Scratch Challenge Days Seven and Eight

I decided to make tortillas yesterday, but didn't have all the ingredients. I finally found a recipe for sandwich wraps, which I did make. The dough was tough to work with. I couldn't roll it out as thinly as I wanted, but they turned out awesome! Not that this should be a surprise to anyone. I had some excellent breakfast wraps and some chicken and rice wraps with the leftover chicken. I finished off the cooked pasta and sauce for dinner.

I realized that I needed to make some serious food to stockpile and avoid eating calzones every day for the next month. I have some dried pasta, some frozen calzones, but that's just about it. I made two delicious things today. The first was a pot roast. There were onions and carrots with beef slow cooked for hours with a delicious blend of herbs and spices. I also made bagels.

I timed the two to finish at the same time. This created some interesting results. I started by discovering that flipping the bagels during the boiling process was difficult, and that reaching your hand into boiling water is not necessarily the best method. Next I found that the spray I used on the pans creates an inordinate amount of smoke, which, if one does not use the fan sets off the extremely loud smoke alarm. However, after throwing open some windows I found myself enjoying a fresh bagel with a thick slice of juicy, piping hot beef.

Scratch Challenge Days Six and Seven

Day six was not fun. I'd been sick, and got sicker. I had a bit of leftover rice, but otherwise I didn't eat very much, or cook very much.

Day seven was slightly better. Breakfast was an undisclosed quantity of scrambled eggs. Lunch was leftover chicken and rice, and dinner was a calzone. More ambition to follow.

Scratch Challenge Days Four and Five

Day four was a bit crazy due to my recovery from illness and the fact that I decided to try to make pasta from scratch. Lunch was more leftover calzone along with fruit and veggies. I'll be very happy when I make it through the carrots.

I started the minute I got home from work with the dough. The initial dough I made wasn't cohesive, so I had to add some extra egg and water. The resulting dough was still tough and difficult to roll into a thin sheet. As a result the pasta was big. I'd like to invest in a pasta machine if I'm going to do this again, and I need to play with the dough recipe.

I also made sauce from scratch. I blanched the tomatoes, scooped out the guts, and then pureed the meat and the skins. I added roasted red and yellow onion and roasted garlic. I also threw in some basil and oregano, along with a dash of wine. The sauce wasn't bad, but the tomatoes were clearly out of season.

Finally, garlic bread was made from one of the stale baguettes. The garlic bread was fantastic; the sauce and pasta were both okay, but not great.

Lunch on day five was leftovers from pasta night along with bananas and carrots. For dinner I diced two chicken breasts and made a Mexican-style rice with corn. I typically use cumin, garlic and onion powder, oregano, black pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika, and red pepper as my base spices. I substituted chipotle for cayenne with one of the chicken breasts.

Scratch Challenge Day Three

Something very bad happened yesterday. I came down with a nasty cold, the kind of cold that calls for curling up in bed with a nice warm bowl of chicken noodle soup. Unfortunately, I'm not psychic so I didn't make an advance supply of chicken noodle soup from scratch. I had to settle for some banana, Simply Apple apple juice, and garlic bread made from the leftover baguettes, which are now getting stale. Fortunately, I wasn't very hungry.

Mmmm! Look what I enjoyed tonight!

How is that challenge going, Steve? xx

Scratch Challenge Day Two

Day two- I missed breakfast due to a combination of running late and not having anything readily available.

Lunch consisted of more fruit smoothie, a calzone and carrots. Dinner, not surprisingly, was another calzone, baguette, and cheese. I'm didn't have a chance to cook tonight due to my schedule, and some of the reality of this challenge is setting in- I'm going to be eating lots of leftovers, especially when I don't get the chance to cook.

-Steve

From Scratch Challenge- Day 1

Breakfast consisted of an undisclosed quantity of eggs served with onion and a slice of brie on a baguette. I also had some baby carrots because we have way too many in the fridge. But wait Steve- isn't a baguette a delicious french bread, which means it's not made from scratch? It is made from scratch if you're awesome enough to have made it from scratch yesterday! Which, just to be clear, I am.

I ran into my first hitch at lunchtime. I pulled some frozen fruit out of the freezer with the intention of turning it into a fruit smoothie, but not in time for lunch. As a result, I had to nibble on more bread and carrots.

Dinner was far more interesting. I made chicken broccoli calzones. I hope to post the recipe tomorrow, but they can be summed up in one word- awesome. I made twenty-two in total with the intention of freezing some to eat at a later point. Eric and Sean each had one. I had three. I also had a fruit smoothie made with strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and greek yogurt.

From Scratch Challenge

From Scratch Challenge

One day I sat down at lunch and remarked that everything in my lunch had been made from scratch. After talking with co-workers about how often I cook things from scratch, it was suggested that I try cooking everything from scratch for the next month. This was a challenge I accepted with little hesitation and even less thought.

The Rules:

1. All food that I cook and eat must be made from scratch or be raw. The easiest way to think about this is that everything I use in my meals should start off with an ingredient list of one on the package and be uncooked.
2. I can start with ingredients that have been ground, sliced, peeled, chopped, pressed, crushed, frozen, dried, and packaged. For example, I could eat an apple since it's raw. I could also eat frozen apple slices (presumably after thawing them). If I want applesauce I need to make it myself- it's been cooked and mixed with other ingredients.
3. I can eat food cooked by others if it is made from scratch.
4. I need to eat my normal diet- I can't start eating only salads for the month. I really wouldn't want too anyways.
5. There are several exemptions for the sake of my health and sanity. There are a few things that I can't make due to lack of proper equipment and/or the fact that they take longer than a month to make. These include fermented items, like beer, wine, and vinegar; things made with bacteria, like yogurt or cheese, and butter because I don't own a butter churn.
6. I need to document my meals for the duration of the challenge.
7. If I starve to death and die, I lose.

Examples of approved ingredients:

Rice, flour, raw and frozen fruits and vegetables, raw meat and seafood, dried and ground spices.

Things I will be making from scratch:

Bread, pasta, quiche, pierogies, calzones, buffalo wings, cupcakes, crackers, and more.

Welcome

January seems like the appropriate time of year to start new and exciting endeavors, so the blog is being fired up. Eric, Sean and I will be posting our first dishes starting this week, and I will be starting the first challenge. Things are about to get delicious!

-Steve