Rainy Morning Breakfast

I woke up Tuesday morning to a dreary rainy morning, and what better for a rainy morning than a stack of fresh fluffy pumpkin pancakes?  So I got up and found a recipe and got to work, hoping to surprise Philip with a good breakfast.

 

 

While I was standing over the stove cooking 2 pancakes at a time I had this crazy thought.  I wished that I could capture the scent of these pancakes cooking and staying warm in the oven, and find some way that whenever you read this post you got a taste of that wonderful smell.  Knowing this isn’t possible the best I can do is tell you to make them so you can experience it for yourself.

I found a recipe for Pumpkin Spice Pancakes over at Joy The Baker and decided they were what I wanted to make.  These were ridiculously simple to put together and absolutely delicious.  I would never guess just by taste that they have any whole wheat flour in them, they were flavorful and oddly enough fluffy and dense at the same time.

Philip got his serving of pancakes while I was still cooking, and I held my breath as he tasted, knowing that with the pumpkin dislike it might not be what he wanted.  He took his first bite and when asked how they were he made a face that I couldn’t quite decipher so I turned back to the stove worried that they were a bust.  When I turned around after flipping the ones still in the skillet he had just about finished his plate and I knew that they were, in fact, a hit, when I had to tell him to wait to have seconds till after I was able to eat my first serving.  So good even someone who doesn’t like pumpkin devoured them in a matter of seconds, I think that speaks for itself.

 

Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

From: Joy The Baker

 

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

2 Tablespoons brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg

pinch of ground ginger

pinch of ground cloves (omitted)

1 cup milk

1/2 cup canned pumpkin

1 egg

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil or melted butter

 

Whisk together dry ingredients.

In a separate bowl combine wet ingredients

Pour wet ingredients into dry and stir until just combined.  It’s ok to have a few lumps, you don’t want to over mix the batter.

Let batter sit while you heat the skillet.  (The trick I was taught for testing whether the skillet is ready is to sprinkle a bit of water on the skillet and when the water dances around a bit the skillet is hot enough)

Melt a bit of butter or oil in the skillet and drop on about 2 Tbsp batter.  Once the batter starts bubbling and the edges are firming a bit, flip.

 

Set the oven to 200* and have an oven safe plate ready to keep the pancakes warm until they are all eaten.

 

This recipe made about 23 pancakes for us, which we enjoyed them with maple syrup that first morning.  The leftovers made several appearances later in the week, several times I spread them with cranberry juice we had in the fridge and topped that with maple syrup, and that was delicious.

Pumpkin Puree

Before Sunday the only experience I had with whole pumpkins was gutting them and carving Jack-O-Lanterns and the last time I did that was years ago (unfortunately, I think I need to make sure I do it again next year).  I’ve also never really cooked much with pumpkin, growing up we never really had anything pumpkin except pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving and our family Christmas celebration, and since moving out I didn’t try till last year because Philip has told me he hates pumpkin.  Last year, however, I decided I wanted to make some pumpkin baked goods and I didn’t care if he ate them or not so I bought myself a can of pumpkin puree and baked.  That actually was the spark that inspired me to start this blog, unfortunately I hadn’t saved the recipes I used.

So fall rolls around this year and I start seeing pumpkin recipes showing up all over the place, and decide that once again I need to cook with pumpkin this year, and as I recall, Philip didn’t complain about the pumpkin last year.  I wanted to take an extra step this year though, and decided that since I’ve been trying to eat fewer processed foods I would go ahead and make my own pumpkin puree.  So I looked at several blog posts about this, and I Googled it and everything I looked at said something different so I came to the realization that it didn’t really matter exactly how I did it as long as I baked the pumpkin until the flesh was soft.  That being said, here’s how I did it.

 

 

Pumpkin Puree

 

1 Sugar Pumpkin (mine was about 4.5lbs)

 

Preheat the oven to 375

Cut the pumpkin in half and scoop out the seeds (since my Jack-O-Lantern carving days I’d forgotten just how difficult it can be to actually get all the seeds and stringy bits out, but I managed it with minimal amounts of pumpkin splattered all over the kitchen)

Cut pumpkin into chunks (I cut it into 8ths)

Place on aluminum foil lined baking pan and bake for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  (I wasn’t sure how to put my pumpkin on the pan, flesh or skin up, and I put it flesh up.  I think I’d do that differently next time as the outside layer of flesh turned out a bit tougher than I expected.  I actually covered it with aluminum foil about halfway through the baking because I was worried about it drying out too much)

Once the pumpkin is baked so that the flesh is tender (tested with a fork) take it out of  the oven and let it cool enough to handle.

