Cathedral Windows

As my Bloglines blogroll shows, Retro food is all the rage. I found this recipe through Laura Rebecca's Kitchen, she found it on Something So Clever and it's listed on allrecipes. When I saw it, I knew it would be perfect for food day at work. I like sometimes making something very sweet and rich for food day, I can make a big batch, leave a couple servings at home for the boys (two kids who don't need an excess of sugar, and one boyfriend with diabetes), and the work folks can eat the rest.

From AllRecipes:
INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup butter
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
2 eggs, beaten
1 (10.5 ounce) package rainbow colored miniature marshmallows
1 cup chopped pecans
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar for decoration
DIRECTIONS
Melt together the butter and chocolate chips in the top of a double boiler or in the microwave. Stir to blend, then stir in the eggs, colored marshmallows and pecans.
Pour the mixture into a 9x5 inch loaf pan, lined with foil. Dust with powdered sugar and refrigerate until firm.
Remove chilled dough from loaf pan, remove the foil, and slice into 1/4 inch slices.

Sweet Scrambled Eggs

I make "french toast" in the most basic way: eggs, milk, cinnamon, sugar or splenda, a little vanilla. Soak the bread a little or a lot, depending on how soggy you want it, and fry on both sides. There's usually some egg mixture left over, and my mom would scramble that up, and my dad loved it. I didn't really like it, and my kids didn't either, so I'd just try to make the egg mixture work out exactly with the bread when I cooked for them. Cooking for my guy, now, is a whole different story. I made the sweet scrambled eggs for him once after making french toast, and now that's his favorite part. Still seems weird to me.

Meat Wads: My Meatloaf

I didn't make meatloaf my whole adult life until a few years ago when I found this recipe. (come to think of it, I don't think I ever made meatloaf as a kid, either, so I may have actually never made a meatloaf before this) My aversion to meatloaf fell in the category of "Recipes of my Mother's that I didn't like", I never liked my mom's meatloaf. Sorry, Mom!* So I never made meatloaf. (Oh, plus I was vegetarian for many years, and fake-meat doesn't loaf well) When I found this recipe on the back of the Stove Top Stuffing box, and cooking for heavy meat eaters now, I decided to try it. Now I make my modified version at least once a month, either in wad (loaf) form, or as hamburgers or meatballs.

All-American Meat Loaves
Prep: 10 min. Bake: 30 min.
1 pouch (8 oz) Stove Top Stuffing Mix for Chicken
2 lb. ground beef
1 1/2 cups water
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup Kraft Shredded Cheddar Cheese
1/4 cup ketchup

1. Mix all ingredients except ketchup just until blended.
2. Shape into 4 oval loaves on foil-lined baking sheet. Top with ketchup.
3. Bake at 400 F for 30 minutes or until centers are no longer pink.
Makes 8 servings.

My Modifications:
1. I use aprox 2 lbs of ground beef PLUS aprox 1 lb of pork for each set of 4 loaves. (and I usually at least double this recipe, it is awesome for left-overs, and would freeze well, too, if the guys wouldn't eat them all before I could freeze them!)
2. I don't put in any water, but do put in mustard &/or Worcestershire sauce up to aprox 1/2 cup. Also, I'll usually add garlic powder, maybe some mixed spice for steak, and often add mustard seed &/or caraway seeds (like is found in some pork sausage).
3. I always use sharp cheddar
4. I NEVER put ketchup on it. If you want to put ketchup on it on your plate, do it when I'm not looking!
My kids think it's funny that I like to call them meatwads. But that's basically what they are. And wouldn't you love to get that whiney little guy in your oven? ;p

*Since this recipe gets linked to on a regular basis, let me add this caveot: My mother is a wonderful cook! She was my 4-H leader, too, and always served all four food groups (that's all we had back then!) for supper. She liked to try new recipes she found in magazines, which led me to have no fear of trying a new recipe. She also had many great recipes that were family favorites, some were passed down from the previous generation, including her father's mother's potato soup. In addition to the potato soup, which I've always loved, I have many favorites among her recipes, and I learned to love spinach and brussel sprouts too.

