Things I've been making and eating lately

Most of the reason for this blog is so that I can find good recipes that I've made before.  Of course, I created this blog (and its predecessor) long before Pinterest.

The other useful thing to me, is to look back and scroll around and see what our menus were long long ago.  Sometimes I get in a rut!  I need new things.

I've made Peanut Lime Dip (see "Favorite Recipes") a few times lately - great with noodles or as a veggie dip.

I started baking sandwich bread, so that I can avoid getting plastic bread bags.

I made my first loaf of gluten free bread this weekend.  It's...okay.  Better than not  having bread.  It's not cheap, but cheaper than buying it.

I tried a new recipe for chili.  It was good, but not better than my regular chili.

Recipe Links - focaccia and orange muffins

Because these days, this blog has devolved back into what it was in the first place - a location where I can find the good recipes that I've made before...I'm posting links.

You see, finding the "right" recipe is hard.  Remembering it?  Harder.  Sometimes, I print out recipes.  I have a PILE over the microwave.  If it's good, it stays.  If not, I toss it.

Sometimes, I find a recipe on Pinterest. If I like it?  I copy it over to the "recipes I've made and like" file.

Sometimes, one of the recipes from my cookbooks is awesome, and I put it on the "cookbook" tab.

Sometimes, I made up a recipe and posted it here years ago.

Today, it's a couple of links for things we've made this week.  That I want to repeat.

First: orange muffins.  We used lemon and blood oranges.  Should reduce the sugar by 1/2 cup next time.

http://www.feedyourtemptations.com/fresh-orange-muffins/

Second: rosemary garlic focaccia.  Now, I used the focaccia recipe in my bread machine instructions, and just added the garlic and focaccia on top.  That was yummy BUT messy, as the garlic and focaccia just kept falling off.  So TODAY, I put it in the dough, and we'll see how it tastes.

https://www.keyingredient.com/recipes/222623649/shaved-garlic-and-rosemary-focaccia/

Soup and Bread!

Soup and Bread: a very frugal meal.  Not so easy to pull off in 100 degree weather.

Well, this week a few things happened.

It cooled down a bit, all the way to the 80s.
My little guy and my husband got a tummy bug (new rule, NO MORE PIZZA NIGHTS for FUNDRAISERS - from now on I'm donating $10 and eating at home.  This is not the first time.)

So soup and bread are easy on the tummy.

Getting sick is hard and easy on the budget at the same time.  Hard because some of the food you have goes to waste.  I tossed a pound of turkey that went uneaten, and 32 oz of yogurt that expired before we even opened it.  Also hard because I end up buying special foods, like gatorade and applesauce.

On the other hand, plain pasta, homemade bread, and saltines are cheap.

So, can I take credit for using a recipe in a book if I just sort of used it?  I started with the recipe for minestrone from American Wholefoods Cuisine by Nikki and David Goldbeck.  Great book.

But I used it as a general jumping off point.  My soup had some spinach (because we had it in the box), tomato sauce, water, a bouillon cube, carrots, onions, and pasta.  I left out the beans because of the tummies.  I added dried basil, extra garlic, and fresh parsley (because we had it in the box).

It was so good!  I made rosemary olive oil bread to go with it.

I have no pics!  But it is soup.

So this week, assuming the other two members of the family -ahem- dodge the tummy bug bullet - we have a lot of veggies to eat.  I have two pounds of roma tomatoes.  I have a roasted tomato and white bean soup in one of my cookbooks...that might have to be where we put those.  The last few times I've made the Prudent Homemaker's tomato basil soup, it's been too acidic.  I must have changed the type of canned tomato.

Also have lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, carrots, corn...probably some other stuff that isn't coming to me right now.

The Produce Box

So, we are trying a new thing this year!  Our CSA has been suffering because of the drought. They ended early last year, and haven't started up yet this year.  Our neighbors have been getting a local produce delivery for awhile now.  When they are out of town, they have us go over and put it in their fridge.  Bonus: it's still local (farmer's market, including our CSA farm), AND they deliver it.

The only downside is that it's more expensive.  Oh, and I have to prep and figure out what to do with it.  Our grocery budget is about $100 a week, give or take, and this is $40.

