'No Knead Bread 'recipe by Jim Lahey in the NY Times - apparantly it's all the rage, and it's just reaching me now.

I'll leave a 'bread crumb trail' for how I came about finding the 'No Knead Bread' recipe that apparantly has caught fire and is making the rounds. I'm either oblivious, or it is still new enough that it hasn't reached my attention. But it has my attention now!

Beginning with my bloglines morning reads, from not martha today is a list of fun recipes (I already added the kettle corn and sweet potato fries). I followed the no knead bread recipe to splatgirl creates and it was an interesting read but didn't include the recipe. The link was to the New York Times registration or sign in page. I didn't feel like signing in, so I googled and came up with The Wednesday Chef which does have the now becoming famous Jim Lahey recipe.

Apparantly the secret is one of those known to the older civilizations - use of baking stone. For modern day cooks, with modern day stoves, the baking oven is a different concept. This recipe calls for use of a cast-iron pot with a lid.
Woo Hoo - a reason to go thrift store shopping - actually in this case, I can probably find a good enough price on a new cast iron pot with lid at our one and only department store - The Dennis Company.

The other secret to this recipe is that after you mix it and the mixing takes only a few minutes, it's left to rise for 18 hours, then baked in the 'almost like a cooking stone' concept of cast iron pot with lid.

Something for me to try and surprise my husband, who is the bread maker in our home and is not shy about kneading bread. Oh, and we do have the bread making machine, which I probably ought to make more use of using.
We'll blog about our variation of success in using this recipe.

No-Knead Bread
Yields one 1 1/2 pound loaf

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Roasted Sweet Potato Sticks with Rosemary - another 'snack' food - healthy sorta

I haven't fixed this 'snack' yet, but I feel pretty confident having made roasted, seasoned potatos, and recently having made Eggplant Chips. So, putting the recipe here for reference and when I get more sweet potatoes, I'll be sure to make this one. I bought sweet potatoes at our last grocery outing, but they were intended for the Thai and vegetarian recipes I collected. I can recommend the sweet potato Thai recipe, not the vegetarian sweet potato - lentil recipe. But, even so, I'm spoiled in wanting my sweet potatoes to taste like the recipe I use at Thanksgiving.

Found the recipe this morning at Apartment Therapy (interesting blog by the way).

Roasted Sweet Potato Sticks with Rosemary

1 pound sweet potatoes, washed
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped fine
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Fresh ground black pepper, to taste

Heat oven to 425ºF. Cut the sweet potatoes into thick sticks. Toss with the rosemary, oil, salt and pepper and spread in one layer on a large baking sheet. Roast for about 15 minutes, shaking the pan and stirring occasionally.

They don't get crispy, like fried fries, but instead they're tender in the middle with some crunchy edges. Rosemary is just one seasoning idea - try tossing them with thyme, chili powder, or paprika.

Other suggestions from the comments;

Try split batches - half savoury; with chili pepper and cumin, and half sweet; with cinnamon and nutmeg and served with maple syrup.

Try using butternut squash instead of sweet potatoes.

(If you have a variation on the recipe, please post it in comments. I was wondering if you could make these 'fries' using pumpkin, squashes, yams?)

Kettle Corn recipe - for those cravings when I cave in....

Just a little not so healthy Kettle Corn recipe I came across today at Seattlest. Yes, from time to time, I give into my craving for kettle corn. I first tasted it when we lived in Mount Vernon, in Skagit County, Washington. I really liked the 'quaint' downtown and the annual street fair which included many vendors who brought along homecrafts. While I like where we live, I often find myself wishing we had made our permanent settling down in Skagit. The Daffodils and Tulip Festival, the easy driving, the scenery, farming still is farming. We have some sweet memories of our short few years living in Skagit. 1995 - 1997.

Kettle Corn
As the name suggests, kettle corn must be made in something approximating a kettle (we used a 4-quart saucepan with a lid); an air popper (which for conventional popcorn is great) simply won’t do. This makes a largish portion for one, but feel free to double it.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/4 cup popcorn kernels
2 tablespoons white sugar
kosher salt to taste
melted butter (optional)

In your saucepan, heat the oil and popcorn kernels over medium-high heat, shaking the pan to keep the kernels from burning. When the kernels are about to start popping, they will become slightly lighter in color, and most importantly, they will start to smell like popcorn. At this point, sprinkle the sugar over the kernels and cover. With the lid on, continue to cook the popcorn by gently shaking the pan over the heat. When the popping has slowed (don’t keep cooking until the very last kernel has popped, you will end up burning the sugar), remove the pan from heat and empty the popcorn into a large bowl. Toss with salt immediately (when the sugar on the popcorn is still hot and sticky, the salt will adhere to the kernels better) and sprinkle with melted butter if you like. Enjoy while still warm.

