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Showing posts with label pancakes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pancakes. Show all posts

Monday, January 31, 2011

yeast pancakes, say what!!!

ok, these are pancakes that, due to the yeast, you kinda gotta plan ahead a bit to make. that would explain why i haven't tried to make them until now. but let me tell you, once you go yeast, you just can't go back. luckily i had some "tod" left in the frig so that cut the process down a step or two. however, that was the last of the "tod" and since we've been getting bread every week in our csa, i haven't made time to deal with making more bread starter. but after tasting these pancakes, with their delicious dinner roll flavor and super light texture, it's off to make more "tod" i go.

yeast pancakes
(makes 8 small pancakes)

1/2 cup starter
1/2 tsp. dry yeast
1/3 tsp. salt
1/3 tsp. white sugar
1/2 tablespoon butter
1/3 cup warm water
1/2 cup flour
1/8 cup brown sugar
1 egg

mix white sugar, butter, salt and yeast into warm water till dissolved. add solution to the starter and mix in the egg. mix in flour and brown sugar.  set bowl, covered, on counter until everything get nice and bubbly alive. my batter took about 2 hours or so. then i stirred it a bit and let it rest for about 30 more minutes. proceed to make pancakes as you normally would. enjoy.

bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.

add some left over fried chicken, sauteed butter carrots, maple syrup, and you got dinner.

Monday, May 25, 2009

time to feed the tomatoes.

while the tomatoes feast on compost tea and eggshells, while the air gets warmer with small bouts of heavy rain, and while i sit in here typing away on the computer, the garden is just going to town folks. it's getting harder to stay caught up. but i guess really, in truth, that's a good thing. i've got lettuce coming out my ears with plans on planting more, the brussel sprouts need to be thinned out and rearranged, i need to find or construct some space for crowder peas (like now!!!), and i need to cut down the peas to make room for the 2 squash plants we bought at one of the asheville tailgate markets this weekend. not to mention that i have yet to come up with a plan for the fall and winter gardens. and the cleaning around here NEVER ends (you folks with kids, how do you keep sane??). the dairy yesterday was out of butter and eggs, my legs are killing me from jogging, i haven't had a decent BM since i ran out of yogurt, i keep forgetting to order keifer grains, and ray is yelling from the living room that he is bored but doesn't like any of my suggestions of what to do today. but when you think hard about it, if those are my biggest problems right now, i am doing really great. we both still have jobs, the dogs are healthy (although cleveland has developed a wart on his muzzle that continues to grow. it's probably just canine papillomavirus, but i'm taking him to work sometime this week just to be sure), and two different farm tour weekends are coming up. so it's a local we will go. till then let's play a little catch up with some garden goodies and darn good dinners.


high in calcium, the tomatoes are supposed to like eggshells.
although i think they like the compost tea more.


back to the earth you go.
coffee and kitchen scraps ready to be buried under the t.v. dish.


lettuce.
seeds came from a packet labeled summer mix.
there is more where that came from.


not to mention all the strawberries around here right now.
we are having strawberries with just about everything.
strawberries with cornmeal pancakes and local pastured raised bacon.


little strawberry puddings.


homemade yellow cake and organic vanilla ice cream with a quick and easy strawberry sauce.


fresh garden greens, local strawberries, local pasture eggs, raw walnuts, and crackers left over from ray's lunch.


we also had a good bit of peas.
more than i though we would get from only about 9 plants.


venison burger with local onion and homemade roll.
fresh garden greens, raw peas from my garden, cucumber and tomato from local farm.


time to harvest the last of the spinach that was planted last fall.


first harvest of the rainbow silver beet chard.


i harvested the spinach and the swiss chard so i could make a savory tart.
cornmeal crust, spinach, chard, eggs, onions, and local feta cheese from split creek farm.
this my friends was GOOOOOOD!!!!!!!

so good in fact, that ray requested another one......


second savory tart with a few changes from the first.
this one had roasted onions and tomatoes with chard, yellow squash, eggs, and feta cheese.
it's so good and lasts for days in the frig making a few yummy lunches during the week.
can't wait for all the tomatoes in the yard to start coming in.
i see lots of tomato tarts in my future.


more fancy mixed lettuce harvested from the garden.


that lettuce was used to make a salad of fresh mixed greens, homemade wheat noodles, cheese, venison meatballs, and raw peas.


this weekend we bought some of the last asparagus from bi-low farms at the greenville saturday market. we ate some for breakfast the next morning with goat cheese and green onions from asheville, local pasture eggs, peas from the garden, and more local strawberries.


