Yummy Buttermilk Bran Muffins

During my growing up years, my mom would occasionally make up a batch of bran muffins.  The batter would sit in a big pitcher in the fridge and every morning, we would bake a batch for breakfast.  They were good with some jam on them, but I preferred them with just a big slab of butter tucked in there.

A few years ago, I was sorting through my mom's recipes, looking for old favorites to copy for my collection and I ran across this one.

I scanned it and saved it on my computer and then forgot about it.  Then, a week or so ago, I got a sudden craving for my mom's bran muffins.  I think it must be a winter thing... yummy, hot muffins on a cold morning...  So I pulled up the recipe, and then added some scary (to my husband) ingredients to my grocery list and I prepared to make me some muffins.  My husband was truly terrified to see All Bran and plain bran flakes in the cart.  And he was even more scared when he came home early and saw the nasty looking mixture of buttermilk and bran before I mixed in the flour.  I admit, it looked bad, but knowing that I love the product, I plowed on and made the muffins.
Except this recipe is for a large family of hungry eaters.  I didn't have a bowl big enough to mix it in.  I had to use my two largest bowls.  Keep that in mind if you decide to make them.

The verdict:  Even after seeing what goes in and how funky it looks, my husband was willing to try one and then he ate another one and another.  The kids love them with raspberry jam and the little one eats them plain.  I don't know if it's the buttermilk, or what, but for being so full of healthy stuff, these muffins are delicious.  Try them!

What to do with green tomatoes?

Trying to grow tomatoes in a cold climate automatically means that you will end up with a lot of green tomatoes at the end of the season.  Even in this warmer climate, I wound up with many unripe tomatoes.  In the past few years, I've been experimenting with different things to do with these little guys, since I don't want to waste anything that can actually be used. 

Of course, there's the cool sounding fried green tomatoes, which I don't really care for unless they're not truly green.  Even when I do make them, I'm usually the only person that eats them, since they just look funny to everyone else.

In past research, I was surprised to find that the green taco sauce (that my dad has to have) is made from green tomatoes.  I found a few recipes online (this one is complicated.  There are simpler ones) and tried it out.  It turned out too hot for my kids, but the adults liked it.

I have also made green tomato relish, which tastes just like the relish that everybody loves on their hot dogs.  I'll post the recipe at the end of this post.  My mother has been busy canning jars of this all fall after my sister dumped a few boxes of green tomatoes in her lap.

Since the relish is already being covered, I decided that this year, I wanted to make mock raspberry jam with my green tomatoes.  Don't laugh, it really turns out looking and tasting like the real thing.  The texture is right and the tomato seeds look like raspberry seeds.  I couldn't find my recipe though, so I was thrilled to see the recipe posted at a friends blog, Home Maid Simple.  I guess I'd better get busy sorting and washing my tomatoes.

I have also just been informed that you can make a mock apple pie with green  tomatoes, but I don't think I'll try that just yet.

What have you done with your green tomatoes?

Green Tomato Relish

Grind and drain:
13 cucumbers
6 onions
20 large green tomatoes
2 green peppers
2 red peppers (or green or yellow...)

Add:
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp ground cloves
8 cups sugar
4 cups vinegar

Boil 1 hour

Make a paste:
4 Tbs flour
2 Tbs dry mustard
2 Tbs turmeric

Add paste and stir until thick.  Can pints in water bath for 10 minutes (4500 ft elev).  16 minutes above 7000 ft.

Make your own garden fresh salsa!

Here's another drive-by posting!  I keep thinking that things will slow down a bit now that school has been going for a few weeks and my design jobs have finished up, but things still feel crazy around here.

The weather has cooled quite a bit, but the tomatoes are still producing wonderfully.  It is so fun to actually get a harvest from tomato plants.  In the mountains of Wyoming, I would just be getting a few red tomatoes when it would frost and kill everything.  It seems like we would always get a hard frost in August sometime and then another around Labor Day.  In between, we would still have nice summery weather, but squash and tomatoes don't forgive you for a hard frost.

So here I am, getting buried in those wonderful tomatoes and I keep telling myself that I should put together a batch of spaghetti sauce, since we eat a lot of spaghetti and pizza during the year.  But I just can't seem to collect enough tomatoes to make a big enough batch to make the canning effort worthwhile.

Why, you ask?  Because I love fresh salsa!  Every time the counter starts to be overwhelmed with tomatoes, I get a craving for salsa.  I whip up a big batch of the stuff, and then realize that I don't have any corn chips, or that my cilantro is all mushy, so I have made several extra bike trips to the store in my salsa making adventures.  Then I end up eating most of the batch while trying to get the flavors just right, so I have to start over again in order to have some salsa to share with the husband.  There have been many days that I have only had salsa for lunch.  I was hoping to start a new diet trend, but alas, I haven't dropped any inches on my salsa diet.

