Soft Garlic Breadsticks

I would say I'm decent at cooking.  I'm not amazing, but I can follow a recipe, or even tweak it a little, and it comes out well.  But there is one thing I have never made successfully--breadsticks.  They always come out as lumpy bricks.  I even ruined Sarah's no-fail breadsticks twice.  So I was very nervous to make these, but finally did. And it ended up being okay, because they turned out!  Not only did they turn out, they tasted pretty good, too! Hungry Runner Boy raved about them.  And then ate five. Needless to say, these will become our go to breadstick recipe.

Just one warning.  When it says garlic, it means garlic.  I only put 2/3 of the garlic in and it was still strong.

Soft Garlic Breadsticks --from Allrecipes

Ingredients
1 1/8 C warm water
2 T olive or canola oil
3 T grated parmesan cheese
2 T sugar
3 t garlic powder
1 1/2 t salt
3/4 t minced fresh basil
3 C bread flour
2 t active dry yeast
1 T melted butter

Directions
In bread machine, place the first nine ingredients in the order suggested by manufacturer (or do it by hand if you're me).  Select dough setting.  When cycle is completed, turn dough onto a lightly floured surface.  Divide into 20 portions.  Shape each into a ball; roll each into a 9-in. rope.  Place on greased baking sheets.  Cover and let rise in a warm place for 40 minutes or until doubled.  Bake 18-22 minutes at 350 degrees.  Take out of oven and brush with butter.

Baked Carrots

When the Hungry Runner Boy learned I was making baked carrots for dinner tonight he got pretty worried.  He calmed down after I told him the carrots were just the side dish.  Does he really think I am THAT cheap? Probably.

Baked Carrots--came from a piece of paper in Mom's writing with many different recipes on it.

1/2 C finely shredded onion
12 carrots, shredded
3 T chopped parsley
3 T butter
1 t salt
1/4 C cream or milk

Cook onion in butter until light brown.  Shred carrots and mix with parsley, salt, and onion; put in 9x13 pan.  Add cream.  Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

The Hungry Runner Boy tried one shred and said, "do I have to take any more?"
I had one bite and regretted I made the entire recipe instead of halving it.  Or quartering it.  Or just never making it.

They kind of had a weird smell while cooking and they tasted like they smelled.


Do yourself a favor and never make this recipe.  Please.

Marinated Wisconsin Russet Potatoes

I have a little pamphlet from the Wisconsin Potatoes Taste Tour. It features potato recipes from Wisconsin chefs. Tonight we had this little dish for dinner. This is what Sous Chef Justin Aprahamian from Sanford in Milwaukee had to say about potatoes:

"Wisconsin potatoes are a natural fit with what we do at Sanford--the freshest ingredients prepared simply and full of flavor. What could be fresher and closer to home than Wisconsin potatoes, grown practically in our backyard by farmers who have been developing and growing great potatoes for generations."

Yield: 2-4 servings (definitely 4)

Ingredients

4 Wisconsin Russet potatoes, washed and cut into julienne slices
1 qt. water
1 cup white vinegar
4 Tbsp. salt
1 Tbsp. fresh chopped parsley
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp. finely chopped garlic
1/2 tsp. crushed chili flakes
1/4 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
Salt and pepper to taste

Procedure
1. In a medium pan add potatoes, water , vinegar and salt, cokke over medium heat until tender 10 to 12 minutes. Drain potatoes and place in a mixing bowl.
2. Make a well in center of potatoes and add the fresh chopped parsley.
3. In saute pan, heat olive oil, add garlic, chili flakes and pepper. When the oil is hot, pour over parsley to lightly fry it, then mix together with potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

 We thought it was an okay recipe, and I'll probably make it again. It was pretty time consuming to julienne the potatoes. Next time I might just cube them into small enough pieces. Also, I will cut the vinegar and salt in half. The potatoes really soaked in the vinegar taste big time! Ben said they reminded him of salt and vinegar chips. I barely made it through what I had on my plate because the vinegar was SO strong. I didn't know how Russell would like them. I thought with the garlic and the chili flakes it might be too hot for him, but evidenced below he gobbled them right up.

PS. He isn't a shorty anymore. He apparently has had a major growth spurt and is now in the 63% for height. But, he is still chubby....

Zucchini Bars Plus Bonus Chocolate Zucchini Cake Recipe

This recipe was a good use of our precious zucchini. We've gotten maybe 7-8 zucchini, but I won't be happy until I have enough zucchini to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in one day. I fondly remember the year of the zucchini in which that happened. That my friends, is what summer is all about.

