Crammed

I feel like a weight has been lifted. I wish it was from my chest, but it's off my shoulders at least.  After 4 days of steroids, I'm still hacking away at the slightest provocation of breathlessness and I'm desperate. I do love steroids sometimes, but I'd prefer to only need them once every few years. This is the third round in the last 9 months. Something's gotta give before my bones do (nothing like getting diagnosed with osteopenia at the age of 22 to make you feel old).


1. The first to go is farm work. I probably shouldn't have blogged about Urbavore immediately after getting home when I was tired, cranky, cold, and oh-so-sore. After a hot shower and a round with the neti-pot, I was left with yes, aching muscles and wheezing, but also the immense satisfaction of a job well done. Few things can be more fundamental and important as growing your own food and knowing exactly how it got to your plate. I feel very passionately about that. But 15 hours a week on top of my full-time job is a bit ambitious even without asthma in the mix.

There is 100% chance of soaking, revitalizing, but yes cold rain today and the high temps are only supposed to hit the low 40s. I do feel a little bit  really guilty and wimpy because the farmers (one of whom is 6 months pregnant) and interns are out in the field working in this weather. I came home from work last night in a panic because a cold and wet Therese is not an animal you want to encounter in the wild, but also because cold = bronchospasms and a day out in this weather would further lower my immunity. I had to tell Brooke. Fortunately, she was very understanding.

image from google search

We're still trying to figure out if my stipulations (avoid straw, hay, debris, mold, and dust) are conducive to actually being helpful on the farm once a week. If so, I'd LOVE to stay involved, even if it means picking pole beans for hours on end beneath the summer sun (mmm... sun). But for now, I'm at home recovering. And no matter what, I will be FULLY supporting the Badseed Farmer's Market and Urbavore Farm Stand all summer- if you're in town, I'd love to take you and introduce you to the people who have poured their lives into such an incredible and worthy endeavor.

2. The second thing to go, temporarily, is gluten. Homeopathic remedies seem to be hit-or-miss, but I'm desperate and there are a good number of people who swear that a gluten-free diet reduces inflammation. As much as I love baking and eating the fruits of the breadbasket of America, I need to give gluten-free another shot. My month of clean eating in February ended after two weeks because, let's be honest, it was a lot of work and it was also inconvenient/embarrassing in social situations. (I know, there are more important things, but really. We live in a society built around convenience.)

While my stomach never really felt better, my asthma did drastically improve during those two weeks. I'm not sure if it was the lack of gluten or lack of dairy (both of which have been blamed as inflammatory culprits), so I'm going to rule one out at a time. Gluten is the first to go simply because I just stocked up on Greek yogurt (protein and calcium intake are important to maintain while on Prednisone).

This doesn't mean buying fancy gluten-free cupcakes and processed food right now. The point is to veer more toward whole food: brown rice, quinoa, and millet are all easy to make in advance and eat throughout the week. (Easy for me to say now, but in a few hours I'll be eyeing those Almond Joy Cookie Bars in the freezer and wondering if I could make a gluten-free version with oat flour instead of wheat flour!)

3. My running game was finally improving again last week. I was up to being comfortable with 3.5 miles of a run 9 minute/walk 1 minute pattern. Of course now the thought of running just makes me want to cough and wheeze. I was too sore from farm work last Tuesday and Wednesday and obviously haven't been breathing well enough to run since then. I'm going to continue to take time off until this weekend and re-evaluate. Typical of my over-compensation, I am signed up to run a 5.3 mile leg of the Brew to Brew run with co-workers on April 3. Yikes!

Photo from BrewtoBrew.com

4. Of course, just taking things away is never a healthy attitude, so I'm making it a focus to ADD more of the important things to my life:

-Getting involved in a new church that's actually conducive to new member involvement (any recommendations in the Kansas City area?)

-Counseling (embarrassing to admit, but long overdue with my history of depression and anxiety).

-The Word of God. No self-help book could ever replace His love story.

-Quality time with Ross. When BOTH of us pulled long days every day for the last week, things got grouchy fast. We are so fortunate to be able to have some leisure time in our lives and we would prefer to spend some of it together instead of alone in the apartment at different times on different days.

-Foods that please my body and not just my tastebuds- though I always aim to please both!

-Dry brushing. I mentioned it last time, and I've kept up with it sporadically, but it's strangely soothing. I can see how it centers autistic kids when they get anxious. Try it!


