FRUIT-FILLED OATMEAL SQUARES

 Last Friday was the first day that we had temperatures above freezing since the first week of February. It was only 34 degrees F, but the sun was bright and it was a beautiful day. After lunch we went for a ride just to get out. (Check out the view of the Missouri River we saw.) I told Wayne as we were leaving our neighborhood that the two weeks + of extreme cold had not been as unbearable for us as it could have been because of the coronavirus and staying in and avoiding people.

Before I heated up the last of our Chicken-Tortellini Soup for lunch, I made this Amish recipe from The Amish Cook's Baking Book cookbook by Lovina Eicher with Kevin Williams for Fruit-Filled Oatmeal Squares. (Kevin is an internet friend from https://www.amish365.com/ ) Lovina said you could experiment with different fruit fillings so I think that is why it is called Fruit-Filled and doesn't name a fruit. 

She likes to use homemade pie filling for the recipe, but said you could use store-bought too. Her recipe used apple pie-filling but since I had a "no-sugar-added" cherry pie filling and wanted to reduce the amount of sugar in the dish, I made it using cherry-pie filling. That also allowed me to add a scoop of Butter-Pecan ice cream without feeling too guilty. The name implies a little more form that it had by calling it squares, but as long as you know that, it is fine.

FRUIT-FILLED OATMEAL SQUARES

1/2     cup (1 stick) butter, softened

1/4     cup flour

1        cup packed brown sugar

1-1/2  cups quick-cooking rolled oats

1        (21-ounce) can fruit pie filling, your choice

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

In a large bowl, combine the butter, flour, brown sugar, and oats until mixed evenly and the texture resembles coarse crumbs.

(I combined the dry ingredients first and then the butter and mixed with a fork to form crumbs.)

Press two-thirds of the mixture into an ungreased 9 - inch square pan.

Spread the pie filling over the crumbs in the pan evenly.

Then sprinkle the remaining crumbs

on top.

Bake until the oatmeal topping begins to turn golden brown, about 25 minutes. Cool completely and cut into squares. 

Store leftovers in a sealed contained or cake safe.

Great served over a scoop of ice cream if you like...

It is not uncommon in the winter to have chunks of ice floating down the Missouri River and we can drive to a small town that Kansas City has grown around and walk by the river. Today we didn't walk but just stayed in our car at a boat landing. This of course is a still picture but the river was flowing quickly as usual.

TIPS FROM PATRICIA'S KITCHEN

 I've been thinking about doing this post for several weeks. I've been hesitant because probably 90% of you who are reading it, already know and do the things I am sharing. So I guess I am writing it for the 10% who will find it helpful. Saying that I hope the 90% of you read the whole post and will even share in a comment below a good "tip" you have.

I don't consider myself an authority just experienced. I come from a family of very good cooks such as my mother,  grandmother and aunts. I can also add quite a few cousins, too.

The order in which I am listing these "tips" has no special meaning at all. 

1) You have to look closely in the lower left corner of the pan, but if you are making muffins and you don't have enough batter to fill all of the cups, pour a little water in the empty cups so the muffins will cook evenly. About 1/4 inch is fine.

Here is another picture that you might be able to see it better... I also spaced them evenly apart.

2) If you are freezing portions to cook later, place them on a cookie sheet and place in freezer to freeze. Once frozen, you can place them loosely in a container or freezer bag.

Make sure you label the bag or container  with cooking instructions so you don't have to hunt up the recipe when you get ready to bake them. 

3) If you find your brown sugar getting hard in the container where you store it, just drop a piece of bread in the container, seal it, and the bread will be hard and your brown sugar soft when you check it. I will be honest and say, I have never tested this to see how long it took the brown sugar to soften, but hopefully the next time you need some, it will be soft. I don't think it takes but a day or two.

4) I discovered this tip with my Instant Pot but then I tried it on my other stainless cookware and it worked great on it also. Need to clean your inner pot with your IP or just your stainless cookware? Just pour some vinegar in it and use a scratch-free pad to rub over the surface and it will come out looking as new as it did when you first pot it.

 

5) This is one I admit that I do not always do, but probably should as it is a really a good idea! I know it would be helpful for me when I sometimes do not read the recipe carefully and forget some ingredients. As you prepare the dish, you will be reading the recipe for the second time helping to catch any mistakes you might make.

6) When you are making a dish that spread a crumbly - type mixture on the bottom of the pan. Often the recipe will call for half of the mixture to be pressed in the bottom of the pan and then sprinkle the other half on the top of the finished dish. I finally discovered that if I use a fork to press the mixture in the bottom of the pan, it flattens better.

I also do not dump all of the mixture in the pan but leave some in the bowl to fill in the empty places.

It isn't easy to move the mixture after it is pressed so this makes it easy to fill in the corners and low places. Another discovery I made using a fork is, it is so easy to just turn the fork over and "scrape" it along the pressed mixture to help move a little to another place.

