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Baking Bread: Oatmeal and Black peppered Cashews

Baking Bread: One Loaf at a Time Entry Six Memory: Enjoying a spring afternoon in front of the Peace Center. Let’s face it. No one was too sure about that last loaf’s texture. We’d been out of oatmeal, so I substituted quinoa, thinking it’d soften over the 4-hour process. It did – somewhat, but the whole wheat studded with quinoa threw off the family. Although it was truly fine, delicious even, no one touched it but I. Another attempt. Step one: Use oatmeal. Step two: layer the ingredients, avoiding surprise. With the exception of using black peppered cashews, the final product should be rather predictable.

Baking Bread: One Loaf at a Time

Baking Bread: One Loaf at a Time Entry Two To start the experiment, I hauled out my GoldStar Bread Maker HB-152CE, used only once. The problem was that I didn’t have the direction booklet and didn’t know how to operate the stubborn gadget. My first experiment a few months back resulted in a crispy banana bread that was raw in the center. I had to slice it in half and toast it for 45 minutes to achieve edibility. It was not a pleasant experience. After searching online, I found basic instructions. Apparently, I needed to layer all the ingredients in order, snap that pan in place, THEN plug in the machine. Genius. Pure genius. Next, I found a 1996 Gold Medal and Fleischmann’s Bread Machine Yeast recipe booklet stashed in with my cookbooks and looked for a whole wheat recipe. Even though all the coupons in the back of the promo expired in 1997, I figured the recipes were still good. The rest was ridiculously easy: I added the ingredients in order, plugged in the machine, and pressed

Baking Bread: Sun-dried Tomato & Herb Bread

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m feeling smug as I drizzle newly harvested honey over my freshly baked bread. Yesterday, as I collected and spun racks laden with honey from our downtown hives, I wandered around the garden and clipped herbs: mint, lemon-balm, parsley, thyme, rosemary, parsley, basil, and sage. While the kitchen filled with the amazing aroma of honey releasing from its wax, I assisted with jar duty, washed and chopped herbs, and prepped for bread-making. Here’s my recipe for a large loaf, modified from “Fresh Herb Bread”: Sun-dried Tomato and Herb Bread Water 1 cup Egg, extra large 2 Olive oil 3 tablespoons Honey 4 tablespoons Sea salt 2 teaspoons Celery seed 1 teaspoon Fresh chopped herbs 2/3 cup Sun-dried tomato (soaked in olive oil or water) 2 tablespoons Bread flour 4 cups Dry yeast 2 ¼ teaspoons Follow basic bread machine directions. I chose “wheat” setting for 4 hours. Later in the eve

Going veggie -- celebrate with fries

It was bound to happen. When I was a little girl, I preferred grilled cheese or a quesadilla to a chicken leg. Daddy bragged that I ate grilled cheese from Greenville, SC to Quebec to Denver, CO, to wherever else we traveled, saving him bookoos of money. To be fair, I ate plenty besides grilled cheese, but that didn't make the anecdote. Early on, I was suspicious of hamburgers and steaks, lest they were under-cooked. I didn't care for meat touching bones or fat or skin... or, let's face it -- meat. Bacon? Only if it was extra crispy. I knew my daughter would one day declare herself a vegetarian. If you live near Rutherford Road, you're bound to drive behind the chicken truck on a regular basis. It's a dirty, pitiful sight, and I'm sure many parents have detoured when seeing one of those dreaded trucks in the distance. Honestly, it takes a whole lot of compartmentalizing to get stuck behind the chicken truck then proceed to Chick-fil-A for a playdate.

It's my plate. Why are you ticked off?

You can almost hear the eye-rolling when another diner surveys the content of my plate. "Paleo?" he asks. "No," I respond. I might as well follow through. "Gluten-free." The diner now surveys me to see if he can discern what's wrong with me. Perhaps this will lead to a rather personal Q and A, through which this individual will deem that I, indeed, may continue to eat as I wish. Perhaps this will lead to a dismissal of gluten-free as a fad. Perhaps I'll be treated to an anecdote of another experimental person on the gluten-free path. It's tempting just to say I'm allergic to wheat as determined by an elaborate skin-prick test by a leading allergist. It's mostly true. But I don't go there. I'm one of those annoying folks who have some actual food allergies and other food sensitivities. I've found that it's best just to eat what I know is safe for me and to avoid what isn't. It's that simple.

On becoming a quasi-foodie

I’m not really sure when the shift to becoming a foodie occurred. My parents loved to brag about our road trip to Quebec and how their seven-year daughter survived for three weeks on little more than yet another variation of a grilled cheese sandwich. I also made it to Denver and back a few times, subsisting on much the same diet. Why grilled cheese? Onions. It’s simple: I abhor onions and had reached a gross-out point at which I could not bear the taste of one more unexpected onion entering my mouth. I’d been bombarded in the least likely places. At the beach, I cried over my salad when I realized some maniac had slipped raw onions into the Thousand Island dressing. I recoiled when hamburger after hamburger still bore witness to the remnants of chopped onions a line cook had scraped off my order. Few foods were safe: grilled cheese, seafood, raw veggies, dessert, and tea. Even French fries were suspect since they were fried alongside onion rings. It’s not that I’m a particular

Inaugural Chicken Apple Soup

Inaugural Chicken Apple Soup There comes a time when your trusted appliances begin to fade, slipping in consistency and reliability – not even coming on at all when you’ve trusted them to do their job. That’s right. The crock pot let me down. Granted, it’s apparently not quite “mostly dead,” but has enough of a short sporadically to go on strike. So, I struck back. Yep. Bought a new one. Cuter. Smaller. And, thus far, it works reliably. So what to make for the inaugural pot? Chicken Apple Soup. Here’s the basic plan: Take ½ a cooked chicken, remove bone and skin, throw it in the pot with 4 cups of chicken broth and 4 cups of water. Finely chop 3 ribs of celery. Peel, core, and slice 3 apples. Slice 2 medium pieces of candied ginger. Add these and ½ teaspoon of salt (I used the pink), 2 teaspoons of fresh parsley and 2 of fresh cilantro. Add a few drops of lemon oil. Stir. Walk away. Check every now and then. Eat eventually. Why? This recipe reminds me of my grandmother’