I'm having an off week. I managed to delete myself from this very blog, for instance, and I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW. What's the opposite of a technological genius? That's me. Situations like this are exactly why I have not yet completed my *teleportation device. (*This is not related to my time travel device, as I have put those plans on indefinite hold based on some really terrible time traveling nightmares/possible future real life circumstances.)
And just now, I microwaved my dinner FOUR TIMES and kept forgetting to eat it. (Actually, it's sitting beside me right now. I never ate it. Now I am doubting the nutritional value of 4x microwaved food. Should I even bother?)
Other than this questionable microwaved heap of chili relleno, I have not been cooking much. So this post isn't going to have a recipe. I'm telling you now, in case you have other things to do.
Moving on with the general mystery!
This week, I applied to this job at an organic grocery store, and I got a reply from Jim Morrison. I looked up his number through reverse phone lookup and it said he was located in Santa Monica even though this job was in Raleigh. Now, I know what you are thinking. A "Jim Morrison" and a long distance phone number?! That is a red flag for spam! But what I thought was - JIM MORRISON'S GHOST IS CONTACTING ME FOR A LEGIT JOB! I left a message on his voicemail, which, by the by, featured a speaking voice which could definitely translate to Jim Morrison's singing voice.
Then today, I received received several text messages from a mysterious cell number that I did not recognize. Because I forget stuff, and people, and details, ALL THE TIME. I reverse-phone-number looked it up in the white pages, but all the white pages told me was that it was local, which doesn't help, because probably I've forgotten a lot of things/people locally as well as internationally.
Mysterious Text: Are you OK? haven't heard from you in a while, hope you are doing well :)
(My Internal Dialogue: "Crap, what have I done to make people think I'm not okay? and... oh man, this person is SO NICE, they hope I am doing well. with a smiley face! what kind of person am I to not remember whose number this is?!")
My Actual Reply: All is well... Who is this? I don't have this number saved, which is prolly why you haven't heard from me.
Mysterious Texter: It is your favorite friend in North Carolina you poo poo head!
(My Internal Dialogue: "Clearly this IS my friend because only my most Favorite friends would call me a poo poo head!" Then I felt worse about forgetting.)
My Actual Reply: That is probably true based on the fact that you just called me a poohead.
Mysterious Texter: Its Vicki Lynne you douche that says alot you weinie
(This is where I got really confused. Because I know a VickY who is very particular about the spelling of her name, but this "Vickie" didn't even mention bourbon once, and VickY always does cause she's a classy classy lady. And I know a Lynn who changed her name to Lynae. But I don't know a Vickie Lynn. I don't think. Even though she appears to be my favorite. So instead I decided to change the subject.)
Me: I love refreshing insults in the morning! Mm.
Vicki Lynne: WTF I am offended you didn't know it was me!
Me: It IS a shame how I don't have a photographic memory. I am disappointed in that ALL the time.
............................................................
I didn't hear from Vicki Lynne again, which is sad since she is my favorite person in North Carolina.
And Jim Morrison never called me back.
..............
**update: Jim Morrison emailed me back.
**And Vickie Lynne texted again. But I ignored her. She seems difficult.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Bread Update! At Last!
So... Long time no post. Welllll, we're busy, and also lazy. But mostly busy. Because before you can post a recipe, you have to invent it, and then test it out, and then tweak it a bunch until it is right. So we've been doing a lot of testing. Remember my bread quest? I've made some head-way on that.
We decided to start out with some pre-packaged mixes, and see how far we got with those. The first one we tried was Pamela's Bread Mix, on the recommendation of a friend.
And It came out pretty good. It had a nice, fluffy texture like a hearty wheat or wholegrain bread. My husband, who is not GF, really liked this bread a bunch, but I found the flavor a little bit too yeasty. It was good, especially for deli sandwiches, but for more delicately flavored things like PB&J or French Toast, or even buttered breakfast toast, it had a pleasant, but not always desirable aftertaste of beer, and the older the bread got the stronger the yeast taste.
I'll still use this mix though, any time I want a heartier bread, especially in the winter to have with soups and stuff.
But I'm not on a quest for good bread. I'm on a quest for THE BEST BREAD! So we moved on to Gluten Free Pantry's French Bread and Pizza Mix.
