Sunday Morning - Buttermilk Waffles

I think the boys were going to stage a coup if they had to have cereal for breakfast again (I've been sick and out of commission).

I've been wanting to make from-scratch waffles for a while so I decided to give it a try.  I used this recipe Rich Buttermilk Waffles and followed it to a T...except the batter seemed too thick at the end, so I added a couple more tablespoons of buttermilk.  I bought some nice, organic Bulgarian buttermilk.  Bulgarian buttermilk is thicker, creamier, fattier, and more tart than normal buttermilk.  My guys have an allergy to milk processing, so they tend to do better with full-fat versions of milk products instead of skim.  Reading about Bulgarian buttermilk today leaves me confused as to whether it is less-processed or more...because they might actually remove the cream and then add it back in.  I'll have to do some more research.

These are not at all low-calorie.  So, we had a late breakfast and skipped lunch.  I think that's alright on a Sunday.  (I'm not going to talk about dinner.  I started to feel sick again and we purchased atrocious food.  What do you do when you get tired after cooking one meal?  Ugh...)

The recipe is awesome and I highly recommend it.  I'll definitely use it again.  The boys said they were delicious.  "Best waffles ever!" 

I forced one of the boys to be my kitchen helper and showed him each step.  He learned how to crack an egg and was pretty proud of himself.  No shells in the batter!  He's promised to make me waffles for Mother's Day.  I better not let him forget.

Anway...mmmm....waffles.  This was my waffle with organic meyer lemon marmalade on top.

Lazy Saturday - Roasted Acorn Squash Soup

Still not feeling well on Saturday, but I had two acorn squashes that I was saving for the arrival of the oven.  Soup sounded easy and comforting with my sore throat/cough. 

I washed my hands a TON.


Roasted Acorn Squash Soup

Two Acorn Squashes - cut into strips
1/2 cup of cream
1/2 cup of white wine
1 cup of water
4 Tbs butter
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 Tbs red curry powder
1 Tbs coriander powder
1 Tbs ground ginger (I could have used fresh, but I wanted more curry flavor than ginger flavor)
Salt & Pepper to taste

Rub 2 Tbs of butter over the squash pieces and roast at 400 degrees for 30 minutes until you can cut with a fork.  Cool the squash until you can handle it and then remove the rinds.  Process in a food processor with the cream until smooth. 

Heat the remaining 2 Tbs of butter in a pan on the stove until it is melted and done frothing.  Add the garlic and cook until softened, but not brown (med-low heat).  Add the squash, water, wine, and spices.  Simmer for about an hour so the flavors meld together.  You can add more liquid if the soup gets too thick. 

You could garnish with some parsley or crispy shallots OR bacon!  That's what we did and the boys loved it.  :-)  I just crumbled half a strip of bacon over each bowl of soup.

We ate this with some delicious garlicky bread.  So good!

How the mighty fall...

Well, getting a horrible flu sure stopped all my lofty scratch-cooking goals.  After the tart, I started getting a tickle in my throat.  The tickle lead to a hacking cough and fever and staying in bed for three days.  Which led to sandwiches.  And Panda Express.

I'm not proud of myself.

Finally starting to feel better (though still coughing and really drained).

Here is the only thing I really made while sick:


Apple Juice with Ginger and Lemon

Heat up good quality apple juice or cider on the stovetop.  Add the juice of one lemon.  Grate in 1 - 2 Tbs of ginger.  Add 1-2 Tbs of raw, local honey.  Drink while warm.  It feels good on your throat because honey is a natural cough syrup.  The apple juice is full of vitamins and tasty.  The lemon provides vitamin C, of course.  The ginger is full of good things too...and is used in Asia as a folk remedy for the flu/cold.

I also made lots of Throat Coat tea, which helps a lot.  And fresh-squeezed Valencia orange juice.  Have you tried fresh juice at home?  You don't need a fancy expensive juicer to make orange juice and it tastes a lot better than store-bought.  This article Orange Juice Processing is definitely worth reading. 

