Soup, Bread, and a Cake! (how to make stock)

A good friend has come down with pneumonia, so I babysat her daughter today, and whipped up some homemade chicken soup and some sourdough baguettes. Fortunately I had plenty of homemade stock and some leftover cooked chicken in the freezer, so the soup was a cinch. A large stockpot was definitely one of the best investments in my kitchen. Homemade stock makes a world of difference with good soup, so here's a quick primer:

1. Save all of your chicken bones - just toss them in a bag in the freezer. When you have enough to fill your biggest pot, you can make some stock.
2. In the afternoon or evening, put your bones in your pot, along with a couple of onions (cut off the root and quarter), several trimmed carrots, and a bunch of trimmed celery (including leaves).
3. Fill with cold water.
4. I also like to add some black peppercorns (about 1 tablespoon), and some dried thyme and sage (about 1 teaspoon each).
5. Bring to a boil.
6. Immediately turn down to the lowest simmer possible. If you boil it too much, your stock will be cloudy.
7. Let it simmer all night. Check the water level before you go to bed - if it is getting low, just top it off with BOILING water. You don't want to wake up to a burned mess in the morning - I've done that!
8. Strain it and enjoy! Note that it doesn't have any salt yet, I like to keep it salt-free until I use it.




My baguettes turned out a little flat, I think I let them rise too long. But they still tasted great!




I made a "s'mores" cake for my husband's birthday. Graham cracker cake, marshmallow filling, and chocolate icing.



Some thoughts on leftovers

Do you like leftovers? Growing up, my mom never really made potluck soup - you know, the soup that had random leftovers thrown in. But about once a week my mom would heat up all of the leftovers in the fridge and that was the meal. I am a huge fan of variety, so I always enjoyed those meals - a whole smorgasbord of choices!

When I first got married, I cooked only what we would eat for that particular meal. I tried not to cook too much, because I was afraid it would go to waste. However, as I learned to cook more things from scratch and had children, I have pretty much done a 180 on this subject. I intentionally cook more than we'll eat, so that I can freeze or reuse leftovers in other meals. I can make sure my family is eating homecooked, unprocessed food every day while still being able to do some easy microwave meals every week. I know it really saves $ at the grocery store too. But this way of cooking requires contradicting personality traits - both type A and type B - you have to carefully plan out your cooking, yet be very flexible too.

Over the weekend, I found myself in a leftover dilemma. We were going to be out all day Friday, so I needed a crockpot meal - I had planned to cook some venison, and serve with noodles on Friday, then use the leftovers in some burritos Saturday. But Friday morning the venison was still very frozen despite being in the fridge for two days. Fortunately I had some chicken leg/thigh quarters in the fridge (planned for Sunday), so I skinned them, seasoned them, and threw them in the crockpot Friday. Fortunately we had plenty of chicken leftover for the burritos, because my family ate almost all of the venison the next day! I just never know exactly how much they are going to eat.

Mmm...crab!

About once a year I splurge on good crab, only when it's on sale of course. Tonight I made coconut crusted crab cakes, served tropical fruit. It was delicious!!

Sourdough English Muffins for breakfast tomorrow.

Crab quiche - it smells so good, I don't know if I can wait until morning to eat it! I used whole wheat pastry flour for the crust, which it has more of a "rustic" look.

Sourdough Soft Pretzels

My daughter had a blast twisting the pretzels for me, she's actually really good at it for a 2-year-old! I think I only did one or two of them. I had to do the rolling part for her.

Ok, here's the Soft Pretzel Recipe, I'll warn you, they're addictive! Friendship Bread starter will definitely work with this, but the result will probably be a little sweeter (not that that's a bad thing lol, you just might want to omit the sugar in the recipe).

Sourdough Soft Pretzels
3/4 cup warm water (not hot)
1 cup unfed sourdough starter
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup nonfat dry milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon canola (or vegetable) oil
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 packet instant yeast
sea salt or pretzel salt

Place all ingredients except the sea salt in a mixer. Mix on medium speed until well blended. Cover and let rest at room temperature for one hour. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Gently press the dough to deflate it. I use my scale to weigh out 2 ounce portions, and I usually get about 15 pretzels. Roll each piece into a rope, about 18" long. To twist into a pretzel shape, first make a U. Then cross the ends over two times, and bring down to form pretzel shape.  I use parchment paper on a baking sheet. Brush the pretzels with water, then sprinkle with sea salt. Bake 25-30 minutes or until a light golden color.

 I used some ribbon to demonstrate the twisting technique. First you make a U.

Second cross the ends one time.



Then cross the ends a second time.



Finally pull the ends down over the bottom loop. It looks better with dough :)

Valentine's Day Dinner

For Valentine's Day, I made poached salmon, mac and cheese, and brussel sprouts braised in white wine. The sprouts turned out perfectly, and mac and cheese is always good. I admit the salmon was a tad overcooked - my kids "needed" me at the critical moment, so I left it in the oven too long. It was still very good, just a touch dry. For dessert I made a chocolate berry melange with raspberry and chocolate sauces, and a dollop of whipped cream. My son actually made the whipped cream. I also made some yummy heart-shaped chocolate butter cookies which offered a nice crispy texture to the dessert, but alas the cookies didn't make it into the picture.

The Plunge...

Hi! Welcome to My Life in Food! I have to give credit up front to my good friend, Eve, creator and owner of militaryhandbag.com, for inspiring this blog. We have spent many happy hours in the kitchen together, and she suggested that I start writing about my culinary adventures. I used to enjoy writing, back in my school days and even in my working (outside of the home) life, but that was before kids. And we all know that any life before kids becomes a foggy haze!!

So, enough about me, on to the food! Today I will start with bread. I'm going through a sourdough phase. My dad was "thinking" about starting some last fall, and when life slowed down in January, I started hinting that he could go ahead and do it. So with some of his starter, I have been making two or three things every week, including whole wheat sandwich bread, soft pretzels that were out of this world, buttery soft whole wheat dinner rolls, waffles and pancakes. I also made a multigrain bread that was ULTRA healthy, but not for the faint of heart. I saved some potato water (water from boiling potatoes), and I plan to get another starter going with that, to see how it tastes. I can't decide if I want to try capturing some wild yeast for that, or just go with some packaged yeast...I haven't made anything this week, but I have some homemade meatballs in the freezer that would make good sandwiches, so my next project will be sandwich rolls.