Daily Photo:
I’d like to say that I made some amazing mixed-media piece to end this little challenge with a big finish. But I didn’t. I baked a humble loaf of white bread. Simple and somewhat Zen.
Bye everyone! It’s been great creating with you!
Well, at least THIS Sunday was for baking. Crazy busy here today, with grocery shopping, laundry, and baking. I don’t normally do much baking but I’ve realized that I really DO need to keep these energy bars on hand. And I would love to make at least most of the bread we use instead of buying it, keeping the ingredients a little more simple and natural. And I had bananas that were going bad, so the only remedy for that is banana bread, right?
Well the energy bars were a no brainer since I’ve made them so many times, but I’m on my 3rd try with the bread. Today’s recipe was a bit better than the other one I’ve been using but I had to trade out some whole wheat flour for white. Oh well. I’ll keep working on it. The banana bread came out super tasty. I actually didn’t have enough bananas, the Daddy ate one this morning (he’ll eat anything!) so I chopped up a peeled apple, cooked it to soften and mushed up the chunks a bit and threw them in. Best banana bread every. Banana-apple-walnut bread. Even the First Grader decided to try it, and then asked for seconds.
tonight i made brazilian cheese rolls:
i used a yoki mix but you can also find recipes online to make them from scratch. here are the directions (the instructions are in portuguese): add 1/2 cup water, 2 eggs to the mix; bake for 40 min at 350 degrees. i normally add an additional 1/4 cup of shredded cheese mix (mozzarella, romano, asiago, parmesan work well) but didn ‘t have any tonight—i have to say, they taste much better with the extra cheese… also, i usually bake for less time—somewhere between 20-30 min so they are chewier and less dry.
So as usual instead of taking pictures and posting things as I do them, I am just posting in one big grouping all the daily things I’ve been doing.
I decided it would be cool to make some things on photoshop with positive messages on them, my idea being to eventually print them out and frame them or something and post them around my apartment to encourage positivitiy or whatever.
So here are 3 of them, there was one more but my fucking computer appparently hates me and decicded to just lose the jpeg version of it -_-
And it already took me for fucking ever to upload those onto here because my computer is being so fucking slow and annoying.
These are some quotes I found online on some website.
Made banana bread
And some earrings I made, not a good picture of them, but yeah…..
And my spelling is probablyu completely horrible right now because as usual my computer won’t recognize typing any quicker than 1 wpm and I type at an average speed of 60 wpm and if I slow down for the computer right now I am going to lose what little patients I have for this peive of shit and break it….. and that would not be good because I NEED a computer for school even if it is fucking shitty.
There isn’t much in this world that is better than catching up with one of your best friends while making dinner at home. And if that dinner happens to involve these delicious, yeasty, honey wheat rolls made from scratch, well then so much the better:
Today I had to just admit defeat of sorts and use something that’s not an extra ‘thing’ as my ‘thing’. Just dinner. *sigh* It’s not even pretty to photograph, but it was tasty. My First Grader did the requisite “But I HATE roast/spaghetti/meal du jour!!!” whining, but admitted it was ‘good’. So I’ll rest on those laurels until the next dinner time arrives. FYI, it’s just a roast, pot roast, whatever, done in the crock pot.
The bread, however, is a different story. I need to get a new recipe or finesse this one. I want a nice whole wheat with something in it for texture (I threw oatmeal into this). The one in the photo is just from the Kitchen Aid manual as I was using my new mixer for the dough. I want it to rise a bit more and be able to utilize it for sandwich bread. But it was still good, hot out of the oven with some butter melting, First Grader was quite pleased.
Daily Photo:
Vegetable Beef Soup
This is a soup I made up. Great on a day when the snow is coming down in huge fluffy flakes - like today!
1 lb. Beef stew meat, cut into 1/2 inch cubes ***
1 cup onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups beef broth
2 cups frozen mixed vegetables
1 Tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
Brown meat in a small amount of oil in a large soup pot. When meat is partially cooked, add onion and celery. Saute until meat begins to brown and vegetables are softened. Add garlic and sauté 1 minute more.
Add 4 cups beef broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Let simmer 1 1/2 hours, or until meat is tender.
Add the rest of the ingredients to the soup pot. Simmer slowly until vegetables are cooked.
*** I like to use 1 lb. of diced left-over pot roast instead of the stew meat. If you do this, skip the 1 1/2 hour cooking time for just the meat, sauté the celery and onion and garlic alone and then combine all the ingredients and let simmer.
This works well in a crock pot – because you don’t have to really watch it. Just brown the meat and onion and celery on the stove and then add to the crock pot. Simmer on high for the first 1 1/2 hours if using stew meat. Then on low a few hours until the vegetables are done.
Also made bread to go with it:
And Biscotti:
Other two recipes are copyrighted, so can’t print here… I am so tired… too much cooking…
Here’s now a proper but blurry picture of the poopy seed strudel. 
