Apricot Almond Bread

Now that it's cooling off, I'm starting to bake again! It's an exciting time of year. Sadly, I didn't have any zucchini this year (cursed squash bugs!) but I've been baking bread again for a few weeks. So today when I got up and it was one of those lovely fall mornings perfect for baking, I went in search of my trusty Fannie.


This bread was a bit odd, to be honest. I like nuts in bread, but I always use pecans and walnuts. The almonds were just a wee bit odd to me. But the apricots were delicious, and I think I would make it again.

For this, I did change it up a little b/c I only had 1 c. of apricots and Fannie calls for 1.5. So I adjusted the water and flour as well.

Without further ado, here is the recipe I made:

Ingredients:
1 c. chopped dried apricots
1 c. boiling water
2 tbsp. butter
1/2 c. sugar
1 c. white flour
1 c. whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 c. sliced almonds
1 egg
1 tsp. orange extract

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350 and butter a loaf pan.
In a medium/large mixing bowl, add the apricots, butter, sugar.
Pour water over them and let sit until lukewarm.
Stir in remaining ingredients, pour into pan, and bake for 1 hr.

I baked for 1 hr 10 minutes, but it was a little too brown on the bottom. So next time I'd cut the time a little. This bread is very crusty on the outside, but an interesting variation on some of the other fruit breads I've had.

Carrot Cake Oatmeal--overnight slow cooker breakfast

Okay, so if you've read my blog at all, you know we're a breakfast family. That doesn't just mean we believe in the importance of eating breakfast every morning. It also means we believe in eating breakfast for dinner on occasion, and sometimes for lunch, if the mood suits us.

Needless to say, when my brother in law introduced us to baked oatmeal, we were hooked. Lately, I've been wanting to try a crock-pot oatmeal, though. It seems so easy--throw everything in the pot, turn it on, and wake up to breakfast (and maybe a delicious-smelling house). This was my first attempt at crock pot oatmeal, and sadly, I'd have to mark it down as a big fat FAIL.

When I was adding the 8 CUPS (yes, you read that right) of water, I thought it sounded like an awful lot. But I've cooked steel cut oats before, though it's been a while, and I seem to remember them taking a lot of water. So I went along with it, dubiously. In addition, the recipe says to put it on the 'warm' setting on the crock pot for 8 hours. I thought that seemed low, but hey, it's oatmeal, it'll just swell and absorb all that water...right?

the raw sludge in the crock pot after 10 hrs

WRONG. I woke to no good smells. I woke to a huge pot of warm soup...very thin soup. The carrots were still crunchy. The water was not absorbed. The oatmeal was not ready and waiting to eat.

I ended up turning it on high for an hour, and after tasting it again, I gave up and put it on the stove to boil away some of the water. Finally, it was ready, though still pretty runny. This was not a thick, yummy heap of carrot cake. It was a soupy porridge. With some cream and honey, it was actually tasty, but I'd make some major revisions to this recipe if I were to try it again.

bubbling away on the stove after 12 hrs in crockpot

Ingredients:

• 2 cups steel cut oats
• 2 cup shredded or chopped carrots (I threw mine in my Ninja for a minute or so)
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1 cup unsweetened coconut (shredded or flake)
• 8 cups water (I'd definitely cut this to 6 next time, maybe even 5).
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt (optional--I did not use this).
• honey and cream or half & half for topping

Instructions:

1. In a large slow cooker, combine ingredients except for toppings. Set on "warm" and cook for 8 hours. 
2. Now, obviously, I would not recommend this cooking method. I'd try it on low next time, but I can't give conclusive evidence that would work, either, as I haven't done it. But I'd be wary of cooking anything on warm again.

   

   It finally cooked!

   
   
    

Zucchini Spice Bread

Yay, another zucchini bread! I used the shredded zucchini I froze last summer. Thawed and left in a strainer for a few hours and all the water drains right out!

