Homemade Honey Whole Wheat bread with flax seed
Recipe (I can't remember what website it came from...)
2 packages (5 tsp) dry yeast
2 cups milk, heated to lukewarm
1/4 cup honey
2 large eggs
6-7 cups wholewheat flour
2 tsp salt
6 TB butter, softened
In a large bowl, sprinkle yeast over milk and let stand for several minutes until dissolved. Beat in honey and eggs. Stir in 6 cups flour, salt and butter to make a rough dough. Scoop dough onto a lightly floured board or countertop. Knead until smooth and elastic, adding more flour as necessary, about 6-8 minutes.
Put dough in a lightly oiled bowl, swish to lightly coat dough all around, and cover with a damp towel. Place in a warm spot to rise until doubled in bulk, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Punch down, cut dough in half and roll each lump of dough into a log shape. Pat into 2 greased loaf pans, cover and let rise again until doubled in size, 45-60 min. Preheat oven to 375, then bake loaves for 35-40 minutes. Let cool for 5-10 minutes on a rack, then tip loaves out of pans to finish cooling.
Note: If you want the bread to rise slower (if you're going to be out of the house for several hours, for example), use only 1 package of yeast and put the dough in a room-temp or cool spot to rise.
This was my first attempt at bread and I must say I was surprised at how easy it is. I was sure it would come out in a lumpy giant brick, but it didn't. I did have some help from my handy KitchenAid mixer ( I used it to knead... it took roughly half the kneading time listed). I did make a few changes to this recipe. For the flour I added 3.5 whole wheat flour, .5 cup ground flax seed, 2 cups bread flour. For kneading I also used bread flour.
Tyler loves this bread. He says that he never wants to eat store bought bread again (Oh dear... what have I done?). We have been eating it with apple butter, made it into grilled cheese and used it for delecious chicken salad sandwhiches. All applications have come out well.
Caramel Crunch Apple Pie (From Owensboro Jr. League Cookbook - the black one)
Homemade Vegatable Soup and Grilled Cheese (made with homemade Honey Whole Wheat)
Vegatable Pie with homemade cornbread crust
Recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/FARMLAND-VEGETABLE-PIE-243173
This pie is really time consuming, but worth it. It is the perfect solution to a bag/box of homegrown veggies that will spoil before they can be eaten. Of course I didn't have one of those. Wish I did (does the Brooks farm ship overseas? Just kidding.) You can pretty much used whatever veggies you like. I hid some veggies that Tyler doesn't care for in the pie by chopping them into tiny pieces. I used sharp cheddar cheese instead of the fancy shmancy cheese the recipe called for. I put sharp cheddar in everything. I blame my parents. The weird thing about this pie is that it has hard boiled eggs in it. I found baked hard boiled egg to be odd, yet intriging which is why really tried this recipe to begin with. It turns out the eggs really make the pie - so if you like hard boiled eggs and veggies, you will like this. The combo of the warm veggies, cheese, eggs and cornbread is delightful. This is a great recipe to get a meat-a-holic (aka my husband) to eat a vegetarian (not vegan) meal.
Tyler about to dig in!
Tyler helping in the kitchen.
Crock Pot Gumbo
from: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/04/crockpot-gumbo-recipe.html
-4 cups of chicken broth
--1 cup of brown rice
--1 cup frozen okra
--1/2 cup frozen corn
--1/2 chopped yellow onion
--1 can tomatoes and juice
--4-5 fully cooked sausages
--1 1/2 cups frozen shrimp
The Directions:
--chop up your vegetables. I was using mostly frozen veggies, so only needed to chop the onion. If you have bell pepper, it would be a very nice addition.
--slice sausage into rounds
--dump everything into the crock, except for the frozen shrimp
--because the sausage has so much flavor, I opted to not season this any further. If you aren't sharing with children, you might want to add some additional cajun seasoning--your choice.
--cook on low all day, or on high for 4-6 hours. The longer soups and stews are cooked, the better. The rice will cook, and absorb a lot of the liquid, but it will still be soup-y. If you are putting this together the night before, don't add the rice until you are going to turn on the crock.
--20 min before serving, stir in the frozen shrimp
This is the easiest, non-weird ingredient gumbo recipe that I have found. Tyler adores gumbo and this recipe was no exception (he did a happy dance before dinner time). The only thing I changed when making this recipe was to add 1 tsp. of cajun seasoning (I used homemade that is extra spicy, so you might need more) and a handful of frozen peppers at the begining. I think it would have been way to bland without the spice. I also used turkey sausage instead of regular sausage.
If I made this again, I would change a few things. First of all the rice and the okra pretty much disapear if you put them in at the begining. Next time, I wouldn't add the rice to the crockpot, but would cook it separately then serve the gumbo over rice. Also I would add the okra during the last few hours so it gets cooked, but doesn't dissapear. The last change I would make would be to add two-three (depending on size) raw chicken breasts at the begining. At the end I would shread the chicken (you could also just cut it up into bit sized pieces at the begining and then not shread). This would replace the shrimp. Don't get me wrong, I loved the shrimp. It's just that shrimp is expensive and you have to remove the tails (or you can not remove them like I did because I'm lazy...errr I mean because it's "prettier" that way. Then your husband complains that he has to pick all the shrimp out and carefully eat around the tails). Next time it's chicken and separate rice.
Crock Pot Brocoli Cheese Soup
from: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/06/crockpot-broccoli-and-three-cheese-soup.html
--1 qt chicken broth (or vegetable)
--2 cups milk (I used 2% cow's)
--2 10 oz bags of frozen broccoli florets
--1/2 diced white onion
--1/2 t black pepper
--1/2 t kosher salt
--1/2 t ground nutmeg
--1 cup each of three different cheeses, I used jarlsberg, gruyere, and cheddar.
The Directions.
Mince the onion into really small pieces. I used my pampered chef chopper thingy. The onions are going to soften in the milk and the broth, and need to be quite small so you don't crunch on onion pieces when the soup is complete.
Add the onion to your crockpot, and top with the milk, broth, and spices. Stir in the two frozen bags of broccoli.
Cook on low for 7-9 hours, or on high for 4-6. The broth is done when the onion is cooked nicely.
20 minutes or so before serving, shred all the cheese you are going to use, and stir it in. The cheese will be stringy and will stick to the broccoli florets---that's okay!
This was almost yummy. It has good bones. The broth was really great, but I messed up the cheese. I don't know what I was thinking. I used regular kraft cheddar and monteray jack because lets face it I'm not going to spend $10 on cheese. The fancy cheese is good, but I'm perfectly happy paying for the cheap cheese . Not good this time. The kraft cheese just doesn't melt right. It was okay right out of the crock pot, but reheated it was a nightmare. No worries though. I know how to fix it. I haven't tried this yet, but I just know that it will work. Next time I make this I'm going to omit the fancy/different/non-melty cheeses and use Velveeta. Mmmm. It's going to be so good. And vegetarian....shhh don't tell Tyler.
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