Meals for January 2-6 and New Year’s Activity
I am very happy with the sourdough starter I ordered from King Arthur flour. I would say the sourdough loaves I made are the best I’ve had, but I don’t eat a lot of sourdough. Dakota Guy seems to agree and this is his favorite kind of bread. I also made a sourdough pizza crust for lunch Dec 29th and it was really good.
Sourdough
I have made bagels before from the egg bagel recipe from the Bread Lover’s Bread Machine cookbook. They were better than anything we can buy locally which means they were better than grocery store bagels. They weren’t perfect though. About half of them each time I made them were funny shaped and didn’t rise really well. The recipe also doesn’t involve a retard in the fridge step and I didn’t really know how or if I could include one so they require getting up really early to have bagels for breakfast. Dakota guy and his mom who was here one time I made them really liked them. But, I wanted something better. So, knowing how happy I was with the sourdough from Annie’s Eats I checked if she has a bagel recipe she loves. AHA!!! Perfection. An dough I can make up to two days ahead making the morning easy – boil, bake and eat!
Everything bagels
I also tried measuring the flour the old fluff/sprinkle/level method I’ve always used and then weighing it to compare to the weights. My measured amounts were significantly heavier than the corresponding weights. So, I’m going to try to start weighing ingredients. Perhaps that can be my New Year’s resolution.
Dakota guy home brews. He has made many great beers (and really no bad ones). He just made his first batch of mead right before the New Year in the hopes that we can drink it to bring in 2014. Someone on a knitting forum had recommended a mead recipe to me called Joe’s Ancient Orange Mead. And I decided I wanted to make a one gallon batch of it NOW. The ingredients are all easily available and were mostly in my kitchen already. I only needed a 1 gallon jug/carboy. Apple cider doesn’t really come in these anymore. Online (which would have impeded the instant gratification of making it NOW) they would be about $12-17 to have shipped here. I ended up buying a gallon of Carlo Rossi wine that is currently in a tupperware pitcher and may be made into Glühwein. The jug is holding the must and waiting to reach room temperature so we can pitch the yeast.
Ingredients for JAOM
Wednesday Jan 2 – Mexican Lasagna
Thursday Jan 3 – Tangerine/Orange Pulled Pork with homemade buns
Friday Jan 4 – Pizza
Saturday Jan 5 – Potato Chip Chicken
Sunday Jan 6 – Creamy taco mac and cheese or French onion soup from last week that didn’t happen
Some day soon? – Crab Cakes
Stuffed Shells – to make soon and freeze some for a rainy/busy day
dakotaliving 