Project; little girl circle skirt and top - refashioned from bed sheet and Auntie's capris

Now this woman is 'repurposing' purposely. See her blog, Consumption Rebellion, for outline of how she re-used materials that went into making this outfit for her little girl.



excerpt from her blog - how to:

The skirt was constructed as follows:

- waistband - cut from my Great Aunt's pair of denim capris.
- circle skirt (and its really a circle this time!) - from fabric offcut at an op shop - cost $1
- lining - made from an old bedsheet found at an op shop - cost 50c.

- Top - cut from the leg of my Great Aunt's capris and turned upside down so the tapered end went towards the neck and the wider end towards the waist.

Project; Painting or transforming Laminate (Formica) Countertops

Well, now this, I don't know about, and I'm not even sure I would be wanting to take on this project, but it seems all the fashion these days to have granite-looking or marble-looking countertops in the kitchen and bathroom. I'm not too unhappy with our formica or laminate countertops, but I suppose if we wanted to get fancy or look like we are upgrading, this is a project we could take on. Well not until we get those stairs finished. I think I better post this one to our houseblogs, too. I first posted it to my blog Everything old is new again..

Suggestions for transforming old formica countertops - from Thrifty Fun.

(My disclaimer - these are other people's ideas, suggestions and projects. I have no experience whatsoever with doing anything to alter the appearance of formica countertops.)



and close up

Projects: Three projects: Skirt redesign; Postcard Wallart; Skirt conversts to Halter

how to




See this and more at Creative Kismet. She posted this refashion to Wardrobe Refashion but she has her own blog, with photos and how to's and she shares some of her creative ideas.

Like this one.



quick tutorial




Her blog has neatly arranged categories, and from her recycled craft category, below is one nifty idea she created, inspired by something she saw on HGTV in the show Design Remix.
Instead of using matchbook covers as they did on the show, she used old postcards she had and I like the effect. Plus I like old postcards and see them often at thrift stores, and tell myself not to buy because what would I do with them. Well here is what I could do with them.

Bottled Water likened to Driving a Hummer - think about it.

Found this morning at Path to Freedom Journal and I just have to share this here....I so agree, I so agree.

BOTTLED WATER IS LIKE DRIVING A HUMMER
Be Part of the Solution

ENDING BOTTLED WATER ADDICTION WILL SAVE MONEY & ENVIRONMENT {from Organic Consumer Association}

BOTTLED WATER ISN'T NECESSARILY CLEANER: According to the San Francisco Chronicle and lawsuits from the Environmental Law Foundation, 40% of bottled water is really just repackaged tap water. Maybe that's a good thing, considering federal standards for tap water are actually higher than those for bottled water.

BOTTLED WATER AND OIL: Supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, according to the Container Recycling Institute. That's enough to take 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Add in the additional amount of oil it takes to ship the bottles thousands of miles from extraction source to recipient, and your drink of H2O could be categorized with the "Hummers" of the world.

BOTTLED WATER AND BIODEGRADABILITY: Buddha's bones turned to dust a long time ago. But if he had been a bottled water drinker, that plastic would still be laying around. It takes two minutes to drink a bottle of water, but it takes thousands of years for that piece of plastic garbage to go away.

SOLUTION: Buy a water filter and a non-plastic water container of your preferred size. Fill it up in the morning before you go to work or school. Do a quick online search, and you can also find affordable portable water filters for when you are traveling. You'll save yourself and the environment a lot of expense.

And, I would add, that there are instances where the convenience of bottled water is helpful, ie, disaster - Hurricane Katrina-, flood, outages, storms, emergencies. On the other hand, in a documentary I saw that was rather chilling - 'The Corporation' - there well may be something to the underlying premise that conditioning populations to 'pay for drinking water' is just that - conditioning. We've been well conditioned to become avid 'consumers' and buying products is equated to our supposed well being but is it really?



Follow the money and you will come to learn that Big Corporations didn't get that way without some clever, smart 'marketing' over the decades. Even back to the 1940s or earlier corporations were envisioning this kind of future where they owned everything we would need to live - food, shelter, water, clothing, medicine etc. I could go on and on, but I won't. I have to say though that the idea of 'paying for bottled water' is a new concept as only a few years back who would have even thought to pay for drinking water? It was hyped as more pure, cleaner and had a bit of a social elevation twinge to it - a kind of labeling that said I'm too good to drink just any water, I have this bottle of (fill in the name label)....



