Tuesday, March 04, 2008

I just spent the last hour or so going around and around with Useless One #2 on things that can’t be resolved until Amazing One returns on Monday. I’m telling you, this woman is amazingly slow at getting points.

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Yesterday’s baking masterpiece was homemade hamburger buns since I had thawed ground beef for dinner and it was warm enough to fire up the grill for burgers. So Beau made the dough in the breadmaker and I finished the rising, shaping, and baking of them. They turned out amazing and perfect! The recipe:

1 cup water
2 Tbsp butter or margarine (we use butter flavored Crisco because of Beau’s milk thing)
2 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
3-3.25 cups bread flour
(3 Tbsp nonfat dry milk) - Beau left this out
2 tsp yeast

He set the maker for 1:50 on the dough setting. Remove dough from machine. Punch it down and let rest for 20 minutes. Form 12 balls (we got 10), make bun shapes and flatten. Cover and let rise 1 hour. Bake in preheated 375F oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden.

I did an egg wash, but that’s optional. They only took 15 minutes in my oven. I used parchment paper on the baking sheet, as I always do for baking.

For the burgers I just mixed in some Meat Magic into the beef and then grated some chipoltle seasonings over each side before putting them on the grill. They could have used a wee bit of salt, we thought as we ate them, but they were delicious.

We will never buy hamburger or hot dog buns. And we determined that the only hot dogs our kids (assuming we ever have more than Jesse) will eat will be kosher to avoid the preservatives. Except for the dogs bought at baseball games, of course.

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I love now that scientists are saying we’re now heading into a period of global cooling. I more especially love that Lord Monckton and others are going after Al Gore and his inconvenient movie at the UN conference on climate change. Beautiful. Oh, and the Weather Channel founder is in on this, too. Ha!

I’m going home now.