Where in the World is Rebecca Today?

[If a Lincolnshire publication would like to reprint this, just contact me!]

Lincolnshire is famous for several kinds of food. There is Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese – a sharp, biting cheese, Lincolnshire Sausage – a sausage seasoned with herbs, and another famous Lincolnshire food item is Lincolnshire Plum Bread.

No one seems to know exactly when people started making Plum Bread, other than that it is “centuries old”. Several local bakeries that have been in business since the early 20th century claim Plum Bread as one of their first specialities, so we do know that Plum Bread has been around for at least over 100 years, possibly even 200 or 300.

We also know that “plum” doesn’t refer to plum fruits or even to prunes (dried plums). “Plum” simply is a reference to dried fruit, such as calling a Christmas Pudding a “Plum Pudding”. The word “Plum” for dried fruit originated during the Middle Ages, when dried fruit was used to help preserve meat. This type of preservation continued and the recipe was modified into what we now call a Plum Pudding or a Christmas Pudding.

The use of the word “bread” to describe this food item is a bit of a misnomer as well. You wouldn’t want to use this for sandwiches. Lincolnshire Plum Bread is traditionally served at breakfast time or tea time. In medieval England, the words “bread” and “cake” were used interchangeably, and they still are today. Take for example, banana bread. Banana bread is surely more closely related to being cake, yet we call it a bread. Banana bread did not formally enter kitchens until the 1930s in America, though there is speculation that it may have been invented in the late nineteenth century by American housewives. Either way, it’s still a long way away from medieval England when either word could be used.

If Lincolnshire Plum Bread is not a bread and does not actually have plums, what is it? Lincolnshire Plum Bread is a sweet, almost cake-like cinnamon-flavoured bread with dried fruit in it – sultanas, currants, and fruit peel – that has been soaked in cold tea to help the dried fruit “plump” up.

There are several bakeries in Lincolnshire that claim to be “the original”, but perhaps the most famous brand is Myers. in 1977 a loaf was given to the queen at her silver jubilee and Myers Lincolnshire Plum Bread is served on British Airways in their first class cabin. Other brands also exist and the loaves retail for about £2.50. You can purchase Lincolnshire Plum Bread throughout Lincolnshire in small bakeries and at the co-op.

If you’re outside of Lincolnshire, hope is not lost. There are many recipes floating around on the internet for Lincolnshire Plum Bread, and I will include my own recipe, modified for a bread machine, below.

Lincolnshire Plum Bread

First, you will need some cool strong tea. The easiest way to do this is to take a glass measuring cup, put 2 tea bags in it, and fill it halfway with water from the kettle. Then, forget about it for about 5 minutes and let it get nice and dark. Remove the tea bags and add cold water to cool it down quickly.

Add about 300-400g dried fruit (sold in grocery stores as “dried mixed fruit” or use a combination of dried currants, sultanas, raisins, and peel) and let it sit until the fruit is nice and plump.

Meanwhile, get out your bread machine and add to it:

100g butter (melted)
120ml warm milk
2 eggs
450g bread flour
100g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
1 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast

Follow the instructions on your bread machine for what order you should add ingredients. Mine calls for all the liquid to go in first, which includes the eggs. I also save time by microwaving the butter and milk together – an extra bonus is it keeps the butter from exploding all over the microwave.

Set your bread machine to a 1KG loaf (2lbs), medium crust, and use the sweet setting (on my machine, this is setting 4).

Start your bread machine.

Follow your machine’s instructions for adding fruit. Most machines will beep when they want you to add fruit, so wait for the beep, drain off the tea, and pour in the fruit. You might need to keep an eye on it for a few minutes and use a spatula to make sure all the fruit gets mixed in.

Let the bread cool in the pan for about 20 minutes before turning out. I find it’s easier to cut the bread if I let it cool completely, but by all means serve it warm!

Traditionally, Lincolnshire Plum Bread is served with butter and cheese. Give it a try, you might like it!

