Food – Page 2 – New England's Narrow Road

Veggies and Simple Dip

vegetable party platter — This is the way to eat!

I made this veggie platter to take to a neighbor’s 50th birthday party. It looked so pretty that I got a photo and thought I’d share my dip recipe.

Here it is:
Buy a container of whipped cream cheese and chives. Stir in a few big spoonfuls of sour cream and some onion powder and/or garlic powder. That’s it!

Pretty tasty.

My thoughts these days: In fact I would now use plain yogurt in place of the sour cream. I am getting away from eating dairy and Greek yogurt is a better choice. And goat’s milk yogurt is even better.

And don’t worry about finding non-fat. The type of fat in yogurt is not all that bad for you. I look at it this way, avoid the things that are really bad and fattening, and include the fat in foods that are basically good, like yogurt. My homeopathic doctor taught me this philosophy and it makes sense. I also buy mostly organic veggies these days. I try to grow my own if possible, but with a short growing season here in the northeast, I eat my own crops for only a few months. In fact I can grow everything shown on this vegetable platter, except the broccoli. I’ve never tried to grow it. My carrots do not grow nice and big, but they are edible. Summer squash and zucchini is super easy to grow, as are the cherry, or grape, tomatoes and celery.

First Hummingbird Spotted – May 10th!

This morning I saw the first hummingbird of the season at my feeder.
My sister, in Mass., has had one for a week or so, but my feeder has remained empty. I always try to remember to put out the feeder around the first of May in case they are in the area.

hummingbird food — Time to feed the hummingbirds

I prefer to have plants in the garden and yard that will attract them, and for many years I never used a hummingbird feeder, but I no longer have my beautiful gardens full of red monarda (which they love) and other flowers to feed them, so I have to have a feeder.

Here’s the mixture I use if you are wondering.
1/2 cup sugar to 2 cups water.

I put 1/2 cup of sugar into one cup of water and heat it in the microwave until it dissolves.
Then I pour it into my blue (16 oz. plus) plastic container with a lid and add another cup of cold water.

I only pour a little at a time into the feeder and change it every other day. The remainder is stored in the refrigerator.

If you LOVE hummingbirds, I just read a beautiful page full of wonderful PHOTOS documenting a hummingbird nest with 2 babies. Her photos are awesome.

I struggle to capture a good photo, but here is the one I took this morning. My new feeder in the picture to the left, has a glass center and I like it much better than my old feeder shown above.

If you are planning to buy a feeder, I suggest getting one with little perches of some kind. This one came with the perches not attached and at first I didn’t put them on, but the birds seemed to need them and usually sit on them while they drink.

Bread Maker Pizza Dough Recipe

: Making Bread

My bread maker died a few weeks ago and I decided I would begin to make my own bread. I try not to eat too much bread and I mostly used the bread-maker for making pizza dough on Friday nights.

I looked online and found a recipe for homemade bread that was supposedly WONDERFUL… It had to be kneaded for 10 minutes! Are you kidding me? So I made it and got a good arm workout. The bread wouldn’t rise.

Most likely because it’s winter and my house is only around 65 degrees – no where near the 80 degrees suggested for rising.

Even when I heated the oven and stuck the dough in there, it still didn’t do much.

I got a few loaves – the small ones were edible but the large ones were doughy inside. I tried this recipe once more and still didn’t have much luck so I made Bread Pudding – which no one ate either! So I gave up on that recipe.

I now have a new bread maker (West Bend)…and it has 2 paddles in the bottom of the pan, which I had never heard of, but this machine didn’t come with a pizza dough recipe!! Oh no….BUT at Amazon.com (where I purchased it) a lady had left a message about this machine saying she always made pizza dough too and used the bagel recipe instead.

I used it Friday to make pizza dough (which was a combination of the bagel recipe and my old pizza dough recipe) and it was delicious…even better than my old dough would come out.
So below is the recipe for my bread maker pizza dough. In case you like to make your own. Add ingredients in this order and use the dough setting. Mine takes an hour and a half to complete.

PIZZA DOUGH
1 cup water @ 80 degrees
1 1/2 Tbsp. Olive oil
3 Cups of Bread flour
1 1/2 tsp. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt.
2 tsp. active dry yeast

I used this to make one large pizza with semi-thick crust. Add some spices such as onion and/or garlic powder and oregano to give the crust a nice flavor. I also bake the crust first @ 425 for about 10 minutes, then add sauce and toppings and bake @ 425 for about 15 minutes – or until it looks cooked.