Scoop the flesh from the skin and put it in a food processor and blend till smooth.

 

 

Find pumpkin recipes to fill your house with the aromas of fall.

 

I had my frustrations while making this, but mostly because I get impatient.  For example, it really is important to let the pumpkin cool before scooping the flesh out, as I nearly burned my hands several times trying to do this step too soon.  However, I found it rewarding and feel much better using this puree as opposed to canned because it came from my kitchen and I know that it is pure pumpkin with nothing added.

Now I just have to keep finding recipes that call for pumpkin, not too difficult especially this time of year so expect some pumpkin goodies coming soon.

Cornbread Deliciousness

First of all, I know I’ve been neglecting the blog.  Unfortunately it’s not just the blog that’s been set aside, I’ve been neglecting my kitchen a bit.  Between a weeklong vacation in June and two weeks staying with my parents in July I kind of stopped cooking for a while but I’m working on getting back on track with it, and the first recipe back is more bread.

Once again it was time for our Sunday potluck with out twenties and thirties group at church, this time I was a bit more prepared than last.  I knew a week in advance that the main dish was going to be chili and that I was going to bring cornbread, the question was what recipe to use.  I have made Ina Garten’s Cheddar Jalapeno Cornbread for a choir dinner and it went over very well at that event (and we absolutely loved it), but I discovered we have a couple people in the group who don’t like jalapeno so that was out.

I briefly thought about using that recipe anyway and omitting the jalapeno but decided against that partly because I was hesitant about the amount of butter her recipe calls for, and partly because I wanted to try a new recipe.  Now, I’ve had my fair share of dry, crumbly cornbread and was a little worried about randomly picking out a recipe to serve to a group and having it turn out poorly but I figured I’ll never learn unless I just go for it.

I decided that I’d go with a King Arthur Flour recipe, one of their guaranteed recipes at that, so I had a little bit of confidence that It would be pretty tasty.  This recipe was ridiculously simple to put together and start to finish, including baking time, was well under an hour.  I pulled it out of the oven and waited impatiently for the muffins to cool so we could try one before giving them to others.  As soon as they were barely cool enough to handle I grabbed one and ripped it in half to share and it looked delicious and we weren’t at all disappointed when we bit into it.  This recipe makes wonderfully moist cornbread that’s just a little sweet, and I will absolutely be going back to this recipe in the future.  There was also a general consensus among the church group that it was delicious.

Along with being an excellent side with chili I also enjoyed it warmed a bit, topped with butter and maple syrup which was also delicious.

 

Cornbread

Source: King Arthur Flour

 

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup cornmeal

1/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups milk

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 large egg

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 375.  Grease your pan of choice (It calls for a 9-inch pan, I doubled the recipe and made 12 muffins then the rest baked in an 8-inch square pan).

Whisk together flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Stir in any extras you might want to add, you can add in herbs, cheese, corn kernels, green onion, jalapeno, etc. up to 1 cup.

In another bowl whisk together milk, melted butter, and egg.

Pour the liquid ingredients into the flour mixture and stir gently until just combined.

Spread batter in pan, or muffin pan.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the edges begin to pull away from the pan and a toothpick comes out clean. (I baked the muffins for about 18 minutes and the 8-inch pan for 25)

Remove from oven and cool on a rack for 5 minutes before cutting; serve warm.

If you’re looking for a good cornbread recipe, I highly recommend giving this one a try.

Missing Ingredients...

A couple weeks ago we had a pot luck dinner to go to at church. Sunday morning I still hadn't decided what to make, but I was thinking I'd go with something simple like macaroni and cheese. That is, until I was told that someone else was planning on lasagna and I decided that lasagna and macaroni and cheese might be a bit much for one meal. I came home and was trying to come up with something by looking through recipes when a lightbulb went off.

What do you have to have with lasagna? Garlic bread!

OK, that will work, I guess I could just go pick up a loaf or two of french bread, slather it with garlic and butter and stick it in the oven but I decided that would be too boring, so I decided to look through my recipes to see if I could find something that I'd be able to make in the 3 hours I had.

