Cinnamon rolls

Ok, this is an easy one.  I'm going to need to repost my simple bread recipe, but I don't have the pictures at the moment, so use you imagination.  I will make a whole post about the simple bread in a day or two.

So, make the simple bread recipe, and let rise for an hour.

3 cups warm water
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon yeast
1 teaspoon salt
6 cups of flour

Mix everything but the flour together in a large bowl.  Let sit for 10 minutes.  Then add in the flour, a cup at a time, stirring after each addition with a wooden spoon, until its too hard to stir.  Then flop it all out on a floured tabletop and knead until smooth and elastic, adding flour as needed, about 5 minutes.  Put in well greased large bowl, cover with a tea towel and let raise until doubled, about an hour.

Ok, once you have your dough, choose how big you want your cinnamon rolls.  I was taking mine to class, so I made mine small, 2-4 bites each.  So, I took my dough, and seperated it into fourths.  I took each fourth and rolled it out.

I mixed in a separate bowl 2 cups of brown sugar, 1 cup white sugar, and 4 tablespoons of cinnamon.

On each rolled out fourth, I took half a stick of soft butter, smeared it all over the fourth.  Then I spread the cinnamon sugar mixture over it.  Then I rolled it into a tight roll, and sliced the roll into even pieces.

I put this then into a greased pan.  I didn't want to do too many more dishes, so I used a disposable pan.

Then I let them rise another hour.  After that, I put them in the oven at 350 for about 8 minutes, then I mixed 1 part brown sugar to one part heavy whipping cream, and for this batch it was 4 cups of each, and poured half over each pan, since I had two pans.  You would just want to pour an even amount over each batch of rolls.  Then I put it back in the oven until the top was golden brown, about 10 more minutes.  Then let it set 30 minutes before flopping it over, like an upside down cake.  Gooey carmely cinnamon rolls.

No cooking

Ok, I wanted to not have a lot of days where I didn't post, but wow, Aiden got sick, and I forgot about the blog completely.  A little bit later today, I will be posting my cinnamon rolls.  I made them for class on Wednesday.  It's finals week, so I'm having time constraints there too.

Biscuits and Gravy

This is a hard one, because:

• I don't measure with my gravy
• I phoned it in with the biscuits, and used canned ones
• I don't measure with my gravy
• I didn't take as many pictures, this was my bad day, the day my car broke down, and I was focused on getting dinner on the table, not pictures.  Oops.

Ok, so I'm going to try to do this anyhow.  Normally we make homemade biscuits, and oh how I wish we had this time, because the refrigerated kind were wrong.  Wrong flavor, wrong texture, just wrong.  I need my flaky, made with lard or butter, yummy, drop biscuits for this recipe.  Though to anyone who asks, no, you didn't see me using lard, nope, no way, not me.  (I only use lard in biscuits that are for a savory application.  If people are going to be eating them sweet at all, no way, it's butter all the way.)

So, I had a pound of sausage left from our trip to the butcher a few months ago.  We didn't go this month, and I am regretting it, so I have big plans for the butcher in September.

Ok, so 1 pound of sausage, and I add to that a half a stick of butter.  I find that the sausage I get from the butcher is a little too lean for making the roux later on.  So, I fry up my sausage with a little butter, breaking it up as I go, so that it is in little pieces.

Once the sausage is cooked, I add the flour.  It's supposed to be an equal amount of flour to grease, so I add about 6-8 tablespoons of flour.  I played with the recipe this time, and added half regular flour and half chicken flour.  Chicken flour is something you can buy in bulk if you have a store with a huge bulk section, like we do at Winco, just know that it is a little salty, or you can buy chicken flour by Bisquick.  I did the latter, put it in one of my storage containers, and then added regular flour to it, diluting the salt content.

Ok, so at this point we have sausage, butter, and flour in a pan.  I make sure the flour has soaked up all the grease, and that the sausage is well coated.  If you have used the chicken flour, you will see it is a little yellow in color.  I cook this on high heat for about 3-5 minutes, until it kinds of melts and is less flour like, and more paste like, this way the flour taste is gone.  I suggest most people do this on med to med-high because it can burn really easy.  My high isn't very hot.

Once you get to this point, you need to add milk.  I add whole milk, but that is mostly because whole milk is what we keep in our house.  I will pour in about 2 cups of milk at this point.  Then I cook it, constantly stirring, letting the flour get off the sausage and into the milk, and all the stuff that stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Now, once it comes to a boil, you are at the peak of its thickening.  If it seems really thick, add a little more milk, about 1/4 cup at a time.  Wait for the boil, and see where you are.  If you like a thick gravy, stop adding milk when it's as thick as you like.  If you like thin gravy, keep adding milk until it is as thin as you want.  Never add too much, because while you can always add, you can never take away.

Once you get to this place, where your gravy is as thick or thin as you like, I'm a medium girl, I want it thick enough to be smooth and creamy and thick, but thin enough that it drips down the sides of my biscuits.

Ok, back to subject at hand.  Here is where you add salt.  I start with a teaspoon and move on from there.  Taste constantly.  Add salt slowly, remembering that the chicken flour, if you used it, has salt in it.  One it is salty enough, I move to the pepper.  I like to use a course grind on my pepper grinder, and put about 2 teaspoons of pepper in.  Then I put about 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne in.  After that, because I love garlic, I add a teaspoon or so of garlic powder.  At this point, gravy is totally your own, it's the way you like it.  Sometimes I will add sage, because I love sage and sausage.  Other times I want it to have extra zing, so I use more cayenne.  I always add dried parsley, because I like the way it looks.  Sometimes I will add onions at the browning of the sausage.  Gravy is unique.  Once you have the basic recipe, its all yours to play with.

