bearing blog

Refrigerator dough.

My bread machine cookbook includes recipes for two different refrigerator doughs, each with a set of recipes using the ready-made dough in the fridge into a variety of different snacks, meals, and breads.  I had heard of this particular timesaving technique before but never really used it.  This week, with even less energy to make breakfast and lunch than usual, I decided to give it a try.

The first recipe is mostly white flour, with some added fiber, nutrition, and texture coming from added oat bran.  I made it with water instead of with milk because I intended to try to keep it more than a couple of days, and I thought it had a better chance of not spoiling that way.  I always have oat bran around for muffins, so I'm not sure why it took me so long to try this out.  Another time I'll try substituting some whole wheat flour.

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 and 1/2 cups oat bran
• 1 Tbsp yeast 
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 and 1/2 Tbsp sugar
• 2 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1 and 1/2 cups plus 2 Tbsp water

Put in the bread machine on the DOUGH setting, but set a timer to go off after the bread has risen 25 minutes.  Remove the dough.  Transfer to reclosable plastic container coated with cooking spray.  Cover tightly and refrigerate at least 6 hours.

My recipe says "up to two days" but I kept using it for about 4 days and it was fine.  The dough is sticky and moist compared to, say, a pizza dough.  It seemed the easiest way to handle it, at least when making small items like turnovers, was to press it into rounds with your fingers on a greased cookie sheet.

Here is what I made with the dough:

• Little burrito-shaped turnovers, open at the ends, stuffed with fresh chopped broccoli and cheddar, which we ate for lunch next to leftover minestrone soup.  Verdict:  yum. 
• Soft pretzels, which I salted heavily and ate with mustard.  Longtime readers know I am extremely picky about my soft pretzels.  These weren't the best I had ever had, but eating them still hot from the oven was a definite plus. 
• Pizzas for the kids' lunch.  I didn't get to try the pizzas because they disappeared too fast. 
• Little hot apple turnovers for breakfast, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.  These were roundly enjoyed, and something like this may replace cherry bran muffins as my get-up-and-go-morning breakfast.  (I cooked the apple filling -- apples, raisins, sugar, cinnamon, apple juice, corn starch -- in ten minutes on the stovetop the night before, refrigerated it overnight and then reheated it before stuffing and baking the turnovers in the morning).  They were kind of small so I supplemented the grownups' breakfast with some scrambled eggs, but the kids were content to eat the little turnovers.  They were surprisingly un-messy, even eaten out of hand.

Every one of these things were unplanned, last-minute kind of things (except that I decided to do the turnovers the night before, but it was kind of the last minute before bed, which counts in my book).  The dough was maybe a little too savory; the recipe called for less salt, but I reflexively added more because I think every bread recipe in the book is undersalted.  So the hot apple turnovers had a faint saltiness under them, which I actually associated a little bit (not unpleasantly) with McDonald's Fried Apple Pies.  Remember those?  Ahh, I miss them.  The baked ones are so inferior.

Other suggested recipes included "coffee cakes" (looked more like strudely things to me), dinner rolls, calzones, that sort of thing.

I'm not sure I'd want to do refrigerator dough every single week -- the tub took up a lot of real estate in my fridge -- but I give it a thumbs up for speeding up hot lunches and breakfasts during a week when there are a lot of things going on or when you need to take many naps.  If you wind up with too much of it, you can always turn it into dinner rolls.  But if you had a lot of it ready in your fridge, I'd wager you could make a workweek's worth of different breakfast pastries every day without a lot of added work.

Next week I plan to try the other recipe, which is mostly whole wheat plus a little potato starch, and will report back.

Skin crawling.

Last night, every time Mary Jane nursed, I thought I would crawl out of my own skin -- it just set my teeth completely on edge and I had to clench my jaw to keep from screaming.   I have no idea what was different, if I was more sore than usual, or if she had a lazy latch, or if I was extra tired or what.  I just wanted to get away.  I really, really, really hope that doesn't happen again anytime soon.  We intend to night-wean sometime during the pregnancy, but I had imagined doing it in an emotionally neutral mindframe, not the kind where I hide under the blankets and weep I just can't take it anymore.

