Time for tea

Before you head out for Black Friday shopping or even when you return — which could be in the middle of the night — wouldn’t it be nice to have a hot cup of tea?

I really enjoy hot tea, especially this time of year.

My favorite is chai latte, but I also enjoy teas I prepare at home.

For years I’ve made Johnny Appleseed tea in my slow cooker because my entire family enjoys it so much. It’s soothed many colds and sore throats at my house.

Now I have a new fruited tea to add to my recipe collection. I saw a recipe for marmalade tea in Debbi Baker Covington’s “Dining Under The Carolina Moon” a few weeks back. I was intrigued with the idea of mixing a jar of marmalade into a batch of tea. I’ve said before, I love experiments, and this sounded like a fun one.

I changed around several things in Debbie’s original recipe, including substituting brown sugar instead of white, just as I do in the Johnny Appleseed tea. I also didn’t have a lemon, so I used fresh orange juice, and I added a stick of cinnamon to my steaming tea mixture to add a festive flavor to my tea.

The marmalade immediately starts to dissolve when it hits the hot tea, and the little pieces of orange peel float round as you stir. Debbi mentions the tea can be strained; we didn’t mind the orange pieces.

After I had a cup of tea, I poured what was left in a favorite glass tea pitcher and left the tea in the refrigerator for more than a week. Anytime I wanted hot tea, I just poured a cup and let it warm in the microwave. If you are fixing this for a crowd, I suggest pouring the hot tea into a slow cooker and leaving the setting on warm.

I’d still love to receive Christmas goody recipes from my readers to share in this column. Send to the email address below or to Lisa Batts, The Wilson Times, P.O. Box 2447, Wilson, NC 27894.


Johnny Appleseed Tea

• 2 quarts water, divided
• 6 tea bags or 3 family size tea bags
• 1 (6-ounce) can frozen apple juice concentrate, undiluted*
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar

Bring 1 quart water to a boil; add tea bags. Remove from heat; cover and let steep 5 minutes. Remove tea bags.

Pour remaining quart of water and remaining ingredients into slow cook, mix in steeped tea. Set slow cooker to low or warm. Yield: 9 cups.

*I can no longer find the small can of juice. I buy the larger can and use at least half. I try to get most of the concentrated syrupy liquid that’s at the bottom of the can.


Marmalade Tea

• 10 cups water
• 3 family size tea bag (I use decaffeinated)
• 12 oz. jar orange marmalade
• 3 to 4 tablespoons brown sugar
• Juice of one orange
• Cinnamon stick

Bring 10 cups of water to boil. Remove from heat and steep tea bags for 7-8 minutes. Stir in marmalade, sugar, orange juice and cinnamon until marmalade is melted and well mixed. Strain tea if deserved before serving.

Serves 10.

Adapted from “Dining Under the Carolina Moon” by Debi Baker Covington

Thanksgiving sides

This is not the column I had planned to write today. This week’s recipe didn’t turn out as planned, and I don’t mind confessing that. I was experimenting with refrigerator or spoon rolls that my readers could bake for Thanksgiving Day.

I decided to blend several recipes and come up with my own. The rolls I baked were beautiful, the texture was just right, and they rose perfectly, but they had no taste. I haven’t given up on them and will try again with more honey and salt and will share if they are a success.

After that disappointment, I went to my Facebook page and asked my friends for casserole recipes that would be good for Thanksgiving. In no time, several people posted with ideas.

So today, I’m sharing several recipes you can make next week for your family’s Thanksgiving celebration.

I tried one of the recipes, Harriet Page’s garden pea casserole. She said it was one of her mama’s recipes. Harriet said the recipe was given to Edna Ruth Thompson by Sarah Miller in 1968. She said it’s a favorite recipe for anytime, and her family loves it. She said it’s an easy recipe to double or even quadruple!

When Harriet told me about the recipe, I was skeptical; I’ll admit that too. I couldn’t imagine a garden pea casserole with a white sauce, cheese and cracker crumbs. Well, I made it Monday afternoon and was so very happy with the results.

Anna and I couldn’t believe how good it smelled as it cooked and couldn’t wait for it to cool enough for us to eat. It was delicious! I hate to tattle on either one of us, so I’ll just say we both had more than one serving!

We agree it would be such a nice addition to a Thanksgiving spread or to serve anytime as a side dish.



Garden Pea Casserole

• 2 cans (14 to 15 ozs. each) garden peas, drained
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 1 cup cracker crumbs (I used Ritz whole wheat)
• Black pepper to taste
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 2 cups milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt butter over low heat. Add flour, pepper and salt. Stir until blended and smooth. Slowly add milk and cook until smooth and thickened.

Remove from heat; add peas. Pour half of mixture into casserole dish. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup cheese and 1/2 cup cracker crumbs. Add remaining sauce and peas and top with cheese and cracker crumbs.

Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Harriet Page



Corn Pudding

• 3 eggs slightly beaten
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1 (approximately 17 ozs.) can cream-style corn
• 1 (approximately 17 ozs.) can whole-kernel corn, undrained
• 1 (8 1/2 oz.) box cornbread mix

Heat oven to 350. Grease a shallow 2-quart baking dish or 6 (10 oz) custard cups.

Combine ingredients, stir well. Pour/spoon into baking dish. Bake about 1 hour, or until set, in the 2 qt dish (40-45 minutes in the custard cups).

If using the custard cups, you can loosen them and invert the puddings directly onto a dinner plate. Serve the larger casserole directly from the dish.

