Sloppy Joes and Roast Potatoes

Today's blog is a mix of days. I try to take pictures every time I make something. I found I was making such simple things that didn't require a lot of photos so I am going to combine two of those right now.  I didn't make these for the same meal but I totally would if the mood struck me. I also want to say that I ALWAYS add veggies to my sloppy joes. There is just something wrong to me about a ton of meat, sauce, and bread. These are way too filling to pair with much of anything else so the most logical thing, to me anyway, is to load up the meat with veggies. I do warn against adding green peppers unless you really love green peppers. They tend to overpower all the other flavours and it just doesn't taste quite the same.

This is a pretty typical mix for me. One large onion, 1/4 or more of a pepper and a couple stalks of celery including the leafy tops. This all goes in with about 500g of ground beef. The leaner the better as this can get unsightly if there is too much fat floating around. Not to mention, unhealthy.

Now, this is why this is such a photoless recipe, it's so simple! A spice packet and can of tomato paste plus about a cup of water. Follow the packet directions. I do find that I like to add a bit more water to keep the saucy mess from sticking in my pan and becoming like paste.

Once the sauce has thickened it's ready to serve. I generally have homemade buns around and serve these on a buttered toasted bun.

As the weather has been getting warmer I have been finding any excuse to fire up the BBQ. These are a favourite of ours. Mine, because they are so easy to make, Phoenix's because he get's his own package, and they are just so tasty!

If you are making these for a lot of people you can do up a couple big packets and go from there instead of making one for every person. There are only three of us in my house so it was easy to make one for each of us.  

I find that we can eat about 6 new potatoes each or 1 medium potato worth each. Cut the new potatoes in half or thirds if necessary. Try to get them all the same size so they cook in the same time. Chop some onion and throw some in each package. Mushrooms and garlic are also welcome additions. Each person could season their own package too if they really wanted to get fancy. We don't, lol.

Now season liberally with salt and pepper. Dob some butter or margarine on top. It will help them cook and make those potatoes so good. Substitute olive oil, coconut oil, anything you want really.

Now seal up the package. These will be getting turned on the BBQ so be sure to seal the ends well to keep the butter from leaking out and causing flare ups, plus lost flavour! (oh no!)

We have this handy tray for the BBQ that I throw all the packages on. If you don't have one of these, don't worry just put the packages on medium high heat for about 30 minutes. Turn occasionally so nothing burns. These are best kept warm on a top rack in the BBQ when the steaks go on so they cook all the way through. They can also be done in the oven at about 400 F.

We enjoy these with sour cream, green onions, chives, bacon bits, pretty much anything we have on hand.

Sarah's Slow Cooker Pork

We went early to the airport on Saturday to pick up Chris and had a bit of extra time to look around. We found dinosaurs, Chris (eventually), and not much else.

A big one.

A little one, looking scared and a Phoenix.

Phoenix making faces.

Towers of luggage.

Despite travelling back from Germany and being jet lagged, Chris managed to get the beer started on Sunday. There will be more on that in the weeks to come. Here is a teaser.

 A really big pot.

A few things to go in.

Munich Helles of course.  What other type of beer would we make?

I will be taking more pictures and doing a proper post on the beer making process and will keep you updated through the weeks until it's finally time to taste. I can't wait!

Last week, a friend sent me a recipe to try. Naturally, I did. It called for stove top dressing which I don't buy so I looked up a recipe for it. This recipe ended up being pretty tasty!  You can find it here. This was also a perfect way for me to use up some bread that was going a bit stale too!

I started by basically making croutons.  I cubed up some bread and put it into the oven for about 10 minutes.

While, the bread was in the oven I mixed together the spices.

This calls for a few things but it was worth it. I didn't have sage so I just used poultry seasoning.

Let the croutons cool.

Put everything into a container with a lid.

Shake it up.  Simple right?

I had pulled out a pork roast and I cut into chops.

The pork goes into the slow cooker with one can of mushroom soup and one can of milk.

Top with two cups of stuffing mix.

Set it to cook for 5 hours.  I did it on high.

The pork will be falling apart, it's so tender. The sauce is rich and flavourful, the stuffing on top is soft and crunchy and so good!  I served this with a little rice and a nice salad.

Thanks for the yummy recipe Sarah!  Phoenix and I loved it and I would definitely make this again.

What Do You Do With Stale Bread?

I have been keeping myself busy this week making food for this blog and being sure to take lots of pictures. We also have some random stuff gearing up too. I have signed up for the cat foster program with Mississauga Animal Services. We have our home inspection coming up and will probably have a feline guest soon after.  

We have a fish tank. It's empty, but it's getting ready for fish this coming week.

My sourdough turned out tasty.

And my floor garden in the kitchen is green and growing.  It's too cold yet, but I expect these will end up out on the balcony at some point instead of my floor.  We stole their table for the fish tank.

