GOLDEN PULL- APART DINNER ROLLS

 

14 3/4 ounces King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

2 teaspoons instant yeast

2 Tblsp  potato flour or instant potato flakes

3 Tblsp Baker's Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk

2 Tblsp sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

4 Tbsp soft butter

2/3 cup lukewarm water

½ cup lukewarm milk

1 ounce melted butter

Combine all of the dough ingredients in a large bowl, and mix and knead — using your hands, a stand mixer, or a bread machine set on the dough cycle — to make a soft, smooth dough.

Place the dough in a lightly greased container — an 8-cup measure works well here — and allow the dough to rise for 60 to 90 minutes, until it's just about doubled in bulk.

Gently deflate the dough, and transfer it to a lightly greased work surface.

Divide the dough into 16 equal pieces, by dividing in half, then in halves again, etc. Round each piece into a smooth ball.

Lightly grease two 8" round cake pans.

Space 8 buns in each pan.

Cover the pans, and allow the buns to rise till they're crowded against one another and quite puffy, about 60 to 90 minutes.

Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350°F.

Uncover the buns, and bake them for 22 to 24 minutes, until they're golden brown on top and the edges of the center bun spring back lightly when you touch it.

An instant-read thermometer inserted into the middle of the center bun should register at least 190°F.

Remove the buns from the oven, and brush with the melted butter.

After a couple of minutes, turn them out of the pan onto a cooling rack.

Serve warm.

Store leftovers well-wrapped, at room temperature.

Yield: 16 buns.

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD

I love good food. I love to cook. I love to cook simple home made good food and feed people at my table. I love to bake and roast and saute. I don't care much for cleaning the big K, but I do love to cook. And so in addition to the recipes I sometimes blog about ... or as a former English teacher, should I write, "about which I sometimes blog," I also think that I shall write about my real enjoyment of food that is not only good, but good for us.

Since 1971, I have dabbled in healthy foods. Now, I had always eaten more correctly than that with which the American and especially the Texan diet is credited. My mother brought me up on the small protein/ one carb/ green veggies meal plan; and when I married, I took that plan with me. I didn’t know that one was expected to have a stack of bread at the table with the meal and so I didn’t put one out. And that was the way our meals began: my very first meal I cooked that Sunday after we were married consisted of a small broiled steak, a baked potato, and a large salad of lettuce, onion, bell pepper, cucumber, tomatoes, you know … the works. No bread. And that is the way we ate most of the time.

Of course, when we had an “occasion,” we had fresh bread, something special; and that was my doom. I loved fresh bread and soon began to bake, having first begun baking fresh breads when I was 12 years old. That was my summer home making project: baking homemade yeast bread. And it was good. And, of course, when the holiday season, Christmas, came around, I baked a fruitcake… that first year. And it was good also. Friends came to eat with us, students came in to eat with us, family came to eat. We enjoyed the delights of food. Too much so, it seems. But there was always fresh fruit and green vegetables in the house and we did eat those. 

As years went on, food became a subject of the news and health and foods were seen as related; and we ate better and better. And it cost more and more. Remember that first piece of steak I cooked? I remember that I bought those from the very best source in town, Pip’s to be exact, and I bought two for about 80 cents! Those were the days. Now, truth is that we didn’t eat chicken or fish or pork at my house as my dear husband didn’t like them; but we didn’t have beef every night either. Frequently, we had all veggies for dinner: fresh corn as the carb and lots of salad vegetables to accompany it, or a baked potato or a pasta or even home made bread and always the big tossed salads with a little of everything tossed in there or the big vegetable platter of raw veggies.

Now, that I am alone and cook mostly for myself only, I do eat chicken and fish; but oh my, the price of fish is horrendous. How can anyone expect retired persons to eat fish 3 or 4 times a week? I try to eat fish or seafood only once or twice a month as it is far more expensive than other things. Of course, I lightly sauté my fish very quickly and that means that I have to have good fish. Were I frying it or dousing it in butter, a la Julia Child (did you see that fish in all that butter in the movie?), it could be almost anything. But when I try to buy fish that is high in Omega 3’s, then we are talking $10 a pound. Thank goodness, 3 cooked ounces is a portion. That means I could eat three times for that $10 were the fish not so delicious. So often, I simply give in and eat half a pound and love every bite. 


Yes, this is just the first of several comments about food and health and you may expect more to accompany the recipes that have been and will be. In memory of Julia, bon appetite.

