How Cooks Are Born

Pearly and Bunny reading through smoothie recipes to see if we have all of the ingredients on hand.

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Mother's Day 2010

Mother's Day started like this: Orange Boy (12 yrs old) made homemade cinnamon rolls. This is the 2nd time he's made them. He put them together last night and put them in the fridge overnight. In the morning, he put them in the oven on very low to rise and then baked them. This kid is amazing. He was craving cinnamon rolls about a month ago and decided to find a recipe and go for it. Some young lady is going to be very blessed to have him as a husband some day!

Can you say YUM?!!!

After church, we had a picnic lunch at a state park and went for a walk in the woods - right in the middle of Portland. Can you believe all of this in the middle of Portland? I love Oregon!!!

My two oldest sons!

Found a snake along the path.

Oldest three kids

The whole family - yea! We should have taken a family shot BEFORE the hike. Oh well. I love it anyway! What a great Mother's Day. I am so blessed.

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Pears!

This is occupying part of my time and I probably have twice this amount of pears still on the trees! Gotta get moving!

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French Onion Soup

I made this French Onion Soup yesterday. It was pretty good. I know what I will do next time to make it a 5-star recipe. The sherry seemed to overpower the soup and gave it too much sweetness. So, I put a bit of red wine vinegar in it to take away the sweetness and that really helped. The beef broth I used was Trader Joe's organic beef broth. I wouldn't skimp on the broth. The onions really must be carmelized for the best flavor. I toasted thick slices of Trader Joe's French baguettes and put Trader Joe's "Quattro Formaggio" on top. Quattro Formaggio is a cheese blend of Parmesan, Asiago, Fontina, and mild Provolone which was a wonderful blend of cheeses to compliment the French onion soup.

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Reality Check

I made a cheesecake for Christmas and followed the instructions to a tee, but still ended up with a crack in the middle. So, when we were invited to a New Year's Eve party, I decided to try it again with a different baking method to see if the crack could be avoided. Woohoo - success!!



Until I had a little help from Caboose. It really was too good to be true. Heavy sigh:::::

Oh well, it will be topped with homemade loganberry sauce and will still have the same delicious taste. Reminds me of a verse I know - "Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart". So true.

Happy New Years, everyone!

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Sweetness

We enjoyed homemade cinnamon rolls the night we decorated our tree. We like to do something a little special. Orange Boy, immediately grabbed the camera and started snapping pictures. I've got a bunch of Blogger Juniors here. I think perhaps they will be great photojournalists as they get older. That's not a bad thing.

PS - I did not take one of these shots. I'm glad they are capturing these great memories. (Click picture to enlarge.)

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Thanksgiving

We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home. Typically we have people over, but not this year. Even our eldest daughter was away, so that was sad. We will see her tomorrow, though.

But one topic of discussion came up. We are definitely food snobs. We love good food. We all decided that there is no better Thanksgiving meal than our own. Nobody has a better sweet potato casserole recipe than the one we got from Martha when we lived in GA. Nobody makes a better turkey than my husband who seems to have done away with the common problem of dry breast meat. This meal was so delicious. It was a combined effort: Tall dude made the stuffed mushrooms, dh always makes turkey/stuffing/gravy, mashed potatoes, Pearly made the sweet potato casserole, I made pumpkin pies and cranberry sauce.

Tall Dude's plate (stuffing is missing)

We tried a new cranberry sauce recipe this year: Cranberry Sauce Extraordinaire. When I saw my children shoveling it in their mouths like jello, I knew we had added a new tradition to our feast.

See the cranberry sauce cranberry sauce evidence? He was already asking for more at the point.

And this little boy decided the cranberry sauce made a nice addition to the sweet potato casserole.

