Zucchini Noodles

Scrumptious! Take a medium to large size zucchini or summer squash and slice with a vegetable peeler. You will have what appears to be lasagna noodles made of vegetables. These noodles are fairly durable and could easily be used as a substitute for wheat noodles in any dish. Sautee these noodles with butter, garlic, basil and black pepper for a taste sensation. Eat as a side dish or cover with spaghetti sauce and Italian cheeses. Delicioso!

Pumpkin Something...

Mmmmmm...I can almost taste it now! This recipe was born out of a deep need for something creamy, rich and sweet. I looked at a can of pumpkin and thought: "I can make something like pumpkin pie!" So, with a little tweaking, I came up with what I called Pumpkin Something I have found the "suffix" something to be quite useful when I'm not sure just what I've made but want to give it a cute name. It works great for pumpkin. Pumpkin Something--just has a ring to it, don't you know?




Pumpkin Something

This recipe begins its life as pie and ends it as something much more satisfying...

*1 can of pumpkin (mashed, unsweetened), about 16 oz
*1 10 oz can of evaporated milk (can you believe I actually had this just sitting in
the cabinet??
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 T vanilla
3 eggs
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t (each) ginger,nutmeg,cloves
please feel free to add more or less of these spice ingredients. myself, I'm always heavy on vanilla and cinnamon--I would probably use more cinnamon than this and no cloves, since I don't have any!!

Combine all ingredients in a blender. Puree. Grease 6 custard dishes and pour mixture into prepared dishes. Bake at 350 degrees fahrenheit until set (test with fork for doneness). You can actually eat this mixture at any level of done-ness, just make sure the eggs are thoroughly cooked!

What's cookin'?

Pasta with homegrown tomatoes and basil; topped with grated parmesan cheese
Mexican Lasagna? That's what I called it...tortillas, layered with beans, tomatoes, peppers and shredded cheddar
Side view of the "lasagna"
Thought I would share some of our menu for this week before the day is gone. Of course, I also have a gardening tip to pull out of thin air. Wonder what it will be? You'll have to check in later.

Obviously, I didn't take many photos of food this week. We went out to eat a couple of times with my brother. Here is a list of a few of our meals of which I did not get photos...

Thursday...
Breakfast: Waffles w/honey and butter
Lunch: Red beans and rice with spicy sausage

Friday...
Breakfast: cereal
Lunch: stir-fry
Dinner: krispy-kreme and macaroni and tomato sauce

Saturday...
Breakfast: homemade cinnamon rolls...too sweet for me!
Lunch: Chicken Pot Pie...I made my first pie crust and was thoroughly impressed with myself

Menu Planning

This week, I took lots of photos of our yummy meals, so I would have more to share. Last week, we got so many great comments on the fish, that we had it again. Honestly, we have gone from salmon being very, very seldom to once a week. Has anyone tried the recipe yet?

I think the biggest hit of last week was the homemade pizza. It started out as chili spaghetti, but we both decided we had enough of pasta and so the dinner morphed. I took the chili/tomato/pepper sauce and used it as the pizza sauce. The homemade rolls I was making turned into pizza crust, I sauteed jalapenos, bacon and mushrooms together for the topping and James shredded string cheese (no mozzarella in the house). Ah, but it was a lovely pizza!


Another big hit were the BLTs and homefries we had last week. My favorite and James' favorite! Cracked Pepper bacon served on homemade oatmeal bread with homegrown tomatoes and herb salad. I broke down and fried the home fries 'cause nothing else was working!


And finally, my all-time favorite. If you ever come to my house, I will probably serve this: Carrot Souffle!


2 cups cooked carrots
1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
3 T flour
1 t baking powder
1 T vanilla

Cook carrots, melt butter: blend together in blender (a mixer won't work, you really need that pureed quality!). Add three eggs and sugar. Blend all together again. While blending, add flour and baking powder. Finally, add vanilla.

Pour mixture into a greased baking dish. You may use any size, depending on portions. Sometimes we use souffle dishes, sometimes I cook it in an 8X8 pan. However, we always save half for breakfast the next morning. Cold carrot souffle is one of the best dishes around!

other dishes:
macaroni and tomato sauce (old time stand-by)
sauteed rice with mushrooms
avocado and tomato salad
baked potatoes with chili topping
broiled salmon with rice/buckwheat

Hope you've enjoyed some of my menus. Tune in later for Gardening Tip #5: Don't kill 'em all!

not so much a menu planner...