Well, we got our first box yesterday, and here's the haul.
1 bunch carrots
1 bunch celery
3 lbs oranges
1.5 lbs apples
1 head red cabbage (it's huge)
1.5 lbs spinach
1 head lettuce
1 bunch cilantro
2 lemons
1 pound broccoli
1 head garlic

So, what to do, what to do?  I have to tell you, I am NOT feeling the food prep today.  I know it's how we survive the week. But I am super duper tired from lack of sleep.  I've had a chest cold/ bronchitis.  And this week was the school move-a-thon, which I was in charge of running.

And other stresses are that I was at our potluck today, half way through eating, when one of the guys talked about how sick he was with food poisoning 2 days ago.  Ugh, it better be food poisoning.  We've had the stomach flu 3 times this winter already.  I've had contact with too many people with stomach flu!  It's been a gnarly season.

So here's the plan:
Red cabbage slaw with carrots and apples and blue cheese and walnuts (need to buy blue cheese)
Celery and carrots raw with PB or hummus
Lots of salad with lettuce and spinach and diced oranges
Steamed broccoli
Lemon herb salad dressing
Raisin bread

I've already made some fried rice and put it in the freezer.  I will toss the cilantro in there later. I don't have much meat right now - or what I do have is frozen solid.  I really need to plan better, and take stuff out of the freezer on Thursday night.  I have to go get the blue cheese, so I think I'll get some frozen chicken tenders and some sort of sauce from Trader Joe's.  Maybe chicken curry, or BBQ chicken, or something like that.  Tonight might be a good night for salad and nachos.

Super Frugal and Delicious Tomato-Basil Soup and Rosemary Olive Oil Bread

I love baking bread, but rarely have the time. Even though it's not a lot of "hands on" work, it is "time sensitive".  I'm at work all day, so weekends are it.  So I have to set  my day in a way so that I can actually be at home for the various parts of kneading, shaping, baking etc.

I managed to do that last Saturday. I'm a fan of The Prudent Homemaker on line and on Facebook, and she had posted a pic of her Rosemary Olive Oil bread on FB.  That inspired me.  I generally try to follow bread directions exactly, but he batch was too big for me and I wanted to use my bread machine. 

I also had a bread recipe from America's Test Kitchen that I've successfully morphed into the bread machine.  My problem with their recipe is that you preheat the bread at 500F.  My oven is not so great at that temperature.  The Prudent Homemaker uses baking sheets, and I use a pizza stone.  America's Test Kitchen sprays the bread for 15 minutes to get a crust, The Prudent Homemaker uses a tray of water (and some other recipes bake inside a cast iron pot.  But I digress.)

So here's the recipe in the end, combining The Prudent Homemaker, The Bread Machine book, and America's Test Kitchen.

Rosemary Olive Oil Bread (adapted from The Prudent Homemaker)

2 c. bread flour: 0.52

2 1/4 c. all purpose flour: 0.46

1 3/4 c. water

2 Tbsp sugar: 0.04
2 tsp salt

2 tsp yeast: 0.04

2 Tbsp rosemary: 0.15 (usually this is free, but my husband killed my rosemary plant)

2 Tbsp olive oil: 0.18

Total: $1.39

Place all ingredients in bread machine in order determined by bread machine.  Put on dough setting and run.

After the dough cycle is done, dump out onto a flour dusted counter.  Dimple the dough with your fingertips.  Shape into a loaf:  Pull two opposite sides of the dough into the center.  Repeat 2 more times, going around in a circle, form it into a ball.

Place a piece of parchment paper on a rimless cookie sheet, and put the bread, seam side down, on top.  Cover with a clean towel or cooking-spray coated plastic wrap.  Put in a warm place to rise.  Let rise 45 minutes to 1.5 hours, until doubled in size and the dough springs back slowly at the touch.

Adjust oven: Put baking stone in the center and a rack below.  Preheat oven to 450F.  Let baking stone preheat for 30 minutes.  

Right before baking, place a shallow pan with water on the bottom rack.  Remove the plastic from the bread, and slice an "X" in the top of the bread with a sharp knife (I SUCK AT THIS).  Slide the parchment paper with the dough onto the baking stone.  

Bake at 450F for 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes, reduce heat to 400F and bake for 25 more minutes, until internal temperature is 200F.

Transfer to a wire rack, discard parchment, and let cool for about 2 hours before slicing.

Enjoy.  My family LOVES this bread.

