Adventures in Baking: Homemade Bagels

Tim Horton’s. Bruegger’s Bagels. Big Apple Bagels. Dunkin’ Donuts. Einstein Bros. You can give your money to them each morning.

Or. Or you can buy them and just toast them yourself.

There is an alternative #3. It is possible to bake your own bagels. If we can do it, so can you!

I just googled to find a recipe and I stumbled across this one from The Fresh Loaf, who took it from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice book.

My Recipe Notes

• The recipes says to keep the bagels in the fridge overnight after you form them into the bagels shapes… we totally didn’t do this. I didn’t realize it was an overnight deal, so once I did, I made sure they were in the fridge for about 6 hours. Let’s just pretend that 6 hours is a full night’s sleep for bagels.
• I highly recommend using your mixer to mix all the ingredients together but NOT to knead the dough. It is way too stiff.
• You are supposed to knead in another 3/4 cup flour, we could only force another 1/2 cup in and it was fine.
• I didn’t bother buying malt syrup, we just used brown sugar since we already had it on hand.

Just out of their good night’s day’s rest in the fridge

warm out of the oven and ready to eat!

They were super yummy, especially warm right out of the oven. We only made a plan variety, but once these are done we’ll definitely experiment a little bit with some more exciting flavors.

I decided to make these at first because I could not find bagels that were not packaged in plastic and I’d had bad experience with bakery bagels getting hard to quick (even in the fridge!). These were a great result. It made 12 bagels, and we froze half of them for next week’s breakfasts.

Hawaiian Sunday, Snow Monday

After a full day of skiing on Saturday at Crystal Mountain (we actually had powder and got to use our sweet Groupons) the Sunday is usually filled with all of the errands that we weren’t able to get done before.

Sunday started off with breakfast at Northside Grill, where, apparently, it was Hawaiian Sunday. You could get some special things like pineapple juice and pancakes with pineapple, but I stuck with something a bit less Hawaiian.

Spinach Omelette, Hash Browns, & Toast

We spent Sunday by visiting my uncle in the hospital after breakfast. He’s been in the hospital for almost 14 months now and they think he should be able to go home finally in about 6-8 weeks. It was amazing to even see him sitting upright in a wheelchair.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with laundry, grocery shopping, the gym (!!!), and dinner.

Sunday dinner was BBQ tofu and Israeli couscous with zucchini and carrot.

Israeli Couscous with Zucchini & Carrots

makes about 3 servings

Ingredients
1 cup Israeli couscous, dry
2 cups water
1 zucchini, shredded
1 carrot, shredded
1 tablespoon olive oil

Heat olive in a small pot over medium high heat and add in carrot and zucchini. Stir fry for a while then add in dry couscous. Incorporate well. Add water, bring to a boil, then back down to simmering.

Cook until all of the water has been absorbed, about 15 minutes. Stir every so often so that it doesn’t stick. I added in some spices as well – granulate onion, red pepper flakes, and a bit of Lawry’s seasoning salt.

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On the exercise front, I actually made it to the gym on Sunday to go running, which was my goal. I ran two miles, with speeds from 5.2 up to 5.7mph, then stopped to do some other stuff. I did crunches with the ten pound weight, dips, and pikes on the pilates ball and knee tucks. I finished up with another mile, making it three total miles. I am doing about 11:30 minute miles. Not terribly great, but I don’t think I’ll ever be a very speedy runner. I’d rather go for distance.

How is your week going so far? Are you managing to keep up with everything you’ve had planned for the week? I’ve got a Slow Food Huron Valley meet-up tonight at Silvio’s that I am super pumped about. They’ll also be talking about their trip to Terra Madre in Italy! Have a good Tuesday!

Out of Time

It has been a busy week or so over the holidays. I’m really
glad that they are over.

