de facto redhead

This week in kitchen adventures brings about the debut of the Paleo diet. Have you heard of this way of eating before? Darcy and I have decided to try it out for 30 days to gauge how healthy we feel afterward, to see if there is any difference on the scale, and to find out how we can incorporate healthier options into our regular diet. The basic premise of the Paleo diet is to eat like…well…Paleolithic man. What that means is no dairy, no wheat or grains, and no added sugars or salt – just plain ol’ huntin’ n’ gatherin’ sorts of foods. As you can imagine, this cuts out a large portion of what I like to eat – CARBS – but 30 days isn’t a long time, and with a little cheating with my friends on weekends, I will be able to see this thing through to the end. (I have actually discovered in the last week and a half that fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood, and nuts can be mixed into some interesting and tasty combinations.) Darcy, however, is the truly devoted one in this venture, and even though he went away last weekend, he stuck to his diet the entire time! I, on the other hand, went to up to Caroline’s farm and ate chocolate chip cookies, bread, chocolate banana bread, and nachos, and drank juice, lemonade, vodka, gin, and wine. Binge alert!

Caroline and I, and solid proof of my wicked ways.

So, this week marks Week 1 of me forcing the Paleolithic diet on Ami, and our first selection from the official Paleo Diet Cookbook is the So Cal Omelet, that serves two people:

So, I went away to PEI, and while I meant to post about this recipe (and a few other things!) in the past couple weeks, I just completely checked out of the blogging world. Sorry! Ami and I are still baking and cooking, though, and the last recipe we tried out before I took off was the simply titled Baked Oatmeal, from wholeliving.com.

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

My ingredients, with my trusty laptop (i.e. “cookbook”) on the counter in the background.

Ami’s ingredients. I want her maple syrup!

I completely forgot to take a picture mid-baking, so this blurry oven-window photo had to make the cut!

Ami’s prepared oatmeal, ready for the oven!

As you can see, after the baked oatmeal came out of the oven, it was quite popular, but…

Ami’s baked oatmeal looks great, and the added brown sugar looks delicious!

Before I get going into our actual opinions about this recipe, I have to admit that because I baked it almost a month ago, this won’t be a long and involved review – my memory is fuzzy, man! But, as always, I’ll address the ingredients first:

• Ami used hemp milk, and I used soy milk in place of regular milk.
• I went with dried cranberries, but Ami tried out a mix of blackberries and strawberries, since that’s what her market had available that week.
• I stuck with almonds only, but Ami went wild and used walnuts AND almonds. She mixed in the walnuts, and put her sliced almonds on top.
• As I mentioned in Ami’s last photo, she sprinkled brown sugar over her oatmeal, which is something I wished I would have done too!

As for the directions, in addition to the multi-nut mixture Ami used, she went completely crazy and didn’t measure either her nuts OR her berries, and just went with her instinct. Flouting measurement! Gasp! Another note:

• Ami baked her oatmeal for an extra 5-10 minutes (45-50 minutes total) to ensure that it was set. She thought it was a bit more watery because she used hemp milk, but I also baked mine for about 40-45 minutes because it was hard to tell if the oatmeal was set. Turns out, it was, but the extra time didn’t hurt.

When the oatmeal came out of the oven, it smelled SO GOOD, and Darcy and I had some almost right away. It tasted great! Ami and Chris also loved the oatmeal, but the difference is that they continued to love it. Mine and Darcy’s interest dwindled as the days went by. Sure, I heated it up in the microwave, but it just wasn’t the same as fresh from the oven. Plus, Darcy grew to despise the sliced bananas on the bottom of the baking dish – they turned too “slimy” for him. Chris, however, said it was one of his favourite recipes yet! Ami said she would definitely make it again, and is looking forward to experimenting with blueberries, raspberries, etc. She also mentioned this could be a good recipe for Holden (he’s nine months old), so there’s a perk for all you mothers out there! Her final rating was 4.5 out of 5, and mine is 2.5 out of 5, for the obvious reason that I ran so hot and cold on its taste: “I love it!” “I guess I’ll eat it because I don’t want to waste it.” “Uhhhh, maybe Darcy will eat the rest of this when I’m gone to PEI.” (He didn’t, and ended up throwing it out.)

