I <3 pi

I love math and I love to bake and I love to eat baked goods, so Pi day is definitely my favorite fake holiday :)

In case you've been living under a rock and don't know why this is the best Pi day you will ever experience...

pi or π, is just a ratio.  Take any circle or cylinder - your favorite can of soup? and measure around the circumference.  Write that down. Now, measure across the circle - the diameter.  Write that down.  Now get out a calculator, if you're math averse or paper and pencil if math is your super-power.  Take the first number and divide by the second and you should get π.

π = 3.14159265359.....

Something else magical?  It goes on forever and never repeats.

So, today is special because the date is 3/14.  (3.14  get it?)

But hold the phone because we get a March 14th every year...  This year is the best one in the lifetime of pretty much everyone you know because the date is 3/14/15. (so do something awesome at 9:27)  Cool right?

I admit it- I'm completely jealous of all those people who go to be at the truest pi day ever - 3/14/1592 at 6:54 AM.

Anyway, this year, I have decided to start a new twist on the tradition in which we not only eat pie on pi day, but we break our family rule of "no treats before lunch" and have pie for breakfast to forever commemorate our experiencing this pi day of our lives.

What can I say, math brings out my rebellious side :)

Valentine's 2014

Yeah, so, this is a bit overdue...

Jay and I actually celebrated our Valentine's Day a week early, at Tuscany (fulfilling a childhood fantasy of mine.  and sadly, is not worth the money.  if you were wondering*) seeing opening night of Ballet West's Sleeping Beauty (SO SO SO AWESOME!  Might be my favorite ballet... so many awesome women's solo parts!).  We've had season tickets for years now #imsoluckymymanlovesballet2 and I still have NO photos of us there together!!  

Tonight!  We're going to Ballet West II's "The Little Mermaid", so hopefully I'll remember to do it!

ANYWAY, the week-early thing is important because we watched my little sister's kids overnight so she and her man could have a special night away for Valentine's.  I had meant to get lots of cute cousinly togetherness photos, but it turns out, there wasn't much time for photos with a 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 year old to take care of.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, actually.  But I'm happy to only have 3 bums to wipe every day, instead of 5. :)  (and if my mom hadn't watched their baby, it would have been 6!)

They didn't come over until after lunch, so I tried to make a special breakfast for Jay in the morning.  His all time favorite is Eggs Benedict, and though I've made it many times before, this was definitely the best time yet!  I'll tell you why

1) Homemade English Muffins:

2) Hollandaise sauce recipe from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". (which I forgot to write down before returning to the library!  doh!)

3) "Poaching" the eggs in a slow-cooker** made everything SO much less hectic, and I was able to put more attention on the Hollandaise- which actually wasn't that hard!  I can never get the blender method (which is what most scaredy cats recommend to novices so they don't scramble the eggs) to thicken up properly!  Give me a whisk and a pan on the stove and I'm good to go. I like being more in the thick of it when I cook :)

I admit, we eat our Eggs Benedict with bacon.  Not the most traditional, but most excellent. :)  And I cook them the uber-gourmet way: in the microwave, between double paper towels.  In fact, you can see them in the background of this next photo...

and here are my flowers from the Jay :)

Now, if I could only make good rice Krispie treats...

footnotes:  Chris!  How do you do that?
*But Valter's Osteria is worth every penny!  Get the pasta tour, or just get the spinach ravioli or the limoncello angelhair.  My mouth is watering right now thinking about them...

**How to "poach" eggs in a slow-cooker, brought to you by "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook ".  Heat about 1 inch of water in the slow-cooker for 20 minutes. Crack each egg into a separate, Pammed, ramekin or small bowl (I could only fit 4 eggs in my slow cooker) and place them in the hot water.  Cook with the lid on until the whites are no longer runny.  (me thinks it was 15-20 minutes?  it's very flexible, the slow-cooking...)

SunOven Chronicles: Beef Stroganoff

The Low-Down:

I used this recipe my mom used to make all the time growing up.

