Meal Prep 9/3/18 : When life gives you bread that won't rise

...turn the dough into crackers!  

Leeks were on sale this week and caught my eye, so I decided to make potato-leek soup for lunch.  I had made rosemary bread a few nights ago with fresh rosemary from my garden and it was soooooo good I decided to make bread to go with the soup.  For protein, I took some of the leftover pulled pork barbecue from our wedding out of the freezer.  I also sauteed some brussels sprouts and cauliflower for extra veggies.

  For some reason, the dough refused to rise.  I have never had this happen before, so I have no idea what went wrong.  I did open a new jar of yeast, but I hope it's not full of dead yeast!  I guess I'll find out next time... I even tried mixing more yeast/warm water into the dough (using a different yeast) but that didn't work either.  Some google research revealed that I might be able to save the dough by turning it into crackers, so I decided to try it. 

I pulled a big handful of dough off, rolled it out, and used a very thin knife to cut it into rectangles.  I lined a baking sheet with parchment paper and placed the crackers on it.  They were very sticky!  I sprinkled them with pink sea salt and garlic powder, and baked them at 450 for 12 minutes.  For the second batch, I floured my work surface first, and then rolled out the dough.  No more stickiness, but the crackers were completely coated with flour.  I found the parchment paper was completely unnecessary with the floured crackers. 

Thankfully, the crackers came out pretty delicious, so that unrisen bread dough did not go to waste!  And instead of bread with our soup, we will be eating tasty crackers.  Maybe someday I'll make crackers on purpose...

pre-bake sticky crackers

post-bake cracker deliciousness

Meal Prep Monday : 3/13-3/17

Lunch This Week

Baked Chicken Thighs

Risotto

Peas

Chicken : I put 4 chicken thighs into an oven dish, sprinkled them with garlic powder, and cooked them at 425 for 50 minutes.

Risotto : I wanted risotto, but didn't have any broth.  I did have the leftover water from cooking black beans though.  Seemed like it would be more flavorful for the rice than plain water, so I used it to make the risotto.  It doesn't look super appealing, but it does taste good.  I sauteed onions in olive oil, then added the rice, then the black bean water a cup at a time.  I added a grated carrot somewhere along the way.  And of course lots of garlic powder.  

Peas : I didn't feel like putting work into cooking a vegetable this week, so I just grabbed a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer. 

Meatless Friday will most likely be pasta with a pouch of salmon.  

Creamy Basil Zucchini Salad

An actual food post!  I know...it's been a very long time.  I just haven't been adventuring in the kitchen lately.  What I have been doing lately though, is craving cole slaw with my sandwich at lunch.  But I keep forgetting to buy cabbage.  I really wanted some kind of creamy cold salad with my lunch today, so I came up with this idea.  It was quite satisfying.

1 carrot, coarsely grated

3 inches of a medium zucchini, chopped small

1/2 avocado, chopped small

1 handful fresh basil, finely chopped

1 tbsp mustard (I used Jack Daniels Mustard)

1 spoonful mayonnaise

garlic powder (to taste)

Mix everything together and enjoy next to the sandwich of your choice. 

This recipe makes approximately 2 servings.

Cinnamon Biscuits

3 degrees out this morning.  I was craving eggs and fried potatoes for breakfast, but I didn't have any potatoes, and wasn't quite up to venturing out in the frigid air to buy some.  So I had to come up with an alternative.  I have been craving chocolate croissants for awhile now, but they seem like way too much work for first thing in the morning.  I've never made biscuits before.  They seemed relatively quick and easy, so I decided to go with that.  Cinnamon has been making its way into a lot of things lately...so of course it made its way into this morning's biscuits as well.

(after mixing in this amount of cinnamon, I added about this same amount, again)

Cinnamon Biscuits

preheat oven to 425

1/2 c whole wheat flour

1 1/2 c white flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

cinnamon (to taste)

1/3 c butter

1 c almond milk

Mix together the dry ingredients, cut in the butter, mix in the milk.  Flour a work surface, knead the dough for a minute or two, adding more flour if it is too sticky.  Pat it down to 1/2 inch thick,and cut out the biscuits.  Place them on an un-greased cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes.

Not to completely let go of my chocolate croissant/chocolate cravings, I had to add chocolate to some of the biscuits.  I used Dove Dark Chocolate squares. 

pre-bake

post-bake

So much deliciousness.

I wish I had put chocolate on all of them...

Sweet Potato Pierogies

Last year, we had our first snow day on December 10th and our second on January 7th.  This year, January 7th brought us our first snow day.  I woke up to a 1 hour delay because of the frigid temperatures, with a final decision to be made by 8:00.  8:00 went by and there was no word, so I figured I had better hurry up and get ready so I could get my car cleared and thawed in time to get to school for my early-arrival duty.  Then, hooray, the call came at 8:05, right before I started throwing on layers of warm school clothing.  So I happily stayed in sweats and curled up on the couch with a book for awhile.  And then I went for a run.  I was supposed to take today off, because I ran the last 8 days in a row, but I couldn't take a day off when it meant sitting on the couch all day.

After my run it was time to play in the kitchen, because I'm pretty sure that kitchen adventures are a snow-day staple.  My oven is out-of-order until Friday or Monday, so baking wasn't an option.  (I turned it on the other day, and several minutes later noticed fireworks going off inside it.  Turns out the heating element snapped in half...)  I had a sweet potato on the shelf that needed to be dealt with, so I decided sweet potato pierogies would be a delicious, fun, time-consuming project.

Pasta Dough

I used this recipe for the pasta dough, but I made everything smaller and used 2 eggs.  

And I added garlic powder, and skipped the cornmeal.

Filling

1 sweet potato, boiled and mashed with a spoonful of sour cream and a bit of butter

1/4 sweet onion, chopped and sauteed with 2 cloves minced garlic

The final product, boiled, lightly fried, surrounded by shaved carrots 

and drizzled with a ginger cream sauce.

Pumpkin Peach Muffins

(Original recipe calls for 1 1/2 c flour.  I put in 1/2 c wheat flour and 1 1/4 white flour before adding the peach.  I let it sit for a bit to draw some of the moisture out of the peach, then added more flour until the batter returned to the consistency it had before I added the peach.)

Chocolate-Covered Espresso Bean Cookies

1/2 stick butter

1/4 c vegetable oil

1/2 c brown sugar

1/4 c white sugar

1 egg

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp vanilla

1/4 c whole wheat flour

1+ c white flour

1/3 c chocolate covered espresso beans

Beat butter, oil, and sugars together in a stand mixer.  Add the egg, salt, soda, and vanilla, mix well.  Incorporate the whole wheat flour, then the white flour.  Crush the espresso beans, then mix them in. 

Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes.

Beer, Bourbon, BBQ, OH MY!

So this post has nothing to do with my food, but this is an event I went to in Richmond yesterday, and it was awesome.  I got to sample all sorts of beers and bourbons, and I also had a delicious bbq sandwich and a delicious crab cake sandwich.  I love crab cakes...don't get them here in WV too often!

Photos from the Adventure

and this is what we saw while we were waiting:

All in all, a very fun day, and a fun weekend spent out of town with friends.  

A great way to kick off Summer 2013.