What will YOU think of the baked oatmeal?

To be more exact, Elvis lives in Burlington, in a Tupperware container, in my refrigerator. He’s also deliciously flavoured with cinnamon, maple syrup, dark chocolate, and peanut butter. Elvis, thou art sweet and savoury.

Now, why this week’s recipe has the official name of “Elvis Granola,” I don’t know. Is there a joke out there in the pop-culture world that I’m just not getting? Does the author of Eat, Live, Run know something I don’t? (I’m sure she knows many things I don’t.) I just realized I should have been listening to Elvis while making my granola – an Elvis opportunity, wasted! Swoon and collapse and fetch me my smelling salts.

ANYWAY, enough talk. As you’ve heard by now (it was on the news, right?), this week, Ami and I made our own granola. Here are Ami’s initial thoughts on the idea:

“I actually have been wanting to try my hand at making my own granola for a while…and this recipe looks too delish to pass up. It seems like making your own granola is so easy; I always feel like a fool buying it at the store. Same with hummus. People make it sound like it is so easy to make both. Why pay for it?! So, if this recipe works out, I may just start testing out other granola recipes, and, who knows, maybe I will stop ever buying granola again!”

Did Ami’s prophecy come true? Read on…

INGREDIENTS

• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 cup chunky peanut butter
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 4 cups old-fashioned oats
• 1/4 cup ground flax seeds
• 1/2 cup dry-roasted peanuts
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 2/3 cup chopped dark chocolate (or miniature chocolate chips)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 275.

Bring the canola oil, maple syrup, peanut butter, salt, and cinnamon to a simmer on the stove. Cook for three to five minutes.

While that’s cooking, mix together the oats, ground flax, peanuts, and sunflower seeds. Pour hot syrup mixture over the oats and toss well to coat. Spread out granola onto two lined baking trays and bake for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally and turning trays midway through.

Let granola cool completely before adding the chopped chocolate.

*This granola will stay fresh for about a month sealed in Tupperware and kept in the fridge.

My ingredients. Like my new syrup dispenser that I bought for $2 at the Reuse Centre?

Ami’s ingredients. I want her fresh maple syrup!

My granola, all mixed up and ready to be put in the oven.

Ami’s granola. Those oats are about to be baked good. Real good.

My finished granola, looking much like it did before it went into the oven.

Ami’s granola (pictured here, complete with a poised spoon) already being consumed by someone.

All right – as usual, I’ll start with the ingredients, and how we handled them.

• Ami used coconut oil instead of canola oil (she wanted the extra health kick, and she likes the flavour more).

• I have no idea if my use of Quaker Quick Oats versus the use of actual old-fashioned oats affected my granola, but the quickies were what I had on hand, so too bad!

• I also don’t know if non-salted peanuts bought from the bulk bin are the same as dry-roasted peanuts (I don’t think they are), but I used them anyway, and if you can believe it, the world didn’t explode.

• I chopped up the chocolate myself, and even though only one bar is pictured above, I had another on reserve in case I “needed” it. I needed it.

The directions for this recipe are mostly straightforward, but I admit that I was completely flustered at one point. In my ingredients picture above, you can see that my peanut butter is not PC Blue Menu Just Peanuts Peanut Butter. I did, however, have a bit of this left in the fridge, so I used the rest of it, plus the Compliments brand, to make up my 1/4-cup of peanut butter. I had misgivings because, for some reason, the PC Blue Menu stuff never really “oiled up” (i.e. separated) in the fridge like natural peanut butter usually does. It still tasted good, but it was dry and clumpy, and didn’t spread well (and yes, I checked, it wasn’t expired). What the heck, I used it anyway. Bad idea. My syrup mixture was clumpy, too! I thought I had created the first official disaster of our cooking/baking series. But, when I poured the clumpy mixture over the oats, and broke the clumps up with my fingers, smaller pieces were left that, when tasted, were like little balls of oaty (oatie?) peanut butter (you can see them in my “finished product” picture above). I quickly mixed up another pot of the syrup mixture with the Compliments brand peanut butter, and since it looked much more like the picture on Eat, Live, Run’s blog, I figured I was good to go. Crisis averted!

