homemade bread

In case you didn't notice, this loaf is half eaten. I'm telling you, I'm an addict.

I absolutely love homemade bread. Love, love, love. I will eat entire loaves by myself. Sometimes in the same sitting. My grandma loves to make it, especially for me, and that's probably where I learned to love it so much. I lived with my grandparents for a month or so before Jeremy and I got married, and my grandma made sure there was always homemade bread for me. 

Man, it made me love her so much more than I already did. 

 
So as a wedding present, my grandma gave me bread pans and a bag of flour. I don't know what she was thinking. She needs to just always live close enough to me to give me fresh bread! (Which she did. Especially when Berlin was born.) But finally, I decided to pull the plastic off of the pans and learn to make bread. Turns out, not as difficult as I thought. Though it took some experimenting. My first try resulted in burned outsides and uncooked insides. I called my grandma. She gave me some suggestions, and I tried again. It looked perfect, but I was incredibly wary of the insides. I sliced it open, and it seemed just fine inside too.  So I got brave and made a loaf for a friend, and warned her, "I'm still figuring out how to do this. As you cut closer to the middle, watch out. You may get a mouthful of dough." She laughed at me. And told me the next day that the whole loaf was amazing. 
 
Thank you, Grandma, for helping me get it right!

• 3/4 cup warm water 
• 1 package active dry yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp) 
• 1 tsp salt 
• 1-1/2 tbsp sugar 
• 1 tbsp vegetable shortening
• 1/2 cup milk 
• 3 cups all-purpose flour, roughly

1. Put the yeast and sugar in a bowl. Add the water, and let it set for about 10 minutes.
 
I've found that the key to working with yeast and getting it to rise properly is letting it react first. The yeast needs to eat something as it reacts, which is why you add sugar. So you mix the yeast and the sugar together, then add the water. Scorching water will kill the yeast, so if you turn on your hot water and fill your measuring cup right as the water starts to turn hot, it’s perfect.
 
2. Add salt, shortening, and milk. Then add the first two cups of flour.

3. Add more flour a tablespoon or so at a time until the dough chases the spoon around the bowl. Then put the dough on a floured surface and knead, adding more flour as needed until the dough is soft and smooth (not sticky. If it’s still sticky, add more flour).

The amount of flour you need to make bread can vary, even if you’ve made it before in the same place during the same season of the year. So many factors affect bread, like the weather, room temperature, etc., so don’t get set on the same amount of flour. Don’t be afraid to add more or use less- go by the texture of the dough. If it’s smooth, you’re done. You don’t need any more flour. If it’s still sticky, keep adding, even if you’ve already used the 3 cups. That’s why it says, “Roughly.”

4. Put dough ball in a clean, greased bowl. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour (or until dough has doubled in size).

Sometimes a warm place is hard to find. If it won’t double your gas/electricity bill, let your oven start preheating to 350 and let your bread sit near it (not on top of the oven. It will start to cook parts of your dough. No good.), and then you can always guarantee good warmth. And, if it’s a cold day, your kitchen will be the place to be!

5. Punch dough down, and then move dough to a greased bread pan. Cover and let rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes (until bread fills up the pan).

If you let your bread rise a little longer than these times, it won’t hurt your bread. I’ve left it for an hour and a half instead of 30 min (I didn’t leave my oven on) and it was fine. Some people like to make the dough the night before and leave it overnight (it does get huge though, so make sure you don’t cover it with a plate or your plate will end up on the ground. In my case, broken.) so they can have fresh bread in the morning. Whatever works for you. Experiment, see what works best.
I also have only used DARK bread pans. Sometimes, you need to vary your cooking time if you use glass pans, and as far as I know, it takes longer with a glass pan, roughly 45 minutes total. Make sure you watch the bread during the last 15 minutes.

6. Score the top of the bread- make 3 slashes across the top.

7. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Let it cool in a clean dish towel (this also keeps it warm for longer). Try not to eat the whole loaf by yourself.

