blender waffles

This is yummy

it's made from this

and a couple of these home laid beauties

and... milk, yogurt (for oil), baking powder, sugar, and salt.


makes 6-8 waffles:
1 C. milk
1 C. uncooked whole wheat kernels (calls for +1 T. but I usually forget)
2 eggs
4 T. oil (which I substitute... yogurt, sour cream or applesauce)
2 tsp. baking powder
2 T. honey or sugar
1/2 tsp. salt

put milk and wheat in blender. blend on highest speed for 4-5 minutes or until batter is smooth. Add remaining ingredients and blend on low. bake in waffle iron until done.

these are good to eat right away or to freeze wrapped in saran for later consumption

crackers and corn tortillas

The crackers of the day - imitation wheat thins and saltines

Kathleen came over and brought her cracker making experience as well as daughter and taste tester, Claire.

Kathleen rolling the dough

sprinkling the (Kosher) salt

Claire likes them and she's cute so... they must be good



Then we went on to make some corn tortillas

can you trust Masa to be authentic when there is a picture of a Caucasian Quaker on the front of the bag?
that is the question

unfortunately, we did not test both bags of Masa and used this kind

non-appetizing raw tortilla balls

the "I don't have a tortilla press" rolling out process - between grocery bags. It works.
and this is a belly shot...

rolled and cooked

we even ate some for lunch (with other stuff)!

That was a fun time indeed.

buffalo sammies

I was thinking about making some BBQ chicken sandwiches. The thing is though, buffalo chicken sandwiches are... ummm... tastier. So I found this. I had around 7 hours till Pete usually leaves for work so there was just time enough (hopefully!). I began.

Frank's happens to be delicious. I've heard it is used by Jack in the Box for their new Mini Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches as well as rumors of it being the base for Native New Yorker's Hot Wings. If you like wing sauce, you might want to give it a try.

here we have chicken with some ingredients scattered about and around for a do-it-yourself kind of ranch salad dressing mix. I did not have a store-bought ranch mix on hand.

The chicken was ready in about 5 hours - I turned up the heat towards the 2nd half of the cooking time to try to ensure it being ready early enough.

After I started the chicken in the crockpot I was thinking how we'd have to go buy some rolls. this occurred to me after I had started making bread in our bread machine less than an hour before. Oh yeah... you can make rolls!

Here is the recipe. I split the flour pretty evenly whole wheat/white.

pre-risen dough

dough ready for it's second rising

voila! 2nd rising complete

pre-baked

ding!

post-baked

I didn't get a picture of the sandwiches put all together but they were really good. Really.

and while we're here let me introduce one of our newest kitchen utensils: Cleaver.

Welcome, Cleaver.
You might not get much use, but you look pretty neat just being around

Queen of Torts??

I've made corn tortillas before - those are easy

the good news is - these are easy too!

I got the instructions/recipe from here.

These were made with 100% Whole Wheat Flour

:Ingredients were simple : mixed the dough : "de-ringed" for kneading:

:let dough rest: poked for no apparent reason: shaped and rested dough again:


:rolled on oiled surface: cooked:


:ate them:
OK - not all of them, yet. A number of them since last night, but not all of them.

thus saying, I plan on making these again but with less salt (probably half the salt). I don't know if I put a heaping tsp. in or if I did the classic Tbsp. for tsp. or what but the tortillas by themselves are much too salty. Thankfully covered with cheese or filled with peanut butter and honey they are just fine. That was a close one.

I made these this time because I was planning to go to Trader Joe's to purchase some of their 100% ww tortilla's and other baked goods. Then I realized I could try to make them. I think this was a better deal (money-wise, and probably comparable time-wise too since TJ's is about 35 min. away) and these are good - maybe even as good as TJ's!

'tis the season...

...for strawberries!

We had a little left of this jam in our freezer from last year until very recently... it was actually still good after getting under the icy top

we choose to go the "reduced sugar" route this time after trying both last year

strawberry freezer jam

dehydrated strawberries

yummy!

Homemade Yogurt & Chocolate Sheet Cake

Some of this Jack's kitchen adventures/experiments have been low on the to-do-list (along with many other things...) but hopefully the kitchen is back to being inhabited a little more often

Yogurt
Normal store-bought yogurt, if you don't buy plain, is often:
1. full of slightly, if not highly, disturbing ingredients
2. way to sweet to choke down
3. more expensive than I'd like (free would be preferable)

As we happened to be fortunate enough to have a yogurt maker passed down to us, we made yogurt. Actually, Pete made the first batch while I was feeling sick and my mom and I made the second while Pete was working. The pictures are mostly products of the second batch

2

pretty much all you need ingredient-wise is milk (we used skim) and 2 T. yogurt (used as a starter)
We also added some non-fat powdered milk.
Here's the directions we used:
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Yogurt

I have heard there are ways of using a crockpot to make yogurt although we haven't tried that, yet.

For eating purposes, it is rather bland by itself but delicious with honey.
I like berries on top too.

Cake

Secondly I made this for our church community group

those bumps on top are powdered sugar clumps (I hope!) that didn't quite make it. that was a sad misfortune and only so many could be picked out by a non-perfectionist youngest child (they probably taste real good that way anyways)

OK, honestly, I didn't even try this cake. I am not big on chocolate on chocolate with more chocolate, but some people are. I heard many good "reviews" and am inclined to believe them because I got the recipe from this super fun site which has a lot of yummy recipes on it. Maybe they also liked it because it has a lot of butter, sugar, and chocolate - also a possibility

Not the "healthiest" choice of baking but one should probably not bring whole wheat bran muffins when signed up for snacks - it just might not go over well

beans, refried

OK, the sad part about this little bean story is that out of all the times I have made these the time I take pictures of the process they turn out to be my least favorite so far. Thankfully I believe I know why and can share that with you as well... alas.

Here's the Recipe

Starting off with "overnight" soaked pinto beans, add them to boiling water
with onions and garlic

A low effort way to peel garlic is to cut off the hard end, put them in a dishcloth and smash them against the counter.It works surprisingly well.
My thought is that a little older garlic works better than brand spanking fresh, but that is just a guess

simmer, simmer, simmer... the onions look different now

cook some onions in butter, add some seasonings...
(I use the same "big" pot for everything, I just transfer the cooked beans to
a bowl and then the vitamix to mash them)


And voila! You have yourself some homemade refried beans!


Now for the sad part. I used my vitamix too much, if that is possible... which apparently it is.
I "chopped" the onions in the said machine which, I believe, made them too runny and made the beans a little more oniony than I like. So the moral of the story is, chop, don't puree your onions! I think by cooking some more plain pinto beans (with salt) and adding them to my now frozen beans would solve the problem.

Notable Changes I made of the real recipe...
I used more beans than 1.25 cups because I think that is just too few!!
I didn't put cilantro in this batch, I didn't have any.
I have never used feta for garnish but that sounds interesting!

I like to use these refried beans (when they turn out less oniony!) for bean bowls:
layered- brown rice, beans, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and usually some salsa for good measure.
They really are good!