I made this with The Prudent Homemaker's Tomato Basil Soup.  I cannot believe I never made this before.  It was SOOO good.  I had a bunch of tomatoes in the freezer from a #10 can.  We have been collecting carrots from the CSA.  I found chicken stock from 2011 in my freezer (yeah, I tossed that).

Tomato Basil Soup (from the Prudent Homemaker).  Follow the link for the instructions!

2 Tbsp olive oil: 0.18

1 large onion, chopped: 0.50

10 carrots, peeled and chopped: 0.80

1. 5 Tbsp dried basil: 0.23

2 cloves garlic, chopped: 0.10

2 28oz cans diced tomatoes: 1.50

4 cups chicken broth: free (make my own)

1 can evaporated milk: 2.00

Total: $5.32 for 16 cups, $0.33 per cup

Pasta casserole and homemade bread

Note: This was last weekend - I never finished the post.  This weekend we did the fundraiser for the school, so I did pretty much zero cooking.  But I did pick blueberries and make freezer jam!

Boy, busy day.  Started at 4:30 when I just woke up for no good reason.  I was about to fall asleep again at 5:50 when the boys woke up.  And, we've been going ever since!

I have big plans this weekend for cooking.  Tonight: pasta/ veggie/ meat casserole with marinara made with a #10 can of diced tomatoes (a #10 can of diced tomatoes is 102 ounces for about $3).  I also made a (somewhat failed) loaf of bread in the bread machine.  I did not put the paddle in right and it baked into the bread.  And the bread is small.  The last two weeks I also made bread from scratch and they didn't rise very well.  Sometimes, it's because my ratio of water to flour is off.  This time, I'm suspecting my 3 year old yeast.  I've been keeping it in the fridge, but at some point, it becomes ineffective.  I think I paid $3 for 2 lb at Costco 3 years ago.  Time to recycle the yeast.

This whole pasta bake thing is a lot of work though. I like to "use up" my CSA veggies. So I had to wash and chop  a huge bag of chard and kale, chop and onion, chop some frozen peppers from last year, puree the diced tomatoes.  Cook the pasta, stir it all together with meatballs from the freezer, then kinda chop the meat with the spoon.  At least I didn't have to shred the cheese - we had some in the freezer already.

There's a big thread on grocery costs this week on our local FB "swap" board.  We seem to have a range of folks who spend $150/week (for 4) to $500/week.  Big difference!  I think the difference comes down to three things, mostly:
1.  If you pay any attention to prices at all, or not
2.  If you buy mostly local/organic/free range.  It's a thing here - easy to do in our climate, but expensive
3.  If you count wine/ toilet paper/ diapers in your budget.

I used to track my grocery spending closely (you can look back in the history to see the year that I alternated months of $320 and $160 through September).  But we were tracking our expenses in Quicken.  We don't have the time to do that anymore (I would break out the grocery from the "personal" items like TP, for example).  We just started using mint.com now, and as far as they are concerned, Costco is groceries - so our $40/month diaper bill and our toilet paper, drugs, etc. get counted as groceries.  I'm going to run with it and just add those into our budget I guess.

Here's the breakdown on last night's meal:

Herb bread:
2 cups bread flour (0.60/ lb): 0.41
1.5 cups whole wheat flour (0.60/lb): 0.31
1.25 tsp yeast: 0.05
2 T oil: 0.09
1 tsp salt: 0.01
3T parsley: 0.30
2T caraway seeds: 0.30
2T sunflower seeds: 0.30

Total: $1.77 for one loaf, which tasted good even though the paddle ended up stuck in the bread.  We ate 1/3 the loaf.

Pasta Bake
1 box whole wheat rotini: 1.00
70 ounces of diced tomatoes from a #10 can: 2.02
1/2 can tomato paste: 0.25
3 cloves garlic: 0.15
1 onion: 0.20
1 bell pepper: 0.50
12 ounces frozen meatballs: 1.50
1 bag of chopped kale and chard: 1.00
oregano and basil: 0.40
10 ounces sliced mushrooms: 2.29
4 ounces shredded mozzarella: 1.00
2 ounces parmesan: 0.75.

Total: $11.06 for a VERY heavy 9x13 pan.  This will probably feed us 5 meals.

We also had leftover carrot soup from the freezer, probably $1.00 worth.

