Adventures in Bread Making!

Hey y'all! This is Sarah; the middle sister, the only blonde, and the honorary Texan. After multiple weeks of poking, prodding (and not- so- subtle eye rolling from Beth and Mom) I'm finally posting! Yes, I know, tsk tsk, but for some reason, posting just seemed daunting. I don't quite know what that reason was, but that's the beauty of the phrase, "For some reason." ;)
Anyway, my first post would be about food, considering I'm food obsessed. I love cooking, baking, and Food Network is pretty much the only channel I watch. (Except when Bones is on. Then it's Fox. Because Bones is on Fox. Okay, I'll stop now.)

So at the start of this summer, Beth and I decided that it would be a great idea to start making our own bread. This idea came about for a few reasons, the first being Sodium Stearoyl Lactate. And Azodicarbonamide. And Ethoxylated Monoglycierides and Diglycerides. And Guar Gum. I don't know about you, but the ingredient list on store- bought bread these days scares me! Making our own was a great way to help our goal of eating fewer processed foods and all the scary- sounding chemicals that come with them. Second, homemade bread is super easy to make (especially if you have a bread machine) and is absolutely delicious!!! It tastes SO much better than store- bought any day. Third, I'm home all day this summer, so I could make bread on a regular basis.

Since this was my first stab at baking bread, I went with a recipe that was made entirely in the bread machine. I used the book Bread Machine Baking for All Seasons by Connie Merydith, using a recipe called, "Tasty Wheat Bread." Here goes nothin'!

Tasty Wheat Bread:

Ingredients:

1 1/4 C Warm Water

1 Tbs. Canola oil

2 Tbs. Honey

2 C Unbleached, All Purpose Flour

1 3/4 C Whole Wheat Flour

2 Tbs. Nonfat Dry Milk

1 tsp. Salt

2 1/4 tsp. (1 package) Dry Yeast 

First, add all the liquids to the bread machine pan. I added water first, but feel free to be adventurous and start with the oil! Or the honey! But preferably the oil before the honey. I'll get to that in a minute. (What you don't know with this water- pouring, action shot is that I was actually pouring the water into the cavity outside the bread machine pan... holding a camera and shooting action shots while performing said action is harder than it looks!)

 Next, add the canola oil.

 Then the honey. (Yay for actually pouring the water in the correct spot this time!)

Now THIS is why I said to add the oil before the honey. The oil coats the measuring spoon so all the honey slides right off! You get every last bit of honey goodness without the mess of having to use a spatula. Or a finger. (Don't judge me.)

 Next, add the dry ingredients, starting with the flours. First the All Purpose...

 then the Whole Wheat.

Add the dry milk.

Finally, add the salt. 

Note: Be sure to cover all the wet ingredients with the dry ones! This was the reason for adding the wet ingredients first. Since yeast is activated by water, covering the liquids with the dry ingredients keeps the yeast from being activated until the bread machine starts.This ensures that you get the maximum rise in your bread!

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients...

 

and pour the yeast into the well. (Make sure the well isn't deep enough to touch the wet ingredients!)

Set the bread machine for the basic whole wheat bread cycle for a 1- 1 1/2 pound loaf and start the machine!

 

The bread machine in action! I've tried to recreate this shot multiple times and have not been able to for the life of me. *sigh*

 

Once the bread is done, immediately take it out of the bread machine pan and let cool on a wire rack before slicing. (However, slicing it after, oh, 30 seconds and then smearing it with butter is perfectly acceptable. And highly encouraged.)

Enjoy! :) This bread is delicious warm right out of the bread machine, sliced up for sandwiches, used as fresh bread crumbs, even toasted and used as a replacement for dinner rolls!

More bread posts will be coming soon!

Riverdance

One of the most exciting mail deliveries of the spring is the calendar of events for Wolf Trap.  It is brightly colored and folds out into a poster (which my boss coincidentally has hanging on his wall).  We all love Wolf Trap and we always vow every summer to go to more events than we did the year before and really take advantage of it.  Well there was one event that caught my eye right away, Riverdance.  Let's all admit it, we've seen the tv commercials of the loud banging tap dancing and wished we had trained since age 3 and lived in Ireland and had no job so we could tour around the world and dance too!  It was Father's Day weekend and I was determined to go.  We ordered our tickets (box seats of course (but matinee because we're not into spending a ton of money), packed a picnic lunch and a change of clothes, and left right after church.  We got there and parked next to some picnic tables, ate lunch and walked over to pick up our tickets at will-call (which was run by incompetent high schoolers who needed summer jobs.  In other words the line moved very slowly).  Once we found our seats I was decidedly depressed to discover that I had packed the camera and the new zoom lens but had left the battery charging in the wall at home!!! :(  Sad day.  Mom made me feel a little better when she pointed out that the program told us not to take pictures of the show for copyright purposes.  So before the show started I whipped out my trusty blackberry (with not a very good camera) and snapped some shots.

