Thursday Meal details

Today on the menu we find the following:

Spinach and Herb stuffed Flank Steak
Garlic White Beans with tomatoes
Green salad with homemade vinaigrette.

All low fat, heart healthy.

Anyone want recipes?

NO BREAD, no blog, NEW POST!!

It has been a while since I have posted. Spring has brought me quite a few opportunities to travel with my dear hubby, so I have not been home to bake or cook. There is no dough made, ergo no bread. SO -instead of focusing entirely on the bread, I am additionally going to start posting what I am making for dinner.

• Last night I made mustard roasted fish, garlic and herb crusted fingerling potatoes and green salad with compari tomatoes and homemade vinaigrette. It was one of the best fish dishes we have ever had.

• Tonight will be paillards of chicken sauteed in wine with baby bella mushrooms, served over homemade polenta; oven roasted broccoli finished with freshly grated pecorino romano; and, of course, green salad with homemade vinaigrette.

I may post recipes if anyone is interested.

For the last 15 years I have not used commercial salad dressings. I make them all homemade and they could not be any easier. That is also something that I may actually devote an entire blog to at some future date.

Until then - cook something today!!!! Its easy, economical and very, very rewarding!!!

This week in Bread

After we got home from our great snow trip, I was anxious to try some 100% whole wheat bread dough. In the past I have not had great luck in getting such a loaf to rise, so I needed to try the Healthy Bread In Five Minutes a Day master recipe. Here is what the dough looked like as I was mixing it up in the bowl. I let is raise on the counter for a couple of hours and then put it in the fridge.

Wednesday I decided to bake off a loaf and see how it turned out. I followed the directions EXACTLY, and was very, very pleased with the outcome. Here it is:


Yummy, right? It was crunchy on the outside, and perfect on the inside. Some holes, custardy crumb, lovely taste. I used a combination of seeds for the top - sesame, poppy, millet and caraway. I think I will forgo the caraway in the future, as it overpowers the taste of the others.



Then I needed to use up my last lump of pumpernickel dough, so decided to make a pumpernickle/raisin/walnut loaf to have to surprise Scott for breakfast Saturday since he has been in Chicago all week. I just love this bread - it reminds us of bread we used to order at The Rusty Nail in Bellvue when we lived in Pittsburgh in the '80's. Here is how it looked fresh out of the oven:
The raisins on the outside char slightly, adding to the depth of flavor of the loaf. Scott will really enjoy this for breakfast tomorrow.

Last weekend in Snowy Pittsburgh

Scott and I flew to Pittsburgh last Thursday (Feb 4) with multiple purposes. He had a business appointment all day Friday, and his cousin was hosting a surprise 90th birthday party for his Aunt on Saturday. We had not been in Pittsburgh in February in almost 10 years, and were greatly looking forward to staying in the "strip district", which is where all the produce, cheese, meat, bread, fish, etc purveyors in the city are located. It has "cleaned up" a bit since I moved from Pgh in 1993, but as much fun as ever. My sweet sister took Friday off and we just walked around the strip, stopped for coffee, later stopped for lunch. And then it started snowing. Now, we knew that 4 - 8 inches of snow had been predicted from Friday to Saturday. That is not an unusual amount for Pittsburgh in February. But it really started coming down, so Annie dropped me off at the hotel and headed home. Here is what it looked like at about 4PM Friday:
Scott had just arrived at the hotel from his appointment, and we agreed that we should just order some pizza and stay in that night due to the impending storm. Well, little did we know that it would soon get worse. By 7PM, THIS is what the parking lot looked like:
By the time the storm was over the next morning, 22 inches of snow had fallen in downtown Pittsburgh. EVERYTHING was cancelled, including Aunt Betty's suprise 90th birthday party. NOTHING was open. Snow was everywhere, and it was VERY cold and windy. Since there was no restaurant in our hotel we decided to walk around the strip district to see what might be open for lunch/dinner. No sidewalks were plowed, and since we no longer own snow boots, we had to brave the elements in the shoes we had with us. Mine were clogs!!!! (Note to all: not a good shoe for the snow!) We walked several blocks - literally walking in the street - to find everything closed, including McDonalds. Since it was getting cold and our search for food seemed to be in vain, we turned down a street to go back to our hotel. And around that corner was the most beautiful site - AN OPEN RESTAURANT!!! And not just any restaurant, it was the world famous PRIMANTI BROTHERS!!! This has been featured on all the food programs. It is where you order what meat you want on your sandwich, and the rest is what makes this special: it is served on mancini bread (a pgh tradition) with vinegar slaw and french fries ON THE SANDWICH!!! Very interesting. This was the first time I had ever been there. Scott loved it, but I ordered chili as I did not think that kind of sandwich was my cup of tea. I did taste Scott's. It had kolbassi on it, which made it totally Pittsburgh for me!


We stayed there for hours, as we had no where to go and nothing else to do. It was great fun and reminded us of neighborhood dives we would visit when we were in college. Finally, it was time to leave, and it had gotten colder and windier by that time. And dark. Once again we had to walk in the street. The slush that we had walked in earlier in the day had turned a bit icy in the hours we were in Primanti Brothers. On the way back to the hotel, we saw this lone car parked across the street from our hotel. That was also what our rental car looked like in the parking lot, with snow depth well above the bottom of the car doors.




