In my quest for foods I could swallow without mastication, I concluded I needed bread to go with my soups. Soft, warm, delectable bread. This one made the grade on all counts.
SOUR CREAM BREAD
1/2 cup hot water
1-1/2 cup sour cream, at room temperature
6 tsp yeast4 cups flour
4-1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
Combine the water and sour cream, and add the yeast. Add all other ingredients in order (stir in, if by hand, pour in bread machine pan otherwise). Mix about 15 minutes, let the dough rise until doubled in size, punch down and put into two 8x4 loaf pans. Let the loaves rise again, then bake at 350 for 25 to 28 minutes, or until they reach the desired level of darkness.
This bread makes excellent sandwiches, or so I am told. It has a nice flavor, and my dearly beloved enjoyed it as toast this morning with his eggs. And it stayed nice and warm in my bread cozy. No one was laughing at my creation last night!
"The good news," Kevin said, "is that there's enough enamel left for me to crown your tooth. Next Monday." (Yes, of course I call my dentist Kevin. He calls me Marjie, after all.) The tooth is broken off at the gumline, all the way around, but there's no nerve exposed. Be happy, Kevin says, and eat whatever you want.
Except that I'm afraid to eat anything that involves teeth. On top of that, I can't tolerate hot or cold. Oh, that makes eating so much fun. So, last night, while everyone else ate a lovely roast turkey breast with rice and cranberry sauce, I made myself a small batch of cream of chicken soup. This is enough for 2 people, when served with bread.
CREAM OF CHICKEN SOUP
2 tbsp butter
1 small chicken breast (about 3 oz.)
1 tbsp onion, grated
1/2 carrot, grated
2 tbsp. cornstarch
2 cups chicken broth
1 rib celery, minced
1/2 cup cooked rice1/4 cup dry milk powder
1/2 cup heavy cream
fresh ground pepper to taste
Melt the butter in a sauce pan. Cut the chicken into very small pieces, and cook the chicken with onion and carrot in the butter for about 5 minutes, until the vegetables are softened. Stir in the cornstarch until the chicken and vegetables are coated; slowly add the chicken broth, stirring so the cornstarch doesn't lump up. Add the celery and simmer about 30 minutes. Stir in the dry milk powder and cooked rice; when it's hot, stir in the cream and continue cooking 1 to 2 minutes. Grind in pepper and serve with bread. 2 servings.
My picture was taken before I poured my soup in the blender, so I could avoid chewing, because I wanted you to see how pretty it was. It tasted good even without the solids!
Doubtless there will be anothe soup tonight. Or maybe just a bread recipe.
But there's enough soup left over for me to eat some today, and that's a plus!
I thought Pam's Patty Cakes were adorable. I really wanted to make them. I only had 2 small problems in my little world.
First, my stand mixer's not working. Not that big a deal; more of a pain in the rump. But, second, one of my back molars broke in half on Saturday, so I'm living on advil/tylenol, not eating, drinking little, and generally rather miserable. So, since my family "needs" dessert every night, I decided to use Pam's idea, but cheat. I used 1-1/2 cups of chocolate cake mix, blended with 1 egg, 1 tbsp. oil and 1/2 cup water, stirred vigorously with a spoon, and spooned into a cupcake pan. (I felt entitled to be lazy). Then, as Pam did, after they were cooled, I scooped out the middle using a cream soup spoon. I detoured and filled them with vanilla or chocolate pudding, replaced the scooped out top, and topped with whipped cream and colored sugar. They were quite pretty, and, since I don't like chocolate flavored things, no temptation to me whatsoever.
Pam, my children thank you for your beautiful idea, even if I didn't use your recipe. So, it's off to the dentist for me this afternoon, where I will be royally chewing him out for his receptionist's attitude yesterday morning ("We can't possibly see you today. Maybe we can see you later this week." Yeah. I'm not thinking that Kevin wants that attitude from his staff).
The best laid plans of mice and Moms oft go astray.
Wait. What do you mean, that isn't what Steinbeck wrote?
Well, if he'd paid more attention to his mother, he would have.
So, on Thursday I wrote that my first order of business this weekend would have to be my daughter's college bedskirt. Great plan, right? Well, I had the skirt fabric, but not enough plain white fabric for the part which goes over the innerspring. GASP! How could someone who claims to sew reasonably well be out of someth
ing so basic???? Yeah. I had 47" and needed 82". What to do?