Here is the left side of the stage.  I just love the wood and the architecture of Wolf Trap.  It makes me smile.

Hello ma famille, how are you doing?  A little chilly because of the breeze?  Yeah me too, but we would have sweated on the lawn and not been able to see as well anyway.  So good choice.

And here's the right of the stage.  And yes the stage decorations look like they're straight out of the 80s and 90s.  So did the costumes.  The dancing was fun and exciting though.  I could have done with less flamenco dancer and less musician playing, but lowly matinee ticket holders can't be choosers, and apparently this was the last US performance forever (or until they get a revival going.  Hopefully they will get better costumes and set pieces . . . ).  So I'm glad we got to see it and happy we all had fun on Father's Day.  Next time we'll eat the picnic lunch after the show and wait for all the traffic to leave!

Blue Pen

This is a story of a blue pen.

 Months ago an innocent little bitty pen was left uncapped on my desk.

A towel was accidentally placed on top of little bitty innocent pen!  Oh No!  Thankfully little bitty pen left a little bitty dot so the towel was not ruined.  No one will notice a little bitty spot.

Well let's just say that when your tea spills and you grab aforementioned towel to sop it up before it can reach your keyboard you forget all about little bitty ink spot.

And little bitty ink spot, when exposed to liquid, turns into massive ink blot!  So in essence, the world is doomed, but I've folded the towel the other way so no one can see the blot and no one can blame the fall of mankind on me!

My World Filtered

So we all recently got new iphones, and as soon as the boxes were opened the app-downloading immediately commenced.  The very first app I downloaded was instagram.  For so long I had been a Blackberry user who had heard about instagram but had never been able to use it.  But now I could!   . . . The only problem was that that Wednesday night I really didn't have any inspiration for a photo . . . But I had to try it out!  I just had to!

So I took a picture of a lantern and some plugs in out front room.  Don't judge.  I actually like the composition.  Go figure.

Since then I've been really inspired.  So inspired I've taken pictures of  . . .

Tomato plants!   . . . I know I know, be excited with me.  Doesn't this filter look like the world right before a tornado hits?  All green and yellow and shadowy?

 

 And I took a picture of our green beans.   I know the excitement is growing.

And finally, I had to stoop to sorority girl level and take a picture of myself that I then uploaded as my facebook profile picture.  What makes me better than the sorority girls is that I don't have the camera in the picture, it wasn't taken in a mirror, it wasn't taken in a dirty bar/frat house bathroom, and I have clothing on.  But yes it was still a picture of myself.  I have an excuse though.  I was showing mom how to use instagram since I downloaded it on her phone.

More (hopefully much more inspired) instagram photos to come as soon as something interesting happens in my life and I manage to capture that moment on my phone.  Until then more pictures of carrots and lettuce and zucchini to come and maybe a random chair just to mix things up.

Goodbyes

Last Wednesday was the beginning of a new era, a new that includes iphones!  Yes we all finally got on the bandwagon.  It was time to renew the contract, and the decision was made that the ability of Sarah, Mom, Becca, and I to run with our phones and our ipods in the same device would be a lot safer than just running with an ipod.  Dad of course couldn't be left out and got one as well, although Rebecca has deemed him unworthy of such an electronically advanced device . . . I personally think he's up to the challenge of the new phone but have no doubt that he would still be using a flip phone if we, his amazing daughters, were not there to push him in new directions!

Oh and did I mention that the phones were on super sale since we waited so long to buy one?  I refuse to own a $500 electronic device since it will ultimately get dropped in a purse, cuddle with in bed in the morning as I snooze my alarm, balanced precariously next to the sink as I brush my teeth, etc.  What can I say I love me a good sale.

As I took the blindingly white package of amazingness out of the box and beheld it reverently for the first time (before throwing it in the car and heading to a soccer game) it began to hit me that my trusty blackberry and I would no longer be best buds.