Total for last night's dinner:
0.59 (bread) + 0.30 (butter) + 2.21 (pasta) + 1.00 (soup) + 0.50 (crackers) = $4.60

And for tonight:

Roasted potatoes:
2 lb organic potatoes: 1.60
2T oil: 0.09

Fejoida:
1 lb black beans: 1.00
1 onion: 0.20
1 cup diced tomatoes: 0.23
hot peppers: 0.25
Total: $1.68 for enough fejoida for three meals.  We ate them as nachos the next two nights.

My first "Sabbath"

So this was the weekend where I tried to institute a "Sabbath".  A day (mostly) off from chores, and a day for fun.

On one hand, this means all chores end up squished into one day.  On the other hand, I just did fewer chores.

On Saturday, I baked bread.  This is huge people!!  I don't have time to bake bread when I have a baby/ toddler.  Until age 3, cooking is dicey.  I made Moroccan lentil soup to go with it, and it's a pressure cooker recipe (you can find it on my "favorite recipes" tab).  I was going to have salad too, but didn't feel like it, so the lettuce is still unwashed in the fridge.  (Maybe for dinner tonight??)

This bread is sage-apple bread based on a yeast bread recipe by Mark Bittman.  A friend brought it to a housewarming party last weekend and I demanded the recipe.


On Sunday, I consider cooking to be a chore (well, cooking with kids around), so we had Teriyaki chicken in the crockpot, rice in the rice  cooker, and steamed broccoli in the microwave.

Teriyaki chicken dinner:
~3 lbs chicken breast: $5.71
80% of a jar of teriyaki marinade: $1.60
2 cloves garlic: $0.10
grated fresh ginger: $0.10
Total for chicken: $7.51
This is about 9 servings, give or take. $0.84 per serving

1 cup uncooked rice (cooked): $0.19 (6 servings) = $0.03 per serving.

12 oz broccoli: $1.50 (5 servings): $0.30 per serving

We celebrated our "Sabbath" by going on a 6 mile/ 3 hour hike with the kiddos.  It was fun but at one point we lost the trail (well, you cross a creekbed many times.  This time of year, it's dry.  So you get lost for a little bit trying to find the trail).  Anyway, I stepped off a rock onto what looked like solid ground.  Eh, not so much, it was quicksand.  Here are a few photos from the hike.

And...there may have been McDonald's for lunch after, and I may have split a hot fudge sundae with the boys.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

I do love a good meal of Corned Beef and Cabbage.  Last year I didn't cook any because I was pregnant and had no energy.  This year I was nursing and had no energy...and there was that birthday party for my seven year old to pull off.

But I can't walk away from a good sale.  While cabbage was 39 cents a pound this week, I didn't buy any - we had WAY too many greens from the CSA, there simply wasn't room.  As it is, I didn't even finish the collards, carrots, beets, or turnips from the week.  I did buy a single package of corned beef.  I have this GREAT recipe for corned beef from a cooking class that I took.  At least, I think I still have it somewhere.  It involves boiling the corned beef, cabbage, carrots, potatoes and onions, then tossing the vegetables with a horseradish butter sauce.  The beef is then roasted with a mustard brown sugar glaze.

Yeah, I didn't have time for that.  But on Tuesday, I put the corned beef in the crockpot with some leftover chopped onion that came with the sandwiches for the birthday party, and a bunch of leftover baby carrots from the veggie tray.  I didn't have beer so I used water. 

It was pretty tasty.  Not awesome, but okay.  Didn't make very much though.

As far as the rest of the Irish dinner...I've been hankering for some Irish soda bread.  I got home early enough today that I decided to give it a try.  It was tough going because I had to bake the bread, make 2 batches of kale chips, then bake the chicken fingers...dinner was a bit late but it made it to the table about 20-30 mins after normal time.  So I got my Irish on, but on different days.  By the way, my ancestors are mostly German.

Next up: easter.  Ham is on sale...probably will buy one this weekend.  The rest of the week will be full of greens...collards (2 bunches), kale (2 bunches), lettuce, spinach...leafy leafy!

Rosemary and Cheese Scones

I used THIS RECIPE, and edited a bit based on some recommendations by other users and other recipes.  I added 1 Tbsp of sugar and decreased the baking powder to 1 TBSP.  Then I added 1/2 to 2/3 c of cheese and 1 TBSP dried rosemary.  SO easy and these are the BOMB.

