Hello. My Name is Brandy and I am a Blogging Virgin.

I have resisted blogging for the longest time mainly because when I am suffering from an overwhelming need for attention, I have Facebook and most of you are kind enough to indulge my neediness by "Like-ing" what I post. (By the way, thank you for that.  A couple well-placed "Likes" have kept me off the emotional "ledge" more than once. Yeah. I am that shallow. Sue me.)
 
Another thing that held me back was that a perceived pressure associated with blogging "responsibilities."  I mean, HOLY NARDS, what if I can't think of something to say? What if I can't do it regularly?? These questions were of great concern to me.  Then I started paying attention to the blogs out there and I realized something:  There are a LOT of blogs floating about the ol' Inter Web where people have absolutely nothing to say, but blog that nothing in great detail.  So, I figure, if I don't have anything to report, I won't.  By contrast to a great deal of blogs out there, mine could make a nice contrast. Or not. Whatever.
 
Lately I have been wanting to share not just what I am doing or cooking, but how I am making my current projects or recipes happen. Although it may seem extremely egotistic for someone with such a poor self image, sometimes I think I am quite clever. (Several factors must be present for me to think this. Like when my medication hits their marks. Or my hair does what I want it to do right when I want it to do it. Or when I am not retaining more water than Hoover Dam. Or when all three happen at once! A phenomenon I like to call "The Hat Trick of Happy Coincidences.")This surge in positive self-esteem usually passes as quickly as it arrives, so I though I had better record the episode when I could.
 
Anywhooooo....Yesterday was bitterly cold.  When we have that type of weather, I like heating and humidifying the house by baking and having a pot bubbling on the stove and decided last night that I would spend today in the kitchen.  I looked through the cupboards, refrigerator and pantry to see what I could pull together without having to go out get missing ingredients. Grocery shopping the day of the Super Bowl? In the words of the inimitable Toni Winner (the person want to be when I grow up): "I'd rather eat a bug.". (NOTE: I can spell "inimitable", but have the dangedest time saying it.) 
 
After I took stock, I decided on Polish Pickle Soup and having found an unopened packet of caraway seeds bought for a discarded recipe idea for New Year's Day, thought to accompany it with Caraway Seed Bread.  So last night I began the easy but, 14 hour long process to baking this crusty bread and then started the soup this morning.  Polish Pickle Soup is one of those culinary animals that upon hearing the title makes the uninitiated and/or unadventurous think, "What the ...?"  If you like dill pickles and you like potatoes, this simple and hearty soup will warm body and soul from the while weather or world weariness batters you from the outside.
 
Just a QUICK disclaimer: Spring through the first part of autumn I live an 80/20 Paleo Lifestyle. (For ME that means no dairy, no gluten, no sugar, no legumes and no artificial additives.) This is not a DIET, but a lifestyle.  Although I consider myself a "sturdy girl" and would love to be "waifer theen" (Mea culpa,Monty Python. Gross-out scene ahead.)  living Paleo for me is about how I feel not how I look.  I love fresh fruit and veg and the best of what Olde Towne Butcher has to offer me 3/4 of the year.  But during cold weather, I like simple carbohydrates and lots of them. I only ingest dairy infrequently because ever since I cut back, I stopped getting back to back to back sinus infections.  
 
Now the recipes:  Both recipes can be made ovo-lacto vegetarian and I imagine soy milk can be substituted and the egg and butter in the soup can be omitted.  But I opted not to go either route.  So, SPOILER ALERT! There be dairy ahead.
 

 

Polish Pickle Soup and Caraway Seed Bread

I'll do better with pictures in the future. I'll also wash my stove burner pans.

 

 

Caraway Seed Bread

 

Ingredients:

2 1/2  cups bread flour

1/2 cup wheat flour

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon active, dry yeast

2 tablespoons caraway seeds

1 1/3 cups warm water

vegetable or olive oil

more bread flour for kneading

 

 Directions:

1. Combine the flours, salt, yeast and seeds. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and stir in the warm water until just blended. 
2. Turn out onto counter dusted with bread flour and knead for about five minutes.  Let rest while you lightly oil a bowl large enough to contain the dough once it eventually triples in size and looks like it is going to take over Downington, PA. 
3. Cover and allow to rise for 12 hours. I like to do this overnight so I am asleep for most of the rising cycle. Mainly because you are to leave rising dough to itself to do what it has to do and I can't be trusted not to poke a finger in it.
4. Punch dough down and form it into a ball.
5. Take a clean, cotton tea towel and dust it with flour one) and place the dough ball in the center and fold the sides into the center covering the dough loosely.
6. Leave it alone to rise another hour.
7. Bake in a dutch oven* for 25 minutes at 450 degrees F. Uncover the pot and bake another 5-8 minutes.

* I love cast iron cookware and use it for almost everything.

 

Polish Pickle Soup

 

Ingredients:

6 cups vegetable stock or chicken stock

4 large fresh* dill pickles, (found in or around the refrigerated deli case) shredded

1/2 cup pickle juice from the pickle jar

2 1/2 cups thinly sliced potatoes (use your favorite or whatever you have on hand)

2 tablespoons Wondra flour

1 cup milk

1 large

2 tablespoons softened butter

 

Directions:

1. In a large soup pot with cover, combine stock, pickles, pickle liquid & potatoes.
2. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook covered, over low heat until potatoes start to get soft (about 10 minutes).
3. Combine flour and milk, add to broth, bring to a boil and remove from heat.
4. Combine egg and butter and stir into broth. (This step can be left out. I don't think it makes much of a difference either way.)
5. Return pot to the stove and heat through without boiling.

Season with salt and pepper. (Or not.)

Garnish with sour cream and/or fresh dill. (Or not.)

 

So, that was my first blog.

 I'll work on the formatting and see how it goes.

Happy Sunday!

Brandy