Back of the Box Recipes

15 Min Chicken & Rice Dinner

1 tbsp vegetable oil
4 boneless chicken breast halves
1 can (10 3/4 oz.) Campbell's Cream of Chicken or 98% Fat Free Cream of Chicken Soup
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 tsp each paprika and pepper
2 cups Minute White Rice, uncooked*
2 cups fresh or frozen broccoli flowerets


Heat oil in skillet. Add chicken and cook until browned. Remove chicken.

Add soup, water, paprika and pepper; stir. Heat to a boil.

Stir in rice and broccoli. Top with chicken. Season chicken with additional paprika and pepper. Cover and cook over low heat 5 min. or until done.

*For creamier dish, use 1 1/2 cups rice.

Makes 4 servings

This recipe created by Campbell's.

The finished pie

FRESH_GOOSEBERRY_PIE (recipe replay) Crush 1/2 cup gooseberries , combine with 1 1/2 cups sugar, 3 Tbsps. quick-cooking tapioca, and 1/4 tsp. salt. Cook and stir until mixture thickens and boils. Add 2 1/2 cups whole berries. Fill pastry shell. Dot with 2 Tbsps. butter or oleo. Put on top crust, seal, cut slits for steam to escape. Bake in a hot oven (400) for 30-40 minutes or until crust is browned. Serve warm (or cold).

Fourth Food

We celebrated the 4th yesterday, since one of us has to work today, and some more of us have to get up tomorrow. Our 4th celebration was pure geek-heaven: we played an RPG (role playing game) all day yesterday, and some the night before, too. It was fun for everyone! In the planning stages, I had to figure out a menu that would work with gaming, and would not make me, as the cook, have to do any extra work on game day.
Here's our menu:

• Another Dried Beef Cheese Ball like I took to Food Day at work
  
• A seafood cheese ball: cream cheese, fake crab, sundried tomatoes in oil, garlic, Worcester sauce. No official recipe, just thrown together. Added extra tomato oil to balance out adding soooo much fake crab. Needs a little salt.
  
• Three kinds of crackers
  
• A crock pot full of BBQ little smokies. Sauce was just whatever BBQ sauce was in the cupboard, a little plain mustard (I only keep plain mustard for recipes), garlic powder, onion powder, and white pepper.
  
• Make your own sandwiches. I purchased hoagie rolls, two kinds of sliced meat, cheese, and of course, good mustard.
  
• Tons of soda. Cheesh, I think my 15-year-old chain-drank at least 10 of his 24 pack that is supposed to last him a whole week.
  

Everyone could get whatever they wanted throughout the game. And I got out the paper plates, so I don't have much to do today to clean up, except the crockpot of course, better go soak that. I'm hoping to make mom's gooseberry pie recipe today!

Food Day: Dried Beef Cheese Ball

First, appologies for the photo. Here's what happened: I brought a double batch of this cheese ball recipe to Food Day at work today, set it down on the table, brought my camera back for the photo maybe 10 minutes later, this photo was all I got. So I guess everyone liked it! I'm going to make it again for our 4th celebration.

Dried Beef Cheese Ball
1 package cream cheese (regular or low fat)
1 can black olives
1 package dried beef (or thin deli beef)
1 bunch green onions
1 tsp meat tenderizer-type seasoning

Chop black olives, dried beef, and green onions, and mix with softened cream cheese. Form ball if you wish. Serve with crackers or bagels.

Kid Favorite:Burrito Bake

Cheap with a capital "Ch" and loved by my kids: Burrito Bake.

