Awesome breakfast

Pear-berry crisp.  It's quick, it's easy, it's healthy, and it's delicious.  Therefore, it's an awesome breakfast in my book.  I have been using pears and marionberries since we have a lot frozen from last summer and they aren't Matthew's favorites.  I think it would be delicious with any mixture of berries, pears, peaches, or apples that sound appealing at the time.

How to make Pear-berry Crisp
1) Fill some sort of bakeware mostly full with fruit.  Stir in some cinnamon and/or ginger to taste.  If you have super juicy fruit, you might want to toss a bit of cornstarch in to keep it from being too runny.

2) In a bowl, mix together about a cup of quick oats, around 1/4-1/3 of a cup of oat flour, and about 1/2 tsp of cinnamon.  Use your fingers to combine with 1 Tbsp of butter until the butter has been combined fairly evenly.  Pour the mixture on top of the fruit in the bakeware.

3) Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until nice and hot.  This will depend on your choice of bakeware!  A bread pan will probably take 30-40 minutes.

Local Eats - Sunchokes with Crimini Mushrooms

It's winter, and the veggies at the store seem to be coming from California more and more often.  Living in northwest Oregon, I prefer to buy foods grown in Oregon and Washington.  Enter in the sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes) and mushrooms!

As a kid, when my mom made artichokes, I remember digging through the leaves with great anticipation for the best part of the artichoke: the heart.  What does that have to do with sunchokes?  Sunchokes taste a whole lot like the heart of an artichoke.  YUM.

I more or less used this recipe when cooking yesterday.  I only used olive oil, sunchokes, and crimini mushrooms though, and it was really good.

If you like artichoke hearts, you should really give it a try!  It's easy and delicious!

Tortilla Recipe

It turns out that making tortillas is actually really easy.  They taste better, and they are less expensive.  Plus, it's one less plastic bag brought into the house.  I found this recipe here and only changed it a smidge.

Ingredients
4 cups flour (whole wheat and/or white)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp butter
1 to 1 1/2 cups water

Instructions
1) Thoroughly mix together the flour, salt and baking powder.
2) With your fingers, work in the butter until there are no more lumps.  (Until it resemble cornmeal.)
3) Add enough water to make your dough come together but not become too wet and sticky.  Then pour the dough onto a floured surface and knead for a few minutes until smooth and elastic.
4) For medium to large sized tortillas, divide the dough into 10-12 balls.  Use your rolling pin to roll each ball into a circle as flat as you can.  If you have a pastry cloth, it would be good to use here.  I don't, so I rolled my dough on top of a cut-open ziploc bag that had developed holes and become useless for holding food.  If you do this, you don't have to struggle with peeling the dough off the counter.
5) Cook each tortilla in a skillet on medium heat.  Cook each side until it is lightly browned.  I found that I could roll a tortilla out while another tortilla cooked, so the process went pretty quickly and efficiently.

Yum!

Imitation Yumm Sauce Recipe

I was recently introduce to Yumm sauce by some friends recently, and I thought it was an amazing creation.  For those of you who aren't sure what I'm talking about, it is a sauce that Cafe Yumm uses in their Yumm bowls.  These bowls have things like rice, black beans, tomatoes, cheese, avacado, and cilantro in them, and then they are topped off with a delicious sauce.  I like making things myself if I can, so I looked for a recipe online and found one here.  It's easy, and it tastes amazing.  Enough said.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup almonds
1/6 cup nutritional yeast
1/6 cup garbanzo beans
1/4 cup tofu
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 garlic cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp curry powder

Instructions:

Blend nuts, beans and oil in food processor. Then blend in the rest of the ingredients one at a time. Blend until smooth, and you're done!

Pesto!

My basil plants were looking more and more distressed as winter lingered. I kept pinching the flowers off to keep it from flowering and dying. (Seeing as they were inside plants, I didn't imagine that bees would help them pollinate so that I could get seeds.) However, the plants went on strike when they got only the most pitiful amount of sun from our west facing window. They whined, and they moaned. They started dropping leaves. I gave them a pep talk, but they just gave me a pained look while breathing out a deep sigh.

I gave in. I told Matthew that basil seeds would make a great Valentine's Day gift. Then I plucked every leaf off of those whiny plants. I had been waiting for an excuse to pick enough leaves for pesto, anyway.

