Category Archives: Recipes
Another Great Recipe from Donna!
This time in video format for your convenience. Just take me into the kitchen with you and get your cook on!
Salsa and Egg Surprise
This unusual dish combines two of my favorites – salsa and eggs! From food snobs to kids, it’s got a little something for everyone!
Ingredients:
12 eggs, free range, organic
1/2 c. organic milk
2 shallots, thinly sliced
1/2 c. organic salsa (I used peach mango, but salsa verde or regular tomato salsa would work just as well!)
1 box whole wheat spaghetti noodles
6 large organically turnips
1/2 c. Almond milk
1/2 c coconut oil
8 pack of nitrite-free hotdogs
3 cups of organic catsup
3/4 cup capers
4 TBS Srhiracha sauce
Boil spaghetti noodles according to package directions. As noodles are boiling, peel turnips and boil for 10 minutes. Remove both from water and mash turnips with 1/2 c almond milk and 1/2 c coconut oil. Set both aside.
Boil nitrite free hotdogs to make skin removable. When dogs are boiled (~5 minutes) slide skin off hotdog and get that gross feeling all over. Save skin. For now, put the meat aside. Take the skin, capers and catsup and liquify in Cuisinart. Mix in with mashed turnips until well-blended. Set aside.
Crack all 12 eggs and try not to touch your mouth. Once they’re in the bowl, add the 1/2 c. of milk. Beat with a whisk or a spoon, I guess, if you are too poor or too ignorant not to have whisk at home. Set aside, continuously whisking. Add in beet sauce.
While eggs are set aside being whisked by your hand, cut up hotdog into triangles, this is very important for taste and because if you choke, at least some air can still get down if there’s a pointy side. Once hotdogs are cut, put eggs in the pan to fry. Try to keep them in a perfect circle folding once, twice, three times, then four. Remove the eggs in the shape of a tee-pee. First, holding tee-pee on the spatula, put the mashed turnip/hotdog skin/catsup aioli on the plate. Add the spaghetti noodles on top of this. Finally place the tee-pee on top and staple down to make sure it does not slide off per building codes in your area.
Finally spray tee-pee with Srhiracha sauce, be careful, it might be hot. If you have not bitten a hole out of the top of the tee-pee like most folks would automatically do (duh, if not, what is wrong with you?) do so now. Pour bottle of salsa down hole. Allow salsa to flow down the outsides of the egg-pee like a volcano. Do not dice shallots. Place full stalks over on their sides like ruined trees over the sides of your egg-tee-volcano-pee.
VOILA!!! ENJOY!! follow me @lifewithoutpb on twitter and read my blog at http://www.lifewithoutpeanutbutter.com for more great recipes like this!
Sorry there’s no picture, we ate it way too fast to get a shot.
I Don’t Think I’m Cut Out to Do Natural Remedies Part II of III
Subtitled: The Christmas Eve Master Tonic Bomb
I used my friends’ homeopathic cold remedy from the ZAS blog, which I’ve always called “master tonic” to make myself some super hot and spicy immune system booster/sinus drainer/general all-around masochistic drink.
This stuff is STOUT, like that girl you ask to help you lift a washing machine off the back of a U-Haul. It will raise the hairs on your arms and (it’s winter) legs. WOOOO. And pungent – wow, does it have a smell. I think I did a post on it when I made it, or at least had a picture of Rhys blending some of the ingredients in the Cuisinart. I didn’t let him do any of the really strong ones – just the onion and garlic. When I broke out the horseradish and habanero peppers I made him get down.
I’m going to get side-tracked for a second and complain about that woman on PBS that teaches the kids to cook. She makes them wear safety glasses. Fine, great. Do I feel it necessary to wear protective eyewear to cut an onion? No. I worked in a lab with chemicals and radiation and all kinds of things I’d rather not think about now that I’m getting older, like that massive phenol burn I got on my arm – egad. I survived a PHENOL BURN, I don’t need PPE to cut onions. But without fail, my kids – propagandized by state-sponsored media (*giggle*) – ask me where my safety glasses are when I cut anything more potent than an avocado.
Back to the story at hand, the great fail of Christmas Eve, I felt a little something coming on, a tickle in my throat or a sore ear…I’m not sure now what it was, the incident has erased all memory of why I was fooling with the master tonic in the first place. I could have been compelled to take a dose to help get rid of the shingles. Whatever the reason, I felt I needed a dose of master tonic before we hit the road to the Christmas Eve service.