After doing all the heating, boiling, and mixing, the only other thing that was a bit odd for both Ami and I was the fact that we had to use two baking sheets. I was also confused by what was meant by “lined.” Did that mean rimmed? Or lined with parchment paper? I used two un-rimmed cookie sheets, covered in parchment paper, and I placed them on the two most “middle” racks of my oven. Ami used rimmed baking sheets, but her positioning was the same, since it was obvious there was no way the sheets we had were going to fit side by side in our ovens.

Everything turned out fine, and while both of us only stirred the granola once (after 20 minutes), I forgot to turn the trays. This didn’t appear to affect the outcome, either. Success!

Ami rated her granola-making experience a whopping 5 out of 5, and while I almost agree based on taste alone, I just can’t quite get there because of my syrup fiasco, and because of what I thought was ambiguity surrounding the baking sheets and their positioning. Therefore, my royal decree delcares…4.5 out of 5. The granola is dang good, y’all!

And now for Ami’s prophecy.

• Her initial statement: “So, if this recipe works out, I may just start testing out other granola recipes, and, who knows, maybe I will stop ever buying granola again!”

• Her final consensus: “I am completely converted to making my own granola from here on out.”

Ooohhhhh, eerie! To be honest, though, I don’t think I see a reason to buy granola again, either. Carla’s kitchen is a-rockin’!

One more granola note from Ami and I – make sure you have a large Tupperware container to store the granola in because it ain’t no joke – this recipe makes granola for dayz.

Last week, Ami and I had our fun with a recipe that contained coconut, and when it came time for me to send Ami a list of choices for Week 9, I had coconut on the brain, and included a recipe for coconut shrimp. Ami mentioned that our readers (Hello? Please say you’re out there?) might be getting sick of vegan recipes, and because of that, perhaps we should try the shrimp. Our motives weren’t entirely altruistic, though – she loves the coconut shrimp at Red Lobster, and my eyes glaze over and my mouth gets slack when coconut anything is mentioned. Everyone, please extend a warm welcome to Paula Deen’s Coconut Shrimp with Orange Marmalade.

Ingredients

• 2 cups shredded sweetened coconut
• 2 cups bread crumbs
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper (as usual, Kosher salt is not necessary)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs, beaten
• 24 large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• Vegetable oil, for frying

Dipping Sauce:

• 1/2 cup orange marmalade
• 1 to 2 tablespoons dark rum

Directions

Last week, Ami and I had a bit of a miss, but this week, we’re back on track with a total hit! Our recipe in Week 8 (beach “cookies” that are actually more like squares) comes from Chef Chloe, and it’s also the last cooking adventure of March, which also means the end of Ami’s month of being 100% vegan. She didn’t miss much in her four weeks of animal-free eating, but is glad to be able to use butter and eggs again. Hear, hear!

I didn’t join Ami in vegan solidarity this week, and that is simply because I just used what I had at home. I didn’t feel like going to the grocery store. Me lazy.

