Busy Baker

picture courtesy: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/cheesecake-with-blueberry-topping

Happy Thanksgiving my dear readers, for you I give thanks!

I made this cheesecake today for my family's Thanksgiving feast.  I substituted the Blueberry Topping for Blackberry Topping, as I have many gallon freezer bags of blackberries saved up form the summer bounty here on Whidbey Island.

I am also in charge of a vegetable dish for T-giving, so I chose to make a variation on a beet, feta, pecan salad, by adding Brussels sprouts, which I LOVE, but which Luc pointed out will combine with the rest of the salad to make a disgusting combination for many people. 

I actually got a good laugh out of that because he is right!  Nonetheless, I think when I add the luscious sheep feta and fresh pecans it will be a special treat.  For me anyway!  I cooked the beets in a clay pot for several hours with some water, and added the Brussels sprouts at the end, for long enough to cook them thoroughly, about 45 min to1 hour. 

Yum-Inspiring Blogs

I am compiling a list of my favorite food blogs, in the meantime, I am having fun exploring the endless variety that is food blogging.  This is no easy task.

Here are some highlights from today's visits, some yum-inspiring recipes: 

Craving Chocolate or Coconut? Here is a yum-worthy recipe from 101 Cookbooks it is Coconut Chocolate Pudding. 

A great dressing for your steamed vegetables at Chocolate and Zucchini

Here's a classic Ranch Dressing recipe from The Pioneer Woman Cooks, filed under "cowboy food."

How about a No-Bake White Chocolate Pie that has bananas hidden within it's yummy crust?

Not Without Salt offers beautiful meringue mushrooms, a sweet treat!

Travel vicariously with Eating Asia, winner of the best Travel and Food Blog.

Not much for recipes, but love looking at beautiful photos of them?  Visit Nordljus a bilingual Japanese photo blog.

One woman's personal recipe index at Simply Recipes, check out her Leftover Turkey Recipes for your post-Thanksgiving feasts.

Seattle Marathon Countdown!

The Seattle Marathon, on November 29th, is in exactly one week!  It will be my first marathon and the longest distance I have ever done.  I am feeling exciting, like a great adventure is right around the corner.  I have been training with many 20-mile runs, but the 26.2 mile course will be the longest distance I have done!  You can still sign up for the marathon at http://www.seattlemarathon.org/
or at the race expo at the Westin Seattle:
EXPO
Friday, Nov. 27 11 am – 8 pm
Saturday, Nov. 28 11 am – 7 pm
(free and open to the public)

Registration/Packet Pickup
Friday, Nov. 27 11 am – 8 pm
Saturday, Nov. 28 11 am – 8 pm
The Westin Seattle
4th Floor, Grand Ballroom
1900 Fifth Avenue
Downtown Seattle

Map of the Race (click to enlarge):

 

Courtesy: http://www.theseattletraveler.com/2006/11/seattle-marathon-november-26th/

Make Your Own Eggnog

picture courtesy http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/drinking/cocktails/eggnog

There are so many recipes online for making eggnog!  Which one to try??  Here are a few that seem especially good:
Eggnog
Baltimore Eggnog 
Martha's Classic Eggnog 
The Ultimate Eggnog

And use your homemade egg nog in one of these recipes:
Cranberry Eggnog Tart
Kentucky Eggnog Spike
Tiramisu Eggnog Trifle
Spiced Apple Cake with Eggnog Sauce
Eggnog Icecream
Eggnog Cremes
Eggnog Panna Cotta
Cooked Custard Eggnog
Eggnog Martini

Thanksgiving is right around the corner so . . .
Here are some creative and complete Thanksgiving Menu ideas from Martha Stewart.

Painting away the Rain

 

 

 We are all big fans of face paint.  Shown above is marina with a flower, drawn by me, and Stella, with "wild cat" paint, applied by, guess who?  Her!  Much to my surprise.  

This is the face painting book we have: http://www.amazon.com/Face-Painting-Inc-Klutz/dp/0932592856

Creamy Broccoli and Leek Soup with Potato Bread

'

'Tis the season for creamy soups.  I knew I was on the right path, recipically speaking, when my inspired-cooking friend, Jim, was cooking virtually the same recipe on the same day, via facebook.  Sweet.  I am on the seasonal vibe.  Here is my take on a Cream of Potato-Broccoli-Leek Soup, served with a great crusty potato bread and broiled beef (marinated in red wine).  I purchased the bread from the Star Store in Langley, our local grocer.  They carry the wonderful Essential Bakery Bread, from Seattle.

Creamy Broccoli and Leek Soup

White Sauce: Melt 1/4 cup butter.  When melted, add 3 TBS flour.  Mix thoroughly, and add 2 cups milk.  Whisk until thickened.  Set aside.

Vegetables:

2 large leeks, chopped small

2 large heads of broccoli.  Separate stems from florets.  Peel stems at end of heads, to insure that they are tender, chop into small pieces. 

