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| Friday, January 11, 2008 |
| You smell like soup |
Feeling a bit under the weather today I stayed home and rested. While I was resting, my from scratch chicken noodle soup was doing it's thing on the stove for 10 hours. Yes, 10 hours. That's how long it takes to make chicken noodle soup really from scratch starting with making the stock.
It began with a gallon of water and 4 chicken thighs in a huge stock pot simmering away for hours and hours and hours with some celery, garlic, carrots and bacon. When the meat had fallen off the bone, most of the veggies had disintegrated, and the bones were soft, I strained the stock and began making the soup.
I put the chicken back in the stock, added chopped celery, onion and carrot along with a generous sprinkle of salt and pepper. When the veggies were nearly the perfect doneness (almost not crunchy), I added a box of noodles and brought the whole thing to a boil for about 10 min. That's about it. It had been simmering most of the day so it took my bowl of soup about 10 min to cool down before I could eat it and then I still had to blow in each spoonful.
I also made another loaf of egg bread to eat with the soup since the last loaf is down to it's last couple slices.Labels: food, winter |
posted by Jen @ 11:28 PM   |
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| Sunday, January 06, 2008 |
| Failed to post |
I realized just now I failed to post this post about the homemade Christmas we had. I made a number of items for gifts, some of which I started before Thanksgiving.
These mittens I actually started last winter for Steph, but it got to be spring before they were done, so this year they were finished for her Christmas present. I lined them with a pink, orange and yellow flowered fleece. They are yellow at her request to match her yellow VW bug.
 I made my sister a calorimetry similar to my own because I know she often wears her own long hair up and could use the extra warmth way up on the southern shore of Lake Superior. She nicknamed it a baboushka. Pattern from Knitty.com, though modified a bit.
 Below is the wool wine cozy I made for my parents. Of course there was a bottle of red wine inside when I gave it to them, but it's meant to keep your wine bottle from warming up and also to keep it from clanking around when you take it on a picnic. Patten also from knitty.com.
 Last, but certainly not least is the froggy hat made for Matt's youngest nephew. I got the pattern from Lion Brand Yarn's website. The yarn was hard to work with, but it was so cute when it was done.
We spent very little on Christmas this year, opting for homemade. And to be honest we also had a little bit of a "regifting" Christmas. I prefer to think of it as recycling, reusing, reducing waste and reducing consumerism. We also bought a few of our holiday gifts way back in October in a silent auction at a benefit for Driftless Organics farm.Labels: holidays, knit and crochet |
| posted by Jen @ 10:16 PM |
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| From Scratch |
In attempts to make our food budget even smaller (most people would drop dead to hear we spend less than $200 in an average month on groceries - partially due to coupon and sale items), I have taken to making a greater number of things from scratch. Not only is this fun for me as I've always loved cooking and baking, but it's been really great to pick up some new skills. Mostly skills which our current culture has caused to become nearly extinct (except in some ethnic traditions where this kind of thing gets passed down as a family heirloom).
I have started baking bread regularily, up to 3 times a week. So far the favorite has been this "Rich Egg Bread". It's slightly chewy when cooked just a few minute less than the recipe calls for (which in my opinion is the better way than over cooked and dry) and good with just about anything on it, or nothing at all. I let the bread machine to most of the work on this one: mixing, kneeding, and the first rise. Then I take it out, punch it down, shape and let it ride again before baking.
Also tonight I attempted traditional flour tortillas. Though without the proper authentic equipment and no Abuelita to instruct me (being Scandinavian and all), they aren't quite circular an a little too thick in some places. I now long to own a Comal and Palote (tortilla griddle and wooden tortilla rolling pin) to have a better chance of getting it right. I'll have to update you on how they taste later as they are slated to be part of lunch tomorrow with a spicy sausage, onion and green chili filling: taco of sorts.
Last week, I made a pizza and two installments of calzones with dough made from scratch. Well really the whole thing was "from scratch" except I used a jarred spaghetti sauce. The sausage I used was some of the venison sausage we made previously. Oh, and I didn't make the cheese, but I did grate it off a large block.
 Labels: food, musings |
| posted by Jen @ 9:51 PM |
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