Up to Flint, down to Shelby Twp, back to Ann Arbor. (24/25)
Back to Flint, Shelby Twp, Ann Arbor (26).
Up to Traverse City to go skiing (27)
Back to Ann Arbor (29).
Downtown Detroit to see Gowtham. (30)

I don’t plan on leaving Ann Arbor for a while now We’re heading to the bike
store today to finish paying for Tim’s new mountain bike (bringing the total number of bikes in the apartment up to seven when it is finally delivered) and then we have a reservation for dinner at the Grange in Ann Arbor for their special NYE menu.

Of course I have to take a look and see what I’d like to do next year.

2011 Goals
1.) From November 2009 until now I have gone from 135 pounds down to 112 pounds. 23 pounds lost! I can’t say anything grandiose like “I lost a whole person,” but that’s okay. My goal weight is 100 pounds, so that means I have 12 pounds to go. I want to put a goal date on this, but I don’t think I will. I will, however, note that I am 4 foot 11 inches tall, so this should be pretty attainable (and I’ve been there before in my adult life).

2.) Exercise goals: work out (on my own or with Sarah) five times per week. Start doing some P90X routines, if only to break up some monotony.

3.) Run a 5k (signed up for one in February on Super Bowl Sunday in Novi, MI.)

4.) Run/bike a duathlon (need to work on the running distance part, biking is no problem)

5.) Eat meat only once per day or not at all. Breakfast is always meatless.

6.) Eat dinner out once per week or not at all. Try to choose local restaurants over chains.

7.) Volunteer with Earthworks Urban Farm in Detroit and Growing Hope in
Ypsilanti.

8.) Have my own garden in a Project Grow community garden.

And lastly…..

9.) Continue posting about the yummy food I make and eat, like this:

Clam Chowder (brought to me in a bread bowl by mistake)

Spinach & Artichoke dip (shared with everyone)

Breakfast this morning
steel cut oats made in the rice cooker, with brown sugar, cinnamon, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries.

Weekend Catch-Up

Taking some time to catch up on meals over the last couple of days.

Breakfast at Northside Grill
-scrambled eggs
-wheat toast
-hash browns

Lunch Scavenged from Meijer
-whole wheat roll
-roasted red pepper hummus
-fruit juice smoothie… thing

Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning I was up in East Lansing for Phi Sigma Pi Induction ceremony and party. My family went out to Bravo! in Eastwood Towne Center for dinner. My dinner was good but the vegetarian selection was surprisingly not so good for a restaurant like that… not even a “normal” spaghetti dish. I think some of the only non-meat dishes were eggplant based. Sorry, I don’t like eggplant in my Italian food. I ended up having the Pasta Bravo without chicken.

Sunday was the night for the roaster chicken I got from my mom… however I was not completely sure if it was going to be thawed out since I called on my way home from East Lansing to ask Tim to start thawing it. In the end it was nicely thawed and ready to go at 5pm. We had a late lunch at Panera so a late dinner was in the works too.

Fancy Schmancy Sunday Dinner
-Roasted chicken with Citrus Rub from Spice Merchants
-Corn & Peas
-Israeli couscous with Indian curry powder

The leftovers from the chicken made a GREAT lunch today. It’s also going to get made into chicken noodle soup and then chicken stock as well. Gotta use up as much of it as I can

French Toast Breakfast, Chicken Soup Dinner

I used up the last of my cranberry lemon with pecan preserves (that I got at the JamPot) this morning. I have a jar of lemon marmalade to look forward to now.

French Toast! Co-starring blueberry yogurt, a little bit of granola, and coffee.

Bread: Shokupan from Cafe Japon
Eggs: Ernst Farms
Soy Milk: Edensoy. Soybeans from Michigan Thumb area.
Yogurt: Thomas Organic Creamery
Coffee: Rich French Neighbor from Roosroast

We did a little bit of running around today: Best Buy (bought nothing, checked out Kindles), Victoria’s Secret at the mall, and the Salvation Army. I dropped off two garbage bags of clothes and one of shoes at the donation dock – it feels really good to have clothes that I wasn’t wearing and those that don’t fit anymore to just be out of the way.

