38 weeks tomorrow

The end is near but probably not really near enough.  I have been a bit of an emotional time bomb recently. I don't know what will push me over the edge. Friday the kids where unappreciative (how unsurprising) and they were fighting with each other non stop. This probably would have been fine except that all they wanted was their dad (again would have been fine) but now that they are sitting beside each other , it was really constant.  I picked up a frozen dinner since I wasn't in the good to cook and I didn't know when J would be done his golf thing.  Then I told the girls to go paint or play in their play room because mummy really needed a time out. 

The girls can be very good doing other things whole mummy decompresses for a bit watching highly inappropriate TV programming.  But Friday was not one of those days.  After gazillionth time kicking them out of my room I lost it, there were tears and I was done. 

Add to all this that I was guilt tripped by a 5 year old because ladybug is having a small party at a party place because I'm not up to having a big party and cleaning.  Her mom was especially helpful by telling her kid that she just won't invite L to her party in October.  Thanks, just what I needed.  I really wanted to do something for all her class mates but didn't have the energy to try organize something and L wanted a fairy party.  This was an easy solution, and yet so much more stressful then I imagined. 

Today's emotional rollercoaster is so stupid, my gas card has something wrong with it and now says that the driver number is unauthorized, OK after taking the card to my awesome MIL who deals with the company I head back and I pull out my credit card and now that isn't working at the pump and the attendant accused me of putting it in backwards.  I wouldn't put it passed me since that has happened but I followed their stupid diagram (my kids aren't supposed to say stupid but it is an inanimate object and what they don't know.) and I was thwarted.  I'm not big on being thwarted right now especially by a stupid gas pump. 

On a completely different note, the doctor is sending me for an ultrasound to check position of the baby since she is not completely sure whether baby is head down

Remembering summer in the UK

2 years ago we were in the UK for my cousins wedding.  There were a few things that were a revelation on the trip.

Firstly, food prices were actually really reasonable.  If purchasing food at the grocery store you could get some really awesome deals.  Even the ready-meals at the grocery store were reasonable.

Secondly, when traveling with kids rental apartments are the best way and value for your money and sanity.  After a few weeks sharing a room where we would have to escape to the bathroom to do stuff on the computer or read our books, I decided that while in Birmingham I had booked a 2 bedroom apartment right in the heart attack of Chinatown and it was sooooooooo nice. The girls shared a room and we had our own cooking facilities and best of all we had a  laundry machine all to ourselves. 

Thirdly, I love Tesco and all the lovelies helped within their walls. 

Fourthly, Crabbies is an delicious alcoholic ginger beer which I bugged my local liquor store to start carrying :)

Now, on one of our many trips to Tesco I picked up a cooking magazine because pictures on the front cover was this totally delicious looking almond fruit tart.  Since I had some lovely Okanagan peaches and some Italian prune plums so I decided to make that almond tart with some of those fruit.  Being lazy and terrible at making pastry, I used a pre-made pie crust which worked perfectly since the filling then filled 2 shells instead of just the one called for in the recipe.  This let me try it with both peaches and plums.  I think it would also be really tasty with pears or apples.

Almond Fruit Tart
Originally published in "Good Food" magazine, Sept 2010

500g Puff Pastry "or" 2 pre-made pie crusts
3-4 ripe Peaches, cut into 6 wedges "or" 12-14 Italian Prune Plums "or" both

Filling:
175g/6oz Ground Almonds
50g/2oz Toasted Almonds, plus a handful more to decorate
250g tub Mascarpone (or a 250g brick of cream cheese, if you cheap like me)
25g/1oz Butter, softened
200g/7oz Golden Caster sugar, plus 1 tbsp to decorate
2 Eggs
1/2 tsp Almond Extract.

