Still Here

I have plans to knit myself a robin's egg blue hat.  I'm almost done with a pair of striped socks for Phoebe. 

The superintendent came to the PTO meeting tonight, and I am now fired up about inequitable school funding and considering more ways to get involved. Mr. Thrift is not pleased, as I run intense about stuff like this and he would prefer I calm down. I might.

The oldest has a new pet, a sweet little bunny,  that she worked long and hard to prepare for, but I was still out to the Amish stores yesterday to buy pellets and see about getting hay for her to burrow in. 

I bought the most beautiful, soft fabric at the creative reuse store the other day - I think, I dare to hope, it may be cashmere; the strongest, most declarative green  - not kelly, not dark green, just a strong, rich green green.  

I overheard a standholder at market say she needed to get rubberbands for the egg cartons, and I had a bag of rubber bands down to her the very next market day because I am oversupplied.  We were both tickled.  And this is also the stand that still has local storage veggies, which I am so grateful for because buying and eating local food is my act of defiance and hope in the face of very large world problems.  

Phoebe has had a dreadful cough and of course, it is worst at night and people are sleeping poorly around here. We read the news about the coronavirus with disbelief and worry. 

I do laundry every day.  I keep up!  I keep the family in good food.  I have a sore foot that is healing very very slowly, so I can't jog as much and this is changing my mental and physical health.  I do Pilates.  I try. 

Ben has soccer games and soccer practices just about all the time (it seems).  He just absolutely loves it, so I try to work on my attitude about driving him all over creation.  We carpool, and I take my knitting along, and I enjoy my boy enjoying himself. 

I am studying sourdough bread.  I have borrowed books on the subject, and one or two blogs I read.  I made a few notes.  I make something with sourdough every week, as I have for about 10 years now, but I am tweaking and understanding it differently, and the feel of the silky strong dough is pure delight in my hands. 

I finished Phoebe's quilt.  That does really need its own blog post. I'll be back.

Some Bread For Christmas

These are three projects made on different days, photographed only in their dough state.  We had the St. Lucia buns for breakfast one Sunday close to St. Lucia Day.  Another day I made French bread to give as gifts with small jars of jam.  And finally, on another Sunday morning, we had Midwinter Buns.  Delicious December!  Down below in the freezer is Grandma's Russian Kulich, waiting for Christmas morning and mugs of hot chocolate.  Today I made marshmallows for the first time ever to float in that hot chocolate.

Merry Christmas, dear readers!  May your plates be full of goodies, your mugs bottomless, and your beloved people close to you.  May our plenty and love overflow to those who need it, in honor of Jesus whose birthday started all this feasting!

The Unbelievable Sandwich

It's hard to believe that dill pickles and peanut butter taste so good together.  Yes, I am not kidding.  My friend Naomi came over to grind some peanut butter on our machine and exclaimed that it would make a delicious peanut butter and pickle sandwich.  What? What?  She patiently explained to me that it's delicious and the best pickles to use are dill.  I knew I had to try it once - it's weird and I am always intrigued by unusual food.

I couldn't believe how delicious the combination is!  I'm not sure I can explain it either - it's almost meaty, but rich, too, and then the zip of vinegar.  Have you eaten this sandwich before?

My family's reactions were mixed:

Husband: I can improve this.  I think it needs more of an Indian pickle, to take it in a groundnut stew direction.  Yes, I think those are the flavors that it should be going for.
Genevieve:  No thanks, I won't taste that weird combination.
Ben:  Yum!  I want more!
Phoebe:  FOOD.  More FOOD.

I know there are other weird sandwich fillings out there - I seem to recall mention of banana and mayonnaise. . . ?  Maybe?  Or peanut butter and bologna . . . ?  What are they?  All these years I have dismissed strange fillings as not worth remembering, only to find out that peanut butter and dill pickles are delicious together.  What other odd couples am I missing?

