Sweet Treats

So, I saw this pretty idea online and decided to try it out for myself....with a little help from my super-pie-crust-baking-mom.....

It is a lot of work for a treat....but it's kind of fun....maybe a once-a-fall type of thing in my book :)

Forest Honey

 So, I finally tried it.....Forest Honey that is. I've been talking about it for a long while, waiting for just the right season, and it finally came.

I should've known better.

Basically, I saw a recipe in a kid's cookbook two years ago, that you can make a type of honey from pine needles. So I was dying to try it. The basic recipe is as follows:

Gather new pine needles
Soak in water overnight
Drain and discard the needles
Add sugar to the water and boil till thick

Why should've I known better? Because I've made candy before. Because I've boiled sugar before. Of COURSE it gets thick like honey. ha. The longer you cook any sugar syrup, the harder it gets (like peanut brittle, caramel corn, popcorn balls, etc)

So, really, this was pine flavored sugar water. Because for 5 cups water I had to add 3 cups sugar. Besides, I was impatient so I used Balsam needles instead of waiting for white pine needles. Oh boy did it smell! (Balsam is the strong-smelling Christmas tree type)

Need-less to say, I am pleased I finally tried this experiment...but wish I had thought it through (you'd think 2 years was enough!) because it tasted horriblly bitter, and I threw the whole thing out, and only afterward did I remember the candying principle and why it would get sticky. :)

So here you go....you can look at this post and see how "Forest Honey" turns out, but you don't have to try it at home (which I don't recommend any way)!

A Colorful Grochery Trip

This last week's shopping trip was so fun.

Not because of the great deals I got.

Not because of the amazing foods I bought.

But only because it was so COLORFUL when I got it home :)

Wishing you many cheerful shopping trips too....

A Green Party!

Complete with:

• Green Balloons
• Green rice
• Kiwi
• Spinach Curry
• Green Been Toran
• Green table cloth
• Green Streamers
• Green-colored coconut cupcakes

I'd say it was all a hit, except for the green rice. That maybe wasn't so appetizing looking :)

Ridiculous

This is a bit ridiculous.

I have just finished blogging about my quest for healthy desserts and snacks, and now I'm hungry for a snack. I can't tell you what I think sounds delicious right now, because that would make you want it too, and that would ruin the quest! ha

Ohy.

So, let's see. Here are some nice options:

Perhaps I will slice and apple and dip it in peanut butter.

Photo Source

or maybe I will slice a nice juicy orange.







Photo Source

Those things are quick right now, and will satisfy me till supper in about an hour. :)

How about you?

The healthy Snack/Dessert Quest

Over here, Keren is on a quest...for yummy and healthy desserts. I have decided to join her on this quest for a couple reasons:

One.... I too love sugar. And I love snacking.
Two....I should not eat so much sugar, both for health of myself and health of little kiddo!

So, step one, joined by my in-laws, was an agreement that I would only cook a treat once a week.(Yes, I used to do more than that)

Step two....find some nice alternatives.

I start my quest this week.

Meanwhile, I will share this nice snacking recipe for a yummy muffin. It's filling and nice, good snack for a mamma needed healthy calories :)

Oat Bran Muffins

1 1/4 cup oat bran

1 cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 beaten egg

3/4 cup applesauce

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup honey

1 Tbl oil

1/2 cup raisens

Mix all ingredeints until just moist. (Don't overmix or the baking soda won't work so well)

Spoon into muffin tin and back in a 400 degree oven for 16 to 18 minutes. Serve warm. (With milk!)

I have no pictures, but imagine a wonderfully moist, flaky muffin, nestled full of juicy raisens, being snacked on with a full, frothy glass of milk. :)

A Breakfast Idea

This is called Bread Upuma, and it's good :)

Ingredients:

• Bread, cubed
• Vegetables of your choice ( I used frozen stir fry ones)
• 1/2  onion, sliced
• Little oil, for frying
• black mustard seeds (fried with the onion first)
• Salt and sugar to taste

First fry the onion and mustard seed. Then add veggies. Then add the bread cubes and keep stir frying. Then sprinkle with salt and sugar.

So Good!

I adapted my standard muffin recipe to make a Blueberry Bran Muffin.