Look at that garlic shoot!  There is some ginger sprouting along side it. Even the celery is getting crazy. The grasshead got a haircut too.

Now back to bread. I have been making a lot of bread. More than we can eat but we still need fresh bread sooooo what to do with the stale ends? Well I have frozen some for making stuffing and I have made bread crumbs and put those in the freezer. I'm running out of room in my freezer. I have composted way too much.  Finally, I found a couple solutions that don't go in the freezer.  I already made croutons that were great.  I'll be making those again.  

I often make breakfast, even during the week, but I rarely make french toast. Chris is usually the one that makes this dish and I have just left it to him, he's good at it. He is still away in Germany until tomorrow so I figured I would give it my own spin.

I was cooking for just Phoenix and myself so I broke two eggs into a shallow pan.  In this case, a pie dish. I added milk, vanilla, and lots of cinnamon.

I sliced my bread a bit thicker than usual and soaked it in the egg mixture on both sides.

Now onto the breakfast grill or frying pan.  Add a bit of butter if you want.  My grill is non-stick and I didn't add anything.

Cook evenly on both sides. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and drizzle with syrup. It's crisp on the outside, moist inside and sweet all over. It's way more delicious than the slightly dry stale bread it started as.

I am also making a recipe that my friend Sarah sent me that is using up more bread! The recipe called for stove top stuffing, which I don't have, so I made some. It's delicious. My kitchen smells so good right now. I'm liking this! What do you do with stale bread??

What happened to my sourdough starter?

What is growing in my kitchen? It's a sourdough! Well the starter anyway.  I have never worked with this type of bread before and it is such a weird thing.  It started out as goopy dough that could have been made into bread with just a couple cups more of flour.  But instead, I let it sit out in a warm place, as per directed, and put into the fridge over night.  I watched it with great curiosity throughout the day and much skepticism as it bubbled and frothed away.

This afternoon I was ready to bake.  I pulled out my starter, let it sit while I gathered a few other things and got started.  My recipe called to use 1 1/2 cups of starter two cups of flour and some salt.  I go at the starter with a measuring cup... umm no.  What in the hell is that thing in there?  The top bubbly/frothy layer stuck to the cup and tore back in long dangling tentacles of slimy looking dough only to reveal cloudy fluids underneath.  Uh, what. the. hell?  Is it supposed to look like this?  It certainly smelled as described when I tried to google what a sourdough starter should look like but it didn't say anything else about what it would actually look like.

This is my first experience with this and I have to say I was not prepared.  Do I mix the starter?  Do I just try to get equal parts tentacles and slime?  Back to the recipe for answers, it had none.  I can only assume that they assume that I would know what it should look like.  I looked back into the bowl, now what?  I grabbed a spoon and dug in.  There was a thick, sticky sludge on the bottom of the bowl that did nothing to lesson the ick factor of the stuff on top.  I mixed (I use this term loosely) it together as best as I could and started scooping.  It was more like wrestling long elastic slugs into the cup then quickly into the bowl of my stand mixer before they could escape.

According to the sourdough recipe, I had only to add salt, flour, mix, and bake.  It sounded so simple.  Well after the shock about the starter... it turns out I forgot to let it warm up for a couple hours so my starter dough was VERY cold.  This basically turned the bread dough into a hard cold lump of dough in the mixer.  As it was mixing, it sounded just like a pair of shoes crashing around in the dryer.  Not good.  I got scared and added a splash of water before I touched the dough to check for stickiness.  It was pretty sticky but mostly I was shocking by how cold it was.  I always start my dough for bread with warm water and expect dough to be slightly warmer than room temperature.  Well, now I was sure I had ruined my sourdough experiment but there was no going back.

I let it sit in a warm spot for a couple of hours.  I couldn't tell if it had doubled but it was bigger and I was worried that it was unevenly mixed, it was.  I stuck it back onto the mixer for a few tries with the dough hook and gave it a bit of a mix.  Of course, I had oiled the boil so the dough just sloshed around in the bowl merrily slapping the sides but not mixing.  Stupid.  Anyway, I took it out and formed it into a ball by hand and figured I might as well bake it.  It clearly was doing something as it had formed lots of bubbles all through the dough.

The recipe called for a baking stone for the oven and cornmeal for the pan.  I had exactly none of both of those so I improvised.  I'm sick of my bread sticking (it has been happening a lot to me lately) so I couldn't risk just putting the dough straight on the pan.  I liberally floured the pan, plunked my smelly unusual dough into the flour and set a pan of water into the over to provide moisture.  It had occurred to me that I don't know what I'm doing.  I get my oven preheated and stick the dough in.  For better or worse it is baking.

It actually looked amazing when I checked on it!

