My new playtoy

Update 9/26/2011 - I love this jar sealer.  I now always buy my lettuce in bulk at costco, bring it home, chop it and put it in the jars.  Makes meal time so much quicker and makes me more likely to eat salad.  I also seal my brown sugar (keeps it from going hard) my brown rice (hoping this keeps it from going rancid since I bought 25 lbs - it is not something I normally store because when it gets old it is bad.)  Same for nuts - I have pecans, walnuts and almonds that got to move out of the fridge opening up a lot of space there.   I also have some other grains that are prone to get bugs in them stored in jars.  Then there are the mixes I have stored in there -a taco seasoning that I made, a veggie mix of dehydrated veggies.....  Very useful toy tool.

Update: - The spinach didn't work so well, and it kind of ruined the salad.  It got all wet and mushy.  I'm trying again this week with just spinach and just salad (seperate jars) and tried to dry the salad a little better.  Will post results next week. I've also tried chopping some bell peppers and shredding some carrots - in other smaller jars.  Will post how that goes as well.

So I finally broke down and bought a foodsaver the other day.  Then I got a wide mouth jar lid attachment.  Totally my new favorite toy.  A friend of mine told me about this salad in a jar blog, so I had to try it.  I already buy the spinach in the huge bag at costco hoping I'll make green smoothies out of it, but inevitably (every time but 1 I think) I end up tossing a good portion of the bag.  I'll never buy the lettuce because I know it will go bad.  However, with the foodsaver at home, I bought both the huge bag of spinach, and the 6 romaine hearts and turned it into this.

So far so good.  I've used a couple on Cafe Rio pork salad  that we had yesterday and the day before.  I have to say it was so nice to have the lettuce/spinach mix all ready and just have to pop the top.  I made a bunch of lettuce/spinach mixes for salads and then a few pure spinach for smoothies.  Hopefully that will cut down on my waste.  

I also packed my nuts in these and took them out of the fridge - Yea, more fridge space.  I now need to go and pack my brown rice.  :)  Like I said, my new favorite toy.

Ian's Monster Muffins, kitchen gadgets

I tried these muffins out of my cookbook that came with my new bosch.  I didn't care for them, but am posting them to talk about my bosch, and my cute flower pot muffin holders. I'm also writing myself some suggestions for next time.  These were a healthy muffin, flax, whole wheat and rolled oats with applesauce, banana, dried cranberries, and raisins.  Definitely good for you, but they were just plain in the flavor department.  Had a banana flavor but lacked something.  (Ideas, more sweetener, a little almond extract, and/or more cinnamon would make these better.  I'd like to see them taste more like a banana bread.)

Here is why they were fun - I ground my own flax in my blender - love that this blender is that strong.  I don't have to buy flax meal again, and I do use that in one of my waffle recipes.  I also ground my own wheat in my wondermill, and rolled my oats in my marga grain press.  I love it when I can to that.  Somehow it just makes me proud.

These were to be made as monster muffins, and I don't have a large muffin tin, but I do have these cute little flower pots.  I really like them.  They cook nicely, and the food comes right out of them.  I found them at an outlet mall long ago and originally bought them because I had a recipe for bread in a flower pot or something. I would make bread, then crochet a flower, put it on a wooden skewer, stick it in the bread, transfered to a real flower pot and give them as gifts.  Fun.  I haven't done that probably since I had kids, but it was fun when I did.  (Maybe I should try it again.)  Anyway, that is how I ended up with the flower pots, but I really like them.  I have 2 sizes, a large muffin and a small bread.  I had more dough than fit in my 6 muffin pots, so I ended up using a bread pt as well.  You can't really tell the difference well in the picture though.  The empty pot is actually larger.

cutting mats

There are just some products I really like in my kitchen. as I was chopping stuff for stroganoff the other day, I thought about how much I like these cutting mats, so I took a picture of them. I have 4 big ones and 2 little. One for veggies, one for red meat, one for chicken, one for fish, and actually 2 tiny ones for nuts or cheese. All but the tiny ones have cute pictures on them so you know what they are for. You can keep things seperate, you can curl them up to funnel things into a pot of bowl, and then throw them into the dishwasher to clean them. (This is actually my favorite thing about them.) They can curl, but I don't really have trouble with them staying put while I cut, so I like them. Just thought I'd share.  They are convenient.
  

Dough scrapers

These are another tool I really like that I didn't start using until semi-recently. I decided to write about them because the green scraper was the only thing that helped me scoop the roll dough into the muffin tins today. I learned about dough scrapers at a bread class I went to about 8 months ago or so. I learned how to knead bread by hand using a dough scraper in 1 hand and kneading with the other. I like that, so I decided to get one. However, I couldn't find 1 like the 1 I used in the class, and there were 2 I couldn't decide between online. I ended up buying both, and I like both for different reasons.

I have this oxo scraper. I really like it for kneading bread, and scraping my counters clean. It is also easier to see the numbers on this one and measure things like width of dough you are rolling out or the width of a pita. It can actually also chop things so it is a nice multipurpose tool. I use it to chop dough into pieces, and Benjamin uses it as his chopper to help me dice veggies somedays.
I also have this green isi scraper. It is not as handy to cut things because it is encased in plastic, but it does cut. It is also not as handy to measure with because the number 1 is above the notch and so it is hard to use. However, it is very handy for scraping bowls, and it can cut through dough - just not as well as the other one. This tool really helped me make rolls today because I could scrape the dough with the tool, then use it to cut off a piece just by pushing it against the side of the bowl.

Nutty whole grain waffles

This is the recipe out of the book that came with my new waffle iron. I have had a cheap round waffle maker since I got married, and it finally bit the dust about a month ago. It has been a great waffle iron for as cheap of a model as it was, but I wanted something nicer now that we were getting a new one. I also wanted square so that they could be easily heated in the toaster. I ended up buying a Calphalon. I've only used it the once, but I love it. It beeps when it is ready, I can set the amount of browning I want, and it beeps when it is done. Although somehow on the very first waffle it didn't manage to beep. (or more likely I didn't manage to hear it. I left it in thinking the little light would continue to go up on the darkness meter, but it didn't and I ended up with a pretty crispy waffle. Luckily Tavio loved it that way.) The recipe was good. I just like my other waffle recipe better. This recipe also had a berry topping which I didn't try. (I guess I ought to it looks good.) The picture has a burned waffle, and a nice medium waffle. I also thought it a bit odd that the recipe makes about 3 cups of batter since the waffle maker uses 2 cups for 1 batch. Tavio only ate 2 pieces and was full. I'm happy because it is much quicker to make them that way. It find it to be a cross between a Belgian and regular waffle. I think the holes are deeper than normal, but not as deep as a Belgian. I also think the spaces between the wholes are a lot wider than a Belgian making it a heartier waffle. I like that for the filling up the kids factor.



Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup quick cooking oats
• 1 Tablespoon yellow corn meal
• 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon satl
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup plain low fat yogurt (I used sour cream because that is what I had)
• 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten

Directions

In a large bowl combine the dry ingredients. In another bowl combine the wet ingredients. Add the wet to the dry and stir until thick and smooth. Bake in waffle iron.