Delicious

I was finally able to make the pretzel rolls yesterday & they are wonderful!  Havoc has already declared I need to make them more often.

I’ve made them a few times in the past with various recipes none of which thrilled me. This time I used one from Pioneer Woman’s Tasty Kitchen site. This is the printable page

http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/breads/pretzel-rolls-3/?print=1#

But let me tell you a few things about it

1-½ cup Warm Water (110°F) – does it feel warm, but not hot to your finger? yes? then it is fine
1 package (1/4 Oz. Packet) Active Dry Yeast (not Quick Rise Yeast) – this is 2.25 teaspoons if you do yeast in bulk
2 teaspoons Sugar
4-½ cups Unbleached All-purpose Flour 
2 teaspoons Kosher Salt
4 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter, melted
¼ cups Baking Soda
1 whole Egg, Lightly Beaten
Pretzel Salt, To Sprinkle On Top

I used regular sea salt instead of Kosher & large grain sea salt instead of pretzel salt because I do not own Kosher or pretzel salt. You want a decent sized salt grain for the tops. The sea salt was fine.

I used a mix of white flour, wheat flour & 7 grain flour by Bob’s Red Mill instead of just white. This recipe suffers a bit IMO from the American need to use cups instead of weight at a measurement. Being an American I am totally used to it & am also slowly converting my recipes to ounces (because while I agree weight is better than volume, I’m not doing the gram thing as well). I have no idea how much 4.5 c weighs because, as usual, I thought about it after I had dumped 4.5 c of mixed flours into the bowl of water (hence the ‘slowly converting’)

The recipe calls for parchment paper.  I had enough for one tray, but needed two trays, so I was able to experiment with that necessity. The parchment is nice. It does make it really easy to remove the rolls when they are done. But they came off the unlined tray with a bit of nudging with a spatula just fine as well. Parchment paper is nice, but not necessary but YMMV.

Stir up the warm water & the yeast in your large mixing bowl then add sugar, flour, salt, & butter & mix until well combined. Put it in a warm place, covered with a towel for an hour or so, until it is twice as big. In my house this is the microwave, especially since it was just used to melt butter.

Then you take the dough and divide it into 18 2 ounce pieces. I suppose if you are not spatially challenged like me you can visually divide the dough up evenly by eye. Me? I need a scale (and am thrilled the recipe said 2ozs, otherwise I would have had to weigh the dough mass & then divide that total by 18 & I try to avoid having unnecessary long division in my life).

This is where the flour weight would have been nice. See, it was humid yesterday so my flour was heavy & 4.5 cups made 19 2oz rolls. Had it been dry I might have ended up with 17 rolls. Granted I did not need 18 rolls specifically but it’s nice to know you are getting consistent results.

Anyway.

Roll out the pieces into balls by pulling the ends to the middle of the bottom & then put it on the counter & give it a few gentle turns with your hand cupped around it & put it seam side down on the baking sheet (papered or not) – 9 per baking sheet, well spaced and let them rise, covered, for 30 minutes or so

I turn on my oven until it reaches 100 degrees then turn it off, crack the oven door a tiny bit for a couple minutes & then use it for rising the dough. This is my rising trick because my house is usually too cold 8 months out of the year to allow for rising on the counter. I have had much better results with things that need to rise doing this and the microwave thing than leaving things out to rise.

After 30 minutes preheat the over to 425. Get out a large sauce pan & add 2 quarts of water to it. Bring the water to a boil & add the baking soda, hope the foamy bubbles do not overflow the pan because that is a pain to clean up, then turn the water down to a simmer.

Place the dough balls one at a time in the water, seam side down. I found 4 fit comfortably in my pan. Let them cook for 30 seconds then flip them over with a slotted spoon or spatula & cook for another 30 seconds, remove them back to their tray & repeat until all the rolls are boiled. You’ll have to turn the temp up on the stove about halfway through to maintain the simmer.

Get a brush and brush the beaten egg on a tray’s worth of rolls, be sure to cover them well in egg,then sprinkle with the salt, take a sharp knife & cut an X in them & bake for 15-20 minutes on the middle rack of your oven.

I did the first back at 17 minutes & found them overdone for my taste, the second batch, seen above, were 14 minutes.

Cool on wire rack

Cut open and use as sandwich buns or eat by themselves with mustard or cheese dipping sauce.

These are grilled ham & cheese sandwiches.

2ozs makes small rolls. Snack size. These would be called sliders & not sandwiches where I come from. They are too small to be real sandwiches, that’s why I made two.

