No guests for Easter dinner?

Here's the good thing about not having any guests for Easter dinner.You each get 1/4 of the plum pie. ;-)

Clear out your fridge (and freezer) chili

With the Spring sale from Rancho Vignola coming up, I wanted to be sure I had ample space to store my goodies.  I had chili at Heather's not too long ago, and although I ate my fair share, with so much good food to sample from, I didn't get quite enough to quench my cravings, so for this fridge clear out, chili won over soup.  Start with a crock pot and throw in whatever is taking up valuable date storage space is my recipe for this ;-)

In this particular batch, the base ingredient was a few containers of crushed, then frozen tomatoes from last years garden.  Next I threw in some chickpeas, navy beans, green peppers, onion, garlic and lots of chili powder.  Oh, and kidney beans from a can.  Then I left it to sit on low for hours.  In the last couple of hours of cooking, I added some cooked rice and grated carrots.  A yummy, simple meal ready at dinnertime and more room in your fridge and freezer. What a bonus ;-) 

Does size matter?

Well...if you like chocolate it does. :-)
Have you ever seen anything so amazing? Me neither. I didn't know there even was such a thing as a chocolate bar this big. Thankfully I have a friend who is very smart about such things. Dark chocolate with almonds and local cherries. It's so pretty I can hardly bear to open it. (wha ha ha ha) Thank you lovely friend. ;-)

Popcorn!

Here's a fun book to read if you are a popcorn fan. The boys and I read it and then, strangely enough, we started to feel a bit peckish...we needed a snack.

It seemed only sensible to have popcorn. E decided to try his "Almanzo style" with some milk and a bit of sugar over it. W said it tasted like "soggy popcorn" - surprise, surprise. ;-) E liked it.

I had mine with butter and Herbamare (have I ever said how hooked I am on Herbamare?).

For years we've eaten our popcorn with a seasoning mix that I mix up. We pop the corn and then drizzle it with some oil (usually olive or grapeseed with a bit of flax) and then sprinkle on the seasoning mix. The mix includes nutritional yeast (very yummy!), oregano, chili powder and sea salt. Speaking of which I totally forgot to make it on the last movie night. I can't believe you didn't remind me - especially you, Samantha. ;-) I guess we need another movie night to make up for it.

Quick and easy from the bread machine

And did I mention delicious??

My hands are really sensitive to moisture, especially in the winter, so I try to stay away from things that leave my hands wet for extended periods of time.  This is why I'm so thankful for my bread machine, which mixes and kneads my dough for me - all I have to do is pull it out (knead a tiny bit of flour in if necessary) and plop it in the pan.  I was thrilled to discover a website full of bread machine recipes that actually turn out for me (and that don't cook in the bread pan because I prefer to cook my bread in the oven)

First up is:

Raisin bread.  Filled with sweet, juicy raisins and cinnamon, it makes for a delicious breakfast or snack.  The recipe can be found here.  Did I make any changes to the recipe?  Of course :-)  Instead of softened butter, I used an equal amount of olive oil (I usually don't think far ahead enough to soften butter but oil is always ready for baking).  I also used 1/2 whole wheat flour instead of all unbleached white flour and I always add the raisins at the beginning or else I find they don't mix as well into the bread.  Oh, and sometimes I add honey instead of sugar.  I love the wonderful scent as it bakes in the oven, and we can never resist having a slice (or two) as soon as it comes out.

The other recipe I've tried and loved:
It's officially called Crunchy Wheat and Honey Bread (and is found here) but we renamed it to Our Very Favourite Bread.  Changes I've made?  Same with the butter as above (sub in olive oil) and I omit the slivered almonds (allergies).  Also, I just make my own shape and put it on a cookie sheet - sometimes I do a round loaf, but it's usually oval - and sometimes I add in sunflower or pumpkin seeds.  No matter what, it's always turned out great!  Happy baking!

Lentil Quinoa Soup

Yummy!  I found this slow cooker recipe last night in the January 2009 Alive Magazine and happily had all the ingredients to make it.

I made it first thing in the morning, so the delicious smell wafted through the house all day (very welcome after shoveling more snow!)  It's filled with lentils, quinoa and tomatoes from the garden (that I crushed in the fall and froze).  So good!

