The first thing Joseph did when I picked him up today was hand me this. This is his book of secrets. The secrets were of course written in code, but I was lucky enough to have a translator present. I will share them with you, but please, these are valuable secrets. Share with caution.
I can see into the future. I don’t like to share my holiday secrets.
I like Pokémon. I like dogs.
What are Fish? I do not know. This is a future portal.
+ a song I like: "Something Strange Happens” by Allen Clapp and his Orchestra.
I have never been an oatmeal fan, I think it’s the texture. But I love granola. With yogurt, with dried fruit & nuts for trail mix, and all by itself. I don’t make it as much as should, and considering how easy it is I really will have to make it more regularly.
More oats.
ingredients
2 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup chopped nuts (I use walnuts)
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
pinch of salt
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup honey
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a medium bowl, mix the first four ingredients. In a small bowl, add the last three ingredients, microwave for 20ish seconds, and mix. Pour wet ingredients over dry ingredients and stir until evenly coated. Put on a baking sheet and bake for 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.
On this first day of February I am making a challenge for myself. This entire month I will not buy any bread. I will provide all yeasted edibles for my family through my newly motivated baking skills. Sometimes I feel like I can’t give my family enough. Making something that my family enjoys is the best feeling. It’s a way I can provide for them. Bread is such an essential part of our daily eating. Why not start there?
Wish me luck.
No-Knead Bread
This is Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread. I have come to really love making this. You get bread store quality with very minimal effort. While the resting time may seem crazy, I like that I can mix this dough at night & bake the bread when I get home from work the next day. Plus, I don’t like kneading. I get distracted, ten minutes seems like hours. Cooking this in a dutch oven will achieve the artisan crustiness, but it can be cooked without one as well.
ingredients
3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon yeast
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups water
Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add water. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest 12-18 hours. The dough will have bubbles on top and will be stringy. Flour your surface and pat your dough into a disc. Fold your dough in on the right & left, then on the top & bottom. If baking in a dutch oven transfer dough to a piece of parchment paper with the seam of the dough up. Otherwise transfer dough to container you’ll be baking in it. Let rest for 2 hours. If baking in a dutch oven, bake at 500 degrees in a preheated dutch oven and bake 30 minutes with cover on and 15-20 minutes with cover off. Otherwise bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes, and then 30-45 minutes at 375.
TODAY IS A SNOW DAY. An official snow day. Although school was already called off on two previous days this year, the snowfall accumulated to barely 1/2 an inch, which to me doesn’t constitute as a snow day. Today is different. Beautiful, fluffy flakes are rapidly falling, both John & got to come home from work before 10 AM, and I picked up some peppermint schnapps on the way. I’ve never had hot chocolate & peppermint schnapps, but it has always sounded so delicious. SNOW DAY seems like the perfect occasion to try them, and watch Grizzly Man.
John & I finally watched Food Inc. a couple of weeks ago. 
While the truths revealed about the meat industry won’t change my already vegetarian ways, this has made me very concerned about the dog food Breeze is fed. There is human-grade & non-human-grade dog food. Human-grade is dog food that is made with the same manufacturing standards as human food; ingredients that are free from contamination, disease, etc. Seeing how unsanitary human-grade meat is makes me really concerned with whatever terrible things are in non-human-grade dog food. In pursuit of finding reasonably priced human-grade dog food, we found out Trader Joe’s is not. Buuummer. But luckily Whole Food’s brand is both human-grade & the same price of Trader Joe’s regular food. Also, lead is in tennis balls? Does anyone know any more details about this? I realize that there aren’t restrictions on the chemicals that can be in dog toys like there are for children’s toys, but shouldn’t there be? Kids touch dog toys so often while they’re playing.
ingredients
3 cups milk
2 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar
5 ounces chocolate coarsely chopped (I used Ibarra, the Mexican chocolate that John’s grandma always used when he was growing up)
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
Warm milk over medium-low heat. Add sugar, and whisk until dissolved. Add chocolate, and whisk until melted. Heat until slightly thick, about 5 minutes. 
Whisk in nutmeg. Serve with whipped cream, or peppermint schnapps, or both!
And Happy SNOW DAY!
Joseph said something very wise the other day. “To finish a mission, you have to believe in yourself.” This of course was in reference to Pokémon, but a wise statement nonetheless, and something we all need to remember. Something I need to remember.
Today is my birthday and here is my cake.
It was an experiment, and turned out to be a lovely one. The only change I would have made is I would have sprinkled butter in between each layer of phyllo dough to make them less powdery. This was a chocolate almond tart of sorts. I had left over crushed almonds from making almond milk the other day, and leftover phyllo dough from pot pies, and this is what came about. I estimated some but here is my attempt to recreate the recipe.
ingredients
phyllo dough (Roughly half a package, I used the one with individual super thin sheets. I’m not sure how the thicker ones would work.)
1 cup chocolate chips (This is where I estimated. Start with 3/4 cup and add until you have a dark chocolate ganache.)
1 cup cream
3/4 cup chopped almonds
4 1/2 tablespoons sugar
Mix almonds and sugar in a small bowl. Cut phyllo dough to the shape of your pan. Butter pan and put first layers of phyllo dough. Sprinkle almond/sugar mixture between phyllo dough layers for approximately five layers. Layer three or four layers of phyllo dough with butter in between. Heat cream. Add chocolate chips, let melt initially, and then stir until blended. Layer ganache over phyllo dough. Layer a couple more phyllo sheets. Do a thick layer of the almond/sugar mixture. Layer a couple more phyllo sheets. Repeat the ganache layer. Layer three or four layers of phyllo dough with butter in between. Sprinkle almond/sugar mixture between phyllo dough layers for approximately five layers. Butter the to phyllo layer. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 375 degrees. Finish it off with a layer of ganache, and topped with powdered sugar.
