Family Traditions

So there is one family tradition that I've had in my life since, well, forever.  It's getting to be that time of year again and this time I must share the recipe so the tradition can head to Australia.  I took the tradition to Germany many years ago, and although at first it wasn't well-received (I was supposed to be learning about German traditions!), but when I presented it as a gift from me to the family, it soon became a favorite and requested treat!

Poteca

(Grandma Dimzoff pronounced it Puh-va-teetza)

1/4 c. warm water

3/4 c. warm milk

1 tsp. salt

1/4 c. soft butter/shortening

1 pkg. yeast

1/4 c. sugar

1 egg

3-1/2 - 3-3/4 c. flour

In bowl, dissolve yeast in water.  Add milk, sugar, salt, egg, shortening, and half of flour to the yeast. Mix with spoon until smooth.  Add enough remaining flour to handle easily.  Knead for about 5 minutes.  Cover and let rise in a warm place until double, about 1-1/2 hours.  Punch down and let rise again, about 30 minutes.  Place dough on a large well-floured cloth and roll out almost paper thin into an oblong (30"x20").  Spread with walnut filling (below), bringing it to edges.  Starting at the wide side of the oblong, lift cloth and let dough roll up like a jelly roll.  Seal well by pinching edges into dough.  Place on greased baking sheet in a horseshoe shape.  Let rise until almost double (1 hour).  Heat oven to 325° and bake for 40-45 minutes or until brown.

Walnut Filling:

1/4 c. soft butter

1 egg 

1/2 tsp. vanilla

2 c. walnuts (finely ground, not chopped!)

1/2 c. brown sugar, packed

1/4 c. milk

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Mix butter, brown sugar and egg.  Stir in milk, vanilla and cinnamon.  Blend in nuts.  (Sometimes I double this, or at least 1-1/2 times it!)

And here are the pictures I took during the process.  It was a perfect day -- clear skies and cold temperatures - to bake bread!

That's 1.8° C!

Ah!  The sun streaming in!

Ready to be kneaded!

All done kneading, now it's time to raise.

Raising

The ground walnuts for the filling-- they should be this fine!

The filling

Almost ready!

The rolling-out surface prepped!

All rolled out.

Filling on the dough

Starting the roll (by lifting the sheet!)...

...and roll....

Ready for the last rise

Fresh out of the oven!

Bon appetit!  Guten Appetit!  Enjoy!

Happy Couple Recipes!

So, if you know Kent at all, he's not a big dessert fan, but he does like chocolate cake, or French Silk Pie, so in that idea I posted a long time ago the recipe for the Happy Hubby Cake.  But what's the wife supposed to do when she'd rather have something a bit fruity?  She looks for a recipe for one!  Thanks to Taste of Home, I came up with this as my dessert and I made him his chocolate cake-in-a-mug!  And it was really big enough for me to save half for tomorrow's lunch!!  Yay!!

Mini Apple Crisp

• 1 medium apple, peeled and sliced
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 tablespoons quick-cooking oats
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• Cream, optional

Directions

• Place apple slices in a small greased baking dish. In a small bowl,
• combine flour and brown sugar; cut in butter until mixture resembles
• coarse crumbs. Add oats and cinnamon. Sprinkle over apple slices.
• Bake, uncovered, at 350° for 35-40 minutes or until tender.

Happy Veteran's Day

There's nothing new, really, to say except a renewed Thank You to all of our Veteran's.  Here's a revisit to a day that Tiana made me very proud (You'll have to follow the link).

Tiana singing at a Veteran's Day assembly

 And two of my favorite veterans!

Well...

So, I kind of promised that I'd think about doing more blogging since I'm not currently Facebooking, but I'm finding that we lead kind of boring lives!!  We're in the process of refinancing and so we had to have an appraisal done today.  We made sure that the house was in tip-top shape since, although the loan isn't based on my housekeeping skills, it can't help but make a home more attractive if it's kept up!  Also, I made some bread because who doesn't like the smell of freshly baked bread?!  Wouldn't you know it?  Our appraisal had a cold!  Probably couldn't even smell the aroma!  Oh, well!  Win some, lose some!  Of course, if I'd known she was sick, maybe I wouldn't have gone to the effort after my morning!  We have a new labor management system at work and so far, it is a nightmare.  I'm in charge of distributing tips each week and this week, well, nightmare doesn't even begin to cover what it was!  What normally can take me as little as 45 minutes took me 2 whole hours, and would have taken even more if I hadn't just finally said, "Forget it!!  That's enough!"  and if my co-worker hadn't told me to just pay out the one girl out of next week's tips!  Good grief!  Who designed this program?!

So, then, what else?  I went and bought a scrubs top at school the other day.  Had a bit of a frustrating experience with all of that.  Maybe you remember me being so excited and telling everyone that I'd made the phone call that made me a nursing student?  That would have been approximately on October 7.  I didn't feel really good about that call -- like maybe the person who took the call didn't actually pay one lickin' bit of attention to what I said.  So, I decided to go into the school on the day of the deadline, buy the scrubs, get the photo ID and stop in and verify that my name was on the "accepted" list.  I went to the counter and the woman rudely told me I would need to tell her my name if she was to look.  She never wrote my name down, never looked it up on any lists, nothing.  I also gave her my immunization records and she told me that it probably wouldn't work.  Long story and I promise I will make my case for letting me into the program no matter what.  Anyway, that was October 30 at about 10 in the morning and deadline was noon.  Friday rolls around and I have a phone call from the nursing office.  I'm thinking, well, shoot, I have to defend my hepatitis B shot already!  Nope!  Nothing that easy!  The lady's calling because "[they] haven't heard from me yet and I'm the last one to respond to whether or not I'm accepting the position they offered me!!"  ARE. YOU. KIDDING. ME.?!?!  I called AND I walked in and they still didn't get my name on the "accepted the offer" list!!  I'll be going in person again, to make sure nothing else gets missed!  The lady seemed slightly sorry, but not really sorry enough for my taste!  But she did say that, even though it was now past deadline, they would accept my acceptance and I'll start in January.  We still have to see about the immunization that I won't have a titer for before clinicals, but...

So, I guess that's kind of non-boring details of our life right now.  But now I need to go to bed because 4:10AM comes VERY early!