At around 5pm, Tim decided that he wanted to have chicken noodle soup for dinner, so we went to the store to pick up egg noodles. The only recipe that I had was the “8 cups of water plus entire chicken in the pot” kind, so I figured I could just wing it. I’d had chicken noodle soup enough times in 24 years to know what it tastes like.

Spur of the Moment Chicken Noodle Soup
Ingredients–
8 cups of chicken stock (good if you’ve got homemade on-hand frozen)
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 zucchini, sliced
Approx 2.5 cups of chicken, white/dark meat, torn up
Egg noodles (I think I used about 2 cups? I like a very noodle-y soup)
3 cloves of garlic, minced finely or through a press (I used one clove of elephant ear garlic)
Dashes of parsley, basil, paprika, crushed red pepper, onion powder, sea salt, & black pepper

Defrost chicken broth and pour into “big enough” soup pot on medium high. Add carrots, garlic, and spices and bring to a boil. Let boil for a few minutes and bring down to lower heat. Once carrots are tender, add celery and chicken. The chicken won’t take long to heat up. The egg noodles I used take about 3 minutes to cook according to the package, so I added the zucchini and noodles at the same time. Just check and make sure the noodles are done and everything else should be ready too

Aprons make me feel fancy. I got this one from Questionable Content, a webcomic I read.

Finished product, with a focaccia roll

Thanksgiving, Take One

Our Thanksgiving adventure started yesterday morning when I went by the Farmers Market to pick up the turkey I ordered from Ernst Farm (where I usually get bacon, sausage, and flour from). The turkey I ended up getting was 17 pounds. We usually have a larger one, I guess, but 17 pounds was still rather awkwardly heavy to lug the couple of blocks to the car.

After we got out of work, we headed out with turkey in tow to my Shelby Twp. We dropped the turkey off at my Gramma’s and stopped at Khom Fai, a Thai restaurant next to Hamlin Pub at 22 & Hayes for dinner. It was really good–your normal Thai food you’d expect and it was only around $20 for two of us. I had a veggie spring roll (love love love) and Pad Woonsen – a dish with the clear noodles, fried tofu, mushrooms, pea pods, broccoli, carrots, napa cabbage, and celery and water chestnuts (which I avoided).

Afterwards, we stopped in at my friend’s house and hung around with his mom for a couple of hours. Is that weird? I have a lot of friends that it is perfectly normal to stop over to hang out with their parents when they are not there.

One of my goals for Thanksgiving was to actually get some exercise in, especially because I would not have any time on Wednesday. So I was up at 6:30am Thursday morning and up and out for a run around my Gramma’s neighborhood at 7:15am. I ended up running for 40 minutes and did 3.7 miles (I mapped it out on Google maps a minute ago). Some math tells me that this is 10:32 minutes miles, aka 5.7mph. I usually run on the treadmill at anywhere between 5.2 and 5.5mph so that sounds pretty good to me. I made two really quick stops, once to change music and once to take a picture of a new friend.

A little pre-run banana

And a new froggy friend…

I got back to the house, took a quick shower, and then Tim and I picked up my friend Megan to go to Starbucks for some breakfast. There was soy milk all around for the three of us! Seriously, cow’s milk is grossss. Think about where that comes from. Ugh.

Oatmeal and Soy Chai

We had the regular Thanksgiving dinner at Gramma’s house later this afternoon. Well, later meaning 3:30pm. Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, sweet potatoes, biscuits, cranberry from a jar (LOL), stuffing, and the little tray of pickles that I don’t touch. We don’t do fancy or impressive for our Thanksgiving…. Christmas…. or Easter. It’s just how we are.

Turkey leg for me! Muahahahaha, all mine

Three Day Week

Thanks to Thanksgiving Day this week, I’ve only got one day left of work.
Thanks to Thanksgiving Day this week, it is unbearably slow at work today (hence the blogging). I could do some filing, but yea, not as entertaining (and I need something to do tomorrow as well).

