Papa's Bread (or rolls)

For Thursday's home economics class, we made bread!  This is my dad's recipe.  My dad made bread a lot!  He always made the rolls for any holiday.  I'm pretty sure he took his mother's recipe and added the wheat, molasses, honey, and flax seed. Don't worry, he'll correct me if I'm wrong. My mom always liked to make food healthier, so I'm sure she was behind adding all of those things, and subbing the honey and molasses for regular sugar.  

This bread is dark in color. It actually is not because of the wheat flour, because I use white wheat flour because it gives bread a little bit of a lighter texture.  It is this color because of the molasses.  My grandparents raised their own sorghum and made their own molasses. The molasses that I buy in a store now is darker than their molasses, maybe even called "black strap molasses," which they and my dad would say "isn't fit to eat." 

Don't worry, if you don't have molasses on hand, you can sub with all honey.  If you don't have honey on hand, you can sub with sugar. 

I did not have any flax seed to add either. You can leave that out.  You can make all white bread if you want with this recipe too, leave out the wheat flour.  

I'm too lazy to type up this recipe, so here it is from my cookbook, and I'll add some other notes below. 

Notes/Tips: 

As you can see, this recipe is for rolls, but we made bread. 

Don't heat the water and sweeteners very hot, just hot enough to activate the yeast. You don't want to kill the yeast. 

Before you get to the kneading part, you want to touch the dough with your finger. Does a lot of dough stick to your fingers? If so, add a little more flour.  You keep doing this until you can touch the dough and barely any dough comes off on your fingers, or none at all.  But don't over do it or it will be too dry.  

I don't knead bread by hand anymore.  I make it in my kitchen aid with a bread hook.  Once I get to the kneading part, I turn that sucker up and let it go to town for a while.  Even though kneading dough is pretty stress relieving and builds muscles, I just don't have time for that. 

Where it says raise 20 minutes - I raise until double.  For bread, you punch down, then put into two loaf pans, and raise until double again.  

It raised double the size of the first picture

It raised about double the side

I always brush my bread with butter when it comes out of the oven

I was taught to let bread cool on it's side, I tried to look up the reason why, but I din't find anything.  So, who knows?

This was a great home school lesson, because they were able to see the yeast activated, see how they rise, and eat the finished product, of course. Enjoy! 

Home School Home Economics - Day 1

Monday started my kids being home from school because of the Corona Virus social distancing. I let them have electronics or basically whatever they wanted that day.  That got old real fast, and I decided I had to get my butt in gear to keep my kids off the couch, off the phone, Xbox, and TV. Yesterday, among other things, we did Home Ec.  I had some granola that my sister made me from a little while ago, and thought it would be easy to show them how to make their own granola bars (and to finish off the granola).

You can find my recipe HERE, as well as a recipe for my home made granola.  Super easy, add whatever you have on hand, and enjoy!

Turkey Taco Boats

My family fell in love with this recipe this summer when my sister in law made these at our family reunion.  This is a healthier (and in my opinion, more delicious) option to regular ground beef tacos. You guys, seriously... I make this at least three or four times a month, it's one of our favorites!  They get devoured every time.  The recipe is from Skinny Taste. I revised it a bit simply because I'm lazy and don't feel like cutting green peppers and onions. I've actually never added green peppers, but sometimes add onions, or if I'm lazy will just add onion powder.  I also buy turkey in 2 lb. containers, so I just went ahead and did a new recipe using four pounds of turkey, and use just a little less water.  I also forego a tortilla and use romaine hearts to hold my taco.  My daughter even does it! I don't even miss the taco shell! You want to add this to your meal rotation - you won't be disappointed. Enjoy! 

