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Thanks, Mike. I'll give it a try and report back.
I baked five small loaves of wholegrain pumpkin bread on Saturday. I will freeze at least three for dessert emergencies. The recipe is the one posted here at Nebraska Kitchen.
I made chicken broth on Saturday by boiling up the bones from the chicken I roasted earlier in the week, as well as bones save from roasted bone-in chicken breasts.
We had an easy meal of leftovers on Saturday of roasted chicken, the rest of the green beans, cherry tomato, and feta salad, and the leftover roasted sweet potato chunks.
We had leftover stir-fry for Friday's dinner.
Beautiful, Joan!
I had planned to re-heat the stir-fry for dinner on Thursday, but it is a cooler, rainy day, and I had picked up a marked down chicken at the grocery on Tuesday, so I roasted it for dinner. I also roasted sweet potato chunks tossed in olive oil. Dinner was completed by leftover green bean, cherry tomatoes, and feta salad.
On Thursday, I baked oatcakes. As I live with a snackasaurus, a single recipe of 17 does not last very long, so while the first batch was baking, I made up a second. Although I just could have doubled the recipe in the first place, I have a system for rolling out the dough on the same sheet of parchment on which I bake the cookies. I also thought it would be easier to make sure that all ingredients were combined if I did two single recipes. I had two oatcakes for teatime, with a dab of strawberry jam on the second one.
I made stir-fry for dinner on Wednesday using soba noodles and leftover pork from last night, along with the pan de-glazing. Vegetables were celery, red bell pepper, mushrooms, broccoli, and snow peas from our garden. We did not have much of a snow pea crop this year, but we accumulated enough for about a hand full.
I cooked a pot of black-eyed peas on Tuesday and froze four 8 oz. containers. I used another 8 oz. to make Green Bean, Cherry Tomato, and Feta salad again for dinner. I used multi-colored cherry tomatoes from the farmers market, which made for a beautiful presentation. My husband pan cooked some pork to go with it.
For lunch today, I had some of the pasta-vegetable salad that I made last week. It came out very well, which does not always happen when I improvise.
We had leftover hamburger stroganoff over mixed brown and wild rice, along with microwaved green beans from our garden.
After dinner on Monday night, I made a pasta salad that I will eat for lunches the rest of this week. I wanted to use up another jar of that zucchini relish that I made last fall that was unimpressive. I cooked 255 g of Trottole 3 color pasta. I combined the juice from the relish with an oil and vinegar dressing that I made, which has been sitting in the refrigerator since lettuce and spinach became unavailable at the farmers market due to the heat wave we had a while back. After tasting the dressing, I added some maple syrup and a bit of Dijon mustard. For vegetables, in addition to the zucchini relish, I used chopped red onion, a chopped long red bell pepper, sliced celery, thinly sliced carrot, a cucumber that is a variation of an English cucumber, and cherry tomatoes from our garden. I will see what it tastes like tomorrow at lunch.
We were out of cookies. I wanted something sweet with my tea, so on Monday afternoon, I made oil-based blueberry scones. The lemon that I had in the refrigerator had gone bad, so I used 1/8 tsp of lime oil instead of lemon zest and out of lemon oil. The flavor is a little strong in the scone that I ate today. I hope that it will be less intense tomorrow when I have one for breakfast.
I also made dough for Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers this afternoon. I will bake those at the end of the week.
Here is a link to the original recipe for the Blackberry Jam Cake:
The cake is delicious, but I think that the nutmeg is a little strong. I would cut it back to ½ tsp. or perhaps replace it with some allspice. I was a little surprised that the recipe specified nutmeg, as I do not think of it in connection with blackberries.
The last two buns got moldy and had to be thrown out, so on Sunday, we had a half of a ham sandwich each on Whole Wheat Oat Bran Bread. My husband still has to eat his sandwiches open faced because he cannot get his mouth opened wide enough for a conventional sandwich. He continues home therapy, and he has extended the width somewhat. We also had the last of the green bean, tomato, and feta salad for now, but I will be making more later this week.
This Sunday morning, I was searching recipes for a blackberry jam cake on Bing, and "Blackberry Jam Cake," from P. Allen Smith's website popped into view. I decided to see if I could modify the recipe to use avocado oil rather than butter. I also wanted to substitute half of a whole grain flour. When I later googled the question, "Do blackberries and barley go together," I found a scone recipe that uses whole blackberries and barley flour, so I decided the flavors would be complementary. I want to find ways to use my large stock of blackberry jam that has resulted from a couple of years of excellent harvests.
This recipe makes a very large cake. As I am experimenting, and there are just two of us, I chose to make a half recipe. Given the ingredient amounts, I decided on a 10-cup Bundt pan (the "party" pan), and that was a good decision. Oil cakes tend not to rise a lot, but the batter came within an inch of the top. I think that the very largest Bundt cake pan could handle the full recipe.
I replaced ½ cup butter with 1/3 cup avocado oil. I used half barley flour. I substituted English walnuts for the black walnuts that I do not have. I only have light brown sugar, so I used it instead of the dark brown sugar. I deleted half a cup of raisins. I used a cup of the blackberry jam that I recently made--from a jar where there was not enough to can, from a dish with not enough even to put into a jar, and from a jar that did not seal. I did not bother separating the eggs and beating the egg whites and folding them in. I think that it would not make as much difference with an oil cake as it would a butter cake.
The recipe says to bake at 325 F for 1 ½ hours to 2 hours. That seems a rather long interval, but perhaps it depends on the consistency of the jam. I checked the cake after an hour, and, since it is a half recipe and therefore a smaller cake. It registered 210 F, and a Bundt cake is done at 200 F, according to the site I googled. After 15 minutes, it came out of the pan easily. I will let it cool and rest overnight to allow the flavors to develop, and we will begin slicing it tomorrow evening for dessert. It smells wonderful!
Friday night's dinner was my Mom's Hamburger Stroganoff served over a mixture of brown and wild rice and accompanied by microwaved fresh green beans from our garden. The hamburger stroganoff is likely a 1950s recipe, and it was what she frequently served to company in the 1960s. I have given it a healthy makeover by using 93% lean ground beef and draining off the grease, using a pound of fresh mushrooms rather than canned, eliminating the butter and using a bit of olive oil, and replacing all of the sour cream with Chobani non-fat Greek yogurt. I also replace white rice with the brown and wild rice mixture. For my husband, I have to eliminate the fresh onion, so I substitute dehydrated onion. I still use the can of Campbell's Cream of Chicken soup, but I use the variety with less salt and fat.
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