Have you ever bought brown rice crackers? They’re surprisingly expensive, and often have unnecessary ingredients and are wastefully packaged.
So I’ve devised a very easy way to make my own. We love them! They’re nice and crunchy — great for dipping, or just eating plain.
1. Purchase a package of Food for Life Brown Rice Tortillas from your local health food store. (The above 12 oz. package of 6 large tortillas was $2 at my local store.)
2. Cut the tortillas into triangular wedges or rectangular strips.
3. Arrange them on a cookie sheet.
4. They’re yummy just plain like this, but if you’d like to add salt (or any type of fun seasoning blend — Penzeys Spices is my favorite place to go crazy with seasonings!), just brush the top of each strip lightly with water and sprinkle with salt. (The salt will adhere surprisingly well after baking.)
5. Bake at 275°F for 30-35 minutes until lightly golden and crispy-crunchy (and no longer leathery). You’ll probably need to add another 5-10 minutes to that bake time if you brushed them with water first.
6. Let them cool, and then store in an air-tight container (at room temperature is fine). Done!
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Three perfectly baked brown rice chips, against a raw brown rice tortilla, so you can see the color difference.
Mmmm, challah bread! The perfect holiday treat for your own family, or a friend! Challah is a traditional Jewish bread eaten on the Sabbath and on holidays, and is usually parve (made without milk or meat); this recipe isn’t parve (okay with me since I’m not Jewish), but if you’d like it to be, just substitute oil for the butter.
Here’s the challah recipe that I’ve used for many years (plus my tips for success), as well as video instructions on how to do a pretty 6-braid loaf.
Before we start, know that this bread requires two risings. Keep your eye on the dough — once it has doubled each time, move onto the next step promptly. I wouldn’t recommend leaving to go shopping and letting it over-rise and sit around too long, because the yeast will consume more sugar than you want, and the resulting bread will be more yeasty and not as subtly sweet; if this happens, the bread will still be good, but not asgood.
Ok, let’s get started!
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Challah Bread
7/8 cup water, at 100° – 110°
2 tsp active dry yeast
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs at room temperature
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 tsp salt
4 cups flour (I like using half white, half whole wheat…all white is yummy but not as healthy…or you could also use all whole wheat)
For the egg wash: 1 whole egg + 1 Tbsp water
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Proof the yeast by stirring it into the water and letting it sit until it’s bubbly and foamy on top, about 5 or 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, melt the butter and warm the honey if needed so that it’s free flowing.
Stir the salt into the flour in a large bowl, and add all the other ingredients (yeast water, honey, the 2 eggs, and butter).
If you have an electric stand mixer, now would be the time to use it, allowing the dough hook to knead the dough for several minutes.
If, like me, you don’t own a stand mixer, no problem! — with a wooden spoon, stir until a dough forms. With the same wooden spoon, pretend that you are the stand mixer. Knead the dough as best you can for several minutes, until smooth, using the spoon — digging into the center of the dough, twisting, lifting, dropping. I’ve made this bread many times and discovered that you want to add a bare minimum of extra flour, or else the resulting bread will be too dry. When kneading with a wooden spoon in the bowl, you won’t be tempted to add flour since the dough won’t be sticking to your counter, to your hands, etc., while you knead. (You can also knead with your hand inside the bowl! Either way works just fine.)
Now, with the dough in the bowl, cover the bowl completely with a lid, plate, or plastic wrap.
Set aside to rise until doubled in size. To speed the process, I like to turn the oven on for a minute or two, then turn it off (test with your hand to be sure it’s only just warm) to create a slightly warmer environment than the ambient temperature in my kitchen… then put the bowl into the warm oven.
Once it’s doubled in size, punch it down and gather the dough into a loaf shape, cutting it into six pieces of equal size. Feel each piece with your hand, re-distributing dough from piece to piece until they all feel about the same.
On a lightly floured surface, roll each piece of dough into a rope as long as you like; mine usually end up about 18″ long.
Lay your ropes onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper (you can, instead, grease a cookie sheet generously, but I find that parchment is really a good tool in this situation, otherwise the egg wash tends to glue the edges of the bread to the sheet, making it a little hard to get off. You can certainly do it that way… but if you have parchment, use it here.) 😉
At one end, pinch the ropes together, and now you’re ready to braid! Watch the video below for instructions on how to do a 6-braid loaf (it’s not hard, and the end result looks very impressive!).
