Following A Recipe (sorta): Taylor's Piroshki Recipe by TAYLORSMOMMY

My ex-husband LOVES pirogi. (I believe that is the proper way to spell the plural of pirozhki or "piroshki", but I may be wrong. I'm not up on my Russian and am falling back on the wikipedia article on this topic.)

At any rate, he loves those things and buys them at the fair every year. I like thinking about things that I can do for him, and so it dawned on me that although I've never heard of anyone I know cooking these things...Russians probably made them before fairs. haha

So, with amazingly little work I tracked down a recipe (and then tweaked it a bit). The original involves frying, while my recipe involves baking. I realized I could do that from reading all of the comments on the recipe, so I can't take any credit for it. I added garlic and sharp cheese.

This is the first time that I've made a bread with yeast by hand. I think it worked out great!

I ran out of eggs while making this recipe, so I'm reminding myself right now to check the amount of eggs I have before trying this again.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
• 1 red onion, chopped up fairly fine
• 1 teaspoon salt
• a few shakes ground black pepper (to taste)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried dill weed (alter to preference)
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 cup milk
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used canola, and that was fine.)
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 cups all-purpose flour to start (You will add lots more.)
• Around 11 small (1-2cm cubes) sharp cheese
  
  

  Meat section:
  

  1. Brown meat in a skillet, on medium heat. I used the 3 or 4 setting on my stove.  Once the meat looks evenly brown, try to drain off the fat as much as you can. I'm sure that there are great ways to do this, but I sort of tip the pan while guarding the meat with a spatula and draining fat into a container (for later clean up).
  2. Stir in chopped red onion, salt, pepper, dill weed, and garlic. Cook until the onions seem pretty translucent.
  3. Pour meat mixture into a bowl to cool. Refrigerate.

  Bread Section

  1. Pour packet of yeast into 1/4 cup of warm (but not super hot) water. Put it in sort of a warm location, if available. Wait about 15 minutes, until the yeast becomes frothy.
  2. Heat milk in a pan over low heat. I set my burners on 1 or 2.
  3. Combine eggs, oil, sugar, and salt in a small bowl. Put two cups of flour in a different and larger bowl.
  4. When the milk gets warm, add the contents of the small bowl (eggs and such) to the milk. Use a whisk to sort of agitate the stuff gently. As soon as it looks warmed up and well mixed, remove from the burner.
  5. Slowly pour milk mixture into the flour bowl while stirring. 
  6. Add half of yeast solution to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  7. Add a cup of flour to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  8. Add last of yeast solution to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  9. Add another cup of flour to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  10. Assess the texture of the mixture, and add flour until the bread seems to be a dough that forms into a ball and isn't sticking to the bowl. (This took quite a bit of flour when I did it. I probably put another two cups or so into it.)
  11. Knead it to make sure it is evenly mixed, but don't mix it a bunch after it seems pretty even.
  12. Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and set in a warm location. Give it at least 30 minutes. (I didn't notice the dough really rising, but I got tired of waiting after 30 minutes and just did my thing.)

  Putting It Together

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
  2. Get out two cookie sheets, and cover in parchment paper.
  3. Uncover bread dough bowl, and retrieve meat bowl.
  4. Pinch off a handful of dough and roll into a small pizza like disk about 4-5 inches in diameter.
  5. Put at least two heaping tablespoons of meat mixture in the middle. 
  6. Put a cheese cube in the center of the meat mixture.
  7. Close the dough over the meat, and pinch closed.
  8. Roll them slightly in your hands, smoothing any rough bits out. 
  9. Place completed meat/dough sphere on parchment paper covered cookie sheets.
  10. Do steps 4-9 approximately 11 times. In other words, make balls of meat until you run out of stuff.
  11. Let them all sit for about 10 minutes before cooking.
  12. Place in the oven and bake for 18 minutes.

 Verdict: These are awesome! Everyone in the house ate them up, and wanted a whole lot more. My only regret was that I thought that they could have had more meat to the amount of bread. I really liked these, although the prep time on this is sort of outrageous (at least for me). If you don't mind a project, they are well worth the time.

Right out of the oven

Action shot of it being delivered to the ex-husband.

Natural light. The bread really did turn out nice!

YUM!

Baked Zucchini, Yellow Squash, and Purple Potatoes

I sort of winged it, and it turned out decent. The potatoes would have been better if they were cooked for a bit longer though, so I'd tweak that somehow if you decide to do this at home.

Recipe:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Take (something like) three yellow squash, four zucchinis, and four small purple potatoes and wash and peel them. Cut them up into small pieces, and put all of the pieces in a large mixing bowl.
3.  Add olive oil (~2tbsp), garlic powder (~2 tsp), salt (~2 tsp), pepper (~2 tsp), chili powder (~ 1/2 tsp), oregano (~2 tbsp), parsley (~1 tbsp), and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. You're going to have to trust your gut on all of these, and add what seems right to you. I can tell you that I did something like this, and it ended up SPICY and PEPPERY.
4. Use your hands to sort of distribute the spices and oil all over the veggies.
5. Coat a roasting pan with olive oil, and pour the veggies into it.
6. Cook about 25 minutes

Verdict:  
This was super tasty to me, and to my husband! It was mega spicy and peppery though, and I would probably cut the pepper back in the future. Nobody else wanted any part of this dish. It smelled wonderful. I liked eating it with cheese and bread crumbs sprinkled on top, and think I might make a casserole like that in the future. The purple potatoes definitely needed more time, and I think in the future I may want to give them a head start somehow.

