Food for the Sick & Sourdough Recipe

I'm cooking for a friend tonight who is recovering from major illness.  He is a Superman kind of guy and it's so hard to see him off his feet.  Two months ago, he suffered a major heart attack.  Apparently, he had been having heart attacks for days and chalked it up to indigestion.  He was AT CHURCH, leading the little kids group in singing Happy Birthday to our pastor while he was having a heart attack.  He had open heart surgery the next morning and barely made it through.

Add to that the fact that he is diabetic.  Like, majorly.

Last week, he was admitted back into the hospital with symptoms mocking another heart attack.  Turns out, it's now his gall bladder.  They told him to adapt a bland diet with no salt, sugar, or fat.  "I've already been doing that!!!" he exclaimed.  Poor guy.

SO, what do you cook for someone who cannot have salt, sugar, or fat.  Talk about a head-scratcher!  I'm a good cook, but I must admit it's the salt, sugar, and fat that makes me a good cook!  I decided on a very bland Chicken Paprikash.  Right now, I'm boiling the chicken with a few onions and paprika.  I will add no salt at all. The potatoes and carrots will be fine for him to eat.  I'm not sure if he can have the dumplings I put in, but I guess he can pick those out.  I'm doubting the quality of this dish and am quite nervous about taking it over!

I'm also making a nice, green salad (no croutons, bacon, or cheese- the good stuff) and a loaf of homemade sourdough bread.  I put a pinch of salt in the bread and cut the butter down.  I think he'll be OK to eat that.  Sadly, I'm not taking a dessert.  I'm the queen of desserts and I feel like one of my arms is missing to deliver a meal without dessert.

My friend has lost 50 lbs. recently...I guess this kind of diet would do that to anyone!!!

A commenter asked for my sourdough recipe.  I've posted about how to begin a sourdough starter and I've shared one recipe.  Here's the recipe I'm using presently:

The night before you plan to bake your bread, feed your starter.  There's supposed to be a lot of math involved, but I add 1 1/2 C bread flour or wheat flour and 1 C warm, filtered water.  My starter is much thicker than before...almost like a lukewarm gravy rather than pancake batter.  Leave the starter on the countertop overnight.  It should double in size and be very bubbly.  Take out what you need and put the rest back in the fridge.  If you leave it out too long (more than 12 hours), you will need to feed it again.  This sourdough needs to be fed every few days.

If that plan doesn't work out for you, feed your starter about noon.  Mix up your dough around 9:00 PM and let it sit on the counter overnight for its first rising.

To mix up your dough, combine:
9 oz. starter for the winter OR 4-5 oz. starter for the summer
1 C filtered water, room temperature
Add 1 1/2 T soft butter and
1 t salt
Finally, add 3 C flour in 1/2 to 1 C increments.

You may need to add more water at this stage.  You don't want to the dough to be dry; soft and slightly sticky is good.  Knead well for 5-6 by machine or 15 minutes by hand.  To check if it's needed well enough, pinch off a small piece, about the size of a quarter.  Stretch it out with your fingers.  If it tears easily, it's not ready. If it stretches almost to the point of being transparent, it's good!

Place in a greased bowl and cover for 3-4 hours or until doubled in size.  After it has doubled, knead it by hand for a minute.  Shape into a loaf and place in a greased loaf pan.  Cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel to rise again.  After 3-6 hours, it should rise slightly above the edge of the pan.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

It amazes me that this all works out without any yeast.  If you read my sourdough starter post, you'll see that I was frustrated because my yeast-less dough did not rise.  I'm sure that was my error because the loaves I'm making now rise great!  I think I was given a really good starter this time.  I'm trying to keep it that way!

I don't have a bread machine and I lost the dough hooks to my mixer when we remodeled the kitchen.  Last night, I kneaded two loaves by hand and hope to have killer forearms soon!  :)  This bread is great with butter or for toast.  I have to slice is very thin for sandwiches or it's a bit overwhelming for me.  Just talking about it makes me want a slice.  I just might have to go do that right now!

Sourdough Starter

Forever ago, I posted about my experiences with homemade sourdough bread.  I said I would provide you with the directions to make your own starter whenever I got it from the person who supplied me with my starter.  Well, she never gave me the directions.

I really enjoyed making my own bread and planned to experiment with sourdough pancakes and pretzels.  But then summer came.  Who in the world wants to heat up their oven and their entire house when it's 90 degrees outside?  I let the starter go.

