Category: Cooking

Ramen Noodles

I found a recipe for alkaline noodles — well, Scott had been craving ramen noodles. And I cannot say I know where to get them. The Styrofoam bowls with paper covers that you peel back and add water … it’s been a while since I’ve been to CAM (Cleveland Asia Market), but I totally know where to get those. But a cheap pack of ramen noodles — I looked around at the grocery store and didn’t find any. I thought they were fairly ubiquitous no-money/no-time/no-cooking-skill items.

So I googled how to make ramen noodles – and it turns out real ramen noodles are alkaline noodles. I found a really good sounding recipe that uses rye flour, and then found a simpler one that I went with (since I didn’t have rye flour on hand). I rolled them out too thickly, but it’s a cool way to make something like an egg noodle without needing eggs.

Halloween Planning – Healthy Snacks

Anya’s preschool has a sign-up for Halloween party volunteers — and no one took “healthy snack”! We have a couple of lot of Halloween parties this year for which I’m coming up with non-candy but still Halloween-y treats … what’s one more?

So my current Halloween snack list is:

Friends Parties: tangerine pumpkins and witches’ broom pretzel/cheese snacks

Friends Parties: Scarecrow veggie platter

 

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Mmmmm!

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Ingredients:

  • 2 cups raisins
  • 4 cups white whole wheat flour
  • 8 Tbs. sugar
  • 8 Tbs. cinnamon
  • 2-1/4 tsp. yeast
  • 2 tsp.  sea salt
  • 1/2 cup whole milk
  • 3/4 cup warm water
  • 1 large egg
  • 9 Tbs. unsalted butter
  • 3T cream

Method:

Soak raisins in warm water for 5 minutes, then drain.

Add 2T sugar to warm water and stir. Sprinkle yeast on top of water and let sit until yeast is frothy.

In a stand mixer with bread hook attachment, combine flour, 2T cinnamon, and salt. Mix to combine. Add milk, egg, 3T of butter, and water. Mix for about five minutes. Knead raisins in by hand to avoid crushing them.

Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature until the dough looks slightly puffy, about 60 minutes.

In a small bowl, combine the remaining 6 Tbs. each cinnamon and sugar. Melt 4 Tbs. of the butter.

Line a baking tray with a silicone baking mat. Divide the dough in half. Roll each piece out to 1/4 inch thick. Spread the melted butter on the dough. Sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar mixture evenly over both rectangles.
Roll each rectangle into a cylinder. Place on silicone baking mat, seam side down. Brush loaves with cream. Let rest at room temperature until the dough has risen, 1 to 1-1/2 hours.
Heat the oven to 375°F. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes – loaves will sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Place loaves on a rack to cool.

Apple Faces & Strawberry Lemonade

Today was Anya’s turn to bring a snack to preschool. She wanted to make apple faces like we made for Halloween last year, but the school has a strict no-nuts policy. Shorter ingredient list — just Fuji apples, fresh strawberries, and unsweetened carob chips. Omitting peanut butter made affixing the carob chips to the apples more challenging. I debated using tahini – apple and sesame goes well together. But that didn’t seem to mesh well with strawberries and carob … so I decided to make little holes to hold the carob chips.

To start out, you need something to prevent the apples from oxidizing after they are cut. Lots of choices – submerging them in plain water, ascorbic acid, citric acid, or honey and water. Just make sure the apples get treated after each cut.

Core each apple. I used a really sharp tournée knife and pared out little eyeball sockets. I used the same knife to pare out a mouth – cut a straight line for the top and a concave curve under the straight line. The curved point of the knife popped the slice out quite nicely.

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Then drop the carob chips, points down, into the socket. Voila, a tray full of apple faces.

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The “juice” I made is strawberry lemonade — almost two pints of strawberries, juice from half a dozen lemons, and eight cups of water. It is sweeter and more strawberry flavored than I usually make, but I wasn’t sure if *lemony* lemonade would be palatable to everyone. I put the strawberries, lemon juice, and two cups of water in the blender and blended until it no longer had chunks. Put four cups of water into the jug, then added the strawberry/lemon puree. Capped, shook, and tasted. Mmmmm! It’s better cold, so we brought a couple of ice packs along – Anya’s owl bag is insulated, so the jug should stay cold.

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Mead Experimentation

We are experimenting with different honey concentrations and different yeasts to make mead. We’ve got 71b to make a dry mead (with different concentrations of honey) and then 47b to make a slightly sweeter mead.

Researching the process, we decided on three nutrient additions – a blend of 50% Go Ferm and 50% Fermenaid K. Added 1/4 teaspoon of nutrients shortly after the yeast was pitched. Added another a couple of days later … and then couldn’t figure out when the almost-done state was and failed to add the third addition.

Now we’re just waiting for it to ferment.

 

Home Automation Lagering

We are about to make mead (we got near 30 pounds of local honey!). In researching mead-making, different yeasts have different alcohol tolerances … so you make a dry mead by using a yeast with an alcohol tolerance at or above the level your starting gravity would yield if it were fully fermented. A sweeter mead means you have a yeast whose tolerance is lower than that value … the greater the difference, the sweeter the mead. We are going to make a dry mead with Lalvin 71b-1122, a just slightly sweet mead by adding a little more honey but still using Lalvin 71b-1122, and a sweeter mead using Lalvin D-47.

71b-1122 has a very broad temperature range (59-86 F – and how cool is it that Google returns a yeast profile summary if you search for “71b-1122 temperature range”). D-47 is more particular — a published range of 59-68 F, but reading through homebrew sites has us wanting to stay around 63 degrees. Our sub-grade level is cool, but not that cool. Especially as fermentation warms up the fluid.

Scott is developing a home automation controlled fermentation “chamber”. The beer refrigerator is now plugged into a smart outlet. One of the Arduino kits we got has a temperature sensor. We can have a temperature probe monitoring the must and cycle the refrigerator’s power to keep it within a degree or two of our target.

Peanut Butter Oat Bites

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 t vanilla extract
1 T carob powder
2 cups unsweetened peanut butter

Method:

Toast oats in a pan. Powder 1/2 cup of the oats in a food processor.

Toast the shredded coconut in a pan.

Place the peanut butter in a bowl. Stir in the vanilla.

Slowly add the powdered toasted oats and stir to combine. Add the carob powder.

Add the shredded coconut and whole oats. Stir to combine.

Using a tablespoon (or something similar – small ice cream scoop, small melon baller), scoop out some of the mixture. Using your hands, roll it into a ball. Place the balls on a lined cookie sheet and refrigerate for several hours.

These are a little bit like cookie dough — not as sweet since there’s no sugar added. You can add a tablespoon or two of honey if you prefer a sweeter treat.

Beware: an un-monitored tiny person may imitate the rolling process when eating these. They’re a little crumbly and make a huge mess.