I checked on the Alive website and they don't have it listed in their recipe section yet, so I thought I would post a copy for anyone who wants to make it but doesn't have access to the free magazine.  Unfortunately, blogger decided that it should be posted on it's side...
I highly recommend this recipe (if you click on it to make it big, it should be easy to read.  The flash didn't really cover anything important up)  I have a fairly big slow cooker, so next time I would add more broth and quinoa, and more tomatoes too (I don't think I used as much as they suggested).  I omitted the carrots in my version and added a bit of Braggs (a tamari/soy sauce) to it as well.  It's definitely a great starting point and a delicious way to warm up after a day in the snow!

Favourite Tiger Butter Recipe

Last year E made tiger butter to give as a gift to some of his favourite males (we always find it easy to think of gifts for the females in our family but the guys prove a bit tougher). He loved making it and has already made one batch this year to give as a birthday gift. It was well received so I thought I would share the recipe here. ( this is in his words as he also wrote it out as a submission for a newsletter)



Tiger Butter
About 1 lb white chocolate pieces ( from the bulk bin in your grocery store)
1/2 c. smooth peanut butter
bit of dark chocolate to make stripes

Melt the white chocolate over a double boiler or very carefully in heavy pot. Add peanut butter and blend until smooth.
Pour white chocolate/peanut butter mixture onto an oiled cookie sheet and spread out a bit. Let set for a bit. While you are doing this start to melt the bit of dark chocolate in a separate pot. Drizzle the melted dark chocolate over the white chocolate/peanut butter mixture in small lines. You are making this look like tiger stripes. Cool in fridge. Break into chunks. Eat, share or give as gifts.


**We are calling it white chocolate here because then people know what we are talking about but in my house we would say that with much scorn in our voices - how can it be called chocolate when it isn't even chocolate??? I like to refer to it as white confection...it certainly has its place and it is delightful in this recipe...but chocolate it is Not!!

A fun experiment

Amanda, this is your three pounds of chocolate. How well do you trust me with it?

(I expect to see her knocking on my door within the hour) ;-)

Simple and Delicious Pea Soup

This is one of my families favourite cool weather meals, and it really is simple to make.  I have altered the recipe so that there is no chopping involved (making it super simple) but it's a basic recipe that can be played with and new things added in for variety.

Pea Soup

4 cups of vegetable broth (or chicken broth if you prefer)

2 cups of water

1 cup green split peas

1 cup long grain brown rice

1 bay leaf

sprinkle of thyme, basil, chives, and parsley (or 1 tbsp each of fresh but don't add until final minutes of cooking)

little sprinkle of pepper

Put everything into a pot and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer (giving it the occasional stir) until rice and peas are cooked (approx 50 minutes).  Remove from heat, remove bay leaf and stir in:

2 tbsps of miso dissolved in 2 tbsps of water (but I leave this out when I don't have any miso and it still tastes great)

Some options you could try are carrots added during the last 15 minutes of cooking, or else kale/spinach/other leafy green added with the miso.

Enjoy!

Autumnal Equinox treats (or how to choose a husband)

My friends all tell me that I've got it pretty good with my husband. I know it. I chose carefully. ;-) One of the first things to tip me off that he was a keeper was that he baked for me. Chocolate chips cookies. What more did I need to know?

He is also an excellent pie man. Last night he made us a delicious dinner with pumpkin pie (his speciality) for dessert as part of our equinox celebration. We enjoyed our fire while sitting on a beautiful walnut bench he built out of a friend's walnut tree - saved it from being cut into firewood - and recycled concrete planters. Is that my kind of guy or what? Happy equinox.

Bean recipes? Anyone?

It is possible that I have managed to get a little bit carried away in my desire to stock up on food and reduce trips to the grocery store. Still not sure just where I will be storing all these.

I was just thinking that I better find some cookbooks with a whole lot of bean recipes in them when I opened the Jamie at Home cookbook (that finally came from the library) last night and I found his Humble Bean recipe. Yay! Still, I think I need some more recipes...and some more gallon jars.

Who doesn't love to look at canning?

Because I think canning is beautiful! If I could, I would build sculptures out of it and marvel at it's beauty every day! Alas, it has to be stored in a cool, dark place and my sculptures would be unseen - but I can still make little towers here and there.

Here is my last batch of salsa for this year. I'm hoping it's enough to make it through a full year - I shall have to monitor salsa intake to make sure no one has gone over their daily limits.

I would have liked to make more but it was not meant to be. I learned a lesson this year - do not wait until September to buy your canning lids. Lots of little sizes were available, but none for my big quart jars. Luckily, I had some left from last year and I borrowed some from new jars I bought this year because all I had was big quart jars and I need something smaller...

for jam! It's my first year doing jam and it is very, very exciting to me!

