Sometimes…

…I just don’t have enough time to do it all! Do you ever feel this way? I have some amazing stories and recipes burning in the back of my head. I even have photos to go with most of them. Instead, I am writing lessons and grading papers and placing Scholastic book orders. But I am setting aside some time tomorrow to write and edit photos so next week (maybe even as soon as Sunday) I’ll have ready to share with you the delicious dinners we’ve eaten. The piles of cookies I have baked. The bread we ate. And maybe a sewing project. Not to mention the fun new (to me) toys for my Kitchen Aid.

Until then, you can enjoy the flowers my boyfriend sent to me on Valentine’s Day. Actually, he sent them to my work a day early. I was the envy of all!

 

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

I’ve been slowly reading my way through the beginning of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I have found it to be quite interesting. I’m excited to master the art of baking using Baker’s Math. It’s an entire system using percentages based on the type of bread you are making. Apparently, every bread has a formula. Once you learn the basic formulas, you can easily make any type of bread with a few calculations. I would try to explain it further, only I fear I would confuse myself trying to put it into words for you to understand as I am just starting to grasp the concept. As I learn more about this wonderful Math ( I always knew liking math would help me with baking!), I’ll share more about applying it to making bread.

To go along with using Baker’s Math, I will also need to switch from measuring cups and spoons to weighing ingredients when baking. We have a small kitchen scale already and I’ve used it a few times to measure flour and sugar. It’s not nearly accurate enough to measure teaspoons. I guess I’ll be shopping for a different scale soon.

 

With some of my newly acquired knowledge,  I decided it was time to make another loaf of bread. I had been leaning towards a sourdough bread, but that is a multiple day process. I only had one day to make bread. Since it was Sunday morning, I had breakfast on the brain. My stomach and my brain settled on Cinnamon Raisin Bread. I’m not certain how my stomach agreed to this since I don’t like raisins. I’ll eat them occasionally as a snack, but never in anything or on anything and most definitely not baked or cooked in any way! BLECH!!! Thankfully, my boyfriend does enjoy raisins and is a happy recipient of most everything I bake.

Unlike the first bread, this one started with mixing all the dry ingredients together, then mixing in the wet ingredients. The wet ingredients only had to be a room temperature for mixing. I quite like that as I always stress out that the water is a little too hot and I’ll mess up the entire loaf of bread!

I feel I was a bit more successful in this attempt at making bread. The loaves still aren’t perfect. One even looks mangled. Though this time around, both loaves rose quite well. The only reason they don’t appear to have risen properly is due to me having the wrong sized pans. It appears that I am going to have to add bread pans to my shopping list as well!

The original recipe also includes walnuts, which I left out because I forgot to pick them up at the grocery store. The bread was quite delicious. Yes, I did taste the bread. I even tried a bite with raisins! I didn’t particularly enjoy that bite, but the rest was wonderful. Having cinnamon mixed into the dough adds a little surprise taste even when you don’t get a bite of the cinnamon/sugar swirl.

Next time I try this recipe, I’m going to make one loaf without raisins and add the walnuts. I’m curious to see if the bread will turn out without raisins in the mix. When adding the swirl, I plan to roll the dough out a bit further to get a longer swirl in the middle.

If you are curious to try this recipe, you have a few options. Once again, I’m opting not to share the recipe due to copyright concerns. I know I wouldn’t like it if someone took what was mine. Your first option is to purchase The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, it is a wonderful book and you will enjoy making bread from it. Second, you can Google Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread Peter Reinhart and you may just find a copy.

Miss Scarlet’s School

by Kathy Cano-Murillo

Not more than a few days ago, okay, maybe a week, I decided to spend the day reading rather than sewing. Sadly, this doesn’t happen nearly as often as I would like. It used to be that I would sit and read books for days. Now I’m lucky to stay awake for 20 minutes of reading before going to bed! I’m proud of myself so far this year, I believe I’ve already read 4 books! It’s only been a month. Back to my Saturday (or was it Sunday) of reading.

I have been longing to have a copy of Miss Scarlet’s School of Patternless Sewing since first hearing about the book just after its release date. Various blogs I follow were promoting the book. I, of course, entered all the contests trying to win the book, but to no avail. It even sat on my Amazon wishlist through multiple holidays and birthdays. I gave up hoping for a copy and bought my own. And then received one for Christmas from my boyfriend as well!

The book was as amazing as I had hoped based purely on the title. I had no idea the premise of the book or any knowledge of the author before reading this book. I wanted to read it based on the knowledge that is was about a sewing school. I do this often when I see a book about vintage clothes, dressmakers, and sewing. I figure it’s a topic I enjoy, I’ll probably enjoy the story. I was right on the money with this book!

Miss Scarlet is an up-and-coming designer with an eye for fashion thanks to lessons from her grandmother. We meet Scarlet just as she’s been accepted into the prestigious design school run by  Johnny “Scissors” Tijeras, the nephew of her inspiration Daisy de la Flora. With only a few months to raise the funds, Scarlet decides to open a sewing school to teach her grandmother’s methods of patternless sewing.

