Spätzle - made with sour dough discard (updated)

Anyone who maintains a sour dough starter knows that, with sour dough starter comes sour dough discard... What to do with the discard? 

Initially I would bake discard bread.  Those recipes simply use a little bit of starter in a more or less regular bread recipe made with instant yeast.  But there is only so much bread any one person wants to eat - even a German person; and my freezer also has limited capacity.  What to do with the discard?

The Internet is a beautiful place.  King Arthur has a whole collection of discard recipes.  Unfortunately, I am a recovering diabetic, so the cakes, cinnamon toast and even pancakes are not part of my diet. 

Bread is part of my diet despite the carbohybrates, because bread is heavenly.  Bread is what I choose to eat as my carbs for the day.

Recently, I found another beautiful place on the Internet - a Facebook group "Perfect Sour dough" where people talk about - what else - sour dough.  Someone there mentioned that you could make noodles with sour dough.  This is how I had the idea to make German noodles - spätzle - with sour dough discard.

Here is the recipe I'm going to use:

Spätzle (German noodles)

350 g flour 

50 g sour dough discard

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

12 TBsp water (200 ml) - adjust to desired consistency

50 g butter

The flour/sour dough ratio can probably be adjusted to your taste, but this is what I used.  With the eggs in the mix, I imagine that not much of the final hold comes from the gluten.

Mix flour, sour dough, eggs, salt and water into a dough. 

Push the resulting mixture through a ricer into boiling salt water.  

Fish the dumplings out of the water using a colander. 

Heat butter in a separate pot.  Add the dumplings into the pot.

If you have never made spätzle, I wrote a blog post "Taste of Home: Spätzle!!!" a few years ago.  It contains pictures and detailed instructions.  

Sour dough bread for the rest of us - or - Relax! It's gonna be OK.

Sour dough bread for the rest of us - or - Relax! It's gonna be OK.

Sour dough bread has always intimidated me.  The initial set-up, the feeding, the measuring, the timing, the commitment ... Maintaining a sour dough is like having a pet - and I'm not good with pets that don't remind me that they would like to be fed.  A sour dough was not likely to survive in my life.

But then, a few years ago, I set up a sour dough starter with the help of my adopted son. Truth be told, I did it primarily to entertain said son, but it has become a part of my life since then. In the beginning, for a few days - maybe even weeks, I obsessed over it, measured, fed, kept notes... but then, when I realized that this thing was doing just fine, I relaxed a bit.

Sour dough bread, it turns out, only sounds intimidating.  Once you get over the fear, it's really simple - and both the maintenance of the sour dough and the bread baking can be adjusted to work for the schedule of regular working folks.

Mummy Potatoes or The Epic Pinterest Fail and Other Misadventures

October 31st - Halloween.  The theme for tonight's Monday night dinner was - fittingly - Halloween.

Initially, I was a little concerned that I would not be able to find a Halloween-themed potato dish, but I quickly discovered that this would not be a problem.  There were lots of possibilities!  After surfing the net for a bit, I settled on Mummy Potatoes - a Pinterest-worthy Halloween-themed take on the twice baked potato.

Source: onceuponacuttingboard

Thai Potato and Vegetable Yellow Curry (vegan)

The theme for our Monday night dinner on 7/11/16 was Thai.  I love Thai food.  The first time I ate Thai was in Chicago, at a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant that I wished I could remember either the name or the location of....  I remember reading the menu and wondering what coconut milk would taste like in soup since I only knew coconut as an ingredient in sweet dishes like cookies and cakes,

To my surprise, it tasted absolutely wonderful - and to this day Tom Kah soup is one of my favorite dishes ever. Unfortunately, I can't make Tom Kah soup for Monday night dinner since it does not contain potatoes - and the potato challenge is still in full swing.

My daughter was not going to be able to make it to Monday night dinner since she would be out of town for a conference. That meant that I would not have to consider her food sensitivities when cooking.  Peppers were going to be added to this one!

As usually, my dish started with an evening of googling "Thai potatoes".  Of course I also had to make sure that I didn't repeat the Thai potato recipe I made last time.  When I came across a Thai yellow curry potato recipe that called for a homemade Thai yellow curry paste, I knew I had found a winner: Thai potato and vegetable yellow curry it was.

Imperfect Whole Grain Bread

My whole grain bread is definitely still a work in progress.  The end-goal is to create a loaf that is dense with grains, but that's not sunken in the middle - and not soaking wet.

I'm writing it down here because I don't want to forget what I did so far - and because a friend, who tasted the bread, actually asked for the recipe.

Lost - and found picture

I love pictures -not so much pictures of myself, but pictures of loved ones, friends and family.

If my house were on fire, I'd save the kids, the pets and then the pictures. Everything else can be replaced.

Potato Challenge: Super Easy Cajun Roasted Potatoes

This week's recipe was so easy, it almost does not deserve to be called a recipe.  My source was a recipe called "Way too easy Cajun potatoes" that I fancied up a bit by adding garlic to it.

These are the kind of potatoes that you can make instead of going out - they're that quick.