Again though, there are some meals to catch up with.

Saturday we had our friend Brian with us for dinner and we had some rather simple stir fry.

Red Pepper (not shown, since I don’t like it), snow peas, broccoli, carrot, baby bok choy, and romanesco cauliflower

Cafe Japon was at the Farmer’s Market this weekend so I was able to get some shokupan… which means French toast for breakfast I am almost out of the preserves I got at the JamPot up north…

Sunday Breakfast

I decided that on Sunday afternoon that I was going to head out to downtown and maybe look at some Christmas presents for people and pick up more shampoo at the food co-op. Is it weird to post an outfit? Because I am. Please ignore that knick-knacks (ps I made the little clay dudes!)

I came back with two gifts for people from Heavenly Metal and some much needed bar shampoo, seeing as I ran out on Friday. I really want to get some pretty bar shampoos from Lush, since they are awesomely colored and smell nice, but ALL of them have SLS listed as an ingredient… so sorry Lush. Twelve Oaks is too far away for me to drive to get some anyways.

Sunday afternoon we went out to the movies to see the new Harry Potter and I was totally surprised that it was already dark when we got out! Given it is a 2.5 hour long movie and it started at 3:15pm… Dinner was simple. Marinara sauce from Veganomicon, some bow-tie pasta I had in the cupboard, and Gimme Lean veggie ground beef crumbles. First time using the veggie ground beef and it was rather successful. I had to spice it up a bit with a bunch of spices since I bought the plain style, but once it was all mixed up in the sauce it was really good.

Monday night dinner marked another first– Chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon and my first time using vital wheat gluten. I wasn’t quite sure about the “strings of gluten” they were talking about and then BAM I became very familiar. The cutlets were simple, but needed a bit more spice which I’ll do next time. I just wanted to make them according to the recipe first so I would have something to base variations off of. Also included were baked potato wedges and stir-fried baby bok choy.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading down to the Farmer’s Market to pick up my turkey from Ernst Farms, then one more day of work and vacation until Monday!

Not-so-lazy Sunday

I don’t really do “lazy” days.

Today started off with breakfast at Northside Grill.

Two egg breakfast: scrambled eggs, hash browns, wheat toast.

Toast: a strawberry jam delivery device.

Came home, watched some Battlestar Galactica. Put in laundry, hung up laundry. Finished off the last of the pasta leftovers for lunch. Tim and I went to Wheels in Motion and to talk to the guys there about rebuilding the fork on my mountain bike.

Dinner was some more new things out of the Veganomicon. BBQ tofu, stir-fried bok choy & rainbow chard, corn.

The Ingredients

All Done

A Bit Closer

Bears, Beets

Let’s just say we’ve been watching a lot of Battlestar Galactica lately.

Anyways…..

Weekly Menu
…in no particular order, starting 11/6/2010…

1.) Leftover Red Lentil soup
2.) Vegetarian Thai red curry with tofu; lemongrass & cardamom rice
3.) Pasta with Italian Sausage, Garlic Marinara
4.) Roasted Cauliflower, Quinoa
5.) Bean burgers, Israeli Couscous, Corn, Peas
6.) Homemade Pizza
7.) Leftovers Day

Lemongrass, ginger, shrimp paste: Tsai grocery
Potatoes, Chili peppers: Tantre Farm at Farmers Market
Cilantro: Frog Holler Produce at Farmers Market
Cauliflower: Farmers Market
Sausage, Whole wheat flour: Ernst Farm at the Farmers Market
Shallots, brown rice, cardamom, pizza sauce, Israeli couscous, quinoa, pasta, Al Dente marinara sauce, coriander seeds, peas, corn, broccoli, tofu: People’s Food Co-op
Yeast, Garlic, : from Nathan and Jenn

We had a pretty productive day on Saturday. We went to Northside Grill for breakfast, then to the Farmer’s Market and People’s food Co-op. We needed some more ingredients for the Thai Curry so we headed over (in full U of M football traffic) to Tsai Grocery…. and also Target! I got a $50 Target giftcard at work for Thanksgiving and I figured it would be a good time to stop in there since we aren’t over on that side very often. I looked around in the kitchen things around for a while…. immersion blender! Red! $49.99! Mine!