Ingredients:

3 small cloves of garlic

3 cups basil (approximately)

3 Tbsp olive oil

1/3 cup grated parmesan

salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. In your food processor, chop the garlic until it splatters all over the processor walls.

2. Put in the basil and parmesan, and pulse or chop until it is the consistency that you desire.

3. Add the oil, salt, and pepper, and pulse until combined.

4. Store in the refrigerator up to a week. Otherwise, freeze either in freezer safe containers. Another option is to make pesto "ice cubes" in an ice cube tray and then, once frozen, put them in a bag or container for convenient portion sizes.

Pesto in jars!

Pesto on toast!

Bagels

I'm going to be completely honest. Homemade bagels fresh from the oven actually taste even better than homemade bread fresh from the oven.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

2 1/2 cups warm milk (110-115 degrees F)

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup sugar

2 tsp salt

1 egg

7 cups (approximately) all-purpose and/or bread flour

cornmeal and any addings/toppings you want

Instructions:

1) Stir the yeast into the warm milk. Add the vegetable oil, sugar, salt and egg, and mix well.

2) Add enough of the flour to form a soft dough. Turn out onto a surface and kneed until smooth and elastic. Add flour as necessary is you find your dough remains sticky while kneeding.

3) Place in a greased bowl turning once to grease the top. Let rise for an hour.

4) Punch down and shape into 16 balls. Press through the center to create the bagel hole. Cover and let rise for 10 minutes.

5) In a large saucepan, bring water to a boil. When boiling, drop bagels into the water for around 3 minutes. With a slotted spoon, flip each bagel partway through the boiling time. Meanwhile, place cornmeal onto a cookie sheet where you are going to place each bagel. When the bagels finish boiling, using the slotted spoon, place them onto the cookie sheet an inch or two apart.

6) Bake at 400 degree Fahrenheit for about 17 minutes.

Note: The bagels in the pictures are cheddar cheese bagels. We place bits of cheese on top after boiling the bagels. You can also add other flavors like raisins, cinnamon, blueberries, sesame seeds, etc. I've added them while shaping the bagels, but if you want only one flavor perhaps you can add it before the dough rises? I haven't tried that yet.

Shampoo Update

I talked about making household products here, and I said I was trying a castile soap shampoo. I'm not going to lie; it really didn't work for me. Fortunately, I've found that an even simpler "shampoo" works nicely for my hair, so the castile stuff will be used for body wash instead.

What I use now is baking soda and water. I put about 1 Tbsp of baking soda per cup of water in an old shampoo bottle. When I shower, I shake it up and squirt it along my scalp, massage, and then rinse. I still use the vinegar rinse.

I kind of missed the enjoyment of good smells while cleaning my hair, so I added a couple drops of essential oils. Currently I'm using lemongrass, and I smell like lemonheads right after I shower. :)

How to make your own yogurt

I've mentioned homemade yogurt before, but I figured that it deserves it own post. Here's where I got the original instructions.

What you need:

Thermos

1 Tbsp of your old batch of plain yogurt

An amount of milk that fits into your thermos

Pan or Pyrex to heat milk

Thermometer

How to:

1. Bring the milk to a boil either on the stove or in the microwave.

2. Let the milk cool to 50 degrees Celsius (about 122 degrees Fahrenheit)

3. Put the tablespoon of yogurt and the cooled-down milk into the thermos.

4. Close the thermos and let sit for 8-14 hours.

5. Open up the thermos and be amazed! Scoop your yogurt into a container.

6. Add any flavors (like berries) or sweeteners (like honey) that you want, but make sure you always have some plain yogurt around for your next batch!

Note: You might want to allow some of the whey to pour out before scooping out your yogurt. Additionally, if you like thicker yogurt, you can strain more whey off by using cheesecloth or a wire sieve. Save the whey! You can use the whey in baking, soups, etc.

We've been doing this for at least a couple months now, and it has worked great. However, here are a few pointers to keep you from having the same little pitfalls in the beginning. First, the milk really does need to be heated to boiling. It denatures the proteins so that the bacteria can make the milk into yogurt. Second, the thermos is necessary. The bacteria need the milk to stay warm so that they can keep doing their work. Third, the yogurt tends to stick to our thermos, but I found that letting it soak in some water with vinegar and baking soda before scrubbing it helps.

