cooking/baking

Simplicity: Meal Planning

Posted by on 3 Comments

simplicity

 

Wanna know a secret? I suck at meal planning. I’ve never been awesome at it, but I used to be better than I am now. About two years ago, we (Will and I) devised a system in which I would grocery shop each day for that day’s food – kind of like the European model. (What I know of the European model, anyway. I’ve never been to Europe, so my knowledge is limited to what I learned in high school French class.) We decided to take this “route” because at the time, we lived in a small town. Really small. As in no street lights and the only “grocery store” (and I use that term very loosely) carried almost nothing fresh (a few bananas and moldy peaches/strawberries/bell peppers was the extent of the produce department) and charged double what a regular store would for the packaged stuff. The other option in town was a mini-mart whose owners bought their stock from Wal-Mart and marked them up from the already-retail price. So we decided, that as a way for me to make sure to get out of the apartment each day, I should take the car to the bigger town seven miles away and get groceries from a real store.

Since we moved to a bigger town half an hour away in December 2012 (the one I grew up in, actually), we’ve kept up with the daily shopping, just because it was we’d grown accustomed to. But now, I’m starting to feel like it’s becoming cumbersome. I want to spend my time hanging out with my boys, teaching them, playing with them. Not grocery shopping.

Which is going to require a fundamental change in the way I think about our food.

But change is good, right? 🙂

So here’s my plan. I’m going to make a weekly meal plan (inspired by this one from Confessions of a Homeschooler) and buy everything we need for the whole week (possibly excluding highly perishable produce – some things really are better to buy more frequently… although I might just buy that stuff too, and chop it all up and freeze it until it’s needed… we’ll see). The meal plan will include Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, and Dinner. For every single day. (My kids will be happy about the “snack” part – we never have snacks on hand.) I will then turn that meal plan into a grocery list, and on Tuesdays, I will go to the grocery store, just me (and probably Small Fry most weeks). Why Tuesdays? I thought about this a lot, and that’s the day that’s going to work best. Will typically works out of the house on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday each week (it can vary week to week, but that’s the schedule I can count on). Sundays are a Sabbath, so no shopping then. Mondays … well, I could shop on Mondays, but this week, Wednesday worked best (he’s working from home all this week), and I didn’t want my shopping trips to be only five days apart this time.

So there you go.

How do you keep mealtime/grocery shopping simple? Help a girl out and share your tips!

Blessings,

Wendy

Homemade Cinnamon Rolls

Posted by on Leave a Comment

cinnamon rolls

Fresh from the oven cinnamon rolls are something special. Very little is as satisfying in the morning – especially when you’ve made them yourself rather than reverting to the cans. (Incidentally, I hate those things! The cans, not the prefab cinnamon rolls.)

Start with your favorite biscuit dough. I use a basic baking powder biscuit recipe that I’ll share at the end of the post.

Roll the dough out as though you were making biscuits, only thinner.

image

Spread softened butter over the dough. You could also use margarine. I don’t happen to buy margarine; I figure something natural (churned cream) has to be better than a bunch of chemicals formulated to taste like the natural item. Anyway.

image

Next, mix about 1/3 cup sugar (granulated or raw/turbinado) with about 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon. Or you could use the pre-mixed stuff from the spice aisle.

image

Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the buttered dough.

image

Roll the dough up, starting from the long side.

image

Cut the dough into discs.

image

Place in a pan, cut sides up (and down…).

image

Bake at 425° for 12-15 minutes.

image

You can make a glaze to go on top if you want, but I never do. These are good enough that they don’t need one!

Baking Powder Biscuits

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup shortening
1 tbsp baking powder
3/4 cup milk

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut in shortening until dough resembles peas in size and shape. Mix in milk until dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

You can use this dough for a variety of things: drop biscuits, cut biscuits, cinnamon rolls, and pot pie topping just to name a few.

Enjoy!

–Wendy

Sourdough Bread

Posted by on 2 Comments

I bet you thought I was gonna forget, huh? Lol. Since I make all posts from my phone, I don’t have them saved & scheduled; that’s why they’re not at the same time every day (in case you ever wondered).

Anyway, so sourdough bread… I love the stuff and have tried many times to make it at home, never with very good results. It’s always edible just never sour, no matter how long I leave my homemade starter out to ferment. I was reading a blog a couple months ago (I don’t remember which one unfortunately) and someone commented about Oregon Trail Sourdough. They have sourdough starter that they give (yes, GIVE) you for just the cost of a self-addressed, stamped envelope. So I sent off for a starter. I activated it as soon as I got it, and then just let it sit for a good long time. The trick with sourdough is that it takes way more planning than regular bread. Regular bread goes from raw ingredients to completely done in less than 4 hours; sourdough requires prepping the night before – sometimes 2 nights depending on whether you’ve had your starter in the fridge. Because of that, it took me probably a month between getting the starter and getting around to using it.

Here’s what my first step looked like. This is the starter, some flour, and water, which had to sit overnight before continuing to finish the dough:

image

The other thing about sourdough is that you have to use glass or plastic, no metal. Well, I only have stainless steel mixing bowls, so it took me a while to figure out how I was going to make bread without buying a special bowl for the task. Then it dawned on me: the ceramic insert for my crock pot!

When you get to the dough stage, it looks just like any other white bread dough, so I don’t have a picture of that.

We’ve been dealing with plumbing issues in the kitchen (I haven’t had a sink since Tuesday…), and one of my loaf pans didn’t get washed before the sink fiasco, so I had to make half my dough into a loaf and the other half into rolls. Here’s the dough:

image

And the finished product:

image

image

The verdict? It’s a little bit more sour than regular homemade bread, but far less so than what’s at the store. I think I’ll leave my starter (it continues to grow, so unless I choose to get rid of it, I’ll never need another one) out of the fridge for a good week before I bake next time to see if I can a better flavor.