INGREDIENTS

½ cup vegan margarine (Earth Balance soy-free non-hydrogenated buttery spread)
2 cups graham cracker crumbs (Chef Chloe suggests Health Valley Graham Crackers, which you can pulse into fine crumbs in the food processor. Feel free to do this with any vegan graham cracker or wafer cookie.)
1 cup canned coconut milk
¼ cup agave or maple syrup
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons arrowroot
1  1/2 cups shredded sweetened coconut
1/2  cup chopped walnuts, toasted (optional)
2 cups non-dairy chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Melt margarine in microwave or over stove, and pour into a 9″x13″ baking pan. Swirl around until the bottom of the pan is completely coated.
3. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs evenly into pan until bottom of the pan is completely coated in crumbs. Pat down lightly with your hands.
4. In a small bowl, whisk together coconut milk, agave, vanilla, salt, and arrowroot. Drizzle this mixture evenly over the graham cracker layer.
5. Sprinkle the shredded coconut into the pan, then layer the optional nuts, then the chocolate chips. With the palm of your hand, gently pat the top of the cookie pan so that the chocolate chips get cemented into the rest of the cookie.
6. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until centre looks thick and slightly bubbly with very lightly browned edges.
7. Let cool, then refrigerate for a couple hours or overnight. Cut into even bars. The textures and flavours of this cookie really work best after refrigeration.
8. If you’re feeling festive, platter the cookies on a tray or dish of organic brown sugar (mock sand) and stick some cocktail umbrellas in the sugar for a “beach scene.”

My ingredients. (I had to use plain old Aunt Jemima syrup because I was out of pure maple syrup. I felt guilty about it, and the fact that I used regular chocolate chips. Am I vegan-chip convert? Maybe. Time will tell…)

Ami’s ingredients. She’s so wholesome and organized with her labelled mason jars!

Left: The top view of my squares, before they faced the heat of the oven. Right: The side view.

My finished product, laid out all lovely-like on a Pyrex plate.

Ami’s version of the beach cookie. Mmmmmmm!

This recipe is really easy to bake, and, vegan or not, finding the ingredients is simple. The combination of chocolate, coconut, graham crackers, and walnuts is pretty unbeatable, and the firm square that’s created after the pan hardens in the fridge is delicious! First, though, let’s start with a discussion of the ingredients:

• Ami didn’t substitute or change anything this week.

• As for me, I manually crushed my graham crackers into crumbs (like I did with the peanut-butter cups), and it takes a lot of crackers and a lot of crushing to get two cups’ worth of crumbs! I think I used about a sleeve and a half of crackers, and my arms were getting sore. Who knew the act of pummelling with a rolling pin was so arduous? I dare you to try it and not complain!

• I used corn starch in place of arrowroot, and I have Ami to thank for the tip that substituting one for the other is A-OK.

• I didn’t toast my walnuts, and, as I mentioned, I used regular chocolate chips and Aunt Jemima syrup.

As for the directions, instead of melting her margarine in a separate bowl, Ami just melted it in the pan, inside the pre-heated oven. She made a good point when she told me that it saved a dish, and this note was particularly poignant after I put my pan in the oven, and my kitchen counters looked like about five children under the age of six had been helping me bake.

There’s really nothing else to say about the directions, other than the fact that Ami and I both recommend eating these squares COLD. She left hers in the fridge for three to four hours before eating them, and I had mine in there for about five hours. (Well, that’s a bit of a lie – I took them out after three hours and ate one, and then put the pan back in the fridge until suppertime.) And, I think they tasted even better the next day, when the squares really had a chance to harden overnight.

Now, for the rave reviews. Ami made these for friends, and they loved them. Two people asked her for the recipe, and one commented that they were similar to “magic bars,” and that she would likely be abandoning her magic-bar recipe for the almighty beach cookie. Go, beach cookie, go!

Here is Ami’s first paragraph in her “review” e-mail to me, sent the day after her get-together: “Man, oh, man, were they tasty. I had to send Chris to work with five of them on Monday to get rid of the rest, after devouring like four on Sunday afternoon. I actually think this might be my FAVOURITE recipe so far…OK, well, tied with the PB cups (I can’t choose between the two).” Is it any surprise that she rated this recipe a five out of five (“I couldn’t find anything wrong with the recipe or that I didn’t like!! A definite remaker!”)? I am pretty addicted to them, too, and I am rating them a 4.75 out of five because I also like them just as much as the PB cups, and that’s the score I bestowed on that recipe. Oh, the power I wield!

