I Can't Believe it's Butter!

I had the brilliant idea, I wanted to make butter! I did the research for it and all you need is cream! You get a jar and fill it a little under half way, put a little salt in it and then close it up REALLY tight! Then you just start shaking it, and shaking it, and shaking it. You have to shake it really hard! Soon it will become looking like whipped cream, when it gets to that stage its almost there! Just keep shaking it! It gets a little harder but just keep going! Soon you will see a ball of something and some liquid on the bottom. So when you see that, open the jar and pour out the liquid only! The liquid you just poured out was buttermilk, so you have successfully made buttermilk as well. OK so after you poured out the liquid close it up and shake a little more, and then more the remaining liquid out. After that pour a little cold water on the ball of butter in the jar and shake a little, then pour that liquid out. You now have butter!!!!

The cream in the jar!

The butter you just made may not look like the butter you get from the store. It's probably not as yellow because the factories put yellow dye into the butter that they make. So do not be scared. Put it in the fridge over night. When you want to use the butter, just take it out a couple hours before because it is real butter and its really hard! I hope you love your butter. And after you make it you will be so proud of yourself!

Buttermilk!

BUTTER!!!

Blueberries 101

Yesterday I found out some very interesting things and I thought I would share them with you! Some of these things you will probably already know, but just read this and act like it was the first time you have ever heard this.
 My Aunt Rene said if anything says it has 100% blueberries in it, it is a lie! It is mostly corn syrup or other things besides blueberries! My dad's friend said if you eat a 1/2 cup of blueberries everyday, you will be the healthiest person alive. Blueberries are so good for you and they are just so cute and little.
 Here is some blueberry history:

Fresh blueberries are in their prime season during the summer months and are available frozen year around. They are originally from North America. The Native Americans used the berry, leaves, and roots for medical purposes. They also used the vivid color to dye clothing and used the berries with drying out jerky.

Top 10 health benefits of blueberries

• The highest antioxidant capacity of all fresh fruit
• Neutralizes free radicals which can affect disease and aging in the body
• Aid in reducing belly fat
• Helps promote urinary tract health
• Been proven to preserve vision
• Brain health
• Heart disease
• Constipation & Digestion
• Cancer
• Blueberries keep you fresh, active, fit, sharp, and in a good mood!

Have some blueberries today and feel the difference!

Little Italy in Oklahoma???

Yesterday I was on my FAVORITE website on and of food! Notwithoutsalt!! I love Ashley Rodriguez! All the wonderful food she makes is inspiring and yummy:) Anyway, I saw a recipe for pizza! I love pizza and I thought why not. So I made the dough a day before and I had my wonderful mother go to the store today while I was babysitting! I made a muffaletta pizza, roasted asparagus egg & prosciutto pizza, and a pizza with onions, mushrooms mozzarella rosemary pizza! They were amazing. I'm not going to lie, it was very time consuming and a sensory overload. Most of the reason why is because I decided to make all three pizzas at once! But it was all worth it. As I was sitting there scarfing down my piece, I thought to myself how can this pizza be so good, but have no sauce??? If you didn't all ready know this, most pizzas in Italy do not have sauce, who knew! I feel like I have found the key to my pizza making ability! All this time I thought you had to have sauce...... you don't and it's even better without it! After I was done eating, even now, I feel like I have gained 20 lbs just by eating two pieces! They were very filling and if I could stuff one more piece down my thought I would have! You have to try this recipe! even if you go out and buy an pre-made pizza dough, do it and try these! Please, you will thank me forever that I brought these recipes into your life!

Roasted Asparagus, Egg, & Prosciutto Pizza

olive oil
roasted asparagus(drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast in the oven for 10 min at 400)
2-3 oz fresh mozzarella, torn into nickle size pieces
3 eggs
2oz high quality prosciutto
sea salt and pepper
freshly grated parmigiano

preheat oven for 45min with pizza stone inside , to 500-550 degrees

With your dough create 12" round. Place on flour dusted pizza stone or baking sheet. Brush with olive oil and breakup mozzarella onto the pizza dough, add roasted asparagus. Slide pizza into oven and bake for 3 min. Open the oven and quickly crack the eggs in three different places on the pizza. Put it back into the oven until the egg's yolk is semi-soft yolk or to your liking. take out of the oven and put parmigiano over top of pizza them lay the prosciutto on top of it all! You're welcome.

