me make food

We have been doing a sides only dinner a bunch lately. A slab of meat is always nice, but we make some rocking sides and enjoy them. Tonight was skillet fries, cheddar bay biscuits, and Daniels sweet corn.

With the weather being so nice and the windows open all day I made up a batch of five minute a day dough. I have been wanting to make pizza shells for a while for lunches. Made up 3, but one was a bit thick so I tested it out last night.

It was pretty good with the thicker crust, but I still prefer it thin when I make my own. I used the toaster oven last night, but I have the oven set to turn on before lunch so I can have a hot stone to bake it on. Yum.

Trying to eat our way through our freezer. Figured some grilled pork chops would be good. We had some bread and always have lots of Nebraska sweet corn. Theresa wanted some potatoes too. Easy meal.

Are you boiling those chops? Click below to find out.

Bruschetta sure tastes great with stuff off the grill. Theresa has been making it for years and has it down. Our tomato plants are huge this year so we will be enjoying it often. She uses tomatoes, Garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, salt, and some parm cheese. We use Le Quartier bread since it is a bit warm to be baking. Theresa infuses olive oil with garlic and basil and lightly brushes the bread with some shredded parmesan.

In the pic above on the right is some risotto. Theresa has that down really good too.

First try making bread on the grill did not go so well

Since it is nice out and we are always looking to create something new and a bit healthier, we figured some foil wrapped meals would be fun to try. Figured chicken would be a good meat for this since Theresa is not fond of seafood. We really like the flavor for a good seared piece of meat, so the idea was to partially cook the chicken in a very flavorful pouch and then finish it off on the grill.

Was kind of hard to decide what to include in the foil with the chicken. We were thinking something like a marinade coating the chicken and some fresh vegetables to impart their flavor.

Decided to use carrots, celery, onion, red pepper, and garlic for the main flavors. I put all of those along with some olive oil, basil, and lemon juice into a cup and used my stick blender to make up a goop to coat the chicken.

Theresa and I met at Papa John’s 13 years ago. I was a manager and she worked in store. We have made thousands of cheesestix in our lives. Since I have been doing the bread and making pizza crusts, I figured this would be easy. Made up a batch with homemade garlic butter and some liquid evil from Papa John’s.

Left is dinner rolls without any steam in the oven (forgot to put a cup of hot water in the preheated
broiler pan)
Right with steam, but still undercooked.

Been making bread and pizza shells every day for a week and took a couple days off. This dough recipe makes a dense crumb. I have tried diff amounts of letting it rise, but it is usually the same. It is really close to sourdough in so many ways, but not sour. When I get a good crust on it it is really good.

We got more books and I have gotten a bit of read on. Theresa got Alton’s one about baking. Gave up soda, but eat a lot of bread and butter now. I call it a draw.

Took some of the refrigerated dough yesterday and made a few pizza crusts. Roll out and place on hot stone for about 3 minutes to set the dough and kill the yeast. Today I made a pizza and put it on a hot stone just so I could know what that was like. My goal is to do these for lunch and I will not be able to get the stone hot for that, but they should do fine in the toaster oven.

We roast chickens often and normally make chicken noodle soup, but I thought a soup with rice in it might be good. Used the pressure cooker to make a stock from the chicken leavings with onion, carrots, celery, garlic, peppercorns, bay leafs, and water. An hour cooking made it very flavorful. Made the rice with canned chicken broth and it turned out pretty decent. The rice just sinks to the bottom though.

^ Before pressure cooking ^ Did not get an after, but it pretty much obliterates everything. Strain, rince to get all the god stuff, and remove the fat with a separator.

I have picked up a baking stone and made my third batch of dough. For tonight I made some dinner rolls and they were really good, but a bit small. I did some other cool stuff with the dough and will let you know after lunch Monday if it all works out.

Same dough, 2nd day of baking. Got a few more tips. Letting the oven go about 20 minutes after preheating will ensure the whole oven is at the temp you want and hold it better. This time I let the dough rise a bit more before I baked it. It came out better and still tastes really good, but it is still a bit dense. I want those huge holes like swiss cheese. In the pic below you can see how it looked from being sliced.

I am guessing not getting the first initial rise has hurt this first dough I made. So I have made another batch and will wait till it starts to fall before I put it in the fridge. Will post how that goes and then work on perfecting it.