Don't Pee on the Bee

Another Weird Yogurt Post

So hopefully none of you are thinking that I have some weird eating disorder!  But here I am with another possibly unusual take on yogurt as dessert.  The good news is that I did not dream this one up on my own but read it in the September issue of Real Simple.  I love this magazine!  It's one of those where you can sit when you are completely dazed and just gaze at the pictures and still feel that you are an upright human being!

Healthy Snacks for Every Attack was a very helpful article, but I will say it is much easier to read in the magazine itself than online!  There were some interesting ideas on what to eat for a snack--some things I probably won't eat, but others I might try if I think about it!  But the one that really grabbed my attention was under the "for your desk" option.  For me, it should read "for the couch, when everyone is asleep, and there is a good TV show on that you just really want to sit and enjoy" option.  And that would be 1/2 cup low-fat vanilla yogurt, 2 Tablespoons canned pumpkin and a pinch of pumpkin pie spice.  And I've actually got all those things in my cupboard!  We love pumpkin pie--although most of the time I just cook it as a custard and skip the super fattening pie crust!  We call it pumpkin pudding.  But this will do just fine during a warm summer when the idea of turning on the oven to bake a dessert is really one of the last things I want to do!  Sure sounds better than 2 carrots cut into sticks with 1 Tablespoon of peanut butter!

More Pies, Oh Yeah!

Well, if you haven't been reading me for the past week or so, then you have totally missed out on the fabulous pie posts!  ;-)  Well, OK, they probably haven't been fabulous, but they have been repetitive!  But I did make good on a promise!  I actually made a pie!  Well, nine pies, to be exact--and with help from my kids!  Let me show you the proof!

 
Beautiful, aren't they?  And I promise they are the pies that the kids and I made, and not Oprah's pies!  But if you check out the picture with the Strawberry Hand Pies recipe, you might be surprised!  We actually did pretty well if I do say so myself!  And I will also say that these pies were amazingly delicious!

But I do have a few tips.  First of all, it says that the dough will be sticky.  Well, if your butter is so soft that it is practically oozing out of the package, I'm going to hazard a guess that that is too soft!  That's how my butter was, and this dough was almost like goo!  I still wrapped it in plastic, although I had to use a ziploc bag since I was out of Saran Wrap, but I don't think it mattered too much.

Rolling it out, the dough got kind of sticky after it warmed up, so I am going to try less-soft, softened butter next time.  And yes, there definitely will be a  next time!

Trying to find a cup or bowl that was 4 1/2 inches was a little challenging, but JJ got his tape measure, and we measured all kinds of round objects!  (Made me feel less guilty about not doing the math homework packet that his teacher sent home from school at the end of the year!)  But as you can tell, we finally found something that worked just fine!

 

The filling was just strawberry jam and some sliced strawberries . . .

 

 . . . then a little egg wash, seal 'em up, shake a little sugar (we just used regular), and pop them in the oven! 

 

We couldn't resist checking on them once . . .

 

 . . . and JJ came running in from the backyard and announced, "I can smell those pies cooking all the way outside!" 

So you've seen the final result, and now I'll let you in a little secret.  I wasn't sure how many pies the dough would make, so after eight (which was the supposed target number, I realized later!), we rolled the dough back up, rolled out one more and then gave up on the sticky dough.  Total: 9.  Well, that night, after everyone ate one for dessert (that would be four!), and we talked about how good they were and how there were enough for dessert for tomorrow night (that would be eight!), Mama went ahead and helped herself to #9 later that evening on the couch with my feet up on the coffee table.  Delightful! 

O, Pie!

OK, so I am really embarrassing myself here, but once more, a post about food . . .

I had a hard time falling asleep last night, so I broke out my new issue of O magazine and started reading.  Liked the articles about intuition and want to read many of the recommended books, but it was this article, Easy As Pie, that really inspired me!  I used to love to bake when I was a little girl, thanks to my grandmother buying my a Betty Crocker kids' cook book at a young age.  It was my favorite, and I loved to break it out on the weekends and make things from it.  But as I got older, my love for cooking was less about baking and more about food in general!  And I don't know if I have ever made a pie besides pumpkin or sweet potato!  But this article really makes you believe that you can make a pie!  And there are recipes for little Hand Pies as well as regular pies.  And I promise you that I will be making one of these pies here soon and will report back!  Let me know if you try one before I do!

