Cookie Craving Crushed!!

Tonight I am having serious, no-nonsense cookie cravings. I don't have the ingredients to make a regular batch of cookies, and even if I did, regular cookies are a lot of work at 10 PM, and have lots of sugar I don't need or want.

So I sat on the couch and pouted. And complained. And chatted with a friend and complained to her. Then sat on the couch and pouted some more. And finally pacing the kitchen, I came across my new favorite ingredient: bananas.

Now last week when I was having an ice cream craving, I put 2 frozen bananas in one of the smoothie cups that came with my awesome blender, added some vanilla, a handful of chocolate chips and a bit of water, and came up with a pretty terrific milk shake. Lucky for me I pretty much always have bananas in the freezer, because I can never eat them fast enough before they get so over ripe I can't eat them.

But I wasn't sure if bananas would help me tonight. I know I've seen several blogs, articles, recipes, somethings, that use bananas and oatmeal to make cookies, but could it really work?!

A quick Google search and I found multiple pages that all had the same basic recipe: 2 medium bananas, a cup of uncooked oatmeal (most said quick oats, I never have quick oats, only old fashioned), and a bunch of chocolate chips. Mash it all together, drop onto cookie sheet, and cook for 15 minutes at 350 degrees.


OMG it's good. I was afraid it wouldn't work. But it did, and I am happy!!

I'll have to post pictures on the next batch, because this was an emergency cookie situation. And therefore an emergency cookie blog post to make record of my success! Yay!

Feeling better. Baking bread helps.

I'm just starting to feel better, but it has been a rough couple weeks. I've done some cooking, mostly because the other people who live here have to eat, but I haven't gotten too fancy. We've been eating a lot of homemade bread, and then enjoying the things we can make from our homemade bread.

Just about everyone I know thinks making bread is hard. And over the last couple weeks I've had people tell me that they can't believe I can make bread when I should be resting, as if it really that time consuming and difficult.

The truth is, I have an old recipe I used to use out of my dad's cookbook (an old 70's copy of The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook). For years after I moved out of the house I thought the recipe was gone. Every time I went over to visit, he would hide the cookbook so I couldn't take it (I only wanted the 1 recipe Dad!!). But around Christmas time I got desperate and started looking online. SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE had to have the same recipe! and I found it! on Pinterest of all places!

It really is the most simple recipe ever. It starts out with half a cup of warm water (I'm lucky enough to have one of those water dispensers that has hot and cold, so I just measure out a quarter cup of both to get my warm water) and 2 tablespoons of yeast. I mix that together and set it aside.

In a large mixing bowl, I then add 2 cups of HOT water, 3 tablespoons of raw sugar (mostly because that's what we use around here, if you don't have it that's fine, I used plain white sugar when I was in high school), 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1/3 cup of melted butter (that's 3/4 of a stick). I mix that together until the sugar and salt dissolve and then set that aside to cool. It is important to note that if you don't set it aside to cool, you'll kill your yeast. That's not good.

While the hot water mixture is cooling, I measure out 6 cups of All Purpose Flour into another large bowl. This just is to make it easier later, so I don't have to measure out more flour when I have sticky hands.

When the sugar water mixture is just about barely warm (in other words, not cold, and definitely not hot), add the yeast water to the sugar water and mix. Next add about 3 cups of flour to the water mixture, and mix with a wooded spoon until you can't mix it together anymore. Then add another scoop of flour, and mix again. Keep adding flour until enough of the liquid is absorbed that you don't have a sticky mess, and you can't really mix anymore flour into it. Then dump the dough onto a floured surface (I just use the counter, but I know some people prefer cutting boards or something), and knead in the rest of the flour until the dough is smooth and no longer sticky.

Kneading the dough means you are basically using your fists to fold the dough in on itself, then pushing it away from your body. Then you rotate the doughy ball a quarter turn, fold it in on itself and push it away again. People make this sound really hard and complicated, or else they make it sound like you're just supposed to punch the dough over and over again, like that's going to do anything except make tough dough. Picture a cat kneading something. They pull a little bit, they pat it down, and then they stretch their front paws our away from them. It's something like that.

After a few minutes, your dough will be nice and stretchy, and getting hard to knead. form it into a neat little ball, and let it rest.

 After a short time it will start to rise. My daughter says it grows. She actually was a little freaked out that every time she went into the kitchen, the dough was bigger. I can't tell you how long it should rest, because my house gets very warm when I'm baking, so things tend to rise quickly. You want you dough to be roughly double in size from what it was. I took my picture a bit early, so my dough isn't quite doubled, but I wanted to show you that it grew.

 After that point, squish it a little bit, and cut the dough ball in half. Set one half aside. With a rolling pin (or a wine bottle, which is all I have at the moment) roll one of your halves of dough into a rectangle shape. Then taking the edge closest to you, start rolling the dough together again. The instructions I found said to roll it like a jelly roll. I've never made a jelly roll, so whatever on that. Tuck the ends under the roll to get nice pretty ends, or don't if you don't care.  Repeat with the second half of your dough. Put both rolls on a greased backing sheet, and cut some diagonal lines on the top. These are to help release steam as the bread bakes.

