Upcycling & Craftiness

I used to make fun of my mom when I was younger for wanting to make everything and being so crafty. Now recently I borrowed her sewing machine to make diapers, and suddenly have 75 projects to do. And when surfing the internet, I have stumbled upon the concept of upcycling.. that is, taking old things and remaking them to a new and possibly better use.

So here are a few projects I've been working on:
A gift bag made from an old pair of jeans.



Coffee cup cozis or sleeves Made from sweater cuffs.A business card holder made from a brownie mix box.

And an old table we are recovering in mosaic to make a patio table....


And that's where we are at.


Today's lunch was sandwiches. Grilled cheese with turkey pastrami and sungoat pesto. Yummy!

Back to Cooking, and How to Occupy a Whiny Six Year Old

So I haven't cooked much in a few days, as a matter of fact, I was stumped for meals and pointed to leftovers for my family. I also had a several day fight with my breadmaker. I think this was due to me deciding to use 50/50 whole wheat/white flour and Wolfgang Puck did not agree with my choice.

Too bad I was too mad about the thing to take pictures..my bread was turning out like a science experiment!

But last night I decided to make manicotti based on the fact that, well, I had the ingredients. I worked at a restaurant in high school/college that made it with spinach, and I have since adopted and tweaked the recipe to make it my very own. This is typically a hit, with, well, pretty much anybody. And it's pretty easy.

What you need:

a container of ricotta cheese
a container of cottage cheese
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
some sliced mushrooms (canned)
frozen spinach
2 boxes of manicotti noodles
1 onion
either a jar of ragu or your favorite marinara sauce or some homemade
basil
rosemary
thyme
oregano
black pepper
salt
olive oil
shredded mozzarella cheese
a large bowl, large pot, skillet, lid for skillet, and large baking dish

First of all, put some spinach in a skillet on low and put a lid on it. You just want to steam it enough to thaw out. Fill a large pot with water, put a dash of salt and olive oil, and bring to a boil. In a large bowl, mix together ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, mushrooms, garlic, about half of the onion, chopped, and about 1 tsp each of basil, rosemary, thyme, and oregano. Add salt and pepper to taste and stir in the spinach.

Once your water is boiling, drop in the manicotti noodles one by one. Boil them about 8 minutes, stirring carefully to keep them from sticking together and breaking. Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350. Once they are done, drain and rinse with cold water. Too bad I forgot to take pictures of the next part-- it would make more sense that way. Carefully slit open a noodle with your finger and put two teaspoons of filling into it. Roll the noodle closed. If you want to be all perfectionistic about it, seal it closed by closing it with a little water. If you're like me, you'll simply flip it over and put the slit side face down in the pan. Once you have your baking dish full of manicotti, pour your marinara sauce of choice over it. Bake for about 15 minutes on 350, then remove and smother with shredded mozzarella. Bake until cheese is melted, about 15 additional minutes. Serve up with garlic bread and salad. Yum!



Oh, and here's how to occupy a six year old. Have said 6 year old mix together filling and stuff the noodles. The stuffing takes a lot of time, and with careful placement of compliments, can be accomplished with a minimum of whining.


And the final product minus a couple of slices (they dissapear quick)--



This week I've also been working on upcycling some different things. Will be posting pictures of coffee cup cozies and such later in the week.

Why Being Green is a Christian Value and What I Intend to Do About It

Pre-warning: I am on my soapbox today and will be expressing my personal religious views. You are welcome to comment and agree or disagree. But if you are going to get offended, you may want to skip this one. Just a warning, I know everyone may/may not agree with me, and I know my connections in my head can make my thoughts rather off-the-beaten path.


I completely, wholeheartedly consider myself a Christian. I believe in God, I believe Jesus Christ is the son of God who died on the Cross for our sins, I believe in the Holy Spirit.

I believe in the basic (and the not-so basic) teachings of the Bible. Am I perfect? NO. Noone is. But I try. Do I believe 100% of the Bible is applicable to today? Yes. But does the Bible address everything we encounter today? That's a definite maybe.

