Cooking thread, anyone?

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is that's what you call it "carby"--good name--lol Everything sure looks good and wrote the KA recipe down and will use my bread machine in time--looks wonderful...clancey
 
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Congrats! Good job! :)
I have a quote in my kitchen: "I can either take control of my wellness or I'll be forced to deal with my illness."

Hubby and I are watching our carb intake too...he's down 55# and I'm down 60#. Unfortunately, it's required reducing almost ALL carbs: pasta, bread, potatoes, sugar...general intake is less than 30 grams/day...totally stinks but we honestly feel sooooo much better.
The past three winters my weight usually gets up to 234 plus but after giving up bread and a few other things, I'm still at 206 this morning.

Congrats on the weight loss and yes, it does feel great.
 
I have had great luck with King Arthur recipes! ...my K. A. sourdough starter is resting in my fridge--I've heard that sourdough has less effect on blood sugar levels than regular yeast breads so I've been using sourdough as much as possible....well....when I make bread...which isn't often because it's still carby. (but oooooh soooo yummy!!) LOL
i'll have to look into that sour dough and blood sugar. i'am diabetic but have found a couple of things that drop the blood sugar for first thing in the morning. hard boiled egg and peanut butter. thank you for the tip.
 
I'm also a fan of King Arthur recipes.

Yeast set is worth buying, if you bake. I also buy yeast in the 1-lb. brick. Sometimes two at a time. Freezes great.

 
I'm also a fan of King Arthur recipes.

Yeast set is worth buying, if you bake. I also buy yeast in the 1-lb. brick. Sometimes two at a time. Freezes great.

How long can you freeze it?
 
I've used yeast that was in the freezer years past the date on the package, and it's been fine. That'll happen if I buy 2-lb. Even with baking a fair bit, does take me a while to go through 2 pounds of yeast 2 1/4 teaspoons at a time. 😀
 
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I have had great luck with King Arthur recipes! ...my K. A. sourdough starter is resting in my fridge--I've heard that sourdough has less effect on blood sugar levels than regular yeast breads so I've been using sourdough as much as possible....well....when I make bread...which isn't often because it's still carby. (but oooooh soooo yummy!!) LOL
I’ll need to look into their sourdough. I’ve just recently started using more traditional wheat flour as opposed to einkorn which I’ve used for years, but I do love a good sourdough. I find it’s easier to digest, and to me it just tastes so good.
 
I've used yeast that was in the freezer years past the date on the package, and it's been fine. That'll happen if I buy 2-lb. Even with baking a fair bit, does take me a while to go through 2 pounds of yeast 2 1/4 teaspoons at a time. 😀
I haven’t bought yeast from King Arthur, but I do also buy it in large quantities and freeze it. It works well.
 
Nan headed to her mom's in NJ last night. Has to go to her brother's in NC. Easy dinner. There was no marinara sauce in the freezer, so I made a batch. Leone's Marinara Sauce from Leone's Italian Cookbook, 1967.

Casserole elbows with marinara sauce, meatballs, and mozzarella topped with grated Romano in a heated cast iron skillet. Place under broiler in toaster oven to melt cheese on top. Yum!
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We’ve had crazy roller coaster weather this winter here in Texas. Yesterday was a misty 59 degrees (after 70 and sunny the day before), but today we spent most of the day around 24 degrees. (It briefly went as high as 27 when the sun popped out briefly.) Because I had to be outside yesterday afternoon putting frost cloth on citrus trees and onion transplants and had to pick up some groceries in the evening, I needed an easy meal. I also wanted to make sure that I had some good food prepared just in case we lost power with the predicted ice today. I used my two crock pots and cooked a ham in the large one and mashed potatoes in the small one. We ate them with broccoli.

We did not lose power today thankfully, and so we had the ham and potatoes (this time mixed with sautéed onions and a tiny cabbage that I rescued from the garden) for lunch, and I carried on with my plan of roasting a small turkey for dinner. I figured that a day in the 20’s in south central Texas is a good time to use the oven for a few hours. (Our local grocery had ten pound organic turkeys on clearance after Thanksgiving, and so we bought two or three.). It had been defrosting this week in our spare refrigerator, and I think I would have boiled it if we had lost power (gas stove). I’m glad that it didn’t come to that, and we had a nice roast turkey; dressing made from wheat bread, onions, mushrooms, spinach and cranberries; and green beans on the side.

Leftovers tomorrow.
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Yesterday was supposed to be pizza day at our house, but the store did not have the pepperoni I had hoped to use, so I changed plans. (We don’t usually have pepperoni at all, but I had said that we would have it as a treat on the next pizza day, hence the change.) My oldest had asked recently for me to make more Indian food, so I decided on samosas with a spiced ground beef with potato and onion filling. I’m no expert on folding these, but I ended up pleased with how they turned out. We had enough for two meals, but I ended up with extra filling, so that’s in the freezer waiting for another day when I’m feeling ambitious. It did take a while to roll and fold thirty-six of those little guys.

