A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

"Working Towards Whole Wheat" Bread

I call this my "Working Towards Whole Wheat" bread because it's got some whole wheat in it but it's still "white" enough to please the non-whole wheat fans like kids...or Gene.  :-)  Personally, I love whole wheat bread, pancakes,etc. Love the sweeter, toothier texture, but not everyone does. This is a nice compromise. A little whole wheat, a lotta white wheat, and a hidden fiber dose of Benefiber that no one can taste. And then it's an easy transition to a little more whole wheat every couple of weeks and a little less white flour.  Sometimes healthier eating habits are more about compromise than starting cold turkey eating the things we know we're supposed to while whining in our hearts that we want the old ways.  Tastebuds can be retrained.

Artisan Egg Bread Topped with Freshly Roasted Garlic on Steakhouse Night at Home

Juicy Filet Mignon wrapped in bacon, baked sweet potato, a nice deeply rich cabernet, and hot out of the oven home-made bread smeared with soft butter and heaped with sweet roasted garlic, all served on nice linens with pretty stemware--night out at a restaurant? Nope, night in at home. 

 For great recipes and the full explanation behind the method, I highly recommend this book and its sequel Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (whole grained recipes). I was given these books as gifts (Thanks, Ann!) and they've quickly become two of my favorites. For years, I kept angel biscuit dough in the fridge so we could have fresh bread with dinner every night and/or kept frozen dinner roll dough in the freezer for the same reason. One of the things I like most about this book and its concepts are being able to make a week's worth of dough at one time and just pull off as much as I want to bake at one time, whether it's a small loaf or several dinner rolls. 

There is something so homey, cozy, and comforting about the smell and taste of warm fresh home-made bread that nourishes like nothing else. The ultimate topping? To me, that's a  little olive oil or butter, and either bitingly fresh minced garlic or its smooth and suave cousin, the sweet and mellow roasted garlic.  Directions for roasting garlic follow the bread recipe--such and easy thing to do while waiting for bread dough to rise! The reward is VERY worth it, and a plus side is the leftover garlic freezes beautifully to be used as needed in other recipes.

Ozarks Regional Cooking: Mashed Potato Rolls from Homegrown in the Ozarks cookbook

Homegrown in the Ozarks:  Mountain Meals and Memories, 2007, by Rolland Love and Mary-Lane Kamberg  (Click for link to Amazon listing)

Looking for a fast, easy dinner bread recipe yesterday to go with our beans, I grabbed this newly purchased cookbook and gave the Mashed Potato Rolls a whirl.  I'll definitely be adding these to my repertoire.  They went together quickly, for bread, were a fast rise, and because of the high potato and fat ratio, had a solid dense crumb, almost similar to a corn muffin.  In fact, I crumbled half a roll up into my beans and felt almost like I'd made cornbread.

The cookbook itself is a soft back treasure for those of us who grew up in these "mountains", filled with uncomplicated (my hand is heavier when it comes to spices)  recipes from my youth that I haven't thought about much since my youth, to be honest.  There are old-fashioned favorites (not always my personal favorites but I remember these being around when I was a kid) like gooseberry pie, persimmon bread, cornbread, catfish, bass, venison, rabbit, and even squirrel. Along with the "wilder" stuff, there are also great recipes for pork chops with mustard sauce, several breads and cornbreads, many vegetable dishes that showcase the fields and woods of this area, and desserts of all kinds, including a black walnut pie.

Reading a lot of the recipes reminds me so much of being a kid growing up in small rural town where we  often scavenged the woods around us for trashbags or pillow cases full of black walnuts, persimmons, morel mushrooms, gooseberries, etc. for Mom, who repaid us by working up our treasures into delicious eats.  The one thing I miss the most are persimmons, a wild version much smaller and sweeter than the $3/each persimmons I occasionally see at the grocery.  I ate buckets full of those as a kid and then whatever was leftover got made into bread.

Back to the bread recipe...

Snack Time: Seasoned Oyster Crackers

 

Having a couple of bags of oyster crackers leftover from Halloween chili, I decided to play a little. I've tried hot, sweet, salty.... but my all time favorite has turned out to be this recipe.  Not only are the great as a handful straight out of the bag, we've now topped more chili with them, potato soup, and stew--all delicious.  I also crushed 2 cups of them and topped a ham/potato casserole one night for the crunch--yummy!  They're yummy, cheap to make, and versatile. They've also stayed fresh in a gallon zip baggie with as much air removed as possible each time we get into them.  This is a keeper.

The One Perfect Pancake of my Lifetime of Making Pancakes (And it's Whole Wheat too!)

 

This post supported by Detox Diet and Reader's Digest.

Isn't it pretty? All perfectly rounded, sitting just inside the inner rim of the place, the perfect golden brown. Okay, that's one perfectly round pancake I've made in 40 years of cooking! Usually, no matter how hard I try to spoon the pancake mix or twirl the pan all chef-like there's always one edge that sort of globs out all retarded and freakish-looking.  One.  Out of 40 years. 

I can live with that. 