I settled on the Cooking Light basic dinner roll recipe because the timing looked about right and I only had to pick a couple things up at the grocery store before I started baking.

After a quick run to the store I got to work mixing the dough. Working as quickly as I could because I had such a limited amount of time. I got everything mixed, stuck the dough in the dryer to rise, then got it back out to shape. I formed them into three different shapes and managed to find room in the dryer to stack 2 pans to let the rolls rise again.

Here is where I added the garlic. While the rolls were rising I mixed up some melted butter with a couple cloves of minced garlic and basted the tops of the rolls with it just before they went into the oven. They came out of the oven about 15 minutes before we had to leave so I let them cool briefly then piled them into a bowl to take with us. First of all, in this rush to get out the door on time I unfortunately was not able to get a picture of the rolls. Second, one of the rolls dropped on the floor as I was transferring them into the bowl, so we decided to split it before we left. I ripped it open and it looked so light and fluffy on the inside, albeit slightly overdone on the outside, and I was really excited about trying it because it looked so good.

We both bit into our chunks of bread, and something was missing. I have apparently developed a bad habit of forgetting to put salt in baked goods. They were still delicious rolls, just a little bland without the salt, and if I need rolls again I would be happy to make these again.

The recipe is here at myrecipes.com, if you're looking for easy dinner rolls, these are good.

Comfort Foods

We all have our comfort foods, those dishes that you turn to when you've had a bad day or just need something, well, comforting. We all know that frequently comfort foods aren't the healthiest of options, in fact most of my comfort foods are full of gooey cheese. What I have for you today is a slight spin on the classic grilled cheese and tomato soup.

Grilled cheese has been one of my favorite foods for quite a long time, but there are different ways to make and eat it. Eating in the dining halls in high school and college grilled cheese day was always one that I looked forward to, the slightly soggy grilled cheese with melted orange cheese that can be ripped up and dipped into tomato soup. Delicious.

Eating grilled cheese at home was an entirely different story. At home we used white extra sharp cheddar (it's always white, orange cheddar just doesn't taste right to me) and put it on the griddle until the cheese was running out from the bread and the bread was nice and toasted and crispy.

Now we come to todays grilled cheese, which may in fact be the the better of these three. This is my open faced grilled cheese, today with sliced tomato. I only make this version when I have a good fresh tomato, because that's what makes it. Occasionally I'll add bacon or avocado in addition to the tomato, but the tomato is a necessary part.

Here's what you need:

Bread (for however many sandwiches you need)

Cheese (I generally use white extra sharp cheddar, but have occasionally put slices of swiss on top, it really is your preference)

Tomato, sliced

Avocado, sliced (optional)

Bacon, cooked to almost done (optional)

Toast the bread lightly, it will toast more in the oven. Top the toast with a layer of cheese and then top that with tomato, avocado, and bacon, as you like. Put one more thin layer of cheese on top of that, place on a baking sheet and broil until the cheese is melted.

Just look at that warm gooey melted cheese, just slightly browned on the top. It's a great easy meal good for either lunch or dinner. This does come in second to homemade Macaroni and Cheese, but it's a close second, and I'll post that recipe later.

Garlic Brown Sugar Chicken

I was looking for a quick and easy but delicious recipe that I could have mostly prepared when Philip got home about a week ago. I found this recipe on Stephanie Cooks and knew that it would be perfect, and I had everything I needed on hand. I actually started it earlier than I should have so before I put the brown sugar on the chicken I added some chicken broth, covered the pan and let it simmer a bit, I also let it continue to simmer just a little longer covered after putting the sugar on. This was the perfect simple weeknight dinner, absolutely delicious and i will definitely be making this one again.

Garlic Brown Sugar Chicken

4 Servings, I halved the recipe for just the 2 of us.

As found on

Ingredients:

Brown Sugar, 4 tsp unpacked

Chicken Breast, no skin, 12 ounces

Garlic, 1 clove

Butter, salted, 2 tbsp

Salt, 1 tsp

Pepper, black, 1 dash

Directions:

1. Melt the butter in a frying pan

2. Brown the garlic in the butter

3. Add chicken breasts to garlic and butter and cook thoroughly, adding salt and pepper as you like it. (This is where I added chicken broth and simmered)

