Munchie Monday: Quinoa Whole Wheat Bread

Let's start out by saying that it is absolutely impossible to walk away from a fresh-out-of-the-oven slice of whole wheat bread.  Or any bread, for that matter.  This is why I do not make bread very often.  I eat one or two or three slices of it while warm.  With butter on it.  Often also with homemade jam on it.  This is not good for the waist line nor for the blood sugar.  So why would I make it, you ask.  Sometimes just because my Dear One loves it.

Last week we were having the missionaries eat supper with us.  I wanted to make the bread and have it be cooking when they walked in the door.  Why? Number 1 because there is nothing like the smell of fresh bread baking and, Number 2, I thought they would love to have some hot bread just in case the rest of the food was sub-par.

Well, instead of doing that, I made the bread the day before.  I ground the wheat in the VitaMix which worked beautifully.  I am blessed to have a Bosch mixer so I put the ingredients in that and went to town on the directions.

Our daughter shared the recipe that she had found on Mels Kitchen Cafe. I have mentioned that site before.


1 cup uncooked quinoa
2 1/4 cups water
8 cups or 40 ounces whole wheat flour
1/3 cup vital wheat gluten
1 1/2 Tablespoons instant yeast
4 teaspoons salt
2 1/4 cups milk, warmed to about 110 degrees F.
3/4 cup water, also warmed about that much
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup cooking oil of your choice but not olive oil

The first thing I did was grind about 12 cups of red winter wheat in the VitaMix, 3 cups at a time, and placed it in a large plastic container.

Next I cooked the quinoa in the Instant Pot for 1 minute on HIGH then let it reduce pressure naturally for quite a while. I tend to forget about things in the Instant Pot.  After pulling the quinoa out of the IP, I let it begin cooling while I put the dry ingredients into the Bosch bowl with the dough hook installed.

Put 40 ounces of whole wheat flour in the mixer bowl along with the vital wheat gluten, salt, and yeast.  Give it a few pulses to combine well.

In a large measuring cup combine the milk, water, honey, and oil and stir well.  Pour into the mixer bowl on top of the dry ingredients and begin mixing on low.  When more or less mixed, stop the mixer and let it sit for 15-30 minutes.  By that time the quinoa will be cool enough to add in.

To add the quinoa, turn on the mixer again and spoon in the quinoa one spoonful at a time, ESPECIALLY if it is still pretty warm. You do not want to kill the little yeastlets that are growing in your dough.  If the dough is sticking to the sides of the bowl you need to add more flour, 1/4 cup at a time.  It is ready for the real kneading when the dough cleans the side of the bowl.

When they are all added in, let dough knead for 5, 6, 7, or more minutes then take out the dough hook, push the dough down into the bowl so it is more or less even across the top, then put the covers back on.  Let it rest until double in bulk.  This will be when the dough rises up and touches the inside of the covers (in a Bosch mixer...you need to figure it out with your own mixer when double is).

Take out of bowl and put on a slightly floured board and cut into three pieces.  Shape into bread-like tubes then put into greased bread tins or un-greased silicon bread pans. (The only glitch with the silicon pans is that the loaf will look a little bit pregnant when it is cooked...). Let the dough rise for about 30 minutes. 

At this point I turned the oven on to 350 degrees F.  After about 20 minutes the oven was hot and the dough had risen an inch or more above the bread tins so I popped it into the oven to cook for 30-35 minutes.  The 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch tins were ready after 30 minutes.  The silicon pan needed another 5 minutes.

It was good bread.

Yes.  I ate three fat slices.  Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.  But so good.

This was hard red winter wheat.  The bread would have been lighter in texture if I had used hard white winter wheat but I did not have any conveniently to hand.  I will get some soon. If I plan to make more bread.  I still imagine taking some fresh bread to our new neighbors to say hello...

And, sad to say, the loaf of bread I had set aside for the missionaries was still sitting aside when they left...so I will be making bread again for them.

Food Friday: Rice and Beans with Cheese

We had invited the young missionaries to eat dinner with us.  M had texted me a recipe she made recently called Cheesy Rice and Beans. It looked simple and easy.  Since I was also making Brownie Trifle and Homemade Whole Wheat Tortillas, I thought simple and easy would be good.  It was!

In large oven proof pot (I used our five-quart cast iron dutch oven), brown one large sweet onion diced, 2 large cloves garlic, sliced then chopped, and one red and one yellow bell pepper, cored, seeded, and diced.  This will take 5-10 minutes.