During the time God's word was written, there were no ziploc baggies. No cars, paper towels, juice boxes, designer jeans, and no water bottles. Period. Now God may have thought of those things, but they didn't exist in the day-to-day of human experience.

Are you with me so far?
"In the Beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Genesis 1:1
"Then God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." Genesis 1:26

So God created the Earth, and put us in charge of it? Wow. That's a pretty heavy responsibility. I mean, if God puts you in charge of something, shouldn't you take it more seriously than anything else? If you are a parent and God has gifted you with children, you take that responsibility seriously... (well some of us do, but that's a topic for another day.) So it stands to reason that we should take care of the earth.

Wow. Pardon my language, but we have totally failed on that one. It was a little easier to do when there were 10,000 or so humans in the world. But with a current estimated population of 6, 706, 993, 152, things are a little more complicated. Our impact on the planet is obviously on a much larger scale.

Hence the reason when I was a rebellious teenager, I would scream, "Litterers, litterers, SINNERS, SINNERS" out the window when I saw someone littering out of their car. Now that I'm all grown up, I realize that screaming at people doesn't really help, and you obviously can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. And I also realize that I should start with myself and my family, as Jesus said, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." John 8:7
I am certainly not without sin, let alone environmental sins.

So I am doing my best to "green up" my act and that of my family. I thought I was pretty green until I really looked at it. Jeez. Just cleaning out my car on any given day could give you a peek inside our world-- I have two kids. They love disposable things!

So here are some things we have started:

1. No paper napkins. We use cloth. Always.
2. Converting to cloth diapers. (We make these out of old clothes, thus recycling them!)
3. Turning off lights when we leave the room. (Very difficult for some of us for no apparent reason.)
4. Reducing use of ziplocs.Bought a reusable sandwich container to pack sandwiches for my husbands' lunch
5. Buying rice in bulk. It is cheaper, offers less packaging, comes in a cloth bag, is organic. Less has to be packaged and less trips shipped to us is great.
6. Growing our own vegetables. They don't have to be shipped, packaged, waxed, sorted, none of it. We just walk out and pick.
7. Composting. We are throwing out at least 1/3 less since we started composting. And it's rather easy!
8. Repurposing (upcycling) things. T-shirts into diapers, pants legs into little girl purses, baby food jars into containers, etc.
9. Recycling. It's so easy. I mean, really. Where I live our trash service picks it up, but if yours does not, just throw it in the back of your car and drop it off when you see a spot. (Or email me to help you find one.)
10. Take cloth bags to the store instead of getting disposable. Agh! This is hard for me because generally getting two kids safely in the store is a trial, and remembering my list and coupons is hard enough. And when I do take them, I always feel like people in the store are going to think I'm trying to steal something. But I am really working on it. The reader that gives me the best idea how to remember will get a special green gift from me.
11. Carrying reusable water bottles. I love them, they're stylish. I just have to remember to clean them properly. Tip: if you have the aluminum kind, a little baking soda and vinegar can totally help with cleaning of all germs and smells. Just rinse well unless you want to be drinking vinegar water.
    

These are all in progress, but we will be starting more that I may blog about from time to time. I figure if I make an example to my kids, it will help them. And maybe friends will see how easy it is, it may help them, and like a little seed, it will spread on the wind...

Sloppy Joe Omelets & Baby Food

Once again we owe a special thanks to Mr. Sid for the sauce, for I used the leftover sauce to make sloppy joes the other night. They were incredible, even to M who doesn't love sloppy joes. And the morning after, I made sloppy joe omelets:

Ingrediants:
1/4 lb. sloppy joe meat leftovers
1 cup saurkraut
4 slices american cheese
6 eggs
Yield: 2 scrumptilicious omelets

Heat sloppy joe meat and saurkraut together in a skillet.

Break open 3 eggs and beat well or put in a blender for extra fluffiness. Heat oil in bottom of another skillet and pour eggs in. Shake the pan gently while eggs cook until just runny on top. Add meat mixture and two slices of cheese. Fold carefully with a spatula. Serve piping hot. Repeat for the second omelet.

