Whistler baking

We are up at Whistler for New Years and in the condo we have a lovely kitchen (OK it's small but we have it stocked pretty well.)  I was in charge of making dinner so I made Dutch dill potato soup and baked some Hovis bread. 

I first was introduced to Hovis bread on Denman Island at the farm market.  On one of our visits I asked whether she gave out her recipe and she didn't used to but now is getting older so she happily gave it to me.

The nice thing about the bread is that it is a quick bread.  Which means that it takes very little prep and it is very hard to screw up.  Just mix all the dry ingredients and then add the buttermilk mix and then put in the pan and bake, easy peasy.

Hovis Bread
Makes 2 loaves, 12 slices each, 4 Points+ per slice.

5 cups Whole Wheat Flour

2 cups White Flour

1/2 cup Sugar

5 tsp Baking Soda

2 tsp Salt

1 litre buttermilk( not reconstituted from powder)

~Preheat oven 350°

~Mix all dry ingredients

~Add buttermilk and stir to combine.

~Divide dough between 2 loaf pans.

~Bake 1 hour.  Cover with aluminium foil if bread starts to brown too much.~let cool (if you can) then enjoy

Sugar and Spice, Only Lighter.

I have a bit of a cookie problem, I have a see a cookie - eat a cookie, kind of problem.  As a solution I have looked for some alternatives which are a little better for me or at least not as bad for my waist line.  I have been doing weight watchers for the last few weeks in order to shed my baby weight.  I found a great site called Gina's skinny recipes and her recipe for snickerdoodles really intrigued me.  I had to make a few modifications since we don't have some of the ingredients that she called for, and I found the dough a little dry to form properly so I added a bit of milk.

Skinny Whole Wheat Snickerdoodles
Based on skinnytaste.com snickerdoodle recipe
Makes 40 cookies, 1 points+ per cookie or 3 points+ for 2 cookies.

1 cup White All-Purpose Flour
3/4 cup Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar
1/4 cup Butter, softened (or if your adventurous you can brown the butter first) 
1 cup Sugar
1 tbsp Agave
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Egg
2 tbsp Milk
3 tbsp Sugar*
1 tbsp Cinnamon*

~Cream together butter and sugar
~Add egg, agave and vanilla and mix until combined.
~In a separate bowl mix flours, baking soda and cream of tartar.
~Add dry ingredient into the wet ingredients,  if it too dry you can add the milk.
~Using a small disher, dish and roll the dough into 40 balls. 
~In a small bowl mix together the sugar and cinnamon.
~Roll the balls in the sugar and cinnamon mixture and place on a lined cookie sheet.
~Bake 10 minutes at 350 deg.  or until the cookie starts to colour around the bottom.
~Remove and let sit on the sheet a couple minutes and then place them on a cooling rack to completely cool.

Sugar and butter blended together.  This is a light recipe so there is less butter.

Add egg, vanilla and agave.

Start a mixin'.

Wet ingredients all mixed

Dry ingredients waiting to join the party.

Hmmm, looks a little dry. I'll add some milk.

Much better consistency

Sugar and spice and everything nice. 

Delicious

A Recipe from my Youth

My mum is a fabulous cook, and always had some interesting recipe up her sleeve that she would crack out and it would leave a mark in my memory.  This recipe is one of those lovely memories and the best part is that I actually have a recipe to go along with that memory. 

This is a Sweet Curry Sauce that works really well with chicken and rice.  I bet that it would work well with just about anything but I have use it for chicken with rice, because that is the way that mum did it.

I have adapted the recipe a bit with ingredients that I keep in the house.  I am more likely to have greek yogurt in my house then sour cream or light sour cream.  Plus, I love the extra protein found in fat free plain greek yogurt.

This is not a true curry, since I am sure that real curries would never include ketchup.  Don't let the ketchup keep you from trying this; it has a great flavour.

Sweet Curry Sauce

Makes 4 servings, 2 Points+ per serving.

1 tbsp Olive Oil

1/2 cup Onion, diced (I usually don't measure but use a whole small/medium onion)

2 tsp Curry Powder (I add more when I feel like it)

4 tsp Ketchup 

4 tsp Dry White Wine (I use white cooking wine with tarragon in it)

4 tsp Apricot Jam (I used cloudberry jam since that is what I had in my house at the time, it is also good. Probably any light coloured jam would do)

3/4 cup Fat Free Plain Greek Yogurt.

~In a saucepan over medium, saute the onion in the oil until they are translucent, about 2 minutes.  Keep stirring to keep the onions moving so they do not burn.

~Add curry powder and cook 1 minute.

~Add ketchup, wine, and jam and simmer until reduced by half (this does not take very long.) 

~Add yogurt to the cooked onion and stir.

*You can serve this sauce hot or cold.

*If you want to make it a head of time you can cook it up but leave out the yogurt until you have reheated the onion mixture.

Saute the onions.

After I have added the ketchup, jam and wine, then reduced.

My completed dinner including; 2/3 cup white rice, chicken thighs and carrot parsnip mash.

Little Man

I back for a bit again, it has been a while since I posted but I have been rather busy not that we have 3 kids in the house.  I thought I should give a bit of an update on how little man decided to make an entrance in the world. 

I was resisting being induced since I wanted to avoid anything that could lead to a C-section.  I believe that one intervention so easily leads to another which could end in a C-section.  So I brushed aside all my doctors suggestions of an induction until it was 14 days passed my due date and my doctor was sharing her worry if we put it off too long.  I said if it didn't happen by Thursday then I would consider it and that she could put me on the induction list.  2 days passed and nothing happened, but I was still very emotional and upset when the hospital called and said I should come in for induction.  

The nurse was kind and told me that I should arrange childcare (which was already taken care of,) call my husband (we were having lunch so I didn't have to wait for him either,) and clean my house (apparently she thought my house was much cleaner then it was.)  With that description of timing, I wasn't in a rush so we putzed around and killed time, all the while I would randomly start crying since I was really not wanting an induction.  We were at Costco, it was about 3 hours after the initial call and I got another call asking if we were coming it.

We finally made it into the hospital and since they knew I was a reluctant participant in being induced they offered to break my waters (I've always wondered why waters is plural) first.  I liked that option better then a pitocin drip.  They broke my water at 3:15 pm and labour happened rather quickly, with very little time between contractions.  Then at 8:23 pm Little Man was born.

Here he is 4 days old, at the office, hanging out for some tummy time.

This is how much he loved the car seat, or not! He is about a month in this picture

A beautiful picture of Little Man with his dad (although not much to see of him.) He is about 5 1/2 weeks old.

Little Man is now almost 8 weeks old and starting to smile which is really a lot of fun to watch.  Currently he is an awesome sleeper but I am sure that will change in time.  The best part of him being an awesome sleeper is that I get to sleep and with sleep the "Crazy Mom" hasn't really made an appearance, Yippee.  

I will be back to posting again soon. I've tried but my husband stole the SD card out of my camera and he takes the other SD cards to work with him and I only seem to make stuff in the kitchen when he is at work.  I made a lot of tasty, tasty dishes recently that would have been nice to post, but I guess that means I just need to make them again soon.