In case anyone out there is wanting some fresh garden salsa, but isn't quite sure how to get started, let me share my formula with you.  It's not really a recipe because I don't have a single measurement to give you.  Here's what I've got:

Fresh Garden Salsa
-Chop up lots of tomatoes.  Till your bowl is about half to 3/4 full. 
-Chop up the onions.  I like a lot of onion, but you can take it easy here.
-Chop up some cilantro.  I love cilantro, but if you go too crazy here it makes things a bit bitter, so I just do enough that you see a bit of green in every scoop.
-Add some salt and then add some more.
-Pour in a few splashes of lemon or lime juice.  I prefer lemon for some reason.
-Stir and scoop some out on a chip to taste.
-Add salt and lemon as needed to reach your favorite taste.
-Add more tomatoes, onion and cilantro if you taste test too much.
-Eat and repeat.

I guess I'll have to find a farmer before I can any sauce.  I'm not sure how much longer these tomatoes will keep coming.

Valentine (sugar) Cookies

Happy Valentines Day!  I hope you have a good one.  We're not doing anything exciting.  Poor people can't partake of the flower and chocolate frenzy that most people do.    I have a long history of really horrible Valentines Days.  Illnesses, blind dates, crummy boyfriends, etc.  I actually smugly thought that my days of having a rotten VD -my affectionate name for the day- were over once I was married.  It's especially easy to enjoy it when your expectations aren't high.  All I ask for is a Dr. Pepper and maybe a shoulder massage.  Got the massage first thing this morning and the Dr. Pepper not long after that. 

Know what else I got for Valentines Day?  A cold sore.  How nice.  It was shaping up to be the best V Day in my history.  Until my lip started hurting.  And then it exploded into a big puffy, painful lump on my lower lip.  Now I'm getting some chills and body aches.  I swear I just recovered from something like this and now here I go again.  My poor husband won't even get a kiss for Valentines Day.  He will get cookies though.

Growing up, it was always tradition to make sugar cookies and cut out holiday related shapes for several holidays through the year.  Easter, Halloween, Christmas and Valentines Day.

My daughter and I planned on making these cookies a week ago, until I discovered that my stash of butter was gone.  The dancing queen has been begging to make "cutting" cookies everyday since I bought butter.  I finally promised her that we would make them Sunday afternoon, IF she took a nap first.  She really wanted to make them, apparently.

After all that, I realized that I don't own a heart shaped cookie cutter.  Oops.  I really thought I had one.  It must be at my mom's.  Not to be discouraged, my kids happily used the Easter shapes.

Soft Sugar Cookies
1 cup sugar
1cup butter
3 eggs
1 Tbs baking powder
3 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp vanilla

Mix, roll out, cut and bake at 350 for 7-8 minutes.  It helps to refrigerate the dough a bit, but you don't have to.  The dough keeps well in the fridge for quite a while, if you can keep people out of it.  This made 5 dozen cookies, with some dough left over to snack on.

Dinner Crepes recipe

First of all, thanks for the well wishes.  I am feeling so much better today.  Unfortunately, my two girls have both come down with something.  It hit them at the same time I got hit, but it's different.  My dancing queen has a nasty cough.  I hate listening to her cough in the night, knowing I've done everything I can for her.

Also, yesterday, I received a little gift from Boboloo.  These adorable crayon rolls.  At least one of these will be going in the diaper bag to corral those random crayons that end up in there.







It was a fun baking day today, although I did set the smoke alarm off once.  Something under the burner that didn't seem to mind lower heats, got a bit smoky when I was heating up the water. 

We still have plenty of bread, so that didn't make the list.  Instead, I decided to make more wheat bagels.  I have not been able to find any at the grocery store the last several times I've looked.  However, I was dissatisfied with my last ones because after a day or two, they seemed to get kind of soggy.  I found a recipe that suggested boiling longer, so I gave it a go.
I boiled them for a minute on each side, then baked in a 500 degree oven for 5 minutes, reduced the heat to 450 and baked for another 5 minutes.  So far, these are my favorite bagels yet.  We'll see how I feel about them tomorrow.  They aren't the prettiest bagels I've ever seen, but I blame that on the trip to the doctor.  I put them in the fridge while we were gone, and they were quite lumpy looking when I finally boiled them.  The flavor is good though.
 
In addition to the bagels, I made crepes, which isn't really baking, but who's keeping track?  I've been wanting to make dinner crepes for a while, but my husband is usually in charge of the actual crepe making and he's been so busy with school that it's been impossible to get done.  We generally make them as we eat them, which means there's always a few people waiting for the next crepe to come off the pan.  It's a bit of a production, so we don't have them often.  It wasn't until I was snooping around the recipes over at Thy Hand Hath Provided that I realized that crepes can be made before hand.  Once again, like the chicken noodle soup, the obvious eludes me.

