A nice sunny weekend! Part 1

Hi everyone!

Well this last weekend was great! Sorry about the long absence... no promises that it won't happen again, either :) I just don't have time while I'm still working but the good news is we probably only have another 6-9 months to go before I can officially be a STAY HOME MOM and won't that be great! I'm pretending that I'm one today... my little sister got married early last week and I took the entire week off last week and also today.

I've gotten a lot of project-y things done... mostly a lot of canning and we did some gardening in the beautiful weather. Sorry, no pics - my camera is officially kaput so I'll have to wait till I get a new one. I brought home the pressure canner from my brother's house (and alas, had to give him his excalibur dehydrator... sniff) and so I got lots canned. I canned up a bunch of ground beef, chicken, seasoned pinto beans and yellow potatoes.

So far we've tried the beef and the beans and they are both winners. I never thought I'd like canned meat and I don't know how well it would go over in tacos or something but put into a casserole it was quite good. And the beans were very good, lightly seasoned with salt, pepper and a shake of cumin but the flavor was light enough you could easily flavor them in any way you choose. I just wish I had some photos to share!

I also had gotten a new wheat grinder and so I tried that out, of course. The bread rose like it was no one's business! I didn't grind the flour quite fine enough for my taste so I used about 60% whole wheat and then 40% bread flour and it was great. I made just a standard honey wheat bread although I've been doing a lot of the "artisan bread in 5 minutes a day" breads and those have been delicious as well. I think I'll have a lot of fun with this tool once I get to stay home :)

Hummus

Just made this yesterday and it's fantastic! I'm kinda excited to see all the new uses I'm gonna find for this stuff. Made with fresh garlic from my garden, of course.

1 can garbanzo beans, drained and liquid reserved
3 tbs tahini
3/4 cups reserved bean liquid
3 tbs lemon juice
1/2 tbs olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp salt
pinch cumin
pinch black pepper
1/4 tsp mediterranean seasoning (I have a gyros spice mix I bought in Germany to use for this)

Throw it in a blender and blend till creamy. You can use more or less liquid from the beans to make it the consistency you like. 3/4 was what I used which is about the minimum that my blender liked, I used Tommy's magic bullet blender.

So good... great with triscuits, veggies, and I'm thinking if I made a runnier one it would make a good pizza sauce... lots of good fats and healthy protein in this stuff, especially when eaten with a whole grain cracker or pita.

And it's CHEAP!

Meatball Stroganoff

I'm just blogging this since I threw it together tonight and it turned out really good.

1 large onion, chopped
2 lbs mushrooms, sliced
cooking wine
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 can beef broth
italian style meatballs
10 oz or so of sauerkraut
1 box rotini pasta

Saute the onion in butter until it begins to be translucent, then add the mushrooms. Cook until the mushrooms are browning. Deglaze with wine (I used white but red might be better), add soup and broth. Mix until well incorporated. Add meatballs (as many as you prefer) and sauerkraut. Heat to boiling and then turn down the heat to simmer for about 10 minutes (or as long as it takes to cook the pasta).

Cook the pasta until it's al dente, then mix it in with the sauce. This was about a double recipe so I'd have leftovers to take to work for lunch this week. I think this would translate well to the crockpot.

It'll be nice when I can use my own mushroom soup, beef broth, sauerkraut, etc. For now, it's sure nice to have the shortcuts to use.

Making granola!

So I decided to make granola the other day... found a recipe online, modified it a bit (of course!) and voila! Fantastic! I think my oven runs hot because it's pretty dark so next time I'll cut the baking time a bit but wow... what a great tasting breakfast, also great in my yogurt and it keeps me filled up for a long long time. Great quick energy for me to grab before my walks in the morning.

Here's the recipe as I made it:

Cranberry Pistachio Vanilla granola
2 c thick rolled oats
1/2 c slivered almonds
1/2 c pumpkin seeds (raw)
1/2 c chopped pistachios
1/4 c hulled sesame seeds
1/2 c raw sunflower seeds
1/4 c wheat germ
1 c cranberries
1/4 c oil
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 c honey

I threw the almonds and pumpkin seeds in a bowl
Chopped up my pistachios,

Added the wheat germ,

... Sesame seeds,

... and sunflower seeds.

I poured in my oats,

Mixed it up

All mixed!

Now the liquids - oil goes in a cup. Measure the oil separately in a larger measure and swirl it around to coat the sides.

Measure honey in the oil-coated measuring cup and pour it in


Add vanilla
Warm up the mixture in the microwave so it gets thin

Pouring on to the dry mix. The fact that I heated it up helps the liquid absorb into the dry mix.

All mixed!

Closeup of the texture

In the oven on a baking sheet with sides (sides are important!)
And the finished granola! I think my oven was hot since it got VERY dark.

Adding the cranberries. You add dried fruit after it's been toasted otherwise they get all brown and hard.

All mixed!

Closeup of the granola... yum! It comes out of the oven pretty moist but it crisps up well after it cools.

