Happy Belated St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St Patrick's Day 2016?

Now that we have a toddler on our hands, we can really only celebrate with food, and this year I kind of failed. I didn't plan ahead, so we had corned beef the day after St . Pat's, and it was the saltiest corned beef I've ever made. However it did spawn this sweet double recipe blog update!!!! So, not a total loss.

Recipe 11:  Irish Soda Bread

The http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/16947/amazingly-easy-irish-soda-bread/?internalSource=staff%20pick&referringId=1452&referringContentType=recipe%20hub&page=0>
recipefor this comes from All Recipes, and through serendipity, maybe the very recipe my aunt offered to send me a few days ago.
As promised, it was pretty easy. Combine the dry ingredients, cut in the butter, add the wet ingredients. I used sour milk (1 Tablespoon vinegar in enough milk to make a cup) instead of buttermilk, but I also used butter instead of margarine, so hopefully I didn't lose much flavor.

Normally I would use a pastry knife to cut in the butter on a recipe like this, but my son was "helping", so I just used the stand mixer. I used the paddle instead of the pastry hook, but it worked fine and still did some of the kneading for me.  The dough was very soft, and not too sticky. I brushed the top of the loaf with semi-melted butter with a little milk in it (I got too lazy to try to make the real deal). I don't know why the recipe recommends checking the loaf after 30 minutes. For me, it was nowhere near done.

I don't think I've had soda bread before, and I really liked it. Fresh from the oven the crust was like a thick cracker, and the inside was soft and dense. It wasn't very flavorful, but that was actually a good thing since it was served with the world's saltiest corned beef and cabbage. Unfortunately, it pretty quickly became uniformly dry and crumbly, so if you aren't going to eat it the first night, be prepared for a little disappointment when you get into the leftovers.

Recipe 12: Colcannon




Because the corned beef was so salty, I didn't want to just reheat it, so I found this recipe. For some reason, I thought it would be a soup, which it most certainly is not. It is basically super rich mashed potatoes with boiled cabbage and corned beef.

I really don't know what else needs to be said about this recipe - if that description didn't make your mouth water, you are clearly a robot. The one thing I would note is that salting the water you cook the cabbage in is probably a good idea. I didn't (call me gun shy), and I felt like it was just slightly bland. This recipe is definitely going in the "things to do with leftover meat" file. I could see almost any leftover working really well in this, with the right added spices.



Alright! I think I am caught up! There have been twelve full weeks this year, and I've done twelve recipes! It has been a lot of fun to try new things, and it's been nice to see some views on the blog. If anything I make ever reminds you of a recipe, please send it to me! Maybe you'll see my attempt on these very pages.

Sopapillas

This was a super quick recipe, so it will be a super quick blog post!

Recipe 10:  Sopapillas

Taking pictures from below an object is pretty much my only trick to make an "artistic" shot. Note the use of the hood light to add an angelic glow...

Does this really count as trying a new recipe if I just used store-bought raw tortillas instead of making them myself? I'm saying it does. This was definitely a skin-of-my-teeth situation, but since I recently had a double recipe week I'm saying it balances out.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to share my mom's recipe for tortillas, which is much simpler than the Food Network recipe above, and I cannot vouch for its deliciousness.

Basic plain tortillas

2 c flour

1 tsp salt

2 Tbsp oil

Stir together the flour and salt, then drizzle the oil over and stir it in. It should break up into little balls/chunks.

Stir in about 3/4 cup of warm water -- the amount depends on your flour -- and knead until a stiff dough forms.

Cut into 8 pieces (I use a bench scraper), and keep the pieces under the inverted bowl while you work.

Roll out one piece at a time and cook in a hot, dry frying pan. Flip when there are bubbles all over one side.

Let rest in a plastic bag.

The main thing to know about mom's recipe is that it is very difficult to roll out. Expect to have your tortillas tear, especially if you are trying to make them very large. I don't know specifically how this recipe would translate into sopapillas, but I would guess quite well.

Now, on to the Food Network recipe. Like I said, I just used raw tortillas from the HEB. They were the smaller palm sized ones, and not very thick. This ended up making them much quicker to cook than the instructions indicated. The instructions say to roll your tortillas out to a 1/4" thickness, which is incredibly thick. They gave their sopapillas 2 minuted on each side, but if mine were in the pan for a minute total, I would be surprised.

Look at em go!

I also wanted to mention that I used coconut oil instead of peanut oil. I really like having coconut oil around. It stays stable in the cupboard, it is supposed to be good for you, and I haven't run into anything I can't make with it. I've made brownies, cookies, and pie crusts with coconut oil, all with good results. The one big difference is that it doesn't taste like anything, but if you want a butter flavor in your baking I've found using half coconut oil half butter works well.

Anyway! Back to the recipe at hand. I thought the sopapillas turned out really well. They were relatively crispy even the next day, not too greasy, and fun to eat. The one thing I should have done is sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar as they came out of the oil, because once they cooled the sugar just rolled right off.

