Lamb Steaks with Guinness Sauce and Colcannon, Spinach & Cheddar Quiche, Apple Pie

St. Patrick’s Day falling midweek this year didn’t really allow enough time to make a nice lamb stew, but I still wanted lamb.  I picked up a couple of lamb steaks from the nearest butcher, where it turned out to be ridiculously cheap.  I simply pan-seared them, then made a quick pan sauce with échalions and Guinness, reduced a bit and then enriched with a little butter.  To accompany, I made colcannon, an Irish dish which in my world usually consists of mashed potatoes with blanched cabbage and leeks stirred in.

The Lenten meat-free Fridays continue.  This week, I took advantage of a recent friend’s delivery of Tillamook cheddar, and made a spinach and cheddar quiche.  A thin layer of caramelized leeks in the bottom really brought it all together.  Simple and satisfying.

And after a whole season of getting apples every week, I finally made an all-American apple pie!

Originally published on Seasonal Market Menus.

[Via http://seasonalmarketmenus.wordpress.com]

What to do with extra parma ham?

As the title of this post states, what can I do with leftover parma ham?

I decided to saute it together with potatoes & onions!

Then I browned the potato chips with the onion slices

Finally I add in those extra slices of parma ham to add that lovely bacon taste to the fries.

Pretty yummy for a side dish that I cooked up randomly. Making fries is always delicious but the onion gives it additional sweetness and the parma ham renders some saltiness onto it. I don’t know if I offended anyone by cooking parma ham this way but I don’t care!

[Via http://dirtystall.wordpress.com]

Benefits of a silicone cooking utensil

Image : http://www.flickr.com

In modern times, it was not surprised that silicone, which is used to learn to be a component of microchips and breast implants, now a common material for cookware. A silicone cooking utensil can have a competitive price with tools kitchen metal and nylon. There are a number of kitchen utensils that the use of silicone. A common structure for a silicone cookware is that a wooden handle. This is particularlyapply to spatulas, spoons and others.

There are also many bake ware that are made of silicone. These silicone bake ware takes on a solid surface, if you want the cake or a square or rectangular, it was decided to keep it inside

Why a silicone cooking utensil?

Kitchen items will be suspended as a rule, constant heat and cold. This is one of the main reasons why a silicone cookware is great for the job. Silicone resists heat, more possibleoven at medium temperature or the temperature of the oven. Does not lose its shape when exposed to heat or cold, and no silicone to maintain, the smells and colors of food before, has been suspended. A silicone cookware is also robust when it is cleaned and washed a.

Utensils Silicone also the distinct advantage of not irritating to normal substances pr common kitchen. E 'also does not corrode or react negatively to the exposureHot and cold, or vice versa. This means that the silicon is likely to last longer than the cooking utensils, kitchen utensils, providing the right care and attention.

One advantage of using a silicone cookware is its sweetness, when it comes to dealing with non-stick surfaces. Silicone is softer than wood and can not scratch or damage the surface of nonstick pots and pans. Bake ware suspended from Teflon material is less risk of damageand scratches when the baker uses cooking utensils made of silicone. Some people may not realize, but scratched and damaged non-stick cookware should, as a result of exposure to drugs may be scratched the surface of cancer and other serious illnesses are discarded.

These are just some of the benefits of silicone kitchen utensils. The price for a silicone cooking utensils may seem high, but sitting on product durability and robustness ofworth.

[Via http://kitchenpan.wordpress.com]

Why do People Think I'm Idealistic?

My Imagination

“Our greatest failure is not one of politics but of imagination. We need to imagine a world at peace and work backwards from there.” ~ Marianne Williamson in The Age of Miracles

You know how it is when someone says something that you “get” intellectually; you’ve heard it before, and its not a new concept, but suddenly, you hear it and get it viscerally. It has meaning at a cellular level. I was driving home from Robby’s soccer game this afternoon, having been gone with Charlotte most of the day, and I was stuck in traffic.

Listening, again, to the audio version of Marianne Williamson’s book, which I have found uplifting and inspiring (not bad when one is stuck in a traffic jam), I heard the above sentence and the light went on. Not in my head, but deep inside, I felt and saw what she was talking about.

