Posts from the ‘Food(ish)’ Category
My quest for the perfect homemade granola bar is over! Most are either too sweet or too goopy. These were largely adapted from the ‘Do-it-yourself power bars’ in Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking. They are yummy and healthy and can be adjusted endlessly (I have to say that AZ’s BOW pancake recipe has really upped my baking confidence).
Ingredients:
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil (this is to grease the pan. You could also substitute nut or vegetable oil)
- 1 1/4 cups rolled oats
- 3/4 cup nuts or seeds (toasted and chopped. You could also go nut-free and add more oats or rice cereal)
- 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut (or chocolate chips. If you use chocolate chips, wait and press them into the hot bars at the very end, otherwise they will melt and turn your bars brown!)
- 1/2 cup oat bran
- 1 1/2 cups crisped brown rice cereal (I use Natures Path Crispy Rice. You could also use Rice Krispies)
- 1 cup chopped banana chips or dried fruit (or both)
- 1 cup brown rice syrup (this is the secret not-too-sweet ingredient. Please let me know if you find a cheap brand!)
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Method:
- Grease a cookie sheet with coconut oil
- In a bowl, stir together all of the dry ingredients (except for the salt)
- In a small saucepan, stir the remaining ingredients (including salt) together over medium heat until they start to boil and thicken slightly
- Pour the hot liquid over the dry ingredients. Mix quickly until the dry ingredients are fully coated
- While the mixture is still hot, press it into the cookie sheet. If your are using chocolate chips, press them in now – quickly or they won’t stick! – you can also drizzle hot honey over the chocolate chips to increase the stick factor)
- Leave to cool. Cut into bars.
In a way, they are like healthy Rice Krispie Squares. Depending on what you put in, you may have to make adjustments to your dry/wet ratio. My first batch was awesome, my second batch was on the crumbly side. Good luck!
These photos were taken just before Christmas. We made traditional Latvian buns for the festivities. I seem to blog about these a lot. I am starting to think I am neglecting my own Scottish and Norwegian heritage. Though, I can’t say I am in any big rush to put together a Haggis. Maybe it is time to celebrate Robbie Burns Day with my loves? Cock-a-leekie soup and oatcakes are yummy. And, as I get older, I can appreciate a good scotch (now that I have stopped trying to mix it with Pepsi, for a teenagehood-night on the town with my friends).
It is so great that my babies can finally help with assembly! Even W. Though, he got tired pretty quick and just made bun blobs, without filling.
Piragi
Dough:
¾ cup milk
¼ cup soft butter
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. sugar
1 envelope dry yeast dissolved in ¼ cup warm water
1 beaten egg
3 ¼ to 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 egg (for glaze)
Method:
1. Scald milk and add butter, salt and sugar. Stir until butter melts.
2. When milk mixture is lukewarm, add the yeast mixture and beaten egg.
3. Add 2 cups of the flour and beat well (2-3 minutes).
4. Slowly add the rest of the flour (if necessary), beating after each addition. The dough should be pliable and not too stiff.
5. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes.
6. Spill dough onto floured board and knead for 5-6 minutes, until smooth and elastic.
7. Place dough in lightly oiled bowl, cover and let rise until doubled.
Filling:
4-5 slices bacon, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped fine
1 cup chopped, lean ham
¼ tsp. nutmeg (optional)
freshly-ground black pepper
Method:
1. Saute bacon and onion on medium heat until slightly browned. Drain off most of the fat.
2. Add the ham and heat through. Let cool.
3. When filling is cool and the dough has risen, form the piragi into crescent shapes.
4. Roll out a portion of the dough until it is quite thin.
5. Place a scant tsp. of filling in the center and fold the dough over. Cut the dough with a round cookie cutter and carefully press the edges closed. Shape into crescents, and place seam-side down on a lightly greased baking pan. Brush with a beaten egg.
6. Bake at 400 F for 13 to 18 minutes, depending on the size. Makes about 40 rolls.
I thought I would put in another plug for my mother-in-law’s book. I reread it over the holiday and I highly recommend it. It is packed with history, folklore, entertaining anecdotes and insight into what it felt like to be uprooted from your life and culture. Really, I couldn’t put it down.
A family friend has started a nutrition and life coaching business called Get Living. She conducted a Nutrition and Your Kids workshop at my sister’s house last night. Now, I am by no means perfect when it comes to my eating habits, but I am not a disaster either (though, I do tend to focus more on eating locally than the nutrition part). What is cool, is that I came home with a renewed focus on health and new information about the kinds of choices I should be making. Things like, what kind of olive oil to buy (cold-pressed, from the first pressing) and why I shouldn’t eat quite so much cold cereal (milk and cereal are both highly processed, Nature’s Path included). I will be grocery shopping with new enthusiasm and confidence. It was a fun and interesting night.