It was a big hit with the adults, and M tried a bite and declared it delicious until she found out it was sloppy joe...

I've been trying to control what R eats as he enters the solids world. Baby food has so much junk added to it in the form of preservatives and what not, and many of the containers contain BisPhenol A, rumored to cause all sorts of issues. So I am, for the most part, making his food.

It might make me sound paranoid, but let me tell you, it is also more economical than buying the food at the store, and cuts down on packaging waste since I don't have all those little containers. Environmentally sound, healthy, cheap-- I'll take it.

So far, he's had bananas, apples, zucchini, carrots, and beets. My process is very simple, really.

I steam the food (except the bananas) and then puree in the food processor. With the exception of the carrots, that's it. The carrots I had to add some water to. I then freeze the food in ice cube trays, pop them out and place in large bags, and we can thaw out a block or two at a time. The only thing he has refused is the beets, but he will eat them mixed with carrots.

And he already doesn't want to be fed. He wants to feed himself. See how much he loves carrots?

Carnivores, Herbivores, & Lamb Stew

This week's theme is dinosaurs, so we have been studying plant eaters, meat eaters, and fossils. Bringing out some of my own rock collection, I showed off a few fossils to M. We then mixed up a simple salt dough (4 parts flour, 1 part salt, 1 part water) and made fossils. She rolled it out on the floor. She then pressed things into it to make "fossils". She used a dinosaur, a branch, and a coffee scoop. I'm not sure what type of coffee scoops lived millions of years ago, but I do try to encourage creativity. We baked the fossils at 350 for about 50 minutes.
Did you know that fossils can burn??
Anyway, the idea was that she would paint it the next day, and section off a dinosaur footprint to make a necklace the day after, but she loves it so much as-is that she is keeping it a decoration in her little kitchen.

The Farmer Joe outfit she is wearing in the pic is leftover from when she was a cotton picker at school in a play earlier this year. It was her choice of what to wear when I said to wear something she could get messy.

The same evening, I decided to have lamb stew. I already had half a bag of lima beans cooked in the fridge that I need to use up before they went bad. I also had an open bottle of red wine lurking around that it seemed noone was going to drink. I looked around on the internet but just couldn't find a recipe that suited me.
So here's mine:

1 onion, sliced
1/4 tsp. fresh rosemary, crushed
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
1/4 tsp. dried basil
3 garlic cloves, smushed
3 tbsp. fermented ginger carrots
3 tbsp. fermented ketchup
3 potatoes, sliced
2 lb. lamb stew meat
1/2 bag of dried lima beans, pre-soaked and cooked
1 cup frozen spinach
3 cups of beef broth
olive oil
sea salt
pepper
1 cup red wine


As you'll note, this recipe could be difficult to duplicate if you don't live in my kitchen, as I have several of the ingredients on-hand from what I've homemade. But you could always substitute.

To start, brown the lamb in a couple tablespoons of olive oil. About halfway through the browning process, add the onions. As they start to become clear, add the wine and the beef broth. Turn the fire down to low. Put a lid on the thing and leave it for about an hour. (You can check on it if you like). Add your smushed garlic and the other herbs. Add some water if you need (I didn't). Put the lid back on and continue to cook for about 30 minutes. Add the potatoes and carrots. Put the lid back on and cook about another 30 minutes. Add remaining ingrediants and continue to cook for about 20 minutes.

I served this up with some homemade garlic bread I made in the breadmaker, using a recipe that came with it. I honestly don't know which was more of a hit.
My husband, however, who is not a huge bread eater, ate 3 pieces of bread.

Coming up: homemade baby food and sloppy joe omelets.

Jamaican Night

As my husband's family is from Jamaica, my mother-in-law and I decided that once a month we should do Jamaican night so that the kids will get more exposure to that part of their heritage. This weekend we made Jamaican oxtail. Although I was a bit skeptical, it actually turned out to be an AWESOME dish!