4. When chicken is fully cooked add brown sugar on top of each breast (1 tsp per breast)

5. Allow the brown sugar to melt into the chicken (about 5 minutes)

6. Serve, we ate it with green beans with slivered toasted almonds.

Rhamkuchen

I made this Rhamkuchen, also known as German Cheesecake, for a dinner with 4 other couples 2 weeks ago and only now am I finding the time to sit down and blog it. When I was little I didn't like cheesecake, it just didn't appeal to me at all. When I was about 11 or 12 I decided that I did, in fact, like some cheesecake, but only the Jello no bake kind. It may have been a couple years after that when mom made this cheesecake and I discovered that I now really like cheesecake, no matter what kind. Since that this has been my favorite cheesecake and it's one of my favorite desserts to make for a crowd because it's simple and usually goes over well.

As usual, when I offered to make dessert for this dinner I knew exactly what I was going to make, and it went over as well as always. I actually had most of them tell me that I'm welcome to bake for them anytime. On that note, on to the recipe:

Rhamkuchen (German Cheesecake)

Source: Mom-beyond that, I don't know

1½ cup rolled Zwieback crumbs
3 Tbsp butter (or margarine)
2 Tbsp sugar

1 lb cream cheese
½ cup sugar
½ tsp vanilla
rind of 1 lemon
1 Tbsp lemon juice
2 eggs, separated
1 cup thick sour cream
1 Tbsp sugar
½ tsp vanilla

Blend the rolled crumbs with melted butter and 2 Tbsp sugar. Press into the bottom of a 9-inch spring pan. Place in warm (150-200˚) oven for 5 minutes to set the crust. Cool.

Warm the cream cheese to room temperature and break up with a fork. Blend in the sugar and lemon juice, rind and vanilla. Drop in the egg yolks, one at a time, and beat well after each one. Beat the egg whites stiff and fold into the mixture with a spatula.

Pour over the crumb base and bake for 45 minutes at 300˚.

Mix 1 Tbsp sugar and the vanilla into the sour cream. Spread lightly over the top of the cake and return it to the oven to bake 10 minutes more.

Let the cake cool and remove the rim of the spring pan.

Banana Sour Cream Pancakes

We had breakfast for dinner earlier this week, which I love doing because I love breakfast foods, but I'm not big on eating that much in the mornings. Pancakes are one of those essential breakfast foods, but I hadn't yet found a recipe that I really loved until now. I decided to try Ina Gartens Banana Sour Cream Pancakes from "Barefoot Contessa Family Style." Unfortunately I now can't post the recipe because the link I used is now gone, and I can't seem to locate it. What I can say is they were amazing, I loved how dense they were (much more so than most that I've made) and it was also the first pancake recipe I have made that actually made the exact number of pancakes that the recipe expected. All in all, serving these with fresh strawberries and honeydew melon, smothered in real maple syrup, was wonderful and I will be hunting down the recipe again so we can make them on a somewhat regular basis.

So, for those of you who may be reading this, do you have a favorite or fall back pancake recipe? If so, please share, I'll be sure to give it a try.

The Husband Cooks

I just need to tell you how much I love having a husband who cooks for me on occasion. I would say throughout the week that we split the cooking about evenly, although frequently he will take over the main dish and I still have to worry about the sides or making sure everything gets cleaned up. Every so often, however, like the other night he tells me to sit down with a glass of wine and banishes me from the kitchen.



The other night was one of those nights. We had this menu planned and put it off a couple nights because we didn't have time, but finally Sunday we decided we were going to have it, and he kept to his desire to fix this meal almost entirely unaided.

What he made was the Mushroom Crepe Cannelloni out of the Complete Cooking Light Cookbook. I know that there have been some issues with posting Cooking Light recipes in blogs so I'm not going to post it here, but it was an excellent meal.

I would absolutely make this meal again, although next time I think we would make the crepes ahead of time so it's not quite as time consuming, over all I think it took him close to 2 hours including the crepes. I also have to brag that I seem to be able to get Philip to eat foods that he pretends to dislike, such as mushrooms. When we picked this meal, I had looked at at in the cookbook but hadn't suggested it because I know that he's not big on mushrooms and had already agreed to one mushroom dish, but then he suggested it and I figured we might as well go for it.

