Author: Isabel Montclaire

Last year my friend Linda went to the annual Christmas bazaar in Fossil. She returned with a bag of oyster crackers that were seasoned just right and had the perfect crunch. They were a savory and fun treat to eat straight out of the bag and as a garnish on soups, salads, and even on pasta.  “Do you know who made these delicious crackers, I asked?”  She said “No” and then my heart sank.  Should I put up a sign at the post office? “WANTED – REWARD: SEASONED OYSTER CRACKER RECIPE” 

Once in a while the thought of those crackers would cross my mind and I would long for them, as if I was pining over a long lost lover. Then one day, I attended a benefit dinner and much to my surprise, I saw the crackers in a bowl next to the chili. I felt a surge of sheer delight accompanied by an adrenaline rush. With great excitement I inquired “Who made these?” Turns out it was someone I knew. “No problem, I will give you the recipe”, she said.

I call events like these “pop-ins”. A pop-in is an unexpected occurrence that comes out of the blue and fulfills a desire. They evoke feelings of thrill, awe, and joy. Pop-ins are sweet little blessings that warm the heart.  I love to watch for pop-ins every day and feel wonderment when they mysteriously appear. How they come about is sometimes quite remarkable.

This recipe is so simple it only takes about five minutes to make.

Seasoned Oyster Crackers

Preheat oven to 250⁰

One bag of oyster crackers
¾ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp lemon pepper
1 tbsp tbsp dill weed
Finishing salt

Stir olive oil, lemon pepper, and dill weed together in a big bowl. Add the crackers and mix well. Spread the crackers on a jelly roll pan (line it with parchment paper to reduce cleanup) and bake on the lowest rack for one hour. Toss every 15 minutes or so. This recipe can be easily doubled.

When I cook, I usually go more by taste and feel than exact measurements and make adjustments as I go along. You may want to add more or less lemon pepper and dill weed. I use the best sea salt available; not all salt is created equal so I used ground Maldon sea salt flakes. That is Queen Elizabeth’s salt; it says so on the box! Also, the quality of the olive oil makes a big difference. I always use extra virgin olive oil. I try to find olive oil produced in Italy. It’s the best!

Now I know what my friends will be getting for Christmas this year! And I just may include the recipe too.

Wing it Pizza 4.13.23 Last week I visited my dear friend Sunny. Our term of e

Last week I visited my dear friend Sunny. Our term of endearment for each other is “wifey”. She calls me that because when I go to visit I clean, cook, and do the laundry just like a good wife should, or did.  We still laugh whenever we hear this affectionate term as if it was the first time.

When I arrived, she had made a scrumptious dish that seemed like a cross between a pizza and lasagna without noodles, baked in a cast iron skillet. I ate a slice and couldn’t believe how good it was with delicious layers of flavors and textures. Of course I had to ask for the recipe, thinking it would be a somewhat complicated dish to make. But it had only five main ingredients, which means I could write about it since it was simple enough.

This isn’t an exact recipe because you can wing it – no exact measurements are required. My friend Heather helped me make this and it was so much fun it almost seemed like a skit.

Here is what we did:

We browned a pound of ground beef along with a coarsely chopped onion and some salt.  We were startled when the lid on the can of the Pillsbury pizza crust suddenly popped off like a champagne cork as the dough burst out of the tube. Now we know why the dough is kept in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. But when we stretched the dough out, it sprang back like a rubber band. After several rounds of this we gave up and cut it into squares and playfully patted the dough onto the bottom of the skillet. This was fun, like playing with Play-Doh. Next we made a quick tomato-based pasta sauce using a 12 ounce can of Del Monte’s traditional spaghetti sauce, doctored up with Italian herbs, roasted garlic from a jar and some garlic salt. We popped the crust into the oven and prebaked it for three minutes. When it was finished, we layered the ground beef, then the sauce, and topped it with an Italian cheese blend. We baked it for about 25 minutes; toward the end, the cheese was getting too brown so we covered the skillet with foil. Our mouths watered as we pulled it out of the oven.

There was some pizza dough left over and in a spontaneous moment we rolled it into a ball and played catch in the kitchen. It felt so good to laugh and play! Our creation turned out differently than Sunny’s, but it was still tasty. I will make this the next time Sunny comes to visit to see if she even recognizes it.