As I mentioned last week, Ami has gone vegan for the month of March, and her ambitions, combined with my new interest in cooking, led me to the cookbook section at Chapters on Friday. I was in Toronto for a meeting, it was a sunny, warm day, and I thought a leisurely browse seemed like a good idea. First, I looked at the cooking magazines. Too much in price, and too much in selection! Next, I gravitated toward the healthy-eating, vegetarian, et al. section, and it took me about two minutes to feel overwhelmed – again – with all the choices. Annoyance was next, so I settled on buying the newest Toronto Life, and then left and went to my meeting, after which I came home, had a nap (Toronto and transit is tiring!), and made the easy decision to conquer this week’s recipe, which I also went vegan for. Hello, Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups!

INGREDIENTS
1⁄2 cup Earth Balance butter
3⁄4 cup crunchy peanut butter (preferably unsweetened and unsalted)
3⁄4 cup graham cracker crumbs or 10 graham cracker squares, crushed
1⁄4 cup maple sugar or other granulated sweetener
1 cup grain-sweetened, non-dairy chocolate or carob chips
1⁄4 cup soy, rice, or nut milk
1⁄4 cup chopped pecans, almonds, or peanuts

DIRECTIONS
Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
Set aside.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.
Stir in the peanut butter, graham cracker crumbs, and maple sugar, and mix well. Remove the mixture from the heat.
Evenly divide the mixture, approximately 2 tablespoons per cup, among the muffin cups.
Combine the chocolate and milk in another pan.
Stir over medium heat until the chocolate has melted.
Spoon the chocolate evenly over the peanut butter mixture.
Top with chopped nuts.
Place in the refrigerator to set for at least 2 hours before serving.

My ingredients – all vegan! (Well, at least I HOPE they’re all vegan; I couldn’t find any graham crackers/crumbs that fit the bill, so to speak, and these HoneyMaid ones seemed acceptable, judging from the ingredient list…)

Ami’s ingredients, and a peek into Alicia Silverstone’s cookbook, The Kind Diet, where our recipe came from.

The bottom peanut-butter layer of my cups. Greatness awaits.

Ami’s cups, also steps away from greatness.

My cups, all finished, and screaming at me to get chilled, y’all.

One of Ami’s peanut-butter cups, sprung from the confines of the muffin tin.

As far as the directions for this recipe go, there isn’t much to criticize because they’re so straightforward. I put a bit too much of the peanut-butter mixture in the first half of the cups, so the back six ended up a bit smaller in size, but that obviously didn’t end up affecting the taste…I’ll talk further about taste in a minute. Other thoughts: Ami made her cups before me, and she warned me that they would seem REALLY runny – she was right, but since I knew what was up, I still felt confident, and now you can, too, thanks to our dual test-run! The chocolate mixture also ran a bit thin (meaning there wasn’t quite enough), and Ami’s completely ran out, so she had to quickly make a second batch, but you can decide what to do based on your love of chocolate.

Once ready to set/chill, Ami and I agree that skipping the fridge and heading straight for the freezer is the way to go. The cups are bit on the soft side if kept in the fridge, and but stay firm and DELICIOUS if set and kept in the freezer. They also don’t melt, once you take them out, versus the more rapid softening that occurs if coming from the fridge.

There were no substitutions this week because we chose a vegan recipe that we both used vegan ingredients for, and while I did buy graham crackers instead of crumbs, they were easily crushable by way of a solid beating with the rolling pin.

Now, the score. Ami rated this recipe a 4.75 out of 5, and the reason for the docked 0.25 points was because of her scramble to melt extra chocolate to cover the rest of her cups. I would rate it the same because while I ate five in 24 hours, I also had the minor issue with the uneven peanut-butter layering of the cups. But really, we’re nit-picking. Ami’s batch of 12 cups was gone the next day, and Chris was begging her to make another dozen within 24 hours. And for me, my foray into vegan eating was well-received. The use of Earth Balance butter, soy milk, cane sugar, and vegan chocolate chips produced no discernible difference in taste, and while I joked to Ami about my worry that the vegan chocolate chips might taste like dust, I can now eat some humble pie and admit the success of my vegan peanut butter cups. Make them and love them!