Father's Day & Poppy Seeds!

I hope everyone had a great Father's day! I know I did. My dad means the world to me and I'm so blessed to have a dad like him in my life.

For father's day I made an amazing poppy seed cake! It was yummy and I finished my whole piece. Which that was hard considering we had steak, roasted potatoes, backed beans for lunch. The poppy seed cake was spongy and yummy. It also has a mascarpone frosting with strawberries! YUM! I was talking to my mom the other day and I was saying that I should take a break from baking and get back into cooking. Because when you bake something you always have to taste it! So then you have a whole cake left sitting on the counter with only a little sliver of a piece gone and it is just looking at you saying "You know you want more, I'm so delicious and bad for you." Why must I keep finding these delicious, fattening, recipes!

Anyway, so I'm going to try to make healthier things and I'm even going to introduce new vegan recipes for you! Okay vegan sounds weird, but wait until you see what you can make!

My home-made card

POPPY SEED!!!!!

Our fab steak

Roasted potatoes

Family Friday

Last night my aunt, uncle and cousin came over for dinner. My dad's twin brother's family is just like ours. We get along great and we love each other like crazy. Our family is really funny in some ways. My mom and my aunt were really good friends growing up and then they married twins! Me and my cousins are really close in age. At this time my cousin is 19, my brother is 18, my other cousin is 17, I'm 16, and the other cousin is 15. Its crazy and at one point all of the Woodward kids were in every grade at the high school.
So they came over last night and we had a fried feast! We had fried mushrooms, pickles, squash, and the famous pickled chicken. I can't really remember who came up with pickled chicken, but it is crazy good.



Fried Mushrooms! yum



Cousin Love

To make pickled chicken you marinated chicken breasts in pickled juice all day or all night. Depending on how pickled you want it! After the chicken is done marinating you  dip it in flour with pepper and then in egg and milk then back in the flour. Then you fry them up and even if you can let them cool off from the fryer, devour it. Try not to salt them at all because the pickle juice is already really salty.

Stuffed Bread!

The other day I made the best stuffed bread! It was my first time making stuffed bread so it was a trial run. I got it from my favorite website, notwithoutsalt. It turned out REALLY good. I need to make it one more time to perfect it, but other than that it was absolutely amazing! First you make a simple bread which it 5:3, five parts flour to 3 parts water. Add about 2-3 tsp. of yeast and a touch of salt. I made the bread and then put it in a oiled bowl until it doubled in size. Then I punched the dough and floured to surface and made it into a rough rectangle.

For the yummy goodness inside you will need:
1/2lb sliced ham or turkey either one will work
5 hard boiled eggs, peeled
1 1/2 cups of cheese(mozzarella, Parmesan, etc.)
5-7 fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes
olive oil

After you have made the rough rectangle place the ham down in the middle, place the sun dried tomatoes, basil leaves and then the cheese. place the eggs on top of it all and pour a little olive oil over the whole thing. Then take the ends and edges and press them together like a big burrito. Place on a greased baking sheet and then form it into a circle by pinching the two ends together. Brush the top with butter. Cover the stuffed bread with a clean towel and let raise while the oven is preheating to 350. When the oven is preheated place the bread in the oven for about 35 min. or until golden on top!

Cut into it and enjoy! Your can eat it for lunch or dinner. You can also take it to a party for a great finger food!

Puppy Poppers!

I'm one of those people that dress their dog up in clothes and take them everywhere. I know what your thinking, oh my gosh are you kidding me? Well no I'm not. For my 13th birthday I asked my parents for a teacup chihuahua. I was obsessed with Legally Blonde the movie and so of course I wanted to be just like Elle Woods. The one difference is that I wanted a teacup, not just a regular size, I wanted a teacup. I also didn't want a black one. No offence to anyone with a black chihuahua, to me they just look mean.