Key Lime Bars and Homemade Rolls

So, the problem with me blogging a day or two after making something is that I'm too tired to actually type up the recipes.  I'm sorry.

On Saturday, I made an early V-day gift for my spouse (who hates chocolate) - key lime bars from last month's Taste of Home cookbook.  It's got a crust of vanilla wafers and nuts and butter, a first layer of cream cheese and sugar (and I added the zest of the limes), and then an egg/lime juice layer.  Very tasty, but could be a bit tarter.  I can't imagine what it would have been without the lime zest (which wasn't called for in the recipe).

Last night we had soup and rolls.  I was going to make Split Pea Soup, but had a bit of food poisoning or something from a bad burrito on Friday night.  Or maybe I just have a sensitive stomach.  But really, I generally have an iron stomach.  Instead I opted to make the rolls using the bread machine recipe and open up a carton of Imagine garden tomato soup (low sodium).  With kale chips.

Tonight I roasted a bunch of veggies...fennel, beets, brussels sprouts, and onions (can you guess what we got from the CSA?)  Turns out, my kid doesn't like fennel either.  Hub and I don't care for it either.  Served with rice pilaf from a box and frozen breaded chicken.  A working mom's best friend.

Black Bean Chili and Beer Bread and GREENS

Lots of greens this week from the farm.  And I had a head cold most of last week, so I wasn't feeling the green veggies.  So I'm playing catch up.  Salad for lunch with "spicy greens" - which my coworker said looked like lawn clippings.  Tasted a bit like it too. :)  Actually, there was probably a little dandelion in there.  I topped it with leftover tri-tip and some balsamic vinaigrette.  I keep some Trader Joe's dressing in my work fridge.

Broccoli and bok choy, with a cheese and tri-tip quesadilla

I've also been catching up on other greens.  Yesterday, it was kale chips (with the beer bread and black bean chili).  Today, it was stir-fried purple broccoli and bok choy (and leftover potato kale/cabbage soup).

Spicy greens, broccoli, kale, chard, red cabbage, bok choy.  I've been going nuts with the greens.

Kale chips and beer bread (with cheese and dill)

Black bean chili

For the Super Bowl, I decided to make two recipes that came via email from Farmgirl Fare. They looked perfect.  I'm not a huge football fan (unless we're talking the Steelers), and truth be told, we turned the game on around half time (I was cooking dinner and said "is that MADONNA? What decade is it?", and started watching somewhere in the 4th quarter.  Spouse isn't a football fan either.

These recipes were delicious.  The beer bread was tasty (and is the only way I'm gonna get beer for awhile), and the chili was awesome too.  I added some roasted poblano peppers, because I found them in the freezer.  I get a ton of them over the summer at the farm, and roast and freeze, then forget about them.  Some are really spicy and some are not, and I'm leery of adding too many to my food because of the kid factor.  Me, I love spice.

I made bagels!

And burritos.  The burrito filling:

Pinto beans (cooked from dried), onions, tomatoes, garlic, peppers, corn, rice, cumin, oregano, chili powder, S&P.  This was dinner on Thursday and Friday, lunch today, and probably lunch tomorrow.

The bagels came from this recipe using the bread machine.  I was inspired by my neighbor who made them for her hubby's birthday a couple of weeks ago.  They were pretty easy!  And only about 13 cents per bagel.  Can't wait to have one for breakfast.  I topped mine with sesame seeds and coarse sea salt.

Fine Cooking - Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread and Roast Chicken

So, I started getting Fine Cooking by subscription recently.  My son's school was selling magazines, and this is one that I will buy whenever traveling for airplane reading.  I get good tips and recipes, including ginger-glazed carrots, that stay in my repertoire.

This month was no exception.  They had a good article on roast chicken (I know, me? roast chicken?).  And on how you can roast two chickens and eat for a week.  It used to be that one chicken lasted us two weeks, but we were mostly vegetarian then.  Now we are three people, and I've learned that it's easier to maintain my weight if I eat more meat, because I get less hungry.  Too many carbs = hunger for me.

The recipe this month was for citrus roasted chicken.  I did not buy two whole chickens and break them down myself as recommended.  I did not buy two cut-up chickens from the farmer's market, at $23 each.  I did buy two cut-up kosher chickens from Trader Joe's, at $10 each.  Sometimes, you compromise.