As with most chick-lit, everything that can go wrong does. Her jealous boss reneges on allowing the school to be held in her design studios, Scarlet ends up with only a few students, her family doesn’t understand. Yet through it all, Scarlet sticks to her guns and is determined to do anything to go to this school in New York. With the help of her new-found friends (her students), Scarlet very nearly  succeeds. Though in the end, she has the final say in how to make events happen. Will she make the right choices or will she betray those closest to her to get what she believes she wants for her life?

 

Trailer by Kathy Cano-Murillo. you can check out her blog here.

Resolution Report

It’s the beginning of February, around the time New Year’s Resolutions begin to fall by they wayside. We don’t intend to abandon them, it happens slowly. We skip a day here. We put it off until tomorrow. We get busy with what was already routine. In many cases, we just bit off more than we could chew. Maybe we need to slow down and pick just one resolution to focus on in February. Or maybe, you are rocking those resolutions! You’ve got it handled. You’ve made it those 30 days and now they are new habits. I applaud you and am a little bit jealous.

For the most part, I am happy with the progress I have made on my goals for the year. (You can check up on my progress under my goals tab.) I only missed one week with a new recipe. Oooh! That was a week at school! It took 12 hours of sleep Friday night to recover! I’m a little better now. I plan on making two new recipes this week to make up for it. I’m thankful I have loads of recipes saved everywhere that I can quickly choose from or I’d be scrambling on this resolution.

I am disappointed in my lack of use of baking soda, baking powder, and yeast. I need to find more people to bake for. I just volunteered to make something for a bake fair. Anyone else need stuff for a bake fair? Or a birthday cake (it may not be as awesome as this one, but it will be wonderful)? Maybe you just want homemade cookies. Just let me know!

As for the yeast, I decided that before I continue baking bread, I needed to finish reading the beginning of my new book. It is very insightful. I believe it will help me improve the quality of my bread. Not that the last loaves were bad (maybe a little short). They were quite good, I feel as if I skipped steps in the learning process. Like jumping in and making a full suit before knowing how to sew a straight line. The basics are important. I’m loving what I am learning and kind of hoping the author decides to offer a class near me.

Does this guy not look a little like Darth Vader? I highly recommend checking this one out on Flickr When you look at the largest photo, you can see the individual lights from its core.

I’ve even managed to complete not one, but two sewing projects. They were both fairly simple projects, neither took much over an hour. However, both resulted in two items for a total of 4. And that’s an hour more of sewing I had done since September. I decided not to count the battery bandoliers I made for a customer order. Am I short-changing myself on that?

Ever wonder what your face looks like when you are taking photos? I still do!

Finally, we are being delightful tourists of our local area. If I ever get my behind in motion to prepare weekend posts, you might start seeing what we’ve done. For now, you’ll just have to settle for the list on my goals page and these wonderful photos I took of the jellyfish at the Florida Aquarium a few weeks ago. I love the jelly fish tank, the lights change colors.

Sitting Pretty!

Eating Healthy

I’m not very disciplined at being a healthy eater. I know I could do it, but there are just so many foods out there that taste way to good to give up. Also, I don’t like feeling hungry. So given the choice between cheese and crackers or cucumbers and green peppers, I’m going to choose cheese and crackers. Why? Because I’ll be full longer. Like a few hours versus 30 minutes.

In an effort to eat healthier, I am adding vegetables wherever possible. Like in the sauce that I cover my chicken in. I add peas to a recipe that only had corn. The soup gets spinach. My chocolate cake gets zucchini (that makes it healthy, right?)! I don’t know if I’m being successful, the scale doesn’t think so, but it feels a little better.

Thankfully, my newest Food Network magazine is full of lower calorie meals. Including my new recipe of the week; Stewed Chicken and Chickpeas. Overall, the meal was fairly good. I think I overcooked it a bit, making it a little mushy. My brain also is leading me to believe that I made something quite similar that tasted much better (I have to seek out that recipe). I really think the only reason I didn’t love this dish was because it was mushy, which could be solved by not overcooking dinner.

The taste of the dish reminded me of a dish I loved in Egypt called Vegetarian Couscous. That may have been the garam masala. Which is an easy to make blend of coriander, cumin, pepper, ginger, cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon. Depending on whose advice you follow the mix contains most or all of these. Had I realised how easy it would have been to make my own, I wouldn’t have bought a ready-made bottle as we also own all these spices.

Usually, the first time I make a recipe, I don’t make changes. I like to see how it tastes as is. But this one called for a couple changes. First off, I added a small onion. You can’t have green pepper and garlic with no onion. Along with the onion, I tenderised the onion and garlic before adding the rest of the ingredients. We also didn’t add the Greek Yogurt. I had it on hand, we just didn’t put it on the food. I substituted slices of my Anadama bread rather than pitas. I would recommend naan over pita bread.

To improve the next attempt, I’m going to use smaller pieces of chicken. They will cook faster which will help in not overcooking the sauce. I’ll also cut the dried apricots into quarters instead of halves. This way there won’t be random large chunks in the smaller diced vegetables.