It was also nice to have the opportunity to chat with other moms about their experiences with kids and their eating habits. M has nice friends.
We have been making some progress with our mealtimes at home lately. The kids are starting to really ‘get’ the ritual of it, setting the table (with flowers, candles and silverware, of course), making conversation about what we learned during the day, complimenting things they like (no matter how small) and offering to clear the table. It also helps that AZ has a hilarious appreciation for food – and the memory of a goldfish (“This is the best dinner I have ever had!!” He is pretty enthusiastic). Maybe because bedtime is less work than it used to be… or maybe because we know that the kids will help with the dishes a teeny weeny bit… but we sit at the table longer (actually relaxing!). I love it.
S has a lucky birthday. The end of August. Reasonable enough for her to have a party with her multitude of cousins as well as her school friends. This year, I made her choose whether she wanted a cousin party or a school-friend party. She chose the school-friend party. However, because cousin R celebrates the same birthday three days before S, we couldn’t help but show a little spirit during those last days of summer vacation. Me and my sister M phoned an ice cream truck to come over for a surprise visit. It was rad. He gave us all kinds of sugary, gimmicky pops at a great price. Fun, easy insta-party. S and R:
This morning we took S’s school friends and their siblings and parents for a birthday hike. AZ and I hauled coffee, juice, peaches, loot bags and a giant, layered Chocolate Zucchini cake (in backpacks) up Mount Seymour. AZ and 30 kids decorated the cake with zip lock bags full of icing (AZ is the best, by the way). Amid some serious negotiation, beside the mountaintop lake, they came up with…
a horse jumping over a fern:
We picked wild blueberries and mountain huckleberries and drank coffee and got muddy. It was nice to visit with everyone so early in the school year. And thankfully, the rain stayed away.
The only thing I have to think through for next time would be a graceful system for gift-giving. Because it didn’t make sense to haul extra stuff up the hill, most of our guests presented their gifts in the parking lot. S then opened them at home. The gifts were so thoughtful and cool, I felt they should have had more fanfare. So, for next time… maybe a special present Sherpa? Or a present-opening session in the parking lot at the end? I do still toss and turn over the gift-giving and loot bag thing. You know, whether to ban them or collect a donation or some such thing… Leah’s post here helped me relax a bit. We don’t buy our kids many toys. Birthdays are the one time they get spoiled with cool stuff – stuff we wouldn’t normally buy and stuff S can get all excited about. She was over-the-moon today, that’s for sure.
The lake on a better-weather day:
Happy 7th Birthday my beautiful, kind-hearted S. We love you so much.
On occasion, I find this blog to be a rather handy archive. For example, when I need to know how many pounds of tomatoes to buy this year, I go here to find out how many I ordered last year.
Except we ran out of last year’s tomatoes in March… AND we held back on spaghetti and pizza dinners in order to preserve our stash of jars. So how many pounds do we order this year?? Tomato math is big here at the moment.
I went ahead and ordered fifty pounds of organic tomatoes from a colleague of AZ’s (not sure where she got them – Last year, I ordered them from Westham Island Herb Farm – they were lovely). I figured fifty pounds was plenty to deal with in one go. Now I am all set for round two. Say, 40 more pounds? Gulp! I am getting faster, following the recipe for “Cut-up plain tomatoes” from Putting Food By:
For some reason, I am getting slower at making salsa. It took me all day Sunday to make eleven 500ml jars. This salsa is amazing though. The recipe is here. It’s ridiculously time consuming to make, when you factor-in roasting the red peppers over the barbecue and seeding the chilies. I am going to put myself through it one more time (sorry family), because I have decided that homemade salsa and a bag of chips is going to be the coolest present of 2010-2011.
Does anyone have any other good salsa recipes? I made the Cheeky Chile Pepper Chutney from Jamie at Home. It is very yummy, especially on rice. Although, I am not sure how long it will store for. My boyfriend Jamie Oliver said a couple of months, but surely it’ll keep longer. Right? I am reluctant to make too much if it won’t last.
A couple of days after we got home, I was due in East Van to pick up some chickens. About fifty pounds… for the freezer. My sister once told me that she far preferred storing a portion of a cow in her freezer, rather than multiple chicken lives. I am trying not to think about how many lives I have in my freezer. Maybe it would feel better if I had raised and killed them myself? Hmmm… and plucked them – how is that for a fun activity with the kiddies? Anyhow, they are there and I have picked one out for Christmas. Yummy, pasture-raised, chemical and additive free chickens. Yippee.
AZ cooking chicken on a public grill in Visby: Does Vancouver have any of these public grills anywhere?
