The Secret Everybody Knows...Now

Q & A:
Q - What's a scone?
A - A biscuit with a stick up its butt.

Q - How many scone recipes does it take before you find one you like? 

A - Hard to say; where do you live?

Much Ado About Scones
So what's a nice Virginia girl like me doing with a scone recipe in the first place? I don't know. I don't even like bread. Could it be me trying too hard to please? When in Rome California? The latter most definitely had something to do with it. I never knew anyone in the South who served, let alone baked, hard bread for breakfast--unless they had burnt the toast. For whatever reason, I am now the proud proprietor of a highly famed and sought after scone recipe. What can I say? It fell right into my lap. It's not even mine. Funny thing is, it wasn't even the friend's who gave it me, either! Of course I didn't find that out until years later.


Over time I have dibble and dabbled with this recipe trying to force it into something I might eat. While I can't say that's happened yet, I have improved upon an already excellent recipe, to make it even more remarkable, according to some people I know.


Before giving up sharing my Secret Scone Recipe, you might have a favorite of yours I can help you improve upon. Why steal reinvent the egg when you don't have to, right? I'll begin with some suggestions for altering the substandard recipe you already have. (Why else would you be looking at mine?)

SUGGESTIONS 

• Substitute HEAVY WHIPPING CREAM for the milk in your recipe. This one, simple little tip I will liken to the miracle of resurrecting the dead, which trust me, is your scone recipe without heavy whipping cream. You don't need to whip it up or anything, just use it in place of milk.

• Does your recipe call for the zest of one orange or lemon (or a bit of both)? You'll want to do that.

• Reserve a bit of your egg white from the eggs in your recipe to slather on top of the scones before you bake them.
• Do the same with the sugar, or add a bit more. Sprinkle this generously on top of the scones after slathering with egg whites before you bake.

BLING 
Trust me, nothing in the way of fruit or nuts will revive a dry scone recipe. So if your scones aren't delectable after substituting or adding the suggestions above without these accoutrements, nothing by way of adding them is gonna make it any better! Toss your recipe, and steal mine. Just remember, it's mine! Give me the credit. (Unless it doesn't come out right.)

NO LONGER SECRET - SCONE RECIPE
After getting up off the couch and walking over to the kitchen: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 

What to pull out of the cupboards and refrigerator:

1. 2 cups white flour
2. 1/4 cup sugar--reserve a bit for the top
3. 1/4 tsp salt
4. 3 tsp baking powder
5. 4 TBL butter - grated  (use your cheese grater)
6. zest from one orange or lemon or combination thereof

In a bowl, mix above ingredients with a fork until crumbly, then add....

  7.  2 large eggs--reserve a bit of egg white from one of the eggs for the top
  8.  1/3 cup HEAVY WHIPPING CREAM

  9.  1/2 cup chopped dried currents, raisons, or cranberries (or combination thereof)

  10.  1/2 cup walnuts

Mix together with a fork, then with your hands, to form one large or two small rounds, approximately 1-1/2 inches high. Slather top(s) with reserved egg whites and generously sprinkle with sugar. Cut round into eight equal pieces (fourth, then fourth again). *Each round contains eight sections--regardless of whether you make one large or two small.

BAKE  at 400 degrees

- One large round: approx. 15 minutes

- Two small rounds: approx. 12 minutes

SUGGESTIONS

I half the above recipe, and make one small round. It's perfect for two people, or even three--when one of them doesn't eat bread ;)
I usually leave out the walnuts.

BLING
Top with your favorite jam or jelly. 

Mmmmm....Now that's good eatin'!


For another recipe, check out this one I found online--more butter, sour cream and milk--remember to swap that out for heavy whipping cream. They call it Berry Scones. I call it, The Quadruple Bypass. Whatever.

Smashed Potato Salad aka Camp Food!