I’d taken care – oh such great care – to look nice that night. I’d worn my favorite pants (the only ones that weren’t jogging pants which the shingles allowed me to sit comfortably in, that is) and my favorite white shirt and camisole and I’d bought a new Christmas-y scarf just for the night. I told you I have a scarf obsession. The boys were dressed up and Sarah had on her pretty new fluffy dress I got at the Carter’s store for 70% off (heck yeah!), with tights and shoes and looked oh so cute. Dave had on clothes, I am sure of it. I would have noticed otherwise, and it was cold.
So we’re heading out the door – our kitchen is right beside the exit area where the boys put on their shoes and we have our coats. I thought to myself, “I’ll just take a quick tablespoon while they’re putting on their shoes.” Up, up I reached into our cabinet and down, down slipped the bottle and it crash, crashed into the granite and glass went everywhere and I was covered in apple cider vinegar that had been infused with garlic, habanero peppers, horseradish, ginger root, and white onions and left to sit for two weeks.
Oh holy night.
That crap went everywhere. Glass all over the floor, smelly tonic in the drawers under the counter top, into the cabinets (how?), under the refrigerator (!!!), everywhere!! And we had FIVE MINUTES to leave to make it there on time and I smelled like the contents of an embalming kit. And there was glass everywhere AND our house stunk! Dave had to pull the refrigerator out from the wall to get the liquid up from underneath it and all this time the kids are asking, “Do you want us to put our shoes on?” NO!!! There’s glass everywhere! For once, DON’T do what we just told you to do! Thank goodness for the two grandmas there who were able to hold Sarah back, otherwise she would have been rolling all in it too.
So the safety glasses might have come in handy during this part of the process.
I changed but I didn’t have another pair of pants I could wear that wouldn’t rub the area that had my shingle on it (that sounds so odd, but I don’t know another way to put it) unless I was going to wear jogging pants (NO!!) so I scrubbed at the quarter-sized spot of master tonic on my jeans as best I could and hoped I didn’t stink as much as I thought I probably did. I had to change tops but I hadn’t put my scarf on yet so it was spared.
Somehow Dave managed not to get his clothes dirty. Maybe he wasn’t wearing any? No surely, it was cold. I just couldn’t tell you what he had on. Pants, I guess. A top. Everything he owns looks exactly the same, but I am to blame since I buy it. He won’t branch out though, I’ve tried but the pair of flare-leg worship pastor jeans I got him last Christmas are still in the closet with the tags still on them. I thought they looked really cool. But what can you do?
We made it on time but just barely, we were in the back but that was for the best because: I probably stunk and we had a bunch of kids on the row. She’ll never stay still and despite what they tell you, the iPhone 4s does not take great pictures, but here’s Sarah getting her worship on after the homeopathic fail.
He DID have on clothes! Whew!
This is when the decontamination shower came down on me during the service, when high levels of garlic were detected within the congregation.
Snow!!
Nah, it’s just some snow they blew down after the service for the kids to play in.
End part II.
By Request – How to Make Kombucha (video)
Watching this makes brewing kombucha seem difficult. It’s not. Here’s a synopsis:
1. Order a SCOBY off Etsy. I bought mine from Wells of Health (I call them “savvy teas” in the video, I think that’s their billing name). Follow the instructions they send you.
OR
2. Buy a bottle of GT Dave’s kombucha from Whole Foods.
- dump the bottle of kombucha (or at least 1/2 cup) into a mason or wide-mouth jar.
- put a coffee filter over the top and secure with a rubber band
- let it sit ON THE COUNTER TOP for about a week, until a SCOBY forms.
- boil 5 cups of water for 10 minutes.
- add 1/3 cup WHITE SUGAR, stir with a WOODEN spoon
- add 2 family-sized tea bags, steep to your delight
- let come to room temperature
- add to mason jar with SCOBY and liquid it’s floating in
- wait about a week, taste after day 4 with a straw to see if it’s vinegar-y or tea-y
- if it doesn’t taste like tea any longer, its ready
- pour into a jar with a lid you can tighten (you want to keep it carbonated)
- I pour my kombucha straight from the mason jar (holding the SCOBY back with my finger) straight into the bottles via a funnel.
- let it sit on the counter overnight, then transfer to fridge
- enjoy!
- repeat!
ADVANCED:
- try different flavor tea bags – just make sure there isn’t any oil listed in the ingredients section, this can make your SCOBY mold
- add a squirt of lemon juice to your bottles post-pour as they sit overnight on the counter, this will give your kombucha a citrus zing
- add some chunks of ginger to the large brew to make ginger aid.
