Roast Duck

Today, I made roast duck.

It is the most amazing thing I have ever made in my entire life.  I am not exaggerating.

This is the recipe.

Seriously.  Go look at the pictures, and you can imagine the absolute goodness.

I didn't take a picture of it.  Because there wasn't time.  We ate it all.

The glaze makes it, too.  With root vegetables underneath to cook in the duck fat.

If you've never made roast duck, you must try it.  It takes a little over 4 hours, but it is just so incredibly worth it.  

Great Aunt Jeanette's Maple Oatmeal Bread

Today is the day that I'm making sticky buns AND bread.  Because I'm hungry.  And I'm on a sweet kick.

Right next to my cookbooks, I keep a large untidy stack of papers and magazine bits.  These are my favorite recipes.  Some my mother copied down, some are from my Grammie, and some I have printed or clipped out long ago.  This bread is amazing, especially with my uncle's maple syrup.  Slightly sweet, full of flavor, and when toasted with butter...better than any other bread I've tried!

Great Aunt Jeanette's Maple Oatmeal Bread

Yield: 2 loaves

Combine:

2 cups boiling water

1 cups oats

1/2 cup maple syrup

1/2 tsp salt (I used sea salt)

2 Tbsp butter

Stir, and cool to lukewarm.

Dissolve 1 package dry yeast in 1/4 cup lukewarm water and add to oat mixture.

Add flour* (maybe up to 5 cups) as needed.  <-- Here, I added flour a little at a time until the dough came       away from the sides of the bowl and 'felt right'.

Knead (or use electric mixer 5-7 minutes) until dough is stretchy and when you slap it, it feels taught.  It will be a little sticky.

Let rise until double (depending on kitchen temperature, 11/2 to 2 hours).

Punch down.  Shape into loaves, place in greased regular sized (9 by 5?) dough pans.  Rise again about 30 minutes, until dough starts to reach top of the pan.

Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes.

Remove from pans and cool on wire rack.

*All purpose flour works, but bread flour is really great!  <--My mother's side note.

(These loaves are very flat...because I had the sticky buns in the oven right before the bread and turned the oven off before putting the bread in...I didn't realize this until the timer went off 40 minutes later...still tastes good, though!)

Grammie's Brown Sugar Cake Recipe

I spent maybe half an hour today looking for a coffeecake recipe that looked decent, and I couldn't find anything that sounded good and used ingredients that I already had.  Then I remembered, yes, I had finally unpacked the cookbooks and random pieces of paper with family recipes on them.  And somewhere in that pile was Grammie's brown sugar cake recipe.

It is like a cake/coffeecake hybrid, with a brown sugar flavor in an old-fashioned cake form.  If I was ever asked what I wanted for a treat, I would ask for this cake.  I have no idea where the recipe came from.

So now I am sharing it here.  It is rich and goes a long way.

Brown Sugar Cake

2 cups flour

2 cups packed brown sugar

1/2 shortening

Combine.  Mix until crumbly.  Set aside 1 cup of mixture.

(I substituted the following today: 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 1 cup all purpose flour, 1 cup white sugar, 1 cup demarara sugar, 1/2 cup lard)

Add these remaining ingredients:

1 egg, beaten

1 cup sour milk (if you don't have sour milk, measure just under a cup of milk, then add cider or white vinegar to meet the 1 cup mark, let set for a few minutes, and it will sour)

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt (I used sea salt)

1 tsp vanilla

Blend well.  

Pour into a greased 8x8 pan.  Spread reserved mixture on top.

Bake at 350 for 30 to 40 minutes, until a cake tester or knife inserted into the center comes out clean.  My oven runs hot, and it took me 40 minutes, but keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn!

Of course I cut it when it was still piping hot, but you get the idea.  Best coffeecake ever.

Snow/rain day and chocolate swirl gingerbread

I am convinced that my daily motivation to get up and do something is directly related to weather and amount of sunlight.  I have been known, when the clouds part and a beam of sunlight floods into the living room, to jump up and yell 'sun!' and stand in it.  Today started with snow (YAY), but is now just full of rain and I have barely been able to move off of the couch.

At least I haven't let myself take a nap.  Yet.