I browned the meat in the pot, then added everything else except the flour/broth mixture, and put it in an unpreheated Sun Oven facing south.  I can no longer remember the exact amount of time- I would guess from about 11am to 4pm.

When I took it out, I thickened it on the stove again.

It wasn't quite as good as normal, but it was still very good.  It's not a great Sun Oven recipe, though, because you still have to boil water to cook the noodles.  (at least I did, maybe you don't actually have to? I just doubt cooking noodles in the Sun Oven would go over very well...)  For some reason, I prefer to cook all or nothing in the Sun Oven.

Sun Oven Chronicles- Pot Roast

I decided to try my hand at slow-cooking in the sun oven.  Most of my attempts thus far have been only shorter baking and rice.  What better test than the classic pot-roast?

The top pot:
I salt and peppered the roast, inserted some whole cloves of garlic, and browned each side for 10 seconds in olive oil before putting it in the pan.  It's zucchini season around here (i.e. people feel free to leave zucchini on your doorstep, whether you like it or not...) and so I thought I'd throw in some zucchini, and I was a bit too ambitious at Costco last week, and bought a thing of mushrooms, which ended up being twice as many as I really needed, so I threw some of those in too.  Hopefully those won't be confounding variables to my trial.  I added no liquid to the roast.  (The SunOven site says things are more moist in the sun oven and often times you should add less liquid.  I thought the zucchini would probably produce quite a bit)

In the bottom pot, I put some potatoes and carrots.  I salted and peppered them and as an afterthought, misted them with olive oil. I figure it can't hurt...

I used the black lid (not the clear one).

Here's the before pic:

Preheated the oven facing the sun.
put them in a 250 oven at 9:30am.
Turned the oven more south and less angled, but so there was still a bit of sun shining in.

When I checked on it a couple of hours later, it was still at 250.

I pulled it out about 4:30pm.  The sun was no longer shining in, but the oven was at 150 and when I tested the temp of the roast, it was about 170 (well done...)

Here's what they looked like!

the carrots and potatoes looked exactly the same and the pic is slightly blurry,
 so I decided not to show them

I took the roast, zucchini and mushrooms out and made a gravy.  I couldn't believe how much liquid was in there, especially since it started out completely dry!

We were all starving and I forgot to take a picture of the final plate.  Everything was good though- I would say as good as normal, though the potatoes and carrots didn't have that nice roast flavor since they had to be cooked in a separate pot.  If you don't like zucchini, you probably won't like this- it was very soft (as zucchini gets...) but I liked the flavor of it.  My husband wouldn't try it because he said it looked like a pickle and he doesn't like pickles.  (He doesn't really like zucchini either though...)

Sun Oven Chronicles- Chinese Beef & Broccoli w/ Rice

I make an easy and tasty Chinese Beef and Broccoli dish fairly often.  Last month, I was planning to make it for dinner one night and thought, I wonder what would happen if I cooked it in the SunOven?

This was quite a "wild" idea, (look at me.... I'm sooo wild and crazy!) since this is normally a quick meal, and everything is sautéed, but curiosity got the better of me and here's how it went down: 

I cooked the beef 1 hour and added the broccoli for a 2nd hour.

Cooked rice 1 hour- added it's pot on top when I added the broccoli. (cooked them stacked)

Th beef was great! really tender.  After looking at it when I added the broccoli, I'm sure it was done after the first hour, but it didn't burn or taste overdone or anything after a second!  (as the "SunOven people" tout...)  The broccoli was fine, but a bit softer than I typically like- maybe try only 30 minutes next time?

The sticky rice was mostly fine, but I dished mine out last and I got an occasional crunch- Jay didn't though.  Not sure why...

All in all, I'd make it in the SunOven again!  I think the meat was definitely more tender this way...

Massachusetts Trip: Back at the Homestead...

We went back to their home on Sunday night or Monday morning (I forget...) and spent some time there.

Hazel really enjoyed exploring all the new toys they had for her to play with.  She did really really well, sleeping there, and was her jolly ol' self the whole time :)  #bestbabyever

Going to Parlee Farms has become a bit of a tradition, it seems.  Usually we pick blueberries, but as I mentioned earlier, we went out earlier than we usually do, and it was still strawberry picking season this time!  I'm glad, because I think strawberry-rhubarb pie is one of my most favorite kinds of pie.

