Tag Archives: Cooking

Tasting Summer

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It is always this time of year we begin to feel impatient for spring at our house. The holidays are over, we’ve spent several beautiful months enjoying the special vastness that comes with Kansas winters. There have been a few bitter, cold snaps this season and only one snow, we’ve rarely gone more than a week without the weather being nice enough to play outside in the afternoons. And yet we are waiting, looking for things to green up and realizing how far away that really is.

It’s not even lent yet.

Oh my, that makes warm weather seem far away.

My Farmer asked for taco salad for supper this past weekend, and as a side dish I pulled out one of our favorite summer recipes. My mother-in-law gave me this recipe a couple of years before she died. She probably clipped it from Country Woman Magazine. I think of her every time I make it; I remember many of the times we shared in the kitchen, prepping food together for our hungry farmers. This recipe is quick, easy, healthy and delicious. How many wins can you get in one dish?

Corn and Black Bean Salad

2 cups each (cooked and cooled – I usually just use frozen) sweet corn and black beans
1 chopped sweet onion
1 chopped sweet bell pepper (I really like using orange in this salad)
Juice of 1 lime
dash of hot sauce
1 Tbsp oil
Spices of your choice (I added ground red pepper, chili powder, salt, pepper and cilantro)

Mix veggies with corn. Stir spices into oil and lime juice. Mix well with veggies. This is even better if it can sit for a couple of hours in the refrigerator before you serve it.

As it turns out, it is also delicious ON taco salad. And it makes picnic season seem much closer.

WARNING: This dish will also make you long for a Margarita, so plan accordingly. I did not, and alas, had to make due with beer.

Do you have a favorite recipe from a relative you miss either because of distance or death?

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We’re simmering now…

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This past week there was not a lot that happened around here. And yet I was swamped.

Lots of things are *getting ready* to happen around here, so I’ve been knee-deep in preparation.

We rolled the combines into a corn field for the first test cut on Wednesday (the moisture content was still too high – a farmer would say “It’s too wet.”) and are now rolling full-bore. This lands me back in the camp of spending most of my time in the kitchen prepping harvest suppers, in the fields driving a tractor to pull the grain cart, on the road helping move people from place to place, or at the computer tallying results and tracking inventory. While I’m at the computer I promise to do my best to upload some pictures from the time I spend in the field.

I’m also ready to begin school again. The kids are excited too, but they are making sure to enjoy their last un-scheduled days as we count down to changing our routine back to active homeschooling. In preparation, everyone will spend the weekend cleaning their rooms and building as much lego as they can.

I have used this past week to put the finishing touches on my lesson plans and preparing materials for the first few weeks. I have also been cooking like mad. Last year, I made several meals I could freeze and just pop in the oven on school mornings so we could have a hot lunch with no effort on my part. It worked so well I’m repeating it this year. I have some spaghetti casseroles, rice/mushroom/broccoli bakes, salmon and noodle dishes, and creamy mac and cheese waiting patiently in my deep freeze.

I made meatloaf, except it was meatsheet. I mixed up our favorite meatloaf recipe, but instead of cooking it in a loaf pan, I spread it out on a cookie sheet with edges as if it were a sheet cake. It cooks much faster (around 30 mins) and is easy to cut into bread-sized pieces. I freeze those pieces between sheets of wax paper so I can pull out one at a time for a meatloaf sandwich or a single hot serving. I also made my mother-in-law’s famous sloppy joe meat and froze it in serving-sized balls (in a muffin tin). They are so simple to pop out of a bag and zap in a dish for a fast, hot sandwich.

I also made our version of granola, which my children love to have with plain, non-fat yogurt and honey…or all by itself. Here is the recipe:

3 cups rolled oats,
3/4 cup EACH: sunflower seeds, walnut pieces, sliced almonds, macadamia nuts,
Mix dry ingredients.
Stir together 1/2 cup oil (I used organic olive oil from Azure Standard) and 2/3 cup maple syrup.
Poor over the dry mix and stir with a spatula until incorporated.
Spread into a large, oven safe dish or sheet. Bake at 250 degrees F (I used my convection setting at 225) for around an hour, stirring every 15 minutes or so, until crunchy.
Store in an air-tight container.

What is your favorite make-ahead meal?

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Put on a happy face

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My friend Marla, who writes with me at Growing Your Homeschool, is so creative with food for her toddler.

Even though my children are older, they still enjoy fun, silly or interesting food presentations.

Here is the clown-face breakfast I made last week:

Hard boiled egg whites, blueberries, cashews.

I’m a late-comer to the idea that food presentation really does matter. I’m also not terribly talented at it. Decorating and artsy stuff is not really my forte. I’m better at talking, singing, explaining, encouraging…you get the picture (noise-related areas are where I excel). However, I’ve discovered that any little bit of effort counts. Fresh fruit is wonderful.

Arranged (even poorly) on a fun tray is better.

Personally, I’ve found that crystal filled with very good wine or a hand-crampingly cold bottle of citrusy wheat bear placed at the top of my place setting makes everything present well. What do you do at your house to make good food more attractive?