I imagined going home and making dinner for my family, pouring the love I have for them into the meal. My kids have always said that when I make them sandwiches, they taste better. I have always replied that its because there’s a secret ingredient. I have sent them off to school and on adventures with sandwiches full of organic and locally grown produce for years, but the secret ingredient is love. Growing up, I was the default cook in my family, and it became one of my first creative mediums. To this day, people say to me, what is your recipe? I am often unable to answer, but even when I do, they will often claim that it didn’t taste the same when they made it. I know that’s true. When I cook “out of” love, the food simply tastes better. It holds that love. Nothing is ever scorched or over seasoned. Nothing is bland. When I cook in a hurry or in resentment, the results are different. I lose the magic.

Taking off from Marianne’s quote, I thought about how this simple gesture, making dinner, when done with love and the intention to nourish the people I love, a gesture repeated across the globe every day, is, in one small way, a step in working backward from a vision of a peaceful world. Ghandi’s quote, that we read on bumper stickers and billboards,

“Be the change you want to see in the world”,

suddenly crystalized as well. A teacher I’ve learned a great deal from says,

“Its not what you do, but how you do it.”

Another quote from Marianne Williamson reads,

“Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it. If we’re frantic, life will be frantic. If we’re peaceful, life will be peaceful. And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace.”

All of these coalesced in my mind (including the one by Goethe from last night) into one big thought form as I sat in traffic near Husky Stadium. I pushed the back arrow on my cd player and listened again to Marianne. The third time, I had found a scrap of paper and a pen and was ready to record as she got to the words I was waiting for. The image I had in my mind was of going through my day, whatever it brings, in a blissed out state.

Now, that made me laugh! Nice idea, but not realistic. Un-wadding the stinky socks that my 17 year old son played soccer in a week ago and then threw in his bag to fester before finally sending them to the laundry room, while blissed out in a state of love for humanity and the earth is not something I can easily envision for myself at any time in the near future. But rather than get upset that its just not something I will ever do with grace, I can be more gentle with myself and not upset my own equilibrium, thus working backward from the image of a world at peace. I imagine that there will always be those who simply can’t enjoy the stinky socks they are washing out of love, but laughing about it while feeling the love and the inner peace it brings, might just dispel any negativity that the fact of that dislike might engender.

When I first sat down here to write tonight with the first quote in my hand, I had in mind writing something about stay-at-home moms being a force for imagining a world at peace. I was thinking about all the women, like my young friend Sarah, (my kids old babysitter who quoted my blog in hers), who are making the choice to stay home and raise their children, and how important it is for the whole world that they, as well as I, learn to value what we do as coming from a place of being rather than doing.

Its been noted in many places, by writers and thinkers, that hope for the future of our world lies in the hands of women. I believe this to be true. Perhaps, however, this has nothing to do with politics. Could it be that the leadership of our nations changes in a way that that we don’t usually think of? What if a groundswell of peacefulness beginning in the hearts of women around the world simply overwhelms the old patterns that have dictated world politics for decades. Perhaps its only from within our society, within the hearts of our families, that we have any hope of transforming this world into a world of peace. And only by being the peace within our families that we can initiate that ripple outward which joins with others, increasing in magnitude from the centers of homes across the globe. Maybe it doesn’t matter who the leaders of our countries are right now, or what congress is doing, if we all get on the “Peace Train” and simply do whatever it takes to teach ourselves, within our own hearts, how to be at peace.

A note on today’s photograph. The above is not actually my imagination, but a jellyfish I photographed at the Seattle Aquarium today while visiting with my daughter. We were being tourists in Seattle. It was a great way to spend the day with her being home literally as a visitor. We even had lunch on the waterfront before heading off to watch Robby play soccer.

[Via http://camelliablossoms.wordpress.com]

Beignets de Chien Chaud au Maïs, or, Corn Dogs High/Low

Nick’s birthday was a few weeks ago, and as it fell on a Saturday when the horses were running at Vincennes, he wanted to get some people together for hot dogs and beer before heading out to the races.  Since it was a special occasion, I wanted to do a little something extra, and I remembered that I read a post a while back about corn dogs, which I don’t even like, historically, but something about being in France makes me want fried things I don’t normally eat when I’m at home in the States.

Anyway, it was Nick’s special day, and he loved the idea.  So corn dogs it was.  I used Alton Brown’s recipe, with a couple of changes.  I left out the jalapeño, and seeing as creamed corn doesn’t exist in France, I substituted regular canned corn, buzzed with the immersion blender.

