Bread and Butter

A Loon's Spoon Post

I love French bread and I have almost got the process where I want it - thanks to the Master Recipe: Boule and directions in Jeff Hertzberg's and Zoe Francois' book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

In the morning I mix 6 cups lukewarm water, 1.5 tablespoons yeast, 1.5 teaspoons kosher salt and 6.5 cups of flour together right in my food storage container.

Then, I cover it and carry it into the Snuggery, this is the warmest room in the house and a great place to let the dough rise for 2 hours. The Snuggery is also my office and a favorite place for all 3 dogs to hang out when I'm working.  I am very careful to keep the dough away from the dogs and never leave the dogs and the dough alone - it's just not a good combination and I speak from experience.

After 2 hours or so the container is moved to the refrigerator until I want to use it.

Refrigerating the dough, for at lest 3 hours, makes it less sticky and a lot easier to work with.  About an hour and a half before I want to have warm bread I remove the dough from the refrigerator and form it into loaves.

I place the loaves on parchment paper and use perforated French bread pans that my mother-in-law, Gwen, gave me from Williams-Sonoma. Then, they go back to the Snuggery for 40 minutes to rise.  After about 20 minutes I preheat the oven to 450 degrees and place a low sided pan, I think it's the oven's broiling pan, on a low rack filled with water.  This will create a steam environment, which is GREAT for producing a crisp crust.

The dough goes into the oven for about 30 minutes.  First, I brush the loaves with tap water to help with a crusty crust.

After 30 minutes, or so, the bread comes out of the oven and is ready to eat.  WARNING: Keep it way far away from counter-surfing Weimaraners.  Again, speaking from experience, they have been know to take the whole loaf in the blink of an eye.

I love butter and on this point I agree with Julia.  Unfortunately, butter is not part of a plant-based diet.

Neither, is cream.

So, I decided to try one of the butter substitutes that have come out since my last round as a vegan.  Earth Balance products have received excellent reviews from the vegetarian/vegan communities.

I think I picked the wrong product.  I bought the sticks and they're more of a baking product.  It didn't taste so great spread on the bread.  Earth Balance offers a number of different spreads and I think that's the route I should have taken if I wanted to "butter" my bread.  

You know what? I've ALWAYS been a fan of olive oil.  Dipping French bread in plain or flavored olive oils beats butter in my book.

Sweet Potatoes and Tahini

A Loon's Spoon Posting

There is a lot of help online for vegans.  In just a few minutes I found some amazing blogs and recipe sites with beautiful pictures and easy recipes.  Just last night there was a Facebook post pointing me to the Top 50 Vegan Blogs.  One of the first blogs I ran across I really loved - great name, great photos, fun commentary and a mix of recipes - This Raswsome Vegan Life written by Emily, you can can her Em.  Her philosphy is similar to mine.  She writes, 

". . .With the knowledge I've learned about what animal products do to me, you, our earth, and our beloved fellow animals - I choose not to put anything that has caused suffering in my body. My lunch shouldn't require murder. In any case, humans can certainly thrive without eating animals. Being vegan simply means caring about others."

I found an easy recipe for baked yams and tahini on her blog and since I had some organic sweet potatoes just waiting around for something to do I decided to try it.

Well, the sweet potatoes were good, but I think I have to find a better tahini source.  It was thick and globby from a jar (I won't reveal the brand).  I  had a great tahini sauce from au Bon appetit that I brought back from Milwaukee, but it's all gone.

So, my sweet potatoes ended up like this - note the tahini glob on the top.

Again, the potatoes were great, but the drizzled tahani effect didn't work out and it didn't taste great.

Asher thought it was all great!

Black-Eyed Peas for Luck

When I went to school in Virginia I was introduced to a number of southern delicacies that I had never really considered before, including greens and black-eyed peas.  While the two are enjoyed throughout the year, they are required eating in many homes for the New Year. Both greens and peas are associated with money and are eaten to bring financial luck and good fortune.

Since I enjoy almost any dried legume I can find in the grocery store, cooking up a pot of black-eyed peas for New Year's seems like an easy way to guarantee a successful 2012.

I had a nice black-eyed pea recipe I acquired in Virginia, but I don't have it here. I remember it being fairly complicated with a lot of heat.  I decided to take a simple approach this year.