Food Trippin', Part 2

Still finding great delight in the recipes that I am reading!  I am hoping that one of these days my "deep thinking" brain will return, and I will be able to focus more on things other than what goes into my mouth!  But for now, I will let my reptilian brain take over and just drool at some of these things!

The August/September 2011 issue of Shop Smart has 3 delicious-sounding recipes for fries, and after eating some amazing sweet potato fries in Santa Cruz a few weeks ago, I haven't been able to stop thinking about them!  I only have a minute to blog today and haven't been able to find the link, but if you think that Oven-Roasted Potatoes with Rosemary, Oven-Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Cinnamon, or garlicky Parsnips with Parsley sound good, you might want to try and find the recipes!  Personally, I am dying to try the parsnip recipe.  I posted a recipe for roasted parsnips sometime ago, and I will tell you that they were so delicious, I couldn't believe it!  And I don't think that I had ever eaten a parsnip prior to that!   Wonder what my reptilian brain would do with some of those right now!

Food Trippin'

That seems to be where I am finding my solace these days, and I have to say that these Vegged-Up Oatmeal Cookies from the August 2011 issue of Everyday with Rachael Ray sound amazing!  Definitely not low cal, but they do sound delicious! 

I'm not a huge fan of hiding "good food" in something just to get my kids to eat it, and I don't even think that I would try that with these.  I mean, come on, aren't our kids going to see green zuke and know or at least ask what it is???

But with all the zucchini that are coming out of my garden, I have got to make these at least once!  Not too sure that I will share, though!  Mama needs some good stuff of her own these days!

The Colors of the Garden

So, all was not lost during The Time of the Cast.  Although certain things were definitely more difficult to do (like blogging!), the one thing that the kids and I did a bit more of was some cooking projects and, of course, the garden.  We had our first harvest of blueberries which was super exciting this year!

 

JJ loves picking these enormous radishes for his dad.

 

We also harvested lots of arugula and a little bit of basil.  (The basil is having some issues this year with a particular pest . . . named JJ . . .who loves to pick the leaves and munch on them while hanging out in the garden!)  Sarah and I made the delicious arugula pesto that I mentioned in the post Good Food Stuff.  The recipe isn't listed separately, so click here to get to the page with the recipe.  We didn't have pistachios but had a great bag of walnuts from the Farmers Market, so I used those instead.  It was delish!  And look how beautiful it looks . . .

 

Ooops!  Like I said, it was so good!  The Handsome Carpenter and I just ate it on crackers before we put it on chicken, pasta and grilled veggies for dinner that night.

And if you are wondering about the chickens . . . or the dog . . .

 

He still keeps his eye on those chickens!  I have taken to putting him in the garage before opening or closing the chicken yard gate!  PTSD lives on!

Toward A June Sunset We Go

It's so nice to feel caught up on all my magazines!  I love it when I can blog about an issue that is still on the newsstands!!!

The June 2011 issue of Sunset magazine has some fun stuff going on in it!  First of all is the description of a new book called Walkabout Northern California: Hiking Inn to Inn.  The book takes the European practice of "trekking to food and rest without having to lug your load" and infuses it with a Northern California environment.  There are treks in Mendocino and in the Sierras.  Maybe it appeals to my memories of traipsing through Europe with a big ol' backpack on my back, but I think that hiking and then having someone prepare my dinner and let me sleep in a nice comfy bed sounds like a cool way to spend a few days!   Maybe when the kids get older . . .

And speaking of kids, I wish that I had taken this magazine with me when we were in Santa Cruz.  There is a new ice cream place called The Penny Ice Creamery where they make their own ice cream on site  And the flavors?  How does strawberry pink peppercorn or cherry balsamic sound?  To me, the cherry balsamic sounds amazing!  And if the kids don't like it, we can always get them their favorites--strawberry and rainbow sherbet--somewhere else!

And for another unusual taste?  How about Crispy grilled kale with creamy sesame dressing?  Kale on the barbeque.  Can you believe it?  We will definitely be scouting out the dinosaur kale at the farmer's market!  And sesame seeds and tahini always rock my world, so I think this sounds amazing!  And there is also a recipe for grilled romaine with guacamole dressing?  Doesn't that sound interesting too?

And for those of you who, like me, loved reading Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, you should check out Sunset's blog, One Block Diet.  They took "locavore" to a totally different level!  And, of course, they are Sunset, so they have access to an amazing garden space and a number of experts, but still, this blog and the teams of people who are working on this are pretty amazing and very down-to-earth!  I love it.  And with the additions of our chickens, we just took it to another level too!  Yahoo!