Mayo, bread, soup

Today is a basic day. I made a gallon of laundry liquid, next comes stock, then soup, and bread. This is because I was out of all of them. I'll also take another try at mayo from aqua faba, the last try not working so well.

The  laundry stuff lasts ages, needing about half a cup per load, so at least 32 loads, which explains why I can't find the post about the last time I made it. It still seems to be a surprise when it runs out though.

Here's a screenshot from September, which might in fact be when I last made it, for people who fancy trying their hand.

Quarter bar (one ounce) castile soap, grated and melted in one cup water on the stove,  quarter cup each of washing soda and borax, stirred in the container half filled with water. Then add the melted soap solution, fill up with hot, not boiling, water, stir and stir. Leave 24 hours to cure, shake, use. I shake it every time because the contents can settle.

Done. Cheap. Very little shopping involved.

Oatmeal I got this week from Misfits will get into the oatmeal-whole wheat bread I am about to commit.

There's a bag of peeled carrots and a cooked sweet potato in the freezer, plus stock makings. By end of day it will be soup.

And maybe there will be tuna salad if the mayo works out. Aqua faba is a vegan egg substitute. I'm not vegan, (clearly, tuna?) but I like trying substitutes. Definitely for eggs which can only get more pricey. Especially since today's bank alert tells me the plumber cashed his $$$$ check.

On to cheerier things. I heard last night that an online friend on another platform saw yesterday's outdoor picture I'd posted there and her mood improved from seeing it. 

She'd been very down that morning, worried about her SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid and subsidized housing. Old lady who worked all her life until felled by leukemia, now hanging in at home. 

She has a lot to worry about and I was so moved that I'd unknowingly given her just a moment of feeling better. She's unsinkable, but even she needs a cheerful note now and then. So there's that. 

Hamish Macbeth continues and I think I'm near the end of the ebooks, oh dear. I may have to start writing more of them.

Happy day everyone, and if you're up for cutting way back on buying 

A word of encouragement there!

Food Friday third try

Blogger froze, shut down and lost the other tries.

So here we are. Not much food around so I mixed a batch of bread, set it to rise and forgot all about it while I did paper weaving finishing,

 see https://beautifulmetaphor.blogspot.com, at least see in a while, after I write the post. I listened to a chapter of Braiding  Sweetgrass while I worked. She's the best studio companion, almost as good as a cat.

Then I needed lunch so used up yesterday's roast potatoes, broke an egg over and called it lunch.

 Fast food

Finally noticed the nicely risen bread I'd forgotten,  but couldn't bake it, off out to knitting group and shop. Wonderful afternoon as always, then home for cornbread and a pot of tea. And a catch-up on social media.

At last got the bread into the oven, but what to eat for supper? The cupboard a bit bare but a can of peaches waiting to be curried. Heaving a sigh, I thought fine, I'll do that. Jasmine brown rice, good.

Then found I had used up the Bill Veach Curry Powder 2. Dang. No help for it, I made a new batch.

You see the cast of characters waiting their turn, and the Bill Veach book of curries in the background.

I don't measure much, just estimate, and I guessed pretty well how much this would make-- one filled coffee grinder, which filled the little glass container.

A bit of luck entered into it, too. You don't want to make too much at a time, because fresh ground is wonderful.

The smells as you make this are just so filling to your senses, particularly when there's nostalgia for learning this as a newlywed. You can hardly go wrong, really.

And if you make it yourself you get the best mixture, not just overwhelming cumin, turmeric and pepper.

They're all in there, but so are cinnamon, cloves, coriander, mustard seeds, ginger, black pepper, cayenne. So each taste is a different combination from the last.

So I thought just  peaches, drained and rinsed,  no need to worry about not having chicken or fish, for once.

Here's the base, onions and salt and a heaping tisp of curry powder sizzling gently in olive oil and butter.

