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Yesterday was Sunday. Big shocker there. But we did do something a little bit new/unusual by our standards for food.

First, we did something that we had done before, made Veggie Soup. This is actually one of Chris’s specialties. The recipie is pretty basic, and I’ll recap it hear momentarily. Normally we enjoy the soup as a purely vegitable experiment. However, I was feeling the need to be carnivorious as well, so we added some meat as well.

Ingredients:
1 and a half pounds of steak, cut into cubes. You can use a cheap cut hear, as the more time the soup simmers the more tender the meat will get.
1/2 pkg Frozen Corn
1/2 pkg Frozen Peas
1/2 pkg Frozen Green Beans
1/2 pkg Frozen Lima Beans
1/2 pkg Frozen wavy cut Carrots (cause the wavy makes ‘em good!)
4 14.5oz cans chicken broth
1 28oz can Tomatoe Sauce
2 tbls Tomatoe Paste
2 stalks celery
1 small onion
2 tbls minced garlic
Salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, rosemary, parsely, dried, to taste

Dice onion to desired size…if you really like knowing you have an onion in your mouth then do it a little bigger, you’ve cooked before, so you know what you’d like…I would think….

In order for the right textures you are going to need to brown the meat as well as saute the onions, garlic and celery. If you are in a time crunch brown the meat in a different pan. Otherwise, brown the meat, remove, and drain off excess grease. Hold meat on the side. Then, add onions, garlic and a little olive oil to the pan and saute until the onions are translucent. Add celery. After the celery has had a couple of minutes to soften up, add the tomatoe sauce, chicken broth, and other vegitables and stir. At this point you can go ahead and add the meat back in. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Taste soup and season to taste. If the soup is a little too thin, then add tomatoe paste to desired thickness. Allow to simmer for an additional 10-15 minutes after adding seasonings.

Now eat. Pretty simple little recipie, but good on a cold day. A note about the veggie amounts, they are by no means exact. If you like corn more than anything else, then by all means add some more…after all, every meal is a culinary experiment, try different things out and see if you like it or not.

Now for the bread. Bread I suppose is allegidly an exact science. This is a bad thing for me, as I prefer to eyeball, as opposed to measure, most things. So it was with some trepidation that I went into the bread baking venture. Our attempt was going to be “Honey Wheat Bread” as found on the back of the yeast packets.

Honey Wheat Bread
3-3.5cups Whole Wheat Flour
1/3 cup Honey
1/4 cup oil
1tsp Salt
2 packets yeast
Water (can’t remember quantities)

First you’ve got to activate your yeast. To do this, you’ll need a cup and a half or so of warm water. The water will need to be between 105-115 degrees. Any hotter and you’ll kill the yeast, colder and they won’t come alive. Stir the yeast into the water until it forms a solution. We used a stand mixer to actually kneed the dough, so we added 1 cup of flour, the honey, oil and salt into the mixing bowl. We then added the yeast and water. Then we started the mixer at a low to medium speed. Every minute or so we needed to stop the mixer and scrape flour back down to the center. Then we began adding additional flour until the dough started to come together. Once it seemed the dough was coming together we let it mix for 10 minutes. Note, we were using the dough-hook attachment for the mixer.

After 10 minutes the dough was very elastic (a good sign I’m told). I greased a glass bowl with vegitable oil and moved the dough into the bowl. I also filled the bottom of a glass cassarole dish with water. This dish went on the bottom oven shelf. Then, the glass bowl went on the top shelf. Viola, instant proofer. If you have a gas oven, then the pilot light will provide just the right amount of warmth to increase the humidity in the oven, allowing for more effective rising of the dough. If you’ve got an electric, well, your shit-out-of-luck…ok, so not really, you probably have a ‘warm’ setting, that might be appropriate, but you’ll have to figure that out on your own. Cover the dough with saran-wrap, set it in the oven, and set a time for an hour. After an hour the dough should have about doubled in size. If it hasn’t, give it another 10 or 15 minutes in the oven.

When the dough is risen you’ll pull the bowl out and punch the dough. Yes, you read that right, it was the most fun part of baking the bread…I got to punch my fist into the dough. I essentially beat the dough down to not far from its original size. Then I took the dough from the bowl to the cutting board and seperated it into two similar size pieces. Then I took 2 greased bread pans and spread the dough to an even thickness in each pan. This was a departure from the recipie as it had us rolling the dough out and then rolling it back up, similar to a giant jelly roll. Thus, the 30-35 minutes in the oven would have been a bit of overkill. Instead we set the timer for 20 minutes, because it was 2 smaller pieces of bread we were baking. Came back and did the toothpick test, which thankfully did not collapse the bread (first time remember, wasn’t sure if it would), and it came out clean. Success! So we pulled the bread out, let it sit in the pan for another 5-10 minutes then turned the bread out onto a cooling rack.

We sliceed the bread, buttered some, and it was fantastic. Even better was when butter and honey was on the bread, it was like desert. Spectacular, I think I found a new hobby…baking bread. God I am a dork.

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