Oh YUM! did they ever turn out good :)

So, I thought that recipe was just too delicious not to share!

Blueberry Bran Muffins

• 1 1/3 cup flour
• 2/3 cup oat bran
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1 cup wild blueberries
• cinnamon sugar for top

Mix together your ingredients. Spoon into 12 muffin cups. Sprinkle tops with cinnamon sugar. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until nicely brown. Devour warm or cold!

Cooking when Company Comes

So, I had a bunch of freezer meals ready for when our baby arrived. They were really handy and I was glad we had them!

We had some left still, this last week, and I found another great use for them! We had unexpected company over for lunch, and I was so glad when I looked in our freezer! Usually, I just eat letovers from the previous supper for lunch, but there wasn't enough for all of us and I started to panic. I opened the freezer door, and there I saw a nice couple hotdishes just waiting for use. Of course! I just popped one into the stove for a half hour and lunch was ready!

So, my tip to you today on When Company Comes, is set aside some hotdishes or dry soup mixes to have on hand for a quick meal. That way, when guests do stop by, you will have no qualms about asking them to stay for lunch.

Some good meals we've had success with from the freezer:

• Chicken Broccoli Crescent Bake
• Turkey Wild Rice Casserole
• Tossed Lasagna
• Pot Pie (Vegetable or Meat)
• Pea Soup

Do you have any company ideas or great freezer meals? Leave us a link!

 

Last minute orginazation

There were some important, and not so important, last minute things on my to-do list last week. One of them was cleaning and organizing our freezer.

I decided between the above-the-fridge freezer and our little chest freezer there needed to be some consolidating.

Our Above-the-Fridge freezer was designated as our "quick meal" space. I filled it with pre-cooked beans, meat, veggies to steam, and some hotdishes from Mom. Now everything is pretty easy to access, and, I found out we're pretty set for the whole rest of the month. Nice!

The other freezer became my "misc and baking freezer." It's in this freezer that I found out how much zucchini we were blessed with last summer. Ha. How about at least 15 bags of it! Now I need to start using it up. Here are some plans I have:

• Zucchini Pancakes (like Potato Pancakes)
• Chocolate Zucchini Cake or cupcakes
• Muffins with zucchini

Any other ideas?

When Company Comes....Cook!

Yum yum yum. I think homemade cinnamon rolls are one of the tastiest things ever....warm.....carmally...fresh. *sigh*

I've been looking at and bookmarking some recipes to have on hand for when we have overnight guests. Most of these I've found related to Christmas time, but the pictures sure make me drool!

Presentation adds so much to the dining experience!

But for some inspiration, just check out these sites:

• Walnut Lane Inn's recipe collection and pictures
• About.com's crockpot & freezer breakfast recipes
• Allrecipes.com roll recipe
• FoodNetwork's Christmas Morning Cinnamon Rolls

Or, to really make your appetite kick in, type in "overnight breakfast recipes" into Google and then click the Images tab to see a bunch of delicious looking breakfasts!

Happy Cooking!

To try sometime....

I want to bake these sometime....soon too....

Bagels

( I have the cream cheese already....)

Soft Pretzels

(And I have parmesan cheese....)

English Muffins

(Now all I need is the time)

Blueberries

Blueberry season is here. I am trying my best to get out when I can and pick "gallons."

The only thing is, I might be a fast picker, but I'm a slow cleaner, so I have to pace myself a bit :)

Blueberry Pie.....here we come!

Tasty Treat

• Chocolate pudding
• Whipped Topping (mixed in the above)
• Grahm cracker crust (grahm crackers, butter, sugar, mixed)
• Fresh Strawberries
• Cupcake liners

Homemade Waffle Bowls

Yum!
The other day I decided I was hungry for ice cream in a waffle cone or bowl. I also decided that it must be something you can make at home, and I was right. Though, it wasn't quite as succesful as I first imagined!

I found a couple batter recipes, here, here, and here. All contain basically the same ingredients:

3 eggs

3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder

Beat the eggs and gradually beat in the sugar until the mixture is creamy.
Stir in the melted butter and vanilla.
Combine the flour and baking powder, and then add it to the mixture. Blend it in well.