I have a lot of different types of flours, so I used an assortment for this. If you want to go gluten free, you can substitute for the 1/2 c. of wheat flour and use gluten free flour (I love Bob's all-purpose mix). If you're fine with wheat, just use 1 1/2 c. wheat flour.

This is what I used: 

• 1/2 c. buckwheat flour
• 1/4 c. whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/4 c. organic white flour
• 1/4 c. coconut flour
• 1/4 c. garbanzo flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
•  1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 eggs
•  1/4 cup coconut oil (in liquid form)
•  1/4 cup applesauce, (I used pear sauce), mashed banana or more coconut oil
•  1/3 cup organic sugar
•  1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
•  1 cup grated or shredded zucchini
•  1/2 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)

This is what I did:

1. Grease and flour a glass 8 x 4 inch pan. 
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 
3. Mix flours, baking powder, soda, cinnamon and nutmeg in medium bowl.
4. Beat eggs, oil, applesauce, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. 
5. Add dry ingredients to the wet ones and mix well. 
6. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. 
7. Pour batter into prepared pans.
8. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. 
9. Cool in pan on wire rack for 20 minutes. 
10. Remove from pan and eat warm or cold with butter, peanut butter, cream cheese or by itself. 

This turned out very dark but tasty. I think it was the buckwheat flour. It also didn't hold together all that well, despite the bit of wheat flour and the eggs. I was hoping that would be enough but it was very crumbly. Despite that, it tasted delicious and everyone enjoyed it. Would definitely make this again.

Lemon Blueberry Zucchini Bread #2

 

 This is probably my last zucchini bread recipe of the year. I have a bit of grated zucchini leftover, though, so I may make a small loaf. I have loved making so many recipes for zucchini bread this year, but sadly, today I grated my very last zucchini, which has been sitting on the counter for months. I thought it might be seedy and hard or bitter, but it was tender and perfect. So I made lemon zucchini bread, which has such a delicate flavor that it needs a perfect zucchini.

I made a lemon blueberry zucchini bread recipe earlier in the year, so this is my second one. It's adapted from The Baker Mama's recipe.

Here is what I used:

Ingredients:

1/3 cup coconut oil, (or use 1 stick butter, softened, which I recommend)
1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 tablespoon lemon zest
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. all-purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder
1-1/2 cups shredded zucchini
1-1/2 cups blueberries (I used frozen, but fresh would be great, too!)

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease and flour two 9x5-inch loaf pans. Set aside.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and beat until well combined. Beat in the yogurt, lemon zest and 2 tablespoons lemon juice until smooth.
3. By hand, mix in the flour, baking powder and salt until just combined.
4. Mix in the zucchini, then blueberries.
5. Divide batter evenly between two prepared pans.
6. Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

I used coconut oil here, which didn't turn out to be the best idea. Coconut oil is either liquid or solid. It's very difficult, if not impossible, so get it 'softened.' So I used it more on the melted side, but it immediately congealed when I added cold ingredients. It was virtually impossible to mix or spread into the loaf pans. So I would definitely use butter for this one! I don't know why I didn't, as I usually only use coconut oil if the recipe calls for cooking oil. Oh, well. Live and learn!

Taking a Break

If you've been following a while, you've probably noticed that some of my posts lately have been empty. That's because blogging takes a lot more time than I have some days. With that said, I'm going to try to do an amended version of NaNoWriMo for the first time ever this year (that's National Novel Writing Month, for those of you unfamiliar). During the challenge, you try to write an entire novel in a month. Sooo, I will be extra busy, and am  not planning on having any time to blog. I'm going to *try* to start back up in December, but you never know. At some point, though, I will be back with Fannie. So do not despair, I will still be trying out recipes and giving a verdict...but I'm not sure when.

For now, this has been a long and taxing process (the blogging, not the cooking), so I'm taking a little break to work on a shelved novel. I will still be cooking and hopefully keeping track so I can post about them sometime later.

Have a happy November and enjoy NaNo if you're participating!