Once you’ve braided your loaf, it needs to rise until doubled in size. I’ve tried covering the loaf with wax paper, plastic wrap, a damp tea towel, and they always stick to the loaf no matter what. My favorite method, therefore, is this: turn on your oven for a minute or two until it’s slightly warm, and then turn it off. You don’t want it too warm! Meanwhile, boil some water. When the water boils, pour it into a couple of mugs, and place those in your warm oven. Put the uncovered braid into the warm oven, and close the door. (I like to turn on the oven light to add a little more warmth too.) This way, your braid can rise without anything covering it, and because of the high humidity, it won’t dry out while rising. Because of the warmth and humidity, this step may go fairly quickly, so keep tabs on the braid.
Once your braid is doubled in size, take it out of the oven. Preheat the oven to 375°. While the oven’s heating, make an egg wash by combining 1 whole egg and 1 Tbsp of water in a small jar and shaking vigorously. Using a pastry brush, paint the egg wash onto the braid.
When the oven is hot, put your braid onto the middle rack and bake for about 15-20 minutes, until the top is golden and the underside is lightly golden, but not overdone. Try not to over bake, as that will also dry out the bread. You want the top to be golden, but not too dark.
A nicely done underside will look like this. See how it’s golden also, but not too dark?
Let the bread cool, and enjoy! It’s delicious fresh, but also keeps nicely on the counter; seal it inside a bag to keep it from drying out.
So how do you transport — on a bike — an 18-inch loaf of fragile and delicious 6-braid challah bread? Funny you should ask, since I just did that last week…
You take the bottom of the box that your new canning jars came in. You fold it in thirds and tape one end shut. You wrap your challah like a mummy, lay it in its box, and keep everything together with a couple rubber bands.
Stick it in your backpack, taking care to tie your zippers together with a couple of twisties twisted together to make an extra-long twistie…lest the zippers unzip and the challah fall out.
And voila! It will arrive perfectly intact after its ride across town:
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And join me a little later this week when we’ll bake challah together and I’ll show you (in a video) how to do a 6-braid loaf.
A couple weekends ago, my mom and I were admiring some beautiful wreaths and swags at the local garden center; they smelled so good, and were so Christmasy! There really is nothing like the real thing when it comes to greenery at Christmas… and really, there’s nothing like the real thing with just about anything in life, I’ve decided.
But instead of buying them, we wanted to make our own — and so yesterday we did. Across the street and through the snow we went, clippers and bags in hand, to the park across the way. We gave some of the trees a ‘light pruning’ while filling bags with fragrant boughs, then cleared off their dining room table, turned on some Christmas music, brewed tea, and got to work.
We learned quickly that gloves are a must for a project like this!
Our creations began to take shape, and we admired each other’s work, exclaiming how that wreath and those swags were even better than the ones we could’ve bought. And how they were totally local, totally fresh, and totally free. What satisfaction to make something so beautiful! They smell incredible, too — something I didn’t really expect from city pine trees. Like a mix of fresh Christmas trees and wood smoke.
Here’s the wreath my mom made for the front of their house. Isn’t it beautiful!! I love how she added pine cones and some bare lilac branches.
Have you ever tried fresh, raw pomegranate juice? It’s incredible! Pomegranates are in season now, so give it a try sometime!
You can easily juice a pomegranate without a juicer; in fact, even though we have a juicer, I prefer to do it this way. And it’s only a little more effort above and beyond the task of separating the seeds from the pith. One large pomegranate will yield roughly 1 cup of juice.
Now when you’re doing this, I suggest wearing black — or at least a big apron. The distance a juice splatter will travel seems to be directly proportionate to how much you love the shirt you’re wearing; this phenomenon also appears to be heavily influenced by the color of the shirt — with white inducing bigger and more far-reaching splatters than any other color.
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1. To peel your pomegranate, make perpendicular cuts (both going all the way around the fruit) — deep enough to cut through the skin, but not through the seeds underneath:
2. Grab a section and break it away:
3. Over a large bowl, gently separate the seeds from the white pith. This is the most time-consuming step.
4. Discard the pith & peel:
5. Empty the seeds into a blender or food processor:
6. Pulse them quickly about 8-10 times; we just want to burst the juicy outer red part without grinding up the crunchy white inner seeds:
7. Empty the contents of the blender into a mesh strainer over a bowl:
8. With clean hands, squeeze the seeds to get the rest of the juice out:
9. Pour the juice from the bowl into a glass. Enjoy it!
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