Last week I received some shocking news that threw me for a looptie-loop. Unfortunately, it wasn’t “good” news, or at least it seemed that way. However, I agree with Shakespeare when he said “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet). Who knows, maybe down the road this event will be the best thing that ever happened to me. Dark clouds can have silver linings, you know.

I bemoaned over this situation to my love, Jim, who then said “Ok, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, lemon meringue pie, lemon cheesecake, lemon bars, lemon sorbet, and lemon poppy seed muffins. What a good idea! I will drown my sorrows in the sourness of lemons. He made me laugh as he usually does. Then I went on to other things and completely forgot about all the treats I could make with lemons.

A few days later, I was at the Merc in Fossil and when I was almost out the door, I felt an inner jolt accompanied by the thought to get an apple box. I wandered into the back room and asked Coco if I could have an apple box. She said the boxes were all gone but there was one with lemons in it that were too soft to sell. They looked fine to me so I took the box and the lemons too.

When I got home it struck me. I have lemons!! Wow!! Now I can make all manner of lemon things. So I did! Ironically, those lemons were juiciest lemons I had ever seen. Those poor lemons were so misunderstood. But, they were such a lovely present for me.

I made lemon bars for the very first time. They were surprisingly simple to make, being a shortbread cookie topped with custard (yes, I asked the AI for a recipe). After that, I made a large bottle of peppermint and lemon elixir for a friend who did not feel well. For dinner one night, I made fettuccine with a lemon cream sauce and capers, shrimp, fresh parsley, and a few red pepper flakes. Being a Moroccan food fan, I made preserved lemons, a staple in Moroccan cooking. And lastly, I froze lemon juice in ice cube trays, and popped the cubes into a Ziploc bag.

After the lemons were gone, I felt truly blessed, as if something out there had a sense of humor and was lovingly watching over me. Whatever it was knew that lemons were just the ticket to lift my spirits. Sometimes I feel like a marble in a maze game, running into dead ends, falling into holes and climbing out. But a lemon a day did keep my sadness at bay!

I usually write about light-hearted, food related topics and easy recipes that delight the body and the soul. But this week I’m offering up food for contemplation, which is still nourishment, just of a different kind.

Last week, I wrote about a recipe that the artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, gave me for barbeque sauce. The sauce was so delicious that I kept going to the fridge with a spoon and ate it right then and there (yes, I know, that is not very lady like.) Then I learned that AI can now generate images. For example, I can ask the AI to make me a picture of a jar of barbeque sauce held by an angel with a halo and it will create a work of art that is beautiful and thought provoking (check it out at beta.dreamstudio.ai).

All this news caused me to deeply reflect. I was rattled with a mix of terror, amazement, and overwhelm. Then just as I was finished contemplating all that, I learned that the ChatGPT had evolved to the next level. Until now, ChatGPT could only spit out answers that drew on data prior to 2022. But now, ChatGPT has access to the internet in real time. Uh oh, nefarious rabbit hole, here we come. AI can also spread misinformation. Scary.

Author Thomas Friedman, a famed New York Times columnist and three times Pulitzer Prize winner, has written books on globalization, technology, and international affairs. In his book “Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations”, Friedman reflects on the lightning speed of technological change and its impact on society. He speculates that one of the reasons there is so much anxiety and depression in the world is because technology moves faster than our biological ability to keep up with it.

Ray Kurzweil is a futurist with a track record of predicting the future with great accuracy. In his provocative book “The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology”, he refers to a hypothetical future in which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. As AI evolves, it will improve itself and cause an exponential increase in technological progress. Super scary!

My favorite book of all time is “Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World”, written by Prince Charles. He argues that the modern world has become too disconnected from our roots and advocates for human well-being through nature, community, culture, and spirituality.

Words that cross my mind: inconceivable, epic, mind blowing, awesome, thrilling, terrifying, challenging, and weird.  What is AI going to do next? The dishes, maybe the laundry, cook dinner? This all points to our urgent need to have more face-to-face social connection. Food has, and always will, bring people together.

