Family Traditions

So there is one family tradition that I've had in my life since, well, forever.  It's getting to be that time of year again and this time I must share the recipe so the tradition can head to Australia.  I took the tradition to Germany many years ago, and although at first it wasn't well-received (I was supposed to be learning about German traditions!), but when I presented it as a gift from me to the family, it soon became a favorite and requested treat!

Poteca

(Grandma Dimzoff pronounced it Puh-va-teetza)

1/4 c. warm water

3/4 c. warm milk

1 tsp. salt

1/4 c. soft butter/shortening

1 pkg. yeast

1/4 c. sugar

1 egg

3-1/2 - 3-3/4 c. flour

In bowl, dissolve yeast in water.  Add milk, sugar, salt, egg, shortening, and half of flour to the yeast. Mix with spoon until smooth.  Add enough remaining flour to handle easily.  Knead for about 5 minutes.  Cover and let rise in a warm place until double, about 1-1/2 hours.  Punch down and let rise again, about 30 minutes.  Place dough on a large well-floured cloth and roll out almost paper thin into an oblong (30"x20").  Spread with walnut filling (below), bringing it to edges.  Starting at the wide side of the oblong, lift cloth and let dough roll up like a jelly roll.  Seal well by pinching edges into dough.  Place on greased baking sheet in a horseshoe shape.  Let rise until almost double (1 hour).  Heat oven to 325° and bake for 40-45 minutes or until brown.

Walnut Filling:

1/4 c. soft butter

1 egg 

1/2 tsp. vanilla

2 c. walnuts (finely ground, not chopped!)

1/2 c. brown sugar, packed

1/4 c. milk

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Mix butter, brown sugar and egg.  Stir in milk, vanilla and cinnamon.  Blend in nuts.  (Sometimes I double this, or at least 1-1/2 times it!)

And here are the pictures I took during the process.  It was a perfect day -- clear skies and cold temperatures - to bake bread!

That's 1.8° C!

Ah!  The sun streaming in!

Ready to be kneaded!

All done kneading, now it's time to raise.

Raising

The ground walnuts for the filling-- they should be this fine!

The filling

Almost ready!

The rolling-out surface prepped!

All rolled out.

Filling on the dough

Starting the roll (by lifting the sheet!)...

...and roll....

Ready for the last rise

Fresh out of the oven!

Bon appetit!  Guten Appetit!  Enjoy!

Happy Couple Recipes!

So, if you know Kent at all, he's not a big dessert fan, but he does like chocolate cake, or French Silk Pie, so in that idea I posted a long time ago the recipe for the Happy Hubby Cake.  But what's the wife supposed to do when she'd rather have something a bit fruity?  She looks for a recipe for one!  Thanks to Taste of Home, I came up with this as my dessert and I made him his chocolate cake-in-a-mug!  And it was really big enough for me to save half for tomorrow's lunch!!  Yay!!

Mini Apple Crisp

• 1 medium apple, peeled and sliced
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 tablespoons quick-cooking oats
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• Cream, optional

Directions

• Place apple slices in a small greased baking dish. In a small bowl,
• combine flour and brown sugar; cut in butter until mixture resembles
• coarse crumbs. Add oats and cinnamon. Sprinkle over apple slices.
• Bake, uncovered, at 350° for 35-40 minutes or until tender.

Happy Veteran's Day

There's nothing new, really, to say except a renewed Thank You to all of our Veteran's.  Here's a revisit to a day that Tiana made me very proud (You'll have to follow the link).

Tiana singing at a Veteran's Day assembly

 And two of my favorite veterans!

Well...

So, I kind of promised that I'd think about doing more blogging since I'm not currently Facebooking, but I'm finding that we lead kind of boring lives!!  We're in the process of refinancing and so we had to have an appraisal done today.  We made sure that the house was in tip-top shape since, although the loan isn't based on my housekeeping skills, it can't help but make a home more attractive if it's kept up!  Also, I made some bread because who doesn't like the smell of freshly baked bread?!  Wouldn't you know it?  Our appraisal had a cold!  Probably couldn't even smell the aroma!  Oh, well!  Win some, lose some!  Of course, if I'd known she was sick, maybe I wouldn't have gone to the effort after my morning!  We have a new labor management system at work and so far, it is a nightmare.  I'm in charge of distributing tips each week and this week, well, nightmare doesn't even begin to cover what it was!  What normally can take me as little as 45 minutes took me 2 whole hours, and would have taken even more if I hadn't just finally said, "Forget it!!  That's enough!"  and if my co-worker hadn't told me to just pay out the one girl out of next week's tips!  Good grief!  Who designed this program?!