Enjoy!

Crockpot Granola

I have been eating this for a snack all week with frozen blueberries and milk. This stuff is AMAZING.

Ingredients:

5 cup Oats

1/2 cup Coconut oil

1/2 cup Honey

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

1 tsp Cinnamon, Ground

1/4 cup Coconut, Shredded -- unsweetened

Instructions:

Mix in the crockpot, and cook until brown (3-5 hours) on low. Stir occasionally.

Note: This is adapted from http://homewithpurpose.blogspot.com/2009/10/crockpot-granola.html

I tend to not bother to measure things when I'm cooking, and I think I probably use a little less honey and coconut oil than listed above. It's a pretty flexible recipe... Find what you like!

Homemade Household Products

After learning how many harmful chemicals are allowed in shampoos, soaps, lotions and the like, I felt motivated to go out and find alternatives. There are some natural options in stores, but even those sometimes have sketchy ingredients (not to mention an expensive price!) I went online and did some searching, and here are some of my findings.

First of all, most of these recipes will have castile soap in them. This is a simple soap primarily made from vegetable oils. I buy Dr. Bronner's castile soap.

Soap

We like using liquid soap to wash our hands, so I found a simple way to make bar soap into liquid soap. Bar soap is cheaper and uses less packaging, so this seemed like the way to go.

Ingredients: 4-5 oz. bar of castile soap, 1 gallon water, essential oil (optional)

Instructions: Find them at http://www.casasugar.com/DIY-Eco-Liquid-Soap-1734577

Lotion

I've really enjoyed this simple lotion.

Ingredients: 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 1/4 cup water, 1/4 cup emulsifying wax, essential oil (optional)

Instructions: Find them at http://www.wabisabibaby.com/blog/2008/how-to-make-an-all-natural-lotion-with-only-3-ingredients/

Shampoo

I just started using this a few days ago. The first day my hair felt really weird and kind of oily. I read that some people go through an adjustment period as you stop stripping your hair of its oils by using standard shampoo. Each day since then my hair has felt better and better though, so we'll see. I hear castile soap shampoos work just fine for some people, so even if this doesn't end up working for me...

Ingredients: 2 cups hot chamomile tea, 3 Tbsp grated castile soap, 1 Tbsp glycerin, essential oil (optional)

Instructions: http://organic.lovetoknow.com/Organic_Shampoo_Recipes

Another thing I've heard works well is a ratio of 1 Tbsp of baking soda to 1 cup of water. You just pour this on the scalp and work it in with your fingers. I might try this out too and see which works best for my hair.

Conditioner

Vinegar is AMAZING conditioner. The first day I used it I was surprised at how soft and tangle-free my hair was. You just need to put around 1 Tbsp of vinegar per cup of water. I put it in a spray bottle that I had sitting around, and it's super easy! I've used white vinegar so far since that's what I had, but I just bought some cider vinegar since people suggested that it smells better. Speaking of the smell... It will smell a bit while you use it, but I've never been able to smell it after my hair dries.

Laundry Detergent

I used this once so far, and it seemed to work no better or worse than our old detergent. Our clothes looked and smelled clean, and that's all I ask for. :)

Ingredients: 3 cups borax, 3 cups washing soda (NOT baking soda!), 5 oz bar of castile soap

Instructions: Finely grate the soap. Stir all ingredient together. Store in a closed container and use 1-2 Tbsp per load.

I used almond castile soap because I liked the smell, but it doesn't smell very strongly after you wash the clothes anyway.

Parsnip Fritters

This is a recipe as found in a email from the First Alternative Co-op of Corvallis. Parsnips are a root vegetable that grows in the Willamette Valley during the winter. We're doing our best to eat more local food, so I had to try this out. It has an interesting mix of flavors that I enjoyed and Matthew was fairly ambivalent about. We used a large egg, slightly less milk, and 1 1/2 tsp of dried rosemary, and it turned out fine. I hope you enjoy the recipe if you try it!

Recipe: Parsnip Fritters

1 medium egg

1 pound parsnips, grated

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup feta

1 tbsp fresh rosemary

2 tbsp butter or oil

Lightly beat the egg and milk in a mixing bowl and add grated parsnip, rosemary and feta. Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl and stir into the wet ingredients. Put the butter in teaspoon-sized pats on a medium-hot griddle and scoop 1/3 cup of batter on top of each butter pat. Flatten slightly to form six 4” cakes. Allow the fritters to sizzle gently in the butter or oil until they are well-browned and crisp on the underside, about 5 minutes. Flip and cook 3 minutes more or until cooked through. Serve with homemade aioli & try adding your own fresh herbs for variations!