This bread has the seal of approval from several Lincolnshire born & raised men and women! :D

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When you’re a kid, you don’t really think about where food comes from. An adult (usually a family member) puts a complete meal in front of you, and you eat it. Pretty simple. As you get older, you might even start helping to prepare those meals, doing small tasks like mixing or pouring. You still don’t really give much thought about where the food actually comes from, again, you just eat it when it’s placed in front of you. The same thing happens when you are away at college/university. A cafeteria worker puts food in front of you. You know that somewhere behind the buffet line there is a kitchen and staff who make things, but you hardly give it any thought.

Eventually, you might move away from your family, and into your own home. You’ve entered the “real world” and you’re probably spending too much time at work to really think about preparing food. Purchasing pre-made meals sounds like a good idea. You don’t know who made them, or how much work went into them, but they’re good.

So here I am, married, and for the first time cooking every single day. I don’t use pre-made meals and I try to make most things from “scratch”. Sometimes we buy a loaf of bread, but I most often put to use the bread machine we got as a wedding gift. I make things like spaghetti sauce and sweet & sour sauce from base ingredients. I don’t even buy pre-formed hamburger patties, preferring to mix my own mince and shape the patties by hand.

Tim got this brilliant idea that we should have a burger party sometime and make mini burgers out of all the types I make. Of course, mini burgers require mini buns, and I decided I might like to try my hand at making my own buns. I searched all over the internet, and most of the recipes seemed a bit too involved for a beginner. I don’t count my bread machine as experience at all, and the only other bread items I’ve made on my own have been things like banana bread and blueberry muffins. Nothing that involves kneading and punching and rising at any rate. I did finally stumble on a “no knead” roll recipe that I might like to try, but it involves 12 hours of rising! Which means that I either have to wake up really early in the morning to mix it together, or I need to stay up late at night to mix it together. Neither of which really appeals to me, but I still might give it a go one week when Tim’s on the overnight shift (since I never seem to sleep on those) and I need something to do.

A few days ago I was reading my Betty Crocker cookbook looking for ideas for meal planning and I stumbled on a recipe for regular dinner rolls. Now, this wouldn’t be interesting, except that there were directions for making cloverleaf dinner rolls, and as I looked at the picture in the cookbook I had one of those childhood epiphanies – this is where the Thanksgiving rolls my Aunt Beatie makes come from. Her rolls are slightly sweet, perfectly shaped, and pull apart into thirds giving you extra room for butter. She makes them ahead of time at her house in MD, and then heats them at Aunt Janie’s house before we eat.

Well, I just had to try this out for myself. Since I have a bread machine, I followed the directions for making the dough in the bread machine, and I even left the dough in the bread machine to rise (since it calls for a warm place!). Here’s the recipe. I copied it off of the Betty Crocker website, so it uses US measurements. I keep a handy chart inside my kitchen cabinet for easy converting, but I also keep a set of US measuring cups.

1 cup water [cookbook calls for room temperature]
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1 egg
3 1/4 cups Gold Medal® Better for Bread™ flour [used regular bread flour]
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons bread machine or active dry yeast [The cookbook only calls for 2 1/4]
Butter or margarine, melted, if desired

1. Measure carefully, placing all ingredients except melted butter in bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select Dough/Manual cycle. Do not use delay cycle.
2. Remove dough from pan, using lightly floured hands. Cover and let rest 10 minutes on lightly floured surface. [this step was not in my cookbook. Cookbook advised to let rise for 1 hour, then if you could poke it and not have the hole fill in, you punched it down, then did step 3]
3. Grease large cookie sheet with shortening. Divide dough into 15 equal pieces*. Shape each piece into a ball. Place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Cover and let rise in warm place 30 to 40 minutes or until double. (Dough is ready if indentation remains when touched.)
4. Heat oven to 375°F. Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown. Brush tops with melted butter. Serve warm, or cool on wire rack.