Plain

With Sprinkles!

~Patty

Following a Recipe: Baked Kale Chips by LucyDelRey

This year my housemate grew some organic kale, which is awesome...except that you can't really eat kale without doing something to it.

Well, I guess you can.

I just don't know why you would want to.

It is beautiful and easy to grow out here in the Pacific Northwest.

Behold the power of kale!

I was going to bring in a few plants and sauté them, but then things went sideways. I decided to make chips, and I found this recipe for Baked Kale Chips Recipe by LucyDelRey.

I didn't really follow the thing to the letter at all.

Here is the gist:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Get some kale, and take off all of the individual leaves. Wash the kale leaves, and sort of shake them dry. 
3. Take out the tough middle stem parts, and tear into bite sized pieces.
4. Put all of the leaf pieces on some cookie sheets covered in parchment paper.
5. Drizzle with olive oil. I am not good at "drizzling", so I pour some into a tablespoon and drizzle with the spoon. It helps me keep track of how much I am using, and limits catastrophes.
6. Shake some season salt over the leaves. (I think that in the future I want to experiment with my own mixtures of spices.)
7. Bake for about 10 minutes (or until edges are brown).

I think that I probably should have baked mine for less than 10 minutes, personally. They were definitely crumbly.

Verdict:  They made the house smell bad, in my opinion. They were pretty tasty to me though, and addictive. I ate about half the kale without even thinking about it. My child, who hates all green things, voluntarily ate some and liked them. My housemate wasn't pleased by these at all, and made some wistful comments about how it might have tasted if the kale was prepared otherwise...and compared the chips to eating dry tarragon. My mom thought that they were tasty. I'm not sure if I'll do this one again or not. It is definitely fast!

This is what the process looked like:

Raw Kale

Drizzled and Salted

Baked Kale

~ Patty :)

Wikipedia Article on Kale:
"Kale is very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin, and reasonably rich in calcium. Kale, as with broccoli and other brassicas, contains sulforaphane (particularly when chopped or minced), a chemical with potent anti-cancer properties.^[1] Boiling decreases the level of sulforaphane; however, steaming, microwaving, or stir frying do not result in significant loss.^[2] Along with other brassica vegetables, kale is also a source of indole-3-carbinol, a chemical which boosts DNA repair in cells and appears to block the growth of cancer cells.^[3][4] Kale is also a good source of carotenoids.^[5]"

Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies with White Chocolate Chips

I pretty much followed a recipe on this one, with some really minor alterations.

I was having a five alarm sweet tooth emergency at 11pm or so, and tried to imagine what my mouth wanted. It answered chocolate and oats. I looked around for a recipe and found Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies by Norcal. I didn't go too far afield with this, as I'd had some unfortunate hamburger recipe issues earlier in the day (which I'll write about soon).

I didn't have semi-sweet chocolate chips, but I had some leftover white chocolate ones. I like a bit more vanilla in my cookies, and I also needed to cook these longer than was stated in the original recipe.

Darn good cookies, actually.

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups rolled oats
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a bowl with a whisk.
3. Mix margarine, brown sugar and white sugar in a different bowl. Then mix in the egg and vanilla. 
4. Mix the two bowls together, slowly bringing the dry ingredients into the wet ones and mixing a bit after each bit is added. 
5. Mix in oats and choco chips.
6. Put parchment paper on a cookie sheet. (I cannot sing the praises of parchment paper enough!)
7. Spoon out the cookie mixture onto the cookie sheet. I liked 1 tablespoon sized spoonfuls. 
8. Cook for about 11 1/2 minutes. (The original recipe said 8-10, but that didn't work for me very well.)
9. Remove from oven and let them sit on the hot sheet for 5 minutes, then put them on a cooling rack.

 Verdict:

My child ate some, but wasn't in love with them.
I adored these cookies, and so did my partner.  I think that I might want to double this recipe in the future, because I'm going to be out of cookies fast. I think these are some of the best ones that I've baked so far.

~Patty 

Ogre Cookies (Combo Smitten Kitten and Jill Saunders)

Why Ogre Cookies?

They have layers.

I am starting to be a bit adventuresome with online recipes, and I add or subtract things to see what happens.

I also combine recipes sometimes, and that is what happened here.

I was craving a soft cookie that had a couple of different flavors, and a bit of chocolate. I found Brownie Roll-out Cookies by Smitten Kitchen and The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies by Jill Saunders, and I decided to put them together to make something a little like both.

I made the dough separately, and it looks like there is a lot more vanilla sugar cookies than chocolate (if you follow this to the letter).

So, I made the Brownie ones first (and with only a few minor changes):

Choco Layer

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup margarine, softened
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

Don't preheat the oven, because this is going to have to chill for at least an hour. Soften the butter by nuking it for a short time (like 15 seconds).