 Let the dough rest a little longer. It will puff up some more, and you'll see those lines you cut start to spread apart. Then bake in a preheated over (350 degrees F) for 30-35 minutes. The bread will have a nice golden color to it. It is important to let bread cool completely before slicing it, otherwise the rest of the loaf will get gummy. We didn't let the bread cool at all, but we ate the whole first loaf before it cooled and got the chance to get gummy. Notice I didn't tuck the ends of my dough under, and I have pinched looking ends.

 The next morning I made French Toast with the second loaf. It was super delicious. It also meant I had to make more bread. From start to finish the bread took about 2 1/2 hours to make, but I really only spent about 30 minutes working on it. Give or take a few.

 This is the last of the first batch of bread. :) It was good.

Sickness sucks

Even though I'm pretty sure no one actually reads this, I figured I had better make an appearance and say I have not given up on this blog yet. Last week David and Rosalyn were both sick, which left me exhausted. I did cook a few things, so hopefully I will get the pictures of those up in the next week or so as I get over being sick this week. I have pretty much done no cooking this week aside from scrambled eggs for my daughter, because she does not understand why I don't feel like cooking.

For the time being I am going to go back to drinking my orange juice and hope this passes quickly. Today had to be the worst day ever!

Problem solved. Onto the next one.

David made it easy for me to figure out what to do with the chicken once it was cooked. He just ate it. Problem solved. No more leftover chicken legs to worry about. I made sandwiches out of the chicken breasts, like I said I would, and I was amazed to discover that my favorite flavors at Subway are even better at home, on my own bread. Cucumbers and feta are the most perfect combination in the world to me right now, closely followed by caramel pretzel ice cream over warm apple pie.

So far today I’ve just snacked on leftover shredded beef, and Rosalyn hasn’t even asked for food yet, despite it being almost 2 in the afternoon. Considering how much she was eating a couple weeks ago, I’m dreading another growth spurt. I know it’s coming. Either that or she has given her appetite to me, because I cannot seem to come close to feeling satisfied.

I can’t make up my mind if I want a big glass of milk or if I should once again take advantage of my new blender and make a smoothie. Right now my favorite smoothie concoction is an orange, a banana, several pieces of sliced cucumber, and a scoop of Omega-3 seed mix (chia, flax, and hemp seeds). I wish I had an apple. An apple, carrot, ginger smoothie sounds just about perfect right now.

Some random thoughts on raw chicken...

I have leftover raw chicken. I need to cook it today, or throw it out. I have no choice in this matter. But I also have leftover cooked chicken legs from Saturday night and leftover shredded beef from last night, so I’m not sure what the best course of action is for today. I figure the best idea is to just get the darn chicken cooked and go from there.

So in the biggest baking dish David has (since all my cooking stuff is still in my old apartment 4 hours away), I put the little rack (which I normally use to elevate cups on the dishtowel after I do dishes, but is really intended for the oven), and I arrange the 3 large boneless/skinless chicken breasts and the 4 drumsticks I need to cook, cover them with a little seasoning salt, garlic, and pepper, drizzle with olive oil, and hope for the best.

Once cooked I can pick the meat off the bones of the drumsticks and make chicken soup. I don’t have egg noodles, and David says I can't use farfelle (bow ties) to make chicken noodle soup, but I do have plenty of brown rice, plus plenty of carrots, celery, and onions. I do wish I had some herbs. I really need to work on that, but herbs are kind of expensive. I’m thinking every payday just picking up a small bottle of a single herb I know I can use. Eventually my spice cabinet will fill up, right?

But that doesn’t yet help me decide what to do with this chicken. I think the breasts I’ll slice and then store to make sandwiches. David bought me some really nice Italian bread, and we have cucumbers and feta cheese. That would make a good sandwich.

And sandwiches make me think of quesadillas, which are a perfect way to use up leftovers! Here it is Monday, and I really don’t have to cook for at least the next 3 nights, because we have that many leftovers. I think my kitchen sink will thank me later.

Back to my cooking roots (or the books that made me think)

After dinner last night I started reading Jeffrey Steingarten’s The Man Who Ate Everything, and this morning my Kindle says I am 11 percent in. I just finished reading his chapter on the French Paradox, how the French eat so much more saturated fat that we do but still have less heart disease (and obesity, though that doesn’t seem to be mentioned). I almost kept on reading into the chapter about mashed potatoes, except the phone rang, so I had to go back and reread the last paragraph to get into my reading groove again, and then I realized that this fits right into my thoughts/quest for eating better.

We live in an age where raw vegan, gluten free, paleo, and numerous other diets are the supposed answers to weight loss and feeling better and having more energy. But we weren’t always fat and tired, and we didn’t used to have to go on diets in order to lose weight and feel better. We just ate what was available to us, taking cues from the seasons and from the culture we live in. In the last book I read, Robin Mather’s The Feast Nearby, she wrote about eating in season. She also briefly mentioned that during the time she lived in Arizona, she ate mostly the foods indigenous to the area, noting that when guests came from out of state and continued to eat the way they were used to (instead of the light meals of chips and salsa and taquitos we love so much in the Southwest), they were miserable in the Arizona heat, their bodies unable to digest such heavy foods. In the first book I read this year, Almost Amish by Nancy Sleeth, even though it ended up not being about food so much, she noted that the Amish don’t eat fast food, and they only eat what they can provide for themselves, which again means eating with the seasons and within their own culture.