Making Soap
I made some laundry detergent today using this recipe. I had to half my batch because I only had a 3 gallon bucket, so I made 2.5 gallons of soap.
Bucket of goo!
Then I diluted it 1:1 into gallon jugs. I only ended up with 4.5 gallons so my measuring must have been off a bit. I added 10 drops of lavender essential oil into two of the jugs and left three unscented.
DO NOT DRINK.
I am washing my first load of clothes right now. I added a little over 1/2 a cup of detergent but didn’t see a lot of bubbles. I don’t know if that means I need more or what. I didn’t look back, but I’m pretty sure she said to use 5/8ths of a cup of detergent. I guess we’ll see if that amount is sufficient for our filthy rags!
Anxiety Baking – Lemon Bars That Bounce
What does one do after one wakes up with overwhelming anxiety that leaves one paralyzed in bed and unable to get up until a quadruple dose of anxiety medicine kicks in? One BAKES!
Sunday was horrible. First, I still had…whatever Henry had. Now Sarah has it. I heard her from our room this morning. She woke up screaming and starving at 5 am. And tooting. CC is going to be interesting today. I need a sign that says “That was her —>” so people can differentiate. Then, I had this ruthless anxiety that came out of who-knows-where. We did not make it to church for the second Sunday in a row because of illness (last Sunday colds galore, this Sunday – THIS mess), since I was laying in the bed, paralyzed by (???), unable to get anyone dressed, do anything at all, but just lay there. I think I laid there until 12:30 when I finally summoned the courage to take my meds. Had I not I think my heart might have exploded. I laid there another 20 minutes or so, to give it time to kick in and then went downstairs. On my way down I ran into Dave and almost jumped out of my skin. I said something to him and realized I sounded as hysterical as I felt. I feel okay today, though. We had tacos the day before, I will blame it on that. That makes as much sense as anything else. Taco-enduced anxiety. Yep.
Oh, so to the baking, which was the important part. I heated up some chicken tortilla soup (not the stuff I canned – I am only opening that in the event of an apocalypse – that was way too much work!) and then made some of these little critters. They’re brussle sprouts drizzled in olive oil and tossed in salt, pepper and Panko bread crumbs. I baked them at 400*F for about 30 minutes; until they turned dark brown and looked almost burned. That’s how you know they’re ready.
Hot on the pan
Get on me fork!
They were good, but Dave and I are the only ones who will eat them and really, I think I’m the only one who will eat them cheerfully so most went to waste, sadly. I think they taste like mini-eggrolls but I can’t convince anyone else of this.
I also decided to make lemon bars. I’m not a big lemon fan, but in an effort to move the boys away from eating processed garbage junk like Oreos (oh I love you) and Chips Ahoy (not so much), I’ve decided to try my hand at more um…less tasty desserts that don’t have sugar in them in hopes that they’re young enough that they’ll forget what the good stuff tasted like and acquire a taste for au naturale foods instead. So I am starting with the lemon bars.
They used honey, eggs, whole wheat flour, almond flour (CAN’T – augh!!!), lemon juice from a lemon, lemon zest and egg whites. I substituted spelt flour for the almond flour, which was my first mistake. I wanted these to be sort of light and fluffy, or at least gooey. The spelt flour, I should have known, would produce neither of these traits in a bread or bar. It creates very dense bread, and so I ended up with lemony, dense sort of flubbery lemon squares. NOW – they’re GOOD – they’re just not what most people could readily identify as lemon bars were I to set them on a dessert table at a church potluck. I made the accompanying topping, which was a cup of Greek yogurt (I used Fage) mixed with honey. You’re supposed to add lemon zest, but I’d already thrown my lemon away (oops), so there’s none of that. And my apologies to the Fage, I know your package says “Do not stir the Fage,” but I stirred. My bad.
Bars in the pan. Dave said, “Is it cornbread?” Dude, way to kill my “I’m making something good for the kids” buzz. Dang it, it does look like cornbread.
THIS. IS. NOT. CORNBREAD.
Looks like a lemon bar from this angle.
I stirred the Fage! Oh noes!
Totally unrelated, but cool thing I want to share: I made my own brown sugar. The other week when everyone was sick (so, pick your week) I made molasses chocolate chip cookies for the boys and the recipe instructed me to make my own brown sugar. You just add molasses to white sugar and volia! I had NO IDEA that’s how you made brown sugar. Neither did my friends OR my mom (I think – if you want to defend your reputation, you better leave a comment). Dave said he knew this and raised an eyebrow at my molasses ignorance. Well. I am not a sugar expert and I kind of take offense to that, because I think he was looking at my backside when he scoffed at my ignorance. Anyway, here’s the brown sugar, post-mixing:
White sugar + molasses = brown sugar. Who knew?!
