While today didn’t go quite as planned and was more annoying than necessary, any day that ends with the sweet and delicious taste of REAL Dr Pepper with Imperial Sugar can’t be all bad.

And, we are having S’Mores for dessert tonight. Or at least I am.

If you ever happen to be in my house or somewhere else where I am in charge of doing the cooking, and you hear me say I am going to “Iron Chef it!” … be prepared for something completely different created without following or even looking at a recipe. This usually happens when I notice a lot of odds and ends, bits and pieces of things, stacking up in the fridge and freezer. The end result is always interesting and edible, and sometimes it’s worth doing again.

Last night was just one of those occasions.

I knew I wanted to make something with the crab, and I knew I wanted to make something different, so quiche it was. There isn’t a recipe at all, but I can tell you what’s in it. I started by thawing some tater tots and crumbling them to make the bottom crust and top sprinkles. Then I tossed chopped broccoli, cauliflower and crab into a large bowl, to which I then added the last remains of every kind of grated cheese I had in the fridge (mostly mozzarella, Swiss, and Parmesan). In another bowl, beat the last two remaining eggs, added some milk, sour cream, and cream cheese … as well as garlic sea salt and pepper. The tater tot crust got baked until it was starting to turn crispy, the veggies were put on the crust, the egg mixture was poured on top, and the last of the tater tot bits sprinkled on top of all that. I baked it at 350ºF … until it was done. No idea how long that took. Maybe 30 minutes or so.

Totally yummy, and I am thrilled there are leftovers for dinner tonight!

I love just getting into the kitchen and throwing things together. I love it even more when the end results turns out to be something so tasty it begs to be made into an actual recipe other people can follow. I’ll have to make this again in a few weeks and pay attention to how much of what I am using, because seriously, this is worth making and not expensive. Quite filling too.

And now to get to the grocery store so I don’t have to Iron Chef it again tonight. I may love doing it, but I also like having an advance plan for what we are having for dinner.

Bread production is back in business! I think, with my current kitchen setup (no counters) and equipment (two large glass bowls and a variety of loaf pans), the most bread I could make in a day (when better rested than I am) is about 16 or so. If I had proper kitchen counters, more or larger bowls, and places to let bread cool that were cat free, I could probably make more than that. It’s going pretty quickly, once I get into the rhythm of it.

The initial 6 loaves are in the Box Room cooling, because they were still too warm and moist to wrap in plastic … and that’s the only cat-free place 6 loaves are guaranteed to go unmolested. It’s also the coldest room in the house. Almost as cold as it is outside right now. Should cool quickly in there! I need to get those cooled and packaged, because there are about to be 6 more loaves to do the same with! Even the Box Room doesn’t have enough flat space for 12 loaves of bread.

The kitchen will be a wreck once I am done, but I’m not going to even think about it until Saturday afternoon when I crawl out of bed. Though there aren’t going to be many dishes to wash, seeing as I am tossing the foil pans when done with them and I only have the two large glass bowls and a couple of utensils. Maybe I can at least deal with those before bed tonight. The flour coating everything will have to wait. I do not feel like wiping down everything and doing the floors on Xmas Eve.

The cats have been out of their minds all afternoon. They worked themselves into a total frenzy earlier and started fighting, and then … the puking began. Yes, that is just what I need while trying to bake bread. Cats puking all over the house! They seem to be settling down now and heading to the bedroom for their usual afternoon nap. Thank goodness, because all three of them have been unbearable today. The outdoor wild cats aren’t being much better either, as they are at the front door whining to be let in, which can’t happen. I have enough mayhem on my plate today. I do feel sorry for them being out in the cold wind, but they know how to get under the house, and it’s plenty warm under there, especially in the kitchen and laundry room areas. Just ask the resident possum!

Time to go poke the loaves rising in the pans and start on the next batch! Then the dip bowl and dip!

I think I could bake bread like this every day and never get grumpy about it. I love baking bread. So relaxing. The perfect thing to do before a stressful family Xmas trip!

