Cooking for the Week

Here's what I do on Sundays. I know...day of rest. For me, cooking is fun. I don't consider it a chore.

I make dishes I can serve up quickly for the rest of the week. After two days, the leftovers go in the freezer for later. This helps out when I can't make something because of appointments.

White rolls. Here's my story with this. I've made bread for about 15 years now. I can never get it just right. My crumb is too coarse and the roll falls apart when you eat it. When we went on vacation, I bought a loaf of bread made by an Amish woman. It was heavenly! When I cut it, it was so light and airy I thought it would float away. Literally. It was moist, cut well and made great sandwiches. No dry crumbs with her bread. It had a nice shape. The top was rounded and high. Beautiful!

Now I had something to stack mine against. I knew it could be done and this Amish woman was a master of the bread baking. I went home and got out my recipe. I read the general directions for bread and I found no more clues. OK. I'm doomed to make lousy bread. Wrong! The thing I have never done is kneaded the heck out of it and get as much flour in it as possible before the dough rips. Bingo!!! It worked. I have light and fluffy bread rolls that are moist and tender and stay together. Ta da! 

 Croatian potato salad. It's simple and a lot less fat. Cook your potatoes like normal. Cut them and put into a bowl with some onions. I decided to use red onions for color. I usually use what's on hand and that is white onions. I love the onions from the garden and I chop the green tops into the salad for color. Waste not! Vinegar, oil, salt, pepper and about two tablespoons of Italian dressing for extra flavor. I give the Italian dressing a squirt, which is probably more than two tablespoons. The longer it sets, the better it is. I like it cold, but you can eat it warm, too.

 Pulled pork butt from the crock pot. Hubby loved it this time. It's usually pretty dry. This time, it was just right. It went great with the white bread rolls.

And, with some of the white bread dough, I made pepperoni and mozzarella rolls. You can cheat with this and used thawed, frozen bread dough. Roll out dough. Line up the pepperoni along one end. I used sandwich pepperoni. Add mozzarella. Roll. Rise. Bake. This time, I laid out the pepperoni and mozzarella over about 2/3 of the surface of the dough before rolling. It made a nice streak of meat and looks good for presentation. You can use any dry type of meat for this. Don't use cooked ham! It's too wet and makes a soggy heavy mess of the bread. Dry Virginia baked ham with cheese is good. The other Italian deli meats are probably good, too. Prosciutto, cappacola, sopressata, etc. Not cheap. Wouldn't a nice calzone be good with this dough? Hmmm.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my food prep for last week. Take care.

Have a simple day!