Philotic Web

This is my everyday recipe. I cut the recipe in half because Kitchen Aids can't handle as much as Boschs.

That and who really needs 5 fresh loves of bread! they would all be bad before they were eaten.

Ha. Not in my family.

Well I suppose you have created enough adorable little people to eat 5 loves of bread. I on the other hand just have a husband so. 2 loves is perfect

I made 2 (small) loaves today of my ad-hoc recipe. they taste delicious nonetheless.

The most humble dive is a palace when it smells of homemade bread.

Are you guys trying to torture me during passover

If it gets you to post, yes.

So the bread was super yummy! its basically all gone already (there are 2 slices left)
Once it cooled chris and I tried a plain slice and it was great.
then we tried a slice with butter and it was even better.
then I made cinnamon toast with it and wow was it amazing.
Since that first night (thursday) we have devoured it.
And this morning we used the last of it for French Toast with fresh strawberries and fancy jam.
Also amazing

to quote my husband "Bread is just so much better without all the extra crap in it"

tonight we are going to try Steph's recipe

Paint.

nice, completely random in our stream of events yet completely relevant to the topic...

OK so here is a pic of the loaves I made on thursday using Jan's Recipe.



As you can see they are a little short, but that was my fault I think it rose to much on the first rise and then the second one got stunted... but it was still really yummy and airy not heavy at all.


Here is a photo of the bread the hubby and I made today using Steph's recipe



They rose much better (the yeast seemed to activate better as well) and the hubby and I just had sandwiches for dinner and they were fantastic.

I think I learned a lot from the first try thus making the second loaves turn out better

Also my mom told be to try getting the yeast cubes that are kept in the fridge section at the supermarket. so I think I'll give that a try next time I bake bread. but I think thee 2 loaves will last us a while longer because we have already eaten a lot of bread this week.

Looks delicious!

Tonight, my kitchen smells of roasted asparagus and pesto tortellini. It was my first time attempting both, but I'm satisfied with the results. The asparagus is wonderful and I devoured it way too quickly. The pesto could be better, but I won't complain too much. I used cashews instead of pine nuts because, if you haven't noticed, pine nuts are ridiculously expensive. I hope to have my own mini herb garden the next time I make it so I don't have to pick though the store-bought basil. Still, all-in-all, a delicious meal.

Oh, and I bought the pre-made tortellini. I know Kelly says it's possible, but I don't think I could get pasta dough thin enough by hand to make it myself.

ETA: Any suggestions of what to do with the leftover pesto?

I make pesto a lot, some tips,

you can use walnuts and they work just as well as pine nuts
if you are using it as a sauce try less oil and some milk for a creamy version

as for tortellini, if you don't want to make pasta you can use wanton wrappers as a shell

pesto pasta is my fav by the way, sounds delicious

Looks delicious!

Tonight, my kitchen smells of roasted asparagus and pesto tortellini. It was my first time attempting both, but I'm satisfied with the results. The asparagus is wonderful and I devoured it way too quickly. The pesto could be better, but I won't complain too much. I used cashews instead of pine nuts because, if you haven't noticed, pine nuts are ridiculously expensive. I hope to have my own mini herb garden the next time I make it so I don't have to pick though the store-bought basil. Still, all-in-all, a delicious meal.

Oh, and I bought the pre-made tortellini. I know Kelly says it's possible, but I don't think I could get pasta dough thin enough by hand to make it myself.

ETA: Any suggestions of what to do with the leftover pesto?

Pesto: more pasta! Or you could spread some on bread and add cheese and toast it.

Regarding basil, did you know you can sprout it from a cutting? Strip all the leaves off a stalk (even a store-bought one) except for the top few. Put it in water and change the water daily or so, and in a little while it will start to grow roots. Then you can plant it. I do this all the time to extend the usefulness of my store-bought basil, and have had three or more pots growing at once, because when I use basil, I tend to use a lot.

Pesto: more pasta! Or you could spread some on bread and add cheese and toast it.