As always, we had to feed the goats, chickens, and sheep.

And the bunnies were out this time!!! (they were gone last year for some reason)

Look how stinkin' cute they are, huddled around the little feed tube!

The Frog sporting mom's sunglasses...

I liked this picture because you get a good look at that cute little heart necklace Peach found somewhere in the attic and pretty much wore it every day for the rest of the trip.

Sun Oven Chronicles- Flourless Chocolate Decadance

I admit.... if there's ever an emergency, I doubt I will be needing to bake a flourless chocolate torte... BUT I needed to make some for a YW activity (we were sharing our best recipes.  If you love chocolate... THIS is the cake for you!) and since I was making a double batch and it needs to be baked in a waterbath, I didn't quite have enough room in my regular oven to bake them all, so I decided to try out one of my 6" rounds in the Sun Oven, even though in the how-tos, one of the trouble-shooting things that can go wrong in the sun oven is having too much condensation on the glass, which can prevent the oven from getting as much sun inside... (was that sentence long enough for you?)

As you can see, it totally worked!!  I put my 6" cake pan inside an 9"x9" dark glass pyrex with about 1" of water and baked them in late afternoon.

This was a double experiment because the recipe has you make one batch in an 8" round (must be 2" high, and that even usually goes way over the top for me...), and I made a double batch into  2-6" rounds and 12 muffin tins, and had enough left over for 1 ramekin as well.  Point being, one 8" round is to be baked for 30 minutes, and I wasn't sure how long to do the smaller ones.  I think I baked this 6" round for 30 in the Sun Oven (my muffins only baked for about 15 minutes, and the otheI think...)  They both tasted great, but for some reason the Sun Oven one actually came out of the pan easier.  Weird...

However, not all my experiments have turned out dandy, as you shall soon see...

Sun Oven Chronicles!

In case you hadn't noticed, the baby food Fridays are over because I've not needed to make any more.

Never fear, something much nerdier is about to come forth- solar cooking!!

Jay and I have felt a push to be prepared for an emergency, and though we'd probably be okay with food for at least a couple of months, if we lost electricity, we'd be in big trouble.  We've debated quite a bit about what to rely on for cooking food, and I've been swayed by the Sun Oven.  I mostly love that it requires no fuel to store, and that I've been wishing for a double-oven since we moved here and this, believe it or not, may have given me my wish!

When I think of Solar Ovens, my first thought takes me back to a time when I tried to cook my own "pie crust cookies" in a homemade one with my friend Charlotte many, many, many moons ago.  As you may have guessed, that tin-foil-lined box covered in plastic wrap never got hot enough to do much more than turn our pie crust slimy.

Nice.

Well, this technology is *a bit* more advanced. :)

I've only had the Sun Oven for a week, but I've been cooking up a storm, and I'd like to chronicle my successes and failures here, so I can remember what worked and what didn't and be able to reference them in the future.  Who knows, maybe someone "out there" would learn something as well.

Without further ado, here's my first attempt: Granola Bars.

I love this recipe from mealmakeovermoms.com and I thought I'd give it a go in the sun oven.

First off, I was impressed that after only 20 minutes, it was at 325 F!  That was much quicker than I thought it would take.  You could also really feel the heat coming out when you opened up the oven to put the food in.

 The recipe says to bake them for 18 minutes in a 350 degree oven.  I checked them after 18 minutes and they weren't done, but then I forgot to set a timer again and sort of forgot about them...  I think they were probably in there about 45 minutes, luckily, they ended up being great!

 As you can see, they even browned a bit!  One of the great things about the Sun Oven is that it just heats up the air inside the oven, unlike a regular oven that blows heated air into the oven.  That means your food won't get dried out as it would in a regular oven if you say, forgot about it...

They turned out just as yummy as usual.  Hooray!

PS I bought my sun oven here- they are having a 20% off sale on the newer American version, until June 21st, if you're interested.

