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I’m making tomato soup from the Barefoot Contessa to go with grilled cheese on freshly baked sourdough

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Asparagus was on sale so I got some to make a penne pasta with Alfredo sauce and Tuscan chicken sausage. I added a little Brie to the sauce. We both enjoyed it and have dinner for tomorrow

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last night we had leftover homemade pizza. Tonight I made a chef's salad with homemade thousand island dressing. the salads greens are a mix of leftover spinach, Bibb and cilantro that I'm adding a small head of romaine to. Mix ins are turkey, ham and Swiss from the deli, cucumbers, carrots, tomato and hearts of palm (those were on sale).

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Yesterday, I made a slow cooker carrot & chickpea tagging. It was a little bland, but Will doctored up the leftovers so we will eat some and freeze some. Last night we had it with couscous and sautéed baby boy choi. Not sure what I'll have for my greens with it tonight.

Tomorrow Will will make pizza (he has a friend visiting for a couple of days) with his sourdough crust and homemade pizza sauce made with tomatoes frozen from the garden last summer. He likes to make several smaller ones with different toppings - a cheese, BBQ chicken and vegetarian.

Happy Birthday to your husband, Joan!

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The ramen was really good, BA. I like to use the brown rice and millet ramen noodles from Lotus. You can order a big bag from Amazon. It’s a better deal than Thrive Market. I always try to find other resources before I order from Amazon, but sometimes . . .

Will made roasted potatoes and broccoli with homemade quest sauce, only this time it was cheddar with a little bit of havarti and no peppers. It was really good and we have leftovers.

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I made garlic butter ramen with fried eggs. The recipe has chopped spinach in it. It was good comfort food for a chilly night. Low 40s is cold here 🙂

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The lettuce, arugula, kale and box choi have all sprouted. We are still waiting for the carrots and the nasturtiums.

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Last night I made an Alfredo pasta with roasted broccoli. I sautéed chicken sausages to go with it for Will who wanted meat with dinner. All I wanted was the pasta. A nice warm dinner.

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Depending on the vege, some you can keep year round, but for summer veges transplanting around end of February-mid March. We gave up the community garden plot at the end of last summer. We don’t know if we’ll be able to grow veges here because of the amount of sun, or lack thereof - great sun in spring, not so much in the summer - we have tall oaks and pines around us, so we have to find patches of sun.

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Here’s the photo of the sprouts

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Will has gotten industrious with salvaged wood from our attic. I got him the smaller HydroMars grow light for Christmas to see how it works. Attached, hopefully are a picture of our planter and the newly sprouted arugula on right and lettuce on left. We are trying to grow indoors rather than transplanting outside.

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Thanks Mike! I will have to share with Will

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I took the eggplant Parmesan out of the freezer and it’s in the oven. It’s our last batch from the garden last summer.

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I had half a head of cabbage left over from a recipe earlier in the week so I made Connemara broth from the Simon Pearce cookbook. It's a soup I really like and it's been cold here for Georgia - high 30's-low 50's. It was a nice dinner with the brown bread (see Baking thread).

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Yesterday, I made a loaf of Ballymaloe Brown Bread from Simon Pearce's cookbook. It was originally his mother's recipe that she took to Darina Allen. I hadn't made it in forever, but remembered having some trouble with it. It's a yeasted batter bread so it's very easy to make. Molasses, yeast, water, salt and whole meal flour. He recommends King Arthur Irish meal in place of the whole meal from Ireland.

You put the batter in the pans and allow to rise for 10-20 minutes until it reaches the top of the pan and be careful not to overproof. I was afraid of over proofing - it was chilly and it took longer to rise, maybe 35 minutes - but before it got all the way to the top edge, I decided to put it in the oven. it did shrink back a little, so I may have over proofed a little. But the texture and flavor are good.

I had in the back of my mind a conversation I had had with one of the KABC bakers about using the Irish Whole Meal in yeast breads. Because of its lack of gluten, they don't recommend it as a stand alone flour, but it is fine in soda breads. So, I decided to go online and do some troubleshooting. The Ballymaloe version uses some AP or Bread flour and then I found a David Lebovitz article making that version. The AP or Bread flour is even used with the whole meal from Ireland. So I am definitely going to try their version and it might explain why I've had problems with this recipe in the past. We still have half a loaf for tonight and another in the freezer so it might be a while until my next experiment. It would also help if I got some more Irish meal from King Arthur.

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