Vicky Learns to Cook

So for Kaiser rolls, you start with this concoction that I swear looks like you're making a witches brew. It's dark brown and bubbly, and frankly smells weird. I added 2 packets of yeast to warm water and sugar and let it sit for 5 minutes. Looks like this: Then I added oil, salt, sugar, more water, and lots of flour. Now the recipe calls for all purpose flour, but apparently the flour gnomes visited last night and made off with a bag of flour I swear I had. Since Kaiser rolls are bread, I figured, okay, I can probably use bread flour. Hopefully I'm right about this and they will be awesome and not hockey pucks. (eek!) The dough is sticky when you get done mixing, but it's kind of a pleasure to have it suddenly become dough, and a soft one. Easy mixing, if you get my drift. Not like cookies where you need someone else's arm to mix for a while. I put the dough down on a floured table. I have to make a side note here. They tell you in the recipe to put

There is not much in this world that is more satisfying than a well made blueberry pie. How many times have you gotten a blueberry pie and it was crust and blue liquid? Not much fun to eat. And not very inspiring to have made either. I didn't want that to happen when I made the pie for small group. (This is a group of us from the church who get together and have fellowship and study things from the Bible and basically do life together). I have no pictures of the process but imagine this: I have no pie crust yet. But I already put a cup of tiny little wild blueberries into the pot with the cornstarch and sugar.  I boiled them until they were dark purple, all while looking up recipes for good pie crust.  I have 5 recipes for pie crust, but my favorite one is labeled 'the best', and rightly so. It requires a food processor, which I have, with an actual blade which I do not. The dishwasher ate it. Not to be dissuaded, I used the squish method on the butter pieces and

I had to embrace the idea that I am no good at making up recipes. Seeing as how I had over 1400 recipes that shouldn't be a problem, right? It still made me feel somewhat less of an amateur chef. Do you get that feeling? But, embrace it I do, and I had to make something with Shrimp. Because, well, I had shrimp in the freezer that's why. I've had pretty good luck with risotto, the creamy rice dishes. But this time I wanted to do well. So I found a recipe called Risotto con Scampi. Basically Risotto with Rice. Arborio rice to be exact. And i did add in one thing; I had asparagus. Imagine, pink shrimp, creamy yellowish rice, and bright green asparagus. Beautiful. And tasty! I had to get out my reading glasses, you know those tiny little 5 dollar blue reading glasses you get from a flea market? Yea those. That's how tiny the writing on this cookbook was! It was a small spiral notebook, that I got for 10 cents at the library's shop. Pretty good deal! Check the

How is this possible?  I mean I made them and I still don't believe it.  NO flour? Really? So you get a ripe banana (we have plenty now that Hubby is eating them, well some of them, every day) And you get a couple of eggs. Mash the banana first. Beat the eggs. Mix them together. Throw some vanilla in. You can do flax seed too, but I didnt have any ground. Now, use some coconut oil (which is really weird, thick like slush, but not smooth like butter) to heat in the frying pan and put 1/4 cup of the mix into the pan. This is important, dont add too much at once, it will be easier to flip over. And it might give you the heebie geebies if you see a lot of this mix. It's kinda gross, looking too closely. Let it cook until (I suggest) dark brown. Very carefully flip the pancake. It is not going to hold together like a flour pancake so you may have to pat it in place. But it will look similar to a pancake. Take it out of the pan onto a plate. This makes two servings