It occurs to me that I cook... a ton.  I quite literally spend most of my day, every day, in the kitchen.  And, after years of people asking me for recipes, many of which I came up with myself, I decided I should probably start sharing a few here.  I keep thinking, for some reason, that the purpose of this blog is sewing, but that's not really true, is it?  That just happens to be my favorite part, however much I don't actually get to it because I'm busy with lesser favorite parts... 

Today, it'll be my go-to pizza crust recipe.  Adapted from something on allrecipes.com, this is AWESOME for pizza, calzones, and I'm about to try it for this:  http://rhodesbread.com/blog/blog/braided-spaghetti-bread.
I am entirely certain that it will be fantastic for that, as well.  I use it at least once/wk, and anybody who's ever tried it has LOVED it!  It's the reason we don't get take-out or restaurant pizza anymore.

Pizza Crust

1T yeast (or 1 pkg)

1c warm water (warm, but not burning your finger)

1t sugar

2T oil

1t salt

3c flour*

Proof your yeast with the water and sugar (mix it with the sugar and water and let it foam to prove itself worthy of your time).  Add salt, flour, and oil.  Mix and knead (a stand mixer is a god-send for time-saving here) until it forms a ball.  Let rest 5-10 minutes.  Knead all bubbles out and form a 14" diameter circle (a large pizza).  Top.  If you want a thick, puffy crust, let it rise until it looks thick to you.  Otherwise, bake it in a 425F degree oven for 12-15 minutes. 

You can top this crust however you like, and it's awesome.  Top half of it generously, leaving about an inch around the edge, fold it over, and crimp it with your fingers for calzones (I keep these in the freezer for Hubby when he doesn't have leftovers to take to work).  Spread olive oil, herbs, and cheese over it for cheesy bread.  There are TONS of options here!

*For the flour, you have a variety of choices.  It really depends on how you like your crust.  For ultra-puffy and soft, go 3c all-purpose flour.  For very puffy and soft but healthier, try half white whole wheat flour and half AP.  For a little tougher but a lot healthier, try half regular whole wheat.  I have recently made it all white whole wheat, which got great reviews.  We are trying to make the switch to at least all white whole wheat flour--and I have to be honest here, it's only because I'm not entirely sure of the details of the white whole wheat vs. regular whole wheat.  More on that later, I'm sure, as I navigate these finicky-term-infested waters!

Let me know how it goes, if you whip this one out.  Especially if you find a new dress-up for it.  :)

Another Awesome Blog! And a Recipe!

So, once in a while I'll mention a website or blog that I have fallen for, and I feel the need to give a shout-out to this one.  I can't remember how I found it--probably looking for a whole wheat bread recipe--but I have gone back to it day after day for recipes and information.  It's great!  We have been "naturalizing" our house for quite some time, and continue to work toward eating food and using products that are free of artificially-created ingredients, and this is an excellent site for that. 
Okay, okay, already!  Here it is:

heavenlyhomemakers.com

And no, you don't have to be a Christian to glean tons of awesome information from it.  

And while I'm chatting about whole wheat bread, I'll give you my whole wheat waffle recipe!  It is newly discovered (one of the thousands of recipe sites--can't remember which one--and no doubt tweaked in my own kitchen) and Hubby even likes it, which is a big step.  I use white whole wheat flour, but the original recipe called for regular whole wheat flour.  To make it dairy-free, just use milk substitute (almond, soy, rice) and vegetable oil.  It's great!

[White] Whole Wheat Waffles

1 1/2 c (white) whole wheat flour
2t baking powder
1/2 t salt
2T sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 lukewarm milk (mine's usually cold--that's fine)
1/3 c melted butter or vegetable oil

Mix all the ingredients together well, and cook on a prepared waffle iron. Enjoy!

Adventures in Wine Making

Only time will tell if I should have titled this post, "Misadventures in Wine Making". I think it was oneprettything.com that featured this craftster.org post about dandelion wine making. Messing up all over the place, I have undertaken this endeavor and documented it along the way.

Here we go...

To kick off this great experiment, we needed 2 liters of dandelion blossoms. About an hour and a half in the yard and I had probably twice as much as I needed, but had spent some good time outside in the glorious sunshine with the kiddos, which was good for all of us. After a long winter it's getting warm here in Iowa, and we've been cooped up inside for too long. Our time in the elements resulted in two pretty tired kids. Gus at lunch:

And Rhyl didn't make it off the couch after a PB&J:

As the first of many mistakes that my batch of wine may or may not survive, I had many things that needed my attention, and by the time I got back to my bucket 'o' dandies, they were wilted:

Let's hope that doesn't ruin things too badly.