That phone and it's pink case have been with me through a lot.  Through plane flights and cross-country car rides, through late night parties and early morning classes.  As my alarm clock, it was the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing I saw as I plugged it in to charge at night.  It's been dropped and slid and spun around on various surfaces.  It was sweated on as I carried it on my runs.  It was rained on when I carried it on my runs.  It called home every night for two years.  It texted multiple friends and previous boyfriends.  It was my trusty gps and always close by.
  

But sadly it was getting obsolete.  There was no touchscreen and no itunes compatibility.  I think it still probably had another year in it but it was losing charge faster and faster.  It was also time to renew the contract and the RIM software isn't looking too hot right now.  So I chose away from Blackberry and converted to the Apple cult (but I promise I will never be completely on the dark side!  I promise to never buy a mac!).

I'm still gonna keep my old blackberry around in case the delicate darling that is my iphone decides to break.  And I'm still going to keep checking the top of my iphone in vane for the blinking red light that told me that I was important and someone wanted to talk to me or email me about a sale at LOFT.

-Sincerely,
Former Blackberry Owner

Garden Beds

This is a story of our raised garden beds.  We used this same space for a garden last year and it worked pretty well but it was just a mound of dirt that we grew stuff in and according to my must-have-a-plan-for-everything-in-the-yard father that wasn't good enough.  So this year we put in raised garden beds.  But first we had to build a wall.

Here's Dad building the rock wall (he's obviously missing Colorado and the million rock walls he built in our front yard there).

The reason we (well he) built the wall was so that the garden could be level because this side of the house slopes.  See how the wall gets thinner as it gets towards the house?

After the wall was finished we moved all the leftover rocks away, leveled the dirt, got more dirt, and Dad built the raised beds out of 2x4s.  We filled them with soil and were ready to start planting!  This required bringing all my starter plants down from the deck (there were a lot of them), (well there were a lot of zucchinis).

Look Sarah planted the first plant in the new garden!  It was a tomato plant of course.  Those get the place of honor in our house because dad eats like a million a day.  Not kidding.

We also have a rain barrel that I'm bugging Dad to get hooked up.  The hope is that it will provide all the water we need for the garden.  Well basically all I'm hoping is that I don't have to lug the annoying hose around and battle bushes to turn the water on and off.  I'm selfish that way haha

Here's some pictures of what we planted.  This section will be all lettuce.

In the back we'll have corn and beans. I think I'm making a dinosaur eating a block of cheese shadow puppet here . . . but I can't be too sure.

And carrots.

I know those were boring pictures but I needed to post them because I would forget what I planted if I didn't have a picture of it somewhere!  

Did I mention it was incredibly hot and muggy on Memorial day?  At this point we'd been working outside all day long and it was hot so Mom went and got the patio umbrella and had us plant in the shade.  I just think that she didn't want to get dirty hands ;) but we appreciated the shade nonetheless.

So I diligently checked my newly planted plants every. single. day. this week and of course nothing happened.  Plants take at least a week to germinate.  I know this.  I was just hoping my plants would be early bloomers (haha get it?  bloomers?  Like flowers bloom?! nevermind).  They weren't, though, to my chagrin.  But they did start sprouting when I went out to see them this morning!  And yes I understand that only my eyes desperately searching for some sort of life would be able to see the beans in the above picture.
  

We also had a renegade squash plant from last year survive our garden bed building and pop up outside the beds.  I'll leave him there for now, but your time is limited buddy!

Here are the sunflowers.  I understand why they have already started growing, I mean they have to grow at least three times taller than any other plant here!

And there random alien looking things are the beginnings of corn.  I'll be sure to post more pictures as the plants actually begin to resemble plants :)

Best Cinnamon Rolls

It all started when I was in college.  No seriously it did.  I was on call one weekend with my friend and we couldn't be more than five minutes away from our apartment complex.  So we were hanging out on her couch bemoaning the fact that everyone else got to go out and meet cute guys and we were stuck working.  About 1am we got hungry and decided to make cinnamon rolls.  Well we didn't have any yeast, but that's what google is for.  The search "cinnamon rolls no yeast" came up with a recipe that worked and was pretty tasty.  I made this recipe a few more times and over Christmas break I made it for the family.  Like I said, it worked as a fast cinnamon roll recipe that didn't require rising over night but it wasn't amazing.  Mom liked the concept though, so when Fine Cooking had a breakfast issue come out with a recipe called "Fastest-ever Cinnamon Rolls" she thought we should try it and see if it was any better than the recipe I had googled.  Turns out this recipe is AMAZING.  The rolls are soft and there's just enough cinnamon and spices to keep it interesting and you can make it in under an hour.  So as the first post in the cooking tab I thought I'd debt this classic, enjoy :)

p.s. I went a little overboard on the pictures . . . but that's the fun of blogging right?!