In the spirit of starting off on the right foot, I had some liquid sunshine with my breakfast to brighten up this dreary day. A carrot, beet, orange, and coconut smoothie.

*Disclaimer: I am a Registered Nurse, not a Registered Dietician. At work we deal with calorie and protein ratios in milk, not big-kid food. What works in my life and eating style may not work for you. But please, give me feedback on my recipes and feel free to share your own!

Liquid Sunshine serves 1 hungry girl
(you will need a food-processor or high-powered blender with these ingredients)

2-3 small steamed, peeled beets (I used pre-steamed organic beets from Hy-Vee-- don't confuse these with canned or pickled beets!)
1 orange
1 organic carrot, chopped into 1/2-inch chunks
1/2 cup coconut milk (using unsweetened SO Delicious has been cheaper than buying cans of coconut milk and it has a very mild, creamy taste that's not overwhelming)
1/4 cup unsweetened Greek yogurt (or just add another 1/4 cup of another liquid-- OJ, milk, coconut water, etc.)
3-4 ice cubes


Add ingredients to food processor or blender and blend until smooth. This may take several minutes depending on how powerful the motor is.

Pour into a tall glass and garnish with shredded coconut or chopped almonds if desired, and smile: Today will be beautiful!

(Please don't think me a hypocrite. I know that after getting on my soapbox about local food, I made a smoothie from non-local ingredients. While I'd love to get to the point where 90% of what we eat is grown within 50-100 miles, it's not practical right now mostly due to extremely limited pantry and freezer space and the fact that the local climate doesn't grow fresh fruits and vegetables year-round. Probably my biggest disappointment over not being an Urbavore intern is that I will miss out on the FREE education about preserving local food so it can sustain you even through the winter. These farmers don't just talk the talk!)

Bread Baking

I feel like I haven't had a night off in a long time! I worked 3 nights in a row, went to Tiffany's wedding, babysat overnight for 3 days, and then worked 5 nights in a row. Ack! I was so happy to have a quiet Sunday at home because my friend and co-worker Johanna had given me 2 dozen farm-fresh eggs from her parents' stash and I wanted to bake!

Such a lucky kid. I grew up in a "from-scratch" household. Yes, I still make a mess when I bake and yes, I still lick the bowl

These eggs are so much better than store bought because these chickens are true free-range birds. They eat grains, corn, and whatever else they can scavage, including worms and bugs. There's no such thing as a true vegeterian free-range chicken like they claim on the brown egg containers in the supermarket.

You know it's a good egg when the yolk is practically orange! True free-range eggs are much higher in beta carotene and omega-3 than their grocery store counterparts.

I trusted Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice with this liquid gold and used his recipes for challa bread and poor-man's brioche. These recipes call for 4 and 5 eggs, respectively. The recipes are more or less the same: flour, yeast, water, and eggs. But brioche is richer due to the addition of butter.

The best yeast, courtesy of Central Market. And a good example of what challa bread should look like.

That's not discoloration from the flash- it really is bright yellow!

Brioche dough rolled into a sandwich loaf

Braiding the challa dough

Mmmm bread dough is yummy!

Brioche rolls fresh from the oven. These were amazing and the crumb structure looked professional, if I do say so myself (thank you Peter Reinhart).

Challa on the left, brioche on the right. Again, the color is not distorted- the eggs made these loaves so yellow.

We'd be eating a lot of omelettes and quiche if it weren't for this book!

Oh what a beautiful morning...

I made homemade bagels this morning and before you start to think, wow, she's gone carb-crazy because of all the bread pictures on my blog, let me explain. I got a bunch of awesome books for Christmas, but most of them have to do with gardening and will therefore have to wait until spring. The book from my Grandma and Grandpa Schekirke, though, can best be put to use right now! It's called The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart and it's amazing!

I first heard of this book when I took a bread baking class at Central Market and once I looked through it, I had to add it to my Christmas list. Since the cold weather has really been getting to me lately (snow was fun, but can it be spring now?!) I thought I'd bake my way thorough the book, a la Julie and Julia. This gives me something to do on my days off and warms up the apartment. Ross, of course, is fully supportive of this goal.

I also harbor a (not-so-secret-anymore) desire to own a bakery/coffee shop one day like the one I fell in love with in Canada. They had organic, healthy, and mostly local food... that tasted GOOD! I can make cakes, cookies, and muffins all the livelong day, but this is good practice for more complex "artisan" bakery offerings that require patience.

Yes, there's actually a picture of this bakery in our honeymoon photo album from Banff. It was that good!

