Thin Bread and Wheat Thins

Every January I tell myself I'm going to dial back on the carbohydrates. After a December filled with cookies and toffee and caramel corn one doesn't need potatoes and bread and crackers. And then the cold weather comes and my body cries out for carbs. Demands, them really. Macaroni and cheese, scalloped potatoes...bread. And crackers. What's a girl to do? This girl gives in and heads to the kitchen.

Rhubarb Loaf

Local rhubarb has been appearing at the market, just in time for a Sunday baking/therapy session.  The weekend was so beautiful for being out of doors I was glad to have prepared these loaves (the recipe yields two) just after breakfast. The brown sugar/butter/cinnamon topping made the house smell dreamy while I cleaned up the kitchen. And I got to spend the rest of the day outside.

English Muffins

This past Saturday morning around 7 a.m. I rolled over and said to David

I'm going to go downstairs and make some English muffins. 

David knows me well enough to know that I didn't mean

I'm going to go toast myself an English muffin. Maybe slap on some jam, or if I'm feeling ambitious an egg and some cheese. 

Because this is what I do. I wake up on a random Saturday and decide to make marshmallows. Or even doughnuts. I don't know why I do, but I do. So here's how it went.

What we ate for Christmas - Christmas morning

Christmas morning is one of my favourite mornings of the year. After the presents have been opened and everybody is basking in the glow of new toys, books and other diversions, I make pancakes for the kids and David puts on a pot of coffee. As much as I like making pancakes for the kiddos each December 25th they aren't my idea of the perfect Christmas morning breakfast. Last year I bought a stollen for the grown-ups but this year I really wanted something home-made. (Christmas morning seems to demand home-made.) While flipping through recipe books and scouring the Internet in the weeks leading up to Christmas I toyed with the idea of making stollen myself but something nagged at me that this wasn't the satisfying Christmas breakfast I was seeking. Then I found it. Or rather, we found it, as I had roped David into my quest: yeasted coffee cake with sweet cream cheese filling. Yes please!

Whole Wheat Pumpkin (Quick) Bread

This weekend was such a relief. A welcome respite from the reality of the last couple of weeks. (It's been very real around here of late) September has been a strange month so it was wonderful to spend a Sunday in the kitchen again. It felt familiar and I've been craving something familiar. So after David and I ran in the Terry Fox Run (10K) this morning I went crazy in the kitchen - pumpkin bread, banana maple oatmeal cookies and pork roasted slowly with apples. It was very Fall-ish here today.

Hot Cross Buns

I've never enjoyed cooking with yeast. I find I'm too impatient when it comes to waiting for the yeast to do its thing so I end up rushing the recipe which usually ends in disaster. Last night I found I had some time on my hands. Enough time to wait for yeast to get...yeasty. It's the playoffs and the Habs are still in the hunt so no plans were made to do anything other than sit in front the television. Which was nice. There was popcorn to be had, for one thing. And the boys are old enough now that they ask intelligent questions about the game that David is only too happy to answer. What's a girl to do when all of her boys are otherwise occupied for several hours? Make hot cross buns, of course!

Signs of Spring

For one brief shining moment last week, it was Spring. The sky was blue. The breezes were balmy. On the walk to school my youngest son kept asking 'Mummy, what's that smell?'. (Spring, my friend, Spring!) We could see grass peeking through the snow on front yards. It felt so good to leave a few layers at home and walk through the concrete beach at work without being assaulted by gale force winds. Or freezing pellets of snow. Sigh. We all knew it wouldn't last. And it didn't. Today we woke up to fresh snow. But Friday, Friday was beautiful. I hope the memory will hold us until the next Spring thaw.