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We have a Guest Blogger

NOTE: This is written by Pearly - 14-yr old - assigned by her mean homeschooling mom

Last night as my mom and I were looking up a recipe for chicken pot pie at Allrecipes.com, I noticed a recipe that they were advertising on their front page: MUDDY BUDDIES!!!! I had these for my first time at a violin ensemble a few years ago and I absolutely LOVED them!! They're made out of Corn Chex (Rice Chex would be really good too), peanut butter, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and powdered sugar. So when I saw the recipe, I asked my mom to print it out and my dad got the ingredients at the store on his way home from work. They are very easy to make and taste delicious!! I guess it's just the crunch of the Corn Chex combined with the flavor of the chocolate chips and peanut butter that makes them so good. Although it was very tempting to demolish them all last night, I decided I would save them and bring them to a volleyball game at PSU that I'm going to with my dad and volleyball team today!!

I took some pictures of them today and asked my mom to post them on Allrecipes.com.

So........YOU HAVE GOT TO TRY THESE!!! THEY ARE THE BEST SNACK IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD!!!! Oh, by the way, they are very, and I repeat very addicting!!! :)

Ok, Jewel's "the mom" comments :

So, this morning, Pearly came up to me and told me I needed to upload her pictures on allrecipes.com. Allrecipes.com is a great place to find recipes - you can search by ingredient, read reviews, see pictures, upload your own finished meals/snacks, etc. All good fun for a mom who likes to cook. So, I obliged and uploaded the pics on Allrecipes.com and thought that it might be fun to post the recipes ond pictures here on my blog. Being a very practical homeschooling mom, I decided to assign Pearly the job of writing about the recipe. I am "the" teacher. I get to assign whatever I want. This is not a traditional school. I get to see what my kids are interested in and base their writing assignments around that using whatever media I choose. They don't have to be at a desk sitting up straight using No. 2 pencils. They can be like my eldest daughter who did some of her schoolwork beneath the baby grand piano (same child who also hid reading books in the bathroom and spent extra time doing her "business" - hahahaha Hannah, you're outed).

So anyway, I thought this would be a cool assignment and I'm glad you could be a part of it. And now if you will excuse me while I proofread her work above.

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Purple, Pink, Green Grapes

Can't you see a scarf out of those colors? I couldn't stop staring at that beauty in front of me!

I love this grape steamer. It was found at a garage sale for probably a few bucks. There are three levels. Water is put in the lower level and the fruit is put in the top level. The top level has holes and so as it steams, the juice goes to the middle level and out the spout/tubing that you see. It's a very cool system.

It's grape time. We picked 2 large Tupperware bowls and an even larger stainless steel bowl (top picture) from our yard. All of those grapes gave us about 22 cups of grape juice. Tomorrow I will make grape jelly out of it (minus any small glasses of juice my kids manage to take before then).

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Blueberry Pancakes with Blueberry Sauce

Remember all of that blueberry picking we did in the summer? This is what I'm talking about. Blueberry heaven all throughout the year! This is my grandma's pancake recipe. I have no idea where she got it. All I know is that I am a pancake snob now and nothing has ever come close to competing with this simple pancake recipe. Sometimes, if there is some whole wheat on hand, I will exchange some of the all purpose flour for whole wheat flour and it is still delicious.


Here is the recipe. International House of Pancakes - eat your heart out.

Mema's Buttermilk Pancake Recipe

2 cups flour
2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
¼ cup oil
1 cup blueberries (optional)

Combine all ingredients until until well blended. Cook on electric skillet at 350 degrees. When little bubbles come to the surface of the pancake, flip over. Pancakes are done when they bounce back up when touching. If you leave an indentation, they need to cook a little more.

I don't ever follow a recipe for the pancake toppings. Blueberry sauce with added cinnamon, maybe a pinch of nutmeg, sugar, water, and cornstarch works fine. But what I really like is a combination of blueberry and another fruit - especially peach, lemon, or orange. If you use the citrus fruits, the zest makes it out of this world.