Ok here are the ingredients you'll need:  buttermilk, melted butter, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, flour, salt, and ricotta (or cottage cheese, I've never liked cottage cheese because it looks gross.  The recipe calls for cottage cheese but you can substitute ricotta because this is what makes the rolls moist and they have about the same moisture content). 
 

 Add the ricotta and buttermilk.

 

The sugar (all nicely measured out into an individual bowl just like on Food Network ;)  How I survived before cable I will never know).

Then add the butter and the vanilla.

Then you mix all of the ingredients together for about 5-10 seconds until it goes from looking like the above picture . . . 

And ends up looking like this picture.

 Then dump in the flour,

The baking soda,

The salt,

Now this is a very important step that I wasn't able to take a picture of, but it needs to be done.  Throw a pinch of salt over your left shoulder BEFORE you put the salt in the mixture.  (I couldn't take a picture of this because I was holding the camera in my right salt-throwing hand).  I never used to do that, but then I saw Rachel Ray do it and I've thrown salt ever since (sorry about throwing it in your face that one time Sarah . . . you should know better than to walk behind me when I'm throwing salt though!).  I'm superstitious that way.  I could probably stop throwing salt and be just fine, but then again something awful could potentially happen sooooo I choose to be cautious and keep throwing salt.
   

Then add the baking soda (btw did you know that baking powder has baking soda in it?  weird huh)

Once all the ingredients are in the food processor, PULSE (not mix) for five pulses or until the dough has gone from liquidy to sticking together.  Yes it will be very sticky but that's OK.  Do not worry.  I wouldn't lie to you, if you don't want tough cinnamon rolls don't pulse any more.

Before you can roll out the dough you'll need to clean the counter . . . just saying.

 

 You also may need to make yourself a peanut butter and banana slice of toast for breakfast because making cinnamon rolls is a lot of work!

NOW you can dump the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and start rolling.

You need to roll the dough into a 12"x15" rectangle.  Don't worry if the edges aren't perfect.  Even I can't make them perfect and I'm a pretty amazing dough roller-outer.

Now it's time to make the filling (it seems like a ton of steps but it goes fast, trust me).  The ingredients are melted butter, brown sugar, pecans, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon.

First brush the dough with the melted butter all over (you don't need to leave an edge like some recipes will tell you, it's not going to make a difference).

Mix all of the spices and brown sugar together (I'm lazy and just eyeball a 1/4tsp cloves).

Till it looks like this!

Then spread the sugar mixture over the butter-brushed dough and sprinkle on the pecans.  You don't have to add pecans if you don't like nuts (gasp!) or if someone in your Dad's office is allergic to nuts so you make a whole batch of cinnamon rolls with no nuts just for her and SHE DOESN"T EVEN SHOW UP TO THE OFFICE THAT DAY!  Then you try not to let it affect you a month later.  Still working on that . . .

Now start rolling the 15" long edge (or make a hot dog if that's what you were taught in elementary school), and slowly roll up the dough keeping all the sugar and pecans and yumminess inside.

Then cut the log into 12 equal pieces (cut the log in half, then each of those halves in half, then cut those halves of halves into thirds), and arrange in a buttered and floured 10" cake pan.  The recipe calls for a spring form pan but ours was only a 9" and all of the rolls wouldn't fit.  So you can bake these in anything as long as it's round and 10" in diameter.  You could also bake them individually in a muffin tin if that's easier.

Then bake them in a 400 degree oven for about 25-30 minutes.  They will get semi-brown on the top so if you need to just put a piece of tin foil on the top and they will be light and pale and yummy :)

While the rolls are baking, make a glaze of water, powdered sugar, and vanilla.  Make it decently thick.  We're not going for frost-a-cake consistency, but it needs to be thick so it doesn't disappear once you drizzle it over the cinnamon rolls.

When the rolls are out of the oven they will look like this!  Wait for them to cool them drizzle the glaze and eat one of the soft, scrumptious little beautys :)