Here is where it got tricky. Most sites said to use a pizzelle maker or Krumkake machine , which I don't have. Hmmm....what to do?

Nope, in my waffle maker they made, guess what? Waffles! ha

So I got out my griddle and tried my best to make them thin round pancakes. The first were a bit thick, but I got better and better.

This is how I decided to make my pancakes into bowls. I slipped the pancake over one glass and gently set a bigger glass on top. It cooled in about 2-3 minutes.

Now, both M. & I thought they were delicious, but we actually ate them without the ice cream. We just snacked one them as-is. :)

I wasn't very good at storage, so they got a little soft by just keeping them in a tupperware container.

This website, Skip to My Lou, has some great pictures and success it looks like. I'd recommend going on over there to follow her steps. :)

What to Do with Sesame Cookies

So, the other day I decided to make some African cookies. Nigerian Sesame Cookies or Benne Cakes to be exact.

They are supposed to be crunchy & delicious, and look like this:

Image from Family Fun.

I liked it because I have a ton of sesame seeds to use, and there weren't that many other ingredients.

But, when I made them, mine looked like this:

Don't be fooled....I did NOT spread this into the pan like bars. I carefully rounded each spoonful, and set them 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet to bake!

So what do you do with flopped cookies?

Because, they were too sticky to even cut and take off in squares, I made them into these:

It works for me!

When Company Comes, you should have.....Good Pancakes

This morning I made pancakes for breakfast. Not that you are terribly interested in that fact, or that I am terribly interested in telling you what I make every day for breakfast, besides the point that we had no company. But, there are some key points I thought I'd share, just for fun.

1) Neither of us are very fond of pancakes *gasp*

2) I think it's because I like "light" pancakes rather than very dense

3) This morning I thought to experiment with the batter to make it lighter (I think I read this somewhere at sometime, someplace)

The recipe calls for buttermilk, but I used 1/2 regular milk, and 1/2 ginger ale. :)

And it worked!

The result was a nice, fluffy pancake....without a hint of ginger I might add!

So, without further ado, here is a nice recipe for company pancakes:

1 cup flour

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

1 egg

1/2 cup ginger ale

3/4 cup milk

2 Tbl oil

Image from here.

The other fun thing you might try sometime, is making cookie-cutter shaped pancakes!

I read this in a book, but the above image is as close online as I could get (every other instruction says to cook the pancakes and then cut them out...nah)

From what I remember, you would grease a cookie cutter (with oil), set it on your hot griddle, and then pour in batter. Let cook until brown and bubbly (like usual), but then, flip the whole works over. If the cutter was greased sufficiently, the pancake should slide down to cook the other side (and still keep it's shape). After that you should be able to remove the cutter.

Have fun!

Idiappum

This really turned out delicious! Of course, when I read the recipe, I had no idea it would look like this, but that's okay as long as it's good.

This is called Idiappum. And Indian "quick" dish.

Boil some eggs and set aside.

Soak noodles of your choice (I used whole wheat spaghetti noodles) in cold water for 30 minutes. Then, boil water and add the drained noodles in it for all of 3 minutes. Drain again.

In a fry pan, fry up garlic, onions, almonds, and green pepper chopped. Add 2 tsp curry powder and some salt.

Add the noodles and fry.

Garnish with egg slices. Yum!

Shrimp Curry

This was our first try at making prawn (or shrimp) curry.

It turned out tasty, which was nice.

Most of all, it was fun to watch the chef in the online video cooking, making it all look so simple. And it was nice to have M. peel and cut the prawns for me.

I'm not a big fan of seafood myself, so honestly, I picked out the shrimp and just ate the gravy on rice. :)

Veggie Pizza

Sometime a couple weeks ago, I went to a friend's house for a Tupperware Party.

I'd never been to one of those before, so it was kind of fun.

My friend made this yummy veggie pizza for snacks....it was YUM!

Veggie Pizza:

One container crescent rolls, rolled flat on pizza pan

Bake till brown

Mix sour cream and dry ranch dressing

Spread on cooled crust

Chop veggies of your choice. In this picture, black olives, brocolli, cauliflower, and carrots.

Eat or chill and eat.