Dilly Cheese Bread

There is such comfort in homemade bread. I feel so centered making the dough, the smell soothes me, and eating a slice warm out of the oven is one of the best feelings in the world.

We have a basic white bread recipe and this honey oatmeal on regular rotation but sometimes even a good thing can get old.  I was looking to expand our bread repertoire recently and thought of my bakery days.  There were two breads I enjoyed back then, Dilly Cheese and Cheddar Mustard, and I thought I would try a hand at making them at home.  Dilly cheese was first up.

I did some research online and found a few recipes that seems similar to what I remembered making back at the bakery. 

Full disclosure: I kind of hate Dill.  It is not my favorite herb and I try to avoid it in most foods I eat.  This bread however is super good. And although there is dill and you can taste it, I am not deterred. 

The recipe makes two loaves which can also be divided into rolls. We can finish off half a loaf on day one but the rest tends to take us more time to finish. I froze the second loaf for another day. 

Dilly Cheese Bread

by Emily Morris

Prep Time: 15 minutes, plus rise time

Cook Time: 30-40 minutes

Keywords: bake bread

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Ingredients (2 loaves)

• 2 tablespoons yeast
• ½ cup warm water plus a pinch of sugar
• 2 cups small curd cottage cheese
• ¼ cup milk
• 2 TBSP vegetable oil
• 2 TBSP raw or granulated sugar
• 6 TBSP dried minced onion
• 1 TBSP dried dill seed
• 1 tsp dried dill weed
• 2 tsp kosher salt
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 5 cups all-purpose flour

Instructions

Gently stir the yeast into the warm water with the pinch of sugar in the bottom of a large mixing bowl. Let stand for 5 minutes, or until the yeast is frothy. While that rests, whisk together the cottage cheese, milk, oil, sugar, minced onion, dill seed and weed, salt and eggs in a saucepan over low heat just until lukewarm.

Add that to the yeast mixture and stir. Add the flour all at once and use a sturdy spoon to mix until there are no dry pockets of flour and everything is evenly moist.

Cover with a­ towel and let rise in a warm place for about an hour and a half, or until almost doubled in size.

Grease 2 standard loaf pans (9X5) but the dough can also be divided among ramekins or muffin tins for rolls. Divide dough evenly into 2 pieces and place in greased pans.

Cover the loaf pans with a damp tea towel and let rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes while you preheat the oven to 350°F. Bake the risen dough for 30-­40 minutes for loaves or 25-­30 minutes for rolls.

Remove from the oven and let the loaves rest in the pans for 5 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Store loaves wrapped in a clean towel at room temperature for up to three days, or wrap cooled loaves in a double layer of plastic wrap and freeze for up to three months.

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Spicy Thai Red Curry Beef #cookinglight

As I got older, married and became a mom and home owner my magazine choices shifted. No longer do I spend my time flipping through Glamour, Cosmopolitan (I really only saw this at the gym for free). Women's Health and Self.  Now I am all about This Old House, HGTV, Parent's and Cooking Light. 

Cooking Light is by far my favorite right now. I still only read magazines at the gym but with Cooking Light reading becomes a page flagging event.  Each recipe that looks good gets a little page flag and then I head to the store with my weekly meal plan getting any ingredients we don't have on hand. 

Its a good week when I have about 2-3 new recipes interwoven with the handy standby favorites. It is not unusual for me to come out with 10 plus recipes I want to try but the June issue of Cooking Light was particularly full of good looking, delicious sounding recipes.

I had a hankering for curry and when I saw their Spicy Thai Red Curry Beef recipe I knew this would be the first recipe to try.  We had all of the ingredients on hand with the exception of the peppers. I was extra excited to be able to use our fresh basil from the garden.  This recipe came together so quick. We prepped the onions and peppers ahead of time during the weekend. Come Monday night Mr. J went to work on the sauce and beef while I played with the baby.  The meal was even easier by using some leftover Chinese takeout rice.  

We also seem to have leftover Chinese takeout rice since we always order fried rice or lo mien noodles with our food.  The rice is always kept for another meal which uses rice.  

