Messy (Delicious) Christmas

In case you were wondering what it looks like to make cinnamon rolls with five kids:

Pumpkin Spice Latte, anyone?

I'm going to try making this recipe this week!  

My Poor Camera, My Poor Knees, and a Fun Dessert Idea

I've been cheating on my Nikon with Steve's iPhone lately.  It's so fun to take photos with the Instagram app.  And the phone weighs significantly less than my camera.  And it fits in Steve's pocket.  I'm finding it hard to lug around my camera AND baby paraphernalia AND three-year old paraphernalia AND four-year old paraphernalia AND my own paraphernalia.  It's a good thing I decided to do a Project 52 instead of a Project 365 this year!

Here is an Instagram photo taken with the iPhone: 

After 7 weeks of knee pain, I went to the doctor and found out that I'm predisposed for knee issues.  Apparently the tendon attached to the top of my knee curves off to the side... it's called a Q-curve, or something.  So, any time I bend my knee the joint could rub the wrong way, because it's being pulled to the side by my quirky tendon.  It's in my genes.   If I faithfully do my leg lift-exercises I should be able to squat and lunge and sit Indian-style again-- someday.   Strengthening the muscles around the knee will keep it straight so that the joint moves correctly.  Everyone look down at your knees-- if the tendon protruding at the bottom doesn't make a straight line to your leg bone, be sure to keep your quad muscles strong!

One of the few pictures I've taken this month was of Mom Deterding's birthday "cake".  It's actually a cakestand holding trifles served in individual-sized canning jars.  We had german chocolate cake+chocolate pudding+whipped cream, and pound cake+lemon curd+strawberries+whipped cream.

Fun idea for a summertime dessert!

Tying On the Aprons Again

Grace loves watching cooking shows.  Today she wanted to watch a show called "Primal Grill", all about...well, grilling huge hunks of red meat.  Recipes fascinate her, and we love to bake together.  Today I was finally feeling up to getting back in the kitchen and making something from scratch, with a lot of ingredients, instead of napping.

Grace was there to help! We made Lemony Olive Oil Banana Bread with chocolate chips- the perfect solution if you happen to have four very very ripe bananas and some lemons lying around, like I did.  And olive oil in baked goods turned out to be pretty yummy.

I made this the theme of my Project 52 for the week.  The recipe can be found at The Kitchen Sink.

I Finally Fed Them Something Healthy

The list of foods I'm craving include ice cream, cheesesteak subs, and especially anything salty.  Salty and fried- even better.  This is terrible.  In the first two trimesters of this pregnancy, I actually felt an aversion to fruit and vegetables, with the exception of juice.  Was it in my head?  I'm not sure, but I have to force myself to eat healthy foods.  The other day, I had a refrigerator full of odds and ends and had to make a meal, preferably not from scratch.  This salad came to our rescue!  I really liked it and thought I'd share the recipe.

Brown Rice and Spinach Salad

adapted from marthastewart.com

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons red-wine vinegar

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

1 garlic clove, minced

1/4 teaspoon sugar

Coarse salt and ground pepper

2 cups cooked brown rice

2 cups baby spinach

1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved

grilled chicken breast, cubed

blue cheese or feta

In a large bowl, whisk together the oil, vinegar, garlic, dill, and sugar.  Add the rice (leftover!), spinach, tomatoes, chicken (leftovers!), and cheese.  Toss to coat and serve with crusty bread.  And then ice cream (just kidding!!)

She Turned Two

Leah can't believe that it's been three months since her second birthday party and I'm only just now getting pictures posted on the internet.

Although it's a little late, I thought I'd share a few photos anyway!  As always, we crammed as much family as possible into our little house and had a great time watching the cutie pie birthday girl do her thing:

Best fruit dip recipe (you can see it in the bowl in the picture below):
Combine one small box of vanilla pudding mix, 1 tub of Cool Whip, and 16 oz. can of crushed pineapple, with the juices.

Oh my, did Leah enjoy her cake.  She was in the midst of her highly-restricted diet to kill the rampant yeast in her gut, but at her party she enjoyed a cake full of gluten, eggs, and sugar!

Happy (Belated) Birthday to our sweet Leah-loo!  You are just as cute, cuddly, and charming as ever.

