We tried to make sourdough bagels, but they didn’t really turn out exactly as planned. I rigged up a proofing box out of a tupperware container, and they looked like little pillows until we tried to tear them away from their new friends. I think the dough should have been more dry. At least they were still good enough to eat! We are definitely going to get back up on that bagel horse soon.
Sometimes I can have the strongest willpower ever. I can make dozens of cookies, and not eat even one (except for a bite of dough, for quality control purposes). Other times, I eat cookie dough by the spoonful, and its a miracle that there is anything left to bake. This was more of a lacking willpower moment, or, I was just providing really good quality control. But its chocolate and peanut butter, so I can’t really blame myself.
We saw some really excellent looking focaccia bread at the store last week. I spent a couple minutes thinking to myself if sourdough focaccia was a thing, then consulted the internet, and the result was yes, it is a thing.
I loosely based my focaccia experiment on this recipe here. It was mostly cloudy outside, so it didn’t rise as much as I was thinking, but there will be no problem at all putting it in our bellies. Put some pesto and cheese on this, and call it dinner.
Ahhh. Bakeries and plants. My two favorite things. The toast at Walton’s Fancy and Staple is delicious, and the indoor plant game is on point. It probably helps that they are also a florist.
Well, looky what I found! Maybe next weekend I can talk myself into buying some.
Jon’s new phone has turned him into quite the artsy photographer. I like it lots.
I am thankful we both fall into the love leftovers category. We both have the odd foods we like better cold, and leftover dinner makes an easy work lunch the next day. We’ve been playing with recipes from this cookbook lately, and even though it specifically says its for two people, it can still be A LOT of food. So we still end up with extra.
This week, we made a frittata with some potatoes, asparagus, and red pepper for dinner. Yum, but I can’t eat half a pan of frittata in one sitting, so…
1. A breakfast frittata-co! Chop and heat up frittata, stick in tortilla, add some avocado, and you have a colorful breakfast taco.
2. Frittata-quiles! Chop and heat up frittata, crush up some blue corn tortilla chips and heat them up in a pan with some salsa, and stick them both on a plate together.
We decided our summer thing (sometimes we skip spring here, so we need to plan early) is to go get pie. I LOVE pie. Pie is perfect. It fits any occasion, season, mood. Pie is happiness, and I want perfume that smells like it.
Our first pie adventure was to Quack’s Bakery. It was a not too warm evening, and we sat outside, sharing pie with friends. We shared a slice of peach pie and chocolate cream. And somehow the air vents wafted fresh pie right past our noses, and I wanted to camp in their parking lot forever.
(second photo from here) I was too busy deciding on types of pie to be bothered with photos.
We planted a whole bunch of basil this spring. We read that bugs tend to not like the smell of it, or maybe the strong smell just confuses them. The smell mostly makes me hungry, so those bugs are really missing out. We have basil growing in a box on the back porch, some in the herb garden in the front yard, and some in containers near the vegetable garden. So now, we have a list of basil recipes to try for the next couple months.
One of the new recipes we tried was simple lemon and basil infused water. We cut up some lemon slices and added some basil leaves to ice water for a nice, refreshing drink. Pretty to look at, too.
We had some 90 degree days last weekend. Thank goodness our backyard has some nice big trees, and I swear it stays like 20 degrees cooler back there. We take our warm evenings on the back porch with a side of ice cream. Which got me thinking about all the cool summer treats coming up right around the corner! (even though it is super thunder/rain stormy at the moment)
Some popsicle recipes to try soon: lemon and raspberry yogurt with super cute wooden sticks, neopolitan always reminds me of birthdays, classic vanilla pudding, and pretty purple blueberry greek yogurt popsicles.
These ice cream cones are still the best. We used to open them over the sink, so the little nuts didn’t go everywhere. Sometimes I wonder what foods our children will remember.
I’d like to show you a picture of my latest loaf of bread, but this is all that’s left.
jk, There is still almost half left. We aren’t monsters.
This recipe is somewhat my own concoction, pecan sourdough bread. Its based on a recipe for walnut bread, but we have a lot of pecans, so I wanted to use those instead. We also ran out of honey, so I subbed in some molasses instead. Smelled sooo good while it was in the oven, and our toast this week has been on par. I think next week I might try some spelt bread, or some other kind of cool kid grain.
We decided that this weekend was a pecan pie. Armed with a big bag of pecans, I got right to work on Saturday morning. Pecan pies scare me a little bit, since I didn’t grow up with them, and am not technically 100% sure what the consistency is supposed to be. But since my guy sure loves them, I need to teach myself to be unscared of them.
I followed part of the filling recipe from here. I like dark chocolate, and happened to have a bar of it.
We spent a lot of the weekend doing yardwork, which means you earn an extra big piece of pie in the evening. I think that is a rule somewhere.
guy and his girl 