Inside Out Tacos

Food has become our excuse to be social. Between the amount of traveling we do and the number of activities in which we've involved ourselves, we don't leave many opportunities to be incredibly social, especially on weekends. Our desire to be social, however, hasn't gone away, so we've tried to find ways to be social during the week. How? Inviting people over for dinner. We always have to eat, everyone we know also happens to really enjoy eating (let's be honest: who doesn't love eating?), and it definitely makes our weekdays more interesting. Some days I think it's pathetic that this is true, other days I think that we're brilliant. Depends on my mood. And how recently we've seen the friends we're inviting over.

Sometimes though, we don't really plan a night with friends. We just start to make dinner, something happens, and we have friends over. Not to make our other friends like we love them less because we plan for them, but these impromptu dinner parties are usually the best.

Earlier this week, my brother- and sister-in-law were coming over to plan a party (by this we mean the girls were planning a party and the boys were playing FIFA. They don't care what the reason is, if it means they'll end up at the same house with an xbox, they're in).  My sister-in-law texted me to ask what time they should come over, and I said, "We're just starting dinner. If you guys haven't eaten yet, you're welcome to come eat with us." It was already 6:30, and I had just gotten off the phone with my sister who had made a dinner recommendation when I whined about needing to make dinner and not having even a bad idea about what to make. She suggested this fabulous recipe, and I needed to run to the store because we'd just run out of chicken, but otherwise, I already had most of these things from other meals that week.

• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into halves
• 2 tbsp. vegetable oil, divided
• Green onions, diced finely
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 3/4 c chicken broth
• 5 cups tortilla chips, broken into large pieces
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• 1 c shredded cheddar cheese, shredded (or whatever you have. I usually have either a giant bag of Colby Jack or a smaller back of a Mexican blend. Both work great)
• 2 tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro

1. Pat the chicken breast halves dry and season with salt and pepper.  Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large stainless steel (or otherwise oven-safe) pot over medium-high heat.  Add the chicken to the pan and cook until golden brown on both sides (your chicken doesn't need to be fully cooked right now, just the outsides.)  Transfer to a plate and set aside.
2. Add the remaining oil, green onions, garlic, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.  Cook just until it starts to smell wonderful, about 30 seconds (and it will smell wonderful).  Add the chicken broth, scrape the browned bits from the bottom of the pan, and let it start to simmer. 
3. Stir in half of the tortilla chips. Put the chicken into the broth so that the chicken is covered as much as possible (I cut the pieces in half again, so that they cook faster and fit in the pot better) and cook over medium-low heat until cooked through, which is about 10 minutes.  When the chicken is cooked through, take the chicken pieces out, let them cool enough to be able to handle, and then shred the chicken. Put the chicken back in the pot. 
4. Add the tomatoes, 1/2 c cheese, and 1 tablespoon of cilantro. Stir in the other half of the tortilla chips until the chips are moist. 
5. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top and place the pot in your oven with the broiler on high for 2-3, just to melt and slightly brown the top. Top with the remaining cilantro and serve! 

My in-laws asked if they could bring anything, and I said, "It's kind of a casserole, so there's not really anything you can add... maybe fun drinks?" So they went to Sodalicious and bought us each a soda. Man, I don't even like soda very much and I love that place. 

This recipe has been passed around from blog to blog, and my sister sent it to me from a blog but suggested some alterations. I made some of my own alterations, and then I really wanted a different name. Throwing "casserole" into anything makes it sound less appealing to me, for whatever reason. So when we started to eat it, my husband asked, "What are we eating?" and I said, "It's kind of like the inside of a taco." But the shell is inside too. Inside out tacos? Duh. Why didn't they think of that a long time ago?!