So it seems that even before all my reading, even before all the undocumented research that I have done in the past (when I never thought I would find the courage to start a blog and might actually need to find those articles again), I was on the right path. I need to listen to my body, and I need to eat mindfully. This does not mean I need to count every calorie or beat myself up for wanting a cheeseburger, but if I’m going to give into my cookie craving, maybe I would be better off making those cooking from scratch, rather than buying them from the store, and maybe that burger can be made at home with better quality ingredients.

We had a night several weeks ago where we ate only bread and butter for dinner. I didn’t have my normal, over full feeling I get when I eat bread, but normally I’m eat bread with other things. And reading Jeffrey Steingarten’s chapter on baking bread last night made me suddenly crave bread. Not just bread and butter, but the smell of it in the house, the feel of the dough in my hands, the beer like smell as the bread is rising. I used to make bread all the time when I was in high school. I think my mom liked me cooking because it meant I did the cleaning too, but the bread always turned out good. The last time I attempted bread, when Rosalyn was 2, the bread did not turn out so good. It was dense and flavorless, and it scared me away from making bread again. Maybe it’s time to get over that fear, and get back to what I used to know instinctively. Fresh food is better, real food is better, and I need to stop being scared of food just for the sake of being scared.

My kind of comfort food: all day tacos!!!!

I finished reading The Feast Nearby by Robin Mather, and I have to say I was really impressed with it. All the things I’ve dreamed about doing, but (1) didn’t know how and (2) people told me were pointless in the day and age we live in, I suddenly feel encouraged inspired to do! Granted I still don’t know what I’m going to be able to find at the local farmer’s market (if I can find the local farmer’s market), and I don’t know what grows out here in the middle of the desert, but I’m inspired none the less.

One of the later passages from her book, she discussed comfort foods. She mentioned that the foods we grew up eating are typically the foods we considered comforts when we are adults, and then she asks if our kids today are going to grow up thinking chicken mcNuggets are comfort foods. I had to laugh. For as much as Rosalyn loves chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, and pizza, her all time favorite food is refried black beans and rice.

For the last couple years it has been Rosarita’s canned refried black beans and Zattaran’s boxed Spanish rice that she has loved so much, but then I learned how to cook beans. It took quite a few trial and errors to figure out what flavors to add to get her to eat my homemade beans (and I admit a few of my first attempts I didn’t like either), but I got it.

I start with 2 pounds of black beans. I used to buy them in bulk at WinCo, but now I have to buy 2 bags at Safeway instead.  I soak them overnight,  completely covering them with water, bringing it to a boil, and then turning the heat off and covering it to sit over night.

In the morning I drain the beans, add fresh water, a medium white onion chopped, a packet of McCormick taco seasoning (I know, I really need to be making my own! I’ll get there!) and a jar of Herdez salsa verde. I bring it back up to a boil, and then let it simmer until the beans are super soft and most of the water is gone. At this point I used to just mash the beans with a potato masher, but that just didn’t work for me, so I borrowed a neighbor’s fancy schmancy immersion blender, and that was awesome, and now I have a brand new Ninja blender that I got for Christmas, and that was even better than awesome. I let the beans cool a bit so I didn’t burn myself pouring them into the blender, and then a couple pulses later they were perfectly mashed, with some still looking like beans, and some not so much, and then when I poured them back into the pan and simmered them a bit longer, they thickened up beautifully, and Rosalyn asked for a burrito. She declared them perfect.

Us adults like more than just beans for dinner, so I pulled out my friend Danielle’s shredded beef recipe for us. This means that last night in the crock pot I put a 3 pound roast in with the same seasonings for the beans (this recipe actually came first and is how I came up with the seasoning for the beans!). Recap for you: 1 packet of taco seasoning and a jar of salsa verde. Hold onto the onion until later. I added enough water to cover the meat and set the crop pot on low and went to bed. This morning, with the house smelling so good my mouth was watering, I turned the crock pot off and just let it sit for a bit while I dealt with the beans, and made a pot of coffee, and made breakfast for David and Rosalyn, and a smoothie for myself. Then finally after I did all the dishes, I pulled out a big pot and started shredding the meat from the crock pot by hand. I know some people think they can just use 2 forks to shred their meat, but it really doesn’t work here. The best kind of roast to use for shredded beef has ribbons of fat  and maybe a bone in it, so I shred it by hand so that I can pull out and set aside those things I don’t want in my final product. The bones gets saved for later use, and the fat gets put into a bowl for Koda (David’s dog). The beef gets put into the big pot, along with the juices from the crock put, and a sliced onion. It continues to cook on lower than a simmer (if your stove goes that low, my old one didn’t), until most of the juices are gone, the onions are soft, and the meat is just about perfect.

It’s an all day process to make tacos around here, but it is so worth it! Now if only I could make Spanish rice Rosalyn would eat, I could stop buying boxed foods!