• One package (8-10) frozen burritos of your favorite flavor
  
• Two cans refried beans
  
• One can/jar taco sauce/enchilada sauce
  
• One package (2 cups) shredded cheese of your choice
  

Spread the beans in a cake pan-type casserole dish. Place the burritos in a single row on the beans. Pour sauce over all burritos. Bake at the temp/time suggested on your frozen burrito package (350 for 30 minutes usually). Sprinkle cheese over all, put back in oven (can turn off the heat) just to melt the cheese, maybe 5 minutes. Feeds 4-6, plus or minus leftovers.
Variations: Use one can regular beans and one can refried beans. (We always use black refried if we can find them), or if you're bean lovers like my kids and I, use two refried plus one regular.
Add any hot sauce, jalapenos, sour cream, etc, that you like.
The kids really love this, and it's much more filling than just eating a plain frozen burrito. Groceries for this, with my Russ's card: $7.59.

Copper Pennies

• 2-3 pounds sliced carrots
  
• 1 green pepper, diced
  
• 3 medium onions, sliced in rings
  
• 1 10 1/2 oz can undiluted tomato soup
  
• 1/2 cup oil
  
• 3/4 cup vinegar
  
• 3/4 cup sugar
  
• Pinch of salt and pepper
  
• 1 teaspoon prepared mustard
  
• 1 teaspoon Worcesterchire sauce
  

Parboil sliced carrots for 10 to 15 minutes or until tender but not too soft. Drain. Mix the rest of the ingredients and add carrots. Let set overnight in refrigerator before serving. Will keep covered and chilled for several weeks. Serve chilled on lettuce as a salad; also good on cottage cheese.

Family picnic and potluck favorite. From the 1990 "Heavenly Calories" church cookbook, that my mom was co-chair of the committee. Photo from Food Day at work May 31, yes, there is still a little left in the fridge. Several weeks is several weeks.

Chicken Awesome

So I want to submit a recipe to All Recipes, so when I was cooking last night, I took several pictures, and made sure to write down all the ingredients and steps. I tend to cook 'by the seat of my pants' and if I try to write down the recipe later, I don't remember everything I did. This recipe is kind of based on one of the recipes we made at Supper Thyme, Cowpokes (#3 in this post. I used cream cheese, green chilies, and black olives for the filling. Found this reference: Hormel Chicken Temperatures, to make sure the chicken was cooked through. Now I'm ready to submit it to All Recipes, except for one thing, the name. When I asked my kids what to name it, the younger son said "Awesome!", but I'm not sure if that's a good name for a recipe.
Any ideas?

Recipe from Mom: Gooseberry pie

FRESH GOOSEBERRY PIE
Prepare pastry (my recipe to follow) for two-crust 9 inch pie and line pie plate with pastry.
Crush 1/2 cup gooseberries (I use potato masher), combine with 1 1/2 cups sugar, 3 Tbsps. quick-cooking tapioca, and 1/4 tsp. salt. Cook and stir until mixture thickens and boils. Add 2 1/2 cups whole berries. Fill pastry shell. Dot with 2 Tbsps. butter or oleo. Put on top crust, seal, cut slits for steam to escape. Bake in a hot over (400) for 30-40 minutes or until crust is browned. Serve warm (or cold). Good with home made vanilla ice cream.

NO FAIL PIE CRUST
2 cups flour
2/3 cup salad oil
5 Tbsps. water
salt to taste
Mix all ingredients. Roll 1/2 of dough between 2 sheets of waxed paper to just larger than the pie pan. Remove top sheet of paper and hold dough by second sheet to help put the crust in the pan. Crust is easily repaired with a scrap of dough if needed. Roll second half of dough and have ready. Pour gooseberry mixture into prepared crust, add butter/oleo, then put on top crust. Seal edges, cut slits, Sprinkle a little sugar on top. Bake. This is an easy, flaky crust. Makes a 2-crust pie or two 1-crust pies.