This pancake has a hidden secret.  It's actually good for us!  Eating healthy has become a journey for me over the last couple of years. As in so many things in my life where instant gratification is is never realized, I finally realized that pursuing healthier habits in all parts of my life are about baby steps, not about throwing out the old and emerging from my bed a new person on a designated day. (Which is usually how I'd try to do it in the past.) I'd start a new "diet" by saying to myself at bedtime "Tomorrow I will start eating only healthy wholesome perfect foods and exercising for one hour and do it every day for the rest of my life."  Waking up in my new frame of mind, I would be that perfectly perfect wholesome creature up until about 10 seconds after my first breakfast before I had my Hobbit second breakfast of a slice of processed cheese and a Coke.  C'est la vie. Literally, that is my life!

Not Always a Dessert: Ham & Swiss Bread Pudding with Tarragon Mustard Sauce

 

When I think of bread pudding, I think of a wonderfully sweet creamy concoction created out of bread, eggs, sugar, spices and fruit.  But last night I stepped out of the plane of usual and created a  wonderfully creamy SAVORY bread pudding using that same base of cubed stale French bread and eggs, but added ham, celery, carrot, and savory spices that I served with a tarragon mustard sauce.  It was a huge hit in our house.  It has the down home tastiness of a ham and cheese casserole but with a little more downtown taste of the tarragon mustard sauce. This will be on our table again and again!

One of the great things about this recipe is that it's very versatile in the ingredients it will take to make a wonderful dish. I call recipes like this "This or That" recipes, meaning you can use this or that or some other thing and still make it turn out very well which comes in handy when you have, like the title of this blog, a fridge full of food...but not necessarily every exact ingredient for a certain recipe.

 

Good & Good For You: Blood Orange & Lavender Olive Oil Muffins

 

My sweet tooth has been acting up a bit lately. No matter how much I try to feed it broccoli, it screams for sugar. I hate it when it gets cranky, but I will persevere. I'm a firm believer that I can eat healthy AND still satisfy my sugar cravings. My sweet tooth demanded orange: Orange martinis?  Orange jelly candies?  Orange Cake?  What we compromised on, my sweet tooth and I, was a batch of these delicious and good-for-you blood orange and lavender olive oil muffins.  Sweet, but not too sweet, and a treat without being empty calories.  With the addition of the whole wheat pastry flour, these muffins are a little heavier, a little more toothsome than so-called muffins that are really fluffly cupcakes masquerading as breakfast food.  More than breakfast, these are a fruity, flower-scented snack, that also contain a serving of good daily fat, for tea time or any time of the day I need a pretty little pick-me-up. 

This post supported by Healthy muffin recipes

Light Wheat Roasted Garlic Farmhouse Bread

 

The other night I was whipping up some bread for dinner and Gene walked through the kitchen.  He said "What kind is that?" 

I replied "Just basic bread...why?" 

He said, "Will you make it garlic?" 

"You mean like broil it with butter and garlic after it's done?"

"Nah," he said. "I mean, can you put the garlic in it now?"

There are days when the man is a genius.  I hadn't thought of it.  But I'm sure glad he did!

This bread is a light wheat that uses a combination of all purpose and whole wheat pastry flour, eggs, and a "goodly amount" (love how archaic that phrase sounds) of roasted garlic.  The recipe was inspired by the wonderful Faith from War Eagle Mill in War Eagle, Arkansas, who taught Aunti Miranda, Ann, and I her farmhouse bread recipe last year. In this version I did cut the recipe in halfish so that it now makes one 8-9" diameter boule or one large loaf (for example: bakes nicely in the Pampered Chef loaf crock).

Happy St. Pat's Day: Traditional "Brown Bread" Irish Soda Bread

 

After doing a little research, I found that what I have bought in bakeries in years prior that was advertised as "Irish Soda Bread" is not even close to the daily quick bread baked in Ireland mid-1800's through the turn of the century.  Most of the Irish Soda Bread I've had commercially prepared was a yeasted bread with raisins.  According to the "Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread" that is not even close and it makes sense.  Soda Bread was a daily meal bread, so it wouldn't be sweet or difficult to make. Like American southern biscuits (and the recipes closely resembles that) it would be something homemakers would make quickly and easily every few days to be eaten during regular meals.  So the basic REAL soda bread contains just four ingredients:  flour, salt, baking soda, and buttermilk.  Another little tidbit of interest is that not only does this bread not contain yeast, it didn't even come into existence until the commercial availability of "bicarbonate of soda" or baking soda in the mid-1800's.

Click on either of the links provided here to the Irish Soda Bread web site for more information. I found the author to be very informative and passionate about her subject, to the point of being on the entertainingly cranky side about what does NOT constitute traditional Irish soda bread.  It's a fun read.

War Eagle Mill: Faith Brockoff's Farmhouse Bread

Mmmm...breakfast this morning of Egg-in-the-Hole made from the bread brought home from War Eagle Mill's bread class.  Literally, what a tasty reminder of last weekend's fun with Aunti, Ann, Doug, and Faith!

For lots of photos and details of our weekend bread class at War Eagle Mill, click HERE.

Speaking of Faith, she has graciously allowed me to reprint her recipe here on the blog--Thank you so much!