Category Archives: cooking

Searching for Unicorns

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Every now and then when the boys drive me absolutely crazy I send them out to the backyard to search for Unicorns. I used to send them out looking for gnomes, but that backfired.

I’m fairly sure one day they’re going to find a unicorn, and then I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but until then I’m going to enjoy a few moments of peace and quiet while they’re out searching.

Until such time as they do find unicorns, I plan to “find” the occasional unicorn poop cookie (recipe below the cut) to continue the notion that there may be real unicorns visiting the yard. We have deer, wild turkeys, large domestic cats, and large domestic dogs which wander in the back orchard, why not have unicorns visiting us?

I’m also considering making some out of salt dough and hiding it in the yard once the weather dries up a bit.

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Homemade Apple Sauce from Grandma’s Dubious Apples

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To help us pass the time on Monday, the boys and I picked apples from Grandma’s D dubious apple tree, it grows outside of Auntie M’s room and we were warned that they might have worms. Apparently Gavin and his father had tried making apple sauce from the dubious tree before, according to Gavin, it didn’t turn out well.

We picked several pounds of dubious apples, all the ones that I could easily reach off the tree. Oliver had a good time helping me peel apples, while Patrick sampled the peels. Of the several pounds of apples we peeled we only found two or three that were beyond salvaging.

We put the apples in the crockpot for an indeterminate amount of time (I think it ended up being 8 hours?) with some water (not sure how much, it started out being around 2 cups, and I added a little more). I checked on them periodically and stirred them around a bit as well.

The boys are enjoying the apple sauce, but Gavin refuses to sample it, apparently he “knows too much about that tree!”

Crunchy Crispy Chocolate-Pecan Granola

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I’ve been tinkering with granola recipes for awhile, I came up with this one last night and this time I remembered to write down the proportions I used.

I shared about my success on Twitter and a friend asked for the recipe. After I typed up the e-mail, I decided I should share it on the blog as well. I am still tinkering with the ratios, but this batch turned out quite well. Photo may or may not be forthcoming, granola is not particularly photogenic.

I have not given this to the boys, P does not have enough teeth to chew pecans, and O was more interested in “banas and yogut” for breakfast.

My modified granola recipe, liberally adapted from Cooks Illustrated (March/April 2012), and from reading the backs of commercially made granolas. Continue reading →

Summer Squash Lasagna

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On Thursday some friends generously gifted us with a bounty of some variety of heirloom summer squash, which was great, except I tend to dislike squash. Throwing them out seemed wasteful (the photo below shows slightly over half of the remaining bounty), giving them away seemed unlikely (most of our friends are growing something!), so that left eating them – but how?!

I mentioned my dilemma to an internet friend who is far more creative in her vegetable endeavors than I tend to be. After the usual ideas of mashing/pureeing, grilling, or baking, she suggested baked squash chips with salt and Parmesan, or using them as a pasta substitute.

A quick google search turned up several squash lasagna recipes that were a little too vegetarian (or worse yet, vegan) for my liking. I didn’t want the squash to star in the dish, I wanted them to behave the way noodles do – to help make lovely layers of meat sauce and cheese. I wanted it to look (and ideally taste) like a “normal” lasagna, and I think I mostly succeeded. Continue reading →

and now for something completely different: WTF-Leather

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Long-time readers of my blog will remember last years post about the WTF, and my attempts at making WTF-sauce. My attempts were wildly successful, but the popularity of the WTF-sauce waned as the novelty wore off.

Yesterday was O’s last Farm Day at his pre-pre school program and the mommies and daddies were invited to walk to the farm too. I struck up a conversation with one of the other mothers and the topic of excess fruit came up. I mentioned the WTF tree and it’s bountiful yields, and she suggested I use a dehydrator make fruit leather.

I don’t have a dehydrator (maybe one day), but I do have the internet, and one of my favorite food blogs had simple directions on how to make fruit leather.

As I already had several pints of pureed WTF I skipped down a bit to the dehydrating directions and then improvised some more: I used parchment paper instead of plastic wrap (I don’t trust the stuff in my oven), and I have no idea how long it was in for – a few hours here, a few hours there, it seems to have turned out mostly OK.
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P’s First Birthday Party!