Quick! Start something else! For a long time, I've been meaning to make a thing for my bread basket. My dearly beloved called it "basket clothing". I call it my "bread cozy". This got made 
Friday night. It's two different green tiny floral prints with a very thin layer of batting between them. To keep the batting from sliding around and bunching up in the washer, I quilted a giant M in the middle of it. Well, I like it; the rest of the family can just laugh at me all they 
want.
The girls didn't want to go get the white fabric Saturday, so I made two identical dresses, this one in white, and one in pale pink. (This isn't hemmed yet, so excuse the strange looking lower edge on it. I just ran out of enthusiasm.) My princess seamed sundress pattern seems to have gone missing - GRRR, I hate when that happens - so I tried a new one. I'm not sure I like it well enough to try it on the yellow fabric, which has gone through two washings this weekend, so I'm wearing the new dresses to decide.
Finally, on Sunday, the girls got me more white fabric. This is a corner of Kellie's bedskirt, with the box pleat. Yes, it is really long
, but at college, they flip over the bedframe so it sits higher and they can cram more crap under the bed, and this is my feeble attempt to guess at what the height is. Cass says the one I made for her was perfect, so here's hoping I'm somewhere in the ballpark for Kellie, as well. I'll take a picture when we take her to college in a couple of weeks.
So, the project that absolutely, positively had to be done first squeaked in last, just under the wire. As I said, and Steinbeck should have said, the best laid plans of mice and Moms oft go astray. But all's well that ends well.
Gaylen was asking recently what's on the calendar for sewing. Nothing much has made its way out of my machine lately, but a number of projects are either required or desired, pretty much immediately.
First up is a bedskirt for my daughter's college room. We went shopping last weekend, and after many hours traipsing through every store in the world, or so it seemed, we found the "perfect" quilt, sheets, towels, lamp, hamper.....but no bed skirt. So off to Joann's we tromped! Of course, they had fabric in just the right shade of pink to go with the green quilt and pink sheets. That's the first project for Saturday afternoon.
One of my sons decided last Thanksgiving weekend that his full sized mattress, upon which he's been sleeping for 21 years, was "worn out". Whatever that may mean. So he went to the store and bought a replacement. Only one minor problem: he bought a queen sized mattress. For a full sized box spring and sheets. Well, last weekend I got him to build extensions to his boxspring so the mattress is properly supported, and took apart and remade his bedskirt. Now, of course, the quilt is too small. But, "I grew up with this quilt! It's MINE!" So, it's left to Mom to figure out how to enlarge it. The quilt will grow a new, quilted border of around 6" width around the 3 outboard edges, but it will still be his quilt. That'll happen before Thanksgiving, but I don't make any representations as to exactly when - just covering my bases here.
Most exciting of all, however, is this:
Hunter Green!
Yellow!
Kelly Green!
Jersey knits!
I've been unable to find nice yellows and greens. So I was really excited to find these on ebay, and, yes, I bought the full 10 yards of each. I even confessed to my dearly beloved in advance that I was doing this, and he inquired as to whether that would be enough to make me happy. What a guy! He even feigned great excitement when they arrived yesterday, along with this:
Yes. about 180 zippers. Not entirely my fault. I found this website, zipperstop.com, and the zippers were under 40 cents each in quantities of a dozen. My dearly beloved looked at a couple of zippers I had in my sewing pile, looked at those prices, and said, "Get yourself a couple hundred, in lots of a dozen per color." When they came in, he did say that was an awful lot of zippers. Yeah, even I think I've got nearly a lifetime's supply.
Sewing projects for me: tank tops, summer dresses, long sleeved tops in yellow and greens. More to be determined later.
No, my Kitchenaid stand mixer problem is not resolved. But I really, really wanted to try this cake. You can tell by the ingredients list that it's very rich (translation: bad for my butt), and should be superb for those of us who are citrus fans. So, off to the box drawer, where I found my trusty 1979 model GE hand mixer. Isn't it a beauty in that harvest gold? When I found hubby dearest, I found a nearly unequipped kitchen. So, even before we married, I dragged him off to Bradlees, where he magnanimously agreed to let me purchase a pyrex loaf pan, a pyrex 9x13 pan, 2 cookie sheets, a 1 cup pyrex measuring cup, this mixer, and a blender, which, sadly, bit the dust in 2003. It's Oster's fault, really; that blender had a hard plastic base, which, after 24 years of service, cracked too badly to continue. Now, the jar on that blender was plastic, also, which meant that it was scratched, and once my husband tried to blend something with a spoon in it, causing the spoon to fly upward and put a lovely hole in the plastic top of the blender, but it was a good appliance. The trusty hand mixer, however, and all the pyrex and cookie sheets are still with me. So, onward with the cake!
