Wonderful Wheat Night

We had wonderful wheat night in our ward at my home on Thursday night. It was so much fun!! We learned how to make Amy's Wheat bread, which ask anyone there, is the best thing ever! And home made tortilla's from a few woman in our ward. Those two things alone were the highlight of the night! Thanks everyone who came! Here are the recipes for those of you who missed it!!

Amy's Wheat bread (Translation yummy, yummy!)

6 C warm/hot water

2 T yeast

1 T Sugar

2/3 C oil

2/3 C honey or sugar

2 T

2-12 C whole wheat flour

(You can easily substitute some wheat for white store flour)

*Put water in mixer, yeast and then sugar. Allow to set for a couple of minutes. Then add oil, honey mix a little, then add salt and a couple of cups of flour. Turn mixer on low and add flour until very, very gooey. Scrape sides of mixer and turn on high for 5 minutes (This is very important it's called sponging your dough and it makes your whole wheat bread taste and then texture far better!!!) Slowly add more flour. When dough pulls away from sides, this is a lose term, it's still very gooey and you would think how in the world am I going to knead that!!) Put oil in bottom of large bowl and around sides (Amy uses Veg. oil and a lot of it!) scrape the dough out into the kneading bowl and put oil on your hands and knead for a few minutes.

Then let is rise till slightly over the bowl (about an hour). Take our of and knead on counter with oil on it. Knead into long 4 loafs. Let rise till over edge of pan and bake 350 for 30 min. *

Flour Tortillas!!!

(We had experts teach us how to make them and we quickly realized that technique was EVERYTHING!)

2 C flour

1/2 t salt (heaping)

1/4 t. baking powder

1/4 C oil

2/3 C hot water

1 HOT frying pan

Mix ingredients in food processor. Mix until it all forms a ball of dough. Cover with a damp cloth and allow to rest of 15 min. Then knead the dough just a little and squeeze a ball of dough out from your fist. Take a little flour and smooth the ball of dough with your hand. Next place in on the counter and roll once in each direction, then turn half way and roll once in each direction again.

Then back and forth in your hands, flip the dough until it is even again and repeat rolling it with the rolling pin. Do this until desired thickness is reach, which should be pretty thin!!

Then place in on the HOT pan until cooked on both sides evenly. They are so good! But please, please don't over cook them!!! :)

I'm feeding company on food storage!!

I'm having friends over in just a few hours. I haven't had the best week, some of my kids woke up sick Monday morning, which threw my whole week off. I normally always shop on Tuesdays. But alas that did not happen. If fact it's Wednesday and I haven't even been to the store!!! I am having company tonight, so maybe you think I am a wreck. Nope, we've got plenty to eat in this house and plenty of options that are "company" worthy. And this is what I came up with for tonight!!

3 jars of Pergo

2 Lb. of Spaghetti

1 loaf of frozen bread dough that I made earlier this week

Minced garlic

Butter

Italian seasoning

Lettus from last weeks shopping trip

Tomatoes

Croutons

Salad dressing

I made spaghetti for dinner tonight, I am sure this is not a surprise to most of you that I came up with this from food storage, but I did come up with an amazing side we like to call cheese sticks. I make it from my bread dough and it's very difficult; no it's really not I am lying! Whenever I try out a new recipe my family looks at me blankly and asks, "Why didn't you just make cheese sticks?" Yep it's that good. And so easy. I froze some dough I made last week and let it thaw out today. By dinner time all I did was roll out the dough. In a cup I added,

4 T butter

1 T Italian seasoning

1 T minced garlic

2 cups cheese for the topping

I like to put cornmeal on the bottom of the dough so it doesn't stick!! Bake at 450 until golden and brown!! How easy is that!

Here is an easy way to make a beautiful drink on very little $$$. I store country time lemon aid in my food storage. I mix it up, add a lemon and a can of Sprite! I have honestly had more than a hand full of people ask we for my drink recipe!

