Sunday Story: The Giant Whole Foods

When i was in Chicago visiting my friends Stu and Ronnie last weekend, they took us to this giant Whole Foods.  I mean, it had its own parking structure, first of all.  This is a shot from inside the structure.

I did some minor googling, and apparently this is the third largest Whole Foods EVER.  It was huge.  I think we spent a good hour and a half there, most of the time just gawking at the beautiful collection of foods I can't afford.

When you get in, you can choose which level to go to.  There is even a separate escalator for your shopping cart.  WHAT. 

The little signs on the cart escalator indicate No Men on the left, and No Cart With Baby on the right.  Hilarious. 

So here we are on the human escalator, going down into the depths of amazing food.

Here we are!  This is just one part of the produce section.

The seafood area.

I was just so overwhelmed.  So incredibly overwhelmed.  It's like IKEA.  No, it's like Disney World.

The wine bar.  Wow.

So, the real reason we were here is to get food for our grub plate meal for that night while we played our nerdy games, like Pandemic and Settlers of Catan.  So it was more than essential to hit the olive bar.  We ended up getting two full containers of olives and other olive bar goodies.

And a grub plate meal is never complete without....OH HELLO. 

Okay, since this is a Sunday story and not recipe day, let me just take a moment to make this comment.  I wonder how many of these words are loanwords.  For instance, the word for cheese in Korean is written as "chee-ze" in Korean orthography.  I mean, just upon first glance, almost all the words either have the [k] + [s/z/x] formation (e.g. keso, kaas, kees, queixo) or the [fr] + [m] + [dʒ] pattern going on (e.g. fromatge, formaggio, fromaja).  Almost makes you want to write a spontaneous term paper.

SNAP OUT OF IT!

Okay, I'm back.

Sorry 'bout it.  But for suffering through that paragraph, here's a funny picture for you.  What is wrong with this tag?

That's right!  You get a savings of -2 cents.  That means you, the lucky customer, get to pay an additional 2 cents today.  Sale!

After buying $90 worth of groceries, we went home and had a delightful meal of amazing cheeses...

Olives...

Spinach artichoke hummus...

Along with delicious sourdough bread, apples, grapes, and copious amounts of wine.  It was an incredible dinner, and I am so happy to have friends that enjoy the same sort of dining experience that i do. 

And I'd like to close with the following fact that might tickle a few of you: one of the cheeses we got was a sheep's milk cheese called Ewephoria.  Gimble nerds unite!

Have a wonderful day, SSUR readers!

Amish Friendship Bread

 
A few weeks ago, my friend Alison gave me a bag of Amish Friendship Bread batter.  It came with some instructions on how to take care of it every day.  I have never had a pet quite like this one.  Usually, i don't get to eat it after i grow it.

You give the thing a nice massage every day (mush it well) so that the heat of your hands and the movement (or agitation, as we learned in high school chem) activates the active yeast that makes it bubble and ferment. 

What a strange pet.  On the 6th day of the ten day cycle, you have to feed it a cup each of milk, flour, and sugar.  By day 9, your gallon bag is like a giant balloon of air, and you literally have to burp it by releasing the air from the bag.  I'll get a picture of that sometime...it's pretty funny.  And oh my goodness, the batter gets pretty darn stinky.  I mean, all things do when they ferment, but still. 

But okay, enough talk about batter burps...here it is on the 10th day.  The day it gets baked.

Before you bake it, you put it in a non-metal bowl (sorry Stella, not a job for you) and add some more milk, flour, and sugar to it. 

Then you beat it like crazy.

Then you measure out four 1-cup rations of batter and put them into baggies. 

Then you give the baggie to your friend along with a copy of the instructions so they can start the whole process all over again.

Isn't that such a fun concept? 

Though, being in grad school, i'm not surrounded by too many people who bake on a regular basis, so I tweaked the recipe a bit so you only harvest 2 cups/bags of batter.  I keep one, then give the other away.  That slows down the rate of Friendship Bread growth.  You really don't want your Friendship to get out of control. 

Okay, so then after harvesting, I put in the rest of the ingredients, my favorite of which is this large packet of Jell-O Vanilla Pudding.

This will make you seriously wonder why all cake batters do not have "pudding in the mix", because it makes it so delicious and moist. 

Okay, so after putting in the rest of the ingredients, you pour it into 2 loaf pans or a bundt pan.  I used my angel food pan because I don't get any use out of this thing, ever.  How often does one bake angel food cake?  Seriously, SP, when it comes to baking supplies, you don't think, you just buy. 

Okay, so this takes an hour to bake.  This is enough time to read an article for your dissertation if you really focus.  DO IT. 

Fast forward to 1 hour later.  Voila!

How lovely does THAT look?

You won't believe how good this smells.  I love breads that are based on fermentation, kinda like beer bread.  It's so darn good.

Okay, let's get this baby out of here!

And let's take out the middle and cut out a section, just to see how my pet cooked up.

Oh help.

Stop this ridiculous insanity.  Why why why.

The bread is moist (and stays moist for days!) and soft and absolutely heavenly.  And with coffee in the morning, it will make you want to cry. 