I edited the recipe a bit.  I generally don't buy whole lemons - my neighbor has a tree.  In season, I pick 'em (with his permission), and then zest and juice them and freeze both in ice cube trays.  So, I used 4 cubes of juice/zest.  I didn't use oranges - I subbed our tangerines from our tree out back.  I also didn't read the recipe until 2:30 pm, so the chicken didn't get the recommended 6-12 hours of marinating (only got two). I also edited the cooking temp/time for my oven, and for the fact that I forgot to reduce the temp. It was still quite tasty.

Citrus roasted chicken
2 chickens, cut into 8 pieces each (legs, wings, thighs, breasts)
4 Tbsp olive oil
4 cubes of lemon juice/zest (about 1/3 to 1/2 cup)
3 tangerines.  Zest and juice two and slice the third.
8 cloves garlic, pressed
3 Tbsp soy sauce
1/2 Tbsp honey
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
S&P to taste

Mix the lemon juice, tangerine juice and zest, garlic, soy sauce, red pepper flakes, and honey.

Place the olive oil in a roasting pan large enough for all the chicken to lay without overlapping (I use my turkey roaster).  Swirl it around.  Place the chicken in the pan.  Pour over the marinade.  Cover with plastic and refrigerate up to 12 hours, but two will do if that's what you've got.  Or 1/2 hour.  I don't know.

Preheat oven to 425F.  When ready, turn chicken to skin side up and add salt and pepper.  Roast for 45 mins at 425F.  The skin is supposed to get brown. Mine didn't really, and that's with doubling the recommended time at 425F.  Reduce heat to 375F and cook 15 more minutes.  My oven is low and slow, so I always need to up the recommended baking/cooking time.  Just saying.  YMMV.

I served this with fried potatoes and kale chips.  Gotta have the messy kale chips the night before the cleaning person comes.

The leftovers are destined for chicken salad sandwiches, chicken and bean burritos, and maybe some chicken fried rice.  I saved some of the pan juices.  They recommend risotto, but I'll probably go with the fried rice.

I also started the day by trying out cinnamon raisin swirl bread from the same issue.  Again, my house is on the cool side, so even with extra time on the stove top with the stove on warm, it didn't quite rise like I wanted it to, so the bread is a little bit dense.  But still delicious.  Should freeze a loaf so it doesn't go bad.

The recipe calls for using the stand mixer, so it really wasn't that hard.  I started at 7 am and was done at 11 am.  Next time I might try the bread machine though.

Macaroni and Cheese Week...and...when life gets in the way

You know how you sometimes have those weeks that are SO busy you cannot even think of blogging?  Well, this week was like that.  Who am I kidding.  Every week is kinda like that.  This was no exception.  But I remembered to take pictures!

So what I have for you, my friends, is not recipes.  It is photos and descriptions, so you can see what is seasonal and delicious in Southern California in October.
Scrambled egg with chicken and homemade salsa and cheese, with Martha Stewart's Soda Biscuits on the side (this was breakfast):

Pantry/Freezer meals, week 1

I made a serious effort to eat foods out of my freezer(s) this week.  My small freezer in the laundry room doesn't have much in it.  Some popsicles, some bread, a steak, and a piece of liver I bought at the farmer's market.  And a bunch of chicken stock.

The above-the-fridge freezer is a different story.  Bread crumbs, frozen fruit, frozen veggies, bread heels, and some unidentifed items wrapped in foil  (turns out, these were pancakes and cooked tri-tip, but not together).

My pantry is not much better, with rice and pasta and beans and things that I stopped eating when I went low-carb.  I've kind of drifted away from the low-carb thing, and I'm actually not feeling all that healthy about it.  Ah well, it's a process.

Last weekend I made another loaf of no-knead bread.  This time it was rye bread.  I used up some rye flour and caraway seeds from the pantry (well, I didn't "use them up").  The Cook's Illustrated bread recipe calls for beer.  I found one dusty beer a few weeks ago in the laundry room, and have been using it for the no-knead breads.  I just stick a wine cork in it and put it back in the fridge.

Rosemary Olive No Knead Bread

This recipe originally comes from Cook's Illustrated and I love it.  It's so easy.  But you have to remember to mix the dough up a day before you are going to bake it, that's the only problem.  I also experimented a lot with my pot and my oven and have adjusted the baking temperatures and times to work for me.