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Indian Butter Chicken

Well, so much for getting caught up! I plan to try another new recipe today, which will put me two behind. Oh well.

Recipe 9: Indian Butter Chicken

The recipe this week is courtesy of my cousin, who posted some delicious looking pictures of this meal when he made it last month.

I jumped on the chance to get a new butter chicken recipe. I had made it in the past, but it was really labor intensive, and involved simmering a sauce made of butter and heavy cream, so I generally managed to "break" it. (For anyone who hasn't broken a sauce here is a good example and instructions on how to fix it.)

This recipe still required multiple steps, but was much easier to complete. I mostly followed the instructions, but I got paranoid about the chicken not cooking completely in six minutes, so I covered it while it cooked. I don't think this was actually necessary, and did make the yogurt mixture the chicken cooked in look a little strange. I also cooked the chicken in the same pan I had cooked the sauce in (does it freak anyone else out when people call sauce that isn't made from fat drippings "gravy"?), I just wiped it out in between steps. I should also mention that I couldn't find Tandoori BBQ mix, so I used Tandoori Marsala mix instead.

The resulting dish was very satisfying, and quite a bit spicier than butter chicken I've made in the past. I had so much sauce (probaby in part because i heated it *very* gently) that a few days later I mixed it into stir fried rice, and got another large and satisfyingly spicy meal out of it. I also wasn't sure how much ginger to buy, and ended up getting twice what I needed, so I have three ounces frozen in cubes in the freezer for the next time I make stir fry.

Plus, now I have a new website to mine for recipes!

Slow Cooking the Winter Away

Alright! Let's power through a couple of posts and catch up!

Recipe 8:  Slow cooker White Chicken Chili

This is yet another recipe fromBudget Bytes.

I decided to make this before going to the store a few weeks ago, but was apparently not committed enough to actually read the instructions before picking up ingredients. So, some winging occurred.

I have a pretty large crock pot, so I doubled the recipe, as recommended. The main change I made was to use five bone-in chicken legs instead of two breasts. Four servings off one chicken breast? I like Budget Bytes, but I'm not willing to cut back my meat intake to save money to the same extent the author is. Even my mother isn't that Scottish. 

I also bought canned green chilies instead of salsa verde, so I had to add a cup of red salsa to compensate. This made the chili more tea colored then white, but didn't taste too out of place. I also used a yellow bell pepper instead of a jalapeño, because I wanted to be able to offer the chili to my baby.

I also took this opportunity to use up the rest of the great northern beans I had purchased for the White Beans and Sausage. I remembered to soak them overnight this time, and cooked them all day in the crock pot, but they were still a little waxy for my taste. I guess that is just how they are. 

The yeild on this recipe was very good. I believe we ate two dinners and a lunch from it, without really adding sides. I thought it was a little bland at first, so when I reheated it, I added some lime juice, which perked it up. I'm completely willing to conceed that my alterations are probably what made it bland in the first place, so I'll have to try it again sometime with the right ingredients. Since winter seems to be lingering where I live, I'm sure I'll have an opportunity sooner rather than later.

Muffins, muffins everywhere

Well, I've gotten pretty far behind on updating, although I've done alright on the cooking new food front. My husband has been sick in a pretty serious way, although he is getting better now, so hopefully the rhythm of the house will go back to normal. (Edit: Aaaaand, now our son is sick...)

Recipe 7:  Blueberry Muffins Two Ways

I made these at the same time, so I'm going to count them as one recipe now, although I might come back and count them separately if I come up short at the end of the year.

Recipe 7.1:  Blueberry and Banana Whole Wheat Muffins

I like baking with whole wheat because it feels healthier and more satisfying. These muffins, however, did end up a bit heavy and mealy, which can be the downside of whole wheat. They were also bit bland. I'm not sure whether to blame that on the lack of additional sugar, or the complete lack of salt. They were fine, but more "mature", I guess, and tasted like health food. They also started to mold after only a few days on the counter.

Oh, final caveat: this recipe fit just fine in 12 muffin cups. If I had spread the batter between 18 cups as recommended, I think they would have been disappointingly small.

Recipe 7.2: Blueberry Applesauce Whole Wheat Muffins

These turned out much better. They were both sweeter (not surprising, since they have 3/4 cup sugar), and lighter. They had more of the springy, cake-like texture I want in a muffin. While I think the other recipe will be left on the shelf, this will probably make it into the pre-planned breakfast rotation.

Crafts: Magnets from Christmas 2014

This blog is the thing I do when I don't feel like cleaning my house, so I'm going to start a second update for this week.  I doubt that I'll finish it on the day I start it, so I'll get to avoid mopping for several days!  Lucky me! (Edit:  Yep, I started this update before Valentine's Day.)

Anyway!  On to the meat and potatoes of this update.  I want to bring this blog back to its roots with this one, and make an update on some of the crafts I've completed recently.