I found this recipe in the newspaper, and made virtually no changes.
ORANGE BUTTER CAKE
Cake:
2 cups sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
5 eggs, at room temperature
1 tbsp. grated orange rind
1/2 cup orange juice
2-1/2 cups flour
3-3/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt1 cup milk
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour two 9" round cake pans. Cream butter, adding the sugar 1/4 cup at a time, until it's all combined, with mixer at medium high speed.. Add the eggs, one at a time, and the orange rind, and mix completely. Reduce mixer speed to low and add the orange juice. Then beat in half the flour, powder and salt, followed by the milk and the balance of the flour. Beat until smooth, and pour into the pans. Bake 22 to 25 minutes. Cool 15 minutes, then remove from the pans and cool completely.
Frost with this frosting:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 tbsp grated orange rind
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
2 pounds confectioner's sugar
Beat together the butter, rind and half the juice. Add the confectioners sugar a cup at a time, and mix well. Add the remainder of the juice as it's needed.
Now, assemble this beauty!
Place one layer on the serving platter. Put at least 1 cup of frosting on it, and stack the second layer on top. Frost the top and sides of the cake. I refrigerated it, because of the high butter content, and to harden up the frosting a bit.
This first piece went to Jeffrey, and he struggled to finish it. (Maybe the pork roast, rice and salad contributed to that difficulty; I make no representations in that regard.) Everyone else except my husband had smaller pieces, and some of us couldn't finish ours. There's enough left for dessert tonight, so I'd guess I'll get somewhere between 16 and 20 servings out of this cake. It was, as I had hoped, splendid! Heavy, rich, delectable! I'll certainly make it again when the weather's cooler again.
After we finished Calvert 6th grade, I sent our math books to Paula. She hadn't used Calvert math previously, and was contemplating its use for 7th grade for her son. I was happy to have our books take a trip across country - after all, they'll not get such an exciting vacation again - and happy to help a friend make an informed decision. Well, I got the books back today, and she sent them with gifts of chocolate for me and the boys, plus Nutella. This was mentioned by Kevin in a post about crepes a couple of weeks back, and dummy me, I'd never even heard of it. Everyone else was raving about it, and I'm the dope saying, "Is this a commercial product?" Well, when one of my daughters saw the Nutella, she was dancing in glee around the kitchen with it, and Jeffrey scooped up her with the Nutella, and ran through the house, singing, "We stole the candy! We stole the candy!" So, Paula, the boys had their chocolate in a picnic basket with Nutella sandwiches, Cass had a Nutella sandwich, Thor had peanut butter crackers, and you provided great amusement for all. Thanks!
My youngest son has had issues in learning to speak clearly. Brilliant kid, articulate, but less than fully intelligible. So, this summer, I hired a speech therapist to come to the house twice a week to retrain Mark. He is making astonishing progress. But the funniest thing of all is that Thor always attends speech class. No, don't get me wrong; Thor is not becoming more articulate. But he always sits or lays between Mark and the teacher in my dining room, presumably protecting his boy. When Mark has to stand at the mirror to watch himself talk, and see how he's forming his words, Thor stands between Mark and the teacher. He is really a funny dog! This was yesterday, when he didn't want to lay down, and Mark was hugging his dog while speaking.
I tried to make a fabulous sounding orange cake last night, but my almost new Kitchenaid stand mixer, which is 3 months out of warranty, developed some serious issues. If Kitchenaid resolves them fairly, I'll let you know. But, if they tell me to suck it up and buy a new mixer, you'll hear about that, also.
After everyone pigged out on strawberry shortcake Monday night, there were just a few sliced, lightly sugared berries left in the bottom of my mixing bowl. So, after they had spent the night in my refrigerator, I decided to give them a useful life. Tossing a bit of this and a bit of that in the bowl with the strawberries, I came up with dandy muffins; hubby and sons implored me to write down what I'd done so I could repeat it again. As usual, these are mini muffins, because I'd rather have more than one, if I really want it, and my daughters agree!
STRAWBERRY MUIFFINS
1/2 cup strawberries, sliced and lightly sugared
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp strawberry extract
Stir all ingredients together in a bowl. Spoon into greased mini muffin tins. If desired, sprinkle about 1/2 teaspoon of granulated sugar on top of each muffin. Bake at 400 for 10 to 12 minutes, and remove to a serving tray. Makes 24 mini muffins. Of course, I only got one, and, as usual, there were none left for my dearly beloved for breakfast the next day, which caused a great moaning and groaning.
