CANNELLONI DI CARNE AND DI MAGRO--DELIZIOSO!!!

Daring Cook's Challenge this month is Cannelloni.  This was sort of like an Italian crepe.  There were several variations.  I chose di carne--meat version, and di magro--a spinach version. This was a challenge from Manu of Manusmenu, who lives in Australia, but is native Italian and grew up in Milan.  The recipes were wonderful, but a lot of work.  She said these are for special occasions like Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, etc.  Can totally understand why both flavor-wise and effort-wise.  Will definitely try pasta more often, though.    

Cannelloni di carne for dinner tonight--absolutely delicious.

Di carne version ready for oven in stone casserole dish.  Fit 11 in there.  Used four for dinner, then froze rest for  when Sonny and his family get here on their cross-country move back to Washington in a couple weeks.  

One of these days I'll figure out how to put recipes on here and have them work, but for now, let me suggest you do a search for both the egg pasta recipe and the cannelloni recipes, but will include my Cuisinart food processor version of the pasta.  EGG PASTA is basically: 5 large eggs, 2-3 Tbl. olive oil, 3 Tbl. water, 1 1/2 tsp. salt, 3+ c. mix of unbleached all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour.  Put flour and salt in food processor and pulse to mix, then add olive oil.  Add in eggs one at a time and water if needed.  Mine ended up being a bit too moist so had to add more flour.  At this point, I put it in an oiled baggy and put in the fridge overnight.  Today it was quite easy to roll out.  Would have loved to use my little pasta machine, but it was bought for polymer clay and is not usable for food anymore.  I do have an attachment for my Kitchenaid, but most of those parts got "misplaced" in our kitchen remodel years ago--think I need to go on a search for it.  You want a very thin sheet--didn't realize how thin it needed to be until I saw someone's and you could see the pattern of her kitchen towel through it!  That wouldn't have shown up with my whole wheat dough, but realized it needed to be very, very thin and really glad I re-rolled all 20 sheets.  (you can purchase sheet pasta, but wonder if that's a possibility in my little town!)

Used about half white and half whole wheat flour that I ground on a  rather coarse grind.   Since I can't stand at this point for very long, cookie sheets work well on a wooden tv tray to keep the flour from getting onto the floor too much.

 The meat sauce was a mixture of ground beef and ground pork sausage.  It called for white wine, but since we don't use alcohol, I used some balsamic vinegar.  Hubby shopped for me and couldn't find more than one small piece of parmesan, so shredded it along with some gouda and manchego cheeses.  Bechemal sauce is delicious...time consuming, but well worth it.  

Two sheets rolled out the first time, then realized they were way too thick and re-rolled them.  Glad I did that as they  puff up a bit in the water.

Cutting out heart shapes from scraps.  Dough didn't seem to lend itself to scraps being re-rolled, so used a tiny canape cutter.  Scraps from hearts were just cut small and eventually found their way into left over meat mix with hearts sprinkled on top.

Lots of left overs so a tray full of hearts.

Used one quarter of a piece of paper as the pattern for my sheets and pizza cutter to cut them.

Made 9 di magro cannelloni--four in this very old pyrex dish and five into a brand new dish.

  Not sure I'd ever make this again--it's delicious, but too much work for this oldie!!  Saw an easy version Jamie Oliver has, so might try that.  As it was, I spent three days working on this as I had the energy.  Hope everyone likes it!

Blog-checking lines: Manu from Manu’s Menu was our Daring Cooks lovely June hostess and has challenged us to make traditional Italian cannelloni from scratch! We were taught how to make the pasta, filling, and sauces shared with us from her own and her family’s treasured recipes!

Seven Garden Steps Blocks

Jennie and Clara, at Clover and Violet: http://www.cloverandviolet.com/p/stitch-quilt-along-index.html are sponsoring Garden Steps Quilt Along.  They started in February, but I've just gotten started.  Debated doing it because centers feature hand embroidery and I've not done that in years.  Finally decided it was needful!  All material had to be ordered online and at several shops to get it all, but that's ok and happy to now have all the fabrics called for. 

Added something extra to most of the embroideries.  This one has apples on the tree--we live on Apple Road, by the way.  And added "carved" R and E plus a heart for hubby and I.

Daisy block

Dragonfly block.

Flowers block

Tulips in Basket

Three Flower Block

First Seven Embroideries

 While waiting for Good Fortune fabrics to come, I started the embroideries.  Had to add sashing to a couple of them since used pieces that were smaller than center was supposed to be.  One looks ok, other a bit cattywampus, but hopefully quilting and washing will help hide that.  Directions called for making blocks before embroidering but that wouldn't work well for me--don't like the extra fabric to deal with while working the stitches.

Fiskar's fabric cutter.  LOVE this for cutting strips!

CHALLENGING CHALLAH

Daring Baker's challenge this month is for challah.  The recipe I used was a whole wheat/all-purpose/oatmeal one with three eggs, so it's a beautiful bread.  Doubling the recipe allowed me to make two nice size loaves and freeze two pieces of dough for later.  It's a delicious bread and easy to work with.  


Ruth, from: http://www.mommy-crafts.blogspot.com/  came up with this really fun challenge.  Thanks, Ruth!  Go to her site for the recipe--I just can't seem to get recipes to post correctly on here!  I did add more oats than it called for, but loved the whole wheat recipe!

Challahs cooling on rack

Cinnamon Sugar spread on piece for six strand
Since I've done a lot of 3-braid breads before, I chose to try six-strand braiding for the long loaf (got "lost" a bit there in the braiding even though I watched the excellent videos several times.)  For me, watching it upside down was hard to figure out, so if there's a video out there showing the braiding as if I were doing it, it'd surely help this very visual learner.  The 4 braid round loaf was very easy to do for me and think it's a beautiful loaf.  My pictures are from my phone, so not the best, but tried to show you every step along the way.  Really, you should try this!