8 small to medium red potatoes, cut into 1/4's

3 TBS soy sauce

Sauté leeks in olive oil in a soup pan until they are very soft.  This will take 15 minutes +/-.  Add 5 cups of water, potatoes, and broccoli stems.  Cook for 20-30 minutes, or until very tender.  Add the broccoli florets, cook for another 10-15 minutes on a low boil, until soft.  Use a manual egg beater to puree the soup, leaving some chunks.  When the soup is cooked until soft, add the white sauce (above) and 3 LRG tablespoons of soy sauce.  Stir thoroughly, and cook for another 10 minutes, or until the soup has thickened.

Serve with Potato Bread, Green Salad, and broiled, red-wine marinated beef.

Spinach, Beef and Green Olive Nachos

I love having nachos for dinner.  There is really no need to have anything else, just put it all on one baking sheet: the spinach, beef, chips, cheese, beans!

Spinach, Beef and Green Olive Nachos
 serves 4 (or 6 if served as appetizer)
Chips: approx 11 oz blue corn chips, just cover a baking sheet in 1 layer of blue chips.  I used about half of a Garden of Eatin' fiesta style size bag (22 oz)
Tillamook Yellow Cheese, enough grated to cover the chips entirely
refried beans
salsa verde
green olives with pimentos, sliced
1/2 pound ground beef, precook it
chopped spinach

avocados, serve on the side

Place the ingredients on the baking sheet in the order they are written above, beginning with the chips.   I cooked the nachos on a lower oven rack on Broil.  You may also cook them on Bake for longer, and they will be less likely to burn.  Watch closely, they cook quickly!  Enjoy ~

Spiced Tomato Cornish Game Hens in a Clay Pot

 Spiced Tomato Cornish Game Hens Cooked in a Clay Pot, 

pictured with Stir-Fried Greens

Here is yet another take on cooking with a Clay Pot.  This time I used two 24 oz (that's 1 1/2 pound) Cornish Game Hens, which fit easily in my clay pot (see above).  To spice them up I used 8 whole, peeled garlic cloves and 2 TBS fresh ginger, all chopped to be about 1/4 the size of a garlic clove.  Here is the rest of the recipe, serves 3-4 adults, or, in our case, 2 adults and 2 kids with some leftovers.

2 Cornish game Hens, 1.5 pounds each

8 cloves of garlic, peeled, 4 per hen

2 TBS fresh ginger, peeled and chopped into small pieces (1/4 size of the garlic cloves)

pepper to taste

6 cloves, 3 per hen

1 large can of chunky tomato sauce

To prepare the clay pot, soak it in water for 10 minutes, do not preheat oven, as you want to be careful not to crack the pot.

Split the spices evenly between the two chickens.  Pour the tomato sauce in the bottom of the clay pot, it should not fill more than 1/3 of the pot.  Next, place the hens in the sauce, breasts up.  Use 3 cloves per hen, pushing them into the breasts.  Place the garlic and ginger over the breasts and pepper them to taste, more if you like spicy, less if not. 

Turn oven to 350 F Bake and cook the hens for 1 1/2 to 2 hours in a clay pot with a lid, or until they are done.  Because the clay pot holds the moisture in, it is unlikely that you will overcook the hens.  Usually more time equals more tender meat.

I served the Spiced Tomato Cornish Hens with:

stir fried greens (collard, mustard, kale, and spinach) and 

fried red potatoes and cauliflower.

Use some of the chunky tomato sauce marinade as a sauce on the hens.

Wild Harvest

It's that time of the year when you can easy forage wild mushrooms, and to mark the occasion I am including some great links to help motivate you to include some of the wild bounty that is all around us in your cooking!  I live in the Pacific Northwest United States, and there are many edibles that you can forage for all year around.

chanterelle

Chanterelle Mushrooms:
http://theforagerpress.com/fieldguide/julyfd.htm
http://www.wild-harvest.com/pages/chanterelle.htm#allrain

The Forager's Virtual Wild Food Field Guide:
http://theforagerpress.com/fieldguide/guide.htm

Also:
Fiddleheads
Wild Leeks
Morels
Maitake (hen of the woods)

 fiddlehead

Blog: Fat of the Land, based in Seattle covers a variety of foods, including recipes, found & foraged right here in the pacific northwest!  Checkout his nettle-mint sauce, dandy bread made from dandelion petals, wild mushroom pizza, and Cream of Chanterelle Soup, as well as many more. 

wild leek

Another blog of note, located in the UK: http://wildmanwildfood.blogspot.com/

wild morel (above)

hen of the woods, Maitake (above)

Stinging Nettle

Important Note: Foraging for wild edibles requires a certain amount of knowledge.  Learn how to find them by going with an experienced forager, taking a class, and/or consulting a good field guide!  And Good Luck!