For cloverleaf rolls, use a cupcake/muffin pan and divide roll into 45 pieces, then put three pieces in each cup.

Here’s what my rolls looked like:

Not quite as perfect as my aunt’s, but close enough!

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Tim said he loves my burger combinations, because it’s an adult update to a favourite kid meal. Tonight’s meal was Turkey Pizza Burgers.

No pic, but here’s the recipe:

500g minced turkey (ground turkey)
2 TBS green pesto sauce (I used Bertolli)
2 TBS tomato sauce (not ketchup, sauce that comes in a jar. I used leftover pizza sauce)
handful of shredded cheese
1 egg
1/4-1/2 cup breadcrumbs (start with 1/4, if it’s still too wet to shape, add the second 1/4)
salt & pepper
sprinkle of oregano

Mix all together and shape into palm sized patties. Cook until done (on the George Foreman this takes 4-5 minutes). Serve on rolls with lettuce, tomato, and fresh basil leaves.

I am well on the way to becoming the burger queen :). Next up? Trying my hand at creating sweet and sour burgers.

I know I keep posting recipes instead of blog content, but I love to cook and I love experimenting with new recipes and twisting them into my own, so here’s three recipes I’ve been playing with recently – Roasted Tomato & Spinach Quiche, Cranberry Turkey Burgers, and Lemon Herb Chicken Traybake.

Roasted Tomato & Spinach Quiche

I found this recipe on the LJ cooking community, but I modified it slightly…or a lot, depending on how you look at it.

This was enough to make two quiches – one in my quiche dish, and the other in an 8-inch pie plate.

You will need:

300 grams baby plum, cherry tomatoes, or regular tomatoes (if you use regular tomatoes, chop into pieces about the same size as cherry tomatoes would be)
1 package frozen spinach, thawed and drained (I stuck mine in a colander in the sink, then pressed a tea towel over it to push out some of the water)
50g Feta cheese, crumbled (or “reduced fat greek salad cheese”)
300g crème fraiche (or sour cream)
300g milk (yes, I realize milk is a liquid and can’t be measured in grams, but I used the Crème fraiche container to measure the milk)
8 eggs
salt & pepper
2 shortcrust pie crusts

1. Roast the tomatoes – spread tomatoes on a cookie sheet and brush lightly with olive oil. Roast for 15-20 minutes at 200C. When they are done, lower the oven to 190c.
2. Mix together eggs, creame frache, milk, salt, and pepper.
3. line 2 quiche dishes or pie plates with crusts.
4. Divide tomatoes, spinach, and feta between the two dishes
5. Divide the egg mixture as evenly as possible between the two dishes and bake for 45 minutes

My second recipe is for Cranberry Turkey Burgers. Again, I found the recipe online as a link from a blog I regularly read, though right now I can’t remember which blog it was (if it was you, remind me so I can link you)!

So…my version!

Cranberry Turkey Burgers

You will need:

1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 tbs dried Sage
500g turkey mince (ground turkey)
1 cup dried cranberries
1 egg
Salt & pepper
Handful of grated cheese (optional)

Combine all ingredients and shape into patties. Again, I made them about the size of my palm and got 10 out of the mixture. Grill until done. I did it on a George Forman and they only took about 4-5 minutes in batches of four.

I served it with cranberry ketchup and fresh salad leaves from my garden. The recipe for the ketchup was on the blog I found the link on, and it was quite simple. Just combine equal parts cranberry sauce with ketchup. Again, if it was your blog, please leave me a comment so I can give a link!

And the last recipe was created this morning. I had wanted to make the Spiced Chicken Traybake recipe I clipped out of Prima magazine, but when I tasted the spice mix after mixing it, I decided I didn’t like it, so I created my own spices as I already had everything else ready!

