Oh. And happy Easter!

She beat me to it!!! Dang...it...is good.

If we head back to the post on Cinnamon Mistake Bread, my main reason for making it was to create a base for great french toast. Basia, this morning, made french toast out of our Challah (Braided Jewish egg bread). It was sooooo good that we now have plans to make it for company on the morning of Ethan's third birthday (two weeks away). The quintessential mark of success we used? Just like my pizza, when both we and the kids eat it without complaint, it is a hit.

Here! have a photo. or two.

Somewhat before we started blogging about our culinary adventure, our fun seemed to be based around going out to eat. It has been a month or so, and we have been hearing less and less from the kids demanding to head to a restaurant.

Even if the change for us was spurred forward by economic factors, it seems I (at least) have awakened to the idea that the way we were living was not serving my family. We were transported as lumps of flesh from one expensive menu choice to the next. We had no idea what went into the food, how to prepare it, or how much effort it took. Now the kids (and we) can see all of this and we can teach how to use math and intellect to create what we want. I think we are better for it (but Cinnamon Mistake Bread will always have been a mistake). We are learning. And loving.

And I got in the way, too!

While Basia was making Challah this morning, I noticed we still had six hotdogs left from the max pack in the meat drawer of the fridge. I've always loved bageldogs from Costco, and have wondered if I could combine my new talent making bagels with the hotdog group. Yep! It works. We had homemade bagel dogs for lunch out on the back patio.

After lunch, I took a nap. Upon waking, I discovered that Basia and the kids had crafted a carrot cake (we only used the Kitchenaid mixer on four different culinary projects today). Oh, here is a picture of the cake.

"What are you going to bake today?"

My good friend Charlie and I talk almost every night (it is a good thing that night and weekend minutes on cell phones are included in the price for phone service). The title of this post is one of the last things he said to me as I dragged my weary self home this morning. I didn't think I was going to do anything in the kitchen. When I walked in through the family's hugs though, I found that the kitchen was already humming. I just couldn't go to bed, I had to get involved.

Basia was making Challah, more for taste than for religious significance, but she was getting ready to braid.

There is no question that the credit for this successful bread (beautiful and tasty) belongs to Basia, but the kids and I did help by getting in the way a bit (and oversprinkling poppyseeds).

We have three loaves now and one is being whittled down rapidly. French toast tomorrow!!

Don't tell the kids, but it's working!

We haven't gone to a restaurant in two weeks, and have been eating better food more economically the entire time.

We finished off the lasagna tonight for dinner. What has become of life in America; why am I surprised that we can make good food at home (and we are amateurs)?

We have had the "Noodle Dream"

If you've seen Kung Fu Panda, you know from whence this comes.

Anyway, we made pasta today... umm... well, we actually destroyed some extruded spaghetti and the like (when the Kitchenaid manual says seperate immediately, do it). We did end up with small test quantities of angel hair (ish), fettuccini, and lasagna noodles (the reason for the exercise in the first place).

While I was napping, Basia translated mixed up flour and eggs plus many other scratch and non-scratch ingredients into a wonderful leftover-roast-chicken lasagna that I would gladly pay for at a restaurant. Between two adults and two small kids, we consumed more than half of it. Given the base cost of the ingredients, we will get two great meals and some culinary satisfaction for about 15 dollars.

OK. To the pictures. And I'll even let Basia rant on about it

for a moment on down the page. Thanks for reading again!







































Hey, I finally get a chance to get a word in edge wise (snickering inside). I've been wanting to make homemade pasta for a long time but as with anything else doing something for the first time it's a little intimidating. It really was easy. Next time the kids will be allowed to "help".


Wade and I have been having fun with our Kitchenaid Stand Mixer ('ol Blue and Mixtress) and this was no exception. We made the pasta before Wade had to go pick up Sarah. We had a good laugh in discovering all of our pasta maker parts. The biggest laugh we had was at Wade's expense (yet again). We were trying dilligently to make fettuccini and the gosh darn dough WOULDN'T go through the rollers. Then I noticed the problem ... I screamed "STOP, STOP, STOP, STOP" ... then I laughed. Wade had installed the rollers UPSIDE DOWN! Just because it said "Made in Italy" doesn't mean that's the "top" of the machine. After fixing the problem, the fettuccini noodles were being rolled out and examined. "Not bad". However, we realized that the straighter you fed the dough into the rollers, the less noodle splinters were created.


Sorry, I digress ... the lasagna was made with leftover roasted chicken, pesto sauce and jarred Ragu spaghetti sauce, chedder cheese, mozarella AND Eggplant. It must have been really been good for Wade to eat Eggplant! !
Even the kids liked it!

One of the biggest compliment that Wade has given me about my cooking is that he would "pay for this in a restaurant" - Wow! That's a far cry from the first time I made some chicken soup for Wade when he was sick and we had just started dating. The soup was really bad but he ate it anyway. That's true love!

Some of the advantages of making your own food is that you know exactly what's in your food and how your family is eating. You can make "substitutions" and not get charged up the wa-zu for it ($2.00 for each additional pizza topping). Wade and I are not particularly fond of the ricotta cheese used in typical lasagna recipes - so, I didn't put any in and the results are a spectacular WOW!

Being a true "stay-at-home mom" does have it's advantages and ONE of them is that you get to experiment in the kitchen. It's good family fun and educational (huh?) - for the kids to know where food comes from.

Well, that's all for this edition of "familyfuninthekitcken". There'll be more after Easter - I'll be attempting to make Challah.

Ciao,
Basia

PS. If this post seems to go on a bit too long, know that it is only because we haven't stopped typing yet.

