Cooking for One

[orange&white]

That's really nice setup Mother Dragon!  My attempts at gardening sure have made me appreciate farmers.  I've had better luck with fall/winter gardens than spring gardens, which seem to turn into dry sticks between Memorial Day and mid-June.  Too much heat and not enough humidity most years. 

My sister and her family lived in The Woodlands for a few years, so I know you're in a really beautiful area of the state.  You have the humidity on your side for gardening.

Sure is nice to walk to a back garden for super fresh veggies during the good years.  I'm inspired to at least pick up a couple tomato plants...and some basil this year.  Your yummy sounding recipe reminded me of my love for fresh pesto on pasta!

 

[Mamanyt1953]

OK, @Mother Dragon  , I'm drooling now.  And will make that salad the next time I go to the store.  I love grapes.  They are my favorite sweet thing to eat.  I like the red seedless best.  Although, the Thompson green seedless are wonderful for morning sickness.  Just three or four of them when you first start to get the queasy feeling will usually kill it immediately.

 

[Willowy]

OK, @Mother Dragon
 , I'm drooling now.  And will make that salad the next time I go to the store.  I love grapes.  They are my favorite sweet thing to eat.  I like the red seedless best.  Although, the Thompson green seedless are wonderful for morning sickness.  Just three or four of them when you first start to get the queasy feeling will usually kill it immediately.

She was talking about grape tomatoes. . .I think the salad will turn out very different if you use actual grapes . I'm drooling over the thought of that too.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

OK...so now I'm drooling over the thought of EITHER or BOTH, and my keyboard is in danger of shorting out!

The new batch of pasta sauce turned out pretty well, considering that I made it from tomato sauce, and not fresh tomatoes.  I bagged it in quart ziplock bags, in single serving sizes, and they are tucked in my freezer.  OH...hint for heating the sauce in the bag...thaw the frozen sauce, the bring a couple of cups of water to a simmer.  Pour the water into a bowl and immerse the bag.  Then cook your pasta.  By the time the pasta is done, the sauce is nicely warmed.

 

[orange&white]

I wasn't going to say anything about the grapes vs grape tomatoes.  Who knows?  Grapes, basil, and ranch dressing could be a creative masterpiece.  I always thought that whomever first combined mayonnaise with whipping cream and poured it over apples, nuts, and celery surely read the recipe wrong.  But that recipe is now the famous, all-time classic Waldorf Salad.

I've run many cooking experiments based on combining limited ingredients on-hand, most of which turned out exactly how you'd expect from an "experiment". 

  That's one of the joys of cooking for one...no one else is subjected to your mistakes.

Mamanyt...You are seriously making me want to "do" some homemade spaghetti sauce!!!

 

[Mamanyt1953]

LOL...I ate a bowl of the sauce for supper last night!  It came out really really well!  No pasta, just the sauce!

 

[orange&white]

Mmmmm....tomato soup, only much richer, spicier and better!

 

[Mother Dragon]

You're my kind of folks! I've decided that for my 71st birthday in June, I'm going to the House of Pies and eat nothing but slices of various kinds of pies (mostly chocolate) until I'm too full and sick to move. 

I love "scratch" foods. They always taste much better than ready-made. I refuse to eat frozen prepared dinners and such, but I do cheat and use canned soups and pasta sauces. Canned veggies? Ick! As the late Megabyte used to say when we offered him something he didn't want, "I'd rather lick my feet." And he did.

 

[Winchester]

 
LOL...I ate a bowl of the sauce for supper last night!  It came out really really well!  No pasta, just the sauce!

I can't tell you how many times I've eaten a bowl of pasta sauce (no pasta) for my supper when Rick has been away. I dearly love pasta sauce.

 
You're my kind of folks! I've decided that for my 71st birthday in June, I'm going to the House of Pies and eat nothing but slices of various kinds of pies (mostly chocolate) until I'm too full and sick to move. 

I love "scratch" foods. They always taste much better than ready-made. I refuse to eat frozen prepared dinners and such, but I do cheat and use canned soups and pasta sauces. Canned veggies? Ick! As the late Megabyte used to say when we offered him something he didn't want, "I'd rather lick my feet." And he did.

