Monday: Favourite Thing

I think every monday I am going to post about something that is my favourite (but since yesterday was a holiday, I'm starting this on a Tuesday. Please file your complaints with the complaint department).

I like to say that everything is my favourite. My favourite meal, my favourite colour, my favourite shirt. I have a lot of favourites in every category.

To start this off I'm going to mention my favourite thing in salad today:

TINY TOMATOES

photo cred: http://www.naturesweettomatoes.com

Not only are they adorable to look at (OMG so cute!), they are sweet and yummy, and not so big that you feel it's going to explode out of your mouth when you bite into it.

Tiny tomatoes keep my lunch salad crisp. Tiny tomatoes make me smile.

Pizza: Our Friday Ritual

Every weekend Mark and I make a meal plan for the week ahead. We only plan our dinners as we build our lunches from leftovers. The plan helps us stay on track and stops us from buying lunch.

We break it down to what kind of meat, veggies, and starch that we want. Only occasionally do we have a specific recipe in mind. Most nights we plan as far as "We are going to have chicken" and the "how" is determined once we're home from work.

Monday nights are usually reserved for "Mark's Choice". This means he gets to figure it out and make supper. We also usually do our grocery shopping on Mondays. We recently decided that subjecting ourselves to an overcrowded busy grocery store on a Saturday was not a fun way to spend the weekend, so we moved our shopping to Monday or Tuesday night. So far it's been much better.

Since I only work a half day on Fridays, they have become "Maria's Choice" for supper. Some Fridays I want something easy and quick so I'll whip up some homemade Macaroni and Cheese, but more often than not, I'll make Pizza.

My Pizza crust recipe is easy. I have two that I use frequently. One is a quick version that doesn't require any rising, and the other needs a 1 hour rise. The most successful version is the 1 hour rise recipe, but both are delicious and make great pizza.

When we make pizza we always make 2. I get to choose the toppings for one, and Mark the other. The last time we made pizza we had a very good pepperoni and veggie pizza followed by a BBQ chicken, bacon and onion pizza (we had a lot of BBQ chicken leftovers). Both were delicious!!

The Pepperoni pizza had Pepperoni, Zucchini, Yellow Peppers and Mozzarella cheese. We used jarred pizza sauce and I usually season the veggies before it goes in the oven with Salt and Pepper.

The BBQ Chicken pizza had a BBQ Sauce base (Cattle Boyz is the best!), lots of BBQ chicken chopped up, bacon that we had cooked earlier, and lots of diced Red Onion and a mix of Mozzarella and Cheddar cheese.

Pizza Crust (1 Hour Rise)

for 2 Medium size pizzas, make for 3 people

in a mixing bowl add:

1/3 cup Water for each person

2 tsp Rapid Rise Yeast

A couple Glugs (that is a standard size measurement, dontchya know) of Olive Oil. If you want to measure, do 2 TBSP.

Add 1/2 cup of flour. Whole Wheat is good. Mix everything together and add another 1/2 cup of flour. Stir.

When the dough is still wet, add 1 tsp Salt.

Keep adding flour 1/2 cup at a time until it comes together. Usually ends up at about 3 cups of flour total.

Knead on the counter for a few minutes. The dough should not stick to your hands. Place in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a clean tea towel, and let rise 1 hour.

Pre-Heat the oven to 500F. If you've got a pizza stone, let it pre-heat. If you don't, place a baking sheet upside down in the oven to pre-heat.

Punch down and knead until most of the big air bubbles have popped. Divide in 2 and roll out onto Parchment Paper (or if you are well equipped, onto a pizza peel).

Each pizza will roll out to about 12". It should be fairly thin, about 1/8" or so. Stretch it out with your hands letting the weight of the dough pull it thin.

Top with anything your heart desires!

Pop it in the oven, Parchment Paper makes for easier transferring, for about 10 minutes. Keep an eye on it. Take it out, let it cool for 30 seconds to 2 minutes (test your patience) and enjoy!

Easter Paska: My First Heirloom Recipe

The inaugural post. Always a lot of pressure.

I've been brainstorming (more like brain-sunshowering) about the posts I dream for this blog. I wanted to be able to create a blog that would thoughtfully present my point of view on many subjects. It started with the desire to talk about food. I mean, I talk about food a lot as it is, but I wanted a bigger audience. A bigger audience meant more sharing and more great stories and recipes and advice. But then I thought about the other things around my home that I like talking about too. General domesticity and homemaking, my deep love of ironing, but poor time management which means I never make time to iron; all the things that make me happy in my home-life.