Gluten Free Pantry is a product made by Glutino, a company I have mixed feelings about. In my area, they've pretty much cornered the market on GF products. And a lot of them are decent, and some of them are very good. But there are also a lot of products that are sub-par substitutions for traditional glutinous foods, where the finished product doesn't taste like what it is supposed to be substituting, nor does it necessarily taste very good, but a lot of time and resources went into making it and somewhere along the the line, someone decided, "Well, it's as good as we're going to get it," and left it at that, and then slapped a $7.00 price tag on a yucky substitution food that normally costs $2.50 and is much more delicious. All that to say, I was skeptical of Gluten Free Pantry. But for the sake of science, we got the Sandwich Bread Mix, and the French Bread and Pizza Mix, cause I was jonesing hard for a half-way decent pizza. The Sandwich Bread Mix was about what I expected. Not much of a flavor, the texture was ok, but didn't hold up after the first day. But the French Bread mix turned out to be something we could work with.
To be successful with this bread though, you need to do a few things. 1) do NOT expect French Bread, or anything remotely like it. But if you want a light, fluffy sandwich bread, or a really good pizza dough, you can achieve it.
2) The box comes with instructions, and we followed those at first, and then we started playing around to see if we could make it better, and guess what!? We did. So after about 10 different trials and combinations, I'm going to tell you how to get the best bread.
Combine:
1cup of luke-warm water
3/4 cup warm milk
1/3 cup melted butter
Combine:
2 tsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 eggs plus one egg white
(all beaten together)
Pour both liquid mixtures into bread machine. Empty entire bag of French bread mix on top of the liquids. Empty enclosed package of yeast on top of mix.
Set bread machine to French Bread, Light settings, then press start and let it do it's thing.
This bread is truly yummy. Nice, buttery flavor, fluffy texture, slices well, toasts nicely, keeps for a couple of days. My biggest problem with this bread is it is a pain in the ass to make. Even with the bread machine. With all the warming and melting and egg separation, the prep time is around 30 minutes, and then it is another 4.5 hours to bake.
Still, That's a fine lookin' sandwich, no?
You want to know what is on that sandwich, don't you. You see bacon, and you're like, "Ohh damn, what deliciousness is that!?" Alright, I tell you. It's my breakfast special.
You will need:
3 strips of thick cut maple cured bacon
1 large egg
2 thick slices of NY extra sharp cheddar cheese
2 normal (grocery store bread) sized slices of the delicious bread you just made
a little bit of butter
a little bit of salt and pepper
some hot sauce.
Heat a griddle to 375 degrees. Use one side to fry up your bacon.
Put the bacon on some paper towels
Crack your egg right into the bacon-greased griddle, salt n peppa it up.
Flip your egg. If you think yoke is gross, cook it all the way, but if you want the best sandwich ever, cook your egg over-easy so it is still a little yokey. Be careful not to break the yoke.
While your egg is cooking, melt a little butter on the clean side of your griddle, and put both slices of bread face-down in the butter.
On one piece of bread, melt your slices of cheese. (Said 2 slices because I need 2 side by side to cover my bread, but I guess it depends on how big your cheese comes. You basically just want on side of the bread totally covered by cheese.
When your egg is cooked to your liking and your cheese is melty, put the egg on top of the cheese bread, with the yoke side up.
Now put your bacon on top of your egg, and hot-sauce it to your satisfaction, and then put the top piece of bread on and serve.
Right before you eat it, smush your sandwich down to break the egg. This bread will totally hold up to smushing AND yoking, as you can see by the three bites already taken in the above picture. Sandwich intact? Oh yes!
Add a cup of coffee (I take mine with honey and cream) and you have yourself a pretty perfect breakfast.
So, my next goal is to make bread that is just as good as this bread, but does not require a box, OR 5 hours. It is a steep challenge, but I think I am up to it.
In the meantime, now that I DO have a good sandwich bread, I'll try and get Noelle to post some of her more bangin' sandwich creations. It will help if you bribe her with empty promises.
No really, it will.
We decided to start out with some pre-packaged mixes, and see how far we got with those. The first one we tried was Pamela's Bread Mix, on the recommendation of a friend.
And It came out pretty good. It had a nice, fluffy texture like a hearty wheat or wholegrain bread. My husband, who is not GF, really liked this bread a bunch, but I found the flavor a little bit too yeasty. It was good, especially for deli sandwiches, but for more delicately flavored things like PB&J or French Toast, or even buttered breakfast toast, it had a pleasant, but not always desirable aftertaste of beer, and the older the bread got the stronger the yeast taste.
