chicken Livers
1- 1/2 lb chicken livers
1-2 teaspoons sea salt 
1-2  tablespoons paprika
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Flour, for dredging (I used whole wheat)
Shortening, for frying (I used virgin coconut oil)

Directions

Melt coconut oil in a heavy fry pan over medium heat.

Combine salt, paprika, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper. Liberally season livers with this mixture. Dredge livers in flour and shake off excess.

Place livers into the pan and fry until cooked through, turning once.... don't overcook them, or they'll turn out chewy and bitter.

Drain livers with paper towels.

ENJOY!!!!

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I love this time of the day when the children are entertaining themselves (they are playing with the rice box ) and we have no appointments, and I get the opportunity to declutter and reorganize. Of course I also get easily distracted. Anyway, while pouring over a file I had not seen in a long time (ha, it's called my "Frugal Living" file), I came across this little saying I copied from somewhere.  Since I'm going to trash a lot of things from that file, I thought I should at least save this saying. It's good and applies to lots of things we spend or want to spend money on.

USE IT UP.
WEAR IT OUT.
MAKE IT DO.
DO WITHOUT.

Hmm...food for thought as I go back to my decluttering.

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Oh, Im so happy! My Christmas gift from my husband is here at last! The UPS man just left. It's an automatic sprouter! Yeah, we're going to have lots of fresh organic sprouts to eat!! Stay tuned for more!

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How do you prepare your sweet potatoes?

I usually steam my sweet potatoes (eaten with a pat of butter and a tiny sprinkle of salt). If there are any left-overs, I usually make sweet potato bread the next day.

Sometimes I make African Chicken (one of my dh's favorite meals - recipe another day!) with chunks of sweet potatoes.

Of late, I've been making oven-fried wedges of this wonderful root vegetable (I call it “God's candy”). Here is the recipe to try if you want something to eat with your steaks or if you run out of ideas what to take for a church pot-luck.

Oven-Fried Sweet Potato Wedges

2 lbs. sweet potatoes

1 tsp. chili powder

1 tsp. dried thyme or basil or oregano

1 tsp. sea salt

½ tsp. ground cumin

½ tsp. ground cinnamon

2 Tbs. olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Grease baking dish with olive oil or cooking spray.

2. Cut potatoes into 1”-thick wedges and place them in a bowl.

3. Pour the oil over the wedges. Toss well.

4. Combine salt and spices into a bowl. Pour mixture over the wedges. Toss till wedges are well-coated.

5. Arrange the wedges on pan in single layer.

6. Roast until potatoes are tender and browned, 20-25 minutes.
   Best eaten while hot.

This was I made recently. Spicy, soft inside and and crispy outside. Yum.

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These days I don't use my bread-making machine. I don't even use the oven when I make bread, LOL.

                                       2 pans of freshly steamed bread

Friends have been curious how I steam bread. Well, it's really easy. First you need a steamer. See this blog for a picture of my steamer. Then you make the bread like how you would ordinarily but instead of baking it in the oven, you place it in the steamer. Sometimes when I'm in a hurry, I don't wait for the second rise. Usually I make two loaves, so I steam the bread one after the other. About 40 minutes each. Bread out of the steamer is really wonderful with butter! Its texture is slightly different but delicious. 3 day-old steamed bread tastes terrific toasted too.

I don't only steam regular bread. I steam my banana bread as well as my blueberry bread. Try it! You might like its moistness! 

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I was asked about how I went about steaming my vegetables so I thought I could write a blog on it.

I steam most of my vegetables unless we eat them raw or if I’m stir-frying them. I even steam potatoes instead of baking them and they taste jolly good with olive oil, sea salt and black pepper. Sometimes when my steamer is full or I’m too lazy to transfer the vegetable/s from the steamer, I lightly simmer other vegetables in a saucepan.

My trusty steamer.

