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In my new flat, the oven doesn’t seem to hold a consistent temperature so I have been baking less until I figure out a way to deal with it. This makes my bread machine all the more important!
I had a gift certificate and planned on adding £25.00 out of pocket for the purchase of a bread machine. The store only carried it in their cataloge so I had to pay for it and get it delivered to the shop. As I walked into the mall to place the order, I went by a new-ish charity shop that seems to carry a lot of home goods- appliances, kitchenware and boardgames seem to be its forte. I saw the same model of food processor that I had in the old flat and stood around guarding it while thinking. I have ‘learned’ time and time again to not try to rationalise charity shop purchases but just to go with my gut. Still, I always try to make a rational choice. I told myself I didn’t really need a food processor but in the end decided to splurge the £12.50 anyway.
As I arrived to the chain store with food processor in tow, I was told that the bread maker was on sale. The balance after the gift certificate was only going to be £13, bringing the total for two appliances to the price I was prepared to pay for one. That is when I remembered that I should always follow my gut: I was meant to walk by and buy that food processor. Bread, hummus, pumpkin puree…these are things that form my basic food needs. I am being watched over.
1. Spending an entire weekend with my best friend from high school. I’m very lucky to have her living on this same island. It’s one of the gifts in my life.
2. Eating her yummy food- her crumble, pastas and enjoying hours and hours of wandering, talking, and sharing. Her blackcurrant jam was delicious!
3. Bringing her treasured American treats that I had stashed away. Root beer barrel candy and the autumnal treat of Philadelphia, spiced wafers.
4. Finding this beautiful, beautiful sweater that feels luxurious and makes me do a little internal leap of excitement when I look down to see it!
I know I’ve talked here about foods I crave that aren’t quite right, and pickles top that list!
British gherkins just don’t do it for me- they are too sweet and multi-flavoured. When I say I crave pickles, I really mean it- I am known in my family for saving the jar and drinking the pickle juice! There is nothing better than a nice, crisp and juicy kosher dill pickle. Actually, one of my favourite childhood “trips” was to go to the supermarket with my dad and pick the pickle from the barrel (but I did not pick a peck of pickled peppers, just to set the record straight).
Last week we received some beautiful garden cucumbers and I knew it was time to give pickle making a try.
After reading around, I learned that some pickles are made with vinegar while others are pickled by letting the juice ferment a bit. Apparently, Polish pickles are fermented. This explains why they looked similar to what I expected from a pickle (the standard jar of British pickled cucumers has many extra spices floating around), but it did not taste the same.
Some of the dill pickle recipes I came across had “pickling seasonings” in the ingredients. Unnamed, mixed spices always make me nervous when purchasing them outside of the area in which the writer purchased them- you never know how different each culture or nation’s take on the mixture will be from the intended flavour. Checking into the ingredients of pickling spices, I decided to skip them for my first attempt because some of the flavours evoke sweetness (like cloves) for me, something I wanted to avoid.
In the end, I used a modified version of this recipe and it was FANTASTIC! Thanks to Sharon Howard for submitting it! I read somewhere that soaking the sliced cucumbers (I cut mine into “pickle spears”- just long quarters) in ice water for at least two hours before jarring them helps keep them crunchy, so I treated them to a chilly bath.
The recipe here was a canning recipe and since I don’t have any canning jars, I skipped that part and didn’t wait the expected 8 weeks. I tried them after two days and thought 4 would do the trick and yes, 4 is the magic number when it comes to these pickles (sorry, School House Rocks!).
I also doubled the dill and the garlic. The original recipe website enables you to alter it based on servings, but I found that the ratio of flavouring was not enough since I knew it was not going to sit and seep in the flavour for at least 8 weeks, as recommended.
This is my augmented recipe, using 4 medium cucumbers, it was exactly 2 Lbs and the jar is 1.5 litres. I had a bit of vinegar juice left over, but that’s fine.
6 C water
2 C vinegar (I used apple cider)
1/3 C salt (make sure it has not been iodized or had anything added)
Start on medium heat, stirring these ingredients together and bring to a rapid boil. This is your brine.
Sterilise the jar well. Then add FOUR half cloves of garlic (recipe calls for 2) – I crushed them before cutting in half- and one head of dill to the bottom of the jar. Pack in the pickles, add the brine and put 2 more cloves (crushed and chopped in half) at the top and another large cluster of dill.
Put the lid on and pop them in your fridge. Resist the urge to eat them for four days!