Here is my strawberry jam. It is so very delicious - strawberries picked from my garden and sweetened with honey. I've realized I've become a bit of a jam snob. Heather spoiled me with her tasty homemade jam and now I find store bought doesn't cut it. There was one passable jam that was fruit juice sweetened, but I'm finding other jams in this world are too sugary sweet for me. It was no surprise why when I read some canning recipes and saw how much sugar went into them! That was one reason why I hadn't yet tackled jam, but thanks to Heather, I found a low sugar recipe that doesn't overwhelm the flavour of the fruit. I also did blackberry jam with the blackberries from our bushes but no photo exists. You will have to trust me.

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I also wanted to do peach jam, but we are so enjoying the box of peaches from our tree that taking a big chunk of them to mash up seemed so wrong. Then we stumbled across a huge stack of 29 cent/lb juice peaches at a local packing house and I ended up buying as much as I could carry out. Seemed sad to leave them to spoil, just because they weren't "perfect" enough to sell. Most got chopped up for smoothies but one box became jam.

Isn't it pretty? Am I the only one who thinks canning is beautiful?

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By mid afternoon, I was finished canning and the only thing left to do was let it cool. L and I went outside to play some games, but mostly I spent my free time laying on a blanket, staring at this:

How lucky I felt to be laying in the grass, enjoying the warm weather that I will miss so much in a month or so. If I could have, I would have had a little siesta, then and there. But that wasn't in my sons plans. He was collecting tomatoes...

There are my beauties. I've know these tomatoes since their plants were tiny seeds in my hand. I should know what kinds they are, but I don't. It's a sad story. I started out so organized, seeds planted in their tiny starter cells with a little map drawn up, labelling what seed was in what cell. We watered them, we talked to them, we sent them happy growing vibes. Then, one sad day, I was carrying the tray back to the window sill and it buckled and fell to the ground. I sunk to my knees and quietly sobbed, not because of the dirt spread out all over my kitchen floor, but for all the tiny newly sprouted seeds revealed in the dirt spread out all over my kitchen floor. Then my hero, my husband, rushed into the room wearing a white shirt and tan coloured breeches, and put the little seedlings back into cells. Happily, they became small plants which turned into huge tomato bearing plants, but my map of who's who was completely thrown off. But it all turned out okay. And these lovelies became crushed tomatoes for winter soups and sauces.
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I'm not done with dealing with food yet. Oh no. Not by a long shot. Canning, yes. Done. 100% done for the year. But Amanda came by with a little delivery for me...

Beans anyone? Sitting there we have 200 lbs of beans (which I'm splitting with Heather because I don't think even I could eat that many beans!), 50 lbs of whole wheat flour and (in my freezer) 25 lbs of rice. The goal of not having to do any grocery shopping is quickly being achieved.

Just a tomato?

I showed the boys this tomato that I picked this morning. W immediately began singing this tune. Aaaargh!! We only just got it out of our heads from when we heard it last time. E chimed in for the Ron Weasley part. ;-) At any rate, I think he might have a point. This tomato is rather Snape-ish. Speaking of which is any one else as sad as I am that the next movie has been postponed? I keep hoping it is just some ploy/hype to get people revved up about it and that it really will still come out in November but things are not looking good. Sigh.

Tomato Zucchini tart...sort of

Life in the garden is good at this time of year. We have been eating from the garden at every meal - peaches or blueberries with our breakfasts, tomatoes and salads at lunch and, of course, zucchini, tomatoes and beans at dinner.We also continue to enjoy the different flowers as they come into bloom. E made this flower arrangement for a neighbour to cheer her up. We have so much Rudbeckia right now and are really loving how long it blooms for and its different colours.And the Phlox...I am loving the Phlox.

I picked up Simply in Season from the library again because I remembered (from this post) that last year I had made a very yummy tomato/zucchini tart from it. So W made the crust and I started to put together this dinner.See how delicious it looks? Now, ask me how it looked once I remembered that I had to transfer it onto a baking sheet...and that the dough was getting very damp from the tomato juice and that was making it stick to the board...and that those tomatoes and zucchini that I had loaded it down with were heavy and making the dough stretch...and that I am not a patient person...especially when it is already 6pm and I am hungry.

**Note to self - next time roll out the dough, put it on the baking sheet and THEN add the toppings.

I think W ended up calling it a tomato, zucchini scramble instead of tart but it still tasted good and we ended our meal with E's chocolate peaches so it was all good.