Lemon Herb Chicken Traybake

You will need:

Chicken legs (I bought a pack of 4)
Diced swede (I wound up with a bag of “root vegetables for mash” that also had parsnips and carrot)
Cauliflower
3 TBS olive oil
2 TBS fresh thyme (I used lemon thyme)
2 TBS fresh oregano leaves
1 TBS dried basil (If I had fresh, I’d have used it)
1 TBS dried sage (ditto)
1/2 TBS lemon pepper (if you don’t have lemon pepper, use regular pepper)
1 lemon or lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 220C. Boil the swede/root veg for about 5 minutes (just to get it slightly tender). If you used fresh cauliflower, boil that too.
2. De-skin the chicken. I didn’t do it this time, but I will in the future as there was a lot of fat in the bottom of the pan, and most of that comes from the skin.
3. Combine herbs and olive oil
4. Spread swede (root veg) in the bottom of your roasting tray and arrange chicken on top. Put cauliflower in the gaps between chicken.
5. Brush oil mixture on chicken and exposed veg, cut and squeeze lemon over dish.
6. Bake for 45 minutes, or until juices in chicken run clear.

Serve with gravy and roasted potatoes. Gives a roast dinner a new spin!

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[This post also appeared on the LiveJournal cooking community]

Tim just called tonight’s meal “The Best Burgers Ever”. He might be biased, of course.

I had a package of pork mince in my freezer. It, along with a pack of minced turkey was supposed to be Swedish Meatballs out of the new Jamie Does… cookbook. BUT, when we had Ben and Marie over for Tea on Saturday, Marie requested spaghetti. Since I made spaghetti with meatballs that night, I decided we probably didn’t want meatballs quite yet. But we still needed dinner.

Turkey mince lends itself to all sorts of other Italian dishes and assorted “hamburger helper” type skillet meals…but I wasn’t in the mood for that. I was in the mood to experiment with the pork. So I asked myself, “what goes with pork?” and came up with – Apples. Porkchops and Applesauce, Pork Stew with Cider, etc. etc. Tim likes pork and apples together. So…here’s what I came up with!

You will need:

500g package of pork mince
1 apple
1/2 tsp cinnamon
handful of fresh parsley
about a half cup breadcrumbs
1 egg
Worcestershire sauce
pepper (I cranked my rainbow grinder about 30 times)
handful shredded cheese (optional, I just happened to have some leftover)
rolls
handful spinach leaves/rocket/watercress/lettuce/whatever
tomato (sliced)
applesauce (I used homemade, I’m sure jarred would be fine).

1) Peel and shred apple, then use your hands to squeeze out as much juice as you can (I squeezed mine into a glass to drink! LOL)
2) In a large bowl, combine pork, breadcrumbs, parsley, cinnamon, the egg, the shredded apple, and the shredded cheese. Season with pepper and add a dash of Worcestershire. Use your hands to really mix everything together. If the mixture feels too wet, add more breadcrumbs (I wound up adding part of a stale baguette).
3) Shape into patties about the size of the palm of your hand. I have small hands, so I made 10 burgers

I cooked these on my George Foreman. Time varied between 6 to 8 minutes, depending on how thick the burgers were. I topped the burgers with the lettuce and tomato, and then a spoonful of warm applesauce along with some HP (aka “brown sauce”) Sauce for Tim, ketchup for me.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished burgers, but here are the six I have leftover to freeze for the future:

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I don’t have a picture of this, but I made this on Saturday when Tim’s brother and brother’s gf were over for Tea and it went over well. As usual, I tweaked the original recipe a bit…

Lemon and Poppy Seed Drizzle Cake

200g flour
200g caster sugar (Yes, I went to the trouble of going out and buying a small bag of caster sugar instead of using regular)
2 tsp baking powder
Juice and zest (grated peel) of 2 lemons
1 egg
1 TBS water
125ml buttermilk*
2 TBS poppy seeds
2 TBS caster sugar

1. Line an 8×8 cake tin with parchment paper and preheat oven to 180C.
2. Mix together flour, caster sugar, and baking powder
3. Beat together lemon zest, egg, and buttermilk and slowly add to buttermilk mixture.
4. stir in poppy seeds. Bake for about 45 minutes
3. Mix lemon juice with 2tbs caster sugar to make a glaze. As soon as you take the cake out of the oven, poke holes in the top with a fork and immediately drizzle glaze.

