Filed under: Simple Woman's Daybook | No Comments »

This is the Stollen that I made, or at least started and then directed.  It turned out with a somewhat crumbly texture, a little more like a soda bread than a yeasted bread, but holds together very well over all and has a great flavor.  We made it in a doughnut shaped ring, just because I liked that shape and asked John to do it that way.  He started with a lump and made a hole in the middle and then expanded it I think.  The recipe below is what I did, not what  Joy of Cooking does.  Joy also calls it “Christmas Bread”

Stollen
Based on Joy of Cooking 29th printing

½ Joy’s recipe:

Have ready
3-4 Cups all purpose flour

Combine and let stand for 3 to 5 minutes
¾ Cup coconut milk at 105 to 115 degrees F
1 T active dry yeast

Add 1 Cup flour (should have been one half but I goofed), cover this sponge and let rest in a warm place until light and foamy, about one hour.  What I actually got, due to adding double the flour called for was a lump of clay.

Meanwhile mix to form at least ½ lb:

Raisins
Crasins
Chopped dry apricots
Fresh or canned peach (I used a snack sized peach cup with juice)

Let juice rehydrate dry fruit for a while, then add

1-2 cups chopped dried nuts (I used pecans this time)

Sprinkle with flour to coat

Melt (should be beating soft butter, but ours got accidentally re-refrigerated)
¾ C Butter,

Mix in
½ C Sugar
2 eggs
¼ + 1/8 t salt (half of ¾ )

Add the sponge and work with a fork or utensil of your choice until the sponge actually begins to break up and separate in the liquid ingredients.  (This would be different except for the “too much flour” and the “melted butter” mistakes above, but I’m very happy with how the bread turned out, so I’m writing out what I did instead of what I should have done.)

Add enough flour to knead the dough until smooth and elastic.  Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk.  Put on floured board, knead in fruit and nut mixture.  Dough was not very elastic at this point and wanted to shred more than knead, but all the fruit went in.  Shape into desired form, or whatever form dough is willing to go into on greased baking sheet.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Filed under: Holiday, family, Recipes | No Comments »

Banana Bread – “Real Good”
From Butter Sugar Flour Eggs

2 sticks butter – melted
½ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup dark (buckwheat) honey
2 eggs
3 ripe bananas – mashed
2 cups WW flour
1 ½ t baking soda
1 ½ t baking powder
½ t salt
½ c yogurt (silk soy vanilla in this case)
1 – 1 ½ c walnuts and/or pecans.

Preheat oven to 325 F.  Line  a loaf pan with parchment paper.
Mix butter, sugar, honey, eggs and mashed bananas until smooth
Mix flour bs, bp and salt.
Alternately mix flour and yogurt to banana mixture
Stir in nuts.

Bake at 325 F approx 90 minutes, or until knife comes out clean.  Check at 70 minutes.

Cool until warm and turn out.

Makes one loaf.

Filed under: Recipes | No Comments »

Here we are in 2009.  John has banana bread baking, and I have stollen rising.  We’ve continued with our cleaning, done a little handwork, listened to music on the stereo, and started soaking black eyed peas for part of supper.  Everyone even rode the exercise bicycle, although Logan’s version only involves one peddle at a time.

It’s been so warm again that we didn’t even build a fire today, with the oven going it’s around 70 in the house.  I was going to roast chestnuts in the woodstove, but I think they’ll have to go in the oven with the bread.  Not quite the same as “open fire”, but I like chestnuts at any rate.

I spent part of my morning before anyone was up looking up wombat information for Logan.  I learned that they can weigh 35 to 45 pounds, and grow to be around a yard in length, maybe a little longer.  They are very muscular, due to the digging they do.  They are highly intelligent and ornery — which has led to them being thought to be dumb. Evidently they may choose to go through an object rather than around it because they don’t want to go around it, rather than because they are too dumb to go around it.   I read about wombat rescue and rehab groups in Australia that care for orphaned or injured wombats, and printed information for reading to Logan later, John and I have helped her start a note book for her wombat information.  And yesterday we found that the author of her favorite book, which started the fascination with wombats, Diary of a Wombat has lived with wombats in her yard for 30 years, and has written other books with wombats in them.  She is Jackie French and the wombat, who is not named in the book (which is from the wombat’s perspective) is called “Mothball” in real life, and is now twelve years old.  Logan is considering drawing a picture of a wombat to send to the author.  I’ve ordered some of her other books, and have found one that’s due out in February which I can preorder.  Considering my child has been trying to plan a trip to Australia since her fascination with wombats started, finding out that the children’s book was based around experiences with a real live wombat is a big bit of excitement!