1. Whisk flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.
2. Mix butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and cocoa in a different bowl. Use a mixer instead of a spoon, or you'll get the same stupid chunks in your dough that I did. That cocoa is insidious stuff that likes to create balls of powder in otherwise nice dough.
3. Mix the dry stuff into the wet stuff slowly. I used my hands to really mix it up, and then I wrapped the dough in plastic wrap and shoved it in the fridge.

Vanilla Layer

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup margarine, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Don't preheat the oven, because you will have to chill this for an hour. Soften the butter by nuking it for a short time (like 15 seconds).

1. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together.
2. Mix butter and sugar together in a different bowl. 
3. Add eggs and vanilla to butter/sugar bowl, and mix together.
4. Stir the dry stuff into the wet stuff, slowly.
5. Mix with your hands, until the dough looks pretty good. Then wrap it in plastic and stick it in the fridge for at least an hour.

Chocolate and Vanilla Ogre Finger Sugar Cookies (Not exactly catchy, is it?)

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
• Grab about a third of the vanilla dough, and roll it out between wax paper.
• Grab a similar amount of  chocolate dough, and roll it out between wax paper.
• Remove the top pieces of waxed paper on both flattened pieces of dough, and then carefully lay the choco layer on top of the vanilla one.
• Remove the wax paper on the choco layer completely.
• Roll the dough into a long cylinder
• Cut the cylinder into 1/4 inch cookies. (I smooshed mine, so that they became long finger cookies.)
• Place them on cookie sheets that are lined with parchment paper. (I'm a huge believer in parchment paper. It makes clean up SO nice!)
• Cook for about 12-14 minutes. Check at the 12 minute mark by sticking them in the center with a toothpick. If you pull it out and it looks like the toothpick isn't wet, and there isn't dough sticking to it...it is done!

This makes a boatload of cookies, and leaves you with a bit of leftover vanilla dough.

The Verdict:

This was a bunch of stuff to go through, and it left me feeling sort of "meh". My daughter felt the same way about them. The two men in the house devoured them hungrily, and raved about enjoying them. These are GREAT cookies to be served with coffee. I've had requests to make them again.

Layers...like an onion.

These are long finger cookies, and that is totally on purpose. It has nothing to do with smooshing the dough when I was trying to cut it into circles. Nope. I'm sure that wasn't the case. *cough*

Cutting Up A Whole Chicken, and Oven Fried Chicken

I'll tell you a secret...

I'm afraid of cooking meat.

I think that I'll do something wrong and kill everyone with food poisoning, and I'm particularly phobic about chicken.

Therefore, it took some courage to decide to look at a whole chicken and decide to cook it in any way. (I've cooked chicken maybe two or three other times, but always in a crockpot. I have produced bland and sad meat that made the baby Jesus cry.)

The first real hurdle was cleaning and cutting up the chicken.

I carefully washed the bird off in the kitchen sink, with just plain water. It was a good idea to get a buddy to turn the water on/off, and make the garbage can available without needing to use my hands. It was also good to have a bowl right next to me to put the bird in, so it didn't drip on the floor on the way to the cutting board.

The CSA that I signed up for plucked and gutted the bird, and I decided to turn to Youtube for the answers to cutting it into pieces.

 

                              How to Cut Up a Whole Chicken - Gourmet Magazine 

This video was super helpful, but cutting up a chicken didn't go exactly like this at all. I had a very crummy dull knife. It is extremely helpful to have a good one, I'd imagine. 

Popping the bones out wasn't exactly effortless either, and I really had to work on some of them. I guess that I have to start working out with weights again. Ha!

 I watched the video once, and forgot some of the steps too...so...I didn't have quite as many pieces. 

The coolest thing about this video is that it gave me an idea of what to do, and it also mentioned kitchen scissors. I finally know what those are really great for doing! 

I managed to do the breastbone part completely wrong, and it was nowhere near as easy as he showed. I'll have to try to improve on that part next time.

I was pretty happy with the end results. I got most of the meat off of the bird, and in a fairly orderly manner. 

I found a recipe that I could use as a jumping off point, Oven Fried Chicken III Recipe by Elizabeth Hinlely.

I changed quite a few things about it. The very first thing was the oven temp. I put it to 375 degrees.

Ingredients 

• 1 whole chicken, cut up into pieces
• 1 cup dried bread crumbs (I used IGA brand breadcrumbs.)
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/8 teaspoon Curry Powder
• 1/8 teaspoon Mustard Powder
• 1 cup mayonnaise

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. Mix dry ingredients with mayonnaise.
4. Rub chicken pieces with mixture. It will be sort of gloppy, and won't stick on the chicken very well. 
5. Put the chicken pieces in a glass baking dish, and then put all remaining glop on the chicken pieces.
6. Bake for 45 minutes. Check internal temperature of chicken with a meat thermometer. It needs to be 160 degrees. If it isn't, put it back in for 5-15 more minutes. 

Verdict: 

 This recipe turned out uber yummy. I left the skin on the bird, because I like it. My partner wasn't fond of the skin, but he removed it easily and enjoyed it anyway.

