Bread

I have been wanting to make bread for a long time, but I have always been intimidated by the rising and waiting and smushing and waiting some more all before baking and waiting. I'm not very patient. So after seeing a very simple recipe for white bread on This blog, I decided to give it a try. She found the recipe in a cook book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I plan on checking the bookstore for this book this weekend because I just can't wait for it to be shipped to me. Anyway here way go, Homemade bread!

The Nice people at this blog have typed out the recipe so I don't have to! Check it out.


Here are the pictures from my break making experience.



Mixing the yeast with warm water.



The dough!

I forgot to take pictures of the dough rising. Ooops.



The refrigerated dough.



Two formed loaves on a pizza peel covered with cornmeal. Rising one last time.

I forgot to take a picture of them after flouring the tops and slashing the pattern. Again Ooops.



The finished product. So Yummy! Not to mention bread baking is about the best smell ever. It makes you feel all cozy inside.



Yum.

Taco Salad

My husband and I love Mexican food, from barely Mexican texmex to the more authentic mom and pop places that claim to have the real deal. This dish leans pretty far into the texmex court.

My fake it till you make it Taco Salad:

Ingredients:

Ground Beef
Taco Bell Seasoning Packet
Lettuce
Fritos Original Corn Chips
Salsa
Tomato, chopped
Mexican blend cheese
Sour Cream
Any other taco topping you like.

Brown ground beef, season with Taco Bell taco seasoning packet as directed.

Put lettuce into bowl or on a plate, top with salsa, tomatoes, taco meat, cheese sour cream and any other toppings you like. Add Fritos on top like croutons. And done!

Key Lime Pie

Key lime pie is my husbands favorite dessert. He can eat a whole pie all by himself, and he will if I let him. Key lime pie is very easy and very yummy. I use the recipe right off the Nellie & Joe's Famous Key Lime Juice bottle. I know that's cheating a little to use bottled juice. So if you want to squeeze all those tiny key limes, knock yourself out.

You will need:

1 9" graham cracker pie crust (store bought or home made, I've used both)
1 14oz can Sweetened Condensed milk
1/2 C Nellie & Joe's Key Lime Juice
3 Egg yolks (whites not used)

Combine milk, egg yolks and lime juice. Blend until smooth. Pour filling into pie crust and bake at 350º for 15 minutes. Allow to stand 10 minutes before refrigerating. Just before serving, top with freshly whipped cream and garnish with lime slices if desired.

This time I decided to make my own pie crust. It's super easy. I buy the graham cracker crumbs and use the recipe on the box. It's just crumbs, sugar and butter.

Stir Fry

Tonight for dinner I decided to try something new, chicken stir fry over fried rice. Again I just kind of took a stab at it and didn't follow a recipe. From what I understood stir fry was pretty straight forward, meat, veggies and noodles or rice if desired, so that's what I did.

I used one large chicken breast sliced thin. A package of premixed stir fry veggies from the produce department at my grocery store, a little bit of oil for the pan, white rice, soy sauce and a large egg.



First I cooked the rice in a rice cooker, then rinsed it in cold water and put it in the fridge to chill.



Then I put some oil in a bowl with the sliced chicken and the package of veggies along with some ground ginger, garlic red pepper flakes, ground pepper and a few tbs of of soy sauce and mixed it all up to get everything coated and spiced up.



Next I put a couple tbs of oil in a large fry pan (I don't have a wok), put it on high and tossed all of the veggies and chicken in. I stirred it as it fried up. I added a little bit of water to the pan near the end I threw on a lid and let the veggies kind of steam a little. Then I added a little more soy sauce stirred it up a little more and put it in a bowl and covered it with foil.



I rinsed out the pan and added some oil again, brought it back up to high and then added the egg and stirred it around until it was almost all the way scrambled. Then I added soy sauce and the chilled rice. I let it fry in the pan until it looked like fried rice.



After it was done I platted the fried rice in noodle bowls and put the veggies and chicken on top.



It was really good and it was really easy to make, didn't take long and leave out the chicken and its an all veggie dish.

Enjoy!

Pulled Pork

So being the lack luster blogger that I am, of course it took me a hundred years to remember to take a picture. And I only remembered to take a picture at the end. Anyway, here we go, I didn't use a recipe, I don't with a lot of things I make, I'm too lazy to look up what other people think I should do. So for this I got some advice from my brother who could out cook me any day of the week.



Pulled Pork

I used 3.5lbs. of picnic pork roast

I mixed:

1/2 c white vinegar
1 c bbq sauce (use your favorite)

A few shakes of:
fresh ground black pepper
red pepper flakes
garlic
kosher salt

I poured all the spices and sauce on the roast in a croc pot cooked it on low for 9 hours and then pulled it apart.

After I pulled it all I put it on a baking sheet and baked it at 375 degrees until the top layer was a little bit crispy. And then served on buns with bbq sauce.