Salmon with garlic cheddar spinach sauce

I took some butter, half and half, four color pepper and unsweetened soy milk. I added spinach, cooked slowly until bubbly hot and added about one-quarter pound garlic cheddar from Klein Farm.

Delightful sauce for our salmon filets.

Lasagne soup

The title is a joke.

I made lasagne in a bread loaf pan because I only had 8 no boil lasagne noodles.

So I layered plain sauce, noodles, ricotta from Klein Farm, heaps of spinach, some garlic powder and some Italian seasoning.

I didn't do the egg and multiple cheese thing. Wanted to keep the dairy to a minimum and keep the recipe quick.

It was tasty even if it was soupy.

Berry frozen yogurt

Took two bottles of smoogurt from Klein farm (one maple vanilla and one blueberry), added a splash of triple sec, and 1 cup of chopped berries to make this lovely frozen yogurt.

I let the kids (mine and her friend) smash and cut the berries with a potato masher and pastry blender.

Farm visit

Spent $41.25 (thank you, Mr. Visa) at Klein Farm today.

Smoogurt (their yogurt smoothies) were buy one, get one free so I bought 2 blueberry, one egg nog and one vanilla maple.

I got a pound of bacon.

The medium jar of unprocessed local raw honey, a quart.

A pint of raw milk.

Garlic pepper cheddar.

Ricotta.

And a dozen jumbo eggs.

Bâtard and quince

A few more weeks and my last full semester at Lafayette will end. My daughter is drowning in her phlegm and her ear tubes are falling out. Target opens at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving. We're still barely making ends meet.

But hey, no sense complaining. This is life.

Today I stopped at Wegmans because my poor daughter wanted ice cream and I'm restricting her dairy right now because of her allergy/ear issues.

I got her coconut milk cookies and cream ice cream.

She also wants to cook dinner tonight so I got vegan ravioli, one butternut squash and the other roasted red pepper. She suggested ravioli for the meal.

I also got salad greens and Health is Wealth Pizza Munchees which are also vegan.

And sushi. Because I can't make it through Wegmans without a serious impulse buy.

I also got bâtards, a small type of French bread, because I've craved a bâtard with butter and quince jam for months. A few weeks ago, I discovered Lebanese quince jam at the Mediterranean Deli. Imagine my delight when I found bâtard bread today. The flavors bring me back to Tunisia.

I also made myself a smoothie of vanilla maple yogurt from Klein Farm, frozen pitted dark cherries, a fresh banana and a splash of sour cherry nectar from Turkey. (Another find at the Mediterranean Deli.

My belly celebrates.

Raspberry smoothie

I'm not a fan of smoothies. Maybe it's a psychological throwback to when I broke my teeth and survived on an all liquid diet for a month.

But today I wanted something different.

So, for breakfast, I prepared some salad in a wrap.

And got out the blender.

Ingredients:
- one banana
- about 1/4 cup vanilla maple yogurt from Klein farm
- about 3/4 cup frozen raspberries
- about 2 tablespoons apple cider from Heckman Orchards
- about 3 tablespoons Very VanillaSilk

This is delightful.

More so-called weird snacks

For breakfast today, my daughter had a banana, water and peanut butter/jelly on my multigrain biscuits I made yesterday.

I started to prepare her snack. I was thinking maple-vanilla yogurt from
Klein Farm. She's been pretty good about avoiding dairy so a shot of yogurt will be good.

As I was adding some frozen raspberries to keep it cold, she came into the kitchen.

"Are you packing another weird snack?" she asked.

"Is yogurt and raspberries weird?"

"Yes."

"I thought other kids brought those tube yogurts."

"Yeah. And some bring fruit snacks so that's similar."

Me, muttering, "fruit snacks... As if that's healthy... Do you want something else."

"No," she said.

"Do you want some almonds in top?"

"Yeah!"

Me, after contemplating, "Yesterday you had an apple. That's not weird."

"It is when I bring it."

"I'm sorry."

She shrugs.

Time to pickle

We had one huge pickling cucumber so we picked it and got out our canning equipment. Since we don't have enough cucumber, we're also pickling some carrots from Klein Farm.

Last summer, I was given some Ball dill pickle seasoning mix so I'm trying it, using apple cider vinegar as the base.

The tomatoes in the garden aren't getting red. Two of my peppers don't seem to be getting bigger and despite bees in all the flowers, my cantaloupe is looking like a dud.