In the meantime put rice cooking in pot-in-pot in your Instant Pot.  This means put 1 1/2 cups water in the inner pot of your Instant Pot then place the trivet on top.  In a smaller pot that you can remove from the Instant Pot put 1 cup long grain brown rice and 1 cup water.  Yes, 1 cup water.  Put on cover and cook on HIGH pressure for 30 minutes then let release pressure naturally for 15 or so minutes.  Mine was longer since I forgot about it in the heat of the other things I was cooking.

Drain one 15-ounce can of black beans and rinse.

When the rice is cooked, add it and the beans to the pot with the vegetables.  Stir gently then add 1/2 cup or more of your favorite mild salsa and 2 cups grated cheese. I was not going to add the cheese but at the last minute decided to.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  I did not add any of either salt or pepper.

This is what is left over.  We were able to send another container home with the missionaries.

The whole wheat tortillas were not ideal since I only put in a little salt. I think in future I will put in the correct amount of salt then only eat part of a tortilla if I am worried about salt intake.

This meal, with the added bonus of individual brownie trifles(not the best idea I ever had due to the individual containers I used being hard to get the trifle out of...silly me.), together the beans, rice, cheese, tortillas, brownie, chocolate pudding, and whipped cream had a TERRIBLE effect on blood sugar.  Never again. It was a tasty meal but not THAT good.  I wonder how many days it will take my body to recover from putting that bad things in it along with the good things.  Well, we shall see.

I will certainly make the rice and beans again, but I will leave out the cheese.  No need for all that artery-clogging fat.  It did not add that much flavor to be worth the risk of heart attack.

New Book: Undo It! by Dean Ornish, MD and Anne Ornish

With the many health webinars I have watched in the last year or so I have come to respect the information I have received from several people.  Most notably is Dr. Dean Ornish.  He has written quite a few books over the years, all with the eye to helping us return to good health and live long, happy, and productive lives.

On Tuesday I saw his new book which includes a program that is so good that insurance companies will underwrite the cost of that program in the medical centers where it is presented.  I contacted the closest one to us, which was not close at all, but was probably do-able, but it turns out I don't qualify for the program, thankfully.  (You need a cardiac diagnosis which fortunately I don't have...though I have all the other eligible diagnoses.)

This is the book:

On Monday I ordered it from Amazon ($11 for hardback). It arrived Tuesday morning before I left for my doctor appointment.  We are supposed to arrive fifteen minutes early for our appointments. I was there ten minutes early with book in hand.  As I waited in the waiting room for an hour, and in the office itself for another forty minutes, I had plenty of time to get into the book.

For this book I decided to start at the beginning and just go through it instead of skipping around as I often do in non-fiction. I got to page 46 before I was seen.  By then I was so excited about the  book that I told my medical practitioner.  While in the outer office I had noted that most of the people who came out of the inner door had a similar physique as mine.  Or worse. I told her I thought it could be a blessing to lots of her patients.  She took down the name and author and will give it a check.

There is science in the book but don't let that throw you off.  When there are "big words" there are explanations in parentheses which make the book understandable to the non-scientific reader.

May I say that I am so enthusiastic about changing my lifestyle that I went out for a walk first thing this morning, even though it was already 75 degrees out. I have come back after a 36-minute walk sweating like a pig but happy. 

When I read on page 43 that eating just one meal can make a huge difference in your health,  either pro or con, I decided I am going to throw out all the fatty things in the freezer and some other things as well. 

Let's read this book together and get healthy once and for all.

Birds in the Backyard

We had a LOT of visitors today!  I had just gone upstairs to see if Dear One was interested in supper of some nature...not that I had anything interesting to offer him ready at hand, but thought if he was not really hungry I would not go to the effort.  He was just finishing watching "Gravity" with Sandra Bullock and I don't know who else since I only saw the part where she 'comes to' and decides to get herself out of whatever predicament she was in.

All of a sudden there were zillions of little birds in the sky.  Surprisingly, they decided to light down in our backyard.  It would be great if they picked off all the strange spike-y shoots that come up from the grass...but now I will have to wait until daylight to see if that happened.  South Carolina does not have the same grass as in Vermont!  Anyway, it was delightful to host them, even for a few minutes.

This is a picture from our deck though I was inside the slider hoping not to scare them off:

This is a LOT of birds!  I do not know what kind they are.  I am wondering if we are on their migration route south.  I shall find someone around here who knows.  Maybe at the library...

Here are some of them resting on the roof next door.  It just occurred to me that our binoculars are right beside our sliding door so next time, if there is a next time, I can look at the birds close up to see if I can figure out who they are.  I will need to go through our books to see if the bird book came south with us.