I'm a big from-scratch cook. While we do have some packaged food in the pantry, there's really not a lot. I prefer baking breads and cakes from scratch; I have been known to use the Dough-Boy for my pie dough, though....life is too blasted short to have to deal with homemade pie dough. I can make it, but man, I hate it. For apple dumplings and peach dumplings, I will make homemade dough. It's worth it.

When you go to the House of Pies, you must take me with you! Chocolate pies of all kinds just rock my world. 

 

[orange&white]

Mmmm…homemade breads.   In 2011, I was unemployed and challenged myself to buy nothing pre-made with flour for an entire year.   If I wanted baked goods, I had to bake them from scratch.   Crackers, breads, tortillas, cakes, brownies…if it had flour I had to find a scratch recipe.   Fun, cheap and better than store bought.   In 2012, I found work and didn’t have time to babysit finicky yeast rising times.

I should get another sourdough mother started.   Fresh, hot sourdough bread for pennies a loaf!

Mother Dragon….All you can eat pie buffet sounds like a fabulous birthday gift!

 

[arouetta]

 
I should get another sourdough mother started.   Fresh, hot sourdough bread for pennies a loaf!

How do you do that?  I come from the West Coast and I remember the great sourdough bread that was in every store.  Now I live on the East Coast and the absolute few places that offer sourdough bread, well it's not sourdough, it barely tastes any different than French bread.

 

[orange&white]

I used a rye flour starter, but then made bread with white, wheat or rye breads with the same starter.  You can do a wheat starter, but I think the tang you're missing may be from the rye.

You just mix a little flour and water, set it at room temperature until it starts to bubble (a day or two).  Then you start "feeding" it by taking out about half and adding more fresh flour and water.

It's been six years since I was baking...so I'd have to do a web search to refresh my memory on the specifics of how much water/flour to add, and how to tell when its ready to use.

The nothing but flour and water is traditional "old fashioned" starter.  Some people use a little activated yeast to get a starter going faster.  I do remember having a few failed starters before I got a really good one going.

Once you get it though, you can make fresh sourdough bread for literally a few pennies.

 

[micknsnicks2mom]

 
I used a rye flour starter, but then made bread with white, wheat or rye breads with the same starter.  You can do a wheat starter, but I think the tang you're missing may be from the rye.

You just mix a little flour and water, set it at room temperature until it starts to bubble (a day or two).  Then you start "feeding" it by taking out about half and adding more fresh flour and water.

It's been six years since I was baking...so I'd have to do a web search to refresh my memory on the specifics of how much water/flour to add, and how to tell when its ready to use.

The nothing but flour and water is traditional "old fashioned" starter.  Some people use a little activated yeast to get a starter going faster.  I do remember having a few failed starters before I got a really good one going.

Once you get it though, you can make fresh sourdough bread for literally a few pennies.

yes!!! that's what i've done, though i don't have a sourdough starter going at the moment. i agree, the rye flour gives a really good tang to the starter.

 

[orange&white]

I'm going to try to get another one going soon.

Here is a link to a traditional rye starter using only flour and water:  http://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/rye-sourdough-starter-in-easy-steps/

 

[Winchester]

 
Mmmm…homemade breads.   In 2011, I was unemployed and challenged myself to buy nothing pre-made with flour for an entire year.   If I wanted baked goods, I had to bake them from scratch.   Crackers, breads, tortillas, cakes, brownies…if it had flour I had to find a scratch recipe.   Fun, cheap and better than store bought.   In 2012, I found work and didn’t have time to babysit finicky yeast rising times.

I should get another sourdough mother started.   Fresh, hot sourdough bread for pennies a loaf!

Mother Dragon….All you can eat pie buffet sounds like a fabulous birthday gift!

When you get it started, please send some starter to me! I had a good sourdough going for over a year. Oh, man, sourdough pizza crust is out of this world. Sourdough soft pretzels. Pancakes and waffles. Caramelized sourdough onion rolls. Sourdough English muffins....I made mine with lots of cinnamon and raisins. I was able to freeze my starter for the summer and then I thawed her back out to use last fall. Beautiful. I went back to feeding her and she was fine. More English muffins, more rolls, more pizza. 

And then one day, I opened the crock and......pink fluffy stuff. She went bad. Really bad. I have no idea what I did to her. Threw it all out and sterilized my crock. I want to start over, simply because sourdough anything just rocks. 

I read that you can also dehydrate your starter for the summer if you don't want to freeze it. Freezing worked OK though.