First it was actual glass bottles, then plastic bottles, then the image became one of the 'active person' into exercise, sports, health, good parent concerned about children and family, well being sort of imaging. First it was some few companies manufacturing bottled water, now how many companies make bottled water available as a 'for sale product'? In one of the South America countries, and I forget which one, perhaps Brazil, there was effort by the money makers to charge the people for 'rain water'. That's right - rain, falling out of the sky, captured in barrels and containers for use as family drinking and cooking water - and being charged for doing so ---- think about it. Rain - free resource - who can own the rain? A long time ago, the Native Americans found it an equally perculiar concept that the Europeans coming to America believed they could own the land.

What kind of carbon imprint are you (we) leaving? Whatever your consumption and the carbon imprint it leaves is the inheritance of your children and their children. I rather like the idea of giving some thought to personal responsibility and our own carbon imprint. There isn't a lot we can do about Big Corporation and launching any kind of campaign to get them to change their behavior or take responsibility takes enormous energy and resources. However, if each of us becomes different kind of consumer and more interested in our own carbon imprint, corporations will by their very nature be forced to alter their behavior.

Another blog entry and I'll write about Montsano - the Big Corporation who has already done what none others have done - taken out patents on seeds (food) - as if a living thing can be patented. That's not all - but more on that another time.

Oh, this woman doesn't like the infamous Monkey Puzzle Tree. I followed her comment from one blog to her own blog and she has a post about what another writer calls the Dinosauer Tree.

Well, we have one, over 92 yrs old now and I can tell you that the writer was spot on in calling it a Dinosauer Tree. It is left over from that era it seems to me, since it is not exactly a friendly sort of tree. I've read the writer's assessment before somewhere, and was amused then, but I see it is a copyright, so I won't reprint it here. Leave it to the woman who blogged it at her blog to deal with copyright issue.

excerpt:

Ever wondered why even the most die-hard of all treehuggers won't touch this tree, not even with a barge pole? Because it's bloody lethal, that's why! Look at those sharp and stiff leaves. They last for 10 to 15 years, the little blighters. That tells you something about how tough they are. Not forgetting those cones the female trees produce, which are 6 to 12 inches long and look a bit like coconuts. It's really not wise to stand beneath a female tree when she's shedding her cones!

For reference though, here is a photo of our aged monkey puzzle tree - named such as what monkey could ever figure out how to navigate a monkey puzzle tree without serious damage to the monkey! The leaves (if you can call them that) are indeed needle sharp and will stab you when you try to pick them up. I know because I learned not to handle them when they fall off our tree - I use a rake.


posted entry by Lietta Ruger

Three Soups, A big batch of Granola, and Eggplant Chips. What a day in the kitchen!

Three Soups Tonight!

New batch of Granola.

Eggplant Chips.


I got busy and made three different soups tonight to go with the big batch of rice I made yesterday. I also wanted to be sure that Sweetie would have 'leftovers' for the rest of the weekend and to take to work on Monday.

If we had a bigger refridgerator, I'd do the weekend making up meals ahead, but there is no way with the two of us we could get it all eaten. And I'm not real sure it's a good idea to be freezing the Thai food. While I'm sure it is entirely freezable, we are enjoying the taste of it cooked fresh with fresh ingredients. How does tofu freeze up after it's been cooked anyway? I suppose it does, but I'm not ready to find out yet.


And that is not all I made tonight. I made up another big batch of granola - the 5 cups of rolled oats recipe so we have our granola now for another week. For the granola, I combine two recipes, mixing and matching the ingredients as the mood strikes me and based on the ingredients we have on hand. Right now, we have a lot of ingredients for granola, so we are getting the 'deluxe' model.

Oh, remember the story of the Eggplant? Well, Sweetie can't say anything to me about another eggplant going to waste cause I cooked it up tonight - using a recipe called Eggplant Chips. They were quite tasty, not really chips, too soft but very tasty.

I talked to both my daughters this weekend. Daughter 1 - the Vegan Daughter has been doing some creative work with her blog, Veganville, and figured out how to have a 3 column blog, using Blogger. I want one too. She gave me the link for the tutorial and I made an 'experimental' blog to play around with and sure enough got it into 3 columns.

Daughter 2 - and she told me she has weekly cooking classes with some other women who are teaching each other how to cook 'ethnic' cuisines. Daughter 2 is learning how to cook Japanese and Phillipine foods. I was excited to learn that and asked her if she would blog her newly learned recipes. She said she would, so I am looking forward to seeing what she does with her newly learned skills. I figure with both daughters trying new foods and recipes and giving them ratings, then I can just borrow from their experience. And when they want to borrow from my experience, well, they can find recipes at this blog. Why do I keep saying that this is not a recipe/cooking blog when so far that is the majority of what I have put on this blog? Well, because right now I'm in the fever pitch of our project of converting to vegetarian, so that is where a lot of my attention is going right now.