Favourite cherry pie

A few years ago I found a recipe for plum pie in this Canadian Living cookbook, what I liked about it was the slight taste of walnuts mixed with the flavour of plums all encased in a bit of custard filling. It became one of my favourite pie recipes (I posted about it here last year) and I looked forward to plum season each year. I also filled my freezer with plums so that I could make it more often if I wanted. The other day as I was pitting cherries I thought that cherries might work just as well in the recipe. I tried it and it was delicious.
This recipe is so good that I could easily eat the whole pie myself...in one sitting...easily...and still want more, the problem is that so could the other three people I live with.

Behind the leaves...

yummy surprises are hiding. My strawberry patch has been a little neglected for the past week. I've been concentrating on painting walls, clearing weeds out of the garden and other mundane household chores. The strawberries are taking over the garden bed and I figured they were taking a bit of a summer break from producing berries when I saw a few little glimmers of red. Pushing aside the leaves I found this:

What a beauty! This is the biggest strawberry I have found in our patch this year. I brought it in to show my son and he admired it briefly before eating it. Oh well. I grabbed a bucket and headed back to see what else I could find.

Well, hello there... Seems the strawberries have been hiding on me. After snacking to my fill on blueberries and strawberries, I still had a few treats to bring into the house to share.

It's hard to get an idea of how many blueberries there are from the photo, but I would guess there is over 1 cup and still lots more to come on the bushes. Not bad for their first year! I think I could get used to this.

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In my meager bits of free time, I've been absorbing the most wonderful book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. This book was just the kick in the pants I needed to bring my focus back to a diet of local eating, especially at this time of year when there is so much local goodness available. I'm disappointed I missed out on asparagus season but I look forward to trying out other recipes from her book (which are also available in the above link - I can't recommend her zucchini orzo enough). I'm seeing a bigger veggie garden... I'm seeing more grass removed... I'm seeing my husband leaving town again...

Hot Weather Eating

What do you eat when the temperature goes past 30 degrees Celsius? I know I don't feel like standing in front of the stove cooking. So when it got super hot this week, I knew the only thing that I would be serving for dinner would be sandwiches and pasta salad.

The trick is to get up early enough (before it's too hot) to cook the noodles. After they cool, you can throw in any veggies you have in the fridge (here I used carrots, peppers, broccoli, cucumber, and peas). Other things I've had in my pasta salad are tomatoes, green onions, cauliflower, green beans and even chickpeas. The nice thing is you can add whatever you like. Add a bit of feta or other type of cheese, throw on your favourite salad dressing and let it all marinate until you are ready to eat. I did a huge bowlful here and it lasted for 3 days. And to really cool down, finish the meal with:

homemade ice cream! My husband has been on an ice cream making kick and here is a shot of chocolate chip mint ready to be scooped into a container for the freezer. It's the perfect way to cool down on a hot summer evening.

Snacks

Last week I was talking to a friend on the phone when E came in for a snack. I saw him take an orange (I had bought him some because I thought he was getting a cold) and disappear back outside. When I looked out later I saw this(lambsquarter, johnny jump up and chamomile petals, dill, currants, strawberry and dateball)

and watched as he made this

to roll up and eat. Yes, those are very unripe currants - they are, in fact, black currants, so you can imagine how much ripening they have to do to get from that hard green berry to the dark, almost black, purple berry they will become. But how can you complain when your kids likes fruit so much that he can't even wait for it to ripen?

Food to Live By

One of the books in that stack of library books I got was this one.

You know those kind of recipe books that have you drooling when you look through them? It's one of those. So many recipes with fresh veggies...makes me wish I had more stuff ready in the garden. Lucky for me I still have stuff from last year's garden in the freezer.

I used up the last of the raspberries to make these raspberry cornmeal muffins. Yum!!I was going to see if I could link to the recipe but I couldn't find it on their website. However, I did find lots of others and they all sound good. (I am sooo making the Rustic Summer Crostada as soon as I have enough ripe tomatoes) Here is the link.

And if you want another recipe link for a yummy treat I put the requested pear cake one here.

Rhubarb cake recipe

See ladies, I can provide recipes too. ;-) Here is a link to the rhubarb cake recipe that I used last time.

rhubarb cake

I love the Best of Bridge series of books, so much yummy stuff in there. Since I already deleted my pics of the cake I will have to make do with more flower pictures. :-)