I have been reading about Melissa's menu plan Monday and thought I would join in today. Although, in my neck of the woods, it's only Sunday, we have people talking about Tuesday already. I'm so confused!

Broiled salmon with butter and spice sauce
1 T salt
2 t cumin
2 t chile peppers
1.5 t cayenne
1.5 t garlic powder
1 bay leaf
1 t ground cinnamon or 1 inch of cinnamon stick

I ground all these ingredients together in my coffee turned spice grinder. Don't worry, we have a separate grinder for our coffee beans! Grind to a powder consistency.

Melt 2 or so tablespoons of butter. Dip each side of fish in melted butter and sprinkle both sides with ground spice mixture. Broil or grill fish until done.

I served the salmon with rice sauteed in sesame oil. Oh my, we now love rice with sesame oil. It reminds me of my mom's rice and gravy. To finish the meal, we had fresh tomatoes from our garden. So yummy...

Oh, and the reason the salmon looks like it's half-eaten is because I devoured half the meal before I could find the camera. Pardon please...

Belated...my MIFS entry...

Every Wednesday night, a group of us gets together and has dinner and a Nooma. Don't know what a nooma is? Check out Rob Bell's website. He's part of the Emerging Church Movement. Not sure what that movement is? Just check out the link. It can tell you way more than I can.

Anyway, last Wednesday's dinner theme was Asian Cuisine. We had pad thai, cold peanut butter sauce noodles, miso soup, green tea, some type of excellent slow cooked BBQ chicken, salad and coconut macaroons. MMM...the food was lovely. My contribution was Chinese Sesame Kale, tea eggs and cheese puffs. The tea eggs were kind of pretty but not much else. The cheese puffs were a big hit but I wasn't too impressed with them. James' and my favorite was the sesame kale. Here are some photos from the cooking.


Cheese Puffs: these are basically crab rangoon without crabmeat. Cream cheese, garlic, salt and pepper. I made the wonton skins myself! Flour, salt and egg. Super easy!




Chinese Sesame Kale: sesame oil, soy sauce, kale, ginger and toasted sesame seeds. The kale is from our garden. What a huge plus!



Tea Eggs: hmmm...first you boil the eggs, then you take them out of the water, crack the shells, and put them back in a "tea" made with one tea bag, cinnamon, soy sauce and salt. Theoretically, the lines in the eggs should have been more prominent. Also, they were supposed to soak overnight. Perhaps that was the problem?



This week, we're doing tapas. I'm thinking of making gazpacho. Does anyone have any good tapas recipes they'd like to share???

Supercharge Me...

30 Days Raw

Our good friend Dave handed us this RAW-cumentary since he knows we're into eating right (most of the time) and healthy living. We just watched it and would like to send out kudos to Dave Flaton (he's the editor of the film and has Spirit in the Sky playing on his site). Great job. We're inspired!

Supercharge Me is about one woman's journey to fit into a showgirl costume for hallowe'en. At 152 lbs, she checks herself into a raw foods institute in San Diego, CA. For 3 weeks, Jenna undergoes an intense detox program. In one scene, we are even treated to an in-depth colonics session. The audience actually sees a session taking place! That's mighty gross. In all fairness, the film tells its viewers that folks with a weak stomach had better leave the room for approximately 5 minutes and 16 seconds.

In the three weeks that she is detoxing, Jenna loses 14 lbs, drops cholesterol levels (good and bad), blood sugar levels, blood pressure and becomes slightly anemic. How does this come about? To begin, her first three days at the institute, she is on a juice fast. No outside food is allowed on the campus and the stove/oven are disconnected in the dorm rooms. Along with the raw foods diet, the detox participants engage in light exercise and classes on digestion and spirituality.

Filmed and edited in the same vein as Morgan Spurlock's Supersize Me, this raw-cumentaray is a really cool expose on the raw food world. We learn about enemas, implants, wheat grass, colonics and sun burgers. Did you know you can eat chocolate on a raw foods diet? Ice cream and custard also somehow find their way into the raw foods menus.

