Making of Vanilla - Part 1

I start by buying the best beans I can afford. I have found an internet site, that I buy them from. I've tried a couple sites and like this one the best. (spice fever is the person from ebay)

I then cut up the about 12-18 beans and put into a pot with 1 cup distilled water. I heat until boiling and then them boil for about 1 minutes to get the seeds out and the color started.

I put this into a sterilzed 1 quart jar, with the lid. Shake it everyday, a couple of times a day.

To this I add 16 ounce container of Vegetable Glycerine. I let this set for 2-4 weeks, depending on the color and fragrance I want.


This is the back of the Vegetable Glycerine bottle so that you can see it is a food grade product.

To be continued........

New Recipes

Tried out 2 new recipes last evening for dinner and we liked them! Sometimes we get in the same old rut and fix the same meals over and over again, maybe because as we go down the isles of the grocery store, we know where our favorite food items are, so we buy them.
I was watching Rachael Ray because they had on Michael J. Fox and I wanted to see how he's doing. As Rachael was saying good-bye to Michael and Ryan Reynolds she mentioned she would be cooking a Thanksgiving dinner rolled into one, so I was interested in how this could be done.
Well, it's called: ‘Turkey and Stuffing Meatloaf’ with mashed potatoes and ‘Cider Gravy’. Doesn't that sound different? It looked easy enough and sounded great, so I copied off the recipes got the ingredients I didn't have and made it. Wow, it was pretty good! I asked the kids if I should make it again and we all agree that we could. My son and I said, we liked meatloaf the way I made it but this would do every now and then. My daughter liked this better as she doesn't care for meatloaf at all.
I really liked the gravy, it was different and I am not a gravy fan.
S00ooo, if you want something a little different before big turkey day, you might want to give this a try. It gave me an idea of what to do with the leftovers, changing the recipe just a bit.
Web page: www.rachaelrayshow.com/food/recipes/turkey-and-stuffing-meatloaf

www.rachaelrayshow.com/food/recipes/cider-gravy
Sorry, I didn't take pictures.

Day Dreaming of.....

Days of Yesteryear?

Always wondered if I would say that. I can remember as a child and thinking that my grandparents were wonderful and of course older than I. They would talk of their growing up days and the younger years. Some stories I loved listening to and others, I wish I would have paid more attention to.
Holidays were always fun and exciting to think about just before Thanksgiving. We used to have the week before Christmas off and get to dream of what we wanted and to be able to make or buy some little thing for our family members. Today we just buy, buy, buy and not really think about why we are buying. The children say, I want this or that and usually somehow they get it. My dad and mom usually would make something for us and then buy a toy to go along with what they made. We accepted it and if we got what we dreamed of that was a bonus! We usually had a tradition of where we went to a relatives home the Sunday before Christmas and have a big feast and give and received gifts, (we always had to wait and open them on Christmas). The feast and visiting were always great fun! Our families are so scattered that we don’t do that anymore. I usually have Thanksgiving and Christmas here with the seven of us. I didn’t realize that this has become a family tradition, so to me to switch things around has been interesting. I like change in most things, so I was excited to see if I could get it done. Looks as if not this time, back to the same old thing. We’ll see what happens come Christmas. I suppose when you live in a house a long time, things just do fall apart and sometimes don’t get fixed. I can remember thinking when I visited other houses and it needed work, I thought to myself, how can they live like that? No knowing maybe they just couldn’t fix it for whatever reason. And not helping them fix it up, how selfish of me. Now I look at where we live and I am sure people think the same of me. No wonder I don’t have many visitors anyone! If I had the money and get-up-and-go like I use to, I would love to fix up my house! I know in my head what I want done, just the body won’t get going like it use too.
After all my years, I have finally decided what I do best at, and that is to bake. Breads and cookies and other goodies. No so good at pretty pies, I can bake good pies, just not decorative type. So I would love to have a huge kitchen just to bake. I know I couldn’t bake big batches; otherwise I would be in a bakery. But just to bake for family and neighbors is fun.
I have enjoyed looking at all kinds of blog sites on breads and other different foods. It is so cool that many people have written their recipes and pictures. You all are doing such great work!
Guess I will get off my soap box now and get busy…..thanks for letting me talk it out.
I do hope all of you will have a great holiday season!

Polish Cottage Rye Bread

Today I made some rye bread, again from the book, "Local Breads" by Daniel Leader page 327.

I enjoy reading his little stories of how he came by the recipes.

Luckily I had two rye starters going, as the one I had for this recipe didn't rise, but I put it in anyway and added some of my other rye starter. The only major difference is that I used one teaspoonful of vital gluten, as this recipe calls for unbleached bread flour that is high in gluten. I didn't have that so I just used my regular flour and added the gluten. I wanted to make sure this dough did rise, so I added 1 package of dry yeast, no extra water.

The recipe said the dough would be sticky, as you can see in the first picture, it was. The fermention of the dough turned out great, in second picture. It is rising in a colander, I don't have a banneton. (Maybe as a Christmas gift, from one of my children??? HINT) But I was surprised because I thought it turned out great, as you can see from the picture where the bread is in the oven.

I baked the bread for 40 minutes and did the thumping because a toothpick wouldn't go through. It sounded done, but I think Daniel is correct on adding 5 more minutes in the oven, as the bread wasn't quite done as I would have liked. I think you can notice that from the last picture. But the finished bread was beautiful and tasted great! (Croc, you're right, it does taste like the rye crackers) I enjoyed it with butter and my daughter with some honey.