Category Archives: Cooking at Home
“The laziest man I ever met put popcorn in his pancakes so they would turn over by themselves.”
W.C. Fields
Welcome back to my blog after my week off! Glad you returned after I took some time off to prepare for my driving test (eek!) & get accustomed to my new job- but don’t worry, I’m back! 
While I was away, though, I did a little more cooking! My goal is to have Sundays’ blog entries to be a recipe I can share but I’ve been a little behind. I love cooking, but I found myself in this cooking slump where my best friend became english muffin pizzas because I was either too lazy or too poor to buy anything. This week, all has changed for the better!
Pre-cursor to this recipe: I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this before about myself but I am indeed lactose-intolerant so cottage cheese ends up in that “not allowed to eat” category even though I enjoy it. Luckily this past grocery trip, my Mother found dairy-free Lactaid cottage cheese and bought it. I haven’t been able to eat it in so long, I was almost dumbfounded as to how to add it back into my diet. I found this recipe on howcast.com and made a protein-filled breakfast!
- 3 eggs
- 6 tbsp. all-purpose flour
- Salt & Pepper
- 1/3 cup chopped onion
- 1.5 cups of cottage cheese (I used Lactaid brand but any cottage cheese Works)
- 2 ¼ tablespoons of butter
First cook the 1/3 cup of onion in 2 tbsp of butter on a skillet with about 1/8 tsp of salt & pepper (I just guessed at it) over low heat until the onion is golden brown. Pour everything from the pan to a bowl and add the cottage cheese, eggs, flour & 1/4 cup of butter. Then whisk everything to combine.
They recommend adding salt & pepper to taste here but I find that it’s better to add it later on to the individual pancakes. I didn’t add any at this point and I found that they tasted fantastic!
Brush a nonstick skillet with butter and heat over medium heat. Cook the pancakes by scooping the batter per pancake depending on the size you want them to be. Cook each side for one to two minutes, or until the sides are golden brown. These pancakes are slightly more mushy on the inside than regular pancakes because of the cottage cheese so don’t get nervous if you’re not used to the consistency. Enjoy!
*NOTE* Looking to add cottage cheese to you diet and pancakes not your thing? Try cottage cheese in your lasagna instead of ricotta cheese!! Let me know what you think!
“Easter is the demonstration of God that life is essentially spiritual and timeless.”
Charles M.Crowe
Easter was this past Sunday and my Mother and I hosted dinner. Easter is one of my favorite holidays because I love when my family gets together and has a meal, it doesn’t happen as often as it should. 
I wanted to take part to help with cooking something for the meal and I decided to make Braided Easter Bread from a recipe I got on the Allrecipes.com app on my iPad but can also be found on their website HERE. Those of you who follow my blog know that I recently made a Whole Wheat French Baguette so I figured this was right up my alley.
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided 1/4 cup white sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast 2/3 cup milk 2 tablespoons butter 2 eggs 5 whole eggs, dyed if desired 2 tablespoons butter, melted
To start, add 1 cup of flour, sugar, salt & yeast and stir. Then, heat milk and butter in a small saucepan but don’t melt the butter, just soften it. I used whole milk (even though I’m allergic) because I felt that it would make the taste better. If you decide to use something else, let me know how it tastes!
Next, stir as you mix the milk/butter mixture to the flour mixture. After, mix 2 eggs and another 1/2 cup of flour and beat well. When that has combined, then add the remaining flour 1/2 a cup at a time until the dough has pulled together. If it gets to be too much flour to handle, I find that it helps to wet your hands and mix it with your hands. Then knead it on a lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic for about 8 mins.
Lightly oil a large bowl and turn the dough in the bowl to lightly oil the surface of the dough. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise for an hour, until it has doubled in size.
After an hour, deflate the dough on a lightly floured surface and divide the dough into two equal pieces then cover and let them rest for 10 mins.
This is a good time to color the eggs if you haven’t yet since it doesn’t HAVE to rest exactly 10mins. There is time for you to do it later, though.
Roll each piece of dough into a long roll about 36ins long and 1.5 ins thick. I just rolled the dough long enough where I thought I could braid it easily and make a big enough circle. Braid the 2 pieces together and seal the ends together to make a circle shape. Place as many RAW colored eggs (they’ll bake in the oven) in spaces in the braids as you can fit; the recipe says 5, I used 4. I got to this point and hadn’t colored the eggs so there’s still time if you haven’t yet!
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Place your bread on a buttered baking sheet and cover with a damp towel, put it in a warm place and let it rise until it has doubled again, about 45mins. If you have yet to color the eggs & put them on, that’s fine. Since I had 45 mins to spare, this is when I colored my eggs. The color will run but to keep most of the color on the egg, be sure to wash the egg in cold water/rub off excess color with a paper towel after you have given the eggs sometime to dry. This is also a good time to decorate the bread how ever you want, I added sprinkles!
After 45mins, lightly brush the bread with melted butter to create that golden brown top and bake until golden, anywhere between 40-50 mins. Take it out, nice and warm and ENJOY!
“Love does not just sit there, like a stone; it had to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
I love trying to make new things that I’ve never tried before. I wrote for a previous blog entry about how I made pasta so this 
time I tried something a little different, I baked bread, a whole wheat French baguette.
4cups of unbleached, all-purpose flour (I used Whole Wheat flour)
1/2 tsp of salt
1tbsp of active dry yeast (usually one packet)
2cups of warm water
2tbsp oil
cornmeal (I couldn’t find any so I just used some of the flour)
1. Mix the flour and salt & in another bowl add the yeast & water
2. Add half of the flour mixture to the yeast & water
3. Mix with your hands until it’s doughy
4. Cover it and leave it in room temperature for it to more than double in size, about 3 hours
5. Mix in the rest of the flour mixture
6. Take the dough out and knead it on a floured surface for 10mins
7. Place dough in a large oiled bowl, move the dough around so it’s lightly covered in oil
8. Cover and let it sit for another hour, it will again nearly double in size
9. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F & knead the dough for another 5mins
10. Divide the dough into 3 parts & roll each part into a long baguette
11. Let them rise in a warm draft-free spot for a half hour
(This would be the point you would preheat the baking stone, I didn’t have one so when it was time to put the baguette in the oven, I put it on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper and sprinkled flour)
12. Make 4 length-wise slits no deeper than a 1/4 in & lightly brush the top with water
13. Fill a medium sized container half way with water and put it on the bottom shelf of the oven, the baguette on the middle shelf
14. After 15mins, take out the container of water & continue baking the bread until golden brown, about 15-20min (it’s hard to tell if you decide to use whole wheat flour so make you you look closely at the color)
15. Take the bread off the stone or pan & turn the bread over for 5 mins
Something to Share
After seeing the burger cupcakes on this is why you’re fat, I decided to try and make them myself. Excuse the green burgers, I was out of red food coloring at the time. Even though theirs is much more realistic looking, I thought this was a cute idea I wanted to try and found it so humorous that I felt I should share it with you. If you ever try to make these cupcakes or cupcakes resembling anything else, send me a picture and I’ll post it on my blog!
“I have a good collection of cookery books. This is not so much because I like cooking, but because I like eating. “
Louise Brown
I don’t know if it’s because I went to the Festa or just because I was in the mood to cook but I’m ready to expand my blog to cooking and I’ve begun with pasta.
1. I started with flour and eggs. I looked up online that you should make this crazy egg volcano but have learned that this is an awful idea, it spills.
2. Then I mixed them and made dough
3. I only recently bought myself a pasta maker so I had to roll and cut each noddle/ravioli by hand
Finished Ravioli
I MADE PASTA!!!