I bought a huge pack of cheap wooden chopsticks at an Asian restaurant supply store to use as sticks, but since French hot dogs (aka Knacks) are so much thinner than their American counterparts (maybe because they don’t go frying themselves in corn batter?) I used only one stick per dog, instead of the recommended two.

I was actually surprised at how well this recipe worked.  I don’t know why.  But let me tell you, it was seriously awesome to pull real live corndogs out of the bubbling oil in the Dutch oven.  And do you know what was even more awesome?

We had French’s yellow mustard to dunk them in.  (Ah, irony.)

But I had some leftover batter, even after frying up 10 of those puppies.  I thought it would be fun to go all classy with it – fold in some whipped egg whites and call it soufflé.  Come to think of it, some Dijon mustard probably would have been pretty good in there, too.

1. corn ramekin before, 2. corn ramekin after

Despite my greasing the ramekin (and the loaf pan – you’ll see in a minute), the soufflés didn’t rise all that much.  Oh, well, it still tasted good – like cornbread, but lighter and moister.

In fact, one person to whom I served it immediately called it spoonbread.  Maybe not the ultra-classy French dish I had in mind, but still a delicious side to roast chicken.  Or curry potpie, if it happens to be a clean-out-the-fridge kind of dinner.

On this day in 2008: Mac N Cheese: A Classic French Dish

Originally published on Croque-Camille.

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[Via http://croquecamille.wordpress.com]

Cooking with Delicious Rattlesnake Meat

Image : http://www.flickr.com

Rattlesnake meat is a delicacy southwest. If you have not ever eaten rattlesnake, you are a real treat. No, it does not taste like chicken! It has a flavor much Garnier – more reminiscent of pheasant, frog legs, alligator, or even elk.

There are two ways to cook meat rattlesnake: De-boned, or with bones intact. If you cook with the bones intact, you have to deal with them while he eats. This is not a big deal really, and in fact many "just a snake" typeRecipes (baked snake, the snake southern fire, etc.) call the snake cut into pieces and cooked with the bones.

Use of snake meat in Chile or other dishes where the meat is mixed into the dish calls for the removal of bone. This can be done by the snake carcass simmer for one hour in a pan of water with a little lemon juice and maybe some spices. While the meat comes off bones easily. Be sure to taste it before mixing with other ingredients!

Hereis an easy to make recipe for Rattlesnake Chili:

1 large onion, chopped

3 large cloves garlic, minced

1 red pepper, chopped

3 jalapeno peppers, chopped

1 28 oz diced tomatoes

1 15 oz can tomato paste

1 28 oz can chili beans

1 / 4 cup chili powder

2 v. Tea. cumin

1 tsp Tea. salt

1 tsp Tea. black pepper

2 pounds beef Rattlesnake

juice of 1 / 2 lemon

Simmer rattlesnake in water and lemon juice for 1 hour, remove andSeparate meat from bones.

Combine boneless meat with remaining ingredients in a crock pot and cook slowly for 6-8 hours, or bring to a boil in a large pot and simmer for 2 hours.

[Via http://kadookmoo.wordpress.com]

Cooking as Coding

If it is not already obvious, one of my favorite hobbies is cooking. Recently, as I was toiling away on a seafood risotto, I had a realization: cooking is a form of coding. People might enjoy cooking for many of the same reasons people enjoy coding. If you think about it, the similarities between these two activities are striking:

• Fundamentally Creative. When you cook, you are engaged in a fundamentally creative task. You are using your hands and your skills to build something. This is no different than when you sit down to code; you are the master of your food (or program’s) destiny.
• Scientific Basis. Cooking is not a realm of mysterious alchemy. It is based upon rigorous principles of chemistry and physics. To create a delicious meal, you need to obey those scientific principles. When you write code, you similarly ought to understand the computer science and mathematics that underlies your work.
• Real-Time Debugging. Coders love to constantly test and debug in real-time. They like to quickly write a function, test it out, and revise it as needed. The same is true in cooking. Debugging consists of sticking your spoon in and having a taste. Then you adjust your ingredients or technique as necessary.
• Open-Source Documentation. Within both cooking and coding, there is a beautiful culture of sharing knowledge. Cookbooks, of course, are a form of open documentation. More importantly, ask most anyone for a recipe of something they’ve made, and they oblige. Both cooks and hackers take a pride in their creations and love to share their code/recipes.
• Black-Box Abstraction. Meals can be modularized into constituent parts. For example, a pie consists of a crust and filling. To make a pie more easily, you can use an off-the-shelf crust, even if you don’t know how it was made. This black-box abstraction resonates well with a programmer’s instinct to reduce complexity through modularization.
• Instant Gratification. This might be the most important attribute. In many fields of engineering, you have to wait a long time to see the results of your work (e.g., building a bridge). The fact that coders can quickly play with their creations is what attracted many of them to computer science in the first place. Cooks get to enjoy this exact same kind of instant gratification. A chef’s code is edible!

