And more cooking

I had roasted a chicken last week, so yesterday afternoon I took the bones (and the meat that remained on them) and threw them in a pot with a bunch of (low sodium) chicken broth, an onion, and some Herbes de Provence seasoning. Cooked it down for a couple of hours, pulled it off the heat to let it cool, picked the remaining meat off the bones.

I might make chicken and dumplings later on this week, I don't know. (The kind I make has "dumplings" as sort of a wet biscuit that's cooked on top of the stew. I know in some parts of the country, "dumplings" are just large egg noodles. Or some places do "dumpling squares," which are big squares typically made of noodle dough. I've even had "chicken and dumplings" where the dumplings were piecrust, sort of like a savory cobbler. (Actually, that's not too bad. It's not the chicken and dumplings *I* know, but it's still good - it's more like chicken pot pie).

I also don't put vegetables in mine. Some people do; I've seen it with canned peas and carrots (ugh) in it. I don't know, I'd rather have my vegetables separate and on the side. (And anyway, there's that food intolerance to carrots).

I'm the same way about most sandwiches: if I'm going to eat lettuce with a sandwich, I want it as a proper salad on the side and not some leaf, or worse, shreds of lettuce (which for some reason always make me gag), put on top of the hamburger or whatever. And okay, there are a few sandwiches where lettuce (but leaf lettuce, not shredded iceberg) improves it, but not most sandwiches and, IMHO, not a hot sandwich like a hamburger.



I also baked a loaf of bread. Once again, as always when I do this, I ask myself "Why don't you do this more often?" It only took about 2 1/2 hours, and most of that was "uninvolved" time while the bread was rising. I used the "Farmhouse White Bread" recipe from this book. I did cut back on the salt which was probably a mistake - 1/2 teaspoon of salt (what it called for ) is not much for 3 cups of flour (it's far, far less than commercial bread). I used a lot less and the bread came out tasting a little flat. Well, live and learn. Also, next time I am going to take the little piece of advice "for richer tasting bread" and add in some dry milk, or maybe use canned milk as part of the liquid in it. My mother tells me that "everybody" used canned evaporated milk in bread calling for milk when she was a kid - that may have been partly to avoid having to scald raw milk (raw milk contains an enzyme that interferes with yeast, I guess) and also, for people who still used iceboxes and didn't drink much milk, it meant you didn't have to keep the fresh kind on hand. (My mom grew up in a rural area and until she was 6 or 7, I think people there still used iceboxes. They had electricity, but refrigerators were expensive. Also, some remote areas, despite the rural electrification plan of the 1930s maybe didn't have reliable electricity until later on.)

I often use evaporated milk to make "cream" soups.

I make the single-loaf (small) recipe. I know it's probably more efficient to make multiple loaves but right now my freezer is full (partly frozen vegetables but also a lot of those frozen Bertolli desserts, which make a nice treat and really aren't any worse for you than a lot of sweet things) and I couldn't easily freeze an extra loaf. And I'm doing well if I use a loaf up in a week. (I refrigerate my bread even though "everyone" tells you not to, because otherwise it goes moldy before I can finish it. I know slicing and freezing is considered superior but my freezer is too full...)

Bread is fun. I know it's a lot of work and is kind of superfluous for most people (though for people like me, who need to avoid a common ingredient in most grocery-store bread, it is nice to be able to make your own). You can do so many different things - sub in some wholegrain flour, change the kind or amount of sweetener (next time, I might use honey, and use more of it, when I make the 'farmhouse' bread). You can even take plain bread and add raisins or a cinnamon swirl in the center. Sometimes my mom would make sweet rolls using plain old bread dough, and they were pretty good. (That is actually a reason do do the double batch that makes two loaves: make a loaf of bread and a pan of rolls)

I grew up eating homemade bread. My mom baked all (or almost all) of our bread. I'm not quite sure why; I don't know if it was an attempt to save money (it's probably still cheaper to bake your own bread, especially if you're comparing on the basis of quality - the most cheap-o spongey bread sold by the grocery store is probably cheaper than baking your own, but it's not that good. Comparing homemade bread to bakery or "artisan" bread is probably a fairer comparison, and in that case, homemade bread is cheaper, even using more expensive ingredients like the King Arthur Flour that I prefer.)

It may also have been a desire to occupy her time - my mom is one of those "can't just sit and do nothing" people. And she didn't work outside the home when my brother and I were growing up, so she found things to do - baking bread, having a huge garden. That those things saved money for us was a plus. Also, I suppose homebaked bread, especially back then, was better for you (in terms of not having weird additives) than grocery store bread was.

I may think about working some breadbaking time in either every other weekend or every weekend, depending on how fast I use the loaves up.