We’re having turkey burger sliders for dinner tonight with them.  Next time I make them I will make a mix of 3oz & 4oz size rolls to see which size is best with burgers, because I foresee these being a staple at cookouts this summer.

They freeze well too.

You can also use the dough to make actual soft pretzels, just roll them out into long rolls & twist into pretzel shape instead of making rolls. Knock the baking time back about 5 minutes (IME with other pretzel dough recipes)

Rainbow cookies

These are so easy to make. Just go get your favorite sugar cookie recipe & make it. (mine is from Joy of Cooking & includes cream cheese which makes a wonderful texture with these) 

Then divide it into 4 sections.

My cookie dough recipe makes 48 cookies so I divided it into 8 batches.

This was a tad excessive.

4 or 5 would have been fine.

Get your hands on some gel food coloring. It has to be gel if you want the vibrant colors. The drop kind of food coloring is pretty much useless for this. The colors are pale & it changes the texture slightly.

How much gel?

Just this much. Dip the toothpick into the container, swirl it around, pull it out, stick it in one of the dough batches, swirl it around and then stir the dough until the color is spread through out.

Chill the doughs in plastic wrap in the fridge for a couple hours.

Then divide it into small sections with a butter knife

Take 3-4 different colors & put them together. You want a lump about the size of your general chocolate chip or peanut butter cookie dough lump. A tablespoon? two? #4 disher?

(THIS is why I didn’t give a recipe for sugar cookies. Mine was from Joy but has morphed into something else. I don’t measure anymore & I am spatially challenged so I cannot even guess by sight how much of anything I am using, I just know it looks like the same amount as last time.)

Roll it into a ball & then roll it out like a snake, like you did with play dough as a kid

Then coil it up into a cookie & place on a cookie sheet

It doesn’t matter how expert you are at this, all ages can play along

It’s buttery cookie dough and you are rolling it with your warm hands so some flour or powdered sugar is helpful.

Bake for as long as your recipe recommends, cool on racks & eat

After school treats

For the ill prepared.

Chocolate crackers

1. Realize you have a lot of graham crackers left over from the cookout.

2. Remember there was a cookie recipe for them in one of those mysteries with the really annoying sleuth that you have been reading & you copied it. Find it.

3. Lay out graham crackers on foil lined pan

4. Start 2 sticks of butter melting

5. Get one cup brown sugar

  a. Realize there is no brown sugar in the house because *someone* (I’m looking at you DH) made cookies last week and did not tell you they used all the brown sugar

  b. Google ‘brown sugar substitutes’ and find many proportional variations of ‘add molasses to white sugar’. Debate between 2t to 1 cup and .25c to 1 cup

  c. Realize you aren’t just making cookies, you are also making blog fodder. Get your camera & channel the Pioneer Woman.

6. Remove 1T butter from pan. Add 1 cup white sugar and 1T molasses.

Stir until melted together, bring to a boil and stir constantly for 5 minutes.

7. Decide that what you really want for Christmas is a tripod and a well lit kitchen

8. Pour this mixture over the graham crackers and spread evenly. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

9. Spend 1 minute gathering some toppings.

Spend the remaining 9 minutes on a ‘just the right sized container’ quest to hold all  your jars of toppings & colored sugar.

10. Remove pan from the oven and sprinkle 2 cups of chocolate chips over it all. Let them soften for a minute or two and then spread the melting chocolate evenly over the crackers

11. Sprinkle with toppings if you have people in your house that are partial to that sort of thing

12. Wait about 10 minutes for it to cool a bit then stick in fridge to chill for 2-3 hours.

      a. Damn!

b. rearrange fridge

13. Once it is hardened, pull the foil off the back and break into pieces

oh look! the quality control inspectors have arrived!

14. Taste one.

     a. OMG that is sweet!

15. Debate what sized sugar rush effects you want to deal with and resize the cookies

16. Referee the inevitable fighting

These are really good and really sweet. OMG sweet. One small cookie is plenty.

I might make them with 1/4 less sugar next time for comparison.

 

Chocolate crackers (from one of Joanne Fluke’s books)

2 sticks butter (1 cup)

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 inner package of graham crackers (enough to cover a foil lined 10x15 rimmed baking sheet)

1 foil lined 10x15 rimmed baking sheet

2 cups chocolate chips

toppings optional

Lay out graham crackers on foil lined pan

Start 2 sticks of butter melting

Add one cup brown sugar, stir until melted together, bring to a boil and stir constantly for 5 minutes.