Now that it's cold and rainy out once again, I'm craving the fresh taste of homemade bread.  So I decided to find directions for making your own starter online.  Viola!  I just love having the resource of the internet at my fingertips!  (You'll notice that the directions in this post vary slightly from the directions in my other post.  It made me realize, this is not science.  It doesn't really matter how you do it, just as long as you do it.  Don't stress over it; it's not as complicated as you think.)

So, sorry I'm so late, but here's how you begin your own sourdough starter:

Combine 1C warm water and 1C flour (any type).  A wide-mouthed, glass jar works best.  It's good if you can easily see what's going on in the container.  A disposable container, Tupperware, or old mayonnaise jar works too.  Do not use metal containers or utensils.

You need to feed the starter every 24 hours. 

• First, throw half of it away.  I don't know why, but every site about sourdough starters says this.  So it must be important.  My friend removed half but didn't throw it away.  She kept it in a second container and fed it separately.  That's where I got my original starter from.  So I guess that's OK too. 
• Add 1/2 C flour and 1/2 C warm water and mix. 

Your starter should sit at a temperature between 70 and 80 degrees.  You don't want to use an air-tight lid.  A cloth draped over the container will suffice.  I just left my lid lying on top of the jar, tilted to the side.  The starter will bubble and smell pleasantly sour (possibly like beer, they say).  It may puff up.  When it develops a bubbly froth, it's done. 

Move the starter to the refrigerator with a lid on it.  If the lid is air-tight, poke a hole in it.  At this point, the starter only needs to be fed once a week.  (You can read more about that in my other post.)  You do not have to be meticulous about feeding it.  Missing a day or two won't kill it.  Some people said they only fed theirs the day before they planned on using it.

I wouldn't recommend using a Mason jar.  The opening was too small and made adding the flour difficult.  I made a mess all over the sides of the jar.  Plus, the container was a bit too small.

Day 2:  I split the starter in half and added 1/2 C warm water and 1/2 C flour to each.  (If I'm going through all this work, I will be starting out with two loaves of bread.)  Here is what it looked like before I did anything to it.

One thing you may notice in your starter (as seen in this picture) is a yellowish liquid forming at the top of your jar.  This is called hooch.  It's fermentation and it's harmless.  If it disgusts you, you can pour it off.  You can also just mix it back in, which is what I do.  That's kind of what sourdough bread is about.  If the liquid is really off-colored or moldy looking, you need to toss out the starter and begin again.

The starter changed very slowly over the next several days.  I keep my house pretty cool so I think it may have taken longer.  One article I read said that they would never use starter that was less than a week old anyway.

After about 8 days, I determined that my starters were done enough.  They weren't really changing any more.  So I put one starter in the fridge with a dish cloth rubber banded around the top.  I immediately began mixing the other starter into a sponge.  I didn't use the recipe I posted the first time.  I tried the recipe from the same site where I got my starter ingredients.  It did not work.  The sponge did not rise at all so I threw it out.  The second recipe did not have yeast in it.  The site said that true sourdough bread does not have yeast...the fermentation should be enough to cause it to rise.  Well, I don't care if my bread is true sourdough or fake sourdough.  I just want it to rise and taste good. 

Despondent, I fed the starter and put it back in the fridge.  I contemplated starting over and dumping everything out.  But I had worked so hard!  I think I used an entire bag of flour making these two starters!  I decided to hold off a couple days and think about it.  Almost a week later, I decided to try baking bread again, this time using the first recipe I tried.  Success!  My house smelled fantastic and the bread turned out great!  So, the moral of my story is this:  use a recipe that has yeast in it!  Who cares if you're not an authentic sourdough baker- as long as it tastes good!

Also, one article I read said that the riper the starter, the paler in color your loaf will be.  That was absolutely true.  As you can see in the photo in my last post, my loaf was very brown in color.  This time, my starter ripened for a week and my loaf came out very pale.  It had a stronger sourdough smell and definitely a stronger sourdough taste.  I liked it even better than the bread I made in early Spring!

So, I'm passing off my trials and error to you, loyal blog readers!  I hope you give it a try.  The starter is time consuming but it's not really that much work.  Making your own bread is fun, inexpensive, and tasty!  Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Salsa, Baby!

Oh yes, I did make salsa on Friday!  The verdict:  scrumdidaliumptious!