We make our crepes by sauteing up some garlic and mushrooms, finely chopped, and then adding a bunch of chopped spinach and cooking until the spinach is wilted.  I took the advice of Thy Hand and did this the day before.  It didn't look like much in that little bowl, but it ended up making more than enough. 

Then we make the crepes. 
Here's my crepe recipe.  I don't know where exactly we got it, but we've been using it for a few years now.  I'm sure there are other more sophisticated recipes out there, but we like this one pretty well.

Crepes
2 eggs
1 1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup melted butter
2 cups flour

We mix it all up in the blender.  I doubled the recipe and my blender threatened to die.  It's a wimpy blender.  I finally got so I could make a decent looking crepe using my electric skillet.  I would pour some batter in a circle and then pick up the whole skillet, tipping it around until the batter stopped running and started cooking all over.  Turn it over when it doesn't look wet anymore and cook a little longer.  I struggled with going too long and cooking them too  much.  They don't roll very well when they are cooked too much. 
If you are making the crepes as you eat them, add the filling right there on the skillet as soon as you turn the crepe over.  Roll it up and let it sit on the skillet for a bit while the cheese melts.  Our filling includes the spinach mixture as well as a few slices of lunch meat, like ham or pastrami, and cheese.  The kids prefer just ham and cheese in theirs.

Today, I made the crepes, took them off the skillet and then filled them and put them into a pan.  I got into such a groove, I didn't realize how many I made until I ran out of batter.  (Usually, we make dessert crepes as well, but I forgot)  We have enough for an entire other meal.  Guess I know what we'll be eating tomorrow.  At dinner time, stick the pan into a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. 

Making the crepes beforehand and then popping them into the oven at dinner time made my life so much easier.  I love when I can get almost everything done while the baby naps.  Maybe we'll be having this meal more often now.

I'm too sick to cook chicken noodle soup recipe

Wow.  This cold has smacked me down hard.  Picture a cartoon character after being hit by a hammer, or anvil... That's how I've been feeling.  It came fast too.  Usually, I can keep these colds off a little, but not this one.  Saturday, I had just enough energy to throw the remains of a rotisserie chicken and some veggies into the crockpot for some chicken soup.  My first time actually making home made chicken noodle soup.  For some reason, I had it in my head that you had to actually make the noodles from scratch in order to make chicken noodle, or I probably would have done it a long time ago.    It tasted really good.  We ate it again Sunday and probably will again today.

Just in case anyone else suffers from a misunderstanding of how easy home made chicken noodle soup is, here's my "I'm too sick to cook Chicken Noodle Soup recipe"
  

1 leftover rotisserie chicken, or some chicken stock, I suppose would work
2 chunks of frozen chicken because there really wasn't that much on the leftovers
Carrots.  I didn't even chop them
Celery -I had some frozen
Onion - chopped
Salt and Pepper
Parsley
Basil
Put all ingredients in the slow cooker.  Cover the chicken bones with water and cook on low all day.  About an hour before dinner time, during a burst of energy, I sorted out all those little bones, chopped up the chicken and carrots, added a bunch of dry noodles and turned the crockpot to high.  This was really brothy.  Add more chicken and veggies and less water if you want a chunkier soup. 

Other than the soup, I have my morning and nightly ritual of some tea and the netti pot.  Have you ever used one?  It took me a long time to actually try it.  I didn't think I would actually be able to because I have a little fear of water and a fear of things touching my nose, so pouring water up my nose seemed quite impossible.  It took a really bad head cold about a year ago to make me try it.  When I got to the point that cutting the top of my head off seemed like a nice thought, I figured the water in the nose thing couldn't be any worse.  It's really gross, and not all that pleasant, but it does give some relief.  My husband still is afraid to try it.  Chicken.

I woke up from a long Sunday nap to find dinner almost ready.  At least I'm sick on the weekend when my husband can help out so much.  The house is amazingly clean.  What a guy... a nap, dinner and a clean house?  Too bad I'm not feeling better to enjoy it.

I also woke up to some strange project in the works.  He has filled a few old 2 liter pop bottles with water.  They are sitting on the counter.   I asked why, but he was too embarrassed to tell me.  That's okay.  Usually it's him trying to figure out what on earth I'm up to with all my shenanigans and half finished projects.  I'm dying of curiosity though...

Hope you have a lovely, healthy day.

Baking day Tuesday...on Thursday

I realize I'm late this week.  It's been that sort of week.  I did not win the sweater I wanted, which didn't really surprise me, but sometimes I fool myself into thinking I'll become one of those lucky people that win things.  But then I did win something!  I entered a giveaway over at boboloo and I won some cute little crayon rolls, which I always have thought I would make, but I never do.