Okay, off to CC, but first I have to make that sign.
Yes We Can(ning)!
And just like the failed, worn-out slogan of 2008, so goes the story of last Saturday.
I finally got around to using my pressure cooker, or as I began to consider it, my “pressurized canister of potential death, dismemberment and/or disfiguration normally reserved for the preservation of foodstuffs.”
I cooked a huge, 6-quart batch of chicken tortilla soup, and all I got out of it were four, seemingly extra large quarts of soup. This is what I get for buying off-brand. I’m going to spend the extra $1.50 next time and get Mason jars. These jars were like quart jars with giantism. They weren’t really the next size up, but they weren’t quite quarts either. They were quarts after a nice, big Thanksgiving dinner.
Big-arsed "quart" jars beside hulking pressure cooker
The big black pot in the back, normally reserved for water bath canning, was used to boil 4 quarts of water to fill the bottom of the pressure canner. Four quarts of water is a lot, it’s 16 cups. That’s a LOT of water. Here’s a picture of my soup jars in that massive amount of water. HA HA HA HA HA HA.
It covered their toes. This pressure cooker is HUGANTIC.
And then I had to figure out some geology to see how long the things had to stay at 11 psi. Are we > 2000 ft above sea level? I hadn’t the slightest idea. Oh how I envied Dave’s mom, who would know for sure that she is, in fact, NOT 2000 ft above sea level, or my BFF who would know that she IS > 2000 ft above sea level because they live like 400,000 feet above sea level. I know that when I get brownies and there are special “high altitude” instructions I laugh and ignore them, but this was important, we could get botulism if I chuckled at this. So I had to look up our altitude. We were about 1100 ft above sea level, or maybe 800. I couldn’t really read the graph, I had my contacts in. But I know it was less than 2,000. I was to set the timer for 25 minutes. At least that was easy.
Just like working in R&D again.
It took a considerable amount of time to get the thing going. But finally everything was a-go!
Zeros, zeros! Zeros mean so much! /TMBG
Wha? Needle? Why you no moving?!
I had apparently put something together wrong, and I didn’t realize it until the water in the cooker was already boiling. So. I had to take it apart (DEATH!) and then unscrew some stuff (BURNS!) and then rescrew it on (INSANITY!) and then let it heat up again. But finally, after – good gosh – like, and I am not kidding, four hours the pressure started to rise. Not. Unlike. The. Pressure. Of. My. Blood. (which had been going up for the last FOUR HOURS).
BOOOM!!!!! It's not an accident, it's a kitchen renovation.
…and then the pot sat there at 11 psi for 25 minutes.
oh. the. tedium.
After that you just have to wait for it to cool down before you can do anything else. Which means you can’t do anything with it until the next day. So it effectively took six hour to can four jars of soup, only three of which actually sealed properly. *sigh*
My SCOBY, Day 2
Check out that mother! It was just a flat patty when I put it in the tea day before yesterday and check her out today. There are strands of yeasty goodness all over the place – she has really grown! I added some lemon juice to the tea mixture yesterday because I’d read that it helped enrich the growth medium and perhaps so; either way, my SCOBY is coming along nicely!
It’s gone from smelling sweet to not really having a smell. I think it will take 4 – 5 days before it’s ready to drink, so maybe by Saturday I’ll have my first batch of home brewed kombucha ready for a taste test! I’m probably going to double ferment it to flavor it, so that will take extra time, but since I am addicted to the citrus flavor, I’ll just have to be patient and wait. Once I get a system rolling, there shouldn’t be any downtime without available kombucha.
This stuff apparently multiplies like friendship bread, or so an employee at Whole Foods warned me today (yes…I live there now…). I told him I had at least two friends on my SCOBY baby adoption waiting list. I always wanted to do some sort of adoption volunteer work but I did not envision it including yeast patties.
LWoPB 1st Annual Thanksgiving FOOD POST
What is wrong with me? Why is this the FIRST ANNUAL FOOD anything? I have been blogging for five years now and I’ve never started some sort of traditional holiday food post? Insanity.
Tomorrow I am making this.
Pumpkin Dip
Ingredients
- 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
- 2 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 1 (15 ounce) can solid pack pumpkin
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
- 1 teaspoon frozen orange juice concentrate
Directions
- In a medium bowl, blend cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar until smooth. Gradually mix in the pumpkin. Stir in the cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and orange juice until smooth and well blended. Chill until serving.
