Beets with Béchamel sauce

This is a pretty easy dish you can make it ahead of time and put it in the oven at dinner time. 

2 tablespoons of butter melted

1 pound of beets sliced a quarter inch thick (partially cooked, either via baking or nuking). You can peel them if you prefer. 

1 1/4 cups of Béchamel sauce (recipe below) 

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease an ovenproof dish with butter. Arrange the beets in the prepared dish and drizzle with melted butter. Season with salt and spoon the béchamel sauce over the beets. 

Bake, covered, 25-30 minutes. Remove cover and bake another 5 minutes. 

Serve immediately. 

Béchamel sauce 

1/4 c butter

1/4 c flour

2-1/4 c milk

Pinch nutmeg

Salt and white pepper

Melt butter over medium heat. Remove from stove and whisk in flour to form a roux. 

Slowly stir in milk, combining until smooth. Stir in nutmeg and salt and pepper. 

Place back on heat and bring to a boil stirring constantly so as not to burn and to keep the flour incorporated. 

Lower heat to simmer and cover, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes. 

The sauce should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. 

The sauce is used for gratins soufflés and stuffings and can be used to make pasta sauces or put over poached eggs. 

It's also great over fish and vegetables. It is the base sauce to my macaroni and cheese. Or you can also lick it off the spoon all day long it's delicious. 

Béchamel Sauce

béchamel sauce 

The sauce is used for gratins soufflés and stuffings and can be used to make pasta sauces or put over poached eggs. It's also great over fish and vegetables. It is the base sauce to my macaroni and cheese. Or you can also lick it off the spoon all day long it's delicious. 

1/4 c butter

1/4 c flour

2-1/4 c milk

Pinch nutmeg

Salt and white pepper

Melt butter over medium heat. Remove from stove and whisk in flour to form a roux. 

Slowly stir in milk, combining until smooth. Stir in nutmeg and salt and pepper. 

Place back on heat and bring to a boil stirring constantly so as not to burn and to keep the flour incorporated. 

Lower heat to simmer and cover, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes. 

The sauce should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. 

Bologna Sushi (appetizer with pickles, cream cheese and bologna)

I've been making this for years with all kinda of lunchmeat but the term I give it is "bologna sushi."

Bologna is such a fun word. I love to randomly say "it smells like bologna (baloney) in here". 

Heres all ya do: 

Spread it with cream cheese, and roll it around a pickle and slice. It's that easy. 

It sits in the fridge well overnight. 

They make great appetizers. 

Drain and dry the pickles slightly for better adherence. 

Using a whole pickle...and a whole pickle cut in half. 

My teddy bear picnic lunch at work tomorrow. 

Grapes, banana, bologna sushi, club crackers, cheese cubes, buttered rye bread, Spicy slaw (Kim chi), milk and lemon water. 

Honey Bagels. Easy to make and contain no yoga mat material.

Bagels are rather easy to make. My sister-in-law makes them in her bread machine it mixes, kneads and rises in there for her. I got rid of my bread machine because I had too many appliances and something had to go.

I make mine in the stand mixer. It does all of the mixing and kneading for me. Then I transferred to a bowl to rise. 

You can add almost any addition you like. I prefer spinach bagels and the bagelry is almost always sold out of them by the time I get there. 

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups water

4 1/2 cups all purpose flour

6 tablespoons honey

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons coconut oil or vegetable oil

1 tablespoon instant yeast

Add ins:

Chopped spinach. I used 1cup frozen (processed fine in the food processor) and slightly adjusted the water to under the 1 1/4 Mark. 

Or

1 tablespoon cinnamon 1 cup raisins

Or

Whatever you like in your bagels. 

4 quarts water
1 Tbsp Baking soda (this is optional and not part of the original recipe, gives a nicer shine and browning)

Combined 1 1/4 cup water, flour, sugar, one teaspoon salt, coconut oil, and yeast in a mixing bowl of a stand mixer. Also throw in your ad inns here. 

Using the dough hook mix on low speed or speed two of a KitchenAid mixer, for about eight minutes. When it's done you should be able to tear off a small piece and pull it and it look like a translucent windowpane. 

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl cover with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and let rise for two hours. 

Punch the dough down place it on a lightly floured work surface and using a dough scraper divided into pieces. This will make about six normal size bagels, or as I prefer, 10 to 12 small bagels. 

Stretch each piece into a sausage shape and join the ends to form a circle laying it on a floured surface to rest for 15 minutes. 

Preheat oven to 475° F. 

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or, as I do, just lightly dust your baking stone w cornmeal if you're using a baking stone. 

Bring about 4 quarts of water and baking soda to a boil in a large pot. Boil the bagels two or three at a time until they rise to the surface of the pot, about one minute. Flip it over and boil another minute. Remove the bagels with a slotted spoon and place them on the baking sheet. 

Here you can get the bagels water wet into toppings like sesame seeds, poppyseeds, space dried onion flakes, space coarse salt, space or whatever you like. 

Bake in preheated oven until the bagels begin to brown 15 to 20 minutes. I put mine in for more like 25, watching them do they didn't burn. 

