Dandelion Fritters

My mom is in a constant battle against the dandelions. Not just the ones in our yard, but also the ones in my grandma’s yard, and all those hearty yellow flowers growing anywhere along the road in between our houses. It began the year we actually planted a yard and had been an ongoing saga ever since. I decided this summer that if you can’t beat them, eat them. And since you can find absolutely everything on the internet, I looked it up and found several fabulous recipes for eating dandelions. However, with all the rain coming in to flood my summer, I have only managed to try out this one recipe so far. I’ll have to come back to how to eat weeds another time I guess. Until then, here’s the link to the recipe and a few photos of the process. I really liked them. Mom only liked them hot with jam. I didn’t have any regular milk, so I used gluten free flour and chocolate soy milk. Enjoy.

http://www.learningherbs.com/dandelion_recipes.html

Saturday Smorgasbord

It all started Friday night, when I thought my sister’s ice cream bowl looked good, but should be improved on some. As in dipping the strawberries in chocolate and adding blueberries. Amazing. A little overboard perhaps, but hey, it was Friday night.

So, Saturday morning at our house is usually a random happening of unconnected events and slow awakenings. However, this Saturday, I was in the mood for pretty. I got up, actually picked out an outfit AND put on make up. I know, I went all out. Went and ran some errands, came home and decided the cuteness should continue. I found the nice tablecloth, the pretty dishes, and the cloth napkins. Meaning that I couldn’t make the plain muffins I had originally planned on having for breakfast/ brunch. (That, and the fact we’re out of cranberries.) This called for extra special recipe experimentation. Blueberry banana chocolate chip walnut muffins that needed to be eaten with a spoon when hot. They tasted amazing.

For the evening meal, my sister decided to jump on board the pretty train and dress up dinner. African Peanut Soup, lovely salad, toasted garlic bread, and gorgeous Key Lime Pie for dessert. I don’t do peanuts and meat combos, so my soup was tomato and chicken, but it was still good.

And there you have it. Saturday Smorgasbord.

Slow Motion S’more

I know I said I’d talk about something other than marshmallows, but we had to try one more experiment with the home made ones to see if they could become less melty. After letting them dry out for a few days (or perhaps more), we took them out to the fire again. Here’s the beginning of the home made s’more in photo slow mo.

Summer Food Experiments

Almost vegan chocolate pudding. It was supposed to be vegan, but I didn’t have vegan chocolate. Sometimes, you just have to go with what you’ve got. Guess it’s a good thing I’m not vegan right now. It was fun to make, mainly because I watched Christine make it and gave side commentary while finding ingredients. But we got to use a blender. They don’t usually like me, so again, Christine did the work. Although, the one we have at the moment seems to hate me slightly less then usual. And another plus to this experiment is that it’s pretty, especially before it’s all entirely mixed together. It’s chocolate too. Always a good thing. However, I have to admit that the taste was not my favorite. I wanted the chocolate pudding taste without the soy taste. Unfortunately, since we were using tofu, that was not exactly the case. However, it was fun to take pictures of.

Here’s the link to the recipe, just in case you want to try it out yourself.

http://www.parentsconnect.com/dishes/dish_1209151705654.jhtml?sem=SEO_SSP_Y

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

After all the fun of carving was done, I moved on to my next pumpkin activity – roasting pumpkin seeds. Again, something I’ve never done. You’d think I grew up in a land that has no pumpkins, but I’ve heard rumors that even in the frozen Northland there are giant pumpkins lurking. Anyways, back to the pumpkin seeds…
I found a recipe online, but I wanted a bit more spice and flavor than it called for (I think I was just hungry and wanted sugar) so this is the sort of recipe that I eventually came up with…

Rinse the pumpkin seeds and dry at least slightly.

2T. butter
Olive oil (just a tiny bit)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/8 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
dash of coriander and cloves

Lay out foil on a baking sheet. Spread the seeds out into a single layer. I put the oven on 400°F and put them in for 10 minutes or until they were golden brown.

Those are not exact measurements in the least, since I was just playing around with the recipe. However, I really liked the way they turned out. They don’t taste really sweet, just a little hint of sweetness. I think I ate a quarter of the pan before deciding that pumpkin seeds alone may not be the healthiest dinner ever.

 

 

 

cupcakes, cakewalks, and car trips

This weekend is not turning out at all like I planned. I don’t think it ever does, but this one is really off from my imaginings. First of all, I went to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in Portage for work on Wednesday. It was fun and I enjoyed seeing the animals – more on that later, but my sciatic nerve did not agree with the trip so well. By Thursday night it was ice packs, Ibuprofen, and as much sleep as possible, since that was the only way I could get it to relax. My Friday was spent again with ice packs and Ibuprofen and anything remotely interesting that could distract me from the fact that it felt like some one had stuck a knife in my nerve. I did try to get on the computer and do some work, however, I became extremely distracted by finding all sorts of sweet new blogs to read, most involving cupcakes. By the time the painkillers and ice had kicked in enough to allow for semi-rational thought again, I had found two recipes that in honor of Kelsie’s birthday and the cakewalk in Hope, I just had to try… at 10p.m. of course. So, here’s a few pics from my first attempt at convection baking cupcakes found in a very nice food blog. 

I made Coconut cupcakes with coconut cream cheese frosting and they were divine. I found the recipe at a food blog that I promptly fell in love with. Gorgeous photos of mouth-watering food and easy to read recipes. Who wouldn’t love that. Simply Recipes. It’s one of my new favorites. You can find the recipe here. 

I also made Chocolate Mint cupcakes from the same blog Simply Recipes. Hers are much prettier, and I think I left mine in the oven a bit too long, (still working out that whole convection thing), but they taste SO good! 

The absolute best muffins ever – according to me

Being that it’s Friday and I don’t have to work ten hours today, I decided to make breakfast. And, since I happened to be missing my ever so dear Aussie roommates, I decided to make my almost traditional, slightly experimental banana chocolate cranberry muffins. And just because I’m feeling generous, I’ll even include the recipe… feel free to experiment at will.

1 egg
½ c. sugar (I use less cause I’d rather have more choc chips, so I only use about 1/3 c.)
1/3 c. vegetable oil
about 3 mashed bananas -close to 1 cup
1 pkg. choc chips
cranberries - maybe 3/4 cup ( I don’t measure them, I just dump them in till it looks good. Keep in mind though, these are genuine, hand picked till your fingers are freezing Alaskan cranberries, so they make it pretty tart)
1 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon ( I use more of this depending on my mood…)

Heat oven to 350F (that’s 180C for all you Aussie’s)
Bake 15-20 minutes

I occasionally also exchange mars bars for choc chips, sadly, we no longer have mars bars in the U.S. I also occasionally add carrots or walnuts or whatever random ingredient I happen to find that sounds good. If I don’t have three bananas I might just use two and a bit more veg oil…

anyways, enjoy!

oh, and as always, here’s a picture of my masterpiece…