Two moments of domestic genius and one huge fail!

Today was spent preparing for my little one's baptism tomorrow.  The two little ones went to their grandparents and the rest of us got to work.

While the others cleaned, I had some major food prep to attend to.  We're serving gyros, and I had to prepare the onions and peppers and attempt a Tzatziki sauce.

Through this process I had two clever moments and then I feel obligated to show my very big fail!

Turning non-fat yogurt into Greek yogurt

The recipe I was basing my Tzatziki sauce off of called for Greek Yogurt and I only had plain non-fat yogurt. I decided I would prefer a little thinker sauce and I decided to remove some of the moisture from the plain yogurt to get it to resemble Greek Yogurt.

I cut a couple pieces of cheese cloth and filled them with the yogurt. I twisted them and could not figure out how I was going to suspend them.

Here's where the genius comes in... Has anyone seen the tip on Pinterest about keeping a recipe displayed by using a pants hanger? How about using a pants hanger to suspend two pouches of yogurt? Perfect!

This picture shows them hanging from the cupboard, but I assure you I had them suspended over the sink from the spout. However, my sink full of dishes wouldn't photograph well, I'm sure!

Removing excess moisture with a paper towel

I felt some ingenuity coming on as I decided how I was going to make sure to get the extra moisture out of my tiny diced cucumbers.

Sure, I could use my wire strainer but those pieces were really small. I could also just set them on a paper towel...

I decided it would be best to suspend the towel over the bottom of the yogurt container so the excess water could drain into the bottom. I think was still thinking along the lines of tip number one. And why didn't I use cheesecloth, I wonder now... I have no idea... Let's call this the tip for others like myself who do not own such kitchen supplies (I got mine from my mom when I decided to try making Ricotta out of whole milk that had just expired).

I taped each corner of the paper towel to the outside of the container and stuffed it in. It fell about an inch off the bottom of the container. I filled the container with cucumber and removed the entire paper towel pouch, poured out the liquid from the container, and squeezed even more excess out with the towel.

Well, I could say there were two moments of failure today because I wasn't too happy with the Tzatziki turnout, but it wasn't bad, just different...

I tried my new (to me) bread maker today. I was excited to start making bread, especially because I seem to have an abundance of flour. Well, I read the manual as I was waiting for the bread to knead and realized I made a rookie mistake. The flour I have in abundance is all-purpose, and as I read that it is not interchangeable with bread flour I though, "oh great..." I also never heard the beep telling me to check the dough to decide whether to add flour or water. I noticed my dough wasn't sticky and seemed a little dry so I tried to add water but realized the kneading stage was over. I grabbed the dough so I could dump out the waster and made a mess of it. Therefore, when it came out (with a thud!) it looked like this!

The manual told me the flour would make a dense loaf and it wasn't kidding! That baby is like a rock! At least it tasted alright - after you break through that thick and hard crust. I think we'll use it for things like grilled cheese, croutons, and breadcrumbs!