Enough Philosophy - Let's EAT!

All that driving just makes me so reflective and philosophical. Can you tell from my last four posts? LOL! So now something to "earth" me...baking. When you find your head in the clouds...baking is a wonderful way to balance yourself. My daughter did think I was a bit "nutty" for taking pictures of our bread but...it just looked so YUMMY I wanted to share it with everyone...

Tonight I noticed we had some Zataar sitting on the counter. You can find it at any Middle Eastern or African store or you can make your own with the following recipe:

Zaatar

1/2 cup excellent-quality Mediterranean thyme
1/4 cup sumaq
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons sesame seeds

DirectionsGrind the savory, sumac, salt and sesame seed in a spice grinder or clean coffee grinder until you obtain a fine powder. Keep in a sealed jar in a cool, dark and dry place.

This is one of my favorite spice mixtures in the world for the following reasons:

1. It tastes amazing!

2. It is one of the few healthy things that Sofi LOVES

3. The thyme in it helps clean parasites out of the system and kids love it so it is an easy way to cleanse the kids :)

4. The sesame seeds in it are high in vitamin E, which helps the skin stay young-looking and clear of blemishes. Vitamin E is also a wonderful anti-oxidant.

I could go on forever...but the short version of this is that "Zaatar Bread" is amazingly healthy (ww flour, olive oil and spices) and YUMMY!!!

Whenever I make Zataar bread I start with a pita bread recipe and I make half the recipe Zaatar bread and the other half regular pita bread. The instructions are below...

Pita Bread

3 cups ww flour

1 tsp. yeast

1 cup warm water

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. sugar

1 TBS. olive oil

Warm the flour. Dissolve the yeast in 1/2 cup of water. Add salt, sugar and remaining water. Stir yeast mix and 1 cup of the flour until it is a bit thick. Cover with a cloth and let sit for 15 minutes. Stir in the remaining flour, knead until smooth and turn into an oiled bowl. Let sit 1.5 hours until doubled (we went grocery shopping and left it on the counter).

To Make Zaatar Bread:

Punch down the dough and divide the portions into the size of a child's palm. Roll each portion into a "pancake". Let sit for 10 minutes.

Brush olive oil onto bread dough. Cover with Zaatar mix and squash the mix into the olive oil so it is mixed in with it.

Put into a 450 degree oven and bake on an oiled cookie sheet for 5-7 minutes.

Enjoy warm!

To Make Regular Pita Bread (with hollow inside!):

Punch down the dough and divide it into portions about the size of a child's palm. Roll each portion into a ball and let sit for 15 minutes (or up to one hour if you have somewhere to go). Cover with a damp cloth.

See how much they rise under the cloth?

After some time take the cloth off and roll each circle into a flat round "pancake". Let each of these sit for 20 minutes under a warm cloth.

Pop into the pre-heated 450 degree oven and let bake for 5 minutes on an oiled cookie sheet or baking stone.

Sharing our Waldorf Enrichment Day

Today we enjoyed donut making instead of the traditional bread to start off our week. The kids response? "Hey! Why didn't we do this yesterday and all those other days too?"

I enjoy making homemade donuts because we use olive oil in the dough instead of lard and whole wheat flour and all organic ingredients. We use canola oil for frying, which is not ideal but it is better than corn oil or who-knows-what oils they use in the shops! The kids love them and they are the only donuts I can eat without feeling ill :)

I probably already shared this recipe with you but this is my mom's old recipe that we used to make as kids...at that time we used a glass for the donut and a plastic curler to cut out the middle of the donut :)

Before we made donuts we told the story about Red Riding Hood bringing donuts to her grandma and about the little girl and her basket going to the market to sell donuts (another version of “Little Girl and the Milk Pail”)


Grandma’s Donuts (Recipe used in my family since 1934 or earlier)

1 TBS. Yeast
¼ cup water

¾ cup milk, scalded
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup organic pure dried cane juice (cane sugar)
1 tsp. Salt
1 egg
3 ½ - 3 ¾ cup flours (I use WW and a touch of white or other)

You can put all this in the bread machine – wet ingredients first, dry next and yeast last and press “make dough only” OR you can do the following:

Soften the yeast in the warm water
Combine milk, shortening, sugar and salt. Cool to lukewarm
Add one cup of the flour and beat well
Add softened yeast and egg. Mix well.
Add enough of the remaining flour to make a soft dough
Turn out on a lightly floured surface and kneed until smooth and satiny.
Place in a greased bowl and let rise of 1 ¼ hours or until double.
Punch down and let rise again until double.
Roll out the dough 1/3 inch thick (we did this in class)
Cut the dough into shapes and cut a hole in the middle (we did this in class)
Let rise about 30-40 minutes (we skipped this step in class, but if we did it the donuts would be more light and fluffy).
Fry in deep fry oil until slightly browned (375 degrees). Drain on paper towels.
While they are warm frost them with a simple glaze

SIMPLE ORANGE GLAZE (This is MY favorite but we did not do this one in class)

Add 1 tsp. Grated orange peel and 3 TBS. Orange juice to 2 cups sifted confectioners sugar (icing sugar)

SIMPLE VANILLA GLAZE

Add 1 tsp. Vanilla and 3 TBS. Milk to 2 cups of sifted confectioners (icing) sugar.

YOU CAN THEN ADD SPRINKLES OVER THE GLAZE! YUM!

Advent Cookies - How Many is Created from One

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Healing Kool-Aid?

The first time I had a cup of cold hibiscus tea I thought it was Kool-Aid. It was in Egypt and I asked my host "Where did you get Kool-aid in Egypt?" They just gave me a strange look...