So, then, what else?  I went and bought a scrubs top at school the other day.  Had a bit of a frustrating experience with all of that.  Maybe you remember me being so excited and telling everyone that I'd made the phone call that made me a nursing student?  That would have been approximately on October 7.  I didn't feel really good about that call -- like maybe the person who took the call didn't actually pay one lickin' bit of attention to what I said.  So, I decided to go into the school on the day of the deadline, buy the scrubs, get the photo ID and stop in and verify that my name was on the "accepted" list.  I went to the counter and the woman rudely told me I would need to tell her my name if she was to look.  She never wrote my name down, never looked it up on any lists, nothing.  I also gave her my immunization records and she told me that it probably wouldn't work.  Long story and I promise I will make my case for letting me into the program no matter what.  Anyway, that was October 30 at about 10 in the morning and deadline was noon.  Friday rolls around and I have a phone call from the nursing office.  I'm thinking, well, shoot, I have to defend my hepatitis B shot already!  Nope!  Nothing that easy!  The lady's calling because "[they] haven't heard from me yet and I'm the last one to respond to whether or not I'm accepting the position they offered me!!"  ARE. YOU. KIDDING. ME.?!?!  I called AND I walked in and they still didn't get my name on the "accepted the offer" list!!  I'll be going in person again, to make sure nothing else gets missed!  The lady seemed slightly sorry, but not really sorry enough for my taste!  But she did say that, even though it was now past deadline, they would accept my acceptance and I'll start in January.  We still have to see about the immunization that I won't have a titer for before clinicals, but...

So, I guess that's kind of non-boring details of our life right now.  But now I need to go to bed because 4:10AM comes VERY early!

Christmas Dinner Theme is PLANNED!!!!

Sometimes all you need is the Seaside (Oregon, that is!)

Just what we needed!  A weekend at the beach, a book to read, some sunshine and we're rejuvenated.  A few more days would have been perfect and we had to cut our time short due to obligations at home, but the getaway was awesome!!  Click on the picture for some of my favorites of the pictures I took!  And here's a clip of the surf in action.  Don't blink or you'll miss it! :-)

Happy 11th Birthday, Coda!

This is the (was) napping birthday boy!  If he knew what was in the oven right now, he'd probably be sitting inside creating a saliva-puddle in front of the oven door.  Would you like to join him for some cookies later?  There's baby food chicken, peas, sweet potatoes and oatmeal cereal, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, bacon bits, cheddar cheese, egg, oat flour and oats all basted with bacon grease.  Are you sure you won't join him for his birthday treat?! ;-)
   

Or, if you'd rather, we can just have some cinnamon applesauce!!  This is the second large batch of applesauce I've made from the two FULL grocery sacks of apples that I received from friends.  I've eaten a number of the apples, but I LOVE the applesauce that come from these apples!  No sugar, just the pure flavor of the apple!  And it makes such a beautiful mauve applesauce!

Well now isn't that something?

Ah...the glorious days of fall -- something to be enjoyed while on a leave of absence from work!  EXCEPT I'M NOT ON LEAVE.  Oh, wait!  Yes, I am.  But I'm not supposed to be and so why did I work today?!  Somehow, in preparing to get ready for my Coffee Break Sabbatical and doing everything right to have that start on the 13th of January, it got entered into the computer as pending, but also completely "finished" because the date the specialist entered was January 13, 2013!!!  But my leave isn't until 2014!!  Anyway, so that explains why I couldn't assign a till today at work, and also why I couldn't even access the partner portion of the Starbucks website.  So, hopefully my specialist should be able to fix that first thing in the morning and I'll be able to work until January 2014!!!  Phew!!

So, off to coffee for my hard-working, lawn-mowing, still-sniffling husband!  And I might just need something to calm my nerves after having to try and take care of a mess I didn't create!

Lessons of the Heart

Yesterday I had the extreme pleasure of introducing the heart to three adorable young ladies!  We listened to the heart with a stethoscope, found our pulse, dissected a sheep heart and talked about what makes for a healthy heart.  I didn't feel it quite right having these girls here right after school without a snack, but I also wanted the snack to be heart healthy so I looked for an oatmeal cut-out cookie recipe that I could cut into heart shapes.  I found this recipe and want to make sure to keep it on file!  I made just half of the recipe so I had just an egg white and I also used part whole wheat flour and did NOT pack the brown sugar!  The cookies were huge hits! (As was the whole heart experience!)

Iced Oatmeal Cut-Out Cookies

• 1 c. butter
• 1 c. brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1½ c. flour
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1½ c. old-fashioned oats (cut with a knife)

Pre-heat oven to 350°.  Prepare parchment covered baking sheets; set aside.  