Today,  someone managed to lock us out of the bathroom.  Nobody is fessing up, but I can't pick that dang lock.  Bobby pin is too short, paper clip is to flimsy and nothing else will fit in that dang little hole!  There is no key to it here and from the looks of the door knob, this has happened before to previous tenants.  There's lots of little scratches, and the hole is a bit stretched from something being forced in there.  If I don't get this figured out soon, I may be taking the entire knob off.  That, or busting through with my body.  Fine day to actually drink as much water as I'm supposed to.  So here I am, trying to take my mind off of this situation for a bit.

It was a big baking day today, not entirely on purpose either, but first, a story:

About a decade ago,  I was a college student.  Every once in a while some friends and I would go to an little cafe/ice cream shop for a change from all the fast food that college students seem to live on.  It was attached to a gas station and decked out with coca-cola paraphernalia from top to bottom.  At first, it was just an ice cream run, but then we noticed the other menu items.  It was run by a little old lady, in fact I think the name of the place was Gramma's Ice Cream, or something similar to that.  She appeared to be a sweet little grandmotherly lady, but she had quite the sharp tongue -never approving of my friend's hairstyle- and such a funny sarcastic sense of humor.  I think that's why I liked her so much.  She would make any variety of baked potato you could think of, polish dogs, with all sorts of toppings and she introduced me to something called a bier-rock.

I had never heard of it before.  Cabbage and burger, wrapped in bread dough and baked.  It's like a self contained sandwich.  I guess snowmobilers would stop to get them, wrap them in foil and put them in the engine area while riding their machines.  Then when they were hungry, their lunch would be all nice and warm for them.

When I  left school I basically forgot about them.  That is until I was perusing through a cookbook that I have, and I came across a recipe for runzas, which are the same thing as far as I can tell.  I guess it's been about a year now that I have been making them.  They are quite labor intensive, especially with small hands helping, but judging by how quickly they disappear, they are quite a hit.  I really like to make them for those long work days on the ranch because they are so contained.  We don't have to have a cooler to hold all our sandwich making supplies, which is always a mess.  And I can easily hand one to my dad when he is needing to refuel, but not yet ready to quit and get off his horse.  He can eat while he rides.

It occurred to me this past week, as I kept forgetting to find things for my husband to take to school with him to eat, that these little runzas are the perfect answer.  I can make a bunch, freeze them and then send one or two with him in the morning.  They will be defrosted by the time lunch comes around, and there is no shortage of microwaves on campus for him to warm them up with.  So, I made some.  A bunch.

I figured that two loaves worth of dough would get me through the two pounds of meat I had browned, but I was wrong.  Maybe if I had stuffed them a little more.  We have also, in a pinch, used frozen roll dough, as well as biscuits in the can for the bread part of the recipe.  All have worked, but I prefer to make my own dough.

I had not planned to get so crazy in the kitchen today, but I ran out of dough.  Originally, I planned on two loaves of bread, the runzas, and maybe some buns if I had left over dough, and some cookies.  I ran out of dough with just a bit of meat left, so I decided to whip up some more dough.  Only I forgot to half the recipe and ended up with tons more dough, hence the many buns.

The cookie recipe, I got here.  They are mostly peanut butter, and not getting my fill of my last batch of peanut butter cookies, I decided to try these.  Wow.  Even my husband admits that they are rich, and he never admits something like that.  I do like them, but I think I'll stick to the spoon method when I want that much peanut butter again.  I used to scoop out some PB and then dip it into some chocolate milk mix when I was a kid.  These reminded me of that, just a bit more sophisticated, I suppose.

Here's the runza recipe:
adapted from the centsible nutrition cookbook

1 lb sausage
1 lb hamburger
1 onion chopped
8 cups chopped cabbage
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
cheese -I used mozarella
approx. two loaves worth of dough.  I used my favorite bread recipe.
Brown meat  with chopped onion.  Add cabbage and cover for 5 minutes.  Drain liquid and add salt and pepper.
Pull off a piece of dough- egg sized is what I did- and roll it out in a sort of rectangle.  Put a bit of cheese down on one side and top with a good pile of meat mixture.  Fold the uncovered side of the dough over and seal the edges together.  The recipe I got this from suggests dabbing water on the edges before folding it over, but I found it stuck better without.  Let rise on a pan for as long as it takes you to finish making them all, or 20 minutes or so.  Bake in 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.

I have never frozen these before,  but I'm going to give it a try today.