I enjoyed my granola all week long in the mornings with milk and also in my yogurt at work. I'm going to make more today because I ran out yesterday. It's a good dense food for me to eat - I have trouble eating enough calories some days especially when I exercise a lot (nursing burns like 500 calories!) so its good for me to have on hand.

Sourdough bread

When I was a child, we lived for several years in Nuernberg, Germany. We were missionaries and my dad did a lot of work with local churches in addition to making trips out to the poverty-stricken eastern european countries. It was a very formative time in my life in many ways.

One of the things I'll always think is ironic about that time is that I spent my time there longing to come back to the States and when I was back here at age 11, I longed to go back to Germany. We did that with the food, too - when we were there, we missed peanut butter, chocolate chips, and soft white bread. But then when I came back to the U.S., one of the things I missed the most was the good, solid German cooking, especially German bread. I went back for a visit several years ago, and one of the best things I brought back (besides chocolate) was bread that had been baked fresh the morning I left. They actually had a bakery IN the airport!

German rye bread is definitely something to be cherished. I spent many years trying to perfect it, and last year I finally did. It's a simple sourdough rye, with wheat flour and salt. I remember when I first baked it for my mom, she took a piece and ran it upstairs and made my dad (who was still asleep) eat it. He wasn't too impressed with the being woken up part, but everyone agreed it tasted pretty authentic.

Unfortunately, I moved into an apartment where something seemed to be wrong with the air, and my starter went bad, along with any other starters I tried to make. Even my plants died in that apartment. I was so busy that I stopped baking bread and began to buy it instead.

In July, we moved into this house and I've been meaning to start again. I hate to say it, but I can't really remember what I did to make that bread taste authentic, but I decided to start again. I bought some organic whole rye flour and also pumpernickel rye from Barry Farm, and began a starter this morning. There was a perfect crock for it in one of the boxes of canning jars I recently acquired - not safe for canning in, but perfect for sourdough. I'll keep a picture log and in a week or so when the starter is ready, I'll post the progression photos along with instructions.

As I try and remember, I think part of my success involved my attempts at no-knead bread. No-knead bread is basically where you mix yeast with salt and flour, mix in some water to form a slack, shaggy dough, and let it sit for 24 hours or so. You bake it in a La Cloche, dutch oven, or even a lidded casserole pan.

I made a homemade baking pot from a upside-down terra-cotta flower pot (I got the idea from somewhere on the internet, it isn't mine... can't remember where though). What this does is trap the steam inside while the bread is baking, which makes for an amazing crust. When I tried the regular No-Knead recipe, I found it too bland for my taste but when I made a sourdough version, it was amazing. So, after a furlough, I'm excited to try again :)

If you are more interested in the no-knead technique, here's a fantastic website that is very educational on the method with videos and everything - Breadtopia.

Kielbasa

We looooove kielbasa around here (it goes great with fried potatoes!). I used to get big packages of it at Costco for pretty cheap but they stopped carrying it. I was just looking around the web to see if it would be easy to make it. Any tips? I already have a meat grinder attachment for my kitchenaid and so I think the only equipment I'd still need is a smoker. If I end up making a lot of it (I will EVENTUALLY but not for a few years) I might need a sausage stuffer... but that's probably not going to happen soon.

But a smoker, maybe. We do have a fireplace, is it possible to use those as a smoker? lol... I'm such a duct tape person ;)

Now the gears in my head are beginning to grind... sometimes I wish I didn't have so many projects I want to do! I think it all stems from me wanting to master many of the old-world skills. Soapmaking I have down - been doing that for about 10 years. Cooking and baking bread, check. Right now it's cheese and canning that I'm working on, but now sausage is entering the picture... oh my! lol. Also, homebrewing is on the horizon at some point.

Can you imagine... a fine meal of german sausage (from your own pigs) and potatoes & kraut (from your garden) and an ice cold homebrew (from your homegrown hops). That's the life I envision.

Canning potatoes - Experiment # 1

So on Saturday afternoon I canned potatoes! I got a great deal on some nice clean small Yukon Golds the other day and I bought 15 lbs of them for canning. One of our favorite meals is fried potatoes with kielbasa sausage and some sort of veggie, usually broccoli. When I go back to work next week, it'll be Tommy's job to feed the kids and make dinner. Since he isn't really much of a cook I generally try to have easy stuff on hand for him to throw together. I had the great idea of cutting up potatoes and canning them and then all he'd have to do is drain them, throw in the sausage and veggies and voila - dinner!

One of my most despised kitchen jobs is scrubbing potatoes. That's one of the reasons I'm going to grow mine in straw or some sort of mulch next year - I just really hate getting potatoes that are covered in dirt to scrub off. The potatoes I bought for canning were actually pretty clean (and to my delight, all pretty small). However, I still didn't want to take chances and I needed to clean them myself, right? Well, forever searching for an innovative way to make my life easier I thought about THIS:

I did some googling and turns out the Washington State Potato people actually say it's fine to clean potatoes in a soapless dishwasher. Who knew? :) In any case, it made my life much simpler. I wouldn't do it except for canning because the cycle heated up the potatoes a bit which would really reduce their shelf life I imagine, but for this purpose it was great. I wasn't planning on skinning them so it went really quickly.