It has a wonderful flavor combination with tomato, parmesan, and mushroom all balancing each other quite well. One thing that did stand out to me while we were eating is that the mushroom filling incorporates a dry white wine, we got a Barefoot Sauvignon Blanc and we decided to each have a glass with dinner, assuming it would go quite well with dinner. It was a good wine and I'd had several sips of it before I started eating, however when I had a sip after taking a couple bites of food it actually made me shiver. The wine did not pair with the food at all, it's possible that with a different wine it would be different, but this one just didn't work.

Muffin Frittata

We've been trying to make our menus for the week on either Saturday or Sunday so we can get our grocery shopping done for the week on the weekends when we have the most time, so we sat down on Sunday afternoon and wrote out our menu, unfortunately without leaving time for shopping. Somehow yesterday afternoon came around and I realized somehow we had skipped Monday night, Monday nights are difficult to begin with because we have limited time for dinner with choir rehearsal and added to this was our unusually bare pantry and fridge. I remembered that we had discussed having eggs but needed to figure out how to make it a little more exciting than just plain eggs.

I did hesitate a bit on posting this recipe because I didn't measure anything, so it's a little haphazard. I'll give it my best shot, but I can't quite guarantee results. I'm slowly becoming more adventurous in the kitchen, just a few months ago I was obsessive about following recipes to a t, now I've gotten into the habit of guessing amounts and am starting to venture into my own creations.

Spinach Muffin Frittata

1/4 Large onion

Handfull fresh spinach, chopped

A couple sprigs parsley, chopped

6 Eggs

1 Scallion, finely diced

1/2-3/4 cup Part skim ricotta

3/4 cup Shredded parmesan

1/4 cup Goat milk feta cheese

Preheat the oven (and muffin pan) to 375*

Heat some olive oil in a skillet over medium heat, when oil is hot add onions and cook until starting to brown. Add spinach and parsley, saute until wilted and moisture dissipates some. Set aside to cool some.

In a medium size bowl beat eggs then add scallion and the cheeses. Once those are mixed together add the spinach/onion mixture.

Take the muffin pan out and spoon mixture into the muffin tin, each to about 3/4 full. I got 11 out of it, putting about 1/4 cup in each.

Bake at 375* 20-30 minutes until set and browned.

They came out really well even though I realized after I put them in the oven that I had completely forgotten to put any salt or other spices in. I will definitely be making them again, altering them to whatever veggies and cheeses we have on hand or are in the mood for. I also estimate that 2 "muffins" makes a serving.

Chocolate Mint Cookies

I know I've been bad about blogging lately, but holidays just eat up time. We spent a wonderful and much needed 10 days in Vermont visiting my family for Christmas and New Years but it is nice to be back home now. A week or so before we left I decided I really wanted to make cookies, but I wasn't sure what we really had on hand or what kind I wanted to make so I pulled out my Cooking Light Complete Cookbook and found a really easy recipe for Chocolate-Mint Cookies, which taste just like soft thin mints.

Now, I'm not sure if it was just the recipe or if I did something off but my dough seemed really sticky, not only when I was rolling it into a log but even when I took them out of the freezer they weren't as solid as I expected and was tricky to cut. They still came out delicious although perhaps not the prettiest cookies.

Chocolate-Mint Cookies
Cooking Light Complete Cookbook

1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup packed brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons butter, softened
3 tablespoons applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon peppermint extract
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
Cooking spray

Lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flour, cocoa, and baking soda in a small bowl, stirring well with a whisk.

Combine brown sugar and next 5 ingredients in a medium bowl; beat with a mixer at high speed 2 minutes. Beat in egg white. Add flour mixture; beat at low speed until well blended.

Coat hands lightly with cooking spray. Shape dough into a 6-inch log. Wrap log in plastic wrap; freeze 1 hour or until firm.

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cut log into 24 (¼-inch) slices, and place 1 inch apart on baking sheets lightly coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 10 minutes. Remove from pans; cool on wire racks.

They were wonderful soft and chewy thin mints and they didn't stick around for long, but there are a couple things I think I'd do differently next time. First of all, I think I will dust off our stand mixer and see if using that won't billow flour and cocoa all over the kitchen the way my hand mixer did, and second I will either freeze them for longer, or I'll just make them as drop cookies instead of slicing them. I suppose it depends on how adventurous I'm feeling.

I Love Bread!

I really love making bread, because even though I get frustrated sometimes and feel like it's not coming out well, it's really really hard to mess up bread. I have to say, though, that I will never use a bread machine or electric mixer to make it, at least not an electric bread machine, I crank the dough by hand in a bread bucket mixer that I will never, ever give up.