Each morning, I wash at least one kind of vegetable: broccoli, Brussel sprouts, greens (turnip, kale, collards, etc.) carrots, cabbage, spinach, cauliflower, beets, or whatever is in season. Then I steam them for a few minutes in the steamer. We have them for lunch and I put the rest away for dinner. If I need to steam something that needs more time, like butternut or acorn squash,  I steam that first, and if there is still space left in the steamer, I put in the other vegetables in with the first vegetable. If the steamer is already full,  I just remove the steamed vegetable and steam a new batch. Usually I steam 2-3 kinds of vegetables simultaneously.

Steamed greens -uncovered!

For example the dinner I described in an earlier blog (Dinner Last Night) comprised

1)       butternut squash

2)      broccoli

3)      greens

4)      BBQ turkey (steamed!)

5)      Quinoa (with raw vegetables like diced tomatoes and scallions)

I steamed the butternut squash first thing in the morning. When I thought it was almost done, I threw in the broccoli. My children and I had half the squash and some of the broccoli (and other stuff) for lunch. Towards dinner time, I steamed the greens, transferred them to a dish and steamed the turkey/BBQ sauce. The quinoa dish was already prepared and was sitting in a big bowl in the fridge.

My husband, bless his heart, doesn’t care if his food is hot, warm or cold. He is not finicky about food of which I’m thankful. Anyway, I still try to serve him at least warm food if the food tastes better that way.  

The greens were room temperature by the time the BBQ turkey was ready, but the turkey was hot, so my husband got to eat warm turkey rolls. The quinoa dish is delicious cool or cold so that was served cold.  We had the other vegetables (broccoli and butternut squash) at room temperature. A nice slice of lemon served as garnish.

Hope this helps! J

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Oh no, another left-over turkey recipe, but believe me, this was so good I have to post it so I will remember it for posterity.

This year, we bought a 9 pound free-range turkey from my supermarket. The day after Thanksgiving (we had Thanksgiving dinner at my in-laws), I simmered it so it was really nice and tender. We had turkey for lunch and dinner, and then I bagged the rest. I made curry with one bag on Saturday. Not bad. Last night I decided to make turkey barbecue. Oh, the result was so yummy, so moist, so tender, even my daughter who doesn’t care for meat loved it.

The secret? STEAMING the frozen meat and the sauce together.

Anyway, here is the recipe if anyone is interested.

Yummy BBQ sauce

1 cup tomato ketchup (I used Heinz Organic as it doesn’t contain corn syrup)

2 tablespoons honey

juice of half a lemon

½ teaspoon salt

½  teaspoon mustard powder

black pepper

I placed my turkey breast in my glass bread-pan. Then I poured the BBQ mixture over it and steamed the whole thing for about 20 minutes. I lifted the steamer’s cover once or twice to gently separate the breast meat to let the steam and sauce in. When I decided everything was really heated through, I further shredded the meat.

For dinner, we had the turkey BBQ wrapped in large steamed collard greens, steamed butternut squash, steamed broccoli and quinoa (with extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt, black pepper, balsamic vinegar, chopped tomatoes and  chopped scallions).

Just for fun, I took a picture of my husband’s portion (see below). He thoroughly enjoyed it!

My hubby  grew up eating Southern food - fried chicken and all,

and that he actually loves my cooking- veggies and all,

makes me feel very tender towards him, LOL.

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This simple tip alone saves me an average of 5 minutes a day, 35 minutes a week and at least 30 hours a year!  

For those with a big family, this TIP might save them even more time…so without much ado, what is this super time-saving tip?

Train your family members (when they are old enough) to pin their socks together with a safety-pin before they dump them in the laundry basket.

My husband and I run through many pairs of socks each week, especially during the cooler months, but since we started pinning our socks before washing them several years ago, we’ve saved ourselves LOTS OF FRUSTRATION. And it’s a breeze for my daughter to help me with the laundry as well. She merely rolls the already paired socks neatly and returns them to their respective drawers.

Another sock hint: we get identical pairs of socks for our toddler so even though we don’t pin his socks together, it doesn’t matter as we can always reach for a matching pair. We just put the occasional orphan in a basket and when another orphan appears, we roll them together and toss them in his sock drawer.

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