Tuesday Troubles

The garden is coming along.  At least, things are growing, except for the kale plants that it appears the gray squirrels like to eat!

A few days ago the straight neck summer squash started looking funny.

This is what the leaves look like today.  (Disregard the dark flecks...they are just dirt that splashed up on the leaves from watering too enthusiastically.)

Today I took the smallest of the leaves that had the white veins (there are only two leaves that still are green all the way through) to the Sumter County Extension Agent.  He was a very nice young man.  He told me that 1.  in South Carolina plants are subject to MANY diseases, diseases that are unknown in Vermont and 2. this looks more like a micro-nutrient that is missing rather than a disease and another thing 3.  Don't water and let the water get on the leaves of ANYTHING!

Well, there you go.  Doing just about everything wrong.  A fourth thing I did wrong was putting the stones in the bottom of the containers.  He said that drilling holes in the bottom was a great idea but adding the stones was not.  What happens is that when the roots of the plants get down to the stones they reach empty air, not soil, and that cuts off the roots.  It makes sense.  How sad to have spent the money and energy getting all those stones here to have it be wrong.

This young agent also told me that containers are really not the best way to grow plants in South Carolina.  What to do?  The soil where we want to plant needs to be excavated six inches deep and a shovel full of soil put into a bucket.  Every fifteen feet a hole needs to be dug and soil tossed into the bucket.  When the whole area has holes dug up, the dirt is mixed then a small amount is put into a little bag, brought back to the Extension office, a small fee charged, then some weeks or months later we will know what we need to do to "amend" the soil to make it productive in a few years!  A few YEARS!

Does this signal the end of the gardening?  I don't know.  It does rather take the wind out of at least my sails.  Dear One was not enthusiastic in the first place so it suits him all right.  The nice boy did tell me somewhere that we can find compost.  (It is the same place, out near the air force base, where we can buy wood chips. )We are forbidden to have a compost pile here in Pocalla Springs.  Sad.

Well, we shall see.  The tomato plant has a bacterial infection and should be yanked up.  I think I will give it a chance.  The squash had a male flower blossom today so I am not willing to give up on the squash yet, either.  It would be really a bust if we came to a place where there are three garden seasons every year and we can't grow anything.

Munchie Monday: Oil Free Pesto

With the basil on our deck doing so well, I decided to find an oil-free pesto recipe.  I found one on the Oh She Glows page.  I have her cookbook and love it, thanks to my niece Mitsi for pointing it out to me many years ago.  WELL, Oh She Glows had just what I needed.

My iteration is a little different AND IT IS SCRUMPTIOUS!!!  I know, I know.  I always say that, but this time it really is delicious.

You need a food processor or maybe a blender. I used the Cuisinart food processor for the first time since she moved into our house and was washed.

In the food processor bowl with the metal S-blade, put:

1 PACKED cup of basil, including the stems.  Lots of flavor in the stems.
2 large cloves garlic, paper skin removed
1 can (15-ounce) cannellini beans mostly drained.  Save the water just in case you need it later.
2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
3 Tablespoons lemon juice.  I used it from a bottle since I had no fresh lemons.
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1/2 cup walnut pieces.

Pulse several times then process until smooth and uniformly green.  I stopped the machine twice to scrape down the sides.

This is so good. I could just eat it with a spoon...and that said, there is nothing in it to make that a bad idea!  Regular pesto, the kind with lots of oil in it, hurts my tummy.  It also adds pounds to my body, so this pesto is a win-win situation.

Food Friday: No Cheese Cheese Sauce

Since we are doing a rather crazy "eat potatoes for ten days" diet, I was looking for something different to put on the potatoes.  We can use catsup, salsa, salt and pepper, and all the vegetables and greens we want.

Amazingly I found a recipe that uses Yukon gold potatoes, carrots, and seasonings like garlic, onion, apple cider vinegar, lemon, etc.  The sauce tastes really good to me. I have not served it to Dear One yet but am looking forward to that...!

Nice and thick and luscious.  Well, maybe not luscious, but certainly good enough. 

Apparently I have lost the recipe.  Today I was fighting with the computer because iCloud said I had used up all my space so I started tossing out files willy-nilly, including more than 24,000 emails.  I cringe when I say that but it is true.  Of course, iCloud still is not happy with me.  Dear One says it probably will take 24 hours or more for the snakes to update their servers but...anyway,  that is one of the emails that disappeared. If I find it again, I will post it.  It has NO FAT if you are being careful with fat.  That PlantFit Summit I attended online a couple of weeks ago was very encouraging towards dropping all added fats from our diets....

