Extremely Potent Pumpkin-tini

I would like to mention that I wrote the draft to this entry when I was most certainly NOT pregnant.

I repeat, I was NOT PREGNANT when I made this tasty, tasty drink.

Are we good? Okay...

. . . . .

What's a girl to do when left with half a can of pumpkin puree? Mix it with alcohol, natch!

After browsing online for some inspiration and working with what I had on hand, here's what I came up with.

Serves 1
Step one - in a shaker with ice, put:
2 oz gold rum (though white rum, vodka, or maybe even apple brandy could be nice)
1 oz white creme de cacao
1 heaping kitchen spoon of pumpkin puree (straight pumpkin. You could try the sweetened stuff, but then I'd probably leave out the creme de cacao and spices)
1 small splash of vanilla
a shaking of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger

Pour this into a martini glass.

Step two - in a shotglass, put:
1/2oz evaporated milk (theoretically, milk or cream could work, too)
1/4oz white creme de cacao

Pour this gently over the back of a spoon into the martini. It should settle under the pumpkin layer.

Step three - drizzle a touch of kahlua over the top. Most of it will settle into the very bottom.

Top with a dash of nutmeg (or whatever you please. Cinnamon, crumbled graham crackers, candied pumpkin seeds, etc.)

Voila. Put your car keys some place safe and enjoy.

The Beauty of Bland Food

Hello folks,

Here I am, almost 7 months pregnant and still getting sick at most anything with flavour. Add to that that we're moving in a few days and cooking hasn't exactly been a priority this week but, unfortunately, I still need to eat.

This is where "Blank" comes in. I rigged this little gem up a couple years ago when my cooking skills were minimal and I had to be able to feed myself regularly while I was alone for a couple of weeks. It's pretty healthy, filling, and actually fairly comforting once you find the "final prep" that appeals to you.

BLANK

• In a rice cooker, place 3 cooker-cups of rice. (I use plain old brown rice.)
• Fill to the 3 cup liquid line with water.
• To this, add 1 can of black beans that have been very well rinsed.
• Now add in as many frozen mixed veggies as you like. I usually put maybe 6 or 7 rice cooker cups full. There's no need to pre-thaw, just in straight from the freezer. (I like the classic mix with corn, peas, some string beans, and those little carrot cubes, though I imagine whatever you like would work as well.)
• Give the whole mess a stir, put on the lid, and let your rice cooker cook as normal.

Boring, right? Well it's not intended to be eaten like this. It's a nutritional base with a blank flavour (hence the name.) Once it's done, fluff it a bit and keep it in the fridge. When the time comes to eat, take out as much as you'd like, season it in whatever way sounds good, and supplement with extra veg or protein as you see fit. A bit of fat and a few spices make a huge difference in terms of flavour.
Some of my favourite ways are as follows:

• Fried rice: In a small pan, heat up a bit of veggie oil, then add your serving of Blank and toss to coat. Sprinkle in some Chinese 5 spice powder, dried parsley, and soy sauce. I like to finish it with a drizzle of sesame oil and a good stir in the pan to heat through. Also good with added scrambled egg or toasted almonds.
• Fish-day comfort bowl: You know those cans of smoked herring "fish snacks" you find by the tuna cans at the grocery store? Pick one you like. Dump the whole contents into a small pan or pot and start to heat it up. This one doesn't really need oil as the fat from the fish will give you what you need. Again, add as much Blank as you like, stir and heat through, season to taste. (I like just a bit of parsley these days, but normally I'd be more creative in my seasoning choices.)
  
• Inauthentic Mexi-style: Heat some veggie oil in a pan and add your blank. Toss to coat and be a bit rough with it to smoosh up the rice and beans a bit. Add things like chili powder or some taco seasoning mix. Heat and stir until it reaches the texture you like. Makes a great filling for a sort of rice and bean burrito on the fly. Add cheese if you'd like.
• French-inspired: Take a serving of hot Blank and stir in a little bit of butter and a sprinkle of thyme and maybe parsley. Top with some broken up bits of brie or camembert and let the heat get them all nice and melty. (As always, if you're pregnant, make sure the cheese is pasteurized.)
  