"A Better World"

today's baking:  bagels and daily bread

". . .cut for yourself, if you will, a slice of bread that you have seen mysteriously rise and redouble and fall and fold under your hands.  It will smell better, and taste better, than you remembered anything could possibly taste or smell, and it will make you feel, for a time at least, newborn into a better world than this one often seems." - M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf, from the chapter "How to Rise Up Like New Bread"

Happy New Year to you all!  In this, the year of the baby, I resolve to eat, sleep, enjoy my family, and keep on baking bread.  The rest might have to wait its turn, depending on the nature of the baby and my mental state.  I maintain that the scent of fresh bread is one of the most heartening, comforting things in the world - may you find comfort and joy in your new year, whether you get it from new bread or elsewhere.

Low-Key Sourdough and Its Resulting Crackers

My sourdough starter has to be very hearty to survive my treatment.  It lives in the fridge and I make bread about every other week. Ideally, sourdough likes to be at room temperature and fed with fresh flour and water daily.  That is too needy for my kitchen! 

My sourdough starter is almost 4 years old and it has a very strong, rustic taste (locals, I'm always happy to share - just email me from the link in my sidebar).

But after my sourdough got so weak and weary from neglect that it could hardly raise the roof on bread loaves, I have been careful to feed it at least weekly. Instead of throwing away the starter from the feeding, I make crackers.  I tweaked this cracker recipe from Gina, who has some other great ideas for using the discarded sourdough.

I am pleased to have such easy crackers on hand for snacks and packed lunches.  They're cheap and healthy, and I don't have to go to a store and throw away subsequent packaging to have them on hand.

Sourdough Crackers
1 cup "discarded" sourdough starter
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. salt

Combine sourdough starter and butter in mixing bowl.  Add flour and salt and knead until smooth.  Depending on the weather and the thickness of your starter, add more or less flour.  Dough should be stiff.  Cover dough tightly with a lid or enclose mixing bowl in a bag.  Allow to sit at room temperature for 7-10 hours. Break dough into pieces and spread evenly on parchment or Silpat on a large baking sheet.  Roll out to a 1/4" thickness or less, using a sheet of waxed paper between the rolling pin and dough.  Use a knife or pizza cutter to cut into cracker shapes (I cut small squares).  Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.  Remove any crackers that are hard when you press on them.  Hard crackers should break away from their partners easily.  Turn oven down to 300. Return soft crackers to the oven for 10 minutes.  Repeat pressing test, again removing hard crackers and returning soft crackers to oven.  Repeat in 10 minute intervals until all crackers are hard.  Cool all crackers and store in airtight container at room temperature.

Play with flavoring the crackers:  sprinkle with an herb, more salt, or freshly ground pepper. Press it lightly into the rolled crackers.  Once, I used part rye flour and added caraway seeds to the dough.  I bet cheese or sesame seeds could be added. 

St. Lucia Buns for Breakfast

It's not hard for me to make fun bread during the day when I'm at home and the children are at school.  I find yeast breads easier to make than, say, cookies, and the baking scent is so deeply delectable. 

So that's how come I made St. Lucia buns early in December and cached them in the freezer for December 13.  The dough is a fairly standard sweet yeast dough, but the added saffron and the s-shape makes the buns special. They are pillowy and subtly exotic from the saffron and then there's a dark little spot of sweetness from the raisin in the fat curl.

The batch was so large that we had St. Lucia buns again for breakfast yesterday, and this time I snapped a picture. Warm St. Lucia buns, red oranges, and yogurt cheese.  And strong black coffee for the bigs and hot chocolate for the littles.  A nice way to start a dark winter morning that's not Christmas yet.

 

 

Peanut Butter and Jelly French Toast

Make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, dip in egg mixture, and fry in butter.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar for pretty and drizzle with maple syrup.  Oh, heavenly.