Mom says: It's from BH & G Pies and Cakes cookbook, and it's the one I always use. I think I did make it with Splenda the last time I made it. I think Splenda would be cup for cup.
I say: I love gooseberries. We had a little bush out back, well, they still do as they still live in the house I grew up in. Some years we'd get barely enough berries for one pie, other years we'd get 4-5 pies' worth. It was always rather a treat, since we didn't have it all year long. I have seen gooseberry pie filling in the store, but I'd never buy it, it wouldn't be the same.
However, I do have to admit that I don't love Mom's pie crust recipe. It is definately the easiest homemade crust recipe I've ever seen, but the taste was never my favorite, though Mom and Dad have always loved it. I'll probably buy my pie crust from the store.

Hello again

Since one of the biggest things in my life is cooking, with all that comes with it, the planning, shopping, cleaning up, etc, I think I'll dust off this ol' blog.
Let me outline a bit of my world for some background.
I was always a great cook as a kid. I was in 4-H, took cakes and cookies to the fair, saved all the best recipes out of Seventeen magazine (I'll bet they don't even have recipes anymore), and cooked or helped mom cook most meals at our house. Often on the weekends, I'd spend an afternoon making something more time consuming, like homemade pasta. I saved up my babysitting money to buy a roller pasta maker out of a catalog, it was from Italy! (It now is used for polymer clay)
In college, there were times I didn't have the means or time to cook. In a dorm room with a mini-fridge and microwave, and a meal ticket to the cafeteria, I didn't do much cooking. When I had an acutal apartment, I did cook when I could. I remember one inspired batch of a pasta dish with 3-4 different kinds of pasta, veggies, tomato sauce, cheese and meats, that I got so into cooking, that I had to find people to share it with. I took a pan to a couple small families I knew, and called the party host to ask if I could bring the other huge pan there.
Fast forward a bit:
I've been a single mom for over six years now. Cooking for just kids and maybe making myself cheese and crackers was the menu for most of that. A little over a year ago, my wonderful boyfriend moved in. He loves to eat, likes to cook sometimes, loves to argue with me while we shop, helps with cleaning up, and mostly challenges me to be the great cook I always used to be. Plus, my kids are getting more interested in cooking, my younger son, now 13, has gone back and forth with wanting to be a chef or a starving artist, and is a creative cook.
I'm working with some good tools, All Recipes is awesome. I get their recipe-of-the-day e-mail, and several of those have become favorites. My profile there is seeshells if you want to look me up. Also, working with a great program A Cook's Book, which also has a Yahoo! Group. This tool I'm still figuring out, but we researched several recipe programs before we bought this one.
And my favorite cooking tool, is Alton Brown. In my kitchen, everyone knows, if AB said it, it's gospel. I love the other shows on the Food Network also, I have often spent a whole weekend afternoon with that channel playing while I'm doing chores or arts-n-crafts.
I guess that's all for the background of me for now. I need to plan out the grocery list, the guy and I have a date to go to the warehouse store, and the regular grocery store. Fun will be had by all. I hope ;p

Supper Thyme Review Part 3

Meal #5: Sesame Ginger Chicken
We ate this one without the kids, but it could have fed us all. The flavor was a little odd, not bad, but just like 'what ingredients did we put in this?' strange. We got rice to go with it, and some frozen veggies. The rice, we had one of our pseudo-fights in the store, and I insisted on the one bag of rice, because it had chinese writing on it, so it must be good for chinese food. What a dork I am. It was sushi rice. It's STILL sitting in the fridge waiting to be thrown out!

Meal #6: Stromboli
This one was awesome, and we knew when making it, we'd all love it, and we'd have to make it again. Bread dough flattened, hamburger and pepperoni and cheese put in. Roll around the dough, connecting the edges, it's hard to get the edges to stick together. The guy (owner) at Supper Thyme showed us a 'trick', of putting a squirt of oil over the stuffed loaf, and sprinkling some Italian seasoning over the top. That makes a nice shiny top of the bread. It was very yummy. This is also very easy to make at home, though you'd have to thaw out the frozen bread dough sufficiently before you roll it out.