I'm pretty sure that I'll be doing this recipe again, and I think that next time I want to try using my own (homemade) breadcrumbs and cornmeal. I don't know how to do that yet, but it sounds fun and I think it would taste good. I'm also curious about taking off the skin, dipping these in egg, and then rolling them in the breadcrumb mixture (without the mayo).

~ Patty

Suddenly Salad

I was making that pasta salad that Betty Crocker puts out, and I almost experienced catastrophe.

The pasta is in a plastic bag, and I sort of didn't look in the box and tried to just dump things blindly in the boiling water.

Luckily, I caught both the bag of pasta and the spice bag before it hit the water.


I'm looking at the ingredients for this thing, and it kind of gives me the screaming squicks. I don't want to eat "hydrolyzed corn gluten" and "monosodium glutamate". Those might be great, but I don't want to mess around with this crap. Plus, 770mg of sodium in 3/4 of a cup? Hmmm...

It looks like I could maybe make my own?

Enriched plain, spinach, and tomato pasta... I'm sure that I can probably just buy that, right?

Red bell pepper, parsley flakes, garlic, onion, basil, vegetable oil....

The back of the box gives suggestions for adding pepperoni, broccoli, carrots, olives, and cauliflower.

I just realized that this is what you call "pasta salad", and there are probably a bunch of recipes for it out there.

Some of you may laugh, but if you spend a lifetime not cooking this stuff can feel like a revelation.

Suddenly My Own Pasta Salad...

I'll have to try that.

~ Patty

"He's so greasy he glides when he walks. He goes to the barber for an oil change, not a haircut.'” - S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

I decided that I needed to make my own conditioner, or do some sort of at home deep conditioning.

I'm broke at the moment, and it was unlikely that I was going to get a chance to go somewhere to pick up jojoba.

So, I went to the kitchen and grabbed the virgin olive oil.

"I'll just add a bit to my ends."

Yeah, that is what I thought.

I spread some on my ends, and then sort of over my hair a bit. It seemed like it wasn't really doing anything. I didn't notice much.

"If a little is good, more is better."

This kind of logic sometimes helps to make me one of two things:

1. A happy hedonist.
2. A Regretful rethinker.

I warmed some olive oil in a bowl, and then dowsed my hair with it. Then, I wrapped it in a warmish towel for 30 minutes.

I surfed the internet while I had the towel on my head, and I saw something that disturbed me...and made me think that I might have benefited from some earlier research.

This doesn't bode well.

Hmmm....

Well, I read the article on getting olive oil out of your hair, and it was written by someone that was even more clueless than myself. They pretty much recommended napalm and a blow torch, so I didn't pay much attention.

Still, the idea sat with me and made me uncomfortable.

Then I went to clean my hair.

It looked like I had a bunch of greasy hair snakes spronging off of my head.

No problem, I was going to wash it all out.

I washed with the baking soda shampoo.

Nothing.

This oil was staying IN.

I washed with the baking soda shampoo again.

My hands were still oily when I was done.

Hmm...

I rinsed with the vinegar rinse.

A little bit of relief, but not much!

I rinsed with the vinegar again.

Still oily.

I rinsed my hair in water for awhile, and thought that when my hair dried it would get better.

Dry hair? HAHAH

It has been at least an hour, and my hair is greasy damp.

I'm glad that I don't have to go anywhere until Friday.

Until then, I'll look like one of The Outsiders.

Cool. :/

~ Patty

Edit: I figured out that Dawn dish washing liquid would remove a large amount of the oil. It is still there, but MUCH better after using Dawn. Yeah, that is kind of like nuking your hair from orbit.

The Great Shampoo Experiment III !

Update to the shampoo recipe posted here.

I found out that the baking soda shampoo can leave a white powder in your hair too. I saw some on my brush all of a sudden, and was not pleased.

I used apple cider vinegar for the first time in the rinse recipe, and I noticed that I didn't like it as much. I ended up with the first residue in my hair, and sometimes I felt like the scent of vinegar was lingering a bit.

So, I started over and reduced the baking soda to 1/4 cup and went back to white vinegar in the rinse. I'm already feeling the results, which are very positive.

My hair feels far less heavy using this shampoo/rinse, but I also feel like it is a bit dry. I want to experiment with making a jojoba oil conditioner for occasional use.

My scalp is feeling a LOT more healthy using this shampoo/rinse, and my psoriasis is practically non-existent at the moment. I've also noticed that I seem to have less hair falling out.  Nice!

~ Patty

Following a Recipe: Nana's Mashed Turnip by DARIA K

The organic farm share that we bought into this year gives us boxes of veggies, but they don't have any kind of invoice or information about what veggies they are.

I suppose that they think that if you spend good money on a few months of vegetables, then you are someone that knows what they look like and what to do with them.

Well, I fooled them. :)

I don't know the difference between a turnip and a rutabaga. After searching the internet, I think that the box that they gave me recently contained a few turnips and a rutabaga. I thought they were all turnips, so I used the big "turnip" and followed Nana's Mashed Turnip Recipe by DARIA K. It turned out WONDERFUL! So, this is actually a rutabaga recipe too.

