Creamy Feta Dip

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Laura

I woke up at 6am today and checked out the window to realize I couldn’t see to even the end of my back yard through the dense fog. It’s continued all day and all I really want to do is curl up with a book in bed. I should probably start the supper prep soon, but I’m going to push it until the last moment, I think. I was doing so well with meal preparations, too! Planning is the key to us eating well and sometimes, benefits others, too! Yesterday, I made food for a family since the mother is on strict bed rest. Sloppy joes, sweet potato fries and creamy feta dip.

The feta dip is the reason for this post. I’d been buying a glorious Greek yogurt and feta dip at the grocery until we realized Sylvi liked it and she was having an allergic reaction every time she ate it. And I’m sorry… there is almost nothing worse than having to deny your child food due to an allergy. Especially when you love it too. Of course, after looking at the ingredients on the container, I kind of felt I wasn’t going to miss anything… until I remembered how much I really, really liked it.

Thus far, I’ve tried this recipe with sweet potato fries, veggies and crackers. Amazing. Also amazing on a hummus and cucumber sandwich. Or just from a spoon. Ahem. To prove the taste factor, my friend told me that her teenaged son ate half of the dip himself. In my experience, if a teenage boy inhales your food, you may as well stop cooking… you’ve reached your pinnacle.

Creamy Feta Dip

8 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup crumbled Feta cheese
1/2 Greek yogurt
1 tsp. Greek seasoning

Soften the cream cheese until it easily mashes with a spoon…. I typically warm it in the microwave so it’s really soft. Then, place all the ingredients in a food processor and whir until smooth and blended. You’ll have little bit of Feta still, but it’s primarily smooth. At this point, test for taste. You may want more seasoning or to thin it out a bit with some milk. I keep mine in the fridge (and it does firm up, by the way) in a glass jar. I can’t tell you how long it lasts for… I eat it too fast. But I can tell you this is a staple in our home and it’s something I can safely feed my kids without worry!

Honey Orange Granola and Bars

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Laura

I think that if you had read my earlier Facebook post, you’d have gotten the idea that my day was going very smoothly. I had high hopes for today, despite being very tired. In the end, my husband walked in the door tonight and didn’t bother to ask what was for supper. Instead he commented on my tired, puffy eyes and asked how soon I wanted to lay down. We wouldn’t have starved for at the very least we could have eaten granola bars for supper.

The amount of money I spend each month on granola bars is laughable. Shameful, even. But I tell you, for whatever reason, despite trying dozens of recipes and even finding a few that I loved, my children would not eat my homemade creations. Now I will admit that Liam still turned his picky 3 and a half year old nose up at these, but he’s been in a foul mood all day. Sylvi couldn’t shove hers in her mouth fast enough. What’s more, the husband gave these guys a firm stamp of approval.

I made a quick batch of granola first.

2 cups of gluten free oats
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp. melted butter
2 Tbsp. honey
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. orange extract
orange zest (optional)

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Melt the butter and mix in the honey, orange extract and any zest you choose to add. Mix together the oats, brown sugar, cinnamon and a pinch of salt. Then, pour the honey mixture over the top and toss through the oats. Line a baking sheet with foil and dump your granola out on it. Spread the granola out and cook for 10 minutes. Stir the granola well and cook for an additional 10 minutes. Recipe makes just over 2 cups of granola, which is the perfect amount for the bars.

Once the granola cooled… and I got my hands out of the pan… seriously. I couldn’t stop eating the little granola clumps! Honey and orange with the oats is amazing! Anyway, once the granola cooled, I made it into bars.

1 recipe of granola
2 cups puffed rice cereal
6 Tbsp butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup mix-ins (chocolate chips, cranberries, raisins, peanuts, etc.)

Mix together the granola and rice cereal. You can reuse the foil from making the granola, but this is very important: grease the foil before you put the granola mixture on it. I know there’s butter in the recipe, but it still sticks like the dickens and that’s just not pretty. Then, melt the butter in a small pan with the brown sugar and honey. Bring it to a boil and stir constantly. The mixture will become caramel colored and bubble constantly, remove it from the heat and very quickly stir it into the dry ingredients. Press the granola into the prepared pan. My bars were about 10 inches square, so I just molded it so that they were fairly even across the top. Then, press your toppings into the granola and set aside for 20 minutes while the caramel hardens.