AHHH . . . The Wonders of Bread

It's so yummy. In fact it's so yummy there are entire diets based off of avoiding bread . . . Therefore you know it's got to be good stuff. And who doesn't love a fresh slice with a good hunk of butter on it? (No one comes to mind at the moment).

Bread; there's a reason it's called the fruit of life. Because in the absents of nothing else it can keep you alive. Therefore years ago when I started my food storage I started here. Yep, right here with bread. I had to come up with a bread recipe that my family would eat. And because I am a simple person and a no no sense one at that, it had to be good for a loaf bread and including but not limited to toast, french toast, rolls, pizza crust, and generally anything you either buy a loaf of bread or the frozen rolls for from the store (But not cinnamon rolls, I don't like bready cinnamon rolls). It had to be good enough to mess up my kitchen to make and it also had to meet another major criteria; it HAD to use up some of all this crap I had been storing!!! So here you go. Reap the benefits of all the &*^%$ loafs of bread I made looking for and finally coming up this recipe. Happy eating!!

Ashlee's Bread

2 cups milk (Make it from that nasty dry stuff you store!)

1/2 cup sugar

2 heaping TB yeast

2 cup potato pearls or instant mashed potatoes

2 eggs

1/4 cup Crisco (Use that good old white lard!)

1 TB salt

6 1/2 cups flour

*Mix the milk, sugar and yeast together, let this sit in you kitchen aid, mixer or just a plan old large bowl, because there's nothing wrong with that either! Let it sit for 10 min. or better yet while you make your instant potatoes. Next add eggs, Crisco, salt and two cups of flour. Mix until combined into a gooey mess. Then add in the nice and warm boarder line hot instant potatoes. Then add in the rest of your flour.

Let this rise for about 35 to 40 min. And rise it will! It's going to rise quickly because of the warm potatoes. Nope, no waiting three hours here! (Three hours?! Who wants to make bread that has to rise three hours!) Punch it down and flour your work space, then make four pizza's, 32 rolls, or four loafs of bread. Whatever your fancy! Bake your rolls and bread at 350 but pizza at 400.

Foot Notes; Let me take a moment to tell you the hands down way to ruin any bread recipe is to add too much flour! Let me say that again! The best way to ruin your bread is to add too much flour!!! Cake batter dough is better than too much flour! I promise you will thank me for this after you taste a lighter than cloud loaf of bread. If your bread dough falls apart your flour is bad, if your yeast mixture doesn't look like it's growing your yeast is bad, if your bread taste not so good you forgot to add the salt. And for heaven sakes if it's too sticky add oil to your hands and table, but don't add flour!! Got the message! Good, now go make some **** good bread.

All Things Food...

I have an obsession. It's with food. I like it. Actually I love it. I love to buy it, I like to collect it, I like to hoard it, I like to cook with it, can it, freeze it, dry it, organize it and probably most of all EAT IT! My love of food is even safety conveyed in the invention of this blog and my ever expanding waist line!! I am telling you I have a problem. It makes me so happy to cook. I will even cook knowing I am making a hug mess that I have to clean up later, now that is saying something. I secretly wish I would be called to be the food storage expert in my ward, because I want to, I know I will never be. When Steven and I got married we read an article in the Ensign that talked about the importance of food storage. So we tried to do it. I bought a food safe plastic bucket and put a 20 lb bag of flour in it and that was the beginning of this. . .

I now have all my full year supply numbers completed! It does feel good. But to be honest it then created another problem of learning to cook with it all and mainly the half ton of red and white wheat I have in my house. But since I like to cook and especially bake, it has lead to a house full of cookies, rolls, pies, bread and dumplings! (Yep it made me a dumpling as well). Here are my rolls; I think they look a little better then they tastes so I am still working on them . . .

Needless to say I can now probably add cooking to the top of my list of favorite things to do in the kitchen!! (Hey it's more productive then my second favorite hobby . . . shopping.) As a side note, I can safely say there are two ways in which I would not like to die; being burn at the stake or starvation. Since I can control the later here is the extreme I feel necessary in order to make sure my last wishes are well known. So, happy eating from a new foodie on the blogs!