Chicken Noodle Soup

Homemade chicken stock
Chicken Bouillon
Celery
Carrots
Onions
Cubed, cooked chicken
Egg Noodles

Cook vegetables in broth and bouillon 10 minutes, add egg noodles when boiling, add chicken at the end. Delicious and easy!

Uncle Eric's Pink Lemonade

Ingredients

• 2 cups water
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon grated lemon peel
• 1 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1 pint fresh strawberries, hulled and halved
• 2 cups cold sparkling water or club soda
• Ice
• Mint sprigs, garnish
• Whole strawberries, garnish

Directions

In a medium saucepan, bring the water and sugar to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves. Add the lemon peel and lemon juice, stir, and remove from the heat. Let cool completely, then strain into a clean pitcher.

In a blender, puree the pint of strawberries and add to the pitcher with the lemon juice. Stir well to combine and refrigerate until well chilled.
Add the sparkling water and stir well. Pour over glasses filled with ice and serve, garnished with mint and strawberries

Hot Chocolate

French Hot Chocolate
3 (1-ounce) squares Baker's semi sweet chocolate (I have used others
and it still tastes good)
1/2 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar

Cook chocolate and water over low heat until smooth and thick,
stirring constantly. Add salt and sugar; cook for 5 minutes more. Cool
completely.

1 cup heavy cream, whipped
1 teaspoon vanilla

Whip heavy cream and add vanilla. Fold into chocolate mixture. Store
in refrigerator. To serve, add a heaping tablespoon (or two) to a cup
of hot milk. Stir and enjoy!

Perfect French Bread (3 hours)

French Bread Recipe

This is for 2 loaves - it works to cut it in half and make a single loaf
4 cups bread flour (I used regular)
2 teaspoon active quick rising dry yeast
2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups warm water
1. Put 1/4 cup of bread flour on your clean counter top and reserve. Place remaining 3 3/4 cups bread flour in your mixer bowl. Spoon the yeast on one side of the bowl, and the salt on the other side. Pour in the warm water and with your regular mixer paddle, mix on low speed until the dough comes together in a mass. Switch to the dough hook. Mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Dough should clear the sides but stick to the bottom. If it is too sticky, add 1 tablespoon of flour at a time. If too dry, add 1 tablespoon of water to dough to adjust. (I don't have a mixer, so I do this by hand. Mix for 6 minutes).
Let the dough rest for 5 minutes. (7 minutes if by hand)
The dough should look like this during the rest:

2. Turn the mixer on again and mix for 3 minutes. (7 minutes by hand) Take the dough out and place on the counter. Remember that 1/4 cup of flour that we reserved? We’ll use it now. As you knead the dough by hand, incorporate more flour as you need.
Knead by hand until the dough is very satiny, smooth, tight and formed into a nice, compact ball:

Place this dough in a large lightly oiled bowl (I use Pam spray). Turn dough over so that all sides have a thin coating of oil. Cover with plastic wrap and set in warm place for 1 1/2 hours to let rest and rise. Dough should almost double in size. While the dough is rising, about 1 hour into the rising stage, preheat your oven to 450F and place your pizza stone into the oven to heat up. (I turn it on when I take the risen dough out of the oven)
4. After the dough has risen fully, punch dough down and form back into a ball. Poke your finger on the surface – the dough should give into the pressure and slowly creep back up.
5. Ok, here’s the fun part. Cut the dough into half – you’ll shape one half at a time (keep the other piece under wraps) Pick up the dough – stretch it out until it forms a big rectangle. Dust your work surface with flour and fold over the ends of the dough like this:

Now do a little “karate chop” lengthwise down the middle of the bread and stretch out the long ends again. Fold over in half. The karate chop helps get the middle tucked inside. Pinch all sides shut. This is important – you want to make sure that all ends including the short ends are pinched tightly to create a seal. This allows the bread to rise & expand up and out evenly. If the bread looks a little lopsided, you can try to fix it by letting it rest 5 minutes and gently stretching it out again. Just don’t knead the dough again – you’ll pop all the beautiful gas that took 1.5 hours to create!
Here’s what it should look like:

6. Turn the bread over so that it is seam side down. Cover the loaf with a damp (I forgot this) kitchen towel. Repeat with the other dough ball. Leave the loaves to rest on your well-floured pizza peel or cutting board for 30 minutes. After resting, take a sharp paring knife and make 3-4 shallow, diagonal slashes on the surface of the loaf. This allows the steam in the bread to escape so that it expands evenly during the baking process:

7. When you are ready to bake, remove your pizza stone from oven. Carefully slide the gorgeous loaf into or onto your pizza stone. I like baking one loaf at a time.  The most important equipment to have is an instant read thermometer to measure temperature of the bread (I don't have this).
Cover the loaf with a large metal bowl and put it into the oven. Bake 15 minutes, remove bowl, and bake another 10 minutes.

To re-crisp the crust, put in 375F oven for 5 minutes. Eat one loaf, share the other loaf with a friend!