Pop!

Well, I'm not entirely sure it was worth the time and effort, but I wanted to try out a collage sometime, and here it is!  (Don't look too close at the edges--Atticus is about to wake up, and I don't feel like going back into the project and changing it again!)

I made some peach yogurt pops last week to freeze in my cheap-o mini pop molds.  As you can see, I like to eat mine by scraping my teeth down the sides.  The yogurt melts slowly, allowing you plenty of time to enjoy the creamy fruity goodness as you take a break from washing dishes or sneak outside to satisfy a mid-afternoon food craving.  Who, me?

Once I'd worked my way down to about a 1/3 of pop's original size, I stashed it back in the freezer for someone else's afternoon craving.  It was well-enjoyed both times.

Really, these pops are just yogurt, peaches, a teensy bit of sugar, and vanilla.  So there's no harm in eating one for breakfast and no need to feel sneaky about eating one any other time of day!  Plus, mine are small.

Yogurt Fruit Pops

Equal amounts:

fresh or frozen fruit

yogurt

sugar to taste

dash of vanilla or other complimentary flavoring

Do it!  Whiz all together in a blender and pour into molds.  If you don't have popsicle molds, just use a cup or small yogurt container, cover with foil, and put a popsicle stick in it.  Freeze and enjoy!

Grits: Take 1 & 2

Nothing makes me feel so southern as making a bowl of hot, buttery, cheesy grits for breakfast (except maybe frying green tomatoes!).  A little fresh-ground black pepper on top, and you need nothing more.

When we'd eaten all we wanted--baby LOVED the grits!--I put the leftovers in a small loaf pan and into the fridge.  The next morning I sliced the grit loaf up as you would for fried cornmeal mush and fried it gently in a skillet with some butter.  Topped with homemade syrup or fruit sauce, we enjoyed it as much the second day as we did the first.

Grits: Take 1 & 2.  Simple.

Hot, Blistered Corn on the Cob!

Have you maxed out your corn on the cob eating capacity for the summer yet?  Well, I was getting there.  We had eaten it fresh a few times, processed two big batches for the freezer (I'm not even sure how much corn I ate while cutting it off the cob!), and had about a dozen ears in the fridge, cooked and ready to eat.  If we could.

Something had to get me re-energized.

How 'bout a bottle of sweet chili sauce?  

In Israel, where they apparently don't grow sweet corn, a little sweet, spicy chili sauce and a few minutes on the grill made even field corn-like stuff go down yummly.

I had to try it.

Here's what you do:  Take cooked corn on the cob, slather with sweet chili sauce (like this--I had a homemade concoction I put up last year), and place it on a cookie sheet under the broiler of your oven until nice and blistery, turning as needed.  

Yep.  That's it!  Of course, if you have the grill all fired up you might as well throw them on that.  But the broiler works just as well.

Watch out lips!!!!  Wowza, I made some hot chili sauce last summer!  It gets all caramelized and gooey as it heats and just sticks to the lips--you know with corn on the cob it's hard to avoid lip-to-food contact.  But yum, yum!  Even my taste-tester (who normally doesn't offer up feedback) volunteered, "this is really good."  He liked it cold the next day too.

So if you're getting a little tired of corn already, try this to spice it up a bit.  Or a lot. 

Peaches & [S]cream

The morning started innocently enough.  Baby slept through the night [insert lots of "!" here], something I've been complaining about the last week.  So I awoke at 7:00, blissfully went back to sleep, and woke again at 8:00.  Diaper change, nurse.  

I knew David had been up awhile already so I told him I'd make pancakes and bring some to him in his office when they were ready.  Little A was happily entertaining himself with toys, the Bumbo seat tray, etc.  I began mixing up the pancakes from a recipe out of the "Luarel's Kitchen" cookbook.  As I was getting ready to add some sweet cream buttermilk powder to my other dry ingredients (I know this, because later I found the cup measure with buttermilk powder still in it sitting on top of the other ingredients in the mixing bowl) I heard a loud thud and scream.  

This is not the sound a mother wants to hear when she's had her back to her child for the last 10 minutes.  

I whipped around as I heard David also bounding down the steps.  In a moment I saw what had happened.  My son was sitting on the floor by the cookbook shelf with the object below lying next to his foot:

OUCH!  OUCH!  and OUCH!    Oh, my poor boy!  He was scrEAMing!  And rightfully so; I weighed the iron later at 6.5 pounds.  It fell on his left big toe, scraping a good bit of skin off and doing who knows what to his toe bone. Well, needless to say, pancakes were hastily abandoned as we phoned Dr. Grandpa and scrambled to gather gauze, children's acetaminophen, and ice for the ride over.  One of us had to hold Little A the whole time to keep him from grabbing/kicking his hurt toe.

We arrived at Grandma and Grandpa's still screaming and uncertain about what the rest of our day might look like.  Well, triage nurse Grandma and Dr. Grandpa quickly assessed the toe, bandaged it, and supplied animal crackers while I nursed to keep him as still as possible.  All in all, he seemed to recover well, especially when Grandpa got some of that acetaminophen down his throat.  

About an hour after the "thud" we were home with instructions to leave the bandage in place as long as possible and administer acetaminophen as needed for pain.  Little A got another diaper change and some more milk and went down for a nap.  David returned to his office upstairs.

And me?  