But that single memory has remained my motivation for sharing this recipe with as many people as I can. This herb is so healing and so healthy and if it tastes like Kool-aid what kid would not LOVE to drink this? And the benefits are so many!

This morning I woke up with a sore throat and a fever and immmediately made myself some of this drink. It is perfect for my condition - soothing to the throat, cools the body down (in Egypt they use it to stay cool in the summer - here I use it for fevers and for hot flashes :)), and is very high in vitamin C! This is the perfect herb to use all winter.

I made my yummy healing drink by pouring 4 cups of hot water over 4 tsp. of dried hibiscus leaves (order online, or buy at any local health food, Arab or Indian store) and then letting it sit for 15 minutes and straining it. I drank mine warm with honey but I am saving the rest to give my kids as an afterschool snack - whenever ONE person in the house is sick I always give everyone the herbs so more people don't get sick too.

Enjoy!

9-in-one Holiday Cookies

This is my FAVORITE holiday cookie recipe. After you are done making the base dough there are instructions to make 8 different cookies and when you end it looks like you made 8 batches of cookies but you didn't! I make these every year now and I don't even bother with other kinds of cookies. Why make a thousand cookies over days and days if I can make one recipe and it LOOKS like I made thousands of cookies over days and days? This coming so soon after my "Easy Pumpkin Pie Recipe" will probably establish me as one of the laziest moms around...but really - I love to find recipes that are easy so my kids can help more and so I can have more time to do more things! And these cookies are so buttery and yummy! They are gourmet. Hint: the hardest part of this recipe is gathering all the ingredients. Make substitutions if you need to - don't stress yourself! And I have a 9th idea...how about taking a bit of the white dough and spliting it in half, adding a bit of peppermint and red food coloring to one half and then twisting those into "candy canes" - see? Now you have NINE cookies! Here it is (I got this from a magazine 12 years ago...not sure what the copyright limit is on magazine articles and I can't find it online so I apologize if I am stepping over any boundaries here...)

8-in-One Cookies

Basic Dough

4 sticks of butter (2 cups)
1 cup of light brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
2 lg. Eggs
2 tsp. Vanilla extract
4 ½ cups all-purpose flour

Beat all except flour until fluffy
Gradually beat in flour
Take ½ of the dough out to make chocolate dough by adding ¼ cup cocoa and ½ tsp. Vanilla.

Divy the dough into 4 parts each and add the following to them:

CHOCOLATE DOUGH divided into four parts makes:
Chocolate chunk
Hugs and kisses
Chocolate-marshamllow thumb-prints
Chocolate-vanilla spirals

VANILLA DOUGH divided into four parts makes:
Oatmeal/peanut butter cookies
Jam Thumb-prints
Apricot-pecan cookies
Chocolate-vanilla spirals

Oatmeal-peanut butter
1 part Vanilla dough
½ cup oats
¼ cup raisins
¼ cup creamy peanut butter

Jam Thumb Prints
1 portion vanilla dough
32 almond slices
1/3 cup apricot or raspberry jam

Roll Dough into 8 inch log
Slice into 16 pieces
Roll pieces into balls
Thumb-print balls
Put a small dab of jam and an almond in the “print”
Bake 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees



Apricot-Pecan
1 portion vanilla dough
¼ tsp. Ground cardamom
8 small dried apricots, diced
¼ cup chopped pecans

Mix cardamom and apricots into the dough
Roll and slice as in the jam prints
Put balls on greased cookie sheet
Bake 12-14 minutes

Chocolate Chunk
1 portion chocolate dough
¼ cup vanilla chips
¼ cup sliced almonds

Mix and bake as in recipes above 10-12 minutes in flattened balls.

Hugs and Kisses
1 portion chocolate dough

Roll as in jam thumb-prints.
Instead of jam put a “hugs and kisses” Hershey’s Kiss (The white and black ones) in the middle before baking 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Chocolate Marshamallow Thumb Prints
1 portion chocolate dough
small jar of marshamallow topping or small marshmallows

Roll Dough into 8 inch log
Slice into 16 pieces
Roll pieces into balls
Thumb-print balls
Put a small dab of marshmallow sauce or 2 small marshmallows in the print
Bake 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees


Chocolate-Vanilla Spirals
1 portion vanilla dough
1 portion chocolate dough

Roll out both doughs to approximately the same rectangular size.
Put the rectangles on top of each other and roll as if making cinnamon rolls
Slice into circlesBake on a tray for 10-12 minutes at 350

10-minute pumpkin pie!

Every year somebody asks me to publish this recipe again. Ever since I discovered it my kids don't even like the "regular" pumkin pie anymore! This is SOOOOO easy and tastes like a pumpkin pie with a thin crust - the recipe actually makes its own crust. Hope this helps your life be less hectic on Thanksgiving :)

Homemade "Bisquick"
3 cups flour (you can use a mix of whole wheat, oat, white flour, rice flour and other kinds of flour but the best results come from at least ½ the flour being wheat or spelt)
1/3 cup butter or oil (olive or sunflower are both fine)
2 TBS. Baking powder

Mix all this together with a pastry fork and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. You can make pancakes or waffles in minutes with this or the two recipes below¼


Homemade "Bisquick" Pumpkin Pie
(This REALLY tastes like pumpkin pie and it makes its own crust)

1 eggs
½ cup sugar
2 c. cream, tofu or condensed milk
¼ tsp. Cloves
½ tsp. Ginger
¼ tsp. Nutmeg
1 tsp. Cinnamon
1 ½ cups pumpkin (1 small can if using a can)½ cup Homemade Bisquick mix (see above)

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Alternatives to OTC Cold Meds

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