Meal #7: Grilled Ham
Making this one was super easy. There was just a few ingredients to mix together, and pour into a giant zippy bag where the ham was. It was tasty eating, but I found it rather salty.

Meal #8: Layered Burrito Bake
This one is one of the bigger meals to make. We mixed burrito-ish ingredients in a bowl (refried beans, meat, onions, sauce) and layered this meat mixture with tortillas and cheese. At home, we like the black beans better, so we would have used black refried beans, but this was still very good. Another rather simple one that would be easy to make ahead of time.

Sadies

With the BFF's birthday coming up, and being kid-less this weekend, I figured we'd try something new on the PoGo card. I thought maybe we'd try the cajun place, but he wanted to try the chicken place. (His birthday, his choice--we'll try the cajun place in December)
Sadie's is a bar and restaurant connected to the Villager motel out on "O" street about 52nd, by the Barnes and Noble.
Walking in, it looks like a bar with the restaurant added as an afterthought, but that is definitely NOT the case. The food was awesome and the wait-staff was attentive, even though they were training new staff that night.
They specialize in chicken dinners. And by dinner, I MEAN dinner. You get sides that come to the table family style, so everyone gets to sample everything. They have several chicken dinners, all breast, all leg, (hmm, that sounded like a guy menu), one of each, however you like your meal. I saw something a little different on the menu, and just had to try it: Pistachio Chicken. It was a chicken breast with pistachios in the coating mixture. It was wonderful.
The meal was a bit slow getting to us, according to our wait staff, we really didn't notice, but they were very apologetic, and offered us free dessert. Even though we were using the PoGo card, so only paying for one meal. We did ask if we brought the whole gang some other time, could we use the PoGo card more than once, and they didn't have a problem with that. So we'll definitely do that.
This was one time that we actually brought home leftovers, and they pretty much fed us a whole second meal. That's pretty rare for our large appetites!

Supper Thyme Review Part 2

In our last episode, the BFF and I had gone to Supper Thyme and made 12 meals...
We've eaten a few meals so far, and at work I got a visitor from the cinnamon roll fairy!

Meal #1: Sweet BBQ Meatball Sandwich
This was the sample meal they made the night we were cooking, so BFF and I had already tasted it. We both really liked it, but I thought it was too sweet. Same thing when we actually ate it. The kids picked that one as the first meal we'd try together. They loved it, too, but I still think it's too sweet! When we made the recipe, it was like a cup of ketchup and a cup of brown sugar, with other spices. That might not be exact, but it was a lot of sugar. Next time we make this, I will only put about half the sugar, and maybe compensate with some extra spices.
What this is, by the way, is meatballs in sauce, with cheese, wrapped in a bread dough crust. It was hard to get the edges to connect, so it was a bit sloppy. I'm glad they had us put it in a pan rather than the other similar sandwich meal that we just wrapped in foil. I think we just had salad with this when we ate it.

Meal #2: Guadalajara Grilled Shrimp
When we made this one at the Supper Thyme kitchen, BFF and I knew this would never feed all of us. So we cooked this while we were kid-less last weekend. Five skewers of six shrimp each, and we all love shrimp. The sauce was very good, lemon juice, and some pepper. This was meant to be grilled, but we don't have a good grill, so we did it in the skillet. We made some oriental noodles to go with it, and it made a great meal for the two of us.

Meal #3: Cowpokes
This was my favorite from just the description
"Cowpokes - Tender chicken breasts stuffed with a blend of pepper jack and cream cheese and wrapped with bacon. The added kick from the pepper jack will really spice up your dinner table! - 9 x 13 Baking Pan"
It did not disappoint! All meals were advertised as feeding 4-6, and this meal and the other meal that has individual servings, each had 5. Also, when we were making the meals, there were stickers to put on each meal, with baking instructions. This one said to mix ranch dressing and salsa for a sauce for the cowpokes, which BFF did. To go with it, he made cornbread stuffing with corn added. It was a good side dish. Probably my favorite overall. Also, good recipe to try at home or modify. Maybe at home, I'd just put the chicken breasts in the pan, put the cheese mixture over top, and then sprinkle with bacon bits.