The night before I marinated the oxtail in:
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbsp. black peppercorns (whole)
1/2 finely minced onion
2 tbsp. allspice
4 finely minced cloves garlic
1/2 tsp. sea salt
2 tbsp. thyme


The day of cooking, we browned them. You can do this in a pan, but we did it in the broiler for the time to pass more quickly. We then put them in a pot to boil, along with about 3 tsp. tomato paste, a diced tomato, and more of the same seasonings. A couple of cups of water, and we cooked them in a pressure cooker until they were tender enough to be falling off of the bone. M and my husband then made spinners, which are basically flour and water "spun" into little dumpling like concoctions and cooked in with the oxtail.

While the oxtail was cooking, we boiled some lima beans that had been soaking overnight. Once the oxtail was nearly cooked through, we added the lima beans in with it. We served the resulting dish over rice. It was delicious as you can see by M digging in below. She is usually skeptical of any kind of meat other than "chicken" (which can mean anything from salmon to pork chops) but she loved it even though she knew it was oxtail!

Mr Sid's Chicken!

Last night for dinner I decided to use up the fresh veggies lingering in my fridge and also a bottle of Mr. Sid's barbeque sauce. Sid is a friend of my dad's, and M calls him Mr. Sid and his wife Mrs. Sid. Anyway, Mr. Sid has a secret recipe barbeque sauce and since it's a secret, I got him to give me a bottle. I marinated some drumsticks in it and then basted them as they were grilling. I only thawed out 4 drumsticks, and the result was so good I thought the family members with teeth were going to get into a fist fight over the extra. THANK YOU MR SID!!

For the veggies, we had corn on the cob with my jalepeno lime butter, which is very simple to make and just really enhances the natural flavor of the corn.

1/2 stick butter (NOT MARGARINE)
12 slices of pickled jalepenos
juice of one lime

Melt the butter. While butter is melting, chop the jalapenos finely. Mix all together and put in a container in the fridge to harden if you want to spread on the corn. If you prefer to roll your corn in it, leave melted.


We also had homefries, which I fried up in some olive oil in the iron skillet, with some onions, garlic, salt, pepper, and a little cayenne. I did this after scrubbing them with my new veggie brush, because I prefer to leave the skins on. (M used to complain like a lot of kids, but I chose to ignore her until she realized resistence is futile.)

My family has a tendency to ignore me when I tell them that an item is for a specific purpose they have a tendency to ignore me. I had this fear that someone would scrub the dishes with my veggie brush and then there would be cross-contamination issuwes, which I'm a bit of a freak about, so I borrowed a trick from my Pepa and labeled it with a Sharpie. Surely to goodness they can figure this out:


One would hope anyway, right?












We also had some kale, which I made up with onions, garlic, fresh ginger, tomatoes, and carrots. I used some chicken broth that I thawed out right in the pan. M complained, did not like it with the broth, and said it wasn't as good as what I usually make. I think she prefers the kale & garbanzo bean mixture, which I completely forgot existed until she complained!


This week's them was Native Americans, which we studied by reading books from the library, making several crafts, and visiting the Etowah Indian Mounds in Cartersville, GA. Our crafts included an Indian headdress and a "leather painting." We made the "leather" by crumpling up a paper grocery sack, throwing it into some water, and drying it out overnight. M painted a story on it, which was pretty cool.

The Indian Mound site was a bit above her head I think, but they had improved it quite a bit since last time I went. They have a museum now and a replica daub house. I explained to M that when you are digging up daub in Georgia, a way to differentiate between daub and Georgia red clay is to put it in your mouth. If it stick to your tongue, it's daub. Thank goodness she's not a fan of dirt or she probably would have been tasting the whole site! The museum featured some pot sherds of the same variety that I dug up on my first dig, a fact which completely failed to impress her.

What did impress me was that I climbed Mound A with R in my Ergo carrier. Now Mound A does have stairs and the Ergo is extremely comfortable as far as carriers are concerned, but it was rather steep:
At the end of our field trip I asked M what she had learned about Indians, and she replied, "They built big hills and had smelly houses but they couldn't help that."

I'm not sure that's what I was going for, but c'est la vie. After we got back from Cartersville, we went over to a friend's for dinner (she made delicious tacos de papas) and we took the kids swimming. It was R's first time, and he LOVED it!