Thanks Brid :)

meat and potatoes- variety with basics

So in the last five months, we've eaten a lot. If you can imagine. A jump roper and a pregnant lady. We make quite the hungry team.
I've been pretty thrilled with the energy I've had throughout my pregnancy, so fortunately I've still been able to enjoy cooking. Despite what I haven't shown on this blog. I really like to try new things, recipes others give me or random things I find online by searching for a list of the ingredients I want to use, especially when I'm not feeling terribly creative and don't have any ideas on how to mix things myself. But I also have some basic go-to ideas, formulas if you will for a quick, no-thought meal that still tastes like there was a lot of thought put into it. Marinades are great that way :)

The idea of marinating is, of course, that you let it marinate. If you're trying to think of dinner plans at 4:30 to eat a little after 5, overnight marinating is out of the question. But letting your meat bake in a marinating sauce, or really most kinds of dressings, gives your meat great flavor, even if it's not as rich a flavor as you would get from actually marinating. I also using this baking marinate method because we find random marinated and salad dressings on sale for a dollar or so, usually less than that, so we sample them. Why not? Once or twice we've found that they're a little strong for marinating (actual soaking it overnight), and the meat isn't very good afterwards. Baking instead of marinating makes the flavor not as strong- if you're experimenting, it's a safer method of not being disappointed.

So there's your meat. Thaw something that maybe you don't know what to do with (pictured: top sirloin  steak- we found in a small package that was barely enough to feed us, but it was perfect with a side) and cover it in a salad dressing (pictured: sun-dried tomato salad dressing). Let it bake at somewhere between 350-400 for about 30 minutes, depending on the meat of course, but across the board, this is pretty safe. Check it periodically, of course; some meats you want more done, some a little more tender.

Not the greatest picture in the world, but I always forget to take a picture until after we're eating. Oh well.

Then I have an assortment of four kinds of potatoes that I choose to go with the meat- mashed, wedged, baked, or twice-baked(pictured). None of them take quite as long as the meat does, so dinner can be ready all at the same time, but you can prep the potatoes while the meat is cooking. 

Mashed potatoes Everyone has their own recipe. I like to chop and boil potatoes, drain them, beat them with a little bit of butter and a little more milk. 

Wedged potatoes My sister taught me this one, and I use this style of potatoes all the time. Cut a potato into wedges (if it's a large potato, using two is too many for me and Jeremy, so maybe 3/4 of a large potato is a generous serving size for an adult), arrange them around a microwave safe plate. Sprinkle with whatever seasonings you like (I use a garlic pepper blend), and then put a generous tablespoon or two of butter in the middle of the plate. Cover with saran wrap. Put in the microwave for 9 minutes. Delicious.

Baked potatoes Stab each potato generously with a fork. Toss the potatoes into the oven around your meat tray (they'll  need roughly 15 minutes more than the meat will). You can also make them in the microwave- stab each potato generously with a fork, then put them in the microwave for about 12 minutes, flipping them over about halfway through (the time varies with the size of your potatoes and the power setting on your microwave, so you may need a little more or a little less time). 

Twice-baked potatoes There are lots of great recipes for these. I use a pretty basic and somewhat adapted recipe- Bake the potatoes (I usually do this part in the microwave), let them cool a little bit before slicing them open and scooping out the insides, leaving a potato canoe. Mix the potatoes with a tablespoon or two of butter, a little bit more milk (1/4-1/2 cup), bacon bits, and cheddar cheese. Spoon the spread back into each of the potato canoes, and stick them back in the over for another 15-20 minutes. 

Step 1: Meat and marinade. Bake for half an hour.
Step 2: Pick a potato style. Throw together while the meat's cooking.
Enjoy!

Microwave Mug Omelettes

I have a ridiculously hard time getting out of bed lately. So when I have to be up early for something, I usually want a really great breakfast. But I also don't want to get up any earlier than I have to to make aforementioned great breakfast.

So this morning, I found this:

Of course, I found this 15 minutes after my alarm went off, while I was laying in bed justifying that I was at least not falling back asleep. I was searching on my phone for a recipe, just something worth eating, while actually battling my desire to look presentable when I went to work and my desire to sleep for another 45 minutes. 

• 1 egg
• 2 egg whites
• 2 tbsp diced ham
• 1 tbsp diced bell peppers
• 2 tbsp shredded cheese

Thoroughly coat the inside of a mug with cooking spray. Mix all of the ingredients in the mug, microwave for 1 minute on high. Stir, then microwave for another 1 1/2 minutes.