I have been glad each time that I was still nursing my toddler at the time the next baby was born, and that we took our time weaning afterwards, but that doesn't make it fun every single second.  

She's still asleep and I'm glad.  I'm going to make sure that before she wakes up, I'm completely dressed with a really supportive bra she can't break into, so that I can nurse her on my terms today.  I have always found in the past that re-asserting a little extra control over the nursing relationship helps keep the screaming willies at bay when they rear their ugly head.  Obviously this is only appropriate with an older toddler.  Not that it isn't always appropriate to listen to what your body is telling you.  It's just that there's a lot more leeway in the space you can give yourself when your child is older.  

Fortunately I almost never feel that I need more space when the baby is very young -- the baby needs to be with me, and I need to be with the baby, and I just don't ever perceive much of a conflict.  Maybe not everyone's so lucky that way; in any case I am thankful for it.  The crawling-out-of-my-skin sensation did creep up once when I had a young baby, and that was when I was tandem nursing Milo and Mary Jane when she was pretty young, less than 6 months old.  When that started happening I took it as a danger signal -- I am not supposed to have nursing revulsion towards a newborn -- and decided it was time to wean Milo.  That weaning went extremely well, all the horrible skin-crawling went away, and I'm still very confident it was exactly the right decision.  You might think this experience would make me more likely to wean my toddlers earlier, but actually the signal (the revulsion which I interpreted as the sign I should wean him) was so strong and so unmistakable that I really have high confidence that when it's time to wean somebody in the future, I'll know it.  So I don't feel conflicted about continuing to nurse the toddler, and to gain all the benefits that come from it, right up to the moment when I suddenly can't stand to do it anymore.  

So maybe the sudden onset of nighttime revulsion is the signal that it's an appropriate time to start changing the night-nursing routine -- again, not a total weaning, just at night.  I could certainly use the extra sleep right now.  We'll see if the sensation returns or if it was just a one-time thing.  Mark has a business trip coming up, and I'll really need his 24-hour support for such a push, so I'll want to put it off at least for a week or two if I can.

For word nerds.

Fun new alternative to an online dictionary:  Wordnik.  Try it next time you want to look something up.  Or play the game (similar in concept to Googlewhacking):  see if you can come up with a word that nobody has yet tried to look up on Wordnik before.  

I suppose this could make Boggle more interesting.

(h/t Literal-Minded)

Can this already be happening? Really?

Okay -- I am 9 weeks pregnant, and I already appear to have "popped out."

This defies logic.

This is not my uterus:

No, wait, it gets better.  The above picture is me with my gut sucked in as hard as I could.  This is what happens when I let it out:

This bump is too high to be uterus anyway.  I can prove it:  my pants all still fit.  Although I now have the Muffin Top From Hell.

The only explanation that makes sense other than NO NO PLEASE NO twins is that some sort of hormonal cascade has gotten the message to my pre-separated abs that they may as well loosen up, and so they've prematurely released the tension that normally holds all my entrails in.

I assume this sort of thing is normal once you hit your fourth/seventh/twelfth pregnancy or so?  Right, ladies?

More on eating while pregnant, and yogurt carbohydrates.

A reader who is about as pregnant as I am emails:

So, I guess I wanted to email you to say, keep up the posts on eating/pregnancy etc. I am really feeling my way through this as well. Sweets don't really tempt me right now. That's good. I  despise having to think about food so much. I really need to be putting something in my mouth every 2-3 hours. That's when the hunger pangs start, and I start feeling sick if I don't eat. I'm trying to do something healthy like a protein with a carb. Peanut butter and banana. Cottage cheese with tomato or apple. Shaklee bar.  Can I ask how are you handling being hungry more??? I was just getting used to telling myself, Oh, supper will be in an hour! I can't seem to do that now!