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We had simple cauliflower on the side.
 
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Stir fry tonight. Pork and broccoli.

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My wife wants filled focaccia for Super Bowl Sunday. Great choice. Haven't done it in a while.

An old thread (2009!) on a car web site that got us making focaccia: https://www.vwvortex.com/threads/home-made-focaccia-fah-katz.4351797/#post-57020576

Recipe to play with for filled focaccia when we first made them: https://www.food.com/recipe/bread-machine-stuffed-rosemary-focaccia-322511

King Arthur has similar: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/cheese-and-herb-stuffed-focaccia-recipe

Doing the second rise in two no. 12 cast iron skillets. Pictures from December 2015. Been a while!

Also baked picture. And cooling. Yum!

Mine will be Italian sausage, mushroom, sun-dried tomato, mozzarella, and garlic.

My wife will make ham, sun-dried tomato, goat cheese, green pepper, and onion.

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nice recipe and a wonderful cook..enjoy...My late husband was a wonderful cook too and I enjoyed so so many wonderful meals and in those days I I could eat...thanks for sharing. I love my old black pots for they hold the heat so well...clancey
 
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Focaccia turned out great. Made two in no. 12 skillets. Mine was sausage, mushroom, sun-dried tomato, mozzarella, provolone, and garlic. Nan's was ham, goat cheese, and sun-dried tomato. Served with homemade marinara.

Recipe is Cheese and Herb Stuffed Focaccia from the King Arthur Flour web site. Used Italian seasoning. Easy to make two large focaccia. Dinner for several nights.

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@PaulOinMA , that stuffed focaccia looked so good I decided to give a try to stuffed pizza. I’ve never done it before, and I put all the fillings in the middle instead of having sauce and cheese on top as most recipes seem to indicate. It was a hit with most of the family. The five year old still hasn’t really developed a taste for spinach, so he wasn’t as thrilled, but a ate a good portion of his piece.

I used this recipe for guidance, though I didn’t use sausage. I used uncured pepperoni, onions, peppers, and spinach all cooked with some sauce I had made in the summer and frozen. I cooked it down a good bit to get rid of excess moisture, and it worked inside the crust. I made one large pizza in a 10 x 15 pan and cut it into twelve pieces. One piece was enough for each of us except my teenager.


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I’m not always up for cooking such dishes, and I thought I’d share a couple photos of “snack lunches” that we occasionally eat at our house. There’s still work involves with these, but it’s work that‘s done in advance for the most part and can then be called up for a quicker meal.

The first photo shows pickles we made in the summer, oatmeal bars, craisins, white cheddar cheese, and some teriyaki meat sticks we made from ground beef and spices the other week. This was a meal for three.

The second features some guacamole I made recently because avocados were on sale at the local grocery. We used it to dip corn chips (not homemade) and dehydrated cucumbers and tomatoes from the summer produce. I still have some hot peppers on my counter from our last harvest, but I’m slowly using them up. I think I used four in this large batch of guacamole.

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Looks good. We also haven't made calzones in a long time.
 
For me uncured pepperoni sounds better for a pizza then sausage anyway and the taste would give it a "zip" so to speak--lol...Gosh I am hungry...Thanks for sharing and my late husband always mentioned a stock pot and do you people have a stock pot and how does that work? clancey
 
The wife had made these for me before so yesterday under her watchful eye, I made a batch, dang they're good. We don't use the topping in the recipe, we use brown sugar with cinnamon sprinkled on the top.

The recipe is from a cooking show that's on our local TV station out of Watertown NY.

What You'll Need​

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 stick butter, melted
  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup maple syrup
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • Streusel Topping
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 3 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 2 tablespoons chopped walnuts
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 tablespoons butter

What to Do​

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 16 muffin cups with paper liners.
  2. In a large bowl, combine the 2 cups flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, baking powder, and salt; mix well. In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, milk, syrup, egg, and vanilla. Add milk mixture to dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Do not over mix. Spoon batter evenly into muffin cup liners.
  3. In a small bowl, combine Streusel Topping ingredients; mix until crumbly. Sprinkle evenly over batter.
  4. Bake 18 to 22 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Let cool slightly, remove from pan, and let cool completely on a wire rack.

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A couple of weeks ago the local grocery store had an excellent sale on organic strawberries. We got five pints for fresh use and freezing. My oldest daughter wanted to make strawberry shortcake. I helped, but she did a good portion of the work, including the decorating.

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I also discovered the pureeing strawberries with yogurt in the blender makes an excellent liquid sweetener/flavoring for homemade granola (a mixture of oats, corn flour, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds for this particular batch).
 
your oldest daughter is talented. that cake looks like a pro made it. and looks delish