After that we drove out to the east side to see my uncle in the hospital. Yesterday was 11 months that he has been in the SICU at St. John’s, but his doctor told us yesterday that he is almost ready to move out of the SICU and on to a rehab floor.

On our way home, we stopped in at the Apple Store at Briarwood Mall and picked up some handy new iPhone 4′s. I really think it is faster than the laptop I am using right now. We got back home, worked on syncing up the new phones, and I bought our plane tickets for Denver as well. We’ll be gone from February 16 to the 20th to visit my friend Amanda and get some skiing in, of course.

Sunday morning’s breakfast was French toast syrup and preserves, blueberry yogurt with granola, and a cup of Rich French Neighbor from Roosroast coffee.

Plantains, coconut, and crepes

Weekly Menu
… in no particular order……. this is from Saturday (10/30/10)

1.) Quinoa and Cauliflower
2.) Pasta with Italian sausage & Sauce from Al Dente Pasta
3.) Bean Burgers and Mac & Cheese
4.) Leftover Japanese Curry
5.) Stir Fry with Noodles (green pepper, bok choy, carrots)

Bulk: quinoa, pasta, most spices for burgers
Local: cauliflower, italian sausage, Al Dente pasta sauce, soy milk, whole wheat flour, green pepper, bok choy, carrots

First, to start off some with some epicness, my car, the Satillac, got to 125,000 miles this weekend! Yay, it still works… for the most part.

Before we went to the farmer’s market and food co-op we had breakfast at Northside Grill again. It was the first time we actually had to wait outside for a table. They do have some sweet coffee outside for people waiting I ended up mixing it up a bit this time and got the Wall Streeter breakfast sammich. Fried egg, American cheese, and sausage on an English muffin, plus hash browns.

One of my coworkers took me out to lunch on Friday so I had the lunch I brought instead on Saturday. Just some lentil soup leftovers and pasta toss leftovers.

Dinner on Saturday was bean burger patties and Annie’s Mac & Cheese. Pretty much all the ingredients below, except for the whole wheat flour for the burger mix.

All done! Sweet new dishes I got at HomeGoods. Having the leftovers from this for lunch at work Monday.

On Sunday morning, Tim and I met up with our friends Justin and Becky for breakfast at Cafe Zola. There was really dark coffee in French Presses that Justin was brave enough to press at our table… and I finally got that crepe I’d been craving since seeing the crepe shack at Breckenridge almost a year ago. I had a sweet crepe with raspberry preserves and almond-hazelnut butter. I wish they had a savory crepe with swiss, spinach, and mushrooms, but it had onions in it I believe.

After breakfast, we hung out at the apartment for a while and then Tim and I went to the last of our cooking classes at Hollanders. This was a tropical Indian style dinner. There was a plantain stir-fry, masala-fried shrimp, coconut rice, and mango lassi. I was surprised that I liked the coconut rice so much, since I normally eschew anything remotely having to do with coconut (except coconut milk in curries). From there we headed to the co-op to refill out olive jar–of course, making a mess and smelling like EVOO along with that.

We made the drive up to Tim’s parents in Montrose for dinner. Swiss steak, brown rice, and broccoli… but no picture. Now we’re back at home, ignoring Halloween, and watching Battlestar Galactica.

Oh, and I need to think of an appetizer to bring to Christmas. I am thinking of either making/buyer some pita and assorted breads, making crackers, and making a smattering of different types of spreads (hummus, sun-dried tomato & roasted garlic, etc.)