Lame-O

Sorry friends... Once again I feel as though I have neglected my blog. I don't have any particular reason, but I shall update you a bit on what has gone on in my kitchen... We BBQd a lot, we celebrated Jacob's 3rd birthday (pictures to come), and just this week finished bringing in the garden. We had lots of green beans, some onions, tons of parsley and lettuce, carrots and tomatoes. It has been delicious and exciting to grow our own food. I tried making squash (yuck), kale chips (yuck again), apple bars (yum), Amish friendship bread (not really bread, but still yum), pea soup (decent), and sish kabobs (love!). I made up my own bacon-mushroom-potato soup for Jeff who wasn't feeling well, and I perfected my oatmeal cookies (only 1/2 cup of brown sugar in one batch!). It has been a pretty great month in the kitchen.
Sorry for being lame.

Fire!

So we bought a big bunch of dill at the farmers' market for 1$. We both love the smell, so just the walk home was worth the money. Well, I used it in a few things and then wondered how I could 'save' the rest. I found a website that said I could dry it in the microwave and then store it in an airtight container. So I stuck my dill in the microwave, and as you can probably guess, next thing I know there is fire in my microwave. I open it, toss a glassful of water in and remove the now terrible smelling dill. Burnt dill stinks!

Tastes Like Strawberries?

It was a cloudy, cool, rainy day today... so what does that mean? A perfect day to heat up the house (and our tummies) with some yummy baking. Only one minor problem... No butter. No hard margarine. No soft margarine. No oil. How is this even possible? As it turns out, this is more of a major problem when I start scouring recipes for something,anything, to bake. And then I come across pretzels. Well, I had been wanting to try these again, so I used a different recipe this time. I doubled it (except for the egg), used grated mozzarella, and topped with cinnamon and sugar. The recipe made 16 mini pretzels and they were pretty good. Next time I would add more sugar to the dough.
... I just asked Jacob if the pretzels yesterday were yummy and he said "Yup." I asked what they tasted like and he said "Strawberries."
. 

Lenten Pretzels
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Recipe By: Taking Faith Home

Ingredients:

1/2 tsp active dry yeast
3 tbsp warm water
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup flour
2 tbsp cheese, grated  
1 egg
coarse ground salt

Directions:

1. Sprinkle yeast in warm water and stir to dissolve.

2. Add sugar, flour, and cheese.

3. Stir and knead until smooth.

4. Divide dough into 4 and roll each piece into a snake.

5. Shape like a pretzel, brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with salt.

6. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes.

A is for Apples

Well, Jacob knows his whole alphabet now, and is constantly doing ABCs on our fridge with our letter magnets. He lines them all up (not in the correct order), names them all then wants me to sing the song. He sings too. His new thing is to spell all of our names out. Today he put up "GATT" and said "that's mommy's name." I think I like it. Last week he spelled his own name...

He was pretty close and I was impressed.

Also... This week I was invited to a parishioner's house to pick apples. I got 1 big bag of eating apples and three big bags of baking apples. The next day I made nine jars of applesauce, one apple-rhubarb crisp, and one pan of apple bars. I had tasted some apple bars at church, they are so yummy, just like apple pie, and I was told they are easy. So I opened up my church cookbook, and sure enough I found the recipe. I wouldn't say they were the easiest thing ever, but they sure were tasty. The boys both love to eat the baking apples because they are small enough to fit in their hands. Daniel eats the whole entire apple, and i think Jacob ate four just today. Oh yea, and with all this baking/cooking/eating, I didn't even use up one whole bag of apples. But I did use up all my butter/margarine so now I have to wait until grocery day to do anything else with them. Though I have an interesting looking recipe for appe brownies that I think I will try.

Apple Bars
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Recipe By: Edberg Cookbook

Summary: 

Says it freezes well, but they are too delicious and don't last long enough.

Ingredients:

2 handfulls corn flakes 
1 egg, separated
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup margarine
1/3 cup milk
10 apples, small
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp water
1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

1. Dough: Sift flour and salt together. Mash margarine into flour. Add egg yolk and milk. Mix until it clings together. (Add a little more milk if needed.) Divide in half and roll out to fit bottom and sides of 12x17 cookie sheet.

2. Sprinkle dough with corn flakes.

3. Filling: Mix apples, sugar and cinnamon. Place on top of corn flakes.

4. Place top crust, sealing edges like apple pie. Brush with egg white.

5. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes. Remove from oven and glaze. Cool and cut into squares.