Mulberries!

 

 

We tasted the ones that were about the color of ripe blackberries.  They are good!  Now I need some mulberry recipes!

Message in a bottle

I'm writing this post in September of 2014 and setting it to publish in April of 2015.

Why am I doing this? 'Cause I have too much going on and I'm thinking about this right now and I don't want to forget when the time is right.

This summer will be the summer of the girls cooking dinner. Everyone will have to make a dinner ... They can do it alone or in a team. They will plan their menus; determine if we need any special ingredients; and make sure we do grocery store run for any needed food before their night of cooking.

We'll mark the nights on the calendar and plan to spend the afternoon cooking rather than doing an event. (We can be flexible if something comes up and move "the girls' cooking night" to the next night.)

I'm so excited! Girls, what do you think?

Happy Anniversary to me and my scanpan

It's been 2 years and a lot of pancakes!  It still cooks them beautifully with NO oil!  I love my scanpan! 

 

The original picture of it...

 

More recent picture!

 

 Last week's bounty.

A typical Sunday morning job for the scanpan. It takes a while to do this.

These are the leftovers for the week. We've already eaten about 10-15 pancakes.

Here's the recipe for these lovely chocolate chip pancakes.

Baked breaded tofu!

I just learned about Hummusapien's blog. Awesome!  I was looking for a new idea for dinner and found her recipe for "Tofu Fingers." I've been wanting to try something new, and I had some tofu to use up, win-win!

I followed her recipe pretty closely... I'll put my version below, but give full credit to her for thinking of such a fun dinner!  Also, go look at hers for the pretty pictures!

1 pound extra firm tofu (I actually used this and didn't drain or press it since it is so water-free)
1/4 cup soy milk (you dip the tofu in this before you put it in the breading)

For the breading
1/4 cup almond meal (made it in the vita mix)
1/4 cup oat flour (made it in the vita mix)
1/4 cup corn meal
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
2 teaspoons smoked paprika (I LOVE THIS STUFF)
1 teaspoon chili powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
(note, you can put the spices in with different proportions--this is how we liked it)

Mix all the ingredients for the breading. Cut the tofu, dip the cut tofu into the soy milk (or almond milk), then dip into the breading. Place carefully on a baking pan lined with a silicone liner or parchment paper.

Bake at 425 for 20 minutes, flip and bake for 15 more.  Dip in your favorite dipping sauce!  (Next time I'll make some home made BBQ sauce!)



Here they are all breaded and about to go into the oven.

 
I forgot to take one after they were cooked 'cause we ate them so quickly--next time! (All 5 of us liked it.)

Oh Fudge! I mean "not oat fudge!"

I found a recipe on a new (to me) blog. The blogger, Kate, described it as an accidental recipe. I love it when accidents turn out great! The recipe caught my attention as she called it "Easy Salted Oat Fudge." (I love salt in desserts! It's my weakness.) I'm calling the recipe "not oat fudge" because of my modifications.

Here's her recipe (modified because that's what I do). This is super yummy; everyone who has tried this has loved it. (My youngest doesn't like the pecans, but the next time I make this, I'll make her some without the pecans.)

I don't think of this as "fudge," but I don't have a better word to describe it.  It's not as soft and moist than fudge, but it kind of melts in your mouth, so it's very nice. Thanks, Kate for the happy accident of a recipe! (See below for the world's worst photo of my version. Click over to Kate's blog to see nice photos.)

3/4 cup almond butter
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1/8-1/4 cup maple syrup
2-4 tablespoons cashew butter
1.5 teaspoons vanilla
3/4-1 teaspoon salt

~3/4 cup of oat flour (a bit more, maybe, but probably not a full cup--see note below)
~1 cup of toasted pecans


(To toast the pecans, stick them in a 300 degree oven on a silpat or parchment paper for 10-15 minutes. Easy-peasy, yum!)

(To make oat flour, stick as many oats as you need to be flour in your food processor or blender and watch them fly as you turn it on! I love making oat flour. You can buy it if you'd rather.)

Melt the almond butter, chocolate chips, maple syrup, cashew butter, and vanilla in a double boiler or regular sauce pan (keep the heat low if you use a regular pan). Stir in the oat flour (this will be hard 'cause the mixture is super thick already). (Add 1/2 cup of oat flour at first and mix it in, and then add as much as you can--probably another 1/4-1/2 cup, but add it kind of slowly. Your arm will get tired from all the mixing (but then you can eat more of this recipe since you worked out while making it).

(Note: the second time I made this I discovered that 1 cup was too much oat flour.  I had to add a little more almond butter to counteract the flour.  So, since the original post, I changed the oat flour amount in the ingredients to 3/4s of a cup--maybe a tiny bit more, but not a full cup.)

The "dough" will be very dry. Add the pecans. Next, put the dough in an 8X8 pan and pat it down so that it all sticks together.  (Again, you'll be using muscles and working out!)

After it's in the pan, stick it in the freezer for a while (1/2 hour or so), or just in the fridge to cool.  It will slice (with a little breakage), and taste excellent. The warm "dough" also tastes great! 

The recipe is delicious, but not moist like fudge (because of my modifications--my leaving out the butter makes it dryer).  Kate described it as a cross between a no-bake cookie and fudge... I think of it more as a cross between a no-bake cookie and a baked cookie with fudge-y flavor.

Whatever! It's a winner! (Unless you don't like chocolate.  I'm looking at you, LindaX.)

Enjoy the heavenly, not oat fudge!

 
(you can see the frost on the glass from the freezer.)

For 12 servings cut in the 8x8 pan (that's a decent size):

Garden Chipotle Quinoa

I don't make enough dishes with quinoa. There's this one and it's pretty good. But I usually make Mexican Casserole with Quinoa as I like it better. Everytime I make that Mexican Casserole, I wonder why I don't make it more often.

Tonight, I wanted to make something a little different and I played around with the one-pot quinoa wonder recipe (the first recipe linked above) and came up with Garden Chipotle Quinoa. It's awesome. I heart Garden Chipotle Quinoa.

You may remember the the homemade adobo sauce recipe--if you don't go read; I used the sauce in the quinoa dish and WE LOVED this quinoa dish!  OMG! Weeeeeee!

The dish came about because I had carrots and fava beans from our winter garden and I wanted to use them. I diced up:

carrots (2-3)
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
then added
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
2 teaspoons cumin
1 can of black beans
2 cups of veggie broth
1 can of diced tomatoes
1.5 blocks of my adobo sauce (that was frozen)

All this went in a big skillet... it's probably a 14-inch very deep skillet. After it all had cooked for about 15 minutes I added:

1 cup of quinoa
1.5 cups frozen corn
fava beans (~1 cup--I don't know, we just picked some for fun today and I wanted to see what they were like.  I didn't measure)

At the very end of the cooking (for about the last 5 minutes) I put in a little kale from the garden (next time I'll add more).

 
(You can see the fava beans and a little kale; the carrots are hard to see.)

Yum! I have decided that the adobo sauce, quinoa, and whatever vegetable is in season in the garden will go into this dish; that is why we will (forever) call it Garden Chipotle Quinoa.

(I ate too much! I am stuffed.)


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