*To make buttermilk – Using a 1 cup glass measuring cup, put 1TBS lemon juice or vinegar in it and then fill it to the 1 cup line with milk. Let stand for 5 minutes, then use as you would buttermilk.

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Recently, we started ordering organic vegetables from nearby Woodlands Farm. It seemed like such a great idea – having vegetables delivered, especially when we’re trying to lose some weight.

However, I’m starting to run into problems. We pay (well, as of next week when the new rate kicks in) £13 for a “Small Mixed Box”, which is a box with both fruit & veg. They have a section where you can state your dislikes (in my case, allergies), and if a dislike is on the list for that week, they will substitute with something else. Two weeks ago, both Leeks and Onions were on the list and as substitutes, we were given celeriac and cabbage. Neither of which I really have a use for, and so I’ve spent the week looking up ideas. I still haven’t found one for the celeriac.

We also received loads of potatoes, jerusalem artichokes, carrots, and parsnips. We use those veg all the time, but that week, not so much. Now that the second box has arrived (on Wed), I have even MORE carrots and parsnips than I know what to do with.

This week also brought a huge bunch (is it called a bunch?) of celary, bok choy (other than stir fry, no clue what to do with this, either), and TWO heads of broccoli (as subs for onions). Which is great, except that we had to throw out last week’s broccoli because we didn’t use it in time and it got fuzzy.

We do seem to go through the fruit in the boxes, though. And anything that’s made for going into a salad gets eaten.

So I’m at a conundrum. Do we…

- cancel the orders all together
- switch to a fruit box
- switch to a smaller mixed box
- switch to a “salad box”

The small fruit box costs £9. Next week’s box contains: mandarins, oranges, bananas, grapefruit, pears, apples, kiwi. With the exception of the grapefruit, all fruits I like, and fruits that would make my aunt’s fruit salad recipe.

The large salad box ( £13) will have: onions, apples, kiwi, celery, carrots, celeriac, lettuce, fennel, broccoli, and tomatoes.

The basic mix box (£9.95), which is smaller than the small mixed will have: potatoes, apples, pears, aubergine (eggplant), carrots, leeks, broccoli, onions, lettuce, bananas, and celeriac.

And I just can’t decide what to do. On one hand, the prices do seem a bit high. They claim to be competitive with getting organics at the grocery store, but if we’re getting veg at the grocery store, we don’t usually seek out the organics. On the other hand….we really want to support small local business!

If anyone has any suggestions on what we should do, I welcome the input.

*

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Tim and I really struggled on what to do for Valentine’s Day. It was our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple, and really, our first Valentine’s Day to spend together, since last year he had to work 2pm – 10pm on it. Last year I managed to surprise Tim with a heart shaped cake* and a bunch of valentine’s on the front door. This year…we were stumped. We thought about going away for the weekend to one of the bed & breakfasts we enjoyed staying at, but then thought it might be crowded. We thought about going out to a nice dinner, but again, the crowded factor came into play. Instead we decided to just stay home, and I cooked a meal for us.

(there was steam coming off the food!)

For Tim – he had a steak grilled on the George Forman, steamed broccoli/cauliflower, roasted potatoes/sweet potatoes, and a side salad.

For me – I had prawns (shrimp), roasted asparagus, some of the potatoes and steamed vegetables, and a side salad.

I had never cooked a steak before, but apparently it was edible!

We tried grocery shopping at Morrisons this week (when we usually go to Tesco), and I didn’t know where anything in the store was. After two trips around it looking for the baking aisle, I gave up. This was our dessert:

I made butterscotch sauce (all you do is cook butter & sugar on the stove, remove it from the heat when it boils and add vanilla), and served it over ice cream and bananas. It was tasty, but not what I had been expecting to make for the day!

