May 24, 2013

Are you ready for Memorial Day?  The weather out here looks to be a bit chilly to hop in the pool, but there will definitely be some bike riding!  Our youngest has mastered his two-wheeler and now calls it his "awesome bike".  It is amazing to see him go, especially thinking about how far he has come in his short life!  Yay Liam!!!

Ryan was out of town for most of the week which means...we made sloppy joe's!  (Most of you may recall how much he absolutely loathes good ole sloppy joe's!)  But we did it with a twist because we used ground chicken instead of ground beef, and it was great!  We made pancakes two mornings in a row because they are easy to whip up, and the kids devour them.  I like to send them off to school with a good breakfast in their bellies though this usually means cereal or yogurt or oatmeal. Since I wasn't swimming before the day began I had a bit of extra time and knew pancakes would put a smile on the kids' faces!

We did try one new dinner recipe, a chicken dish, but it was nothing special.  Even though Ryan was out of town, Friday night we still made homemade pizza.  Each Friday I say the same thing = "I love homemade pizza night!"  It is so fun to see the kids create their own unique pizza, and everyone is happy to eat it.  Don't ask me to try Owen's (he uses Frank's, crushed red pepper and ground pepper on his), or Hannah's (she skips the cheese, skips the dough pre-bake, and puts on anything from taco meat to chicken to pepperoni, or all of those), or Liam's (he loves olives!  blech!).  So homemade pizza night is great - everyone is happy and no consensus needed!

Remember the great graham cracker experiment?  Two recipes yielded a massive amount of graham crackers!  The kids snacked on them, then I ground the rest up before they got soft.  We used them to make a graham cracker crust for a light n fruity pie, but it was a bit too hard. On Friday I used them in a s'mores cake.  The kids loved this cake, but I don't think I'd make it again,  It didn't have a great presentation, and I thought it only okay.  Ryan was out of town and didn't try it, though he isn't a sweets guy.  And you should have seen Liam - face covered in chocolate! 

Finally...I do have one new recipe for you.  I will admit the kids did not get a vote on this one.  I made homemade lemonade with hand crafted blueberry vodka!  Yes, this is a family friendly blog, and I am sure I am not the only one who at the end of the week, or certain days, likes to have a drink.  I discovered blueberry vodka when out with my sisters earlier this year - and it was amazing!  However, I don't need an entire bottle.  So, I filled a tiny wide mouth mason jar with fresh blueberries, muddled them just enough to break the skins, and then covered it with vodka and screwed on the cap.  I let it sit for two weeks.  Friday night I made lemonade (I always love a reason to use my kitchenaid citrus juicer - just ask those sames sisters of mine!), and added a shot of the blueberry vodka. Yum!  Super refreshing, and think of all those health benefits of the blueberries!

Happy cooking!

New Recipe
Homemade lemonade with blueberry vodka

Homemade Lemonade with Blueberry Vodka

Ingredients
* 1/2 cup fresh squeezed lemonade
* 1/2 cup simple syrup
* 2-3 cups water (to your taste)
* 1 shot blueberry vodka

Directions
Add ice to glass.  Pour in one shot of blueberry vodka, fill glass with lemonade.  Stir, and enjoy!

Notes
The vodka was blue, but when diluted with the lemonade it turned a purpley-pink!  If you want to make the blueberry vodka, fill a jar (size of your choosing) halfway with blueberries, break the skins, and then cover to the top with vodka.  Let it sit a week to two weeks, and then strain out the blueberries.  When you feel it is ready, keep it in the jar and use as you see fit!  It was my first time trying to do anything like this, so I used the smallest mason jar possible and used a plastic screw top made to fit the jars.  Seems like the perfect container for this experiment!

May 17, 2013

What a hectic week!  My "summer" grad class (it is over before it is officially summer) is an amazing amount of work, and it meets twice a week.  I have a triathlon in about 2 weeks so I am trying to fit a lot of training into my spare time. Needless to say I have been putting a lot of effort into school and swimming/biking/running instead of trying out many new recipes.  I did fit in one this week, and it was definitely a keeper!  Braised Chicken and Kale was fantastic, and I think it was the fresh lemon that put it over the top for us.  To be honest I had never tried kale in any form before this, but have heard so much about it, and I know it is a "super food".  I decided it was time to give it a go.  I don't know if it was this specific recipe or that Hannah and I found that we just love kale, but the two of us really thought it was the shining star of dish.

Class again this week (of course), plus a soccer tournament this weekend, and Ryan heads out of town on business for most of the week.  We will have to see what new dishes, if any, I whip up in the week ahead! 

Happy Cooking

New Recipe
Braised Chicken and Kale

Braised Chicken and Kale

Ingredients
* 1 lb chicken breasts, sliced thin (or butterflied)
* 1 tbsp paprika
* freshly ground sea salt and black pepper
* 1 tsp olive oil
* 1medium onion, sliced thin
* 6 garlic cloves, sliced
* 2 cups chicken broth
* 1 cup dry white wine
* 2 sprigs thyme
* 1 large bunch of kale, ribs and stems removed, cut into 1" strips
* lemon wedges

Directions
1. Sprinkle chicken with paprika and season with salt and pepper.
2. Heat oil in a large pot or saute pan over medium heat.  Brown the chicken on both sides, then transfer to a plate.
3. Add the onion and garlic to the pan and cook, stirring often, until softened, about 8 minutes.  Return the chicken to the pan, and add the broth, wine and thyme.  Bring to a boil, cover.  Reduce the heat and simmer until the chicken is nearly cooked through, about 15 minutes.
4. Add the kale to the pan.  Cover, and cook the kale until wilted, about 5 minutes.
5. Discard the thyme, and serve the chicken and kale with lemon wedges.