New House: Guest Room

Another bit of progress this past week...the guest room is looking up.  Dear One installed the fan and light installed.  Now the bed is about ready.

Until the weekend we had a large stack of blankets, quilts, and afghans piled neatly beside the fireplace in the living room.  We had gotten word that perhaps the living room furniture was coming soon so I needed to do something with that pile.  Dear One felt that it would be reasonable to put them in the dumpster because "it is too hot for them here and we don't need them."  Well,  since I had personally made most of them, and was emotionally tied to them,  PLUS the possibility that someone at some time in the future might need them, it made me think of what to do with them to get them out of the living room.

Long ago I read a book, maybe Little House on the Prairie or some other book of that same wonderful ilk, where the mom stacked all the extra quilts on the bed that was saved for when the Grandma came to visit.  When Grandma came the quilts were stored elsewhere for the time frame of the visit then returned to the bed.

This is what I did.  There are eight blankets on the bed.

The top blanket is the Barbara Walker Learn To Knit Afghan taken from the book by the same name.  It is a wonderful book.  There are sixty-three different squares to knit. I learned a ton as I was knitting the blocks even though I have been knitting for years.  Anyone who wants a great project should look for the book.  I found it at a knitting store but it is available on Amazon for $20.00.

Underneath that afghan is a blanket I knit on the Bond Ultimate Sweater Machine using cotton yarn. It is a pretty good blanket.  You cannot see it at all.  You CAN see the blue and white gingham border from a tree of life quilt I made for my mother-in-law which I took back after her death.  Sadly it took on a bit of damage in storage but still, if someone was desperately cold, I am convinced they would not mind the discoloration.

What progress will we make this coming week?  I wonder.

Wednesday Wonders

The Young Women, their leaders, and some of the women in our ward, including me, are working on a 12-week finish-your-personal-progress program.  I thought it sounded like a good idea to do this...a way of self-improvement and a plan to try to become more regimented.

Each day the president of the Young Women organization sends a text out to all participants with assignments and encouragement.  Besides reading scriptures and other good resources,  there are things to do and goals to meet including writing in a journal PLUS a 10-hour project.  The first project was a Faith Project (the Young Women have virtues they work on to make an integral part of their lives, faith being the first one).

For my faith project I decided to finish two knitting projects I had started ages ago.  I thought I would have plenty of time but still I really did rather have my nose to the grindstone every day.  In the end I took nearly thirty hours to complete this project!

What we have here is a pair of socks, knit from the toe up using a cast-on from Cat Bordhi's book Personal Footprints with two socks at the same time on two circular needles US Size 2, then plain knitting for the insole part (including using a VERY tiny circular needle (US Size 0) on the bottom of the foot to make it more squishy and lovely to walk on).  For the heel I took the pattern from Cat Bordhi's Sweet Tomato Heel book.  The heels are wonderful and fit so well.  After that the leg was just knit2, purl2 with the leg being a little less than seven inches tall.  The socks look rather wonky but they fit very very nicely.  (And I have another pair just like them in the drawer!!!  Except they do NOT fit well and are pretty awful. I will probably pull them out and knit a matching pair that fit.)

The little doll is a Comfort Doll for which I received the pattern many years ago from a lady who encouraged volunteers to make them to send to the children in Biafra.  I made some at the time and had started another as a demo for someone but never got to finish it.  Now it is done. Dear One thought I should put more than eyes on the face, but there we differed.  Mainly because I was too lazy to find other yarn.  I could not make a blue nose or blue lips.  Well, I guess I could have but I preferred just leaving it with eyes.

The Faith project end goal was this past Sunday.  I happened to wake up at 4:44 that morning and popped out of bed to finish the last inch of the leg and cast off.  After Church I wove in the ends then stuffed and finished the doll.  Finished on time.

May I say that it was a wonderful experience to study, record, work toward a goal, and finish in good season. Sort of good season.  Even though it just about killed me.

Now we are on to another project these next two weeks.  I will tell NO ONE what that project is because finishing it in two weeks is almost an impossibility...but then, I was not sure about the last one. That is what faith is all about...after all.  Feel totally free to pray for my stick-to-it-ive-ness . AND that my computer will cooperate.  Currently, it is giving me fits.

Progress

Every day a little more progress happens on the way to emptying the garage and filling the house!  Today's photo is of the guest bedroom.  Well, mostly just the bed.

Last week we had a big pile of folded blankets in the living room beside the fireplace.  Dear One was agitating towards throwing them away because "it is hot here. We don't need them."  Well, that was not a good comment to make. Especially since more than half of the blankets were ones I labored on for ages.  I have a real emotional attachment to them.