God is in the Everyday: The Kitchen

I like to make food. It started in high school when I set out on the noble journey of creating "the best chocolate chip cookie." No more flat, greasy cookies that were the result of following the recipe on the chocolate chip bag for me, thanks. In case you're curious, I have settled into a variation that is my own. Are they the best? Well, that just depends on who you ask. :)

God made us into incredible food eaters. It is something most of us typically do at least three times a day. Food is something that satisfies and nourishes, and I think that God made us with the capacity to enjoy eating.

I like making food because it is downright important. What we eat affects how healthy we are. It also affects our mood and our energy level. Our food is what makes us the physical being that we are. This is why I like to make our food from scratch as much as possible. I like to know what we are eating, and I like the ingredients to be fresh and simple.

I also like making food because homemade food tastes amazing. I dabbled with bread making a couple years ago, and there came a point when there was no turning back: I really didn't want to buy bread anymore. There's something to be said about the flavor and substance of home-cooked food made with fresh ingredients.

It is when kneading bread dough that I am most reminded of the magic in making food. I hold in my hands that which will provide us sustenance that week, and as I push it and stretch it, it turns into a healthy dough.

My kitchen is small, and once a week it gets sticky with honey and streaked with flour as we make our food. It is an exciting time to see all of the different creations formed and baked. There is blessing in it.

I cook to provide good, healthy food for my family and anyone else who happens to visit us during a meal. I am thankful that God has given us what we need to eat, and I believe that He is blessed by each lovingly made loaf of bread that comes out of the oven.

Karen's Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar (not packed)

2 eggs

1 tsp of vanilla

3/4 cup white flour

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 dash salt

1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats

1 3/4 cups chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla. (Feel free to add a smidgen of extra vanilla here!)

2. On top of the wet ingredient, pile the flours, baking soda, and salt. Mix it all together.

3. Next stir in the oats and the chocolate chips.

4. Bake at 375°F for 8-10 minutes. (Try the shorter time first. If you bake these too long, they will be dry!)

I often estimate when I add ingredients, so it is difficult to write down a recipe! If you like these at all, feel free to change them and make them to your taste. :)

Recipes!

I decided to share some of the recipes that we enjoy so much. I tend to change things in recipes a fair amount. I often use whole wheat instead of white flour for much of the flour, and I generally use less sugar than people recommend! Of course, make your own changes, too! :)

Breads:

Bagels

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Homemade-Bagels/Detail.aspx

Honey wheat bread

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Simple-Whole-Wheat-Bread/Detail.aspx

English muffins

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Traditional-English-Muffins/Detail.aspx

Snacks:

Zucchini brownies

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Zucchini-Brownies/Detail.aspx

Pumpkin, banana, zucchini, or other fruit muffins

Find a base recipe, and try things! I like adding apple sauce and/or sour cream pretty often. I also like throwing in oatmeal and extra spices.

Yogurt (I am actually just trying this as I type... waiting for the milk to cool!)

http://fakeplasticfish.com/2007/12/plastic-free-yogurt-well-almost-plus/

Meatless Dinners

Enchiladas

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Black-Bean-and-Rice-Enchiladas/Detail.aspx

Veggie fajitas

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Colorful-Vegetable-Fajitas/Detail.aspx

Eggplant parmasan

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Eggplant-Parmesan-II/Detail.aspx

Macaroni and cheese

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Home-Style-Macaroni-and-Cheese/Detail.aspx

Orzo with parmasan and basil

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Orzo-with-Parmesan-and-Basil/Detail.aspx

Orzo with butternut squash

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/winter-squashes-are-here-try-a-butternut-squash-orzo.html

Household products:

Deodorant (This can be tweaked a little to get the consistency how you like it)

Blend together 1 Tbsp baking soda, 1 Tbsp cornstarch, and 1-2 Tbsp coconut oil

Surface cleaner

Mix 1 part vinegar with 5 parts water

Well, that's a good start, at least. Let me know if I forgot anything! :)