Trade-sies

So I've essentially given up on spinning at this point in my life.  I can say that now that I haven't used my wheel in almost a year.  I'm kind of sad, but every time I think of spinning I think how much knitting I could do instead ... it seems to appeal to me more, and thus I knit.

But I also garden now :)
I had no idea when I bought everything this spring how labour intensive and rewarding gardening is!  My mom has always been a gardener, and I have helped to put some of her flowers to rest on more than one occasion.  She shakes her head at me when I talk about cross-pollination now, but I can't help it.  The difference: I grow food.

To the left

And to the right

• Blueberries
• Broccoli
• Herbs
• Lettuce
• Raspberries
• Kale
• Tomatoes
• Garlic
• Onions

• Strawberries
• Green Bush Beans
• Jalapeno Peppers
• Serrano Peppers
• Bell Peppers
• and yet more onions ...

From a salad point of view, this little plot has been the best investment ever.  The lettuce and kale just keep giving, no matter how I abuse them, and the broccoli was the sweetest I have ever had.  The berries will be much more exciting next year, I'm sure.  Few things I know I'll never plant again:

• Zucchini - way too big for such a small space
• Spinach - I suck at it
• Green Beans - no one likes them but me ;)
• Broccoli - it pains me to say this a little because it was so tasty, but massive amount of real estate as well.  We'll see.

My favourite part of this whole endeavour is doing it with the gingersnap.  She loves to plant, water, and eat almost everything we have grown!  A few more close-ups?  I think so!

Blueberries and rosemary

Garlic lowers and a yet to flower clematis

Beautiful, delicious tomatoes

All kinds of peppers!

Many lovely zucchinis

So Now That's Done ...

I'm finished school.  Excellent.  And there's no point in even thinking about jobs for a week or so, thus I get to do more fun things now!
We just came back from a lovely holiday and all I want to do is spend time in the kitchen and garden (I want to talk about the garden separately because I need to devote some time to it ;) ).  First up, BBQ sauce.  It is super hot and muggy here and we bought ribs yesterday for some friends coming over for dinner and I was inspired.

The Barbeque Sauce recipe came from a quick search on Tastespotting, and I will definitely be adding that blog to my frequently surfed.  It is totally delicious, even after a few dicey substitutions:

• 1 tablespoon EVOO
• 1/2 a finely chopped onion
• 1/2 a minced jalapeños
• 3 smoked garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon spicy brown mustard
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon garlic scape salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 cup homemade ketchup
• 1/2 cup fresh blueberries

I cooked everything up according to her instructions, and used one of the most exciting purchases from my trip - smoked baby garlic.  

Having not made anything without this wonderful product, I'm not sure about what difference it made to the flavour, but I would like to think a lot since my whole kitchen reeks of the stuff ;)

The other wonderful ingredient that I have access to is garlic scape salt.  

This stuff is gold - it can turn the most boring dish into something fantastic.  Get some if you can!!

We're also talking a lot about sugar content in our house right now, being not super healthy people, but wanting to be.  So I subbed out the brown sugar for honey, the apricot preserves for fresh blueberries, and I made my own ketchup.  Again with mods:

• 13 oz can of tomato paste
• 2 cups of water
• 4 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
• 3 tbsp of Grade A maple syrup
• 2 cloves finely chopped garlic
• 2 tbsp finely chopped onion
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp all spice
• 1/2 tsp garlic scape salt

This is settling in the fridge right now - it might need some more maple syrup.  I halved the quantity ... 

Anywho - that was the first day home in my kitchen and it was wonderful!

Everyday Bread

I found today that my favorite source for bread recipes is missing :(
I'm not sure what is going on but since I make this *at least* once a week, I'm recording this case I have a brain fart one day and need a reference.

This is, I think, what the recipe from www.thekneadforbread.com is.  Either that or it is my interpretation of it!
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Ingredients

1 cup rolled oats
2 cups boiling water

3 tsp yeast
1 tbsp soft unsalted butter
1/2 cup molasses
1 tsp salt

2 cups whole wheat bread flour
~2 cups white bread flour

Putting it Together

Pour the boiling water over the rolled oats and leave until cooled.

Add all the other ingredients, minus the flour, and mix with a bread hook until well blended.  Add the whole wheat flour and mix until well blended.  Add the white flour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough is dry enough that it doesn't stick too badly when poked.

Let sit in the bowl, covered, until it has visibly risen to about double its size (this can take up to 2 hours).
Preheat oven to 350 F
Transfer dough to 2 bread pans, cover and place on top of warming oven.  Wait until they double in bulk (usually only about a half hour).

Bake bread for about 35 minutes, or until the top crust is brown and a knock on the bottom of the pan sounds hollow.

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This yields me 2 rather short loaves of bread.  As I have lots of time right now, I make this whenever we're running low.
My plan for the fall is to double it and hopefully get 3 normal sandwich loaves from it.  Two for us and one for my parents, but only need to make it once a week!

Happy Late Mother's Day

As we spent most of Mother's Day in the car this year, and my traditional gift is to make dinner for my mom and mother-in-law (and any other family that cares to show up), we postponed it by a week.  It was a lovely evening - I made pineapple chicken with rice, salad and roasted veggies.  Quite tasty but *I* think that dessert stole the show.