My wonderful husband got me this wonderful book for Christmas. Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. It takes the most basic of ingredients and shows you the relationships between them in the most common of foods.
Minor subtleties are the difference between pizza dough or bread dough, pancake batter or muffin batter. The ratios are in weight, though are easy enough to decipher if you are like me and without a scale. Understanding these relationships makes me feel so much more free in the kitchen. No longer hindered by recipes, I can experiment with flavors without worrying that my cookies are going to end up like a sweet bread. There’s also the freedom in how much with ratios! So great. Tonight I took on a task that always seemed time consuming and difficult to me: pie dough. With the aide of the food processor, this probably took a mere minute and thirty seconds of hands-on time, and only thirty-five minutes of waiting time including blind baking which you may or may not need to do depending on what you are cooking.
Pie Dough = 3 parts flour : 2 parts fat : 1 part water
For one bottom crust. Double for a top & bottom.
1 cup flour
1 stick of cold butter cut up into tablespoon-ish pieces
1/8 cup cold water
1/4 teaspoon salt
Mix flour and butter by hand or in a food processor until it forms a coarse meal. Add water and salt and mix again. If you are making a top & bottom, split the dough in half and pat each down into spheres. Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. Roll dough out and place in a pie pan.
Some pies will cook for a long time and won’t need to be pre-cooked. Others that cook for a shorter time, such as quiches, will need to be blind baked. To blind bake a crust, layer the pie crust with aluminum foil or parchment paper and some dry beans. Bake this at 325 degree Fahrenheit for 20-25 minutes. Take out the aluminum and beans, fill with tastys, and bake as usual.
John wrote 2010 on our chalkboard a week ago in anticipation. I made blackberry almond cake to celebrate (my first attempt at a layered cake!). As I was making the cake I noticed the batter was way more dry than cake batter generally is, which make made for a dense, almost scone-like cake. It has been wonderful for breakfast! While this year has been super exciting, John & I are both more than ready for things to settle down some. In 2009 I have become a wife, a stepmom, a homeowner, and a pet owner, amongst other less weighty titles. These things have challenged me. They’ve made me more focused and more productive, and a little crazy. But gaining all of these responsibilities at once before your 23rd birthday would make anyone crazy, right?
To a slower paced life.
Below is some of what our family has been up to for the holidays.
These past few weeks have been yarn-filled for the whole family! I have been knitting/crocheting a lot lately as the weather has gotten cooler, and Joseph wanted to learn. He calls it “sewing,” and created an octopus (pictured above), a platypus, and a monkey. It is so beautiful what unique and creative things children come up with. While Joseph has been “sewing,” I’ve been busy knitting my first hat. This pattern is from Margaret at resurrection fern. Hers is one of the first blogs I started reading, and is always delightful and relaxing to read. This hat is super easy and quick.
You will need:
- size 15 (I used 13 because that what I had) circular needle or double-pointed needles
- about 100 yards yarn
- stitch marker/safety pin/etc.
- large-holed needle for finishing
the pattern:
Cast on 40 stitches and join.
Rounds 1-10: Knit one, pearl one ribbing.
Round 11: Knit in the front and back of each stitch. You should end up with 80 stitches. Place a stitch marker.
Round 12: Wrap yarn twice over the needle, and then knit the next two stitches together. Repeat for entire round.
Round 13: Knit row plain. Knit the two yarn-overs as one.
Round 14: Repeat row 12.
Round 15: Repeat row 13.
Round 16: Repeat row 12.
Round 17: Repeat row 13.
Round 18: Repeat row 12.
Round 19: Repeat row 13.
Round 20: Wrap yarn twice over the needle, and then knit the next three stitches together. Repeat for entire round.
Round 21: Knit row plain. Knit the two yarn-overs as one.
Round 22: Repeat row 20.
Round 23: Repeat row 21.
Round 24: Repeat row 20.
Round 25: Repeat row 21.
Round 26: Cut the yarn with an 8 inch tail. Thread the yarn onto needle. Thread through each of the remaining stitches and pull tightly. Knot off and sew into piece.
Today, someone at work brought in pears for the taking! I was already in the mood for quiche so I did some research about pear quiches. This was certainly the most delicious quiche I’ve ever had. I used feta because I had some, but gorgonzola, gouda, or goat cheese would be equally as tasty. This was accompanied by cucumber salad, with cucumbers fresh from the garden!
ingredients:
1 large pear
3/4-1 cup feta crumbles
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1/2 small to medium onion chopped
5 eggs
1 pie crust
salt & pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Sprinkle feta on the bottom of the pie crust. Sprinkle almonds and onions. Core pear, and slice lengthwise. Layer the pear slices over the filling. Whisk eggs, and add a bit of salt and pepper. Pour egg mixture into crust. Bake for 35 minutes.
After cooking up my first pumpkin of the season with Ms. Deborah, I am left with tons of pumpkin puree for baking experimentation. Earlier this week I made two loaves of pumpkin bread and pumpkin & black bean soup. This chilly fall morning left me yearning for a warm beverage, so: Pumpkin Spice Latte.
ingredients
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons pumpkin puree or canned pumpkin
2 tablespoons sugar (adjusted to taste)
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/4 cup of espresso or 1/2 cup of strong brewed coffee
Heat milk, pumpkin, and sugar over medium stirring often until steaming. Remove from heat. Add vanilla and spice. Transfer to a blender, and blend until foamy (or whisk well with a wire whisk). Pour into mugs, and pour espresso or coffee on top. Top with whipped cream and your choice of spice (pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, or nutmeg).
jelly
jgm77
