Fresh and tasty

My local Farmers' Market had Mandarin oranges on Sunday, so I thought I'd try this recipe: Mandarin Orange Marmalade

The process spans 3 days, but the most difficult part (which wasn't difficult at all) was cutting up the fruit. I referred to Hitchhiking to Heaven's blog post, How to Slice Citrus Fruit for Marmalade. Mandarin oranges don't have seeds, so the chopping 3+ pounds went pretty quick.

Yesterday was the 3rd day of the process and I canned 6-2/3 pints of lovely marmalade.


Mandarin Orange Marmalade

I dove into the partial jar this morning and spread a generous amount on my breakfast bread, Oatmeal Date Nut (with dried cranberries) from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.


Good morning!

I wish I didn't wait so long to make this marmalade. Hopefully the Farmers' Market will have more Mandarin oranges in the weeks to come.

Rosemary & Chive ABin5

Every 3 months I get so busy at work that it becomes difficult to keep up with the normal household routine. Baking bread falls by the wayside and we end up eating store bought bread for a week or two.

I celebrated a lull in the work schedule by making a 1/2 batch of the master recipe from Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I adding fresh rosemary & garlic chives from the garden, about 2 tsps of each in the 2 lb batch of dough.

Like a good golfer, I "hit a provisional" and took a photo before baking just in case the rosemary on top burned to a crisp.


Rosemary & Chive ABin5 before baking

It smelled amazing while it was baking and turned out beautifully.


Rosemary & Chive ABin5

It makes wicked grilled cheese sandwiches and is a perfect pairing with lentil soup.

A new favorite: Oatmeal Date Bread

We came home from the warehouse store with a multi-pound bag of steel cut oats. Okay, now what to make other than oatmeal? I turned to my trusty bread book--



and found a recipe for Oatmeal Date Bread.

Hmmm. Dates. I don't like dates, but we do have them in the fridge. Eh, what the heck? Maybe enclosing them in a hearty bread will change my mind.

Measure. Chop. Stir. Rise. Refrigerate. Shape. Rise. Bake. Cool. Slice. Toast. Butter. Eat. Smile.


Oatmeal Date Bread

Next I'll add chopped pecans and more dates (who am I?!). It's a very tasty bread.

Prunus armeniaca

Prunus armeniaca, the humble apricot.


Apricots from the Farmers' Market

These delicious orbs were what got me started canning food. Last year, a lovely friend handed me a jar of apricot jam she made and that was all it took. It was so tasty, I wanted more.

Many pints of fruit later, here's my first batch of apricot jam.


First Apricot Jam

And what goes well with apricot jam?


HBin5 Wheat

It all comes full circle. Thank you Carol.

Danish Braid - who knew?

You know that feeling when you see something and you say to yourself, "I gotta have that!" That's how I felt when I saw the Mother’s Day Danish Braid post on the Artisan Bread in Five blog.

I chose to make Challah instead of Brioche and mixed up a 4 lb batch of dough last night. This morning I took out about 1-1/3 lbs of dough, rolled it out, and spread sweetened cream cheese down the middle



followed by 1/4 c of homemade strawberry/white peach jam.



Here's the braid rising (it's almost too big for the pan!)



and here's it is brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with coarse sugar, ready for the oven.



20 minutes later and voila!




ABin5 Danish Braid

I sliced up the Danish and took it to the Picchetti Winery where Spinnity brought the spinners together for some outdoor spinning, knitting, and socializing.






Spinning at Picchetti Winery

The Danish Braid was a hit and so was spinning in public.

I made another Danish tonight for tomorrow's Mother's Day brunch, and it looks as good as the first one. Thanks to Zoë for the blog post and inspiring me to make something wonderful to share with friends and family. Who knew something so fancy was in my realm of possibilities?

Flour, water, yeast, and salt

My weekly go-to bread is the Master Recipe on page 53 of


Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Flour, water, yeast, and salt plus vital wheat gluten produces a lively batch of bread dough in about 2 hours.


4 lbs of HBin5

A few hours in the fridge calms the yeast down--in this case it rested overnight. The next morning half of the dough was cut off, shaped into a loaf, and placed in a buttered loaf pan.


2 lb loaf dusted, scored, and rising

2 hours later--


It's ready for the oven

This smells so good.


1 hour @ 375 F

Waiting for it to cool was not easy.


Cooling

But it was worth it.


Still warm (and very tasty)

Kitchen crafts

Weekends are for shopping at the Farmers' Market and cooking. Here are a few of the FO's from the kitchen:

• Focaccia with Onion and Rosemary
  
  Focaccia
  
  The recipe is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and I used the light wheat bread dough. Easy, relatively fast (much faster than a loaf of bread) and very tasty. It makes yummy sandwiches too.
  



• Peach/Pear-Apple Jam
  
  Peach/Pear-Apple jam
  
  These were the last peaches from our Farmers' Market and some pear-apples from my parents tree. I love the color and the intense peach flavor.
  



