Food so far...

Breakfast was bâtard with butter and local raw honey.

Lunch was a big bowl of Brussel sprouts sautéed in coconut oil with pumpkin seeds, almonds, bacon and cranberries.

Modified lemon poppyseed muffins

I don't even know what to call this crazy batter:

- 2 eggs
- 1/4 cup coconut oil, in liquid form
- about 1/2 cup flax meal mixed with warm water
- 1 cup unsweetened soy milk
- 2 teaspoons lemon extract
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1/3 cup local raw honey
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 1 cup organic white flour
- 1/4 cup old fashioned oats
- 1/4 cup poppyseeds
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 2 pinches salt

Scooped into muffin tins.

Baking at 400 for 15-20 minutes.

Very delightful.

We tried them plain and with a smear of local raw honey, both were awesome but the honey overshadowed the lemon flavor.

Culinary experiment of the day

I have a favorite corn muffin recipe from a local vegan cooking teacher Eileen Bresslin.

Today, I swapped out a ridiculous combo of ingredients.

DRY INGREDIENTS
- 1/4 cup flax meal
- about 1/3 cup coconut flour
- 1.5 cups white corn meal
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- hearty pinch salt

WET INGREDIENTS
- 1 tablespoon flax meal that has rested in 4 tablespoons warm water
- about 1/8 cup coconut oil, in liquid form
- 1/4 cup blackstrap molasses
- 1/4 cup local raw honey
- 1 cup vanilla almond milk
- 1/2 cup soy milk
- 1.5 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine dry and wet ingredients in separate batches, then combine.

Stir vigorously to quickly get the lumps out of the coconut flour and get in the oven while still bubbling.

Bake 20 minutes.

I have no idea what will happen with this.

Update: a tad dry but yummy

Apple butter, part 2

So if you read Saturday's post, you know I left off with a crock pot full of local apples.

Three hours later I had the best applesauce ever.

Five hours later I had runny apple butter.

At that point, I transferred it to the stove to boil off some of the liquid for an hour.

I processed in a hot water bath for ten minutes and have the equivalent of four pints of apple butter.

Really incredible stuff.

Today, I filled half the crock pot with apples with the same basic honey/spice recipe to get some more apple goodness.

Some spiced apples. Maybe applesauce. If some remain, apple butter.

Yield: 2 pints spiced apples and turkey sausage with apples in the crockpot for dinner.

Apple Butter, part one

I have wanted to make my own apple butter for a long time. My daughter loves the stuff. I occasionally like it. My husband is not real fond of it. So if I buy it, it often goes moldy.

We have awesome apple orchards locally so the idea of canning our own apple butter makes sense.

We can preserve the butter in smaller jars that won't spoil before we use it.

I found a recipe online using the crock pot, from Simply Canning, a canner I also follow on Facebook: http://www.simplycanning.com/canning-apple-butter.html

My Better Homes and Gardens canning book also has a standard on the stove recipe, but that one requires lots of liquid. The crock pot version has no liquid.

We overfilled the crock pot with chunks of fresh apples. 6 pounds seems to be the estimate provided on the recipes. I added a few splashes of local apple cider, a few splashes lemon juice, some local raw honey (about 1/4 cup) and spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and just a pinch of ginger.

The Simply Canning web site says to cook on high one hour, stirring, and leave on low overnight. By morning you should be able to whisk instead of stir.

We've almost done loading the crock pot.

Fruit canning

We went to Piazza Farm this weekend for produce, including the best New Jersey watermelon.

Today we made a light syrup of sugar and local honey to can mixed fruit.

Our yield was 3.5 pints. Our fruit included: three peaches (one very large), two plums, two red plums, two white nectarines, two nectarines and a pear.

Waiting impatiently for them to come out of the hot water bath.

Nettle tea and pie

Since I'm concerned about my iron intake, and my iron pills have been swapped for a multivitamin, I am making nettle tea in the French press.

Breakfast will be nettle tea with local honey and a slice of sweet potato crunch pie from the Pocono Cheesecake Factory and a few almonds.

Vegetarian sausage topping

To accompany the cornbread I made today, makes three servings:
- 2 Morningstar breakfast patties broken into bits
- one small green pepper (my first from the garden), diced very small
- one apple, sliced very thin
- butter, if desired
- local honey, if desired

Using butter, no stick spray, oil or your favorite vegan spread, sauté peppers and apples until soft. Add vegetarian sausage. Stir fry until hot. Drizzle with honey. Serve over cornbread.

Bubble Chai

My friend Gayle went to a Chinese New Year's celebration and tried "Bubble Tea" which she enjoyed and thought I would enjoy too.

She found a basic recipe online and emailed it to me:

1/2 cup chilled, cooked large tapioca pearls (if substituting smaller tapioca, use 1/3 cup)*
1 cup crushed ice
1 cup very strong chilled black tea (or orange pekoe tea or Lichee tea)
1 cup milk or to taste
Honey or granulated sugar to taste

I bought precooked tapioca last night at Target so this and homemade pudding top my list.

