Bread making, again, and other stuff I'm trying to do

I gave the bread machine a long hiatus, because I was somehow not finding enough time to even throw together the ingredients and let the machine do the work. But lately I've been thinking just ow hard it is to find good bread, something that has mostly organic ingredients and doesn't come in a plastic wrapper. Ugh, I've come to hate the ubiquitous plastic wrapping that our modern food must have. If I could eliminate the plastic wrapper, and all the energy it takes to ship a loaf of bread to my grocery store...I think it would make a difference.

Last night The Hermit was saying how he missed good homemade bread. So this morning, after the kids got on the bus at the ungodly hour of 6:30 AM, but they wanted to, and they woke up on their own, I put the stuff for a caraway rye in the bread machine. It didn't take too long, and it would be even quicker if I made up a dry mix, put it in jars, and just had to add the eggs and oil and water.

The loaf is almost gone as of this evening. All of the kids had PBJ sandwiches with it, and The Hermit and I got a taste with butter.

In other things, the next homemade item I want to try is salad dressings. I have all but sworn off Kraft and other major commercial brands, due to the amount of soy oil and corn syrup, and I'm thinking: I could probably make something better than the bottled variety, with extra virgin olive oil, vinegar, and fresh organic spices. I could store dressing in pint jars in the refrigerator, without buying and having to rinse and recycle new bottles.

It's one step at a time, this life I want to live.

stinging nettles for dinner

Does that very title give you goosebumps, like it does me? I admit, I was very skeptical about cooking and eating the things. After all, I've had enough run ins with them to know they can be very irritating in their raw form. They cause a blistering rash that lasts an hour or so.

But actually they are very good steamed or sauteed; once they are limp the chemical that causes the rash has been deactivated. They can be dried and steeped in a tea or infusion as well. Nettles are very rich in nutrients, even better than spinach or just about any other green.

These are the raw leaves. I wore gloves as I picked small plants and cut the leaves off. I don't know why some of them are purple on the underside; this disappeared with cooking.

I steamed them in a small amount of water, then added butter for flavor. I knew the amount of nettles I picked would not make for much of a meal, but The Hermit had a work function to attend tonight and I had no intention of inflicting this on the kids...yet. This was my substitute for spaghetti noodles. I'm trying to go gluten free, or almost so, for a while to see if I may be sensitive to it.

The nettles have an incredible rich green flavor, better than spinach or Swiss chard. But I think you'd have to have them picked young, and very fresh, to get the kind of flavor I experienced tonight. I guess I'm lucky to have them growing wild, in unexpected places like one of my garden beds. Maybe there's a market for them at the Farmers Market!