Indian lentil crackers

Although my experiment was a failure, I've definitely made some discoveries. Making papads or pappadam at home is interesting but I've found surprisingly little amount of information on how to make them fresh. You can buy them at the Indian grocery but my attempts to fry, or microwave the pre-packaged kind have always ended in smoke and tears.

Urad Dal flour (lentil flour- gluten free)
baking soda
salt
flavor (cumin, garlic, curry and chilis are all popular but you can add whatever you like)

Mix together reasonable amounts of each ingredient and add water to make a hard dough. This dough requires a lot of kneading. So knead it. Roll like your making a clay snake, then cut into small balls.

THEN <--- and here's where I messed up

Set them out to dry in the hot sun. So all I need to do is wait for some nice weather... in Oregon. Awesome. Once dries they'll last for approximately 6 months, you can top them like nachos too!

Left Over Chinese Food Fried Rice

I love going out to get Chinese family-style food because I always know I'm coming home with left overs. Well in my book, "left overs" is synonymous with "Surprise! Ingredients!". Yesterday in the thralls of being devastatingly ill, yes I was so very very sick, or at least I whined like I was...

Anyway! My sweet husband was kind enough to bring me pan-fried chicken from my favorite Chinese restaurant, and tonight I returned the favor by transforming the remains into fried rice.

I chopped up the remaining chicken into small cubes but removed the vegetables because by this time they are soggy and not so great. The rice was refrigerated, which actually makes it better for frying.

Here are my personal absolute essentials for making fried rice:

Rice (DUH)
green onion
Soy sauce
Vegetable oil
Sesame Seed oil
salt

(If adding eggs you'll need 2 eggs)

If you've got these in your kitchen, you're golden. Nonessentials include eggs, soybeans, carrot, and any spices or ingredients you might want to throw in.

Start by heating your vegetable oil on medium high in a wok or large frying pan. Add your salt and green onions NOTE: if you have any frozen veggies or frozen cooked shrimp etc. you should add them in now as well. I added frozen edamame (soybeans). Stir for about 1 minute. If you're adding eggs, you'll add 1 here, and scramble it. This gives you the tiny threads of egg you see in the restaurants. Then add your rice, soy sauce, and your second egg. The second egg helps bind the rice together. Toss for... I don't know, until you've cooked the eggs. Then splash with sesame seed oil and give it one final stir before serving immediately.

Super delicious! Super awesome! Super... not wastey...? It's SUPER.

Banana Cream Scones

Today I was making scones with my usual recipe and I spied an ancient box of Banana Cream Pudding mix in my cabinet. It seemed to say, "Go on, do it... I DARE YOU." Well no pudding mix challenges ME and gets away with it! HaHA!

Preheat oven to 425
2 C. Flour
4 Tsp. Baking Soda
3/4 Tsp. Salt
1/3 Sugar <---- I substituted half of this for pudding mix but in retrospect I should have added more.
5 Tbsp. Butter, cold, and cubed.
3/4 C. Cream

Mix the first 5 ingredients together until it is fine and crumbly. Add cream and mix just until it sticks together. Divide into 10-12 small scones or 6-8 large, however you like.
Bake until goldeney brown, small scones will cook much faster, about 8-10 minutes.

"I meant to do that" Peach Pancake Scramble

I didn't mess up, you guys just can't understand my genius. You see, it may appear that I attempted to make a buttermilk pancake in a pan far too small to accommodate it but I totally knew what I was doing!

You see, I chopped up some peaches for my lunch which turned out to be fairly under ripe so I cooked them in my smallest pan adding olive oil and cinnamon. Then I remembered that I had left over pancake batter I had made the morning before. So I poured this over my peaches, arranged quite nicely in the pan thinking this was a stupendous idea. Then I tried to turn it and history was made... quite messily. I've used this method before whilst making omelets. I ended up with a scrambled peach pancake that actually fit quite nicely into my lunch box. Much more travel friendly than a pancake or a crepe. You see? Genius. Sometimes I amaze myself!

Oh and if you need a little extra sweetness, drizzle a little maple syrup on while cooking and swish that around.

Maguyver No-Bake cookies

My husband wanted cookies last night but there was one problem. It's incredibly hot here in the summer I wasn't about to turn on the oven. So I had heard of "no bake" or "ice box" cookies before, are they different? I'll have to investigate. Anyway, I found a particularly popular recipe at allrecipes.com and set to work. Here is that original recipe:

• 2 cups white sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 pinch salt
• 1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
• 3 cups quick cooking oats

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the sugar, cocoa, milk and margarine. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Boil for 1 minute, then remove from heat and stir in the vanilla, salt, peanut butter and oats.
2. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto waxed paper. Allow cookies to cool for at least 1 hour. Store in an airtight container.

SUBMITTED BY: bybet2

My train of thought went as such...

"Two cups sugar!? Thats way too much, I'll add one cup... hmm no cocoa powder. But I do have hot chocolate mix! I have butter... vanilla... peanut butter? Hmm, all I have is almond butter. I think I'll add some coconut too."

Despite my absolute inability to properly follow a recipe these cookies turned out fantastic. My husband really liked them and so did I. I've been out of baking cocoa for quite some time but I keep subtituting hot chocolate mix or Ovaltine and it's hasn't blown up in my face yet. The coconut was especially delicious.

Almond Milk

I've recently delved into recreating Medieval recipes. Almond milk was a widely used substitute for cow and sheep milk which spoiled quickly. Not to mention nearly impossible if you didn't have livestock; buying animal milk was possible, but it was expensive and was often watered down.

I started by blanching the almonds, this process involves boiling them in a pot of water for no more than 90 seconds. Then I removed them immediately from heat, strained them, and doused the almonds in cold water. This allowed the brown top skin to loosen and it could be peeled quite easily. I can imagine this being a mindless process one would have done while sitting with others and gossiping or telling stories. I watched a movie, personally, but it was almost 1am so my options were limited.

Unfortunately my Medieval recipe book seems to have failed me because the next step asked me to put the almonds in a blender and liquefy. Now I'm not an authority of Medieval history but I'm fairly certain this wasn't the original method. In any case, I chopped the almonds finely, let them sit in the blender overnight in 2 cups-ish of filtered water and blended them in the morning. I think I could have blended them for longer than I did, approximately 10 seconds, but I have (and always have had) a terrible aversion to very loud noises. Happy Fourth of July, by the way. Once this was done, I strained the frothy liquid through a sieve and was surprised at how much it looked like milk!

It has an odd taste, very almondy but not savory nor sweet. It's the perfect base, however, you can add honey and cinnamon or garlic and rosemary depending on the recipe. I rendered a successful 1 Cup and 1/4 Almond milk, unfortunately I don't know what to do with it.

I had to share...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7huyzRGgLOQ