On our snow-day-before-last (? they've all started to blend together), when boredom was setting in with a vengeance, I learned how to make bagels at home. This might sound really stupid, but I'm not sure I ever really knew that you could make bagels at home. I mean, I guess I knew ONE could, but not an average person like me. I think I thought you needed special training or equipment or something like that.

Turns out -- you can make bagels at home! You make the dough, you let it rise the appropriate number of times, and then you boil your bagels in water before baking them in a very hot oven. It's all a lot simpler than it seems it should be (although once you get going things move pretty quickly, which is why we have only iPhone photos to mark this post, sorry about that).

And yes, I will admit that ours are not the most attractive bagels ever but you have to trust me: they are so, so good. I never had had a fresh, just out-of-the-oven bagel before and now that I have, I don't think I can ever go back.

We've sampled several different recipes over the past few weeks but keep coming back to this one for New York Style Bagels by the Sophisticated Gourmet because 1) it's tastiest and 2) you don't have to let the dough proof overnight, which I hate because I am impatient. We like this recipe so much that we've been making up a batch every Sunday. A. really loves the whole play-dough aspect of this recipe and I really love having my family together in the kitchen baking for the week ahead, it seems like such a wholesome (read: generally unlike us) thing to do. And James really loves these bagels with butter, and he's not a carb guy, so that's saying something.

Happy Thursday!

Purists are going to hate this recipe because authentic Irish soda bread has only four ingredients: flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk. This dairy-free recipe has a few more and comes out a bit more dense and sconelike than the traditional recipe. But my kid can eat it, so that's a plus. And it's also really good.

And easy -- Anouk mixed this one up herself (I pre-measured everything and laid it out for her). Just so you know, each raisin was placed into the dough individually. It looked like a very important part of the process so don't forget it.

Dairy-free Irish Soda Bread (from Food Allergy Mama)

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons brown sugar (we used about 1.5 T honey and .5 T molasses)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1.5 cups soy buttermilk
1 cup raisins, dried cranberries, or currants

Mix up the soy "buttermilk" by adding 2 tablespoons of white vinegar to 2 cups of plain soymilk. (Don't be a hero and try to taste this. It isn't like real buttermilk at all, but it works for the recipe). Let sit for 5-10 minutes. It should look grainy and thick when it's ready.

Sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the soy buttermilk a little at a time and mix with a rubber spatula until the dough comes together. Add the raisins. Press into an oiled 9-inch round cake pan or iron skillet. Mark a cross in the top and bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes or until brown.

This past week has been a long one in our house. Anne came down with a nasty cold last Sunday, passed it on to me, and then I passed it to James. And then just when we thought the little one was almost all better, she came up to us and informed us that "ear HURT, mama." We took her to the pediatrician, the whole sneezing lot of us (we were very popular in the waiting room, as you can imagine), and found out that on top of a cough, A. also has a double ear infection.

We're on the mend now, but long story short: we spent a lot of time inside the house last week. Which means I don't have any fun adventure posts in the can to post this week.

But we did try to keep busy, all the same. One of the things I like to do when I'm not feeling bad enough to lay on the couch all day but am feeling bad enough to crave comfort food is to break Paleo edge and bake a loaf of bread. Anne likes it, too. Bread is a little bit like magic, even if you're an adult. To a kid, it's super-mega-amazing. This little ball of goop? Watch it get bigger and bigger and turn into something completely different.

I especially like this recipe because it requires minimal effort, as far as bread-making goes -- it doesn't need an overnight rise or a second kneading. An hour from proofing the yeast, I was pulling a fully-baked loaf from the oven. And it's delicious, the perfect satisfying texture -- chewy crust with a soft, fluffy interior. It doesn't get much better than that.

Unless...you add butter!

Which leads us to the second part of our kitchen magic show: homemade butter. I remember making this with a group of preschoolers back when I was a camp counselor in the summers during college. It's really the easiest thing in the world: fill a jar halfway with heavy cream. Screw the lid back on, and shake shake shake. Within 10 minutes of continuous shaking, the fat will start to separate from the whey. Shake it another five minutes, and you'll have real-life actual butter.



Some tips: First, a lot of online butter tutorials call for you to put marbles in the jar along with your cream. This is not necessary and is not recommended, at least in my opinion. It's a good idea to chill the jar in the fridge or freezer for a little while before starting, and I learned the hard way back in the day that sometimes marbles + cold + vigorous shaking = broken glass. We didn't use anything in our jar, and it turned out fine. Don't be taken in by the pro-marble movement!

Second, the butter from this method tends to be a little wet, so we squeezed it in a cheesecloth once to get the liquid out.

Third, you should add some salt to your butter after you scoop it out. About 1/4 teaspoon should do it. You can also add other stuff to your butter, if you want -- we added a touch of honey, but you could also do thyme or oregano (or cinnamon or pretty much anything). And don't forget about the buttermilk in the jar after you take the butter out!

This butter also tends to be excellently delicious.