Pour this mixture over the graham crackers and spread evenly. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes

Remove from the oven and sprinkle 2 cups of chocolate chip over it all. Let them soften for a minute or two and then spread the melting chocolate evenly over the crackers

Wait about 10 minutes for it to cool a bit then stick in fridge to chill for 2-3 hours.

Once it is hardened, pull the foil off the back and break into pieces

Homemade yogurt

So easy an unorganized ditz could do it.

And I’ll prove it to you.

Step one - get a quart sized mason jar

Step one A – get a step ladder

Step two - which probably should have been step one, find your recipe

Step three - heat a quart of milk in the microwave to 180-185 degrees F in 2 minute increments, stirring each time. This takes about 6-7 minutes in my microwave.

Get distracted by step 4 & fail to photograph step 3

Step four– search for thermometer to check the temp of the yogurt after first 2 minutes

Find only cases and the long missing apple corer

Step 4a – stick yogurt back in the microwave for another 2 minutes while you tear through every drawer in the kitchen until you come up with one of the thermometers.

Step 4b – once yogurt reaches 180 degrees leave it to cool on the counter to 110-115 degrees. This takes about 45 minutes. Do not put the hot glass jar in the fridge!

Trust me.

Step five – gather your other ingredients (probably this should have been step 3 as you will see)

Check the expire date on the ingredients. This is especially important in my kitchen. I haven’t made yogurt since Sept 09 since yogurt is a warm weather thing for me.

Oh look!

Step 5a– Google ‘homemade yogurt recipe’ and compare eleventy billion of them to see just how many require the use of dry milk and whether you can get by without it.

Turns out you can. Dry milk apparently is used as a thickener when using lower fat milk and it adds protein. I’m using 1% milk but I have plans for this yogurt that should get around the thickener issue. I don’t really care about the protein content.

Step 5b – check the yogurt you will use as starter since this is absolutely necessary. I like Greek yogurt because it has more types of active culture. I just bought it 2 days ago, so I’m good on the date.

Step six – once the milk is at 112 degrees or so whisk in 2 tablespoons of yogurt. Whisk well until blended.

Step seven – put the lid on the mason jar and wrap it well in a couple dish towels or some fleece then put it in a warm place. In my kitchen this is the microwave.

Leave it alone for 8-12 hours. The longer it sits the thicker it gets.

You can also wrap a lot of towels around it and put it in a small cooler. I think Alton Brown wraps a heating pad on really low around his. I have a yogurt maker, which is basically an insulated container that gets a bit warm when you plug it in and keeps the yogurt at a constant temp. The mason jar fits in it nicely when wrapped in one towel, but I couldn’t find it in a timely manner this time.

(Step 5c – find yogurt maker)

Step eight – 8 to 12 hours later remove yogurt from warm place, unwrap and stick in the fridge for 2-3 hours to cool (you can drain the whey from the top of the yogurt before putting it in the fridge if you like. I do because I need thick yogurt this time)

Step nine – remove yogurt from fridge and look at it

Open the jar and take out a spoonful

Hey! You made yogurt!!

This yogurt at this thick yet loose consistency is good for smoothies, or eating by the bowl with granola and fruit, or for marinating chicken with Indian spices.

But I have other plans for this yogurt.

It has a different destiny.

It is going to be used in spreads and dips, which require it to be thicker,

Step ten – line a strainer with paper towels and set it over a bowl

Pour the yogurt into the strainer & stick it back in the fridge for 1-2 hours.

This is what happens

The yogurt has lost half it’s volume & is now much thicker

Put it in a pint sized mason jar until needed

About half of this is going to become tszatziki – blending it with grated cucumber and garlic. The rest will appear as a replacement for mayo in chicken salad and mixed into roasted eggplant & garlic for a savory dip and mixed into chocolate peanut butter for a sweet dip (great on apples, strawberries and graham crackers)

So despite missing a major ingredient and doing things out of order I still managed to make yogurt. That is how easy making yogurt really is

You need

1 quart milk, any kind will do but if using 1% or fat free you might want to add a couple tablespoons of cream or the dry milk

2 tablespoons of good plain yogurt with live cultures

1/4 c dry milk, as I have found out, this is nice but not necessary

1.5 tablespoons honey or other sweetener – if you want sweetish yogurt.

Pour the milk into a quart glass mason jar or other non metal container & microwave it on high in 2 minute intervals stirring each time until it reaches 180-185 degrees F. This takes about 6-7 minutes. You can also heat the milk on the stovetop directly in a pan or put the glass jar in a pan of water & heat that on the stove top. Both take longer.

