Living in Harmony » cooking

Stainless steel bakeware

AttachedMama — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:41:09 +0000

The Food Renegade blog is giving away stainless steel bakeware. Go check it out, and while you’re there, if you have any interest in “real” food, fermentation, raw dairy, healthy fats, etc, have a look around the rest of her site too.

Real Food Online Course Giveaway

AttachedMama — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:13:17 +0000

Food Renegade is giving away one spot in Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s Real Food for Rookies course. Don’t go check it out though, I want to win it all for myself. Do check out the rest of her site though. There is lots of great information about cooking [...] Related posts:

“Hiding” Vegetables

AttachedMama — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 21:20:47 +0000

We did baby-led introduction to solids with Meredith, and will do the same with Fiona. Proponents say that this method of introducing foods is more natural and that kids are less likely to be picky about what they eat. One of the keys is to offer variety. I find this part hard sometimes. For instance, neither Kris nor I like calamari. We were out to eat with some friends a couple of months ago and they ordered calamari and Meredith loved it. But it’s not something we would ever order ourselves because if she didn’t eat it it would go to waste and she’s unlikely to eat a whole plate of it anyway. But if we never have it around, I worry that (and things like that) will end up being just a weird foreign food in her mind.

I feel that we eat very healthy compared to most of the population. Our suppers are pretty much all home cooked and from scratch. I make my own broths, and I plan to can tomatoes and make sauces and salsa this fall. We have grown quite a lot of our own vegetables this summer, and I’m trying out a winter garden this year. I started that pretty late so I’m going to try and not be too disappointed if that’s a bit of a flub though.

All that being said, we eat healthy, but we don’t eat a huge variety. We have lots of great tried-and-true recipes, but I find it difficult sometimes to get out of the comfort zone of recipes I know we all like, and try new things. There’s also a lot of vegetables we’ve never really tried. Not because there’s anything wrong with them, but because I know we like other ones. In fact, when I was looking over the list of vegetables that work well in a winter garden, I almost gave up on the spot simply because a lot of the vegetables on the list are things we just don’t eat. (Cabbage, swiss chard, beets, parsnips, to name a few.) But then I changed my mind and went ahead and ordered them.

While I wouldn’t consider Meredith overly picky, she’s certainly suspicious of foods she’s never seen before, and she doesn’t like leafy greens much (though she ate almost an entire bunch of fresh spinach from the garden to herself once!). I think a lot of it is a texture issue. She used to eat mushrooms and onions no problem, now she pulls out even little pieces from ground beef. If any of the above foods actually do grow this year, I obviously want them to get eaten. So I’ve been reading a bit about hiding vegetables in food. There seem to be two sides to the issue: those who feel it’s best to get vegetables in your kids any way you can, and those who feel kids should be exposed to lots of foods and that you’re not doing them any favours (or giving them much credit) by hiding vegetables in food.

I agree with both sides. I want vegetables to get eaten, but I want them to be seen and enjoyed for what they are too. I don’t agree with forcing kids to eat things they don’t like. We don’t have a one-bite rule of any sort, though there have been times I’ve encouraged her to try something. With Meredith’s personality, it often works best if I offer it to her and then drop it and leave the food in front of her. Often she says no, but then if I drop it she will try some and before I know it she’s done hers and trying to steal mine too!

My way of going about “hiding” foods isn’t so much about hiding as it is about masking flavours and textures. When having pasta, we’ve always cut up and added onions, peppers, zucchini, mushrooms; basically whatever we have on hand. But even that she will sometimes pick out. I was reading about pureeing foods and decided to give that a go this week. Meredith often helps me cook, so it’s hard to hide something when she’s the one adding it to the food processor. She still sees the vegetable, I tell her what it is if she asks, she helps me pick them out of the garden, and she knows it’s in her food. My plan is that as she gets used to the tastes, I can puree it less and less and hopefully eventually just be chopping it coarsely. We also still offer other vegetables that we know she does like at every meal as well, so she’s still getting lots of exposure to different vegetables.