There are a few keys to making this good, I think:

1.  Use soft bread, not your hearty, homemade wheat bread.  I use commercial potato bread.
2.  Use a strongly flavored jam - I use strawberry freezer jam.
3.  Flavor your egg and milk mixture with a pinch of salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and a splash of vanilla.

It is rare that I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for a meal as I prefer more savory sandwiches, but I purposely looked for bread on sale to make this!  I found potato bread for $1.33 a loaf at a local store this week and stocked up.

 

If we get tired of this French toast, there's always the oven version.

Recent Kitchen Flops

Since I was writing about the "abundance of a certain material to make an impact" in my last post, let's talk about my spate of kitchen flops as a blog post.  Here they are in order.

1. I didn't use my sourdough starter for a week or so because I made a batch of oatmeal bread with regular ol' yeast for my mother who was convalescing from a terrible bout of flu.  The bread was like manna from heaven for her, so that warmed my heart.  But. But. But. I mixed up a batch of sourdough bread.  I left the sourdough loaves to rise overnight and in 12 hours, they had hardly risen. I, the old kitchen genius, baked them anyway and handily underbaked them while I was at it.  So they came out like bricks with doughy centers.  I'm pretending nothing is wrong and I just toast it before it gets eaten, but it's embarrassing.  I will not neglect my starter again!

2.  Around the time of the pink living room, I made a batch of Jeni's black coffee ice cream that was truly the most divine thing I put in my mouth this year.  Then last week I made a second batch, dreaming of that flavor, and lo, I messed it up.  It acquired too much liquid (milk? water?  did I just totally space out and add water???) and it's so hard and ice-crystally and the intoxicating flavor is totally diluted.  Very sad.  Tonight I pried a few icy scoops out and added them to vanilla seltzer to make floats, but still sad.

3.  I was charging through my excellent recipe for hot-and-sour soup when I reached in the back of the fridge to get my staple box of tofu and it was a frozen-solid brick.  Apparently the cold spot had gotten really cold.  Bless my husband for grabbing up a whiny kid and whipping out the car and returning with tofu in hand.  It wasn't exactly my fault, but on the heels of these other flops, I was not cheered.

4.  Yesterday I was making a lemon sponge pie when I realized I had poured in 2 1/2 cups of milk instead of 1 1/2 cups.  I was horrified.  All that butter, eggs, sugar, wasted?  I had nothing to lose, so I poured off a cup of the filling and baked it beside the pie like a custard.  I actually put it in the fridge and did not look at it yet - maybe it's a sauce?   The pie itself was oozy and watery around the edges, so I put it in the freezer for an hour before I served it today and guess what?! It was fine!  The flavor was not diluted too much and the custard was just set from the freezer.

Want to share any of your recent kitchen woes?  I could use another laugh.

How to Freeze Unbaked Sticky Buns to Bake Later

Here are some helpful ways to fit a warm yeasted sweet bread (sticky buns or sweet rolls, etc.) into your life - what is better on a bitter winter morning? Start these methods before the morning of.

Method 1.  Allow dough to rise in bowl per recipe.  Once the buns are shaped, put them in their pan and pop them, covered, in the fridge overnight (I use my metal 9x13 with its metal lid, which is not airtight, but an airtight bag is fine too).  Let stand on the counter for 10-15 minutes in the morning. Bake 10 degrees warmer than the recipe originally called for OR add 5-10 minutes to the original baking time using the original baking temperature. 

Method 2. Allow dough to rise, allow shaped buns to rise to the point where you would bake them.  Then, instead, wrap the pan up tight and freeze them.  The day before you want them, put the frozen buns in their pan in the fridge for 12 or so hours.  Then, bake the same way as #1.

Isn't that handy?  I made sticky buns using method #2 on Christmas morning because there were so many festivities piled up that I couldn't bear the thought of fiddling with sticky buns on Christmas eve evening.

Sticky buns in the pan, just before baking.