The small taste of Spring we had has put me in a very green frame of mind. I ordered a new bedspread and stuck with my traditional neutral colours but ended up picking a design with a touch of green. I started adding some Spring touches to my mantel and found a great floral bunting on Etsy that features orange, pink and green. (I seem to have developed an obsession with bunting. More on that later). Then I made some zucchini and carrot bread that I found on a blog called Coconut & Lime. This recipe caught my eye because it included cardamom (along with cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon) in the batter. I bought some cardamom for a cookie I made recently and have a fresh bottle in the pantry. So it felt like fate - appropriately Spring-ish and using ingredients I had on hand. The result was lovely. A cross between spice cake and zucchini bread with the added kick of carrot. Yum.

Christmas Julecake, with a side of potato salad.

A couple of weeks ago when we were snowed in I went on a cooking/baking rampage. See here. And here. Oh - and here too. One of the things I made (and have yet to blog about) was Julecake. Julecake is a Norwegian Christmas bread. D. and I have seen searching for the perfect Christmas morning breakfast and julecake seemed like a decent contender. A Google search revealed plenty o' julecake recipes. I decided I was 'feeling lucky' and went with the first recipe that was returned, which I found here.

I don't bake a lot of bread. Particularly yeast breads. Don't have the patience, don't have the time. But when you're snow bound, suddenly you have oodles of time. Here's what the recipe tells you to do:

Julecake

To make the bread, start by using a large, flat mixing bowl. (I used a large, flattish bottomed wooden salad bowl) In this bowl, put:

5 c. white flour
1 T. cardamom
2 c. candied fruit and citrus
1 - 1 1/2 c. raisins.

Mix these dry ingredients until blended. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. Set aside.

In a Pyrex measuring cup, combine the following:

2 c. milk, scalded (I figured out this pretty much means heated)
1 c. sugar, dissolved in the scalded milk
1 c. butter (I used unsalted), melted in the scalded milk

Let the mixture cool to lukewarm. Pour a little over:

1 T. active dry yeast

Stir to dissolve. It may begin to bubble a bit; that's OK. (I'm not sure my yeast actually dissolved all that well. I stirred and stirred, and when I got bored of stirring (as noted, no patience) I stopped.) When smooth, add the dissolved yeast mixture into the main milk/sugar/butter mixture. Then add the whole kit and caboodle into the flour mixture, and begin to combine all to make a soft dough. You'll probably add another cup or so of flour, but your goal is to knead this all together to create a soft, pliable dough that doesn't stick to the sides of the bowl. If your bowl is too small, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead further.

When well but not over-kneaded, place in the buttered bowl, turn it over once so the oiled side is up. Place a cotton dish towel over the top, and place the bowl in the pre-heated oven. It shouldn't be too hot; just warm enough for a good, protected rise. Let it do its work for 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. Punch down and knead again. This time, you can separate the dough however you like; 2 loaves, 2 rounds, or 4 smaller loaves and 1 small round. Do whatever blows your hair back. (Can I just say this is one of the best directions I've read in a recipe...'whatever blows your hair back'. Brilliant! For the record, I made two small loaves.) Cover with a dish towel again and let it rise once more for 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. You may have to do a brief second pre-heat on the oven for rise #2 to keep it nicely warm.

Once risen, bake in a 400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes. I generally put a piece of foil over the tops after about 25 minutes as otherwise I feel it gets too dark. (I would agree - I 'foiled' mine and they came out pleasantly but not overly dark.

The author of this recipe further suggested that Julecake is best toasted with some butter. I would have to agree. This bread was lovely on its own, but toasted and buttered it was even better.


Now. About that potato salad. I haven't actually made potato salad for several months. It's just that I forgot to include a post about it back in the Summer, and because I plan to print/bind all of my 'my sunday dinner' posts at the end of the year so I can have a quasi-recipe/memory book on the shelf, I don't want to forget the potato salad. Because it was very, very good. It's a Julia Child recipe that you can find here through Epicurious.

This was seriously good potato salad, which is why I don't want to lose track of the recipe. If you want to eat it with some Julecake, by all means...

