Recipes Archive

Our oatmeal breakfasts and sandwich lunches are rather mundane but our dinners do have flare. Yesterday I made pork tenderloin that I would normally cover with a plum sauce I made from plums given to me, but we can’t use foods given to us or already in stock. So the pork tenderloin I marinated in soy sauce, cooking sherry, garlic, and brown sugar was eaten without the extra topping – still very good with broccoli and rice.

Tonight the leftover will be cut in half a used in Fortune brand mushroom flavor Udon soup (7.26 ounce noodle package from the refrigerated section $1.48). I’ll add some baby bok choy, half a package of portabella mushrooms, onion, and basil.

Day three of the pork tenderloin will be mixed in with Fortune brand Yakisoba stir fry noodles (7.7 ounce package in the refrigerated section for $1.98). This will be dressed up with baby bok choy, the rest of the mushrooms, onion, carrot, broccoli and basil.

Going into this I new that in order to stay within the $18 a day budget challenge for our family I’d have to stick to things that produce tasty leftovers and buy condiments for use in multiple recipes. This week has had a bit of an Asian theme to it so far.

Pork Tenderloin Marinade:
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon dry sherry or Chinese rice wine
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 clove garlic, minced

Plum Sauce:
2 pounds ripe plums
¼ cup honey
1 tablespoon ginger
4 cloves garlic, minced
¼ to ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, red chili paste (basically add heat to your taste or none at all)
¼ cup soy sauce

• Pit the plums and add everything except the soy sauce to a pan
• Bring it to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the plums are soft (about 15 minutes)
• Remove from the heat and stir in soy sauce
• Puree in a blender or food processor

I’m taking the United Way of Snohomish County seven dollars a day challenge. It started yesterday. After signing up on the local United Way website a page showed with the rules including a set of more challenging rules, the rules that food stamp recipients actually follow. With the more stringent rules our family doesn’t receive $21 a day, we only get $18. I like a challenge, I’ll take it, but I’m finding that my biggest hurdle is getting my husband Kurt to join in. He’s having flashbacks to nights of liver and onions on the days just before payday. His family actually needed these services when he was growing up and if his mother reads this post I know what she’ll say, “I wish I had eighteen F*&#^&% dollars a day to spend on our family of four back then!”

The Rules

• You should eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, spending only $7
  per person, per day on food.
• Salt and pepper don’t count as expenditures, but all other
  seasonings, cooking oils, condiments, snacks and drinks do.
• Don’t use food you already own.
• Don’t accept food from family, friends, coworkers or others
  in the community. That includes free samples at your local
  grocery store!
• Try to include fresh produce and healthy protein each day.

Want more of a challenge?

• Purchase only what the Washington Basic Food Program allows. This means no fast food (including hot items from the grocery store deli), alcohol or tobacco.
• Participate with your family, coworkers or other community group. The amount of benefits changes based on the size of your “household”:

Household Size – Hunger Challenge Budget
1 $7/day
2 $12/day
3 $18/day
4 $22/day
5 $26/day
6 $32/day
7 $35/day
8 $45/day

I’ve made it my job in the last two years to save money on groceries, since I’m not bringing in an income, without compromising taste or quality of food. If I come off sounding like this is too easy it’s due to some practice. I’ve never actually done the math to figure out how much I’m spending over a week, month, or year, all I know is that I’m keeping the food spending in check by buying on sale, embracing certain store brand items, and utilizing the bulk food section. I don’t bother with hours of coupon clipping and didn’t for this challenge either. There are some stores that are just cheaper than others like Ranch 99 and WinCo Foods and have the same food quality as “high end” stores.

Fred Meyer has milk on sale every week. One week it’ll be ten half-gallons for ten dollars and the next it’ll be one gallon for a dollar ninety-nine. Normally I buy my milk, cheeses and a few other food staples at Costco. Milk there is always a dollar ninety a gallon, which is important to know for a family that drinks four gallons a week. Yeah I know, that’s A LOT! Buying in bulk saves a lot of money, but most Costcos don’t accept food stamps and we aren’t supposed to use food we already have. Also buying cases of food would put me way over budget for one week. In some ways, this would be a lot easier to do over the course of a month.