Now, here is a bread-freezing trick that I tried over Christmas that did not work for me.  I parbaked French bread and froze it, so that I could bake it another day and have hot bread then.  The first time, the parbaking, I baked the loaves just until they were taking on color.  When I baked the bread a second time, it kept its doughy, underdone center no matter how long I baked it and how dark the crust was getting.  Not successful!  So, now you know. 

Grandma's Christmas Bread, Russian Kulich

Maybe it's because strokes have reduced my grandma's vocabulary to "yes" that I have lots of questions for her. One of my burning questions: Grandma, how did you make your Christmas bread? I asked my mom and several aunts to see if they knew where the recipe came from. Luckily for me, Aunt Elena had copied it down and she generously went out of her way to get it to me. She warned me that the bread never rose very well for her.

 

Grandma made this bread every Christmas. It has a mixed reception in the family. I wasn't sure I remembered the exact taste, but I have a very clear memory of Tampa, Florida, in the 1980s at Aunt Elena's house on a quiet street in a development, on a shiny, sunny Christmas morning. I was standing next to the counter close to the screened-in porch, there was a toaster, and it was scenting up the kitchen toasting Christmas bread. Cousins were running and screaming everywhere and I was wearing shorts in the middle of winter. Lovely.

So I hunted around for the weird fruit-ish things in this bread and started a batch.  Then, I googled the name, "Russian Kulich," which was also written on the recipe.  Turns out, it's Russian Easter bread.  Now I have another burning question for Grandma:  Grandma, how did this Russian Easter recipe get into our Swiss-German family and why do you make it at Christmas, not Easter?

In 1994, I was in Russia over Easter time and I do recall eating a tall, eggy white bread.  I do not recall fruit in the bread, but it was a gorgeously elaborate Orthodox Easter, so I'm sure I've forgotten some details.

 

I am so pleased with this bread; it's delicately fruity and not overly sweet.  We had our bread toasted with butter, alongside grapefruit halves and homemade eggnog.  Ben worked very hard with the grapefruit knife for the first time, a pleasant little kitchen chum. It was the perfect winter white morning outside, and then the sun broke over the breakfast table.

Russian Kulich - Grandma's Christmas Bread

1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. yeast
1/4 cup warm water
2 eggs
2 cups white-whole-wheat flour
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
grated rind of 1 large lemon
grated rind of 1 orange
1/2 cup chopped almonds
1/4 cup dark raisins
1/2 cup citron (fruit cake mix)
1/4 cup chopped candied cherries
oil

1.  In a saucepan, heat milk until almost boiling.  Turn off heat.  Add sugar, butter, and salt.  Stir.  Set aside to cool to lukewarm.
2.  Combine yeast with warm water in large bowl.  Add lukewarm milk mixture and eggs. 
3.  Add 1 1/2 cups flour, either kind, and beat well with a sturdy whisk for 2 minutes.
4.  Add the zest, nuts, and fruits.  Stir.
5.  Add enough flour to make a soft dough.  Knead 5-8 minutes, until satiny.  Form into a tight ball.
6.  Lift up the ball of dough and pour a tablespoon of oil in the bowl.  Rub the dough in the oil and oil the dough and the bowl.  Put a damp kitchen towel over the dough in the bowl and allow to rise until nearly doubled - 1-2 hours or a little more.
7.  Punch down and allow to rest for 10 minutes.  Form 3 loaves, oil them, and place in greased 8x5 bread pans.  Cover again with damp towel and allow to rise until almost double, maybe 1 hour.
8.  Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes.  Turn out of pans to cool completely.  Slice when cool.  Excellent toasted with butter.  Mom recalls that Grandma used to ice the tops of her loaves with confectioners sugar icing and then decorate them with cherries and green frosting leaves.