Lemon Dijon dressing

 Our family seems to go in salad spurts.  One week, we just can't get enough of it, so I buy a bunch of lettuce, and then, the desire goes away.  We've not had a salad for a few days, and I hate cleaning out yucky lettuce, so I decided I would do my part to use up some salad makings.  There was also a bit of avocado and some jack cheese.  I've been planning to make a dinner chicken salad out of some left over rotisserie chicken for a few days now, but my husband seems a little scared of the idea, so I made it for lunch the other day, and I ate it.  All by my self.  It's a salad, so I don't feel guilty.

The dressing is very simple.
3 Tbs lemon juice (or the juice of one lemon)
1 Tbs Dijon mustard
salt
pepper
3 Tbs olive oil

Mix it all up and throw it on whatever salad you put together.  I like this dressing because it's light and yummy and so different from everything that I have in my fridge.  I put my chicken right into the dressing to soak up the flavor, because I hate when the dressing just runs down to the bottom.  Blue cheese sprinkled on top would probably taste good if you like that sort of thing.  I never have it in the house, so I use whatever I've got.

Of course with so simple of a recipe, I had to try to ruin it.  As I tried to sprinkle in a bit of salt, I noticed that all the holes except one were clogged.  I turned it right side up and started banging on it, when suddenly, the stopper in the bottom fell out and about 1/3 cup of salt landed right in my dressing.  I thought I got it all out, but my salad was still a bit salty.  Still good enough to eat though.

I'm linking up with Homestead Revival for a recipe exchange.

Right about the time I made this, Amy over at Homestead Revival mentioned having a dressing recipe exchange, so I saved this one until that was going.  I'm so excited to see the different recipes because I'm getting a bit tired of the same old stuff around here.   Check it out and share your salad dressing recipes!

Baking Day Tuesday: a flop!

Strange day.  It seems the universe did not want me to bake much today.  And what I did get baked totally flopped.  I got a late start, even though I was up in good time, but I did remember to pull the yeast out of the fridge to warm up.  Finally, around lunch time I got serious about making bread.  While it was raising the first time, the dancing queen (4 year old daughter) and I mixed up some pie dough.  We did not bake pies today, but it is in the plan.  Still gotta use up those apples.  I had planned to make some cookies also, but that hasn't happened yet. 

The bread... I don't know what happened.  It raised the first time and a little bit the second time.  After waiting and waiting, I finally baked the poor pitiful things.  I see a lot of french toast and bread crumbs in our future, as well as another bread baking day.  Maybe tomorrow.

Back to the pie dough.  This is a great recipe that I got from my mom.  She makes a huge batch and then freezes it in balls so that when the pie making bug bites, she's already got dough made.  Here's the recipe:

Moist Pie Crust Mix
from some cookbook that is held together by a rubber band

10 cups flour
1 Tbs salt
4 cups shortening (or 3 1/4 cup lard)
Combine flour and salt in very large bowl.  Mix well.  With pastry  blender, cut in shortening until evenly distributed and resembles corn meal texture. 
Add:
1 1/2 cup cold water
1/8 cup flour-if needed
Add water all at once and mix lightly until the flour absorbs all the water.  If dough is too sticky, sprinkle flour over the top.  Divide dough into balls.  Makes 10 single pie crusts or 5 double pie crusts.  Freeze, or not.  My mom has been known to bake five pies in a day, but I'm aiming for just one.  :)

Hopefully the next time I bake, things will work out better!

Honey wheat bagel recipe

I thought I'd post this recipe too.  Around this time last year, I made bagels for the first time.  I was very pregnant, and I was nesting in a big way, cleaning out the cupboards and baking any recipe I came across.  My husband at this point was not surprised to come home to any baked good, or any mess on the kitchen floor.  He's a good sport about trying things too. 

To make bagels, you mix and proof dough, like any bread, but then you boil the bagels and then bake them.  Those bagels on my first try looked doughy still.  They were very white and un-cooked looking.  Then I found another recipe that said to add 2 tsp baking soda to each cup of water in the boiling pot.  I have heard of doing that to make pretzels, so I was worried to use that much.  I didn't want pretzels.  I made a compromise and did 1 tsp for every cup of water.  These ones look much better than my first try.  Of course, they are wheat this time, so they look different anyway.  Here's the recipe:

Honey Wheat Bagels
adapted from lilacs.in.bloom and Cooking with Food Storage
1 cup water
1 1/2 Tbs honey
1 cup bread flour
2 cups wheat flour (actually, I didn't need this much, so add a little at a time)
1 1/4 salt
1 1/2 tsp yeast
any other ingredient you want (blueberries, sunflower seeds, etc.)