I'd show you a picture of what these mashed yummy things looked like, but we all ate it up before I could snap a picture.

Nana's Mashed Turnip Recipe (turned into a mashed Rutabaga Recipe and slightly changed)

• 1 large rutabaga
• 3 white potatoes
• 1/4 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2.  Peel the rutabaga and the potatoes.
3. Cut up the rutabaga and potatoes into cubes or cube like objects. (It doesn't matter, you are going to mash them anyway.)
4. Put them all in a pot, and add enough water to just cover them.
5. Boil the water, and then cook them for 25-30 minutes.
6. Pour them out into a strainer, and then put them back in the pot.
7. Add milk, 2 tablespoons butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.
8. Mash them up.
9. Put the mixture in a baking dish, put some butter on top, and then put on a loose cover. (I used foil that wasn't tight.)
10. Bake for 15 minutes, and then take the cover off. 
11. Bake for 8 minutes with the cover off, or until things are slightly golden brown.

Verdict: 

These were super easy to make, and folks devoured them. I was surprised to find out that I loved them. It is like eating mashed potatoes, but with a bit of spicy special zing in the mix. Super yummy! I liked these so much that I want to grow rutabagas now.

~ Patty :)

Following a Recipe: Roasted Beets and Sauteed Beet Greens by " BN61079"

(Okay, this is actually a post that is current! I did this tonight!)

I don't remember ever eating beets in my life, and I certainly haven't wanted to do it.

This summer we bought a share in an organic community farm, and they sent three beets to us in the last box of groceries. The beets were the whole plants, with slightly wilted looking greens attached. I looked at them perplexed, and pretty much resigned myself to the idea that they would be rotting in the compost heap soon.

I mean, beets? Wilty beet greens? BLECH!

I asked my ex-husband if he ever liked beets or had a way to cook them, and he said no.

I asked my husband if he knew how to cook them, and he said that they were really yummy pickled (and that you could also roast them and saute the greens).

Well, that didn't sound appealing at all.

That said, my husband is pretty busy these days and I wasn't sure he'd get around to cooking the beets.

My curiosity started to take root.

I found Roasted Beets and Sauteed Beet Greens by "BN61079"  on allrecipes.com, and I figured that I'd give it a go. I didn't even attempt to make everything at the same time, as my brain would have broken. I adapted things just slightly.

Mildly Tweaked Beets and Greens

3 beets (with greens attached)
4 Tablespoons olive oil
2 1/2 cloves garlic
2 Tablespoons chopped red onion
butter
salt
pepper

The roasted beet. It smells like dirt.

The Beet Part

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Cut the greens away from the beets, and put them to the side.
• Then wash the beets, and cut off the tough tops and weird little rooty bottom bits.
• Put all of the beets in a baking dish (like a ceramic corningware dish with a glass top).  Honestly, I didn't even remember I had one of those.
• Add 2 Tablespoons of olive oil, and kind of roll the beets around in it. You might want to use some kind of implement for that, or you'll get olive oil hands (like I did). 
• Cover and cook for 70 minutes. (The recipe called for 45-60 minutes, but that didn't seem to be enough time in my oven or with my cookware.)
• Check to see if the beets are done by sliding a knife into the biggest beet you have in the dish. It should slide in super easy and cut down without resistance. 
• Remove outer skin from beets, and chop them up into bits. 
• Add butter, salt, and pepper to taste.

Cooked and chopped up!

It looks like a massacre on a plate.

 

The Beet Greens Part

• Cut the leaves free from the thick stems.
• Wash all of the greens, and stack them in a bowl.
• Tear leaves up into small 1-2 inch sections, and tear free of center stem while you do it. If there are very tiny and tender leaves, just keep the center stem in.
• Cut up garlic cloves (after peeling them). My garlic had started growing, so I also removed the green plant from the center. The recipe said to "mince" garlic, so I just cut it into sort of small pieces. 
• Cut up red onion into small pieces. I failed to check the refrigerator to see that I already had one slightly cut up, so now I have two sliced onions. So, this is a reminder to check next time!
• Put onions and garlic on some kind of saucer.
• Put about 2 Tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet, and then heat it. My stove doesn't have "medium-low". It has Lo, 1-9, and High. I used 3 or 4, although I can't remember which. Either way, heat the olive oil and then add the onions and garlic. I waited until the stuff was "sizzling" pretty good, and then let them go on for a minute. 
• Add the greens, sort of evenly over the sizzling stuff. Then, take a safe object and stir things. (I used a silicone spoon dealie.) 
• Stir around pretty actively until it seems like things are darker and soft. I erred on the side of caution, and maybe didn't cook mine quite enough. 
• Add salt and pepper to taste!

These actually look pretty!

On the plate, with some salt and pepper.

Verdict:

I tried the greens first, as they were finished far before the beets. I wanted to wait and eat them both together, but I just couldn't contain myself. I ate every last bit myself. That's right. I didn't even wait to share it with someone else. They were surprisingly yummy, and we didn't have very many (since there were just the three beets). I think that if I had more beet greens, I would add more garlic and onions. (So, for every three beets that have greens I'd use what I did above). I would definitely want them again!

