Week 25: Egg and Cheese Pie, Again

The first veggies of the year were ready from the garden this week! That tiny tomato (an heirloom variety called Matina) was delicious. Hoping for lots more of those, that real tomato flavour is just impossible to get anywhere other than your own garden, unless you are willing to shell out the big bucks.

I forsee many tomato recipes in the future, but for now, I wanted to do something with the zucchini and the broccoli. So I decided to modify that Moosewood cauliflower cheese pie.

Egg and cheese and veggie pie:
I am really in love with this recipe, you can pretty much alter the fillings to suit whatever you have lying around. It's easy and delicious!

The crust is made of potatoes and, in this case, shredded zucchini. And a bit of salt mixed in. Toss with one beaten egg and a tablespoon or two of flour(you can also leave these out, this crust I actually forgot both the flour and the egg!). Grease a pie plate with butter, then line with the mixture (this is maybe 2 medium potatoes and a half a zucchini? you want to be generous, since the potatoes will shrink as they cook), bake at 425 or so for about 20 minutes. Brush lightly with olive oil and return to the oven for another 10 minutes or so to brown.

(anyone have any tips for how to get the potatoes to not turn kind of gray? I think it might have been the particular potatoes I was using, but next time I'm going to try tossing the shredded potatoes into cold water before I make up the mixture).

When the crust is nicely browned, shred cheddar cheese over top, and add in your veggies. You'll want to pre cook the veggies a bit, just to start them off and maybe get a bit of colour on them. This is garlic, broccoli, and zucchini lightly sauteed with some garlic. Onions are great in this, but I wanted to have a fighting chance of my kids eating this, so left them out.
Top with more cheese.
Pour in a mixture of eggs and milk. I used 4 eggs and maybe a scant quarter cup of milk. It's really guesswork, based on the size of your pan and how much you piled in the veggies!

Return to the oven and bake until the eggs are set:
About 25 minutes for this one. It was really yummy, and yes, the kids ate it! A slice of this makes a great lunch at work the next day, too. It also freezes pretty well, so worth doubling the recipe and putting one in the freezer.

Now I just need to solve the grey potato problem...

Garden explosion!

My garden is very, very happy.

The weather has pretty much been ideal, so everything is growing like crazy! Plus there's been enough rain I haven't really had to worry about watering.

Tomatoes! Ripen! RIPEN!!!

OK, probably not yet. But soon enough!

I've lost control of the tomatoes, again. I tried, I really did, but man, you miss a couple of days and bam, the tomatoes are out of control.

Week 24: Rainbow Peanut Noodles

This recipe? Awesome. I don't know why it took me so long to discover the deliciousness of peanut based dressings. This is a terrific recipe for using up the random vegetables you have stashed in the fridge, too, there's lots of things that would work really well.

http://splendidtable.publicradio.org/recipes/pasta_peanut.html

I made a batch of this and stuck it in the fridge to eat for lunch at work this week. I tossed everything together, including the dressing, which in retrospect I wouldn't do again - the noodles wind up absorbing the dressing, and they are good, but I think I would like it better freshly dressed. So next time I'll toss together the noodles and veggies, but pack the dressing seperately.

Instead of chicken, I used tofu, which works very nicely (I'm not really a tofu fan, but for me it works here because frankly you don't even really realize it's there). I also cut way back on the garlic, since 8 cloves of raw garlic seemed like a good way to scare the hell out of my new coworkers. I increased the soy sauce in the dressing, but I didn't really measure the ingredients and so wound up I think adding way more peanut butter than the recipe calls for. Which meant on the first taste, it was too peanut-y. More soy sauce balanced it out nicely. Oh, and I used rice vinegar instead of the called for vinegar.

Definite keeper recipe!

Week 23: Cauliflower Cheese Pie

Wow, being back to work full time is taking some definite getting used to. I'm going to be making a lot of quick cooking recipes, I think, as I try to get dinner on the table within a half hour of getting home from work. And making lots of recipes that make large quantities of leftovers for lunches.

This week, I tried out a new recipe that was recommended somewhere or other as working well in the freezer. So I made it Sunday, froze it, and we ate it for dinner on Thursday.