Falafel and Tzaziki! Yummy yummy!

I must start by saying that although I used to get several "mommy" magazines, I am rarely seduced by the "easy" recipes in them. Usually they don't appeal to me. But several months ago I came across a recipe for falafel in one (I think Family Fun magazine) and thought, why not?

If you are a fan of Mediterranean food at all, or chickpeas at all, you MUST try it:

4 tbsp. olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
2 (15 oz.) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
handful freshly chopped cilantro or mint
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
3 whole-grain pitas cut in half
1/2 cup shredded lettuce or mixed baby greens
2 plum tomatoes, sliced
mango chutney for garnish (optional)

1. Heat 2 tbsp. of the oil in a small skillet. Add onions and garic and saute until soft and golden, about 5 minutes. Place in the bowl of a food processor and add the chickpeas, cumin, and coriander, pulse until the mixture becomes a thick puree. Transfer the mixture to a bowl, stir in the chopped cilantro or mint and season with salt and pepper.
2. Form mixture into 12 balls and flatten them into patties. Heat 1 tbsp. of the oil in a medium skillet. Add half the patties and cook until they are golden brown, about 5 minutes on each side. Repeat with the remaining oil and patties. Let cool completely.
3. Place 2 falafel patties in each pita half. Top with lettuce, tomatoes, and chutney (if using)
Note: Don't worry if the patties break apart. Just stuff them into the pitas and your kids will never know the difference.


My notes: I use chopped mint. We don't love cilantro. This time I used dried garbanzo beans instead. I soaked them a full 24 hours before using them, 1 bag=approx. 2 cans. The results were great. We have used mango chutney in the past, to rave reviews from M, but I made tzaziki sauce this time and she was stubbornly not impressed. It sounds much more difficult than it is, my husband and I had to swap out in the middle of cooking as I recieved an important phone call. And although I don't purchase vegetable oil, I have used it in the past and it does make it easier. This time we used coconut oil.


For my tzaziki sauce I looked at several recipes on the web and invented my own:
1 large container of plain yogurt, excess liquid drained
6 cloves of garlic, crushed and minced
1 handful chopped fresh mint
juice from 1/2 lemon
1/2 cucumber, peeled and grated
salt and pepper to taste

It was heavenly. We ended up with the container between us, dipping out spoonfuls and dolloping on everything. (I used Stonyfield organic full fat yogurt, the carton I had removed the whey from earlier in the week for lacto fermentation)

I also made some greekish-style potatoes:
2 medium potatoes, scrubbed and sliced thinly
2 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 cup water
1 clove garlic, crushed and minced
2 tbsp oregano
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and pepper to taste
goat cheese

Lay the potato slices out in baking dish or dishes. Mix together oil, water, oregano, salt, garlic, and pepper. Pour over potatos. Cook in a 400 degree oven approximately 20 minutes. Top with goat cheese. (I used a Dill Chevre bought from the farmer's market.) These are also good with the tzaziki sauce!

The same day, I checked my carrots, which turned out, ahem, interesting. I guess I was expecting them to taste like a Morrocan ginger carrot salad. They are more of a sour, spicy carrot relish. Once I figure out what to eat them with, I'm sure I'll love them! :-)


Coming up this week: Apple Butter, Strawberry Preserves, and Oxtails!

Old Ladies and Concrete Don't Mix, the Art of Kimchi

As I mentioned before, we were out all day on Friday working on building a stone wall. Now I have been known in the past to believe I am She-Ra, Wonder Woman and Super Girl all rolled into one, but typically these days I skip all that. So I was picking up smaller pieces of concrete and moving them. Ahem, apparently not small enough. Saturday afternoon I was sitting on my parents' couch nursing R and I starting having spasms in my left shoulder. They were so bad I nearly dropped him. Fast forward thirty minutes and he was asleep on the guest bed and I was begging for Tiger Balm. (For those of you unfamiliar, Tiger Balm is the best stuff ever-- discovered it when I was doing archaeology professionally.)

