Blueberry Buttermilk Loaf

 One of our milks went sour a little early, so I made pancakes on Saturday and Sunday morning I decided to use up a bit more with a buttermilk-based quick bread. I found this recipe as a starting point, but I made quite a few modifications.

https://www.seasonsandsuppers.ca/blueberry-buttermilk-loaf/#wprm-recipe-container-41344

I doubled the recipe to use up more milk. Instead of the eggs, I used 4 of the numerous bananas that became too ripe and went into the freezer (thawed out of course). Because of the bananas, I reduced both the butter and sugar to 3/4 cup and 1.5 cups, respectively. Because of the subs and probably because I forgot to remove the pizza stone, it took about one hour and 10 minutes.

It turned out pretty good. Definitely not too sweet. The texture is a little gummy, but maybe that will help it stay moist. I will freeze one loaf for later. We'll see how it comes out then.

Christmas Cookies

I was looking for something to do with the kids over winter break and decided to make decorated sugar cookies. I used this recipe from the New York times. It tastes great, but I'm not sure how often I will do it again because making them with the kids is a bit of a pain! I now know why my mom didn't make these with us when we were growing up. Haha!

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017888-frosted-holiday-sugar-cookies

Happy New Year

 I'm trying to keep up with using my Rancho Gordo beans and decided to use the black eyed peas I received in the last bean club shipment for the New Year. 

I used this recipe and I was happy how it came out. Hopefully it will bring good luck for this coming year.

https://www.africanbites.com/black-eyed-peas-recipe/#wprm-recipe-container-576856

To make with Masa

 I have been wanting to make tamales and pupusas since the beginning of the pandemic, so I found these recipes.

Pupusas : https://tasty.co/recipe/salvadoran-pupusas-as-made-by-curly-and-his-abuelita

I think I did pretty good for my first try. I filled them with refried beans and cheese. I also liked the slaw.

Update on 12/2024 I forgot I made these before and I followed https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/recipes/pupusas/, which is roughly the same, just a smaller serving. I used Oaxaca string cheese for the filling and I tried some homemade refried beans, but they were a little runny. Curtido was from https://www.food.com/recipe/curtido-de-repollo-el-salvadorean-cabbage-salad-207798

Tamales (not made on the same day...)

I made three types. Sweet corn -https://www.mexicoinmykitchen.com/easy-sweet-corn-tamales-recipe/

bean and cheese, and (soy) chorizo-https://www.veganblueberry.com/vegan-tamales/

The sweet corn ones, I only made 1/3 of the recipe, and it was just enough for the kids, but there were no leftovers. Then I made the other recipe fully.  There were lots of leftovers which I put in the freezer! I steamed them in two batches in the instant pot. It took a little longer than I expected but seemed to work pretty well.

 I didn't use any stock, and I think that would have made the dough more flavorful. Otherwise it was a success. 

IP Mac and cheese

After making a different recipe for at least 15 times, the family informed me that they didn't like it. So I searched for a new one.

I found this one and used cheddar, asaiago, parmesan, and mozzarella cheese with a small chunk of cream cheese. I thought it came out great and the rest of the family liked it too.

https://thesaltymarshmallow.com/instant-pot-mac-and-cheese/#wprm-recipe-container-4012

Pizza at home

We finally found the right pizza crust recipe. We put the ingredients into the bread machine on dough mode and it's ready a couple hours later, so we do need to plan ahead. One recipe makes two pizzas that fit on our 15" round pizza stone.

https://www.food.com/recipe/easy-peezy-pizza-dough-bread-machine-pizza-dough-35805

With this dough recipe, at one point I was missing Somerville and Flatbread pizza, so I made this as one of our favorites from there.

http://planetofcrepes.blogspot.com/2014/06/punctuated-equilibrium-rip-of-pizza.html?m=1

One day we had some extra dough, so we tried making dessert pizza. It tastes like Godfathers cinnamon streusel pizza!

https://www.keyingredient.com/recipes/14610060/godfathers-streusel-dessert-pizza/

Italian dressing

 Used this recipe to make Italian dressing 

https://thewholecook.com/easy-homemade-italian-dressing/