And Tim and I even dressed up for the occasion:

I even had a new dress! Tim’s granddad gave me some money for Christmas, and this dress was on super low clearance at BHS (marked down to £10!), so I picked it up intending to wear it when we went out…since we didn’t go out, I decided to wear it anyway.

Hope you all had a great Valentine’s Day!

*To make a heart: bake one square cake and one round cake. Cut the round cake in half. Set the square cake on a diagonal, and use the round halves to make the top part of the heart.

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On our first trip to the library when I got my library card, I borrowed Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food. I had watched his Christmas cooking specials this past December and loved his recipes and his style of cooking, so I thought his cookbook(s) would be worth checking out. I decided to borrow this one from the library that way if I decided I didn’t like it, I wasn’t out any money.

And I love it.

I learned how to make poached eggs!

A few weeks ago, Tim asked me if I could make poached eggs for breakfast. I did a bit of umming and ahhinng, because the only way I knew how to make poached eggs involved a three-piece special pan. But as I was leafing through Jamie’s cookbook, he had a whole section devoted to cooking eggs, and I learned that poaching was pretty easy –

Bring water to a boil, and gently drop the egg into the water (Jamie recommends putting the egg in a cup first). Boil for 2 minutes for a runny yolk, 4 for solid. Remove with a slotted spoon and boom – you have your poached eggs.

Jamie also taught me how to make a British staple – Yorkshire Pudding.

Again, this was one of those recipes that to read it, you’d have thought the author was insane and you’d write it off as something a bit too complicated, but it really wasn’t bad at all. See?

Jamie’s recipe:

Set oven to it’s hottest temperature possible and pre-heat your muffin tray in the oven. Whisk together: 285ml milk, 115g flour, eggs, and a pinch of salt. Set aside for 30 minutes. Spoon vegetable oil (his original recipe called for 1tbs/cup, but I plan on reducing it in the future to 1/2 tbs) into the hot muffin tray and place it back in the oven for 10 minutes to heat the oil. Quickly spoon batter into hot oiled cups (best to do this while the tray is still in the oven). Bake 15 minutes. Don’t open the oven door to check on them or they won’t get puffy. I then removed the puddings from the trays and placed them on a wire cooling rack with a paper towel underneath to drain off some of the oil (since I really think I used too much!). I even checked other recipes online to see if I really had to do the pre-heating thing, and you do. The only difference between this recipe and others out there are the amounts of flour/eggs/milk.

I also learned how to make roasted potatoes that are crispy. This is something that is a staple for Tim’s family instead of serving potatoes mashed, so I wanted to learn how to do them (though I probably can’t do them with a roast until I get a double oven or bigger oven) – boil potatoes for 10 minutes, drain and shake colander. Bake in a roasting pan drizzled with olive oil for 1 hour. Pretty straight forward and the potatoes were good. Not as crunchy as I had hoped to make them, but it was still good for my first try!

And of course, my recipe last week for cranberry muffins also came from Jamie Oliver.

My beloved Betty Crocker might have to share some limelight with Jamie Oliver.

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Two posts in one day! Go me!

My husband is fantastic. And I’m not just saying that because today marks three months of being married and two weeks of me officially living in the UK. When we knew we wouldn’t get to spend Christmas together, we decided to hold it after I arrived complete with all the proper Christmas trimmings…which included a turkey, a Christmas pudding, Christmas crackers, and cranberry sauce. I made Tim a shopping list, and he set out to get everything we needed. I thought he was only going to get me 1 or 2 bags of cranberries….so imagine my surprise when I opened the freezer to find SIX BAGS OF CRANBERRIES!