The end result was I played hookie from the driveway yesterday and caught up on some cooking. I made my prettiest loaf of sourdough yet, oddly enough, by reading several recipes and winging it. I had to write it all down as soon as I saw how beautiful it was so I won't forget.

I used:

4c unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 c sourdough starter
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp olive oil
3/4 tsp yeast
1 cup of goat's milk


I put all the wet ingredients in first, then dry, then made a pocket in the dry for the yeast and dropped it in. Cycle 1 on the bread machine, and three hours later it was picture perfect. (Tasty, too!) I'm sure that it would work if you did it by hand, and I'm sure it would work with cow's milk, but I had goat's on hand and 50 projects in mind.


As a matter of fact, I had so many projects in my head that after the sourdough loaf I forgot to take pictures. (I know, I know, bad, bad, BAD blogger!)

I also had promised my dad a batch of kim chi, and he wanted it spicer than the last. I shredded about 4 large, peeled carrots, 1 head of napa cabbage, about 1 1/2 tbsp. ginger in the food processor. I mixed this with 2 tbsp. of whey, 2 tbsp. of sea salt, 1 tbsp. red chile flakes, and about 1/4 c. of kim chi sauce. I also minced about 5 cloves of garlic. Once I mixed this all together, I put it in my smaller crockpot and mashed it with my marble pestle until the mixture produced enough juice to cover itself. I topped it with two saucers and on top of that a soup bowl half-full of water. (Yes, I am a half-full person. Watched too much Disney as a child, so sue me!) I then covered it with a clean dish towel and put it in a corner of the kitchen. I will check it every day, he wants a very strong taste so it probably won't be ready for about 5 days. My last batch took 3. I will update with a picture once it's ready. I also used looking at various recipes to create my own for this.

Next, I made a batch of Sally Fallon's "Gingered Carrots," from the Nourishing Traditions cookbook, as I've read a lot of things online suggesting that kids love them. M has decided carrots are gross, which I personally believe is from overexposure to the mini-already peeled variety that lose their flavor quickly in the fridge. It was pretty easy, but the taste has yet to be seen.
4 c shredded carrots (shredded at the same time as the ones for the kimchi)
2 tbsp whey
1 tbsp shredded ginger (shredded at the same time as the ginger for the kimchi)
1 tbsp sea salt
Mix it all together, put in a wide mouth Mason jar, and mash down until the juices cover the carrot mixture. Cover tightly, and let ferment approximately 3 days.



An update on the marmalade I made a couple of days ago. It is quite sour and quite salty. As I didn't use pectin, also quite runny. I'm thinking of marinating chicken in it instead of using it on toast.

Last night for dinner we had oven fries and bison burgers, both so quick and easy it was ridiculous!

R is teething badly now, half of my day in between doing all of the above was spent letting him gnaw on me!

Building from Stone (Now THAT's Traditional)

So my plans for the busted up driveway that is ahem, on top of my driveway were thwarted. Apparently although I had a vision for a large fire pit/grill in the sink hole in the backyard, my husband had a vision for a retaining wall. And as his vision was closer to the driveway and immensely more practical, he won.

So we spent most of the day yesterday (Ok, he spent most of the day yesterday, I spent about two hours) moving busted up chunks of concrete off of the pile in our driveway to the bottom of the hill adjacent to it and forming it into a rock wall.

It's actually turning out pretty good, I think. But the chunks of concrete are much heavier than they appear. Couple that with a crying baby and a whining 6-year-old, and I wimped out early. But after our 4th of July celebrations I'll be back at it. It is a great workout for the arms. And back, and legs, and.. well I have a 5 month old baby and haven't lost the weight. So I can use the toning. Besides we are recycling what would otherwise be fill, so I'm all for it.




The night before the building of the great wall of our house, M picked out mini-Asian pizza appetizers from her latest cookbook. Little did she know they would turn out not to her liking since she only looked at the picture and didn't read the ingredients. Kids! At what age do they learn to listen?

So they were pretty basic, using eggroll wrappers, ground pork or chicken, soy sauce, mozzarella, and Chinese 5 spice powder. Of course, I didn't have all this on hand, so I did some substituting.