All photos are courtesy of Wikipedia

Making Apple Dolls & Author Elisa Kleven

Perusing the  library one day we found a lovely book, The Apple Doll by Elisa Kleven.  The story is about a young girl who finds a beautiful apple on her favorite apple tree and pretends that the apple is her doll.  When the girl's sister informs her that her doll is not looking too fresh anymore, she asks her mom if she can dry the apple.  This idea reminds the girl's mother that her grandma used to make her a dried apple doll when she was small.  She then learns how to make her beautiful apple into a longer lasting doll, with the instructions included at the end of the book.  The story is wonderful and I love the illustrations!  Visit Elisa's website http://www.elisakleven.com/

Here is the book:

I decided that this would  be a fun fall craft to do with my girls.  So we picked out a couple of big, round granny smith apples at the local grocery story, peeled and carved them, and let them soak in lemon juice and salt water for 30 minutes.  After that we placed them on a cookie tray and cooked them on "keep warm" - Bake in the oven for several days, turning off the heat at night.  It was a quick and easy way to dehydrate them.

apples, pre-dehydrating

Using pipe cleaners I made bodies for the apple heads and we pulled out some little doll clothes to dress them in.  To attach the pipe cleaner to the apple, make a hole through the center of the apple (I used a chop stick) and push the pipe cleaner through the hole.  On the second doll I made I used an old wooden knitting needle to make the body of the doll, which gave it more support than the pipe cleaners.  I then hot glued the pipe cleaners to the needle.

Stella even liked the taste of the apple doll's nose.  I used a hot glue gun to glue to doll's hair (made from wool) to its head.  You can then insert beads in the eye sockets (which we have to do still) and lightly color the dolls cheeks with a pink pen.

Here is the doll from the book, The Apple Doll:

  picture courtesy Seven Impossible Things

Buy the Book: The Apple Doll by Elisa Kleven
Some other books by (and/or illustrated by) Elisa Kleven:

• Wish: Wishing Traditions Around the World by Roseanne Thong (Chronicle, 2008)
• The Apple Doll (FSG, 2007)
• Sun Bread (Dutton, 2001)
• The Lion and the Little Red Bird (Dutton, 1992)
• The Paper Princess (Dutton, 1994)
• Ernst (Dutton, ‘89; reissued by Tricycle Press, ‘02)
• The Puddle Pail (Dutton, ‘97; reissued by Tricycle Press, ‘07)
• Abuela by Arthur Dorros (Dutton, ‘91)
• De Colores and Other Latin American Folk Songs for Children by José Luis Orozco (Dutton, 1994)
• Our Big Home by Linda Glaser (Millbrook, 2000)
• A Carousel Tale (Tricycle, 2009)

An Interview: Elisa Kleven by Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

my girls with their apple dolls, L: Stella, R: Marina

Learn how to make another kind of apple doll:
http://www.appledolls.org/

Fried Green Tomatoes with . . .

. . . with chicken

. . . on a salad

 

. . . in a pie!

 A great fall recipe

Fried Green Tomato Quiche with Polenta Crust

This recipe has a new kind of crust-- and it's wheat free-- for quiche... POLENTA!  I love polenta and it's especially yummy as a crust.  Here is how I made this fall treat with fried green tomatoes form my garden.

Recipe makes two 9" quiche pies

Polenta Crust:
You can make crust a day ahead of time if you like.
1 cup polenta (corn grits)
3 cups water
salt and 1 TBS olive or canola oil
optional: 1 cup chopped fresh spinach
optional:  1/2 cup red and green tomatoes, cooked briefly in boiling water then peeled and chopped

polenta crust, above, in a rectangular pan, with feta on top, ready for meat and filling

Bring 3 cups of salted water to a boil, add 1 TBS oil and chopped & peeled tomatoes.  Slowly add 1 cup of corn (polenta) grits to the boiling water, stirring.  Turn temperature down to medium and stir until mixture thickens.  Be careful of the  hot grits popping up and burning you!  You may need a lid between you and the corn.  Add the spinach and mix thoroughly.

Pour the thickend mixture into 2 pie pans, making a crust.  You may have some polenta left over for nibbling.  At this point you can bake the polenta in the oven on 375 F until it becomes harder (20-30 mins) or if you perfer a softer crust, you can set it aside and make the innards (the filling)!

Filling:
8 eggs (approx 4 per pie)
4 cups of milk
2 cups sliced green tomatoes, fried unitl they are lightly browned
2-4 cups of chopped fresh spinach 
1 pound of ground turkey, I make it into little balls and pre-cook it
1-2 cups cheddar cheese, I used sheep feta, which was lovely.

quiche, prior to egg and milk 

Preheat oven to 375 F Bake. Mix eggs and milk thoroughly.  Melt cheese on the polenta crust by putting it in the oven on broil briefly.  When cheese is melted, add the cooked turkey meat evenly over the two pies.  Next add the fried green tomatoes and spinach.  Lastly, pour the egg and milk mixture into the pie pan, leaving a little space at the top to prevent spilling.  Cook in the oven at 375F for 10 minutes then turn down to 350 F Bake until the filling is solidified, about 30+/- minutes.  I check the pie by sticking a knife in the center, but you can tell by using a toothpick as well.

Serve with a green salad.

Also checkout my Vegetable Quiche with Polenta Crust and my Recipe Index, which has several other wheat and gluten free quiche recipes.

Whidbey Island Election Results

Here are the election results as of November 3rd:
http://wei.secstate.wa.gov/island/Elections/ElectionResults/currentElectionresults/Pages/ElectionResults.aspx