In my blender, I soaked
- 1/3 cup tapioca
In
- 1/2 cup very vanilla soy milk
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- 1 teaspoon local honey (all I have left)

While that soaks, I have one
- organic chai tea bag by Tazo
Steeping in
- 1 cup boiling water

Now I'm going to add
- 1 cup small ice cubes
To my blender and crush the ice

Once the tea gets really dark, I'll combine them

Day 4 of school

I'm not one of those moms who likes school. I like having my daughter home. Getting a child ready for school
is the most exhausting activity in my life. I walk two miles by 9:30 a.m. and only half of that comes from the literal walk to school. The other half comes from the circles I walk and the stairs I climb getting child ready for school.

I'm wearing a pedometer today.

I fed my child a breakfast of Chobani black cherry yogurt, homemade granola, animal crackers and Very Vanilla Silk soy milk.

While she ate that, I could have joined her with my own yogurt. But no. It's chicken nuggets- ham and cheese- or - PB&J day in the school cafeteria and child requested a Mom-packed lunch. What'd I pack?

- 100 % juice "punch"
- leftover sizzling chicken and cheese from the TGIFridays dinner we had with my dad last night. That involved the hot lunch bowl.
- homemade fruit salad with tangerines, banana and raspberries (see recipe below)
- cloth napkin
- kid fork

Now, normally my fruit gets a Vouvray sauce like this:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2010/08/honeyed-fruit.html?m=1

But since child isn't a huge fan of white wine I adapted the sauce to this:
- 2 tablespoons Vouvray (sweet desserty white wine)
- 2 tablespoons local honey
- 2 tablespoons cran-pomegranate juice
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 1/4 teaspoons juice of fresh raspberry juice from the bottom of the raspberry bowl (more if you have it)

Rag Tag Meals

tortellini

I made peach muffins yesterday which I thought were mediocre, but my daughter ate six of them so I could be wrong. I didn't post the recipe because I ran out of flour, brown sugar, baking soda and baking powder. I ended up mixing half flour and half oats.

For dinner last night, I made cheese tortellini with a butter/olive oil sauce, with fresh parsley, kielbasa, and peas.

For dinner tonight, we had breakfast. Pancakes my husband made over the weekend and froze. Strawberry ones with real maple syrup. Veggie sausage. Smoothie of raspberry Chobani yogurt, coconut milk, unsweetened soy milk and vanilla carnation instant breakfast. And hot generic grape nuts, with raw local honey, dried blueberries, vanilla almond milk and a touch of blackstrap molasses.

Peanut butter and honey

While my daughter was struggling to recover from her ear infections, I fed her some peanut butter and local raw honey sandwiches. She fell in love with peanut butter and honey, which we mix at a 50/50 ratio. Peanut butter and honey was a trick I learned from my college roommate. We've had several recent breakfasts of peanut butter and honey on Archer Farms breakfast bread-- like the blueberry streusel or apple fritter.

Peanut butter muffins

Yesterday I adapted this recipe for breakfast:

http://www.mrbreakfast.com/superdisplay.asp?recipeid=461#

First, I doubled the recipe. I replaced the sugar with honey, replaced the milk with 1 cup vanilla Silk, replaced about 1.5 cups of the flour with oats. I used 2 eggs and replaced the other eggs with applesauce.

Summer café

We have officially opened our summer breakfast café-- our little table by the front door.

Daughter had eaten breakfast with husband, zucchini bread from the freezer that I purchased at the library bake sale and canned tropical fruit salad she shared with the tortoise.

For "second breakfast," I made my rose tea and four slices of last week's hearty rye bread, toasted, two with margarine, one with cheddar and one with peanut butter and local raw honey. Cheddar for me. Peanut butter for child.

Hot Grape Nuts

A long time ago, maybe it was college, I discovered a recipe for hot Grape Nuts. Heating them and adding honey makes them soft and sweet, though not soft enough for me to eat in present circumstances. I made a bowl for daughter and she seemed to enjoy them. The trick is to determine how soupy you like them.

As a base:
-about 1/4 cups Grape Nuts or generic Nutty Nuggets cereal
- one teaspoon local honey
- soy milk

Heat in microwave until toasty warm.

Back on track?

Yesterday I had one of my meltdowns. Between my health (anemia-related issues still kick myass from time to time), the final weeks of school and working too many hours, I was overextended.

And as my psychologist once told me, being overextended makes me crazy.

So I called out sick.

Between the exhaustion, the multiple open wounds on my hands from a fall I took on Saturday, minor babysitter issues AND spilling stuff all over my last clean pair of khakis, I was done. And I was in bed by 7:30 and slept until 7.

