Bread Machine Action

Yesterday I loaded ingredients into my bread-making machine, and then about 3 and 1/2 hours later - BREAD!




Hey, I geek like me will make bread using a microprocessor-controlled gadget like this. After all, we don't live on bread alone.








Bread flour mix, yeast, and water. Simple & easy. This is an Italian herb bread mix.

















First, water is put in at around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That's around 27 degrees Celsius I believe. Second, bread flour mix on top of the water. Third, yeast on top of bread flour mix.


Then just start the engine.







This loaf came out great - filled up almost the whole chamber. Crusty on the outside, soft & delicious on the inside.
















DEEEE-LISH!!!




This was great. More bread machine mixes will follow. Plus I've found some websites with bread machine recipes.

Tomato Time

Tomato Time!!!



I finally got some good tomatoes out of the garden. Woo Hoo!!!

These are some of the smallest beefsteak tomatoes I've grown. However, they taste just as great as any I've ever grown, so I'm happy.







Home-grown tomatoes usually taste better than store-bought, and this is no exception.

Sweet and tomato-y tasting. Tender as well, not those tough textures from lesser tomatoes.

I was wondering if I'd get any tomatoes at all this year, with all the rain we've had, and not a lot of sunny days. So far, so good. Looks like there are more in the garden just waiting to ripen.

PASTA!!!! Cookbook

A recently aquired pasta cookbook - I'll have to get this first picture rotated somehow.

Quite an interesting book. I'm learning how pasta is made, which is good, since I eat pasta all the time.

Plus lots of pictures. Hey, my kinda book!

Pasta, Risoto, Rice.

Fresh pasta vs. dried.

How to make ravioli.

Lasagna.

One of my favorite types of pasta is anything with tomato or green stuff in it. The tri-colored pastas have been a favorite of mine.

Well, this is going to take some time to read and digest...

Oh, and follow your dreams.

A Pasta Recipe And A Little Olympic Humor

Today I thought I'd share a nice little video of a chef who has a video on his blog:

http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/

Here's the video of an easy-to-make pasta recipe. He also throws in some Olympic 'updates' throughout the video.

http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2009/03/obvious-benefits-of-very-high-carb-diet.html

It's the Olympic Freestyle Pasta video.

Oh, and follow your dreams.

Tortelloni

Here's a dish I've had out at restaurants before. I decided to try cooking some on my own. I got the ready-to-boil pack at Wegman's. Just my style of cooking.

Pork, Prosciutto & Parmesian.

It came out pretty good. I used Chef's brand pasta sauce. Not bad for a jar sauce, but still a jar sauce.

I think I'll be making this again using a homemade sauce.

I think I'll be making anything hot today - woke up to -6 degrees (fahrenheit) - nice.

PEEETSAAAHHH

Yesterday I made some homemade pizza. It was absolutely great. I used some fresh WHOLE WHEAT pizza dough (trying to make this healthy & wholesome), some pizza sauce (which had to be enriched with basil and oregeno before it smelled like pizza sauce), some shredded mozzarella cheeze, and some pepperoni.

It was so good I was ready to call Chef Ramsey on the phone and say "<<<>>> Top this you <<>>> in chef wanna-be!!!


But I knew he was probably too busy to talk to me so I didn't bother.


Also, if you look at the pictures closely, you can see I shop at Wegman's.


I'm glad I made this. I made this as I watched Monday night football, and watched the Buffalo Bills lose an absolutely critical Must-Win game. At least the pizza was great.