Then I’m going to serve it with warm gingerbread that I’m also planning to make. I am just going to go ahead and take the stupid weight loss ticker down until January.
I’m going kind of ghetto for Thanksgiving this year. Which is great, considering this is the debut year of my LWoPB Thanksgiving Food Post. I’m doing a turkey breast (not fooling with a bag of guts), turkey from a jar (heresy, should be giblet gravy or nothing), stovetop (heresy again, I was raised on pan dressing), broccoli casserole, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole with broiled marshmallow topping, and a pineapple casserole with cheddar cheese, sugar and Ritz cracker topping. Really, everything I’m serving either consists of cream of chicken soup and a Ritz cracker topping or cheese and a Ritz cracker topping. My shopping cart is just crackers, soup and cheese. Entire meal, covered. Plus one turkey, which I guess I could coat in Ritz crackers. OH and cranberry jelly. JELLY. Not sauce, no, that is gross and unnatural. It’s got to be the jelly that makes the slurping sound when it comes out of the can in one big lump. Dave hates it, Henry and I love it. Slurrrrrrrrp. Plop. Yum.
I am a master of onomatopoeia tonight.
DANG. I forgot dessert. Maybe I will make a pumpkin pie. Or – NO! – a chocolate chess pie! Or maybe a chocolate pecan pie, I have never had one but pecan pie is sounding really good lately (I don’t like it, yes, someone is cutting up my southerner card as we speak) but I don’t think I could stomach it unless the goo underneath the pecans is chocolate. But the pumpkin pie at Costco today tasted SO good. Probably safer too, given the name of this blog. It’s not called “Life Without Pumpkins.”
My poor kids. They were playing trick-or-treat the other day. It went like this:
Rhys: “Here’s your candy!”
Henry: “Thanks!”
Rhys: “…and here’s your shot!”
Well, at least they know what to do if the need ever arises!
Now they’re playing “Take out my splinter.” Henry cannot STAND for Dave to take splinters out of his feet, it’s like he’s taking his leg off or something. Rhys is chasing him around the room taunting him half-yelling ‘DO I NEED TO GET THE TWEEEEEE-ZERRRRRRRS?” and making little pinching motions with his fingers, heeeee hehehe. Then he’s tackling him, sitting on him and pinning his leg down like Dave does. He’s really got this down-pat and Henry is getting almost as hysterical as he does when he actually has a splinter in his foot, except he’s also laughing and sort of egging Rhys on. Maybe next time we should just let Rhys get it out. Sarah is oblivious to all this, lying naked from the waist down, airing out the yeasty rump and playing with the toys on her play mat. Who probably all now have yeast rashes. Sorry about that, birds.
Oh and our Christmas tree is up. The lights are going on tonight, along with the ornaments, if we get that far. Just like in 2009, my goal is to have every present bought, wrapped and under the tree (or hidden) by the first weekend in December so we can bake, have fun and not stress about the stupid, materialistic side of Christmas. So tonight I’ve got to do some “Black Friday” research and see where I can get the cheapest whatever we’re getting them so I can get this mess ordered, wrapped and under the tree. I’m gettin’ Christmas DONE. NOW. And we’re going to ENJOY IT.
Okay gotta go make the delicious fish (aka chicken) I bought at the slam-packed Costco today. We ran into a friend who also has a Sarah who had not seen our Sarah (and I had not seen her Sarah) and I had to giggle and say “Ha, we copied you!” but Sarah is common so it’s not like anyone who names their kid that is really copying anyone anyway. Her Sarah is so pretty! But Costco was insane, I don’t know what I was thinking going there today. But I did get to sample their pumpkin pie. Totallygoingbacktomorrowandbuyingone.
Almost Summer Fun Stuffs
Just gliding in the afternoon. They got haircuts from “Miss Merr” as Rhys calls her. They were both so good. Rhys asked if he could sweep up his hair after she cut it and she let him have the broom and Henry the dust pan thing.
 Enjoying a strawberry on the porch. |
| From May 2011 |
Would you like some?
 |
| From May 2011 |
Strawberries waiting on their sugar coating, which will make a syrup. That’s how we roll in the south, y’all!
 |
| From May 2011 |
And now I must go iron 8 curtain panels. I hate doing this. I’m doing it on the floor this time, on top of a sheet. I am not doing on that blasted ironing board anymore. Iron -> scoot -> iron -> scoot. Gaah! We’ll see how the floor method works.
66 DAYS UNTIL SHE’S HERE!