I started with 16 lbs. of tomatoes (yeah, that's a lot) and I grew every one of them in my garden.  They were a mixture of Best Boy and Brandywine.  The Best Boy tomatoes are my favorite for sandwiches and just eating by themselves but they had A LOT of water in them.  The Brandywine seemed to be better salsa making tomatoes.

I used this website, which had very detailed, step-by-step instructions.  I read them through several times and decided, I can do this!

So I chopped.  I chopped for a very long time- tomatoes, onions (I bawled my eyes out), peppers, and garlic.  I'm a pretty big wimp when it comes to spiciness so I worried that this recipe would be too hot for me.  I cut the amount of onions in half and reduced the peppers from 6 to 2. 

Quick tangent about the peppers:  my Grandma is the one who planted all the peppers in my garden.  I don't eat them.  She knew she had habañero plants and she called the others"chipotle peppers."  She got them free from a garden center and said they were very mild.  So one day, I got brave and decided to try a mild chipotle pepper.  If I am growing them, I should at least taste them.  Right?  Yowzers- it was NOT mild!  I immediately spit my bite into the sink and drank a glass of milk.  Still on fire.  I moved on to a piece of bread.  Still burning.  I drank a glassful of cold water.  No relief.  For a good half hour, my mouth and lips burned.  When I told Grandma, she laughed and said she must have been wrong.  So that is the main reason I only used two peppers.

Still following the directions, I simmered all the ingredients, tasting from time to time.  The salsa wasn't spicy at all so I added another pepper.  Still not too hot, I added 3 shakes of the chili powder bottle.  That gave it a nice flavor and a bit of heat.  I still wanted to keep it mild so I stopped there.  When my jars finished sanitising in the dishwasher, I pulled them out and got ready to start canning.  It was then that I realized, I don't know what the heck I'm doing!  I know absolutely nothing about canning.  So I decided I'd better look it up.  The same site had detailed directions about the canning process.  That whole deal was just as intense as actually preparing the salsa!  This is when I began wondering if I was in over my head.

I followed the directions closely and filled my jars.  I boiled them for the proper amount of time and set them on a cooling rack to seal.  I made 7 1/2 pints.  The next morning, I tested each jar and they all seemed to seal properly.  I opened one right away and the salsa still tasted delicious.  So now I get to enjoy tasty, fresh salsa all year long!

I still have 2 quarts of chopped tomatoes leftover.  (The 15 lb. conversion didn't exactly measure out after the tomatoes were chopped.)  So I bought a Ball seasoning packet and I'm going to try it that way too.  Who knows, taking the easy road might even be easier!

This has been a year of trying new things so I'm quite proud of myself!  If you want to taste my homemade salsa, swing on by and sit a spell! 

I will leave you with one tip.  After you've been dicing hot peppers, DO NOT touch your eye later on in the day...even if you've washed them more than once.  Just take my word for it.

Cookie Tradition & Softened Butter

I read a post that suggested a home should not be without homemade cookies in the month of December. I couldn't agree more. So I am attempting to keep freshly baked cookies on the counter through Christmas. It may be a challenge, however, because I know how quickly these cookies are likely to disappear.

Last night's cookies were good, old-fashioned chocolate chunk. My recipe is just a tweak of the Tollhouse Cookie recipe, but I'll share it anyway.

Many recipes called for softened butter. There is a great difference between softened and melted butter. The consistency of the butter can dramatically alter your finished product. If you are prepared in advance, you can leave the sticks of butter on the countertop for a couple hours. But that never happens in my house. Luckily, I learned how to soften it in the microwave without melting it. You must reduce the power on your microwave. I had never done that before so wasn't even sure how to do it. But once I figured it out, I learned that 2 sticks of butter take 40 seconds at 20% power in my microwave. Yours may vary. Too long and it's liquid. It's better to try 10 seconds at a time and keep checking it.

Now that I've got this power application down, I've started to microwave my popcorn at 90% power. It seems to help more kernals to pop without burning. So there's your cooking tip for the day! Now, on to the recipe:

Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 1/4 C flour
1 t salt
1 t baking powder
dash cinnamon
2 sticks butter, softened
3/4 C sugar
3/4 C brown sugar
1 1/2 t vanilla
2 eggs
2 C semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks

In a small bowl, combine flour, salt, soda, and cinnamon. In a large bowl, mix butter, sugars, and vanilla by hand. Mix in eggs. Gradually add flour mixture without over mixing. Add in chocolate.

Drop by rounded tablespoons onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes or until edges are brown. Cool on the tray for a couple minutes then remove to a cooling rack to cool completely.