Cream butter and brown sugar.  Add egg and mix well. Add flour, vanilla, cinnamon, baking powder and oats and mix well.  Dough is VERY sticky so make sure work surface is very well floured and roll out with well floured rolling pin.  Cut out with well floured cookie cutter.  Place on prepared cookie sheets and bake 7-9 minutes or until golden brown.

White Icing

• 1 c. powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. corn syrup
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 tsp. water

Mix all together and pipe onto cookie with a #4 tip.  Start with outline and then fill in until smooth.

Cinnamon Icing

• 1 c. powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. corn syrup
• ½ tsp. cinnamon
•  5 drops cinnamon extract
• 2 tsp. water

Mix together as for white icing, adding drops of water if needed to get a creamy consistency.  Ice cookies in same way.

A different take on the Sunday Pot Roast

We bought 2 pot roasts the other day because there was a Buy One, Get One Free sale happening.   Kent wasn't too sure he wanted just the same ol' roast recipes again, so he found this one.  It was really interesting and we decided it was a keeper, too!  I made Cheddar Jalapeño Biscuits to go with this and later Kent used some leftover gravy on a leftover biscuit to expand his biscuits and gravy repertoire as well!

Braised Chuck Roast with Roasted Pepper Sauce

1 (3-pound)  chuck roast (arm, shoulder or blade)
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
4 1/2 cups beef broth
1 1/2 cups diced sweet onion
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, minced
2 poblano peppers, roasted, skinned, seeded and diced (sometimes sold as Pasilla Peppers)
4 garlic cloves, roasted and minced
2 cups heavy cream (I used half-n-half)
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 cup grated aged Manchego or Romano cheese
Salt and pepper to taste
 Other cuts that you can use for this recipe:
» Chuck Roast
» Shoulder Clod Roast
Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Season beef with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in heavy bottom pan. Brown beef on all sides; pour off drippings. Add 4 cups broth to pan. Cover tightly with foil or lid and braise 4 hours until fork tender.
2. While the roast cooks, place remaining 2 tablespons olive oil in medium fry pan over medium-high heat. Add onions and saute until transparent; add peppers and garlic; saute 2 to 3 minutes. Deglaze pan with remaining broth and reduce by half. Add cream and reduce by half again. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Remove roast from pan and allow to rest 15 minutes.

4. Spoon 1/4 cup sauce onto each plate. Top with 3 ounces beef. Garnish with cilantro and cheese.

So, a couple of changes we've thought that might also work with this: 1.) use anaheim peppers instead of poblano; 2.) use sour cream for half or less of the heavy cream.  Reading through this now, I realize we forgot the cheese on the top at the end!  Oops!  The meat will literally fall apart done like this!  Enjoy!

A Fall Flavor

Old-Fashioned Gingersnaps

2 c. flour

 2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. ground ginger

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. ground allspice

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1/2 c. butter, softened

1/4 c. dark molasses (not blackstrap)

1/2 c. firmly packed light brown sugar

1/3 c. sugar

3 Tbsp, peeled and grated fresh ginger

1 large egg, beaten

Turbinado sugar

Position oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven.  Preheat oven to 350°.  Line 2 baking sheets with parchment and set aside.   

In medium bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, the 2 tsp. ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and salt; set aside.

In a large bowl whisk together butter, molasses, brown sugar, sugar, 3 Tbs. fresh ginger, and egg.  Add the flour mixture.  Stir to combine.  Cover and chill 1 hour.  (I did not do this step!)

Place turbinado sugar in a small, shallow bowl.  Make small balls out of dough and roll in turbinado sugar.  Place on baking sheet (2" apart).

Bake 10-12 minutes or until edges are crisp and centers are still chewy.  Switch baking sheets between racks and rotate them front to back halfway through.  Remove from oven.  Transfer cookies to wire rack to cool.

These are so good!!  I didn't have near enough fresh ginger, but it was still very good and the turbinado sugar adds a nice dimension to the cookie!!

Hello!

Does anyone even read blogs anymore?  Does anyone read THIS blog anymore?  I wouldn't blame you if you didn't because it's not been updated in so long!!  I practically just use it as a recipe reminder anymore myself!  :-)  But let me see, SOOOO much has happened since we last met.  Sheesh!  I'm not even sure WHEN we last met.  I guess I might have told you about Riana  -- and that was back in January already!  We had a good winter and then came spring quarter.  Things really started to wind down for Tiana and I when it came to school.  In the wind-down things really wound up with scheduling, though!  For the first time since I started school I had a 5 day a week class schedule with lots of extras going on for a couple of classes.  I had 2 microbiology labs a week and in order to do my final project, I also had to do some extra work because my bacteria decided not to cooperate with me!  I also took a photography class that really demanded a lot of time.  BUT in the end, both Tiana and I managed to graduate!  We took a long trip out to Montana and visited some ghost towns and Craters of the Moon.  We came home to have Tiana's tonsils out and then think about getting her ready for her grand adventure to Australia. She's now in Australia and seeming to enjoy it.  She's gone to visit two of our former exchange students and is now with one of them for awhile.  Here's a little glimpse of our summer.