So far, it’s been fairly successful. We made sloppy joes with zucchini, green peppers, carrots, and onions pureed into the sauce, and then corn and mushrooms in bigger pieces. We had curry last night with lots of peppers, mushroom, and onion. I have a menu plan for the next week all ready to go, with plans to add things like cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, and most of the above vegetables to various ones. We’re going away next week, but when we’re back I want to try buying some vegetables that may be out of my comfort zone and starting to add those in as well. Hopefully this will help get all of us eating a larger variety of vegetables, not just Meredith.

This post is my contribution to Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday this week.

Cooking Spree

AttachedMama — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:10:14 +0000

We spent this past weekend cooking up a storm. I’m actually impressed with how much we managed to get done. We made chicken and beef broth, chili, steak and mushroom pie, prespiced whole chickens, wontons, yam and bean and beef and bean burritos (with homemade tortilla shells and everything), hamburger soup, shepherd’s pie, lots of meat pasta sauce, and tons of meatballs. Over the next week I want to make some muffins and loaves to freeze, and some cookie dough. I also still want to make some soups, and probably some chicken curries. But even if I don’t get to those I feel like we have a good supply of food frozen for after baby comes. Everything turned out so well, and all of it except the pie shells for the steak pies is completely from scratch and dairy-free. I wish we had a vacuum sealer, but I’m thinking it will all be fine for 4-6 weeks regardless. There’s more food than this in the fridge freezer, it just wasn’t frozen enough to stack yet. Once everything is completely frozen we’ll be reorganizing the freezer a little better.

Considering that we went to four different grocery stores on Saturday, spent the whole evening cooking, then spent all day Sunday and I spent most of the day Monday cooking, Meredith was so patient. She mostly was happy to entertain herself and seems to realize that something is going on. I had a dream about the baby last night (I dreamed it was a little girl and I gave birth to her in water), and then the first thing Meredith talked about this morning (after asking if Daddy was home, which is always her first question in the morning) was about how the baby was a girl. I hadn’t mentioned the dream to her at all, so that was a bit odd. I still have a feeling the baby is a boy though. Not sure why. I don’t think I put much stock in all those old wives tales, but if you do, most of them point to this baby being a boy. So maybe subconsciously I believe them more than I think. We’ll see in just a few weeks or less at this point. (My ticker on the side is almost down to single digits, eep!)

I got a package in the mail yesterday that’s making me really want to have this little tiny baby to dress him or her in these adorable, tiny clothes. They’re from my sister-in-law. I have a few more shirts in the works too and another pair of pants, plus I am making a shirt for Meredith and one for a friend’s son and hopefully a few as gifts too. I’m not sure they’ll all get done before the baby gets here, but it shouldn’t be too hard to sew at least a little bit with a newborn in a wrap. On my to-do list for this week though is the baking, Meredith’s and my friend’s son’s shirts, and trying to clean out our study so we can move the change table down here. I’d like to get at least one more coat of paint on the kitchen and our living room painted this weekend, and then I feel like we’re mostly pretty much ready for baby to come whenever.

I’ve always wanted a spring baby. The weather has been absolutely beautiful and it looks like I’ll get my wish, even though it technically won’t quite be spring yet.

Baked Seasoned Salmon

AttachedMama — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:53:46 +0000

This was delicious and really easy and quick. The salmon came out nice and moist and perfectly cooked.

1lb salmon filet
mushrooms (optional, original recipe didn’t call for these but we thought it would be good)
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp salt
1 tsp prepared mustard
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted (we used olive oil and we didn’t use this much)
1/4 tsp paprika (optional)
1/2 tsp dried parsley (optional)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Arrange filets in a shallow baking dish and add mushrooms over top of them. Mix together the remaining ingredients and pour half over the fish.

Bake 20 minutes, basting with the remaining sauce throughout. When done, sprinkle with paprika and chopped parsley, if desired.