Hmm, how am I handling being hungry more? 

I stopped to think about it:  the thing is, I am not feeling hungry more often now that I am pregnant.   I already eat five times a day; maybe those snacks at 10:30 and 3:30 are effective at keeping my blood sugar steady?

What I am feeling is a slight aversion to vegetables, and that aversion has changed the composition of my diet.  Though I am discovering that if I can just make myself eat the darned things, they stay down, and so I'm trying.   Oh, and  plain water repulses me for some reason, so I'm spiking all my water with juice or Gatorade.  

You know, it's okay to gain weight when you're pregnant, and  so it's okay to eat if you get hungry.  It sounds like a dumb thing to say, but believe me, it is worth saying, because I have to keep saying it to myself to keep the panicky feelings at bay.   How can I already have gained four pounds?    Well, duh, Erin, it's okay to gain four pounds at 9 weeks pregnant.  

On the other hand I think it is possible to develop bad habits in pregnancy that you then have to deal with later.  Carte blanche is not okay, nor is eating for two unless it takes into account the fact that one of the two is the size of a lima bean.  So I guess if I were feeling hungry every couple of hours I would probably be spacing out a bunch of little micro-snacks.  If I were to need a snack every 2 hours, it probably wouldn't have to be an ounce of cheese and six crackers every single time.  If I want to stay in the habit of "mealing" rather than "snacking," then maybe it's worth figuring out how much snack it takes to keep the nausea and light-headedness at bay.  I'm willing to bet that for most people, assuming the snack contains some fat and protein, less than an ounce at a time is necessary.  Like, not a half sleeve of cheese-topped saltines, but TWO cheese-topped saltines.  Five or six almonds.

 I also wanted to ask you about yogurt. How do you do that? All the yogurt I look at has so much sugar and carbs!! I was borderline gestational diabetic last time, so I'm really trying to not eat white flour, sugar and watch for the high sugars. You would think yogurt would be okay, but I'm tending more toward 1% cottage cheese.

I eat plain, full-fat yogurt.  No sugar added, no artificial sweeteners, no flavorings.  I like to mix chopped fresh fruit into it, but I also like it just plain.  I had to wean myself onto plain by mixing it with sweet stuff for a while, but that was years ago and I've never looked back.

But maybe you're already thinking about plain full-fat yogurt, and it still seems to have too many carbohydrates and sugars.  It's not as bad as it looks.  Plain yogurt has fewer grams of sugar in it than are listed on the label.  If you compare the nutritional labeling of a cup of milk and a cup of yogurt, you'll notice that it's the same number of carbohydrates and sugars.  Obviously, though, this can't be correct because bacteria make milk into yogurt by converting lactose (milk sugar) into lactic acid.  I'm not really clear on why the labeling laws allow for this, but apparently the number of grams of carbohydrate in a food is calculated by some sort of subtraction process, and so in lactofermented foods, the label reflects the lactose content of the milk the product was made from and not the final total.   So, this goes for kefir and buttermilk as well as yogurt.  (Not necessarily nonfat or lowfat plain yogurt, however.  Manufacturers sometimes mix carb-laden thickening agents into these to make up for the lost butterfat.)

About one-percent cottage cheese:  I love cottage cheese but I don't touch low-fat anything, it's full fat or none at all for me.  I'd so much rather eat real food, and I think most people don't give enough credit to fat's role in satiety, in slowing down digestion and helping you feel full for longer.    One thing worth trying any time you find yourself constantly hungry is to raise the percentage of calories you're getting from fat.  

Mailbox fixed.

A reader just let me know through the comboxes that email to bearingblog.com was bouncing -- I believe I've fixed the problem.  I really don't know how long it's existed, it may have been six weeks or more.  Sorry about that.

Grilled meatloaf.