Wow!! The world is changing so fast that it’s almost impossible to keep up with it all. By now, some of you may have heard of “ChatGPT”. That is a “language model” that makes artificial intelligence accessible to everyone. You can go to the ChatGPT website (chat.openai.com) and ask “It” any question and you will get a surprisingly accurate and conversational answer. You can even request the answer to have a specific word count and be written at a certain grade level. When I first asked It questions a couple of months ago, I felt a visceral response in my body. I was slightly nauseous and dizzy, as if my circuits had been blown-up. I had trouble comprehending what had just happened and was overwhelmed with feelings of fear, awe, wonder, confusion, and excitement. What a mix!!  After I recovered from the physical fall out, I got a bit addicted to asking “It” so many random questions.

Since food is my passion, I wanted to know if It could generate recipes. I have been on a mission to find, taste, and use the best barbeque sauce available. I asked It for a barbeque sauce recipe. Lo and behold, I was so surprised when It gave me a recipe that sounded quite delicious, using an ingredient that I would have never thought to put in barbeque sauce ‒ smoked paprika. It is very clever and apparently is also a gourmet cook! I made the sauce and it was wildly delicious. The flavor was multi-dimensional and lingered in my mouth for a long time. When I compared AI barbeque sauce to Sweet Baby Rays, It made Ray’s taste like tomato flavored corn syrup. It, you have a very sophisticated and gourmet pallet! How cool is that?! You impress me!

This recipe makes about 1½ cups. Interestingly enough, the second time I typed in “barbeque sauce recipe”, It gave me the recipe with the addition of two tablespoons of molasses and 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard. It! You appear to be consistently inconsistent! I will soon try that version.

AI Barbeque Sauce

1 cup ketchup
¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)

Mix all the ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a boil, heat through. Remove from heat, let cool. Eat!

The robots are coming! Nooooo, no, no! They are already here and it’s more than FUN! It is fun and then some!  Now we can get answers to our questions without having to sort through many websites. Try It and see for yourself how incredible and entertaining It is.

Last week’s column was about meatloaf that I topped with barbeque sauce before popping it into the oven. That got me thinking about barbeque sauce. Then I remembered that a few weeks ago, I met fellow food aficionados Clark and Jessica VanHook of Fossil. The pair mentioned that their All Purpose Barbeque Sauce won first prize at the Wheeler County fair in 2020. As usual, I asked if they would share their recipe and they said yes!

When I received the recipe, I was happy to see how easy it was to make. You know how much I love easy! Having a good sauce on hand is like having a magic wand in the fridge. Put a sauce on it and kick the flavors up a notch. There are some excellent barbeque sauces out there. Is it really worth the extra effort to make your own? I wanted to do a taste test. So I went to the store and bought a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s because the label said “Award Winning”. Well okay then. Now we are on a level playing field.

Then I went into the kitchen and whipped up a batch. Clark and Jessica told me to bring the sauce to a bubbling simmer, then to taste and be careful to not overcook it. I did that and the sauce was so delicious that I could not stop tasting it! The deep mahogany mixture was sweet and tangy and had a bold, complex flavor. I asked my friend Heather for her opinion. She tasted it and said “Dang, that’s a humdinger.” I hadn’t heard that word in years and giggled like I was a little kid.

Jessica and Clark use generic ketchup and Brer Rabbit molasses.

All Purpose Barbeque Sauce

2 cups ketchup
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
½ cup light brown sugar, packed
2 tablespoons mild flavor molasses
1½ teaspoons honey
1 teaspoon liquid hickory smoke
¼ teaspoon chili powder
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon onion powder
¼ teaspoon freshly ground sea salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Whisk together all ingredients in a medium-sized sauce pan. Heat to a low boil over medium heat until thoroughly heated through. That’s it!

I let the flavors meld overnight. Then came the taste test. Sweet Baby Ray’s is good, but since the main ingredient is corn syrup, the sauce had that corn-syrup overkill sweetness that overpowers the other flavors. All Purpose Barbeque Sauce is easy to make and lasts for months in the fridge. Thank you, Clark and Jessica, for sharing your award winning recipe. Stay tuned for their recipe that won a blue ribbon in the Walmart Cooking Challenge.