Cinnamon Mistake Bread

I've been waiting to make this bread fo the last couple of weeks. My end product (intended) is a cinnamon roll that is a loaf of bread. We altered the recipe to make the filling better, but it prevented the loops of bread roll from holding to each other. Tasty, but still a mistake. One day, I'll make it right and we will have french toast from the slices. As you can see, Ethan is more interested in handling the tape measure than the dough (but it was a close second).

The tape measure made Basia laugh.

Two dozen bagels this weekend, but five did not survive the next morning!

I love bagels. We have made small batches several times over the past few weeks, but each time, the dough lacked some kind of oomph. Some of the internets recommend using this malt powder (diastatic or non-diastatic) for taste and to help with the shiny surface and rising. Well, I've never had a problem rising, so we went with non-diastatic. That is exactly the flavor we were missing. What tremendous bagels.

We made the dough. Let double. Seperated into bagel sized dough balls and formed them (poked a hole and stretched and stuff). Let rise another twenty minutes, and boiled the bagels two or three at a time (then cooled in cold water). While they were wet, added some topping junk (garlic, onions, garlic, garlic and onions).
Using a preheated 450 degree oven that is calibrated for farenheit, we added some bagels for two sessions of 9 minutes ish each. In between the sessions, kind of nudged them loose from the pan (saves on PAM) (actually do this, but I forgot to say place the bagels on some corn meal--the corn acts as little edible bearings).







Cool these puppies on some sort of rack and place in a tupperware bin to rot... not.

They are ttttasty.

Bagels scared me because of the extra step, and the fact that something is on the stove and really hot. Fortunately, with water, the odds of it getting so hot that it causes your brother to light your arm on fire are very long. We all have our baggage from childhood I guess.




Oh. and here is that tupperware thingy.

Basia and I also noted that starting to make two batches of bagels after dinner makes for a long night.

Eat well and have a good economy,

Wade

Pizza night! Followed by home made Ice Cream

Here is Ethan enjoying the Chocolate Malted Ice Cream we made last week.













And here is Sarah enjoying same! Not the copious amount of pizza rind on the plate!














Backing up a bit, here is a pic of the fixins'. The dough was altered a bit by the addition of malt flour (from a homebrew supply store). It makes the taste as fantastic as it did with the bagels but the dough is nearly unworkable. Hard to get into a ball and difficult to roll out.















And this right here is one of the finished pizzas. Yes, it did taste as good as it looks. Evidence? There was no noise from the kids save for extreme mastication and swallowing. Sarah had 4 and a half pieces.

The adult pizza was a tad larger (16") and featured onions, sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and olives (have I left any out?). Basia's most notable contribution to the cheesy success is the idea to mix mozarella and cheddar.

So tasty.

Right now we are making Leftover Ice Cream out of some canned pears (from a neighbors yard) and a modified peach recipe from the Ben and Jerry book.

This is so much more fun than just going oiut to eat!

Spoke with Kitchenaid this morning

A replacement for our new refurbished mixer is on the way. Should be the same color (and we will keep the name "My Mixtress").

Sarah, in customer service was so helpful and polite, it warm fuzzies me about that KA company.

I'm sure glad I fixed the original mixer this weekend "old Blue".

Iffy, but I can't blame Ethan (his help was invaluable)

Ad Lib Bread. It's for dinner!

I'll first, stipulate, that this has yet to be tasted. Suffice to say though, when you are too lazy to separate an egg white and brush it on top of the bread, and decide to use olive oil instead... the results are somewhat different.

Only two cups of flour, one package of yeast, some garlic powder, a bit of salt and seasoning salt, a tad of sugar with the 1 cup of warm water (to help out the yeast) and a smidge of olive oil in the dough. Make a mess with a bit more flour (the boy loved that part). Let rise for 40 minutes, punch down and divide in four. Then roll out in your hands, cut the stupid little slots in the top (they look cool when the egg white trick is "actually" used) and drizzle a bit of olive oil on top. (they are, at this point, residing

on a cookie sheet on top of some corn meal)

While waiting twenty minutes for them to rise again, wave the magic wand and get that oven pre-heated to 450 and slide them in for twelve minutes.

After dinner, I'll let you know how they were. (they sure look weird). Would have been worse but for the help. Thanks Ethan!

And now pretzels

I may be able to upload the video later, but I made pretzels for my wife and the kids to welcome them home. I used the recipe for mall pretzels from allrecipes.com to do this. To scratch the creativity itch, I wrote their names in pretzel dough. It went over well.

This photo was taken after the extras were nearly consumed and Mom had eaten the bridge between the O and M in hers.

There was a little more ice cream batter to freeze up, so I had the kids help me. I'm glad I fixed the broken mixer, because the "Refurbished" new one we had delivered this week is now just making noise but not turning. Argh. A call to Kitchenaid customer service in the morning. I'm sure it will get fixed.

Thats all for now. Back to work tomorrow!

While the Family is Away, Dad Will Play

Bagels and Ice Cream, thanks to Kitchenaid!
















Those are some of the bagels anyway.

I got the recipe for these NY style bagels from cdkitchen.com.

I wanted to try a dough recipe that included malt. We did not have malt syrup, so I used malt flour from a brew supply place (thanks to my lovely wife for getting it).

Two of them have already been eaten.

As for the ice cream, allrecipes.com has a chocolate malted crunch recipe that sounds very close to the Thrifty brand ice-cream of my youth (double choc malted crunch). First batch with the Kitchenaid adapter yielded overly airy confection (I think the freezybowlthingy was not quite cold enough. The results are very edible, but is more like a frozen Wendy's frosty.

More later (working on special, Welcome Home pretzels right now).