Given the vibrant similarities between cooking and coding, I would love to see software engineers have a stronger influence on the discipline of cooking. Beyond the gizmos of molecular gastronomy, here are a few more cultural ways engineers could improve cuisine:

• More science-based culinary training. With the exception of Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, very few (cook)books teach much about the science of food. As a result, very few people really understand the science behind cooking. This inhibits their creativity in the kitchen. Instead, it’d be wonderful to see more cooking texts that teach science– from the physiology of taste, to the chemistry of ingredients, the thermodynamics of heat transfer.
• More innovative recipe templates. The canonical recipe template (e.g., opening notes, ingredient list, prep instructions) is out of date. There is a lot of room to innovate on how we articulate recipes. There are, for example, better ways of visualizing parallel activities, or incorporating video demonstrations of standard techniques. Recipes need to come into the 21st century.
• More knowledge of reverse-engineering. Whenever coders come across a new piece of technology, they try to figure out how it works. They are masters of reverse-engineering. People are often the same way when they enjoy new dishes at restaurants. By devising better a more rigorous methodology for reverse-engineering meals, people could greatly enhance their cooking technique.

Can you think of other ways the culture of computer science can enhance the culinary world? Given that software engineers revel in both the artistic and technical demands of the creative process, I think that geeks are bound to make fantastic contributions to the culinary arts.

[Via http://blog.samidh.com]

Cookin' In The New Cave

The Egg Thingy

Well, we are a week into setting up the new cave. We still have painters. We still have boxes. And, I still can’t find my camera cord so I can post up some before and after photos of the new digs. BUT … I finally actually made something, other than a sandwich or bowl of cereal, in the new cave-kitchen!:)

Now, don’t get too excited. It wasn’t anything new, nor is there a new recipe to gawk at. However, it is a family favorite and was the overwhelming dish of choice for the cave clan this morning. I speak, of course of The Egg Thingy, pictured here on some of Western Bagel’s best.

It really got my jets going, too, as I finished up the delicious day starter and ended up going through about 2/3 of the boxes that filled the garage. You can actually see out to the street from the back end, now! I’m actually amazed at how far along we are in the short time we have had to unpack, especially considering some of the “pot-holes” we’ve encountered.

In fact, we felt comfortable enough from our efforts to take the night off last night, employ the now geographically nigh Cave-in-laws’ babysitting services, and head out for a real late-date-night with the Cavewoman … our first in nearly a year. Our first stop was at a very highly recommended local (actually walking distance) Japanese restaurant called Sushi Yusho. Happily, it lived up to the hype and was very delicious. The service was great, sushi chefs friendly, and the clientele seemed to be mostly very satisfied regulars. We will definitely be returning soon, and I plan on doing a full write up of this fishy-find.

Next, we stopped at Claim Jumper for a very sinful dessert they call a Chocolate Chip Calzone. A traditional Italian pizza dough turnover filled with very untraditional ingredients: butter, and semi-sweet and white chocolate chips. When it comes out of the oven, they top it with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and drizzled fudge sauce. Ohhhhhhhh, Man! Is it gooooood!!

Toad The Wet Sprocket

The final stop of the evening was a local live music venue called The Canyon Club. A place that attracts a wide array of name acts in a smaller, comfortable setting. The headliner were some old friends from Santa Barbara collectively called Toad The Wet Sprocket, a band that has had several top hits and really play a very unique, melodic brand of rock. It was so good to see the boys together again, enjoying what they do best. The packed house enjoyed it, too! Sorry for the lousy pic, but it’s not bad for a Palm Centro, eh?!?

After the 2.5 hour set and some long overdue reunions with the SB faithful, we had to head home and relieve the over-generous grandparents who reveled in the fact they only had a 15 minute drive home (it used to be an hour-fifteen!). It was a great night, and one that we really needed after a crazy year of house selling and buying, packing, and moving. Obviously, we are far from settled-in, and I can’t do the planned post about our actual move until I find that darn cord. But, I now feel like we are indeed here: I’ve cooked, found a great sushi spot, seen some live music in the hood, and have finally posted something longer than a haiku here!