I never considered my almost daily mochas as a food item, so in my past grocery-cost bill-analysis they never made the cut. Though I have been trying to quit them for a while not because they are very expensive. I’m using this week to help me drive past the stand without stopping in for my fix. Our other major switch for this week is Kurt will be bringing lunch to work instead of going out, which means I have to get up at zero-crack-of-dawn-thirty to make it for him.

I bought oatmeal, raisins, and dates in the bulk section for breakfasts, and didn’t have to leave out the ever important brown sugar and cinnamon. I wound up spending thirty-eight dollars and eight cents on condiments for this week. Most of which will be used in multiple recipes.

Yesterday we had muesli for breakfast (I didn’t add nuts or fresh fruit), chicken salad sandwiches for lunch, and ‘Chinese Chicken’ with broccoli and rice for dinner. Today we had oatmeal for breakfast, ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch, and we’ll be eating leftover ‘Chinese Chicken’ for dinner.

Chinese Chicken recipe:

Foster Farms’ directions on this recipe says to cook in a dutch oven on the stove-top. I baked our chicken in a cast iron dutch oven in the oven at 350 degrees for about 1 ½ for a 3 ½ pound chicken so I skipped the bit about browning the chicken on all sides and just popped it in the oven with the sauce. I used a slice of regular onion instead of green onion and left out the sesame seeds.

Mixture:
1/3 cup soy sauce, regular or reduced salt
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon catsup
1/4 cup dry sherry or apple juice
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)
1 clove garlic, pressed
1 green onion, sliced

Other:
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds*

1. Remove giblets, rinse chicken and pat dry. Heat oil in Dutch oven, brown chicken on all sides.

2. Mix together soy sauce, brown sugar, water, catsup, sherry, red pepper, garlic, and green onion. Pour mixture over chicken. Cover and simmer 35 to 45 minutes or until meat is no longer pink at thighbone.

3. Turn chicken once during cooking. Remove chicken to platter, draining juices back into pan. Skim fat from sauce.

4. Blend together cornstarch and water and stir into sauce. Cook, stirring constantly, until thickened. Spoon some sauce over chicken, sprinkle with sesame seeds. Serve chicken with remaining sauce.

*Sesame seeds need to be toasted to develop their nut-like flavor. Toast sesame seeds in shallow pan at 350 degrees for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

Here is the United Way of Snohomish County blog. There you can see what other people are doing for this challenge.

After watching several cooking shows and doing several Internet searches for good basic marinara sauce, I’ve found that that Italian cooking generally uses fresh ingredients and keeps it simple. I like that and kept that in mind while searching for recipes to make my own. I’ve also discovered the difference between the cheap almost scentless olive oil I get in bulk at Costco and a good flavoring/salad dressing olive oil. I still use my Costco olive oil for cooking, but to add olive oil flavor, I get out the good stuff.

As a half beaner I’m not going to make any claims to the authenticity of the Italian-esk marinara recipe that I’ve come up with, but if nothing else it’s a great base to build upon.

• ¼ cup of good flavoring/salad dressing olive oil – It should say on the bottle that it’s for flavoring
• 1 onion, chopped
• 5lbs of tomatoes – Aside from cherry, grape or other tiny tomato, to me it doesn’t matter what kind of tomatoes. Ideally they should be ripe, but if they aren’t that’s ok.
• 1 carrot, very finely chopped. Very fine. Like bits the size of a baby’s fingernail, fine. This can be omitted if the tomatoes are all perfectly ripe. I use a carrot instead of refined sugar to cut down the acidity of the tomatoes. Don’t worry if you absolutely hate cooked carrots, if it’s chopped finely enough I promise you won’t taste it at all. Really, you won’t.
• Fresh basil
• Salt
• Pepper