Turkey Taco Recipe

Adapted from Skinny Taste

2 lbs. lean ground turkey

2 tsp. garlic powder

2 tsp. cumin

2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. chili powder

2 tsp. paprika

1 tsp. oregano

1 tsp. onion powder (or 1 small onion diced)

1 c. water

8 oz. tomato sauce

1.  Brown turkey in large skillet until no longer pink.  

2. Add seasonings, water, and tomato sauce. Mix well. 

3. Simmer on low for about 20 minutes.  

4. Serve in a lettuce wrap, tortilla, or taco shell. 

How I assemble my taco boats:

Sour Cream Sugar Cookies

These are awesome sugar cookies!  They are great frosted with a buttercream frosting, cream cheese frosting, a plain vanilla frosting from a store bought jar, or with a glace.  I also use this recipe for fruit pizza with a cream cheese frosting, topped with fruit. I've also used it to make a cookie cake (shown below the recipe). The dough is the perfect consistency.  The cookies are fluffy and not dry. These cookies are always a hit!

Sour Cream Sugar Cookie Recipe

2 c. sugar
1 c. butter
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
1 c. sour cream
5 1/3 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda

1.  Cream butter and sugar together.

2. Add eggs, vanilla, and sour cream.  Mix well.

3.  Whisk dry ingredients together in separate bowl.  After mixed, add slowly to wet ingredients and mix well.  You add enough flour until your dough isn't sticky.

4. Chill dough.  (Do not skip this part.  It helps the cookies bake more evenly so they aren't super fluffy and look better decorated.  Also, it makes them easier to roll out and easier to handle as you cut them and place them on a pan.)

5.  Roll dough and cut out desired shapes. Place on lightly greased cookie sheet.

6. Bake at 400 degrees for 6-8 minutes.  You want them to BARELY brown on the edges to keep them soft.

Makes 60 cookies.  (For real)

Two Potato Gratin

This is a super yummy holiday side dish!  This crowd pleaser is a bit more gourmet than a regular potato cheese dish, and adds a festive flair to your holiday feast. 

I made this recipe for the first time at least nine years ago.  The original recipe called for a crust, and then we realized it didn't really need one.  So, I revised the recipe a bit and now share it for you to enjoy!

Two Potato Gratin

1 Garlic clove minced
1 T. Fresh Rosemary (or 1 tsp. dried)
1 1/2 lbs Sweet Potatoes
1 1/2 Yukon gold potatoes
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
2 c. Gruyere cheese (divided)
2/3 c. Heavy cream


1.  Peel and thinly slice the potatoes.  We use our mandolin to get even slices. (Make sure you use the guard so you don't lose a finger tip...)

2. Place the potatoes into a greased 9-10 inch round pan, or 9x13 pan.  I place them in a pan by alternating every other type.  For a round pan, I make a round design.  For a rectangular pan, you can do one row of potatoes in one direction, the next row lying the opposite direction, and so on. 

3. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

4.  Roughly mince the fresh rosemary.  Or, if using dried - I usually put the dried in my hand and crush it up with my fingers. 

5.  Sprinkle the salt, pepper, and rosemary evenly over the potatoes.  (Honestly, I don't really measure. So, you can play it by ear a bit here.)  Sprinkle with 1 cup of the cheese.

6.  Microwave cream and garlic together on high just until boiling. Pour over the potatoes and cheese. 

7. Sprinkle with remaining cup of cheese. 

8.  Cover with aluminum foil.

9.  Bake for one hour.  Uncover and bake for 25 minutes or until the potatoes are done.  Check the potatoes at 45 minutes, if they are already soft, uncover and bake until the top is a light golden brown.

10. Enjoy!!

Thanksgiving Turkey

Years ago, I discovered turkey bags to cook turkeys in and now it's the only way I cook my turkey. 

They are so easy to use and make a yummy, moist turkey! I think it comes out similarly to cooking a chicken in a crock pot, but a 23 pound turkey just won't fit in my crock pot.

You need a cookie sheet, a cake pan, or roasting pan. Whatever your turkey will fit in.

Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe

1 T. flour
Onion quartered
Celery chopped
Butter
Salt

Wash your turkey, take out the neck and bag of giblets. My mom would cook those on the stove in some water and make additional broth out of it. My uncle would even use the liver, etc. to cut up and put in the stuffing. We rub the turkey all over very well with butter.  Then, we cover it very generously with salt and massage it in. Then, follow the directions in the roasting bag box.  Once the turkey is in the bag I fill it with however much onion or celery I feel like (or that I had in my fridge, ha!)