I found this recipe and got a little bit excited about it. So vanity won.

We didn't have bell peppers or ham, so I just made these with eggs and cheese. I also threw some bacon on a cookie sheet in the oven and bread in the toaster, in between blow drying my hair and putting on my makeup. Jeremy came in while I was finishing up all of the food and asked what he could do, so I told him to make hot chocolate.

"Didn't I just watch you make hot chocolate?"

"No, you just watched me make omelettes."

"...in cups?"

"Yes."

Breakfast was a success. Arguably, not as time efficient as I was expecting (or I just shouldn't have laid in bed for so long) because we were still a few minutes late getting out the door, but we were all well-fed... so I didn't complain.

bacalhau com natas.

One of the things I absolutely loved about Portugal was the food. My goodness. With as much as I felt like I ate all the time because people liked to feed us so much, I'm surprised I didn't come home looking like a balloon. I asked everyone for recipes, but there was one recipe that everyone told me was too hard to make. Bacalhau com natas, literally, "codfish with cream," is a very, very traditional Portuguese dish. You can find it at every restaurant, even some fast food places, it's just the dish of Portugal. And it's so good. The first time I had it I loved it, and I really wanted it whenever I had the opportunity. When I spent a few days in the mission home after my family's car accident, the chef asked me what my favorite Portuguese meal was, and I told her this was it. And she made it for me. So there you have the sentimental factor, added to mission nostalgia, that the only thing I remember eating in the midst of disaster was bacalhau com natas (and chocolate milk, but that's just... a given). 

Just trust me. It's good. 

So when we decided to have a "mission night" for dinner, where all of Jeremy's siblings and I got together and brought a dish from each mission, depending on who had served and where they had served, to help my sister-in-law get ready for her mission, I just wanted to try to make that recipe that everyone told me was too hard. I found a million recipes that only varied slightly, but I read every one and none of them seemed all that difficult to make. It does take a little bit of time, but otherwise, nothing too crazy.

Well, okay, I lied just a little bit. The first real step is to buy salted cod and soak it for 24 hours and change the water a few times. So maybe people telling me it was hard just meant that it took some time. I used cod fillets that had been breaded and seasoned and just needed to be parboiled. It took about 24 hours off the time estimate...

Ingredients:

• 4 fillets salt cod (about 1 lb.)
• 3 lbs. of potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1 onion
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 5 tbsp of oil
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 pint heavy whipping cream
• 1 c. milk
• 1/2 tsp of nutmeg
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp corn starch
• 1/2 tsp salt
• pepper to taste
• fresh parsley

So in case you do choose to get fillets that haven't been prepared with anything, you should soak them for 24 hours, changing the water twice. Keep the cod in the fridge. After the 24 hours, parboil the cod for about 5 minutes in water. Flake the fillets and remove the bones and skin if the cod requires it (you can buy skinless cod). Set aside.

Peel the potatoes, wash, cut in small cubes, and fry with 3 tbsp of olive oil, just until they look cooked. Don't over fry them. Set aside.

Slice the onion in thin rings, mince the garlic, add a bay leaf, and fry all with 2 tbsp of olive oil until soft and translucent (about 5-8 minutes). Add the cod, saute a little bit and then add the potatoes, mixing it all together. Remove from heat and set aside. Preheat the oven to 350F.

Sauce:

In a medium skillet, melt 2 tbsp of butter and slowly add the corn starch, mixing well. Add the milk and heavy whipping cream and mix until well combined. Add the nutmeg, salt, and pepper and cook over low heat for about 10 minutes or until the sauce has a rich, creamy texture.

Add 2/3 of the sauce to the cod, potatoes, and onion mix and pour into a large baking dish (a 9X13 is about the smallest I would go, it makes a lot!). Cover this mixture with the rest of the sauce and put in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes, turn on the broiler and gratin for another 5-8 minutes, keeping an eye on it so it doesn't burn (you want just a golden crust on top). 

