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So I accom­plished quite a bit this week­end. Fig­ured out how to sew with Ultrex (a Gore-tex type mate­r­i­al), got the guest room ready for a friend (quite a feat, I assure you, as it is also my sewing room), and did a fair amount of cook­ing. So here it is, in order of increas­ing good-ness:

sal­sa: I had a lot of tomatil­los and cher­ry toma­toes from the gar­den, so I decid­ed to make sal­sa. I put in about a half-dozen tomatil­los, four hand­fuls of cher­ry toma­toes, a shal­lot, two cloves of gar­lic, a jalapeno, and some lime juice. It is def­i­nite­ly spicy, a lit­tle watery (I prob­a­bly just processed it too long though), but it is okay. I think it will be real­ly good with chick­en or fish, so we’ll try that tomor­row night. Mmm.

dog treats: My hus­band made me break­fast on Sat­ur­day, and we had some left­over bacon. I made dog treats with bacon, peanut but­ter, shred­ded car­rot, hon­ey, and a mix­ture of oat flour and brown rice flour. I had to make my own oat flour using GF rolled oats (seri­ous­ly, make sure the oats are GF), which I put in the blender until they turned to pow­der. The dogs seem to love them. I found the recipe at http://tidymom.net/2011/homemade-dog-treats/. I fol­lowed the recipe exact­ly, and it turned out well.

bread: Sad news — my sour­dough starter died. Good news — I got to make beer bread instead. I used this recipe, though I cut out the dill. I used Green beer, part­ly because we had it around the house and my hus­band won’t drink it, but also because it is a nice dark beer (even if it does­n’t taste great). It made the bread real­ly deli­cious. My hus­band said he liked it even bet­ter than the sour­dough. Because it isn’t a yeast bread, though, it did­n’t rise, and so it was just a real­ly real­ly flat loaf. How­ev­er, like I said, deli­cious. If you know the beer is there, you can taste it, but it just tastes good. The tex­ture was real­ly light and the beer makes nice holes in the bread the way yeast does in yeast bread.

and the best thing this week­end:

choco­late chip cook­ies: I did­n’t even try the recipe I have in a book, because my exper­i­men­ta­tion worked out so well. I adapt­ed an old Toll House recipe that my grand­moth­er had altered years and years ago. I want­ed to try mil­let flour, and I’m glad I did. I think it added a fla­vor that just tast­ed sub­stan­tial, if that makes sense. One thing I have done in the past that I wish I had done here is add some cin­na­mon. But any­way, here is my GF choco­late chip cook­ie recipe:

• 3/4 c mil­let flour
• 1/4 c tapi­o­ca flour (tapi­o­ca starch)
• 1/2 c white rice flour
• 4 T pota­to flour (not pota­to starch)
• 2 t xan­tham gum
• 1 t salt
• 1 t bak­ing soda
• 1 t hot water
• 1 T vanil­la
• 1 pkg choco­late chips
• 2 c oat­meal
• 1 c short­en­ing
• 3/4 c brown sug­ar
• 3/4 c gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar
• 2 eggs
• 2 t cin­na­mon (option­al)

Sift flours with soda and salt (and cin­na­mon). Cream short­en­ing and sug­ar. Add eggs, one at a time. Add hot water and vanil­la. Add sift­ed dry ingre­di­ents. Mix well. Add choco­late chips and oat­meal and mix only until blend­ed. Bake at 375 for about 10 min­utes (my grand­ma said 8, I think it’s clos­er to 10, just keep an eye on them).

So there’s my fol­low-up from yes­ter­day. Now it’s time for anoth­er busy week — week 2 of my new job!