Well, it was back to the pancakes.  We all needed a little treat to help recover.  I finished mixing up the batter, adding a little extra flour to make it less runny.  While the first few pancakes sizzled in the skillet I thawed some peaches and threw some sugar/cornstarch/water mix on the stove to heat. Once thawed, the peaches were dumped in along with a little drizzle of almond flavoring.  And a few hours after they were promised, I had a stack of pancakes ready to take to David . . . 

And of course, one BIG one (the stack was just too messy to do twice) for me.  Little A, who loves pancakes and fruit got some for an early lunch when he woke up.  And now you know why this blog post title is "Peaches and [S]cream".  Here's to a hopefully uneventful rest of the day.

Fruit Sauce for Pancakes:

1 cup fresh or frozen peach slices (or any other fruit)
1 TBSP sugar
1 TBSP cornstarch
1/3 cup cold water
drizzle of almond or vanilla flavoring

Thaw peaches if frozen.  Dissolve sugar and cornstarch in water and set on stove over med-high heat.  When peaches are thawed add to mix along with flavoring.  Stir occasionally, and let bubble until the juices are clear.  Remove from heat.

Summer Cucumbers

Well, it's the time of year that, no matter how sparse your garden looked a month or two ago, you find yourself SWAMPED with some produce or other and looking for creative new ways to use it.  A few weeks ago, I made a quart and pint of refrigerator pickles from this recipe.  I forgot to harvest and add dill the first time through.  But the fun of doing pickles like this is you just keep adding more stuff (new cucumber slices, extra seasoning, etc.) to the brine and just keep on eating!  I think the flavor improves with time.

With pickles in the fridge and lots of cucumbers still to use (and more growing in the garden!), I made a goal to eat some cucumber at every meal.  This primarily took the form of a sweet-n-tangy cucumber/onion/mayo salad, but when we got tired of that I had to move on (and yes, we had raita once or twice too!).

Last night I tried another take on the cucumber, one that Asian cuisine is probably more familiar with than my native Menno-Americo-Germanic food culture.  I had a few pretty old cukes still sitting in the fridge that had gotten partially frozen (from the top shelf of the fridge being a little too cold).  While they might not make great pickles and definitely wouldn't be good for fresh eating, I thought they might do okay in something cooked.  Enter stir-fry cucumbers.  

Before cooking anything, I peeled and sliced cucumber halves which I salted and let sit to drain.  After it had sat awhile, I wrung the slices in a towel to get as much moisture out as possible.  In the meantime,  I made a cheater's spinach kimchi (cheating because it didn't ferment at all and had no cabbage in it) and prepped the other ingredients I wanted for my cucumber saute.  

I started cooking the dish by pan-scrambling a few eggs which I removed from the pan to add back in later.  In the hot skillet, I quickly seared my red pepper and onion chunks with some smashed garlic in a little oil.  When they started looking tender, I added the cucumbers and a soy-ginger-rice vinegar-chili kinda sauce I'd mixed up.  I didn't want the cucumbers to get mushy, so I really did not cook it very long once I'd added them.  I pulled the skillet from the stove then added the scrambled eggs back in along with some fresh-chopped cilantro and toasted sesame seeds.  We ate it over rice noodles with my spinach kimchi on the side.

Now.  The low-down.  While the flavor of the saute was good, the flavor of the cucumbers in it was not.  They were bitter, and I should have checked them out before cooking them.  On the other hand, there were so many other flavors happening, that it was still possible to enjoy the dish overall.  I think I would make it again with fresh, sweet cukes.  And I'm not sure I would use soy sauce again as it made the whole dish a rather unattractive brown.  Well, here's to experimentation!  

Got any stellar cucumber recipes to share?  We'll take 'em!

Ginger Peach Slushie

Well, they didn't turn out quite as well as I had hoped. How's that for an opening line? [pause while I watch a youtube video about how to replace my left shift key] So, it didn't turn out specatularly, but the slushie was a pretty color and refreshing.  And when temps top 90+ that counts for something.  I started by making a ginger brew on the stove, which I sweetened a little, cooled with ice, then dumped into the blender (ginger chunks and all!) with a good dose of frozen peach slices, more ice, and water to make it blend.  Which is what made it bland. 

I think another time I would use a mild fruit juice (apple, for example) to loosen it up as it blends instead of water.  Not a bad first attempt, but has room to improve for sure!

Asian Meatballs

We've gotten into quite a routine with the Vietnamese noodle bowls this spring--almost summer! With lettuce and fresh herbs from the garden, it's hard to resist making this once a week (and nobody's complaining about that!). Only problem is, I've run out of the chunk venison and pork tenderloin that were perfect for marinating and pan-frying for the top of the salad. What I still have tons of in the freezer is ground venison. 

Enter: Asian Meatballs! I thought just seasoning and frying ground meat would be a little weird for this dish, but a nicely defined meatball? Could work. I found a recipe and dove in. 

Spices

I modified the recipe a bit, but not enough to really post a new recipe. I used green onion instead of regular onion. I added a dash of sesame oil. I used pepper paste instead of pepper flakes. That sort of thing. The smell was heavenly. And the meatballs worked out pretty well with the noodle bowl too. 

Our only complaint: they were a bit too big to maneuver easily with the chopsticks. Remedy? I made the rest of the batch into mini-meatballs which were frozen raw on a baking sheet then put into a container for future use. Whenever I make noodle bowls, I'll just bake the meatballs at about 375F for 10-15 minutes and be ready to go! 

Aren't they adorable?