Potluck.

I hosted a "potluck." Nobody else brought food, except for some chips and dip. I'm okay with this- I love to cook and cooked way too much, but I have to note that people here suck at potlucks. (Although the homemade bean dip was very good.)

I made this stuffed pepper recipe from the Deborah Madison Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone cookbook. I used green peppers from my garden instead of red. I skipped out on the bread crumbs because I don't have a food processor/good way to crumble bread. I love the stuffing a lot. I think next time I try this, I will just cut up the peppers and put them in the mix. No point in stuffing. Makes it too hard to eat.

(I also made a tomato pasta dish that I don't care to elaborate on. It wasn't wonderful. I think I will freeze it though- it would be good in soups.)

For dessert I made strawberry cupcakes using overly ripe strawberries from my health food store. It told me to puree, but again, I have no food processor, so I mashed them up with a potato masher. (I'm not actually sure if it is technically a potato masher. That's just all I've ever used it for. Until yesterday.) I iced the cupcakes with this super simple frosting. The cupcakes ended up tasting almost like strawberry shortbread- the strawberry flavor wasn't entirely throughout the entire cupcake, but it was pretty decent.

Swiss Chard

I have a lot of swiss chard in my garden and had no idea how to cook it. This is a variation of several recipes I found online.

2 tbsp olive oil
large pinch of red pepper flakes
a large teaspoon of pre-cut, ready to go garlic
large bundle of swiss chard (washed and cut into approx. 1 inch strips)
teaspoon of butter
salt

In a large pan, let olive oil, red pepper flakes and garlic sautee for about a minute. Then add swiss chard.

(My swiss chard filled the pan)

Let this sit for about five minutes. Stir. Cover for about five minutes again. Add teaspoon of butter and salt. Stir. Eat.

(I ate mine with the bread I made the other day.)

I am very certain that I used far too many red pepper flakes. I think I seriously underestimate red pepper flakes. I liked the dish, but probably would have liked it more with less red pepper.

Also...

I think it should be noted that cold, very lightly sauced leftover spaghetti with the fake shaker Parmesan cheese is a wonderful, wonderful meal. Also, split peas are decent cold. I have not yet mastered split pea soup.

Ad Libbing Bread...

I dearly love bread. And I love having the capability to make my own bread. I haven't figured out how to make it quite as wonderfully as many other people have.

Today, I looked for something simple (since I have a limited number of ingredients), finding this recipe. I thought, since it was simple, it would be okay for me to modify slightly. This is what I ended up putting in my bread machine:

1 1/8 cup Water
3 cups Whole Wheat Flour
1 1/2 tablespoon Sugar
1 (hefty) tablespoon Honey
1 1/2 teaspoon Salt
2 teaspoons Dry yeast

I noticed, when my machine was kneading, the mixture looked much stickier than the last recipe I used. The last recipe, however, looked fairly dry and lumpy when kneading. This one was much smoother. Not sticking to the sides of the pan or anything- just sticking to itself better. I don't know if this is good or bad- it's just a variation in the recipes.

Last time, a little bit of dough got pushed up onto the edge of the pan during the kneading process. Just a tablespoon or so. It happened again this time, so I opened the machine and put the little bit of dough back in the mixture. Didn't seem like a big deal. I came back about an hour later and saw that the time was still the same- apparently I didn't close the door to the machine all the way. I started it back up again- it was in its rising stage at that point, so I figured that the dough just had more time to rise.

I don't know if it was the extra stickiness, the extra rising time or the fact that this was the first time I have reassembled the machine after washing it, but when I pulled the loaf out after letting it cool, the little spinners at the bottom of the machine (two black removable paddles that do the kneading) weren't attached to their pegs anymore. They had come up into the dough. One was just about a quarter of an inch into the dough (but was still cooked into the loaf, nonetheless.) The other was nowhere to be found. I poked at the loaf a little and found it in the middle of the loaf- it had obviously traveled since it detached, which causes me to think that this happened during the kneading process (as opposed to the extra rising.) I don't know if it's because of the extra stickiness, which I assume would be because of the largish glob of honey that I added to the recipe, or if it would have happened regardless...

I do believe that this affected my bread. The bread is pretty dense- no air bubbles. It has a decent flavor- still not quite like the pros. It's crunchy on the outside, but not near as much as my last one- it's a pleasant crunch. I'm letting it cool on a cutting board right now- it's cut in half (because I had to take out the second paddle.) I will go back to it before the night is over and put it in a bread bag. We'll see if it changes texture any overnight (like my other one did.)

(My camera battery is dead, which is why you don't have pictures. If I can find the charger in the near future, I will post pictures.)

Simple Sandwich

I haven't been around my own computer lately with internet access.

Just wanted to show you all this glorious sandwich that I conquered earlier this week:It's made of homemade bread, fresh picked lettuce from my garden and extra sharp white cheddar cheese. I wish I had a tomato, but this simple sandwich was quite good enough for me at the end of a busy day.

Whole Wheat Bread, Eaten!

Once the bread finished, around midnight, I had a very hard time waiting for it to cool. I waited for about three minutes, grabbed a potholder and went for it.







The outside was pretty crunchy- and there's a lot of outside surface because it was so oddly shaped. I thought it might have been a little on the dry side, but totally not intolerably so. I spread some butter on it and was super happy.

This morning, the bread was entirely different. It is very possibly due to the fact that I put the bread back in the loaf pan, covered it with plastic wrap, put that back in the bread machine and covered it with a towel. (We have knats who really like food. I'm trying to discourage them.) This morning, the bread was much softer and much moister. It was a wonderful breakfast.

I think next time I use this recipe, I'll add a little more butter, and maybe a little more honey. When I was eating it this morning, I came across a sweet spot where there was just a very light drizzle of honey left. It was delicious.

I have good feelings about this bread machine.

Whole Wheat Bread

I am currently making my first loaf of bread ever. A friend let me borrow her bread machine and my current housemate and I decided to use it.

I found the recipe on the internet.

1 1/3 cups milk
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons honey or sugar
4 teaspoons margarine or butter
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 active dry yeast

(In my bread machine) Add ingredients in order listed; wet first, yeast last. Select "basic" cycle. This is going to take three and a half hours.

The anticipation is killing me!

Pancakes

I made these on my first official day in the SENS house- my first cooking project to get to know the kitchen.

I found it on the internet.

1.5 c. flour
3.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/4 c. milk
1 egg
3 tbs butter, melted

Mix all dry ingredients. Make a well and pour wet ingredients inside. I used butter in a cast iron skillet. Reloaded the butter in between every couple of pancakes.

Very good and simple. The butter gives it an excellent flavor. Worth repeating.