Make this bread.

I could have made this bread a long time ago. 


I should have made this bread a long time ago. 


But I held off because these photos of the bread baked in the Le Creuset pot taunted me. I wanted one too. A few times I convinced myself to go to the retail store with the intent to buy one. But yikes, even knowing what they cost beforehand didn't quell the sticker shock and I always left empty handed. 


Enter the town-wide garage sale. 

I picked up this baby for $2.00. Saving somewhere in the neighborhood of $248.00? Hooray. 


Thrifting bliss at it's finest. 

So now the bread has been made. 


And you should make it too.

With or without the pot.
It's that good. 

Rhubarb Pt 2

Rhubarb Nut Bread

Ingredients
1 1/2 C sweetener - I used a combination of honey, maple syrup, and agave syrup
1 very ripe avocado, mashed
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 egg, beaten
1 cup milk 
1 tbsp. lemon juice
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup nuts, any type - I used walnuts
1 1/2 cups rhubarb, chopped


Directions
Mix the milk together with the lemon juice. Allow to sit for at least 5 minutes. Don't worry about the curdling, that's the point. 

In a bowl, mix whatever sweetener you chose, avocado, vanilla, and the egg, until well combined.
In another bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking soda.
Add the milk mixture to the avocado mixture alternately with the flour mixture, beating well after each addition.
Fold in the rhubarb and the nuts.
Turn into 2, greased, medium size loaf pans (approx. 9" x 5" x 3").
Bake at 350° F for about 45 minutes.

Cool on rack completely before slicing.

No sugar! No oil! No white flour! 

A new favorite. 

rhubarb

I've always disliked rhubarb.
But there's something about the harvest being your own that softened my position on the vegetable.

Loafs and cakes and juice and sauce and pie and on and on it goes. So many things to make and already another harvest starting to grow. 

Cake Pops

Add this post to the bajillions of blog posts out there devoted to cake pops. 


Ephram has to take a special birthday snack to school tomorrow and months ago he informed me that everybody brings cupcakes. So those were out. I had in mind to make these but the boy had other plans. Plans he said he'd help with.  


So we baked, crumbled, mixed, rolled, poked and dipped little by little over the last few days and...

ta-da! 60 little cake pops ready and waiting. 

Old Mother Hubbard

... or that's the goal anyway. 


We are in a self imposed grocery spending freeze. 


I have a rough idea of what we spend on a month in groceries and while I know it's way less than the average family, it's more than what I think is reasonable. Especially at this point in our life when over half of our income is reliant on faith. God has been abundant in his blessings and the ways He's provided for us in these months but (predictably and unfortunately) we've gotten really comfortable in the area of finances and before we repeat the same debt cycles we've been prone to in the past we are tightening up our belts. 


I hate waste and I love living simply with less stuff but these ideals have never really transferred over into the kitchen. Our cupboards are bursting from grocery trips past and our freezer full of meals prepped pre-baby so the time is right to start thinking creatively to use up what we have and harness our grocery spending even more. 


We are feasting in just afew short weeks but until then, my goals:

• Buy nothing! Milk is the one definite exception but besides that we should be fine. (I do have to take a birthday snack to Kindergarten mid  month, but I think I can make do with the baking ingredients I already have save a carton of eggs I probably will need to buy) We have an embarrassing amount of frozen veggies and the fruit drawer is bursting with apples and oranges that should last ALMOST to the very end.  
• Bake my own bread/buns/bagels on scheduled days.
• Work out a system for weekly/monthly meal plans to implement when the spending freeze ends that is cost effective, healthy and won't keep adding extras that always seem to fill our cupboards.
• No eating out - even when things are looking REALLY bleak. Friday nights are movie nights though, when we picnic on our bed with a $5 Little Caesars pizza. I do realize we pay $5 to eat a slab of cardboard but it's 5 bucks and right across the street and well, it's a tradition so it gets a pass.
• Think creatively. Make meals we actually want to eat.
• Healthy. We don't keep much (or any) in the way of canned or boxed meals in the house so I'm not worried that in order to use up what we have that we will be having entire meals of ichiban or Alphagetti. This goal should be quite easy I guess but still worth putting it out there to keep me accountable.

I think that's all. 

So far we haven't been to the grocery store at all this week - a record!

Last night I used up a can of mixed beans that had been sitting in the cupboard and otherwise would have just collected dust for months I'm sure, to make Veggie burgers. And not just any veggie burgers - veggie burgers that were eaten with conviction by everyone. For an 88¢ can of beans (and afew other kitchen staples) I say, not bad. Not bad at all. 

Simple Veggie Burgers

1 19oz can mixed beans (use whatever kind of beans you'd like)

1 small carrot cooked

1 small onion

1 small bunch of parsley (totally optional)

1 cup oatmeal (this is an estimate)

1 egg

salt and pepper


(this one is really open to interpretation so have fun adding whatever you think you're family would like - keep in mind the consistency should remain the same as in the picture below though)

This one is really as simple as throwing everything into the food processor and mixing until you have a moist but not wet mixture. I would say by the time I was done I had used 1 cup of oatmeal total, but start off with a half cup and add as you need to. If you end up with a mixture that is too dry use some wine, water, ketchup, etc. to add some moisture and help bind it all together again. 

Form into patties (I got 12 medium sized burgers from this recipe) and let sit in the fridge, tightly covered, for at least an hour to help them set up. 