Recipe: White Bean Bruschetta

I made this recipe a while ago and LOVED it, so I took a picture.  After I garnished it.  (I don't usually garnish my lunch!)

I found this recipe on  Lisa's  food blog- she's super sweet and makes delicious food, so be sure to check out her blog, Lime in the Coconut.

Ingredients:

1 can of white cannelini beans, rinsed

6 oz. prosciutto, chopped (or you can use pancetta, as Lisa did)

3 cloves garlic, chopped

2-3 Tbsp. fresh rosemary, chopped

2 Tbsp. olive oil

salt and pepper

goat cheese (Lisa used grated Romano cheese.  I'm going through a goat cheese phase right now)

french baguette, sliced

Brown the prosciutto in a skillet.  When it's crispy, remove to a plate.  Add one Tbsp. olive oil to the empty skillet, then add the garlic.  Saute until the garlic is soft, then add the rosemary, cooked prosciutto, and beans.  Cook until the rosemary has softened and the beans are well-coated.  Season to taste with salt and pepper, then remove from the skillet and keep warm while you toast the baguette slices.  To make the toasts, brush each side lightly with olive oil and toast right in the same skillet until golden brown.

I like to spread goat cheese on one side of each toast then pile on the white bean mixture.  Drizzle with a bit more olive oil and serve warm.  YUM!  

The Home List: What I'm Trying Part 2

I'm no expert at any of this, I'm flying by the seat of my pants!  The last time I wrote about the new things I'm trying around here, I mentioned home-grown food and canning/preserving.  Next on my list is making more food from scratch.  My luke-warm feelings about making homemade food instead of buying processed food were intensified when I watched Food, Inc. with Steve the other night.

If you haven't seen it, you should.

I promised Steve that there was no way I'd ever make our family eat vegan (no way), but I wouldn't mind cutting out some refined flour and high-fructose corn syrup.  And yesterday I forked over a few extra dollars for cage-free organic eggs and chicken. Once I look at my budget I'll let you know if it was worth it.

MAKING FOOD FROM SCRATCH:

Grace and I made some whole wheat tortillas for yesterday's lunch.  The recipe was Tex-Mex, so the results were more like gorditas than tortillas, but they were really delicious.  Like flatbread, almost.  Definitely better than store-bought flour tortillas.

Here's the recipe, courtesy of HomesickTexan:

2 cups flour (I used 1 cup unbleached and 1 cup whole wheat)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp oil
3/4 cup warm milk (I used almost 1 cup)

Combine all the ingredients except for the milk in a large bowl.  Slowly add the warm milk until a sticky ball forms.  Turn out on a lightly floured surface and knead for a couple minutes until the dough is firm and smooth.  Cover with a damp towel and let rest for 20 minutes.  Divide the dough into 8 pieces, roll into balls, cover with the damp towel and let rest for 10 minutes.

Roll each ball into a thin 8-inch circle.  Cook in a hot iron skillet on high heat; 30 seconds per side.

In the past, I've also liked making my own bread, granola, baking mix, kefir, chocolate pudding, and pasta sauces.  The hard part is being consistent.  I try to think like Ma Ingalls and have a certain day of the week for baking, but it doesn't always work out.  What foods do you like to make for yourself?

Those Italians Know How to Eat...

I enjoyed a delicious lunch this past weekend and a little organic cafe in DC.  The company is what made it fabulous, but the food was excellent as well.  We ordered a Tuscan platter, and this is what it included:

two kinds of crusty bread
sun-dried tomato and olives with spring lettuce
black olive tapenade
fresh ricotta cheese garnished with radish
prosciutto
shaved parmesan
melon

Some time in the future I'm going to serve a meal like this to company, instead of worrying about preparing a big hunk of meat and several complicated side dishes.  Simple can be the best sometimes; maybe you'd like to try a meal like this, too-- no cooking required!  I'm off to Trader Joe's for some prosciutto...

Recipe: Cake Mix Cookies

I'm generally a bake-it-from-scratch kind of snob, but yesterday was my day to deliver a meal to friends from church who have a new baby girl, and I needed a quick dessert.  Enter in the random box of cake mix left over from a buy-one-get-one-free deal and the icing left over from making Grace's birthday cake pops.

Easy, yummy, cakey cookies-- good for friends and good for keeping Steve happy in the after-practice snack department.