6 lbs of Crisco

I can't believe it!  I emptied one of those giant Crisco cans from Costco.  

And it only took 5 years!

That's right... my family has consumed 6 pounds of a mysterious, fatty substance.

yay

Too Many Strawberries...

I made some strawberry freezer jam several years ago.  It was good- better than Smucker's, definitely, but I didn't like having to store it in my freezer.  I'm a bit intimidated by canning because I have a glass-top stove and I've heard that those big canning pots can break those, so I've been scared to try, BUT I really wanted to try making some strawberry jam.

Strawberries have been selling at $1.25/lb lately (as opposed to the typical $2.50) and I just decided in the store that I was going to make some jam.  Not having a clue as to how many strawberries I would need, and thinking it was better to buy too many, rather than too few (my last trip to the grocery store with all 3 kids reminded me why I try to only go when I absolutely have to...) I left with 8 lbs of strawberries.

What can you make with 8 lbs of strawberries?

2 batches of strawberry jam  (I used 5 lbs for this, in case you were wondering...)

2 strawberry pies:

Old Fashioned Strawberry Pie
sooo goooood.  and this happened to be my best pie crust ever!

Dairy-Free Strawberry Cream Pie
ok, but probably won't make it again over the previous one!

and 1 batch of dairy-free strawberry "ice cream":

Vegan Strawberry Ice Cream
I can't wait to have the real thing...

Some jam notes:
I have an aversion to those slimy chunks that often accompany homemade strawberry jam.  However, it appears it is important to have actual strawberry pieces in the jam.  i.e. puree won't set up well (which is what I discovered with my freezer jam that I pureed.)

I found a solution!  I used the large grate on my food processor- worked like a charm!  (and was waaaay faster than smashing the strawberries in 1 c batches at a time.... sooo tedious and a lot of manual labor!)  Try it!

Also, I ended up bottling the jam using a large pot I inherited from my mother-in-law that is intended for steamers (clams), but I discovered that I can only do the smallest ones without it boiling over.  Looks like I won't be bottling any pears on my stove...

Has anyone with a glass top tried using a big canner?  I know of at least one person that almost ruined hers...

Homemade Corn Flakes

**Update!  Now that the joke's over, I will feel bad if anybody actually tries to MAKE these!  I've been getting a lot of google search hits.  This was an April Fool's joke.  I didn't actually do it and just made up random proportions....  Best of luck to you in your homemade, corn flake escapades!**

Is it just me, or is cereal surprisingly expensive?  

Since going dairy-free, I've been reading a lot of ingredient labels lately and one time I was looking at the ingredient list for corn flakes: milled corn, sugar, malt flavor, and 2% or less of salt.

I thought wow!  no crazy sounding ingredients!  I wonder if I could make that myself...  After some experimenting, this is what I came up with...

I started off with popcorn, and ground it (okay, I made the kids do it.  It's "fun"!) with my hand grinder into this:
 But you could just use cornmeal.  It's really a rather simple recipe!

Ingredients:
1 c cornmeal
1 T sugar
1 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1 c water
Directions:

-Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
-Mix cornmeal, sugar, soda and salt in a medium mixing bowl and stir well to combine. (I use a wire whisk)
-Add water to the dry ingredients, until no lumps remain.
-Pour out into a big blob on your amazing Silpat (Pam-sprayed foil might work?  I haven't tried it) and smooth it out to a thin layer.
-Bake 25 minutes, or until golden.
- Let cool, and then break up into little corn-flake-looking pieces.




The main down-side is that one batch is only really one bowl of cereal... so you'd have to have a lot of pans and Silpats to make it worth it.  But seriously,  doesn't it look exactly like Kellogg's Corn Flakes?

That's because it is.

April Fools!! :)
(did I trick you?)

