Biscuits, Anyone?

Baking Powder Biscuits

I thought I'd share my biscuit recipe with you since I tempted you with all of those other goodies I made this past weekend. I've used the same recipe from my Betty Crocker Cookbook for years. However, I got to experimenting a little and made a better tasting biscuit, IMHO. ; )

Michelle's Baking Powder Biscuits

2 cups white flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup of plain yogurt or buttermilk or sour cream
3/4 cup of milk
3 tablespoons of butter
3 tablespoons of shortening (looks like lard stuff)

Mix all of the dry ingredients together. Add butter and shortening and cut into flour mixture until it is very well dispersed. You shouldn't see any large lumps in the flour. Add milk and either plain yogurt or buttermilk or sour cream. I like using yogurt or buttermilk. Stir until blended. Turn out onto floured surface. Fold and press dough upon itself 5 or 6 times. This will make layers. Cut and place onto an ungreased baking sheet. I use a flat pizza stone. Bake at 425 degrees F for about 20 minutes. The biscuits will be nicely browned when done.

Enjoy!

Busy Weekend!

This weekend I put food into the freezer. Woo hoo!!! What I do is pre-make food and put it into the freezer for using later. I like to do this every so often so we can have a variety of foods to warm up during the week. That way I don't have to do so much work during the week. This should last us about a month. I think you'll agree that I've really been busy!

I started on Saturday by making garlic and cheddar biscuits. Then I made Spanish Rice with rice left over to make Peppered Rice on Sunday. Then I made stuffed shells, gnocchi, cookies, banana bread. I pre-freeze the stuffed shells and gnocchi so I can put them into a container and they don't stick together when I pull them out of the freezer. It takes a little time, but it's worth it to be able to get just what I need out of the freezer.

Gnocchi

Today, I finished off by making the Peppered Rice, meatballs and cheater stuffed cabbage. In between making all of this, I made bread dough for dinner rolls, pepperoni rolls and cinnamon pull-apart. This just finished baking a few minutes ago. I'll break apart the rolls and slice the pepperoni rolls to put into the freezer for later. Pre-cooking foods is the way to go, in my book! It helps out so much.

Rolls

Cheater Stuffed Cabbage

Pepperoni Roll

I make all of this and then I portion it out so we don't have to eat so much at one time. It's just two of us and we both have special diets. So it's really necessary that we eat foods that we can control. For Hubby, we watch starch per his doctor. For me, we watch chemicals because this is what I've found to exacerbate my health problems. Even though I make some starchy items, Hubby can eat as long as we monitor everything with his glucose meter. And I just watch everything else to make sure I don't create any electrical problems for myself. The best part is I control everything that goes into our bodies with what I make. Pardon me, but health problems really suck! I have really been blessed by God with my knowledge of cooking. We are both fortunate for this ability!

Here is my recipe for Cheater Stuffed Cabbage, that's what I call it. We had this for dinner tonight.

1# ground beef
1/2# smoked sausage - sliced into 1/2" rounds
1/2 chopped cabbage
1/2 chopped onion
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 8 oz. can water
1/2 or 1 14 oz. can of sauerkraut, drained
Salt and pepper

Brown ground beef and smoked sausage. Add onions, cabbage, tomato sauce, the tomato sauce can full of water and the sauerkraut. This should be enough water because the cabbage and onions will give up a lot of water when cooked. Cover and cook on low, stirring every so often to mix ingredients. When everything is cooked, salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot. Makes 4 servings.

Note: I left some sausages whole for Hubby's sandwiches for lunch. If you like kraut, add the whole can. If not, you can use 1/2 can or omit the kraut, totally. There will be a flavor difference if you omit the kraut! 

I hope you enjoyed today's post. Take care.

Michelin Stars?

Look what I found hanging in my kitchen!

My Michelin's

I've got a 5-star kitchen! Who needs Michelin reviews?