Parmesan, garlic, Italian spices spread for round challah

Rolling up one side of piece

both sides rolled up on piece

sides pinched together before rolling into strand

strands rolled up ready to be braided

braided and risen challahs...ready for oven

sliced cinnamon sugar six strand challah

Blog-checking lines: May’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was pretty twisted – Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to make challah! Using recipes from all over, and tips from “A Taste of Challah,” by Tamar Ansh, she encouraged us to bake beautifully braided breads.

NEW YORK BEAUTY QUILT ALONG

Okay, I'm REALLY late to be starting this, but want to make at least some of these beautiful blocks. It started months ago, but I'll just have to go at my pace.  I have made one NY Beauty for Sylvia's Bridal Sampler and found it fun to make, but it was in the red/black/white I am using for those blocks.  Anxious to try my hand at more colorful ones.  So...along with all the other things in my basket, at least a few of these will get made and hopefully more.

Garden Steps Quilt Along

For the life of me, I can't figure out how to put a linky button on the side of my blog.  Just figured out how to copy one of them--ok, this is an old, old brain here!!  And I had a head injure 56 years ago--that's my story and I'm sticking to it!  Anyway...this is a cool quilt along and I'm anxious to join it.  Hopefully, eventually the linky will be where it belongs, but for now, this is it!  And have no idea why there are a cazillion links to this post--think must have pushed the wrong button someplace, oh, well.

Blogger's Quilt Festival--BoylyGirlieCircly Quilt

Original Layout

This quilt, named the BoylyGirlyCircly Quilt is the result of three generations of my family.  My beautiful, talented, smart, almost perfect   grandchildren are my boyly boys and girlie girls.  Six of them are my daughter's children and they helped design and stitch.  I've been wanting to make a circle quilt for over a year.  I'd expected to make a regular sized quilt, but this seemed like the only thing I could reasonably get done in time for the festival--and I love it.  It's about 2 feet by 18 inches.  Thanks to Amy at: http://amyscreativeside.com/ for sponsoring.  Her site is full of wonderfulness--tutorials, great things she's working on and challenges.  Well worth visiting.

Final Layout

Gridded print of layout

Spencer, Sabrina, Trey, Sydney arranging circles

Ironed fold lines on background enabled copying design

Circles sewn and starched around templates

Trimming circles

My grandchildren were given various sized cardstock circle templates to trace around, then color in red, blue, yellow, green, purple, or orange.  They cut them out and then took turns putting them down without touching each other on back of a comforter.  Then they took turns tossing their circles just onto the floor...only thing they could do was to turn them over so colors showed.  Chose that design!  There were some slight changes as I sewed pieces on, but it's pretty close and kiddos lit up when they saw the finished top prior to quilting!

Circly with some stitching done

Adam, Trey, Sabrina, DL stitching

Beautiful Sydney under quilt frame

Trey & Sabrina under, Sage, Sydney, Spencer (with momma's help) stitching

Some circles being sewn down on background

Close up of children's stitches

Sabrina concentrating on her stitching--she's legally blind and light-sensitive so wears dark glasses all the time.  My intrepid little girlie girl

Sabrina and Trey stitching

Sydney watching Adam and Trey stitch

Trey and Sabrina pulling thread through to back, Sage, Sydney, DL stitching (Spencer's trying to help underneath!)

Trey, Sagie, Sydney, DL,Spencer , Sabrina 

Wow--am I totally amazed or what?  I was able to capture the button for this wonderfully fun and fantastic quilt festival!

Boeuf Bourguignon--A Delicious Experiment

Boeuf Bourguignon was the Daring Cooks challenge for May, and it was actually quite fun.  Something I'd never thought to try as it just seemed too intimidating.  It was a fair amount of work, but the results were enjoyed by all.  It really is a delicious dish.  I suppose what I made is, in fact, a misnomer, as instead of Bourgogne (Burgundy) I used grape juice.  We don't use alcohol, so that was a change.  Not the only one--used sliced bacon, and hubby (who does all my shopping) could not find small onions, so I suggested canned small onions.  Not until they'd cooked in the dish did I read the label--they were pickled--definitely a bizarre taste, so we removed them from everyone's plates!  One of these days, I'll figure out how to make something entirely by the recipe, but it's definitely not in my dna!!!!!!!!!   :)

 Beautiful bacon from Zaycon foods--extra to use for something later.

 Next time I'd not put all the meat in at once--didn't give it a chance to brown up as well as it could have.  Didn't think about it until it was all in there!

 Beautiful mirepoix!  How I love this combo for almost everything. 

 Mirepoix sauteing.  Can almost smell it's deliciousness while typing.

Boeuf Bourguignon, or more correctly, Boeuf Jus de Raisin!

Anyway, it was a dish that was greatly appreciated and one (a few weeks removed from all that work) that I'd consider making again.  Because I just can't seem to figure out how to put a recipe on here without it spacing out--literally, I'll just say to look it up online--Julia Child's is classic, of course.  As you can see, it was served over rice--and quickly disappeared with hubby, me and our daughter's sweet family all here.  May try this when my son and dil are here later in the year--am sure she's tried it in the original form and would like her opinion of it with juice.  

Blog-checking lines: Our May 2012 Daring Cooks’ hostess was Fabi of fabsfood. Fabi challenged us to make Boeuf Bourguignon, a classic French stew originating from the Burgundy region of France.