Avocado Bread/Rolls/Biscuits and Gravy

Thank you for all your birthday wishes for Hannah!  She had an awesome weekend!

She bought her first lottery ticket:

She won her first lottery ticket!

She bought whip cream!  Okay, some of you had questions about why you had to be 18 to buy canned whipped cream.  Apparently you can get high off of the nitrous oxide that makes the whip cream come out of the can!

we will be using it for angel food cake though! 😀

And. . . . she got her nose pierced!  It’s tiny though.  And Tony and I have always discussed with the kids – piercings you can take out but tattoos are forever!

So Hannah wanted biscuits with sausage gravy for breakfast.  This is a breakfast she usually has at my Aunt’s lake house.  I cheated a bit, because I used packaged gravy mix that my mom bought me, but it is so damn good!

it's ready in about 5 minutes!

And the only sausage we buy – we used to buy cheaper sausage but it was so greasy, we stick with good ole Jimmy Dean:

One thing I’ve learned about making biscuits is to not overwork the dough too much.  I also shred my butter too – I put a stick of butter in the freezer the night before – I think it makes for a tender buscuit.

I got 10 biscuits

I baked them on a baking stone

this breakfast was so good!

So Saturday I decided to attempt my first Healthy Bread in Five recipe.  Click on the badge below for more information.

It was avocado bread.  I can’t post the recipe, but I’ll give you what page it is on in the book!

It is interesting because it calls for mashed avocado in the dough!

You mix the mashed avocado with the water and add that to the dry ingredients.

The dough is pretty sticky, but after the two hour rise it was perfect.  I decided first to make rolls for our burgers.

I weighed out 4 ounces of dough for each roll, brushed with water and sprinkled with black sesame seeds.

I love parchment paper - my baking stone heated up in the oven so this was an easy way to get them on the stone - with 5 minutes left of baking, I put them directly on the stone

done!

So it was our first burger grill of 2010!  It was almost dark outside, but that didn’t stop me!

I also made fries with dinner.  These are the best fries – they are baked potatoes, quartered and deep fried – the secret?  Two fries – the first time I just get them slightly brown, then when I am ready to plate, I drop them for another three minutes – so crunchy on the outside, yet tender on the inside.

My plate!

I really liked this bread, although Tony thought it had a weird aftertaste.

So I had a lot of dough leftover, and decided to use the same cooking method as the Best Bread Ever.

I scored the top

I then baked it in my dutch oven for 30 minutes with the lid on.

And then another 15 minutes with the lid off.

I may have waited 5 minutes before slicing a piece!

I love this crunchy crust! I think I'll bake every bread with this technique 😀

I had a great grocery shop – $107!  (Breakfast and Lunch is just for me)

Breakfasts:

• Breakfast pizza
• zucchini egg white omelet
• crustless broccoli and cheese quiche (I’ll have this twice)
  
• oatmeal with craisins and almonds

Lunches:

• chicken tikka masala with brown rice
  
• broccoli cheddar soup
• beef noodle salad
• chili baked potato
• Posole soup with spinach quesadilla

Dinners:

• Scallop saltimbocca with mashed potatoes
• dinner at Chinese restaurant to celebrate Hannah’s b-day with my step-son Joe
• Pork chops with blue cheese dressing
• Sesame chicken salad with spinach, cucumber and cilantro
• Party Pizza Friday?  (not sure I can convince Tony, so it may be fish tacos!)

Hope everyone had a great weekend – back to the grind – time to get ready for work! 😀