This is how my mom taught me to make bread, and thankfully she had 2 bread buckets, so when I moved out she gave me one. I've been wanting to post about some bread that I made a few weeks ago, but I waited because I wanted to be able to show pictures of my process, as I know it's a little different from what most people use now.

The first thing I do, of course, is proof the yeast with sugar and warm water and let it sit for a few minutes while I make sure I have everything else ready to go.

When the yeast starts bubbling and foaming a bit, you know that it's active, if the top of the mixture stays flat, it's time to toss that one and try again. Next I add the butter, milk, and honey followed by the egg yolks, salt, and first of the flour, and this is when I dump it into the bread bucket to mix it.

I mix with the crank as I add the flour until the dough stops sticking to the sides of the bucket, and appears to be forming a nice ball around the dough hook. Here's what the whole setup looks like:

Once the dough is mixed, it comes out onto a floured mat, I knead it a bit and then put it in a buttered bowl to let it rise. It usually takes about an hour for it to rise to double it's size, once there, I separate it into 2 even balls, knead it just a bit and form into loaves. They go in buttered bread pans and rise for another hour.

Growing up, when we made bread it always sat next to the wood stove to rise, because it was a nice warm place. The first time I made bread in our house I had no idea where to put the bread, as we keep our house around 63 degrees, and that's not nearly warm enough for the bread. I have recently discovered that the best place to keep it here is in the dryer after letting it run for a few minutes to heat it up.

I just wonder how Philip must have reacted when I sent him a message in the middle of the day to tell him that the bread was rising in the dryer.

Now, after all that work, all you need to do is pop the loaves into the oven and let them fill your house with the wonderful smell of freshly baking bread (in my opinion one of the best smells ever).

Well, if you made it through all that, I'll talk a bit about this particular kind of bread. I had always made the recipe that my mom taugh me, and I believe that particular recipe came from my grandmother, but I found this honey white bread recipe in Ina Garten's "Barefoot Contessa at Home" and decided I'd give it a shot. It's good, we've really enjoyed it as a change from the other recipe because it's light and fluffy where the other recipe is a bit more dense. Each recipe has its place and I will probably switch between them from now on while maybe exploring some new recipes every now and then.

Now we're finally on to the recipe:

Honey White Bread

(makes 2 loaves)

½ cup warm water (110 degrees)
2 packages dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 ½ cups warm whole milk (110 degrees) I used skim, and it was just fine
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 ½ tablespoons honey
2 extra-large egg yolks
5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 egg white, lightly beaten

Place the water in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment. If the bowl is cold, be sure the water temperature doesn’t drop below 110 degrees. I measure temperature by warming the water in the tap and when it feels warm on my wrist it's about the right temperature. Add the yeast and sugar; stir and allow them to dissolve for 5 minutes.

Add the milk, butter, and honey. Mix on medium speed until blended. Add the egg yolks, 3 cups of the flour, and the salt. This is where I moved the mix to the bread bucket. Mix on low speed for about 5 minutes. With the mixer still on low speed, add 2 more cups of flour. Raise the speed to medium and slowly add just enough of the remaining flour so the dough doesn’t stick to the bowl. Add the flour slowly; you can always add more but you can’t take it out. Knead on medium speed for about 8 minutes, adding flour as necessary.

Dump the dough out onto a floured surface and knead by hand for a minute, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Grease a bowl with butter, put the dough in the bowl, then turn it over so the top is lightly buttered. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and allow it to rise for 1 hour, until doubled in volume.

Grease two 9 x 5-inch loaf pans with butter. Divide the dough in half, roll each half into a loaf shape and place each in a prepared pan. Cover again with the damp towel, and allow to rise again for an hour, until doubled in volume.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. When the dough is ready, brush the tops with the egg white and bake the breads for 40 to 45 minutes, until they sound hollow when tapped. Turn them out of the pans and cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

First attempt at chick-fil-a inspired chicken...

One thing that I'm working on doing is creating recipes. I've always been jealous of the people who can just grab a bunch of things out of the fridge, throw it in a frying pan or in the oven, and come out with something absolutely delicious because I've never felt I can do that. I've been stuck on the things that I know I can cook, those things being eggs, any way you want them, pasta (mainly easy stovetop macaroni and cheese), and bread. Those are the things my parents taught me how to make, and things that I've been cooking since I was a kid, however I'm now working on branching out.