Then I rinsed them:

And then, after I'd put them in the pot with the water, I stumbled upon a little more Dandewine wisdom that grieved me. NO GREEN??? You've GOT to be kidding me! Some directions say no green parts at all. Some say leave a little green, but absolutely NO stems. None are more lenient than that. This is the type of tedious, headache-inducing stipulation that, had I known before I started, would have kept me from doing this. BUT, I'd already spent an hour and a half picking dandelions and corralling the kids outside. I wasn't going to waste that. So I got to cutting:

And I got about a quart of blossoms cut off the base of the flower before I decided I was done. My 2 liters of flowers are mostly blossoms with the tiny green leaves that you'd need magic elfin fingers to pick off.

Into the pot with water and juices, onto the stove to boil, into a dark corner to steep for 24-48 hours. Except, I forgot to add the yeast before the steeping began, so after 48 hours, I added the yeast and waited 24 more. I'm really hoping that the recipe I found that read, "Absolutely NOT more than 48 hours" was written by a very finicky person with a very particular way of doing things.

After roughly 60 hours of steeping, the sugar, spices, and orange peel stirred in, I strained it out:

And jugged it:

I'm curious to see how long it's going to bubble. After 18 hours, it doesn't show any signs of slowing down. It smells great, looks delish... Only time will tell.

More later on this! But, it'll be a LOT later. It's got to sit for a few months. In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed! Because if it doesn't work out, that was a LOT of wasted time! And I hate that. Clearly, since I've been useless for a few weeks. :P

Cheers!

Some days warrant a tall glass of wine at the end of them. Currently, the only wine in the house is some failed home brew that leaves me with a belly ache. Clearly, if you back up just a bit down the blog, you can see that we do have..... Vodka! I raided the fridge and found lemon juice, lime juice, 7-Up, some cherries--but I have no real idea how to mix a drink, other than the small handful of drinks that my sister offers at her bar. So I went looking for the allrecipes.com equivalent for alcohol, and BAM! Found it.

http://www.drinknation.com/

If you have any interest in drink mixing--whether you're looking for a good punch recipe or you find yourself with vodka when you usually have wine--go there! My relaxing evening included a Vicious Kiss. Lime juice, cherry juice, vodka... pretty good! Thanks, DrinkNation!!

Except, this really made me wish we'd gotten more expensive vodka. ;)

Vanilla Skyy

After reading about how ridiculously easy it is to make your own vanilla extract, I couldn't resist. After doing a tiny bit of Googling, I ordered 4 Bourbon-Madagascar vanilla beans from spidercamp on Etsy. Very good price ($1.05/bean, after taxes and shipping), nice looking beans, VERY fragrant!

I have decided that I really, really like vanilla beans just for the fact that they're vanilla beans. And okay, so our vodka wasn't "Skyy", but just try to come up with a more clever title for this post!

Vodka + vanilla beans + 8 weeks of shaking & storing in a dark place =

I NEVER run out of really yummy vanilla!!!

All you bakers will understand how exciting and important this is, I think.

I read that any cheap vodka will work, so that's what we got. The most common ratio I remember from the sites I visited was one cup of alcohol to 3 beans. I had 4 beans, so I used 1 1/3 c.

Ugh, that looks REALLY gross!! lol

We have a few Gold Peak Tea bottles (which I highly recommend, if you must spend money on iced tea) and the bottles are wonderful to reuse for all sorts of things because of their lovely neck and tight-fitting caps. And because they're clear glass.

We decided to make it a couples affair, so Nick helped slice the beans, scrape out the pulp, stick it all in the bottle with the vodka, shake it all up, and put it away. So, we shall see, in about 2 months, how wonderful our vanilla is!

Excellent Dairy-free Cinnamon Rolls!!

My husband did something really, really awful to me this morning. He made a pan of cinnamon roles from scratch that smelled like heaven and looked like a Swedish vacation. I can only assume that they tasted like a day at the beach, but I couldn't have any because he used BUTTER!! And milk and yogurt... ugh.