all this food is making me happy, but i am also sad, cause i am down to the very last few pecans that we collected from my grandmothers yard during christmas. but not to worry, i have already scouted out a few areas to forage for even more nuts this year.
there is a tree at work, a few trees here on the subdivision property, a co-worker of ray's says her sister always has more than she can use, and of course the 17 trees at grannies. hopefully, once we get a big freezer, i will be able to collect enough to last me a whole year.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

catching up in the kitchen

to understand what has been going on in the kitchen, i must first tell you about a few of the goodies i acquired over the holidays. twice we stopped at a lodge cast iron outlet and bought a few pieces of cookware. three pieces to be exact. a small skillet, a 10 inch round griddle, and a two quart serving pot which i have nicknamed "mini dutch." (i so wish i had pictures to share with you, but the battery in my digital camera was dead.) also, ever since i started making bread, i've been on the look out for a bread box. i wanted a vintage one, but i still needed it to go along with the current kitchen decor. not an easy task i must say. but at christmas, i remembered that my grandmother had a pretty darn cool silver one in the garage that she offered to me a long time ago when she gave me the matching canisters. but the bread box seemed pretty dirty, and since i really didn't have need for one at the time, i declined. but now it is mine. i was going to get navel jelly to help with the rust, but once i got it home, it clean up pretty nicely considering where it had been living over the last decade or two.

grandma's old chrome bread box and my new cast iron cookware. ray and i have decided that we are going to, piece by piece, replace all the current cookware with the lodge cast iron. also i am very much hoping to go to the cornbread festival over in tennessee this year.



since returning home i've been putting the new cast iron to work.
here we have morning oatmeal with pecans from my nannie's yard.


the griddle gave us some of my best pancakes thus far.
buttermilk pecan pancakes.


although i could get four pancakes on the griddle, it worked best with just two or three at a time. these babies needed room to grow.


all that, plus the good fortune soup, a loaf of traditional irish soda bread, and two batches of cookies that were ravenously eaten before i could photograph them, bring us up to today. a lazy sunday. so i started the day off by making a new batch of local raw milk yogurt. again i must give props to the yogurt maker.


isn't she pretty.


then i decided that today was the day to make the chicken and rice soup that i had been thinking about for the last few days. for some mysterious reason i have been obsessed with soup lately. i know the weather has turned cool again, and i am a lover of the soup, but lately the soup urge has been overwhelming. i couldn't figure out what was going on. but then, yesterday, in the bathroom at earthfare, it all became clear. there on the calendar of events taped to the back of the stall door.......january, national soup month. well there you have it folks. that explains the good fortune soup from the post a few post ago, the wonderful batch of mushroom and wild rice soup from last week, and today's lunch.....homemade chicken soup with left over collard greens and sweet brown rice. not only is soup a good way to use up left over veggies in the frig, but it gives me something to take for lunch all week long.


mushroom soup with wild rice.
this soup lasted forever and got better and better as the days went by.


time to get this soup party started.
garlic, carrots, onion, celery, sweet brown rice, and although the container says seven stars yogurt, it is really homemade chicken stock. i saved a bunch of the yogurt containers back in the day when we would buy our yogurt at the store. they work great for filling up with stock and putting in the freezer. which reminds me, with only one container left, the carcass of the chicken i used in the soup today will become homemade stock next week.


also, this week at work i got some of the coolest garden advice. i've been sad, since the disappearance of nicki's pig, at putting all my perfectly good veggie scraps in the garbage can. since i can't put a compost heap in the yard (damn those neighborhood convents) and i have yet to buy one of those stupid plastic bins you can turn and turn and in 14 days have compost, the garbage can was the only other option. that was until the genius that is our client who works at a gardening store, and i hear one heck of a home gardener herself, gave me this most awesome of awesomeness's tip. she told me to save my veggie scraps and then little by little bury them about 4 inches deep all around my garden in little veggie graves. by the time you make it all around the garden, the first area is ready for more. sounds simple i know, but i would have NEVER thought of this. GENIUS!!! so today was the first day of saving my scraps. i also found a spare coffee tin that i am now filling with my used coffee grounds. i know, i know, i should have done that long before now.


making soup and saving the veggie trimmings in my super cool vintage bowl.


crap..... i almost forget the left over collards.
they were the whole reason i was making this soup to begin with.


all done!!!!
and what goes better with soup than a nice loaf of crusty bread?


what the F#*@&^K!!!!
no bread!!!!!!
no worries i will just whip up some of my new favorite bread.....
IRISH SODA BREAD


what's cool about this bread is it is SO EASY. and since yeast is not involved, you don't have to wait all day for the bread to rise and then rise again. just mix the ingredients in a bowl, kneed ever so slightly, pop it in the oven and about 30 minutes later.....bread!
here i'm making a white flour loaf with rosemary and pepper.
not a true traditional irish soda bread according to this website, but the brown loaf i made earlier this week was.


and not only is it easy, but when i baked it in mini dutch, the outside was wonderfully crusty and the inside was so tender and moist.


a wonderful lazy sunday lunch.