On that note, here's what inspired me to try my hand at just throwing something together. I love Chick-Fil-A, it's really the only fast food I ever eat, but unfortunately, since my gallbladder surgery I'm afraid to eat it because it was the only thing before the surgery that actually made the pain unbearable, so I decided to try to make my own imitation. It was pretty good, but it definitely needs some more experimentation. I kept it pretty simple this time because I wasn't sure how well it would come out and now I have something to build on.




Here's what I did:

I took one large chicken breast (I thought it was 2 in 1 package when I thawed it, thankfully the one was big enough for both of us) and marinated it in Claussen kosher dill pickle juice overnight.
I put panko bread crumbs, with some onion powder and garlic powder, rolled the chicken in the mix to coat it. Then placed the chicken in aluminum foil and baked it at 350 for about 50 minutes.

Really, really simple, and really good, but next time I think I'm going to try regular bread crumbs. I also think I'm going to at least add some smoked paprika, and maybe a bit of white pepper to give it a bit more flavor. I would say that marinating the chicken in pickle juice gives it a good and different flavor.

Corn and Kielbasa Chowder

I've been really wanting to make soups lately (I guess it must be the weather), but haven't found many recipes that I've tried yet, this Corn Chowder was wonderful though. I don't often eat corn chowder, I think because I love clam chowder so much, but Philip can't eat seafood, and really enjoys corn chowder I thought I'd try this recipe that I found on http://www.carriessweetlife.com/. I'd say it was a hit, especially since Philip has requested it be his dinner on Christmas eve. It's a tradition in my family that my mom makes clam chowder on Christmas eve, so we now have to make some corn chowder alongside that so Philip has something to eat.



This was another pretty simple recipe, with an easy ingredient list. The only thing that I changed was that I only used half an onion where it calls for 2. It worked out well but I think next time I'll use a whole onion, still not the whole 2 though.



Here comes the recipe:



Corn and Kielbasa Chowder

8 oz. kielbasa cut lengthwise and thinly sliced
2 onions finely chopped
1 T. butter
One 14.5 oz can chicken broth
1 lg baking potato peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 c. half and half
1 1lb. bag corn thawed
Salt and pepper
Fresh dill for garnish (I omitted this)

Heat a deep skillet or a wide 4- to 6-quart pot over medium-high heat. Add the kielbasa and cook, stirring, until lightly browned, about 6 minutes. Transfer to a plate.

Add the onions and butter to the pan and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until golden, about 6 minutes.
Add the broth and potato and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover with a lid and simmer until the potato is tender, about 10 minutes.
Add the half-and-half and corn and cook, stirring, until heated through.
Using a blender or food processor, puree 1 cup chowder until smooth. Stir the puree back into the chowder along with the browned kielbasa and season to taste with salt and pepper.
Top with the dill.

Apple Streusel

Well, I'm finally getting to posting the food, so here goes.



I found the recipe for this Apple Streusel on http://jesstyler.wordpress.com/ and thought it looked really good, and it's apple so I can pretend it's healthy, right?

Having really just gotten into baking and cooking more I decided to start with something very simple, and this definitely fit. It took about 15-20 minutes to prep, most of that was time spent slicing the apples, and I just had it baking while I fixed dinner on the stove.

Alright, now on to the recipe:



Apple Streusel
From Penzeys

As found on http://jesstyler.wordpress.com/

Ingredients:
3 good-sized fresh apples - Cortland or McIntosh are best (I used McIntosh)
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp. vanilla
Topping:
1/2 stick cold butter
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.
Grease bottom only of small casserole dish (4 cups or so).
Peel and core apples and slice and place in a bowl.
Top with sugar, cinnamon and vanilla, toss to coat. Set aside while preparing topping.

Make streusel by cutting the cold butter into a bowl, adding flour, sugar and cinnamon and rubbing it through your fingers until streusel is course texture.
Put the seasoned apples into pan and top with streusel.
Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes until the streusel is golden brown and the apples are starting to bubble up through the topping

Getting Started

After recently getting my kitchen cleaned up I have discovered how much I really do enjoy cooking and baking, and what better way to keep myself inspired and remember what I've done than to record it all in a blog. This will follow my adventures in trying to fix and create good and healthy meals for my husband and myself, and we'll see where it goes from there.