[RiversideLen]

Happy Birthday, Chocomouse!

Tonight I made rice and red lentils, brussels sprouts, and sauteed some ham. Not difficult but good.

[RiversideLen]

I decided to make a loaf since I want to make some grilled cheese sandwiches. I don't make loaves often, usually make sandwich/burger buns. I made a basket weave round loaf based on my semolina/wheat/rye recipe but down sized it (made 60%) and omitted the rye (I think rye makes it hard to braid). It's hard to divide an egg to 60% so I separated an egg and used the yolk only in the bread and cooked the white with some ham for lunch. I baked it in a round Corningware dish. And since it's a smaller batch, just for giggles, I used my mini KitchenAid stand mixer to do the mixing/kneading. I think it worked out pretty good. I haven't sliced into it yet, but the finished loaf looks good to me. I was watching a youtube video recently of someone making a round challah basket weave and she lightly dusted the strands with flour before doing the weave to give the strands some separation in the baked loaf. That sounded like a good idea so I did that too.

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[RiversideLen]

I had ham and cheese on rye (my pizza crust is 25% rye, which might be more than commercially made rye bread).

There was also mushrooms, green peppers and onions hiding under the cheese.

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[RiversideLen]

I ground up a steak I had in the freezer (along with a couple of carrots) and made a small burger for lunch and a larger burger for dinner. I put the carrots through after the beef to push through the meat that's left in the grinding plate. I have enough ground steak left for the exact same tomorrow.

[RiversideLen]

My mother in law had a couple of Black Walnut trees, they're still there, those things are squirrel magnets. I have a Bur Oak in the front yard, the chipmunks and squirrels go nuts over it. The sidewalk and yard get loads of acorn shells.

[RiversideLen]

I hope that KA works out well for you, Joan!

Tonight I had a stuffed pepper, roasted potato and a little broccoli.

[RiversideLen]

For New Years Eve, I went to my neighbor's. We had roasted pork, potato pierogi's, sweet potato casserole and salad. Also, shrimp cocktail. I brought cup cakes and someone else brought an apple pie.

Yesterday I made a veggie and chicken stir fry and had it with rice.

Today I made stuffed peppers. I mixed some shredded carrots in with the meat mixture. They are about to go into the oven. I'm going to have one with pasta, I have some jarred sauce in the fridge that I want to use up.

[RiversideLen]

I made a batch of sandwich/burger buns.

[RiversideLen]

That's amazing.

[RiversideLen]

I baked chocolate cupcakes, topped with a white chocolate ganache to take to my neighbor's tomorrow.

[RiversideLen]

I pulled a 10 ounce steak from the freezer and ground it up and made stuffed peppers with it. Had one for tonight's dinner and one will be for tomorrow.

For Christmas, I was invited to a neighbor's, so that was no cooking for me but I did bring a pan of cookies (oatmeal coconut, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip and Noel nut balls). We had Italian sausage, penne pasta, fried chicken, roast potatoes, and a real delicious eggplant parm. There were plant based meatballs there too but I missed them (one of their son's and daughter in law are plant based eaters but I saw her munch on a piece of fried chicken as they were getting ready to leave).

[RiversideLen]

Yesterday I made a batch of oatmeal cookie dough and divided in half, I put coconut in one half and rum soaked raisins in the other half. I baked those and also baked the Noel Nut Balls and chocolate chip cookies.

[RiversideLen]

Those croissants look great!

Last night I made a batch of dough for Martha Stewart's Noel Nut Balls. I have them portioned and frozen, to be baked probably on Friday. Today I made a batch of Alton Brown's chocolate chip cookies, The Puffy, again, portioned and in the freezer now, I will bake some of them on Friday and leave a few in the freezer for another occasion.

Also am making a batch of my sandwich/burger buns, they are waiting to go into the oven. I had both of my KitchenAid mixers going at the same time. I used the flex edge beater on the mini KA in which I made the cookie dough, that did a real good job, I didn't have to scrape down the sides of the bowl at all.

For yesterday's baking I needed 2 sticks of room temp butter but my butter was straight from the fridge. So I went on YouTube to look for tricks to soften it without melting it. I found several variations of this. You take a glass and pour very hot water in it and let it sit for a few minutes (to warm up the glass). Then you dump the water and stand the stick of butter up and then the empty but hot glass over it (don't let the butter touch the glass). Wait about 5 minutes and then you have softened but not melted butter. I tried it and it worked.

[RiversideLen]

I made a spatchcock chicken this afternoon. I roasted it on a bed on celery, carrots and onion with a little water so I have enough juices to make gravy. I cut the wing tips off and put those in the bottom of the pan as well as the back to help flavor the pan juices.

Dinner will be chicken, rice and brussels sprouts.

The chicken is seasoned with a little salt and thyme.

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[RiversideLen]

I got a new meat grinder for my KitchenAid mixers (the metal one, not the plastic). Yesterday I had a couple of strip steaks in the freezer that I decided to grind. The grinder worked beautifully. I made a smaller burger for yesterday's lunch (about 3 ounces) and it was very good. It does taste different from regular ground beef. I took the remaining meat (20 ounces) and used it to stuff 4 green pepper halves, which I had one for dinner yesterday with some pasta and broccoli. I made a small batch of pizza dough this afternoon and one of those stuffed peppers is going to find its way sliced onto a small cast iron skillet pizza.

If I had prepared those steaks as steaks, I would have had 2 meals from them. By grinding them I got one lunch and will have 4 dinners.

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