00goddess

Last week I decided, on a whim, to start a new sourdough mother. I had a mother a few years ago that was a free gift from Cultures For Health, but it was never very vigorous and it was a brown rice starter. Last Monday I shaped and baked some baguette. and I ended up with a lot of bread flour left on my mat. I didn't want to waste it, and I had been thinking about making a starter, so I scooped it up and put it in a jar. There was 10g, so I added 10g of water and off it went. It was very vigorous from day 2. On day 4 it got a little sluggish, but then it picked back up. On Saturday it took a big jump and needed more food; I had been feeding it 1:1:1 starter/flour/water twice a day, but I switched to feeding it 1:2:2 or sometimes a little more. After 7 days it was very vigorous so I fed it one last time and put it in the fridge. I don't discard, so I keep a very small starter. Because it's GF, I will need to feed it about twice a week at first, I think.

I'm actually not very interested in making straight sourdough bread, but I decided to make a mother because my homemade breads don't keep very long. In general a homemade GF bread lasts about 3 days max, sometimes less. Sourdough breads last longer. I plan to use the sourdough starter in my yeast breads to see if they keep longer, and to add some flavor complexity as well.

In the week I was waiting for the mother to mature, I had to "discard" a few times to keep it manageable. I used the discard though, I added some to yogurt rolls, some to a pair of baguettes I made, and made sourdough pancakes. My pancakes were not as fluffy as I would like, kind of heavy.

I also bought a new tibicos culture and a kefir culture! I had been thinking about both for awhile and went for it. They came on Monday and so far the tibicos culture is very active, the kefir not so much. I will give it another few days.

I don't love taking on more things to feed and take care of, but with the pandemic going on, I think I need to be eating more cultured foods. And I know that when I drink tibicos, I have less tartar on my teeth.

I think it's time to start my baking blog.

I think we're going to get an air fryer. It seems like it would help to speed up cooking. Also we could roast or heat things without heating up the whole house. Our oven is extremely cheap and it makes everything so hot! Once we have a new one, I hope to get a convection oven, but for now an air fryer will have to do. We don't have the counter space to get a countertop convection oven, our kitchen is pretty compact. We have 3 small prep areas and we would have to give one up, which is not going to work.

So right now I am just choosing what to buy. We were leaning toward the Instant Pot Air Fryer lid, because it will work with the IP. BUT several reviewers complain that it's too small. So another option is to buy a pod-style air fryer. I want something we can easily pull out and put away. But I also want to be able to make bigger batches of appetizers for parties. If you have an air fryer, please tell me about it.

Monday: sweet potato & poblano soup, eggs in zucchini nests.
Tuesday: sweet potato poblano soup, possibly eggs in a yellow squash nest? Possibly banana pepper poppers.
Wednesday: depends on what we get in the produce box. I wish they would consistently let us know ahead of time what we're going to get.

Right now we have an absolute glut of sweet potatoes, so we need to use those up. I hope I can muster the momentum to make some kind of sweet potato bread. Biscuit dough would be ideal because I can freeze that. 

I want to go this week and buy several bunches of bananas so I can freeze like a month's worth of bananas for smoothies. This 3-at-a-time shit is ridiculous.

I no longer doubt our ability to eat these vegetables, lol. We did really well this week and it's had me feeling great!
( recap )
So what will eat this upcoming week?

Monday: crab cakes, Greek salad, roasted green beans.
Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe Thursday: Cajun white beans; that will use up the remaining bell peppers and onions. Tomato salad. Need to do something with the zucchini, but I don't know what. I could really go for some zucchini bread.
Friday: some kind of quiche, with a potato crust.

I am also going to make some deviled eggs to keep in the fridge for snacks.

Our produce box this week was very similar to last week, except instead of poblanos we got a few Anaheim peppers, and instead of a bunch of new potatoes, we got 2 sweet potatoes, and even more tomatoes than last week. This week's watermelon was even bigger than last week.

Sunday and Monday dinner was corn and poblano chowder, and tarragon chicken. Chowder recipe after the cut.
Tuesday and Wednesday night: chicken and green beans in a honey-balsamic sauce, roasted tomatoes & yellow squash.
Thurs and Fri: Cajun red or white beans with rice or riced cauli, and squash casserole.
Sat: probably pasta, because that's what I usually like to eat on Sat. But we might go out for burgers.

( Read more... )

I never thought I would like "overnight oats," but last week we got a wild hair and decided to make some. It turns out I was right: I don't like overnight oats! The raw oatmeal tastes okay but the raw texture is not appetizing to me. But it turns out that if I put them in the microwave for 30 seconds, they cook really fast after soaking all night; the oats plump up and lose the raw texture.

