Grannie's fry bread

When I was a little girl I loved winter because sometimes if I was SUPER lucky I would come home from school and my grandma would be there. Whenever grandma rosemary was at my house it smelled like bread. She made such yummy bread you could smell it before you opened the front door. She baked a lot at her house but she also smoked like a chimney so whatever she cooked at her house tasted liked ashes. That is a surprise if you don’t expect it! But when she cooked in my house it was perfection. We had a huge bowl I mean HUGE bowl that she used when raising the dough as she always made a lot but you ask what my point is? For dinner sometimes she would rip hunks of dough and fry them up with fresh jam.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh ya.

So last night I had a hankering for some fry bread and as I always bake a loaf of bread each day I just used my bread dough I already had rising. I use my bread maker to knead my dough as my arthritis makes bread making hard (yes I know I am only 33 moving on) so this is a fail proof bread machine recipe for white bread.

You can bake as is or to make fry bread;

Tear off a small piece and make a circle with the dough or make a ball and stick your finger thru the middle, it makes a rustic doughnut. The oil need to be hot about 375 degrees and deep enough the dough doesn’t touch the bottom, at least 2 inches. Drop in the oil carefully and after just a minute it will be brown on ready to turn over turn it over and in about a minute take out and put on a paper towel to drain. It isn’t super sweet as it isn’t a sweet dough but if you want sweet just sprinkle with powdered sugar or server with jam, I like strawberry preserves personally.

Completely Perfect Failsafe bread machine white bread

Ingredients
1 cup water (about 90 degrees)
3 cups white bread flour I use ap flour
1 tablespoon dry milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons fast rise yeast
Directions

Place ingredients in your bread machine according to manufacturer's instruction and bake as directed.
This recipe is from recipezarr.com and the woman who wrote it used it in the 1993 Oregon State Fair and won 1st place. I know you were thinking it would be grammas’’ recipe but this is it almost perfect replica and only makes a 1 lb loaf instead of 4 loaves and enough fry bread for 10 people!

Welcome to the crazy house!

Well we have a new family member that I am very excited about. This tiny kitten was outside hubby’s office window hollering for food and looking dirty. The field cat had her babies and this little lovely was lost. We had no why to find the mommy as she was nowhere to be seen and little bit was starving he called me and I rushed to get the little bugger. I have never had a kitty this small she appears to get lost her first time out alone as she is weaned and healthy. My son named her snickelfritz. That is what my daddy called me when I was a little girl and also the name of the cat on the big comfy couch. She is super sweet and was easy to litter box train. She even gets along with the choco lab and the kids so she is here to stay! If she was mean to the kids or bothered my son’s asthma she would have to go to the pound and I didn’t want that to happen and so it has been 3 days and not even a sniffle so she is in the clear to stay!

By the way, I love how she is almost the same color as the chair- you better look before you sit! :)

Strawberry vanilla bean ice cream!

This is so amazing and can be altered in so many ways. If you don’t have any vanilla beans then just use 2 teaspoons vanilla and it will be fine, you just won’t have the pretty black spots throughout. It is a nice option over custard ice creams as there is zero cook time and no need to chill first. I got the basic outline from recipezarr and then modified it to match my needs.

Ingredients

2 large eggs

3/4 cup sugar

2 cups heavy whipping cream (I get it from my local dairy)

1 cup milk

1 scraped vanilla bean OR 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
¼ c premade strawberry sauce seedless (you can use the syrup kids put in milk and that is fine)

½ chopped strawberries set aside for later they can be fresh that you froze or frozen in a bag

Directions

Whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes.

Whisk in the sugar, a little at a time, and then continue whisking until completely blended, about 3 minutes more. Pour in the cream, milk, vanilla and strawberry sauce and whisk to blend.