What to do, what to do?  A thought crossed my mind.  Years ago I was reading a book...probably not Little House on the Prairie but a book along those lines.  The mom in the house stored the unused quilts on a bed that was saved for when Grandma came to visit.  When Grandma did arrive, the quilts were stored elsewhere for the duration of the visit.

This little guy watches over the guest room.  My sister gave this to me from a seafood restaurant near her office.  I love it.

Our guest bed is just such a bed!  There are currently eight blankets stored on the bed.  The top one is the Barbara Walker Learn To Knit Afghan with sixty-three different patterns.  It was a wonderful blanket to knit.  I learned so much even though I have been knitting for years.

One of the things I learned is that the final step - sewing the squares together - needs to be done as carefully and thoughtfully as the knitting itself was done instead of slapped together fast to show some off the squares in a blanket rather than a pile of squares.  Some day before I die I hope to take the afghan apart and re-sew it together properly. In the meantime, it looks nice enough on the bed. In my opinion.  AND it is not in danger of going out the door in the big dumpster bin..

Munchie Monday: Dunkin Donuts

Recently (before coming south during the stresses of packing up to leave our home of 46 years, and many many generations--family arrived in Massachusetts in 1633 and in Vermont in the earliest set of settlers in the 1700's)  I gave in to a weak moment and drove up to the Dunkin Donuts in West Lebanon's drive-through. 

 I asked for a donut for me and a donut for Dear One.  The girl over the intercom said, "Just two donuts??!!!"  Well, yes.  Wasn't it Dunkin Donuts?  What more could I want?  Pretty funny.  It ended up that no donuts arrived home to share with Dear One.  

Too much stress, I guess.

Food Friday: Homemade Oat Milk

Because all the smart plant foods people are adamant about how dangerous dairy products are for our longterm health, they suggest using plant milks when we want a white liquid for a recipe or to drink. 

Recently I saw a YouTube video, well, quite a few, actually, but one that seemed to make sense, on how to make Oat Milk, just like Oatly...which is not something I have tried.  And, after this fiasco, don't think I will try it.

To make this oat milk, put 1 cup old-fashioned oatmeal and 3 cups water in your blender.  I think there was also a quarter cup of raw cashews to help with separation. Blend on HIGH SPEED for 20 seconds.  No more, or it will turn slimy according to all reports.

Well, I did just as this YouTuber directed: blended, filtered, drank.  I had found some "flour sack" dish towels at Walmart which seemed like they would be sturdier for the filtering process than cheesecloth or a nut bag.  I used a clean flour sack and filtered/strained the solids out of the oat milk.

The next thing I did was make some "chocolate oat milk" which was supposedly "fabulous".  The YouTuber called for 2 cups milk, 1/4 teaspoon Hershey's cocoa, and one pitted medjool date.  I ask you...!!!

Well, 1/4 teaspoon of cocoa was NOT going to make chocolate milk "just like Nestle's Quik" which this woman said it would...so I put in a heaping teaspoon.  I did put in just one date for the sweetening.  And blended the tar out of it hoping that I could blend the date to bits and not have to strain again.

So the results:  I gave Dear One a glass of chocolate oat milk.  One swallow and he put the cup down.  He thought it was a mean bait and switch.  It looked just like chocolate milk but it just was not.  AND if you look at the jar of plain oat milk, you see that the milk itself is rather slimy looking...not just the leftover oat bits.

You can see that the milk separated some.  The lighting makes the milk look rather brown. It isn't.  It really is white and looks like milk, if it is shaken up.

My assessment:  do not spend one moment thinking about making this stuff.  Too bad since it seemed like a good idea.

Home Improvements

When the speculators who built our "green, smart house" put in the electricity and the lighting they were kind of cheap sons-of-guns.  They put in the wiring for fan/light fixtures, but only put in lights.  Well, I am definitely thankful they put in the lights.  Very useful.  And really, I am also grateful they wired for fans because Dear One had put a beautiful fan/chandelier light in our dining room at home. And thus, he knew what to do.

So, this week he put in a fan light in the guest room.  Very very nice.  Now visitors will not suffocate in the heat.  Or at least, they will be able to have the hot air moving about which gives the impression of being cooler!

Beautiful and it works great!  It is so wonderful to have a handy husband!  He can do just about anything.

Wednesday Wonders!

Having been listening to the Plant Fit Summit interviews this past week and hearing again and again how important exercise is to add to healthy whole plant foods eating, I thought I would go for a walk. 

