In spite of the fact that it's almost 90 degrees in the house today (when will this crazy weather end???), I decided to play housewife for the day. This, for me, means a little cleaning and a whole lot of cooking.
It started out simple. I did the dishes, and DH wanted cookies. He loves this one particular recipe that has salted peanuts and chocolate chips in them. And since I've finally found trans-fat-free shortening, I feel better about making them (I'm leaning toward cutting out trans fats and high fructose corn syrup, but I'm fighting an uphill battle). Then I realized I was out of muffins, which I take for breakfast on the mornings I walk with my friends. So, I figured, while the oven was on...
So I tried a new recipe, off the back of a box of currants. Apple, currant, oat muffins. They're good, but there is very little batter for the amount of "stuff" in it, so they LOOK like hockey pucks, but they're really very tender and yummy. I was running out of all purpose flour so I substituted cake flour. Worked like a charm. And I tried using my ice cream scoop as a muffin scoop, which also worked perfectly.
Then I realized that I had six bananas going to waste, so I whipped up two loaves of lowfat banana bread (got the recipe years ago from www.epicurious.com - it's fabulous). I was running out of eggs and I needed to keep some for dinner, so I opened one of the emergency cans (you know, for when bird flu hits), and tried it out. They worked perfectly too. I'm learning so much in the kitchen today!
Enough baking for one day!
Then I made pasta salad to take for lunch tomorrow. Trying something new and totally simple - orzo pasta, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, sliced olives, and some dried onion, mixed with italian salad dressing. We'll see how it goes - it certainly SOUNDED good! I bet it would be even better if I threw in some fresh mozzarella when I take it tomorrow.
Then I whipped up some manicotti for dinner. It's DH's favorite, and I've been supposed to make it for his birthday dinner (which was the 10th), as soon as it cools down on a weekend. He's tired of waiting, so manicotti it is. And I cut some broccoli out of our garden to steam, to go with it. No aphids this year. YAY! I bought some spray that is mostly organic. It works really, really well...
And now I need to clean the kitchen all over again...but at least I don't have to bake anything for a while!
Does anybody know if there's such a thing as unbleached cake flour???
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3 comments:
You are asking me about unbleached cake flour? I have no idea but it seems reasonable enough. Well, well, well. You were busy this weekend. I don't think I managed to cook a darn thing. Lately I've been fantasizing (this is scary) about being a stay-at-home mama so I could actually focus on organizing the house, spending quality time with my wee little ones, keeping the house in order and discovering growing and cooking awesome healthy and tasty foods. One can dream...
Well, I think I have a few other visitors from time to time who don't actually comment...so I was asking the world at large about the cake flour.
As for the stay at home thing, I don't even care if I have kids - I just want to be a housewife! Of course that would involve a certain someone having a regular paycheck again...
I would say maybe you could get a work at home job that you could do when the kids were at school or napping, but I'm not about to encourage any activity that might mean we wouldn't get to work together anymore! :-)
Did I say napping? I meant sleeping, like at night!
I probably said napping because I want one really, really bad right now...and it's only 6:30 a.m.!
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