Whisk in the sweetener if using it then set the milk aside to cool to 110-115 degrees F.

Whisk in the yogurt and the dry milk (if using) and mix well.

Wrap in warm towels and put in a warmish place (a small cooler packed with towels works really well for this I am told by friends but I don’t own one) for 8-12 hours. The longer you wait the thicker it gets. If this is your first time making it, check it at 9 hours. If it is not thick enough you can put it back in the warmth for a couple more, but don’t go longer than 12 hours.

Remove from warmish place and put in the fridge for 2-3 hours.

Share and enjoy!

If it seems really thin there are a few things to try in your next batch – use slightly less yogurt, find a warmer place and/or use fattier milk

Flour power

This is the result of a recent trip to my local bulk foods market.

Sunday I decided to make my favorite soft flat bread recipe and discovered I was nearly out of white & wheat flour and several other flours. Naturally I did not discover this until the liquid ingredients were all mixed together with the sugar, salt & yeast so I couldn’t just say ‘oh well’ and walk away. I had to come up with something.  The bread ended up being a mix of white bread flour, whole wheat flour, soy flour, oat flour, buckwheat pancake mix, oat bran and some Self Rising flour. (I needed 7 cups of flour because I foolishly was making a double batch)

It was *interesting* texturally.  Not bad, but not at all what I want in my flat bread. Normally I stick with white, wheat and flax meal, sometimes bran.

The market is just down from the boys’ TKD class so I dropped them off Wed and headed over there.

They have these little carts because the aisles aren’t wide enough for bit carts. Mine was overflowing when I reached the register. I bought over 40lbs of flour! (plus 7lbs of raw sugar, a pound of cocoa powder and a half a pound of mini peanut butter chips and 3lbs of butter) I bought 10lb bags of white bread and whole wheat bread flour. I bought a 7lb bag of white AP flour. I bought oat flour, rice flour, buckwheat flour (not pancake mix, which had been an absentminded mistake from my last flour buying trip), and rye flour. I wanted soy flour but they were out of it. I almost bought spelt flour but none of my current bread recipes call for it. I also bought flax meal, wheat germ and oat bran.

I’m probably good for flour until July, though maybe late May on the AP flour.

This is my favorite soft flat bread recipe.

2 teas yeast

1 c lukewarm milk

1 teas sugar

3 tablespoons plain yogurt (at room temp or at least not chilly)

2 tablespoons melted butter

1.5 teas salt

3.5 c flour (It can be all white. I use a mix of 2.5 c white bread flour, .75 c whole wheat and .25 flax meal usually)

Mix the yeast, milk, sugar, yogurt, butter & salt together. Add the flour. Stir together.

Knead for 10 minutes, let  rise 3-4 hours, punch down & let rest 30 minutes.

Divide into 6 balls, roll each out to about 6 inches in diameter.

You can then broil each one for two minutes a side, grill them for 2-3 minutes a side or cook in a cast iron skillet one at a time for about 2 minutes a side.  You want them to be puffy and golden.

They are best served warm with some melted garlic butter brushed over them.

If you double the recipe (as I was doing Sunday) you can, skip the kneading just mix well, let the dough rise for 2 hours then stick it in the fridge in a covered but not airtight container & pull off fist sized balls as you need them. It will keep for about a week.

Just a smoothie

I don’t drink smoothies in the fall & winter. Smoothies are a warm weather drink, like milkshakes and ice cream. Except of course for random weather induced Blizzard cravings and really…54 inches of snow in 2 weeks…I deserved a DQ Blizzard.

But it’s spring now and I’ve been in the mood for smoothies. They make lunch so much easier for me when there are no leftovers. They keep me from making pepperoni rolls. They are sweet and if I add protein powder are nutritionally rounded.

Several of us were talking about smoothies we like to make the other day. I said something along the lines of “lately I go with mango, frozen berries, V8 Frusion and some yogurt”

I had the least amount of adjectives of anyone in the group, having a total of only 1 adjective – frozen.

Everyone else’s smoothies were full of adjectives – organic, local, homegrown, homemade, hand juiced, farmer’s market, in season, fresh, high protein and popular buzz words – Greek yogurt, flax meal, spinach flakes. Like it was a contest to see how many ways you could describe your smoothie.

Thank goodness I specified the types of fruit. If I hadn’t I think they would have assumed I drank some fruit flavored, dairy based beverage with high fructose corn syrup that I bought at Wal Mart.