I love to camp, with the one exception that I do not like to decide what to bring in the way of food when I do. I Googled, great camping recipes, for ideas to help me write this post, and Sunset's, The West's best camping, appeared in the line-up of sites to check out. It features 38 Easy Camping Recipes of which seven are variations on s'mores. I'm kidding, right? No, I'm not. Not only this, but among them is also a variation on my Almost Homemade Brownies, and Mango-Tango Salsa--the nerve! Oh well imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Only thing you'll want to decide is, who is imitating whom? First, may I go on record to say, "I never slept with that site before today!" Click on the hot link yourself. Who in their wildest dream goes camping to grill rib-eyes, barbeque salmon, bake cornbread, and make Dutch oven peach cobblers? And when might I ask, does s/he find the time to do anything else in the great outdoors, like read, nap, swim, bike, or hike? Don't get me wrong. I'd love to eat like this when I rough it, but don't ask me to cook it. Just tell me when the food's ready and I'll be sure to be up, or back, or something, in time.

Last summer, Mr. G and I decided to tag on a camp outing after visiting family in Santa Cruz. Planning this ahead of time, we had packed our camping gear and stove, but already being on the road the food preparation needed to be a la car. It wasn't as difficult as I thought. I've used the same technique twice now.

So here it is, my guide to 123 Camp Food, in honor of our Svea 123 camp stove.

Locating bathrooms heading south on the 101, or 1, has always presented embarrassingly unique challenges for us. Most the restrooms we happen upon are either Closed for Cleaning, if not, Out of Order. There have been a few times we've been out of order--using them anyway--when necessity necessitated the mother of invention. Last year, after finding then using a not-so-secluded-spot off the road in which to leave mother nature's child, we happened upon a Whole Foods Market in the same city --swanky Monterey. So we decided to shop there for our camping trip. They have clean public bathrooms for washing up too.

I forget how much in the way of dollars we dropped there for pre-packaged, organic, whole food, for four days and three nights, but I can tell you this, it paid for itself ten times over in time efficiency at mealtime, especially when you take into consideration our lack of packed accoutrements. Two easy to prepare food items we purchased were Pacific's All Natural and Organic CREAMY SOUPS, and frozen lava cakes. (We found the raccoons at Big Sur like lava cakes more than we did. Secure them well.)

All we had in the way of cooking equipment was Mr. G's Svea stove and pots, as if there is ever another option--remember your earplugs!--which worked just fine. We later purchased a nifty little cast iron grill pan we happened upon in the campground store at the visitor center in Big Sur, along with some bacon to cook on it. We forgot to bring anything to eat on or with, so we bought plastic utensils there too. As for plates, we ate out of the pots we cooked in that came with the Svea. Oh yeah, we bought a blue enamel drinking cup at the camp store. I already had a ceramic tea cup in the trunk of the car--who knows why--so we only needed to pick up one. In fact, the camp store featured many nice items we admired, and later purchased: Hiking and Backpacking BIG SUR, along with a lovely yellow sweatshirt. I'll let you figure out who among the two of us bought what. Come to find, it wasn't just a camp store, or visitor center, it was part of the lodge at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. It housed an excellent restaurant too--open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That came in real handy.

You're probably wondering by now, "When is she going to get around to the smashed potato salad?" Okay, our latest camp out with my brother featured this. I threw in a few potatoes, along with some mustard, mayo, celery, garlic, and onions from the house to make potato salad. This would accompany the all natural beef and veggie hot dogs I bought at the store for roasting over the campfire. Should you ever co-camp with an RV-er and choose to use their kitchen stove for boiling your potatoes because it's so much bigger, convenient, and less noisy than your Svea; know the cooking time will decrease immensely, and you will need to rename your recipe:
"Umm...yeah...we call it, Smashed Potato Salad, it's so much creamier than regular."

Another random item bought that we took on this camping trip was a box of Ghiradelli Dark Chocolate brownie mix. Again, I knew nothing of Sunset's: 38 Easy Camping Recipes. This was the one and only thing I prepared ahead of time. Top one of those with a roasted marshmallow and squeeze both between two graham crackers, and you've got eight variations on a s'more.