The beets took a long time to cook, and they smelled like dirt. I didn't like the way the kitchen smelled, and they were a pain to peel. I don't know if I had to do that...but I did. Any advice about that? They also leave messy purple/red stains all over. That said, served with some real butter, salt, and pepper...they charmed me. They are sort of sweet and interesting. I don't know how far I'd go out of my way to eat them, but they did turn out well (as far as I know).

Caution: I have never eaten beets before, and I may have destroyed these and simply liked the taste of utterly ruined beet.

~ Patty :)

Anadama bread

The second loaf that I've made...and super yummy!

This is another one of those posts that is mostly for me, and any other poor soul with an an ancient Regal Kitchen Pro Breadmaker model K6725. I'm preserving this recipe, as I'm likely to lose the booklet that came with it.

I figure that many of you talented folks may be able to adapt this as well, so here we go! (If you do adapt this, let me know! I hope to learn to make bread without a machine next.)

Anadama Bread

6 to 8 ounces water
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter (or margarine)
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup corn meal
2 3/4 cups bread flour
2/3 cups whole wheat flour
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast

Remember to get all of the ingredients to room temperature first! It took a few tries, but I realized how important this little fact happened to be to the process, and now my bread is nicer.

With this breadmaker, you add liquids and salt first.
Then you add dry ingredients.
Then you make a little well on top and add yeast.

Select the Sweet setting, select medium crust, and press start.

When the timer blinks zeros, stop the machine and take the bread out right away.

For those that want to adapt this recipe and have talent, I'll tell you that this makes a 1 1/2 to 2lb loaf, and the Sweet setting makes the whole thing last about 2 hours and 50 minutes from start to finish.

Verdict:

This is a pretty nice tasting bread, and it smells great when it is cooking. Folks in the house tend to eat it up swiftly, and my daughter asks for it by name now.

I learned about cutting bread, and that made everything a lot better too.

Yeah, I really just said that.

I'd been trying to cut bread with a small and crappy serrated knife, and usually trying when it was too hot. Now? My dad bought me a bread knife, and so I have a large nice knife to cut through the bread when it has cooled. That makes a big difference!

It is the little things in life, ya know?

~ Patty :)

Pisa Bread

This one isn't going to be very useful to anyone but me, unless you happen to have a Regal Kitchen Pro Breadmaker model K6725.

See how I just made that google possible? If you have one of these ancient machines, welcome to the club.

I didn't create this recipe. It came with the used bread maker that was given to me for free. I'm sure I'll lose the darn booklet, so I'm going to write out the recipes that I like or try.

Regal Kitchen Pro Breadmaker #K6725

The only change I made was using grated Romano cheese instead of Parmesan. Oh, and onion powder instead of onion flakes.

I call this stuff "Pisa Bread", because it seemed a bit structurally unsound. All of the cheese sort of lumped together funny in places too. I may not have grated it finely enough to be reasonable for this recipe.

Tastes wonderful, but didn't work out exactly right.

Pisa Bread

9-11 ounces water
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 1/2 cups bread flour
1/4 cup Romano Cheese (or Parmesan)
1 tablespoon dried parsley
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons dried onion powder (or flakes)
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons active dry yeast

The important thing that I didn't do was use ingredients that were room temperature. That made the yeast act weird, so don't do that.

I also didn't wait for the bread to cool all the way, and I didn't have a proper bread knife. So, I was sort of doomed.

With this breadmaker, you add liquids and salt first.
Then you add dry ingredients.
Then you make a little well on top and add yeast.

Select the French setting, select medium crust, and press start.

When the timer blinks zeros, stop the machine and take the bread out right away.

For those that want to adapt this recipe and have talent, I'll tell you that this makes a 1 1/2 to 2lb loaf, and the French setting makes the whole thing last about 3 hours and 50 minutes from start to finish.

~ Patty :)

Out of Order

I decided to start this blog so that I could keep track of the things that I have been doing/learning. The only problem is that kickstarting it means adding things in a jumble.

So, shampoo and cookies have come first! hah

I have some bread, meat, and sewing stuff to add soon.

I sort of feel like I'm unpacking. Everything is a mess, and this isn't really home yet!

~ Patty :)

Modular Oatmeal Cookies Recipe

I tinker with stuff, as that is how I learn.

So, I started off looking at the Thick, Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies Recipe by Deb at Smitten Kitchen. I liked her style, as she basically wanted to take the Quaker's Best Oatmeal Cookies by Quaker Oats recipe and make it her own.

I love oatmeal cookies, and I like them chewy. I do not like raisins in them though, and I like them sweeter.

I have come up with a modular recipe that I have adapted into several kinds of oatmeal cookies now.

Basic Modular Oatmeal Cookies

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) margarine
1/2 stick butter (softened in the microwave for about 15 seconds)
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups Quaker Oats (or similar)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In one bowl mix butter, margarine, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla.
(If you are making Module One, add syrup. If you are misguided and making the horrid Module Three, make adjustments to vanilla and add extract.)