From the intent way these people described their smoothies I’m guessing there is a point system for adjectives in use and whoever scores the most points wins the Food Smugness Crown for that round.

The point system probably looks something like this

Fresh 0 (it’s way too common for things to be fresh)

Frozen 0 (if pre-packaged but organic), –1 (if prepackaged & not organic), +1 (If you frozen it yourself)

Local +1 (how do you define local anyway? 20 miles, 50 miles, 100 miles? To me, ‘local’ means a place I drive around on a regular basis. I don’t regularly drive 100 miles anywhere, so my local range is about 30 miles. But I’ve heard good arguments for the 100 mile local range)

In season +1

Out of season –1

Non-local 0 or –1 (depending on if it is shipped from another country)

Organic +1 (lets not even go into those rules)

Artisanal +1

Goat milk +1

Raw milk +2

Green juice +2 (this is usually made with greens like kale, spinach & collards)

From your garden +5 (and you can add an additional +1 if is an unusual garden, like a hydroponic one, or a balcony garden with those upside down tomato plants, or if you have devoted half your kitchen counter space to an indoor herb garden)

From local U-pick orchard +3

From farmers market +2

From locally owned small store +1

From grocery store 0

From Wal Mart –10

Homemade +1

Home juiced +3

Small business bottled juice +1

Corporate bottled juice –1

Corporate ‘fruit flavored beverage’ –5

Containing HFCS -10

Using white sugar – 5

Using raw sugar –1

Using honey 0

Using agave nectar or stevia +2

Using currently trendy ingredients like agave nectar, Greek yogurt, flax meal or quinoa is an additional +1 hipness point for each

Increasing the fiber content +1

Increasing the protein content +1

Increasing the fat content –3

Now, with this point chart in mind, let’s analyze my smoothie.

Mango – in season, but not organic and sourced from outside the USA, bought in a grocery store 0

Strawberries – out of season, not organic, sourced from the midwest, bought in a grocery store –1

Frozen blackberries – from a local U pick farm (just inside my 30 mile limit) and frozen by me. Come to think of it, some of those berries are from the bushes in my yard! Though I did not deliberately cultivate them. So +1 local, +1 my freezing, +3 U-pick farm & call it +1 for home grown since it wasn’t deliberate Total +6

Greek yogurt- to increase the protein content, from a store bought container +2

Honey – from a guy DH works with who owns hives, but lives 125 miles away, so I can’t claim local points but I think it counts for artisanal +1

Golden Crown’s 100% fruit & veggie juice – corporate bottled juice from a grocery store – 1

Total Food Smugness Points +7

I knew I should have added that flax meal & juiced some kale for green juice

This post was inspired by an actual encounter Monday and a request by Aunt Becky Wednesday to tell her what irritates us

Muffin cakes

Lately, whenever I open the pantry I am greeted by this

They’ve been in there for a couple of weeks. Different ones on different days. I think they are on a rota or something.

Mayhem reminds me every day that the dinos would like some muffins. Mayhem himself does not like muffins so he isn’t in this for gain.

Today was the coolest it has been in weeks, which is not so cool really, more like the difference between 94 degrees and humid and 91 degrees and not quite as humid. So I decided to take pity on the dinosaurs & make them some muffins.

I was out of bananas so my standby recipe was out & I went looking for something new.  I found a recipe for peanut butter muffins written on a random scrap of paper in my mom’s old Good Housekeeping Cookbook. I had all the ingredients, so I went with it. But I used some chocolate peanut butter I bought at the Mennonite market.

 

I don’t know where the tiger came from, but the triceratops is missing.

I mixed it all together & the batter was much more cake like than muffin like and there was entirely too much mixing for the muffin method (as I know from watching Alton Brown religiously for years) . Still, cupcakes are always welcome.

 

There was some undignified squabbling over who got to lick the bowl

 

I had to bake them in 2 batches because my oven scoffs at the idea of baking 2 trays at once & having them come out remotely cooked properly. While the first batch was cooking a part of the baking element turned white orange & started sparking (which I didn’t realize until I took the muffins out). Sparking baking elements don’t give off heat so the muffins were not quite as done as they might have been.

If there was any chocolate icing left – I’m looking at you DH – I’d ice them. Mayhem would eat one then. If I could find the confection sugar I’d give them a dusting of that. But they are delicious as is.

I called around & no one within 50 miles of here has a replacement baking element for my 13 year old Maytag. I had to order the part online and in 5-7 business days I can bake the other batch of muffins…cupcakes…baked thingies….

