Food blogging

Day to of the Celery and Romaine Experiment:

Celery:

Romaine:

My brother and sister-in-law were here this weekend.  My brother requested red beans and rice for dinner on Friday.  My sister-in-law is a vegetarian, though, so I it had to be a recipe that would taste OK meatless.

I used the recipe from Eat Your Greens, sort of.  I left out the allspice and cloves because I didn't want to take that kind of tack, flavor-wise, and I also left out the Worcestershire sauce (couldn't get anchovy-free), the garlic powder (didn't have any; added an extra clove of garlic instead), and the Tabasco (SIL is sensitive to hot food; I figured we could add Tabasco to taste to our own bowls).  I have to say, though, that I was impressed--the smoked paprika and chipotle in adobo give this a bit of a smoky flavor despite the lack of sausage.

It was also easy: You pretty much put everything in the pot (except the salt, so the beans don't get tough) and simmer.

(I did also get a link of andouille, though, for those who wanted to add it.)

I also went a bit nuts and made Amish potato rolls (recipe from Family Life in the Kingdom of God; yes, I will try your recipe even if we're on completely different pages when it comes to religion).  I cut the sugar back to 3/4 of a cup, and I think 1/2 would not be too little.  All I had was rapid-rise yeast so I used two packets of that, and I used 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour and 3 1/2 cups all-purpose white.

I'd like these a little less sweet, still, and they're denser than I think is ideal, but they're still very good and they made nice mini-sandwiches for our road trip on Monday.  They were easy.  Yeast breads and I are not friends but they came out just fine.

I was totally too lazy to find a biscuit cutter so I just free-handed them into squares, rectangles, and triangles.