Mix up the dough.  I start with the water, honey and yeast, then add flours and salt and any other ingredients you want.  Shape into ten disks and then push thumbs into middle and make a hole.  I don't think I made mine quite big enough.  I let them rest for 30 minutes, but you probably don't need to wait that long.  It was cold in my kitchen, so they didn't rise much.  Then, place into boiling water.  One recipe says for 10 seconds, the other says 20 seconds per side.  I went with the 20 on each side.  Flip and remove with a slotted spoon.  After you remove them, you can put a topping on them if you wish.  Maybe next time I'll do some sesame seeds. I put them onto corn meal to try to give them that store bought look, but it just turned into a mess of soggy corn meal.  Next time I'll just do parchment paper or a greased pan.  Bake at 450 for 8-9 minutes. 

I'm enjoying mine with nutella on top.  Yum!

Baking Day Tuesday: Round two

I did not get as crazy this week like I did last week.  Thank goodness we don't have another birthday for a while.  As predicted, the cookie dough is gone and I have almost finished off the cookie crumbs.  Because we were out of town for the weekend,  we didn't use as much bread as usual, so I still have quite a bit of that.  We are still swamped by halloween candy and that sweet ice cream cake, so our need for sweets is taken care of... too much so, probably.

So for today, I pulled out some recipes that I have been wanting to make, but I just haven't had time: bagels and granola bars.  I also want to make some pretzels, but I don't have the salt that I want, so that will have to wait... until I make a run to the store... I do need socks... and parchment paper...

For the granola bars, I puffed some wheat following these directions.  I did it in two batches and I think I overdid the second batch.  I wish I had timed the first batch, but three kids suddenly needed my attention, and I was scrambling for the lid to the pot because those little wheat berries spit the oil at you.  So I don't even have a guess at how long.  Next time maybe.

I love these granola bars.  You can basically use whatever is handy.  They certainly aren't the healthiest thing to eat, but you can sneak as much healthy stuff into them as you like and the kids still love them.  I like using flax seed because you don't even realize you are eating the healthy stuff, and it otherwise tastes kind of yucky to me.   But, I didn't have any. 
Here's how I made them:

Granola Bars

Boil 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup honey
Then add 1/2 cup peanut butter
Remove from heat when all melted

In separate bowl stir together:
2 cups oats
1 cup other cereal, like rice crispies, or puffed wheat.  This is where I used the toasted wheat berries
1/4 cup sunflower seeds

You can also add 1/4 cup ground flax seed, 1/2 cup dried fruit or/and 1/2 cup coconut, or whatever else you want to have in there.

Mix sugar mixture into cereal mixture.  Add chocolate chips if desired and press mixture into wax paper lined 9 x 13 pan.  Press down on top to flatten.  Cool in fridge.  Cut into bars.

I haven't had a problem in the past with the wax paper sticking because I line the wax paper with the chocolate chips and it will come right off the chocolate.  However, if you aren't throwing in the chocolate, I would recommend putting some butter on the wax paper, because that honey/sugar mixture is really sticky.

Ice cream cake

Yesterday was my husband's birthday.  To celebrate, he went to school.  That's what poor student families do on birthdays.  We did go out to dinner tonight and then we came home to sing to him and eat this.


That is an ice cream cake.  I did dump it out on a sheet to decorate it, but the sheet wouldn't fit back into the freezer, so back into the cake pan it went.  It is covered in caramel and chocolate sauce.  I was going for a completely homemade cake, but I didn't have enough home made ice cream left.
Here's how I made it:
Bake a cake, whatever flavor you want.  I was going to buy a rainbow chip mix because he likes that, but he opted for a caramel theme, so I made chocolate.  In the past, I have used two cake pans, one to bake the cake and one to form the ice cream, but I only have one this size... 
Smear the top of the cake with your favorite ice cream sauce.  We've done fudge before, oreo crumbs would be great in there too.  For this cake I used the caramel that was left over from our apples and caramel night and chocolate sauce that was left in the fridge from when we made the homemade ice cream.  Who knew that birthday cakes could use so many leftovers?
 
It's hard to see in this picture, but I have covered the cake with caramel and then chocolate on top of that.  Then fill it in with ice cream.  I did a small layer of homemade vanilla ice cream, then more caramel and chocolate, and then another layer of ice cream from the store.  You could get crazy with flavors of ice cream too, but with so much already going on with the cake, I stick with vanilla.  At this point, I stick the pan into the freezer to harden up the ice cream again.

After a while, take it back out and flip it upside down onto a sheet, or whatever you plan to serve the cake on.  Make sure you have a spot for it in the freezer before you start so you don't have to try to get it back into it's cake pan like I did.

At this point, the ice cream layers are on bottom and the cake is bottom up on top.  Spread more ice cream on the whole thing, basically frosting it with more ice cream.   Drizzle caramel and chocolate on top and stick in the freezer. 

At party time, take out of the freezer and enjoy!  This was way too sweet for me, but hubby and the kids liked it.