Except for the Mexi-style one, these are simple and "safe" enough that I can eat them this week without getting sick. If you're worried about the... consequences... of the beans, just take a Beano pill with your first bite. (I'm not saying that Beano is always okay during pregnancy, but my midwife did tell me I was okay to take it. Check with your own care provider if you have any concerns.) Rinsing the canned beans really, really well before adding them in the first place will help as well.

I imagine this would work with other beans , but I'm really not a fan of beans in general and black beans (especially once they're broke/smooshed up) are the ones I find the most inoffensive to eat.

That's it! A meal in a bowl that can be as bland or as flavourful as you like. It's not gourmet by any stretch of the imagination but it can be tasty and unless you drown it in fat, you certainly shouldn't feel guilty for tucking into a big bowl of the stuff.

If you try it, by all means post the seasonings/add-ins that worked for you.

The sunny side of the plate

So, I'm 9 1/2 weeks pregnant and starting to wonder if the diclectin my doctor gave me isn't a placebo. I've been scrambling to find nibbles that stay down well and finally hit on some goodies that seem to do the task. As I'm sure there are/will be others in a similar situation, scouring the web for ideas as I've been doing, I thought I'd post what's working for me.

-plain oatmeal prepared with water and just a tiny sprinkle of salt.
-unsweetened vanilla flavoured almond milk (I love Blue Diamond's Almond Breeze because they're peanut free.)
-plain brown rice cooked with some corn
-canned corn, straight out of the can (a remnant taste from childhood, maybe?)
-plain scrambled eggs, with or without milk - a relatively bland source of protein
-whole wheat english muffins, though I am trying to move away from wheat/bread to see if things digest more easily.
-plain boiled perogies, just the cheese filled kind you can get at the grocery store, with a touch of sour cream on the side (this is a dish I've *never* enjoyed before though it was made often when I was young. Tonight, it was delicious and about as much flavour as I could handle!)
-sliced apples with some cinnamon on the side (though this sometimes gives me heartburn, but it's so yummy and has so many good things to offer.)

Another upside to these simple meals is just that: they're simple, quick, and easy to prepare. They don't cause much in the way of dishes which is extra appreciated by my DH, who is doing all the cooking and cleaning these days since the slightest smell in the kitchen sends me running to the bathroom. I'd like to add as little trouble as possible.

Honestly, a nutrient IV is getting to sound appealing - just the thought of getting the nutrients I need without facing heartburn or the inability to move for an hour afterwards for fear of throwing up would be so nice. I will, however, take all the misery in the world if only I get to keep this one! In that sense, the nausea and discomfort is reassuring. I'm due to start the second trimester just before Christmas, so hopefully we'll be having a happy holiday.

Good luck to anyone out there in a similar situation. Hang in there!

Food aversions

So my last post ended up being a lie. I couldn`t have planned that.

Here`s the twist - seems right after my miscarriage, I got pregnant again. Major morning sickness, major food aversions, and major fears. Somehow this one has lasted longer than either of the other two and if I can last until morning, I`ll be 9 weeks.
I've had aversions to everything. I lost four pounds in two weeks. Even when I was exercising an hour a day and counting calories, I couldn`t lose weight that fast. The last time I weighed this little, I was 13! Thank God my doctor gave me diclectin, so I can somewhat think about food without getting sick.

Ah, food, how I miss thee. I`ve completely lost my sweet tooth, but I still like fruit. I can barely stomach garlic, or any other spices, really. Tomato sauce gives me horrible heartburn. And bacon. Ohhhh, I can`t stand the smell of cooking bacon - it`s like rancid b/o to me - and the smell of frying steak isn't much better. Now, the family joke is that bacon is the food I've loved since I was in utero. It's always been delicious. I never dreamed it could smell so bad! So, so, so so bad!!!

