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I had not planned to cook on Tuesday night, but we found a marked down package of three bone-in chicken breasts for 99 cents a pound at the grocery this morning and could not pass it up. I looked up a recipe on Serious Eats for how to roast a chicken breast and used it. My modification was to use avocado oil in place of butter. For the spice, I used Penzey's Justice blend and seasoned liberally under the skin. I second guessed the temperature of 450 and should not have done so, as I had to increase the cooking time. One breast was larger than the rest, so we took out the two that were done, and my husband sliced them, and let the third one go another ten minutes. I had forgotten how wonderful bone-in chicken breasts can be. I had my husband save the bones, and I will use them to make broth.
To go with the chicken, I made another one of my farro stir-fries with carrots, celery, red bell pepper, sliced mushrooms, and kale from our garden. I seasoned it with thyme, sage, and dried chives. I cooked the farro in turkey/chicken broth from the freezer and put in the rest of that bag of frozen peas that were clearly old and cannot be eaten on their own. However, mixed into the stir-fry, they are not that noticeable. We should get another two nights or maybe three from the leftovers, so I should not have to cook until the weekend.
Len, your peppers look wonderful. Like Mike, I have a spouse who has a problem with green peppers, but fortunately, orange, yellow, and red are fine. Now if the pepper plants in our garden would set fruit, we can eat some from our garden, which are always better than what I can get in the store.
I have found with my 7-qt. Cuisinart stand mixer that most dough needs 6-8 minutes. Of course, I'm usually making breads that are heavily whole grain with a recipe that makes 2-3 loaves. I also find my Cuisinart mixer kneads better on speed 3 rather than the recommended 2 (note that it has 12 speeds on the dial). I usually check my dough after 6 minutes. None of that counts the initial mixing of the wet ingredients with most of the flour and a resting time of 15 minutes before adding the remaining flour.
The big difference I noticed when I moved from hand kneading to using the stand mixer was that I used less flour.
I only got into trouble with my mixer once, as I wrote a while back when I smelled burning, and that was because I was using the mixing rather than the kneading attachment, because I wanted to mix in the oil (I add last) before moving to the kneading hook. That was not a good idea since it was a heavy dough for three loaves. Lesson learned.
Keep us posted, Skeptic, as you acclimate to the raised bowl stand mixer. Have you decided what your first bake will be?
These days I mostly do quick breads in small loaf pans and freeze a loaf or two. In the summer, with heat and humidity, I find that the quick breads that use fresh fruits and vegetables do not last well past a few days. It is also nice to have the variety.
Small loaves at the farmers' market encourage people to try them since if they do not like it, there is not much left over.
If you have a longer, narrower loaf pan, Mike, that will help with the underdone center. I have some recipes that I just do not bake in my standard loaf pans, as the centers do not seem to bake completely, even though the outer edges are done.
I baked Cinnamon Biscotti on Sunday--a recipe that I have not baked in a while. I cut the amount of cinnamon chips in half, but the saturated fat is still high. I told my husband to limit himself to two per day.
As I had 2 cups of zucchini left from the turkey loaf that was cooking for dinner, I mixed my adaptation of The Shipyard Galley's Zucchini Muffins and put them into the already heated oven before we sat down for dinner. I make mine two-thirds whole wheat, add some powdered milk, replace some oil with buttermilk, add some flax meal, and add cinnamon chips. I made the full recipe, or 24 small muffins. I will freeze some for quick breakfasts.
I had a busy day in the kitchen. For dinner, I made potato salad and my Turkey-Zucchini Loaf with Peach-Dijon Glaze. We have leftovers for the next two days of dinners.
I also made yogurt.
I am really missing my favorite farmers' market vendor, as her produce was excellent and reasonably priced. I bought lovely broccoli from the Amish lady, but she charged $6 for a 1 lb. stalk. I bought 4 oz. of salad mixed greens from the organic farmer (only one who had greens when I got there), but the cost was $6--an increase of a dollar since they moved to compostable plastic holders. I did get a good buy on two green and one yellow zucchini for $1 each. I want to help the farmers' out, but I'm beginning to wonder if we should go to the larger town where we shop next Saturday to check out their farmers' market.
My grandmother liked to slice bananas and add a little milk and sugar to them. As kids, we enjoyed that treat.