-Preheat oven to 400.
-If using puff pastry, roll out pastry on a floured surface until big enough to line a 23cm tart tin with an overhang.  Line the tin with pastry, gently folding overhanging pastry down the outside of the tin, then prick all over with a fork, Line with greaseproof paper; sit a 20cm round tin on top (it should fit snugly). Fill with baking beans, then blind-bake for 20-25 minutes until the sides are set.  Remove the beans, tin and paper and cook for 10-15 minutes more until golden, risen and crisp. Cool a little, then trim the overhang and press down.
-If using pre-made crusts, I just baked it until it was golden.  Let cool.
-Lower the oven to 350.
-Beat together the filling ingredients, spoon into the tin and top with the peaches or plums. Scatter with 1 tbsp caster sugar and extra flaked almonds, then bake for 40 min until puffed up and golden, with a slight wobble in the center.  Cool to room temperature.

NB: if using pre-made crusts it will probably take less time to bake, so keep an eye on the state of the almond filling.  Remember: puffed up, golden and with a slight wobble in the center.

Enjoy

Prepping the Cottage for Baby

Not sure how much we will be up at the cottage before the baby makes an appearance especially with School starting for both girls and all the birthdays that will pop up.  We had some family dinners in Van so we made a bunch of trips to IKEA to get office stuff and pick up a bunk bed for the girls so we can turn Rosie's crib/toddler bed back into a crib for baby.

Hubby and I spent the morning doing furniture moving and construction.  I took apart both toddler bed from the kids room and put one back together as a crib in our room. While I did that J started the job of putting together the bunk bed.  I think he cheated using power tools but it does the job done faster. It probably would have been easier for both of us but we had the girls helping with the construction projects and they liked moving things from where we put them, plus Rosie liked undoing bolts that I has put in to hold everything together while I tighten other things.

Once we finished with that we had a lovely lunch of poached salmon and corn sandwiches with a side of curried cucumber pickle and watermelon and feta salad.  I really want to try my hand at making a curried pickle this summer since that is one of my favourite way to eat salmon salad sandwiches with a nice thick layer of curried pickle which is very much a cottage things since we buy them from the preserve lady at the Saturday market on Denman island.  As an added bonus both the girls love them too.

Now I'm off to make banana bread with Rosie while Ladybug gets use to her new glasses.







I'll will have to figure out how to rotate the pictures on my tablet or phone since that is all I have to post on right now.

Blue Pie

My dearest husband brought home a giant box of blueberries the other day since we had a bunch of people including a bunch of kids, and what kids doesn't like blueberries (ladybug doesn't bit she gets that from my husband) so with no plans to use the berries they started to be very ripe.  In an attempt to used the berries I decided that pie was the best and tastiest way to used them.

I have never had a great time with pastry, it is an art and skill I have yet to master, although that would also assume I'm trying my hand at making it, but I'm not.  So I picked up a couple boxes of pre-made pie crusts and off I went.

Awesome Blueberry Lemon Pie.

4 cups blueberries, rinsed and dry-ish
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp corn starch
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/3 of a nutmeg, finely grated
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
2 ready made pie crusts

-Pre heat oven the 425. Having the rack in the lower half to the oven
-In a mixing bowl mix together blueberries, sugar, corn starch, cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon zest.
-Pour into prepared crust, top with butter.
-Wet the edges of the bottom crust and place the top crust on. Crimp the edges with a fork
-Place pie on a cookie sheet lined with parchment.
- Bake 40-50 minutes until the blueberries are bubbly.  If the crust starts to bring brown to much cover loosely with foil.
-Let cool and enjoy.

Nesting, probably.

The clutter in my house has reached a point that it annoys me enough to actually do some small-ish projects.  The ones I have done aren't life changing organization but they are decluttering some small but annoying areas. 

A couple days ago I took apart the kids art cubbies and trashed a whole bunch of things, recycled a whole bunch of other things and I still have a small pile of things so donate.  I got ride of the non-crayola crayons because they are terrible and the kids won't use the. Colouring books always seemed lime the best thing for the kids but they prefer to be creative with plain paper, coloured paper and scrape book paper, so I'm donating all the colouring books to a local restaurant we frequent that could use them.  I also emptied and reorganized the two drawers keeping me things accessible but now tidy. 

Tonight I tackled the pantry which was a bit of a disaster since we got back from the cottage.  So I went through the bottom 3 shelves and reorganized, tossed expired things, and got rid of superfluous boxes and packaging. Lots of garbage, recycling and compost followed but now the hallway is cleared out and we again have a usable pantry.