I’m about half finished with the bread baking, but I needed to take a break and have some lunch … and do something other than hover over bread in various stages of preparation. Oh, I’m enjoying myself, but my mind is not designed to do any sort of really repetitive tasks. I start making mistakes if I don’t take some breaks.

Looks like I’ll end up having to make about four batches of bread in order to get what I need. Though it’s not necessary for all the loaves to look exactly the same, I want them to be, and there have been a couple of oddball loaves that rose unevenly. Still beautiful and tasty, but not identical! Whatever extras I have will be taken to the neighbors’ doors later today when everyone is home. I’ll be spreading the bread around!

Once I get done with the small loaves and they are all wrapped up in plastic and ready to go, I need to make the one large round loaf for the crab dip bowl. Since a whole batch will be too much for that loaf, I’m going to make a few pretzels with the leftover dough. What’s Xmas without pretzels? OK, maybe that’s not a tradition, but I think I’ll start it this year.

While I usually get up super early on Xmas morning to make the crab dip, I think I am going to throw it together tonight in the glass bowl it will bake in, and then in the morning, when the bread bowl has gotten nice and cool and crusty, I’ll bake the dip and pack it into the bowl. That’ll give me an extra hour or two to sleep in, which will be nice. We have to get up early enough anyway to hit the road to get to my cousin’s house.

The wind is just awful today! Seriously just gusting and blowing like crazy. When I get around to transplanting my poor broken tomato plants, I’ll have to drag them into the laundry room to work with them. It’s insane out there. How Lin and I are going to get the plastic over the garden beds in wind like this I do not know, but we have to do so, because it’s going to be getting very, very cold. I don’t want to lose anymore plants, especially since some of the stuff in the garden is starting to look like it’s doing well (finally).

As tired as I am and stressed out about getting everything done that needs to get done by tomorrow morning (the bread, the dip, tending the plants, and also taking a shower and making myself pretty), I’m actually starting to feel cheerful and in the holiday spirit. Maybe it’s the wonderful smell of fresh bread baking all day! The house truly does smell fabulous right now.

I suppose I should get back to the kitchen now and press onward. Much to do! Much to do!

You know how they always say that before beginning a big project that requires many components and an airtight time plan to make certain –well in advance– that you have everything you need to accomplish your goal of project completion? And you know how smart people do just that? Guess who apparently isn’t so smart?

I had to run to the store to get olive oil and three more foil baking pans, and this was after I had already started the first batch of bread –beyond the point of being able to just let it sit there– so I was on a tight time constraint to get there and back.

Amazingly, I made it to the store, got the things I needed (plus an extra bag of sugar, just to be safe), and got back to the house with enough time leftover to bring in the trash bin, check the tomato plants (windy again), and wash the bowls from the first batch of bread. Go me!

Well, “go me” for getting the trip to the store done quickly, but not so much “go me” for being so stupid as to not check the status of my project supplies.

Having another problem as well. The recipe I used the last time I made the whole family bread must have made more per batch, though I can’t imagine how since the ingredients are almost identical. The loaves, they are looking really small in the small foil loaf pans. Oh well. Take it or leave it. Grumble about it or not. Still going to be homemade bread and tasty with the sausages mom is bringing.

Chicken, broccoli, and mushroom casserole with chopped fresh veggies tossed with balsamic vinegar and garlic sea salt … on my new plates!

Updated … see below.

Oh. I just saw the newest juice-drink/soda tax commercial with that same woman in it whining about how the middle class just doesn’t need a new tax on our disgusting sugar water drinks. It’s going to break the middle class!!!

Does anyone think a few cents more for my weekly supply of Dr Pepper is going to break my budget? Does anyone think it will even make me stop buying it? Hardly. Not likely anyone else would even notice either. The prices at the grocery store fluctuate by some amount almost every week. Anyone who goes grocery shopping knows this.