So this morning I decided I wanted to make cranberry muffins. I have a really yummy recipe from Vegetarian Times I found several years ago, but that recipe was in US measurements and requires stuff like ricotta cheese and orange juice (the recipe is no longer on their website, sadly). I wanted to make simple, easy cranberry muffins, so I went to my favourite British Chef – Jamie Oliver. Sure enough, he had a simple recipe, which I’ve copied below to make it easier for you:

Cranberry muffins

Method
1)Put the butter and sugar in a medium sized mixing bowl and mix them together until completely blended. Add two eggs, one at a time, beating them into the mixture.
2)Put your flour in another mixing bowl. Add two teaspoons of baking powder and a pinch of salt. Measure out 125 millilitres of milk. Then add small amounts of the flour mixture and milk alternately to your original mixture giving it a good stir each time, until all the milk and flour has been added and the mixture is smooth.
3)Finally, add the cranberries to the mixture. Spoon your mixture into a paper-lined cake tray. Fill the cases 3/4 full. There should be enough mixture for 12 muffins.
4)Pop them in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius or gas mark 4 and bake them for 25 – 30 minutes until they are golden brown. Leave your muffins to cool for about 20 minutes and then enjoy!

I didn’t have any stick butter, and the village shop only had lard in a stick, so I used butter out of the Lurpak (which has the bonus of already being soft). I also increased the amount of berries to 300g, as the bag I had was 300g and I sprinkled some sugar over the tops of the muffins before they went into the oven.

And here’s my finished muffins, all 11 of them (I had to taste one, you see!):

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Tim and I got a bread machine as a wedding gift from parents of a childhood friend of mine…and we LOVE it. It was the first thing to come out of it’s box when I arrived, and I was immediately making bread in it. We even scored organic locally milled (at a real windmill) wheat flour for our first loaf, and it was delicious. For our second loaf, I picked up a Hovel bread mix for white bread, and that went quickly!

While we were doing our weekly shopping at Tesco, we saw that there were several types of bread machine mixes, so we picked up one of each to have a go and see what we liked. Yesterday, I decided to make the Ciabatta. And the photo above is how it turned out. I followed the instructions exactly – 250g of mix, 175ml water, 2tsp olive oil. The only “difference” was that the machine was moved to the end of the counter (it’s the sticking out bit not supported by cabinets) and I was also doing a load of wash at the same time.

Do you think the vibrations from the washer (particularly that spin cycle!) could have caused the bread to not rise (or mix!) properly? I tried it a second time with another Hovel Mix, and while that bread turned out edible, the top isn’t smooth the way the first two loaves turned out, it’s all bumpy. Edible, but kind of ugly looking.

I can’t put the bread machine where it had been for the first two loaves, as that was on top of the old dryer we’ve gotten rid of (well, it’s as far as the front garden, we’re waiting for pick up).

Any ideas?

PS – we also determined that making our own bread will cost much less than buying a loaf. The mixes cost from 30-75p/loaf, but if we make it from scratch, we’re spending less than 30p/loaf. It does take 3 hours, but the machine also has a timer, so we can set it at night to wake up to fresh bread or even have bread waiting when we come home from a day out!

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I have a LOT of posts in the pipe, including the rest of London (2 days), Newark (one day), and the trip North (4 days), but for now, I thought I’d share a recipe I created yesterday:

Sadly, I don’t have a photo of the finished dish because the day I decided to make this we happened to suffer a power outage…FORTUNATELY, the crock pot managed to stay hot for about an hour after the power went out, and the ribs were fully cooked!

I completely winged it on this recipe, adding things I thought would work, and the result is a sweet rib, which is a nice alternative from spicy bbq!

Ingredients:
Pork ribs bone-in or boneless (thawed)
ground ginger
black pepper
1 cup cider ( I used a cranberry apple version) (can probably substitute beer)
1 cup white vinegar
1 cup tomato sauce (canned or jarred, plain)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons golden syrup (can probably substitute honey) (optional)

Cut rack of ribs into separate pieces (I cut mine into 2-rib sections). If using boneless, cut into strips about an inch wide if not already cut
Rub ribs with pepper and ginger. I don’t have actual measurements for this, I just sprinkled some on and rubbed it in. (probably no more than a few teaspoons of each).
Spray crock pot with cooking spray and place ribs in crock pot. I made a layer on the bottom, and then placed the second layer cross-wise on top.
Combine cider, vinegar, and brown sugar. Stir until sugar has dissolved. Add tomato sauce, ketchup, and syrup.
Pour sauce mixture over ribs. If there isn’t enough sauce to cover the ribs, add water one cup at a time until ribs are covered.
Turn crock pot on low and cook for 4-6 hours (depending on how hot your low is).