Moosewood's Cauliflower Cheese Pie

Verdict? OMG SO GOOD. The potato crust is absolutely brilliant, and I plan to adapt it for other savory pie type things. The only change I would make is another egg or two, my version didn't have quite enough filling, but that's the sort of thing that's easy to play by ear when putting the pie together.

I'm making another version this week, a broccoli/carrot/cheddar one. Hopefully my new camera (YAY!) will be up the task and I can start posting pictures again!

Week 22: Baked Gnocchi in Tomato Gorgonzola Sauce

I have two words about this recipe: NOT GOOD. Canadian Living, you are usually so reliable! But, yuck!

Gotta get ready for work; hopefully I can blog properly in a few weeks once I get settled into a routine.

Week 21: Baked spring rolls

No photo this week, my camera appears to be on its last legs.

This week I made spring rolls, but baked instead of fried. They came out surprisingly well done that way. I used this basic recipe, except left out the meat: http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Baked-Spring-Rolls-39000

I baked them on a Pampered Chef stone bar pan. I've discovered recently that preheating the stone is a great way to get things super nice and crispy in the oven. Get the stone nice and hot, and then dump, say, lightly oiled potato slices on it, and in about half an hour you will get amazing oven fries. So I tried the same thing with spring rolls (putting them onto the hot stone instead of a cold stone) and it worked extremely well, they were very nicely browned and crisp (I turned them halfway through cooking).

And hey, I guess this marks the halfway point! Yay! I am hoping to be able to continue - I am starting a new fulltime job next week, so there's going to be some big changes around here, and a lot less time for cooking. I'm going to be looking for a lot of recipes that I can toss together very quickly when I get home from work. And recipes that make large amounts of food for leftovers.

Gnomes!

Pattern for these is found on Wee Folk Art. I painted the faces the same way I do the fairies, and added hair because I have a huge bag of wool fleece, so why not add hair?

I'm actually not entirely thrilled with the hats; I think I'm going to experiment with much smaller ones. I'd like to do a snow white/seven dwarfs set at some point, but I have a rather large lack of time at the moment!

Week 20: Mattar Paneer

Another Indian curry this week. Not too bad at all - I really liked the sauce on this one, and I finally got my act together to make naan, so it was overall a pretty delicious meal! (that's butter chickpeas in the background)

Recipe can be found here.

It's that time of year again...

Yep, doing the community gardening thing again! Got my plot all organized and planted today. Now, the waiting. Man, I cannot wait for tomatoes! I'll detail some of the specifics as things grow more - I've planted some very interesting heirloom tomatoes this year.

Week 19: Tabbouleh

Vegetarianism (at least at home) continues. I'm not sure I'd ever tried tabbouleh before. Turns out I love it! And very easy to make, which will always net a recipe a spot in the 'make this again' binder.

This was last Sunday's dinner - Tabbouleh, obviously, and in the background two half pitas. One spread with an olive-mushroom tapanade, the other with falafel, tomato, cucumber, and tzatziki (ha, the firefox spellchecker hates all those words).

The tabbouleh was also really good combined with hummus on a pita, with some feta and black olives scattered over the top. In fact, I'm having that again for lunch in a few minutes.

I used this food network recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/kathleen-daelemans/tabouleh-recipe/index.html

Except I couldn't find mint anywhere, so left that out. And I only used one bunch of parsley - 3 bunches seems completely insane to me, unless they are very small. Also, the second time I made it instead of using the bulgur I cooked a cup of quinoa, and I actually liked that better. You wind up with way more grains that shown in the picture, and the parsley flavour is a bit less intense, but the quinoa works really well with the dressing and tomatoes.

A few more fairy tale people

My first attempt at Robin Hood, which had a number of issues. Once again, my children wind up with the toys that didn't quite work out properly. They don't seem to be complaining, though.

Queen. Her tunic came out very well, I'm quite pleased with it.
Pink witch, or a princess, or a lady, or, or, or! I haven't quite worked out the long dresses to my satisfaction. This one was supposed to be sort of 'floor length', but it's rather cute even though it didn't come out long enough!
I'm really into embroidering the little flowers! This is the green lady, forest spirit, goddess of summer, maybe the mother - many different ideas! To me she's the green witch.