Susan B. Hoffman



Broccoli and Cheese Casserole

• 1 can (10 3/4 ozs.) cream of mushroom soup (regular or 98 percent fat free)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons yellow mustard
• 1 bag (16 ozs.) frozen broccoli florets, thawed
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (4 ozs.)
• 1/3 cup dry bread crumbs
• 2 tsp. butter, melted

Stir the soup, milk, mustard, broccoli and cheese in a 1 1/2-quart casserole.

Stir the bread crumbs and butter in a small bowl. Sprinkle the crumb mixture over the broccoli mixture.

Bake at 350 degrees F. for 30 minutes or until the mixture is hot and bubbling.

Mary Elliott Farmer



Spinach and Artichokes

The combination of nutmeg-scented cream cheese, spinach, artichoke hearts, and water chestnuts is irresistible. The addition of diced cooked chicken or shrimp could turn it into an entree.

• 12 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 4 (10-oz.) packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 (8-ounce) cans sliced water chestnuts, drained
• 2 (14-ounce) cans artichoke hearts, drained and quartered
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter 3-quart casserole dish. In bowl with mixer at medium speed, beat cream cheese until smooth. Reduce speed to low, beat in spinach, butter, lemon juice, salt, pepper, seasoning salt, and nutmeg until thoroughly combined. Stir in water chestnuts. Arrange artichokes on bottom of baking dish. Pour spinach mixture over artichokes. Cover with foil. Cut several slits in the foil to vent.

Bake 30 minutes. Uncover and sprinkle top with Parmesan cheese. Bake until golden brown about 15 minutes more.

Serves 12.

Debbi Baker Covington

There's a squash in my soup!

I had the most delicious soup last month at a luncheon at the Wilson Country Club. It was a creamy butternut squash soup sprinkled with cinnamon and served in a bread bowl.

The women at my table loved it as much as I did, and one challenged me to make my own and put the recipe in the paper. Challenge accepted!

Before the week was out, I had purchased my first butternut squash. I had no idea how big the squash should be to end up with six cups, but I decided on a 31⁄2-pound butternut and took it home with me.

I didn’t know whether my husband would even try this soup, but when I told him what I was making for supper than night, he was pleased and looked forward to something new.

The first order of business was peeling that big thing. That was no small feat. I had read suggestions online for how to peel a butternut squash with ideas that included roasting it with the peel on it and removing the peel once the squash had cooled. But my sister assured me it was easy to peel the squash if I used a vegetable peeler.

Well, that’s the route I took, first cutting the squash into manageable segments with the sturdiest chef’s knife I own. It was awkward, but I was able to get most of the peel off with my very cheap peeler. (Make note to tell my husband to buy me a nice vegetable peeler for my Christmas stocking.) Please be careful when cutting and peeling your squash. I consider it a major triumph that I did not cut myself while slicing that thing. I recommend buying two smaller squash rather than one really big one for this recipe.

I must stop to warn you of something else. I had a weird skin reaction to the squash; my sister did, too, with one she cooked recently. I researched online, and discovered many people get contact dermatitis from butternut squash. The skin on my left hand, which I had used to hold the squash while I cut and peeled it, turned a strange yellowish orange and felt extremely tight and uncomfortable. I tried washing off what felt like a waxy film, but it didn’t help. It was a few hours before the symptoms went away. I found out later that I should have applied a cortisone cream.

When I was preparing another butternut squash a week later, I held onto the much-smaller and more manageable squash with a paper towel, limiting my hand’s exposure. I had no reaction.

If you get to this point in the recipe, and I haven’t scared you too much, the rest is easy.

I looked at a number of butternut squash soup recipes and combined a few ideas, including roasting my squash instead of sauteeing it and adding a bit of nutmeg for flavor. I also decided to add in a medium sweet potato to give a little sweetness to my soup.

The kitchen smelled so good while the squash, onion and sweet potato were roasting, and I couldn’t wait to try my soup.

Once the vegetables were cooked, I combined them with the other ingredients and got a chance to use one of my favorite convenience products — an immersion blender. The soup was creamy in no time, and once I added a little half-and-half, it turned the prettiest shade of pale orange.

I sprinkled some cinnamon on top of my soup, and we were ready to eat our meal, complete with a salad of fresh greens, apple, nuts, feta cheese and strips of grilled chicken.

My husband loved the soup as much as I did. In fact, once we had finished our meal and were cleaning up, he pulled out a bowl and had some more, this time without cinnamon. He said he liked it better that way.

My soup did not taste exactly like the country club’s, and I didn’t expect it to. But it was smooth and creamy, it was delicious with a touch a cinnamon, and it was my creation.

There were plenty of leftovers with our soup and I several delicious lunches.


Creamy Butternut Squash Soup

• 6 cups butternut squash, peeled and cut into chunks (purchase 3 to 3 1/2 pounds of butternut squash)
• One medium to large sweet potato, peeled and cut into chunks
• 1 onion, quartered
• Salt
• Olive oil
• 3 cans (14 ounces each) reduced sodium, reduced fat chicken broth
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• Half-and-half (about 1/4 cup)
• Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

On a cooking tray, spread butternut squash, sweet potato and onion. Sprinkle some salt and drizzle a little olive oil over the vegetables. Use hands to gently toss, making sure the oil also coats the pan.

Roast for 45 minutes to an hour or until vegetables are tender.

Pour the cooked vegetables into a soup pot and add chicken broth, pepper and nutmeg. Let come to a simmer. When heated through, remove from heat. Add in a few splashes of half-and-half. With an immersion blender, blend the soup until it is creamy. If you do not have an immersion blender, a conventional blender would work as well.

Pour soup into bowls and sprinkle a little cinnamon on top, if desired.