Chocolate Peanut Butter Baked Thingies

2 cups flour

2 teas baking powder

1/2 teas salt

1/2 cup chocolate & peanut butter spread (or Nutella, or just peanut butter)

1/3 cup soft butter, but not melted

1 teas vanilla

1 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 eggs

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup mini peanut butter chips (or chocolate or both)

2 mixing bowls – a big one & a not as big one

Don’t make my mistake. Expecting muffins I mixed this by hand. Use a blender.

Preheat your oven to 375

In the not as big bowl mix the flour, baking powder & salt.

In the big bowl cream together the butter, vanilla & the chocolate peanut butter spread. Then mix in the brown sugar one half cup at a time. Then add the eggs one at a time. Mix thoroughly with every addition. Then alternate adding some of the flour & some of the milk until it all incorporated. Mix in chips. It will look like cake batter.

Pour into lined muffin tins, about 3/4 of the way full. It will make 18-24 muffins depending on your definition of “3/4 of the way”. I never manage 3/4 and I ended up with 18 filled muffin cups

Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes, test for doneness with a toothpick & bake for 5 minutes more if needed

I made ragu for dinner

There are times where I wish I could say "I made my mother's ragu, handed down through the generations from mother daughter. It's an old family tradition from the Old Country."

But we're Irish & German, have been here since 1780 or so, and my foremothers embraced the convenience of early modern agribusiness prior to WWII with a startling eagerness. Oh there were jars of home canned stuff in my Nan's larder when I was a child, but no one had seen her can a thing after 1951.

Tellingly perhaps, I cannot remember any of the jars every being opened, let alone eaten.

This is my family's traditional ragu.

It even says 'traditional' right on the label.

I'm rather fond of it actually. There are so few 'family recipes' in my background that I take what I can get.

But sometimes, usually around now, when it gets really cold for the first time in months, the complete lack of Italian blood in me calls out for a dish of rich meaty ragu, served over polenta. And ConAgra's contribution won't cut it.

I make this sort of ragu

I should have remembered to take the photos *before* we ate.

And before I spooned half of it into a bag for the freezer

The pot was actually nearly brim full of ragu when it was done cooking.

It's good over pasta shells, rigatoni or gnocci, and in lasagna, but I like it best over polenta.

It takes freakin forever to make this ragu but it's worth it. Most of the time is just waiting around for it to cook but there is a about 30 minutes of activity leading up to that and another 10-20 or so after. You end up with about 8-9 cups of ragu from this, which works out to about 3 dinners in my house.

You need:

2 28 ounce cans of tomatoes - crushed or whole doesn't really matter, you'll be pureeing them. Get good ones, home canned if possible (assuming you know they were canned in this century)

2 pounds or so bone in beef short ribs, trimmed of large areas of fat

1 pound of boneless chuck meat,likewise trimmed

1 pound of sausage, links or ground, your choice

1 small yellow onion - peeled & chopped

2 cloves of garlic smashed & chopped

2 carrots peeled & grated

2 ribs of celery likewise

4 ounces of portabella or crimini mushrooms, chopped

1 cup of white wine

2 strips of thick sliced bacon, chopped

a handful of chopped parsley

salt & pepper

olive oil

First you need to puree the tomatoes and then strain them, pushing them through a metal strainer set over a bowl. You want to strain out the tougher bits of skins & the seeds. Salt & pepper the tomato puree. Set that aside & preheat the oven to 300.

It a large dutch oven, about 7 quarts, though mine is a bit smaller than that, brown the sausage, breaking it up as you do. Then remove it and set it aside to drain. Pour off the excess fat, but leave a little & add some olive oil. Over medium high heat brown the chuck all over, remove it, add a bit more oil if needed and brown the ribs all over. This takes about 10 minutes or so.

If you're like me, use this time to chop & grate up all that stuff you didn't get around to doing ahead of time.

Remove the ribs, pour off the fat and wipe the pan out with paper towels, set it to medium heat then add the bacon. Stir the bacon and let it brown. Once it is browned add a bit more oil and add the onions, carrots, celery & garlic. Stir them often as they brown & get soft, about 7-8 minutes. Then add the mushrooms and parsley and stir them around for a bit. Add the beef, but not the sausage. Stir it all around well, then add the wine, turn up the heat to high and let it cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the pureed tomatoes, stir and let come to a simmer.

Put the lid on it and slide it into the oven for 2.5 hours. Put the sausage in the fridge until about 10 minutes before the ragu is done in the oven.