These granola bars and crispy and chewy and just the right amount of sweet. Store them wrapped tightly for 2 weeks.

Work In Progress Wednesday

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Laura

Alternate title: Why I dislike hexagons

There came a point while working with this project when I said to my husband that I just wanted it to be over with. Then, I felt like I had a handle on things and enjoyed it. That lasted about half a minute and I’m back to disliking this. I spent my hard-earned money on it, though so I will be finishing it. This week preferably. I have baby quilts to get working on!

In theory, this isn’t a challenging project, but lining up the points for the angles was just so darn hard for me! I tried different methods of laying it out and pinning it, but nothing has made this simple. My seam ripper has gotten a LOT of use in the past week

The good news is that this project helped me make up my mind about our bedroom. It is my goal to finally get around to decorating it and making it a cozy spot this Spring. I chose this pillow kit because I loved the patterns and colors and thought that I could use them to compliment a quilt. We have a king sized bed. As I was attempting to practice some free-motion quilting yesterday afternoon, I realized that there was no way I could handle doing a quilt of that size. Then, I started calculating and decided that since I still haven’t finished piecing the top of the quilt I had planned for our queen sized bed, it would be best to not bite off more than I can chew.

However. I have found so many beautiful patterns I think that I will stick to making them in the smaller sizes and content myself with learning skills. All that to say, it’s a good thing I love throw pillows, because once I finish this one, I’m back to right angles for a while!

What are you working on this week?

Scrambling!

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Laura

At the beginning of the year, the fitness group I belong to, Mommy and Me Fitness, initiated a fitness challenge to jump start everyone’s new year resolutions and get us all moving again, despite the dreary winter weather. At the same time, I’m in training for a real sprint triathlon in a few months and so I’ve been using this as the motivation to keep myself going during this hard part where I really don’t want to go to the gym and exercise. Melissa has been offering fun tips on the Facebook page for the challenge and it’s helped get me out of my rut.

I’ve been keeping an eye on my calories over the last year and noticed that I really don’t get enough protein. I don’t like it in general, so this has been a rough area for me. I do like cheese and I like eggs, so I’ve been making scrambles for myself a few times a week. I like to add either broccoli or kale to mine right now, but in the Spring, I think there will be asparagus too! Even if I have this as an after workout snack, it’s filling without using up too many calories… the total calorie count (according to Livestrong MyPlate) is a mere 287. It does pack a nutritional punch with 20 grams of protein!

Feta and Kale Scramble

2 eggs
a Sploosh of milk
2 Tbsp. Feta cheese
1 cup kale, chopped

Whisk the eggs well and add the other three ingredients. The feta is salty enough that I didn’t add any extra salt, but I did crack some black pepper into the eggs and added a pinch of garlic powder. I like my eggs dry, so it took a while to cook the eggs until I was satisfied. But you do what you like.

Salads and jump starting my Spring Cleaning

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Laura

Last week was overwhelmingly busy for me. I don’t like to have more than 2 outside activities in a week, but somehow, I scheduled myself at least 1 thing every single day. Sheer foolishness. Add to this, my poor husband was in the process of finding a new renter for our first home and the whole family was pretty frazzled by the end of the week. Thankfully, we did have fun and we do have a renter happily contracted for 2 whole years!

Today being Monday, I dove right in with my usual chores and the week’s goal list. What started out as just unloading the dishwasher and cleaning out the fridge turned into a 2 hour long deep cleaning of the kitchen. I didn’t realize how much time had passed until I saw Sylvi standing in the hallway, awake from her nap.

This tidy state didn’t last long… don’t worry

Of course, while I was working away and one child was sleeping, the other was left unattended. He’s pretty quiet when he’s alone and content, so I kind of forgot about him. (Does this give you an idea of the impending disaster?) He was very helpful to me by taking every single last toy out of their bins and spreading them all over the living room. I’ll admit to being shocked when I came around the corner and saw the chaos. On the upside, I went through the toys (since they were laid out for me to see anyway) and weeded out the ones no one plays with on a regular basis, and swapped them out for the Lauri pegs, Farm animal Dominos, Farm animal lacing cards and beads.

Not pictured: the couch, behind the love seat and the dining room.