 Not clarified butter, I used to clarify butter for curries, but I didn't have any today. Haven't done it for a long time. My  Indian friends think I'm nuts, because nowadays you can buy it ready clarified. But I like doing basics. Peaches here into the mix

And the little wells appearing in the rice to tell you it's nearly there.

And here we go

It was really good. I think I can add a touch of chili powder to the mix, too. It was very good and can still afford to go up a notch.


Did I mention that the bread was baking all this time? I had time to eat my curry before it needed to come out.

Today it's whole wheat, a bit of white, a lot of oatmeal, and a shake of sunflower seeds.

I guess today was busier than planned. Now there's food in the house. Except I need cheese, urgently.  No, not tonight..

When daisies pied, and violets blue, etc.

Well, this morning the Montauk daisies budded up to almost opening, and there are tiny pies happening, so Shakespeare described my kitchen this morning.  

Labels

Yes, I know his pied daisies meant something different, but I can take poetic license, too, if he can.

Anyway, here's the making of the tiny apple pies.  
 

and at the same time a recipe of bread, wheat and white, rising.

They'll all bake later today, just heat the oven once.  That cloth is in fact clean from the laundry, though it looks a bit weary.  You know how the cookbooks tell you to use a CLEAN cloth, as if you were going to throw the dog's blanket over your bread.

The filling for the pies is: Staycrisp, I think that's the name, apples from the farm, two, sliced up on the slicing side of the grater.  I never used that before, always looked at it wondering what it's for, then realized, oh, cheese, apples, slicing, maybe.  Works fine.

That's macerating with sugar and molasses (equivalent of brown sugar which I don't have in the house) and a big spoonful of cornstarch.  I may add in a bit of cinnamon, fresh ground.

And the wonton wrappers are thawing ready for use.  I've made half moon pies in the past, but this time maybe I'll make round ones, full moons, nice single serve equivalent.  There will be a follow up if this works out.


Speaking of which, last Friday night's dinner with Handsome Son worked out a bit too successfully.  

 I used the ravioli from the freezer, all of them, and a big red sauce with farm tomatoes, homemade pesto and hot Italian sausage. Parmigian to shake over, and hot peppers.  Incidentally, the thawed ravioli tend to stick together, but they separate fine in the boiling water, so you can just put a clump of three or four in at once, and it works.

It entirely filled a great big earthenware serving bowl, the one you see on the left with the cooked ravioli waiting for the sausage and sauce, and I thought I was set up for the week in addition to a generous dinner for Son.  Famous last words.  He enjoyed it to the point where I have eked out two more small dinners for me.  And this is a slim guy.

We had the shortbread for dessert, and he said, after tackling several of them, did you make these? Gosh, they're as good as from the shop.  I choose to believe he means from a high end bakery, rather than the supermarket shelf...

Visitors next door, gathering in the herbs, and kitchen thrills and spills

Weekend visitors next door, grandchildren, endless entertainment watching their capers.  Here the just two year old ditches her best visiting sandals 

for her favorite climbing shoes, and favorite outfit, ready to tackle the Big Front Step
 

while her five year old brother obligingly holds open the screen door till she eventually gets there.

And the lazy cook thinking about making pesto, the herbs flourishing wildly and ready for pesto, thinks, hm, got all the ingredients, the parmigian cheese, the olive oil, the garlic, the crushed walnuts, not a fan of pine nuts.  But I didn't have the energy to make pesto.  However, the herbs needed to be caught right now at peak.

Seen here, foreground to background,  tarragon, rosemary

thyme, Thai basil, spearmint, oregano, basil, sage.  Particularly happy about the Thai basil, since I brought it back from seeds I saved last year.

Then I needed to pack them somehow to freeze.  Just freeze, don't fiddle about doing anything first.  This is great when you need a few twigs of herbs to lay on top of the chicken or the fish, in the oven.  Also to give to the neighbor when he grills meat, a rosemary twig tossed on the hot grill gives terrific flavor to meat, I'm told, not a partaker, but I can smell the herby effect.