Bread calculations

Remember that delicious bread?  Still delicious.  Here's the math:

1.25 cups 7-grain cereal: 0.39
2.5 cups boiling water
3 cups all-purpose flour: 0.56
1.5 cups whole wheat flour: 0.28
4 T. honey: 0.75
4 T. butter: 0.25
2.5 tsp yeast: 0.05
1 T salt: 0.01
3/4 c. sunflower seeds: 0.75
1/2 c. oats: 0.10
Total: $3.14 for two loaves of bread.  Can't beat that!

Multi Grain Sandwich Bread

I have wanted to try this recipe for a very long time, ever since I found it in my issue of Cook's Illustrated.  And I never did.
And for a couple of years, my friend Jean would bring this delicious multi grain bread to our quilting potlucks.   Yummy.

This year, I asked her for the recipe, and lo and behold, they were the same.  I aimed to try to make it two weeks ago, but life (triathlon, husband traveling) got in the way.
So Friday, I took a day off work to be mom, and I used the morning while my son was at kindergarten to try it out. 

Wow, it is so delicious.  A multi-step process, but still pretty easy.  My loaves didn't rise quite as much as I'd have liked, but I was pressed for time to pick up my child from school.  I baked them early.
This recipe is a definite keeper.

Baked Fish and Focaccia

I've been feeling like making bread.  It sort of relaxes me, which doesn't make a WHOLE lot of sense, because I use the bread machine more than half the time (so, not a lot of kneading).  Today I didn't get started in time to do anything other than focaccia.  I used the recipe in my bread machine cookbook, but tried to bake it per Wildly Affordable Organic by Linda Watson.  It was pretty good, but I needed more olive oil on the top (another tablespoon at least - I only used one), and I ended up baking it at 425F for 20 mins.

I also defrosted some white fish (don't remember what kind) and made a marinade similar to the ones in Bikini bootcamp.

Baked White Fish fillets:
three 5 or 6 oz white fish fillets: uh...$5?  I don't remember.

marinade:
1.5 Tbsp olive oil: 0.16
juice of 3 limes: 0.75
juice and zest of 1 very small orange from my tree
1 clove garlic, pressed: 0.05
1.5 Tbsp soy sauce: 0.09
S&P to taste
Total: $6.05 for 3 fillets, or $2.02 per serving.

Mix the marinade ingredients and marinate the fish for 2 hours.  Bake at 425F for about 20 min.


Focaccia:
2 c. whole wheat flour: 0.41
1 3/8 c. bread flour: 0.28
2 Tbsp sugar: 0.05
2 Tbsp dry milk: 0.10
2 tsp salt: 0.02
2 Tbsp olive oil: 0.22
1 3/8 c. water
2 tsp yeast: 0.05

extra flour for kneading: 0.10

Topping:
one clove garlic: 0.05
2 Tbsp olive oil: 0.22
dried basil: 0.02
coarse salt

Total: $1.49 for a very large piece of focaccia.  Probably 16 servings.  $0.09 per serving.

Place ingredients in bread machine pan in order given.  Use "pizza"  setting.  Knead on a floured surface until it springs back at the touch.  Roll/press out like pizza dough onto a piece of parchment paper coated with cooking spray.  Use the end of a wooden spoon to poke holes in the bread every 2 inches.  Cover with a towel and allow to raise until doubled (20 to 60 min).

Saute garlic in olive oil for 30 sec and let cool.  When bread is raised, brush the bread with the oil  using a brush or your fingers.  Sprinkle with basil and salt.

Slide the parchment paper onto the pre-heated pizza stone using a rimless cookie sheet.  Or, just bake it on a cookie sheet.  I baked at 425F for about 20 mins.  One recipe said 450F for 8 mins, the other said 340F for 25-30 min. 

I served this all with a green salad with tomatoes, cucumber, avocado, and goat cheese (balsamic dressing), and some "Texas caviar" from Costco.

Buttermilk Rosemary Cheese Scones

So, remember that buttermilk?  Yeah, I had extra.  So I googled to find a recipe that was easy to make that hopefully would freeze well, as my spouse is out of town.  I found a basic scone recipe, and adjusted it (basically, added cheese and rosemary).

It was another good task that I could do with my boy.  I have to say, though, I must not have shaken the buttermilk enough, because the bottom was really really thick. No wonder it seemed runny when I made the muffins.