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It’s barbecue time!

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The only thing I love more than being invited to a barbecue is eating the food at said function.

We’ve been to several this summer and I’m in a rut with what I am bringing to share; a good kind of rut! I wanted to share my recipe, keep in mind none of this is exact. I copied off of my brother-in-law for this.

Creamy, Dreamy Guacamole

6 avacado, split, seed removed, sliced
1/3 cup (or so) plain yogurt
1/4 cup mayo of your choice (we use safflower oil mayo right now)
juice of 2 limes (I like it really limey)

Blend together with whatever method you choose (fork, blender, mixer – I used a stick blender).

Chop up two luscious tomatoes, throw in some spices and salt, stir it all together.

I'm in love with it on these blue chips.

Adjust your wet ingredients based on how creamy you like your guac. I have also drizzled in some olive oil and that’s wonderful as well. It’s delicious as a dip or on top of a burger, and while there is no guarantee children will like it, I did have two that were at least willing to try!

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Tortilla Success

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I have a son who L.O.V.E.S. tortillas. He could eat them morning, noon and night and never tire of their soft, roll-y goodness.

Except they are full of so much badness! Or the store-bought ones are, anyway.

So I have been trying out tortilla recipes and I am ready to announce a winner. This is from a site I have linked before, OAMC (once a month cooking). My life on the farm is not predictable enough for actual once-a-month cooking to work, but I DO try to utilize power cooking ideas (double and triple recipes to freeze, doing meal planning and prep work on the weekend for the five day school week, that sort of thing).

Cut 10 Tsp of butter into 6 cups of flour (I use whole wheat pastry flour). I use my mixer and paddle attachment to do this. Dissolve 2 tsp kosher salt into 2 cups of HOT water (I think you could get away with less salt). Mix water into flour slowly and let it form a soft dough. Roll out on flour-sprinkled wax paper (you’ll need to be generous with the flour) and cook on an ungreased skillet until each side bubbles.

My kids think these are absolutely terrific. I made quesadillas last night with the tortillas, and stuffed one with tuna, spinach and red onions. The kids did NOT think that was fabulous but that was okay by me because that meant I needed to eat all of it.

Let me know if you try this out, or what you like best to do with tortillas at your house!

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A tester and a teaser

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Good morning! Even though cooler weather has moved back into Kansas this week (we are back in the 70s this week – hooray!) it still feels like summer is upon us at my house. It looks like June outside after this mild, early spring, and we are on our last days of the school year. The kids are putting finishing touches on their end-of-the-year projects. Everything will be finished come Friday. I have been itching to get to some desk, home-improvement and cooking projects that I’ve set aside for summer. I imagine with glee all the free time I will have once our homeschool year is over for a few weeks (This is like the first time you are pregnant and you are imagining all the free time you will have and everything you will get accomplished after you have the baby).

Planning for these projects has led me down many internet rabbit holes, and here is a great one I want to share with you. It is a once-a-month cooking site filled with recipes. You can search the recipes by cooking method, food type (I linked the whole foods approach) or even by ingredient. (AWESOME – I KNOW!) They even create monthly menus based on in-season items; you can print out grocery lists, recipe cards and labels. Seriously, be still my beating heart!

And the teaser portion of this post is as follows: I ran a Warrior Dash with my running buddy on Sunday. It was da freaking bomb. She is emailing me pictures and I am going to post them here for your blog-reading enjoyment. Never heard of a Warrior Dash? Please click this link.

Come back soon for details…

Copy Cat Cookie; a successful FAIL

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My children really like a certain store-bought cookie that I won’t (usually) buy because it has ingredients I don’t like to have in my house. These would include the following things: More than five total ingredients, ingredients I cannot pronounce, ingredients I don’t keep in my own pantry for baking, vague ingredients like “natural flavors” or “spices” which are often a loophole way of labeling MSG.

The cookies are still better for you than most packaged crackers and chips, so they can be a good snack alternative depending on the direction your food choices take. We have used them before as snacks to share at a class when I forgot it was our turn. They are tasty and have some nutritional value, as well as a better ingredient list than most all other packaged cookies. Here is the link to the nutritional information, if you are interested.

I found a bulk bin of dried, organic blueberries at my grocery store last week, and decided to make a go of creating similar cookies at home. Here is a record of the first attempt.

I tweaked a cookie recipe I found (here is the original) and came up with this:

Cream 3 Tbsp butter and 1/2 cup packed brown sugar. Mix in one large egg and 1 tsp vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine 1 and 1/2 whole wheat flour, 1/4 cup oat flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp cinnamon. Stir in about 1/4 to 1/3 cup dried blueberries (sorry – I didn’t even measure these – I just tossed some in so I’m guessing here).

Spoon flour mixture into wet mixture, beating slowly until just combined.

I used a triggered cookie scoop (like this one) to place melon-ball sized pieces of dough on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Bake at 350F (I have a convection oven so I set mine to 325F) for 8-10 minutes. When they look cracked, but not liquid inside the cracks, they are done. Cool on a rack.

