OMG — my youngest son dropped my iPad face down onto the tile while we all were at the Dentist office this morning and Shattered the screen!!! I even cut my finger on the glass when I touched it!!! I am devastated I use it for everything including for selling my daughter’s girl Scout cookies on their cookie app. And I don’t have the extra cash to fix it. But will have to suck it up and get it fixed nevertheless, AGH!!!
I started a sourdough starter about 2 weeks ago with the idea of making english muffins. Of course I ended up making a bread loaf instead. And with no self control my kids and I devoured 1/2 the loaf in one sitting with a lot of butter and honey.
Ingredients:
Directions
Combine all of the ingredients, kneading to form a smooth dough in a Stand Mixer with a dough hook. It will look more like pancake batter.
Allow the dough to rise, in a lightly greased, covered bowl, until it’s doubled in size, 2 hrs.
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Spray the loaf with lukewarm water.
Make two fairly deep diagonal slashes in each; a serrated bread knife, wielded firmly, works well here.
Bake the bread for 30-40 minutes, until it’s a very deep golden brown. Remove it from the oven, and cool on a rack.
For Christmas I made a 26 lb turkey for 2 adults and 3 little kids. Yeah — I HAVE A LOT OF Turkey left over and have been making sandwiches galore with the leftover meat and then decided I wanted to make burritos for dinner. AND my parents were here over the New Year and brought us several packages of Udi’s Gluten Free tortillas which I needed to use up. So burritos it was!
I took a gallon size ziploc filled with leftover turkey and dumped it into the crockpot with 2 cans of tomato sauce and 1 packet of Trader Joe’s Taco Seasoning and let it cook for 4 hours.
I opened the lid and the meat had a wonderful aroma and shredded as soon as I touched it with the fork!
Next I warmed up the tortillas, spread a very generous amount of sour cream on each tortilla, topped with refried beans, shredded turkey, sliced avocado and rice. Rolled the tortillas and cut them in half.
I love making something creative for dinner from leftovers the night before. I had made homemade sushi and had a lot of rice leftover in the fridge and basically heated that up, too, and added it to the burritos as well.
Regardless, I had A LOT of shredded turkey leftover and 2 more packages of tortillas left so a few nights later I made Enchiladas with Sour Cream Sauce with the shredded turkey and extra tortillas!
Even though I was busy yesterday doing a lot of stuff, today I have to catch up on finishing laundry doing the dishes and taking the ornaments off the Christmas tree. Then I have a PTO meeting and a Girl Scout meeting today is going to be so busy. At Thanksgiving I was in the bay area visiting family. My aunt had a persimmon tree that she let me pick a bunch of persimmons to take home. They’ve been sitting in a bag in my garage since Thanksgiving ripening. This morning I puréed the persimmons so I can make cookies. But I’m going to stick the purée in the fridge and do that tomorrow. And probably in a few hours I’ll have to figure out what it crockpot for dinner tonight. We shall see!
Spinach and Meat Ravioli topped with Butternut Squash Sauce paired with a Caesar Salad and Gluten Free Garlic Bread
Of all the foods that I miss out on eating since being gluten intolerant, I miss eating Raviolis. Being from a loud, obnoxious Italian family — I grew up eating a lot of pastas and ravioli. Now, honestly I have never been a spaghetti kinda person and I am not a huge fan of Tomato Sauce. LOL, I can remember my Grandmother yelling at me “What kinda Italian are you? That you don’t like Tomato Sauce!!” It isn’t that I really dislike Tomato Sauce — I just can’t eat it with out feeling like my stomach is a ball of acid and will burn a hole through my stomach and esophagus. So I try to stay away from it to avoid my stomach issues.
Anyhow, to get back on track — I decided that I was going to finally tackle making a really good pasta dough so I could make my family and I raviolis. I actually converted my grandmother’s pasta dough recipe to Gluten Free and have to say it came out pretty good.
My husband loves Butternut Pasta Sauce and he actually made a fresh batch of sauce to go with our raviolis.
He skipped the roasting of the butternut squash and just boiled it and said he felt that was easier than roasting it in the oven.
