Day 77 - Sausage Bread

Recipe from Mom

This is day 77. Today we kind of did 2 things to make up for our absence. First, my mom made potato and leek soup. To go with that, I made sausage bread, and since it's Tuesday, our dessert night, I made pumpkin muffins a really easy.

Sausage Bread is our own recipe. We mainly make it when we have potato cheese soup, but we decided to make it with this other soup today.

Basically, I you make dough in a bread machine. We used Gluten Free Pantry's French Bread mix.

In the bread machine

Then you make some sausage in a pan.

You spread 1/2 the dough in a loaf pan.

Put sausage in the middle.

Put the rest of the dough on top.

Then you bake it, and it's 11 million thumbs up good.

My mom makes it using frozen bread dough (it's not gluten free). She rolls it out, spreads the sausage in the middle, and rolls it up like a jelly roll. My dad and her like it with mustard. We have it every Christmas, too.

The other recipe is a pumpkin muffin recipe. You get a spice cake mix (we used Namaste GF brand), one can of pumpkin, 1/2 cup of apple sauce, and 1/4 tsp of pumpkin pie mix, which we don't have, so I sprinkled cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger in it.

That's it. You mix it together, put in muffin tins, and bake it. 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.

I think we should up the thumb scale to 5. No, never mind, we'll keep it at 2. These muffins are 2 thumbs up all the way!

Day 76 - Potato Cheese Soup

Recipe From My Mom

After we hit day 75 we kind of mellowed out. We sort of needed a break. It's been 2 days since we blogged.

We decided that we're not going to blog about our cooking everyday. We're still cooking, but will blog a couple times a week until we get to day 100, and maybe more.

We've been really busy because my grandparents brought us a stray cat from the lake.

We've been really busy with it since it's not potty trained and has peed on my bed and on Jared's bed. Then we found out she is pregnant. Plus my mom isn't feeling well, and neither am I, and my brothers had their first band competition and came in 2nd place, so, yeah, we've been busy.

But still eating healthy.

Tonight I made my mother's homemade potato cheese soup. I chose to make this recipe because it felt like a soup day and it's quite yummy.

It's also really easy. You just peel potatoes, cut them into squares, boil them up for about 30 minutes. You also chop carrots, celery, and onions and sauté them in a pan.

Then after those are done, you add them into the broth and potatoes.

You grate some cheddar cheese while that's cooking.

Next you blend the potato and veggies together with a hand blender.

Sophie's Cooking Tip of the Day:

If it's too thick, I learned you can add a little milk to make it less thick.

Then you add cheese, some dill weed, and salt and stir it all up.

It's really easy and good. My whole family loves it (except Sam). This has been another night of cooking from Sophie the cooking girl!

2 Billion Thumbs Up

Day 75 - Pumpkin Muffins

Recipe from my mom's recipe box

We're celebrating today! It's day 75!!!

We had a Book Fiesta to go to at my school tonight so we just got home now at 8:00. I wanted to make something for my class at school. I thought it would be a fun thing to do and since tomorrow is October 1st, my mom said I could make pumpkin muffins for them. I hope they like them! I think they will.

I wanted to do a different recipe than the pumpkin bread Jared made, so I did a pumpkin recipe my mom had in her recipe box. There isn't as much sugar in it as the other one.

Gluten Free Pantry Flour

By the way, I've been a vegetarian for 3 days now. I will inform you how it's going. I am doing awesome right now. I saw a dead fox on the road and it kind of grossed me out, plus I'm against hunting so I'm trying it. Plus because they give the animals antibiotics so they don't work on us. I want to be healthy.

I'll let you know how the muffins are tomorrow!

Good night.

~ Sophie

Pumpkin Muffins

1 1/2 cup flour or gluten free flour mix like Gluten Free Pantry

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 nutmeg, cinnamon, baking power (each)

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup oil

1 cup canned pumpkin

1/3 cup water

2 eggs

Combine dry ingredients, then add oil, eggs and pumpkin. Slowly add water until blended. Pour into greased muffin pans or muffin cups.

Cook for 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes

Day 74 - Stewed Fruit and Crumble

Recipe from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and Jamie Online

Hi, hi, everyone. It's 9:15 and my mom just got home from a book signing. I cooked at, like, 4:00 this afternoon, but now it's past my bedtime, so we're writing a quick post.

Today I made stewed fruit and Crumble. I used plums and a pear which we got from the food co-op yesterday. I'd never made stewed fruit before, but I have made a little crumble before.

This was a very easy recipe. It took about 30 minutes. A little bit more if you do the crumble. It's sort of like an apple sauce, almost, except we used the pear and plums. It was chunky. Stewing fruit is not as easy as it looks. You have to cut all the fruit, which is weird because you really notice the texture of the fruit.

It was juicy. You just cook it with a little water and sugar.

I used sugar in the raw, which my dad uses for his coffee.

When it's done, the fruit is very hot.

You add the crumble topping and then bake it. The crumble topping is just flour, sugar, butter, and oats (we used GF Bisquick).

The crumble topping

I had to get the skin out!

I only had a taste because it's not our dessert night. Yesterday was dessert night. Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday are dessert nights. I think we're a healthy family because we don't eat dessert all the time and we don't go to fast food places.

1 1/2 THUMBS UP

I would have liked it a little less chunky. But it was good.

Day 73 - Everyday Chopped Salad

Recipe from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

Mwahahaha, this is Jared. I'm sorry, but I'm kind of joyous because it's kind of cooler here. It's in the 70s and low 80s and down to the 50s at night. It seems that Sophie and Caleb are in a Halloween-y mood, and it's rubbed off on me so I'm in a Halloween-y mood. I've been reading Caleb spooky stories.

When Halloween gets closer, around the 23rd, or so, we are going to make some sugar cookies with Halloween cookie cutters.

We've made some decisions on the way we're going to do things. We've had to restructure our whole idea because I cannot cook everyday with school and homework and extracurricular activities. Neither can Sophie. So what we decided amongst ourselves is that I will cook one day, and she will cook the next, and so on and so on.

Let me tell you, it is exhausting to come home from school, do your homework, go do art club or whatever, then realize, "Oh, I have to cook and blog tonight, and it's already 7 o'clock." That's happened to both of us on quite a number of occasions and let me tell you, it does not make for a relaxing evening.

So, starting Thursday, which will be day 5 of cooking Jamie Oliver's recipes, we have decided to transition to cooking using his philosophy: to cook healthy, use fresh ingredients, and so on.

In 75 days, we have learned a lot about cooking. We think it will be good for us to branch out and try other recipes and styles of cooking. We will always the Food Revolution and Jamie Oliver!

Tonight was one of those nights when it was hard to cook because mom and Sophie got home at 5:30 from Sophie's sewing class, and we had to do our cooking, and mom had to leave at 6:10, right before we could actually eat dinner to take my brother Sam to driving lessons. I'm not saying we rely on her so much, but we really prefer to have her around and help with things and teach us stuff we don't know.

So with no time, we made a chopped salad from the Food Revolution cookbook.

Super easy. I just sliced some cucumbers and carrots, dumped in some black olives, put lettuce into a bowl, and used our hedge clipper type thing that's actually a salad chopper from Pampered Chef, and choppppppppeeeeedddddd.

2 THUMBS UP for...

Do you think Jamie will understand that we want to branch out, but use his philosophy? Tell us yes!!!