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On Sunday Patrick had his first birthday party, we recycled the “1″ candle from Oliver’s first birthday party, had a few friends over, and enjoyed cupcakes and other light refreshments.

Amazingly, P timed his mid-day nap for mid-day so he was awake and fairly mellow. It was a two-outfit party for the 3-and-under crowd, as the 3-and-unders first devoured cupcakes and then got soaked in the water table.

Next year, we’ll probably do something a bit smaller: P will be turning two, so he can have two friends over instead of 14 of mommy and daddy’s friends.

Auntie Megan took the majority of the photos (and the ones I’ve seen so far looked fabulous!), so I will have more to share this coming weekend.

6 Egg white Cake, Hurray for the Internet

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Yesterday I made another batch of ice-cream. The chocolate was fabulous, but I wanted some vanilla as well, and I still had seven free-range organic vegetarian eggs in the fridge. The vanilla ice-cream called for six eggs, which would leave one leftover, so I started separating yolks until I came across an egg that bounced back.

Apparently some hens lay hardboiled eggs.

I digress, this is not a post about ice-cream, this is a post about what to do with the leftover egg whites that come when you take away the yolks to make ice-cream: they sit in a measuring cup in the fridge and look lonely. Very lonely.

Six is too many to make Mexican Chocolate Chewies, five pushed that limit to the brink, and I’m pretty sure six would’ve pushed it over the edge. So I did the only logical thing, I googled around the internet for a solution.

There were not many to be found, until I came across Self-Frosting Angel Cake at the Cookie Baker Lynn blog: it used six egg whites, I had those. It used cake flour, I used to have some, but it went out with last weekend’s pantry purge (the box said it expired in 2008). I don’t use cake flour very often, but I am not one to be easily deterred. You can fake cake flour, and I had cornstarch on hand.

Once I had the necessary faux cake flour, the recipe and directions were delightfully simple… I didn’t have any almond extract, so I added more vanilla. I also used an 8×8 pan, lined with a parchment paper sling.

27 minutes in the oven and a little time cooling later, we cut some small sample pieces. Gavin and Patrick liked the cake, Oliver got sidetracked by the ice-cream.

This is by far the best way to use up egg whites that I have ever come across.  Continue reading →

Ice-cream without Assistants

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This evening, the conclusion of the free-range, organic, non-vegetarian eggs and ice-cream making saga.

After yesterday’s failed attempt and extra assistance I decided to wait until the boys were tucked into bed before I tried again. The bowl had been freezing for well over 24 hours, and with no extra helpers to stick their fingers in the soupy mess I was sure things would go smoothly.

About five minutes into the process Oliver started wailing – I am still not entirely sure why. We rushed up stairs, leaving the mixer to do it’s thing, settled Oliver back into bed, and returned to gloriously creamily churned ice-cream.

Ok, it wasn’t quite that easy, I had to scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice before the hollering started, and the churned ice-cream didn’t all fit in my up-cycled yogurt container, but aside from that, things went very smoothly.

It tastes amazing. I think the local, free-range, organic, non-vegetarian eggs helped, as did the local, organic heavy cream and milk. The least local-organic-free-range things I used were the Ghirardelli coco powder and chocolate chips, and the salt (it is sea salt fromCostco), I’m ok with that.

Most of it made it to the freezer.

I also found a use for the five unused egg whites. I made Mexican Chocolate Chewies (a friend gave me the Homesick Texan Cookbook for my birthday, sadly the recipe does not appear to be posted on her blog).

The recipe called for three egg whites, but I had five leftover, I figured the eggs I’d been using were a little smaller than the average off-the-grocery-store-shelf egg (the chickens just started laying) so I used them all.

Next time I do that I’m going to up the chopped pecans from 2 to 3 cups. Other than spreading a LOT more than the previous batch (those are scant 1-tablespoon sized drops of cookie dough), they taste pretty AMAZING too (I think the Ghirardelli helped there too).