Tabouleh recipe coming up later! It's not all tiny people around here.

More Fairy Tale People

Yes, I'm getting obsessed with these. They appeal to me on so many levels, not the least of which is the chance to create a bunch of archetypal figures. I've always loved fairy tales and fantasy novels, and the chance to make figures from fairy tales that look pretty darn awesome, if I do say so myself? I can't resist.

This is the hunter, the green man, the woodsman, who shows up in so many stories. A young Robin Hood, perhaps? Or maybe the common figure from so many of my favourite fantasy novels - the young woman who disguises herself as a man and goes off to seek adventure.


Also another witch (I love making witches, which probably says something about me) and a king. These three figures are all available in my shop.

Drop everything...

...and go make these cookies. Just do it.

Well, unless you think you might someday be in a cookie exchange with me, in which case DON'T make these so that I can impress and amaze you with them.

Recipe Here. (Mine are lighter because I only had golden sugar, not dark brown sugar. Probably be even better with the brown sugar!).

Week 18: Parmesan Chickpeas

Oh my.

I could eat this all day long.

I found this recipe on Dana Treat's blog, and it is SO GOOD.

And best of all? Ridiculously easy. Use the best quality ingredients you can, and prepare for deliciousness!

I do think it's important for this one to cook the chickpeas yourself, instead of using canned. Canned chickpeas are great for dips and dishes where they are cooked in a sauce, but here the actual taste of the chickpeas is very central to the dish, and I think canned ones would taste kind of funny.

I used a good quality (expensive!) Parmesan, because that's what I had in the fridge, but any sort of hard grating cheese would work, I expect.

Parmesan Chickpeas

2 cups (or so) cooked chickpeas
juice of one lemon (some zest from that lemon would be a nice touch, too)
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
3/4 tsp kosher salt
ground pepper to taste
1/4-1/3 cup ground hard cheese - I chopped up some parmesan and then whizzed it around in the food processor for 20 seconds or so to grind it into small chunks.

Mix all ingredients together. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve room temperature.

Long overdue: The Fairy Tale People

These were a present for my five year old's birthday. I'm so thrilled with how they turned out! For these, I painted the faces (except for the baby, that was a pre-painted bead). This is the king and the queen, with baby princess. These two are my favourites, I love the way the colours work together.

For these, unlike the fairies, I used embroidery thread for the hair. I really like how it looks.


The fairy godmother, witch, and wizard. Although the witch could be a wise woman or healer or nurse too. And apparently the fairy godmother is the evil queen, according to my daughter. Hey, they're her toys! In retrospect I wish I'd put some hair on the wizard, but other than that, they came out great. I think the witch is particularly delightful.

The prince and the princess. These are a bit smaller than the others, of course. I was losing it a little bit on the embroidery with these, it's kind of uneven and all over the place.

Altogether, these are sized about the same as the plan toys stuff from her dollhouse, so she can play with them in the dollhouse and use the dollhouse furniture.

I'm really enjoying making these to a perhaps unreasonable degree. I need more beads to make more heads, but I've got the body done for a Robin Hood type figure, and I've started on a maiden/mother/crone trio and another king and queen. I'll probably pop them into the store when they are done.

Edit: The five year old insisted I add this picture she took. For some reason the people are currently living in plastic cups.

Week 17: Spinach and Lentil Dal

This one is a winner! Spinach and lentil dal, served over brown rice, with some grilled paneer cubes tossed in. I also served it with diced cucumber and plain yogurt, and those two additions are really key - without the yogurt it was kind of OK, but adding the yogurt made it really yummy. Best of all? Super, super easy to make. I added some onions and garlic because that's what I do, but otherwise I followed the recipe as written.

Find the recipe here.

Week 16: Baked beans attempt #1

Dismal failure, in my opinion.

The beans turned into mush, the flavour was all wrong, it just wasn't good. Although the kids did eat some of it, so maybe I should count this as a win? Ha.