Today I made a bread again. This time using a bread tin, so it won’t be in the shape of a cake. Good again and nice. 
As an addition to the parsley potatoes, carrot and pepper marinated filets, I made a pepper sauce for the first time. Delicious!
This week has been unsually hectic at work, but I have still been plugging away with some creative time.
13th: edited episode 39 for Potter Fic Weekly. Soon to be released!
14th: baked some wonderful flax bread from my own recipe
15th: finished the 7″ for the leg of a pair of stripy socks
16th: cast on and knit the ribbing and 4 pattern repeats of the leg pattern on the Bellatrix socks
About a year ago, my husband decided to eat more naturally. Over the course of the year, he’s cut out all high-fructose corn syrup, white flour and sugar, transfats and fried foods. And looks great for it too! (there are always exceptions for holidays, nights out to dinner, etc, but he mostly sticks to it!)
So, I’ve been making all our bread…100% all natural.
I don’t have any pictures this evening, but my house smells great, so I know I made it!
5 tsp yeast mixed with 2/3 cup warm water
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup dry milk mixed into 2 cups warm water
2 1/2 tsp salt
Combine all above ingredients.
Add 5 cups whole wheat flour ( I use my kitchen aid)
When that’s all mixed in, add about 2 more cups whole wheat flour…until it “looks right” :) and knead in the mixer for a couple of minutes.
Let rise for 1 hour.
Divide into two loaf pans and rise about 45 minutes.
Bake at 350 for 25 minutes uncovered, then cover with foil (to keep it from burning on top) and bake another 40 minutes.
mmmmm, olive loaf. one of my favorite breads. as always, the recipe can be found in the bread bible. That’s where all my recipes have come from.
The biga is the start. A small amount of the ingredients to get the yeast going. The finish, the loaf hot out of the oven and on the cooling rack.
At my parents house, you can always count on there being jars of my dad’s dark chunky marmalade in the cabinet and a loaf of soda bread on the countertop. I must be homesick, since I spent today making those two things. The marmalade turned out nice…dark and caramelized. The soda bread I had some problems with–I think I must have lost count while measuring flour and not put enough in, because although it had a beautiful crust, the inside was doughy and uncooked. I just kept it in there at a low temp until finally it was done. It’s edible, but not great. (though with a heap of marmalade on it, you can’t tell)
Well, I’m catching up on the last four days!
On Friday the First, I helped my three-year-old daughter, Piper, finish making (decorating, really) a calendar for herself. When I kiss her goodnight, she always asks me what we’re going to do the next day, and I thought she might appreciate being able to anticipate certain events a bit more. She coloured in all the birthdays of family and friends, and I drew a few little pictures of things coming up in the next couple of days (visiting friends, Gramma & Opa Snowbird coming home from Texas, etc.).
On Saturday the Second, I made two loaves of bread. I have been making bread remarkably consistently since the beginning of the year, a bemusing pleasure - the pleasure at the thought that I can maintain the discipline, the pleasure of feeling the dough beneath my palms and the simple pleasure of creating something from nothing (nothing you can eat straight, anyway!).
On Sunday the Third, we hosted a Stuperbowl party (that’s what I was calling it, anyway!). About half an hour before guests were going to show up, I decided to whip up a curtain for the kitchen window. I’d been mulling over the idea for a little while, after my husband built the shelf for plants above the sink. I love the colours of this fabric (City Park, by Alexander Henry) - I think I’ll buy another yard so I can have a bit hanging on each side, when it’s open, and so it’s more ruffly when it’s closed. I love how it changes the feel of the sink area, and I love the idea of having plants there. I’ll paint pots to match, and blog about that another day sometime soon.
And today, Monday the Fourth, I took the time to make myself a healthy, yummy lunch - kind of a stirfry - inspired by a book I’m reading on detoxing. I’m not fantastic at lunches. I don’t really do sandwiches, and usually hope there’s leftovers in the fridge that will work for me and the kids, but today, I put the effort in, and felt the emotional benefit of that for the rest of the day, I reckon. I was planning on painting the pots to match the curtains - I bought some paint today - but by the time I had the space to do so, it was feeling like a chore, not creative at all, so I took myself off to bed for a kip before dinner - a better choice!
My pirate WiFi connection disappeared last week, so I just worked out a bridged router solution with a progressive-scooter-dude-neighbor over the weekend. I’m still two posts late, but they’re coming people. Here’s what I’m working on this very minute:
Inspired by the prolific Beef this last Saturday, I’m making my first ball of Artisan bread. Heard about how to do it on the radio and looked it up on the web. http://splendidtable.publicradio.org/recipes/accompaniments_fiveminute.shtml You can make a batch with 3-4 ingredients and a little stirring, toss the risen result in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, then just slice off a glob any time you want to bake a really tasty bread. This is just the Dough at the beginning of the rising period. The smell is inspiring. When I held the bowl up to the kitchen wall, Ms. Liberty seemed to approve.
