Homemade Mini-Pitot

I cannot believe how fast these homemade mini-pitot fly off the plate in this house!
This is all that's left, of about 40 that I made just before lunch:

And yes, I served other food for lunch, omelets and carrot sticks and chumus to go along with these pitot. But really the pitot are a big hit!

This is a really simple recipe - it uses baking powder instead of yeast, so you don't have to plan too far in advance. And if you have a cast iron skillet, that's the perfect place to make them!

Making whole wheat pitot yourself is so worthwhile. They are insanely expensive for what you get when you buy them at a bakery or supermarket. This recipe will save you a lot of money, but it does require a little bit of time and effort.

Here's what you do:

2-3 c. whole wheat flour (start with 2 and add more to get the right consistency. Flour varies in its ability to absorb water, so you'll find this measurement can change drastically from one time to the next)
1.5 T. baking powder
1/2 t. sugar
1/2 t. salt
1-2 t. olive oil
1.5 c. warm water.

Mix all the dry ingredients together, then mix in the oil. Then add water, slowly, stirring to combine. Add more flour as needed. Remove from bowl and knead on a floured surface for a couple of minutes, then roll out and make circles (I use my circle cookie cutter and then roll the circle again to make them a drop thinner).
Bake them in a cast iron frying pan (very lightly greased), that you have preheated over a medium flame. They will puff up and begin to brown. Cook on both sides till they are just slightly browned - don't overdo it!

This post was shared in the Hearth and Soul Blog Hop on December 13, 2011

Tuesday Night, July 26, 2011

We are down to the wire! Moving day is very soon and I'm behind schedule.

Tonight's supper plan takes into account that since it's so hot, I have given in and we're running the a/c.

Took stock of the contents of my kitchen, and here's what we'll have:

Pitot with cheese (toasted, cut into triangles, perfect for little hands to hold)

Barley, Rice, Lentils, and Mushrooms in the crockpot (put it all in the crockpot in the morning, with water to cover, and season to taste. I generally use salt, pepper, garlic powder, and oregano)

Cucumber and Carrot sticks

Watermelon

What's your dinner plan?

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Here's a last minute menu - I found myself haphazardly throwing together supper.

Pitot with cheese melted in them
P'titim (whole wheat ones)
Savory Pancakes made with some leftover gevinah levana that needed to get used
Cucumbers

I find that the less time I spend on meal preparation, the more my kids will eat it. Go figure!

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Here's an "after-the-fact" post. (It's late already!)

Tonight's supper:

Fruit & Yogurt smoothies

Sloppy Sams with Pitot

Cucumbers and Pickles

Somehow,  this turned out to be enough. Goes to show that sometimes it's simpler to offer fewer choices...

Looking forward to a no-fuss week!

Monday Night, May 30, 2011

Many of you are BBQ'ing for Memorial Day, I'm sure. So, I wasn't sure if I would post my ever-so-mundane menu.
I will anyhow, just to get myself back in the habit of posting...

Here's my simple plan:


Quesadilla-style pitot (I just split open the pitot and fill with shredded cheese, put the top back on and toast it. I then call these concoctions quesadillas, even though they are definitely not. we just pretend they are.)

Tomatoes & Cucumbers

Fruit

Tuesday Night, March 15, 2011

Sorry for not posting for a couple of days. Life got in the way. My computer has been turned into the telephone - it's they way we communicate with friends and family overseas - webcam and magicjack - and it's hard to find time to just write. It's been especially busy the last couple of days...

In addition, I have been feeling seriously burned out. Not just cooking burnout, just plain burnout. Sometimes life gets like that. Trying to figure out ways to recharge without actually abandoning my children...

:-)

Anyhow, here's the supper plan for tonight:

Pitot with vegetarian taco filling
Cucumbers
Potato Bourekas (working on the freezer cleanout)
Artichokes (that's what happens when my younger 3 children accompany me to the store. they see artichokes and start dancing. isn't that nuts? not exactly frugal but they were a lot less expensive than last time I saw them - only 8NIS/kilo - so I bought them. at least they weren't begging for candy!)

A bit of a hodge-podge menu, I admit, but everyone ate happily, which was the goal. When my hubby gets back from his trip, I'll have to re-start the "organized" menus...

Have a good day!

Sunday Night, March 13, 2011

As usual, the family needs to eat. Doesn't matter what's in the news, the kids remain blissfully ignorant and excited that Purim is coming...

Sunday night's supper:

Soup (leftover from Shabbat)
Various leftovers from our dairy meal on Shabbat
Pita "Toasts" - with cheese melted on them
Cherry Tomatoes

Feeling really uninspired today. What do you do when you are preoccupied, overwhelmed, and just really not in the mood to cook?