But all my pickling cucumber plants, both in the ground and in pots, are going crazy. My corn has some new growth.

And i found a pepper plant I had forgotten about struggling for air next to the crazy sorrel.

Garden nachos

These would have been incredible if only our tortilla chips weren't stale because somehow the bag was open...

- cheddar cheese
- chives from the garden
- greens from our garden and what's left from Klein Farm
- Archer Farms raspberry salsa
- Archer Farm buffalo blue cheese dip
- ground beef from Klein Farm

Zesty egg wrap

For my breakfast I scrambled an egg from Klein Farm, placed it on a small flour tortilla with Klein Farm's garlic cheddar and greens. I added Archer Farms Raspberry Salsa and a slice of Morningstar vegetarian bacon. Served with sun-brewed unsweetened, decaffeinated black tea with organic rose hips.

Cheesesteak soup

Today, I will make the transition from chicken soup to beef soup.

I prepared a pound of chip steak in the Le Creuset skillet with extra virgin cold-pressed olive oil, garlic powder, oregano and a few tablespoons of Pacific Foods Organic Creamy tomato soup.

In the crockpot I mixed:
- a cheap can of condensed vegetable beef soup, with 1.5 cans water
- about 10 (?) ounces creamy tomato soup
- 32 ounces wegmans culinary beef stock
- 3/4 of the meat, with cooking juices, chopped ridiculously tiny
- 2 cups shredded mozzarella
- more than 1 cup shredded extra sharp cheddar

I did it!!! It tastes like a cheesesteak!

Husband Hamburgers

Because husband got unexpectedly called into work, I didn't have a chance to eat properly. This led to a mild mommy meltdown. Husband saved the day with burgers from the ground beef I bought earlier. While he cooked them, child and i went to Aldi and, among other things, got English muffins for buns. I thought the texture would be delightful and it was.... Airy and crispy.

We dressed them with spring mix and ketchup for the little one and Archer Farm's buffalo blue cheese dip for the grown-ups.

Husband sprinkled some of my country herb blend on each one.

Errands

Last night, I asked my husband to buy a few things from Target and Wegmans. We had a coupon for ocean spray juice and another for Silk almond milk from Target. And I wanted some of those sour infused raisins from Target. They add sugar to them, so they're really not that healthy. But they fill my jelly bean craving so... That's a fine trade.

Husband bought two boxes of Morningstar breakfast patties, Market Pantry cranberry-pomegranate juice, ocean spray blueberry juice, two packages of the golden infused raisins, two cartons of vanilla almond milk and a quart of half and half... The total came to $19-something so it should have been $17-something with the coupons but the cashier missed the one coupon. But we still had a $5 gift card from an earlier promotion and my discount so I guess that works out okay.

At Wegmans, he spent $11 and bought vegan mayonnaise for the child, organic spring mix for the tortoise, broccoli and a bag of Doritos.

Now today we were heading to Kline Farm to buy eggs, meat and local honey (another attempt for alleviating the daughter's ear problems). We stopped at Forks Mediterrannean Deli because we were hungry. We spent about $13 for four portions of zaatar bread, roasted sunflower seeds and a bag of the zaatar spice. Yes, I hope to make my own zaatar bread.

Finally, we made it to the farm. We spent $38.50 and bought:
- 3 lbs ground beef
- 1 lb beef cubes
- 1 pound chipped steak
- a fairly big jar of local raw honey
- apple butter by a local artisan
- one dozen brown eggs

Mango Basil Meatballs

Looking at the week ahead, I opted for some red meat for dinner. Local beef from a nearby dairy farm, but hamburger nonetheless. Meatballs. Served as? Not sure. But it won't involve red sauce or pasta since we had that for lunch and it's too late in the game to make brown rice.

Betty Crocker's Meatball recipe is this:
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs
- 1/4 cup milk
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1/4 cup chopped onion
- 1 egg

Mix. Make 1.5 inches balls. Cook in 13x9x2 inch rectangular pan at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

But we all know I can't follow a recipe. I swapped the rectangular dish for my Le Creuset skillet.