What the flag says.

I know there are plenty of people out there celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with carbohydrates of another variety (the variety that involves green dye, hops, and alcohol), but here in the De Facto Redhead brewpub, Irish soda bread was our top o’ the evenin’.

If you chose to participate in today’s “holiday,” I hope you had (or are having) a fun day. As for me, in about five minutes, my fun time of the day is about to involve a plate, a knife, some butter, a chunk of bread, and American Idol, followed by Shameless. C’est delicieuse et decadent, mes leprechauns.

I’m posting this week’s recipe a day early because it’s Oscar night, and that means tomorrow is reserved for my dress review. Will I face bitter revolt because I am straying from my usual schedule? Let’s hope not (Joanne, I told you to put down the pitchfork, and GO HOME already), because if you so choose not to come back, you will be missing out on further recipe wonders such this week’s Baked Peanut Butter and Banana French Toast, from Food & Drink. Sooooo goooood…

Ingredients

1 wide supermarket-style baguette
2 large bananas
½ cup (125 mL) peanut butter, smooth or crunchy
1 cup (250 mL) milk
3 eggs
2 tbsp (25 mL) brown sugar
2 tsp (10 mL) vanilla
½ tsp (2 mL) each cinnamon and nutmeg
¼ tsp (1 mL) salt
1 to 2 tbsp (15 to 25 mL) butter, melted
Maple syrup or chocolate sauce

Directions

1. Slice baguette into ten 1½-inch (4-cm) pieces. Using a knife, slice through the bottom crust of each piece, nearly right to the other side, to form a pocket. Thinly slice 1 banana. Spread about 2 tsp (10 mL) peanut butter into each pocket, then stuff in a few banana slices. Squish bread back together again and don’t worry if it tears a bit and you can see the filling.

2. Whisk milk with eggs, sugar, vanilla, spices and salt until blended. Place stuffed bread in milk mixture. Turn once. Refrigerate, covered, at least 2 hours or up to overnight, turning a couple of times.

3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 450°F (230°C).

4. Brush baking sheet with half the butter. Place bread on top, spacing evenly. Brush tops with remaining butter. Bake in centre of preheated oven for 6 minutes. Turn and continue to bake until golden, 5 to 6 more minutes. Slice remaining banana. Serve scattered with bananas and drizzled with syrup or chocolate sauce.

It’s cookin’ Monday! Last time, Ami and I had risotto and roasted vegetables cooking in our kitchens, and just about a week ago, we decided to try our hands at home-made bread. When I told my mom what I was baking, she had a decidedly negative reaction. “Bread is SO hard to make. Good luck, chump,” is basically what she said, and when I was with Susie this weekend, telling her about the bread, she asked incredulously, “You made it from scratch?!?!?!” Well, yes, I did, and so did Ami, and with little more than a few e-mails back and forth with our initial uncertainties, we truly accomplished this most impossible feat. We created bread with our very own hands, and the flour runneth from our fingers and the dough riseth most mightily…

Chef Michael Smith’s Country Bread

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup any multigrain mix
1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/4 cups warm water

Directions

In a large bowl whisk the dry ingredients together, evenly distributing the salt and yeast throughout the flour. Pour in the warm water and stir with the handle of a wooden spoon until a moist dough forms. Continue stirring until the dough incorporates all the loose flour in the bowl, 1 or 2 minutes in total. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rest in a warm place for 18 hours. The dough will double in size and bubble (don’t worry if you don’t see this happening – I didn’t notice a difference in the dough until the 18 hours were up), and long elastic gluten strands will form without laborious kneading.
Knock the dough down and toss it with a splash of vegetable oil, evenly coating the dough ball. Form it into a 9- x 5-inch (2 L) loaf pan and, without covering, rest it a second time. In 2 to 3 hours it will double in size once more.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 425°F (220°C). When the dough is ready, bake for 45 minutes.