©2010 Caution: Caveman Cooking/UHearMe, Inc. All rights reserved. This originally appeared on the Caution: Caveman Cooking blog at http://cavemancooking.net authored by Caveman. This may be shared and reprinted as long as this entire copyright message accompanies it.

[Via http://cavemancooking.wordpress.com]

F-F-Friday

No, I’m not posting pictures of flowers today; the double Fs stand for fucking frustrated.

I’m not sure what happened, but my week went to shit on Wednesday morning.  Every little thing made me absolutely crazy: people who can’t seem to be bothered to follow simple directions, kids (biological and academic) who know what they’re supposed to do but can’t be bothered to do it, things that don’t work the way they’re supposed to (or that only work part of the time).  Maybe I should write next week’s Ten Things Tuesday today and get it all off my chest…

…Nah; I don’t plan on being stressed about all this dumb stuff any longer than is strictly necessary.

My plan is to try to hit my reset button as best I can this weekend.  I’ve got some housekeeping errands to attend do, but my goal is to get as much of them done tonight and first thing tomorrow morning as I can.  I’d like to maybe go to a movie with my family or go to visit friends this weekend, perhaps have some pizza, maybe even take a nap on Sunday afternoon.  I might do some more cooking, too; I’m trying to find a recipe for strawberry bread to adopt into my repertoire, and I want to see if I can reproduce the  cheese and roasted garlic sauce that I had at the Cheesecake Factory a couple of weeks ago – it was so good that I’m still thinking about it.

Oh, and I plan to drink a little, too.  I mean it; it’s been a hell of a week…

image credit

My hope is to begin again on Monday at least partially recovered to my normal, contented self.  Wish me luck.

[Via http://theinnerdoor.wordpress.com]

花膠湯

愛上煲湯!

天氣乾燥,認真要滋潤一下.. 前陣子看中醫說不能吃寒涼食物(什么沙律魚生凍飲全都不宜),但他說花膠可以多吃 .. um..好!最鈡意花膠…

材料 – 花膠2隻, 螺頭2个, 豬$20, 蜜 2粒, 淮山4片,龍眼肉5粒, 杞子少許

做法 -

1. 把豬氽水

2. 煲熱水, 把材料全放下,用猛煲5分种,然後轉慢火煲2小時左右

好好味!

[Via http://gracepicks.wordpress.com]

From the Stove #1: Chicken Enchiladas

Last weekend marked the endeavor of our first time in making homemade enchiladas, and the results were more delicious than I ever could’ve expected, making this a required monthly meal from now on.

The recipe was taken from the Food Network site, specifically the Tyler Florence recipe.  While we skipped the tomatillo salsa and avoided all uses of cilantro, the ingredients for the enchiladas — for the most part — included the following:

• Extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 medium onion, diced
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups chicken stock, storebought
• 1 deli roasted chicken (about 3 pounds), boned, meat shredded
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 10 large flour tortillas
• 1/2 pound Monterey Jack cheese, shredded

The key ingredient that I thought really made the whole meal work was the use of a deli roasted chicken, which I picked up from Safeway on a Friday when it was on sale.  Since I was already pretty hungry while preparing the meal, taking the skin and chicken off the bones led to multiple tasty tidbits while shredding the chicken, temporarily satiating the hunger.

As more ingredients were added to complete the enchilada mix, the smells continued to get better, while the cooking dish looked more and more tasty.  The tomatoes really helped to keep it moist, and another key ingredient that we added was sweet corn which just sweetened up the whole dish and balanced well with the spiciness of the peppers and enchilada sauce.

Then the chicken was added and the whole mix cooked for a little so the flavors and spices would soak into the chicken.

The tortillas were first dipped in the enchilada sauce, then the mix was added with liberal amounts of cheese, wrapped and added to the baking dish.  Once all the enchiladas were in the dish, more cheese was added, and the rest of the enchilada sauce drizzled over it all.  Then it was tossed into the oven for fifteen minutes to bake a little, melt the cheese, crispen the tortillas and make everything just right.

Finally, we heated up a batch of Amy’s black beans and cooked up some Mexican rice and the finished dish was ready:

[Via http://bookbanter.wordpress.com]

Watch Water Resistance Explained

All is not what it seems with watch water resistance, you will not find a watch that claims to be waterproof. This is because no watch can be guaranteed totally waterproof.