I was listening to a Webinar when I put this into the oven and I had no idea what time it went in.  I hope it is done because I took it out after what I think was the required hour.  Some days I have it together, some days I don't.  Today, I was winging it.

You cannot tell from these pictures but this is an ugly loaf, it just has a very pretty side.  I didn't get the ends sealed underneath before baking thanks to all the oil it was coated with but you cannot tell unless you look at it from the bottom.  Nobody eats bread from the bottom anyway!

The best part, it didn't stick!

  As soon as the bread started to cool it was making these cracking noises... what is that about?  I guess the crust is cooling but my other breads don't make noises...  Also, I just realized that I didn't let the bread rise a second time.  Doh, well the only direction is up from here.  This was my first sourdough experience and I think it might have been a success but I'm really not sure until I taste it.

Mug Cookie and Croutons From Stale Bread

Obviously, I don't intent to eat these two together and, in fact, I never even made them on the same day.  As you may remember, yesterday I was eating croutons in Campbell's tomato soup.  I have had this reoccurring issue every week of what to do with my bread after a few days.  I have been trying a few different bread recipes, incorporating whole wheat flour, and just trying to find that perfect bread recipe.  And all I have really found out is that I have already perfected my bread recipe and all the others aren't holding up to it.  This means that I have bread going stale every week and I need to find something to do with it.

To further my bread problems, today, I'm making sour dough bread.  The creature growing on my counter yesterday was the starter.

It looks like a hot mess but I hope it will be delicious.

I am officially out of yeast as of this starter yesterday so, naturally, I ordered some from a company online instead of just getting more at the store.  I ordered two kinds of instant yeast from the Vanilla Food Company, red and gold.  The product descriptions are here.  Yeast is the most expensive part of making plain bread so I figured it was time to go bulk.  I bought two pounds of yeast for only double the same amount I was paying for a small bottle in the stores.

Every now and then I get a fierce craving for something sweet.  It is usually in the evening so I try not to indulge but sometimes the craving is strong than me.  Introducing, Mug Cookies.  I experimented with mug cakes while I was in Germany and had varied success but they had one big problem, they were big.  Too big.  They required an egg and multiple people to be down for some dessert which was harder to come by than you realize.  This recipe requires neither.  No egg, no partner in crime.

In a microwave safe mug, melt butter or margarine.

Add in the white and brown sugar, flour, baking soda, vanilla, and salt if you used unsalted butter.  Skip the salt if you used margarine or salted butter.

Mix well.  You will have a shiny doughy looking paste.  Now toss in some chocolate chips.  You can mix or just let them sit on top like I did here.

Microwave for 20 - 30 seconds and test.  You can eat this as gooey as you can get it since there is no egg.  Just cook the raw flour taste out and you are golden.  The recipe is here and I provided a photo of the recipe below.  It is way too easy and accessible, it's perfect.  Once you make this a couple times you will have it memorized.  Unless, you are me, then you will always need to check the recipe.

Look at that!  If you don't cook it too long it is like warm cookie dough.  If you cook it a bit longer it hardens up a bit into a warm cookie.  Don't over cook!  You want it to look really soft and gooey still.  It will be SCREAMING hot when it comes out, let it cool a bit before that first bite.

Now, because mug cookies are so straight forward and simple, they don't require a lot of photos or make much of a blog post so I'll tell you how I used up my stale loaf ends.  Every week I have bread that goes stale.  I make one loaf a week and we rarely finish it before it gets hard.  I have been freezing my crusts in preparation for stuffing.  I have made bread crumbs.  I have composted too much bread.  Finally, I realized I should make croutons (thanks Tipsy Baker).  I love croutons.  I love salad with croutons, soup with croutons, onion soup (easily made with croutons) I don't know why I didn't think of this myself.  Some day I might make bread pudding and french toast.  Those are on my to-do with stale bread list now.

I had about three thick slices worth of bread and the crusty end.  I cut this into bite-sized cubes.  I didn't want my mouth shredded by trying to bite a big hunk of dry bread so I made them a bit smaller than one inch square.

I was going to make them plain but why?  Peel some garlic.

Smash up that garlic how ever you do and get it heating in some oil in a large pan for about 30 seconds.

Toss in your stale bread cubes and toss well to even coat the bread until it soaks up all the garlic oil.  Season with salt and toss again.

Pop the lot onto a tray and into the oven for 10 minutes at 325F until they are completely dry and slightly toasted.  They will be sort of soft, chewy, and slightly crunchy when warm but they will get harder and even more crunchy as they cool.  Serve in place of crackers with soups or in salads.  I added a handful at a time to my mug of soup because I like that perfect moment between crunchy and soggy when the crouton has soaked up the soup but is still crisp when you bite into it.  So good!  These can be stored for weeks in a cookie tin as per the Tipsy Baker.

What do you do with your left-over, less than oven fresh bread?