The stroller (which gives me a feeling of security when I walk) is stored in the garage but under and behind some other stuff, like the lawn mower, and some bins that need to find permanent homes in the house, or recycling if I cannot find a place for their contents soon.  Anyway, I pulled out the stroller, put on my headset, put "Born To Run" by Christopher McDougall on my phone as inspiration--a thoroughly interesting read--, started the Map My Walk app, and headed out after saying goodbye to Dear One.  He gave me a wonderful encouraging smile and off I went.

After the first turn in the road there looked like a leaf blowing across the road up ahead.  It kept blowing in the same direction and at the same speed.  Perplexing.  When I got a little closer I realized it was not a leaf.  It was a turtle.

It was not a very attractive turtle, at least from a distance.  I started to get closer to it so I could really observe it, but he or she stopped in its tracks and looked around at me.  I did not want to bother that little creature so I just spoke kindly to it and then went on my way.  When I got home and reported the sighting to Dear One he wondered if it was a snapping turtle.  Someone had suggested that if there are alligators in our pond, the turtles there are probably snapping turtles.  Not sure why, but...one man's opinion, I guess.  I have the impression that snapping turtles have a pointed shell which this one did not appear to have, so I am in a quandary.  It certainly did not look much like the mud turtles I have seen in Vermont.  The shell was kind of a humped oval.

The rest of the walk, which I thought was taking me on a big loop back around to our street, in fact took me all the way to Route 15 by the SAFE Credit Union.  (Speaking of the SAFE Credit Union, if some financial institution calls itself SAFE, do you get a better feeling about it, or a worse one?  I am thinking if they have to say they are safe, I might want to shy away from them.  Sad, because they are so close to our house.)  So, when I got to SAFE I realized I had gone the wrong way to get back to our house in a circle.  Oh well. It was a longer walk than I had thought I would be doing but I survived it.  Doing more than you intended, even inadvertently, can be inspirational.

When I got back home I was ready for a long lie-down!  The top of my left foot really was screaming at me about what a loser I was to make this trek.  It took two days to calm down.  This makes me think that I have missed some of the things that Christopher McDougall has been saying about walking/running.  Since I am almost done reading the book, well, maybe running is actually not for me.  I never really planned on it, but have thought that walking was a good all-around exercise...and just maybe sometime down the road...?!

Maybe I will head to the YMCA pool this week...

"Back to Eden" Gardening

At the Preparedness fair I attended the gardening classes when I was not sitting at the desk and helping people find their classes.  One of the suggested resources was the Back to Eden gardening method.    I am really souped up about this!

A second really succinct video, also short, on how to start a Back to Eden garden is here.

The 80-year-old man who was teaching the gardening classes at the Fair promised to find a place where we could get the ground up wood chips that could be screened, which is the easiest way to make a garden.  However,  in this video, I got the impression that contractor's paper, organic matter you have on hand, compost which you might have to buy, and wood chips put down in the fall could be ready for a first garden in the spring.  I want to do this.

You will notice that I said "I want to do this".  It is just marginally possible that I am alone in this desire.  As it happens, I have tried very many gardening schemes over the years which had varying degrees of success.  You know that story about the boy who cried wolf?  Well, this girl who tried gardening in unusual tricky ways does not have a lot of credence to her ideas anymore.  Sad.

Having said that,  I have sent an email to the real estate office to find out how to get in touch with the Homeowners' Association committee in charge of how our property looks to see if we can even have a garden.  There is some thought that we cannot.  We certainly cannot have chickens in the back yard, of all silly things.

If the HOA committee says ok, go for it, then I am inclined to lobby a little harder for this to happen.  Dear One did say he was willing to bring in a load of dirt for a garden.  The reason this all comes up is that the soil here is some awful orange stuff that I have no idea where it came from.  It was trucked in and dumped.  At least it was at the neighbors' houses which we saw happen.

Munchie Monday: (No Sugar Added) Banana Bread Cookies

Since Dear One has a sweet tooth, I am always on the lookout for sweet treats for him that won't kill him.  This one is not too bad.

There is a YouTube channel by Garbanzo Girl.  She has quite a lot of pretty good information and recipes.  At least to me.  This is one of them.