The other night we made it with extra thick rolled oats, milk, chia seeds, MRM Vanilla Veggie Protein Powder, and cinnamon. The MRM protein is sweetened with monk fruit, and imo it is way, way too sweet-tasting so we didn't add any sweetener. B loved it as-is, I liked it cooked. Tonight I just made a small amount in a jar for myself, with all the same stuff except the cinnamon. I think tomorrow I am going to cook it with some blueberries.

The MRM protein powder is really fiber and nutrient-dense, and it basically tastes like cookies.

Man, I love having a produce box! Wednesday night we picked up our box and it was already late, so we made a fast dinner of bell pepper, onion, and black bean tacos, with green salad.

I later had some of the bean and veggie mix without a tortilla, and with a little cheese on top, and it was really delicious.

Tonight I made ranch chicken in the IP (from scratch: I used Penzey's ranch seasoning blend and some chives, then when it was cooked I stirred a mix of yogurt and sour cream into the liquid to make it creamy. I topped it with some diced tomatoes.) I also made lemon-garlic green beans and we served those with rice, which was great for soaking up the sauce in the chicken. This will feed us for a few days at least; tomorrow we will have the same thing with a green salad, and maybe some yellow squash. (We usually have a green salad with dinner, but skipped it tonight because I was tired.)

I usually plan to first cook the softer veggies that go bad quickly, before I took the hardy veggies that last a bit longer. So the green beans and yellow squash need to go first.

I think this weekend we will get some lean ground turkey and try making our own turkey Italian sausage, because we have some banana peppers and I found a recipe suggesting that they can be stuffed with Italian sausage and roasted or baked.

There are so many things I mean to write about here but then I don't.

My friend who moved away was kind enough to give to us the last two produce boxes left on her summer season. So last week we got a box of produce and two dozen eggs! So we are eating quiche for the first half of this week.

Sunday night I made a double batch of pie crust. Yesterday I baked one crust to use for the quiche and made the custard. B assembled the quiche last night and found that there was extra custard, so today I put the extra custard (about 1 cup) and the extra pie crust in the freezer.

A few weeks ago I bought a big bag of powdered milk since I am baking on the reg again. Today I put most of that in the freezer too, in vacuum bags. I love responsible food stewardship.

We will get another two dozen eggs and a box of produce next month. Then I think we will sign up for the fall CSA from this same farm.

I love it when I get my mess together on Sunday and prepare for the week ahead! It makes Monday so much easier.

Today I made a chicken-sweet potato soup with kale, and mayonnaise, and baked a rustic sourdough loaf. I also chopped So that's dinner through Wednesday, and with the mayo I will make deviled eggs at some point this week.

Monday is the hardest day of the week imo, in terms of getting back to my weekday routine, and I am also out Monday evenings, so it's nice to have dinner already taken care of.

Here's what we are eating this week:
dinner M-W: soup, salad, bread.
Dinner Th-S: red bean quesadillas.
Ready snacks: devilled eggs, bananas.

ETA: This is the soup I made, although I made some changes.

I don't even remember when I started regularly planning meals. At least as far back as the late 90s, so probably as soon as I started being able to buy food regularly and having a place to cook it.

We plan our meals every week but we don't over-complicate it. There's no binder, no charts, no spreadsheet. On Saturday, we get a produce box, which is the foundation of our meal plan. On Sunday, we talk about and select what we want to cook for the week. While we do that, I usually look through the pantry and fridge to see what we need to add to the list, while B does the listing. I usually make a few notes in my planner about this week's plan, to keep us both on track, though so far it's never really been necessary for memory purposes.

We really only plan dinners. For lunches and breakfast, we either eat leftovers, or keep some staples around for those foods. Also, we really only cook dinner about twice a week, usually Tuesdays and Friday or Saturday. We cook enough to feed us for 2-3 days, and we always have some frozen things around for nights when we aren't up to cooking dinner, or we're running really late.

Ok here is what grosses me out: all of the people who cook a week's worth of food on Sunday. Y'all, that is disgusting. I personally don't like to eat food more than 3 days old, and most cooked food is not safe after 4 days MAX. I've found that after 3 days food usually tastes bad to me. The idea of cooking some chicken on Sunday and leaving it in the fridge until you eat it on Friday is so nasty.

Freezing is different, I am all about freezing cooked food for later eating, but just letting food age in the refrigerator is gross.

About freezing: I like to make a double batch of soup or stew and freeze half. A few weeks ago I cooked a bunch of chicken thighs, shredded the meat, and froze half of the meat in broth to use later.