Me: “We’re like the yin and yang of cheapness. We’re cheap about different things, but together we form the perfect circle of cheapness!”
Me: “Evie, if I see you spray your brother in the face again, we’re going to turn around and go home.”
::time passes::
Evie: “Since we’re getting ready to go home anyway, can I spray him in the face now?”
Me: “I can’t pick you up, how would I make supper?”
Ollie, tapping my arm: “One hand.”
Me: “Do you know what animal ham comes from?
Evie: “A hamster?”
The first Friday of the month is reserved for recipes. You can see additional First Friday Food posts here.
I set out on a mission to find a good, spongy, soft, 100% whole wheat bread. We only use white whole wheat flour, but a lot of the bread recipes we try end up very tough or dense. This was creating a bit of a problem, because bread from the store is increasingly disgusting (i.e. high fructose corn syrup flavored foam bricks with ingredients lists that are inexplicably longer than my arm), but I couldn’t find a good substitute. So I began trying various recipes until I finally found one that was everything I ever wanted, and more.
The reason this recipe is “the one” is because it has a lot of sugar in it. That’s both the good and the bad, but it is a necessary evil because it’s what makes the bread light and fluffy. That sugar is yeast food, and it makes the dough rise like crazy. In fact, with a little extra rising time, you can actually split the loaf in half and make two loaves for the price of one. Lately I have been experimenting with cutting out a tablespoon of brown sugar. So far I haven’t noticed a difference.
I make the bread on the dough cycle of our bread machine, but you could conceivably do it by hand. I’ve just found from experience that I don’t mix it it enough when I do it by hand. Besides, why even have a bread machine if you’re not going to use it? (And believe me, we get a lot of use out of ours)
After the bread has been mixing for awhile in the bread maker, I open it up and scrape down the sides with a spatula to make sure everything is mixing well, and also add a tiny bit of water if it seems necessarily. I like wet dough, because it tends to rise better. Basically, every bread recipe I’ve ever tried for whole wheat flour has required me to add water to it. I don’t know if people just consistently underestimate the amount of water they need, if the recipes are really for bread flour and whole wheat needs more water, or if there’s just something about my baking environment that requires more water. But anyway, feel free to play with the recipe if it’s not coming out quite right.
For artisan breads I rely on Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day (perhaps there’ll be a post on that someday), but this recipe cannot be beat for a sandwich loaf. I don’t think it’s out of line to say this is the best whole wheat bread I have ever made. We don’t buy bread anymore, we only make it. In fact, I have even used this recipe to make some very excellent hamburger and even brat buns!
The original recipe was from the Internet, but I can’t find it anymore.
That’s not just some eye catching headline, designed to upset you and draw you in. It’s actually a fact.
It turns out there is something called the “lone star tick”, whose bite actually makes you allergic to meat.
Technically it doesn’t really make you a vegetarian, since you could still eat poultry and fish, but it is still very interesting that a bug bite could change something so fundamental about your way of life.
It begs the question: was vegetarianism originally an unnatural state brought about by tick bites? And are all the vegetarians since descended from copy-cat followers on? And what other states of being can be brought about by bug bites (besides “itchy”)? Could this explain the difference between “dog people” and “cat people”? Could it explain exercise fanatics? People who like the little disgusting things known as deviled eggs?
Wait a minute! Maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe vegetarianism is a super power, transferred by the bite of an insect. There is some precedent for that.
In any case, nature never ceases to amaze me.
Link via Sara.
In honor of the nation’s birthday, there will be no post today. Anyway, I know nobody would be here to read it, so what’s the point? No reason to keep the shop open for my own sake.
Instead, lets enjoy the outdoors, eat some wonderful food, and celebrate the only holiday that encourages you to blow things up.
-The Management
On this, the day of my 8th anniversary to my lovely wife, I would like to talk about one of my failings, and one of the reasons why she must never leave me (or maybe one of the reasons why she might want to leave me). No two ways about it, I am a terrible cook.
This happens to be one of Sara’s strong suites, so it works out pretty well. One of those complimentary things that makes marriage work I guess. On the other hand, since cooking comes pretty naturally to her, I think my inability to cook is somewhat baffling to her.
When I say that I can’t cook, I don’t mean that I am unable to cook, and certainly I don’t mean that I don’t want to cook. But for some reason, I am just bad at it, and apparently cannot improve past my current sorry ability. Inevitably there is always some kind of disaster that leaves something wrong with the meal. Either something is burned, or something is under-cooked. Either an ingredient was left out, or accidentally doubled. All of it with equal likelihood. I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly that I do wrong, but somehow, it always turns out wrong.
Every time I cook it always seems like a one time thing that didn’t work out. “Oh, well this burned because I had to deal with such and such at just the wrong moment,” or, “Well, of course that didn’t turn out, but there were extenuating circumstances!”, etc. But there’s always a one time thing, every time, so at some point I have to admit that it’s never going to work out.
First off, I get flustered in the kitchen. Suddenly I have terrible time management and multi-tasking abilities for no reason. It’s like I can’t manage two things at once, even though I normally don’t have a problem with that. It doesn’t even seem like it should be that hard, but then again, maybe I just feel uncomfortable in the kitchen because I know it is going to turn out wrong somehow.
I honestly think that it is a culmination of all the little things that go into cooking that I just don’t have a gut feel for. Some parts of the recipe you can play around with a little bit, and some you can’t. Some measurements can be loose, some must be precise. Some things can be left to sit on the stove for a minute, and some must be watched very carefully. I consistently misjudge which is which. I don’t understand standard measuring conversions. I think I’m also impatient with cooking, which leads to me skipping tedious but important steps. I don’t take the time to chop things fine enough, or to let the pan heat up enough, or I turn the burner up too high, which doesn’t give the middle enough time to cook. I forget to set the timer, I use the wrong utensil/pot/substitution for the job, and I don’t have a fundamental feel for how long things need to microwave. Whatever it is, I think I just consistently make a thousand tiny little mistakes which culminate in some larger mistake.
But that’s the part that is frustrating to both me and Sara: why don’t I just stop doing that? All of these things seem like the kind of mistakes you make when you’re just learning to cook. With enough experience, you should be able to move past that, right? But at this point in my life, I think it’s pretty clear that I’m just not ever going to get any better.
I suppose that cooking is a skill, and it stands to reason that some people are better at some things, so there must be some people who are worse at some things. But it’s frustrating because cooking basic meals doesn’t seem like such a hard skill, and I think the vast majority of people are able to master it up to at least a certain level.
I much prefer baking, which is more like performing chemistry then cooking. Ingredients are added precisely according to a recipe, and if you always follow that recipe exactly, you will always get the same result. There is usually only limited opportunity for error: it’s not particularly dependent on timing, and the heat is constant and controlled by a computer chip in the oven. So, there’s less pressure, and consequently I enjoy it more.
I suppose all of this makes me sound like some kind of cooking half-wit who’s lucky not to stab himself in the eye while boiling water. That’s not really the case. Instead, I would say that I specialize in making delicious meals with one flaw each. (How does that go? Imperfection is beauty?) But, whether I am passable at it or not, I can safely say I do not enjoy cooking, that is for sure.
So, cooking, I think this is it. It’s just not working out. We’ve had some good times, but at the end of the day we just weren’t made for each other.
I finally realized, it’s not you, it’s me.
Shane Halbach 