SLEEP

"Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care/ ... sore labour's bath/Balm of hurt minds "

Ah yes, sleep is such a good thing. Researchers have long proved that Shakespeare was quite correct when he wrote that sleep heals the wounds of the day, smooths over the mind's hurts, rebuilds the used muscles, restores the body in every way. They have gone on to find that those who do not sleep well have more pain, more weaknesses, less mental alertness. Sad, isn't it... And yet, that is the state in which I find myself all too often.

You see, at bedtime, I am wide awake. It doesn't matter what I have done during the day. At everyone's usual bedtime, I am wide awake; and if I do go to bed at 10 or 11, or midnight, I do not go to sleep as do most people. Rather, I lie there wide awake and think of everything I have done that day, everything I might do the next day, and everything I want to do for the next year. I have spent hours at night replaying things I had done during the day whether that was weaving a lamp shade or teaching grammatical constructions. I have held long, involved conversations with people I might encounter the next day. I have replayed conversations from the past day. Everything except sleep.

Oh, I finally sleep after a night or two of this, but that sleep never has seemed to help. My 'ravelled sleeve' of care simply was never 'knit up;' my tired muscles never were restored. I would wake in the mornings as tired as I had been the night before. Mornings were terrible for me. I felt like Garfield without his coffee. And then, I read that those with Fibromyalgia had the problem of non-restorative sleep and I immediately identified that as my problem. I could sleep and sleep (as I so often did on weekends trying to 'catch up' ) and still feel as if I needed to sleep even more. Sleep was not restoring that which had been used up in living and I did not know what to do about it.

For years, I tried everything: valerian, melatonin, herbs of every kind; trytophan, Benadryl; everything anyone thought might help. At one time I resorted to Valium for a short while, another time to Xanax. Finally, my doctor gave me Soma to help the hurting muscles relax at night and I could sleep with that; but still it wasn't the answer. After I retired and it was no longer so important to be wide awake in the morning, I gave up and sat up at night to watch TV and drift when possible, finally sleeping at daylight.

Five years ago, I went to see a sleep specialist who listened to my sad story, told me that most people with Fibro had that same problem, but that he, perhaps, had a solution. He sent me for a sleep study. It was a very good situation: the room was very nice; the bed, quite comfortable; even the electrodes didn't bother me at all. I went to sleep, but I slept the same way I did most nights, waking over and over, suddenly aware of the fact that I was not sleeping. The next morning, the technicians told me that I had actually been awake 80% of the time. And so now we knew. Apparently, much of my 'intractable insomnia' (the diagnosis) is because of Alpha Wave Intrusion which means that as soon as I go to sleep and the brain waves begin to take me down into Delta sleep, those Alpha waves pop up and I am again awake.

All I know is that I simply do not grow sleepy until about 5 in the morning. And so the sleep specialist prescribed a new medication that works, a very expensive medication derived from a herbal remedy once found in every health food store, now a controlled substance. (If I had only known about it when it was inexpensive and sold openly.) I take it and within ten minutes, I am sleeping soundly. I sleep for four hours and wake again. I take the second dose and sleep another four hours. But sometimes, after that second four hours, I still want to sleep on and on and occasionally I sleep another four hours. I hate that.

To do the right thing, the smart thing, the thing that will make me seem 'normal,' I need to stop whatever I am doing at 11 or 12 PM and while I am working well, so often feeling better than I have felt all day, take the prescription and 'knock myself out.' That bothers me also. I hate to do that. So often, I do my best work after midnight, writing, cleaning, designing, sewing, embroidering, reading: all things I have done well into the long night hours. And yet, when I do that, I often then find it just as difficult to sleep during the day, not because I cannot, but more often because I feel that I shouldn't be asleep when things are gong on. Everyone is up and busy. Why shouldn't I be doing the same. It is a very confusing way to live.

Tonight, I should have gone to bed long, long ago; and yet, it is now 6 in the morning and I am wide awake and still going. I haven't slept since 9 yesterday morning and I feel fine. This is ridiculous and I have things to do today; but I had things to do last night that I did. Staying up allowed me to accomplish some things that needed to be done. Of course, I cannot do this over and over every day. I can only hope that staying up all night once in a while will not harm me and that my sleeve of care will not become too unraveled before I sleep tonight. And I will sleep tonight. I will stop whatever I am doing at midnight and take that wonderful medication and sleep. Perhaps, I should do that every night and sleep like most people do.