Today was doubly great because boiling and then baking the bagels at 500 degrees F really warmed up the kitchen AND the sun was shining outside! I could almost pretend it was Texas weather. In fact, the sunshine so cheered me up that I was actually able to drag my lazy bum to the gym!

Back to the bagels... I'm afraid to put the actual recipes here for copyright reasons, but I still took nerdy pictures! This was the stiffest dough I have ever made. I still don't think my wonderful Kitchen Aid mixer has forgiven me. Once the dough rested, it was much more friendly.

The shaped bagels after resting in the fridge overnight

Apparently, people who know bagels say that if you don't boil them, it's just bread with a hole.

With poppy seeds, sesame seeds, dried onion, a little sea salt, and a pinch of garlic powder baked on

Look at that crumb structure! Reinhart would be proud.

Mmmm... the cinnamon and sugar caramelized in the oven

Bread Note: Next time, I won't boil the bagels all at once since I had to bake them in three rounds due to my non-industrial -sized oven. The ones that had to sit around between boiling and baking got soggy, lumpy, and flattened a little. They still taste good and don't look too bad once the toppings are on them, but you can tell they're a bit more dense.

In the meantime, Ross was also enjoying HIS Christmas present today! My parents and my mom's parents gave him Best Buy gift cards and he bought a really nice computer screen last week. Apparently in the design world, nice computer screens make all the difference. He then ordered the desktop tower from Dell, personalized to his "designing needs," and it arrived today! I don't think he got much sleep last night with all the anticipation!

Like Christmas morning all over again

Also, Ross said the day he ordered the desktop, the "Y" key stopped working on his laptop. I think it must know it's about to be replaced and wants to know the reason! After seeing the shiny new computer, though, I'm starting to understand "why" it's so much better.

First Day of School!

Ross had his first day of grad school on Thursday! I wish I'd taken a picture, but I was grumpy and attempting to sleep before night shift. He loved the Interaction Design Scenarios class even though he was skeptical of the title at first.
On Mondays and Wednesdays he will have a Junior level Industrial Design studio. When he met with his advisor and found out he could join that studio, he was as excited as a kid in a candy shop! On Wednesdays after studio, he has Design Strategies. All of his classes are afternoon/evening classes and he's still working at Old Navy in the mornings.
I'm anxious to see how much we actually see each other one school gets into full swing. I'm hoping he'll be around more than he would be if he were in architecture grad school. But since we don't have any couple friends with Interaction Design school experience, it's hard to say.
In the meantime, I've been working 4 nights a week and trying to sleep during the day. It seems like it'd be so easy. After all, I'm always exhausted and we have really good blackout curtains in the bedroom so it's not the light keeping me awake! Mystery of mysteries, I guess. It sure does frustrate me, though. Here are the good things about night shift: it pays more and I don't go home with sore feet like I do after a busy day shift. I won't list the bad things. I'm just ready to see the light at the end of this tunnel!
On my days off when I'm actually coherent we have been settling in a little more, I guess. I made foccacia the other day to warm up the apartment. I'm SO GLAD the sub-zero temps are gone (for now), but I'm ready for spring weather and sunshine.

Poolish: a pre-ferment made the day before out of water, yeast, and flour

Kitchen Aid blender with a dough hook. Love it!

I had to fold and let it rise about 4 times

No wonder foccacia is so good. Look at all that olive oil!

Next time I need to cut the recipe in half...

We have actually gotten out of the apartment, too! Tuesday was my friend Amanda's birthday (we went to nursing school together). She and her husband Chris live in Ft. Worth right now but they came up to apartment hunt this weekend! That's right, we have friends moving up here. I know I've mentioned them before, but we're just so excited! Any other friends reading this can feel free to join the trend (*ahem, Brittnye*).
Anyway, Amanda was nice enough to invite us to her family birthday dinner on Tuesday night at the Cheesecake Factory in the Plaza. We had a lot of fun!

This picture doesn't come close to doing it justice. I love the Plaza lights in Kansas City!

Ross, me, Chris, and Amanda. Amanda's eyes were closed in all the pictures we took.

Cheese (cake)!