The different levels of water resistance as expressed in meters is only academic. They refer to the depth at which a watch will keep out the water if both watch and the water are static. So for example if you have a water resistant watch and you dive into a swimming pool the pressure on the watch at the point of impact with the water will be many times greater then if you were just placing the watch into the water.

A gasket or O ring is used to make a watch water resistant these can be made of rubber ,nylon or Teflon and form a water tight seal at all the joints including the crown (the winding stem), case and where the crystal glass meets the watch case. Another aspect of water resistance is the back of the watch, a screw on back is far superior to a push on back.

Depth

The depth that a watch can be used at is a bit confusing a watch marked as a water resistance of 10 meters you would initially think that you could safely use that watch in a swimming pool as long as you do not go deeper then 10 meters. This is not the case, as a watch that is water resistant to 10 meters is designed not to be used under water and can only withstand light splashing of water. Even a watch marked as water resistant to 30 meters should not be worn while swimming in a deep pool. For swimming you are looking at the minimum of 100 meters water resistance to safely use this in a swimming pool.

Things that affect water renitence in watches

You should not use you watch in a hot tub or sauna, as the heat will make the metal within the watch expand at different rates then the gaskets this can allow water to get inside your watch.

Water resistance chart

• Water-resistant to 30 meters, Will withstand splashes of water or rain but should not be worn while swimming or diving.

• Water-tested to 50 meters, Suitable for showering or swimming in shallow water.

• Water-tested to 100 meters, Suitable for swimming and light snorkeling.

• Water-tested to 150 meters, Suitable for snorkeling.

• Water-tested to 200 meters, Suitable for skin diving.

• Diver’s 150 meters, Suitable for scuba diving.

• Diver’s 200 meters, Suitable for scuba diving.

The water resistance markings on watches in my opinion are misleading and should be redesigned to tell you the consumer what depth you can actively take your watch to while doing normal everyday activates. Without knowing a little about this subject having a watch, marked 30 meters would make me think that I could use this in a swimming pool without any worries.

Steven Morris runs GoGiddy.co.uk [http://gogiddy.co.uk] the place to find the best deals on Jewellry and Emporio Armani Watches [http://gogiddy.co.uk/products/Emporio-Armani-Watches.html]

[Via http://antionettristanant.wordpress.com]

Baking Banana Bread on a Whim

I woke up this morning and saw that my bananas were on their last legs. They were too “icky” to eat straight-up, so I thought, “What to do with this mush?” The answer: make banana bread.

I am by no means an experienced baker, but I do like doing it. Baking is such a talented art, and a lot harder than people think it is. Unlike stringing together a meal for dinner, baking is a very precise process–if you put too much of one ingredient, the end product can range from mediocre to really, really poor.

But that’s why novices like myself follow recipes to the hilt (well, sort of). I had found a recipe on the Internet about a year ago that I’ve tinkered with over time, so I printed it out, and scrounged around for the ingredients.

Here are the ingredients:

• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup mashed bananas (but I always used more)
• 1 3/4 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup hot water (this time I used leftover hot coffee)
• scattered oats and granola
• (chocolate chips if you have them…I didn’t )

Most of the time, baking ingredients are very simple, and are more often than not readily available in-house. Luckily, I had just enough whole-wheat flour from the last time I baked (the bag expires next week!), and the rest of the ingredients were scattered around in different cupboards.

First things first, pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees. It’s always best to pre-heat before you do anything, because if you don’t have a hot oven while your mixing, it adds an additional 15-20 minutes to the waiting process. And trust me, you don’t want to wait any longer than you have to before eating this delicious bread.

After you pre-heat the oven, the fun starts. Take a large mixing bowl, and beat together the 1/2 cup honey and 1/3 cup vegetable oil. Honey is very thick and syrupy, but the vegetable oil helps “cut” it, creating a nice liquid fusion. Also, notice how the recipe doesn’t have sugar? The honey serves as a perfect source of sugar, which in turn makes this banana bread a much healthier version.

After its mixed well, add 2 eggs to the bowl, and continue to beat the mixture. The yolks give the mix a nice bright hue (I always think of George Costanza when he asks Jerry about whether his blind date has a “pinkish hue”), and are essential to most baked goods.

