Good "Pinspired" Eats

Hello friends! Just got back a few days ago from a little mini-vacation to my moms (5.5 hours away). My little monkey (who is almost 3 now, I can hardly believe it...) spent a week up at Gramma's and then together we spent another 4 days there when I went to pick him up. We did some visiting with friends and family as well as some other fun stuff like a visit to a petting zoo....

 And I also set up an Etsy shop for my mom. She's been doing craft shows for many years and I've been trying to get her to do an Etsy shop for over 2 years now (since before I even discovered my creative crafting side!). Now that I know a little more about it from having my own, I made it happen! She's got some really cute ornaments for Christmas, if you want to check it out! ;) lilbitscrafts.etsy.com



Yesterday the little monkey and I spent the whole day (minus a grocery store trip for me) at home and I tried out a couple of new recipe Pin's... Slow Cooker Enchilada Soup & Nutella Cookies.

Starting with the Slow Cooker Enchilada Soup....

Super easy and REALLY yummy.  My little monkey enjoyed it too.  I made a few small alterations from the original recipe so I'll just tell you what I did.

Drained / rinsed 1 can of black beans and put them in the slow cooker.
Poured 1 can of diced tomatoes on top of the beans.
Poured 1/2 bag of frozen corn on top of the black beans.
Sprinkled some dried minced onion (I'm not an onion or pepper fan so I go for the tiny dried stuff or powder rather than cutting up a fresh onion... if you like onion fresh onion and the peppers the original recipe called for, would be great I'm sure).
Placed my chicken breasts on top.

The original recipe calls for 10oz can of  enchilada sauce, but I only had a packet of seasoning on hand and a 8oz can of sauce so I mixed those together with the cream of chicken soup then whisked the milk in and poured it on top.

I cooked it on high for 4 hours, pulled out the chicken breasts and cut them up, then let it cook for about another hour.

The monkey and I ate it with dollops of sour cream and crushed tortilla chips mixed in... it was definitely YUMMY.

While our dinner was cooking and after nap time / tutu making time... we also made Nutella Cookies.  Some pinner down the line had noted on the pin not to add the sugar that was in the original recipe.  Good call in my opinion.  These are some of the simplest cookies to make and they sure are good if you are a fan of Nutella.   I discovered Aldi has a Hazelnut Spread, which is what I used.

The third food item we worked on yesterday was our third batch of Sourdough Bread.  About 6 weeks or so ago I made some Wild Yeast Sourdough Starter.  (From this pin)  It's still alive and well!  I now keep it in the re-fridge and feed it once a week when I take it out to make bread.

The bread recipe I follow is from this Pin.  Couldn't be much easier!  It takes a long time in that it has to sit for 18ish hours, but the time you have to actively work with is pretty minimal.


It's really good.  I found that to get a tall enough bread to make sandwich slices from I had to double my recipe because my covered dish (cast iron dutch oven) is pretty big in diameter.  But that's pretty easy too.

Fresh from the oven!

And slice with my husbands homemade strawberry jam...

Well, that's about it for what I've been up too!  Now to get working on tutus for the next craft show and a baby shower gift for this weekend!




I usually party at:

Food "Crafts": Multi Grain Bread

{Adapted from this Planner Perfect Meals post & an article in Countryside Magazine}

A few months ago I made my very first homemade hand kneaded bread.  I've made bread in a bread maker, and I've made "no knead" breads too, all with pretty good success.  But after reading an article in Countryside  Magazine (see above link) I decided to try it out.  It's a fair amount of work (although there are recipes that take less work than the Countryside article), but it turned out pretty darn good.  But as it turned out it was a little too much work for me to do on an absolute regular basis.  However, when I came accross the Planner Perfect Meal recipe, I was inspired to try it out.  With adaptations... and combining steps from the two breads, it turned out pretty darn awesome.  At least the Husband & I think so.

1 1/4 cups 7 grain cereal 
2 1/2 cups boiling water 

4 tbsp. honey
4 tbsp. melted butter 
2 1/2 tsp. yeast 
4 1/2 cups flour (combo of all purpose & wheat, though I imagine you could use all white or all wheat)
1/2 tbsp  to 1 tbsp. salt 
3/4 cup unsalted pumpkin or sunflower seeds
additional butter for coating bowl/bread
 rolled oats or quick oats

• Place cereal in your mixing bowl.  (you will be adding bowling water so I recommend a sturdy bowl) I recommend using a stand mixer with a dough hook  to start with at least, it saves you some kneading.  
• Boil water and then add to cereal mixture, stir and let cool until it is 100 degrees F or cooler.  
• Mix together  flour & salt. 
•  Activate yeast by warming a couple tablespoons of water to about 100 degrees F adding the yeast and leaving it sit for a few minutes. (possibly an unnecessary step but I do it anyway)
• Add honey, melted butter and yeast to the cereal mixture when it is the right temp and stir.  
• Add flour mixture to cereal mixture while stand mixer is on a low speed kneading.  
• Continue adding flour and kneading until dough ball forms.  
• Once dough ball forms continue kneading in stand mixer for about 10-15 minutes or at this point you could remove dough ball from mixer bowl onto lightly floured surface or into a bigger bowl to do the 10- 15 minutes of kneading.  
• If you are adding any seeds to your bread (hand) knead them in at this time as well.  
• Grease bowl lightly with butter and turn dough once to lightly coat dough ball with butter.
• Place on counter or table uncovered for a "long cool" rise between 1 hour & 1.5 hours. (dough should be doubled at this point) 
• Punch down (aka flatten) dough and allow to rise a second time for about 45 minutes to 1.25 hours. (again dough should double in size)
• During this second rise grease or spray two 9x5 loaf pans
• When second rise is complete, remove from bowl and shape into two "logs" rub with butter and roll in oats.
• Turn oven on to 350 degrees F.
• Place loaves in pans and allow to rise another 30 - 50 minutes (again until doubled in size).  
• Bake for 30 - 40 minutes.  
• Cool for just a few minutes in pan then remove to wire rack.  
• Enjoy!

Okay so some "notes" about this recipe...  First of all I failed at finding the correct 7 grain mixture and ended up using Bob's Red Mill Muesli and picking out most of the dried fruit and then putting it in the food processor to make the dried fruit that I missed, smaller (the muesli already had sunflower seeds in it so I got to skip the kneading in of the seeds).   
Second, (and I know there might be some cringes on this- but) I used margarine.  
Also I used 1/2 tbsp salt though the original recipe (both of them actually) called for more salt.  
And for flour I used more wheat than white, though I can't tell you my exact ratios. I actually used fine wheat flour, all purpose flour and a minor amount of course wheat flour.  
And really the bread was awesome even with all the odd tweaks.    I'm one of those bread bakers that will cut into it when it's just cool enough to cut a piece off.  I had to restrain myself from eating the whole loaf!