I used:
wonton wrappers
shredded beef from my soupbones from yesterday's stock
soy sauce (low-sodium)
shredded mozzarella
canned tomatoes (completely drained)
cooked turkey bacon, shredded
shredded turkey pepperoni
shredded leftover buffalo wings
cinnamon
star anise
ginger
fennel seed
black pepper
sea salt

I know, I know. It seems like a big departure. But not so much really. I took the won ton wrappers and fried them up in olive oil and put to the side. I pulled the beef out of the still-going stock pot and pulled all the meat off, reserving the bones for doggy treats. I had M shred the beef and remove the fat once it cool down. I then soaked the beef in the soy sauce, ginger, cinnamon, star anise (ground), salt, pepper, and ground fennel seed. The spices were my approximate substitution for 5-spice powder. Using two cookie sheets, we laid out the won-ton wrappers and topped them. M used pepperoni and bacon (SO annoying since the other was from HER recipe.) I used the beef on all but three and put buffalo chicken meat on the other. We topped with mozzarella and a couple of bits of tomato. Baked in the oven at 450 for 5 minutes and all done. Despite my complaints about the beef, it was delicious and I really didn't mind her not eating it! And the grand bonus.. we used grass-fed beef and the entire meal which fed those of us on solid food cost about 5 bucks!













I used the leftover wonton wrappers and filled them with spinach dip and pizza dip leftover from a Tastefully Simple party (which I attended but didn't host and do not sell) and fried wontons. They were DELISH!

Whew! A Busy Week and Lots Accomplished

For some reason this week has just been extra busy, but I have still been working diligently on making things, and trying out new things. First, I think an update on the rock candy from Rock Week is in order. It turned out great-- beautiful and tasty. Now I'm trying to figure out how to keep M from eating it!




Yesterday, I decided to try to make some marmalade out of the plethora of clementines that always seem to be inhabiting my fruit drawer. I converted a recipe for oranges, and since clementines are much smaller, it may turn out to be horribly sweet. But we'll see.

First, I sliced them quite thinly and then quartered the slices.

Next, I put them all in a mason jar and mashed them lightly.

As I am doing a lacto-fermented marmalade, I mixed together salt, whey, brown sugar, and water, and poured over the clementines. I covered tightly and will let sit for approximately three days. I can't wait-- if it's good-- to but some on some homemade bread at breakfast! Yum! Note: This recipe/process is NOT to be confused with canning and preserving. This marmalade will not be shelf-safe to store for a long time.

I also made fresh coconut milk to use at a later date in a recipe. This required a bit of help from my husband as I bought a different type of coconut from what I've had in the past, and couldn't figure out how to split it. One I brought in the strong arms to handle that (as you can see in the picture next to a crock pot simmering with grass-fed beef broth), I moved on to scooping out the coconut milk. After scooping, I put it all in a blender and blended with the coconut water i had reserved when we split the coconut. I let it blend until there were no chunks, and it looked creamy and a bit frothy. Yum! I use coconut milk a good deal-- in Thai currys, in Jamaican rice and peas, occasionally to flavor jasmine rice, etc. It's also great in coffee in a pinch when you run out of milk.
A couple of other notes:
Whenever I state I am using salt in something, it's always sea salt. A good quality sea salt contains essential minerals not found in your standard iodized table salt. The beef broth (or stock) I was making is almost a constant in my house, although typically I make chicken broth. But I made the beef because my farmer I buy eggs and milk from sold me about 2 lbs of grass-fed beef soup bones for $2. It was a heck of a deal. And my husband will eat grass-fed beef, just not conventional. If you want to know why, let me know and I will explain.

Today's adventures will include more truffles, this time chocolate and peanut butter, making an outdoor grill out of a busted up driveway, taking pictures of the diaper my husband made (grr.), and making chicken cacciatore in the crock pot. (M's dinner pick for tonight.) Also, tomorrow's post should include Asian Mini Pizza appetizers that we made last night (another of M's picks.)

"Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it." Confucious