I'll still use this mix though, any time I want a heartier bread, especially in the winter to have with soups and stuff.
But I'm not on a quest for good bread. I'm on a quest for THE BEST BREAD! So we moved on to Gluten Free Pantry's French Bread and Pizza Mix.
Gluten Free Pantry is a product made by Glutino, a company I have mixed feelings about. In my area, they've pretty much cornered the market on GF products. And a lot of them are decent, and some of them are very good. But there are also a lot of products that are sub-par substitutions for traditional glutinous foods, where the finished product doesn't taste like what it is supposed to be substituting, nor does it necessarily taste very good, but a lot of time and resources went into making it and somewhere along the the line, someone decided, "Well, it's as good as we're going to get it," and left it at that, and then slapped a $7.00 price tag on a yucky substitution food that normally costs $2.50 and is much more delicious. All that to say, I was skeptical of Gluten Free Pantry. But for the sake of science, we got the Sandwich Bread Mix, and the French Bread and Pizza Mix, cause I was jonesing hard for a half-way decent pizza. The Sandwich Bread Mix was about what I expected. Not much of a flavor, the texture was ok, but didn't hold up after the first day. But the French Bread mix turned out to be something we could work with.
To be successful with this bread though, you need to do a few things. 1) do NOT expect French Bread, or anything remotely like it. But if you want a light, fluffy sandwich bread, or a really good pizza dough, you can achieve it.
2) The box comes with instructions, and we followed those at first, and then we started playing around to see if we could make it better, and guess what!? We did. So after about 10 different trials and combinations, I'm going to tell you how to get the best bread.
Combine:
1cup of luke-warm water
3/4 cup warm milk
1/3 cup melted butter
Combine:
2 tsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 eggs plus one egg white
(all beaten together)
Pour both liquid mixtures into bread machine. Empty entire bag of French bread mix on top of the liquids. Empty enclosed package of yeast on top of mix.
Set bread machine to French Bread, Light settings, then press start and let it do it's thing.
This bread is truly yummy. Nice, buttery flavor, fluffy texture, slices well, toasts nicely, keeps for a couple of days. My biggest problem with this bread is it is a pain in the ass to make. Even with the bread machine. With all the warming and melting and egg separation, the prep time is around 30 minutes, and then it is another 4.5 hours to bake.
Still, That's a fine lookin' sandwich, no?
You want to know what is on that sandwich, don't you. You see bacon, and you're like, "Ohh damn, what deliciousness is that!?" Alright, I tell you. It's my breakfast special.
You will need:
3 strips of thick cut maple cured bacon
1 large egg
2 thick slices of NY extra sharp cheddar cheese
2 normal (grocery store bread) sized slices of the delicious bread you just made
a little bit of butter
a little bit of salt and pepper
some hot sauce.
Heat a griddle to 375 degrees. Use one side to fry up your bacon.
Put the bacon on some paper towels
Crack your egg right into the bacon-greased griddle, salt n peppa it up.
Flip your egg. If you think yoke is gross, cook it all the way, but if you want the best sandwich ever, cook your egg over-easy so it is still a little yokey. Be careful not to break the yoke.
While your egg is cooking, melt a little butter on the clean side of your griddle, and put both slices of bread face-down in the butter.
On one piece of bread, melt your slices of cheese. (Said 2 slices because I need 2 side by side to cover my bread, but I guess it depends on how big your cheese comes. You basically just want on side of the bread totally covered by cheese.
When your egg is cooked to your liking and your cheese is melty, put the egg on top of the cheese bread, with the yoke side up.
Now put your bacon on top of your egg, and hot-sauce it to your satisfaction, and then put the top piece of bread on and serve.
Right before you eat it, smush your sandwich down to break the egg. This bread will totally hold up to smushing AND yoking, as you can see by the three bites already taken in the above picture. Sandwich intact? Oh yes!
Add a cup of coffee (I take mine with honey and cream) and you have yourself a pretty perfect breakfast.
So, my next goal is to make bread that is just as good as this bread, but does not require a box, OR 5 hours. It is a steep challenge, but I think I am up to it.
In the meantime, now that I DO have a good sandwich bread, I'll try and get Noelle to post some of her more bangin' sandwich creations. It will help if you bribe her with empty promises.
No really, it will.
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