Now all I have to do is finish in the living room, then do the dining room, basement and then prep our bed room for the babies arrival.  Not putting too much effort into prepping for baby since this is baby number 3 and I have tried to keep purchases to a minimum, and since we have a co-sleeper, baby bath tub, stroller, car seat and a whole bunch of loaned clothing, I think we are pretty much set.  The IKEA dresser still needs to be put together and filled with the stuff but again that can happen after baby arrives, if need be.

Now time for a quick shower and then a bit of TV then bed.  I'll probably still fall asleep before the kids.

What To Do With a Side of Salmon

We are up at the cottage for almost 2 weeks and also celebrating dear hubby's birthday.  Traditionally, it is celebrated at the cottage with friends, croquet, food and drink.  Unfortunately, the weather has been rather hot (for here) so there was more lounging then croqueting.  But we did find a near by lake that was nice and cool. 
We have managed to get a lot of stuff done around the cottage as well. We picked up a washing machine so we won't have to schlepp 2 weeks worth of laundry back home and then back up every time we come.  We already had a hook up for laundry facilities but reallocation the power for the dryer to the granny shack. Since the cottage is rather plain we didn't really feel that we need a dryer but instead a clothesline would work well.  I am loving the clothesline. It has already help 3 loads of laundry, the first one was washed and wrung out by hand (my thumbs didn't like that at all.) I like not having to bring load upon load of bedding down to wash.
Our plan for meals this weekend with friends here included bbq'ing a side of salmon with some boneless chicken wings, but things didn't workout that way.  So everyone left and we realized we had an un-eaten,.uncooked side of salmon. So I  decided to make some Bacon Corn Salmon Chowder and hubby steamed up the other half to put on salads or salmon cakes.

BACON CORN SALMON CHOWDER
3 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
1/2 medium onion, diced
3 small sticks if celery, diced
3 medium carrots, peeled and dicef
1 tbsp butter
4 cups water
2 cobs corn, corn cut off the cob
2 cups or so diced raw salmon
2 cups new potato, cut into small-ish pieces.
1/2 red pepper, diced
1 tsp dill
Salt and pepper, to taste.
1 1/2 cup milk
4 tbsp flour

In a large pot cook the bacon until crispy, remove bacon leaving the fat.
Saute the onions in the bacon fat until translucent and then add carrots, and celery. Cooking a few more minutes, add the butter and saute a bit more.
Add water, potatoes, and corn. Cook 5 minutes on a simmer.
In a measuring cup, measure out milk and add the flour whisking it in slowly to avoid lumps.  Add the milk mix, dill and salmon to the pot a cook until potatoes are cooked through. Salt and pepper to taste.  Serve and enjoy!

Sticky Presents

Father's day was approaching and since don't usually do more then bake something since I am ultimately lazy and hell my husband isn't much into mother's day so turn around is fair play. Unfortunately my mother informed me that my father would be gutted it didn't do something nice for father's day.  

Usually my dad is a carrot cake or spice cake kind of guy, which is all well and good until you crack out the pineapple in the carrot cake.  Pineapple does not belong in carrot cake and in my opinion neither do nuts. I am a purist when it comes to brownies and cakes ... I don't like nuts AT ALL in my baking.  There are times for peanut butter but that is a butter and not truly a nut which just messes with the decadence of brownies.

So in order to kill 2 birds with one stone... or 2 father's day present in one go I decided to bake up a batch of Sticky Gingerbread.  This makes 2 deliciously moist gingerbread loaves.

I dislike washing dishes and I hate to waste all my time chipping off what would have been a delicious cake or muffin from the inside of the pan.  Solution: Parchment paper and A Stapler. Here is a corner in an angled sided loaf pan.  I use the staple to keep the parchment in place.

The parchment liner stays put and that makes it easier to fill the pan.

 This recipe is made in a pan which makes it super easy for clean up and your ingredients don't have to be at room temperature so it is an easy last minute baking project.

 Melt the butter and add the brown sugar and molasses.  Let that melt and dissolve and then let cool slightly.  The add the beaten egg to the cool sugar butter deliciousness.