When these have been gobbled up, make a batch of “refrigerator pickles”. Reuse this brine by thinly slicing cucumbers and placing them in jar. Let them sit for 4-5 days and they will have soaked up enough flavour to be ‘lightly flavoured’ pickles!
After years of searching, I have never seen any recipe for hard pretzels. We have tried to make them from our regular soft pretzel recipe- making them thinner and cooking them longer- but have only ended up with crispy bits that taste like burnt soft pretzel!
I just came across this blog and recipe for HARD pretzels! I will be trying these soon!
Okay, maybe not magic, but certainly an exciting transformation! I found an embarrassing number of old snacks at the back of the cupboard and thought chex mix would be the perfect way to use them up.
In Scotland, we can only get the wheat type of “chex” (they’re variously called “malties” or “malted wheaties”) and bagel chips are out too. When following the original Chex Party Mix recipe, I found it too buttery so this is how I go about making mine:
Pre-heat oven to 250F or 100C. Melt just over a third of a 500g butter block in a pan on the stove (I just chopped off what looked like less than the original recipe). Add the following amounts of flavouring (twice the amount listed in the original recipe):
4 Tb Worcestershire sauce
1 & 1/2 ts garlic powder
1 ts onion powder
The recipe calls for seasoned salt but since the pretzels and nuts I use are already salted, I put in a few cranks of flavoured pepper.
I had around 6 cups of dried, mixed snacks (different types of nuts, stale-ish pretzels, broken corn chips, pumpkin seeds, wheat chex cereal and added in some bran flakes as well).
Once the sauce was all mixed, I slowly poured and hand-mixed it into the dried mixture for even coverage.
Place on a tray and bake for an hour, stirring every 15 minutes.
I made some earlier in the week with the standard recipe and found my trays too full to do any meaningful mixing. So this time, I tossed the contents of the tray back into the mixing bowl, mixed and then returned it to the tray. I got a much more even crisp and flavour this way. The pumpkin seeds are my favourite addition to the mix- they add a different sort of crunch and taste contrast. What is your favourite thing to include in chex/snack mix?
Edited to Add: Just as I finished posting this, a betty crocker recipe appeared in my contact’s flickr stream with this “italian” style chex mix recipe- the vinegar looks like a great addition!
Several weeks ago I found bok choy (or pok choy as I see more often in the UK) in the supermarket for my second batch of kimchi! If you remember my first attempt at kimchi, you’ll remember that it was too weak. I couldn’t find the same recipe this time and just tasted as I went along.
The second batch was too pale but tasted fine so I promptly gobbled it up (after sharing it with 4 or 5 willing tasters)! I just hadn’t put in enough paste. The week that Kimchi 2 was ready, so were the rows of bok choy in partner’s parental allotment! It was amusing to make this third batch when my little sister was visiting because she literally runs away from it. Admittedly, I too ran as a child when our mom chowed down. We thought it smelled (although my mom usually ate the oyster flavoured kim chi and I never ate sea food) but I saw the light when my mom made a friend of mine try some. She had a jar of vegetarian kimchi and I figured I should be a good friend and try it too. I changed my mind about it then but, being a teenager at the time, didn’t admit it until much later in life!
*Kimchi Three was “just right”. I soaked 4 large cabbages, some carrot strips, and spring onions in the salted water.
*Then, I made two times more flavouring paste than I thought I needed, which turned out to be the perfect amount.
*In no particular order, I added together crushed and finely diced ginger (and some tiny strips), freshly minced garlic, hot pepper paste (or, “Rod Paprika paste” as the label helpfully displays), some dried chili flakes for extra heat, a dash of vinegar, a dash of oil, and sesame seeds. I mixed it all together to get a concoction closer to paste than liquid.
*After sterilizing the jars (using the low tech way with an electric kettle and boiling water), I basically smashed and rubbed the paste into each piece of vegetable before placing it in the jar. Pack everything in very tightly and make sure that the top vegetables are covered in liquid/sauce/paste so they do not dry out or mold.
With such large cabbages, I was able to make two jars – I plan on giving the smaller one to my neighbour who thinks she has tried and enjoyed it in the past.
*If you don’t want to have orange hands for the next few hours/days, then wear gloves!
*For Kimchi 2, I let it sit for 4 days on the counter but did about 5 or 6 for this batch before placing it in the fridge. It is summer here, but the temperature was mild at the time- around the mid 60sF.