Meal #4: Baked Spaghetti
We just ate this one last night. It was very tasty. In the cooking process, we mixed the plain, cooked noodles with garlic, parmesan cheese, and an egg, and put that into the pan first. We mixed the sauce and meat, and put that over the noodles, and topped with cheese. The layering made it a bit like a lasagna, and everyone loved it.

Extra Special Treat:
When we went to Supper Thyme, they had us write down our names and where we worked, so they could bring cinnamon rolls to our work. It's pure advertisement for them, pure cinnamony goodness for me and my workmates!
They brought 2 dozen great (although, unfortunately, a tiny bit doughy) rolls, and everyone at work got to hear how much fun it was from me. It's not for everyone, of course, after hearing how it works, one guy said "that's the absolute dumbest thing I've ever heard of." But one couple was excited to try it, and another woman signed up that very day.

Food Day

Most folks have pot lucks or food days as a semi-regular part of their lives. I've always enjoyed regular food days at the places I've worked, it has always given me an opportunity to try new recipes, and show off some of my favorites.
Since I've only been at the new job for a couple months, I've only experienced two food days so far, and I just bought stuff so far. So this time, I'm actually going to bring something homemade.
I was thinking about the crowd-pleasing corn salad that my mom makes. Corn, cheese, BBQ Fritos, mayo. But at this job, food day is a rather grazing kind of thing, people eating on stuff all day. Well, I am NOT making something with mayo and have it sit around all day! Also, with this recipe, you mix in the Fritos at the last minute, which is good and crunchy, but we always try to make the batch of salad small enough to not have leftovers, because the Fritos are soggy by the next day, also not good to leave out all day. So I've modified the recipe. Here it is:

Food Day Friendly
Corn Salad
2 cans white corn
2 cans yellow corn
1 can rotel-type tomatoes (with chilies)
1 small can chilies
1 can black olives
2 cups shredded 'mexican' or 'taco' cheese

drain all cans (cut olives into fourths, if you can't get pre-cut) mix with cheese. refrigerate overnight.
*my tip on draining the cans:
dump the corns into a strainer, then you can dump the tomatoes and chilies on top of the corns, that way, the little pieces of chili won't go through the holes in the strainer.

P.S. the modified recipe is sans crunch, because I didn't want soggy Fritos. I had considered putting in a bag of Corn Nuts, but I talked myself out of it. Do you think that might have worked?

Supper Thyme Review Part 1

Very fun, good looking food, nice AND helpful staff, clean environment, lots of free soda. Overall, a great experience.
Even though we were early, they were completely ready for us, they gave us the instructions, and two lists, one to take home to put on the fridge, and a checklist to carry around with us while we were making our dinners.

Here's what we made:

Baked Spaghetti
Beer Can Chicken
Chicken Pot Pie
Cowpokes
Grilled Ham
Grilled Pork Chops with Spicy Corn Salsa
Guadalajara Grilled Shrimp
Layered Burrito Bake
Sausage Bread
Sesame Ginger Chicken
Stromboli
Sweet BBQ Meatball Sandwich

More specific reviews as we eat them!

Supper Thyme

AND!!!
We're signed up for Supper Thyme this week! We're going to make 12 meals in two hours, while actually being on a kinda date! We're very excited! And I'll let you know how it goes.

Good supper

One fun supper we've discovered in our local market is a combo of a big frozen dinner plus a couple free things thrown in. Of course, it's just a sales gimmic, and you only save four and a half bucks, and as always, if you weren't going to buy it anyway, it doesn't matter if you get it free, BUT, the free things are things we would always buy, and the frozen dinners have been pretty tasty.