Zucchini Bars, originally from Allrecipes

They were almost gone by the time I took the picture.

Ingredients

3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups grated zucchini
1/2 cup margarine
1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese
2 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x13 inch pan.
In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla until well blended. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; stir into the sugar mixture. Mix in the zucchini. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow bars to cool completely before frosting. To make the frosting, blend together the margarine, cream cheese and confectioners' sugar until well blended. Spread over cooled bars before cutting.

These were good and very moist. I substituted 3/4 c applesauce for that much oil and used all the zucchini I had, which was 3 c. It was almost too moist, so if you add more zucchini, squeeze some moisture out and/or don't substitute quite as much applesauce as I did. They were still very good. Brian thought they tasted kind of like carrot cake, and I agree. They were more cakey than bar-y.

BONUS! 

I feel a little guilty because I changed the original recipe so much that it wasn't really the same cake, but here is a recipe for chocolate zucchini cake from Simply Recipes.  I only had the second page of the recipe (the instructions), so if someone else has the first page, maybe she can make the recipe as it was written and give a better review. Since it was printed off the internet, I looked up the website and made it from there. I don't remember exactly what I changed (it's been over a month), but I know I didn't have any orange peel or nuts, and this might have been when I ran out of brown sugar.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake Recipe

INGREDIENTS
2 1/2 cups regular all-purpose flour, unsifted
1/2 cup cocoa
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup soft butter
1 cup white granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
3 cups coarsely shredded zucchini (from about 1 pound of zucchini)
1/2 cup milk
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
Glaze (directions follow)

Glaze:
2 cups powdered sugar
3 Tbsp milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

1 Set the shredded zucchini to drain in a sieve over a bowl. If no moisture drains out and the zucchini feels dry, sprinkle some water over it and let the excess drain.

2 Vigorously whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, soda, salt, and cinnamon in a bow, and set aside.

3 With a mixer, beat together the butter and the sugars until smooth. Add the eggs to the butter and sugar mixture one at a time, beating well after each addition. With a wooden spoon, stir in the vanilla, orange peel, and zucchini.

4 Alternately stir in the dry ingredients and the milk into the zucchini mixture, including the nuts with the last addition.

5 Spray the inside of a 10-inch bundt pan or tube pan lightly with cooking spray (or grease with butter). Wipe off the excess. Pour in the batter and use a rubber spatula to level the top of the batter. Bake in the oven for about 50-55 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean (test at 45 min). Cool in pan 15 minutes; turn out on wire rack to cool thoroughly.

6 Make the glaze by mixing together the glaze ingredients. You can easily do this by hand with a whisk or a spoon. If the glaze is too runny, add some more powdered sugar. If too thick, add more milk. Drizzle glaze over cake.

Cut in thin slices to serve.

Yield: Makes 10-12 servings.

Elaine's Chocolate Zucchini Cake

It's the time of year where zucchini comes on full bore.  For the first time in, well forever, we have no one to supply us with free zucchini.

 

It's normally overly abundant wherever it grows (see above), or grows at nasty huge rates (also see above), but we get none of that.  So I broke down and bought some to satisfy my zucchini craving.  It was cheap, but still not as cheap as free, so I had to make good use of what I did have.  One thing I made was this:

Elaine's Chocolate Zucchini Cake from the Chocolate Bytes Chocolate Lovers website

1/2 C butter or margarine, softened
1/2 C vegetable oil
1 1/3 C sugar
2 eggs
2 C grated zucchini
1/2 C sour milk
1 t vanilla
2 1/2 C flour
4 T cocoa
1 t salt
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda

3/4 C mini chocolate chips
3/4 C walnuts
3/4 C brown sugar

Mix first 12 ingredients and pour into greased 9x13 pan.  Sprinkle with a topping of last three ingredients.  Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes.

It looked so stinking good when it came out of the oven, but I had to use extreme self-control to not eat it, because it was dessert for when the missionaries came.   I kept telling myself I could be rewarded by having an extra piece or two after the elders left, which worked.

When we finally got around to eating it we all liked it.  Apparently no one feeds the elders since we got sisters too, so all they eat is PB&J for every lunch and dinner. That might be why they like everything I feed them.  But I liked it okay as well.  I left out the nuts, but the brown sugar created a nice top that made it better. The hungry runner boy said it was, "eh, okay."