I pre-soaked and cooked a bag of dried black-eyed peas then I let them cool. If you cook the peas at a low simmer, rather than a boil, the skins won't burst.  I was not patient enough to do this.

I chopped, sauteed and browned an onion with 3 cloves of garlic. I added just a touch of diced serrano pepper, a couple of squirts of balsamic vinegar, thyme, oregano, and beer. After the flavors combined I stirred in the peas and this time I set it at a very low simmer.

When I was ready to eat I folded in some baby spinach leaves as I didn't have any "real" greens.  I think the spinach worked. If it doesn't bring financial riches I know it will bring strength and health - it did for Popeye.

The dogs need luck too. I mixed a handful of plain cooked black-eyed peas into their food - so now they're LUCKY DOGS!  They were lucky this morning, when they got to forgo their walk due to the low (-12 degrees) temperature.

lucky, sofa-sleeping, dogs

Happy Halloween

I know I said I wouldn't decorate the dogs, but I just couldn't resist.

Asher and Gracie

Maddie Jo

 I just put a little white paint on their faces and let them wear their Halloween neck gear.  It was so simple, and then the push back. . .

"Enough already!"
Gracie rubbing the paint off.

"Can't we just celebrate my birthday without dressing up?"

Halloween is Asher's birthday; this year he turned six.  After all the paint was washed off and the costumes were put away we got on with the celebration.

Jumping for cake.

Waiting to blow
out the candle.

Maddie Jo enjoys
her pupcake.

I baked pumpkin pupcakes for Asher's birthday. They were devoured - paper and all.

Asher's Pumpkin Pupcakes

1 16 oz can of pumpkin

2 cups cornbread mix

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 milk

1 egg

Mix the ingredients and fill 12 cupcake paper-lined tins.

Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Those were the treats for the dogs. Pete and I enjoyed the trick-o-treating candy. Sadly, there were no trick-or-treaters brave enough to come down Ashe Road.

Halloween Traditions

A ghostly dog.

Devilishly Good Eggs

The chickens have been laying eggs regularly. As you can see the blue/green eggs are about half the size of store-bought white eggs and Henrietta's brown egg is a little bit bigger than the blue/green eggs, but still smaller than those from the grocer.

Pete fixed some eggs with his hamburger the other day and didn't think they tasted any better or worse than store-bought. Well, the chickens are just beginners. I'm sure they will soon be producing eggs that will be sought out by gourmands around the world. In the meantime, we had enough to make a nice egg dish for us.

After some consideration, I decided deviled eggs would be a perfect dish for Halloween. I looked for a festive recipe online and was delighted by a site devoted to deviled eggs called The Deviled Egg Gourmet.  There are some great tips and tricks on preparing deviled eggs on this site.

I started cooking the eggs at the Savory Centre (the name of our stove) and perused the website for an interesting take on deviled eggs. There is a really good step-by-step guide for the best way to boil eggs on The Deviled Egg Gourmet as well.

In the end, I decided to combine a few recipes to make the egg yolks a little bit colorful with a slight bite.  I used pimento in hopes that the yellow would turn orange - that didn't happen. I added horseradish to spice up the taste - that was good. The spider tops are made from kalamata olives.

Henrietta's Halloween Deviled Eggs

6 hard boiled egg yolks

2 T mayonnaise

2 T finely chopped onion

2 T roasted red peppers

2 t horseradish

salt and pepper to taste

Mix ingredients and pipe or spoon into hard boiled egg whites. Top with slices of black olives.

Oh My, It's Pie

It started with a Granny Smith apple tree near Williams Electric and a little inspiration from Bayfield's Apple Festival.

Pete conferred with Gwen on an apple pie recipe and took off early Sunday to gather the ingredients from Snow's. We already had the apples from the tree beside Williams Electric.

Let the preparation begin!

Pete peeling apples.

Maddie Jo enjoys apple peelings.

Gracie thinks she
might enjoy one too.

Peelings for all pups.

Asher doesn't want
to be left out.

Preparing the crust.

Oh my, two pies.
One with lard, one without.

They went into the 400 degree oven for 15 minutes and then for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.  The house smelled heavenly. When they came out of the oven the dogs could not ignore them.

"Are these for us? One for you and one for me."

"No, little dogs, those aren't for you."

"I'm not looking at them."

"Maybe just a little taste."