Cookin'

In our new and improved household, the boyfriend and I both do the cooking.
Since we have opposite days off, we each basically do the planning/shopping/cooking of supper on our days off. (and just FYI, it was totally his idea!)
We have different ideas about how to do it, of course. I'm more in the plan-ahead-and-buy-all-the-groceries-you-need-for-several-days camp, while he's from the go-to-the-store-every-day-and-figure-out-the-menu-while-you're-shopping school of thought. Both ways work, of course. And a bonus with his plan is getting a little walk out of the deal also, if we go to the store that's only a block away. (although they are probably higher priced on some things than the bag it yourself store, and you can't buy in bulk if you're walking)
The other difference is cooking style, he used to be the bachelor chef, where I was the single-mom cook, cooking kid stuff, and eating cheese and crackers myself.
It's fun this way, we challenge each other. Of course, we both still have the basic burger-helper type meals, but we're both trying to out do each other with new food ideas.

The best hamburgers ever

I usually don't 'cook' much on Monday nights. It's just me and the kids, so we usually just do frozen pizza or burritos, or we do the value menu at some fast food (usually Wendy's). But for some reason, I got a wild hair to make some burgers last night. Maybe it was the pending storm.
So my junior chef mentioned a cheeseburger with the cheese on the inside, and that idea grew. First, I doctored up the meat, with some garlic, mustard, bread-crumbs out of a stuffing mix, and an egg. I separated the meat into balls for the burgers, and got the cheese ready, by putting bacon bits between two pieces of cheese. I flattened the meatwads, one at a time, into little meat pancakes. Then I put the cheese/bacon on top of the pancake, and wrapped the meat over the top. The goal was to have the cheese/bacon completely inside the meat, but there were a few cracks, and it still worked fine. I did have to fold over the corners of the cheese to get them to fit.
Then I just fried them up like normal, and they were gooooooood!
P.S. the kids just like the plastic-wrapped american cheese on a burger, but mine was totally better, I used swiss! Hmm, maybe next time, I'll put mushrooms inside, too!

Update

Been a long time, admittedly, since posting.
Rest assured, it has not been as long since I made bread for my family! I haven't tried any new mixes or recipes lately, though.
I've decided to add all cooking/eating experiences to this blog, and it will be easier to keep updated that way, also. Stay tuned for good recipes, restaurant critiques, food related stuff found on the web, and more!

Same song, second verst

The Honey Wheat loaf was soooo good, and using a recipe was fairly painless, and we gobbled up the first loaf yesterday, so I made another just the same today. But we went to a buffet to eat, so I sent the loaf home with the boyfriend.
The one thing that's not easy about making the bread from a recipe, is the yeast. I bought the little packets of yeast, figuring that one packet equals one loaf. So I was surprised that I had to measure the yeast, one packet equals about 1 3/4 loaves. That's not great, because how do you keep the little packet closed up and keep the yeast fresh? Making two loaves in two days, it's not an issue really today, but what about the other loaves?
I guess next time I'm lookin gto buy yeast, I'll look into the little jar. If I 'm going to have to measure it, I might as well get that. And it proably ends up being less expensive.

First Recipe

OK. I'm finally ready to try an actual recipe. First try, from the book that came with the BreadMaker:

Honey Wheat Bread
1 egg, room temperature plus enough water 80 degrees to equal 1 cup
2 TBLS oil
3 TBLS honey
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup Whole Wheat Flour
2 cups Bread Flour
1 1/2 tsp quick rise yeast or bread machine yeast

Program: Basic

I turned the crust to "light"
The loaf was very delicious!!

White Hodgson

I won't post another picture of the box. But I really like the Hodgson Mill's bread mixes better than the Krusteaz. I probably won't buy the Krusteaz brand anymore, they never turned out as well.
Tried the Hodgson White, it was good, too.
I switched the crust to 'light' and we liked that, the 'medium' or 'regular' was too crunchy. Light is just right.