Bagels!

After waffling about it for much too long, I finally made bagels today. Why did I wait so long? They aren't complicated at all! Sheesh.

Okay, so they don't look absolutely perfect, but this was my first time. They taste yummy, though!

Next up: Walnut Rye bread (hopefully.)

Vegetable Bean Soup... with a twist

I wanted to make minestrone today, but I ended up making vegetable bean soup instead.

Ingredients:

1 qt. tomato juice (I used frozen fresh from the garden)
6 cups water (or thereabouts)
1/2 cup carrots, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup green peppers, chopped (I used frozen from the garden)
1 cup leftover Christmas Lima beans (mine were already cooked, of course, but you could prepare them as you would to cook them, and then add them in.)
1 cup various other beans (I used frozen from the garden; not quite dried enough to be dried beans and I did not soak them beforehand.)
3 medium potatoes, cut up (I didn't peel them.)
2 cups frozen chopped spinach (This was the experiment, and it worked wonderfully.)
2 tsp. each dried rosemary, thyme, and basil or to taste. (Fresh: use quite a bit more, I'd think.)
3 tsp. chili powder (or more; the potatoes do soak up some of the flavor, so to taste.)

Put all ingredients into a 6 qt. crock pot (you can easily halve this recipe if needed) and cook on low for 6-8 hours or until beans and potatoes are done. On high, I'd say this should be done in 4-6 hours, easily.

The spinach really did it for this recipe. The spinach flavor complemented the other flavors, and really tied everything together. I'm really pleased with how this turned out.

I also made three seed bread to go with it--two loaves. YUM!

Bread and Pizza

If I ever had to go wheat free, I think I would die.

Today's bread:

This is my 'enriched' white bread. (Enriched means eggs and olive oil added.) It's quite yummy.

Pizza on a griddle.
I read about this on a website, and decided to try it with the larger griddle. I haven't eaten the pizza yet, but the crust came out very nice.

There is one more bread coming--the enriched white bread with poppyseeds, basil, oregano, and rosemary.

Bread Failure

Well, my rice wine isn't good for bread. I used it instead of water yesterday in a loaf of what was supposed to be Oatmeal/Ginger/Cinnamon bread and... ick. Just ick. I won't do that again.

It tastes so terrible that I might just make the rest of it into vinegar after all. But we'll see.

Today, I'm making a more sedate loaf, just enriched white bread (with white whole wheat flour) and I'll be making pizza dough later on, for supper.