Sunday Dinner - Roast lemon chicken with veggies, Tarte Normand aux Pommes (apple tart with custard)

I've always wanted to have long, relaxing family dinners at the table.  I'm starting now and hopefully the boys will come home on weekends from college to have dinner (at least occasionally).

Roast chicken is an easy Sunday dinner and looks like it took a lot of work.  I've made lots of different kinds, but decided to try this version after hearing that famed Italian chef Marcella Hazan passed away- this is her chicken with lemons: Roast Chicken

I pretty much followed her directions on the chicken- except I added vegetables to my roasting pan. I added two russet potatoes, cut into large chunks, a Walla Walla sweet onion also in large chunks, several cloves of garlic, and about 1/4 inch slices of delicata squash (if you haven't had it- it tastes a lot like butternut, but you can eat the outer skin).  I drizzled some olive oil on my veggies- and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Chicken and Veg

My guy carves a mean chicken

The chicken was fantastic.  The lemons inside of it give it this awesome lemon flavor and keep everything moist.  So good.  I repeat...sooooo gooooood.  I highly recommend this recipe.

I made a quick pan sauce to go with the chicken- whisked flour, chardonnay, lemon juice, and rosemary into the drippings after removing some of the fat.  It was a delicious sauce, but the guys didn't even eat it- the chicken didn't need anything.  Seriously, make this chicken.



For dessert (which I confess, we ate at 3:30 pm well before dinner), I made the Tarte Normade aux Pommes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  You can get the recipe here:  Tarte Normand aux Pommes

I'll admit, this one was a lot of work.  You make a dough which is close to a pie crust and let it rest for an hour.  The recipe in the book suggest that instead of a pastry blender, you use your fingers to mix the fat into the flour so you can get used to how the dough is supposed to come together.  Scary- but I tried it and I'm glad I did.  At a certain point of mixing it just sort of makes sense...you can feel the elements of the dough becoming cohesive.  You need to be careful to work quickly and use your fingers and not your whole hand, though- you don't want the butter to melt.  Also...I'm opposed to vegetable shortening (hydrogenated oils) so I substituted butter for the shortening making for an all-butter crust which was very good.  I didn't miss the shortening one bit.

After that, you roll the dough into a spring-form pan and bake until the sides are sturdy.  Then you remove the spring-form and bake a little longer. Then peel, core, and slice apples, and combine with cinnamon and sugar.  I arranged these in three spirals in the tart shell and baked again for 20 minutes.

Then custard...oh the custard.  It's really easy to whisk up and is so creamy, with a hint of brandy.  You pour the custard over the apples in the tart shell and bake again.  Add some powdered sugar (I wasn't sure I wanted it, but it did add something to the end product) and bake a bit more until the custard is brown and a fork comes out clean.  There's no vanilla in this recipe, but I swear my house smelled like vanilla and apples and awesome.  It's one of those desserts that everyone eats and stops talking.  They just sigh these long contented sighs.  You cannot buy this kind of awesome in a store.

Tarte Normande aux Pommes

Happy cooking!

Saturday Night- Two kinds of pizza

Brand new oven...what to make?  My boys suggested pizza, and it sounded easy enough.  However, I quickly realized that pizza only pretends to be easy.  It's actually a lot of work if you're going to do it all yourself- especially if you feel inclined to impress and decide to make two different kinds.

I made the dough for the crust using this recipe: Bobby Flay Pizza Dough

I didn't have any bread flour, so I used King Arthur all-purpose and it turned out just fine.  I only needed about 3.5 cups, plus a bit more for kneading.  The dough came together in a snap.  I let it rise on the counter and then made two sauces.


Basic Tomato Sauce

1 small can of chopped tomatoes
2 Tbs tomato paste
1/2 sweet onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper

Heat a skillet to medium-high and add the olive oil (I eyeball this, but if I had to guess it is probably 1 Tbs).  Saute the onion and garlic until it is nice and golden and soft.  Turn down the heat to low and add the canned tomatoes.  Simmer gently for about 15 minutes until the tomatoes have lost the tin taste.  (I used this time to make the second sauce.)  Add the tomato paste to thicken.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Can you add herbs?  Sure- but depending on your pizza toppings, you might not need to.