But his foray into sweet, sticky baking produced one desired side effect: I had forgotten that there was a dairy-free cinnamon roll recipe that I had been meaning to try. This morning's kitchen aromas were just the motivation I needed to find that recipe and get to it! Of course, I couldn't find the exact recipe I thought I'd saved, but it wasn't too hard to find another one. However, it didn't take long to notice that the wet:dry ingredient ratios were off, the oven temp was missing, etc, etc. So here's what I did, based off of the incomplete and incorrect recipe that I found (from where I couldn't even tell you it came):

3 c all-purpose flour
1 pkg quick-rise yeast
1/4 to 1/2 t salt
2 1/2 T sugar 1 c rice milk or water (or milk, if you're luckier than I)
1/4 c oil (I used canola)
2 T butter substitute (I'm not sure if oil would work here or not)
4-6 T sugar
1-1/2 t cinnamon
1 or 2 cups of thin powdered sugar drizzle

1. In a large bowl, combine 2 c flour, undissolved yeast, sugar, and salt. Add the milk (warmed to 120-130F) and oil. Mix with a spoon until combined.
2. Add the remaining 1 c flour and stir well. Add more flour if necessary (probably will be). Dough will be sticky, but you should be able to pick it up out of the bowl without it falling out of your hands and making a huge mess. Knead 6-8 minutes. Divide in half and let rest for 10 minutes.
3. Roll each ball of dough out on a floured surface into a rectangle until it's around 1/2 inch thick. It will measure around 8 or 10 inches by 14 or 16 inches. Go thicker or thinner if you want. That's a personal preference.
4. Combine 4-6 T sugar and cinnamon. On each rectangle, spread about a tablespoon of butter substitute. Sprinkle half the sugar/cinnamon mixture on each rectangle. Roll them up, starting at either end, depending on how thick/how many rolls you want.
5. Slice the logs into rolls. I went about 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick. Arrange them in a lightly greased pan. I used a glass pie plate, and it was the perfect size for the whole batch. Bake at 375F for 18-22 minutes.
6. Cover them with thin powdered sugar icing. This is just powdered sugar and vanilla thinned out with milk [substitute] to the desired consistency. If you can manage, let them cool for a few minutes. If not, dig in.

If you have any additions, corrections, comments, suggestions, or stories of your own cinnamon rolls, let's talk! This was the first time I've ever made these, and they were GREAT! I actually ate almost half the plate in their first hour out of the oven. I'm ashamed to say that three were gone when I pulled them out a little early and they were still partly raw. I just couldn't stop! SO GOOD!

Vegan Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Nut Cookies

Don't be afraid--these aren't as healthy or nuts-and-berries-y as the title suggests. And they are SOOSOSOOO GOOD!!! My friend Christine brought me a bag of Tropical Source dairy- and gluten-free semi-sweet chocolate chips (remember the dairy-free thing), which are very yummy by themselves, and this recipe was on the back of the bag. It says it's from recipezaar.com. It halves very well, as I proved last night. And then ate half the batch. :S

1/3 c almond butter or peanut butter

2 T canola oil

1 c sugar

1/3 c soymilk (I used rice milk)

1 t vanilla extract

1 c whole wheat flour

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1 c rolled oats

1/2 c chocolate chips

1/2 c chopped macadamia nuts or walnuts

Preheat oven to 425F. Oil a large baking sheet (I use parchment paper every time, and they always comes out perfect! Err, well, you know...) Whisk together first 5 ingredients until very smooth. Combine flour, oats, baking soda, and salt separately, then add to the peanut butter mixture with the chocolate chips and nuts. Stir to combine. Drop batter onto baking sheet by large spoonfuls. Bake for about 8 minutes, or just until tops begin to crack (I went just a touch less than this and they were dreamy!). Let cool on sheet for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack or plate. Or eat them as soon as they're cool enough to handle.

How can we tell that it's not just me--the least picky eater of the house--who loves these? Nick even liked them! He's a die-hard original chocolate chip cookie fan. That would be the version with eggs, white flour, butter, etc. A real manly eater, that one. If he thinks they're good, it's a safe bet that they'll please.

Stuff I've Been Doing

I had a mad, mad hankering for chocolate cake last night, so I made this one. I used this recipe, halving it as I usually do, and used one 9" round cake pan. Then I simply cut it in half and sandwiched peanut butter frosting in the middle. I didn't use a recipe for the frosting, rather dumped in around 1 c of powdered sugar, a heaping quarter cup of Crisco, and probably half a cup or more of pb, and mixed the heck out of it until it was nice and smooth. I was out of vanilla, so that was left out of the cake and the frosting--or filling, as it was--hence the peanut butter. (I made whoopie pies w/o vanilla once, and you've just got to make up for it somehow, imo.) 24 hours later, the filling has set up to what I'd compare to the middle of a Reese's PB cup, and it is YUMMY! And nearly gone. I have a pretty glass cake stand, so it's been staring at me all day. It's lucky it lived thru breakfast.