Whisk flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in another bowl.
(If you are making Module Three, just stop and think about how much you have to live for and how good other things are to eat. If that hasn't convinced you to stop and re-evaluate your life, keep going and make adjustments to cinnamon.)

Combine these bowls and mix them. Add oats and mix. (If you are making Module One or the amazing Module Two, add the nuts or white chocolate chips now and fold them in.)

Bake at 350 on cookie sheets with parchment paper. Check at 9 minutes. Take out around 10.5 minutes. Let the cookies sit for 5 minutes on the warm sheet, and then remove to cooling rack.

Module One plus Module Four

Module One: White Chocolate and Macadamia Nut Oatmeal Cookies (with additional Module Four Icing)

1/3 cup crushed raw macadamia nuts

A "splash" of Torani White Chocolate Syrup (or similar). I hear that the sauce is better than the syrup, but I had some around and that is what I used.

These are fairly yummy. I recommend the nuts. I am on the fence about using Torani syrup.

Add icing, or not.

These are the stuff! Make Module Two!

Module Two: White Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Up to 2 cups of White Chocolate Chips

These are my favorite cookies, hands down!

Module Three: Image Too Horrid to Share
(This is my sense of humor showing, so if it bothers you...jump ship now!)

Module Three: White Chocolate Rum Oatmeal Cookies

Go with the 1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract and 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon options.
Add about 1/4 teaspoon of rum extract.

I found these to be horrid. My ex husband described them like this, "These have some kind of strange taste in them."

 Module Four: You Can Totally Do Better Than This Icing (Cinnamon and Huckleberry Edition)

 

Powdered Sugar
Milk
Salt

You pick about how much powdered sugar you think you'll need, then add milk until it turns into something that will be a glaze. Add a touch of salt. Add Cinnamon or Torani Huckleberry Syrup.

Drizzle this over oatmeal cookies and wait for glaze to set up.

Verdict:

Make Module Two, or riff off of the Basic recipe and make something a heck of a lot better. The White Chocolate Oatmeal cookies are AMAZING.

~ Patty :)

Following a recipe: Chocolate Awesomes by Kate from Scratch

I am nearly 40 years old, and I've avoided cooking stuff most of my life. I realize that is a heck of a privilege, even if I mostly ate at fast food joints.

I'm at the point where I want to learn to cook things for myself though, and so I try to chose recipes that I can succeed at fairly easily.

I decided to try Chocolate Awesomes by Kate from Scratch. I made a few changes, but they shouldn't have been that big of a deal.

My cookies didn't turn out looking anything like her cookies.

Here are mine:

They sort of look just like Chocolate Chip Cookies, don't they?

Verdict: 

These taste pretty good, if you like chocolate chip cookies. They are very rich and have a super texture. My daughter has been asking for them, and they seem to be disappearing fast. My husband and my ex-husband both seem to enjoy them a lot. I'm not a huge fan of chocolate chip cookies, but I've eaten my fair share of these...although maybe just out of boredom. I think they are sort of chocolate chip cookies for those that like dark chocolate and really rich desserts. I think they would go well with ice cream.

Here is the recipe (slightly changed to reflect what I did). If you want the original, please follow the link to the super cook above!

“Chocolate Awesomes”

• 1 cup butter
• 1/2 cup large marshmallows cut up
• 2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 teaspoons Hershey's cocoa powder
• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream, well chilled
• 2 cups dark chocolate morsels

1. Don't preheat the oven right away, you'll have to chill the dough for this recipe.
2. Melt butter in the microwave until it is boiling (put some kind of cover over things because the butter will pop and geyser with heating).  This made a MESS of my microwave.
3. Add marshmallow chunks and stir.  Set aside to cool. These never really melted into the butter for me, but remained floating on top of the butter and were just softened.
4. Whisk flour, baking soda  and cocoa powder together.
5. In a large mixing bowl combine brown sugar and egg. I used an electronic mixer. Add whisked dry ingredients in two additions, mixing after each addition.
6. Add chilled cream to slightly cooled melted butter-marshmallow mixture and stir. This will look weird and make cream "globules" in the mixture...don't worry about it. Pour into the other ingredients while mixing on low with an electric mixer until just combined.
7. Fold in dark chocolate morsels.
8. Chill cookie dough for at least an hour. I chilled for three.
9. Place oven rack in center of oven. (I have no idea if I did this or not.)
10. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
11. Grab two cookie sheets and line them with parchment. Anything else is a pain!
12. Using a round tablespoon measure, scoop batter into leveled tablespoons and drop onto prepared cookie sheets. The texture will be sort of strange, like a combo between clay and ice cream.
13. Bake two cookie sheets worth at a time. Cook for something like 12 minutes. Start checking on them after 8 minutes, and wait until the edges seem to be done or darkening. Let them sit on the cookie sheet 5 minutes before removing them. Try one. If it seems to need more time, put them back in the oven a few minutes at a time until things seem right.

I have no idea how many cookies this made, but it seemed something like 40-50.  It is supposed to make three dozen.

~ Patty :)

The Great Shampoo Experiment II

You'd be lost without this picture...I'm sure of it!

