As far as snacks go, this was so time consuming with little reward (remember the zucchini chips?) that it makes me almost want to buy a food dehydrator. I doubt I'll ever use fresh mushrooms this way again. It's no wonder all the mushroom jerky recipes call for those large portobello mushrooms. The mushroom slices shrink by more than half, which is why you'd want to use the largest mushrooms as possible. I, however, did not have portobello mushrooms and used fresh shitake mushrooms instead. Recipe ratio comes from Food52.
Ingredients
2 tbsp low sodium tamari soy sauce
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp ground chili powder
x large or medium portobello mushrooms
Directions
Slice mushrooms to 1/4" thickness. Add to marinade. Refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.
Preheat oven to 250 F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Arrange mushroom slices on the sheets.
Bake for 1.5 to 2 hours, or until the pieces have shrunken and are dried out. You could flip the slices at the midway time mark, but I didn't bother.
Certainly flavorful and I ate half before I stored the rest in the fridge.
As a snack food, this is a waste of time for so few calories.
I added the remainder of the finished batch to a soup and it was delicious.
Restaurant Style Salsa
Ever since finding this recipe ratio on the internet, it has been my go-to quick salsa for chips, nachos, tacos, and potlucks. It is so easy to prepare (with a food processor) that I have canned fewer jars of salsa this year; only a half batch of hatch chile salsa. But, this recipe doesn't require hatch chiles at all. I usually use one bunch of cilantro, leafy green parts only; and this is significantly more volume than the half cup the recipe calls for. If you want the cilantro to be finer, roughly chop with a knife before adding to the food processor.
Ingredients
Two 14.5 oz cans of roasted diced tomatoes w/ green chiles
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
2 green jalapenos, halved and seeds removed
1/4 tsp organic granulated sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 c fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1/2 lime, juiced
Directions
Pulse together in a the bowl of a food processor with the sharp/serrated blade: all the ingredients.
Refrigerate for an hour before serving to let the flavors mingle together.
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| TheFoodening Blog - Restaurant Style Salsa |
Two 14.5 oz cans of roasted diced tomatoes w/ green chiles
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
2 green jalapenos, halved and seeds removed
1/4 tsp organic granulated sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 c fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1/2 lime, juiced
Directions
Pulse together in a the bowl of a food processor with the sharp/serrated blade: all the ingredients.
Refrigerate for an hour before serving to let the flavors mingle together.
Slow Cooker Minestrone
I suppose it is possible to overcook the vegetables on this, though it wouldn't be any worse than reheating the soup. If you are going to add some type of pasta to this, I suggest cooking the pasta separately, then adding cooked pasta to the serving bowl. There is a lot of flexibility as to what goes into this vegetable soup; though most notably it's root vegetables + beans + pasta.
Ingredients
1.5 quarts vegetable/chicken/beef broth
Two 14.5 oz cans of diced/crushed/whole tomatoes
One 15 oz can beans (cannelini or white/red kidney beans)
2 organic carrots, diced
2 organic celery ribs, diced
1 zucchini, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced or finely chopped
1 cup green beans, fresh or frozen (optional)
1 lb fresh spinach leaves (optional)
Spices
1 tbsp fresh or dried parsley
1.5 tsp fresh or dried oregano
1 tsp fresh or dried thyme
sea salt, to taste (about 1 tsp)
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Pasta
1/2 c macaroni, fusili, or other small shaped pasta, cooked separately
Directions
Add broth, vegetables (except the spinach), beans, and spices to the slow cooker. Cook on low for 8 hours.
Cook macaroni or fusili pasta separately. Drain. Set aside until ready to eat.
Add spinach leaves and cooked pasta to crockpot at least 20 minutes before serving.
Ingredients
1.5 quarts vegetable/chicken/beef broth
Two 14.5 oz cans of diced/crushed/whole tomatoes
One 15 oz can beans (cannelini or white/red kidney beans)
2 organic carrots, diced
2 organic celery ribs, diced
1 zucchini, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced or finely chopped
1 cup green beans, fresh or frozen (optional)
1 lb fresh spinach leaves (optional)
Spices
1 tbsp fresh or dried parsley
1.5 tsp fresh or dried oregano
1 tsp fresh or dried thyme
sea salt, to taste (about 1 tsp)
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Pasta
1/2 c macaroni, fusili, or other small shaped pasta, cooked separately
Directions
Add broth, vegetables (except the spinach), beans, and spices to the slow cooker. Cook on low for 8 hours.
Cook macaroni or fusili pasta separately. Drain. Set aside until ready to eat.
Add spinach leaves and cooked pasta to crockpot at least 20 minutes before serving.
Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies
This recipe presumably comes from the "Murder She Baked" film, produced by Hallmark. They're a great tasting cookie with crispy edges. If you use real butter, eggs, and sugar in the recipe, each cookie comes out to be roughly 135 calories or so. And, simply eating just one with milk is not possible. The butter is likely to be the most expensive ingredient in this batch. Using a 1/4 cup ice cream scoop can get you uniformly shaped cookies. In retrospect, these weren't as crunchy as I had imagined and I probably should have added in the crushed corn flakes at the same time as the chocolate chips.
Makes: 35 cookies
Ingredients
1 c unsalted butter, melted
2 c corn flakes, crushed
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
2.5 c all purpose flour, unsifted
1 c organic unbleached granulated sugar
1 c light brown sugar
1 tsp sea salt
2 tsp baking soda
1.5 c semi-sweet chocolate chips
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 F
Melt butter and let cool slightly before mixing in with white sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and beaten eggs.
In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda. Add this into the butter mixture and stir to combine until no flour powder remains. Stir in crushed corn flakes and chocolate chips.
Spoon or use a small ice cream scoop to drop rounded balls of dough onto a baking tray. For a half-sheet pan, I baked these in batches of six per tray.
(I only own one tray, so at 10 minutes per day you can imagine how long this took to bake.)
Bake for 10 minutes and let cool on racks.
Makes: 35 cookies
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| The Foodening Blog: Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies |
1 c unsalted butter, melted
2 c corn flakes, crushed
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
2.5 c all purpose flour, unsifted
1 c organic unbleached granulated sugar
1 c light brown sugar
1 tsp sea salt
2 tsp baking soda
1.5 c semi-sweet chocolate chips
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 F
Melt butter and let cool slightly before mixing in with white sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and beaten eggs.
In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda. Add this into the butter mixture and stir to combine until no flour powder remains. Stir in crushed corn flakes and chocolate chips.
Spoon or use a small ice cream scoop to drop rounded balls of dough onto a baking tray. For a half-sheet pan, I baked these in batches of six per tray.
(I only own one tray, so at 10 minutes per day you can imagine how long this took to bake.)
Bake for 10 minutes and let cool on racks.
Kitchen Notes: Sourdough Starter
Part of the reason to make your own is so that you don't buy the cup of refrigerated starter from some (un)known company at the grocery store for what amounts to a lot of time and an inexpensive amount of flour. I probably should have started this in say.. summer, when the ambient temperature of my kitchen was in the 70s. Alas, I suppose it'll take longer than the week proposed by King Arthur Flour. They have a non-refrigerator/non-freezer method of preserving your starter too. Which, by the looks of it, reads like it is better than the valuable storage space in the refrigerator/freezer...basically you take the finished sourdough starter as if you were going to use it and dry it out at room temp across several days on parchment paper, then store the dried starter in an airtight container.
Anyhow. Back to the starter. I am not reposting KAF's instructions, but I am going to detail what I am doing with this attempt. Previous tries at sourdough breads have resulted in my killing the starter after I used a portion of it to bake a sourdough bread. It feels bad to waste food ingredients; but alas, you can use discarded starter in a number of recipes that call for bread dough: pizza crust, pretzels, etc.
Day 1, Jar 1:
1/2 c dark rye flour + 1/2 c warm water
Day 2, Jar 1:
Half removed, added 1 scant cup AP flour + 1/2 c warm water
Day 2. Jar 2 (essentially, now I have two Jar 1s):
Jar1 Discard + 1 scant cup AP flour + 1/2 c warm water
Day 3, Jar 1 & Jar 2:
Half removed from each jar and placed in Jar 3 (which will be refrigerated for later use)
and so on, so far, I am only on Day 2.
Anyhow. Back to the starter. I am not reposting KAF's instructions, but I am going to detail what I am doing with this attempt. Previous tries at sourdough breads have resulted in my killing the starter after I used a portion of it to bake a sourdough bread. It feels bad to waste food ingredients; but alas, you can use discarded starter in a number of recipes that call for bread dough: pizza crust, pretzels, etc.
Day 1, Jar 1:
1/2 c dark rye flour + 1/2 c warm water
Day 2, Jar 1:
Half removed, added 1 scant cup AP flour + 1/2 c warm water
Day 2. Jar 2 (essentially, now I have two Jar 1s):
Jar1 Discard + 1 scant cup AP flour + 1/2 c warm water
Day 3, Jar 1 & Jar 2:
Half removed from each jar and placed in Jar 3 (which will be refrigerated for later use)
and so on, so far, I am only on Day 2.
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