Now here’s the messy part. Unless you have a fancy-shmancy electronic mixer (I don’t), you’re going to have to mix the bananas in yourself. The recipe calls for a “1 cup mashed bananas,” but I always put more. I also suggest breaking up the bananas into pieces as opposed to mashing them whole.

Note: You can mash to your liking depending on whether you like more chunks in your bread, or a more smooth consistency.

Throw in the teaspoon of vanilla, and mix up the bananas with the rest of the mix. Here’s where the batter starts to actually become a batter. Toss in the 1 3/4 cups of whole-wheat flour (and 1/2 teaspoon salt), and mix well. You have to make sure the liquid and the flour really blend together, otherwise you’re going to end up with a very inconsistent batter.

This is where I did a little experimenting. Usually the recipe calls for 1/4 cup hot water, but I wanted to use something more interesting. Earlier in the morning, I had made a pot of Zabars coffee. I rarely ever finish it, so I decided to put it to good use. I’ve never made coffee/banana bread, but I love both ingredients in baked goods, so why not? Make sure to add the 1 teaspoon baking soda to the hot coffee (or hot water) before putting it in the batter. Baking soda is living proof why baking is sort of like chemistry class. It is an essential cooking agent, as it reacts to the other ingredients, releasing carbon dioxide, thus helping the bread/cake rise. After you see the bubbly reaction with the coffee/hot water, dump and mix it into the batter.

If you have nuts, chocolate chips, or anything else (oats and granola in my case), you can now place them in. Chocolate chips really make this bread extraordinary, but then again, when is chocolate ever a bad idea.

After you’ve mixed in your guilty pleasures, spread the batter into a greased loaf pan (I’d suggest a 9×5 loaf pan), and pop it in the oven. Depending on the batter, it will take between 55-60 minutes to bake, and it will also need an additional 30 minutes to cool off.

It may seem like a lot of steps, but if you follow them correctly, you’ll have yourself a good end product, and a whole lot of banana bread.

[Via http://benberkon.wordpress.com]

Day 67

Make, Give, Contribute, Challenge. 1 year, 100 creative challenges. 16/100 complete.

Today I conquered the ‘Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage’. There is something rather unappealing about cabbage so the expectations were pretty low for this one. It actually tasted a lot better than I thought it would but still probably unlikely to be repeated unless we have an Austrian themed dinner party in the near future! What I did love was the colour in the red cabbage. It is such a gorgeous purple colour and I am certainly enthused about attempting to use it for dying at some point. The photo doesn’t really capture the true purple.

Sweet and Sour Cabbage

The other thing that visually delighted me today was watching my little men climb the bookcase. Although this isn’t a past time we encourage it certainly shows their physical abilities and I love the way they look against all those books. I think the pictures speak for themselves really.

[Via http://makeitgiveit.wordpress.com]

Five Reasons to Care...

I read a good article today that I would like to share.   I think the writer sums up nicely, and efficiently, the reasons we need to care where our food comes from.  She shares several links (many of which you are also on my Favorite Links page, too) for you to do further investigating on your own.

I hope you enjoy!

\”Five Reasons to Care Where Your Food Comes From\” by Yvonne Maffei

blessings

jane

[Via http://planejaner.wordpress.com]

Stuffed bread and big dreams

Yum! Photos by the lovely Kira.

We have a dream.

Our dream is to take the many, um, skills we learned living in Argentina and apply them to our future.  So Kira and I, along with fellow friends Kathryn and Megan, set out last week to achieve this dream.  Round one of testing for our new empanada restaurant!

We recently learned that 5411 is dominating that thriving Chicago empanada scene.  Coincidentally, the owners are recent grads from different fields, one from Northwestern as well.  But we thought, heck…we already had the idea and have yet to hit up the joint, so  why not test our prowess to see if we could give them a little healthy competition?

In Argentina, after frequenting one empanada restaurant in the northwest city of Cafayate so many times they invited us for a kitchen tour, we learned the harsh truth: delicious argentine empanadas are made with lard.

Determined to be cow-fat free, we set out to Dominicks and got the goods for Feta/Mushroom/Spinach empanadas and Tomato/Basil/Mozzarella.  Of course, we had to accompany it with Stella Artois, which is as common as Pabst Blue Ribbon way down south.  And some Malbec, por supuesto.

