A Progressive Cooking Post, Part II

Thank you for your patience. We’re back to the bread. Here’s the first rising:

It’s actually nearly as high as the rim. It just doesn’t look like it in the picture. I formed the dough into rolls and now they are set to rising again. The dough was maybe firmer than it should have been, meaning that I added too much flour. We’ll just have to wait for the final results.

Ah, but we have a bonus! I had a bit of dough leftover after filling the pans with rolls. So… remember those cinnamon rolls I mentioned, that I used to make with this dough? Yeah, I couldn’t resist.

  

Can’t wait! Back in the day, if I was going to make cinnamon rolls, I would make the dough with orange juice instead of milk. Oh my, those were good!

Meanwhile, in chili land, the beans are through soaking and have been transferred to a cooking pot with fresh water. They are happily bubbling on the stove. It’s about 1:00 now. I’ll start working on the chili around 3:00.

The first step in preparing a dish like chili (or anything, really) is prep. For this chili, that involved dicing a very large yellow onion, two large carrots, two bell peppers, a jalapeno, and 4 cloves of garlic. I also diced the sweet potato, but that doesn’t go in until later. I measured all the spices into a small bowl. The vegetables ( except for the potato) are sauteing now. After 8 minutes, I’ll add the spices and let it all cook for a couple of minutes. Then it’s time for vegetable broth (from my freezer), tomatoes (I’ll use my own canned tomatoes), and the sweet potato.

That simmers for a bit, then I add the beans and let it simmer till the potato is done. All that’s left is parsley, vinegar and seasoning. I’ll show you the finished product below.

The bread: I think I did mention that I don’t have much luck with bread. I gave the formed rolls two hours but they didn’t rise very much. They are baking now and I don’t think it’s going to work. They didn’t grow at all. So the yeast worked great for the first rising and nada for the second.

Bleh. Well, they grew a little bit, but I’m not real hopeful. Smells good though.

….. passage of time…

Look!

The rolls are soft and yummy! It actually worked! I’ll go ahead and serve them with the chili, in lieu of cornbread. I think there’s enough in the rest of the batch for Thanksgiving. Maybe I’ll make a half batch on Wednesday to add to it. If I remember right, leftover rolls work great for turkey sandwiches.

I know you’re on the edge of your seats waiting to see how the chili turned out. Wait no longer:

Very pretty, a bit spicy (I like that!), and tastes great. Dinner is served!