"gotta use up the left over collards"
chicken and sweet brown rice soup


3 cups homemade chicken stock
about the same amount water
1 cup apple cider
1 cup white wine
fresh thyme from the garden
copious amount of chopped collard greens
6 carrots
1 onion
6 stalks of celery
3 cloves of garlic
1 cup sweet brown rice
some chopped chicken

(notes: i didn't have that much thawed chicken stock, and afraid the rice would soak up a lot of it, i added some water to give myself enough liquid. but then i was afraid of losing flavor, even though the veggies would give off a good bit during cooking, so i also added some apple cider. also my chopped chicken came from the dismembered locally raised lemon pepper roasted chicken that i bought at earthfare.)

saute onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and thyme in some butter and olive oil. add cup of wine and cook till most of the wine has cooked off. add chicken stock, water, and apple cider. bring to boil and throw in collards. about 10-15 minutes later add rice. cook until collards and rice are tender. add chopped chicken and continue until chicken is heated through. then enjoy.


don't forget!!!! while the soup is simmering, make your easy as pie irish soda bread. i followed the recipe found here for the white soda loaf, but strayed from tradition a bit by adding in fresh rosemary from my garden and cracked black pepper. yummy!!!!

Sunday, November 9, 2008

bluegrass and pancakes

yesterday there was a bluegrass music festival in downtown. part of it was free and part of it you had to pay for. we did both. at 1 pm there was the steep canyon rangers. this was free and fabulous. they were great and i must see them again. later we saw a different band in the smaller teather which wasn't bad, just different. in between bands we ran a few errands, walked around downtown, and got coffee at the devil that is starbucks. not only did my latte suck, they gave me the wrong size. i would have said something but i was just to upset. upset for even going there in the first place (but the cool local coffee place after 4 1/2 years had shut down....damn economy!), and upset because the coffee sucked. so why would i want more? crappy service number one. well actually number two, because earlier we went to the huge beer and wine store, and they again, didn't have my beer, so i went to customer service to ask why. this one guy sitting at his computer, shook his head, told me it must have been a long time ago that i bought that beer there, and that he does the ordering and they don't carry it. ok dude, i bought it there like a month ago. the chick sitting there, bless her soul, looked on the computer for a moment and then walked with me over to where the beer should have been. seems like there was a computer glitch and the inventory stated that there were 30 bottles. nope, none. she told me that she would fix it in the computer, get it ordered, and hopefully next time i come in they should have some. we liked her, but the other guy was crappy customer service #1. then later after we got coffee it was time for dinner. all we wanted was a simple sandwich, and you would think that would be no problem downtown, but nope. no sandwich. the places we wanted to go were either closed all together or the kitchen was closed. what the f*%#. so we went to this BBQ place instead. all i wanted was mac-n-cheese and green beans. simple right? they brought me fries instead of green beans. i eventually got my green beans, but not once did our little waitress refill our beverages or come check in on us. it's not like she had to walk that far, we were sitting at the bar. why at the bar? well since you asked. when we walked in there was two folks waiting to pick up to go orders and another couple being seated. after a few long moments standing there, right in front of the hostess, she finally asked me "how many?" two. "last name?" sharp. she started to write it down. what?? writing it down, why is she writing it down, we are the only ones standing there.
"it will be about 20 minutes."
what the f&#$!!! there's like 7 or 8 tables empty. "why 20 minutes?" i asked.
"there are a few people in front of you."
"really? where are they?"
"they like to walk around a bit, but if i call them and they don't show up, we will seat you."
what the hell? can we sit at one of the many open seats at the bar and eat there? sure.
crappy customer service #3 (hostess) and #4(waitress). you'd think with the economy as it is, if someone walks into your restaurant and you have many empty tables, on a saturday night no less, you'd be smart and sit them. anyway bluegrass will make it better, so back over to the festival to hear chris thile and the punch brothers. ok that's sort of bluegrass, but really more like jazz played on bluegrass instruments. either way it was pretty good, but i must say the steep canyon rangers were by far my favorite.


steep canyon rangers


punch brothers


now onto the pancakes part of this post. in my grand tradition of "well that's about to go bad, better make something with it now" cooking talents, it's time for cottage cheese pancakes. i came across this recipe at smitten kitchen and it sounded and looked really good, even though i am the worst at making pancakes. but this morning i was determined, and i had cottage cheese that was threatening to go bad. i kept telling myself, slow and low...slow and low...slow and low, as to not burn the poor things. it worked pretty good. i also added blueberries, for no other reason than ray screaming he wanted blueberries. next time i will either try dropping in the blueberries once the pancakes are in the pan instead of mixing them in, as seen here, or perhaps make the pancakes straight and top them with a blueberry sauce. i didn't burn the pancake this morning, but they were still a tad bit gooey on the inside. i'm not sure if it was my technique or the cottage cheese. but no worries, we ate them all up and we still have some non- blueberry ones to snack on for the rest of the day. now what can i do with cottage cheese pancakes and deer meat?????


cooking my cottage cheese pancakes with blueberries.


come here my pretties...


they're coming for you!!!!!


lazy day sunday snack!!!!


i thought i would throw this pic in. i feel really bad for my microwave because it never gets used. it just hangs out in the kitchen watching all the other appliances get lavished with love and attention. since i have no use for radiating my food, i have now given my little microwave a new task. along with mister magnet, he is now responsible for holding up my recipes/ingredient lists for me to look at while cooking.


it is now 1:05 pm on sunday. it's beer and bath time. later.