Doesn't that look delicious?!?  I got both recipes from Ezra Pound Cake - the crisp is her strawberry rhubarb cobbler and I topped it (as the post suggested) with her maple gelato.  I made only one change per recipe - and they would both be *perfect* as written - the gelato was made as ice cream and I put candied ginger in the crisp topping.  Because candied ginger should be in everything.  Just so you know.

An Apple a Day

At the beginning of the year, we started having SPUD delivering our produce and milk once a week.  It's pretty awesome.  Our deliveries are every Thursday and this means by Wednesday I'm looking to finish up the stuff from last week.  We have had some definite flops ... for example we will never put parsnips and beets in the same stir fry again :P

But last week I had a surprising success!

Firstly, please don't judge the colour of my cheese - I'm finishing up the last few boxes of Annie's mac and cheese that Lukie likes.  I would prefer if the focus is on what is added to it and the potential I feel this has if I made it properly!

The idea started with a recipe posted by Naturally Ella, and was changed based on my leftover SPUD veggies:

1. Sautée some onions and garlic together in EVOO on medium heat until the onions were translucent, then add a medium, peeled sliced up sweet potato.  Cook that until the sweet potato is soft, but not finished then add 1-2 sliced (not peeled) apples.  Finish of this concoction by adding 2 de-cased chorizo and continue leave on the heat until the sausages are cooked.
2. At the same time get your mac and cheese going, whether it be from a box or from scratch.
3. Get a bigger serving dish and mix the contents of both pots together, and lastly mix in a couple of generous handfuls of kale until it is wilted.

I only used kale because that's what I had, and I feel that it wilts just as nicely as spinach.  I added the chorizo because it's hard to sell Lukie on a vegetarian dinner (and who doesn't love chorizo ;) ) and the apple was added as an after thought because it was to soft to eat on its own but I really liked the combination!!

I think what I really love about this dinner is that very shorty it will be something that the whole family will be able to enjoy!  It's always at the back of my mind when I cook now - the more often there's only one dinner to prepare, the more successful I can be at getting us all fed!

Where 2 Hobbies Meet

I have had a love of cooking for quite some time now, but it has only been recently that I worry about sourcing.  The organic label doesn't matter so much to me as the local (ish) one ... so we've been eating a *lot* of root veggies and apples.  But there is hope - I found this yesterday:

Let's look more closely at this, shall we?

It made my little heart sing :) I actually didn't see these until I was finished paying in the grocery store, but quickly made a u-turn and bought 2 overpriced bags.  I'm very excited.  Now we just need green onions back and I'll be one happy camper!

But I digress.  I started out with this topic because of what the gingersnap eats!  Her first good veggie mix was squash and zucchini baked with some sage.  We have graduated from that (because I couldn't find any more squash) to sweet potato, green peas, apple, garlic, and sage.

Mixed with a bit of olive oil and baked for an hour or so there is no blender required - it mushes quite nicely on it's own!  Served with 9% MF Greek yoghurt and blueberries I feel like she's getting all the appropriate food groups ...

Most of our lunches have become finger food because there's only so much of my life I want to dedicate to spoon feeding her so little chunks of mozzarella or bocconcini and shredded chicken makes up her protein.  Those cookies I spoke of and cheerios make up the rest.  For the chicken, I use the President's Choice Free From line of products and bake it with some shallots and rosemary, again in olive oil (covered) for about 40-45 minutes.  We often share this part of her lunch - it's pretty tasty!

The last thing I wanted to share is the most recent addition to her meals - oatmeal.  I know we could have had it a long time ago, but I don't like it and thus she didn't get it ;) I needed something quick today, so oatmeal with apples and nutmeg seemed like a good choice.  She, like she does with many first bites, thought this was the worst food ever, but after a few bites I could tell this was going to become a favorite.

I have real problems getting her fed by family members because of this face.  It's deceptive!  But it we gave up every time she made it, I would still be exclusively nursing my 10 month old.  Perseverance.  I read somewhere that if after the 15th time you've tried a food you may have something they won't eat.  Before that, keep trying :)

Favorite Dinner

My parents got back from a spring break trip early yesterday morning, so since they had to work in the morning and I have lots of time on my hands, we brought dinner there last night.  It's one of our favorites, but it always takes me by surprise how much time it takes to prepare!

These are the makings for Vietnamese Spring Rolls (minus the rice paper): homemade peanut sauce, baked prawns, radishes, cucumber, carrots, fresh cilantro, and rice noodles.  That's it.  Yet somehow we were an hour later than I intended.

On top of taking a long time to prepare I learned a few things that I probably should have known about myself:

1. My kitchen is very dark and there is really only one spot at all conducive to photography.  Right there on my stove
2. This means my stove must be clean :P

Since baby clearly can't eat that, she had her standard squash, zucchini, long grain brown rice mixture, 9% MF Greek Yoghurt with blueberries we froze last year, Cheerios, and her favorite cookie (the first recipe on the page).  

Up for tonight?  Chicken drumsticks, couscous cakes, and our new favorite salad :)