So I knew there was a use for those bags the wine comes in. I felt a bit like an old farm lady doing this, putting up me herbs, except that she was probably not putting them in a freezer, nor using wine bottle bags.  

Maybe her Lydia Pinkham's Mixture came discreetly in a brown paper bag?  a lot of farm ladies used to swear by it, I know.  Not surprising, when you realize that this "tonic" was a pretty high proof alcohol!  Well, before the Model T arrived, a lot of women scarcely ever got off the farm, so there wasn't a lot of kicking up of heels to be done.  Enter Mrs. P.  But I digress.

Then, that done, on to the business of the day, baking bread rolls. Plus one actual loaf.  I was so carried away with the herbs that I clean forgot that the baking sheet I put the rolls on wasn't a nonstick.  So the rolls baked beautifully, and were welded to the pan.  

You see them here, with some debris in the background.

Nothing daunted, I used my trusty breadknife to cut across the bottom, leaving only a bit of a crust on the pan in the place of each roll.  And now I have pre-split rolls...ready to toast and butter. And a reminder that things go wrong in the kitchen, and can be rescued without too much sturm und drang if you have the right attitude. And I hadn't even had a glass of Lydia P, either. 

The loaf came out fine, parchment paper in a nonstick loaf pan.  Probably would have done well to put parchment paper under the rolls if I'd thought of it.

Then the scraped-off debris went out for the birds, whole grain bread, good for birds. The starling who has been run ragged feeding two giant babies all week seized on it, and stuffed a big wodge of it in the first baby's beak, pushing until it went down.  It worked fine till a bluejay, butterclaws, landed wrong on the plate, scattered the lot everywhere.  But I expect it will still be devoured.  Nothing's ever wasted. 

And I did a great freecycle this weekend, a big strawberry pot, almost perfect condition, ready for me to plant something. Pic is before I scrubbed it to get a nice mellow terracotta effect instead of the rather mossy look which I'm not so fond of.

Bit late for annuals, but I'm thinking of hen and chickens, never been able to get them to succeed here, in the ground, but I think this might work.  That's an upcoming project.  I would like to bring them into the house in the fall, too, and have them in view all winter. Always good to have something interesting to see.  As long as the cats don't get bright ideas about kitty hockey..

Warms the kitchen, cheers the cook! 6WS

All out of regular bread, so I made a loaf, partly from the Healthy Bread book and partly using tips from Jacques Pepin.  Healthy Bread has recipes for great wholegrain bread which is genuine yeast-risen bread, but no kneading, which is good because my hands can't do that very well.  You can use the same recipe to make buns or breadsticks, just shape it at will, figure out the baking time. I make one giant loaf from a recipe, and bake it, this is where Pepin comes in, in a nonstick casserole.

Mix the dough in the same container, let it rise to double, scrape the sides down a bit, make a cross on it, bake, and it practically jumps out of the casserole when done. Very nice crust, too.

My mom used to cut the sign of the cross on her bread as a devotion,  but I just do it to break the surface and make it easy to cut into four loaves when done.  So easy.  It must be six or seven years since I bought bread.  It's great to make, because it's alive, and the dough works with you. And the house smells wonderful.

Marcella, Chowder and Me

This morning unleashed a storm of cooking since the chicken thighs I'd put in the fridge to thaw couldn't wait any longer, so I cut them into small pieces, and sauteed two thighs then added in the Marcella Hazan simple tomato sauce I cooked and froze the other day

and the other two thighs I sauteed ready to use with the plum sauce I made and froze.   

Six meals out of four chicken thighs.  I did add a chunk of thyme pesto to the simple chicken, and oregano pesto to the tomato sauce one, and a sprinkling of lemon zest on top to finish.  I never buy chicken breast, since I find it dry and not so interesting.

The other seasonings were equally simple:  fresh ground black pepper, shake of kosher salt, garlic, onions.

