Naan

While in Texas last year and during a trip to India, Travis developed a taste for Indian cuisine.  Over the past few months, he has worked at cooking dinner about once a week, and this often involves a new curry recipe.  Being his last week with us, and probably the last time he makes dinner, he asked if I would make Naan, an Indian-style flatbread, to go along with the meal.  I found this highly-rated recipe and felt it didn't look any harder than any other type of bread.  I'm not sure how traditional or authentic it is, but as it turned out great, I don't really care!  The individual naan(s?) came out smaller than I've seen, only about the size of my hand, and I made about 20-25 of them from the recipe.  I'll definitely make this again, but will roll the balls of dough larger, about the size of racquetballs rather than golfballs, to increase the size of the finished naan.  I'm excited to have a bag full of them in my freezer now.  They reheat in only 2-3 minutes in a 375 degree oven.  Easy!

Also.  To clarify.  At the bottom of each of our posts, you can see which of us (Justin or Julie) actually wrote it.  Please do not think that I posted the entry about the thisiswhyyourefat website.  I wouldn't do that to you.  Justin would though.  He did it.

My new favorite website

Since I (Justin) have a thing for over the top food, imagine my surprise when I found out there is a whole website dedicated to that very topic:

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

Here are a couple choice entries:

#1: "Mega Oreo"




#2: "Deep fried Coca Cola"


#3: Self explanatory. Every piece of equipment made should have a button labeled "Push here to dispense gravy"



Other nasty favorites include "The meat ship", and "60 pound rice crispy treat"

Not Quite "Spreads"

I was looking for a quick and easy recipe yesterday that would cover two bases - a church function and treats for small group.  This "Spreads" recipe seemed to fit the bill, so I thought I'd try it out.  I didn't have margarine, so I just used good ol' butter.  The consistency was a bit different than PW's, as the dough was much thicker, and not really spreadable.  I just patted it into a rectangle shape on my cookie sheet and it worked just fine.  I also put a silicone baking mat on my cookie sheet before the dough, simply to make removing the giant cookie/bar easier.  One other minor variation - I put a combination of semisweet chocolate chips and butterscotch chips on the top, and it came out very tasty.  It really was pretty simple to put together, and I was able to turn two of these puppies out of my kitchen in under an hour.  Nice, simple, yummy.

Two Thumbs Way Up!

This past weekend we had a good friend come visit.  Emily flew up from Texas on Friday, ready to experience Wisconsin.  It was a whirlwind of a visit, but we had a fantastic time catching up, laughing, making bread, laughing, visiting a cheese factory, laughing again, playing games and watching movies, and oh yeah, laughing some more.  All of us wished she could have stayed a few more days, though we've already talked about heading down to Houston in the fall.  We have too much fun together to stay apart for too long!

Random Photos

I take quite a few photographs each day, and the majority of them don't see the light of day.  Today I thought I'd go back and pick out a few that I liked, but for whatever reason hadn't posted them.

Regular and Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Bars.

Clementines that I cooked for a cake.  

We didn't really like the cake, so I didn't write about it, 

but I like the shot.

Bittman's Bread.  

I thought, with the air hole, that it somewhat looked like a beehive.

mmmmmmm..... 

Vanilla Bean Buttermik Cake Batter from Jenn's birthday cake.

Paprika Cheddar Biscuits

Looking for an easily portioned, super fast, super yummy bread-type item to go with your bowl of chili, cheesy pasta, or for breakfast?  These biscuits definitely fit the bill.  The batch mixes up in minutes and they don't even have to be rolled out and cut - just drop them onto cookie sheets and bake.  I used a 1/4 cup cookie/ice cream disher for mine, scooped the dough onto the sheet pan and then froze them solid, about 30 minutes.  I then kept a few out for us to have with dinner, and sealed the rest into a zip-top freezer bag.  When you are ready to have fresh biscuits, just take the frozen lumps of dough, set them on a sheet pan, and bake them for about 20 minutes - perfect, fresh, warm biscuits, without any work!  I followed the recipe exactly, except for the fact that I didn't have any smoked sweet paprika - I just used regular sweet paprika, and they turned out wonderfully!

A Mini Vacation

Yesterday we drove down to Wisconsin Dells to the Kalahari Resort (link will play music - awful music).  This was set up by John and Sarah as a chance for the immediate family to get together and have some fun.  John, Sarah, Travis, Luke, Niki, Justin and I all shared two rooms (upgrade to suites upon arrival!) and had a blast going between the Indoor Theme Park and the Indoor Water Park.  We rode the go-karts, braved the ropes course, won tickets on "ski-ball" and "Deal or No Deal", and played many games of laser tag at the Theme Park.  The water park was a blamy 75-80 degrees and we enjoyed our time in the wave pool, floating around the lazy river, and zipping down the water slides.  We are definitely worn out from all the activities, but we had a great time.  

And then, as a "welcome back" greeting (?), our cats had somehow knocked down and shattered one of our side tables upstairs.  Look.  You can see the guilty look on Storm's face.