Happy Belated St. Patrick's Day

So, I married into Irish blood (McCarthy, yeah?).  For some reason, now, I feel like St. Patrick's Day should be a bigger deal for our family.  SO, I tried really hard this year to pull off the traditional corned beef & cabbage thing, even though I've never had it in my life...  I also had this "brilliant" breakfast idea.  hahaha.  I think I was the only one who appreciated it.  Do you see the four-leaf clover fried egg?  and toast cut out to be a clover?  (thanks Jay for eating all the kids' crusts.  That would normally be my job, but I can no longer eat butter....) And a green fruit just to top it all off!

 And here's the corned beef & cabbage:

 I admit, I was pleasantly surprised.  For some reason, boiled cabbage sounds so lack-luster and deflated to me.  It's the kind of thing you read about in books that poor people are eating.  (isn't that what Charlie Bucket's family eats every night?)  But I was surprised by how vibrant and pretty the whole thing looked!

I also made "clover" rolls, just because that's how I roll. har har.

I told The Frog that when I was a kid, I tried to always wear underwear that had green on it for the special day, and he thought that was a great idea. :)

Hope you didn't get pinched!

Babyfood Friday: Bell Peppers

I make my own baby food.  I know a lot of people freak out when I say that, like I'm some super-star mom and how-can-you-have-time-for-that?  So, I thought, some of my friends out there might like to see how easy and not time intensive it is.  

What I typically do, is starting at about 4 months old, I start looking for super sales on vegetables, and then buy a bunch and make one batch of baby food every week.  Then by the time they are 6 months, I have a stash of 8 or so different things to pick from, (plus the stand-by rice cereal, mashed banana, and mashed avocado) and by the time I run out of them, they're old enough to eat "real food".

In fact, with Peach, we had a bunch of baby food left over, so I just threw it in spaghetti or macaroni and cheese for a little extra veggie power and nobody could even tell the difference.

Would you throw extra store-bought baby food into your dinner?  

I wouldn't.  That stuff is creepy.

Which begs the question...  if I wouldn't eat it, how can I expect my baby to?

Not only is it not painful at all, but it is SOOO much cheaper and tastes SOOOO much better than the stuff in a jar.  Have you ever compared the color of Gerber peas to frozen, microwaved and pureed ones?  They don't even look like they could have possibly come from the same plant.  Gerber peas look creepy and old and brown.  Frozen peas turn into a bright, fun, party green.  Are you going to feed your kids party peas or poop peas...  I wonder why kids don't want to eat them...

I know all kids are different, and I'm starting to notice The Frog and Peach snub their nose at new things I cook up for dinner, BUT they both eat their vegetables and I've never had problems getting to do so.  My untested hypothesis is that this is largely because 1)My husband and I eat our vegetables like it's no big deal.  They don't have any picky examples to look up to and 2) cooking my own baby food gives them a more pleasant first experience with vegetables.  

These past few weeks (including now!) Sprouts (used to be Sunflower market) is selling red bell peppers for 3/$1.  That is our first winner!  So this batch of baby food costs $1.33 and ended up making 11 servings.  I can't find any red bell pepper baby food to buy anywhere online (look what else!  if you make your own, you can expand your baby's palate!) but I found 8 servings of apple banana baby food at walmart for $3.92.  

Homemade - $1.33/11 = $0.12 per 1 oz. serving

Store bought - $3.92/8 = $0.49 per serving

and funny because bell peppers are much more expensive (typically) than apples and bananas.

Ok, ok... there is something to be said for convenience.  I agree.  But I think when you see how easy this is, AND the fact that I'm doing it ahead means the pressure is off to get it ready before lunch, it's a really easy, chill thing to get done.  And it happens in several quick steps, so it's the perfect project to take on when you have a baby, since you usually don't get long chunks of time to get things done.

Homemade Roasted Red Bell Pepper Baby Food.

1) Preheat oven to 500 degree.

2) Wash bell peppers.  Place on foil-lined or Silpat-lined jellyroll pan.

3) Bake in oven 30-40 minutes, or until blackened and shriveling.  (I did 40 minutes)  Your house will smell gooooood.