And lunch was a bowl of the seafood chowder I made the other day and never mentioned in here, very good, using part of the seafood mix I'd included in a seafood pasta dish I was living on last week, I added in some pieces of flounder to the chowder, too.  And a piece of homebaked bread to go with.

There was also some pasta left over from the seafood p. dish, so I added it into the chowder instead of the usual potato.   This is a Manhattan style chowder, more or less, a forgettaboudit one, not the elite New England style chowder.  And there are several more meals of it in the freezer.  In fact I've used up all my freezer containers at this point.

Fortunately I've trained myself to remember to label the containers, since the plum sauce, the tomato sauce, and the chowders all look very much alike when frozen.  I like having plenty of choice in the freezer since, though I do like to cook, I don't always like to cook, and do like a day off here and there.

And while all this was going on, I was rising a batch of bread dough, flours were ap, wholewheat white and oat.  The last batch was heavy in pulse food flours, lentils, split peas, and though very good, was a bit crumbly to cut.  It toasted nicely though. 

The original recipe is from the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book, which I swear by, for great artisanal bread with minimal effort. You'll note all the little scribbled reminders on the favorite page.  And since I got the tip from Pepin about putting the dough into a nonstick big casserole, and found what a wonderful crust it gave, far better than the nonstick loaf pans I'd used, that's been my go-to pot.  You mix the dough up in it, rise in it, bake in it, and pop it out at the end, dust off the pan and it's ready for the next time.

In case you wonder how a lady living alone manages to get through all this food, I do have friends who also benefit from it, and Handsome Son can always count on a decent meal here.  So there's that.  But I'm happy to dine alone.  It's good company!

Cold Day Cooking

Also known as catching up on vitals.  Here's bread dough, ready to rise for a while, using white wholewheat, ap flour, lentil flour and split pea flour, using the basic recipe from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, but as you see, with major adjustments.  Not before time for baking, out of bread of all kinds.

 This nonstick finish gives the best crust ever, a Jacques Pepin tip, and you mix and bake the bread in the same container, always a plus.  And once baked, bread removed, the pot just needs to be wiped.


And here's a quart of yogurt working magic for the next seven hours at the end of which bells will chime on my Ipod, and I'll wonder wildly why there's a church service going on on a cold Saturday night before I remember it's my alarm.

And here's lunch, well, two lunches

a veggie bake with broccoli, finely diced red bell pepper, with an egg beaten with fresh-ground pepper, kosher salt, drop of milk, few chunks of sharp cheddar, poured over, baked at 375F for about 15 minutes, or whenever you remember to look in. Always fun to eat colors, as well as being a nutritious advantage.

So the bread and yogurt will do their work for me while I eat my lunch, this bake being two meals for me, followed by the rest of the yogurt I bought as a starter, having forgotten to keep some of the last batch.

Behind the Scenes Chez Liz, Kitchen, that Iz

First full day at home, and it's cold and rainy, so since I'm out of bread and yogurt and fully stocked with vegetables, it seemed inevitable that, between bouts of stitching, see Art the Beautiful for that update, I would make soup and bread and yogurt.

The bread is what you might call artisanal, or peasant, or something I just call it bread.  The flours are white wholewheat, homeground split pea flour and homeground oat flour.  Very sturdy!

The yogurt, which you see well, you don't, since it's in this mysterious wrapping, the aluminum coat thing, and it's held in place by the handle of my hand mixer. 

Inside there is a saucepan, lidded, with about a quart of milk, scalded, cooled, yogurt starter added, and which will sit quietly fermenting for seven hours before it's ready to fridge and leave to go cold before eating.  And I'll make another batch of yogurt cheese.  The starter was the very last of the yogurt cheese of last week.

The soup is cabbage, acorn squash and zucchini,  with basil pesto, several curry leaves, turmeric, salt, black pepper and the liquid, aside from what was already there in the vegetables, is yogurt whey, from a previous making of yogurt cheese.  It does terrific things for flavor in vegetable soups.  It's currently in the freezer.