James and I are pretty sure we could never enjoy a raw foods diet. Things like ice cream, coffee and lemon heads stand in my way. James got a deer in the headlights look when I suggested we try the diet, even though he later pointed out to me the passage in the book of Daniel where [Daniel] fasts from all rich foods, eating only vegetables and drinking only water. How about you all? Is anyone out there a raw foods fan? Let me know what you think.


Here is one recipe that I found linked to from the Super Charge Me site. Feast your eyes on this!

Asian Noodle Salad with Sesame Vinaigrette

I love this salad, definitely one of my favorites. You don't have to be exact with the measurements for the salad part, just make as much as you want and throw it all in a big bowl and toss with the dressing. I'm always surprised at how much I eat of this salad, but once you toss all the veggies with the dressing, it sort of shrinks down in size. Well, that's my story anyways, and I'm sticking to it. It just tastes so darn good, all that crunchiness and sweet and salt and spiciness! Yum.

Instructions:

Whisk together all of the ingredients for the dressing in a small bowl. In a large mixing bowl, toss the salad ingredients with the dressing and serve.

Recipe Credits:
Recipe by Vanessa Sherwood

Ingredients

Salad
1 1/2 Cup Shredded green cabbage
1 1/2 Cup Shredded Napa cabbage
1 Cup Shredded red cabbage
1 Cup Sliced baby bok choyr
1 Cup Mung bean sprouts
1 Young Coconut
Young Coconut Meat Sliced into thin noodles
1/4 Cup Cilantro leaves
1/4 Cup Hemp Seeds
Dressing Ingredients
1/4 Cup Cold pressed sesame oil (olive oil can be used as a substitute)
2 Tablespoon Agave Nectar
1 Large Clove Garlic Minced
1 Teaspoon Toasted Sesame Oil
1 Red Thai Pepper Minced
1 Teaspoon Minced Ginger
1 Teaspoon Himalayan Crystal Salt

To see a trailer of the film, click your little mouse right here. You can also check out Jenna's website at SuperChargeMe dot com

At least I tried,

right?

I must confess, yesterday I decided to embark upon two new projects. Friends and casual readers: they failed pretty miserably. Both of them. Perhaps Tuesdays should be "come clean days." Lest you think too overly well of me, I will share my failures along with my successes. A smart person learns from their mistakes. A wise person learns from others' mistakes. Get ready to do some larnin'!

My first failed project that I will share takes us back to the '80s. I decided nothing would suit me so well as a pair of leggings and a t-shirt dress. So, while shopping at the thrift store yesterday, I found some cute t-shirt material and a huge men's t-shirt. I cut about one inch off both sides of the shirt (using a cute shirt of my own as a pattern) and then sewed a side seam. For extra girly-effects, I cut out the neck to give it a dancer neckline. The leggings? Well, I used a pair of tight shorts as a template, lengthened them and adjusted all lines. Let me just say...at least I know how not to make leggings. And, they can't be the same in the front and back...and cut out the waist to be higher than you think it should be! Is that all? I think so. Without further ado, photos of the first failure:




Now the second experiment is based on a bit of logic and empirical evidence. With temps in the high 90s around here, I began to wonder if I could do some baking outside. Are you giggling? I hope you're not giggling. I am dead serious.

I made crackers. Erm, I mean: noodles. They would have been crackers if I hadn't decided to send them through the pasta maker 10 times! I think it's a good recipe. If anyone wants my cracker recipe, here it is:
1T cornmeal
1T wheat germ
1T wheat bran
1T sesame seeds
1t caraway seeds
1/2 t cracked pepper
1/4 t sea salt
2-4 T olive oil
1 cup flour

mix until you have a very firm dough (should look just like pasta dough!)




our dogs think these are great!!

MIFS Carnival #17

The Make it From Scratch Carnival #17 is up over at keeping feet. You would not believe the yummy food entries for this week! Eat breakfast before you visit...

Oops!

I almost forgot to post my made from scratch entry for this week. I enjoyed this one so much that I wanted to make sure everybody tried it. I was reading a massage and bodywork book of ours and (for some reason), it had a recipe for Curried Egg Salad in one chapter. Well, I took one look at that photo and new I was seeing my lunch. You all, it is lovely. Put extra curry powder in it, though!

Curried Egg Salad on Homemade Jewish Rye Rolls
6 hard-boiled eggs
1/3 cup low-fat mayonnaise
1 T dijon mustard
1/2 t curry powder (puh-leeze! I bet I used a tablespoon of that delish stuff!)
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Jewish Rye Rolls
I made the dough using the breadmaker on 1 hr cycle!