When the time is up remove the ragu. Remove the meat from the sauce, all of it, even the bits that have fallen off the bones. Set it aside to cool a bit. There will be a good bit of oil floating around on top of the sauce. Remove it with a spoon or turkey baster. Then puree the sauce, either in batches in a blender or with a hand blender in the pot, carefully. Once the meat can be handled (10-15 minutes) remove the bones, any chunks of fat or connective tissue and discard. Shred up the meat and return it to the sauce. Add the sausage. Stir and reheat to a simmer for about 10 minutes. Salt & pepper to taste

I usually make polenta, putting 4 cups of cold water with a cup of coarse corn meal in a pan and setting it over medium low heat and stirring it from time to time until it gets thick, then stirring it more frequently (usually in between shredding up the meat & things).It takes 30-40 minutes for the polenta to get thick enough to pull from the sides of the pot.

Pile some polenta on a plate, scatter some provolone & mozzarella over it and ladle a big helping of ragu over that.

It's seriously hearty. Make no plans after dinner.

I've been baking

I made cupcakes Saturday and muffins yesterday. The cupcakes were for a pot luck party my bunco group was having. The muffins were for the family.

I ate several of both batches.

The cupcakes were cheesecake brownie cupcakes. I used the recipe for Mrs Field's Cheesecake Brownie Cups found here at RecipeZaar.com. However, I am not sure what it is with me & measuring, but I ended up with 16 cupcakes instead of 12. They were very well received.

I had 2 bananas that needed to be used yesterday so I made muffins. I was going to make peanut butter banana muffins, in the hopes of tempting Mayhem to actually eat a muffin rather than just demand to make them. But he'd gone on a PB&J spree over the weekend & there was insufficient peanut butter remaining. I decided to replace it with Nutella. Chocolate, bananas, hazelnuts...yum!

Nutella Banana muffins

Preheat oven to 400 and prepare 12-18 muffin cups. (recipe claims 12, I made 18)

In a large bowl mix together

2 cups flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tblsp baking powder

1/4 teas salt

In a smaller bowl mix until well combined

1/2c Nutella

2 tblsp oil

2 eggs

3/4 c warmish milk

2 medium bananas mashed (or pureed like I did)

This will take some time if you do it by hand. The Nutella and the milk & the eggs do not want to combine, but they will if you keep at it. I don't own a hand blender so I stuck it out with a whisk.

Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. This will be a thick but liquid batter. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full with the batter. Bake for 20 minutes or so. Test with a toothpick.

These are very good banana muffins with a chocolate & nut background flavor. If you want a chocolate & nut muffin with a banana flavor I suggest omitting one banana and increasing your Nutella by a couple of tablespoons. And you can add some mini chocolate chips as well.

Forgot the muffin recipe

I worked myself into enough irritation about the muffins and forgot to post the recipe. *I* like them even if the boys are only so-so about them. I bet if I made them with Nutella and raspberry jelly Havoc would like them more.

Peanut Butter & Jelly Muffins

This makes a dozen regular sized muffins. Use paper muffin cups. Preheat oven to 375.

1.5 cups AP flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 teas baking soda

1/2 teas salt

Combine in a large bowl& set aside

1/2 cup smooth natural peanut butter

2 eggs at room temperature

Mix these together well in a second bowl then add

3/4 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

4 tblsp really soft/ melted but too not hot butter

and mix thoroughly. Add to dry ingredients and mix until just combined

Let sit for 10 minutes. Then spoon into muffin cups, filling each one about 3/4 of the way. Add a teaspoon of grape jelly to the center of each cup, making an indentation as you do.

Bake for 20 minutes

The kind of mom I want to be (I think)

I made muffins. I made those muffins specifically to give to Havoc when he came home from school. See, I have this vision in my mind of the kind of mom I want to be - the kind that greets their children with home baked goodness and milk when they get home from school. The kind that sits down with them at the kitchen table and asks them how their day went, in a casual, non-cross examining manner. I want my kids to have a memory of a mom who fed them fresh from the oven baked goods and listened with interest & sympathy to their thoughts after school. I've been waiting for almost 6 years to get a shot at being this kind of mom & now it has finally happened.