And here is the treasure chest of frozen goods, pesto in bags on the right, soup in bowls all over the place, and in bags slipped down on the left along with spaghetti sauce and tomato paste, various spices and garlic and breadcrumbs in the door, loads of frozen vegetables ready for maintaining me over the winter.  This is after I took out several bags of vegetables for the soup!

There's another lot next door in a friend's freezer, too, but I'm too lazy to go out in the rain and organize that area in order to open it and show you.  However the state of my freezer shows you the situation which gives rise to the occasional avalanche.

Off for a healthy walk in the rain in a little while, can't stay in the house for long without needing to move a bit.

Staff of Life Before and After

Following on the Great Oat Flour Experiment, here's a loaf I baked using oat flour, whole wheat and all purpose, with sunflower seeds on top.  Before

and after

baking. 

I wish I could transmit the smell of this bread to you!  As you see, I scored it and it will be easy to cut into four loaves once it's cool enough to approach.

I got a large carton of old fashioned oats, and ground it to flour, so I now have a big supply of oat flour for things like bread and pancakes and whatever else it works with.  In the fridge along with the whole wheat, the white whole wheat and the all purpose. And the vital or essential wheat gluten or whatever they call it.  Ed note:  Dragged myself out to the fridge to check, it's vital wheat gluten.

Food rules

Deliberately ambiguous title this morning.  Read one way, it's about how food rules my current world.  Read another it's about the rules I need to observe in order to stay in charge of the food and not be ruled by it!  This is not about consuming food.  This is about the logistics of liking to cook and save and freeze vs. the reality of a smallish freezer at the top of my fridge.

So I made a giant loaf of bread yesterday, whole wheat and oatmeal with sunflower seeds inside and poppyseeds on top.  This is a variation I made of the whole wheat recipe in the Healthy Bread book.  I also quit using loaf pans, and put the entire lot into one great big casserole with a non stick lining, which creates a fabulous crust. 

I bake at the usual 450 F. for about an hour and a quarter, had to lengthen the baking from the loaf pan time, but now I've got it down.  The crumb of this loaf is lovely, too, nice texture, firm, but good.  Excellent for spreading tomato lemon jam on..

Then found that when I quartered it into useable sizes, the segments  that I freeze wouldn't go into the freezer, dangit.  Those containers full of herbs I picked for pesto were taking up too much space.

Deep sigh, removed them from the freezer, put the bread in their place and set to work, forced by necessity and the rules of food to get on with pesto making.  And after all that whining and tergiversation, it only took about an hour to create flattened packages of pesto for the freezer, now in there lying on a plexi sheet to keep flat while they freeze.

Rosemary, sage, basil, English thyme, lemon thyme, peppermint, spearmint, oregano, I think that's the lot, all done.  Instead of my usual olive oil, walnuts, herb, grated parmesan, I used all the above, but subbed grated asiago for the parmesan as an experiment, so we'll see how that works out.  And I made a container of pesto water at the end, to rinse out the blender without wasting any pesto.

I also finished one bottle of oil in the course of this, just came to the end of it.  Then left it capped and upended while I got on with the newly opened one.  After a few minutes, uncapped it and as I expected, at least another ounce of oil in there still, poured that into the new bottle, waste not want not, good olive oil is expensive.

The food rule seems to be like so many other parts of life: just do it. Don't put up the ingredients and waste a lot of mental effort remembering and planning and resolving to do it.  My whole winter's pesto is now up and done.  And the bread and the pesto all fit nicely in the freezer.

Next to make soup from all the little containers of potato water and pesto water and green bean water and other bits saved up, along with all the veggies waiting their soup life.  I'm thinking of putting soup into freezer bags and squashing it flat, too, why not.  Space saving. 

Every year at this time I wonder if I should have another freezer, and the urge passes if I lie down for a while..or until I get another space saving idea like this one.  So that the cook, not the food, rules!