As for the rest of our day, John is out feeding while it’s still light.  If we’re lucky we’ll go to bed earlier than we’ve managed the last few nights, and set a trend for getting a good night’s sleep too.  After seeing someone else’s, I got a set of Stick N Click lights at Radio Shack, and Logan is using one as a night light until she’s asleep.  The light doesn’t wake John up, and I just turn it off when I wake up later in the night.  They look like a large tea light candle, which I like.  I wasn’t able to unscrew them to put the batteries in, but John could, and when one came apart, Logan had no trouble rescrewing it, so it may just be my hands that are the problem.  Radio Shack  had a video playing while we were there, and Logan said she was frightened by it but couldn’t stop watching it either, for the five minutes she was in the store.  She described it as the stort that Ryan and Dev liked to watch, with robots in it.  Then she wasn’t able to go to sleep that night and was terrified about the robots and about having nightmares about them.  I didn’t even notice there was a television playing in the store, and have so far avoided her suggestion that I call the store to complain.  My first try at explaining that she didn’t have to watch it fell on deaf ears.  If I ever forget that I have a sensitive child, she finds a way to remind me!

Logan says “Happy new year, I hope you have a good new year.”  Now she’s back to tucking dolls in to bed.   Best wishes to all of you from the three of us.

PS — the banana bread came out really great, John typed out the recipe and how he changed it from the cook book.  I’ll post it tomorrow, or soon.    The Stollen worked and came out well, and I haven’t written down how I changed the recipe yet.  Split pea curry with black eyed peas along side was good and we mixed them together for left overs.  And we did roast chestnuts.  I’m stuffed, and we’re all headed for bed.  Not early unfortunately.   It’s been a good day, and that was the point.

Filed under: life, Holiday, family | No Comments »

So following the saying that what you do on New Year’s Day is what you’d do the rest of that year, there are some things we are going to carefully not do tomorrow.  Such as heavy cleaning.  We are doing some of that today.  Tomorrow we will do some light housekeeping, and perhaps some more baking.  We’ll do family time things.  We’ll try to spend some time outside I think.  But having had some rough times this year, I want to do my best to start next year out on the right foot.  I’ve also planned to have black eyed peas for good luck — which will make Wilma happy, she always asks.  And split pea curry, because I like it.  Good food seems like a good thing for New Year’s Day.  I found an on line reference that says eating black eyed peas is considered good luck in many parts of the US as well as eating other legumes, along with eating cabbage, and also that rice is a good luck food.  I think we’re covered pretty well on good luck foods.
Logan has worked out that the year changes at midnight.  She hasn’t asked to stay up, thank goodness.  We’ve made her a new chore chart for next year, or actually for January, and she’s going to try to fill in chores by the date rather than just by the blank space.  There’s no requirement to actually do the chores, but she can earn a little bit of money if she does do them.  Some are ones she likes, like helping to cook, and some she doesn’t like actually keeping count and making sure she’s had at least five servings of fruits and or vegetables in a day.

We’ve played with Abraham four days in a row, and I told Logan it was like having an instant brother.  His mom has been house hunting, and it’s been easier to combine the kids for part of that so she has some childfree time, and extra adults to supervise while she talks to home owners, as well as giving Logan and Abraham a lot of fun play date time.  Part of my grocery shopping yesterday was with two helpers, which actually worked fairly well.  Abraham is a quiet fellow until he has a topic he focuses on.  (Logan has now worked out that a play date on New Year’s Day might mean play dates frequently for the rest of the year, and wants me to make her one!)  It’s been very interesting getting to see houses for sale too.  The ease of living in the city seems very tempting compared to the mud and broken pipes here right now.  Anyone want to buy a flock of sheep, some goats and a geodesic dome?  Of course there’s the little matter of John’s job in Myrtle Creek too, that’s harder to adjust.  House hunting is more fun when it’s not for oneself I suspect too.

Now the day is almost over.  We’ve cleaned the kitchen, and cleaned the kitchen, and cleaned the kitchen… no that’s sounding like part of an A A Milne poem.   The kitchen still has a bit to go, but it’s cleaner than before.  John is working on fixing the TV / Stereo problem that’s left us with no video or music for nine months.  It wasn’t a big deal since we didn’t actually watch videos more than about once a month, but being able to listen to the radio again would be nice.  And I think there’s a way to plug my ipod in to the stereo, which would mean I could listen to my choice of music in the house without forever changing CD’s.

Here’s wishing you folks a pleasant new year.  I’ll plan to post something here tomorrow too, to start the year out right for blog posting.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Filed under: life, Holiday, family | No Comments »