Perfect Summer Side

I like to plant my vegetable garden from seeds.  It's less expensive and so much more fun.  London helps me dig the holes and then places the seeds in.  We check and check and check in the next couple weeks until we see green poking up out of the dirt.  The one thing I buy started are tomatoes.  I don't have a good spot in my house to start them indoors and I've never had success starting them outdoors by seeds.   (The never get big enough to get tomatoes on them when I do.)  I will keep trying though.  We like to buy our plant from the Farmer's Market in Boise.  We also like to buy the Early Girl variety. We have had great success with this type and like today we are always drowning in fresh tomatoes come end of July.  Right now at this moment after making a delicious side of tomato salad I still have 10 on my counter looking juicy red.  I like to the extras whole or can them diced.  I wait until towards the end of the summer to do that because right now I am still loving eating tomatoes every day.  Nothing tastes better than a warm fresh picked garden tomato.  Yum yum.  We have been having sliced tomatoes with olive oil and balsamic on them almost every night.  I also have basil that is doing really well this year.  Here is my summer time Tomato Salad recipe:

Tomatoes, how many you use is up to how many you are feeding and how much they like tomatoes.

Big Bunch of Basil

Fresh Chives

Clove of garlic

salt and pepper

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Balsamic Vinegar

Chop up the tomatoes and place in a bowl.  I didn't dice them but chopped them so they would be larger chunks.  Don't forget to add the juice from the chopping board, it adds lots of tomato flavor.  Chop up the basil and chives and add to bowl.  (I used about 8 chives from the garden but how many you use depends on how big of a serving you are making.)  Dice up the clove, or slice it really thin, and add it to the bowl.  Sprinkle salt and pepper.  Drizzle the oil and vinegar over top of the ingredients.  Stir to combine.  Let marinate for a couple hours to intensify the flavor.  I had mine marinate from 3 until 6 pm and it worked fabulously.  

Super easy and super tasty.  Happy Tomato Eating!

Namaste,

Natasha

Oatmeal Muffins

           


I am on a muffin kick. Well for the last two days I have been. There is a local natural food market that I go to once in a while that sells bags of bananas for .99 cents. They are overripe and browning. Perfect for banana bread or muffins in my case. So yesterday I made banana oatmeal muffins. I followed my banana bread recipe except I subbed the egg with flax and threw in 1/2 cup of oats. Yummy! They were gone yesterday. I know! I made them yesterday!

Today Lucca has been having poop issues, too many bananas most likely. :/. So I figured blueberry muffins would counter that. :). I made oatmeal muffins, half with blueberry and half without. They just came out of the oven and we are two down. Better save at least one for daddy!

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup brown cane sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 egg (or in my case I used flax. 1 tbsp flax meal mixed with 3 tbsp water and set aside. Do this before anything else so that it has time to set up. )
1 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup melted unsalted butter
1/4 - 1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 400 and get your muffin tin ready Mix all dry ingredients. Mix all wet ingredients except milk. Mix together. If batter is as thick as mine was add the milk a little at a time Add blueberries if you would like, gently. :). Place in tins and bake for 18-20 minutes. Take out and enjoy.

The great thing about replacing egg with flax is that you can lick without feeling worried about getting sick. It also adds extra fiber. :). Which my little one really needs right now.

Namaste
Natasha

So safe that I let both kids lick the bowl clean!  

Summer Sides

Today I went out into my garden and picked a large yellow zucchini squash and a handful of peas. Yesterday I went to the farmers market and bought a bag of skinny green beans and a red onion.

Here is my recipe:

Pad of unsalted butter
Two handfuls of Green beans
Handful of Peas
Clove of garlic
Thin slices of onion
Salt and pepper

Boil a pot of water. Submerge beans, peas, and squash for three minutes. Scoop out and submerge in ice water. Empty hot water and melt the butter. Add the onion and saute until soft. Add the veggies and salt and pepper to taste. I like to grate the garlic over the pot and add the 'zest'. Sauté.
Enjoy.

Namaste
Natasha

Dinner in China

Dinner was really good in China tonight. We have a friend who lives 30 minutes away and says we live in China. I guess Patrick invited him to dinner and he turned us down because we live "in China". Well let me tell you it was really good "Chinese" food. You missed out Max! :) There is always next time.

I made Portobello summer squash lasagna. I found the recipe on pinterest. You can find it here. I didn't put as much cheese. In fact I put probably half the cheese. The recipe called for a layer of mozzarella and Parmesan for each layer. I only did that on the top. I also half baked it around 3 pm. Then finished it before dinner. It worked great and was super yummy and best of all vegetarian!!! I love cooking vegetarian meals. They just don't have that heavy feel to them after you finish. This is a really bad picture of it because I only decided to take a picture last minute once the dish was already cold. :/. Sorry.

