If I agreed with the title of a book I received for Christmas, I wouldn’t be posting this. According to author Margaret Mason,“No One Cares What You Had for Lunch.”
I beg to differ.
I’m sure that somewhere out there, someone cares that I ate pita for lunch today. (You do, don’t you?) More than that, you might even want to know how I made it. If you’ve never considered baking your own pita, I highly recommend it. It’s even slightly entertaining… if you have an oven with a window. The flat dough puffs up and forms a pocket, just like a well-behaved pita should.
I know you’re not supposed to care what I had for lunch today, but I ate my fresh, warm pita with fresh, warm roasted red pepper hummus. Mmm. There are as many hummus variations as there are camels in Egypt, so I didn’t bother to write down my hummus recipe.
This whole wheat pita recipe is one I found online years ago and have modified slightly. Note: the oven temperature isn’t a typo. The hotter the better!
:: WHOLE WHEAT PITA ::
Ingredients:
1 1/4 c. warm water
1/2 t. sugar
2 t. active dry yeast
1/4 t. salt
2 1/2 - 3 c. whole wheat flour
Directions:
1. Place water and sugar in a large bowl and stir. Add yeast and stir slightly. Let rest for 5 minutes. Mix in salt and flour gradually.
2. Knead well for 5 minutes. Place the dough in a bowl and lightly coat it with oil. Cover with a cloth and let rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.
3. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Divide dough into 8 balls. Roll out each ball to make 1/4-inch thick rounds. Lightly dust each side with flour by rubbing it with floured hands. Let rest covered for 20 minutes. Bake on ungreased cookie sheets for 5-8 minutes or until lightly browned.
Today I’m celebrating my blog’s first birthday. OK, “celebrating” might be stretching things a bit. I didn’t eat cake, give gifts, or blow up balloons. I almost didn’t even write on my blog (some days just aren’t very inspiring), but in honor of my first real post here on January 14 of last year, I pulled together a few interesting tidbits about my still-unnamed blog.
My visitors came from 52 countries (can you find Qatar and Brunei Darussalam on a map?) and 43 U.S. states (please tell your friends in Nevada and Vermont to visit).
Posts: 126
Comments: 156
Spam comments gobbled up by the almighty Akismet: 270
Most hits in one day: 102
So, happy birthday to my blog… and thank you to YOU, my dear blog readers, for humoring me by reading this.
Was it a map of Uzbekistan or a slice of bread? It was hard to tell. Unfortunately, it was indeed a slice from the Most Pitiful Loaf of Rye Bread ever made. I baked it yesterday afternoon, and needless to say, the recipe did not find its way to my list of the seven great recipes I’ve made during the first seven days of 2008.
I think I need a bread-baking tutor. Seriously. I’ve attempted to make bread a number of times, and it just never turns out like I want it to. Yesterday’s rye bread adventure was particularly disastrous. Edible, but just barely. I keep thinking that if I just try a different recipe, it will go better. (Practice makes perfect, right?) After yesterday, I’m beginning to reconsider that logic.
Besides the run-in with the deformed rye bread, I’m loving my new year’s resolution to “expand my culinary repertoire.” Already I’ve spent quite a few hours poring over cookbooks, peeking in my cupboards, scouring the internet, and digging through the freezer. The results have been quite tasty, ranging from Moroccan carrots on New Year’s Day to curried pumpkin soup this evening.
Believe it or not, my favorite new recipe is for lima beans. Lima beans! (I found the recipe for “lemony lima beans with parmesan” in a back issue of Everyday Food magazine, but you can also find it here). I only made a half recipe, and I still ended up with four servings. To my delight, I quickly discovered that with a little olive oil, lemon juice, and parmesan cheese, lima beans really ARE good!
We’ve all seen them — three adolescent boys wearing bathrobes and Burger King crowns, looking more like wise guys than wise men. If they’re lucky, they won’t even have a speaking part in the Christmas pageant. The boys will carefully lay the glittering boxes of gold, frankincense, and myrrh in the straw next to the manger and secretly breathe a sigh of relief.
It’s a scene oft-repeated in Christmas pageants and children’s Bible storybooks, so I’m sure many people would be surprised to discover that it didn’t really happen that way.
First of all, where did we get the idea that there were only three wise men? Oh, that’s right. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Three gifts, each carried by one of three wise men, right? Probably not. Although the Bible doesn’t say how many men were in the caravan, I suspect there were more than three.
But was the stable in Bethlehem big enough for 17 wise men to crowd into? Not to worry. The wise men never went to the stable. By the time the wise men arrived in Bethlehem, Jesus was no longer sleeping in a cattle trough.
“On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.” (Matthew 2:11)
Since set changes during a Christmas pageant would be too disruptive, we’ve compensated by changing the story. Today is Epiphany, the day on which the Christian Church remembers the arrival of the wise men in Bethlehem. Instead of changing the story, let’s allow the Truth to change us…
Somebody please tell me why I went to the library tonight when I already own plenty of books I haven’t read yet. Is this normal behavior? (I’m afraid it is.) Actually, I had a book on reserve that I wanted to pick up, but I decided to browse the shelves just for fun. I came home with six books. Six? What was I thinking?
I usually check out the “new book” shelf, and I almost always find an interesting title or two. Tonight I saw a book called “All The Good Ones Aren’t Taken.” The blurb on the back starts off: “If you always experience the same unhappy endings in your relationships, then All The Good Ones Aren’t Taken is the book for you.” I snorted and put the silly book back on the shelf. Perhaps if I had more happy beginnings I’d have more unhappy endings.
As I was browsing an aisle upstairs, another title caught my eye: “The Very New Christmas Make-It Book.” It looked old. I pulled it from the shelf and checked out the copyright date. 1954! “Very new?” I flipped through it just for kicks. My family should be very glad I didn’t find this book BEFORE Christmas.
Isn’t that the sweetest little handi-wrap poodle you’ve ever seen?
Unlike my neighbors who were hootin’ and hollerin’ and blowing those little party horns, I spent the first few minutes of 2008 standing calmly on the sidewalk in front of my house. Earlier in the evening I had walked downtown for some First Night festivities, and then some friends and I came back to my house to hang out. I own a TV that’s rarely plugged in, so we weren’t watching the televised Times Square hoopla. Instead we walked outside just before midnight, listened to my neighbors chanting inside their house (seven, six, five…), and watched the fireworks. Ooo. Ahh.
After considering several possible New Year’s Resolutions, I’ve finally decided on just one resolution for 2008: expand my culinary repertoire. I love to cook, but somehow I’ve managed to become stuck in a culinary rut. No longer. Bon appetit!