I always feel a little shameful when something I make derives most of its tastiness from ketchup, but, well, there you go.  What's not to like?  Sweet, tangy, tomatoey...

I am sure there is nothing particularly original about this, but I did make it up myself when I wanted to make hamburgers but didn't have any buns.  My. Family. Loved. It.  

• 2 lbs ground beef
• 6 Tbsp ketchup 
• 2 Tbsp hot sauce (Frank's RedHot, to be specific) 
• 1 egg 
• 1/4 cup minced onion 
• 1/4 cup minced green bell pepper 
• Fine fresh bread crumbs or similar  

Mix beef, ketchup, hot sauce, egg, onion, and bell pepper in large mixing bowl.  Add bread crumbs until, er, until the texture holds together "just right" -- the amount depends on the kind of crumb, but about a half cup seems to do, maybe a bit more.  Let the mixture rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes or so to firm up, then form into hamburger patties.  Grill till done and a bit charred on the outside.

You could serve these on buns if you wanted to, but they are fine fork food too.  They are a little softer and crumblier than a good solid burger; if I were going to put them on bread, I think open-faced on buttered toast would do very nicely. 

 I served them with fruit salad and steamed broccoli, with ketchup and mustard on the side.

In which I sleep a lot, and learn to eat more.

Well, I've dropped a couple of nearly invisible hints that no one (with permission to mention it) seems to have noticed, and all friends and family IRL have been dutifully notified, so I'll just come right out and announce it, even if it means nobody will read the other two posts I wrote today:

Baby #4 is expected in late January!

There will be a larger gap than I originally wanted between Mary Jane and her younger sibling -- she will be nearly 3 1/2 when baby X is born.   After I met my weight loss goal, we decided, I needed some more time to learn how to manage my new weight.  I am certain that was the right decision -- my confidence was so much better in April than in November.  

Besides, almost by definition, weight loss depletes your physical resources.  A few months of solid, good nutrition at a stable weight seemed like a good foundation for a healthy pregnancy.

In many ways, this pregnancy feels like a first time.  So many things are different:  I am getting regular exercise, I am more physically fit than I have ever been in my life, I am eating a different diet richer in vegetables and fruits and lighter in starches and meat, I am starting out 27 pounds lighter than I ever started a pregnancy.  Already at 8 weeks there are some obvious differences.  I am tired and sleep a lot, but mostly in the afternoon and evening rather than all day long as in previous first-trimesters.   I have a little bit of aversion to certain foods, but so far zero nausea and vomiting.

On the other hand, I am astonishingly stressed out and obsessed over the 3 pounds I have put on.  My morning weigh-in is swinging wildly up and down and every morning it kind of freaks me out.  Is anyone surprised?  No, me either.  And I am having some trouble figuring out what to eat, especially with the slight food aversion which is monkeying with the routines and meals I had carefully settled on in the past few months.  I can't even look at a Brussels sprout, for instance.

I tried to find some helpful advice online by googling "pregnancy after weight loss".   Not a whole lot out there, or at least, if it's there, it's a needle in a haystack of "weight loss after pregnancy" and "pregnancy after weight loss surgery."  I'm beginning to wonder if I should be looking for pregnancy-and-nutrition information on sites for people who are recovering from eating disorders.

Anyway, coming into it I decided that a safe thing to do is mostly to eat how I've been eating, and add extra calories mainly in the form of yogurt.  Because one of the ways my new way of eating shook out is that I don't eat nearly as much dairy as I used to.  

So... let the expansion begin.

(UPDATE:  Just in time, here's Alice Bradley's new website, Let's Panic About Babies.  Check out the "ad" for slings in the right sidebar.  Awesome.)

Obsessive avoidance of backsliding, or, I feel bad about my bread.

Alert readers, especially those who came from Cathie's blog, remember that I keep up with my family's need for sandwich bread pretty well using a bread machine.  Also that I experimented recently with acid-soaking flour in the bread machine and came up with a more-or-less reliable method for adapting bread machine recipes to an eight-hour soak.