Anyhow, just an update on my dinner. What did you eat tonight? :)


Side note: my garden is doing awesome even for starting so late. Here are some pictures of my tomato plant, pepper plants, corn and yellow squash. Tomato salads are days away.

Namaste

Natasha

107 degrees

Okay. The other day it reached 107 degrees. HOT. It hasn't been that hot in Idaho on that date for 20 years, or so they said on the news. It has been over 100 for the last 5 days. It is a dry heat so more tolerable than humid heat, at least for me. We have been hot and wishing we had a pool. An in ground nice pool. For now our blow up pool will have to do. I still don't get in but London loves it. Pure torture is when I have to sit in the sun and watch while London swims in a nice in ground pool during lessons at the hottest time of the day, 4:30. Bleh. It is then that I have little pools of sweat accumulating in those little spots on my body. Oh and nice arm pit sweat too. Pure torture! As so many people I know are into watermelon right now, we are too. It is the time of year when mass quantities of watermelon are sold. We were going to grow watermelon this year but got a late start. On a side note, I picked my first red tomato yesterday! Super stoked about that and the millions more to come. Back to watermelon. I like to make it into a drink but this time I decided to cut some up and to freeze some on Popsicle sticks. If you know me, you know my obsession with Popsicles. It has passed on to London and her friends that come to play. I get into so much trouble if I don't have any made. So I sliced some melon and placed sticks into them. Placed them on baking sheets lined with wax paper and stuck them in the freezer.

Watermelon before freezing

So easy peasy. No molds or pureeing. Girls came over, melon was frozen and they were stoked! Lucca was too. Then they jumped in the blow up pool. In a while it's time for torture mom time but for now I'll stick my feet in and cool off.

Lucca loved it too!

London enjoying her melon.

Namaste!

Natasha

Dehydrating

Some days I don't drink enough water and I feel dehydrated.  No silly, that's not what this post is about!  It's about playing with my friend Kerry's dehydrator, and fruit of course!  I know I said I wasn't going to go on about cherries anymore but I still had some in the fridge and I had to do something before they went bad.  I even made more pop tarts.  My neighbor and friend Kerry mentioned that she had a dehydrator in her pantry.  I asked her if I could play with it and she so nicely said yes.  I have had a dehydrator on my wish list of some time now, at least 2 years.  I've researched them and forgot and researched them and forgot and the cycle goes on.

Fast forward to yesterday and I got the dehydrator from my friend and started to use it.  I got to work pitting the rest of the cherries.  After I pitted the cherries I pureed some raspberries, that I picked, strawberries that I bought and cherries that I, well you know the answer to that.  I also wanted to try my hand at fruit leather.  I looked up how long to dehydrate for and the answers varied tremendously.  One site even said 90-100 hours for dehydrating cherries!!  That's a LONG time!  Someone else's blog said 8 hours.  So I figured I would wait until morning and see how long it took.  That way they wouldn't finish in the night and then keep going until morning and I wouldn't wake to ashes.  :/  That wouldn't be very tasty.  Well I put the puree on the special mats and I think I will need to try my hand at leather another time.  This batch didn't turn out well.  Some of it did.  I didn't make sure it was all even thickness.  So some parts of the leather were too dry and others too moist.  I couldn't peel half of it off and some was still mushy.  I did get some and the strips that I did get off were tasty.  In the future I will try it again so that I can get good at it.  Maybe when I get my own machine?  (I hope my husband is reading this although he already bought my birthday present.  Maybe anniversary? hint hint)  Did I mention I love him?  A lot?  :)

The berries before puree.  

The fruit leather dehydrating.  (I did get a picture of the actual leather but on my other camera.  It's getting late, so they will have to wait.)

This morning I halved the pitted cherries and placed them skin side down on the trays.  I turned on the machine and let it go and looked at the clock, 8:30 am.  At around 5 pm was when I finally liked the texture of some of the cherries.  Some where done and others needed more time. I took the ones that were done out and let the others keep going.  I think they are finally all done, it's 9:00 at night now.  So I'd say anywhere from 8-12 hours for all my cherries.  (Some were fatter than others.)  Now, I have not too many but some delicious dried sweet cherries.  I am going to put these into my granola bars right away.  If I have more left over I think we will just eat them as snacks.  Maybe if I have my dehydrator by next cherry season, ahem!, I will be able to dehydrate a bunch more and then we will make them last and I will figure out the best way for us to store dried cherries.  For now, I'll just gobble them up and I bet both kids and the husband will help.  (I'll be out by tomorrow night!)

The pitted cherries before dehydration.

During dehydration.

Finished product in a bowl 1/4 the size of the original blue bowl.  Yummy!