 

 

 

A Little Greener

I highly doubt that we will ever win a medal for being the greenest family on the block. We do a few things here and there, but we could very easily do a little more. The little bits we do help us feel environmentally contentious, which does lead to more green decisions. Our most recent green commitment came with an excuse to make those fabric coffee sleeves I’ve been seeing everywhere.

I have been a fan of reusable cups/mugs for quite some time. I always made certain do give customers their discount when ringing them up when I worked in a cafe. I, however, never bought my own. I just couldn’t fathom paying so much for a cup or mug. Before you say, check the dollar store, I did. They always looked super cheap and about ready to fall apart. I’m not a fan of hot anything on my lap. Particularly on the way to work!

Then this marvelous thing happened, where a big name coffee chain (you all know who I mean) began selling $1.00 reusable cups. I can handle one dollar. I even check out the construction. Much better than anything I’d seen at the dollar store. They even have the added bonus of feeling as if you are drinking from a plastic lid and paper cup. I like that feeling. I’m always afraid that I’ll get a big Sploosh! of hot tea in my face from some of those travel mugs out there. No worries about that with my new cup, it looks just like the disposable one, only I get to use it over and over and over! Not that we frequent cafes all that often. Mostly at Christmas.

The drawback to this new wonder cup is the lack of insulation. I could just grab a paper sleeve and be done with it, but that seems a little ironic (I’m fairly certain I am using that term correctly) to be using a green cup only to throw away a paper sleeve (even if it is made from recycled paper). I decided to use a little part of my day off to stitch up a couple of sleeves to protect our hands while carrying around our drinks.

There are a million tutorials about how to make these fabric coffee sleeves. I suggest doing a google image search to find the one that suits your fancy and follow that tutorial. I settled on using this tutorial by Skip to my Lou. It’s a blog I follow and her tutorials are quite good. For the most part, I copied the tutorial exactly. The couple changes I made this time are minimal. First, I used heat-resistant batting. I don’t recall which brand I had on hand. Since I stitched my sleeve second, I used a slightly smaller seam allowance to make my sleeve a bit wider.

The sleeves turned out awesome as you can see from the photos. My boyfriend loves his flannel bug covered sleeve with canvas lining! I’m mostly happy with mine for which I used quilting cotton with corduroy lining. I wanted it to overlap a bit more and be a little wider. For now, I’m going to show off my current sleeve; I’ve got other projects to tackle!

  

Anna, Damn Her!

So legend (or folklore) has it, my latest attempt at yeast bread making came from a namesake of mine. As the story goes, a Gloucester fisherman/farmer/hunter/woodsman (I’ll stick with fisherman), had a wife who was a terrible cook. Everyday, he came home to cornmeal mush and molasses. Upon returning home one evening to yet another meal of cornmeal, he took matters into his own hands and mixed in some flour and yeast to make bread. The entire time muttering “Anna, Damn her!” Thankfully, despite having the same name, I am fully capable of making many delicious meals. Though I do often leave the cooking to my boyfriend!

I started my bread making with this particular loaf for a few reasons. First, it has a story and it involves a person I share a name with. I don’t know about you, but I always feel drawn to something that shares my name. Second, it was close to the front of my new bread book. I have had this particular book on my wishlist for over a year. I finally received it for Christmas. There are a multitude of bread baking books out there. To the point where you can choose a book on a specific type of bread. When I was researching the best bread book for me, I settled on The Bread Baker’s Apprentice  for its detailed instructions in the recipes and the massive introduction to bread baking at the beginning.

The author, Peter Reinhart,  is passionate about baking bread and it shows in his writing. This book wasn’t just a way for him to share a few recipes (nearly 100), he wanted the readers to learn how to make good bread. Through his writing you can see that he isn’t just a baker, he is also a teacher. If you want to learn how to make good yeast bread, I recommend this book. My only complaint about the book is that the recipes are in alphabetical order rather than by bread type. Though, I have a feeling as I grow more familiar with the book, this will stop bothering me.

Back to the recipe and the third reason I tried this bread first. It has molasses in it. We rather enjoy the flavor of molasses, yet we only use it around Christmas. I feel this needs to change. The recipe also uses corn meal, which I found very intriguing. Really, this was a recipe that demanded to be baked.

You begin by soaking the corn meal in water overnight. This is to soften the meal and help release its flavours. While I was researching the background story, I also discovered that some people bake the cornmeal, some boil it, and other just pour boiling water over it and soak until it reaches room temperature. Though I’m sure any method will work, I like the archaic feel of soaking something overnight in preparation of baking bread. I’m sure there is some sort of epiphany in there somewhere, but I’m sticking with it just feels right!

Also thanks to my research, I may have discovered why I think my loaves ended up being short instead of fluffy. According to Spoonful, using All-Purpose flour rather than bread flour will result in a denser bread due to the difference in gluten. I think I will pick up a bag of bread flour before my next bread baking adventure. I may have also rushed the last rise a little in my excitement that my bread was beginning to look like bread.

I’m sure I’ll have many more bread making adventures and helpful suggestions as the year progresses. Once again, I won’t be typing in the recipe for copyright reasons, but you can visit this link that share the same recipe I just made (hers looks better than mine!)

Anadama Story Resources:

Spoonful

A Taste of History

The Sour Dough