Here are my ingredients:
- 1 package (I hope it's) 1 pound ground beef
- 1/2 cup crumbled Matzoh
(now my meat was frozen and I thawed it in the microwave and it got juicy, then the Matzoh was too big, so I tossed it all in and improvised)
- 1/3 cup breadcrumbs
- 1/2 cup mango coconut pepper sauce (to replace the milk, but I misread the amount)
- 1/2 teaspoon four color organic peppercorn
- 1/4 teaspoon fresh ground garlic salt
- 10 leaves fresh basil from the garden, torn
- 1 egg

They "feel" "right."

Will keep you posted.

They were incredible!

Farm Fresh Cream Sauce

I didn't go to the grocery store yet, in part because the tire on the car exploded and in other part because we have so many random items in this house that I like the challenge of using what we've got.

This morning I was thinking vegetables rolled in cold cuts. But then I decided on pasta for dinner. We have some tri-color rotini, and some lunchmeat ham my mother-in-law brought last week. I thought I could combine those. We also have some raw milk that's a week old and we always have plenty of butter.

Ingredients:
- Tri-color rotini
- Leftover cold cut ham
- About 4 tablespoons butter
- About 1 teaspoon organic four color pepper
- 1 cup raw milk
- 2 tablespoons unbleached white flour
- dash nutmeg
- 3/4 teaspoon fresh dill
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
- 2 cups peas

So I made the rotini.

In my Le Creuset skillet, I started with with a pat of butter and some four color peppercorn. I tossed all the ham into the skillet, heated over medium and fried both sides. I removed the ham from the skillet and put it on a cutting board. I added two tablespoons of butter to the skillet, reducing heat to low. Stirring constantly, I added the butter.

The base of this recipe came from the Betty Crocker 25th Anniversary Cookbook.

This is probably the first time my flour-butter base for the cream sauce actually came out as liquid and not as a lump. I think it's because of the even heating in the cast iron skillet. After stirring it until bubbly, I removed the skillet from the heat and added the milk. Stirred until everything melted and mixed together.

I returned the skillet to the heat, added the rest of the herbs (dill, garlic salt, remaining pepper, nutmeg) and stirred constantly as it thickened. When it got almost bubbly and a nice consistency, I added the peas and the ham and stirred until everything was warm.

Then I added the rotini, and stirred together.

My stirring technique for this involved a wide plastic turner where I scraped back and forth across the skillet.

It was my best cream sauce ever.

Sweet Potato Crunch/Casserole hybrid

So, yesterday I thought I would serve some sort of sweet potato with the chicken. The cordless can opener battery died a few turns into the can and the manual can opener just would not latch. (Husband even tried.)

Now that the Gizmo is recharged I got the can open. And I made a use-up-leftovers kind of baked sweet potato dish.

For the potato base:
- 1 can sweet potatoes, drained
- 2 handfuls brown sugar
- About one-half cup farm fresh milk
- 1 egg
- 1 handful raisins

Over top, mix and spread:
- 1/4 cup walnuts (all I had)
- about 1/4 cup leftover pie crumbs
- about 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon

Coat with three tablespoons melted butter.

Arrange in Pyrex bread loaf pan and bake at 350 for 45 minutes

Waffles for dinner

We had belgian waffles from the freezer, smoked bacon, and berry applesauce for dinner. We topped the waffles with real maple syrup and in some cases peanut butter. The house is running out of groceries, but it worked.

Dinner Party

I am completely exhausted and I have one hour until it's time to set the table and two hours until time to start cooking dinner.

We started our day at Wegmans. I was thrilled to find a one-gallon glass sun tea pitcher for $5.99 but distraught to find pineapples were $3.99 and that cored pineapples were $5.99. That's nuts.

I spent $48.76, which I'm counting toward the August budget even though it's July 31. I was bummed about that until I remembered I bought the sun tea pitcher.

I bought:

• 2 pounds Wegman's butter, one salted, one unsalted, $1.50 each
• one pineapple, $3.99 (grrr)
• the large bottle of coffemate vanilla chai spice creamer, $2.99
• 2 pints heavy whipping cream, $1.49 each
• 3 packages of celestial seasoning tea (blueberry, almond, and berry), $2.29 each
• 1 liter of Orangina, $2.49
• 3/4 pound sliced ham from the deli, $4.31
• shredded gruyère (domestic?), $3.60
• smoked gouda, $3.47
• the sun tea jar, $5.99
• 3 lbs bananas, $1.09
• 6 ounces raspberries, $2.50
• strawberries, $2
• ground nutmeg, $2.99

Before we left, I made the pear soup and I had set the brioche out and shaped it. When we got home, I baked it and brewed iced tea (green with berry). Then we went to the liquor store for wine. My husband came home early for lunch, so we had leftover crêpes and then I prepped the pineapple crumble and the zucchini cakes.