Our day ended very nicely and I’m thrilled to say that my floors actually got a through vacuuming. That was much needed, I tell you! Supper was pretty hasty and made me grateful for always keeping my salad greens washed and ready. I recently made a new salad dressing and have been craving salads even more since! I have nothing against store-bought salad dressings; I love them actually, but Sylvi has (at the least) a sensitivity to some of the preservatives in salad dressings and dips, so I’m back to making my own again. Nothing like watching your child’s face become covered in welts after eating your salad dressing kissed cucumbers to jump start your creativity! This dressing is tangy and flavorful and in my opinion, even better than my old Italian dressing recipe. Probably because it’s more Greek than Italian, but it still dresses up a bowl of kale like you wouldn’t believe!

Greek Feta Salad Dressing

1 cup oil
1 cup white vinegar
3 tsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. onion powder
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. dried basil
2 tsp. ground pepper
2 tsp. sea salt
1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
1/4 cup crumbled Feta cheese

Pulverize the feta as best you can and then sprinkle the spices over the top and stir thoroughly Then, mix in the mustard, oil and vinegar. (Alternatively, you could do this in a blender.) Store in a lidded container in the fridge and shake well before each use.

The oil that keeps the wheel running

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Laura

One of the most frequent complaints I hear from women be it stay-at-home, working full/part-time, parenting or not is the struggle to balance housework. There are dozens of planners, website subscriptions and outlines for scheduling your day. Personally, I don’t use them. I’ve printed out planners and things of that nature multiple times or tried a digital calendar, but in the end… I’m just a lined sheet of paper and spiral bound calendar sort of girl!

The “brain” of my kitchen: calendar, lists, coffee and the phone.

Before I go any further, let me say this: housekeeping comes naturally to me because I’ve been doing it since I was a little girl. Because of my family’s needs and dynamic, I was capable of doing laundry from start to finish, including ironing without any assistance. I could cook simple meals, clean the house and plan a weekly menu/grocery list. When I was nine, my mother’s health had a collapse and although the grandmas came to help out often, I still needed the skills for days when Mom simply did not feel well, but wasn’t emergent. Therefore, I iron like my Mother’s mother, menu plan like my own mother and fold laundry like my Father’s mother. I enjoy housekeeping in general with the exception of dusting. No matter what I do, I always sneeze. Always.

For my home, at this current stage with two children under the age of 4 this is what works for me. Last year, I wasn’t doing things exactly the same, and next year, I may need a change again. But right now, I need to care for my home and family first, train for my next triathlon, sew and write. In order to get the “fun” activities in my life, I am willing to give up sleep. Like I said, this is what works for me

First thing in the morning (often before the sun is even out of bed), Sylvi wakes me up, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Sometimes, I let Matt sleep a little longer, sometimes I don’t and get him moving to work. Either way, I head straight to the kitchen and turn the coffee pot on. I get food for Sylvi and unload the dishwasher and start laundry. I read somewhere that if you spend your first hour of being awake getting your tasks done and don’t check email, you’ll find your day to be much more productive. For me, this is genius since I am a morning person. So… I leave my phone on the charger and the monitor turned off and get my tasks for the day as completed as I can by 9am. That’s the goal. I was done by 847 yesterday, 1015 today.

Every single day I complete 5 tasks:

Make the beds
Unload the dishwasher
Clean the kitchen after meals
10 minute tidy of bedrooms and living room midafternoon and before bed
Daily chore

This is why I am not stressed by my home. I am a very particular housekeeper, so I keep up on the clutter (except for the hideous pile of paperwork to my right) and as long as I do that, general tasks are simple.

Sunday: weekly fruit/veggie prep (washing, cutting, etc.)
Monday: Clean bathroom and diaper laundry
Tuesday: Vacuum and 1 load of laundry
Wednesday: Laundry and declutter and dust
Thursday: Diaper laundry and menu/grocery plan
Friday: Wash sheets and towels
Saturday: any catch up housework

Each task that I assign to the days are quick ones. I don’t do laundry all in one day because I get burnt out. I do a little bit each day and it’s quick enough that way that it takes about half an hour of total active time. The task that takes me the longest honestly is the veggie prep because I’m washing, peeling, cutting and organizing about 10-15 pounds of produce.