Homemade Beef Dip

AttachedMama — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:56:41 +0000

One of Kris’ favorite meals when we go out to restaurants for lunch is beef dip, sometimes also called French dip. I’ve never attempted to make it before though. Our grocery store had roasts on for a really good price, and in the flyer next to the roasts was a big picture of beef dip. That got me motivated to give it a try. I forgot to take pictures as I went, but here is how I’ve gone about making it. I’ve adapted most of the recipes based on my own preferences or what we had on hand, so there’s no one recipe I used, though I did read through a few recipes/comments on allrecipes.com. This was also my first attempt at beef stock. I make chicken and turkey broth fairly frequently and we almost always have some in the house, but it is apparently a little bit of a different process for beef stock. (Though from the reading I did, beef broth can be made very similarly to the way most people make chicken and turkey broth and is a bit of a simpler process that doesn’t require roasting first.)

Beef Stock

Preheat the oven to 400F. Put about 6 pounds of beef bones on a roasting pan and roast until nice and brown, making sure to turn partway through. Keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t burn as that can make the stock taste bitter. Mine took about 25 minutes.

While they are roasting, coarsely chop the vegetables. I had a large onion, two carrots, two stalks of celery, garlic, and a tomato. You can put them in the oven with the bones, or caramalize them on the stove. I didn’t have room on my roasting pan for them so I chose to caramalize them. (Don’t use sugar for them though.) Basically, heat up a tablespoon of oil or butter on the stove top until it’s nice and hot, then add the vegetables, starting with onions and carrots, then once they are starting to turn brown throw in the tomato, and when everything is getting dark, the celery. Keep the heat fairly high and stir constantly.

I do have a compost, but I also keep a baggie in the freezer and put vegetable trimmings into it that I think would be good in stock: potato peels, the ends of carrots, older mushrooms, etc. So in addition to the veggies above, that baggie also got thrown in the crockpot. (I didn’t caramalize those though, they got tossed in frozen.)

Put everything in the crockpot along with a bay leaf, ten whole peppercorns, thyme, rosemary, and parsley, then cover completely with water. I started the crockpot on high until it was nice and hot, then reduced to low and left to simmer overnight. In the morning, I strained the stock into a bowl and put it in the refrigerator. Once cool, the fat settles at the top and can be spooned out fairly easily. I like to pour the stock into my muffin pan: each muffin cup is exactly half a cup. I freeze it in the muffin tray, then once frozen I take the stock out of the tray and put in a baggie or freezable container, separating the layers with wax paper. Then when recipes call for beef stock, I know each little patty is a half a cup and can use them in recipes accordingly. With chicken stock, it normally ends up strong enough that I will use half water and half the broth when recipes call for it; I have yet to see if my beef stock turned out that strong.

If you don’t have a deep freeze or need more freezer room, you can also take the lid off at the end and let the stock reduce a lot. Then rather than freezing in muffin tins, freeze in ice cube trays and save them like that. You’ll just need to add water as well when recipes call for stock.

Beef Dip

Trim a large roast and place in the crockpot.

In a bowl, add half a cup of soy sauce or tamari sauce, or a combination of soy sauce/tamari and worcestershire, depending on your preferences. Add a bay leaf, three whole peppercorns, garlic, and about a teaspoon each of rosemary and thyme. Pour this mixture over roast and fill with enough beef stock and water to almost cover the roast. Leave the crockpot on low for 8-12 hours.

I’ve read this tastes best if made ahead of time and put in the refrigerator to let the flavours meld a bit, so I left it overnight and put it in the refrigerator during the day. Then I just stuck it back in the crockpot and turned it on to heat it back up in the evening. Take the roast out and shred it with a fork and use the sauce for dipping. Extra sauce could be used as a base for French onion soup or something similar.

Crusty French Rolls

I made these in a breadmaker, so adjust the recipe accordingly if you do it by hand. Add 1 1/4 cups of water, 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 3 1/2 cups bread flour (I actually used 1 cup whole grain flour and 2 1/2 cups bread flour, and would experiment with more whole grain in the future), and 1 1/4 teaspoons yeast to the breadmaker and turn on dough setting. When done, turn dough to a lightly floured surface and shape into nice roll shapes for sandwiches. Cover and let rise until doubled in size, about 30-45 minutes. Mix 1 egg with 1 tablespoon of water and brush over tops of bread. Bake at 375F for 25 minutes, brushing once partway through with glaze again if wanted. I actually under cook these just a tad, because we don’t like them to be too crispy. I do throw some water in the bottom of the oven at the beginning which will crisp up the outside a little bit though. If you like them crispy, you could also cut them open when they’re done cooking and broil the inside for a short time too.