Julia's American Style Potato Salad

2 pounds large Yukon Gold potatoes, or other waxy, boiling potatoes

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1/3 cup chicken stock or potato-cooking water

2/3 cup finely chopped onion

1/2 cup finely chopped celery

3 or 4 slices crisply cooked bacon, chopped or crumbled

2 to 3 tablespoons finely chopped pickle, sweet or dill

2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced thin

3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives or scallions, including a bit of their tender green

Salt and freshly ground white pepper

1 cup or so mayonnaise, homemade if possible (yeah - no)

Peel the potatoes and slice each one lengthwise in half, or in quarters if very large; then cut crosswise into half-round or quarter-round slices, about 1/2 inch thick.

Put the slices in a saucepan with water just to cover and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt per quart of water. Heat to a simmer, and cook the potatoes for 5 to 6 minutes, or until just cooked through. It is essential that they be just cooked through. Bite into a slice or two to be very sure. Immediately remove from the heat and drain the potatoes into a colander, but save a cup of the cooking liquid for dressing the potatoes. Transfer the potatoes to a large bowl. Stir the cider vinegar with ⅓ cup of the potato water or chicken stock and drizzle this over the potato pieces, turning them gently to distribute it evenly. Let sit 10 minutes to absorb the liquid.

Add the prepared onion, celery, bacon, pickle, hard-boiled eggs, and chives, and season carefully to taste. Top with ⅔ cup of mayonnaise and, with a large rubber spatula, gently fold everything together until well blended. Taste the salad and add more salt, pepper, or mayonnaise as needed.

Cover the salad and set aside in the refrigerator for at least an hour or so before serving. If it is refrigerated longer, let it come back to room temperature before serving. Taste and adjust the seasoning again.

Disney World Dishes - Corn Bread

I have been to Disney World...a lot. I don't even want to say how many times because it's embarrassing. My family loves going to Disney World. It's as far from day-to-day reality as you can get with nice weather to boot. And a monorail! What's not to like?

Our last trip to Disney World we had a couple of stand out meals. One that I particularly enjoyed was the Hoop Dee Doo Review dinner which featured the first corn bread I've actually liked. I've always gone through the motions with corn bread. It's the kind of thing I think I should like. It works well with stew, chili, fried chicken...so versatile! And yet so disappointing. Until Hoop Dee Doo.

Now I must admit I might have enjoyed the HDDR corn bread so much because my husband got dragged on stage mid-way through dinner to participate in the show. When I booked the HDDR my husband made me promise that we (meaning he) would not have to participate in the show. I promised. We're sitting in the balcony, I said. No way can we get dragged into the action.

So when we were seated the night of our HDDR dinner near the front of the stage, just off to the right, I got a look. The nice Disney Cast Member perkily informed us that we'd been upgraded. For free! Uh-oh. How much to sit in the back?

My husband is not a joiner. He's perfectly wonderful and I love him to pieces, but he hates being the centre of attention. Which means that he is always chosen for things like audience participation theatre. When, mid-way through dinner the nice lady from the HDDR cast came and asked my husband if he would mind joining the show, he looked at me, looked at his two boys (wide-eyed and very excited for daddy) and threw aside his napkin with no hesitation. Sure, he said. Why not. Hence, the brave indian scout -


So while we enjoyed our corn bread, fried chicken, ribs and strawberry shortcake my husband gamely particpated in a scene right out of his worst nightmare. Because he knew the kids would love it even if he hated it. To make it up to him I make him corn bread. Whenever he wants. And remind him that it could have been worse. At least he wasn't the guy they dressed up as a fairy.

Walt Disney World Corn Bread - served at Fort Wilderness and Hoop Dee Doo Review

3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs, beaten
1 cup milk

Heat oven to 375 F.
Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, salt. Add beaten eggs along with milk and vegetable oil. Use a whisk to stir mixture, mixing only enough to incorporate the elements. Pour batter into 13x9 baking pan hat has been coated with nonstick cooking spray.

Bake 20-25 minutes, or until golden. Cut in wedges and serve. Makes 12 servings.