Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Bites

These little balls are like healthy no bake cookies - so efficient and yet so delicious.  You can make all sorts of different versions of them - I've tried cocoa powder to make them more chocolatey, dried fruit instead of chocolate chips one day I was feeling particularly healthy, and peanut butter chips - all pretty tasty.

Ingredients:
1 cup (dry) old-fashioned oats
2/3 cup toasted coconut flakes
1/2 cup almond or peanut butter
1/2 cup ground flax seed
1/2 cup chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, or dried fruit
1/3 cup honey or agave nectar
1 tablespoon chia seeds (if you feel like it)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
Stir all ingredients together in a medium bowl until thoroughly mixed. Cover and let chill in the refrigerator for half an hour so that the dough gets a little more solid. Once chilled, roll into balls. (Mine were about 1" in diameter.) Store in an airtight container and keep refrigerated.

No Knead Sourdough Bread

Ingredients:
3 ½ cups flour
¼ cup fed and bubbly sourdough starter
1 ½ cups room temperature water
2 teaspoons salt
olive oil, for oiling the bowl

Directions:
Dump the flour, sourdough starter, water and salt into a bowl and use a standmixer with a dough hook to mix the ingredients together on medium-low speed until they form a uniform ball of dough that cleans the sides of the mixing bowl, about three minutes.

Oil a 4-quart glass mixing bowl with a lid, and dump the ball of dough into the mixing bowl. Cover tightly, and let it rise in a warm spot for at least six to eight hours (I just leave overnight for up to 10-12 hours in the winter but probably less when it’s warmer out), or until doubled in bulk.

Place a 6-quart cast iron or Dutch oven in a cold oven, and then heat the oven to 450 F.

Flour your working surface, and dump the dough onto the floured surface, gently forming it into a boule. Cover it with the empty glass mixing bowl, and allow it to rise for 30 more minutes.

If the dough has spread, reform it.  Open the oven and remove the lid from the preheated Dutch oven. Dump the dough into the Dutch oven and cut a slit in the top of the loaf to let the steam escape. Cover and bake for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, remove the lid to the Dutch oven, and continue baking another 15 minutes until the bread is light brown.  Remove the bread from the oven and allow it to cool on a wire rack before slicing and serving.

Sourdough Directions - How to Feed Your "Pet Flour"

As some of you know, I have been obsessively distributing sourdough starter after our homemade family Christmas presents this year and the birth of my newfound sourdough obsession.  I brought some starter out to Portland in an attempt to lure Kurt and Hannah into getting back into sourdough since apparently they were sourdough people years ago.  So I go about explaining the idea of keeping your sourdough alive to Hannah. Hannah, who has been known to mistakenly use air quotes much like Joey on Friends, was getting the hang of this concept of strangely feeding this flour to keep it alive, and started calling it our "pet flour" because we were constantly worrying about getting our sourdough fed and ready in time for our next round of pita, pizza, bread, pancakes, you name it, and thus the term "pet flour" was born thanks to Hannah and her successful use of air quotes in the best and most perfect way possible.

Anyway so here are the directions for trying to keep your "pet flour" alive:

1. For those of you who have gotten sourdough starter from someone (ie me), the first step is to mix in 1/2 cup lukewarm water (preferably filtered or chlorine free) and 1 cup flour.  The starter will be fairly thick, like pancake batter.
2. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature (for up to 12 hours max), until it gets more liquidy and bubbly.  If it doesn’t get bubbly before 12 hours, stir the starter again, and divide it in half; discard half, and feed the remaining half with 1/2 cup lukewarm water and 1 cup flour.
3. Stir the starter down. Place it in a stoneware or glass container, loosely covered with a lid, or a screw-on top, not fully screwed on. Refrigerate it until you're ready to use it in a recipe.
4. Most sourdough recipes will call for 1 cup or so of "fed" sourdough starter. Here's how to turn your refrigerated starter into "fed" starter.
5. Up to 12 hours before beginning a recipe, stir the starter and discard 1 cup. You can give this 1 cup to a friend, or use 1 cup to make pancakes, waffles, whatever. Whatever you do with it, just get rid of 1 cup (or about half of the bowl) of starter.
6. Feed the remaining starter with 1/2 cup lukewarm water and 1 cup flour.
7. Let it sit at room temperature, covered, for 4 to 12 hours, till bubbly. It's now "fed" and ready to use in a recipe.  In the summer, it will get bubbly quickly and in the winter it may take up to 12 hours.  If it ever reaches 12 hours and it’s still not bubbly, discard 1 cup (or half of it) and feed it ½ cup lukewarm water and 1 cup flour again.
8. Once you've removed however much starter your recipe calls for (usually 1 cup), feed the remainder with 1/2 cup lukewarm water and 1 cup flour. Let this remaining starter sit, covered, at room temperature for 2 to 4 hours, until bubbly. 
9. Stir down, return to its container, and refrigerate again until the next time you want to use it.

