Quick and Easy French Bread

This is a recipe I found on urbanstrawberries.wordpress.com. 

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups warm water
2 Tbsp. yeast
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. salt
5 1/2 cups flour
1 egg white (or 2 Tbsp olive oil)

DirectionsPreheat oven to 450*F.

In a large bowl, mix warm water and yeast until yeast has dissolved.  Next add sugar, salt and flour. Knead ingredients together till it’s a soft uniform dough.

Now place a thin towel over the bowl with the dough in it and let it rise in a warm place for 15-30 minutes.

Separate dough into two, and begin shaping dough into long loaves, and place on a baking sheet.

Make slits with a knife and brush with egg white or olive oil. If you are garnishing with herbs or cheese, do so now.

Cover the dough with the towel once more and let rise 5 minutes or so (the longer the better).

Remove towel, and bake for 12-15 minutes or until tops are brown and crusty. I did 19 minutes.

Pork & Veggie Eggrolls

This started as an attempt to make Lumpia, a Filipino eggroll, I ate a lot as a teenager in the Bay Area. Alas, there are no lumpia wrappers to be found around here, so I ended up using eggroll wrappers....which means they are eggrolls, not lumpia. But they turned out AWESOME! I'd seen several people comment on some lumpia recipes that they added cilantro for an extra kick, and I DO love cilantro, so I went for it. These did NOT disappoint. I'm already craving them again and it hasn't been a week! To be completely honest, adding the onion powder was a mistake (I thought I'd grabbed the garlic powder). But, the end result was so yummy, I'm keeping the onion powder in there.

1 lb ground pork, browned and set aside (drain grease, leaving just enough to coat the skillet for veggies)

Add to skillet:

1/2 cup onion, minced (I just tossed everything in the food processor)

1/2 cup carrot, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced (or 2 tsp minced garlic from a jar)

Saute 2-3 minutes, then add:

1/2 cup cabbage, minced

1/2 cup green onions, minced

1/2 cup cilantro, minced

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp soy sauce

Saute another 2 minutes and add pork back in, stirring to combine.

Scoop 3 Tbsp onto each eggroll wrapper and roll up.

Cook for 5 minutes or until golden brown in vegetable oil that is 375 degrees (medium heat).

A good sweet chile sauce from the asian market will put this over the top, but it's pretty good even without the sauce. We bought something called 'Dragon Fly Sweet Chile Sauce.' Makes 15 large eggrolls Note: These should freeze well. Store wrapped rolls in freezer bag, then thaw before frying. Next time I'm going to freeze half so we have 2 meals for the prep time of 1.