Banana Bread Cookies (16 cookies) . (This is where you can watch her make these cookies. Her recipe is here with my changes inserted.)
2 ripe bananas ½ cup peanut butter 2 tbsp maple syrup 2 cups quick oats 1 tbsp chia seeds--since I left my chia seeds in Oregon, I used ground flaxseed meal here. 1 tsp cinnamon ½ tsp salt dash nutmeg--since I did not have any nutmeg I put in 1/4 teaspoon or so of ground allspice. ¼ cup vegan chocolate chips--since I really like chocolate chips, I put in a little more than 1/2 cup of mini dark chocolate chips DIRECTIONS 1. Preheat over to 350 Farenheit. 2. Peel and mash your bananas in a large bowl. 3. Add peanut butter and maple syrup. Mix well. 4. Add dry ingredient directly to wet ingredients: oats, chia seeds, spices. Mix well. 5. Fold in chocolate chips. 6. Form dough into 2 tbsp balls. Flatten each ball with your hand. 7. Bake for 15 minutes. Wait 15 minutes for cookies to cool.

These cookies came out nice and soft and certainly sweet enough for Dear One to eat several of them. We made them for the Emergency Preparedness Fair that was at the church over the weekend but SO MANY kind people brought cookies and bars and doughnuts that they were still giving them out after church on Sunday...SO I brought the cookies home to eat here. The neighbor's lawn people came by to mow today. It crossed my mind to put a big container of cookies on their front seat to get them out of our house, but they were faster than I was and drove off before I could do that. Oh well.

This is what ours looked like. If the Garbanzo Girl told us why she named them Banana Bread Cookies, I missed it.

Food Friday: Quick and Easy Black Bean and Corn Salad

Quick and Easy Black Bean and Corn Salad

Drain 3 15 ounce cans black beans and rinse them.

Drain 2 15 ounce cans of whole kernel sweet corn.

Place in a large bowl.

Chop half a red onion into fine dice and add to bowl.

Dice one orange bell pepper and add to bowl.

Chop one head of broccoli and add to bowl.

Pour on about one-half bottle of Vidalia Onion Dressing.

Gently toss then refrigerate for a couple of hours.

If you are smart, which I was not,  you will dice several celery stalks and a small jalapeño and add in. You might also want to add some chopped cilantro.

Serve in a pretty bowl with sweet cherry tomatoes as garnish.

It was actually edible as I made it, but would have been better with the mentioned amendments.

Easy Homemade Bloody Mary Mix, No Alcohol Needed!

Whenever I have the opportunity to fly somewhere and the cabin attendant offers a beverage, I always choose Mr. and Mrs. T's Bloody Mary Mix.  It is slightly healthy, is savory, and over ice really hits the spot, especially if I have a savory snack also, which lately I have not.

Last week I went to the local farmers' market.  I was looking for a big armful of collard greens but was instructed that it is way too early for them. In fact,  it is just this week when they will be planted.  To be good they have to have a solid frost and then comes the harvest.  Well, I was so grateful to learn that little tidbit that I bought two baskets of tomatoes from Milton who had enlightened me.  One basket was sweet cherry tomatoes.  The other basket had four large "pineapple" tomatoes.  At that stand you dump the basket into your bag and take them home that way.  Interesting.

Now we had lots of tomatoes.  Dear One does not enjoy raw tomatoes.  I have a raw tomato allergy.  But only if I eat too many.  Well, we had too many...so my skin is going to be screaming at me soon.

Anyway, my favorite people had a recipe to use up a solid pound of tomatoes which I tried.  It is pretty good.


Ingredients you need:

Tomatoes
Olive juice
Worcestershire sauce
Tomato paste
Lemon with peel
Lime without peel
Horseradish
Thai peppers (I did not have that so I added 1/2 teaspoon black pepper)
Celery salt

• As you can see, I stored the bloody mary mix in my memorial glass milk bottle from the Strafford Creamery which is the next  town over from our former home.

Easy Oatmeal Pancakes in the Blender

Easy Oatmeal Pancakes in a Blender

#LifeIsNOYOKE has a pretty good oatmeal pancake recipe.    This is just one of many good recipes Lenny and Shalva have on their channel.

Put all ingredients in a blender jar and blend them up.

1 1/2 cups oatmeal (I used old-fashioned)
1 ripe banana
1/2 cup almond milk
1/4 cup aquafaba (this is the liquid you get when you drain a can of chick peas.  It has lots of interesting uses so don't throw it away.  Just put it in a glass jar in the refrigerator.)
1 pitted date
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Heat a heavy skillet over medium heat. I used our cast iron skillet.  When the pan is hot, give it a quick spray of vegetable oil.  Did I say to make sure the pan is HOT?  You just do not have a good result with pancakes unless the pan in hot when you put in the batter. At least, that is my experience.

When hot, and lightly misted with oil, put pancake batter on the pan in 1/4 cup blobs.   Spread it out a bit with a spoon and let it cook until there are little bubbles and the bottom seems to be browning.