And my mother made my grandmothers ground turkey and spinach filling to stuff the raviolis with! So the whole process from making the dough to filling the raviolis took a good 2+ hours and we ended up making 125 raviolis. But I actually used 10 cups of my Gluten Free Flour blend (my own mixture of Brown Rice Flour and Tapioca Flour).
I used my pasta dough roller to roll out the dough then I used a medium sized biscuit cutter to cut out circles of dough to fill the raviolis and then pinched off to seal.
My kids had a blast helping make the raviolis — it was like a production line at the table — but could had taken an hour longer if I didn’t have the help!
Hot English muffins, Canadian-style bacon, and poached eggs topped with hollandaise sauce is my most favorite breakfast of all time. I have made it so many times over the years, I can make it in my sleep, LOL! But honestly I really only make it on Holidays especially for Easter and Christmas.
So this past New Year morning I decided I was going to make the family Eggs Benedict to start the new year off right because I believe Eggs Benedict is one of life’s simple pleasures… and why not indulge!
My parents bought my family a prime rib to have for New Year’s Dinner. I have to say it was very generous on their part and very much appreciated as well. I took the roast and spayed it with Olive Oil then generously covered it in Pappy’s prime rib rub seasoning, minced garlic, rosemary and parsley…. because sometimes Prime Rib can be a little flavorless unless seasoned correctly. I Roasted the Prime Rib for 3 hours and then let it sit for 5 or so minutes after pulling it out of the oven before slicing. I love the ribs — give me a rib any day over the steak and I am in heaven! It was delicious and I didn’t need any horseradish either!
Roasted Prime Rib
9-10 lb Prime Rib Roast
Seasoning is as much as you want to put on the roast:
Pappy’s Prime Rib Rub Seasoning
Fresh Rosemary
Dried Parsley
Garlic Minced
Olive Oil
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
In a bowl, mix all the herbs well, and mix thoroughly. Next, add the oil, whisk to mix, and then apply to the exterior of the roast evenly on all sides. Roast until the internal temperature reaches 120 degrees F for medium-rare, about 2-1/2 to 3 hours (15 minutes per pound for medium-rare). Then allow to rest for 10 minutes before carving.
Serve with the pan drippings or sauce if preferred.
Here’s wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2015!
Tonight felt like a steak night and my favorite is Ribeye. To me it has the most flavor of all the meats. Since it had snowed the weather is ungodly cold outside to even attempt to heat up the barbecue. So I decided to try cooking the steak in the oven something I had never done before. And I will have to say – I cooked it to perfection — not a piece of meat was left!!
Ingredients
1 boneless rib eye steak, 1 lb or more
Olive oil, to coat pan
Steak Seasoning of your choice – ( I used a mixture of Olive Oil, Pappy’s Prime Rib Rub, Rosemary, Parsley and Olive Garden Garlic & Herb Italian Seasoning )
Directions
Place a 10-to-12-inch cast-iron skillet in the oven and heat the oven to 500 degrees F. Bring the steak to room temperature.
When the oven reaches temperature, remove the skillet from the oven. Coat the pan lightly with oil.
Immediately place the steak in the middle of the hot skillet. Cook 30 seconds without moving. Turn with tongs and cook another 30 seconds, then put the pan straight into the oven for 5 minutes. Flip the steak and cook for another 5 minutes. (This time is for medium-rare steak. If you prefer medium, add a minute to both of the oven turns.)
Remove the steak from the skillet and let sit for 2 minutes before slicing.
I am gonna try making gluten free sourdough bread – basically give it a whirl. And the first thing I am doing is making a Sourdough Starter!
Gluten-free sourdough starter can be made in as little as seven days using gluten-free flour, water and a medium-sized bowl.
Combine 2 ingredients….
1/2 cup of flour (whatever gluten-free flour or blend you like)
1/2 cup of bottled water into the bowl
Whisk until smooth and cover with a plate or lid, leaving approximately 1/2″ gap for air to circulate.
At least twice a day for the next six days, at regular intervals, add 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of bottled water to the existing starter. This is called feeding the starter.
Small Town Living in Maryland 