At 3 p.m., I'll set the table.

At 4 p.m., I'll start the crôque monsieur.

When the crôque is in the oven, I'll fry the zucchini cakes. While we eat the first courses, the pineapple crumble will bake.

Recipes:
Follow these links:

• Brioche-- from The Paris Cookbook by Patricia Wells, also should be accessible via 'French,' 'bread,' and/or 'brioche.'
• Chilled Pear Soup-- Vegan, eileen bresslin
  
• Zucchini crabbiless cakes-- The Imus Ranch Cookbook, 'vegan' (Deirdre Imus calls it vegan even though she used eggs because she has her own chickens) and zucchini
• Perfumed Pineapple Crumble-- Venez Diner, C'est Prêt by Dominique Malet, follow pineapple or French or the name of the book
• Crôque Monsieur-- obviously French, it's from The Barefoot in Paris Cookbook by Ina garten
• Rye bread-- clicking on rye will show you all my experiments with rye flour

My daughter made me a lovely four-course meal:
Tomato salad (pictured)
Piled-High Sandwiches
A cheese and egg platter
Chocolate-Carrot Crumble

Chilled Pear Soup

I wanted to make the chilled pear soup Eileen Bresslin prepared for us in our vegan cooking class at Northampton Community College. But I can't find it. Online or in my cookbooks.

So, I experimented.

I took a big can of pear halves and put them in the blender with the freshly squeezed juice of half a lemon. I added about a 1/2 teaspoon of ginger. I blended. I poured half of it into three bowls and transferred to the fridge to chill.

That's the vegan sample.

I added a quarter cup vanilla-maple- drinkable yogurt from Klein Farm to the remaining stuff in the blender and added the lemon juice from the other half of lemon. This also got sent to the fridge to be taste-tested at lunch.

The verdict from the family:
The vegan option is the most soup like, whereas the yogurt one is more like a dessert or a palette cleanser. Both are equally edible.

Tracy's Yellow Cake

My friend Tracy said yellow cake is her favorite. So, I tried to hook her up.

From:
http://bakingbites.com/2005/10/happy-birthday-to-me/

Yellow Sheet Cake

2 ½ cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 ½ cups sugar
½ cup butter, softened
3 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 9×13 inch sheet pan with parchment paper, or lightly grease it with shortening or oil (butter will produce a harder “crust”).
Sift cake flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer. Add sugar and, using the paddle attachment, mix on low speed to blend. Cut butter into 4 or 5 chunks and drop into the bowl with the flour. Blend on low speed until mixture looks sandy and no large chunks of butter remain, 1-2 minutes.
In a large measuring cup, combine eggs, milk and vanilla. Beat lightly with a fork until combined. With the mixer on low, pour 1 cup of the egg mixture into the bowl. Turn speed up to medium and beat for 1 ½ minutes. Reduce speed back to low and pour in the rest of the egg mixture. Continue to beat at low speed for an additional 30 seconds, until liquid is fully incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat for a few more seconds, if necessary.
Pour into prepared 9×13 pan and spread batter evenly with a spatula. Tap gently a few times to eliminate any bubbles.
Bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes, until a tooth pick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Let cool for 30 minutes in the pan before turning out onto a rack to cool completely. You can leave it in the pan if you’re serving it casually.
Serves 16 (or 12 birthday-sized pieces)

I really followed this one and made Betty Crocker's chocolate icing.

That I deviated from the recipe...
Chocolate Frosting (from Betty Crocker)
1/3 cup butter, softened
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
(I didn't have unsweetened so I used semisweet)
2 cups powdered sugar (I reduced to 1 and 1/3 cups because of the semisweet chocolate)
1.5 teaspoons vanilla
2 tablespoons milk

Combine butter and chocolate until well mixed. Not when hot. Stir in sugar. Beat in milk and vanilla. Use enough milk to make desired consistency.

I also gave Tracy some Heath baking bits to sprinkle on top. Turns out Heath is her favorite candy.

The cake didn't cool before she had to leave so I sent her on her way, with the cake in the pan, icing in a separate container and the Heath bits.