By now, you are probably familiar with my philosophy on food, which I sum up in three words – “keep it simple”. Stock your pantry with the highest quality “scratch” ingredients available. Scratch ingredients are unprocessed foods; they are real, single ingredient whole foods. I call these Master Ingredients. Stick to recipes that you can make in thirty-minutes or less. These recipes usually require just a few steps and minimal ingredients. Fabulous food does not need a lot of “do” to prepare! I will often make a super-simple concoction and say to myself “This was so easy that it really shouldn’t taste this good”, as if I had broken the law with my love of simplicity.

Recently my friend Jerry dropped by with a pan of surprisingly delicious meatloaf. Of course, I asked Jerry for the recipe. “It’s easy, he said. The recipe is on the back of the Stovetop stuffing mix for chicken”. For decades I have used Julia Child’s meatloaf recipe so I definitely know good meatloaf. Does Julia really have a box of stuffing as competition?

Intrigued, I bought a box of Stovetop and set foot in the kitchen. The recipe on the back of the box calls for two pounds of ground beef but I used one pound mild Italian sausage along with one pound of ground beef. I followed the instructions exactly. The recipe makes a generous quantity so I divided it in half and put it in two loaf pans. I baked one and put the other in the freezer to see if it freezes well. It did! The recipe says to top it with barbeque sauce but I wanted to know if ketchup would work as well. It didn’t – we all agreed the one made with barbeque sauce was better.

Then on the next batch, I acted on a suggestion that my love, Jim, made, and shaped it into hamburger bun size patties and baked them until a meat thermometer reached 160⁰. Then we topped them with all the usual burger condiments including cheddar cheese, dill pickles, and red onions. These definitely were leveled up hamburgers. In all my years with Julia Child, why did it not occur to me to make the meatloaf into hamburgers? Well, maybe because a hamburger is not French! In my opinion, a meatloaf sandwich is the best part of making meatloaf. This is a prime example of simplicity at its very best.

Out of curiosity, I googled Stovetop dressing and meatloaf isn’t the only thing you can make with this boxed convenience food. There are quick recipes galore! I made an exception to my self-imposed guideline of “no processed food in my pantry” and Stovetop dressing is now on my Master Ingredients List. Try it!

Last week I went to a fund-raising dinner and the table was covered with a beautiful display of desserts: pies, cakes, cookies, and a chocolate thing topped with what looked like maple frosting. Being a confirmed choco-holic, I took a piece and sat down.

That first bite practically knocked me off my seat! The dark delicacy had a crunchy crust and a smooth, creamy, molten center that reminded me of a chocolate lava cake. What’s the secret? Is this fancy confection made from an old family recipe?  A treasure handed down for many generations? What is in this thing? The world’s finest chocolate just flown in from Belgium? How was this treat made? With a complicated baking process that takes multiple steps and three days to complete? And by the time you are finished, you have completely lost your appetite?

And the frosting! Never before had I eaten maple with chocolate! Chocolate pairs well with coffee, coconut, cherry, oranges, ginger, raspberries, apricots, pineapple, any kind of nut, rum, cognac, and kirsch . . . but maple?? That would definitely be a first.

I ate a few more bites then I just couldn’t stand it any longer. I absolutely had to know who made this luscious treat so I could track them down and learn all about it. I found the organizer and with perfect timing, the baker just happened to walk through the door and sat down next to me! Dude! I didn’t have to do anything, love that! I introduced myself and began to ask questions. She said the dessert was a Betty Crocker brownie mix topped with peanut butter frosting made from an easy Betty Crocker recipe. I was floored. Betty Crocker you rascal, you just fooled me! By the way, did you know that Betty Crocker is not a real person? She was created in 1921 and in 1945 Fortune Magazine named her as the second most popular woman in America, the first being Eleanor Roosevelt. She has a website: www.bettycrocker.com. You can ask her a question!

The next day, I went to the store and bought a box of Betty Crocker Dark Chocolate brownie mix. I made the recipe using eggs from happy chickens that run around and scratch on a farm. I used grapeseed oil because that oil is much more healthful than soybean, corn, or canola oil and it tastes and bakes better. While the brownies were in the oven, I made the peanut butter frosting. Then I smeared the brownies while they were still warm.

Wow! Making such a decadent dessert is so easy! Perhaps I will write Betty Crocker a thank-you note. After all, I know how to reach her now. 