 Here is another sign that I am lazy, I would prefer weighting my dry ingredients since that takes so much less effort then measuring it out.

 Flour and spices and everything...Dry?

 Then you mix everything together.  I used a spatula but really that is really up to you.

Pour in to your prepared pans and bake.











Sticky Gingerbread
Original Recipe from "Healthy Lunchboxes: for kids"  By: Amanda Grant

1 cup Butter
1 cup Dark Brown Sugar
2/3 cup Molasses
2 Eggs, Beaten
12 oz All-Purpose Flour (approx. 2 1/2 cups-2 2/3cups)
2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1 tbsp Ground Ginger
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 1/4 cups Warmed Milk


~Line 2 - 2lb loaf pans.
~Preheat oven to 275F.

~In a large saucepan over medium low, melt butter with the brown sugar and molasses. Stir continually until the butter is melted and the sugar is dissolved.

~Remove butter sugar mixture from the heat and let cool slightly. I like to temper the egg a bit so I add a bit of the butter sugar mixture to the beaten egg and mix it about to bring the temperatures closer together. Then you can whisk your egg in to the butter sugar mixture.

~Weigh out the flour and measure out the spices(excluding the baking soda), then add to the butter sugar pan.

~Mix the baking soda in to the warmed milk and then add to the batter.

~Pour the batter equally in to the pans.

~Bake 50 minutes or so, the tops of the slightly golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!

Egg Curry Time

I have been wanting an egg curry for a couple days so I decided to put that last of chickpeas that I used to make some Nacho Mmmm Sauce and made a vegetarian Korma with swiss chard an spinach. 

 

So with a little (minimal) research I found that egg curry can be made with a korma which is a lovely creamy coconut curry. I decided to modify the basic recipe that I got from Daksha's Gourmet Spices on their Korma spice blend.  These are the best spices that I have had, they are flavourful without being spicy.  

Egg Chickpea Korma with Swiss Chard an Spinach

4 Hard boiled Eggs

2 tsp Korma Curry Powder

3 tbsp Olive Oil

1 can Chickpeas, drained

1 cup Greek Yogurt

1 Onion, diced

1 lb (approximate) mixed Swiss Chard and or Spinach

2/3 cup Coconut Milk

1/4 cup Ground Almonds

2 tbsp Water

1 tsp Sugar

pinch Salt

-Start by hard boiling the eggs. 

1)In a saucepan place eggs and cold water just to cover.  

2)Bring it just to the boil, cover and remove from the heat and set the timer for 13 minutes.

3)Once the timer goes, run the eggs under cold water.  Eggs peel better when left to cool.  

-Mix chickpeas with 1 tbsp olive oil and 2 tsp Korma curry paste.  After they have marinaded for a bit transfer chickpeas to another boil and add yogurt.  Use the original bowl to place the peeled hard boiled eggs to add some more flavour.

 -Chop up the swiss chard.

-Chop the spinach.

-In a pan heat 2 tbsp of oil and saute onion.  
-Add chickpeas and yogurt marinade.
-Top with the swiss chard and spinach.

-Add the coconut milk, ground almond, and water (if needed).
-Let cook a couple minutes.

 -Add the hard boiled eggs to the curry to reheat the eggs and finish the cooking the greens.

- Serve over rice.

Game Night Ravenous Hordes Baking #2

Tonight's dilemma is brought to you by sick kid.  Rosie is under the weather, nothing seems to be causing it, she is just low energy, has a fever and is whiny.  So someone (Rosie) has spent the day watching Treehouse kids tv.  This is okay but I missed Little Misses' school party and a tea at her school, but hubby did make both those events. 

Also game night was cancelled due to a friends birthday that all the gamers are attending. So I figured I would be off the hook from baking something but there was a lot of left over fruit from the party so we are having a pre-party get together and now I am back on making something for the ravenous hordes.  On a current trip to Costco we picked up some cinnamon raisin bread with the plan to make bread and butter pudding which is a favorite for our family.  So I had to throw together a quick bread and butter pudding so I used my sister-in-laws recipe as a base and changed a few things, mostly out of necessity since we didn't have 4 cups of milk in the house, but surprisingly we had some table cream which will hopefully make it tasty.  The other ingredient that we didn't have enough of was sugar.  It is really hard to bake without sugar, especially when the recipe calls for it.  I did have some finer berry sugar so I cut it down a bit and hopefully that will work. 