I may have to give up on the whole cooking beans from scratch thing - I have been trying, and trying, and trying, using all sorts of different soaking methods (and not soaking at all!) and I just can't seem to get beans to come out cooked, but not mushy. They seem to go from just slightly undercooked to mushy in the blink of an eye.

So I think I'll cook beans from scratch for things where they are being pureed or mashed anyway, like bean dip or refried beans, but stick to canned for dishes where the beans are supposed to stay relatively whole. I just like the texture of canned beans better.

Not sure where I found the recipe, but here it is:

1 lb. navy or kidney beans
6 c. water
1/3 c. molasses
2 tbsp. brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. dry mustard
1/2 c. butter

Precook beans in boiling water for 2 minutes. Cover and let stand 1 hour. Then simmer for 1 hour until tender. Drain, reserving liquid. Place beans in crock pot. Mix 1 cup reserved liquid, brown sugar, molasses, salt and mustard. Pour over beans and dot with butter. Cover and cook for 6-12 hours on low setting.

I think the molasses was an issue for me, taste wise. I'm going to try and hunt up another recipe that doesn't use it, see if that's the flavour I didn't like.

Rainbow Bundt Cake

Birthday cake for my 5 year old (man, that's weird to type. I have a five year old! What?)

inside....

Surprise!!!

This is awesome because the WOW factor is massively disproportionate to the actual amount of effort it takes to make the cake. It takes maybe 5 minutes of extra work to make the rainbow effect, but everyone thinks you are Martha Stewart.

how to make it?

Make your favourite white or yellow cake recipe. Or boxed mix. Whichever.

Divide the batter equally into six bowls.

Use gel food colouring to dye each bowl a different colour.

Pour the batter, one colour at a time, into a bundt pan. So start with red, pour it in (this will actually be easier with a boxed mix, since they tend to be runnier - I made a from scratch cake and it was pretty stiff batter, so it was a bit trickier). Then pour the orange on top of the red, the yellow on top of the orange, the green on top of the yellow, etc. Eagle eyes will spot the error I made when I poured in my batter, I accidentally reversed two of the colours! Try and pour each colour into the middle of the last colour, that will push the previous colours out a bit and create the arched/curved effect.

Bake as normal, cool, invert onto your serving tray, frost, enjoy!

Flower Fairies

These are made with instructions from Salley Mavor's Felt Wee Folk. The instructions are very easy to follow, although I did make a few modifications! Mavor is very attached to acorn hats, for example, and I just couldn't get acorns big enough, so I improvised felt hats instead. And my aesthetic definitely tends a lot more towards bold primary colours.

For these, I used prepainted beads for the heads I found at Micheal's - I wasn't sure I wanted to tackle painting faces, and they were actually the only wooden beads I was able to find locally that were even remotely suitable.

I definitely highly recommend the book if you want to try making these yourself.


I decided to try my hand at some creative photos with these. Fortunately they are so cute they make it easy.


My older daughter is having her fifth birthday party tomorrow, so I actually made 11 of these dolls for party favours - we're expecting 6 guests, so this way everyone will get to choose one, with a few left over.


And the whole gang:


Tomorrow, the fairy tale grouping I teased yesterday. Need to retake the photos of that one, they came out a bit blurry for some reason.

Sneak peak: Wee Fairy Tale Folk

More details on these coming tomorrow.

Week 15: Kashmiri Paneer

Yep, we're still eating vegetarian. This week I decided to experiment with paneer, a sort of pressed cheese - basically it's like taking the curds from cottage cheese and pressing them into a solid block. To be honest, it's kind of tasteless, but it has a texture I really like, so that makes it a great vehicle for sauces. I expect it to be using it quite a bit more. It also browns quite nicely, adding that bit of flavour.

I got this from here, a great blog on quick Indian cooking. I'm finding Indian vegetarian to be really great - the sauces are so flavourful that it kind of compensates for the lack of meat.

This week, baked beans. It's not that I've never made baked beans before, it's just that I'm still looking for a really good recipe. I've found one that seems promising, so we'll see how it turns out! And it's a great excuse to make cornbread.

Stuffed Pony

I realized I never posted a picture of my eldest daughter's Easter present! This is the pony, made from the same pattern as the elephant.