I'm living on lots of eggs, cheese, cucumber, avocado, apples, (with just a touch of cinnamon on the side - delish!) honeydew, chicken, and bagels. I wish I could have fish more than twice a week as it sounds so yummy, but I'm trying to make sure I don't overindulge until I get to see the specialist. The occasional tv dinner (mmm, swedish meatballs) gives some variety when it sounds palatable.

DH has been an absolute saint, taking over cooking and cleaning and dishes as I'm on self-imposed bed rest as much as possible. I don't care if doctors say it can't fix anything. When I lie down, the warning signs from the first time go away, so I'm lying down.

I will try to post more, but really don't know what I'll be able to post about.

P.S.: Before I lost my sweet tooth, there was one delicious creation, though everyone gave me funny looks. Take a slice of toast, spread strawberry jam on thinly, then top with sliced breakfast sausage. It was so sweet-and-savory good.

The Art of Brownies

After my happy success with the honey fudge, I decided to challenge myself by adapting a brownie recipe. I have a little cookbook called Cooking for Two and it has a nice little brownie recipe that only needs an 8x4 loaf pan. Sadly it's too cake-y and not chocolate-y enough for my tastes.

Then a few months back I was watching Chef at Home on the Food Network. The host (Michael Smith for anyone who doesn't know) has a very non-threatening approach to cooking that encourages the home chef to play with the recipes without fear of the kitchen crumbling down around them. It's great. So he starts talking about brownies and how there are different types and what makes them different. I search online hoping the clip is on youtube, but alas, it wasn't. So I look at the brownie recipe on his site, but it makes a huge 8x12 pan full. It's way too much for just the two of us but I make a mental note of how much flour he uses. Then I remember another great site. baking911.com I search on brownies there and get enough information to feel I can make an educated guess or two.

Back into the kitchen and my main recipe. I turn this baby on its head. I double the chocolate and reduce the flour from 1/3c to 1/4c. I tweak the mixing process by beating together the eggs and sugar and then temper them instead of just dumping everything into the chocolate. Finally, I lay down about half the batter and drop blobs of leftover raspberry pie filling on top before finishing with the rest of the brownie batter and then swirl the whole thing through.

Into the oven!

I think I added too much raspberry pie filling and it kept the centre from setting like it needed to. Consequently, the edges were a little bit overcooked and the brownies were a little messy with raspberry generously marbled throughout. They weren't very elegant and maybe not quite the thing to serve at a dinner party, but boy oh boy were they scrummy! I'll try it again (soon, hopefully) without the raspberry for just a plain, tasty fudgy brownie. It's so cool to have a recipe that I really made my own.

Honey Fudge

I made honey fudge on Thursday night. We have this big bottle of runny honey (so much more fun to say than liquid honey) that has gotten all crystallized and is just a pain to use now. I had to find a way to use it up. I also wanted to challenge myself with sugar work. (I've tried making molasses taffy for the past few years and have yet to succeed, but that's another story.) On a camping trip a few weeks back, we stopped at a place that had all kinds of fudge but I couldn't get any (peanut allergy) and my sweet tooth has been twitching ever since. Honey and fudge... could they be combined? Have I mentioned how much I love the internet?

I found this honey fudge recipe and it seemed simple enough. I followed the instructions to the letter - mostly - and made the plain variety. First off, I let it boil for the full 9 minutes. I checked it as I went with a thermometer and with the cold water method, since I want to get the hang of that for future candy fun. It seemed to reach the temperature I'd seen at other sites around the 7 minute mark. I figured I'd trust the recipe over my thermometer since my last attempts were underdone.

Then I started mixing it right away like it said, even though some other recipes I'd looked at said to let it cool to a certain temperature before mixing. Those other recipes, though, were for sucre a la creme which is what I grew up with and which I understand has a different texture - grainier and crumblier. So I'm stirring and stirring and realize I've forgotten the vanilla. In it goes. That's my only deviation from the recipe: the vanilla went it late. It didn't seem to ruin anything.