7) Rinsing your measuring cup with warm water will make "sticky" ingredients come out easier. Like molasses, corn syrup, or honey.

8) You have to look at the order of the words in the list of ingredients to know what is meant when measuring them. 

For example: 1 cup sifted flour or 1 cup flour, sifted.

The first one means to measure out an amount of flour (1 cup), sift it, and

then measure one cup to use.

What you have left, just return to your canister. 

The latter one means to measure 1 cup of flour and then sift if. I don't necessarily have pictures for this. 

It does make a difference in the amount of flour you will end up using it your recipe which can make a difference in the outcome of the dish. It also makes a difference how you measure your flour. You should spoon or use a small scoop to dip into the flour and lightly drop it in the measuring cup. DO NOT take the measuring cup and dip it in the canister and then level it off at the top. This will give you way more flour than the recipe calls for.  
 

9) I have to give my husband Wayne credit for this tip because I don't eat avocados. He buys them and they all ripen and he can't eat all of them. He discovered somewhere that he can peel, remove the pit, and then wrap each half in plastic wrap and freeze.

When he takes one half out of the freezer, it looks just like it did when he froze it.

10) When you are cutting your dessert into serving pieces and want to have nice clean edges, cut it into pieces using a plastic knife.

11) Don't have a cookbook rack for your kitchen? Easier than you might think.

12) I saved my favorite one for last. I don't know what I would do in my kitchen without my spatula. In fact I have three of them. I use it to scrape the sides of the bowl when I am mixing/beating ingredients often during the process. AND I use it in the end to make sure I get every little bit of the batter in the pan, etc. 

Here are some of my kitchen gadgets I use daily...

I hope you have enjoyed this post. I didn't include some I would have liked to have shared. Maybe another time.

CHICKEN-TORTELLINI SOUP

 

Last week I looked through one of my cookbooks for main dishes that I could use with my menu planning and wrote them down on my notepad. This Chicken-Tortellini Soup was one of them. All I needed to do was pick a day in the month to make it knowing we would probably get two days out of it for leftovers. 

We have been experiencing the longest and coldest spell of winter that Kansas City has seen in a long time. We went for more than a week with temperatures below freezing or I should say in single digits. Two days our high temperature was just above 0.

I don't know about you, but those temperatures can only mean one thing -- Soup. So Sunday found me in the kitchen making this yummy soup. When I plan my menus, I don't plan the same leftovers two days in a row. I warmed up some yesterday for us and we will have it again on Friday. I might have to add some chicken broth to it when I warm it up to have enough liquid, but I can make a cup using a cup of boiling water and a chicken bouillon cube. I do that all the time.

CHICKEN-TORTELLINI SOUP

1     lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cooked and cubed

9     oz pkg, cheese tortellini, uncooked

46   oz can chicken broth

1     cup carrots, peeled and chopped

1/2  cup onion, chopped (I omitted)

1/2  cup celery, sliced

1/2  teaspoon dried thyme

1/4  teaspoon pepper

1     bay leaf

While I cooked the chicken tenders in a pot of hot water, I cooked the carrots and celery in 2 cups of chicken broth.

When the chicken was done, I cut it into cubes and add it to my big soup pot.

I added the carrots, celery, and broth and

the rest of the broth along with the spices.

I brought the  broth to a boil and

then added the frozen tortellini and

simmered it until tortellini was done.

Remove the bay leaf and serve.

Season with a little more black pepper.

HAM & EGG CASSEROLE

 

It was a good thing that I found this recipe earlier in the week, last week, to prepare for our Saturday morning breakfast instead of remembering Friday night after going to bed that I hadn't chosen a recipe. It would have been bad news if I had had to get out of bed to boil 5 eggs. 😁 I probably would not have used this recipe and that would have been unfortunate. After usually making some delicious muffins on Saturday morning, I think Wayne was pleasantly surprised when I called him to the table to eat.

We will be enjoying this for several meals as it makes enough to serve 4 to 6 servings depending on how much you pile on the biscuits. Wayne said it would be a good dish to make when you had company, but that was okay because he really liked it. I reminded him that you could eat it for any meal at any time of the day. It would be a good dish to serve at a brunch.

I made my famous Buttermilk Biscuits to serve the casserole over instead of cooking canned biscuits. 

HAM & EGG CASSEROLE

5      eggs, hard-boiled and chopped

1      can (10-3/4 - oz) cream of chicken soup

1/4   cup milk

2      cups shredded Cheddar cheese

1      cup cooked ham, cubed

Biscuits - homemade or 12-oz tube of refrigerated biscuits, baked

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray or grease an 8 - in square baking dish.

Combine the eggs, soup, milk, and cheese in a mixing bowl.

Blend well.

Place mixture in baking dish.

Spread ham evenly over the top.

Bake uncovered for 25 minutes.

Serve over biscuits cut open-face.