Below is what the science experiment looked like after 90 minutes. The perfect excuse to nibble a bit. Ahhhh. Fresh rising dough flavor tastes like a promise you know will be kept =)
we’ll limit the words tonight - but youtube is not working atm, videos added later.
bread
pasta
(more…)
OK, so maybe ‘loaf of bread’ doesn’t count as making something, but I think it should. I have never made bread this particular way before, so I’m calling ‘new thing’ and ‘creativity’. Also, it was SO GOOD, I couldn’t stop…I had to slice it and grab a hunk before I could even photograph it. Mmmm. Breeeead. Of course, I needed to make bread, since we used up all the bread yesterday making the turtle. No, my things won’t all be food. But I’m also thinking about making some strawberry jam tomorrow…
Lately, I’ve been exploring more of the food side of things. i bought a book on Charcuterie and a book on bread making. Now I have countless of weeks of enjoyment ahead of me.
Today was all about cooking.
I had some breakfast sausage that was waiting to be used. So I whipped up a nice little sausage/pepper/garlic quiche to start the morning off.
The highlight of the day was the finishing of the drying of my pancetta. I actually began the process about a month ago. But the drying and the unveiling of the project was today. Took it down from the hook and sliced it open.
Fried it up and ate a few pieces. Wheeee, I love pork.
My loaf of rye bread was next on the agenda.
(more…)
My son, Spud, had a flyer from school about making ‘bread clay’…that is clay out of stale white bread, glue, and food coloring. So we tore up three slices of bread into tiny bits, added three tablespoons of white glue (which had been colored with some candy-coloring), and then kneaded the Sam Hill out of it. It turned into this mushy mess…let it stand for ten minutes or so, and then it’s soft but not sticky. Form into a ball, squish, make head, legs, and tail, decorate with circles, and voila! Bread clay turtle!
(I didn’t post yesterday, but I actually made TWO things yesterday — that loaf of white bread, and the signatures for an upcoming journal project. YAY!)
I finally got around to sewing tool kits from felt. The large one on the left is for my paintbrushes and watercolour pencils. The one on the right is for my drawing pencils, extra leads, and art gum eraser. I got the basic pattern from Dory Kanter’s book, Art Escapes. The felt backing is about 14″ high and as wide as you need to hold your tools. The pocket front is the same width and 5″ high. A doubled ribbon is sewn to the right side so that you can fold down the top flap, roll the whole thing into a bundle, and tie it neatly. It would have been fun to make them different colours but it’s not easy to find usable sizes of felt at reasonable prices at my local craft store in Jerusalem, so I ended up buying a single piece of purple felt and cutting it up. When I have more time, I may replace the ribbons with grosgrain ribbon (more durable than regular satin ribbon) in different colours.
Sourdough bread recipe
The comments on my posting yesterday requested the sourdough bread recipe. It’s rather sketchy, so you may want to go to www.sourdoughhome.com if you’re really new to sourdough. First you need a starter.
Starter
Combine 1 cup water and 1 cup flour in a glass jar or plastic bowl, cover with a clean tea towel or handkerchief, and let sit until bubbly. This is the trickiest part, catching a starter. I had no luck in Boston or Toronto, but in the Negev desert I have managed to catch wonderful starters. Probably a dry climate helps. When foamy like a milkshake, add another cup of water and flour, stir, and cover loosely. Refrigerate.
Your starter will need to mature and you have to feed it with equal parts flour and water every week or two to keep it alive. It should be fairly thick, like gravy or porridge.
Bread
The night before you want to make bread, take a cup of starter and add a cup of water and enough flour to make a soft dough. Cover with a clean towel and let it sit overnight. In the morning, add a couple tsp of salt and enough flour to make kneadable dough. (Note: this quantity produces one large loaf, 2 small loaves, or 3 mini-loaves. I usually make 3 mini-loaves because I have a small family and we need the 3 loaves for the Shabbat meals, supplementing the third meal with a frozen pita.)
Knead for about 15 minutes. If your dough is really cold because your flat is as cold as mine, zap it in the microwave oven for 20 seconds. Let rise for at least 2 hours. Punch down and knead. Shape into loaves. I prefer to rise mine on ‘couches’ made of flour-impregnated tea towels. Preheat oven to 450 F. This sounds really high but you need it for the oven spring to get nicely risen loaves (don’t try it if you have a sweet glaze or fruit or something that burns easily on your loaves). Flip onto a preheated oven tray using a peel or cookie sheet. Bake until done–about 35 to 45 minutes. Cool on a rack.
It will take some trial and error because your starter and oven are not the same as mine. Good luck!
P.S. Sourdough also makes fabulous pizza dough. Just mix a cup of starter with enough flour to form a dough, let it rise all day on the counter, roll out, put on sauce and toppings, and bake at 400 F for 25 min.