That's her the whole 4lbs of her!



She blinked!



Brother's dog

Anyway, why I'm telling you all about my chihuahua is that one day I decided to make treats for my precious Chi-chi. She loves them and so does my brothers dog Seuss. Chi-chi is a very picky eater, so I thought that I should try to make treats for her. When my brother was a baby my mom used to make his baby food because he didn't like the jar kind. It's kind of like that with me but I don't have a child, I have a dog.
Here is the recipe for the fab dog treats. (I re-named them FYI)

CHI-CHI'S FABULOUS PUPPY POPPERS!
2 cups whole wheat flour
1Tb. baking powder
1 cup peanut butter (chunky or smooth)
1 cup milk

preheat oven to 375
I'm a bowl mix peanut butter and milk , then add dry ingredients and mix well. Place dough on a lightly floured surface and knead. Roll dough out to 1/4 in thickness and cut with whatever cookie cutter you prefer. Bake for 5-7 min. or until lightly brown on a greased baking sheet. Let cool and store in a airtight container. Hope your puppies enjoy!

Farm Fresh Eggs!

About a month or two ago my parents had the brilliant idea to get chickens. They thought why not have fresh eggs everyday and so we got chickens. As Im cooking more and more I have found out some different things about these eggs. For one they have a richer yolk, it is very yellow. They also have a tougher outer layer, but they are amazing.
When we first got them we couldn't wait to get the eggs, so right after they would lay them we would grab them. This is our first time with chickens, so we had no idea that they were hot when you got them right after they were layed. It's very interesting and very weird at the same time.

My thought for the day has I was getting the eggs this morning was, how does a chicken lay this thing? I mean this eggs comes out of this chicken once a day and it is perfect with a shell and everything. To me that is very interesting and probably to other people it is normal and they don't think about chickens laying eggs in such a scientific way. You don't realize what animals can do sometimes. I like to think that God has many "tricks" to things he has created. The chicken for example, it is a food source in not only one way, you can eat a chicken but also not kill the chicken and get eggs! To me that's crazy and amazing.

One Good Cookie

As I explained earlier I have an impulse for cooking sometimes and tonight I made oatmeal shortbread cookies! They were different from another cookie I have ever tasted. My taste testers (dad,mom&brother) said they have never tasted a cookie like this and they loved them! They are so unique that I decided I must share them with you!

oatmeal shortbread cookies!

1 1/2 sticks butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 Tb. white sugar
1 yolk
1 tsp. salt

1 Tb. vanilla extract

3/4 cup ground oatmeal(this can be done in a blender or food processor)
1 cup flour

*preheat oven to 350
Cream the butter and the sugars until light. Add the yolk and salt. Scrape down the sides of bowl. Stir in the vanilla. Add the ground oatmeal and flour. Stir just enough to combine the ingredients. Roll into a log and wrap with plastic wrap and put in the fridge to chill.
Slice the chilled log into 1/4" discs or a round cutter(like I did), put on parchment paper or spray with non stick spray and bake for about 15 minutes or until lightly brown on the edges.
Let the cookies coll completely and serve with your favorite ice cream!  original recipe from-Ashley Rodriguez

The final product in the oven!Success!

A New Friend-KitchenAid

As I got home today, I could smell the grill. The best part of summer for me is all the cooking on the grill and the real taste you get when you bite into a hamburger. We also have a garden at my house and we plant all sorts of things, but the best thing we plant are tomatoes! Nothing is better than a home-grown tomato. Even if you don't like tomatoes, my advice is, eat a home-grown tomato and tell me how bad they taste now. They are sweet, juicy, and the best by far.

