Omelettes for Everyone!

You can thank my adorable Sister in law for this link. Man, I want me some backyard chickens. If only I had a backyard.

Recipes | Seedy Crackers

One of the hardest things about cutting out processed foods is snack time. Granola bars and crackers were pretty much always in the cupboard until January. And while it might be healthier to just eat an apple...well sometimes you just want crackers! My favourite crackers are the Seed Celebration crackers from the Shoppers Organics line. So I decided to make something similar.

I started with the Parmesan Cream Crackers recipe from Bitten (you should watch the video where he makes these, it's very amusing). I made these once before using all-purpose flour. This time I used half AP flour and half WW pastry flour. They turned out really well, so next time I will use 100% WW pastry flour.



Ingredients:
1 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
4 tablespoons butter
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp poppyseeds
1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
1/4 cup (plus maybe a bit more) cream

Directions:
1) Heat oven to 400. Get a cookie sheet ready and dust it with flour.

2) In food processor pulse flour, salt, cheese and seeds to combine. Add butter and pulse until it's crumbly. Add cream while running the machine at a low speed a bit at a time until it forms a ball.

3) Flour your counter and roll the dough out until it is very thin, 1/2 cm maybe.

4) Transfer to the baking sheet and score the dough into cracker sized rectangles.

5) Bake for about 10 minutes, until it's lightly browned. Let it cool and then snap apart into crakers.

6) Serve at room temperature or store in a sealed container or tin for a few days.



I also made a version with no seeds and Nostrala cheese. Mmmmmmm. We love us some crackers. This is a very quick and easy snack to make, and they keep decently well (as long as you don't eat them all the first day!

Pretties | Beautiful Bowls

My kitchen would like to be friends with these bowls :)

1) Set of Four Small and Colorful Prep Bowls by Lynn Cardwell


2) White Porcelain Bowl with Lattice Design by Isabella Bramson


3) Small Bowl - Teal and Brown Pottery by Pate Ceramics


4) Simple Yellow Bowl by Simply Daisy


5) Olive Star Rice Bowl by Lure Arts

Tips | Winter Salad

Eating seasonally and locally doesn't mean no salad in the winter! We can get hot house lettuce here and I top it with homegrown sprouts, grated raw beets and feta. With a green tea vinegrette tonight. The raw beets are sooo good on it, nice and crunchy and sweet.

I hear that some people get local hot house peppers in the winter. Our hot house peppers come from Mexico. Seriously? Can anyone explain that to me? Grocery stores are a mystery to me.

Recipes | Warming Winter Vegetable Soup

If you are going to eat seasonally in this part of the world, it's best to try and love root vegetables. There's a wonderful variety and I'm been experimenting with all the ones I can get my hands on. This recipe came about when I came home with celeriac and didn't really know what to do with it. It has a mild celeryish flavour which is nice in soups when celery stalks are out of season.

This recipe is vaguely based off of Jane Spice's Spicy Parsnip Soup. It was my starting point at least.



Ingredients:
Carrots - 2 large or three medium
Parsnips - also 2 large or three smaller
1 medium Celeriac (also called celery root)
Olive Oil
1 large shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp whole coriander or 1/2 tsp ground*
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chili
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 quart (1 litre) chicken or vegetable broth.
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Peel and cube veggies. (cut the bottom of the celeriac off first if it's too tendrilly)

2) With a slosh of oil in the saucepan cook the shallot for a couple minutes until starting to go transparent. Add garlic and spices and cook for a minute or so until fragrant. **



3) Add vegetables and broth to pot and simmer until veggies are soft.



4) Puree or mash (I use an emersion blender). Salt and pepper to taste.

5) Enjoy! So good with biscuits or fresh bread. Serves 4.



* I really like whole coriander for some reason. I like the little pods. I grind them with the other spices with a mortar and pestle before I throw them in.



** I totally forgot to do this step this time around. I just chucked the shallots/garlic and spices in with the broth. Still very yummy.

Experiments | Paneer/Ricotta/Day Cheese?

So today I made cheese. As I was a cheese making virgin I started with what is apparently the easiest cheese in the world. Which is pretend Ricotta. Apparently (and I know this from all the blog posts I've scouring to learn how to do this) real ricotta is made from the whey after you make mozza. I did not make mozza, so this is made out of straight milk.

Here's some excellent blog posts about how to make it:

Homemade goat milk ricotta by Kittbo (this is what I followed. Only I didn't milk a goat first.)

The Garden of Eating (hee hee) has excellent photos in her explaination.

Discovering Ricotta over at Bitten got me started on all this.

I used 2 litres of whole milk and two cups of buttermilk. That made maybe 2 cups of cheese. It really is as easy as they say, and really is that yummy. I will be making this from now on whenever a recipe calls for ricotta or cottage cheese.

We just ate half of it with jam. Mmmmm

Tips | fun rice in the cooker

Tonight for dinner? Szechuan beef and beans over rice.

We don't eat white rice anymore. I tried to let it down easy and only have it for "emergencies" But it turns out that I had a lot of them and would just eat the white rice and never have time to make brown. So I just stopped buying it. And now I have to remember or else I just don't get rice. It's working out well.

I like to buy one bag of Lundberg Farms organic brown jasmine (so much yummier than brown long grain) and a small bag of Shaol Lake wild rice and mix them. It's more fun than straight brown.

I use the rice cooker and I've found that it needs a bit more water than white rice does, otherwise it turns out extra...chewy. I usually cook up 1 1/2 scoops of rice and fill it up to the 2 scoop line with water. So if it were stove top that would be 1/2 cups of rice to 4 cups water. And a bit of salt of course. It take a bit under 45 min I think (I'll time it for you next time I make some). This mix is fantastic in everything I use rice for.

Have fun with rice! Ditch the overprocessed whiteness! Save it for sushi.