Ever since I started eating salads as a wee lass, I have loved croutons.  No scratch that, I adore croutons!  Crispy crunchy little bits of bread that are loaded with flavor adding a nice texture to salad.  Sometimes they’ll soak up a bit of the dressing acquiring even more flavor!  I prefer smaller bite sized pieces but I won’t turn down a crouton when presented to me.

I used to buy croutons all the time at the store.  I had my favorite brands and favorite flavors.  Garlic was a must and cheese was optional.

Croutons that came on salads from a restaurant seemed even more special.  No doubt they were the same croutons I was buying myself but when you’re out to dinner everything always seems a little more decadent and special.

I rarely meet a crouton that I don’t like.  Oh it happens, just not often.

For some reason it never occurred…

The first time that I came across the concept of cheddar and dill, I was watching an episode where Ina made some cheddar dill scones.

Oh?

I love dill very much.  It is probably my very favorite herb and no I’m not kidding you.  I also love really great cheddar and combing the two seemed like a great concept.  While I didn’t really want a scone to snack on, I did think that this could be transferred to a great biscuit.

The first time I made this was years ago using a drop biscuit method.  I used really poor cheddar, factory farmed milk, and some Bisquick.  Oh yeah totally not something that would be considered healthy but instead more likely to be found as an option at The Red Lobster.   You know what I mean.

Now I have several years of baking under my belt which has given me…

It’s the end of the month which means we are wrapping up Quinoa Month!  What better way to end the month than with some chocolate!

I originally set out to make brownies but this experiment turned out a lot more quick bread-like and not so brownie-like.  However it’s still super tasty and full of chocolate goodness!

Andrea’s Chocolate Quinoa Bread

• 1C Whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/2C Unbleached All-Purpose flour
• 1 1/2C Cooked quinoa
• 1/4C Cane sugar
• 1/4C Unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2tsp Baking powder
• 1tsp Baking soda
• 1/2tsp Ground cinnamon
• 1TBSP Ground flax
• Pinch salt
• Pinch cayenne pepper
• 1/2C Crushed walnuts
• 1/2C Dark chocolate chips
• 1 1/4C Soymilk
• 1/2C Coffee
• 2tsp Vanilla Extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Spray a brownie pan or 8inch square casserole dish with nonstick spray, set aside.   In a medium size mixing bowl combine the soymilk, vanilla, and coffee.  In a large mixing bowl combine all other ingredients except the walnuts and chocolate chips.  Whisk to get all ingredients combined and…

I love cornbread and I mean LOVE it.  Like real love and not just like-like, you know?  I’m also really picky about my cornbread.  I like it sweet, not too sweet, but it definitely needs to have some sweet background to it.  I also do not like things in my cornbread.

Things include:

• Corn
• Jalapenos
• Bacon
• Green onion

And any other variety of “things” that have the potential of throwing off the texture of the sweet divine bread.  Also?  Do you know when I like to eat cornbread?

For breakfast or for dessert.  Although if you ask me to pick a favorite time, it’s going to be with breakfast because sweet cornbread goes amazingly well with morning coffee.

At least in my world it does.

When I discovered that I could make cornbread on my own, goodness I was ecstatic! We rarely had cornbread at my parent’s house growing up.  In fact the best memories I have of…

I used to buy Irish Soda Bread at Whole Foods all the time when they had it out.  It was fantastic! It was also the first time I had tasted it before.  Irish Soda Bread wasn’t something I grew up with nor heard of until I saw it at Whole Foods.  I guess I just didn’t run around in circles where it was mentioned.

At some point I think Whole Foods might have changed their recipe because I don’t care for their version anymore.  Something about it just tastes off and I can’t quite put my finger on it.  I never really thought about soda bread again after that until I came across Happy Herbivore’s recipe for Irish Soda Bread.

It was her recipe where I learned that one could curdle non-dairy milk with a little bit of acid, either lemon juice or apple-cider vinegar.  Did you…

Pizza!!  I don’t know why it took me so long to finally post my dough recipe but here we are, woo!

Scott and I started Pizza Thursday I think in early 2009.  We love pizza and we decided that if we have it every week then we would be more open to playing with toppings and sauces.

Also because we have had trouble finding pizza we like in Columbus.  I know everybody has places they like but some of them are a little too far for us to travel for pickup for a Thursday night.

In order to satisfy our love for pizza we had to make our own.  I originally started out buying pizza dough from Whole Foods which was fine but it wasn’t awesome.  Plus it was pricey.  Yes it was still cheaper than buying a pizza out but if I made my own crust, I could save us loads…

Not that long ago I had a hankering for some chocolate zucchini bread.  Or at least I assumed this was the case, as I had never actually had chocolate zucchini bread.

Zucchini bread, yes.  But it was always the same way, spicy and more along the lines of like a carrot cake, spice cake kind of taste.  Lots of cinnamon, clove, and allspice in the mix.

That wasn’t exactly what I envisioned.  I wanted a dense chocolate quick bread with some zucchini in it.  I started looking around for recipes to see what I could find.  There were loads out there!

But they all had tons of sugar, white flour, and a load of eggs in them.

This is where my knack to never follow a recipe comes in handy.  I looked at the recipes to get an idea of the basic ingredients and then I created my own chocolate…

The first time I’ve ever had bread and oil as part of a meal was back in North Carolina, about 7 years ago.  Scott and I had just purchased our first house and we were out having a celebratory lunch.  The server brought out a basket of warm bread and a little dish that she poured seasoned olive oil into, then quickly scurried away.

Me: What do we do with this? Do I just dip the bread into the oil?

Scott: I think so. I’m not sure what other options there would be.

Me: Okay. Although dipping bread into oil and eating it is a little odd.

Scott: Totally weird.

The concept was so foreign to me.  “You want me to what?! Dip this bread into some fat and munch away?”, was my thought process.

But you know what? It was fabulous.  And of course olive oil is full…

I have seen people here and there talk about beer bread but that’s about as far as I went in giving it any attention.  Then over the holidays I saw it pop up again and thought, “Hell Yes!  Beer Bread!”

New Years at OHC HQ means sauerkraut and some sort of pork dish.  I wanted to make the beer bread to go with that meal but then I forgot.  And when I remembered about dear old beer bread we were past the holiday.  I still wanted to make it though and started doing some research.

Most of what I found was pretty basic.  Beer, flour, and some baking powder.  Well that’s lovely but can’t we pump this up a little bit.  Where’s the seasonings and extra kick?  I decided to try my hand at making some beer bread with some umph!

Andrea’s Cheddar Beer Bread

• 1 C All purpose flour
• 2 C whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 TBSP of baking powder
• 3 TBSP of sugar
• 1 tsp of…

When I was in middle school it was the 80s.  Hair bands and mall teen pop queens were in their prime.  And the thing to do back then was hit up the skating rink on Friday night.  Especially when you lived in a super small town and there was nothing else for you to do at that age.  The skating rink was a happening place and I taught myself how to skate.  And backwards skate.  And skate going around the corners with my feet turned out, heels touching.  My favorite thing to do was skate backwards and stop with my stoppers coming to a sliding halt.  My skates were white with blue wheels and a blue stopper.  And Velcro because when you are at the skating rink, it is all about the skating and not about wasting time lacing up your skates.  Oh and secretly crushing on the boys who preferred video games until the couples skate was announced.  Eventually…