We were finishing the wonderful hamburgers and I had a need to bake something. Do you ever have that need, to just brake out all the pots and mixers and make something fabulous? Well I do, and it seems that that impulse is coming more and more often now that it is summer and I have nothing else to do than babysit, swim, and cook!
So my new obsession has brought me a new friend and its name is kitchen-aid. It is the best. My mom got it for mother's day or her birthday a couple years back from my dad, and I think I like it more than my mom sometimes. As I was making my oatmeal shortbread cookies, I realized that I had a new friend. This now means I'm tired and I'm hallucinating. Anyway......... if you don't have one, I'm sorry and good luck.

Spontaneous Dinner!

It was about 5:45 at my house and its a usual Sunday night, everyone is wondering whats for dinner. Almost every Sunday after church we have a "big" lunch. Normally steak, pot roast, or on occasion chicken livers(yumm), today it was steak, baked potato, and corn on the Cob, and always sweet tea! So our big lunch has satisfied us until now and my mom hasn't really planned anything for dinner, so leftovers for dinner. But tonight I thought that I will find something to make and it will be fabulous! At my house we always have some kind of a box of pasta, so my mind went Italian.

I decided pasta with a olive oil/tomato sauce. I boiled the pasta and then I just started putting stuff in a skillet. 1 tomato, 1/2 onion, Olive oil, cooking wine, little butter, basil, oregano, and salt. I let it simmer on medium for about 15 min. and then poured it on the pasta! It was yum, all my family liked it, including my teacup chihuahua, and it was simple and fast!

CookBooks

I have a million cook books at my house. Most of them are from my mom, but we have a wide range. My family has a cook book about wild game and then we have a vegan cook book. But my all time favorite cook book is my great grandma's. It is filled with old recipes past down from generation to generation and most of them have been made millions of time. Like my grandma's famous home-made brownies, sugar cookies and crazy stew. I also love the look of it, its old, pages are coming out, and there are food stains all in it. When a cook book has food stains in it, you can tell that it has been used a lot and is worth looking at.

Baguettes from scratch!

Homemade French Baguettes
yields four baguettes
adapted from Artisan Breads Every Day, Peter Rein hart

Ingredients

5 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour (I’ve used all-purpose with great results)

1 tbsp coarse kosher salt

2 1/4 tsp instant yeast

2 cups warm water

Method

Prep Day: Combine all ingredients in bowl of mixer, set with paddle attachment, and mix on lowest speed for 1 minute until well blended and smooth.  Dough should form a coarse, shaggy ball.  Let rest, uncovered for 5 minutes.  Switch to dough hook and mix on medium-low speed for 2 minutes.  Dough should be smooth, supple, and tacky but not sticky.  Knead dough by hand on lightly floured work surface for 1 minute, then transfer to a large clean, lightly oiled bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap and immediately refrigerate overnight or up to 4 days.

Dough can also be made without the use of a stand mixer. Combine all the ingredients – start with a wooden spoon then switch to your hands when the flour is incorporated. Lightly knead until all the ingredients are well blended. Let rest for 5 minutes then knead for about 5 more minutes until dough is smooth and slightly tacky.

Baking Day: Remove dough from refrigerator 2 hours prior to baking.  Gently transfer to lightly floured work surface, taking care to release as little gas as possible.  Divide dough into four equal portions. You can also do as I have by removing just enough dough to make one baguette and have a fresh baguette everyday for the next four days from one single batch of dough.Bake for about 45 min, but it depends on the size so make sure to check on them!

Compliments to Ashley Rodriguez- not without salt

Starting out.

         Today is the first day of my cooking. Last night I made dough for some baguettes and it was not as hard as I thought it was going to be. They just came out of the oven and my house smells as if a Paris bakery was dropped right in the middle of Oklahoma. My family is eating some as I am writing this. My mom has a bread machine, but Ijust made the dough in our kitchen-aid mixer. The dough took about 10 minutes, but it had to refrigerate over night.
          So, for my first time making a baguette from scratch was a success! The outside got a little done, but that's the way I like them. I had no help at all with this recipe and I for one am very proud of myself!

          I'm obsessed with cooking and baking! I'm only a teenager but I hope to bring new and fun ways to cooking!