After Thor's unhappy day at the vet's office Monday, I decided a dessert which included our dearly beloved dog was in order: strawberry shortcake. Sadly, strawberry season here is over; however, many of the 24 quarts I froze live on! I laid them on waxed paper on cookie sheets and froze them individually, then transferred them to ziplock bags, and look how perky they still look!
I'm sure most of you have shortcake recipes. Mine is very simple, measuring is helpful but not entirely mandatory. This can be made into individual biscuits or pressed into a round cake pan (my family prefers the biscuits, so everyone gets his or her own personal shortcake).
SHORTCAKE
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1 egg
7/8 cup milk
1 tbsp baking powder
Stir together the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients, and drop onto greased baking sheets. Bake at 400 for 10 to 12 minutes. Makes 12 individual shortcakes. To bake in a round pan, bake at 375 for about 16 to 20 minutes, then cut into wedges. Serve with sliced strawberries, sweetened or unsweetened, and whipped cream (I whip 1 cup of cream with 2 tsp vanilla and 1/4 cup sugar until soft peaks form). Thor got his shortcake without the strawberries or cream, but he was contented because he got dessert, also. Take that, vet who said Thor was fat!
To use this recipe for biscuits, which work phenomenally with stew, cut the sugar in the recipe to 1 tbsp. For my crew, I quadruple the recipe and sometimes a couple of biscuits are left over.
On Sunday morning, I felt like coffee cake. So, after reading some of the Sunday paper, it got to be Sunday afternoon, and I made two apple filled coffee cakes. These are really good, and, while they need a little attention, they are well worth the effort. I offer this proof: half of one survived until this morning, and my 3 oldest sons aren't even home!
APPLE FILLED COFFEE CAKE
Dough:
3/4 cup warm milk
2-1/4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp yeast
2 egg yolks
1 tbsp. butter
Add all machines to bread machine bucket and let it knead for about 15 minutes, or soften the yeast in the milk, stir in the sugar and salt, and add the egg yolks, melted butter and flour and knead until smooth and elastic. Let it rise about 15 minutes, while you make the filling:
2 large apples, cored and sliced
4 tbsp. flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
4 tbsp butter
In a 4 cup pyrex mixing cup, stir the apples with dry ingredients; cut the butter in chunks and put on top of the apple mix. Microwave about 5 to 7 minutes, stirring once or twice. Set aside until the dough is ready.
Generously grease & lightly flour a 9" round cake pan. Roll the cake dough out into a rectangle, and fit into the pan, with half the pan's width hanging out each side; smooth the apple mixture into the portion of the dough in the pan, and fold over the dough which is hanging out of the pan. With a few drops of water, close the seam in the center. Brush the top of the coffee cake with 1 tbsp melted butter or egg white whisked with 1 tbsp water. Let it rise about half an hour, then bake at 375 for 24 to 26 minutes.
Thor was eating the end pieces I'd saved for him, which had no filling in them, after his unhappy experience at the vet. The vet told the kids Thor was "somewhat overweight" and should lose at least 10 pounds, and one of my smart-aleck daughters told him he was not so fit himself. My son almost choked.
Over the weekend, one of the girls wanted Jeff to give her a piggyback ride. This, of course, caused them all to want piggybacks. So, after one turn around the family room, the second daughter piled onto Jeff's back, and he walked around the family room again. At this point, Thor decided that this was wrong. Notice in this picture that his head is level with his back. This means he is saying "Ah-roo!", which roughly translates to "stop that right now or I shall jump at you!", and shortly thereafter he will begin stuffing his head between the involved parties to cause them to cease their unseemly behaviour at once! Of course, since they were upsetting Thor, the girls stood on their own feet and fed him dog treats.
We have had a stressful day. Thor has been favoring his back leg for about a week, so last Friday the kids tookhim to a vet, who convinced them to bring him back this morning for X-rays. After the application of $600 to this vet, it was determined that Thor does not have bone cancer, arthritis, tendonitis, or hip displasia. As I told the kids, he's just a little older, and neither his nor their mother's joints work quite as well as they used to. Well, at least now I can stop worrying about our faithful, loyal companion and get back to cooking and other useful pursuits.
This bread makes excellent sandwiches, or so I am told. It has a nice flavor, and my dearly beloved enjoyed it as toast this morning with his eggs. And it stayed nice and warm in my bread cozy. No one was laughing at my creation last night!