Last night I made Suki Yaki (Japanese). I really enjoy suki yaki - it's one of my favorite Japanese meals. The recipe I used last night though left something to be desired. Either it was me, the chef, or the recipe, but that was not one of the better suki yaki meals I've had, either that I've prepared or on those rare occasions when we eat out. I'm not going to include the recipe here as I won't likely use it again. Maybe there wasn't enough sake in the liquid mixture - maybe too much daikon radish. I know I like to add extra ingredients like bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, mushrooms, bean sprouts, even if the recipe doesn't call for them.

Okay, so Sweetie tried all three soups tonight. How clever he is and you can see that in the photo. He found one of our old compartmentalized lunch containers, and it worked so handily for him to try one of each of the three soups. It looked so pretty, I made him wait while I took a photo. I sampled each of the soups and rather knew what I thought, so it was interesting to hear his ratings of the three soups.

Tofu/Pineapple Soup

2-1/4 cups soup base (1395 mg sodium)
1/2 cup (125 g) canned crushe'd pineapple, unsweetened
7/8 cups (212 g) canned diced tomatoes (385 mg sodium)
1 lb (454 g) tofu, bite sized pieces fried
1-1/8 cups (267 g) water
1-3/4 cups (210 g) diced Vietnamese celery (regular celery also works)
1-1/2 tablespoon (24 g) soy sauce (1140 mg sodium)

Directions:

1. Fry the tofu.
2. Place the: soup base, pineapple, tomatoes, tofu and water in a pot. Simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.
3. Add the celery and soy sauce. Bring to a simmer. Turn off burner.
We usually eat this soup with rice. Serves: 6 Preparation time: 45 minutes


(We both really like this soup. It has a sweet but tangy taste to it. These are not ingredients I would have likely thought to mix. But now that I think of it, tomatoes and pineapple do go on pizza, so maybe they are compatible. I used a vegetable broth soup base. A thank you shout out to Kyo for providing the recipe at VegWeb.com)



Sweet Potato Curry with Sticky Rice

1 can coconut milk
1 tablespoon Thai red curry paste
2 small or 1 big sweet potato cubed
1 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, chopped
any other root vegetables, chopped
soy or vegan fish sauce (to taste)
cooking oil
2 cups uncooked sticky rice (also called sweet or glutinous rice)

Directions:

This is a super easy and super yummy recipe.

Curry:
Warm up some cooking oil in a pot, cook onion until softened. Add garlic and curry and stir for 2 minutes. Throw in the rest of the vegetables and stir until coated. Add the coconut milk and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the vegetables are cooked to your liking. I like my vegetables really soft so I cook them for a long time. Season with soy/vegan fish sauce.

Serve with rice.

Sticky Rice:
The rice should be rinsed and soaked for at least an hour before cooking. Boil a pot/wok with some water, just enough that it won't touch the bamboo steamer. Place the rice in a cheesecloth, or on top of some lettuce leaves so they don't fall through the steamer. Place the steamer in the wok/on the pot and steam for about 10 minutes. If you don't own a bamboo steamer, get one. Just for the rice, it's worth it!

Serves: 4 Preparation time: 30 minutes


(We gave this one a thumbs up. It's got that very Thai taste to it with using the red curry paste. Using the curry paste together with the sweet taste of the coconut milk was something new for us. And using in combination with sweet potato. I would make this recipe again. Although, I really prefer the taste of sweet potatoes cooked in more Western style, so while I would make this recipe again, I would more likely make another of the Thai with noodles recipes before I would this one. Only because I would use sweet potatoes in a different way. Sweetie liked the soup - gave it a thumbs up )



Curried Red Lentil Soup with Sweet Potatoes and Greens

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped red onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 cups water
1 1/2 cups dried red lentils, rinsed and sorted
2 large or 3 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoons good-quality curry powder, more or less to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
6 to 8 ounces Swiss chard or spinach
juice of 1 lemon or lime
salt to taste

Directions:

Both nourishing and sublimely satisfying, this thick soup incorporates fall's first sweet potatoes with seasonal greens. Red lentils, which cook to a warm golden color, are available in natural food stores and ethnic groceries. Serve with Chapatis or a store-bought flatbread.