I go to bed with toys picked up, laundry put away and the dishwasher running. Every now and then, I skip this step and then have a grumpy start to the next day because I hate waking to a mess. When Liam was a little baby, a friend mentioned to me that I needed to learn to do my chores while he was up so that he saw that I did other things than wait on him hand and foot. Perhaps a kinder way of saying this would be to simply involve your children in the tasks. When I sweep the kitchen, both kids get out their brooms and “help”. They help me match socks and carry laundry to the bedrooms. Liam unloads the silverware from the dishwasher and both children are responsible to take their plates to the counter after meals. And if that doesn’t keep them occupied for a few minutes, I can always pull out the crayons and paper and they create for a little while.

Once I have all my tasks done… I’m free to start on the list. I make a long list of all the things I’d love to accomplish and keep at it for a week. I’ll assign things to myself in the morning and what gets done, yay! The rest goes back on the list for another time. I’m supposed to roast garlic today. We’ll see. I’m not overly enthusiastic about it. Some days, like today, I’m in the mood to do nothing extra… my house is clean, the kids are happy and I think we’ll have leftovers for supper. Every day is different!

So how about you? How do you tackle balancing life and your home?

Work in Progress Wednesday

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Laura

This week, I decided to get a little more practice in with triangle piecing before continuing with the pillows I posted about last time. Those pillow are ready to be put together, but the angles were making me nervous so I spent some time learning half-square-triangles via this wonderful tutorial. Super simple, but it did take some learning to get the hang of trimming and pressing the tiny triangles. I’m gonna need a smaller iron. Since I had made the triangles with left over from the charm packs I used to make Sylvi’s quilt, I am going to turn it into a pillow cover for her bed.

Speaking of pillows, I really should be using envelope covers as an opportunity to try out patterns. Genius. I’m also entertaining the idea of hexagons on the quilt for my bed. I say entertaining because I’m not sure how I would handle quilting a king-sized quilt with hexagons all over it. It’s mind boggling to me the weight that material will wind up being!

I did manage to finish Sylvi’s Easter dress, though! I followed the pattern pretty closely, but in the end, I wound up making the skirt into a bubble… and I love, love, love how it turned out!

I finally worked up the nerve to dig out my first quilting project from a year and a half ago and start piecing the squares again. I like this quilting business. If I choose patterns that can all use the same color thread I can be as ADD as I’d like about the projects. This is how my dining room came to be covered in stacks of fabric and china was displaced from the buffet as a means for storing the fabric, tools and machine.

Which is why yesterday also found me purchasing yet more material for children’s clothing. I have no self-control in a fabric shop. Material for dress linings was a must as were the zippers, but I suppose I could have held off on the jersey for t-shirts. But the superhero tie was a definite must. And really… what better news could there have been in my inbox at 630am other than a notice from an Etsy seller that she had exactly the right amount of fabric I needed and was willing to ship it out today?

What am I working on this Wednesday? A little bit of everything. How about you?

Soup for my soul

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Laura

What is it about these rainy January days that serves to chill you right to the bone? My goodness, everything in my body feels like it’s frozen and it’s dreary out but I can’t drink any more coffee if I want to sleep sometime in the next decade, you know?

Thankfully, Sylvi has inherited my love of soup. Although, she may have been influenced by the alphabet soup in I Stink. Anyone on Facebook knows that my daughter is obsessed with the story… so much so that the entire family and most people who spend time in our presence has the entire thing memorized. This tiny little girl is completely enthralled by garbage trucks and it just makes me laugh.

Anyway, back to the soup. I love potato soup, but I will say that I feel like it’s a lot of work and then I have to stay in the kitchen while the potatoes cook and all the stirring… yeah. Anyway, this is a relatively quick prep meal and can cook slowly all day in a crock pot. The only part that needs to be cooked separately are the onions. If you don’t cook them before adding them to the potatoes, they really, REALLY taste like onions. Otherwise, this is low maintenance and your house will smell so comforting.

I like my soup to be thick enough that it doesn’t immediately drip off the spoon, so I put the least amount of broth in, but you could totally make it thinner. Also, you can adjust the seasonings, the type of broth, even substitute the dairy sour cream for a non-dairy one. This soup can be what you need it to be taste or nutritionally, but it will always be just a simple soup to warm you up on a cold, dreary, Winter’s day.