German Pancakes

This is a really weird breakfast that is not actually a pancake. I'm not sure exactly what it is. It's pretty tasty, though. See pictures...it tasted a little like a giant fortune cookie.

Ingredients:
3 eggs
1/2 c. whole milk
1/2 c. flour
2 tbsp melted butter


Toppings: lemon juice and confectioners sugar, maple syrup, butter, etc.

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 450.
Butter a large skillet or 4 small ovenproof pans.
Beat eggs in large bowl until well beaten.
Add milk and blend well.
Sift flour into the eggs and milk as you whisk or mix.
Add melted butter and mix until smooth.
Pour batter into pan and bake 15 minutes. If using one big pan, reduce heat to 350 and bake 10 more minutes.
Sprinkle lemon juice over pancake and top with sugar or maple syrup and eat immediately.
This was pretty strange, a bit stretchy, a bit sweet, a bit chewy, but tender. I thought it was good, but my son thought it tasted too eggy. It was an interesting breakfast experiment to make once, though.

Salmon Rice

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/2 extra small onion (about 1/4 c.) I used red onion
• 1/2 green pepper
• 1/4 c. minced parsley (or 2 tbsp dried)
• 2 c. cooked brown rice
• About 1/2 can of salmon (or 2 cans tuna)
• salt & pepper to taste

 
Directions:

1. Melt butter in cast iron skillet.
2. Finely chop onion and green pepper and add to skillet.
3. Cook until onion is translucent.
4. Add rice and salmon and parsley and heat through.
5. Add salt & pepper and serve

Warm Mustard Sauce for Fish, etc

This sauce would go well with any fish, but I've always used it for salmon loaf.

Ingredients:
1/3 c. prepared mustard
3 tbsp. honey
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. vinegar
1 tsp. ground sage
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground pepper

Instructions:
Mix all ingredients in small sauce pan and heat over medium/low until hot but not boiling

Salmon Loaf

This is a standby at our house, especially in the winter when we don't have a lot of veggies around. It's pretty simple, although the sauce we always put on it does add some time to the overall prep. But it's a favorite for everyone, even my picky son and picky sister, so I make this often.

I know it doesn't sound appealing, but it's very good and a good (and cheap) way to get salmon into your diet. Of course, you could use fresh or frozen salmon, cooked and flaked. But a can of salmon will run you somewhere around $2-3, so if you are a bit tight on funds (who isn't?), this is a more budget friendly way to get Omega 3s than going out and buying fillets.



Ingredients:

• 1 can pink salmon (14-16 oz), undrained.
• 1/2 c. bread crumbs
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1.5 tbsp. onion, minced
• 2 tsp. parsley
• 1-4 tbsp. minced green pepper
• dash of Worstershire
• dash of Tobasco
• dash of salt
• Warm Mustard Sauce (recipe here)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Butter a loaf pan
3. Combine all ingredients and mix well (I sometimes use my food processor for this, so I can grind up the bread crumbs, then add onions and green pepper, then remaining ingredients and give it one more spin to mix).
4. Press into loaf pan and bake 35 minutes. 
5. Serve with Mustard Sauce.

Scrambled Eggs with Peppers and Onions

This is one of my favorite breakfasts. I have been making this for years, and I just love it. Scrambled eggs without veggies are good, but they are just not nearly as good as ones with random veggies.

So, this one has both red and green peppers and onions, and you just throw in the eggs once the veggies are soft, and scramble the eggs for a couple more minutes.

Here's what you'll need:
about 1/4 c. chopped onion
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 green bell pepper, chopped
1 tbsp. butter
6 eggs
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper

• Heat butter in skillet
• Add onion and pepper and cook about 5 minutes until vegetables are soft
• Add beaten eggs, salt & pepper, and cook until eggs are set

What I've Learned about Cooking (so far)

So, I've been doing this blog for three months now, and today I'm doing my first non-recipe post.