Next time, after Bedtime

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It has been a while since I made ice-cream. The last blog post about it is from 2008, and then I cheated and made my amazing hazel nut gelato. It has been even longer since I’ve last attempted a custard-based ice-cream recipe, but the hardest part is usually separating some eggs with out getting egg-shell bits in the yolk.

Armed with my dozen free range, organic, not-so-vegetarian-diet eggs, I set about finding a recipe that would use almost half of them, but was still simple enough to manage with my two assistants.

I turned to my oft-flipped-through-with-great-longing-but-never-yet-used cookbook devoted to ice-cream: “The Perfect Scoop” and cleared space in our freezer for our kitchenaid ice-cream maker.

I soon settled on basic chocolate ice-cream (although rocky road with homemade marshmallow looked very good too), and once I acquired heavy cream at the store we were set to go.

That was Thursday afternoon. Thursday night and early into Friday morning, Patrick decided to wake up several times to remind me he was CUTTING A TOOTH!! and he NEEDED COMFORT (and a boobie, and to kick me in the ribs) NOW!!

Friday morning, more than a little exhausted, and with a constant stream of three-year old chatter in the back ground “make dis ice-keem mommy! make dis ice-keem! me help mommy! make dis-ice-keem” I assembled the necessary ingredients, hauled the me-help-mommy tower from the garage, and loaded up Patrick’s tray with finger snacks so he’d be somewhat occupied.

Both the recipe and directions were simple, keeping Oliver from touching the hot pot, splashing simmering liquid everywhere, and grabbing things because it was “me turn mommy!” was less easy. He also kept scooting his tower within inches of me, pinning me between the stove, tower and Patrick’s chair.

     

After the custard had chilled in an ice-bath, and then in the fridge, we poured it into our ice-cream maker. After a few minutes I realized we probably hadn’t frozen the bowl long enough, and the custard wasn’t thickening, and it was all soupy.

By this point Patrick wanted to participate too. He had launched his banana off his tray and Oliver had taken his crackers. He wailed in dismay from his vantage point, firmly strapped into his booster seat. I sat him on the counter, only to snatch him back up again as he reached his fingers into the bowl while the machine was running. He was unharmed, just cold and sticky-fingered.

"NO! BABY!"

Next time I am going to wait until after they’ve gone to bed.

Realizing it wasn’t going to solidify any time soon, I did the only logical thing to do, I poured the soupy custard into a repurposed yogurt container and stuck it back in the fridge, cleaned out the ice-cream maker bowl and put it back in the freezer.

We will try making solid ice-cream tomorrow afternoon, once the bowl has frozen for 24+ hours, and then perhaps I will come up with a use for the five egg whites that were left behind.

 

*I had initially embedded links in this post, but for some reason they did not publish. I am not pleased. 

free-range, organic, vegetarian diet eggs

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On Thursday one of the mother’s in Oliver’s waldorf group approached me and asked if I had chickens. Some days I think we are the only family in West County with a chicken-less backyard. I’m OK with that. I like chickens, they’re great, I like to roast them, bake them, fry them, have them on sandwiches, but running around my back yard/over-sized flagstone patio? No thanks, I’ll pass.

She looked very relived to find I was chicken-less, and then asked if I would like some chickens. Not so much. She explained they had ten chickens (they’d over-bought assuming they’d loose some to predators – and they hadn’t), and the chickens had started laying eggs, by laying eggs, there were “50 this morning” and she had some eggs in the car, would I like some eggs?

Eggs, yes. Chickens, no.

Thankfully the chickens are not going to new homes, just their eggs. So I came home with a carton of free-range, organic, vegetarian diet eggs (the carton said vegetarian diet, but her husband made her scratch it out because the chickens ate organic, free-range worms and bugs, they were bad vegetarians).

While I was thrilled by the gift of a dozen free-range, organic, vegetarian diet eggs, I usually buy them in cartons of six because I don’t use eggs very often. I didn’t want the eggs to bad (although Gavin has since assured me they’re likely to last for quite some time as they were freshly collected Wednesday and Thursday morning and grocery store eggs are at least a month or two old), so I did what any logical person with small children who like to “help” and who needs to use up a few eggs does: I decided to make custard-based ice cream.

Yep.

some of the remaining eggs