White Garlic Sauce

2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 Tbs butter
1/4 - 1/2 cup of cream
1/4 cup of grated fontina cheese
Salt & Pepper

Head a small sauce pan over medium-low heat and melt the butter.  Add the garlic and saute until it softens.  Add the cheese and whisk until everything is blended.  Reduce heat to low and add the cream.  Add salt and pepper to taste (I used a white, red, and black pepper blend in this which is really tasty).  Let the sauce simmer and reduce.  It'll bubble even on low (at least on my stove).  Stir regularly so it doesn't stick to the pan.

After my sauces were made, I rolled out my dough into two pizzas and then assembled the toppings.

Pizza 1
Tomato Sauce, Italian sausage (casings removed and browned in chunks), kalamata olives, crimini mushroom slices, mozzarella, and parmesan.

Pizza 2
White Garlic Sauce, sliced d'anjou pears, pancetta strips, crimini mushroom slices, mozzarella, fontina, and parmesan.

I baked each pizza at 400 degrees for about 15-20 minutes until the crust was golden and the cheese was bubbly and browned.

I forgot to take pics of the pear pizza...but here's the tomato sausage...

I had some pretty happy guys.  I'll use this crust recipe again- it was easy and the crust was tasty and chewy but not too dense.  It was requested to use "normal olives" instead of kalamatas, so we'll see about that...

I think this could be a weeknight meal if I make the dough in the morning and refrigerate it, and have some sauce ready to go.  On a weeknight, I'd probably stick to either two red sauce pizzas or two white sauce pizzas.

Anyway- Yum!

It started with an oven...

Well, sort of.  I've been experimenting with cooking and recipes for years.  And reading about food.  Reading articles about nutrition, cooking techniques, obesity.  Reading everything I can about why Americans (including myself) gain weight and can't seem to lose it.  So, I'm launching an experiment on myself and my family members to eat better food and hopefully be healthier.

I've, personally, always struggled with my weight.  I don't believe in cutting out entire food groups (sorry Atkins/Veganism/Paleo, but you're not for me), and the whole calorie-counting thing is frustrating because when I'm calorie-counting, I have a nasty tendency of eating processed, convenience foods because it is much easier to write down the number of calories off of the label.  It takes so much effort to weigh, measure, and record everything I cook- especially when cooking a recipe from scratch for my family.  So I started reading as much as I could about diet and trying to find a way to lose weight or at least be healthy and not gain any more weight while not torturing myself.

While I was reading, I found this interesting information in a study from the Journal of Economic Perspectives: in 1965 a married woman (who didn't work outside the home) spent two hours a day preparing meals.  Today that number has dropped to 30 minutes (Forbes).  And our weight has soared. But the most interesting part of the article was this- the authors state that prior to WWII, Americans ate "massive amounts of potatoes" but those potatoes were mostly cooked at home.  Now we just eat massive amounts of french fries.  So, that seems to mean that the much maligned potato is not the problem...the problem is how the potato is prepared and how convenient it is to eat a potato.  The authors also point out how much work it takes to make french fries at home.  How many of us go to this effort?  (Here's a link to the article if you'd like to read more:  http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/jesse.shapiro/research/obesity.pdf)

That article was really eye-opening.  So, I read more along the same vein.  I read about other cultures- and found more and more that cultures that don't eat all of our processed foods (I'm looking at you, Oreo) don't have the obesity problems that we do.  They can eat carbs and not gain weight. 

I talked things over with my family, and decided to start cooking everything from scratch.  Yeah, everything.  

Oh- and then my oven broke.

We ordered a new one, and it took months to get here.  But, it is gorgeous...

 

I've set the following "ground rules" for myself.  

1. Cook as much from basic ingredients as possible.
2. If I need to purchase something pre-made, it has to have recognizable ingredients, no preservatives, no artificial sweeteners, no high-fructose corn syrup, and no hydrogenated/partially-hydrogenated oils.  (This rule lets me buy sandwich bread.  I, eventually, want to bake it myself...but baby steps.)
3. Try new things.  Don't get stuck in a rut.

That's enough philosophy.  On to the food!