• Garlic Dill Pickles
  
  Garlic Dill Pickles
  
  The recipe is from Food in Jars. These are easy to make and taste really good. The combination of vinegar, salt, and peppers really gives them zing. I had almost a quart of brine left over, so next time I'll make 3/4 of what the recipe suggests.
  



• Apple Pie in a Jar
  
  Apple Pie in a Jar
  
  4 lbs of Granny Smiths and yielded about 3-1/2 quarts of apples. I used this recipe and didn't have any issues with overflowing jars.
  



• Rustic Apple Pie
  I was going to make an apple crisp with the canned apples but realized that I didn't have any brown sugar.
  
  Plan B: Turn a Rustic Apple Tart into a pie.
  
  Pie plate lined with Pate Sucree.
  
  
  Pate Sucree as Pie crust
  
  Dumped 1-1/2 quarts of Apple Pie in a Jar into the pie crust (which used up the 1/2 quart from the most recent batch).
  
  
  With apple pie filling
  
  Edges of the crust folded up, brushed with milk, and sprinkled with coarse sugar.
  
  
  Ready for the oven
  
  Baked at 350F for 30 min in the bottom third of the oven, then in the top third of the oven until nice and brown. Pie!
  
  
  Apple pie
  
  
  a la mode
  
  The juice bubbled over the sides of the pie plate and made a bit of a mess. Thankfully I had a sheet of foil on the bottom of the oven so clean up was quick and easy. Next time I'll put a cookie sheet under it.
  
  
• Lemon Lime Marmalade
  
  The Meyer Lemon Marmalade recipe from Epicurious has only yielded ~4 pints for me in the past. That's a lot of work for not a lot of marmalade.
  
  This time I added 3 Bearss Limes from our tree and increased the recipe by 33%. Total weight = 2 lbs.
  
  
  Meyer Lemons and Bearss Limes
  
  
  Slicing, slicing, slicing
  
  The lemon seeds were secured in a cheesecloth pouch--they are a natural source of pectin. The fruit and seeds soaked in water for 24 hours.
  
  
  So fragrant
  
  The next day the solution was reduced for 45 minutes, sugar was added and it cooked for about 15 minutes, then the marmalade was transferred to pint jars and processed in a water bath.
  
  
  7 pints of Lemon Lime Marmalade
  
  I ended up with exactly 7 pints of beautiful marmalade. Yesss!
  

Buying in bulk

The last time we went to Costco, I wanted to go down the baking/spice aisle. I didn't have delusions of buying 50 lbs of flour, but I was curious to see if I could find something that I could use for bread baking in reasonable quantities.

Score!


Buying in bulk

On the right, a 4 oz jar of active dry yeast that I bought at the grocery store on sale for $6.99, regular price $8.99. It lasted about 6 weeks.

On the left, a 2 lb brick of active dry yeast for less than $4. If I bought 2 lbs of the jars of yeast on sale, that would be $56. $56!!

Apparently you can freeze yeast and it lasts a long time--but even if I only used 4 oz of it, it would still be less than half the retail price of the jar of yeast.

I sure hope I like Red Star as much as I like Fleischmann's. I'll know soon enough.

Food, Glorious Food

You may have noticed that I've been baking. A lot.

What can I say? It's been 4 weeks since I bought Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and I'm enjoying trying different recipes.

Here's a taste of the baked goodness so far:


AB in 5, Dutch Oven method
Master Boule recipe


Sticky Pecan Caramel Rolls (twice)


Crusty Sandwich Loaf


Reubens on the Crusty Sandwich Loaf


Challah after rising


Challah


Chocolate Prune Bread after rising


Chocolate Prune Bread

Some of you are saying, "Prunes?! I don't know about that." Before you write it off, imagine this--2 lbs of Challah dough... add to that 8 oz of Ghirardelli Bittersweet chocolate chunks and chopped prunes. The result is a bread is rich and chocolaty with a touch of sweetness from the dried plums. Yeah. It's all gone.


Hot Cross Buns


Brioche

The Brioche is on beef stew made with organic veggies received in our CSA share from Two Small Farms. Spinnity & Bill introduced us to Two Small Farms and CSA and this year we joined. I love stew, and from the looks of it we're going to be having a lot more stews and soups in order to eat the quantity of veggies we're receiving every week. This stew had leeks, smallage, turnips, carrots, barley, Cabernet, balsamic vinegar, & veg broth and was sooooo good.

I'm very happy with the progress we made with last week's box. Everything's eaten except for 4 leeks, some smallage and dill.

Tomorrow's share will include mint, beets, shallots, agretti, strawberries, carrots, broccoli, and mei quin choy (baby bok choy) or summer squash.

Agretti?! That's part of the adventure, getting veggies you've never heard of or tried before. Well, it's new to me. Have you have agretti? If so, how did you prepare it? Note to self: avoid agretti with eggs. lol

The ABin5 trend is catching on in my circles--people are telling me they either bought or will buy the book based on the photos here. How cool is that?

Next on deck, 4 lbs of whole wheat dough in the fridge. We'll have a loaf this week.

As Oliver said, "Please, sir, I want some more."