Oh - and while we were in Primanti's, Southwest Airlines called to let us know that our flight back to Nashville on Sunday (superbowl sunday, I might add) was cancelled. Scott called them and they said they could get us out MONDAY, as they had cancelled all flights out of Pittsburgh for both Saturday and Sunday. SO - intrepid traveler that he is, Scott set to work on the phone to figure out how to get us home on Sunday. Eventually he got us on flights out of Cleveland on Sunday. It seemed that EVERYTHING on the east coast was a mess for travel that weekend, so I was grateful that Scott finagled this. We drove to Cleveland on Sunday, taking our time. The roads OUTSIDE of PA were fine; the further north we went, the snow depths diminished rapidly. Our flight was totally full, and half of it with folks who had also been cancelled by Southwest for Pittsburgh departure. In the midst of all this, my sister sent me this weather forecast map, which sent us into wild laughter -We finally got home in time for SOME of the SuperBowl. It was good to be home. I had a bit of dough in the fridge when I got home, so I made some pepperoni rolls. They were so yummy, but I forgot to take a picture of them.

Next post will be very soon, with several loaves to discuss.

Not bread, but fun anyway

So I haven't made bread in a few days. That gorgeous loaf of pumpernickel has lasted 3, onto 4, days now. And Scott and I are going to Western PA tomorrow for business/ Aunt Betty's 90th birthday celebration tomorrow, so no bread will be made until Monday. Sorry

However, I now want to introduce you to my other passions, one at a time. First - movies. Let it be said that I have now seen most movies that are nominated for academy awards for 2010. As of today, I believe The Hurt Locker will win best picture. Hands down. However, it is not my favorite movie of the year. That would be An Education. Anyway, I will be seeing Crazy Heart and Avatar next week, and that may change my mind. I doubt it, but am leaving my options open.

The next passion I have is well prepared food. Love it. Nothing from a box. All prepared from scratch from the best ingredients I can find. And seriously, I don't think that is as expensive as it sounds. For example - I make all my own salad dressings. Period. And I am happy that I know how to do that. EVERYONE loves my salads. I also use local ingredients whenever possible, and in TN, that is a vast treasure trove of goodies year-round. More about cooking later.

Finally, I have a passion for really good wine, particularly red wine. I have been to Napa/Sonoma a few times and am always impressed with what I learn there. We have a small cellar of some really special wines, but I am always open to finding that special low price value that is out of this world. For me right now, that is Marietta Old Vines No. 49. Please go look for it. Priced at about 11.99, it tastes like a 40.00 bottle. Let me know what you think.....

No Bread Today

Today is another snow day for Williamson County Schools. Since all my kids have all graduated from HS this usually wouldn't affect me, but as Abbe is a teacher this frees her up to tend to some of the planning details for her wedding in June. SO - today we met with a "cake lady" who gave us tons of samples and information....almost too much. It made me appreciate the SIMPLE nature of bread making as opposed to cake making! We are in the process now of figuring out which of the "cake ladies" with whom we have met that we want to hire.

SO - no bread today. CAKE decisions are being made instead.

Tomorrow I will be making pumpernickel raisin walnut bread. Stay tuned.....

Maiden Voyage, continued

We had a major winter storm on Friday and Saturday here in Middle Tennessee. Several inches of snow, followed by about an inch of ice. Everything is quite beautiful, as we are not used to snow that sticks and provides us with such pristine landscapes. However, the roads are still quite icy, and the temperatures will stay below freezing for at least another day. All churches in our area cancelled services for today, and I am fairly certain that our local schools will cancel for tomorrow. SO - whilst being snowed in, we are enjoying hunkering down by the fire with reading materials, homemade soups, and freshly made breads. Today I made a loaf of light whole wheat bread (which is my profile picture on this blog) and have a large loaf of pumpernickel almost finished baking as I write this.

This bread baking thing happened only a few weeks ago. I have always enjoyed cooking, and have been fairly successful at those endeavors. However, I have tried over the years to make good bread (GOOD bread, the kind that crunches when you bite into it and has a lovely crumb inside) over the years with less than stellar results, no matter what I did. Then one day a few weeks ago, we went to our friends house for dinner. I had made chicken parmesan, Lisa had made salad and bread. AND THE BREAD WAS BEAUTIFUL!!! Like BAKERY bread. Like OLD WORLD bread. And it tasted as good as it looked.

So I had to know her secret. And now you will know it, too. It is the method taught in the fabulous book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day, by Hertzberg and Francois. Basically, a very wet dough is stirred together (one bowl, no kneading, no fuss), allowed to raise at room temp for a few hours, and stored in the fridge for up to 14 days. Bread baking daily is then made simple: A lump of dough the size of a grapefruit is cut from the bowl of dough, then it is lightly floured, hand - turned into a little loaf, placed gently upon a cornmeal crusted pizza peel, and left to rest 40 minutes. A baking stone is placed in the oven to warm up as the oven does. Once all is in readiness, the dough is placed in the oven on the stone, a cup of hot water placed in a pan on the shelf below the bread, and the oven door quickly closed. Baking time is about 30 minutes, depending on type of bread being made. Thats it.

Please look up this book on Amazon. It will change your (bread baking) life. Meanwhile, enjoy this photo of the pumpernickel that has just come out of the oven.