Tag Archives: cooking woes

Update

Hello, all.

I want to apologize for the lack of posts since Wednesday. A confluence of two unavoidable events caused it. Well, one unavoidable event and one instance of me being spacey.

The unavoidable event was flying to New Mexico yesterday, and all the chaos that entails. We have many wonderful loved ones here, all of whom need some of our time. Especially as we’re here effectively to celebrate the holidays, there’s a lot going on. Such as a party this afternoon at Bill’s mother’s house. So yesterday was not a great day for posting.

The other event happened Wednesday night.

We had decided we wanted to try two recipes a second time, the “Steak, Mushroom, and Ale Pie”:http://metacookbook.com/archives/140-71-Steak,-Mushroom-and-Ale-Pie.html and the “Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Garlic.”:http://metacookbook.com/archives/146-75-Roasted-Brussels-Sprouts-with-Garlic.html… Continue reading →

[61] Sandwich Bread, Five Ways, Version 1

How to Cook Everything, Revised Edition by Mark Bittman

Well, we’ve discussed this bread a couple of times previously. First because the dough seemed to utterly fail to rise. Time took care of that. Then, since time took care of that, Bill and I decided to give it a go. This was despite the fact that the top of the dough had dried out quite a bit during the rise.

So, with all of that in mind, I’m going to launch straight into the recipe, and skip over the typically longer pre-recipe banter. Of course, there will still be cooking and consumption notes after the recipe. Also, as a note, I have and use a stand mixer for this, so those are the directions I’ll give. Looking at it, it appears Bittman prefers a food processor for this, but I <3 my stand mixer.… Continue reading →

Experiment time!

Well. So.

The bread dough did seem to be sort of growing a little bit by the time the 2h rise was up, but not at any real pace. I didn’t have enough time to make new dough & let rise, or to change the environment and restart the 2h rise, and punch down, rise again, bake before our plans yesterday. That was what super bummed me.

So I did what any sane and curious person would do. I left it alone.

By this morning, it had definitely risen a goodly amount. I didn’t have time to do anything with it before my piano lesson, and then after I debated. Curiosity won out, as usual.

The dough has been punched down, and is waiting 15 more minutes in the warmest spot I could think of.… Continue reading →

Bummer

As I mentioned last night, we’re planning to have dinner out and about tonight, so today wasn’t looking good to be a “recipe” day. However, when I realized Bill forgot his sandwich stuff today, I realized today would be a good day to make sandwich bread.

Normally, I make “this”:http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Amish-White-Bread/Detail.aspx bread when I want to make bread, especially for sandwiches. It’s a touch on the sweet side, but basically works. I’d imagine you could drop the sugar quite a bit and still get great bread.

So, I started contemplating bread when I realized that one of my cookbooks HAS to have a good sandwich bread recipe, right?

Well, maybe. But after asking on Twitter, I got one vote for “nothing good in Joy of Cooking” and one vote for “Make my mother’s bread recipe” (which I didn’t have).… Continue reading →

Not my day in the kitchen.

Today’s been a long day, you guys. My kitchen’s a mess. Which, on the one hand, is good because it means I’ve been DOING THINGS! On the other hand, though, it means a lot of cleaning.

Thus, I’m glad to soon be leaving the kitchen to go play games with Bill and some of his co-workers. Not that I don’t enjoy cooking, but today I’ve dropped things, spilled things, forgotten ingredients and so forth. It’s not been an easy day in my kitchen.

However, all that said, I did want to send out a “hello”. A quick list of some recipes you’ll be seeing posts about soon: banana bread, turnip greens, chocolate cake, potato and bean gratin, brussels sprouts with bacon, port-braised onions and stuffed mushrooms (the last two you already knew about, but still haven’t seen).… Continue reading →