But for a person like me, the best part about it is, if you keep a baby for yourself, you can bake every 10 days, AND that allows you a chance to mess with the recipe, which is what I did to make it a little less sweet and have less fat.  I eliminated the cinnamon-sugar sprinkling that's supposed to go on top, and kept it more of a pure, delicate bread instead.  I love messing with recipes to make them healthier :)

Have a wonderful weekend!  Special thanks to all of you who became a fan of Sunny-side Up Recipes this past week!  If you're so inclined, suggest the page to your friends and spread the sunshine! 

Caramelized Onion Bread

Before I go into this recipe, I would like to introduce to you the newest addition to my family.  She is everything I ever dreamed about.

A Kitchen Aid Professional 600 in Nickel Pearl.  Oh my heavens.

The story is that my fiance and I have some very generous people in our lives.  You see, we haven't started making our wedding registry yet, but we knew that the first thing we wanted to put on there is a Kitchen Aid.  But before we could even get to doing that, Drew's sister, her husband, and his parents pitched in to get us this baby for our engagement gift instead.  And had it sent straight to me. 

It was a glorious Saturday morning.

Of course, I wondered whether it was proper etiquette (i'm so very awkward at these things) to use the gift before we got married, but after consulting Drew, some of my married friends, and some other sources, it seems that engagement gifts are okay to be used.  So, I rejoiced and got to know our dear Stella a little better :)

Thank you so much, A, D, L, E, M, and J for the amazing gift!! 

-----------------------------------

I decided to make caramelized onion bread, a recipe in the "savory muffins" section of my cupcake book from Dani :)  I thought this would be a perfect debut recipe for Stella, since there are a lot of ingredients, and I wanted to see how she would do when a double batch recipe. 

Here it goes!

Ingredients (1 loaf or 12 muffins):
-1 large onion, chopped
-1 tsp red pepper flakes
-2 cups flour
-1 cup cornmeal
-1/2 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-1 egg
-1 stick butter, softened
-1 cup milk
-2 tsp thyme

1.  First, caramelize the onions in some oil over low heat.  This takes time, so be patient, grasshopper.

2.  Preheat oven to 350F.

3.  Combine the dry stuff (red pepper flakes, flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt) in a bowl and set aside.

Mix mix mix.  I used a rice scooper.  Be true to yourself.

4.  In your working bowl, combine the wet ingredients (egg, butter, milk) and thyme. 

Here we go!

5.  Now, little by little, pour in the dry ingredients until well combined.

Good job, Stella!

6.  When onions are done caramelizing (nice and translucent), fold half of the onions into the mix.

Perfect!

7.  I decided to use a muffin pan for this bread because this way it will cook faster, and they'll come out as a to-go size :)  But you could definitely use a loaf pan and make it into a loaf.  Here, i greased a muffin pan and filled it with batter. 

Top with the remaining onions and bake for 20 minutes (40-45 mins if you're using a loaf pan). 

When you take them out of the oven, they look like this. 

Yum! 

Delicious onion bread with caramelized onions on top.  It makes a dense muffin because of the corn meal. 

I loved them!  The only problem is to try not to eat 4 of them in one sitting when they come out of the oven so hot, savory, and inviting.

Here's what it looks like on the inside.

Oh my.  I love the thyme at work here in this recipe, it's an amazing contrast to the sweetness of the onions. 

Yay for a successful first run!  Many--and i mean MANY--more to come in the future, near and far. 

Have a great week, everyone!

For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.

Pepperoni Bread

Last week, I was given a giant bag of pepperoni--like, we're talking a gallon bag of them--and asked to do something with it for the potluck at my church. 

I thought transporting a million pizzas would take too much work, so i decided on making pepperoni bread instead. Never having done it before and not bothering to look up a recipe, i just decided to play the Wing-It game.  I love the Wing-It game.

So i made my favorite pizza crust recipe the night before.  Two batches of them.  It was just that much pepperoni.  After putting my lovely pizza stone in the oven, i preheated the oven at 425F.  Okay, back to the dough.  I took a third of one batch and plopped it on the counter.

I rolled it out onto something resembling a rectangle.

Next, I covered the inside with tons of pepperoni. 

Then rolled it up like a kimbop.  Only this is much easier than rolling kimbop.

Okay?

The second time, i sprinkled some italian seasoning on top of the pepperoni before rolling it.

Almost there!

Done!  I gave the ends a little pinch because i felt like I had to.  But it doesn't really matter too much.

Then, I brushed the tops of my pepperoni bread with olive oil.

See?

And sprinkled more italian seasoning on top for good measure. 

When the oven and pizza stone (VERY IMPORTANT) were fully preheated at 425, I gave the bottoms of the pepperoni bread a nice coating of corn meal, and tossed them on the pizza stone.

After baking for a good 20 minutes, I pulled them out and cut one open.  Here it is!

Mmm!  Look at the neat little folds of pepperoni all rolled up and delicious in the bread! 

How good does this look, guys? 

Does this make you wanna die, or what? 

I admit, this isn't the most healthy recipe (to be fair, i made it for a mardi gras potluck), but it does make a very simple snack that is a big crowd pleaser.  Good for game watch parties, kids' parties, or as an after school snack for little and big kids alike. 

Have a very splendid Monday!  And if you haven't done so already, Sunny-side Up Recipes has a page on facebook!  Click here and become a fan :)