Hamburger Pie recipe, or leftover casserole

This is a recipe that my mom received from a friend as a newlywed.    It is a great "clean out the fridge" type of dish and it tastes great.  I have memories of this casserole all through my life.  It doesn't look great, so I was always a bit reluctant to eat it, and then I would end up having seconds and thirds.  It really is good.

The recipe calls for instant potatoes, something we never have around.  My mom fixed this to use up left over mashed potatoes and whatever vegetables were in the fridge.  So, as I still had a rather large bowl of potatoes left from Sunday dinner, my instincts called for this casserole.  I didn't have green beans, but I needed to use up carrots.  I think the key to this recipe is the tomato soup.  We use homemade and it tastes wonderful in there, but my mom often would throw leftover spaghetti sauce, or any other tomato sauce in as well.

Give it a try!

My first ever baking day Tuesday!

Maybe.  Tuesday might not work every week.  It felt like I was baking almost every day, and there are other things I want to do with my afternoons, so I declared yesterday baking day for the week. 

Originally, I had planned to get started immediately in the morning, but my brain doesn't kick in till about 10, so I got a late start.  My 4 year old helped, so that took a bit more time, but we made a lot!  We made bread dough and then made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies while the bread was rising.  Then we punched down the dough and made these oat muffins -still using up apples-while the bread rose again.  Then I remembered that hubby's birthday is this week and I should have made a cake instead of cookies, so after the kids were in bed, I made a little chocolate cake.

The grand tally:
3 loaves of bread
8 rolls (because I only  have 3 bread pans)
2 dozen crumbly cookies -not sure what happened
18 muffins
1 9x9 chocolate cake
1 bowl of cookie dough, because it makes me happy

I wanted to share my cookie recipe, because I love these cookies so much, and with the oatmeal, I can pretend that they are healthy.  I've honestly been making this recipe since I was a little girl.  I'm not sure why they fell apart, maybe I didn't let them sit on the pan long enough.  They still taste good though.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
4 Tbs milk
4 cups rolled oats
1 cup chocolate chips, or raisins if you really want to be healthy, or dates or nuts...

Preheat oven to 375
Sift flour with soda and salt into mixing bowl.
Add butter, sugar, brown sugar, egg, vanilla and milk.  Mix until smooth.
Add rolled oats and chocolate chips.
Drop by spoonful on ungreased cookie sheet about 2" apart.
Bake for 10-12 minutes

*food storage friendly changes:
add egg powder, butter powder, or milk powder with dry ingredients, then add needed water when recipe calls for milk.
I used 4 Tbs egg powder and 1/2 cup water in place of the eggs, and 8 tsp powdered milk and 1/4 cup water.

Making healthy foods unhealthy

 What do you do when you have tons of apples that are quickly getting mushy, and the kids are tired of eating apples for every snack?  Make caramel, of course!

For some reason I got a huge sweet tooth this week.  I'm really not big on sweets- they make my teeth hurt, but caramel apples just seem to fit this time of year.  We tried the apple on a stick thing last year, but little mouths and hands had a tough time with it.  This year, we sliced a bunch of apples and made caramel for dipping.  Yum.  As a person that doesn't like sweets that much, I could drink this caramel, but I forced myself to use the apple slices to get it to my mouth.  And I had a stomach ache for a while.

Here's the recipe, taken from a caramel popcorn recipe I got from my mother-in-law.
Best Ever Popcorn Balls!
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup cream or canned milk
1/2 cup white Karo syrup
1 tsp. vanilla

For popcorn balls, heat to 250 degrees, that's soft ball stage, then pour over 4-5 quarts popped corn.
We wanted a dip, so we heated to about 225-230 and as it cooled, it was just right. Not too runny, not too thick.

As if that wasn't unhealthy enough, I ran across a recipe for sugared cinnamon almonds made in a crock pot.  I'm a sucker for those nuts you see and smell at workshops and such.  I know my husband loves them, and since his birthday is next week, I made them for him.  I don't think they'll still be around at birthday time, so we'll probably have to make more.  I think these will be gifts for neighbors this year.  You can find the recipe at A Year of Slow Cooking, one of my favorite blogs for recipes.

And now, off to eat some rice cakes and carrot sticks... too many almonds today.

Oh, and ignore this little thing.  I have to post this code to be verified for something, so here it is...
22NGB8GRHK7H

Roasting pumpkin seeds

Friday night, we had the great idea to carve pumpkins with the kids, which actually means that the kids pick out crazy designs and then the parents stay up late working on them because I'm not giving my kids any sharp objects to cut with.  The kids got the pumpkins that we grew in the garden, but we bought a bigger one for us big kids.  Hubby decided to use the dremel tool.  He finished the princess and the ghost so we could finally get the kids to bed and then worked on mine.  He kept saying it was mine, but I never got to touch it.  Here's the finished product:

 As I waited for him, and since I had already washed all the seeds, I was perusing all the tabs here on blogger, and I discovered the stats tab.  Somehow, someone got here from a Russian website.  I can't understand the website, but judging from the pictures, it's a building design site.  I can't figure that one out.  It was interesting and fun to see all the different countries that have visited my little blog.