Here's the recipe~

1 box cake mix
1 egg
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup oil
1 cup of chocolate chips, chopped nuts or candy, etc.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix all ingredients together.  Drop by teaspoonfulls onto baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes, or until centers are just set.

I used buttercream icing on these, but I once had cookies made with spice cake mix and topped with cream cheese frosting...DELISH!

Heather's Brief Moment in the Spotlight (Sort Of)

I'd like to dedicate this moment to Aunt Candy (I know she'll read this) because she alone is responsible for introducing me to make-at-home funnel cakes, and for serving them to her adoring nieces and nephews for breakfast.

Here it is:
Pioneer Woman likes my funnel cakes.

Blizzard Food: Spicy Chicken & Black Bean Soup

Sometimes in the kitchen I like to make things up as I go- and soup is no exception. I found two soup recipes that I wanted to try, but didn't have the complete ingredient list for either of them. To add to tonight's supper challenge, Steve is a rather picky soup eater.

I decided to take the essentials of my found recipes, mix them together, and make the rest up as I went along. This method doesn't always work out as well as I hope, but after Steve ate one spoonful of this concoction I knew that Heather's Spicy Chicken and Black Bean Soup had made its way from his stomach straight to his heart xoxoxoxo. We have a winner! Grace and Leah loved it, too.

Here's the slow-cooker recipe I came up with:

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into small pieces

2 cans Cuban-style black beans, you can find them here

1 can sweet corn

1/2 cup chopped green, red, and/or yellow peppers, mine were frozen

2 large cloves garlic, minced

16 oz. salsa

2 tsp. cayenne or chili seasoning

2 tsp. cumin

16 oz. chicken broth

1 1/2- 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1/4 cup sour cream

2 Tbsp. flour

1/4 cup milk

Add the first 9 ingredients to your slow cooker. Give it a stir, cover, and set on "low".

Go about your day feeling like a superwoman since dinner is essentially done.

An hour or so before serving, stir in the cheese. Combine the sour cream, flour, and milk (I added the flour and milk to the sour cream container, which was almost empty, then snapped the lid back on and gave it a good shake). Stir the flour mixture into the soup, then continue to cook with the lid off to thicken.

Serve with chopped cilantro and green onions. I think that a healthier version, made without the flour mixture or the cheese, would still be delicious.

But we like the cheese.

More Blizzard Baking: Bread Sculpture

Clockwise, starting from the far left: panda bear head by Grace, braid by Steve, over-easy egg by Steve, snail by Heather, and in the center is a bird with a cracked head, by Heather.

This recipe satisfies both the baker and the artist in me. It was a little challenging for an 18 month old and maybe even an almost-3 year old, but sculpting bread dough gave us a good 15 minutes of something "different" to do, and it made a really tasty, warm snack straight from the oven. In case you didn't know, my girls are all about snacking.

I simply made this really quick bread dough recipe and then gave the raw dough to the girls to sculpt into whatever shape they wanted. Steve and I joined in, too. We put the finished raw masterpieces on parchment paper, arranged them on a baking sheet, and then baked them. They got a little puffy in the oven, but it was a worthwhile activity even if the end result was not recognizable!

I first came across this recipe, actually called "bread sculpture", a few years ago when I was a teacher/nanny. One change I would make to the recipe is to add more flour to the dough-- I think it would make the dough more sturdy and less likely to deflate into a blob during the sculpting process.

1 package active dry yeast

1 cup warm water

1 tsp. sugar

2 cups flour

1 Tbsp. oil

1 tsp. salt

Mix the water, sugar, and yeast in a bowl. Let sit until foamy.

Add 1 cup flour and stir with a wooden spoon. Beat until smooth, then add the oil and salt. Stir.

Add the second cup of flour and stir until smooth. (*I needed to add 3-4 Tbsp. more flour at this point, my dough was much too sticky)

Turn out onto a well-floured surface and knead for 5 minutes, adding more flour if you need to, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Place in an oiled bowl, cover, and let rise for 45 mins.

Punch down the dough and work into a smooth ball in your hands. Create sculptures!

Bake sculptures for 15 minutes in a 400 degree oven, or until golden. Remove from pan to cool.