Chop the onion and sauté in the olive oil until translucent. Start a pot of water boiling to dip the tomatoes in. They’ll only be in for a minute or two until you see the skin start to split. Move the tomatoes to a bowl of cold water to cool and peel the skins off. Then either coarsely chop or blend the tomatoes depending on the desired consistency. Add the carrot, two or three sprigs of fresh basil, salt and pepper to taste. Bring it all to a boil, and then simmer for thirty to forty-five minutes for the flavors to meld. I remove the basil before storing, but if the majority of your recipes call for basil, there isn’t any reason for removal. This recipe makes about six cups of marinara.

I don’t use garlic in my basic marinara because not all my recipes use garlic and some use a ton of garlic. I don’t want to have to adjust all my recipes or make multiple batches of marinara with varying garlic content so I simply leave it out.

I love growth spurt days. Sophia slept in until 9:30 and she ate A LOT of Muesli this morning, probably half a cup or maybe more.

Yesterday I finished the last of our blueberries. I added them to just about every breakfast and even made blueberry pancakes myself for the first time ever. Usually pancakes are a Kurt made breakfast from a box of Bisquick which contains trans fats, the latest mad made no-no food ingredient. I was going to use Bisquick for my first attempt at pancakes, but we were down to a quarter cup. Not many pancakes to be made from that, so I tossed it and looked up some recipes.

Old Fashioned Pancakes

• 1 ½ cup flour
• 3 ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 ¼ cup milk
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons butter

I actually use a lot less butter, more like one tablespoon but three is what the original recipe called for. Mix your dry ingredients together and in a separate bowl mix up the wet ingredients. Then mix it all together. After it’s all mixed add about a ½ cup (or a little more) blueberries or other small sliced/chopped fruit.

These turned out AWESOME, very fluffy and moist. They’re so much better than Bisquick pancakes (no offence to Kurtie) and really, just as easy to make.

For our unexpected Christmas time at home Kurt and I bought a few groceries that we knew we could finish within a week and things that don’t spoil. On Kurt’s annoying additive infested list, canned soups and boxed Mac & Cheese. On my list, bulk steel cut oats, eggs. We’re truly like yin and yang. I want to get rid of all that crap but every time I take him shopping with me he buys more of it. I swear if I have to smell Mac & Cheese cooking with nasty cut up chunks of unidentified leftover animal parts (hot dogs) I’m going to heave. That shit is nasty! Any “meat” that expands when cooked just ain’t right. Think about it, what fuckin’ steak puffs up when cooked?

Anyway, tired of only being able to feed Sophia zucchini omelets and Dutch Babies (recipe to follow) for breakfast I decided to force some oatmeal in her. I’ve heard steel cut oats have more nutritional value because they’re less processed than regular old-fashioned rolled oats, so that’s what I use. They texture is a little different and they take twenty to twenty-five minutes to cook verses five to ten, but other than that it’s all the same to me. One part steel cut oats to three parts water cooked until tender, add raisins and/or dates, add milk for preferred consistency, and brown sugar or maple syrup for preferred sweetness, and viola!

I put three tablespoons of oatmeal into a bowl for Sophia and offered her some on her spoon. She pushed the spoon away. Oh no you don’t, you’re going to at the very least try a bite you little shit. I know many people insist that all things should be pleasant joyful experiences for kids. Everything from eating to toilet training is supposed to be made into a ‘fun game’, but at some point I want my kid to try new stuff and she just isn’t doing it on her own. One stupid bite that’s all I want. If she doesn’t like it that’s fine, we can go back to the standby and try it again another time, but just take a fucking bite!

Holding her arms down I used a heat seeking missile spoon to find an opening somewhere around the mouth area. She turned her head back and forth, looked at the ceiling and fought it off until the spoon found it’s perfect opportunity. She paused. She chewed. I readied another spoonful and this time her mouth was wide open. I knew you’d like it you stubborn little shit.