Recently, Judy Thomsen of Condon wrote to me. She diplomatically mentioned that I forgot to include the baking time for “Creeping Crust Cobbler” in last week’s column.  Her question prompted me to stop and think. Why had I omitted such important information? Because I rarely pay attention to cooking times, that’s why!

I think of time differently than most people. Life flows on and events seem to have their own clocks. They unfold in accordance with their own unique rhythms; they take all the time they need to reach full expression. Haven’t you noticed that when you plan something, the estimated time often varies from the time things actually take? That’s called planned versus actual. Your prediction just doesn’t match up with what’s going on in the real world. Usually we have absolutely zero power to make things hurry up or slow down. We are powerless to force a conclusion to matters. A clock is an artificial, grid-like, inflexible thing that tries to measure something that is flexible: life as it unfolds in real time with all its unknown variables. Often life inserts itself into our plans, usually without asking for permission first.

The cobbler’s  baking time is around 30 to 40 minutes. But remember not all ovens bake at the same rate. Temperatures vary. Humidity affects the way food bakes, as does atmospheric pressure. Were the ingredients cold when you put the food in the oven? That increases the cooking times. A more reliable indicator of doneness is to rely on all your senses. When the cobbler is finished, it bubbles up around the edges. The top will be a dark golden brown. And suddenly poof!! The kitchen explodes with a lovely, potent fragrance that says – okay, I’m done, get me outta’ here! Maybe the cobbler took only 25 minutes. I can hear the clock arguing with the cobbler. Nooooo! You are not ready yet because I said so!!! You need to stay in there ten more minutes. So you can see, cooking times are estimates only.

Recently, I made “Brenda’s Peanut Clusters”, the recipe I wrote about in December. I made them exactly the same way as I did before, and they take three hours to cook in a crockpot. I set the timer for three hours and wandered off and forgot all about them. When I got back to the house in three hours, the kitchen smelled like scorched chocolate. How could that be? Well, cooking times vary. This is a perfect example of what I was just trying to explain. I need to take my own advice, don’t I? And pay attention to my senses. They are reliable, true, and accurate helpers in baking and cooking.

By now, you probably know that I’m a bit lazy in the kitchen. My recipes are so simple! They typically require no more than five or six ingredients, thirty minutes, and few pots, pans, and utensils to wash. I never forget to add that invisible ingredient called love which always infuses my creations with not only taste, but feel. I use the highest quality ingredients available and then food doesn’t need much “do” to prepare.

In accounting and economics, there is a principle called “diminishing returns”. That’s when continuing efforts and resources produce a marginal result. For example, I could spend two hours in the kitchen to make a complicated recipe with many ingredients and dishes to wash, but is it really going to be any better than a simpler, faster recipe? The fare might be ten or twenty percent better, but how much added value does that extra time create? Most of the time, simple is best!

You also know by now that I love a reliable recipe that’s tried and true. And it’s even better when that recipe is handwritten by a friend. A couple of weeks ago, Donna Yonce of Fossil not only hand wrote one of her favorite recipes for me, she hand delivered it too (the recipe was given to her by Bev Mabe Osborn). I was quite moved by her kind gesture. I tell ya’ – it’s true. The little things in life are not little at all. They can have enormous impact. Especially generous acts.

Don’t let this recipe’s simplicity fool you. While it only takes a few minutes to assemble, the flavors are rich and satisfying. This would be a good recipe to make with young children because it’s so easy.

Creeping Crust Cobbler

½ cup butter, melted in pan
½ cup milk
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups fruit

Preheat the oven to 350⁰. You make this recipe in three layers. First: melt the butter in an 8” square pan or one of a similar size. Second: put the fruit in a bowl. I put a spin on the recipe and added two teaspoons of vanilla, a big squeeze of lemon, and a sprinkle of cinnamon onto the fruit. Put the fruit over the melted butter. I used frozen peaches and blackberries. Third: in a bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients and pour the batter on top of the fruit (I used half white sugar and half brown sugar).

Top this dessert with cream, whipping cream, or ice cream and you will have a delicious first class dessert. If you use canned fruit, adjust the sugar accordingly. This recipe only took me about seven minutes to assemble. Amazing!