One the way to chicken-pick up, my babes and I went strawberry picking. And last night, we went raspberry picking… and AZ has ordered a whack of blueberries from a colleague at work. All of this, and I have managed to harvest and freeze some chard from my own uber-wee garden. I didn’t think we would get it together, but there it is. We’ll just keep plugging along as the crops ripen. There is a nice pace to it, really - and all hell doesn’t really break loose until the tomatoes are ready. But, by then, we’ve warmed up.
The canning bug hasn’t hit yet, but overall, I think we are on it. Let’s just hope the freezer doesn’t cut out on us.
Our new neighbourhood is full of them… which is very exciting, because remember how I like to forage?
Salmonberries are beautiful, but not very tasty. In my opinion anyway. I wonder if they are bit like rhubarb? Do they need a heap of cream and syrup to liven them up?? Anyone have any ideas?
We have managed to buy a big lot: a giant triangle, sitting where two streets merge. The previous owners were meticulous caretakers. The lawn was always green and neatly trimmed. The plants were always carefully pruned. One of the previous owners was commonly referred to as “Mr. Lawn”. You get the idea?
The front part of the triangle looks like a public park. In fact, many people don’t know that it actually belongs to the house. Teenagers rest on the grass on their way home from school. Now, I don’t really mind the communal nature of this, I just don’t want to maintain the neighbourhood park. I like my grubby yard space, with soccer balls and rowdy kids and a clumsy vegetable garden.
So… we have plans to claim the space. And, ahem…. wreck it (sorry!). We have designed a fence and have been on the look-out for free shrubs. Preferably native ones. (Anyone have any?)
I have also starting digging up the garden to make room for food. This year, we will plant a little food. If all goes well, we’ll plant more next year.
Passersby make many many comments about the previous owners and how we have “big shoes to fill” with regard to maintenance. Though I do feel a bit guilty about wrecking the place, I mostly just laugh and think about how surprised they’ll be to see the tomatoes and spinach where all of the ornamental shrubs used to be. Except those will be hidden by the fence. And I will be gardening in my PJs.
My friend J has the best ideas. A couple of years ago she threw a giant folk-dancing potluck party. The entire neighbourhood came. Friends played their fiddles, J led folk dances and many took turns washing dishes in the kitchen and maintaining the food tables. J really has the best ethic when in comes to community. These days, she’s working on starting a klezmer band. I could go on and on about J’s ideas.
She sent me this link the other day: http://www.granvilleonline.ca/gr/blogs/goods/2010/01/08/make-your-own-reuseable-food-wrap
How to make your own reusable food wrap out of fabric and beeswax! Brilliant!!
Of course, I bought some beeswax that very day.
The instructions are fairly straightforward: Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, then melt shredded beeswax into squares of fabric at 150 degrees Fahrenheit.
My only recommendation would be to use a patterned fabric to hide the beeswax splotches. My light pink fabric turned out like this:
Kind of gross-looking. Especially when wrapping food. This one turned out well:
At some point, we’ll cut pretty fabric shapes and experiment with snaps and ties (to make nice little Abeego envelopes). But this’ll solve my kids’ soggy cracker problem for now. Wash in warm water.
You may have gathered from this blog that I like to make things with others. I have fond memories of dying Easter eggs with my aunts, uncles and cousins in my Grandmother’s kitchen. We feed off of each others’ ideas and share in each others’ creative successes and mistakes. I clearly remember the year my aunt left her egg in the blue dye for hours and hours to see what would happen. The whole family waited and speculated and treasured that little experiment on the windowsill.
Clean-up also never feels overwhelming when there are a bunch of adults to share the task. During a particularly lengthy clean-up after one Thanksgiving dinner, my cousins dared me to finish the gravy in the gravy boat. They even took-up a collection of $20. I did make a heroic attempt to drink the gravy, but heaved at the last second. One year, I will have to try again.
Do you remember the surfing trip I took in the fall? Well! I went with two old friends and two new friends. We hit it off amazingly and agreed to see each other regularly, ideally to either learn something or make something (is this a girl thing? Do women ever just get together to drink beer and play cards?).
For our first meeting, we met at B’s house to make meals. Lots of meals. Each woman went home with two steak meals (for 4-6 people each), two chicken meals (for 4-6 people), and two apple pies – all to stick in the freezer (yay food loot bags!). We chopped, peeled, simmered, mixed, chatted and drank wine. B did the shopping and planning. We all split the bill. It was great fun.
(Thank you for the pictures M!)
B got the recipes from this book. We used Zip-lock bags to store the food, but would likely attempt to bring our own containers next time. We would also try to have one person doing dishes throughout the night, rather than trying to do them all at the end with one sink (that part kept us up past bedtime!).
Making together: crafting, cooking, cleaning-up… is pretty fun. And, now that we are grown-ups, we get to drink wine at the same time!