Regarding basil, did you know you can sprout it from a cutting? Strip all the leaves off a stalk (even a store-bought one) except for the top few. Put it in water and change the water daily or so, and in a little while it will start to grow roots. Then you can plant it. I do this all the time to extend the usefulness of my store-bought basil, and have had three or more pots growing at once, because when I use basil, I tend to use a lot.

yes, I really like pesto on my bread / toast in the morning too!

sounds like a great idea for the basil... I never seem to have enough!

btw: awesome looking bread, ThoughtReader!

I figured that since I had these recipes typed up in my diary I might as well share them, the first is from my grandmother...

FRIED SHRIMP

Ingredients
Shrimp
Salt
Potato flour
Garlic powder
Curry powder
Paprika
Oil (vegetable peanut or any other low flavor oil suitable for frying)

Instructions
1 wash peal and de-vain shrimp
2 in a small bowl mix potato flour with lots of salt garlic and curry and a pinch of paprika
3 fill a small pan with 3/4 inch of oil and heat oil till popping
4 bread the shrimp w\ potato flour
5 fry the shrimp till crisp and pink

DUTCH BABY (this is from my friends dad/my own experimentation)

Ingredients
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
4 eggs
Cinnamon sugar (you can do this to taste, but don't put over 3 tbsp)
Vanilla
4 table spoons Butter

Instructions
1 heat oven to 400 degrees
2 in blender mix flour milk eggs vanilla and half of the cinnamon sugar
3 place a pan with butter in the oven for 3 to 5 min
4 take out pan and pour in batter
5 bake for 20 min
6 enjoy (with wiped cream if you've got it...)

I like the potato flour idea I have been using rice flour and corn starch for years but spud flour has a different kinda nutty flavor when browned. I'm headed for the freezer to fish out some big crawdad tails to give it a try. Last night I made a 4x size batch of my famous sticky chicken wings for my girls Sarah n Kylie and their boyfriends. Its just a simple thing but the secret is to use the best stuff 1 cup good soy , 1 cup sugar (I often use part or all palm sugar) and 1 cup good rice wine vinegar. Its so simple its stupid I do add a couple tbs ea garlic and ginger and red pepper flakes in the final reduction and I cook them all in a 25 in cast iron monster pan and dump the whole gooey mess on a platter and sprinkle on sesame seeds and green onions out of the garden. It's one of those dishes you can't eat just a few of but it's amazing how many a couple of young men can put away! Oh yah ya gotta get out the rice cooker and make a big mess of jasmine rice to cut all that sweet salty sour it just all goes together.

Dang, buckshot! You're making me hungry!

Aw Steph It looks like like you're one of the top cooks out here I can only cook a few things , But I do have a masters apetite! I am amazed at how little some people do cook ,I know folks and bet you do too that eat out every day more than once too What a waste of money and unhealthy as well. When I'm on hunting trips or in Alaska or traveling and doinking around one of the biggest reasons I come running home is to get Julie's good cooking, I'm convinced I'll die without it and her.

I am amazed at how little some people do cook ,I know folks and bet you do too that eat out every day more than once too What a waste of money and unhealthy as well.

It always baffles me that people can be so put off by cooking; it's fun enough, and the homemade food is SO worth it

Your're so right! I notice now more and more that when I eat some store made crap out of the freezer or fast food that I feel crappy and then go looking around for some other crappy snack food a couple hours later, I'm better off without it.

I don't eat out often -maybe once or twice a month, if that- but I also don't enjoy cooking or do much that can't more or less watch itself. I'm hard pressed to think of any food anyone has ever made me or that I've made myself that I felt justified the effort that went into it.

Sunday dinner with friends tonight. Sunday dinner with friends; buffalo pot roast with carrots and onions, yellow squash and zucchini, fresh home made bread (cottage loaf), and pink potatoes (regular mashed potatoes with a beet mixed in).

looks delicious!

hey if you mix sweet potato's and pink potato's you can make sunset potato's...

I don't eat out often -maybe once or twice a month, if that- but I also don't enjoy cooking or do much that can't more or less watch itself. I'm hard pressed to think of any food anyone has ever made me or that I've made myself that I felt justified the effort that went into it.