After three months of experimentations, trials and some errors, there's a few things I've learned. First of all, I cook seasonally. And there's not a cookbook out there that can give me enough recipes for all the vegetables I grew. I can make every cabbage recipe in any cookbook, and I'll still have more cabbage than can be cooked. So at times you have to go off the cookbook and go on Pinterest.

Second of all, cooking takes a lot of time....and even more dishes. I may have never noticed this if I had a dishwasher, but since we don't have a dishwasher in our new place, believe me, it's hard not to notice. Especially when the sink is piled so high with dishes I'm in fear of an avalanche. Cooking takes a lot of time, and then you have to do dishes, and that takes about twice as long as the cooking. I end up spending a lot more time in the kitchen than I ever thought I would, not being the Holly Housewife type.

And lastly, if cooking takes a lot of time, blogging takes a LOT of time. My husband doesn't have a problem with my cooking, but the time I spend blogging has been an issue of several occasions. But, the whole thing kind of went hand-in-hand. So it's new recipes and blogs, or it's tuna sandwiches. I can't really believe I've stuck with it this long, but here it is, 3 months later, and I haven't missed a single day. Of course, sometimes I make two or three recipes in one day, and that way I can skip a day here and there. But I've yet to skip a blog. So here's to nine more months.

Happy Cooking everyone!

Lentils with Pork or Sausage

This is another of those recipes that I found in Fannie and then ended up adapting so much that I'm not sure it's even based on her recipe anymore. Her recipe was for Lentils and Sausage, and I didn't have sausage, so I used some pork bones for flavor (and boy did they make the whole thing taste like I was eating pork instead of lentils!) and tried to follow the rest of the recipe. It didn't work out that well, as it was WAY dry and I had to double the water. By the time I was done, it had very few aspects of the Fannie Recipe. If I have sausage again, I might make this, but I found it a bit lacking of vegetables and overall a disappointment. It was way too bland for me. I love my lentil soup (I don't have a recipe, but I've made it many times and it always turns out full of flavor) and this was just eh. The next time I make a lentil dish, I will probably not repeat this one.

For this, I used:
1 1/4 c. dried lentils
2.5 c. water
2 small onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 potatoes, chopped
1 bay leaf
pork bones OR 1/2 lb. italian sausage, cut in 2 inch pieces

Directions:

1. In a large soup pot, combine lentils and water. 
2. Add onions, garlic and bay leaf. Bring to a simmer.
3. Add potatoes and sausage or soup bones.
4. Simmer 20-30 minutes until lentils are soft.
5. I had to add about 2 c. more water because not everything was covered by the water. It all boiled away, so this is not a soup, but a drier lentil dish.

I ended up putting soy sauce and sour cream and cilantro on this just to make it have some kind of flavor besides overwhelming pork-ness. Seriously, it was like I was eating a pork chop. Couldn't taste anything else!

Oatmeal Pancakes

Here's another breakfast recipe I made this weekend. My son didn't like these quite as much, and I didn't either, mostly because they were very hard to flip. They kind of fell apart, even though I added twice the flour in the recipe. I'm guessing it's because I didn't use quick-oats, but regular oatmeal. While it did soften as it soaked, I don't think it soaked up as much milk as the quick cooking variety would. They tasted okay, but not special enough to make these instead of regular or buttermilk pancakes.

Ingredients:

1/2 c. whole milk
1/2 c. oatmeal (quick cooking or rolled...rolled will be a bit chewier)
1 egg
2 tbsp. flour
2 tsp. baking powder

1. Heat the milk, then add the oatmeal and let sit 10 mins for quick oats, 20 for rolled
2. Add the beaten egg, flour, and baking powder and mix batter. I had to add a bit more flour at this point because my batter was too thin.
3. Cook in hot buttered skillet until golden on each side.
4. Serve with butter and syrup or honey.