Notes on the recipe: 
a. You can replace the white whole wheat flour with white flour, but I would not use regular whole wheat flour in this recipe; this is a delicate, eggy bread and the white whole wheat flour is unobtrusive.

b. Grandma's recipe called for candied orange peel, but I couldn't get my hands on any and didn't feel like making it; plus, I figured the fresh orange zest would give the bread a nice lift.

c.  It's because this is a family recipe that I'm willing to use this crazy candied crap fruit.  It's loaded with preservatives, coloring, and other stuff I can't pronounce and am pretending not to see.  La la la la la, not listening!

d.  Unlike Aunt Elena's, I think my bread rose just fine and baked up beautifully.  I made sure to give it plenty of time to rise, however.

 

e.  If you're going to lose all your words and be left with just one, isn't it beautiful that the word is "yes?"  I love you, Grandma.  I love making your bread and tasting memories.

Ben Elevates Basic Cornbread

It suddenly occurred to Rebecca and me, by telepathy on the very same day (I'm not kidding) that we should split leftover cornbread and melt some cheese on top. 

When I served just such a piece to Ben at lunch with soup, he asked politely and firmly for honey on top.  I explained that the bubbly, toasted cheese was the topping, but he insisted.  And guess what?  honey on top of toasted cheese on top of cornbread is delicious!  Smart boy.

I thought it would be tasty for breakfast.  It is.  I told Ben he invented a new breakfast.

I tried some blackberry jam with the cheese, too, and it was also great.  We had Pink Lady apples on the side, and age-appropriate hot drinks.

This is an excellent way to use leftover cornbread; the other way is to make cornbread dressing.

Basic Cornbread from More with Less

Bad cornbread is really bad; it is dry and crumbly and hard to choke down.  I am careful not to overmix the batter and not to overbake the bread; I get tender, moist cornbread every time.  Also this recipe is so quick to whip up that the oven is never preheated by the time I'm ready to slide the pan in! 

In a mixing bowl, combine with a whisk:
1 c. cornmeal
1 c. whole wheat flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1/1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. brown sugar

Make a well in the dry ingredients; this gives you a headstart on mixing without beating so hard that you turn out a dry, crumbly bread.

Put in the well:
2 eggs

Break them up with a whisk.  Beat slightly.

Add to the eggs in the well:
1 c. milk
1/4 c. vegetable oil

Mindfully, pay attention, and stir JUST until mixed.  It's okay if there are streaks of flour and egg.  Pour into a greased 9x9 pan or equivalent cast-iron frying pan.  Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes, when bread has pulled away from the sides of the pan and is lightly browned.  Better to underbake than overbake!  I use my cast-iron skillet and only bake for 18-20 minutes because the cast iron bakes faster than aluminum or glass.

What To Do with Old Spices

Throw them out.  There's nothing thrifty to do with them, and it's false economy to save them and hope they have flavor when, actually, they don't.

To wit:  this is supposed to be cardamom naan (naan is a yeasted Indian flatbread).  I adore cardamom.  I keep a little bag, tightly sealed in two layers of platic, in the freezer for the rare occasions I need its unique flavor.  Apparently it was older than I realized.  The recipe called for 1/4 tsp. and I added over a teaspoon of my cardamom.  I was so sad:  there was not even a whiff of cardamom in the finished naan!

I went through the rest of my stored spices and herbs relentlessly.  They either reside in a dark cupboard, tightly sealed, or in the freezer as I mentioned.  I threw out anything tasteless, and I have a few that I'm planning to test in cooking before I throw out.

Makes an excellent argument for shopping at my little herb shop with my little containers!  What good are bulk spices and herbs if they go tasteless before I can use them all?  Thrifty cooking that uses up odds and ends needs to handle flavors cleverly, so I'm going to be careful to have really flavorful herbs and spices on hand.

Breakfast Avocado with Red Pepper Marmalade - updated with recipe

I'm putting red pepper marmalade everywhere these days:  on bagels with cream cheese, on toast with avocado, on our English muffin egg sandwiches with Swiss this morning.

It's delicious.  I'm glad I made another batch this year!

But here's the thing:  I have been having a murderous little tug-of-war with Genevieve over food recently, specifically school lunches and breakfasts. 