Part of my problem stemmed from not eating proper dinners because I had worked 4 nights in a row and of those four nights, the last three I ate dinner on a fifteen minute break. That gets compounded by shifts that start at 3 or 4, meaning even if I eat a good meal before I leave home, it's not enough.
Last night, I let child pick a restaurant and we went out to dinner to celebrate her report card. She selected a franchise based on her desire for chocolate pudding until I pointed out the dairy issue. She selected a kid and ice cream oriented franchise instead, saying she'd forego the ice cream if we gave her a tofutti cutie at home.

Considering the quality of our meal, I should have talked her out of that too. She ordered processed chicken on sticks that was supposed to come with salad, carrot sticks and celery sticks. It came with lettuce. I'll save my other complaints...

This morning I read the label for the apple fritter bread and as I suspected, it has milk. It has more salt than milk, but it does have milk.

Finally, in an act of desperation, I made my famous homemade granola that the child is munching on right now.

The dry ingredients measures about seven cups, with the dressing consisting of 3.5 tablespoons raw local honey, 1/2 cup blackstrap molasses, and 1/2 cup canola oil.

The dry ingredients were about:
- 3.5 cups oats
- 1/2 cup unsalted raw almonds
-1/4 cup dark cocoa dusted almonds
- 1/2 cup unsalted cashews
- 1 cup dried fruit and peanuts from a commercial trail mix
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons tiny chopped candied ginger
- 1 teaspoon fresh ground cinnamon
- 1 box sour peach flavored golden raisins
- 1 cup golden raisins, dried blueberries and dried strawberries

Mix and bake at 300 for 45 minutes in a thin layer on a cookie sheet, turning every 10-15 minutes.

A variation of the Imus Ranch cookbook recipe

Afternoon Tea

My mother didn't cook when I was growing up and I usually ate my dinner early so I don't remember my afterschool hours having food rituals. But my daughter often pulls up a stool to our dishwasher, which serves as a kitchen island when not in use, and does her homework while I cook.

Today I made her a cup of celestial seasonings Sugar Plum Spice tea with a big spoonful of local raw honey and a hearty piece of the banana walnut cake (dairy free) I made yesterday.

And she was cute. I hope she remembers our kitchen with fondness.

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

Almost vegan honeyed corn

Today I went to my state Senator's office re: school and gaining political experience and I noticed a "Taste of pennsylvania" cookbook published for free by the Pennsylvania Dept of Agriculture. I grabbed one.

In it, I discovered a recipe for microwaved honey corn from the Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association. I decided to de-dairy it and try it as a baked item.

The original recipe calls for:
- 20 ounces frozen corn
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 3/4 cup milk

Mix in covered casserole dish and microwave 8-10 minutes.

My version:
- 16 ounces frozen corn
- 2 tablespoons organic Earth Balance margarine
- pinch fresh ground salt
- 2 tablespoons honey (and next time I hope to replenish my supply of local honey since spring allergy season is here)
- 3/4 cup soy milk

I'm baking mine in the oven thinking the slow heat will let the corn absorb more flavor)

Angel's doughnut holes

I decided to try the doughnuts I've been thinking about for a week. School starts Monday here so we only have a day or two left to do something crazy.

This is the recipe from Cooks.com that inspired me:

HOMEMADE DOUGHNUTS from COOKS.COM

1 c. milk, scalded
2 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. brown sugar
1 pkg. yeast
3 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 egg
Confectioners' sugar

Pour milk over butter and sugars; stir until melted and cool to lukewarm. Add yeast, stirring until dissolved. Sift flour, salt and nutmeg. Gradually add half the dry mixture to milk; add egg and beat well. Add remaining flour and leave dough in warm place for 1 hour. Knead gently, roll to quarter inch thickness and cut into diamonds. Allow to rise 30 minutes to 1 hour. Fry in deep fat, 375 degrees and dust with confectioners' sugar or use confectioners' sugar glaze if desired.

As you can imagine, I deviated from the recipe.
I didn't scald the milk. Merely warmed it to near boiling in the microwave. Matter of fact, I used half soy milk and half two percent milk.
I didn't sift all the dry ingredients together, I simply put two cups of the flour in, mixed it, added the nutmeg, mixed it, added the egg, mixed, added the other cup of flour and before I mixed it I added the salt.

I used about 3/4 to 1 cup of canola oil in my smallest sauce pan to fry these suckers, and I could have probably used a little less than that, more like the 3/4 cup mark. Because I made doughnut holes usually slightly smaller than a golf ball that was plenty.

For toppings, my daughter's favorite was local honey and powdered sugar. I liked brown sugar and cinnamon. I even made an "adult" doughnut by thickening the honey white wine sauce from the fruit salad the other day and then rolling it in granulated sugar. I made cocoa doughnuts with baking cocoa, chocolate sprinkles, granulated sugar and powdered sugar. And mix every other combination among them...