–Wendy

New York Style Bagels at Home

Posted by on 7 Comments

We love bagels at my house. On Sunday mornings before church, I make breakfast sandwiches – egg, cheese, and bacon on a bagel. Yum! We used to buy them from a local coffee shop, but they got a new owner who raised the prices (drastically) and lowered the quality. So I figured out how to make them at home instead. Until this week, I’ve been buying the bagels, but a couple weeks ago there was an article about bagels in the local newspaper, which was accompanied by a recipe. I’d been meaning to try it, but never remembered until it was too late on Saturday night. Well, this week, I remembered on Saturday morning!

So here we go: New York style bagels in 6 basic steps…

image

Make the dough and knead it for ten minutes. (Recipe to follow)

image

Let it rise for an hour until doubled in size.

image

image

image

Divide the dough into 8 pieces and shape into balls.

image

Using your finger, create a hole in each dough ball. Let the bagels rest for 10 minutes.

image

Boil the bagels. This is the step that turns “bagel shaped bread” into bagels.

image

Bake.

I hope you enjoy making – and eating – your own bagels as much as I did!

EASY NEW YORK STYLE BAGELS
Yield: 8 bagels
Recipe from The Oregonian, Tuesday April 2nd

1 1/4 cup water (more as needed)
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar (I use raw, not granulated, and they turned out fine)
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
3 1/2 cups bread flour, plus more for kneading (I used 2 1/2 cups King Arthur bread flour and 1 cup generic whole wheat flour)
2 1/4 teaspoon salt
Egg wash (optional)
Various toppings (optional)

In a small bowl, add 1/2 cup warm water. Pour in sugar and yeast but do not stir. Let sit for 5 minutes, then stir to dissolve.

In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Make a well in the center and pour in the yeast/sugar mixture.

Add enough of the remaining water (it took about another full cup for me) and mix well to form a moist, firm dough.

On a well floured countertop, knead the dough for about 10 minutes, being generous about working in additional flour. Your finished dough should be firm and stiff.

Lightly brush a large bowl with oil. Add the dough and turn it so it’s coated with oil. Cover and let rise for an hour, until doubled in size. Punch the dough down and let rest for 10 minutes.

Using a bench scraper or knife, divide dough into 8 equal pieces. Shape each into a ball by rolling gently on the countertop.

Coat a finger in flour and gently press your finger into the center of each dough ball to form a ring. Stretch the ring to about a third of the diameter of the bagel and place on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough balls. Cover bagels and allow to rest for 10 minutes.

*note: use a bigger baking sheet than you think you’ll need in this step to avoid dirtying 2 pans. The bagels grow considerably during the boiling process. Mine was 11×17 which was about perfect.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil and heat your oven to 425*. When water is boiling, reduce heat to a simmer. Working in batches of 2 to 3 bagels, gently slide into the water. They should float almost immediately. When they do, set the timer for 2 minutes. Turn and boil for 2 additional minutes. Move to a wire rack to drain.

Return to the oiled baking sheet. If you want to add toppings, brush the bagels with an egg wash and add toppings as desired. If not, omit the egg wash. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Vegan Blueberry Muffins

Posted by on 2 Comments

I’m not sure whether or not this counts as a “craft” per se, but I’m going with it :).

My husband and I, after watching the documentary Forks Over Knives, have decided to cut all animal products from our diets. This has been a bit harder than I expected – until today. But more on that in a minute.

We took our sons to a farm last Friday, and because it’s so late in the season, all they had available for u-pick was blueberries, so we picked blueberries. It was a wonderful family experience, even if most of the bushes had already been picked pretty clean. We got at least 2 pints for a meager $1.11. I know, had we purchased those same berries in the store, it would have cost us at least $8. Fun family time + cheaper berries = big win!

The trick with so many blueberries, though, is that I don’t particularly like them, except in baked goods. I know they’re really healthy with all their antioxidants etc., but I’ve never enjoyed raw blueberries, so my mind was immediately trying to think of what we could use them for. The kids like the raw okay, but hubby (after a huge blueberry picking trip as a child where they literally ate nothing but blueberries and blueberry-inspired baked goods for several days) isn’t overly fond of them, either, so unless I cooked something with them, I knew a lot of them would go to waste. Even at a savings of almost $7, I couldn’t let that happen.

Since this was after we adopted the vegan lifestyle, however, I was at a loss as to how to make muffins (the standard blueberry fare :)) without milk or eggs. A simple Google search led me to this recipe, which was so easy I knew I had to try it. It’s made using ingredients commonly found in a standard kitchen; all I had to buy was the margarine (we’ve been butter people for years) and applesauce. These used about half of the berries we had, so I went over to another site and found a wonderful recipe for vegan waffles and added the rest of the berries to that for breakfast one morning (unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the waffles, though). Yum!

Back to that comment about finally finding our way in this new lifestyle today. I found a documentary on Amazon (I love having a Prime membership!) yesterday morning – while I was nursing Baby E and wishing to be asleep, lol – from one of the guys who did Forks Over Knives called “Forks Over Knives presents The Engine 2 Kitchen Rescue with Rip Esselstyn” and watched it. It was really good; I highly recommend it. In it, he went to two families’ homes and taught them the basics of this lifestyle: they went shopping for a day’s worth of groceries, and then he taught them how to use those whole ingredients to make delicious meals. Believe me when I say the meals were amazing looking! Or better yet, go watch the film yourself :). We’ve committed to taking his 28-day challenge (starting today) and have had two of the meals from his site so far; both are some of the best food I’ve had in ages, especially since going vegan. Head on over to his site if you’re interested in more information on this plant-based, whole foods lifestyle :).

Until next time…