This is another idea I got from Trash2Treasure, the site by AJ mentioned in my last post. I got 2 pieces of crappy wood rescued from our burn pile, which my hubby gave me really strange looks for. Then, I dry-brushed on the blue base color, then stenciled the stars and painted 'kitchen'. At first I was going to make some beachy-looking signs for my bathroom revamp. I did the stars first. Hmmm, I thought of Michelin stars and decided to promote my kitchen to a 5-star kitchen without the help of Michelin. My kitchen has earned this distinction, IMHO. ; ) Maybe next time I'll make a sign for the bathroom.

One of my favorite things to do in life is to cook. In fact, I just finished cooking for this week's meals. I do this on Sundays since I don't feel like doing much during the week after work. My lineup today was pork steaks in saurkraut, lentil salad, macaroni salad and macaroni with meat sauce. I'll make a greens salad tomorrow and we'll take a little of this and that to make our meals for the week. I also have potato soup, which I made last Thursday, in sealed containers in the fridge. I think this will hold us for a few days.

Take care.

Stop by again.

Soaping

I am almost out of soap. I use homemade soap to wash my hair and the rest of me. I love the lather I get from homemade soap. If you've never tried any, you ought to invest in a bar. I guarantee you'll become a 'soap snob' like me. That's what the hard-core soapmakers call those who won't use anything but gentle, homemade soaps.

Soaping Supplies

I like to make my soap because I love the chemistry of it. I enjoy figuring out which oils to use and how much lye to use. It's really cool to do, but very dangerous to do. If you look, you'll see my goggles and dust mask to protect me from the airborne lye particles. Lye can kill you if you inhale it. The lye is in the brown paper bag to the left of the gallon jug. By the way, the gallon jug is vinegar in case I get lye on my skin and need to neutralize it quickly.

The stick blender is for blending the oils and lye together until it reaches 'trace'. That's soap lingo for getting thick like pudding.

This picture shows me in the process of letting the lye mixture cook. I get to sit back a while and let it do its thing. I won't have to do anything for about 1/2 hour.

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!

Yogurt

Have you ever looked at yogurt and thought 'I can make this!'? I did that. The lovely internet has a bunch of recipes to make your own yogurt. I use it instead of sour cream for just about everything...biscuits, muffins, pancakes, cakes, etc. You get the same fluffy texture and flavor as with sour cream.

Here is my recipe. You have to follow the instructions or it won't work. The instructions are very simple.

You'll need:

Stainless steel saucepan to cook on the stove. 2 quart is best unless you make a half batch.

ORGANIC yogurt leftover from what you bought in the store. About 1/4 cup or 2 tbsp for a half batch.
NOTE: DON'T use anything other than organic! It will not work! There are too many gums added to regular yogurt to thicken the milk and to give a creamy mouth-feel to it.

Milk. 2% or Whole. Whole makes a thicker yogurt.

Cooking thermometer.

Stainless steel whisk.

Clean plastic containers with lids.

Warm place to put it.

How to do it!
Put 4 cups of milk in the 2 quart saucepan. For this batch, I used 2%.

Heat the milk to 190 degrees F. Use the thermometer to check the temp from time to time. Don't let it go over 190 degrees and don't quit before it reaches 190 degrees. Don't worry if the milk sticks to the bottom of the pan. Sometimes it will get a little brown.

Take the milk off of the stove and let it cool to 110 degrees F. Use the thermometer to check. Don't let the milk go under 110 degrees.

Add yogurt. Whisk with whisk until you see no lumps.

Put milk into plastic containers and put on the lids.

Put containers in a warm place until they coagulate. You can be creative in how you process the yogurt.
You can wrap them in a towel and place them on a low heating pad.
You can preheat an oven to a temp of about 100 degrees F. Turn off the oven and wrap containers in a towel and put on the rack. Leave the door closed.
Wrap them in towels and put in the sun. Do not expose the milk to the sunlight.
*My favorite...I put them in my microwave with the night light on underneath. This stays just warm enough. If I put it in there at night, by morning I have yogurt. DO NOT MICROWAVE YOGURT. Take out the yogurt if you need to use the microwave. You can always put it back in.

**TIP: Put the yogurt in small containers or you'll have to wait forever for the center to set up.

Here's the lovely stuff! My homemade yogurt in a 1 cup container. I can't call it organic because I have store milk in it. I don't know what hormones are added to the milk. If you use organic milk, you'll be better off. However, 1/2 gallon of organic milk in my area is $5 for a 1/2 gallon! At this time, I can't afford that.

