Making Bread

These are cinnamon swirl loafs. I was really baking up a storm...just kidding. I put them in mini-loaf pans. The recipe I followed was from the Bread Bible.

This is zucchini parmeasan loaf from the Martha Stewart recipe collection...love Martha.

Cinnamon rolls...yummy. Most cinnamon roll recipes taste the same to me. This one included, the main difference is the bread is very sweet and soft. I used buttermilk, instead of milk. I used pure maple syrup in the frosting.

Finally figured out almond gravy...yippy

There is a restaurant in Portland that sells biscuits and almond gravy, and it is so good. Ever since I have lived in Bethel I have attempted to make this gravy, and everytime was a disgusting clump of ickyness. Greg reminds me that the only meal that he did not like was my biscuit and gravy. Well last night I finally made it right, and it tasted just like the restaurant. As Martha says, "It's a good thing."

The recipe is simple..figures:

2 T butter or oil
3 T flour (white or whole wheat)
2 c milk or vegetable stock (or even water, if you don't have anything else)
1 c ground toasted nuts (cashews, almonds, pecans...)
Salt
Pepper
Directions Heat the butter or oil in the saucepan, until melted/hot. Whisk in flour and stir continuously for one minute.
Remove from heat for 2-3 minutes.

Return saucepan to stove and whisk in the milk and nuts. Simmer, stirring constantly, until thickened, 3-5 minutes.

Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Finally ate the spagetti squash

I have never baked spagetti squash, because it always went bad. I finally used this squash that came around Thanksgiving time. It was pretty good tossed with butter and basil. We ate it with some potatoe casserole, with my last onion and a can of tomatoes. Greg pretended to like this meal, but I could tell it made him sick. Just like eating a steak would make me sick :)

Plenty of Zucchini and yams

I forgot how much I love zucchini. I have not ate it as much since I found out that Greg does not like zucchini very much. I secretely have been adding it to stuff without greg knowing. It turns out that he likes zucchini as long as he does not know it's in the meal. This was a very good meal. I julienned the zucchini and onions and added basil, mozzerella, and olives. Very yummy!



I am running out vegetables and once again only had zucchini, onions, yams, and elephant garlic. So I diced all these vegetables up and sauted them, added a can of tomato sauce and waited for them to get soft and mix nicely together. I put them in the food processor and added about 1/3 cup of milk and some parmesean cheese and threw them over whole wheat pasta.....really yummy! I didn't tell Greg what was in it, but he asked if I put yams in the sauce because it was orange. I told him that I added milk to the red sauce which really would have turned it pink but he was sufficed with this answer. He liked it end of story. Ruby liked it too! I probaly liked it the most.

organic food with wings

All of this cost 60.00, yes it's true. Seems like a lot of money. Usually I pay 44.00 but I bought some extra onions and elephant garlic. This is still cheaper than Bethel produce, and it is flown over 2000 miles by Alaska Airlines, so it gets to my house in really good shape. Our supplier is Full Circle Farms in Carnation Washington.
fullcirclefarms.com
let see, we got:
1 elephant garlic
1 regular garlic
4 kiwis
4 lbs of potatoes
spinach
carrots
cucumber
6 zucinni
6 garnet yams (I like that name)
basil
6 onions
2 green bell pepeprs
4 apples
4 really yummy red pears
4 oranges
brocolli

My favorite pizza dough recipe

Notice the bubbles...I love bubbly pizza

Thin-Crust Pizza Dough

1 1/2 tsp. active dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
3/4 cup warm water (about 105°F)
1 cup cake flour
1 cup plus 3 Tbs. all-purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp. kosher salt
2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil

In a small bowl, whisk together the yeast, sugar and warm water and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes.

In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the dough blade, combine the cake flour, all-purpose flour and salt and pulse 3 or 4 times.

Whisk 1 Tbs. of the olive oil into the yeast mixture. With the motor running, slowly add the yeast mixture to the flour mixture, allowing each addition to be absorbed before adding more. Pulse the machine 10 to 15 times to knead the dough. The dough should clean the insides of the bowl but will be slightly sticky.

Coat the inside of a large bowl with the remaining 1 Tbs. oil. Dust your hands with flour and remove the dough from the food processor. Form the dough into a ball and place in the bowl. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in size, 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Divide the dough in half and roll out as directed in the pizza recipe. Makes two 10-inch thin-crust pizzas.

side notes:
I actually make cake flour by adding 2 tablespoons of corn starch to the flour. I also added gluten flour

Williams-Sonoma Kitchen. (Given credit where credit is due)