We sat in a cloud bank all day Thursday with intermittent rain showers. But I think it rained all night and it was still raining when I started drinking coffee on Friday morning. By the time the rain ended and the sun came out we had over an inch and a half in the rain gauge. So grateful!
Thursday was spent baking bread and cookies plus making a huge pot of spaghetti sauce. The hamburger meat Lonn gave us is frozen in two pound packages! That’s a LOT of hamburger meat! Way too much ground beef! So, I have to think up ways to use a two pound hunk of meat. Pioneer Woman’s sloppy joe recipe is one the Cowboy and I enjoy very much–it uses two pounds. My spaghetti sauce recipe is a one pound recipe and I double it to use one of these gigantic tubes of ground meat. We eat spaghetti a couple times then I freeze the rest of the sauce for a time when I need a quick meal.
This sourdough bread making is a long, slow process! My starter finally started rising and I mixed a loaf of sourdough on Tuesday evening. Wednesday morning it was not double in size as it should until into the evening! Then it has to go in the refrigerator and I left it there all night. Baked it on Thursday morning and it didn’t rise in the oven as it should have but geez it tasted good–just the right amount of sourdough taste. Thursday evening I mixed another batch and left it overnight to rise–nope, not double on Friday morning–so we wait. A long, slow, process!
And—-that bread was a flop. Onward to another loaf!
Having problems with internet, thus no photos and a few hours late post.
Restoration Cowboy Style 
Hurray for the rain! So glad you guys are getting some relief from the drought. Meanwhile, here in North Carolina, we’re planning our adventures around the almost daily afternoon thunderstorms. Couldn’t we somehow even things out? 🙂
Nice to have some things in the freezer made ahead for days that you don’t want to cook. I need to get better at that, we cook every day but rarely make enough to freeze.
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Yes, couldn’t we even it out–my family in Arkansas has been inundated with rain at times. I’m not really very good at freezer meals but sometimes I try!
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Sloppy Joe’s sound so yummy…haven’t cooked that in many years. With 4 kids growing up in our home back in the day, it was a weekly favorite! Always nice to have things to pull out of the freezer!
I’m so happy to read you have had rain! Gay
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Pioneer Woman’s recipe for sloppy joes is wonderful! And it’s a Cowboy favorite!
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Wish that rain would stick around and keep the smoke away! We love sourdough but I’m afraid I’m always going to have to depend on someone else to make it 🙂 My plan was to use the Instapot and also make meals to freeze while traveling. Haven’t done either one, alas laziness has won out.
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I usually start a RV trip with a couple meals ready in the refrigerator/freezer but that soon falls by the wayside.
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Glad for the rain for you! Sad about your internet, you know how much I love your photos. Haven’t thought of Sloppy Joe’s in a long time, but I do always freeze the leftover spaghetti sauce, mostly for MoHo trips.
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I too had forgotten about the sloppy joes but was looking through all my recipe files trying to find things I could cook that used 2 pounds of hamburger!
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Glad for you for the rain.
Sourdough can be frustrating at times, tho I usually don’t have too many problems. I have found that sometimes a bit of warmth can help things along. I have a couple ways to do that. Set a pint of boiling water in your microwave or other insulated container and place your dough in there to raise. Or warm the oven for about 1 minute. that is usually enough and then put the dough in there with the light on and that can help. On very chilly days, I have not only warmed the oven for a minute, I have also put a kettle of boiling water in the oven to keep the warmth and humidy up.
Or, your starter just isn’t quite robust enough and will get better with age. You can a bit of some other flours while feeding your starter such as whole wheat, or spelt, or rye, any of those can have good yeasts in them. YOu don’t have to add much to inocculate the starter and give your little beasties a kick in the pants.
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I think my starter is just not robust enough–I’m not giving up–after all, it’s just flour, salt and water I’m wasting!
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Ah, spaghetti sauce in the freezer is always nice!
So happy some areas are having rain. It surely
helps in the fire areas.
We are praying for rain for California🙏🙏
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I too will pray for rain for you Linda!
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It’s too bad we can’t come up with an easy way to share the water across the country. The east just floats in too much water while the west is drying out way too fast. We see very little rain here in BC. We do watch the dark clouds in the distance as they drop rain in AZ. But I must say that I prefer no rain in the summer. The rain brings humidity which isn’t fun when it is over 100. Luckily, we rarely get much humidity. It’s amazing how different the humidity level is between here and AZ.
Sorry about your bread. All that work and it doesn’t rise properly…darn! Glad it still tasted good.
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Yes, it would be nice if the moisture was spread out more evenly! I’m not giving on the sourdough experiment!
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Would love to learn your spaghetti sauce recipe. I just made a large batch yesterday to freeze, but it just seemed to be missing something—-but can’t figure out what!
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l will try to remember to add the spaghetti sauce recipe to the next blog post.
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