Gluten Free, Grain Free Zucchini Lasagna

Confession: This was actually an impromptu meal that was salvaged from a failed attempt at zucchini ravioli. The person who made the ravioli is way more talented than I am at wielding a grater. After clutching my stand-up grater so tightly I managed to grate half the skin off my thumb on the opposite side while I attempted to wrangle a zucchini through the slotted side, I gave up. I lifted the grated to find a sad little pile of 2-inch long, paper-thin zucchini shreds and a few longer, thicker, choppy pieces.

Soooo not going to be able to make ravioli wrappings with THIS!

This is nothing like the perfectly uniform ravioli-wrapping strips in the pictures. I didn't know what to do at this point, since I'd already started my sauce and had this wonderful ravioli picture in my mind. So I winged it and made lasagna on the fly, without a recipe. I've made regular lasagna enough that I didn't feel too lost as I attempted a noodle-free version. Forging onwards, I set about slicing the zucchini lengthwise with a knife, making the thinnest slices I could, and laid them out for lasagna noodles.

I then discovered we only had about 1/2 c. of cottage cheese and no ricotta (the ravioli didn't have cheese--it was meat/spinach ravioli). Though tempted to give up, I persevered, using the cottage cheese in one layer and meat in the next, layering with sauce and zucchini and cheese as I went.
When it came out of the oven, it didn't look half bad, all layered and pretty, although my pasta-infused Italian blood did not find the zucchini an equal substitute for noodles. However, it really was quite good. If you're gluten-free and used to things like spaghetti squash and other noodles substitutes, I would absolutely recommend this. But I can't honestly say I didn't feel a *little* deprived, knowing what 'real' lasagna tastes like.

For this, I used:
2 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp. chopped onion (fresh or dried would be fine, or leave this out altogether)
1 c. ground beef or lamb
1 large zucchini (2 small would be fine)
1 c. cottage cheese or ricotta (2 if you like more cheese)
1 egg
1 c. grated mozzerella
1/2 c. parmesan cheese
1 batch of marinara sauce (or 1 jar canned)

1. In a medium skillet, heat oil, then add onion, garlic and ground meat. 
2. Cook over medium heat until pink is gone from meat, then set aside. 
3. Meanwhile cut zucchini lengthwise in as thin strips as possible (or grate on the side that makes strips, if you are a talented grater-user).
4. In a small bowl, beat egg and then stir in cottage cheese or ricotta. You can add a dash of Italian seasoning or other herbs to this if you wish.
5. Put about 1/4 c. marinara sauce in the bottom of an 8x8 baking dish, spreading to cover the bottom of the dish. Then lay out zucchini slices as you would lasagna noodles.
6. Top with half your cottage cheese mixture.
7. 
8. Top that with third of your mozzerella and parmesan
9. Follow with another layer zucchini, then about half your remaining sauce, then the meat, the rest of the cottage cheese, third of mozzerella and parmesan.
10. Top that with your last layer of zucchini, the remaining sauce, the last third of your mozzerella and parmesan.
11. Bake in a 375 oven for about 45 minutes.

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Guess where I got this recipe? Off the wonderful collection over on this blog. My goal is to make 10 of them this year, so I'm working my way through. I already made a zucchini banana bread, but I was at my mom's and she asked me to make something from the overripe bananas she had sitting on the counter. Instead of making regular old banana bread, I went to the list and found one I hadn't made. This one calls for Greek yogurt, but I used regular vanilla, since that's what she had. I didn't adapt this one a whole lot, since it's already healthy-ish.

For this, I used:

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cups white flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup organic sugar
• 3 large over-ripe bananas, mashed
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup vanilla (or plain) yogurt
• 1 cup zucchini, grated
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Directions

1. Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl.
2. Mix brown sugar, bananas, eggs, vanilla extract, yogurt, zucchini and chocolate chips in another large bowl.
3. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
4. Pour the mixture into a greased 9x5 inch loaf pan.
5. Bake in a preheated 350F oven until golden brown and a toothpick poked into the center comes out clean, about 60 minutes.