Corners of the Kitchen

A fun thing I have started doing is writing up a menu for meals on our little chalk board. Sometimes it's the list is written up for a breakfast but I always try to do dinner. Clara enjoys sounding out words and seeing the little pictures and it helps me to evaluate if the meal is lacking something.

The other night we were invited to have dinner at a friends house and I found this written on the board a little before we left.

'Dinner:

Tadrosis'

Yogurt Pops Hit the Spot

It has been another hot week here so we searched out a recipe for popscicles. I found this recipe on the popular food blog, Orangette.

Clara and Jibs loved them. Jibs ate half of my popscicle off the stick and then another whole one broken into a dish. These are so fresh tasting and delicious. We are already plotting our next batch and the flavour combos we will try. The ease of these made it possible for Clara to make these almost entirely on her own and that made her very happy.

Yogurt Pops

Adapted from The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz

2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt
2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries or other fruit combo
¾ cup sugar
1 tsp. lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in the jar of a blender, and process until smooth. Set a strainer over a bowl (or other vessel) with a pour spout. Press the mixture through the strainer to remove seeds. Pour mixture into popsicle molds.

To serve, briefly run the sides of the mold under tepid water to loosen the popsicle, and gently twist or wiggle the popsicle stick as you lift.

Saturday Brunch

Saturday Brunch has become a wonderful weekly tradition for my household to spend time catching up and fellowshipping with hungry friends and family.

This Saturday's Brunch Menu:

~Crepes

~Blueberry Buttermilk Muffins

~Mushroom Quiche

~Pineapple, Nectarines, Blueberries, Strawberries and Cherries

~Coffee

~Mango Juice

The boy is ONE...let us eat bananas.

My beautiful Jib turned one today. My beautiful boy loves 'anana'! Jib says two things presently, 'anana' and 'dada'. So to make sure the birthday was all it could be there were lots and lots of bananas.
Some of the indulgences of the day (banana and otherwise) included:

~Roast chicken on butter-herb noodles. (Jib finds long slurpy noodles quite hilarious)
~Mango Juice
~Banana Cream Pie (made by my ridiculously talented Gramma Dorothy)
~Banana Cupcakes with Chocolate icing
~Banana Puree (Clara's gift to jimmy.) The thought was to have an emergency jar of banana puree in case of a dire calamity such as an unripe or absent banana. What a good sister.


It's hard to believe you've only been with us for one year, Jimmy! We love you dearly and are praying for you to come to know and love Jesus very soon.

Berries and Babies

A thick layer of rich vanilla yogurt topped with blueberries, raspberries and toasted pecans has been our snack and breakfast of choice lately. Astro's Balkan Style Vanilla yogurt is delicious and our current favourite. Jim and Jack prefer Plain Yogurt mixed with pureed fruit.

Eating my garden

Clara-Very proud of the garden she helped plant.
Lettuce and peas.

Notice the nasturtium atop my salad...this is pure Jimmy. He got us into eating them.
Little Jibs loved this dinner and eagerly at two bowls full.

I cannot really express how excited I was the first time I harvested vegetables. My friend Shannon's Grandpa has a beautiful garden and let me fill up bags and bags of peas and cucumber and potatoes and peppers. Let me tell you, digging up potatoes is so thrilling to me that I kept saying to Jim, "Can you believe this, this is amazing!" So at the nearest opportunity Jimmy put in a garden for me so I could frolic around our yard picking vegetables while chanting, "Can you believe this?" It doesn't take much to excite me but, come on, this is exciting stuff. I ate a pea today straight off the vine and a salad whose leaves and petals were picked mere moments before being tossed with lemon juice and consumed. Ahhhh the summer harvest, such a thrill.
We had our first meal on the patio tonight of Sole Dijon and Summer Salad. It was wonderful.
This recipe is so easy and quick. Clara made the sauce independently while I chopped the veg and assembled. done.

Sole Dijon

4 Yukon Gold Potato sliced 1/4inch thick

1 Onion sliced 1/4 inch thick

1 green or red pepper sliced 1/4 inch thick

1/4C butter -diced

salt

pepper

1C mayo

2T Lemon juice

2T Dijon Mustard

2lbs Sole fillets

Preheat oven to 400*. Line a 9x13 dish with parchment paper. Layer potatoes over the bottom, peppers next and top with onion. Dot the top with diced butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook for 30 mins uncovered in the centre of the oven.

In a small bowl stir together mayo, lemon juice and dijon.

Add sole fillets to the top of the par-cooked vegetables, pour sauce over fish and bake for 15 mins more.

Pink Cake and My Apprentices

A little produce shop I go to has great seconds of fruit and vegetables for 2$ a basket. This week I was able to get tons more strawberries so I made a strawberry cake with strawberry icing...decorated with a strawberry.

The cake took a while to make but I think that was only in part due to the recipe. Clara and I were having a slow afternoon and had fun taking our time while making it. To assemble the cake, I placed one cake face side down topped that with some strawberry preserve, then placed the other half right on top and drizzled the top with icing and let it run down the sides.

I realized how much Jimmy watches me cook when I saw him pull a pot out of our cupboard and start mixing in it with the wooden spoon. He looked at me quite impress with himself as if to say "Look mama, I'm cooking too".

Strawberry Cake

3 cups + 2 tbsp (780 mL) cake-and-pastry flour

2 tsp (10 mL) baking powder

3/4 tsp (4 mL) baking soda

1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt

2 cups (500 mL) halved strawberries (8 oz/250 g)

1/2 cup (125 mL) buttermilk

1 cup (250 mL) unsalted butter, softened

1-3/4 cups (425 mL) granulated sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla

Butter two 9-inch/23 cm diameter cake pans; line bottoms with parchment paper, then flour sides; set aside.

In bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and soda, and salt. In blender, purée together strawberries, and buttermilk.

In large bowl, beat butter until light and fluffy; on high speed, beat in sugar, 1/3 cup/75 mL at a time, until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in eggs, one at a time; beat in vanilla. Gradually stir in flour mixture and buttermilk mixture, making 3 additions of dry and 2 of wet. Divide evenly between cake pans, smoothing tops.

Bake in centre of 350F/180C oven until cake tester inserted in centre comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool in pans on racks for 10 minutes. Slide knife around edges and remove from pans; peel off paper. Let cool on racks.

Strawberry Icing
1/2 cup frozen strawberries thawed
1/2 C butter
1/2 brick cream cheese
4 cups confectioners sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla

Cream the butter and cream cheese together. Add vanilla and the confectioners sugar. Puree the frozen strawberries until smooth and add to the icing.