For serving sizes, there are leftovers when it’s just the three of us. With another (hungry) adult around and only a small side, it was the perfect amount. It would probably be great for four adults too, with more sides. Any more than that and I would double the bread, though there is always lots of beef.

While the buns are in the oven, we sautéed some mushroom and onions to put in the sandwiches, and then topped it with a slice of Havarti cheese. These were absolutely perfect. Once you have beef stock, they’re also deceptively easy. The stock was probably the most time-consuming part of making them the first time. This is a recipe we will most definitely make again and again.

Pantry Challenge

AttachedMama — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:14:00 +0000

A pantry challenge basically means to go through your cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer, do a good clean out of anything that may not be usable anymore, and take inventory of everything else. Then, you make a meal plan based on that inventory. The goal is to buy as little as possible besides perishables during the course of a week to a month (depending on how full your cupboards are), as well as to empty out food products that may have been sitting there for a very long time.

I first heard about the pantry challenge two or three years ago. It seemed like a great idea, and we gave it a try and it worked fabulously. We saved quite a bit of money that month and used up some foods that we hadn’t known what to do with. We also tried a number of new recipes, many of which we still use today.

While we ate pretty well back then, we still had a number of processed or prepackaged foods as stand bys, so I’m not sure if we would do so well again now. We buy very little prepackaged or processed, and because we try to make meal plans and stick to them, we don’t have a lot of food that doesn’t get eaten. When I make my meal plans, I try to take into account any food we have in the house already. I’m going to give it a try though, as I may be surprised by what I find. We’re trying to come up with ways to save money before Christmas, and this seems like a good start. I’d like to start today if I get the time to go through all our cupboards. Otherwise, we’ll make a regular two-week meal plan this time and I’ll slowly do the inventory/organizing over the next two weeks and start then.

Thanksgiving

AttachedMama — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:28:17 +0000

We had a busy Thanksgiving weekend here. My twin sisters came to visit from Calgary. One of them has only visited once, and it was four or five years ago. The other has never been out here. So it was really neat to see them. I really haven’t spent much time alone with them in a long time. When I moved away from home, they were only thirteen. They are twenty-one now. Even though intellectually I know that they’re older and more mature, they’re still my baby sisters. It was neat to see just how mature and, well, adult, they are. We had a ton of fun. Meredith called them Bob or Baba (Melissa) and Kaw-wee (Kayley). She can be a bit shy and quiet around people she doesn’t know well, but she adored them from about two minutes after they got here.

My sisters have a friend who was in town just for the weekend who is spending the semester in Bamfield. She brought someone with her from Bamfield, and one of their friends flew up from Calgary to visit her. Since they had no where to go for Thanksgiving dinner, we invited them over, along with a good friend of ours who moved out here with me eight years ago and has no family here. All in all, we had eight people for Thanksgiving. I’ve never really cooked for more than four or five. (I grew up in a family of six, but I made one mistake once while cooking for them and after that my mom decided I was a terrible cook and I never had to cook for the whole family again, besides helping out with stuff they were doing.)

I was a bit nervous, but did a lot of prep work Saturday and made what I could ahead of time. So Saturday I made stock, mushroom gravy, cranberry sauce, and cranberry relish. I also cut up what veggies I wasn’t worried about going brown overnight and prepped a few other dishes.

Sunday morning my sisters arrived, and they were a huge help in tidying, prepping, and cooking. Everything ended up working out really well and was timed almost perfectly. The turkey ended up being done early, but we just turned the oven down and continued basting it a lot and it was fine. I forgot about the buns while they were rising, so they rose a little too long but still tasted delicious. My two crockpots came in really handy.