I have no idea if I actually am that sort of mom, or if this particular fantasy of mine will last beyond next week, but it's worth a go. I have the essential elements - I like to bake and I am a good listener. But I am also lazy and selfish and get involved in other things to the point where it is too late to bake something or I'm just not able to stop & listen right then. So while I want to do it, I have some doubts about my ability to follow through. (I've known me for 41 years, follow through is an issue for me)

It's important to me to try, because I always wanted the "meet-you-at-the-door-with-cookies" type of mom. What I had was the "shout-to-you-from-the-laundry-room-"Don't eat anything you'll spoil your dinner" type of mom. (and she was correct. I got home after 4pm and we ate at 5:30). Mom has never been much into baking either. I made all the homemade cookies in the house starting when I was 8. I'm not saying I felt deprived by this, or that my mom didn't take an interest in my life; she was always willing to listen, but she didn't ask much. "How was you day?" was a dinner time question and the amount of attention you got depended on how everyone else's day was, how picky you were being about the food and how badly your sibling was behaving.

I met Havoc at the bus stop and we walked back to the house. He was delighted to find chocolate muffins waiting for him and we spent about 8 minutes eating muffins and talking about his day.

Then Super Dog came on.

When I was constructing this little after school fantasy in my head I had forgotten I was dealing with my children, who are occasionally shockingly like me. See...despite wanting a 'meet-you-at-the-door-for-cookies-and-chat' mom, I was not a 'cookies-and-chat' sort of kid. I was a 'But Mom, Scooby Doo is coming on" sort of kid. I really preferred to veg in front of the tv for an hour before I spoke to anyone, a habit that stuck with me through college & all of my working life. I need coffee before I can talk to people in the morning & I need a mindless sitcom rerun after work before I tell you how my day went. So, as with most fantasies, they don't work well in real life. I'm going to continue to provide an after school snack & a willing ear, but I'm going to try & time it better.

The muffins were good though.

Chocolate Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

2.5 cups flour

1/4 cup unsweet cocoa (not Dutch processed)

1 teas baking soda

1/4-1/2 teas ground cinnamon

1 cup softened butter

1.5 cups sugar

2 eggs

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 teas vanilla extract

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 cups shredded zucchini

4oz bittersweet chocolate well chopped

Preheat oven to 375

Mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda & cinnamon together in a large bowl

In another bowl cream the butter & sugar together until fluffy (I use a stand mixer but a hand mixer is fine too, or if you really want a workout - a whisk). Slowly add the oil while mixing, then the eggs one at a time. Add about a third of the four, when it is combined add half the buttermikl, repeat until all the flour & buttermilk are added. This has a very creamy almost icing like texture. Fold in the zucchini & chopped chocolate

Pour into baking cups and bake for about 25-35 minutes, checking until a toothpick comes out clean.

This makes about 20-24 regularly filled muffins (fill cups 3/4 full). It makes 15-18 overfilled muffins (cups filled all the way up). In my case, since I only had 12 cups, it made 12 overfilled muffins and 14 overfilled mini muffins (bake 15-20 minutes)

Dino muffins

Havoc has informed me that today is the allosaurus' birthday. (We have about 20 plastic dinosaurs, 2 are allosaurs). They are 26 today and they would like banana muffins at their party. The orange crocodile was content with Cheerios at his party last month but I suppose allosaurs think big.

I made muffins with the help of Havoc, Mayhem and 2 allosaurs.

(the lighting in my kitchen sucks in the morning)

There has never been such a mess making muffins before. Those allosaurs need to learn to control their tails. Melted butter got knocked over, the 'wet stuff' bowl had stuff sloshed out of it, molasses seeped slowly across the counter and pureed banana splattered everything when Havoc took the lid off the mixer too soon. Usually I just get flour all over the place. Other issues include - melted butter instead of softened butter, plus spilling it so it wasn't actually 1/2 cup, more yogurt than the recipe calls for, probably not enough flour due to humidity and an unknown quantity of pureed banana because Mayhem dumped it in before I measure it. We were also out of mini chocolate chips - I'm looking at you DH - so I have to use regular ones & they don't distribute as well.

Despite all the issues though they turned out well.

Happy Birthday Allosaurs!

Here is the recipe for the muffins

Banana Yogurt Muffins

1 2/3 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup really very soft butter

2/3 cup natural bran (or crushed Bran Flakes)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or mini chips or both combined

1 egg

2/3 cup pureed bananas

1/2 cup plain or vanilla yogurt

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 Tblsp molassas

Preheat your oven to 375

Mix the flour, baking soda & baking powder together. Add the really very soft butter and stir it in gently until the mix is all crumbly. Stir in the bran, nuts and chips.

In another bowl mix the egg, bananas, yogurt, brown sugar & molasses together. Add to the dry ingredients and stir gently until just blended.

Spoon into 12 lined muffin cups, bake for 20-25 minutes.