Flip over and let cook another minute or two.  The next flip is onto your plate.

Serve with your favorite topping.  We used maple syrup one day but raspberry syrup the first time because we did not at that point have maple syrup. Pancakes are really better with actual from-maple-trees maple syrup.

We will make these again.  Especially until we get some more sourdough made. 

We had an accident with a glass that shattered on the counter and (apparently!) some of the dust got into the lightly covered sourdough container.  When I made another batch of this time REALLY GOOD sourdough bread/rolls (I let them rise 7 1/2 hours), we each found a little bit of grit in them.  That made me think it was glass shards so we dumped the sourdough and the remaining rolls just in case.  The thought of chewing glass rather turned my stomach.  If such a thing is possible.

Probably we will start more sourdough in a day or two.  The rolls seemed to have a good effect on blood sugar.  Maybe there really is something to the suggestion that sprouted wheat flour bread is better for us.  And not that hard to do.

• 
  

Tuesday Triumph!

Our new house has two and a half bathrooms.  Nice.  Very useful.  Often used.

The bathroom in the master/owner's suite has two walk-in closets, a double sink, a giant deep bathtub...maybe called a garden tub (a perfect place to put in a fish tank or some sort of plant-y thing if I was that kind of person unless we install several grab bars or a crane for getting in and out of said tub)...and a small shower with sliding glass doors.  You would not think there was anything to complain about BUT...I am claustrophobic and my balance is sometimes a bit unsteady.  PLUS did I say the shower was a small shower?!  It seems to be a foot narrower than the beautiful step in shower in the master suite in our old home.  Every time I entered that shower and slid the door shut behind me I cringed.  Seriously.  Did not make showering a fun experience.

Anyway, as you might expect,  I was not perfectly comfortable with the owner's shower so I started using the guest shower.  The tub there has rather high sides.  Dear One kindly installed the flexible shower sprayer that we had purchased in Oregon and used there.  Early on he re-installed that sprayer in the guest shower.  That was wonderful. 

Of course, with the aforementioned unsteadiness, I was a bit concerned about getting in and out of even that tub/shower.  SO that dear man installed a wonderful grab bar for me!

He also replaced the nice shower rod my sister had given us with a permanent curved rod.  All in all, I like the guest bathroom now.  It is quite small and the tub/shower enclosure was installed in such a way that a horizontal grab bar is not reasonable, but may I say I really love the "enter and exit" grab bar.  It makes me smile every single day when I use it.

Munchie Monday: No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

We have an Emergency Preparedness Fair coming up next week.  In Relief Society we were asked to donate cookies.  Since I am lazy I wanted to make bar cookies.  I asked if we could.  No problem!

 Tonight we had a potluck to get some of the final things together for the Fair.  I made these bars as a trial run.  They were well-received.

Sarah Kozowski at Sugar Apron created these bars.  She has other recipes!

No Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Bars

1 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1 teaspoon  vanilla extract

3 cups rolled oats

1 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup peanut butter

Line an 8 or 9 inch square baking pan with parchment paper and set aside.  Use a 9 by 13 pan if you want thinner bars.

Melt butter and brown sugar in a large saucepan over medium heat.  When the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved stir in the vanilla and the oatmeal.  Cook over low heat 3-4 minutes or until the ingredients are well blended.

Pour half  of the oat mixture into the prepared baking pan.  Spread the mixture evenly and press down.

Melt the chocolate chips and the peanut butter in a small microwave-safe bowl for about 1 minute, or 1 1/2 minutes until you can stir them to a lovely smoothness.

Pour the chocolate mixture over the pan, reserving about 1/4 cup to drizzle over the top.

Sprinkle on the remaining half to the oatmeal mixture and tamp down with the back of a spoon.  Drizzle the remainder of the chocolate over the top.

Refrigerate 2-3 hours or overnight.

Bring to room temperature before cutting into bars.

This is Sarah's recipe, more or less the way she recorded it.

What I did differently:  I used a quarter sheet pan (more or less 9 by 13) with a Silpat liner.  After the bars had chilled for 5-6 hours, I put them on the cutting board and with the stainless dough scraper I went around the edges of the pan. I was able to then pull them out of the pan and put them naked on the nice Boos cutting board where, after they had set out for about ten minutes, I cut them into squares...about 24 pieces.  I used dark chocolate mini-chocolate chips that were just dying to be used up.  They were left over from the hot chocolate bar at the Christmas Zone Conference last year, so you know they wanted to be used up!