In the end, we had buns, green salad, avocado and asparagus salad, garlic herb turkey, stuffing, ham, apple sauce, mushroom gravy, cranberry sauce, cranberry relish, broccoli and cauliflower in cheese sauce, scalloped potatoes, and yam and apple casserole. There weren’t as many left overs as I’d expected there might be. Most of the side dishes were gone that night or the next day for lunch. I actually had a lot of fun, and can definitely see myself doing something like that again in the future.

Unfortunately, though I got pictures of some of the prep and the centerpiece my sister put together out of stuff from my garden, I forgot to take pictures of us actually enjoying the food! Oh well, I did remember to get pictures of everyone afterwards.

For supper the next day, we mashed up the rest of the scalloped potatoes, made some glazed carrots, and used the rest of the stuffing, some turkey, cranberry sauce, and gravy to make a Thanksgiving shepherd’s pie. That was really delicious too and something we’ll keep in mind for next time too.

I’ll likely post some of these recipes in the next little while, as some were from a magazine borrowed from a friend, and others were found on the internet, and I want to be able to find them again later.

Meal Plan

AttachedMama — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:29:01 +0000

This last month we’ve really gone off the meal plan bandwagon. What with Kris’ surgery, lots of travel, Meredith teething, and just general laziness lack of motivation, it hasn’t been happening. But, I feel like we haven’t been offereing Meredith enough variety and she’s getting to that age where access to a variety of foods is going to be really important. She still doesn’t eat much, but she’s growing and healthy and happy so I’m not too worried about it. And while sometimes it feels like she doesn’t eat very healthy, other days it is driven home that I’m incorrect thinking that. Over the weekend we went to two parties. At the first there was chocolate torte and cupcakes. I got a big dish of the torte and two spoons and offered to share it with her, and she took one bite then got up and went to get herself some strawberries. When it was time for cupcakes, she picked one out, then handed it to me without even a bite and went and got grapes and rice crackers instead. I should have got a picture; almost every other person there was chowing down on cupcakes and she had a plate of fruit and crackers. She also ate some cheese and meats. At the second party she ate a little bit of hot dog and some chips and a cherry tomato. Again, no interest in the cake that was there.

I spent this morning going through our cupboards and the flyer for the grocery store and have put together a meal plan for the next week and a half or so. I kept it mostly really simple, so it would be easy to start up again. I have a few recipes for next time that I want to try, but this time I just stuck with things I know we all like and that are simple to make. I haven’t included the veggie with a lot of these recipes, because that will depend on what’s looking good at the store.

Here’s the list, in no particular order:

BBQ steak with bbq baked potato and mushrooms
Shepherd’s pie
Sticky chicken
BBQ salmon
Tilapia with homemade fries (sweet potato and regular)
Pasta with mushrooms and capers in balsamic reduction
Ham and butternut squash with apples and maple syrup
Spaghetti with homemade red sauce

Pasta with mushrooms and capers in balsamic reduction

AttachedMama — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:41:41 +0000

This was supper last night. It was the first time making it, and it was really delicious. Definitely a keeper recipe that we all enjoyed and that will be made again. The recipe as is is vegan and gluten-free. We added boneless, skinless chicken thighs that we cubed and marinated, and then grilled and tossed on top.

10 oz package of brown-rice penne pasta

1 lb crimini mushrooms, sliced

1 small onion, sliced

4 cloves garlic, chopped

2 oz fresh basil, chopped

2 T capers

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

honey

Boil water for the pasta. Put some olive oil in the water to keep it from sticking together. After draining, throw on some olive oil and salt for more of that Italian flavor.

In a medium-large skillet, warm up some olive oil on medium-high heat. Add the chopped garlic and let it fry for about 30 second. Then add the onions and mushrooms. Cook them until the onions are tender and the mushrooms are squishy. Pour in the balsamic vinegar. Good vinegar has lower acidity which helps keep the dish from getting too sour. When the liquid has boiled off, taste it. If it’s too sour now, add a teaspoon or two of honey to sweeten it. We ended up only needing to drizzle just a tiny amount. Throw in the basil and capers and mix them in over heat for just a minute or two.

Serve the sauce over the pasta.