Chocolate Cherry Bread

One of the things I greatly miss about Fort Worth (besides the people and the weather and Spanish-speaking patients) is Central Market. Grocery shopping was always more fun when Central Market was involved. Whole Foods just isn't the same. One of the best parts about Central Market was the artisan bakery. And this was a TRUE artisan bakery, not just another grocery store bakery pretending to be fancy. Year-round they made the best focaccia I've ever had in my life (but that's another entry, I'm sure). They had seasonal selections in addition to daily baked goods and my favorite was the chocolate cherry bread only made between mid-November and February. Whole Foods makes a chocolate cherry pistachio bread and, while I love pistachios, I don't want my chocolate/cherry combo messed with! So I took matters into my own hands (no pun intended).

What follows is, naturally, a product of boredom and my craving for said bread. (And it gives me something to do while the bread is rising.) The recipe is from Vegetarian Times (no, I'm not vegetarian; it's just the best recipe I found). The "12 Stages" are common knowledge to professional bread bakers, but I first heard of them in my bread-baking class at CM (taught by Gwin Grimes of Ft. Worth's Artisan Baking Company-- amazing!) and now I'm copying them from Peter Reinhart's book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

Chocolate Cherry Breakfast Bread

Ingredients: 1 package active dry yeast (0.25 oz)

1 cup warm (not hot) water

1/3 cup + 1 Tbs. sugar

2 1/3 cups all-purpose or bread flour (I used organic white all-purpose)

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp. salt

2 Tbs. unsalted butter, melted (I used Shatto, a locally-made brand)

1/2 cup chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate)

1 cup dried, pitted cherries

Directions:

-Dissolve yeast and 1 Tbs. sugar in 1 cup of warm water. Let sit until the yeast foams on top

-Sift remaining sugar, flour, cocoa powder, and salt in large mixing bowl. Add water/yeast combo and stir with wooden spoon until smooth dough forms.

-Fold in butter

-Transfer dough to well-floured work surface, and knead 7 to 10 minutes, until dough is smooth and elastic and no longer sticks to your hands

-Pat dough into 10-inch square. Place chocolate pieces and cherries in center of square, then fold in sides like an envelope. Press edges to seal. Gently knead dough 10 to 12 times, or until chocolate and cherries are evenly distributed throughout. Transfer to oiled bowl, cover with clean dishtowel, and let rise 1 1/2 hours in warm place or until dough doubles in size.

-Punch down dough. Cover and store in refrigerator overnight, if desired (I was too impatient for this), or place on well-floured work surface. Divide dough into 16 equal rounds. Roll each round into a tight ball, and place on baking sheet coated with nonstick cooking spray. Repeat with remaining dough. Set baking sheet in warm place, and let rolls rise 30 to 45 minutes.

-Preheat oven to 375F. Bake rolls 20 to 25 minutes, or until tops appear dry and centers spring back when touched. Cool 15 minutes before serving.

Now for my illustrated (humor me, please) version of these directions, using the 12 Stages of Bread:

1) Mise en Place ("everything in its place")

This step is self-explanatory, but it's amazing the difference it makes. Having everything out reduces the risk of forgetting an ingredient (which I know we've all done) or realizing you don't have one of the ingredients/enough of an ingredient halfway through (which I know I've done). This also has the added benefit of making you feel like a professional chef on a cooking show since you're now using little bowls of pre-measured ingredients!

All my ingredients

2) Mixing (aka kneading)

Apparently, there's more here than meets the eye. There are actually 3 goals of mixing: ingredient distribution, gluten development (keep kneading... it's impossible to overmix this type of bread and gluten development is vital to bread structure and flavor), and initiating fermentation.

All mixed up and ready to rise

3) Primary Fermentation (First Rise)

In general vocabulary fermentation is bad. Indeed, this is the process by which most food spoils. However, it's necessary to ferment grain in order to leaven it. This process also releases sugars trapped in the complex starch molecules. Some of this released sugar becomes yeast food, but most of it becomes available to the taste buds and to the caramelization of the crust. Reinhart says that primary fermentation "is the most important stage in the creation of great bread."

After rising for 2 hours. It probably would've risen more if it weren't 4 degrees outside this morning. Our apartment is very drafty!

4) Punching Down (Degassing)

There are four reasons for degassing dough:
a. It expels some carbon dioxide; too much carbon dioxide will eventually choke off the yeast
b. It allows the gluten to relax a bit
c. The temperature on the outside of the dough is usually cooler then the interior, so punching it down helps equalize the interior and exterior temps.
d. Finally, when the dough is degassed it allows for redistribution of the nutriends and triggers a new feeding cycle (which we will utilize in Stage 9 when the dough rises a second time).