Namaste!

Cherry Mania

By now I am sure you have all had it with my cherry posts.  If not, read on!  Now that I have my true loyal readers I will let you know what I've been up to with my twelve pounds of cherries.  First I made the crisp.  Then for Father's Day, except we celebrated Saturday, I made Patrick ribs.  I never make ribs but I made them and not only did I make them but I made cherry BBQ sauce.  Well I cheated and didn't make the sauce from scratch but I bought my favorite no high fructose corn syrup sauce and added pureed cherries into it.  Basted the ribs over and over again.  They were pretty good.  Then Sunday I made jam.  I like to make my own jam whenever possible.  A few reasons for this is high fructose corn syrup.  As most of you know, HFCS is in everything now.  It is very hard to find jams, preserves and jellies made with sugar.  Even the sugar free kind is made with aspartame, even worse!!  I find some good jams at Cost Plus World Market and also at this barn that sells fresher produce and during the summer local produce.  If given the chance though I like to make my own.  Not only do I make sure it is cane sugar in my jam but I dictate how much, which is usually less than other people use.  So I made some jam.  I didn't can it though because I was just going to use it for my pop tarts.  Which I made today!

I love pop tarts, but hate how horrible the store bought kind are for your health as you might remember, I blogged about it a couple years back.  I even gave you a recipe for them that I got off of Smitten Kitchen's blog.  I made some chocolate ones.  Well this time I made cherry pop tarts.  Not only did I make cherry pop tarts that were so so so so good but they are soy, dairy and egg free!  (I am amazing!)  ;)  If you have been following me I was on a very restrictive diet for the baby and am now able to eat anything.  However, I still am trying to avoid most dairy and like to substitute to make things healthier even more than I did before.  Today I decided to play around with an already fabulous recipe and try to change it.  Here is my new recipe.

Soy, Dairy and Egg Free Pop Tarts

Jam Filling:
3/4 cup jam
1 tablespoon cornstarch plus 1 tablespoon cold water mixed (TIP: cornstarch and flour mix better with cold water as opposed to hot.)

Put both jam and cornstarch water mixture into pot over medium heat.  Bring to boil and let simmer for a few minutes stirring until thickened.  Turn off heat and let cool.

The jam with the cornstarch before mixing.

Dough:

2 cups flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup Earth's Balance soy free butter substitute (Butter if you don't care about being soy/dairy free)
1 tbsp ground flax seed mixed with three tablespoons water
2 tablespoons dairy free milk (I used vanilla almond milk)

In a small bowl mix the ground flax seed meal with the 3 tbsp water and let sit.
In a mixing bowl combine flour, sugar and salt.  Add butter substitute or butter cut into small pats.  Mush with hands until dough is crumbly but sticks together when squeezed.  Now add the flax seed meal and milk.  Mix together with a wooden spoon.  If your kitchen is warm place the dough in plastic wrap into the fridge to cool it off.

When ready roll out dough and cut into desired shapes.  I used a small Ikea bowl to make the shape I wanted.  You could do circles or rectangles too.  Place one cut shape onto your lightly greased baking sheet.  Because I was doing egg free, using my finger I dabbed a bit of water all around on the edge of the dough.  Place a dollop or two of jam in the middle.  Place another piece of dough on top and seal the edges together.  Using a fork, poke some holes onto the top to let the steam rise out while baking.  You can crease your edges or not.

Place in fridge and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Once preheated take the pop tarts out and bake for 20 -25 minutes.  Take out and PLEASE wait to bite into one.  It will be soooooo tempting to just take a big bite, but then your mouth will be on fire and you will end up either burning your esophagus, because you swallowed so fast, or spitting out a perfectly good piece of pop tart.  So wait, and then you can enjoy the entire tart.

London, Lucca and I were on our way out the door but had to wait for these babies to get out of the oven.  I grabbed a quick picture of the pop tart finished, super duper hot and on a paper plate in my car.  It's not the most elegant picture of the finished product but if only you could taste through picture you wouldn't care.  :)

London and I enjoyed these and we agreed they tasted like personal cherry pies.  So yummy.  And remember if you only want to bake a few you can freeze the rest, pre-made but not baked, in between wax paper and in a plastic bag.  Then when you want one or two you can take them out of the freezer and place into the oven to bake.  Or bake them all, place them on a plate and watch them disappear faster than it takes you to wash all the dishes and clean the counters off.  Freeze them, they'll last longer.  :)

(Off the topic of pop tarts, tonight for dinner I made pork chops.  I used a red wine as the liquid and some cut up cherries and it came out divine.  One of the many uses for cherries.)

I think I am done blogging about cherries.  What will my next topic be about?  Stay tuned!

Namaste
Natasha