I love mustard. I love it on sandwiches and many other savoury things, but most of all on pretzels. Pretzels and mustard are one of my all time favourite snacks (although we’re out of pretzels at the moment or they would be in the above photo!)
The store brand pretzels sold in the UK at Chrsitmas were great when they were all we could buy, but now that there is enough of a demand for importing packs of pretzels from Poland (say that quickly 5 times!) I just can’t go back to the under-toasted flavour of holiday pretzels. Also, since they’re only sold for the holidays, they’re all produced at once and every pack expires in March. So, we’re very happy nibbling on the yummy ones our store now sells for an affordable price….which leads me to my mustard cravings!
I’m also picky about mustard- I was raised eating spicy brown mustard on all pretzels, hard or soft. The whole grain mustard here is beautiful looking (in that earthy, real food sort of way) and I do dump it on sandwhiches or roast veggies but I find it too lumpy and sweet. So I thought I’d make my own!
I came across this recipe and modified a few things. I used a bit of purple onion instead of shallots because I had one to use up. I used only brown seeds instead of brown and yellow and added a bit of tumeric in the blending stage.
I followed the recipe and soaked everything together overnight in the fridge. It looked like this:
The next step is to blend it all, which I tried to do in my food processor since it is sturdier than my blender. I strained it and only put about a third of the liquid in- which was a very smart move! Using the food processor, however, was not. The large blades just threw the seeds around, making them look like those little styrofoam balls dancing about inside a child’s play vacuum! After scraping it all into the mortar and chasing the seeds around without grinding many of them, I resorted to the blender. The blades started to do their thing, although it took many pauses to scrape it all down off the sides again. Just as it was getting close to being smooth the blender stopped having fun.
Next time, I will make more than one batch to justify all the scraping and only put in a third of the liquid for soaking. The mustard does taste good and it’s pleasantly Not sweet, but I will be trying a few more recipes before I settle on one. If you have one of those wee mini-blenders for your food processor (the sort that you grind coffee in), this process will be a breeze! Tonight I’ll be making some rye bread to make the perfect sandwich!
We celebrated our V-day early this year, on Thursday. Partner made a delicious chef’s salad and I made chocolate cake! After eating we spent the evening playing Monopoly and Scrabble- a very nice date night! We enjoyed not worrying about gifts or cards- and created online photo collages for each other instead. How’s that for no waste? With my thesis taking up most of my time, it was fantastic to just spend so much uninterrupted time relaxing and re-connecting.
This is my go-to recipe whenever I want to make choc. cupcakes or cake (scroll down for the recipe). Since my partner couldn’t find any conversation hearts or anything sort of Valentine’s-ey, I used some swedish fish we received in a package. In the second photo, you can see my scrabble hand, our holiday table cloth and a necklace my mom made me when I was in elementary school. I still wear it every year!
Chocolate Cake Recipe – I got this from some company’s packaging at some point…I think
1 & 3/4 C flour
2C sugar3/4C cocoa
1 & 1/2 ts baking powder
1 & 1/2 ts baking soda
1 ts salt
2 eggs
1C milk
1/2C oil
2 ts vanilla
1C boiling water
Combine dry ingredients. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla. Beat. (I just do this step by hand). Stir in boiling water. Pour thin batter into greased and floured pan. It specifies 13 by 9 by 2 inch or two 9 inch rounds. I just used a 10 inch or so spring form. Bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes in pan, then remove to cool completely.
We found that 22 minutes for cupcakes is perfect in our fan assisted oven and somewhere in the upper 20s was perfect for the cake.
I wanted to bring something tasty to a party this weekend and skipped over my usual cookies because I didn’t want to have to purchase any new ingredients. If easy baking is the goal, I usually make some chocolate chip cookies, but here, that involves buying and chopping chocolate bars. I’ve been trying to cut back even more recently on purchases, especially in my creations. My partner and I have decided to not only make each others presents (as we usually do), but to make sure the main components (we’re allowed to re-stock on thread) are already in our home. I/We have plenty of yarn, fabric, etc, to make gifts!
I searched online for easy-yet-yummy cookie ideas with the ingredients I already had. I saw that many people have been surprised with how easy biscotti is, so I gave it a try! I did have to buy eggs, but we would’ve bought more to eat soon anyway.
I made my first batch on Saturday using this recipe. I altered the flavours a bit and also added mixed dried fruits. After making them, I realised there weren’t enough so I fed a few to friends to see if they thought it was worth making more. They did.