Remove from the oven and allow to stand for 5 minutes. Serve with chopped fresh parsley.

*Note: The first time I made this, I cheated on the amount of potatoes I used. I was in kind of a hurry, and I didn't have 3 lbs. The result was that, even baked, the casserole was a little bit runny. It still tastes really good, but this isn't quite the traditional texture. You might not want to cheat :) all I'm saying. 

why I love clearance shopping.

We were headed up to Logan last week, and we were trying to get out the door as fast as possible.
This never happens. We try, we try to leave by 7PM so we can get there before 9PM, but we always have other things we decided we need to do and we never get there before 11PM. But I had been planning for it all day. I knew what dinner was going to be before I got to work, so I hoped that I would get home and have dinner ready and then we could eat and then leave quickly.

Potato wedges baked in garlic, and chicken marinated in dijon dressing. It was going to be half an hour, probably before Jeremy even got home from work, and we could eat as soon as he walked in the door.

The idea morphed by the time I got home. I don't know why making potatoes seemed like more effort than I was willing to go to, but it was. So I decided to put them together, with a different dressing.
Three ingredients:

1. Red potatoes (given to us by my mother-in-law the week before)
2. Chicken drumsticks (we found an incredi-sale on meat at Smith's one day. 5 drumsticks were $1.75)
3. Sweet vidalia onion dressing (one16 oz. bottle- part of a different clearance rack at a different Smith's. $0.49 a bottle)

I did cut the potatoes in half, but otherwise I was not up for effort. I threw it all into a glass baking pan. I stirred everything around to make sure it was covered in dressing, and put it in the oven at 350 for about 40 minutes.

So I cheated on the picture a little bit. I didn't serve it with broccoli, but the picture I remembered to take after we'd eaten most of it wasn't as appetizing as I thought. But it looked like this. Minus broccoli. 

It was absolutely delicious. And the whole thing cost us $2.24.

And that's why I love clearance shopping.

on babies and busy schedules- new spin on lasagna.

Jeremy and I have a couple of good friends that just had their first baby, and we were (and still are!) so excited for them. It was especially fun to tease the mom, Kana, about how enormously huge she was not even 5 months into her pregnancy. We were also excited about being able to bring them dinner one night the first week that Kana and her baby came home from the hospital.

Only we weren't actually home the week they came home from the hospital.


Fortunately, there were lots of other great people around to help them get back into the normal routine of things and brought them dinner for a week or two. But Jeremy and I felt terrible for not being around to offer any assistance, nutritional, social, or otherwise, so we decided we'd make it up to them. By texting them in the middle of the week.

"It's already in the works, so don't make anything for dinner tonight."

Both Kana and Ed laughed at us. But as Ed was also in the middle of his last finals, Kana was happy to postpone whatever they planned to eat that night (and yelled at Ed as soon as he started making lunch, "DON'T MAKE DINNER!" Poor Ed. "I was just making lunch!" Kana- "Well... I guess that's okay.").

So I found a great lasagna recipe; it's unlike any other lasagna I've tried before. And it was delicious.

Chili-Cheese Lasagna

• 1 lb. ground beef
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 jar (24 oz.) spaghetti sauce)
• 1/4 c. water
• 1 can (15 oz.) black beans, rinsed
• 1 green pepper, finely chopped
• 3/4 c. salsa
• 1 Tbsp. chili powder
• 9 lasagna noodles, cooked
• 1-1/2 c. cottage cheese
• 1-1/2 cup Mexican style shredded cheese 

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Brown beef and garlic in a large skillet. Add next 6 ingredients; stir. Simmer 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Grease a 13x9-inch baking pan, then spread 2 cups of the meat sauce on the bottom of the pan. Cover with layers of 3 noodles, 1/2 cup of cottage cheese, 1/2 cup of shredded cheese, and 2 cups of the remaining meat sauce. Repeat these layers twice, and then top with the remaining shredded cheese. Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake for 1 hour- after an hour, remove the foil and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Let the lasagna stand for 10 minutes before cutting to serve.


Thanks to kraftrecipes.com for the great recipe!