This recipe is from my sister-in-law and it is totally amazing.

Miti's Whiskey Pudding with Whiskey Sauce

Bread Pudding

1 Loaf Cinnamon Raisin Bread (or you can use what ever bread you want, add 1 cup raisins)

3 tbsp Butter

3 Eggs

3 cups Milk

1 cup Cream

2 tbsp Vanilla

2 cups Sugar

1 tsp Cinnamon

-Butter a large and relatively deep oven pan with the butter. Arrange the bread, or as much as will fit. If using raisins with regular bread, hide the raisins among the bread.

 

I've arranged the bread, it isn't pretty but so what.

-In a large bowl mix the other ingredients. Pour over the bread. Press down so that all the bread gets moistened.

 

The custardy liquid is whisked together and ready to pour over the bread.

The bread has been mushed into the custardy liquid, I didn't leave it to sit long enough but that just means that doesn't soak up all the juice, still it is delicious.

-Let stand for an hour (for today's pudding, I didn't have enough time to let it stand.) Bake for another 45-60 minutes at 375F or 200C

Out of the oven and ready for the sauce.

-While still hot cover with Southern Whiskey Sauce.

We were too desperate to eat it so pictures had to wait until some of the pudding had been consumed.

Southern Whiskey Sauce

8 tbsp Butter

1 cup Sugar

1/4 cup Bourbon

2 tbsp Water

1/4 tsp Nutmeg

1/8 tsp Salt

1 large Egg, beaten until Frothy

-In a saucepan combine all ingredients EXCEPT the egg (you can also leave out the bourbon until just before adding the egg so less of the alcohol burns off.)  Cook stirring until the sugar has dissolved.  Add the egg while whisking vigorously.  Bring to a simmer and cook until thickened, about 1 minutes.

Game Night Ravenous Hordes Baking #1

Everyone Monday evening our house is over run by ravenous gamers.  As part of standard fair for Mondays we used to do just pizza but have branched out a bit.  The nice thing about gamers is that they will devour almost anything placed in front of them.  There are some up sides and some down sides to this.  This means I can make something that I should eat the whole tray, but almost anything is my house seems to be fair game.  I have used this to my advantage on many occasions, such as a pan or two of lemon bars that got devoured withing minutes.  


Tonights delicious treat is one that I tried a few years ago at our New Year's Whistler trip, Michael made brickle.  I had attempted it a couple of years ago and it didn't turn out well, which is a surprise since it seems rather simple to make.  


I tried a different method of making it and this batch turned out really well.


Brickle 


48-60 Saltines Crackers (such as premium plus)
1 cup Butter
1 cup Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 bag of Chocolate Chips (I like dark chocolate)


-Preheat oven to 350 degree


-Line cookie sheet with heavy aluminum foil.


-Lay the crackers out, try to get them to fit fairly snuggly.  Break crackers to fit, so that they crackers go edge to edge.

-In a saucepan, melt butter and sugar.  Stir often.  Bring it to the a boil, remove from heat and add the vanilla extract.

Butter and sugar melting but yet to come to a boil.

It has come to the boil and the vanilla is added, the vanilla will  cause it to bubble up a bit.

-Pour butter sugar mixture over the crackers and place in the oven for 7-8 minutes.

Butter mixture is poured over and spread out over all the crackers.

-Remove from the oven and scatter the chocolate chips all over the top and place back at the oven for another 2 minutes.  Remove from the oven and using a rubber spatula spread the melted chocolate all over the top.

The butter mixture has been cooked for 7-8 minutes.

The chocolate chips have been spread out and heated in the oven for 2 minutes and then spread out.

-Allow to cool 20-30 minutes and then you can refrigerate it or allow it to solidify and then brake into pieces.

All ready to cool.

 Tasty and very more-ish.