I have to say, the pony was WAY harder. Sewing the nose was not fun, and sewing on the mane wound up being an enormous pain in the butt. Not sure I'll ever make another one of these, although man, is it ever cute!

Pattern is available here.

Week 15: Butter Chickpea Curry

Our vegetarian adventures continue, with this week's star being Butter Chickpea Curry. Basically, I was thinking I really like Butter Chicken, so surely there's a version that uses the delicious sauce but without the chicken? And yes, yes there is.

Now, I forgot to photograph the finished dish. So I figured, no big deal, they'll be lots of leftovers, because no way are the kids going to eat this stuff!

Yeah, three servings later, DD1 was finally satisfied, and the baby ate her fair share too. Who knew?

And then a certain husband took the rest to work for lunch, so no photos until I make it again! Which will probably be soon, because it was awfully good.

I did change the recipe slightly. The version I made:

Butter Chickpea Curry

Ingredients

• 4 medium potatoes, cubed
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• 2 teaspoons curry powder
• 2 teaspoons garam masala
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup crushed tomatoes
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt (full fat, please!)
• 1 (12 ounce) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

In a large pot of boiling water, simmer potatoes until tender. Drain, and set aside.

Heat butter in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in onion and garlic, and cook until the onions are soft and translucent. Stir in curry powder, garam masala, ginger, cumin, and salt. Cook for 1 or 2 minutes, stirring. Pour in crushed tomatoes, yogurt, and chickpeas. Stir in potatoes. Keep warm until you are ready to eat.

Tastes best the next day, IMO, when the flavours have had a chance to meld a bit.

Week 14: Spinach and cheese empanadas

Didn't get the best pics this week, but these are quite yummy! A spinach and cheese mixture wrapped in pastry and baked until golden.

The recipe I used can be found here: http://southamericanfood.about.com/od/snacksstreetfood/r/spinachempanada.htm

I did make a couple of alterations - for the dough, instead of using all flour, I substituted in one cup of masa for one cup of the flour, just to add that bit of corn flavour. And for the filling, I skipped the melting cheese and tossed in a handful of feta instead, because spinach + feta is fabulous.

Getting ready to roll out the dough.

Rather than making small ones like the recipe suggests, I used a large bowl to make big empanadas. I like to have lots of filling, so I think you get a better filling-pastry ratio when you make a big empanada rather than a little one!

Dump on filling and brush water on the edges of the circle.

Fold in half and use a fork to seal. I also like the roll the edges over a bit after pressing.

Bake until golden! And I cheat a little bit - I like to stick 'em under the broiler for about a minute after they are cooked to get that nice brown on the top.

These are really good, and can be filled with anything you like (I think a mushroom filling would be fantastic, and for the kiddies, you could easily knock off those pizza pop things). However, they are a lot of work, with the rolling and the filling and so forth, so not exactly something I will be making every week. They are terrific for lunches, since they are pretty good cold, and they actually heat up not too badly in the microwave if you don't go too overboard. Also great for dinner if you put a big pile of veggies or a salad on the side.

I made a bunny cake!

Happy Easter!

I've never made a fancy cake before. Not bad for a first timer, I don't think! Of course, the bunny cake mold made it fairly easy, but I'm still impressed it didn't completely disintegrate.

Week 13: Welsh Rarebit

OK, really it's just fancy cheese sauce, but damn, is it ever tasty! Loved this dinner.

Welsh Rarebit, made from this recipe, served over homemade whole wheat baguette slices. Yum.

And since although one could just eat that, it probably wouldn't be the healthiest idea, there's also some steamed cauliflower and broccoli, and a zucchini/carrot/quinoa patty I invented. Basically, one shredded zucchini and one shredded carrot and a cup or so of cooked quinoa mixed together with an egg and a couple of tablespoons of flour. Season with salt and pepper, fry it up, easy as can be. Also great with the cheese sauce!

The Easter Elephant

I was trying to think what I could make for the kid's Easter baskets, and not really coming up with anything exciting. So I was idly browsing sewing patterns at Etsy to see if I could find one for a stuffed rabbit, and I stumbled on this vintage stuffed animal pattern. And I just had, HAD to have it, if only for the elephant. Something about the elephant just screamed SEW ME NOW.