We enjoyed our panda head, snail, braid, egg, and bird with butter and boysenberry jam!

p.s. For our snowed-in Superbowl viewing pleasure, I made another batch of this dough, and after letting it rise I divided it into two equal pieces, rolled each piece into a long rectangle, then arranged pepperoni, ham, roasted red pepper, and mozzarella cheese down the centers. I folded the long edges in and pinched them together to seal, flipped them over seam-side down on a baking sheet, cut some slits down the center, baked at 385 degrees for 20 minutes, and viola! Stromboli!

This dough is really versatile. What would you create with it?

Blizzard Baking

These are two lovely loaves of bread on their last rising. I made Martha's Honey Whole Wheat Bread yesterday, since we ran out of bread and there were no snow plows in sight. I just realized that I have a honey thing going on...it's so yummy.

The bread was delicious-- great plain or with butter and sturdy enough to use for sandwiches.

3 1/2 cups warm water

3 Tbsp. honey

2 packets active dry yeast

4 cups bread flour (I used all-purpose with great results)

3 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup wheat germ

2 Tbsp. salt

Combine water, honey, and yeast. Let stand for 10 minutes, til foamy.

In a large bowl, whisk together 3 1/2 cups bread flour, whole wheat flour, wheat germ, and salt. Make a well in the center and pour in the yeast mixture. Use a wooden spoon to stir.

Turn the dough onto a well-floured surface. Knead the remaining 1/2 cup bread flour into the dough, 10-15 minutes. ( barely made it 10 minutes-- as long as the dough is smooth and elastic, you should be ok, even if you don't knead as long as Martha does.)

Place the dough in a well-oiled bowl, cover and let rise until double, 1-1 1/2 hours.

Punch down, divide into two oiled loaf pans. Cover and let rise until doubled, 30-45 minutes (see photo above).

Bake 50-60 minutes at 400 degrees, until golden.

Blizzard Food

Since Saturday, I've had a great time cooking and baking some new recipes...since, you know, we've kinda been stuck at home. Steve encouraged me to share them on the blog, and I thought that would be fun. As well as a nice change of pace from the usual.

Blizzard recipe #1 is Fruitalicious Honey Oatmeal, adapted from the Quaker Oats website (to give credit where credit is due).

3 1/2 cups water

1/4 cup honey

1/3 cup dried fruit (I used pitted dried dates), chopped

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

2 cups oats (quick or old-fashioned), uncooked

In a medium saucepan, bring the water, honey, dried fruit, and cinnamon to a boil. Once it's boiling, stir in the oats. Return the mixture to a boil and cook for about 5 minutes (for old-fashioned oats, only 1 minute for quick oats) or until it's thickened to your liking, stirring occasionally.

I served the oatmeal with chopped walnuts and a drizzle of honey. Great substitutes or add-ins include Craisins, dried apricots, or golden raisins.

Serves four.

Tomato Invasion

They started sprouting out of the compost, and there was no turning back.  Not that anyone around here is complaining (we love tomatoes), but cherry tomato plants took over our flower beds this year.  You can see the huge tomato bush in the picture above.  It's choking out my new lavender and rosemary plants, but we decided to let it grow-- no sense in all those tomatoes going to waste.  It was a good decision, I think, because most of the tomato crop at the farm where we purchased our CSA share was killed off by some sort of blight.

Grace always helps me with our daily harvest.  She reminds me to "only pick the RED ones, Mommy".  Usually any red tomatoes Grace finds end up in her mouth,  but on this particular day we managed to get a whole bowl full into the kitchen.  Where Grace washed them.  Then ate them.

Here's my new favorite way to eat cherry tomatoes, for those of you who are interested:

In a baking dish, toss a large handful of whole cherry tomatoes and some sliced hot peppers (like Anaheim) in some olive oil.  Season with sea salt and ground pepper then pop them into a 400 degree oven until they're soft and starting to char a teeny bit.  While the tomatoes are roasting, put a thick slice of crusty french bread in the oven next to the roasting pan, just until it's toasty.  Now you're ready to assemble the most delicious lunch ever~  rub a piece of fresh garlic over one side of the toast, spread the toast with goat cheese, then spoon a big helping of roasted tomatoes on top.  Garnish with chopped fresh basil.  It will smell and taste so delicious that you won't even bother to put it on a plate or grab a napkin, you'll eat it right over the sink like I did.  Then you'll make a second helping.