Notes
Wow!!!!  We loved this!!!  I had never cooked or even tried kale before, but figured I should hop on the kale train and see how it went over.  Everyone enjoyed this dinner tremendously, and Hannah and I were fighting over finishing the kale before Ryan even got some. (Note to self...definitely need to add more kale for us next time).  Squeezing the lemon over the chicken and kale really added a brightness to this dish that put it over the top.  We did serve some egg noodles on the side for my carb lovers!  They drizzled the sauce over the noodles, so next time it might make sense to try to reduce the braising liquid after cooking the kale to make it a bit "saucier"!

May 10, 2013

Another week and no great recipes to post!  Argh!!!!  We tried a new dinner, but it wasn't voted a keeper.  I turned my attention and kitchen time to graham crackers.  My youngest loves graham crackers.  We used to get them a lot, but now not as often.  I saw a recipe to make graham crackers a few weeks ago, and finally tried to make them this week.  The first batch came out decent, and the kids loved them, but my oh my, they were very time intensive.  Cube and freeze the butter.  Make the dough, shape it into a disk, chill it 2+ hours.  Roll it out, cut the cookies, refreeze.  Finally bake - then add the cinnamon sugar and bake a little more.  Clearly not a quick recipe, and although it wasn't hard, it wasn't really worth it.  Plus, the recipe called for quite a lot of honey, so it wasn't going to be a thrifty recipe.  All in all, these graham crackers will be enjoyed, but not made again.

When I determined that graham cracker recipe wasn't quite a keeper, did I throw in the towel?  Heavens no!  I found a second recipe, similar ingredients (so I assumed it would taste pretty close), but no chilling, freezing, etc.  So I gave it a whirl.  It was definitely easier, but didn't taste nearly as good.  I would have been bummed, but instead a peaceful feeling washed over me.  I had thoughtfully and intentionally tried my hand at homemade graham crackers, and am now saving you the trouble.  Don't try to make graham crackers.  It isn't worth your time. Instead of a keeper, I am helping you keep your time so you can put it to better use!

I did learn something fantastic this week - use cold bread flour when you make pizza dough!!!  Why do I know this, you ask?  I buy AP flour and bread flour in bulk, split it into gallon size bags and put it in my freezer.  This helps keep my freezer full so it runs more efficiently, and also guarantees I rarely run out of flour.  As I was making the dough for our pizza this morning, I was running low so I grabbed more bread flour out of the freezer and used it in my recipe.  The dough came together so much easier, and was incredibly easy to work with, but I feared that I had killed the yeast because the flour was so cold!  I continued on and put my dough blobs in the fridge, and later in the day saw they had risen just as they always do!  Now I think I will pre-measure my flour and toss it in the freezer the night before I will make dough and hope for the same result. I'll let you know if it works again!

And on Sunday - happy Mother's Day!!!

May 3, 2013

Welcome to May!  We tried two new dinner recipes this week, but neither was voted a keeper.  Hmmm...what to do.  Since I don't have any recipes to share, I will tell you all about one of our favorite snacks, popcorn.  Popcorn, you say, what is so exciting and new about that?  I love popcorn.  When I graduated from high school Mrs. C gave me an air popper to bring to college; I had that popper until about 6 months ago.  It didn't break, but it finally was retired because I replaced the way to make popcorn.  On Pinterest I had seen a way to make popcorn using kernels, a brown paper bag and the microwave.  It looked too good to be true, but why not try it?  It worked!!!!  No oils, no additives, just the popcorn in a folded lunch bag in the microwave.  How fantastic!

Also, remember that grapefruit spoon sitting in your silverware drawer?  Have you been using it to hollow out your zucchini boats?  Scrape out the seeds from a jalapeno pepper?  Fish out small pieces of shell that accidentally got in the bowl with the egg?  Here comes another idea for that super serrated spoon - use it to hull your strawberries!  We probably should stop calling it a grapefruit spoon since that is only a small part of its duties in the kitchen.  :)

Happy cooking!

New "Recipe"
Popcorn

Popcorn

Ingredients
* 1/4 cup popcorn
* 1 brown paper lunch bag

Directions
1. Pour the popcorn into the lunch bag.  Fold over the top two times.
2. Place in the microwave and set the timer for 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
3. Listen to the popcorn pop and stop cooking when you hear the popping slow down.  You don't want to burn your popcorn!
4. Pour the popped popcorn into a bowl and season as you like (melted butter, salt, Parmesan cheese, garlic salt, the sky's the limit!). Enjoy!

Notes
I saw this idea on Pinterest, and was extremely skeptical.  It looked way too easy, and had to be too good to be true.  I tried it, and a-m-a-z-i-n-g!!!!  It worked!!!  No oils, so additives, and you can even "recycle" the un-popped kernals in the next batch!!!  We used to have an air popper, but once I discovered this, it is so much easier so we freecycled our popper!!!