Foodie Friday #9

Why hello again!

I’ve been making lots of food (cause I need to eat, of course), but only a few new things over the past couple of weeks.

Including some nice pizza crusts, for thin crust pizzas! I made a batch of this dough, divided it into four pizzas, so I’d have crusts that would fit in my trusty cast iron pan, which makes it so easy to come home, preheat the oven and stuff some toppings on the crust and stick the pizza in the oven for a couple of minutes basically until the cheese melts. Easy as pie, and a nice change of pace from having to make something each night, but the downside is having no leftovers for lunch.

I found a nice recipe for granola bars, which I’ve made twice now. The first time, I actually had some nuts, and I used crunchy peanut butter, so it felt like actual granola bar quality stuff, but it ended up being super crumbly. So the second time, I supplemented the oats with Rice Krispies, and added some more peanut butter, actually double the peanut butter, but it ended up being hard enough, but still crumbly, which I think was because the Rice Krispies fill up more air spaces than the nuts did, so I had more material to cover. I’ll be trying again sometime, once I actually get some more nuts.

The Kitchn had a nice recipe for ricotta spaetzle, which is probably going to be my go to meal every time ricotta is available to me. It was delicious and really easy to make! I need to work on some timing, though, so I’ll have nice fresh spaetzle as well as something to eat it with, because I’ve mostly been eating it with butter, since that’s the only thing available right after pulling them from the pot.

I ate the same potato and sweet potato for three days straight! The first day I had them straight from the oven with some cheese and salt, and some salt and sugar. The second day I cut them up to make something resembling a hash. And for dinner that night (and lunch and dinner the next) I included it in the next endeavor.

Have you ever watched a tv show, any tv show, and suddenly had a craving for whatever the characters (or people) were eating? I don’t know about you, but when I watch Supernatural I start to crave pie. This time, though I was watching the show Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, and the restaurant made the most delicious looking pot pie. And I thought to myself, I love pot pie and I have puff pastry in the freezer: I think its time to make pot pie! I kinda just went by feel and the loose directions given in the show… I made a roux, cut up a carrot, added in the potato hash, added a cup of chicken stock, put in some pork (since it was my meat of the week). I covered it with puff pastry, and set it in a 375* oven. I then fried up the remaining puff pastry and topped with cinnamon sugar while I waited. And after a half hour or so, the pot pie came out smelling wonderfully! Since everything had been cooked previously (except the carrot), I didn’t have to worry about eating raw food, I was more worried about the puff pastry baking, and all in all, it was a good experiment!

Are you obsessed with ginger? Because I’m obsessed with ginger, and therefore it was time to make candied ginger! I used this recipe, which worked perfectly and created the most addictive ginger. Next time I might make thin coins instead, though, since the slivers were inconvenient to sift out of the sugar, but I kept the ginger sugar, as well as the crystallized syrup left over from the candying. I’m thinking tea!

I even used some of the ginger sugar in a baked apple I made! I recently bought these ginormous apples, which were nearly twice as big as my small fist. So what better to make than a baked apple? I mixed together some salt, some ginger sugar, some cinammon sugar, some brown sugar, and some toasted oats, and then stuffed it in a basically cored apple at 400* for 25 minutes. So good!

And a long anticipated bread update! I’ve been pretty satisfied with my bread, so much that I’ve begun to forgo the recipe, and I’ve started to just play around a bit. This week, though, I switched it up and made rolls, and they are delicious! I’ll probably end up wasting less bread this way, since they’re the perfect size to keep in my freezer and pull out for a lunch, while my bread has been been a bit too big to stuff in the freezer, even sliced, so I always run into the end of the bread that is basically inedible without lots of chewing or turning it into croutons. But with rolls, this could be different!

What have you been making?