I will guess on my measurements for this morning's pancake topping. We had some left over canned peaches in the fridge, so I blended that up, added about 2 cups of frozen blueberries, 2 cups of water, sugar to taste, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg. Bring all of the above to a boil. Then in a separate cup, add a tablespoon or so of cornstarch and mix with cold water until the cornstarch is mixed in well and you can pour it. Slowly add the cornstarch/water mixture into the boiling berry mixture until you have the desired thickness. That's it. It's so delicious.

This is one of those great breakfasts to have for dinner when you can't think of anything else to make. We've never had a complaint at our house!
Enjoy!

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Fall Activities

Still doing more salsa with tomatoes from the garden. Bunny helped by printing "'08" on the jars.

I'm participating in a pincushion swap on a sewing board on Ravelry. These are the fabrics I chose based on the swapee's color preference of bright colors, especially orange and pink. There's no pink, but the orange is definitely bright. This recipient lives in the Dakotas, so I imagine a bright pincushion would be a nice pick-me-up during the long, dark winter months.

Okay, lots of piano practice going on around here. I am volunteering at the local high school concert choir class playing the piano for them. This has been a challenge. For many years now, I've been playing primarily from chord lead sheets and generally faking it. Now I need to learn both hands precisely. I like the challenge and the musical connection it gives me with my eldest son.

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So he can smile

Pardon the messy face, but when I looked through the pictures that my daughter took of Caboose - Mr. Stoic Serious Boy Who Rarely Smiles For A Camera, I couldn't help but smile from ear to ear. This is no staged picture. What you see is true messy kid, messy kitchen (making pear sauce), no pants, rainboots in the middle of a hot day, but would you look at that kid smiling? Un-flipping real. This NEVER happens for me.

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From the Mouth of a Six-Year Old . . . .

Who are you voting for? - - - - - -


I'm voting for God - - - who can get better than that?

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Peaches!

We went peach picking for the first time in a few years. They aren't as easy to pick as you might think. When picking berries, it's easy to see what is ripe and what is not. With peaches, some sides look ripe, however, when you pick them, they can be entirely green on the other side (they don't just hang from a stem like apples, so it can be difficult to see the other side).

Two pies are in the oven, I'll freeze some sliced, and then the rest will be canned. Oh - did I say 100+ pounds. And . . . it all has to be done today. . . . . and I still have errands to run. Yikes!

Check out that cool "drive-in" scale at the bottom. The wagon and boxes were weighed before picking so that all we had to do was drive the wagon onto the scale and weigh all at once. Very slick!

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You get a Line, I'll Get a Pole, Honey

. . . . we'll go down to that crawdad hole . . . .Crawdad Song
Do you remember that camp song?

We went back to the blueberry field to get more blueberries. You can see the blueberry fields off in the distance. You have to cross that bridge over a creek to get there. My boys didn't make it to the berry fields for a while because they spotted much more interesting stuff beneath the bridge = crawdads.

Orange Boy had plans for the crawdad he caught. See how the color of the crawdad changed from the previous picture to this picture? That can mean only one thing. I didn't tell him how to do it. He called his Papa and took care of it himself. He especially enjoyed the fact that his little brothers weren't too interested in having some, so he was able to eat it all by himself.

That's my boy.

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Oregon Berry "Weed" Pie

Blackberries are considered weeds around our neck of the woods. We might as well have a little enjoyment with them.

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Never a Spare Moment

Here's the thing about having a garden. When the produce is ready, you have to pick it and deal with it. One more day, and these vegies would have been too big. Look at all of those green burns. And do you see those purple beans? They grow purple on the vine and then when cooked, they turn green and taste exactly like green beans. I love them all. I'm going to saute green beans in a little olive oil with some garlic and onions for lunch. Oh yum. Can't wait.

And see this 2-qt measuring cup of blackberries (Oregon's native weed)? Orange Boy said in his most pleading voice: "If I get enough blackberries, can you please make us a pie today?" How can I resist that? Of course he picked just the amount needed - 8 cups for a large pie. Now you know how I'll be spending most of the rest of the day. Have fun!

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