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer's instructions. In my compressor ice cream maker it takes about 40 minutes as I let it get super thick. When it is thick and near the end just add the chopped strawberries and mix it up.
It is ready to eat now or you can stick it in the freezer for an hour or 2 to get harder. If you put it in the freezer to eat the next day pull it out of the freezer about 10 minutes before you are ready to eat it and then dish it up it gets back that creaminess and it sooooooo good.
Makes 1 Quart
Hubby thinks it is better than any ice cream he has ever had! I was quite surprised as he is a BIG ice cream lover.

better late then never - Bacon Salt!

Well it has been everywhere in the blogosphere but here in the middle of nowhere bacon salt is hard to find. Today I achieved greatness and found it!!!! I despise the faux taste of hickory so I went with peppered and original flavors and decided to do a taste test. My favorite way to use bacon is also the most pedestrian as I love it on a baked potato with cheese. Yummmm. To make sure I could taste the difference I did half with peppered and half with original. Considering that this is vegan and kosher I was surprised that it was so close. I am not a meat lover but I am a bacon lover so this is a nice way to get the flavor without the fat. I vote 2 thumbs up! Well, maybe a thumb and a half but still very good.

Baked potato
1 potato baked till soft with a crispy outside
Way more cheese then my cardiologist recommends
Salt
Bacon salt
Devore and enjoy lustfully.

Tomorrow I am thinking strawberry ice cream come and see the yumminess in action!

Last of summer tomatoes

I went to my local dairy the other day and the little old man that grows tomatoes was selling the less then pretty ones for 50 cents a lb. Score baby! Tomatoes are about 3.00 a lb so this was a great deal I told him I would take all he had. It wasn’t till I got home I saw He threw in some perfect ones too. I thought that was very nice and a great example of the niceness of knowing your local farmer(s). So then I had over 10 lbs of tomatoes to use up and fast. I took the perfect ones and made blt’s for dinner and the kids love tomatoes cut up with ranch so I made them that and they ate it so fast and hubby said that is just how he was as a kid. But even after all that I still had about 10 lbs of tomatoes so decided to roast them for this winter for stews and chili. I chopped them up and put them on a huge industrial size cookie sheet. I kept it simple so that I could use them for any number of recipes, just salt and a smidge of oil. I baked them in a 350 oven for about an hour and half. They were so pretty I almost forgot I hate tomatoes! I was going to can them but I was feeling lazy and decided to freeze them instead. I was reading http://www.kitchn.com/ and saw they had an article on how easy it was so the decision was easy. They look so bright I kind of wanted to make stew now but decided to wait until winter when tomatoes have gotten that plastic mealy look to them.

Roasting Tomatoes
Whatever tomatoes you have cleaned and chopped
Spices – you can use fresh basil or Italian spices or just salt
A little oil to drizzle over non flavor like a corn or a nice olive oil
Oven at 350 degrees for about 1 to 2 hrs depending on how many tomatoes you have
Let cool and pack in freezer safe containers. That is it!

An easy peasy highly versatile method you can adapt however you want.

Come on fall I am ready!

What a night!

Well I took some lovely pictures of my pasta as i made it but it felt.....wrong so I should have gone with my gut and used a different recipe. I have made fresh pasta before and it is yummy but I thought I would try something new. I was wrong! I will go back to Mario and never stray, I am sorry please forgive me. At least my Alfredo sauce came out ok. Rich and saucy just like I like my friends. I would have said hubby but …. I don’t want him saucy it gives me a mental shiver!

¼ lb or 1 stick or ½ cup melted butter
1 c heavy cream
1c grated parmesan cheese

Get the butter and cream hot – not boiling, take of heat and whip in the cheese and it is ready to rumble. Add a little more cheese on top and plenty of pepper.

Oh well dinner came out ½ ok and I now know one pasta recipe that is dreadful so it all worked out.

Tomorrow we will have vanilla bean strawberry ice cream yummmmmmmm.

You want a hot tortilla?