All punched down

5) Dividing

Here, we divide the dough into the final number of loaves/rolls, etc. or some intermediate number to be divided later. I know a dough scraper and food scale (birthday present ideas!) will aid in this step, since the goal is to try to cut the dough cleanly (don't rip) and with as few cuts as possible. Each time dough is cut, weak spots are created. These affect the final loaf if you have to combine two of more pieces to achieve the desired weight.

I divided the dough with a bread knife. Look at all the yummy stuff inside!

6) Rounding

The dough is now given a preliminary shape, usually in a ball. This stretches the gluten again and helps form surface tension around the skin of the dough. This will help the dough retain its shape during the final rise.

7) Benching

Resting the dough is not always necessary, but it's very helpful with any dough that resists shaping (meaning the dough is too elastic). Benching is complete (or not needed) when you can poke the dough with a finger, and the indention does not spring back.

See my finger indention on the right-hand side?

8) Shaping and Panning

Since I'm making round rolls (boules), I'll share Reinhart's technique here. It's much more involved than rolling the dough into a sphere.

a. Gather the dough to form a rough ball.
b. To create surface tension, stretch the outside of the dough into an oblong shape, being careful not to squeeze out any more gas bubbles than necessary.
c. Repeat this stretching motion, bringing the opposite ends together to make a ball. Tighten the surface tension by pinching to seal the bottom of the dough where the creases converge.
This is hard to picture unless you've seen it done. Imagine you're rolling the edges of the dough in on itself to create an upside down bowl. Then pinch the outer edges of this "bowl" together as if you're trying to trap an air bubble inside Silly Putty before popping it.

Ready to rise a second time

9) Proofing (Secondary Fermentation)

From the moment the dough is divided, the secondary fermentation cycle begins. The ninth stage is the climax of this secondary fermentation, where the dough has its final chance to rise in preparation for the oven. The most important function of this stage is to bring the dough to the right size for baking-- usually 80%-90% of the desired finished size. This stage is usually shorter than the first rise because if our final shape doubles in size during this proofing, it may collapse when it encounters the "oven spring" that usually occurs.

10) Baking

Here, the starches gelatinize, the sugars caramelize, and the proteins coagulate. These are the final critical control points in determining the quality of the finished bread.

Many loaves require scoring to release some of the trapped gas. This promotes a proper oven spring and prevents the trapped gas from making tunnels or caverns in the bread, or even worse, splitting the bread along a different, non-aesthetic fault line (you've seen this when you bake a loaf of bread in a bread pan and the top seems to spring up so much that it creates a seam all the way around, essentially separating the fluffy top from the denser bottom of the loaf.)

Ready to Bake at last!

11) Cooling (Patience is a Virtue)

While a loaf is still above 160 degrees F, they are technically still gelatinizing. The trapped steam needs to either evaporate off through the crust or re-form as moisture and be absorbed by the crumb of the bread. If the process is interrupted by cutting the bread while it is still hot, the loaf will seem soggy.

I'm not gonna lie. I did eat one fresh out of the oven. Oops!

12) Storing and Eating (!)

Bread apparently tastes best when it has cooled down completely, to at least 80 degrees in the center (this can take up to 2 hours depending on the size of the loaf).

Yum!

Storage "Don'ts":
-Don't store bread in the refrigerator. It will dry out.
-Don't store crusty breads in blastic bags or plastic wrap.
-Don't store soft, enriched breads in paper bags unless you intend to dry them out for bread crumbs or croutons.
Don't store warm bread in plastic bags or plastic wrap. This will prevent condensation which accelerates mold development.

Final Verdict:
The rolls didn't rise as much as I'd hoped while baking. One reason is probably that I neglected to divide them into their final rolls between benching and proofing! Instead, I messed with them and divided them after the final proof which probably de-gassed them again. Oops. Also, even though I only proofed them for 45 minutes, I used a much more effective method than I did for the first rise. Namely, I placed the dough pan on the bottom rack in the (turned off) oven and put two small pots of almost-boiling water on the top rack. This created a pseudo "proof box" with enough heat and steam to cause the bread to rise effectively. So they did, in fact, double on the second proof even though they're not supposed to. I'm thinking these two things prevented them from expanding again in the oven.

They sure did taste good, though! Even Ross approves. While the rolls are good for portion control, I think I'll make it into three loaves next time (a nice, crispy crust on a loaf studded with cherries and chocolate is more Central Market-esque).

If you read all the way to the end, bravo! You're either extremely patient, of a wannabe food nerd like me! Let me know if you try making the bread yourselves and how it turns out.