After coming back from Christmas vacation, I tried another oatmeal like breakfast food with Sophia. I learned of it in the “What to Expect When you’re Expecting” book that a friend gave to me, it’s called Morning Muesli, or just Muesli.

• ½ cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• ½ cup calcium-fortified apple or orange juice (this sounds gross to me so I use milk instead)
• 1 cup vanilla yogurt (I use plain yogurt)
• 3 died apricots, chopped
• ¼ cup raisins and/or dates
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• Maple syrup or brown sugar to taste
• Fresh fruit of your choice
• 2 tablespoons chopped walnuts, almonds, or pecans (I leave these out when feeding Sophia for now)

Mix all the ingredients together and enjoy. I make mine the night before so the oats absorb most of the moisture and I wind up adding more milk. I don’t add the fresh fruit until it’s time to serve.

DUTCH BABIES:

INGREDIENTS

• 2 or 4 eggs (the more eggs the more quiche-like it is)
• ½ cup milk (or half-and-half)
• ½ cup sifted all-purpose flour
• 1 pinch ground nutmeg (optional)
• 1 pinch salt (optional)
• 2 to 4 tablespoons butter (depends on how rich you want it and salted or unsalted can be used)
• 2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar for dusting (optional)

DIRECTIONS

• Place a 10 inch cast iron skillet inside oven and preheat oven to 475 degrees F (245 degrees C).
• In a medium bowl, beat eggs with a whisk until light. Add milk and stir. Gradually whisk in flour, nutmeg and salt.
• Remove skillet from oven and reduce oven heat to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Melt butter in hot skillet so that inside of skillet is completely coated with butter. Pour all the batter in the skillet and return skillet to oven.
• Bake until puffed and lightly browned, about 12 minutes. Remove promptly and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Dust with powdered sugar and serve with warm maple syrup and wedges of lemon
Or pour on clarified butter, sprinkle on lemon juice and dust with powdered sugar
OR dust with powdered sugar and serve with strawberries and whip cream on top
Serves 2

When I make this for Sophia I only use enough butter to coat the pan, I leave off all the sugary parts and just top it with frozen fruit that I’ve warmed up. I’ve tried to make this with wheat flour, but it just doesn’t come out the same.

Stuffing or in this case dressing is the real crown jewel of Thanksgiving. You can keep your turkey for all I care. Dressing is where it’s at! What’s the difference between stuffing and dressing? Stuffing is cooked in the bird and dressing isn’t.

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter (can substitute with olive oil)
• 1 pound bread cut into bite-size pieces
• 1 large apple
• 1 medium onion
• 2 ribs celery
• 1/2 cup dried apricots
• Handful fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries
• 2 to 3 sprigs fresh thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups chicken or vegetable broth (about 1 1/2 small cans)
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons turkey or chicken pan drippings or melted butter (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease a shallow 3-quart casserole.

Lay bread pieces in a single layer on 1 or 2 baking sheets. Bake until slightly dry and crisp, about 15 to 20 minutes. Cool.

Core, and chop the apple, onion, celery, apricots, and parsley.

Melt the 6 tablespoons butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the apple, onion, celery, apricots, cranberries, thyme, and salt; cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the broth and parsley and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat.

Beat the egg in a large bowl, and add the toasted bread, and the onion, celery, fruit mixture; toss until evenly moistened. Loosely pack the dressing into the prepared pan. Bake, uncovered, until the top is crusty, about 40 minutes. Add pan drippings or melted butter over the top. Cook until the top is crisp and golden, about 20 minutes more.

I found a recipe for zucchini bread from Paula Deen’s website. On first glance I new this would more like a cake than bread, but I followed the recipe exactly as written. Well, except I used Olive oil instead of some other vegetable oil, but I don’t count that as a major change. It’s still oil. I also used lime instead of lemon juice; again, I don’t think that makes a difference. It’s still an acidic citrus juice.