So, I bought the pattern, and raided my fabric stash, and I'm rather impressed with how it turned out.

I can't slip stitch worth a damn, so there's a lot of visible whip stitching where there really should be invisible slip stitches, but I'm just going to say that makes it more charming. And the pattern had a few tricky bits (like the instructions for attaching the elephant's ears made not a lick of sense, although somehow as I muddled through and made most of it up I think I actually stumbled across the correct method purely by accident), but overall the pattern wasn't that hard. I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner, I don't think, but if you fairly comfortable sewing this pattern is very cute.

The elephant will be going in the baby's Easter basket. Tonight, for my older daughter, I'm going to tackle the pony pattern (I have the pieces all cut out and ready to go), and if that turns out as well as the elephant I will be very happy.

The set also includes patterns for a bunny, a kangaroo, a pig, and a penguin. And two incredibly creepy looking dolls. The picture in the pattern kind of freaked me out. I don't think I'll be making those!

Week 12: Vegetarian Week (recipe: Tomato and Black Bean Quinoa)

So, we're going (sort of) vegetarian. At least for a while. Kind of. We've been steadily decreasing the amount of meat in our diets anyway, so it's not that big a leap into trying to go meatless, at least at home. It'll be a fun experiment, and I have no intention of being a permanent vegetarian. We'll see what happens. If someone drops a source of locally grown ethically treated low cost chickens in my lap, I'll probably change the plan!

Sunday was our first official night, so I did a spread of pita, hummus, falafal, tzatziki, all that good stuff. I did make two delightful discoveries: my homemade pita bread makes amazing pita chips (just cut into chips, brush lightly with melted butter, sprinkle with salt, and bake for 3-4 minutes until crisp), and you can make an awesome dip just by tossing a can of (drained) white beans into the food processor with a head of roasted garlic, a couple of tablespoons of melted butter, and enough water/bean cooking liquid to thin it. Super yummy, and also great warm.

Monday's dinner:

Pita chips with the white bean dip, a small green salad topped with leftover falafal and tzatziki, and the back bean and tomato quinoa you can find here. Delicious, although the cooking method for the quinoa is insanely complicated. Just cook it like rice, it'll come out just as well. Also, it makes an absolutely enormous amount, way more than the four servings the recipe claims.

Tuesday:
More pita chips (what can I say, they are SO good) topped with bruschetta-type mix and some balsamic vinegar, asparagus, and a mushroom patty that I made out of mushrooms, onions, and a generous scoop of the leftover quinoa from Monday. Added a bit of flour to help bind it together, fried it up, and topped with some crumbled blue cheese and a poached egg. Delicious! Since the husband type person doesn't like mushrooms, for his I mixed together some quinoa and some white bean dip. He said it was good.

Wednesday:

Stuck pot brown rice with ginger, sesame seeds, and almonds (good, but I put in too much ginger), and pita chips (again!) topped with a chick pea/tomato/cucumber/bean sprout salad that was tossed in a basic vinaigrette. Then I chucked some feta on top, just because.

Thursday was pasta with tomato sauce and cheese, and tonight is our usual Friday night pizza night.

All in all, I did not miss meat at all this week. I think Mark Bittman is right, when he says in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian that the secret to a good vegetarian meal is to stop thinking about having a main dish - instead, think about every part of the meal as equally important. So you have a few bites of this, a few bites of that, and the next thing you know you are full, satisfied, and you haven't missed meat at all. So, in addition to the food above, every meal also included a veggie tray with dip and usually fruit as well, just to add that little bit of extra variety (and get more fruit and veggies into the kids!).

Speaking of the kids, they did great. The baby just eats anything anyway, and the 4 year old was surprisingly willing to try almost everything, although I did save her plain portions of things like the quinoa, and I made a big batch of plain brown rice that she worked through over the week. I do have to do a bit of research on getting them both adequate B12 and iron, and I'm sure they will both eat meat at grandma's house and when we go out to restaurants, so I'm not particularly worried about them getting enough nutrition.