Heat the oil in a soup pot. Add the onion and garlic and saute over medium heat until golden, about 10 minutes. Add the water, followed by the lentils, sweet potatoes, and seasonings. Bring to a rapid simmer, then lower the heat. Cover and simmer gently until the lentils are mushy and the potatoes are done, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, wash the greens, remove stems and midribs, then slice into narrow shreds. Stir into the soup along with the lemon juice. If the soup is too thick, adjust the consistency with a small amount of water.

Continue to simmer gently until the greens are just done, about 5 minutes for spinach and 10 to 15 minutes for chard. Season with salt. Serve at once, or if time allows, let the soup stand off the heat for an hour or two. Heat through before serving.

(We didn't care much for this one. It was not a Thai recipe. It was from a vegetarian recipe and while it was hardy enough, flavorful enough, it has the 'vegetarian' food quality to it. I'm just not ready to adjust my palette yet to what I consider to be somewhat bland tasting vegetarian recipes. It was a nice touch using sweet potato, and the lemon spiced up the flavor, but I'm not that fond of lentils, so it's hard to get around the fact that the soup has the taste of lentils. I would not likely use the recipe again, but I might in those early winter months. Sweetie didn't care much for the taste either).



Very Easy and Addictive Eggplant "Chips"

1 good eggplant, preferably organic
1-2 tablespoons olive oil (**less works fine too)
tamari to taste (about 1-2 tablespoons)
granulated garlic, to taste (about 1/2 teaspoon)

Directions:

This recipe is ridiculously easy, but I practically make a meal out of it every week. Everyone else seems to love it, too.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Pour the olive oil on the cookie sheet, along with the tamari and garlic. Swoosh the cookie sheet around to mix.
Slice eggplant into about 1/4" thick rounds. Place eggplant slices on cookie sheet. Turn each slice over to coat both sides. Bake for about 10 minutes on each side. (Turn over when browned on the bottom). They are done when they look caramelized on each side.

I pretty much eat this all to myself, along with a salad and maybe some bread or something. I am not sure why I love them so much, but I hope you will too!!

**For a lower fat version, you can just use a teaspoon or so of oil, and make up the rest of the liquid with a veggie broth. This works fine too. OR, you can use an oil spray and coat each side that way. (I have a reusable Misto sprayer that I refill with olive oil). Serves: 1 (if you are me) Preparation time: 5 minutes, plus bake time

( Have to give a thanks shout out to quintess for sharing this recipe. It wa good, very tasty and I will gladly make it again. Nifty use for eggplant and it baked up quickly. I don't know if I followed the recipe correctly in baking it, because what I got was not crunchy chips, but they were cooked and tasty. So woo hoo for this recipe, great snack and one I can eat all by myself whenever I want. Since I just love the shape and color of eggplant, I can pick one up at the grocery store any time now and know exactly what I want to do with it!)

Bonus Army and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib on tv last night

I watched Bonus Army on PBS, and then Ghosts of Abu Ghraib on HBO. It remains on my mind today, and I will likely blog on it at my Dying to Preserve the Lies blog and at Washblog.
I mention it at this blog, because it is named Bundelz, an effort to have one place that is not a compartment of the many aspects of being me.

Sweetie came home from work yesterday raving about the granola. It's time for me to make some more and by now I've pretty much got the formula down and mix and match ingredients of my own choosing. I'm so pleased with our small lifestyle adjustments so far. Sweetie continues to do daily 2-3 power walks for 10 minutes each as part of his workday routine. He's feeling more energetic, I can tell, because he gets a kick out of doing a few dance steps for me to make me laugh. Oh, it's not rude, believe me - you'd have to see his idea of dance steps, and you'd laugh too.

Weather is confused here, between serious hail, sun breaks, rain, and some winds, it's that time of year again - at least for the weather around here. Tulips, daffodils, croascia peeking up in the yard - a reminder to me that spring is around the corner and I will be back in my yard and garden again soon. My plans this year include creating a red lava rock pathway in the frontyard leading up to front door. My problem is that the best of the best of the best 'edger' Sweetie bought me a few years ago broke last year. We searched in vain everywhere last season for a replacement - Nada. It's a very specific edger, with a moon shaped cutting edge that is sharp and easily breaks up the ground. It is about hip heighth for me, and has hand holder on each side of the shaft. It is like it was made for me, and works so well for me.

Sweetie, not appreciating the absolute uniqueness of this implement has tried to purchase two other edgers for me - and neither measures up. I made a declaration last season that only the broken edger is what I want and we must find someone to repair it. Sweetie thought he might be able to repair it, so he hasn't searched too hard for anyone else who could repair it. Spring coming up and I need that edger, so project ahead is to resolve the issue of the edger. Yes, a shovel does work, but does not create the straight, clean line that this particular edger creates.

posted by Lietta Ruger