Also, I finished a sweet little project that I began on the trip up to Iowa City for Gus' postponed surgery, inspired by a photo in Mary Janes' Farm Magazine. It's a pink and green needle book, and I must say, how pretty! I'm happy with how it turned out. Needle books and other small projects have become a preoccupation of late, so I'm not keeping it. (I have enough already!) I'm planning to put it in my Etsy shop. It's small and made of synthetic felt, so it'll be very reasonable. So... go buy it! lol


I came home with 4 of the 6 Desktop Vacation baskets I took to the Mops Shop last weekend. I'm sad to say there wasn't a great turnout, which makes the fact that I sold 2 pretty surprising to me. I plan to post the remaining 4 to my Etsy shop tonight.



The main project I have in the hopper at the moment is a couple of sheep costumes for a friend's boys for the kids' church play. It's basically a replication of Martha Stewart's little sheep costumes. They're turning out really well. Almost done. I'll show you those later.

Can You Tell We've Been Baking?

My baking, which is usually just on yonder side of "Over the Top", took a backseat to the flu this past week. But today, between Nick and me, the kitchen was fairly busy. And what a lovely outcome: this stack of goodies.

Nick made chewy peanut butter brownies, and I made whoopie pies (officially my favorite cookie!) and BREAD! And for the first time that I can recall, it's SUPER SUPER GOOD!! I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to share the recipe (I tweaked this one) or put it in my secret collection of recipes that I will release only moments before my final breath. (My pasta sauce recipe is in there.) MAN, it is GOOD! Even Nick thinks so, and he's die-hard store-bought white bread. He said it passed the peanut butter and jelly test. I'm not sure a homemade bread--at least, never a wheat one--has ever done that. I'm impressed. And all still dairy free!

My parents-in-law were here this weekend, and we had a nice visit. Which was a nice respite from the work I've been doing, and will continue to hit hard all week, for the upcoming MOPS craft show this weekend, to be held at the Burnside Christian Church in Burnside, IL. If you're local, definitely check it out. I understand there will be treats. I think I'll be providing some, actually. Hmm, maybe some... whoopie pies?? We'll have to see. :) Anyway, coming soon: pics of some of the things I've been making for the show. Whatever doesn't sell is going in my Etsy shop when I get back. Stay tuned!

Going Dairy-Free: Zucchini Bread

I didn't have to do anything to this recipe; it is originally dairy-free. And it makes a TON! This is what's left of a dozen muffins, a whole loaf, and a smaller loaf made in a pyrex dish. (Which is great, because I love to freeze things for later.) However, there are much healthier options that I can and do plan to try. Applesauce instead of oil, whole wheat flour for at least half the flour, cutting down on the salt and sugar... Allrecipes.com is great because there are reviews with the recipe, and according to Teresamas, Iowamom, and Princess Sandra, to name a few, these substitutions should work pretty well.

The fact that my husband likes this recipe is saying a lot. But late last night, after he got home from his bowling league, when he said, "Honey, you've really got something with this recipe. After tacos, beer, AND brushing my teeth, it still tastes pretty good!" -- well, for what more could one ask in a commendation? :) Seems we've found a keeper.

Going Dairy-free: Whoopie Pies

Recently I was made aware that acne can be caused by a dairy allergy. On the chance that a dairy sensitivity may be responsible for my skin problems, I'm cutting it out of my diet for 3 weeks--or longer, if my skin clears up. That is a BIG downer for 2 BIG reasons: baking and creaming my coffee. I have found that, while soy milk is fine for cereal, it just doesn't get the job done as a coffee creamer. And I LOVE to bake! Butter and milk are in so many things that my family enjoys, so I'm having to find which substitutes work best in our favorite recipes. Yesterday, I tried dairy-free Whoopie Pies. These amazing little cakey cookies are usually SO yummy, but not this time. :( Well, okay, I shouldn't be so hard on them. They were fine--just not like the last batch that I made! But I'm thinking that it had more to do with the fact that I was out of vanilla.

Because the texture was good, and the mouth-feel was still normal, I'm going to have to say that soy milk works for the milk substitute in this recipe. I'll just have to load it with vanilla or some other flavoring next time.