After I picked out some seeds to save, we roasted the rest to eat.  It actually took three days to get the finished product.  I washed them that first night, then Saturday, I mixed in some olive oil and seasoned salt, but we had a full day of activities, so I didn't get the chance to actually roast them.  Finally, yesterday, I roasted them in the oven.  325 for 25 minutes, stirring them up sometime in the middle.  The kids loved them.

They are already gone. 

Bread success!

As my husband can attest, I have had many failures in my bread making career. They taste okay, but look absolutely horrible or, they look okay, but have crazy textures. I have at least 25 different wheat bread recipes that I have gathered and I have been making my way through them. This one seemed way too simple to be that impressive and called for olive oil, which seemed funny to me. I never considered putting olive oil in bread. I have to say, though, this is my favorite recipe yet. My husband has requested this one over and over. I think the extra gluten flour holds it together, so it doesn't get crumbly. I tried it once without the olive oil and it was just not as good. Here is the recipe:

Whole Wheat Bread
makes 2 loaves
2 cups warm water
1/3 cup honey
1 Tbs yeast
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tsp salt
1/3 cup wheat gluten
5-7 cups wheat flour

Combine water, honey and yeast and let proof. Add oil, salt, gluten, and 3-4 cups flour. Continue to add more flour until the dough does not feel sticky to the touch. Knead for 10-15 minutes by hand. (less if you have a mixer, you lucky dog) Let it rise once until doubled in size. (this is hard for me. I'm so impatient) Punch down and form into two loaves. Let rise in warm oven until 1/2 inch above pan. Turn oven on to 350 (leave loaves in) and bake for 30 minutes.

Raspberry rhubarb pie

My mom brought home a bunch of rhubarb yesterday. We were going to can it, but then we decided to use it right away for Dad's birthday pie. My dad asks for pie instead of cake on his birthday, so this year, we made raspberry rhubarb pie. We kind of made it up as we went along, since we couldn't find a specific recipe and we didn't have any strawberries on hand. We put a few cups of rhubarb in the pie shell, then mixed raspberries, sugar and flour, and put that on top and covered. The raspberries put out a lot of juice, as you can see on the last photo.


The kids got to make their own little pies. Can you tell which one was done by a girl?


The finished pies. I really don't like when the juice leaks out of the pie shell, but I think raspberry juice will be okay. We had one after dinner tonight as we sang to grandpa. It was delicious with some vanilla ice cream on the side. Yum!

Branding day menu

Our branding lunch always has my mom's beef enchiladas. I don't know when she started making them, but I can't remember ever not having them. You need many tortillas, hot oil, enchilada sauce, beef, cheese, and we put onion in the beef too. You could use just cheese, or whatever your heart desires. Oh, and we put sliced olives on top when we remember.
When there were more of us at home, we made a big assembly line. Good times, good memories.

First, you fry the tortillas one at a time in some hot oil. (Mom usually did this) Not too crisp, but it's necessary to keep the tortillas from sopping up all the sauce. I know, I tried it once without that step...yuck.
Then into the enchilada sauce. One sister coats on both sides, then puts it on a plate for the next sister to assemble the parts. Beef and cheese -next sister- roll it up and put in pan. We had another girl in charge of bringing new pans and removing the full ones. (That's right, five women in one kitchen. My other sister was already gone to college when I was big enough to help.) When the pan is full, pour more enchilada sauce over the whole thing, sprinkle cheese on top and then toss some sliced olives on. Then we cover and freeze because this is usually the week before we actually cook them.
The next step is very important. Fry up more tortillas, this time till crisp. As soon as you take them out of the oil, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Tear apart and enjoy the feeling of finishing a big job.
To cook, defrost (or just stick it in the oven after assembled) then stick it in a 350 oven for as long as it takes for the middle to melt. Sorry I can't be more technical on that part. Shouldn't take more than an hour. For the branding, we layer the pans into great big roaster pans and cook at about 300 for the morning hours while the branding is going on.

Then, we make buckaroo beans, also something I don't remember ever not having. We quadrupled this recipe because we usually run out. We had leftovers this year. This recipe is for cooking on the stove top, but when making huge amounts, we use the oven or the big roaster at 300. That's what that little note at the bottom is for.

To go along with these, we usually have several salads, some watermelon, grapes and chips. The kids usually only eat watermelon, grapes and chips, but since it's like a holiday, I let them eat what they want.