4) Cover with foil and let cool off until cold enough to handle. (or in my case, several hours until my kids were in the tub)

They should look all sad and puddley now.

ok, so far, each step has independently taken less than 1 minute.  This next step is the most painful, in that it might take you 6 minutes.  (I guess it depends on how many peppers you roasted)
5) Skin and deseed the peppers, and put the goods in your blender/food processor.  (I *heart* my CuisinArt 3-cup food processor)

I don't even use a knife for this step...  I just roll up my sleeves, hold the pepper upside-down, and pull the stem.  It will just slide right off and most of the seeds with it.  Then, just start pulling the skin off... it comes fairly easily, if you baked them long enough.

The goods

If you used foil, now just chuck that whole mess in the garbage.  If your me, you will now have to clean your Silpat.

The leftovers

6) Mixy mix until smooth.

So, I happened upon these silicone ice cube trays at T.J.Maxx (I almost always leave that store with something I never knew I needed...) because I had no ice cube trays in grad school, and I am often attracted to green.  Anyway...

7) Pour into ice cube tray, cover with plastic wrap and pop in the freezer until you have a moment to pop them out and stick them in a labeled freezer bag.

Now, when you need to feed your babe, you can pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds.  PS. I ALWAYS taste it first to make sure it's not too hot.  (and i would never do that with store-bought baby food.  have I mentioned it creeps me out...)

BAM!

*update: the Walmart baby food ones are 3.5 oz per serving, which is WAY too much for a baby learning to eat, but maybe a good amount for older kids (except, I don't give older kids babyfood... it's easier to just give them what everyone else is eating!)  But, in fairness, this would make theirs only .14 per oz.  However, we're comparing bell peppers (expensive) to apples and bananas (inexpensive), and mine is still cheaper...

But really, even if it weren't cheaper, it would still be worth it to me to know my baby is getting fresh food with minimal processing.

so there.

Emergency Preparedness Month- Emergency Ration Bar Tasting

I bought little 72-hour kit starters from Emergency Essentials when Jay and I first moved here.  (I was still pregnant with The Frog, even) And they came with these Emergency food rations.  They're really a great idea- very compact, and just minimal calories, for an emergency, if you have to grab your kits and take off and you just don't want to worry about starving.  (There are 9 bars- breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 3 days.  Each bar has 400 calories.)

 When I went through our kits last fall to update the clothing for the kids, I happened to notice that these were set to expire this month (March 2013).  So, I put it in my calendar for us to, YES, try eating them in February, just to see how they were!  If I weren't nursing, I would have tried to live off it for 3 days, just to see... but I'm a bit sensitive about doing that for the babe.  I'm always worried my kids aren't getting enough since they're all so skinny.  Anyway, so instead of living off it for 3 days, I decided to serve it up for dinner.

my poor family puts up with me so well.

 Looks pretty good right?  Like a big butter cookie.
It's not.
I must say it wasn't terrible.  It had a strange lemony flavor about it.

 Our kits had these waters in them too, which also expire, so I thought, "what the heck?"

 Peach was the first to try the emergency ration.  After taking this bite, I asked her what she thought of it and she said, "good."  But then she didn't eat any more after that.

 It could be because she was too enthralled by drinking her water out of this box (and later squirting it all over the table.)  My poor kids are neglected and don't get juice boxes or capri suns at our house.  (Kids should eat their fruit, not drink it!  Don't deprive them of some good fiber!  Don't get me started talking about fiber...)

 Yes, the water boxes were the highlight of the evening...

I think The Frog actually liked his bar.  He almost ate the whole thing!  Jay was a good sport and ate what I served him (like he always does.  Thank you honey!  I think you are a big reason why our kids are not picky eaters...) but I had a hard time choking it down.  There was something about its flavor that reminded me of conversation hearts.  And those are gross!  (except the minty white ones :D)  My first few bites were hard to get down, but then I started getting used to it and it was tolerable.  But then I took a break to clean up the water mess Peach made, and when I started up eating it again, it was gross again and I had to re-get used to it.  It was weird.  I'm sure if I was starving, though, I wouldn't be too picky.  I think I may buy a different brand to have on hand for the next 5 years, just to compare.

We still have one unopened bar, so if anyone in the neighborhood would like it to try, let me know, you can have it :)