This is a nice a simple recipe. The hardest part is rolling them out. I was so excited I found a tortilla press, but it turns out I hate it. It doesn’t get them thin enough and they are a little thick so halfway thru hubby decided to roll them out with my rolling pin. I had no idea he knew what a rolling pin is so I was happy to let him do the rolling. :)

The recipe is simple

6 c AP flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
½ c vegetable shortening- cut into small pieces
2 ½ c warm water

Put everything in the mix but the water stir for a minute to mix and add water slowly while mixer is running. And that is it, it will all come together really nice and look like dough. Then pull it out onto a floured counter and divide in half, let rest 15 minutes. After it has rested divide each half into 8 balls so you will have a total of 16 balls. You can make more if you want some smaller tortillas. you can use a rolling pin or a tortilla press and make them the size and thickness you want.Let rest another 10 minutes and they are ready to put in the hot skillet. Just 1 minute on each side is enough they will have brown spots on them when they are ready.

They are best eaten right away but if you need them to wait get a large peice tin foil and put a paper towel or reusable cotton cloth and make an tin foil envelope so that they don’t dry out but the paper towel also keeps them from getting a condensation feel to them.

These are truly yummy and delish. My MIL can’t buy tortilla at the store anymore as she says they don’t taste as good anymore! Hey, if the MIL is happy SOMETHING must be right! :)

Let’s make Fajita’s

Well I had planned to make my hubby's favorite fajitas but I didn’t realize that I needed pineapple juice for the marinade. Well, I am not nice enough to go to the store for one item as we don’t live near enough to walk to a market and I hate to waste gas so I turned to my best friend recipezarr.com and found a recipe using ingredients I had on hand.

Ingredients

1 clove garlic (minced or grated)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

2 tablespoons oil (any type works,I used regular corn oil)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/3 cup A-1 Steak Sauce (this was a odd thing to add i thought but yummm so good)

Directions

Combine all ingredients, mixing well.

Marinade 1 1/2lbs Beef skirt steak for at least 2 hours.

Cook as desired on outside grill, stovetop sauté pan, or you can even cook them on the George Foreman grill.

I cooked them on the grill for 7 min on one side and 3 min after turning over once. I found the coolest website to help a novice grill it is http://www.charcoalbob.com/ you tell it what you are making and it will tell you how to do it! I am excited about this as I am sadly, not a great griller.

OHHHH baby and a good time was had by all!!!

By the way to make a really yummy soft grilled onion I put 1 red pepper cut in strips and one onion sliced and then threw in ½ Hatch pepper put in a tin foil envelope with 2 ice cubes and stick it on the grill the same time as the meat and they should be soft and smoky done the same time as the meat.

I love how the picture looks a little fuzzy on the top as it is the steam. I have sour cream and cheese also on the plate. I also made some guacamole but this is my hubby’s plate and he hates quac so it isn’t on there.

I will be sharing my homemade tortillas tomorrow so come back as they are amazing compared to store bought.

Thanks for coming by.

Bunny Egg Molds

I ordered a set of egg molds about 2 months ago from Japan and after impatiently waiting they finally arrived! They are so cute! My kids fight over which shape they will get. The favorite appears to be the bunny as it looks like Miffy. I got them for my sons’ lunch when he takes it to school but sadly he likes the school hot lunch better! He loves my lunches so I don’t know why he changed to wanting a hot lunch but…. I guess it is ok. I was making shaped sandwiches and making a bento style so it was easier for him to eat but I guess he likes it hot and sometimes they get ice cream so therefore my lunch full of love can’t compete. They still love the eggs and it is always a treat when they are shaped. The box snaps shut to form the shape tightly. If you are thinking if getting these somewhere please note that the star and heart are the hardest shape to make and molds somewhat egg shaped like car or bunny are easier and look great!

To make a molded egg;
Hard boil the eggs
I start with cool water and the eggs in the pot then when it starts boiling right away turn off stove, tightly cover and let sit for 15 min.
Then while still hot shell the eggs and put in mold.
Put the molds in cold water for 10 minutes and then they are done and ready to demold. They will hold the shape once out of mold.
Thanks for coming to the new site and have a great weekend!

Thanks for coming!

I will begin to post recipes in about a week thanks for coming as I transition and if you want to look at my old blog it is www.organicandnaturalmom.blogspot.com .