On Saturday, I made broth, using the bones from a turkey and from a chicken that I had in the freezer.
I also made four jars of black raspberry jam. I will freeze any remaining black raspberries and use them in combination with blackberries when the blackberries ripen.
Enjoy the new kitchen, CWCdesign!
I baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Friday from dough I made earlier in the week.
Your banana sandwich brings back memories for me, Joan, of a peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwich that was my favorite quick meal at one of the campus eateries when I had to buy lunch as a college student. It was called a "Walter Wheat Bunny," for some reason. I sometimes make it for myself to this day.
I made stir-fry on Friday for dinner, using the leftover pork and deglazing from last night. In addition to the soba noodles. I mixed in at the end, I used carrots, red bell pepper, celery, mushrooms, broccoli and, from our garden, green onion tops, kale, and snow peas.
Great zucchini, Mike! I am waiting for some to show up at the Farmers Market. We do not have room to plant them here, as we devoted the squash section to the honey nut squash. One of those plants had a male blossom, so that is a start.
My husband has picked enough snow peas for us to use in a stir-fry tomorrow night. He tells me to be prepared for beans within the next two weeks.
We have some green tomatoes on the various tomato plants. The cooler weather helped them set fruit.
Tomorrow, I plan to can black raspberry jam!
Your buns look great, Mike. Maybe we should all come over for a party? 🙂
My husband ate the last of the rolls for lunch on Thursday, so I baked three loaves of my Oat Bran Whole Wheat Buttermilk Bread. I will freeze two and start slicing the third one for sandwiches tomorrow. Although the recipe began as one by Peter Reinhart, I have adapted it enough--and made it healthier--to call it mine.
Navlys--I have made krumkake, which is the Swedish version of pizzelles. I will look up my recipe. I could not use anise, as my husband does not care for it, so I think that I used a vanilla-almond extract combination. I find that they go very well with frozen vanilla yogurt. They would also be good with a bit of chocolate drizzled on them.
We were out of town July 3-5. We traveled to Brown County State Park to get our dog away from the fireworks. Frankly, it was better for us as well, as the evening of July 2 had fireworks going off all over the place. The worst was when we were awakened around midnight by people who had stopped at the field across the street and set off some loud ones. There was a brief lull, then it happened again, which brought both of us downstairs. My husband turned on the outside lights, and the people quickly left. When Independence Day is mid-week, it often turns into a weeklong blast fest.
When we got home on Wednesday night, I thawed the lentil, split pea, turkey, vegetable soup I had set aside for this reason in the freezer.
On Thursday, my husband cooked boneless pork chops, and I improvised a sauce of mushrooms sauteed in avocado oil, with flour, ½ cup chicken broth (Penzey's chicken base), a bit of milk, a tsp. flax meal, dried parsley, and pepper. I served it mixed with spinach noodles, and microwaved frozen peas. I had a chocolate Blood Orange Cake in the freezer which I thawed for dessert and made a glaze using the little bit of blood orange juice I had frozen.
We had salmon patties on the Whole Wheat/Rye/Semolina patties.
I began Sunday morning by improvising a recipe for vegan scones using the almond milk left over from my friend's visit. As my base recipe, I used my oil-based scone, which I usually make with frozen cranberries or frozen blueberries. As I want these scones for traveling, I used ¾ cup of dried fruit I had gotten from King Arthur and soaked it over night to re-hydrate. I deleted the baking soda and increased the baking powder by 1 tsp. I added 2/3 cup almond flour. I replaced the egg with 1 Tbs. flax meal and 3 Tbs. water. I decided to do these as drop scones, using the #10 Zeroll scoop, I baked for 23 minutes. Next time, I will bake a minute longer. The flavor and texture are excellent, which I attribute to using half Irish whole meal flour, as I usually do. I will type the recipe for myself and use it when I have guests who follow a vegan diet, or who need to be dairy free.
My second project for Sunday was baking my version of the Soft Oatmeal Cookies from Jenny Can Cook as a double recipe.
My third, and final, project was baking my adaptation of Ellen's bun recipe as sixteen rolls. While that is a lot of baking for one day, we have been enjoying some nice rain throughout the day, so it was perfect for summer baking.
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