The dish was good but not too spicy. In fact making this recipe again would come with a bit of extra spice for us but we tend to like things spicy, including Miss O. 

Spicy Thai Red Curry Beef

by Emily Morris

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Keywords: stir-fry entree curry

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Ingredients (serves 4)

• 1 (13.5-ounce) can light coconut milk
• 4 teaspoons red curry paste
• 2 teaspoons dark brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons fish sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 1/2 cups sliced red bell pepper
• 1 cup sliced onion
• 12 ounces beef tenderloin, thinly sliced
• 1 cup torn fresh basil leaves
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 cups hot cooked brown basmati rice
• 4 lime wedges

Instructions

Spoon coconut cream (thick layer at top of can) into a large skillet; stir in curry paste. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Add remaining coconut milk, sugar, fish sauce, and red pepper; bring to a boil. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

Add bell pepper and onion; reduce heat to medium, and simmer 4 minutes.

Add beef; cook 3 minutes or until done, stirring occasionally.

Remove pan from heat; stir in basil, lime juice, and salt. Serve beef mixture with rice and lime wedges.

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Kitchen Updates

This post is a long time coming. It is almost a year to the day when we started demo on our kitchen. I thought optimistically that we were going to be without  a kitchen for about 6 weeks and then it would be all put together again. I also thought we were going to do the whole thing ourselves with the help of some family members.  Boy was I wrong.  We did do much of it ourselves and we owe a huge thank you to family and friends for helping out but in the end there were certainly pieces which we just didn't have the time to complete. Thank goodness for hired help. 

One of the biggest lessons we learned from this project is that although it is OK to do things DIY, it is always, always nice to leave for work and come home to a completed project. 

 The kitchen isn't really 100% done. You can see in the pictures there is still a few touch ups, mainly painting to finish up but for the most part you can get the picture. We actually have moved on to a few other things now so really that painting may need to get complete for a very long time. 

We kept the layout mainly the same from the old kitchen.  You can see before photos here.  We debated long and hard about keeping this L shaped outing of the counter top. During the demo process we did have some sort of function kitchen without the L shape and I came to really enjoy the openness. I still go back in forth between loving the extra counter and storage and missing the openness. 

We went with a few open shelves and I love the extra sunlight through the sink window.

We got white subway tile for the back splash and white cabinets. I love white. I also love how the white is offset with the dark grey Quartz counter tops. I will mention that Mr. J laid all new hardwood floors.  He did this, for the most part all on his own, with a bit of help from yours truly as his assistant and wood cutter. 

We lost a double oven and gained convection. I miss how fast the old oven used to heat up but I am glad we ended up getting the oven and microwave combo. 

My favorite part of the new kitchen is the gigantic farmhouse sink.  I love it.  It's 3 feet long and you can put so many dishes in it.  This was my splurge. I was wanted a farm house sink and this one became the object of my affection. I knew once I saw it we were destined to be together. It served as a wonderful bathtub to Miss O for many, many months. 

This is the view from the kitchen out. We always had this cabinet here in the old kitchen. We went a while without having anything there but in the end it is much more function to have a resting place and storage here.  As we finish the dining room more completely this may get moved. 

The biggest change came with the refrigerator. We moved it across the way to gain more cabinet and counter space.  Mr. J never liked this idea but I think it works out just fine.  The refrigerator is the one appliance we kept from the old kitchen. It's a bit small but works fine and meets our needs.  I am hoping it lasts a while because new ones sure are expensive. We added a pantry cabinet along the refrigerator and a mud bench for the top of the stairs, our main house entry.   

This was a long closet of wasted space. Now it is much more open and useful. We still have to figure out a shoe solution but I love this area. I cannot imagine not having it here. 

The old pantry was opened up and painted.  I keep some storage, small appliances, and it is our drop zone from going out. I am working on figuring out the best use for this space.  Our little storage cart is a favorite of Miss O to get into; she loves grabbing the potatoes.

The kitchen was pretty much in this shape back in January. It took a while to get those last cabinet pulls on.  I intend to put in all of the sources information but given how long it took me to just take the pictures and post it could be a while.