Citrus blueberry cake

I found this recipe on the facebook and tweaked it a little. It was originally called lemon blueberry BREAD but it's more of a cake.

'Tastes delicious and it was quick to whip up.

Requires cooling time before icing. 

I might change up the fruits and nuts and make it with almonds and strawberries as soon as they are in season. 

Citrus Blueberry Cake


1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons lemon juice (or orange or lime)
2 eggs
1 tsp almond extract


1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk

2 tablespoons grated lemon zest
1/2 cup chopped walnuts optional
1 cup frozen blueberries

GLAZE
3 tablespoons lemon juice (or orange or lime)
1 tablespoon butter melted
1 cup confectioners sugar

In a mixing bowl, beat together butter, 1 cup sugar, juice and eggs. Combine flour, baking powder and salt; stir into egg mixture alternately with milk. Fold in lemon zest, nuts, and blueberries.
Pour batter into greased loaf pan.

Bake at 350 for 60 to 70 minutes.

Let cool completely. Turn out of pan and drizzle with the glaze.

GLAZE
Combine all ingredients mix well. Drizzle over cooled bread.

Slice. 

Pinterest Challenge

I borrowed this pic from Pinterest to head off my challenge to my Pinterest friends. 

We pin things on Pinterest but how many do we actually do?  Some of us make a recipe or craft on occasion. Our lives are busy, yes. 

Learning new things helps to keep you young. 

Challenge yourself to attempt one of your pins once a month (bi- weekly, weekly, whatever you can make time for). At least once a month is doable for most of us. 

Craft, recipe, garden idea, etc. pick one. Pick one and start planning it out this weekend. 

It is a fun learning experience.  If you get lost partway through, look for similar projects on you tube for more guidance. 

Feel free to post your project results on my Facebook page. If love to see what  everyone is up to and sharing results could spark people interest. 

While we are on the subject of challenges and staying young. Get outside and jump rope or hoola hoop. Jump in some mud puddles. It's fun and feels good.  Don't forget to keep your body young and healthy. 

Milk Kefir DIY Simple

After running to every health food store within a 50 mile radius, I decided to bite the bullet and order a kefir culture through the mail. Be careful what you buy. The box type doesn't regrow.

I was tired of running 20 miles to the nearest store that sold ready made plain kefir. The crap at the grocery store is flavored with unappetizing additives.

When my kefir arrived in the mailbox, it was in a padded envelope that had been crushed. I opened it and the poor little bacteria looked like mashed cauliflower. It was in a little zippy bag. 

The kids named it Gary Busey. Don't ask, but that's what I'm calling it. 

I had to run to the store to get it pasteurized organic milk because the raw milk we have has a good bacteria in it that would fight with the kefir, which is weak right now from shipping. After a few overnight baths in a pasteurized organic milk, we can go ahead and feed it raw milk. 

Day 1

The directions have me put it in a glass jar ( don't use metal) and cover it with milk. Then I put a coffee filter on it and rubber band it. I don't have any rubber bands, how about a stone stretchy bracelet. 

Now I'm going to strain it (in a plastic strainer or w a wooden slotted spoon or a cheese cloth. (remember no metal). I used cheese cloth. 

I will do this two or three times to get it healthy and growing before I want to drink the milk. 

Then, as my culture grows, I can make big batches or give some of the culture to a friend. That way, should mine ever die, I can get some back from them. 

Day 4

Gary definitely needs more milk. It was thick today. He's getting a 2 cup bath today. 

I stuck my finger in it and it's delicious. I added the, shall we say" thick byproduct to the vitamix w a carrot, a banana, a mandarin orange and some raw milk and made a delicious shake out if it. We loved it. I can't wait to have more. 

Day 6

I let it set two days, in rawmilk. I didn't use a combination of raw organic and pasteurize organic this time. I want to get away from the pasteurized. After reading a few books and watching some YouTube videos I'm seeing that you don't need the pasteurized. 

Living and learning every day. 

I also see people who use their fingers and dump it out to into a baking dish to find the culture. It makes it so easy to find. I washed my hands and it's my kefir, so I not worried about touching it. 

Who knows the lady I bought it from May have touched it. The bacteria will take care of that. 

I drank some plain, bubbled up in the blender this am and them decided to try it blended w a tablespoon of honey (6 oz kefir). It's pretty good. 

Anyway, Gary is about two weeks old now, we are up to making four cups a batch, basically daily, sometimes we let it sit 2 days, and we are drowning in kefir now, which isn't a problem. 

Feel free to run it through the vitamix if you don't like clumps. It gets bubbly and frothy. So delicious.

A great book on fermentation with a informative section on kefir is Wild Fermentation by Sandar Ellix Katz. It discloses the history of kefir and tara (a Tibetan culture). The kefir story is full of intrigue and thanks to a Young Russian woman named Irina Sakharova who freed it to society from a Caucasus prince. It was never shared before that time.  (A good read). It remains a very popular drink in Russia. 

There are numerous videos inline. Here are just a few. 

http://youtu.be/xlZrlm9tsrw

http://youtu.be/Yr5F3lT8dmE

http://youtu.be/bM9ubujwsOM