Ingredients:
2 cup grated zucchini
1/3 cup water
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup vegetable oil
3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1½ teaspoon salt
3¼ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar. In a separate bowl, combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice. Mix wet ingredients into dry, add nuts and fold in. Bake in 2 greased standard loaf pans, for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean. Alternately, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.
Yield: 2 loaves
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour

I love that she says the prep time is ten minutes. Obviously there isn’t a demanding toddler tugging at her pants leg and weaving between her legs like a cat the entire time she makes her zucchini bread. The recipe made “as is” was very tasty, and is fabulous if you hate zucchini, but I wanted something that would allow me to actually taste the zucchini. So I altered this recipe. I doubled the amount of zucchini. I relied on the added zucchini to provide the bread with enough moisture so I removed the water entirely and cut the amount of oil in half. I saw a few other recipes that replace some of the oil with applesauce but I didn’t want to add another ingredient. I cut the amount of sugar in half and used brown sugar instead of cane sugar. Cutting the sugar made the nutmeg stand out a lot so I cut that in half as well. I added the nuts in my very first batch, but in following batches I left them out. I find that nuts are a normal part of everyday life but they optional in bread. Here is my final revised sugar and zucchini balanced recipe:

Ingredients:
4 cups grated zucchini
4 eggs, beaten
½ cup olive oil
1½ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1½ teaspoon salt
3¼ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon lime juice
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar. In a separate bowl, combine olive oil, eggs, zucchini and limejuice. Mix wet ingredients into dry, add nuts and fold in. Bake in 2 greased standard loaf pans, for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean. Alternately, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.
Yield: 2 loaves
Prep time: 10 minutes (depending on distractions)
Cook time: 1 hour

Recently I discovered that Costco sells Foster Farms chicken in their usual huge packs, but within that pack are individually sealed two-person portions. We’ve been eating a TON of chicken. And Kurt and I are both a little chickened out, cheesy pun intended.

I hope G-man from Mr. Knowitall doesn’t mind that I totally stole his all-in-one-dish pork steak with apples, stuffing, and squash recipe. Actually, I made some changes of my own, of course. It came out AWESOME! First thing Kurt said was, “keep this one on the list!” Because I like to keep things as close to original natural not-from-a-box form as possible I made G-man’s very simple recipe a tad more complex.

Ingredients:

• One bag (15oz) of stuffing bread cubes
• One celery rib
• Half of a small onion
• One small apple
• One can of chicken broth or less
• One or two can(s) of apple pie filling with NO ADDED SUGAR
• Two or four pork steaks
• One spaghetti squash (You can use any kind of squash)
• Salt and pepper

Directions:
Dump your bread cubs in a mixing dish. Add to your mixing dish chopped up celery, onion, apple, and mix in chicken broth. I used a whole can of chicken broth and with the juices from everything else in the baking dish, the stuffing lost its cubed bread form, so a whole can isn’t necessary. Salt, pepper and otherwise season to taste; I usually use fresh thyme in my dressing/stuffing.

I used an enamel coated cast iron pot, but you can use any oven safe deep dish with a cover or with tin foil. This recipe ain’t rocket science. Dump one or two cans of apple pie filling in your baking dish then cover the apple pie filling with seasoned (salt and pepper or whatever to your taste) pork steaks. Then add the stuffing from the mixing bowl. Cut the squash in half or quarters and set on top of the dressing with the skins side up.

Cover and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour and half to two hours. I served the pork steaks with the apple filling on top, but the filling can also top the squash for a sweetener instead of using brown sugar.

