Best Beer Bread

I hate commuting to Lowell. I only have 3 more weeks of it after this one... then school begins again. I've had a great internship, but I'm so over driving. It took me 1 hour and 20 minutes to get home on Tuesday, the day I had planned to cook dinner for my family (who are my housemates...).

So I got home in a terrible mood, which is really not like me. I wanted to make lentil burgers and biscuits (didn't have time for the yeasted breads) in honor of Aaron's pickle batch that just finished. I began to make the biscuits (I don't remember what I put in) and realized after adding the liquid that i forgot the salt. I added it in, but I didn't want to over-mix the dough, so in the end product the salt was patchy (to say the least). Though my housemates still loved them (thanks for all the support!), I felt like I wanted to do better. I saw a beer in the fridge and that's when I knew: beer bread.

Now, I hadn't made beer bread in a while, and I rarely make quick breads. It's much less forgiving than yeast breads because you have to get the ratios correct so you don't mix it too much, ruining the texture. I looked in Molly Katzen's book to get a basic liquid/flour ratio, and came up with this recipe which I found absolutely amazing. I'm going to share it now:

1 c all purpose flour
1/2 c corn flour
1/2 c white whole wheat flour
1 t salt
1/4 sugar
1 t baking soda
Mix all these things together, then add
1/2 oil
and coat all the dry ingredients with the oil- like you do making pie crust or something like that. It should get to cookie crumb texture
Then mix together
2 eggs
1 c beer (I used a really tasty porter and then got to drink the rest :)
Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until combined, but not more than that.
Cook at 350 F for about 35 minutes.

Enjoy the best beer bread ever!

Blueberry Jam

So this summer has been way busier than I would have liked. Between all the traveling (so many people getting married...) and my commuting to work, I really haven't had the chance to do all the projects I would've liked.

But I did go to ME last week (family vacation) and I got to pick blueberries and then I made about 6 cups of jam. It was super yummy.

I believe I used:
10 c berries
1 or 1.5 c sugar (I used Pamona's Pectin that isn't sugar dependent for setting)
1/4 c lemon juice
The amount of pectin listed on the packaging

I just followed the directions on the pectin, which involved mashing the berries (I used a food processor) and then cooking them for a bit. Then I put them into the canning jars and boiled them for 5-10 minutes. It was really easy and I was done in an hour with everything (OK, not all the cleaning up).

Thank Gd I had a vacation in ME! Thanks Mom!