  (Acidulate the liquid if needed with 1 Tbsp white vinegar; halve the yeast; remove added gluten at first, and experiment to see if you need to add some back; hold back the salt, mix the dough 5 minutes on the quick bread cycle, reset the machine to make whole wheat bread in 12 hours, and put the salt on top for it to be mixed in when the cycle starts)

Soaking the flour, while it is more nutritious, is marginally less convenient than not soaking because of the plan-ahead factor.  And the method isn't perfect (yet) -- the loaves are always edible but occasionally don't rise properly.   So I've soaked every loaf of whole grain bread I've made since I developed my technique, but... I've also made less bread and allowed us to run out from time to time.

This morning I didn't have any bread but I need some for lunch, so I went ahead and started a non-soaked loaf for the first time in months.  I feel kind of guilty!  

* * *

This is a problem I have, my own special kind of perfectionism.   I avoid developing new good practices unless I am sure they are permanent.  All-or-nothing:  once you add, don't cut back.   For some reason it seems okay to say "I know I ought to do such and such, but I haven't figured out how to fit it into my schedule yet."  But it seems not so okay to think about saying in the future, "I used to do such and such, but then I decided I didn't have time for it."

This is probably the number one reason why, for example, I have never even attempted to add any daily Masses to my schedule with my kids.  I dread coming to a decision where I have to say "Sorry, I have to cut back on going to Mass."  Even though I know very well that going to Mass more than on Sundays is optional and not at all required, I fear that once I've established a practice of going more than once a week it will feel like "CHOOSING SOMETHING ELSE OVER GOD" if I ever decided to back off from that.

(Thank God for liturgical seasons, by the way.  They give me the freedom to try out devotions without the stress of commitment past the end of Lent or past the end of Advent.)

I recently decided to try out instrument lessons for Milo over the summer.  I explicitly announced to everyone "This is just trying it out, we might not continue in the fall," and I deliberately cut out preschool music class for the summer to make up for the extra cost and time.  I'm trying very hard to be committed to deciding whether it makes sense with our schedule, but I am still anxious about the possibility that I might have started something we'll need to stop.

In short, I'm good at saying "No" to too much commitment up front.  I'm not so good at being a quitter.  Or, at least, I feel bad about the possibility of quitting. This even though some of the best decisions I ever made have been decisions to quit something.

So, Cathie, if you're reading this, please tell me I have your permission to occasionally bake some bread that hasn't been soaked.  I think I will feel a whole lot better.  

Fusion cuisine.

A dish I never had before moving to South Minneapolis is tacos al pastor  (Google image search results). It's a specialty of the place up on Lake Street where we always get our Mexican carryout when the tribe comes over:  Taqueria La Hacienda, 334 E Lake Street.  We send Chris to fetch it because he's the only one who speaks any Spanish, and he likes the practice.  

Tacos al pastor look a little bit like Greek gyros.  The meat is spiced, pressed, and stacked on a vertical spit, then slow roasted and shaved off onto corn tortillas.  It's usually served with cilantro, onions, and pineapple; the Taqueria also does a plattered version where they top it with bacon, onions, red and green peppers, and cheese and run it under a broiler or something.

So I find out today from the tcfoodies blog that tacos al pastor looks like gyros for a reason!  It's actually descended from Lebanese shawirma:

...at least according to Wikipedia, the al pastor taco is a Mexican adaptation of shawirma, introduced to Mexico by Lebanese immigrants.

Nice adaptation.  Very nice.

So often we think of fusion cuisine as a peculiarly American melting-pot sort of thing... it's good to be reminded that it happens other places too.  Well, if you ever see tacos al pastor on a menu, be sure to order it -- it's kind of rare to see it outside Mexico City, I'm told.  Lucky South Minneapolis!