Shampoo experiment #2:

1/2 cup baking soda (Update: I now recommend 1/4 cup baking soda, due to this experience .)
 3 cups water

 I mixed this in an old Dr. Bronner's container by shaking it.

Rinsed with:

4 Tbsp white vinegar or apple cider vinegar (Update: I now recommend white vinegar over apple cider vinegar, due to this. )
3 cups water

Yup, I used another (separate) Dr. Bronner's container. I shake it up as well.

Verdict: 

It is very weird to shampoo with something so watery, and that has no lather. You have to shake it up every time you use it, and if it has been in the bottle for awhile it will get more gritty.

What the shampoo looks like if you let it sit for awhile

It will feel like you are dumping grit water on your head and then washing it off, which is pretty much what you are doing. That said, it seems to clean my hair pretty darn thoroughly.

I've been trying this one for a few weeks, and I really like it so far! This seems to work out a lot better in hard water, and I haven't noticed any build up on my hair or brush.

This is what it looks like when it is new and well shaken.

The rinse is really key, and so far I've only used the white vinegar version. It makes it smell like Easter in the shower for a few minutes, but once I rinse off the smell is all gone. I am trying apple cider vinegar tomorrow, so we'll see how that works out.

My hair feels lighter since using these on my hair instead of shampoo, and my scalp psoriasis has been clearing up. I have no idea if that is related to this, or just one of those things that happens sometimes.

I'm going to keep using this for now, and hope that it doesn't dry out my hair and make it brittle. I'll tell you if it does.

As you can see, I use fancy masking tape on the bottles to remind myself which bottle is which (even though it is actually pretty obvious).

Oh, and two fun tips:

1. Add the baking soda first, and then add the water. If you get your funnel wet and try to pour into it, the whole thing becomes a pain.

2. Don't pour vinegar into bottles while having them on top of a tablecloth. You'll inevitably spill vinegar and have to do laundry. Okay, maybe YOU won't...but I will.

~ Patty :)

PS  If it isn't obvious, you wash your hair with the shampoo first. Then, you rinse with water. After that, you use the rinse. Then, you rinse with water again (or you'll smell like an Easter Egg).

The Great Shampoo Experiment!

My husband isn't a fan of fake scents, and most shampoos have a scent. I found a few "all natural" and "organic" shampoos, but they were usually scented too.

So, I started thinking about making my own. How hard could it be, right?

I googled around for a bit, and it seemed like Natural Homemade Shampoo Recipes – How to Make Organic Hair Shampoo by Heather Levin was the most succinct and easy to understand version without adding a bunch of smells to the mix.

There are a lot of very good articles about this, but I figured that I'd mention the one that I actually used.

Homemade shampoo recipe #1 (in trial size):

1/4 cup water
1/4 cup liquid Castile soap (Dr. Bronner’s Organic Castile Soap Unscented Baby-Mild)
1/2 teaspoon olive oil

I mixed this in an old Dr. Bronner's container by shaking it.

Verdict: 

I tried this a few weeks ago, and used it for about four days. It sucks if you have hard water, as it will form soap scum on your hair that will become apparent when you brush (and see the film left over on the bristles). I don't know how it does in soft water, but I imagine it could be quite nice.

It made a very thin shampoo, and it felt like I had to use a lot to get all of my hair clean (although it actually didn't take very much at all when I measured). I thought about putting it in an old foaming soap dispenser to make it feel more like lathering shampoo, but I never got around to that.

It definitely cleaned my hair, so much that it squeaked all over. That is how hair screams, so I didn't really love that. Still, my commercial shampoo does the same thing.

I didn't use conditioner, and my hair felt pretty soft and brushed out easily. It didn't have a scent, and that was odd to me...even though it was my goal. (I was super happy about this, as I'd wondered if I was going to smell like olive oil.)

I have psoriasis on my scalp, so I was curious about how it would respond. It didn't irritate my scalp during the short trial.

(Dr. Bronner's website talks about the soap scum issue a bit, and it offers a rinse for those that want to use their soap as a shampoo. The thing is, those are scented rinses that I can't make myself very easily. So, that is the opposite of where I want to go for now...)

~ Patty :)

Introductions

The internet is full of blogs by folks that really have it all together, and that create gorgeous food and marketable crafts projects. They seem to demonstrate a million ways to save money, save the planet, and do it all while being low calorie and gluten free!

I am not one of those people.

I'm someone that thinks it is a pain to fix box macaroni and cheese, and that has forgotten that she was boiling water (until the pan melted).

Yeah, I'm a mom and a wife. That didn't give me the kind of super powers that seem to often be found along with that description. I think folks like that are awesome, but I'm just not one of them.

That said, I do have some talents. I'm reasonably bright (if not wise in domestic skills), and absolutely full of curiosity. I'm willing to do a bit of work to have nicer things for myself, if it isn't too complicated and I don't have to get a bunch of new equipment.

So, this blog is a personal record of the stuff that I sort out. I'll be trying all kinds of things, and reporting about them as honestly as I can (so that I can remember what I've already tried). Feel free to follow along or make suggestions, as I'm sure you probably know more about this stuff than I do.

~ Patty :)