Ooops

I'm fairly certain it was not part of the plan for this  Colonial Brown Bread  to glop over the side and onto the oven like this.

Aaaargh.  Anyone have a tried and true brown bread recipe to recommend?

The quest for cumin recipes . . .

Please tell me I am not the only one with files like this, overstuffed like a deep dish pie with recipes to try someday.

Most of these recipes I acquired pre-Internet days, back when cookbooks were king and magazine recipes were at least crown prince.  My files are passe now, I realize, as anyone with a mouse can ask the Great Wizard of Google to find recipes for, let's say, chicken livers plus mango salsa plus fresh lime juice.

But with a simple web search one would miss the thrill of the hunt.  The tactile pawing through of a ragtag collection of multi-sized scraps of paper, torn or carefully cut, some in neat rectangular shapes and others splotched together with scotch tape and folded, wonton-like, to fit into the bulging file folder -- that's the spirit in which I want to decide what to make for dinner.

It suits my librarian-like tendencies to spend an evening flipping through a file in my vast collection, looking for, this time, recipes containing cumin, a nice bag or two of which I acquired last summer while we were in Morocco for a friend's wedding.

(Yes, the careful reader may note those instructions are in French, and I'm pretty sure there's something there about aiding the stomach with diarrhea.  Moving on.)

This is the recipe I chose to make, Picadillo Tortillas, recipe pre-splattered (somehow) to save me the trouble.  From an old issue of Cooking Light magazine -- so old it's not on the Cooking Light archived recipes page -- it turns out this was a grand choice.  It used just 1/4 t. of cumin (unfortunately), but with a delicious hint of cinnamon, and the surprise of diced apple and raisins, it's a keeper.  Serves four (in our house, two), 232 calories each (in our house, 464).  I think I may multiply this by a gazillion and make it for the next big family reunion.

PICADILLO TORTILLAS
1/2 lb. ground round
1 c. peeled, finely chopped Rome apple
2 T. raisins
1 T. minced jalapeno pepper (I omitted)
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. ground cumin
1/8 t. ground cinnamon
dash of ground coriander
8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
4 8-inch flour tortillas

Crumble beef in microwave-safe 1-quart casserole dish.  Cook for 1 1/2 minutes on high; stir; cook for 1 1/2 more minutes on high; stir again.  If meat is still pink, cook for another minute or 2 until it's done.   Drain off fat to discard.  Add all the rest of the ingredients to the meat, except tortillas, then nuke on high for 3 minutes; stir; cook 3 more minutes; stir.  If it's still kind of soupy, cook for another minute or two until it's a little thicker.  Spread 1/2 c. of the meat mixture on a tortilla.  Can fold over, burrito-style, cover with paper towel, and heat just another 15-20 seconds or so to warm it up.  Then you get to eat it.

So tell me:  Do you have a pile of recipes somewhere that you're waiting to try?