My ingredients, minus the vegetable oil, which I forgot to photograph.

Ami’s ingredients, minus her oil (she used olive), which she also forgot to photograph.

I was very curious to find out what “long elastic gluten strands” are. Now I know, and so do you.

This is Ami’s dough, just before it went into the oven. I had made my bread before her, so I sent out the alert that she needed to watch for this phenomenon. Our solution was to simply tuck the errant dough back into the pan. As you will see, hers turned out looking better than mine did…

…it looks perfect!!

Mine oozed…

…but looked much better when it was out of the pan and cleaned up a bit.

What do you think? It’s not bad, if I do say so myself! All the ingredients were easy to find in the grocery store, and I’m sure many of you have many of the required items in your cupboards right now – Ami did, and she opted for rolled oats as her multigrain mix, while I chose to try out the Red River cereal. No complaints from either of us on our choice of “mix-in.” Other differences between us were my bread flour versus Ami’s all-purpose flour, and the aforementioned use of vegetable oil (me) or olive oil (Ami). Oh, and while I used a plastic-wrap shower-cap-with-elastic thing to cover my bread, Ami used a tea towel, which is good to know if you don’t have plastic wrap on-hand, or if what you do have doesn’t stick to your bowl (which is what happened to me, and was the reason why I scrounged out the shower-cap apparatus).

During the entire process, we found out there isn’t really much of a process at all. There is a lot of waiting. And sleeping. The dough does have to sit for 18 hours, after all! Our agreed words of warning are regarding the crazy dough-ooze that creeps up and flows outside the pan during the last 2-3 hour part of the recipe. Unless you have a deep pan, the escaping dough is going to be a part of your life. Stop being judgmental, and just accept it for what it is, OK?

As I said in the dough-ooze’s caption above, we just tucked the extra dough back into the pan as best we could. In the “after” pictures, you’ll also notice that my bread is slightly burnt on top – for some reason, the crust started to get a little too brown after about five minutes, and I had to put the pan on the lowest oven rack, as well as lower the temperature by 20 degrees. This wasn’t a problem for Ami at all, though, and her loaf of bread looks lovely!

And finally, Ami and I want to reassure anyone who tries this recipe that if your crust feels rock-hard when you take the pan out of the oven, don’t immediately jump to the conclusion that your bread is ruined.We literally knocked on the tops of our loaves, and we both thought we had messed something up, but when we sliced into our bread, it was bliss! So soft and delicious! I had a bit of trouble getting the loaf out of the pan, but I think that’s because of the ooze, since Ami didn’t mention that she had any difficulties.

We found the bread to be pretty filling, with two (thick-cut) slices the maximum we could eat in one sitting, but damn (or day-um!), it was good. Ami rated this recipe a 4.5 out of 5 (it lost a half-point for the mess of the ooze), and I agree with her score, but I withhold half a point for my slightly burnt crust.

I have already stated to Darcy that I will make this bread again, and Ami’s husband asked her bake more the day she made her first loaf, so I foresee more bread-baking adventures in our futures. If we can do it, you can do it!

An ad to which I should take heed?

If you follow me on my De Facto Redhead Facebook page, you might have noticed my announcement this week that I am starting a new feature on my blog – cooking! Joining me in my culinary adventures is Ami, formerly of the Beyond Peas and Carrots blog, and currently a busy stay-at-home mom to Holden and wife to Chris. Ami and I have known each other since we were 11 years old, and while the years have taken us in different directions, thanks to Facebook, we reconnected, and now, by chance, we live within about an hour of one another!