You can see the broth level in the bag below after it was cooked! Yum! We poke a hole in the bag and drain the broth out.  We use the broth to make our stuffing instead of using water.  We also make gravy with the drained broth.

I was out of the kitchen or distracted when the timer went off and our turkey probably even over cooked a bit.  You can tell the turkey is done when the timer pops up, and the legs fall away from the bird, and the breast bone splits in the middle (you can see it in the picture below).  The meat literally falls off the bone. Enjoy!

Luau Celebration

Looking through my unpublished posts, I found this gem and can not believe I have not blogged this yet!

A few years ago John was out of state doing training for his job for 9 weeks leaving me a single mother except on Saturdays (but one Saturday he got snowed in and couldn't make it home).  That summer, I planned a dinner to thank my friends who helped me in some way while he was gone.  They didn't know it was for them, and I actually did it on my birthday and some people thought it was me throwing a birthday party for myself (which actually it really was the best birthday!) but mostly the husbands didn't even realize it was my birthday.  So, I read a little poem (part of it at the end of this post) during dinner that I had written to tell them that the dinner was really for them and I wanted to say Mahalo (thank you) to my village!

Not even kidding, that morning my app said like 90% chance of rain for the evening.  I texted everyone to pray hard it wouldn't rain and borrowed as many canopies as I could.  It sprinkled a bit during the day, but the weather ended up being perfect!  Hallelujah!

The Invite:

The front and back of the invite I made

The walk lined with tikki torches to my back yard

The set up - I wish I had removed the wrapping on the table tikkis before I took the pictures

I made napkins out of Hawaiian shirts I bought back from Hawaii a few years ago. (I gave my nephew a quick sewing lesson, and he helped too!)

I made the seashell candles that you can see in this picture too.

I wrote every name in Hawaiian on the place cards, so it was fun for people to try and figure out their name.  This one was easy.

So, I bought this china at TJ Maxx years ago, and I thought about renting china for this party, but looked into seeing if Replacements carried this china and it did!  So I got enough to make up the difference for the number I needed and considered it my birthday present!

I made these star fish chair wraps with raffia

The buffet

Salads: Spinach salad with Papaya Seed Dressing, Pasta Salad, Potato Salad, and Frog Eye Salad

Rice, Home made Hawaiian sweet rolls, Teriyaki Chicken, Polynesian Chicken skewers, Kalua Pig, and sweet potatoes

The appetizer station:

Pipi Kaula, and shrimp cocktail

The shrimp may or may not have been forgotten about when it was cooking....

We made some virgin lava flows or lava coladas

Of course my friends were greeted with leis when they arrived

The haupia in coconut shells

You guys, I love my backyard.  It basically sold the house to me.  Never a fan of our house, but huge fan of my back yard!  I love these pictures because it just reminds me of what a perfect evening it was!!

Couldn't resist adding a picture of the cows that came to see what all the fuss was about

Played a little Hawaiian themed charades:

Some of my awesome village!

And I even got to hold a newish little baby!  Love!

I had a little photo opportunity:

They made the perfect hula couple with their dark hair

The best evening!

 

Earlier in the evening, I stood up to do my prepared little poem to thank my friends and tell them what the luau was really for, and it was pretty funny because some people thought I was going to announce I was pregnant.  Which I was not.

Below is the first part of the poem I read out loud, I didn't include all of it though.  Too personal, it did make me tear up a bit reading it. 

Aloha!  Welcome!  We’re so glad you’re here,

You have been assembled under a bit of guise.

What’s she talking about?  I know you’re thinking,

But, this was all just a big surprise!

This isn’t a birthday party,

Or just an ordinary meal.

It’s a way I can thank you, my friends,

So, Mahalo!  Here’s the deal…

You see, my husband, he was gone

As you may recall, for a long nine weeks,

But, you, my friends were always there,

To help, even before I had to speak.

I soon realized that I was in good hands

That I was surrounded by my village,

I can’t even tell you how grateful I was,

For my sanity, my children did try to pillage.

And it goes on from there...  

It really was the perfect summer evening with friends!  Going through this post makes me want to do it again!