1 cup + 1 T warm water
1 T yeast (use more b/c this is a quick cycle)
1 T sugar/honey
let yeast react with water and sugar
add,
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup corn meal
1/4 cup oatmeal
1 T olive oil
2 T sunflower seeds
1-2 T caraway seeds
1/2 t salt (not much b/c of quick cycle!)

Knead dough until "elastic." Shape dough into rolls (makes about 8), let rise about 30 minutes and bake 15-20 minutes on 350 degrees farenheit

Posting 100...

I have noticed other folks celebrating their 100th post. Well, this isn't my centennial post, but I am getting ready for it. This post marks my 86th post and with it I would like to announce I will send out a care package in acknowledgment of my 100th post! Wait until the millennial post...that should be super special, eh??

So, sometime in the next two weeks, I will be offering up the care package. Any suggestions as to what should grace the box?

Before I forget, I want to share another recipe with you all out there. It was one of my favorites as a kid and I am now indoctrinating my husband...

German Pancakes

and no, it is neither frugal nor healthy...but you just can't eat a lot of it, anyway...

6 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted


Buttermilk Syrup

1 and 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup butter or margarine
2 tablespoons corn syrup (I never use it)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Place the eggs, milk, flour and salt in a blender; cover and process until smooth. Pour the butter into an un-greased 13x9x2 baking dish; add the batter. Bake, uncovered, at 400 for 20 minutes. meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine the first five syrup ingredients; bring to a boil. Boil for 7 minutes. Remove from the heat; stir in the vanilla. Serve immediately with the syrup. Yield: 8 servings




edit: some of you may know this recipe as "hills and valleys" as that appears to be the more folksy name for it!

Cilantro Pesto

Each year, the warm weather comes long before I can begin to use my plethora of cilantro. Which leaves me with veritable groves of 5 ft tall coriander producing tree-lets. Well, this year I determined such would not be the case. This year, I am making Cilantro Pesto and freezing it to use when the really hot days get here and all I want is yummy Mexican food! After all, what good are the homegrown jalapenos and chiles and tomatoes if I don't have fresh, out-of-my-garden cilantro to mix in as well? Cilantro Pesto is quite easy to make, using stalks or not. Simply chop the cilantro and mince finely in a food-chopper with (or without) olive oil. Once the mixture is finely diced, freeze and enjoy the rest of the year! Of course, don't forget to let some plants produce seeds for next year's crop!

This is my weekly entry into the Made from Scratch carnival and I consider it seriously "made from scratch" because this year's cilantro crop is the result of my seed-saving from last year's cilantro crop. I just need to work on saving all my seeds, eh?

By the way, try this Cilantro Pesto in Jenn's Spicy Thai Noodles MMMMMMM. To swoon for!

FigureA: gift for Micah

FigureB: close-up of fabric

FigureC: salvaged cherries

FigureD: Zucchini noodles (compliments of Sandy)

FigureE: lots of cabbage!

Yay! I finally finished my little sister's rice heater thingie. I made it out of some awesome vintage fabric I had on hand and filled it with lavender and rice. It makes the house smell lovely. Also, you will see some nice shots of yummy food. I made the zucchini noodles Sandy talked about on her blog. They were really, really good. Zucchini is (are?) definitely a must for the garden this summer!

some updating going on...

First update: the caterpillars


Sorry this last photo is so blurry...the camera couldn't compete with vertical and horizontal stripes at the same time...

At least three of our little caterpillars are nicely tucked away in their chrysales. One butterfly has been fluttering around. Alas, we have neither food nor companions for it! These guys should stay quiet for about 10 more days and then emerge. We are in the throes of some more cold weather around here. My...it's 35 degrees outside! At least the sun came out today...
Second update: weed pulling!
I pulled these weeds on Friday I believe. Recall how ancient civilizations placed the heads of their enemies on their gateposts? Well, this should scare away any future weeds...


We call them briar weed/satan weed/**&&*#$ and they are brutal! I broke my shovel digging these up. Thankfully, James repaired it for me...
Last update for now: yummy food!


These photos show delectable Chili pot pie with rice and lightly steamed broccoli straight from the winter garden. Oh, it was good. Although, James did say I gave him an impossible amount of broccoli...