And it’s not like juice-drinks (disgusting sugar water beverages with small tiny amount of fruit juice for flavoring) and sodas (sugar water with added chemicals) is some necessary and important part of any healthy diet or lifestyle. They aren’t exactly on the food pyramid, no matter what the labels try to tell you. There is no HFCS and water food group. If people drank less of them, it would be a good thing.

But no … the middle class won’t be able to pay their electric bill or feed their family if a few pennies are added to their disgusting sugar water purchases. These commercials are bloody ridiculous.

UPDATE: OK, I saw it again, and at the beginning of the commercial, the mom is all sad, because she has to tell her son he can’t buy some “interactive DVD game” –whatever the hell that is– because that damn soda tax has left them too broke. Times are tough! We need our soda and juice-drinks!

Oh, and they’d really like everyone to hear it as juice and drinks and soda that would be taxed. There’s a careful little pause when they say juice-drinks that almost makes it sound like two words. Well, that’s not true. The tax would be on soda and sodas pretending to have some nutritional value due to the four drops of apple juice and grape juice they put in each bottle.

Gods, how I hate theses ads.

The bread is out of the oven. I repeat … the bread is out of the oven.

OK, so my fear that it would be the ugliest loaf of bread ever didn’t come true. It’s not totally hideous, and the crust is gorgeous.

I had as much trouble getting it out of my makeshift Dutch oven as I did getting it in. Once I finally got it free, I remembered that the last time I did a super-hydrated bread in the Dutch oven, I didn’t dump it out and off the parchment paper, I just dropped it in with the parchment paper on the bottom, and it fell right out when it was done. Duh. Must make a note of that on the recipe card so I don’t forget that again.

The crust was rock hard when I pulled it out, and I was somewhat concerned about people breaking teeth while eating it, but now that it’s been sitting on the cooling rack for about 15 minutes under a cotton towel, the crust is getting softer. The loaf has a nice hollow sound when thumped, so I think it isn’t a brick either. I won’t know what it’s like on the inside for at least another hour, but I suspect I have once again pulled success from the jaws of failure.

Of course, who knows what it will taste like. It might be bland. Guess we’ll know tonight at dinner! I’m hoping it’s not bland. The flour is really tasty, so I don’t think it could possibly be too bland.

Even though it appears the bread turned out just fine, I have to say that working with super-hydrated bread dough^† is such a long and drawn out process, and it makes such a mess. The bread tends to be worth it, but I was so tired today, that having to deal with more than my usual “daily bread” recipe really grated on my last nerve.

But I am pretty sure my last nerve will get over it after I have a bite of that bread with some nice soft butter on it … and about 8 hours or more of sweet, sweet sleep.

Seriously, I need sleep. I need sleep now.

1. † Super-hydrated bread dough is equal amounts of water and flour, which is a lot of water for a bread dough. [↩]

It was time to dump the supposed gooey bread dough onto a flour covered work table, and so I did. I’m not sure if it will end up being bread, but I have certainly made a mess of the kitchen. There’s flour and wet bread dough everywhere. Ugh.

But the pile of dough is resting again –for about two hours– and then I have to decide if I am going to dump it into a loaf pan or get out the Dutch oven. I think I’ll use the Dutch oven. This is some seriously hydrated dough.

I hope it’s at least edible. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just edible. Perfect would be nice, but I may be asking for too much.

And now I need to go clean up the huge mess in the kitchen, do the dishes (again), and thaw the stew meat for dinner tonight … provided I have all the things I need to make stew. Somehow, my pantry seems to be lacking some of the basics. I screwed up when I did that unplanned big shopping trip from memory.

Maybe we’ll have shrimp and pasta tonight. I know I have shrimp, pasta, and cream of shrimp soup … and I’m bound to have some kind of veggie to go with it. Yeah, I think that’s what we’ll have. I’d hate to make a half-assed stew on top of making half-assed bread today. I can only tolerate one kitchen failure a day.