Lots of music (Reik!), obsessive picture taking, delicious salads, and good company blurred into a lovely evening.  And the empanadas weren’t too shabby.  In fact, I may say we are well on our way to becoming wealthy young Chicago foodies (i.e. our dream).  Cuidate, 5411.

Check out our recipe below for the dough (courtesy of Epicurious!).  As for the filling– that’s a secret we aren’t ready to divulge quite yet.

-L

“Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1 large egg
• 1/3 cup ice water
• 1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar

Sift flour with salt into a large bowl and blend in butter with your fingertips or a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal with some (roughly pea-size) butter lumps.

Beat together egg, water, and vinegar in a small bowl with a fork. Add to flour mixture, stirring with fork until just incorporated. (Mixture will look shaggy.)

Turn out mixture onto a lightly floured surface and gather together, then knead gently with heel of your hand once or twice, just enough to bring dough together. Form dough into a flat rectangle and chill, wrapped in plastic wrap, at least 1 hour.”

Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Empanada-Dough-230786#ixzz0hH6nihfR

[Via http://newheightsbigcities.wordpress.com]

Anything else George?

One of the first things that we humans do in the morning -besides cursing the day god decided there was (only) 24 hours in a day- is drink coffee. And if you don’t do that yet (though yes it will happen at some point, we all end up coffee drinkers) you surely have a cup or two around exam periods.

Now what’s the environmental impact of our morning coffee?

For those of us who use coffee machines with pads, this impact is pretty bad. Senseo, Nespresso and other Tassimo devices are nowhere near a friendly relation to the environment. The little pads, looking so innocent, are in fact terrible polluter. Tiny but mighty.

Coffee pads produce 10 times more refuse than traditional grounded coffee.

Why? Simple: they are individually packed in aluminium, polyethylene and polyester. On top of that, they are rarely recycled and surely never re-used. If they are recyclable, we usually totally forget to put it in the recycle bin  -  DUH yeah that hit me in the face like a frozen chicken breast too. But did you even know that they were recyclable? Aluminium made Nespresso pads go in the recycle bin. Now you can’t say I didn’t tell you.

So, what else is there? What I suggest is, again simple:

• Green option 1: if you already have a Senseo machine you can purchase a refillable pad. Then you just buy your regular grounded coffee, fill the pad and use it normally in your less-evil-Senseo. These little angels can be found in most supermarkets… or on amazon under the Eco Pad.

 

• Green option 2: you buy the award-winning (understand expensive) manual espresso machine The Spresso.  It doesn’t need electricity and uses the water of your kettle. Just follow the instructions – simple:

It can even make latte More information and links to online shops can be found on the official website. Price? £80

Now Mr Clooney, can you fill my pad and pull my handles?

[Via http://goingbrightgreen.wordpress.com]

Day 62

Make, Give, Contribute, Challenge. 1 year, 100 creative challenges. 16/100 complete.

Today I had one of those domestic perfection moments. The smell of baking bread – handmade from scratch – (applause please!) wafted from my oven whilst I, finally, covered the seat of the last dining chair that has been recently brought back inside. I felt very something – Martha Stewart perhaps?

Today I made Sophie’s Bread – from scratch no bread maker and I am well impressed it looked great, sliced well and was eaten by all my men-folk to great reception. Watch out I might just become a bread maker!

Dundee Cake with Toffee Nut Crust - take 2 'new' ovenMy first 'real' loaf!

 It is Chicken Laksa here again for tea this evening and Master 3 is very excited. We have also made pineapple junior jellies for afternoon tea. The sun is shining and all the colours of summer are out in full. These are the smiles that keep this mama ticking!

I Will Jump!

Smile

Have Teeth Will Smile

Fun

Lately I’ve been thinking about flowers I like and why I like them. First point to note is that I am NOT a gardener. While I can enjoy the beauty of other people’s gardens doing one myself just feels like an extension of housework.

I have decided there is a certain something I like about uncomplicated flowers. The flowers I like are the ones that aren’t classy or pretentious. They are ones that I can imagine would have a happy disposition – Daffodils, Geraniums, Forget-Me-Nots – these are the kind of flowers that appeal to me. Happy to grow anywhere, requiring very little care  – I think these are skills and attributes to be celebrated. I plan to cultivate them in myself.

In my opinion it’s absolutely okay to be low-maintenance (with exceptions now and again!). Here is a sky that caught our attention the other day. Creativity from the Creator.

Christchurch Twilight Sky

At Twilight

[Via http://makeitgiveit.wordpress.com]