Recipes

I was thinking as I made dinner this evening, that recipes are like scrapbooks. They bring back people and thoughts and memories. They make sure people are not forgotten even if it is just for that moment in which a meal is planned.

For instance this evening, I spent time with a dear foodie friend who has moved away, an old Junior High School friend, and thought fondly of a fabulous cook who has passed on. All these ladies touched me in some way. They were there at different phases of me. And at one point we shared a meal. We said to each other "this is great" and say it with me "Do you have the recipe?" At some point the answer to that was yes. They took time out of their lives and jotted them down.

Food is connecting. It brings you together as nothing else can. It says I love you, I care about you, let me feed you. I think that is big. So next time you are making a meal be sure to send some love to those who have inspired that meal. And next time someone says "Do you have the recipe?" know that you are leaving a footprint...a very memorable, important footprint.

My daughter says...

So my sage 9 year old says to me...you aren't so much a blogger you know. You are more of a facebooker. This is true and it stung. I would much rather my astute young person know me as a blogger than a facebooker. I would rather she associate me with original ideas and creating. But I want to tell you how many thousands of thoughts and ideas I have for this little blog of mine and how overwhelming are the stories I would like to weave and how no matter how many photos I take I never seem to have the one that matches the ideas in my head. My young sage is ever so correct though that I should just type. The photos are just eye candy. The meat is the words anyhow. So in an effort to find my voice again I sit today on this cold threatening snow day, blueberry muffins for a bake sale in the oven, Ray Lamontagne on the stereo, incense piping away trying to think of all the things I was meaning to create here...and wouldn't ya know they all went running from my head?

So let's just start with the obvious...above are photos from a class I took at our Nature Center. It was a wood stove cooking class.

Let me just start by saying, I do not have a wood stove and it would take some major home renovation for me to have one. Every time we go out there to visit the Homestead they are cooking or have something going on their little stove and I am always drawn there like a moth to a flame. Asking questions, fascinated, and the foodie in me dying to get my hands in there and give it a go and cook! So when I saw registration for this class I took some leave from work and signed up, I got the last slot is that meant to be or what. I have taking various cooking classes before and I wrongly assumed this one would be similar, you know a tutorial with some sampling at the end.

Oh, how very wrong that was, you do know what they say about assumptions? We hit the ground running at 9:30am we got a brief down and dirty this is how to light and keep the stove hot, these woods have this effect, and here is your menu for the day you will be making breakfast, snack, and dinner for guests. We were all stunned. What? Right now? Just cook it?? Me?? So me and the other 5 ladies jumped in and got to work and let me tell you how very much work that day was. I have never known such a tired. A good tired. An I worked hard all day on my feet tired.
We were responsible for all prep, all cooking, all mixing, all water fetching, all washing of dishes. Let me tell you now our cabin was pretty authentic no electricity and no running water. This was really an eyeopener to gratefulness for modern convenience! Hot, clean, running water is one of the best modern day marvels ever the second would have to be electricity!

I can't wrap my head around what pioneer women went through. There were 6 of us and the 2 instructors and all we had to do was cook. We were not working in gardens, minding children, mending, doing the wash, etc... and we still couldn't manage to do it all gracefully and smoothly. How ever did they balance it all?? How?!!

I must say though that that meal was incredible. We ate and we chatted and we bonded and we were made appreciative of what we do have. And what an atmosphere and such an awesome evening shared with my family who got to come and have dinner the old fashioned way.

I can't believe I signed up for such a day of work and paid to do so!! We didn't get home till 7:30pm!! But it was worth it for the memory and perspective. Let's just say the next night I wasn't so slow to make dinner. It seemed so very simple and easy in comparison and truly left me feeling so very thankful and blessed for what we now have.

Relax and Restore

So today I had a home day. I breathed in and out. I sat on the porch and blissed out to the sound of the windchimes and the feel of the wind. I cradled my coffee mug and devoured my magazines. I took a bicycle ride downtown to restore with some yoga and see friends who love me anyway. I came home and then rode to pick up the Elder Statesman at school. And then I crafted and created a lovely, healthy dinner in the kitchen. I even managed desserts today. I will say today has been exactly what the body and mind needed. A day off. Really and truly off. It made me feel alive again and might I say completely happy!

Shoofly...

So my little lady Bronwyn has been asking for months and months for me to make a Shoofly pie and some spinach artichoke dip. She had heard Ella Fitzgerald's song Shoolfy pie and wanted to know if it was in fact a real pie... after some research we discovered it in fact was a real pie. It was easy to put together, although to this day I cannot stand the smell of molasses!, and it was so incredibly yummy that it is nearly all gone! A complete success and thankfully the Elder Statesman can say she has in fact had Shoofly Pie, now I wonder how long before she asks for Apple Pan Dowdy??

While making the crusts, thanks to the Irishman and his infinite patience, I decided to initiate my new individual pie plates for quiches! Those too turned out lovely and were fun to have a smaller version of the same!