 

[Kat0121]

 
When you get it started, please send some starter to me! I had a good sourdough going for over a year. Oh, man, sourdough pizza crust is out of this world. Sourdough soft pretzels. Pancakes and waffles. Caramelized sourdough onion rolls. Sourdough English muffins....I made mine with lots of cinnamon and raisins. I was able to freeze my starter for the summer and then I thawed her back out to use last fall. Beautiful. I went back to feeding her and she was fine. More English muffins, more rolls, more pizza. 

And then one day, I opened the crock and......pink fluffy stuff. She went bad. Really bad. I have no idea what I did to her. Threw it all out and sterilized my crock. I want to start over, simply because sourdough anything just rocks. 

I read that you can also dehydrate your starter for the summer if you don't want to freeze it. Freezing worked OK though.

Mine went bad too. I just got this starter. I have to get it going today. I want to make some pretzels with it. 

 

[Winchester]

Interesting. Please let me know how the starter works for you. My kids gave me a gift card to King Arthur as part of my Christmas gift last year; I've not used it yet. I'm tempted to spend part of it on some sourdough starter. My BIL just started some starter from scratch, using the yeasties in the air in his house. While it's bubbling like crazy, it's not very sour at all. Not much smell and when he tried to bake with it, no nice tang. I have some sourdough flavoring and offered some to him, but he doesn't want to use it. I suggested that he google what to do to increase his "tang". If you don't have any "sour" then there's no reason to use it, IMO. 

 

[orange&white]

I remember using the recipes on the King Arthur site quite a bit for sourdough and non-sourdough baked goods.  I started using their flours and was happy with them too.  Is your BIL's "tang-less" starter made with white or wheat flour?

A couple weeks ago I looked at the flour selection for the first time in years.  They only had one rye flour product in a 1 lb bag, and it was too pricey so I passed.  I'm thinking the bulk bins at Sprout's.  I threw away so much flour while getting a good starter going because there was  a limit to how many pancakes I could eat.  Anyway, I think I need more than a 1lb bag to start.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

 
Mmmm…homemade breads.   In 2011, I was unemployed and challenged myself to buy nothing pre-made with flour for an entire year.   If I wanted baked goods, I had to bake them from scratch.   Crackers, breads, tortillas, cakes, brownies…if it had flour I had to find a scratch recipe.   Fun, cheap and better than store bought.   In 2012, I found work and didn’t have time to babysit finicky yeast rising times.

I should get another sourdough mother started.   Fresh, hot sourdough bread for pennies a loaf!

Mother Dragon….All you can eat pie buffet sounds like a fabulous birthday gift!

 
I'm going to try to get another one going soon.

Here is a link to a traditional rye starter using only flour and water:  http://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/rye-sourdough-starter-in-easy-steps/

SIGH...I inherited my Gran's sourdough mother, and had it for about 5 years.  I had to go out of town for two weeks, and although my neighbor took great care of my animals (I had a dog and a cat then), she forgot to feed Mama.  She died.  I buried her in the backyard in her crock.  If I had been thinking, I'd have kept that crock.  It was about 70 years old, and gorgeous.  I bookmarked that site.  I'm going to give this a try again, I think!

 

[orange&white]

 
SIGH...I inherited my Gran's sourdough mother, and had it for about 5 years.  I had to go out of town for two weeks, and although my neighbor took great care of my animals (I had a dog and a cat then), she forgot to feed Mama.  She died.  I buried her in the backyard in her crock.  If I had been thinking, I'd have kept that crock.  It was about 70 years old, and gorgeous.  I bookmarked that site.  I'm going to give this a try again, I think!

Can the crock be exhumed???  I wonder what happened to my grandmother's starter.

I just got in from the grocery.  I double-check the price on the rye flour, $3.79 for one pound.  Skipped it again.  I need to check the price at Sprout's bulk bins.  Meanwhile, I could try a wheat starter for practice.

My grandmother, every day, made 2 huge trays of the best dinner rolls in the world.  My memory is that she used sourdough starter in them, but I never could replicate the flavor.  The closest I came was this regular yeast dough recipe made with Crisco (I know....Crisco...really not healthy!)  http://divascancook.com/homemade-yeast-rolls-recipe/   These are the best dinner rolls I've ever tasted, after my Mamaw's.