To keep sourdough in the refrigerator:

1. If you're not planning on using your sourdough starter every day, take it out and feed it once every few weeks.  Starter that hasn't been fed for a month or more will still probably be just fine.
2. If you leave it for 3-4 plus weeks, your sourdough may have a substantial layer of green/gray/brown liquid on top. That's OK; it's simply alcohol from the fermenting yeast. However, if the liquid on top is pinkish; or if the sourdough smells "off" or bad (not simply tangy, or like alcohol), then your starter has attracted the wrong bacteria, and should be discarded.
3. Otherwise, stir the liquid on top into the starter below.
4. Keep stirring till it's smooth, then discard 1 cup (or about half of it).
5. Add 1/2 cup lukewarm water and 1 cup flour.
6. If you’re not planning to use it and just want to feed it and put it back in the refrigerator, stir till smooth, then cover and refrigerate it; no need to wait for it to become bubbly.

Chicken Enchilada Casserole (aka a Gringo/Mexican lasagna)

This recipe came to us from Kelli and became one of the most highly sought after dishes in the Twin Cities – people who barely knew her but had tried it at someone’s house somewhere would request that she bring it with her to potlucks or at the very least give them the recipe so that they could make it themselves.  Eventually we all had to learn to make it ourselves because it is just that delicious that you can't live without it once you no longer have Kelli down the street to call and bring some over.  It may not be pretty but it is pretty darn good.

Ingredients:
3 chicken breasts (bite size pieces)
1 onion (chopped)
1 pepper, any other veggies you want to throw in there (chopped)
1 cup rice (cook rice first separately)
1 can of black/red beans
1 container goat cheese (could maybe do cream cheese if you are a person who hates goat cheese)
3-4 cups shredded cheese (mozzarrella, pepper jack, cheddar, whatever)
2 cans enchilada sauce (Kelli and I swear by green but some people think it’s hideous looking and prefer red)
tortillas (can use corn or flour)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350.  Saute chicken & veggies first.  Mix cooked chicken & veggies in bowl with beans, rice, & goat cheese.  Spray shallow casserole dish with nonstick cooking spray.  Layer tortillas first, then spread chicken/veggie/beans & rice mixture on top of tortillas, pour enchilada sauce on top, and then sprinkle a layer of cheese.  Use 1 can of enchilada sauce in layers and then keep 2nd can to pour over top at the end.  Same for next layer--create as many layers as fit in the casserole dish lasagna style.  Top layer should be tortillas, then 2nd can of sauce, and then a bunch of cheese covering the entire top of dish.  Bake approximately 30 minutes until cheese starts to brown and sauce is bubbling.

I like to put some combination of avocado, salsa, guacamole, and sour cream on top.

Cranberry Curry

Okay so this is one of those recipes that sounds very weird but is actually delicious, and yes I know that's probably the opening line of most of my posts, but I'm serious--try it or request it some night that I'm cooking.

Ingredients:
1 tsp butter
2 tbsp minced onions or shallots
1 tbsp balsamic or raspberry vinegar
4 chicken breasts - chopped into bite sized pieces
1 cup whole-berry cranberry sauce
1 cup green apple chopped
3/4 to 1 tsp curry powder

Optional (depending on how you feel about things like nuts and raisins being in your dinner):
1/4 cup golden raisins
2 tbsp chopped walnuts

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 10-inch shallow casserole dish with nonstick cooking spray.  Add butter & shallots/onions.  Bake uncovered for 5 minutes.  Add vinegar to dish & stir.  Add chicken, basting tops with vinegar/onion mixture.  Bake uncovered for 10 minutes.  Mix together cranberry sauce, apple, raisins, walnuts and curry.  Cover chicken with sauce and bake additional 15-20 minutes or until chicken is cooked and sauce bubbles.  Serve over rice, couscous, quinoa, or whatever floats your boat.