The best advice I can give about making biscotti is to let the logs cool completely before slicing, rather than the 15 minutes recommended by the recipe.
Since I was bringing them to a Christmas party, I wanted them to look nice and yet also be easily served if the host decided to share. I didn’t have any sturdy cardboard boxes to cover with paper, or brown paper to tie it up with string, so I went for this arrangement. I know it’s not the most environmentally friendly to wrap things in plastic and I usually try to avoid that, but I already had the plastic on-hand. I cut two circles from my cereal box, covered them with wrapping paper and stuck the cookies on-top. I have to think of a similarly aesthetic wrapping for the next time I make them.
They went over very well! At the beginning of the party, I stood talking to several colleagues. One picked up the biscotti and sniffed, tasted, etc, analysing the contents. She said “cinnamon”…I said “yeah”..she said “raisins”…I said “mixed fruits including currants”…She said “amaretto”, I said “almond extract”. We didn’t realise until much later that she thought they were store-bought and thought I was analysing them too. I knowing she bakes, thought she was figuring out the recipe I used!
The friend who had tried them on Saturday told me the following story at the end of the party. She was nibbling on them, talking to someone else from our department. She said ‘Riotflower made these’. The other interlocutor said that they looked too uniform. The friend responded that I had made them, and the other woman said “but they’re in plastic!”…the friend continued by saying “She’s crafty”…Apparently, she didn’t believe in the end that I had made them!
If she would’ve looked closely, she would have seen that the wrapping paper was silver and white snowy trees and the ribbon, being green, red and blue, didn’t match. Surely, that’s a sure sign it wasn’t purchased in a store?
: * ) All in all, I’m pleased they went down so well and I felt that I was bringing a party gift in a way that I wouldn’t have bringing one type of cookie. I think I’ll add this to my party repertoire!
That’s a line in the song from a TV movie Alice in Wonderland that filled my childhood. I don’t mean I watched it all the time, although we did have it on tape, but anyone my age can probably quote a song or scene from it. Here’s a link to what I’m talking about and I’m very excited to find a video clip for your viewing pleasure! I haven’t heard this song in years! All the better for you to understand what song was in my head as I mixed and mixed the jam for hours!
With the blackberries I picked last week I decided to try my hand at making jam and it worked!
I washed and weighed the blackberries, then added them to a large pot. I added the same amount of sugar into the pot, which seemed like it was too much and made me nervous that the jam would just taste like sugar! Then, I cut up two large cooking apples (good old British Bramleys in this case) and added it to the pot. Apples have enough pectin to skip purchasing any. I wasn’t sure how many apples I’d need and the two bramleys were just under the same amount of fruit. Probably about 3/4 the weight of the blackberries. This is what it looked like when I started.
I kept the pot on a very low heat, stirring quite a bit at the beginning. Soon, it looked like the photo below. I found it amusing that the blackberries had dyed the apple to look like mini watermelons!
At this point I put the lid on and came back to stir it every 10 minutes. It seemed more like fruit soup. Once the apples seemed soft enough, I smashed everything with a potato masher. With an even consistency, I began to see its jam potential. I left the lid off and went to check on it every so often (I really don’t know because we were watching a movie) and give it a stir. The heat was the lowest it could be and still count as on.
When it seemed thicker a few hours later (1 and a half? 2?), I took a tiny spoon, scooped a bit out and waited to see if it would set by sticking it in the fridge. This is the fun part- if you’re impatient like me, you’ll test it often and get to eat the ‘failed research’! Once it seemed hard enough I warmed up the jar with very hot water for a bit to make sure it wouldn’t crack when I poured the hot jam in. Once it was in, I set the jar on the counter covered with a tea towel/dish-towel overnight to cool. In the morning, I had blackberry jam! No sugar or apple flavour! Next time I make jam with sweet fruit, I’ll cut down on the sugar to see how much I can get away with. I’m already thinking about making apple jam since “apple jelly” is a flavour I just can’t get here!
Refashioning an old refashion
When my mom was pregnant with me 29 years ago, she had a pair of red plaid flannel pajamas. At some point in my very early childhood, she took the legs of those pajamas and made two scarves: one for my dad and one for me. This has always been one of my favourite scarves but unless it’s tucked into my sweater or coat, I’m afraid to run riot with it around my neck for fear that it would fall off. This summer when I was over in the U.S. visiting my parents, my dad gave me his half. I sewed them together at one end and now have the best scarf ever! I wore it while frolicking at a castle yesterday, so I know its safe when wrapped!