Today, I worked on some knitting and made some lamb broth from some bones.  And I ate a relatively large amount of snacks.  Today was also another day that I gave in to hunger and had some peanut butter toast.  Maybe its just that I'm too lazy to think up something else, but when I am starving and I haven't planned ahead, at least I always have homemade bread handy!  Now that I've already given in today, I might as well top it off with this dessert that I found on tastespotting.com.

Chocolate swirl gingerbread.

I have no idea how it will turn out, but the pictures alone make me want to go to the trouble of melting chocolate swirling batter.  It even uses whole wheat flour.  That means they are healthy!

Besides, Jon has been out all day in this weather, and he deserves a treat =)

Gluten and hunger

Going gluten free is hard.  Very hard.  I had no idea how much I depended on wheat in my diet.  And I did make a few things that worked out very well, like banana bread and rice-based dishes.  Making baked goods with wheat for Jon led to a lot of temptation, and there were days where there was nothing to eat but a little bread.  At that point, I had to make a decision to go hungry or eat wheat.  If I had more money and time, I would have been able to stick with the diet.  So.  Instead of completely going without, I am making choices.  If I can avoid gluten, then I do, but if I can't, then I shouldn't worry so much about it.  This isn't a diet because of an allergy, it is a choice.

By the way, this is an amazing gf banana bread recipe.

And this is a wonderful egg substitute for when you run out of eggs and still want to bake (I used whole flax seeds).

Gluten-free challenge, Days 2 and 3

Yesterday was my second day on this diet.  I had been quite dissatisfied with Day 1, craving gluten like crazy.  I made some bread with Bob's Red Mill GF Flour Mix, and it ended up burnt and didn't taste good at all.  I peeled the burnt crust off, and it is somewhat decent when toasted.  Somewhat.  I never realized that making bread without gluten would be so difficult!  Yesterday was so much better because I actually ate enough food and even found some gluten free treats out in town.

I woke up feeling amazingly good- lots of energy, not groggy.  Still felt nauseous, just like every morning since high school.  I went out and helped gather up sheep from the field with my friend, and then took town all the summer's electro-net fencing.  I had enough energy to do chores all afternoon.  Jon and I went to the co-op and got some dessert- Jon got bread pudding, I got a flourless vanilla cupcake.  Then we went to a local sushi place and got one roll to split with the leftover soup that was waiting for us at home.  I think that if I can treat myself to healthy and still gf treats and keep my stomach full, this experiment might work =)

Especially since chips are allowed.

Today is day 3, and I have no idea what I will bake or cook today.  But I feel good, full of energy and hope.  Who wants to teach me how to make sushi?

Gluten-free challenge, Day 1

My cookie ideas are going to be an extra challenge now.  I have decided that I will go gluten-free for two months.

This decision comes from a lot of thinking and a tip from my cousin- that going gluten-free might greatly assist  my dreams of having children.  As far as I know, I am not gluten intolerant.  But I have seen studies that may show that not eating gluten can greatly increase fertility.  I don't know what will happen.  I do know that there is a bigger plan out there, and maybe this is my way of being guided.  At the very least, I will have a chance to do lots of experiments with new recipes, ingredients, tastes, and who knows what will happen!

I will be going to the co-op today to get some ingredients in bulk form, and hopefully they have what I 'think' that I need.  There are so many strange flours and starches in gluten-free recipes.  I have no idea of cost or if the store will even have them.  I may end up coming home with a bag of Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Flour Mix!

Also, from my last post, here is how to make one chicken last for many, many meals:
Day 1: Roast large whole chicken with tons of root veggies for dinner
Day 2: Slices of chicken with leftover veggies for lunch, chicken marsala pizza for dinner
Day 3: Leftover pizza for lunch, buffalo chicken pizza for dinner
Day 4: Leftover pizza for lunch, chicken soup for dinner (made with boiling the carcass in water, straining broth out, then adding the rest of the meat back in with veggies)
Day 5: Leftover soup for lunch, stretch out soup with more veggies and black beans
Day 6: Leftover soup for lunch.  Leftover soup for dinner.
Day 7: Leftover soup for lunch.  Leftover soup for dinner with extra side dishes (didn't I say black beans are amazing?!)
Day 8: Leftover soup for lunch.  Just over a week with one chicken!

And that is how we keep grocery bills down!