Still stirring, stirring, stirring, it didn't say how long to go, so I had set the timer for 9 minutes (I know... now) and started noticing the texture change around the three minute mark but kept going just in case. Around 5 or 6 minutes it almost started to firm up in the pot so I plopped it onto the pan and pressed it out. It was kind of crumbly, but oh well. I scored it into squares and left it to cool by the window. (I felt so Holly Homemaker for that. It was great.)

When DH got home a couple hours later, it was cool enough to try. A friend of ours was with him and they each tried it and liked it. We all agreed it was a little harder and crumblier than the typical texture of fudge, but she seemed to prefer it that way. Go figure. I tried it too, and was surprised at how well I liked it. See, I don't particularly like honey. A bit of it in tea is alright, but the flavour on its own doesn't much appeal to me. This fudge definitely tasted of honey but not too much. It was just right.

Later that night I set aside a few squares for us and packed up the rest for him to bring to work. There was maybe three quarters of a pound and a bit. It came back without a crumb left. I think they liked it.

I definitely plan to try this recipe again, though I'll probably stop stirring it after 3 or 4 minutes. Despite my french roots, I like that softer texture.

Personal Victories

Alright, so I'm going to talk about what I made for dinner last night. It is a complete bastardization of a recipe out of a cookbook but I think it's gone off track enough to give it here.

Cook as much spaghetti as you think you'll need for how many people you're serving. Once it's done, drain it and return the spaghetti to its pot.
Meanwhile, brown up as much ground beef as you think you'll be needing. You could probably use chopped up or ground chicken if you like, but I used ground beef.
Season the beef as you like, I used chili powder and ground coriander.
Drain the beef and add to the pasta.
Then add some drained canned corn or some frozen corn that has been thawed.
Now add the sauce. What is the sauce? It's salsa. Add salsa to make it as saucy as you like and stir in the pot over low to medium-ish heat until heated through.
Serve and sprinkle with shredded or crumbled cheese. (I used cheddar.)

It's simple, quick, relatively cheap, and really really tasty. It's good cold the next day, too. You can add other bits to it to taste. The original recipe calls for olives (which I don't like) and maybe cilantro (which I didn't have on hand) but I like it just fine as I made it. DH added some hot sauce to his.

So what is it about this simple dinner that's a personal victory? Well here's an embarrassing tidbit: Food lover that I am, it scares me senseless to handle raw meat. I had one of those mothers who after prepping meat for cooking, washed and bleached not only the cutting board but the whole counter, too, and God help her if it wasn't extra well done (read: to the texture of something akin to saw dust) because then she would be obliged to remind us of how we were stupidly risking food poisoning and horrible illness. I might be exaggerating, but that's definitely the impression we got when we were younger. It left me with a very deep seated (side note: is the expression "deep seeded" or "deep seated?" Really, they both make sense.) fear of raw meat. I was sure if I handled it I wouldn't cook it or clean up properly and I'd make everyone around me ill.

A few years ago I took a cooking class to learn basic kitchen technique and this included clean up, so I knew what was actually necessary and what was overkill. Still uncomfortable. I deboned a chicken at home once and cleaned up under DH's watchful eye. Felt sick for days and not from the chicken.
Handling raw meat is something I can do now, but it isn't easy and I usually avoid it. Even what I do have to, I keep DH around to give a second opinion as a safety.

So if you haven't figured out the victory yet, look at the recipe. Ground beef. Raw meat.

I prepped this meal all on my own and it was ready when hubby got home from work. I did it alone and I'm definitely proud.

Personal victories rock.

Barley Water Leftovers

I did finally get around to making something with the leftover barley from the barley water recipe. I was trying to use up the scraps in my fridge that were starting to look sad, so I chopped up maybe 5 stalks of celery and all the salvageable bits of a bunch of green onions. I stirred that in with the barley and added some cut up hard boiled eggs and some small cubed cheddar.

Can you see where this is going yet?