Crock-pot Potato Soup

1 large onion, chopped
3 pounds potatoes, peeled and chopped
2 quarts, chicken broth (plus an additional quart if you want a thinner soup)
1 Tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
garlic salt and black pepper to taste
2 Tbsp. butter

Chop the onion and saute in a large pan with the butter. Cook the onions slowly so that they retain their inherent sweetness. While they are cooking, peel the potatoes and chop them roughly. Add the potatoes, the broth, the seasonings and the onions to the crock-pot and cook on low for 8 hours. When the potatoes are done cooking, use an immersion blender to puree the soup. Add in the sour cream and any additional broth to make it the consistency you desire. Serve with a sprinkle of cheese and fresh parsley on top.

The days of soup

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Laura

I’m a huge fan of soup. I’m not always very good at making the soup though. I was spending a lot of money on soup from Panera and Pacific foods up until about a month ago when I got tired of a tiny little Sylvi downing my entire $5 cup of soup before I even got back to the table. She and I had discovered the broccoli cheese soup and I was reduced to eating it either in secret or after she went to bed at night. On one such night, I realized I had a laughable problem: why was I behaving like this when I could just learn to make my own soup for a fraction of the cost?

I did a good deal of reading online before I set forth. I wanted a creamy soup and I must tell you that the answer I’d been looking for came in the form of an immersion blender. I had no idea how awesome that tool was when I bought it on a whim 3 years ago. My little red Cuisinart immersion blender had spent a lot of time in the kitchen drawer until I started making soup and realized how valuable it is. You could always make this in a regular blender, but let’s be honest: it’s way more fun with an immersion blender

Creamy Broccoli Cheese Soup

1 Tbsp. butter
1 small onion, diced
half a stick of butter, melted
1/4 cup flour
2 cups 2% milk
2 cups chicken stock (I did try this with vegetable broth and while it was very good… the chicken makes it the most like Panera’s soup.)
2 large carrots, coarsely shredded
1/2 pound finely chopped broccoli
1 cup shredded Monterary Jack cheese
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder

Saute the onion until soft in a soup pot. Whisk together the melted butter and flour in the soup pot. Add the garlic and onion powder, whisk well and then stream in the stock. Add the milk, carrots and broccoli and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes and then reduce to a simmer. When the carrots and broccoli are tender, remove 2 cups worth of the vegetables and take the pot off the heat. Puree the remaining vegetables with an immersion blender and stir in the cheeses. Return the carrots and broccoli to the soup, mix through. Serve with crusty bread and revel in how much money you saved making it at home!

*** Are you looking for more soup recipes? I made this Red Bell Corn Chowder from the fabulous Whitney Ingram last week. It’s from her original blog, Rookie Cookie and I’m so excited to find it her cook book that she’s working on right now! Follow the progress and drool-worthy updates here.

Pantry Comfort

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Laura

One of my favorite comfort foods is Stroganoff. I don’t really care what’s in it, I’m here for the sauce. And the egg noodles. My grandmother makes it sirloin steak strips. My father made his with mushrooms while we were practicing vegetarians. Depending on who I plan to serve it to, I now use ground beef.

This is definitely a budget version of my grandmother’s recipe, but it doesn’t alter the flavor. It freezes very nicely and if you don’t like egg noodles, it’s wonderful over rice as well. By the time I make supper tonight, it’s supposed to be in the single digits, so I’m looking forward to this warm meal with a side of green beans. Yum!

Stroganoff

1-2 teaspoons olive oil or butter
8 ounces sliced mushrooms (optional, I don’t like them so they aren’t ever in my home )
1 ½ pounds lean ground beef/turkey, thinly sliced sirloin steak or Portobello mushrooms
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste
¼ cup flour
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup beef (or vegetable if making the mushroom version of this recipe) broth
1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
1 teaspoon paprika
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley or 1 tablespoon dried
1 pound egg noodles, cooked

Melt the fat in a large saute pan, add in the onions and garlic and cook until tender and fragrant. Remove from the pan and brown the ground beef. When the beef is cooked, remove it as well, but reserve the drippings. Again, in the same saute pan, heat the drippings and stir in the tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, paprika and flour. Whisk in the flour and sour cream until the sauce is thick and bubbly. Taste and season accordingly. Return the onions, garlic and beef to the pan and stir to combine thoroughly. Serve over egg noodles and top with parsley.

**Note: If you want to substitute in the mushrooms or steak, you’ll still need to cook them separately until cooked to your liking. The rest of the ingredients can remain the same, unless noted otherwise.