Tuesday Night (Feb. 1, 2011)

I think I've been doing pretty well making sure our meals are balanced, nutritious, and frugal, and even a healthy mom deserves a really easy supper night sometimes!

So, it's Pasta Night!

Pita Crisps
Spaghetti with Rose Sauce
Spiral Pasta with Cheese (for those picky children)
Cut vegetables with "Ranch" dressing
Citrus Fruits for Dessert

Some notes about these foods:

If you have day-old pitot to use up, split them open, cut into wedges, brush with olive oil or melted butter, sprinkle with garlic, salt, and oregano (optional: parmesan cheese, but at approx 100 NIS/kilo, I decided not to buy the parmesan right now), and bake at 375 F (190 C) till crisp.

I use whole grain pastas. This makes me feel better about serving pasta, and my kids don't know about any other kind. Occasionally my husband says he misses white pasta, but I have convinced him that the health benefits of eating whole grains outweigh all of his complaints. Nitzat Haduvdevan has organic whole grain pastas on sale this month, the Teverya Mazon Organi store has them for just over 6 NIS, or I found (conventional) whole grain pasta at Yesh last week on sale for 3.99 NIS/bag.

Rose Sauce: I use shortcuts! I just simply combine crushed tomatoes with basil, garlic, salt, and pepper, and mix it with Gevinah Levanah (Israeli white cheese), and heat, but not to boiling. It makes a passable stand-in for Rose sauce.

Ranch Dressing - we really do miss Newman's Own Ranch Dressing. We haven't found anything like it. So I just mix up some yogurt and spices and pretend it's ranch dressing, and the kids eat it, but they do say there's something missing. Any ideas to improve it are appreciated! Just leave me a note in the comments!

A note about organics: I prefer organic over conventional in most cases, but having recently made Aliyah and still trying to figure out how to make our new budget work, I find that I have been forgoing some of my organic purchases for now. I have found that some things (bulk grains, legumes, sugar, etc) are about the same price at the health food store as the conventional version in most supermarkets - sometimes even less, so I'm sticking with affordable organic items for now, using lots of "Sterily" fruit and vegetable cleaner on my produce, looking for lab-path "pachot hadbara" certification, etc, and trying to buy items that are as natural as I can find. (Oils have been a challenge - you can find lots of cold pressed olive oil here, but it's very hard to find oils of any other kind that have not been chemically extracted. I've been splurging on organic sunflower oil and using it sparingly...)

Monday Night

Aside from the frugal aspect, I'm looking for easy meals. We usually have busy days, and since I homeschool my 4 kids, I really don't have much downtime...ever.

For Monday evening, I'm looking to incorporate leftovers into the plan (I've been trying harder not to have to throw those out. If you have tips to make sure that leftovers get used up, please share! My kids sometimes groan when they see a food served "AGAIN".).

I just took stock of the fridge, and while most of our Shabbat food actually got eaten (and the leftover barley went into the freezer), we have plenty of vegetable noodle soup left!

(By the way, I'm really big on soup right now. It's winter, and we live in a "warm" location in Israel, which means we have a poorly insulated house and not-so-efficient heaters. And it's raining - a good thing! In other words, sometimes it's colder inside our house than out, and I'm too frugal to heat the place all the time!)

So here's what we'll be eating (it's a vegan menu!):

Vegetable-Noodle Soup
Sloppy "Sams" in pitot
Steamed Cauliflower and Broccoli
Oven-crisp Roasted Potato Wedges
I rarely do dessert during the week, but maybe I'll even bake muffins! I have a few wrinkly apples to use up.

Some notes about these foods:

The soup is the same one from Friday night. I keep all my Shabbat soups pareve, so I can use them again during the beginning of the week.

Sloppy Sams are Vegetarian Sloppy Joes. I'm making these with drained and crumbled tofu (I buy these at Kimat Chinam; if you buy 3 tofu cubes at a time, they are 3/23.99 NIS. Does anyone have a better deal to share?), browned in olive oil with diced onion and peppers, cooked with tomato paste, water, and spices. We still haven't worked out the perfect combination of Sloppy Sam spices, so if you have any TNT recipes, please share!

Cauliflower and Broccoli - the cauliflower was on sale for 1 NIS/kilo, so we'll be going heavy on the cauliflower, light on the brocolli. The best price I found for broccoli was 8 NIS/kilo at Yesh. Kimat Chinam was 14 NIS/kilo and Rami Levy something like 17 NIS/kilo. My kids love broccoli, so I figured I would have to continue to buy it and stretch it with the cauliflower...

For the Potato Wedges, I usually combine olive oil, mustard, garlic, salt, and pepper. Mix well with potato wedges (just scrub and cut - leave those peels on so you get the vitamins and trace minerals!), and bake in the oven at 400 F till crispy and turning brown. The kids like to eat them with ketchup...