Wheat and sky was born on a typical Friday afternoon. After a couple weeks of dreaming, I finally sat down to figure out a name that would express the general feeling I wanted. Not exclusively food related either. Believe me, I had some awesome and terrible names lined up.

For this inaugural post I'd like to take a trip back in time to the day I decided that learning recipes used by my mother and my grandmothers was important and I wanted to be able to master them and pass them on one day.

My first real journey began at Easter time a few years ago. My mother was ill and my family was out of sorts you could say. I needed a catalyst to energize me for spring. I was down and needed lifting. I turned to bread. Good, soft, sweet and heavenly bread.

Paska is Ukrainian Easter bread. It is a simple quick bread full of lots of good things like eggs and melted butter. Mmmm! The dough is soft and supple and traditionally Paska is decorated and included in the Easter basket to be blessed at church.

The result of this recipe is a sweet and soft bread with a nice fine crust. Best if sliced thin like sandwich bread and eaten with a healthy spread of butter or a slice of cold ham and beet and horseradish relish.

When I made this the first time, my mom was in the hospital. I made her her very own 'personal sized' paska in a tomato can. We sat and nibbled on bread and butter while chatting. Not having a real easter dinner that year was difficult. I made it through by baking bread, and teaching myself how to make pyrohy and nalysnyky (crepes filled with cottage cheese and dill). I sought approval from my mom and grandma and at first that was what got me through it - to know that I could teach myself how to make these things on my own... because I didn't know if they would ever be able to teach me. I was feeling like I had missed my chance for a hands on lesson. It was a sad time and I used Ukrainian food as a crutch.

Thankfully, today I don't lean on this food for the same emotional support as I once did. My mom is well and my grandma as sarcastic as ever. I now make Paska at easter to share with the family and carry on the tradition. It is a happy time for spring and bread and all the wonderful symbolism that Easter brings.

If you have never made bread before, I urge you to try this recipe. It seems daunting (10 cups of flour?!?) but it is very easy to work with. Even if you divided it into loaf pans and made sandwich bread, it would be absolutely divine.

Easter Paska

from Ukrainian Daughter's Cookbook

1/2 cup warm water

1 1/2 Tbsp yeast

1 tsp sugar

Combine until yeast is dissolved, 10 minutes.

6 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup oil

1 tsp salt

3 cups lukewarm water

10 - 11 cups flour (all purpose is fine)

Combine the softened yeast with beaten eggs, add sugar, butter, oil, salt, and water. Mix in the flour and knead until smooth and elastic. The dough should be just a little stiffer than for bread (for bread novices, knead the dough until it is smooth and no longer needs flour to stop it from sticking to your hands). Cover, let rise in a warm place until double in bulk (about an hour).

Punch down and let rise again for another hour.

Prep pans for baking by buttering or spray with oil. The best kind of pan for this bread is a 9" cake pan or a springform pan. But you can also bake these in washed out coffee cans or for smaller breads, use 28 oz tomato cans.

Remove the dough from the bowl and lightly knead a few times. Cut off a piece big enough to make circle 1" thick that will cover the bottom of your pan.

Take 2 equal-sized pieces of dough, roll each to 36" lengths. Place side by side and starting from centre, entwine each about the other, do the other half in the same manner (you just made a dough rope), place the entwined length of the base, in a circle along the edge of the the base.

Decorate the top of the bread with a cross with curled ends, or create a braid similar to the rope and add that around the perimeter of the bread.

Let rise to almost double in bulk. This won't take as long as the first two times so keep an eye on it! Brush lightly with a beaten egg.

Bake in 325 F for 15 minutes then turn the oven up to 350F and bake for 45 minutes more.

This recipe makes 3 or 4 paska. I got 2 large 9" paska and 1 smaller 6" out of this recipe, but one of my loaves was ENORMOUS and ballooned out over the edges of the pan. Hilarious!

Let the loaves cool completely before storing them. I recommend wrapping them in plastic wrap and again in tin foil if you are freezing them. They last about a month in the freezer.

Make French Toast with this bread once it's gone a little stale. Mmmmmm so good!