The results? Well, my food critics tell me that (a) this makes a pretty cookie, (b) these taste absolutely nothing like the cookie I was aiming for a resemblance with and (c) these are delicious and would be great in place of said store-bought cookie anyway.

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Grill Your Own UN-Unleavened (see comments) Bread

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I found a recipe online when I googled “cook bread on the grill,” which I then dissassembled in order to remove all the terrible igredients and replace them with healthier alternatives. Here is the recipe and some pictures because (a) I have an iphone now and it’s just so stinking easy to take and post pictures and (b) this should be a much more interesting post with pictures.

First, dissolve One Tablespoon of yeast into 1 cup warm water and 1/4 to 1/3 cup honey.

We were still working on school when I started - see my lesson plans?

Let this stand for around ten minutes until it’s frothy, as you can see here:

MMMMM - active yeast smells so delicious.

Stir in 3 Tablespoons liquid of your choice (I used almond milk), one beaten egg, 4 1/2 cups whole grain flour of your liking (I used some white whole wheat flour and a handful of cornmeal just because I love the texture it adds). Knead on floured surface for 6-8 minutes or until smooth (or if you prefer machine kneaded dough, knead with dough hook until smooth).

Note to self: shut mixer off next time. This is not really a good 'action' shot.

Let the dough rise in a warm place until it is doubled in volume (I placed mine in a warm oven, it took around 30 min).

Punch down the dough and knead in any spices or flavoring you would like (one suggestion was garlic, which sounded lovely, but I left mine plain this time). Pinch off handfuls of dough roughly the size of a golf ball. I set mine on an oiled cookie sheet. I then sprayed more olive oil on them after I’d finished balling all of the dough.

Thank you, Little Cowgirl, for your excellent photography here.

Put them back in the warm oven to rise (this will be much quicker, 10-15 min in a warm oven or 30 min at room temp) and turn on your grill.

Here they are, puffed up and ready for cooking!

Flatten the golf balls and place them on the grill. These only need a minute or two and they are ready to turn (I waited too long the first time around).

I love this picture because there are chickens in it.

I left them on the top grate to keep warm while the second round cooked and the meat finished (we had uncooked garden veggies with this meal).

I was experimenting with a pork recipe as well...top right.

You can brush these with butter or oil while they cook, and you could add seasonings to that if you would like. Again, I left mine pretty plain because of the customers visiting my eatery this day.

The reviews were all positive.

What does your family like to cook on the grill? Is it nice enough where you are yet to be enjoying outdoor cooking?

Swing into Spring

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Our Parish built a new school last summer. When the move occurred, there was an auction to raise funds and distribute items that weren’t going to be used in our new site. Our close friends were there, aiming to leave with the big swing set. There was a smaller one, and we laughingly suggested we should get the smaller one and help each other haul and set up the swings.

The small set auctioned first. We were the only bidder. I still feel kind of guilty about how little we paid for it (my guilt is outweighed by the money we spent to buy the Sacristy Bell for my father-in-law).

The large set came up next – we were all excited because (obviously) no one wanted swings as we hadn’t even had another bidder for our set.

Ahem.

The large set had numerous bidders and went for hundreds of dollars – not to our friends. A sure sign that the little swing set was really meant for us all along and we just needed the idea planted by our friends.

For nearly a year our little set has waited patiently in pieces beside the old quonset shed. But once the stumps came out of our yard, it’s time had come.

It was a four-person project that required lots of digging. Since then it has required lots of testing out. Over Easter weekend it received a great deal of ‘working the kinks out’ by many children. (And maybe by me as well. I still love swinging.)

I posted this picture on Facebook the week after we put the swing up, and it was very popular:

I love homeschooling. He read four chapters like this.

We moved the grill from the front yard to the back in order to better enjoy the new swing set, cleaned off the back porch and moved the picnic table. I’ve liked it so much that I’ve continued to grill on weekdays while the kids swing and we all enjoy being outside. I’ve been experimenting with some grilling recipes and it’s been fun.

I marinated the chicken in this new beer - then needed to finish up the rest of the bottle, which was so yummy I had another bottle. It was almost as good as the asparagus.

The kids hauled their campfire makings over to the site of a former stump and ‘camped’ between swinging.

I grilled some pita/naan type bread yesterday and it was a big hit! I promise to post the recipe the next time I’m back at my desk. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Homeschool eats…

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I read this great piece over at Simple Homeschool where another Jessica talks about how she plans her meals around homeschooling.

It was inspirational and helpful, so I wanted to share. If you are homeschooling or not, working from home or an office, parenting toddlers or teenagers, honeymooning or empty-nesting, there will be good ideas for you.

Here is our breakfast tray inspired by the post:

We read about the expedition of Lewis and Clark while the food disappeared. All that remained were a few sagging grapes, which I just tossed over the bushes to the chickens since we were reading outside in the glorious taste of spring we’ve had.