Don't get me wrong - cooking doesn't need to be (and for practicality, CANNOT always be) laborious or tedious. But even putting something fresh into a crock pot and letting it stew all day will yield remarkable results that cannot be equaled from a can.

Even that does take some effort for people like me. I have no recipes for anything like that and I've found it largely overwhelming either trying to search online (without always knowing what it is I'm looking for other than the generic type of food) or trying to find a cookbook that had enough recipes I'd actually like to try to be worth getting. I've gone so far even to ask my more food-appreciative friends and they've been largely unhelpful, telling me to look online. Then there's the matter of shopping for the stuff needed in these recipes. My current eating habits (fruit, cereal, eggs, pasta, breads, frozen vegetables, etc) mean a quick in and out of the store and no food goes wasted. When I have tried experimenting with recipes in the past, even if the cooking was easy, a lot of the ingredients that were leftover went bad because I didn't make the same thing multiple times or in a larger quantity than the recipe called for and I had no clue what else to use it on.

Like I said, all more effort than it's worth. That can of soup may not taste as good but it's probably not a largely noticeable difference to someone like me and probably not worth the effort of trying to not waste things.



With that said, I do have two friends who have made some great tasting things, are enthusiastic about helping me learn to cook, and are willing to share those recipes, so I know ahead of time what it is I'm in for. Not sure the waste issue would be taken care of but I am also just in the collecting recipes stage, so that might be worked around.

I'm with you, Alea, when it comes to cooking for myself. But if anyone ever wants to cook for me, I'm all for it!

Alea, do you have a crockpot? If so, every time I crockpot something, I'll share the recipe with you!

Today's feature: Taco Soup

It's not really authentic at all but it is tasty, I think. It may be a good choice for you because it uses mostly canned products (tomatoes, beans, etc), so there wouldn't be leftover stuff to spoil. You could use frozen corn instead of canned, if you already are buying it that way. And the leftovers of this soup should freeze really well in individual portions.

(And I'm not offended if you don't want to try my offerings. Just trying to be helpful, if I can!)

Thanks, Steph, you're awesome. :)

I do have a crockpot and I really don't care about Mexican authenticity (or any other, for that matter). This would be good for me, and I will definitely still try it, but I'm hoping to get a good collection of zero-friendly a.k.a. vegetarian dishes so we're not having to do separate meals too often.

Just leave out the beef! It would still be really yummy!

I'm with you, Alea, when it comes to cooking for myself. But if anyone ever wants to cook for me, I'm all for it!

I just want to third this. Living alone, cooking feels like such a waste of effort. Who am I trying to impress? So I eat what I like as long as it takes under ten minutes to prepare, and then I can move on to happier things.

Although I do sometimes make cookies or other treats.

I love asparagus season! a friend that farms near us has a couple of acre asparagus patch that he let go wild after he got tired of trying to sell it for a few years at the Spokane farmers market. We are welcomed to come get all we can carry and if I don't he cuts it himself and brings it down so I do it myself. So anyhow I love it and I blanch a lot and freeze it , anyone have any good ideas how to preserve some? We canned some and it was kinda stinky and grey, we pickled some and it is good but ya can't eat to much like that. It's kinda a shame hate to see it go to waste, since it's a old field the stalks are big and I like to peel em a bit and I put some old wash tubs over some big clumps to get them to be all white and it worked ok but I like them better green.

So jealous! I love asparagus!

Mexican chocolate cake! It was going to be normal chocolate cake, but then I couldn't find the cocoa so I started making it a spice cake instead, got as far as dumping 2 tsp of cinnamon in, and found the cocoa. So I added some cayenne, and now I have spicy chocolate cake! Yum.

I've had that! Never thought I would like hot with sweet chocolate but it so rocks with lots of good coffee!

I just got done making a peanut butter pie. I'm not a huge fan of peanut butter, but I absolutely love this pie!

Not really a smell, but I made a frozen banana-almond milk-peanut butter milkshake. Yum yum yum. Since I used unsweetened pb and unsweetened almond milk, next time I think I'll add brown sugar.