Since I stopped working, my husband and I have been a little bit more careful with our gift giving, and the past two years we hand made our Christmas gifts.  The year before last I baked biscotti, which went over well (although I forgot my sister is allergic to almonds ... sorry), but this past Christmas I wanted to step it up a notch and make something permanent.  When we brought out son up north to visit relatives last year, I had seen my mother-in-law do some decoupage, and it looked super fun. I had made my sister a decoupaged box for her birthday, so I figured I would do something similar for Christmas.

After much hemming and hawing (and wandering around the craft store), I decided to do magnets.  They are small enough to be easy to make, are nominally useful, and wouldn't be a big knickknack for the recipients to deal with storing or displaying.

I used sheets of foam as the backing, and to make various foreground images stand out.  The pictures were cut out of fashion magazines.  For all of the magnets, the base is wrapped with images to hide the foam, but the foam is visible on the sides of the raised images.  The magnets came as a roll with a paper backing and built in adhesive.  These were okay, but refused to be flattened even after being pressed under books.  I had to resort to super glue to get them to stop separating from the picture.  In the future, I would use the magnets that come in little sheets instead.

For:  My Brother

 

This one is the first one I made, and I'm afraid it shows in the wrinkly paper and foam peaking out from behind the letters.  Overall, though, I have to say I like it. The image (which I will credit if I can find the photographer) is just the strangest, coolest picture, and totally appropriate for my brother. The text, "PQMR" is kind of an inside joke.  I figured a weird picture and some nonsense deserved a background made a few different types of leopard print. Overall, it's not the most perfect magnet, but interesting.

For:  My Dad

 

This is a set of magnets on a piece of cardboard to make wrapping it easier.  I used origami paper for the background because I couldn't find an image in the magazines that looked nice, and I think the geometric pattern is more masculine anyway.  This one was hard to make because finding interesting looking words and letter is surprisingly difficult.  "Everything looks bad if you remember it" is from the Insanity Pepper episode of The Simpsons, and I remember it was a favorite of my father's.  So, there you go. 

For:  My Father-in-Law

Finding this image was a huge score, since my father-in-law likes The Wizard of Oz. For the background I used a scarf, a smear of lipstick, one of those lip balms that looks like an egg, and crushed blush.  I like how the different textures in the background work together to make the image pop.

For:  My Grandparents-in-Law

This is a combined gift for my husband's maternal grandparents.  They have a pretty good collection of "boozy" decorations around their house, including a pillow that reads "Life is too short to drink bad wine".  So I thought this would be appropriate.  You can also see how I started making magnets that were much too large as I started finding larger images. I think this one measures something like 3" by 4". So it's more a fridge decoration than a functional magnet.

For:  My Sister-in-Law

When I asked my husband what I should make for his sister, he said, "Anything with attitude."  This is another 3x4 behemoth, and really not for any good reason. I thought it would look crowded if I made the background smaller, but really, I could have put a quarter inch on each side and been fine. The picture is of Naomie Harris from a shoot she did after Skyfall. The background is a variety of sequined clothes. I should have probably used more blue/silver pieces for the background, because I think it looks a little flat. This was definitely a learning experience.

For:  My Mother-in-Law

All of the images in this magnet are hair, which I think is neat. I was hoping it would look a bit like wood, and I think to some extent it does. This is the only specifically holiday themed magnet I made - a holly and mistletoe wreath. I will admit that all of my knowledge of Yule comes from the internet, but my much more knowledgeable mother-in-law seemed pleased, so I must not have missed the mark too badly. The one thing I would do differently here is use lighter pieces for the holly leaves, so they pop a little more. 

For: My Sister

My sister and I weren't raised to be girly-girls, and while I still struggle to not dress myself like a teenage boy, she has blossomed into quite the fashionista. I liked how fancy the lipsticks looked, and the smile (I think it is from one of Pink's ads) is just so happy. This is another big one - three inches across - but I don't think it would look as cool if it were smaller.

For:  My Paternal Grandma

This was the second magnet I made. For my Dad's mom I wanted something simple and nice. This turned out a little "sweeter" than I wanted. I would also probably move the flower up a bit next time. I think I got the middle of the flower in the middle of the background, but because it is lopsided, it looks a bit off.

For:  Bunka (My Maternal Grandma)

I went with the same sort of design for this one as for my other Grandma, but with a little more edge. The background is all leather, which amuses me. I also drew and cut the oval background freehand, which turned out pretty nice, I think.

For: My Mom

This one is my favorite. Like the one for my mother-in-law, all of the pictures are hair. The heart in the middle of the tree say "GMA", for Grandma. The one issue I see with it is that the ground isn't straight, which is aggravating because I did draw guide lines. Other than that, I really couldn't be happier.

I will definitely be making more decoupage stuff in the future. It is really relaxing to gather the images, the process is pretty easy, and the results are nice.