Without knowing this, a dear friend casually remarked over the weekend that she's glad she has sons because she would be too overbearing with a daughter.  Oh.  Lightbulb.  And my best friend gently advised me to leave my girl alone. 

This morning, I did not ask anybody what condiment he or she wanted on the egg sandwiches, and my girl gobbled up her sandwich with no remarks from either of us.   It was a good start to a morning where she then almost missed her bus.

 

I'm working up (see tug-of-war, above) to do some posts about school lunches. 

updated for Hazel:

Hot Pepper Marmalade - from Simply in Season, with some of my tweaks

3-5 chili peppers, 4-5 medium bell peppers (use more or less chili peppers - you have to guess at the heat you are working with and the outcome you want; using all red peppers makes the prettiest marmalade)

Chop the peppers very finely.  I use my food processor. 

Combine in a saucepan:
4 cups very finely minced peppers
1 cup white or apple cider vinegar
2 cups sugar

Gradually stir in:
1 package no-sugar-needed pectin (or use regular pectin and read the directions to adjust the sugar in the recipe)

Stir until dissolved.  Bring to a boil, stirring.  Boil and stir one minute. 
Ladle into hot, sterile half-pint jars.  Leave 1/2" headspace.  Add sterilized lids and rings and process jars in boiling water bath for 10 minutes. (I did not use the water bath because of the sugar and vinegar; this is called open kettle canning and is not recommended by canning authorities.  Now you are warned.)

Artisan Bread in the Crockpot

This actually took place in an earlier heat wave, but I wanted to report on my experiment with making bread in the crockpot.

I used recipes and techniques that I found online (links on my pinterest board here).  Overall, it worked.
 

The bread was a bit flat and more like steamed bread, such as Boston brown bread, than artisanal bread.  I thought I was going to get European boules with no effort or skill.  Sigh. But really, as I should know, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Any bread is excellent with Nutella, iced cafe au lait, and peaches. 

This Nutella is not homemade. 

I have other kitchen projects I want to spend my limited time on, so my family just ate a jar of tasty chemicals.  There wasn't really a savings of money, although I could use local cream when I made Nutella.  I am glad to know how to make nut butter in my food processor with the hazelnuts (although I found out that almonds don't work the same way). 

I guess I am trying to tell you that I am not a slave to thrift.  It's usually fun and satisfying for me to make things, but it's not my god.

I'm getting unpacked from a fun weekend and scrabbling around with school supplies.  Stay tuned!

Neatballs, Buns, and Rachel

Rachel and Peter stopped by as I was fixing dinner.  They and their boys are dear friends to our family - and they are moving far away this summer.  I'm sad about it, it's true, even though I can be happy for them in a little part of my selfish heart.

But I appeared to be a kitchen goddess when they dropped in - had an oven full of vegetarian neatballs, baked potatoes, and hamburger buns.  I've decided that I'm bypassing the choice of grocery store sales or nasty cheap buns by making buns myself, so I took advantage of a cool-ish day and an oven supper to make the buns.

I asked my husband to take a picture of Rachel and me; he told us to say "buns" which, we discovered, made us look very strange.

The neatballs, a new recipe to me, were fantastic.  I'm already planning other menus around them and thinking of people I want to share them with.  We ate them with baked potatoes and steamed broccoli.

My children are in love with baked-potato-skin cups, the way we ate baked potatoes when I was a child.  I scrub baking potatoes, poke them once, and bake them for an hour.

Then we cut the potatoes in half, hollow out the skin, and put the fluffy potato on the plate.  Put a pat of butter, salt and pepper in the little potato-skin cup and that is heaven!  Is there a name for this?

 Formerly, I oiled the potatoes and put them on a tray so their skins would be soft and I wouldn't be cooking in foil.  However, I shyly introduced this childhood method of my mother's and we are all hooked.

A serving dish from my late Grandma Weaver