The taste is totally different from store bought! Yum!

Cooking for Freezing

It's been a while since I've posted here. The reason is that I've had a short stay in the hospital and I couldn't get up and about very well until lately. What I'd like to tell you about is a real life saver for the family. Since I knew I would be out of commission for a few days, I prepared freezable meals that could be heated up by anyone in the family. Actually, it's just me and my wonderful hubby. He benefited from the preparation because he had to prepare the meals until I could stand on my own.

First, I prepared two rice dishes - peppered rice and Spanish rice. I divvied them out into quart bags and that gave me one serving for the day I made it and two servings to go into the freezer. This was for both of them which ended being 4 quart bags of sides. Rice freezes really well as a prepared dish or plain cooked rice.

I made a large amount of macaroni and cheese. We had one dish for dinner and I divvied the rest into glass loaf pans and put them into the freezer. This gave us three loaves of mac and cheese to reheat.

Then I made chili. One quart and one pint went into the freezer.

Next was chicken and dumplings. I made the first night's dinner with dumplings and the frozen portions were frozen without dumplings. I had one quart left to put into the freezer after the dinner. I taught my hubby to make cheater dumplings using store-bought biscuits in a tube, when it came time to eat.

I also made small meat loaves that cooked in about an hour. Hubby likes meatloaf for dinner and cold on sandwiches. This made it easy for him to prepare his lunch for work, too.

I made pizza shells with a quick dough recipe. I keep all of the fixin's on hand so hubby can make a pizza all by himself.

I made dozens of cookies that we could set out if company came to visit. Oh well, we didn't have too much company. The cookies were good!

In the freezer, I also had a steak, some hot dogs and hamburgers, kielbasa and a few other things that could be fried on the stove quickly.

This was enough food for us for about 3 weeks of eating. My WONDERFUL hubby was able to come home from work and throw something in the oven or the microwave for us for dinner.

Preparing food ahead is a really good idea even when you're not expecting to be laid up for a while. Frozen food comes in handy when you've had a busy day and don't feel like cooking. Throw a few things in the oven or microwave and you'll have really good meals without buying expensive TV dinners.

I hope you enjoyed this post.

Can't Sleep

HELP! I've gotten up in the middle of the night and can't sleep! I guess it's a sign of getting older. YIKES!

What better thing to do than update the blog?!

Thanksgiving day, we had a bunch of relatives over for dinner. This is my holiday to cook for everyone. We even had a few extra people at our table this year. We had a really lovely time. I also invited the neighbors next door to come over for dessert. They are an older couple and are really interesting to talk to. They are like an extra set of parents for Hubby and me. We keep an eye on them to make sure they stay healthy. All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better Thanksgiving day.

Speaking of desserts...

Here's my Thanksgiving lineup: yellow bundt cake was made into a banana cream cake. Middle left pic is a cherry and blackberry pie, middle right is pumpkin. Top left pie is apple and top right is peach. I also made a banana cream pie, which was in the fridge. They all turned out well and I didn't have too much left over as most people took extras home.

As I shopped for ingredients for dinner, I noticed something. Reddi Whip (cream...not oil...LOL) was a reasonable price for a large cylinder this year. I paid $1.98. Last year, I couldn't touch it for less than $4.99! Of course, I didn't buy any last year. I used Cool Whip. I try not to use too many things laden with food additives because we don't tolerate them too well in our home. So, I was very excited to get the Reddi Whip.

Did you see the afghan in the previous post? Mom loved it! Now, my brother would like one for his home. I am starting on it. It is a coffee bean brown with baby blue stripes. I'll put a pic of it on this blog as soon as I get it done.

Take care and happy holidays!

Happy Birthday Hubby!

Do you think my hubby deserves this???

OH YEAH! He's been a really good hubby this past year.

This is his favorite cake - Mahogany Chiffon with icing. This is totally made from scratch and well worth the effort.

He informed me he likes a buttercream icing better than a ganache. Oh well. There's next year.

Happy Birthday, Honey!

Love from your devoted wife,

Michelle