Well, that's it.  That's my gravy.  Like I said, I phoned it in with the biscuits, but the gravy, that's mine, all mine, 100% authentic.

Enjoy.

Slow cooked Beef

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, between school and my serpentine belt going out on the freeway while I was driving to school, I didn't feel like doing anything.  I made biscuits and gravy, and I think I can do that recipe tomorrow.

Here are the pictures of the slow cooked beef.  I got sliced beef for carne asada this time, and next time, I'm just going for a full chuck roast.  The reason, the meat seemed a little too dry, because there wasn't enough fat in it.  A good chuck roast has plenty of fat, and therefore more tender, moist beef.

I put the beef into my crockpot, then tossed in some of my dried sliced garlic, a package of dried onion soup mix, 2 coffee cups of water, some alderwood smoke salt, and some pepper.  You can use regular salt if you like, I just like the hint of smokiness it gives.

I then cooked it for 10 hours in the crockpot, and when it was almost done, I mixed 4 tablespoons of cornstarch into a coffee cup of cold water, and poured it in, so that the gravy would thicken. 

I served it with mashed potatoes, but I forgot to take pictures of the potatoes, nor did I pay attention to the ingredients as they went in, I just tossed and pinched, and tasted.

I also served it with my bacon onion green beans.  I took half a cup of the precooked bacon I keep in my freezer, 3 tablespoons of dehydrated onion, and 4 cans of green beans, all drained except for one. Heat in a frying pan until hot.  YUM!

Aiden's Dump Cake

I didn't make cheesecake tonight, I actually let Aiden make his dump cake.  I also forgot to take pictures of my potatoes, but I did remember my slow cooked beef.  Here are some old pictures of Aiden making Dump Cake with the recipe.

• 1 can crushed pineapple
• 1 can cherry pie filling
• 1 box yellow cake mix
• 2 sticks butter
  
  Preheat oven to 350. Add pineapple and cherry’s to casserole pan. Sprinkle evenly with cake mix. Top with cubed butter. Bake until golden brown on top.
  
  
  

Chicken pot pie

I got so busy making this, I forgot pictures.  I will have 3 pictures up when the meal is done, but it's not the step by step I normally do, it's more all in the casserole, then with the biscuits on top, then cooked.

Basic white sauce
Frozen mixed veggies
6 boiled chicken tenders
1 package of scalloped potatoes
2 packages of  refrigerated southern style biscuits

View full recipeMix basic white sauce (1 tsp of chicken stock concentrated base added while making it, plus the package from the potatoes, making it kind of cheesy), chicken, veggies, and potatoes. Pour into a 9x13 casserole.  Top with biscuits.  Cook until biscuits are cooked and potatoes are soft, about 30 minutes.  About halfway through, you will notice the biscuits are browned.  This is the only "hard" part of the recipe.  You need to flip all the biscuits over, so they get brown on the other side.  Makes it super yummy.  We had no leftovers last night.


White sauce

4 tbs butter
4 tbs flour
1½ cups milk

View full recipeCombine 4 tablespoons butter and 4 tablespoons flour in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in 1½-cup milk and cook over medium heat until thick and smooth.

Tuna Salad Sandwiches

I made tuna salad sandwiches for lunch today, so here's the recipe.

I start by grating a small onion into a bowl.  I add 1 can tuna, half a cup of shredded cheese and mayonnaise to taste.  I grate the onion because I don't like big harsh bites of onion to come at me when I eat this,  the mayonnaise, this you have to experiment with, either you like mayo or not, and you want a wet sandwich or a dry one.  I like mine wet, with lots of mayo.  I use about 3/4 a cup.  Then you toss in three hard boiled eggs, chopped.  Mix it all together, and YUM!

Once you are done, just spread it between two pieces of bread, I use white bread, because this is one of those yummy comfort foods to me, and wheat bread would ruin it.

I'll be posting the cheesecake recipe a poster asked for on Sunday, when I make it and my slow cooked beef sandwiches.  That will make for a full Sunday dinner.  Slow cooked beef sandwiches, mashed potatoes, green beans with onion and bacon, and cheesecake.  I'll post the recipes over a matter of days, not just all on Sunday however.

Comments, please?

Ok, I want to know if there is anything YOU want me to cook.  A kind of cake, bread, a meal, what?  I will then cook it, for the fun of it, even if I've never made it before.  This will make it a bit more fun than me just posting what I am making at the time, and make it a little more interactive.  So, leave me a note in the comments, like was left for me yesterday (a suggestion for cakes, whatnot) and I will cook them.

Bacon Cheeseburger Pie

Tonight for dinner I went with simple and easy.  I made a bacon cheeseburger pie.

First, you fry up a pound of hamburger, 1 large onion chopped up, and some garlic.

I cheated and used garlic paste.

At this point, add in your bacon.  I cheated here as well and used precooked bacon pieces.  If you don't want to do this you can either omit the bacon, or fry it up separately.

Once the hamburger is browned and the onions translucent, drain all the grease from the pan.  Now, if you are using a cast iron skillet, you can just continue the recipe in your pan.  If not, transfer the meat mixture to a pie pan.

Top the mixture with 1 cup of cheese.

In a separate bowl, mix 2 eggs, 1 cup milk, and 1/2 cup of bisquick.  Pour over top of cheese and meat.

Bake in the oven at 400 for 25-35 minutes, or until a knife through comes out clean.

I like to serve this with fresh sliced tomatoes and a cold glass of milk.