Friday, June 18, 2010

What I have learned this week from baking/ cooking

I have been trying to cook healthier and make more food from scratch. Not only is it cheaper but it is also healthier. Here are just a few things that I have learned this week while baking and cooking.

1. That the little man does not like blueberry muffins. He woke up on Wednesday morning and I asked him if he wanted blueberry muffins for breakfast. He was all excited. So he helped me make them. When it came time to add the blueberries he wanted to help so we added a few extra. When they came out of the oven and were cooled off a little I handed him one. He looked at me and said 'I dont like blueberries mom.' What! Then why did we make blueberry muffins. There is now way that I can eat a dozen and a half muffins all by myself. Oh well, there was nothing I could do about it. I tried to get him to eat around them but since we added extra (like he wanted) it was a little hard.

2. Just because I think I know the recipe, look anyway. I have a recipe for no knead bread dough that I use all the time (at least once a week). I use this dough for everything. I know the recipe by heart, or well I thought I did. Water is the first ingredient and for a single batch you use 3 cups but for a double batch you use well.. double. I forgot that part and started mixing it and realized that the dough that is normally really wet was really dry. I added the water and mixed some more causing my no knead beard dough to be a little kneaded. The finished product still turned out fine maybe next time I will look at the recipe.


3. Sugar makes dried beans hard. I had soaked some bean over night yesterday so that I could make chili for dinner. Plans changed and I decided to make baked beans instead. So I just took the beans that were in the pot, rinsed them, added a can a beef broth, a can of tomato sauce and some brown sugar. I let them cook on med-low heat for a while and I tasted them. Still crunchy, so I let them cook longer. After three hours of cooking they were still crunchy. After talking with my mom and dad they said that they have had sugar make food hard before. I had never heard such a thing.

4. Agave can not be substituted for sugar in peanut butter trail mix bars. I had never made these bars before but adding agave was the only change I made to the recipe and the bars did not turn out very bar like. Here I was trying to make them healthier by not putting sugar in them and it was a flop. It had a great taste but it was more like peanut butter granola than a bar. I think that I will try this recipe next week (with no changes) and see if it turns out any better.


And now I have some bananas calling my name. So I think that banana bread might be for breakfast tomorrow (the little man likes banana bread, I think). Hopefully it turns out great.

2 comments:

meo said...

Oh! I love you so-o-o-o much! I can remember my mom telling me the storey about when right after my mom and dad were married and she made the first batch of biscuits for my dad ...they were so hard they actually started laughing so much that they went out in the front yard… and to make a big joke… started throwing them at each other. The neighbors thought is was so funny that they all came out and started cheering them on…they never lived that down.

Michelle, Queen Behind the Lens! said...

Most likely your beans were old-- the older the beans, the dryer they are & the longer they take to soften up. If they are really old, they may never soften all the way (even if you bought them last week, you don't really know how long they were in storage before they got to you). The sugar had nothing to do with it. Salt will do that, but not sugar.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt the "no knead" bread to knead it. ;)

Glad to hear you're teaching yourself to cook form scratch!