Ella got to help the Irishman roll out crusts, she loves to be in the kitchen! But it was very hard to photograph the live action of it all.

Last night I got to go to a cooking class. It was for tailgate foods, and although I have next to zero interest in any sport that would have tailgating I am very into the foods that come with!! The chef showed us how to make coconut shrimp, Detroit style coney sauce, Bloody Mary's wisconsin style, All day potato salad, and a few other dishes but those were the best. The all day potato salad was incredible, and I am not a potato salad fan! And last night I made the leap to big girl real cooking and bought a quality knife!!!!!!! I am delighted! This is supposed to be your first purchase for a well equipped kitchen and it has been the one I have put off the longest. Our knives wouldn't cut butter with ease so this is such a gift! Cutting the veggies for quiche tonight was a lovely experience! I feel so rich!!!

I have book club this evening, we are discussing Little Women. I made it to yoga today and then got to have coffee with a good friend so feel like this has been a very good day indeed, yoga, coffee, friends, kitchen time, good eats, and books...oh yeah it was a good day!!!

On a Roll...

So a few hours before I headed off to work, I decided I needed to get into the kitchen and once I got there I got on a complete roll! There was banana milkshakes, baked butternut squash, baked eggplant, bbq eggplant, tofu fried with taco seasoning, banana wheat germ muffins (yeah I had a lot of aging bananas to use up! as well as eggplant!!), Peanut butter/Choc. Chip/Oatmeal cookies, and Stuffed shells from The Yoga Journal. It all went well and I felt like I accomplished something! I would highly recommend the stuffed shells!

Culinary Disaster

Well sometimes when you have a disaster something rather yummy can come from it...today I tried (for the first time maybe the only time) to make blue corn tortillas. The ingredients were simple the directions were simple yet the tortillas seemed persnickety...I didn't produce one that had even the remotest appearance of being a tortilla...they tasted like tortillas but nothing we could use for tacos that is for sure...so since I already had a disaster why not keep on pushing...so I had hoped to be able to make the tortillas to one day make blue corn chips...so I put some oil in the pan and tore them into bits added some salt and fried them till crisp and voila they began disappearing from the plate before I could get dinner even close to ready!! Sometimes you need a little disaster in your world...

So into it...

Bronwyn has been working on Father's Day for weeks now. She has crafted and made all kinds of lovely things for Dad. She has made lists of "Good Stuff" about him. She instructed me that I had to make lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting, because those are his favorite,(and if you haven't seen it might I suggest you peruse a copy of Vegan cupcakes take over the world, we are not vegan so I sub the regular stuff for things like butter and milk but everything I have made from there is awesome!!) before I went to work Saturday night, well she actually ended up making them with a little assistance of the measuring kind from me. Then she came and got me up this morning because I had to make him breakfast so they could take it to him in bed. I received a recipe for capp. carmel bread from a lovely lady named Kimberly last night so since it was bread machine bread I popped it in before I went to bed. She suggested using it for French Toast which of course I had to do! It was fantastic!! We were running low on milk for the french toast part but had vanilla hemp milk so I used that, it was very good and smelt yummy too but I must say very, very filling!!! And you can see all the asundry things that her ladyship thought Dad needed this morning, and with two slices of the toast he couldn't even touch the rest! Bronwyn even gussied up the tray with petals that had fallen off my beloved poppies. She has an eye for style that I must say skipped a generation as I have never had it and never will!!!

Oh and lets take a moment to mourn the passing of poppy season!! The last petals are falling as we speak!!! So short the season of poppiness!!

Yumminess...

Ok so we didn't get a photo of the loveliness that himself made for the dinner...so I defaulted to a jewelry collection picture...not even close but there you have it...just can't post without a photo...seems wrong...

Ok so the yumminess...today was a day that I would be home for around 1 hr. so the odds of homemade goodness coming from my efforts was zero...we would have been looking at peanut butter sandwiches or maybe even breakfast cereal! So last night himself said to leave him out a recipe and he would make it for dinner!! The poor man should never say this to me!! I always find that one recipe that sounds really great but I have no patience to attempt and dangle it out there for himself. And bless him he dives right in and says here you go... tonight's was http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=6863.0 It was so, so good! You can tailor the veggies to family tastes and the crust could be anything really but himself upped the whole thing a notch and made the one he found at the whole foods site Simple Pie Crust...oh let me tell you it was all I could do not to eat seconds, thirds, and fourths!! And even better, the lovely ladies both liked it and the elder statesman said she would like to take it for lunch tomorrow!! Yipee!! And to make this whole thing even better, with today's meat recall and the scariness that is the beef industry, it is a meatless event!!

Next I have a recipe for flour tortillas I am hoping he gives a go...oh yeah this is me upping the bar!! Homemade tortillas!!! Woo Hoo!!

Speaking of Who....many thanks to Soulemama for the Who bread recipe...it was most delicious and a nice treat at work today the hint of cinnamon is lovely!!