Ami devoted a lot of her posts to cooking and baking, which I have been attempting (as of late) in ever-increasing quantities. I have always enjoyed baking, but cooking? Not really. Let’s review:

1. Childhood: My mom used slap my potatoes down on my plate (while I was scrunching up my nose), and say, “You’ll have to learn how to make these for your own family some day, you know!” Me? Forget the potatoes – I really would have preferred a hot dog or a grilled-cheese sandwich. Or maybe plain pasta. That was good stuff.

2. Teenage years: Absolute refusal to learn how to cook aforementioned potatoes, and my mom’s increasing exasperation with my bored stares at her requests for me to “JUST peel the potatoes, OK?” No can do, mom, this girl’s gotta talk on the phone for eight hours with the friends she just left 10 minutes ago.

3. Adulthood – 19/20 years old: Ahhhh, the freedom of college, and from the shackles of Sunday’s potato meals! Their replacement? Oh, just eight months of the residence meal-plan at Humber College, from which I ate bagels, croissants, salads, hard-boiled eggs, and toasted turkey sandwiches before scurrying up to my room only to be starving in the evening, at which time I would scarf Mini-Wheats and rice cakes topped with peanut butter. Maybe throw a juice box in there for good measure. Truly, I wasn’t a calorie-counter dieter at the time, as much as the evidence is mounting to the contrary – the food in that cafeteria was just BAD…and yet somehow my friend Peter squandered away his entire meal plan in half the year. He liked the eggnog.

4. Adulthood – 20/21 years old: I’m living with a roommate now (hi, Cristiana!), and while I have officially said goodbye to the meal plan, I now have to take care of producing SOMETHING for my own meals. Enter my staple lunch of a piece of fruit, baby carrots, two rice cakes topped with peanut butter, and something for dessert. Cereal or a bagel was usually my breakfast, and supper meant the astounding variety of pasta and Prego sauce, eggs and toast, or French toast.

5. Adulthood – 21/22/23 years old: Graduated from college and moved back home to finish university as a commuter with about an hour’s drive to class. In other words, back to the Sunday pototoes. And no, two years away didn’t make me miss them.

6. Adulthood – 23/24/25 years old: I graduated from university, and moved to Toronto to work retail for the summer before I went back to college for a post-grad program. After I graduate from college (again), I start working in Toronto as well. During these years, I live with Sandy first, then Susie, then Kristy, then (briefly) Erin. Each person became very familiar with my english muffin pizzas, and, yes, pasta with…wait for it…not Prego, but a step up into Classico!

7. Adulthood – 25/26/27 years old: The Edmonton years, when Darcy and I moved in together, and he did the cooking. My specialties were pancakes and a macaroni and hamburger casserole. These were also the Edmonton years when my mom would ask, “What are you feeding Darcy?” Didn’t I just answer that? Pancakes and macaroni and hamburger casserole.

8. Adulthood – 28 years old: Back to Ontario! Roles reversed, I’m the one at home, and Darcy’s the one out at the office. I finally start to feel some sense of homemaker stir within me, and I decide to start trying to cook. Miracle of miracles, I’m not that bad, and now I might even, ahem, enjoy it. Say what? I actually credit part of my motivation to begin cooking to Ami, because when she was writing Beyond Peas and Carrots, she was constantly posting about this meal or that dish – and her son is not even a year old! I guiltily read her posts while wearing my pajamas at four in the afternoon, thinking I should stop being such a slattern, at home all day and producing nothing in the way of sustenance for Darcy and I. What? A graduation from english muffin pizzas to pita pizzas doesn’t count?

So, while I would by no means call myself a cook, I am trying to at least become a competent one, and my little collaboration with Ami, in which we will compare our ingredients and experiences cooking or baking the same recipe, is a great way to experiment with new foods, hone some skills, reconnect with an old friend, and inspire me to get some fresh content up on De Facto Redhead!

You can look forward to our first recipe review on Monday – it’s a barley risotto with roasted winter vegetables, and we can thank my former roommate Sandy for the recipe, who has also evolved his palate from his Delissio pizza days. Aren’t we soooooooo grown up now?

Carla vs. Potatoes, 2007.