My new Go-to bread

One day I was wanting to make some little sandwich baguettes and looked for a recipe that might be a bit faster than the all day one that I've used before.  I found this one and I love it!

Hot, Crusty French Bread

1 c. warm water
1 pkg. yeast
about 3/4 tsp. salt
approximately 2½ c. flour

In a large bowl, combine water with yeast and salt.  Let sit for five minutes.  Stir in flour until the dough is stiff enough to knead.  Knead dough until smooth and elastic.  Place dough in a greased bowl; cover.  Let rise until doubled.  (TIP: heat water in microwave for about 5 minutes while kneading and then place bowl with dough in warm moist microwave.  Will take about 30 minutes to double!!)  Form dough into a French-style loaf and place on greased baking sheet.  (Dust baking sheet with cornmeal if desired).  Place immediately in COLD oven (bread will rise while oven preheats).  Set oven to 375° and timer for 30-40 minutes.  Makes one loaf or 4 small sandwich sized baguettes.

Potato Jalapeno Gratin

Got this recipe from AllRecipes.com and LOVED it!!  Do NOT seed the jalapeno peppers.  It wasn't spicy at all and I left all of the seeds in.  I also would suggest maybe some Cheddar for a different flavor profile.  I also used 1 c. cream and 1 c. half-and-half, as if to lighten the recipe a bit!!

2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/8 inch thick 2 cups shredded Gruyere cheese 3 jalapeno peppers, seeded and minced (wear gloves)

1 pinch salt and ground black pepper to taste 2 cups heavy whipping cream 1 tablespoon paprika

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.
2.	Spread 1/4 of the sliced potatoes into the bottom of the casserole dish, followed by 1/3 of Gruyere cheese, and about 2 tablespoons of minced jalapeno peppers. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Repeat the layers 2 more times; top casserole with last 1/4 of the sliced potatoes. Pour the cream evenly over the casserole. Sprinkle top with paprika.
3.	Bake in the preheated oven until the casserole has browned and the potatoes are tender, about 1 1/2 hours.

Hello and a recipe

Hello!  It's been awhile again!!  Sooo much going on, not enough time to tell about it!!  So, let's see, back in January we welcomed Riana into our home for 10 extremely short days!  Almost immediately after she arrived we took off for her requested weekend in Canada.  I took my parents to the airport on Friday morning (they were off to help Justin and his family and we took care of Pixie), and that afternoon we took off for Vancouver, B.C.  EVERY meal up there we made sure we partook of poutine, as seen in this picture.  Ok, so not breakfasts, but the rest!

Sadly, Riana's time here was far too short and we had to say good-bye.  Thankfully, it is only temporary because she and her family are returning this coming winter, and Kent and I may just happen to Australia in summer 2014!!!  Tiana should already be there if her plans go through the way she's hoping they do!  

Other than having Riana with us, life has pretty much been the same as it has been now for the last couple of years.  I do my school stuff, Tiana does her's and Kent's along for the ride.  Speaking of rides, Tiana's learning to drive, so that's Kent's other job -- taking her out for practice time!  I'm trying to find time to do some walking with a few classmates, too, so that has been good.  I'm thinking today may be a bust, though!  Bummer because I need it!  I'll see what learning I get done soon!

So, tonight, although we won't really be eating together, I'm going to make these Sauerbraten Klopse.  They're one of Tiana's favorites, so I'll share them, and she'll know where to find the recipe if she craves them Down Under. I'll be serving these with Spätzle and a salad.

SAUERBRATEN KLOPSE

1 lb. ground beef

1/4 c. milk

1/4 c. dry bread crumbs

1/8 tsp. ground cloves

1/8 tsp. ground allspice

1/2 tsp. salt

pepper to taste

2 Tbs. oil

1 c. water

1/2 c. vinegar

3/4 tsp ground ginger

1 bay leaf

4 Tbs. brown sugar

2 tsp. flour

2 Tbs. water

Mix beef, milk, crumbs, cloves, allspice, salt and pepper.  Form into meatballs.  Brown meatballs in hot oil.  Drain off fat.  Add 1 c. water, vinegar, ginger, bay leaf, and brown sugar.  Cover and simmer 1/2 hour.  Skim off fat.  Remove meatballs and keep them warm.  Mix flour and water.  Slowly stir into the pan juices to make gravy.  Pour gravy over meatballs.  Serve with Spätzle.

Have a good day!