I found this recipe for Chicken a la King in toast cups on one of the food blogs I read regularly and had decided it was something I might want to try to make for Tim someday…but the toast cups looked like they’d be something I’d fail at. My friend Falnfenix IMed me one day and told me she had made the recipe with success and the toast cups weren’t that hard to make, so I decided to try my hand at it…of course, I needed to use ingredients we had on hand and my end result while similar to the Culinary in the Desert post, really only shares the toast cups in common!

So – start with her toast cup directions. I used a silicone muffin tray though and discovered I needed to toast them for twice as long before they started to look toasty…and even then, they didn’t get that golden brown toast colour.

Then, I took a look at her recipe and at what I had in the kitchen and did the following:

*Melt 2 Tbsp butter in a saucepan
*add 1/4 cup flour after butter has melted, stir.
*add 2 cups chicken broth
*add 1 cup diced carrots, 1 cup diced celary, and 2 cups peas
*add 1 tsp white wine and 2 tsp white vinegar
*sprinkle with parsley, sage, pepper (from a 4-colour grinder), paprika, and salt
*add 1 Tbsp corn starch if it’s not thick
*add 4 cooked chicken breasts, cubed

Then it was simply pour into the toast cups. Tim said this was delicious, and he had the leftovers at work the following day without the toast cups.

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This reminds me of snow days and lazy Saturday’s….

1 can condensed tomato soup
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of flour
4 slices of bread

1. Melt butter on stove, add flour and stir
2. Add soup
3. Heat over medium heat. Add Parmesan cheese and heat until it bubbles
4. Serve over toast

Note to UK cooks: You can make this with a can of uncondensed soup, just double the butter, flour, and cheese. (and you’ll also get enough for 6-7 slices of bread!)

This recipe originally came from my mom’s 1950s Girl Scout Handbook!

One of my favourite foods is homemade mac & cheese served with stewed tomatoes. I’m not sure if this is a regional thing (my family is from central PA) or just a family thing, but we always tend to serve them together. We generally buy a can of stewed tomatoes and just open it up and heat the tomatoes to put on top, but around here I haven’t been able to find any. So….I had to make my own.

Because I love the crock pot, and because it’s hard to coordinate cooking on Tim’s two-burner stove (that only can use one burner if you have the oven on), I decided to figure out how to make these in the crock pot. I looked at a few recipes online for both crock pot versions and stove-top versions and created my own.

Crock Pot Stewed Tomatoes

Ingredients:
14 small tomatoes
basil
oregano
bay leaves
salt
sugar

1. Peel tomatoes. I read on a few websites in order to peel tomatoes you put them in boiling water and immediately put them into cold water. That didn’t work for me. What did work was cutting a small slit in the tomato, then putting it into the boiling water for about 5 minutes or until the split started to grow. The skin should at that point just peel right off, but watch out because it will be super hot after being in boiling water!
2. Cut tomatoes into quarters and cut out the seeds/membrane. I didn’t remove all the seeds, just the ones that were attached to the core.
3. Place tomatoes in crock pot, and cover with about 1 cup water. Sprinkle with oregano, basil, and pepper. Add 1 tsp sugar and 3 bay leaves.
4. cook on HIGH for 3-4 hours, or LOW for 6-8.

My tomatoes aren’t as tomato-y as they are out of the can, so I think if I make them again I’ll be adding some tomato juice to flavor them. Either that, or the tomatoes I had weren’t ripe enough and didn’t have that full tomato flavour I was looking for.

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