No more store-bought bread in this house

A lot of people in this day and age probably don't know that to make your own bread, you really only need water, yeast, and flour. Since making this discovery, I've been trying to make all the bread that we eat. It doesn't take too much work time - just a bit of unattended time.

Using the book "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day," I have learned to turn out a pretty decent basic white loaf over the past year or so. I've also tried the 100% whole wheat variety and ended up with a loaf of bread that was like a lead weight, so I've gone back to regular white bread for now.

Not only does homemade bread taste amazing and make the house smell like a bakery, but it saves you money (in the age of the $4.99 loaf of bread) and allows you to control what's going into your bread (check out the ingredients list on store-bought bread - even the "organic" and healthy stuff - and you'll see about 30 ingredients that look like a page out of your college chemistry book).

Pictured above is a loaf I made last week using the basic French bread recipe in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. Doesn't that look tasty? And it's not that hard to do...

Hotdish is good

Jennie and I were craving something that was kind of "normal" :) and would stick to our ribs. Mary V showed us the Pioneer Woman blog and I found this hamburger and egg noodle hotdish recipe on there (she doesn't write out the recipe, but shows you the steps in pictures). It came out of the oven bubbling with cheesy goodness. We used grass-fed ground beef from Grass Run Farms and Wisconsin cheese to make our hotdish semi-local. The best part was the leftovers - lunch for 2 days!

We served it with a green salad (using local hydroponic lettuce) topped with candied pecans and washed it down with a Harriet Brewing Company pilsner beer, fresh from the growler, brewed that same week less than a mile from our condo. Mmmm good.

Hamburger, Noodle, and Cheese Hotdish

1 lb grass-fed ground beef

1 can organic diced tomatoes

1 large package egg noodles

~1/2 C. sour cream

~1 1/2 C. cottage cheese

~1 C. extra sharp cheddar cheese, grated

Some chives, chopped

A little dried basil and oregano, if desired

Brown the beef, then add the tomatoes to it (and basil/oregano, if desired). Cook the noodles and mix in the sour cream, cottage cheese and chives. In a large Pyrex baking dish, layer 1/2 the noodles on the bottom, then half the meat, covered by 1/2 the cheese. Repeat. Bake for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees until it's bubbly.

C is for cookies

If I had to pick one food I can't live without eating (or making), it would be chocolate chip cookies. I made these a few nights ago for dessert (I also ate three for breakfast today). Growing up, we had a competition in our house, led by my dad, for who could make the best cookies. It went like this: After one of us made a batch, we would taste them and pronounce them "Perfect 10s!" Then the rest of the family would taste them and (even if they were 10s) give low-ball scores - 7 or 8 maybe. This would be followed by an outburst of feigned incredulity by the baker.

Another thing I learned from my dad was that if you used the entire bag of chocolate chips, that was just a few too many - for perfect cookies, each family member had to eat 5-7 chips straight from the bag, leaving the exact right amount for the batch of cookies. We always used the Toll House Cookie recipe but substituted Crisco for half the butter to make them less puddle-y. Lately I've been just going with all butter (Hope Creamery Butter), but making sure the dough is a little cold to compensate.

I've recently tried the standard cookie recipe in Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything," but I think I still prefer Toll House. It's hard to beat a legend. Oh, and I always use a light colored cookie sheet - currently an airbake style. The darker pans always burn my cookies! If you want to have freshly baked cookies all week, just make one pan and freeze the rest of the dough.

By the way, this particular batch of cookies (pictured above) was a perfect 10.

Recipe: Toll House Cookies

(I'm not listing it out, because who doesn't know this recipe?!)