Last night’s pizza was extremely experimental. I decided to make the crust with 50% high gluten flour and 50% the new fresh-ground whole wheat flour from the Richardson Farm. I figured working with the new flour in that context would give me a feel for how much I need to modify my bread recipe to work with it. Pizza crust is very difficult to screw up. Even when they don’t turn out quite right, they are still edible. Maybe limp, maybe too stiff, but always edible.

It’s a good thing I decided to do that, because the new flour is WEIRD to work with, and getting it to rise is going to be a pain. Very dense, even at a 50/50 blend of flours. But, it relaxed well and rolled out very nicely, and it smelled divine! I could tell the chunks of wheat germ were cutting the gluten threads though, so my first stab at whole wheat bread will probably have to be a no-knead variety. Making anything other than pizza crust with this four is going to be tricky.

Once I got the crust rolled out and oiled, I set about putting on the sauce and goodies, except somehow I managed to leave the pantry entirely devoid of any canned tomato products. This happens sometimes when I don’t realize I have used my last can, and it doesn’t get put on the grocery list. Canned tomato products are on an aisle I only go down when I need canned tomato products, so I don’t get reminded at the store either. Ugh. What to do?

Well, I tossed a few cherry tomatoes, a handful of mushrooms, a few leaves of basil, a little garlic, and a good squirt of ketchup into my mini-blender and whizzed it together. It tasted OK, so I spread it on the crust and pressed on with tossing on the usual pizza toppings. I had no idea if it would turn out really tasty or not, but I had to have some kind of sauce on the pizza!

Amazingly, the pizza turned out really, really good. I asked Lin to be completely honest and tell me if there was anything about the pizza he didn’t like, and he declared it good. Yippee! The crust wasn’t as crispy as I like it, but it was a good solid crust that held up to the sauce and toppings without getting droopy or gooey. Also, the crust had flavor! I mean it had enough tasty flavor to it the crust could be tasted with all the other ingredients! It had a very nutty, wheaty flavor … like a Wheat Thins cracker. Quite yummy!

The experimental pizza that turned out to be more experimental than I planned (never change two aspects of a recipe at the same time – like both the crust and the sauce – things can go horribly wrong) turned out just as tasty as my usual pizzas, if not better. I think I’ll be using the new flour for pizza crust from now on and keep trying to improve its crispness.

After dinner and the dinner dishes are done, I think I’ll be mixing up a batch of no-knead bread to sit around the kitchen bubbling overnight. I’m not sure yet what ratio of the whole wheat flour I will use with the usual high gluten flour, but I want to get it pretty high so it will be extra tasty (and healthy). I hope it turns out when I bake it tomorrow, because we really need bread, which means if it doesn’t, I’ll be baking yet more bread tomorrow. I don’t really feel like baking bread all day tomorrow, though it does make the house smell nice.

And tonight for dinner? Frozen corndogs and french fries. Yes, it’s true. We don’t always eat freshly grown and chopped steamed veggies and carefully prepared cuts of free-range cows and pigs. Sometimes, I want a night off from the kitchen duties.

I snapped a photo of the Aguas Frescas y Mas that is now taking up entirely too much room in my grocery store’s produce department.

Since I know there are people who won’t know what the signs say, let me educate you:

Elote en Vaso is corn in a cup. No really, it’s corn in a cup upon which you can dump all manner of toppings like mayo, cheese, butter, cream, lime and so on. I’m a fan of Elote en Vaso with lime, butter and salt. Though I wouldn’t pay $1.99 for it unless it was a very large cup. Much cheaper to make at home.

Fresas con Crema is strawberries and cream. It’s not the sweet cream you might expect. It’s heavy cream and buttermilk with salt and pepper reduced down to a thick crema. Sometimes they also add lime or chili or some other spice.

Fruta Cortada is cut fruit. All the usual Mexican condiments can be added to it as well, including Crema.

Next time I am at the store, I’ll take photos of the other two sides and their menu boards for your further Mexican cuisine education. I might even buy something. Mexican fast food is tasty and healthy. Lots of fruit!