I don’t remember where I got the recipe, probably off the back of some box or bag of something, but it’s AWESOME! This is the cake I’m making for Sophia’s birthday:

Carrot Pineapple Nut Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

1 pound carrots
3 cups flour
3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1½ cups vegetable oil
4 eggs beaten
1 tablespoon vanilla
1½ cups chopped walnuts
1½ cups shredded coconut
2 8-ounce cans crushed pineapple drained

1. Peel and coarsely chop carrots. Cook until tender; puree. Set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour three 9-inch round cake pans.
3. In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Stir in oil, eggs, and vanilla; mix well. Fold in reserved carrot puree, walnuts, coconut, and pineapple.
4. Divide batter evenly among prepared pans. Bake 40 to 50 minutes, or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean and edges have pulled away from the sides of the pan.
5. Cool in pans 15 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely on wire rack. Fill and frost cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. Top with chopped nuts and carrot strips if desired.

*tip: I don’t know how most people cook carrots for a puree but I boil mine in a little bit of water (not even enough to cover them) and cover with a lid to get the steam going. Then to make puree I use the water they were boiled in to help with moisture. If there wasn’t enough water in the pot I add some of the oil from the cake recipe to help the pureeing process along, but not water it down too much.

Also, I don’t trust Sophia to not choke on chunks of walnuts so I poured some of the batter in one 9×9 dish and then added nuts to the rest of the batter, which goes in a 9×13 dish.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
¼ cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
5 ½ cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

1. Beat cream cheese and butter together in mixing bowl until blended. Blend vanilla.
2. Gradually beet in sugar, mixing well after each addition until frosting is smooth.

The name of the recipe I found for Pumpernickel was German Pumpernickel, which led me to believe that it was authentic. It’s not. It’s authentic Americanized Pumpernickel, but I made it anyway. It turns out that real German Pumpernickel is made with coarsely ground rye meal and does not include wheat or all-purpose flour. It gets it dark color from baking at a low temperature for sixteen to twenty four hours not by using cocoa powder, or molasses, and it uses sour dough starter not dry active yeast. The Americanized Pumpernickel recipe I found is still pretty good, at least according to Kurt. I found that I absolutely HATE, as in LOATHE, caraway seed. I tasted caraway seed before, but didn’t know what it was at the time. Caraway seed is found in the sausage used at some pizza places. It’s a vile little grey/brown seed with green stripes. Aside from the horrid taste, the bread I made came out well. It didn’t turn out like a doorstop like the pumpkin biscuits I made when I was pregnant. I’m tossing out the caraway seed and if I made this particular recipe again there won’t be any of that CRAP in it!

“German” Pumpernickel
2 packages active dry yeast (4 ½ teaspoons)
1/4 C. unsweetened cocoa
2 T. sugar
1 T. caraway seed (I HATE caraway seed)
1 ½ t. salt
3 C. rye flour
2 C. water
1/4 C. molasses
1/4 C. butter
3 C. sifted all-purpose flour
Shortening – (I used olive oil)

In large bowl, stir together yeast, cocoa, sugar, caraway seed, salt and 2 cups rye flour; set aside.

In 2 quart saucepan over low heat, heat water, molasses and butter until very warm.

Using mixer at low speed, gradually beat molasses mixture into yeast mixture until well blended. Increase speed to medium; beat 2 minutes. Add remaining 1 cup rye flour. Increase speed to high; beat 2 more minutes.

Stir in enough all-purpose flour to make a soft dough. Turn out dough onto lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic about 5 minutes.

Place into greased large bowl, turning over dough so that top is greased. Cover with towel and let rise in warm place until almost doubled, about 45 minutes to an hour.

Punch down dough. Divide in half. Cover and let rest 5 minutes.

Shape each half into a round loaf. Place 4 inches apart on greased large baking sheet.

Cover and let rise until almost doubled, 45 minutes to an hour.

Diagonally slash each loaf, crosswise, 3 times.

Bake in 375°F oven for 20 minutes. Cover loosely with foil; bake 15 minutes more or until loaves sound hollow when tapped.

Immediately remove from baking sheet. Brush tops of hot loaves with shortening. Cool on racks.

Yield: Makes 2 loaves