I basically just cut them up and threw them in quart jars with a tsp of flaked canning salt and covered with boiling water. You are supposed to process them at 10 lbs for 40 minutes... I think I had too much pressure. I couldn't seem to get the burner on the right temperature and so I ended up overprocessing them a bit. I only made 8 quarts since that's all the jars I had at the time, but since then I've gotten more jars. I still have a few pounds left, and actually I might go pick up more potatoes since they were so easy to can. So I'll try it again... the ones I have now are sort of disintegrated. I'm sure they will be great for mashed potatoes or whatnot, just not the frying potatoes that I wanted.

Of course, I'll update when I do those as well.

Kitchen Experiment #1 - Italian Egg Rolls

For a couple months now, I've been having this idea for a food in my head. Italian spring rolls. In my head, they are crispy egg roll wraps, filled with a ricotta cheese mixture, fresh tomatoes and basil, and broccoli. So tonight, I decided to make an attempt.

First, I made my cheese. It turned out to be more like cottage cheese but it worked anyway. Fresh cheese is so wonderful! Oh, and today I figured out that one of my stockpots can handle 2 gallons of milk which means I can do bigger batches... and that's also great because Costco sells their milk in 2 gallon boxes... but I digress.

Then, I made the wraps. I have a pasta rolling machine so I figured I could just do them myself pretty easily.
I took 3 eggs, 1 cup of semolina flour, and a half cup of regular all-purpose flour and mixed them up in my kitchenaid. I ended up adding a bit more flour.





Then I turned the dough out onto a cutting board...












... and kneaded it a bit until it was smooth.












I flattened the dough ball out and cut it into smaller pieces that would be easy for the pasta machine to handle. I ran them all though the machine... sorry, no pics for that one since I was by myself :)






But here's a picture of my pasta rolling machine!











So now I have several long sheets of pasta.








Since I won't be using them yet, I decided to keep them from drying out by sandwiching them in sheets of plastic wrap (yes, it's purple... hehe). Lesson # 1 - oil the plastic next time... the dough stuck to it pretty well.



Next on the menu - sausage. I didn't have any Italian sausage, so I used some beer brats that I had in the freezer. I defrosted them and slipped them out of their casings.

Frying the bratwurst in a pan, trying to break it up well. I love sausage but it's so hard to break up in little pieces like we like it. As I'm breaking it up, I notice that it was actually a jalapeno cheddar bratwurst that was mislabeled... oh well :)






In the meantime, I've chopped one head of broccoli.







Also two tomatoes get chopped...













And some wilted expensive grocery store "fresh" basil (oh... how I can't WAIT for my own garden!)






Once the sausage was browned, I added the broccoli and covered it so it could cook a bit, also throwing in some garlic, dried oregano, salt & pepper. While that was cooking, I mixed the tomatoes and basil in with the ricotta cheese that I'd already made (see previous post).


I decided to throw in some shredded cheese that I already had. I'd rather use mozzarella, but I didn't have any and haven't had luck making it yet... so I used a cheddar jack combo.


Then I added the browned sausage and broccoli and mixed it all up. Next time I'd add more salt and pepper... and more fresh basil! I love fresh basil... it has such a great flavor that doesn't come through after it's dried.

So here comes the fun part - wrapping it all up :) Oh, and I broke my cutting board :( I think I wasn't supposed to wash it in the dishwasher... lol. Oops!






I have a wrapper out flat, with some filling in the center. I moisten the top and bottom edges...









... and then fold in the sides.














Moisten the tops of the folded in edges...











... and verrrry carefully roll up the roll.









































Here's where I made a BIG mistake. I placed the finished rolls on an ungreased plate. Looked nice... but when I went to cook them, they all stuck! They got unsealed, it was a complete disaster... which made the rolls pretty greasy on the inside.




I ended up spraying the plastic wrap I'd been using with some nonstick spray and laid the rolls on it after I pried them off the plate with a knife.




Here they are cooking in the oil, I put about a half inch or so of cooking oil in a pan and fried the rolls on medium-high heat.










And here are the finished rolls.








The verdict? Not bad. They all got eaten :) Even Eleora had a couple bites of hers.

Mistake #1 - don't make regular pasta for egg roll wraps. It was completely different and turned into more of a "bready" wrap. Next time, either buy pre-made wraps at the store or make real ones. I thought they were just pasta sheets but I was wrong :)

Mistake #2 - not the right kind of cheeses. I'd add mozzarella and parmesan for sure.

Mistake #3 - not enough fresh basil.

Mistake #4 - Ricotta wasn't as smooth as I'd like... figure out what I'm doing wrong there. It was certainly not bad for my first attempt, though :)

And I had about 3 times as much filling as I needed. The rest of it is hanging out in our fridge waiting for me to go buy some real egg roll wraps to try out.

So there we go - dinner for tonight. The filling was really good, though. Just needed a bit more salt, but great fresh flavors. I keep thinking how great it will be when I can make something like this with sausage from our own pigs, cheese from local cows, and fresh tomatoes, broccoli and basil from our garden. Yum!

And tomorrow... I'm canning potatoes (hopefully)!