A bit of vinegar, miracle whip, s&p, and paprika and I had a macaroni salad with barley instead of pasta which was nicely vegetable heavy. We added some herbs from our little garden (parsley and tarragon - too licorice-y for my liking.) The whole thing went a long way, too. Individually it would have served my husband and I for lunch, but there was something about it all stirred up that it took care of lunch and most of dinner.

Barley as a blank slate base - it worked just as well as I'd hoped it would. I'd provide a recipe, but it really was just a case of throwing a bunch of things into a bowl and hoping it worked. If I had to approximate it...

~2 cups cooked barley, cooled
~2 cups mixed raw veggies, chopped to a size close to the barley
~2 oz cheddar cheese, cubed (I used medium)
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped to your liking

toss all this together and add:
a few globs of miracle whip, to taste
maybe 1/4 tsp vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
a handful of fresh herbs of your choice, chopped

Stir it all in and serve either now or later. Refrigerate any uneaten portions promptly.

Gourmet, no?

Barley Water

I finally got around to attempting barley water, or lemon barley water to be more precise. After poking around for a recipe, I settled on Alton Brown's Barley Water recipe. I halved the recipe since I wasn't sure if I would like it and had a very nice little 1 litre pitcher I could use. The one modification made was to rinse the barley before boiling it. I'd remembered seeing that step on some other recipe sites.
Being the impatient foodie that I am, I did taste a spoonful of the drink after it was all stirred up but not yet chilled. It was unpleasantly sour but I figured: 1- temperatures can change taste perceptions, 2- Alton Brown is usually pretty good at this and, 3- I doubt I screwed up such a simple recipe. So I put it in the fridge and left it to chill overnight.
This morning, after breakfast, it was time to try it. Final verdict: Yummy! The acidity had mellowed quite a bit overnight, leaving it just freshly lemony. If I had to liken it to anything, I'd say it's like a cloudy, smooth lemonade. I'm guessing it's the barley that grounds the flavour. The lemon peels left in the pitcher overnight along with the lemon juice also gave it a better depth of flavour than lemon juice alone.

A couple last things to note: First of all, the recipes I saw all said to discard the barley after it's done cooking. I don't see why it should be wasted. After making this recipe I found it was nicely cooked and a good blank slate to use as a base for some yumminess or other. It's in my fridge. I'll probably mix it with veggies, a bit of meat and a light dressing within the next couple of days to make a lunch salad. Secondly, a good bit of liquid gets soaked up as the barley cooks, so if you try this, don't be surprised if you end up with a bit less than expected. Instead of filling my 1 litre pitcher, it was only 2/3 to 3/4 full.

I didn't take any pictures. One thing at a time and right now, it's learning links so I can reference my sources and give credit where it's due. Next I want to figure out how to make the links open into a new tab instead of sending you away.

Hello.

It's an original post title, isn't it? I'm not a huge fan of writing, but I do like keeping busy with little projects and need a place to keep track. A lot of my ideas come from other brilliant blogs, so this just seemed a natural step.

Also, I'll ask you to forgive my punctuation/capitalization. I do try to get it right, but if I worry neurotically about it like I did in school, this blog will be dead two minutes ago. There's a reason I danced down the hall after my last English class, folks.

As a master list - mostly for myself here - the projects I keep meaning to get to that I can remember right now are:

Foodie Fun

• a sweet potato salad recipe that looks delicious
• a freezer batch of pork and shrimp dumplings
• turkish delights
• char siu bao
• homemade bagelfuls*
• homemade pop tarts*
• I will conquer homemade stock! Argh!
  

Crafty Goodness

• a Flemish dress
• an Italian renaissance gown
• a long cotton Victoriana type nightgown
• a corset (style undecided)
• a hat design I have in mind
  

Hair: Currently about an inch above my waist.

• I will try dusting once I find that tutorial and my hair-cutting scissors again.
• Something called SMT at the LHC. Must buy aloe gel.
• A whole bunch of hairstyles

That being said, if I go off the food-clothes-hair track, so be it. Obviously getting the hang of blogging will be a given.

Ciao for now.