Throw on the BBQ (or in a skillet or you could even bake them) and cook for about 5 minutes each side. I added curry paste to the tops while they were cooking but you don't need to. 

Fix 'em up like you would a meat filled burger and enjoy. No one will be the wiser and your cupboard a little bit barer too. 

success

baby food

I've held off for as long as Wren will allow me but the time has come. She's obviously itching to join us at the supper table so we're roasting and boiling and mashing and pureeing up mangos, bananas and butternut squash today.

Good Earth's Toasted Seed Rolls

If you haven't had a seed roll from Good Earth you are missing out. 

But at 4 bucks a pop and over 600 calories a piece it's best to save the store bought ones as a special treat. Practicing restraint with those babies though is like having an itch you can't scratch so yesterday I made my own and am quite pleased with how they turned out. 

For your taste buds pleasure...

I have a go to Bread Recipe that I use for everyday loaves. It adapts to different types of breads well and is quite healthy so that's where I started my seed roll adventure. 

Bread Ingredients

• 1/4 cup warm water
• 4 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons unbleached all purpose flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoons pure maple syrup or honey
• 1 cup quick cooking oats
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2-1/4 cups warm water
• 2-1/4 teaspoons salt
• 1/3 cup pure maple syrup (or honey)
• 1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 5 cups unbleached all purpose flour

(I usually throw in some flax seed too but I never measure... afew tablespoons maybe?)

Directions

1. Proof the yeast in a large bowl (I use my Kitchenaid, but by hand works fine too) using first 4 ingredients. 

2. Add next 6 ingredients. Combine well.

3. Adding a half cup at a time, add the 5 remaining cups of flour. You may or may not need all 5 cups, you'll know you need to stop when the bread pulls away from the side of your bowl. 

4. I usually mix on medium-low speed for 5-10 minutes.

5. Let rise until doubled in size.

6. Punch down. 

At this point I rolled the dough out to a 1/2 inch thickness in a big rectangle. Mine was a little round so I trimmed it down with the pizza cutter. 

I, rather haphazardly, mixed some butter, applesauce, white sugar, brown sugar and cardamon into a bowl until it was a paste. I don't have any real measurements for this but those are the things I used...  (If I had to guess I'd say  I used no more than 1/4 cup of butter as a base and built up the paste from there.) 

Spread that over your rectangle of dough.

Toast any combination of seeds you like. I used poppy, sunflower, and flax seeds. Sprinkle  toasted seeds over paste. 

Roll. Cut into 1 inch thick pieces. Put in greased pan. Let rise. Cook at 350 until golden.Not the most technical recipe ever and obviously not the tutorial to use if you've never attempted bread or cinnamon buns of any kind before, but I am oh so happy with how they turned out and hope you'll try them! 

 

friends with babies

Little Luca made his appearance so we spent the day in kitchen making meals and goodies for the new parents. (Michelle, I wish we were a little closer so I could bring you and Miss M some freezer fillers too!)

It was unfortunate that it was also the day Wren decided to have a marathon cry session lasting from morning till evening. But we survived and their bellies are full for a few days as well as ours. 

Apparently my skills at judging how much food two people can reasonably consume at a meal have gone out the window and I now only know how to cook for armies. 

On the menu:
Mom's Hamburger Soup
Sweet and Sour Chicken Meatballs
Curried Fruit and Beef Stew
Brown Basmati Rice
Banana Cupcakes
Herb Bread

Salmon Tikka with Cucumber Yogurt on Homemade Naan

Another Food Revolution favorite! 

Recipe found here.
Ingredients
• 2 naan breads
• 1 fresh red chili
• ½ a cucumber
• 1 lemon
• 4 tablespoons natural yogurt
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• a few sprigs of fresh coriander
• 2 x 200g salmon filets, skin on,scaled and bones removed
• 1 heaped tablespoon Patak’s tandoori curry paste
• olive oil


Directions
• Preheat your oven to 110°C/225°F/gas ¼
• Pop your naan breads into the oven to warm through
• Halve, deseed and finely chop your chili
• Peel and halve your cucumber lengthways, then use a spoon to scoop out and diskard the seeds
• Roughly chop the cucumber and put most of it into a bowl
• Halve your lemon and squeeze the juice from one half into the bowl
• Add the yogurt, a pinch of salt and pepper and half the chopped chili
• Pick the coriander leaves and put to one side

• Slice each salmon filet across lengthways into three 1.5cm wide slices
• Spoon the heaped tablespoon of tandoori paste into a small dish, then use a pastry brush or the back of a spoon to smear the tandoori paste all over each piece (don’t dip your pastry brush into the jar!)
• Heat a large frying pan over a high heat
• Once hot, add a lug of olive oil, put the salmon into the pan and cook for about 1½ minutes on each side, until cooked through

• Place a warmed naan bread on each plate
• Top each one with a good dollop of cucumber yogurt and 3 pieces of salmon
• Scatter over a little of the reserved cucumber, chili and coriander leaves and finish with a squeeze of lemon juice




I make my own naan which makes this recipe take longer than 17 minutes, but with a little forethought it's really not that much more work. This is a similar recipe to the naan I make using my electric griddle. 


* I left out the chili and it was still plenty spicy. Something to consider when feeding this to the littles.

(dairy free) cinnamon buns

reservation for...

... 5.


Tonight we did Valentine's Day up right. 
With special food made to order, chilled drinks in crystal, cloth napkins, candlelight and a movie. There were even pink, sweet, and foreign treats for dessert. 

And we didn't even have to leave the house.