Knight of Carver, Princess of the Apple Orchard

We've been busy as heck.  There was the annual trip to the King Richard's Faire 

Waiting for the jugglers

Human powered rides

Jax being knighted.  Apparently now we'll have to call him "Sir Jackson"

With the King and Queen

On the jousting field, being introduced with the other new knights

On the way out.  Sir Jackson didn't want to be seen with the rest of us, apparently.

and our annual trip apple picking with good friends.  (Then there was some delicious pulled pork and an apple pie, but I didn't make the pulled pork, so no recipe for that, and the apple pie used a store bought crust, so that's too "cheater" to post).

Sassy princess and her good friend Kaley

Got a good one.

Suffering.  The Pats game was on.  Made only mildly more bearable by the fact that they lost.

She's gonna be a rock star someday, that one.

And today was Rosh Hashanah.  We dined at my folks house, but I was responsible for the sides.  And the kids wanted to make challah, so we took that on as well.  So in case you're curious about what sides are easy to make (and yummy) for a crowd of 12, here you go.

First, the outsourced recipes:

Challah
I used this smittenkitchen recipe.  It was perfect.  The only thing that I did differently was make four small loves instead of 2 large ones, and so I used a single (3 strand) braid.  

Braided and round and raisin.  Booya.

Braided and round and plain.  Perfect for any occasion.

So.  Good.

Mustard Potatoes
I used this recipe from epicurious.  Again, the only tweak was that I steamed the potatoes before roasting them because I like my potatoes extra soft.  I also used a little extra olive oil in the mustard mix, but my mustard didn't stick very well, so maybe I shouldn't have.

Steaming.

Coated, but not cooked.

Ready to be served.

Couscous with Sweet Potato and Zucchini
(remember - this recipe generously served 12.  You could easily halve it.  This would also make a good vegetarian main dish)
2 boxes couscous
1 large sweet potato
1 medium zucchini
olive oil
1/3 c. pine nuts
1/2 cup golden raisins, soaked in hot water to soften
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp cinnamon 

Preheat the oven to 425.  

Peel and dice the sweet potato into 1/2 inch thick slices.  Chop into bit sized pieces.  Place on a rimmed baking sheet and coat lightly with olive oil.  Dust with the cayenne and cinnamon.  

Ready to go in the oven

Roast at 425 for about 20 minutes, then turn and roast for about 10 more minutes.  Add the zucchini to the pan and cook for about 10 more minutes.  Remove from the oven.  

Toast the pine nuts.  Heat a small pan over medium heat and add the pine nuts.  Stir frequently.  You cannot walk away from them, because they go from pleasantly nutty and browned to burnt and unedible in 3 seconds.  As soon as they are golden brown, remove from heat and set aside.

Uncooked.

Starting to brown.

Removed from heat.  It's a miracle I didn't burn them.  I always do.

Cook the couscous according to the box directions.  

Mix the couscous, pine nuts, vegetables and raisins (drained).  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Creamed Spinach with Blue Cheese Breadcrumb Topping

This was a hit.  The whole thing went.  I highly recommend it.

5 slices of white bread, toasted
6 oz crumbled blue cheese
36 oz fresh baby spinach
1 large shallot, finely diced
8 tbsp butter, divided
1 c. lowfat sour cream

Crumble the toast in a cuisinart until it is pulverized into large breadcrumbs.*  Sauté the breadcrumbs in 3 tbsp of the butter until lightly toasted.  Remove to a bowl and mix with the blue cheese.

Melt 11/2 tbsp of the butter in the pan and add half the spinach.  Sauté over medium heat until wilted.  Remove to a strainer in the sink.  Repeat the process with the second half of the spinach.

Uncooked, and practically spilling out of the pan.

Wilted and ready for straining.

Melt the remaining butter in the pan, and, over low heat, sauté the shallot until tender, about 8 minutes.

As the shallot is cooking, squeeze as much water as you can out of the spinach.  

When the shallot is done, return the spinach to the pan.  Add the sour cream and cook for a couple of minutes until the spinach is creamy throughout.  Season with salt and pepper.

Transfer the spinach to a greased 8X11 glass dish, and spread out so it's even.  Top with the breadcrumb mixture.

Untopped.

Yum.

**Cook in a 375 oven for about 35 minutes, or until the spinach is bubbling and the breadcrumbs are a golden brown.  

*if you don't have the time and/or wherewithall to make your own, try panko.
**  If you wanted to make this in advance, you could cover and refrigerate and bake in a day or so.  Just add about 10 minutes to the cooking time if it's starting cold.

Alright, folks.  It was a lovely long weekend.  Back to the grind tomorrow.

Strata

I feel silly even listing this as a recipe, because it's so versatile and you can use almost anything in it.  Leftover bacon?  Sure.  Different veggies?  You bet.*  Sourdough bread?  Go for it.  Vegetarian?  Leave out the meat.  Here's the recipe that I created to use leftover italian sausage.  

Best part of this recipe?  If you're using leftovers, it goes together in about 15 minutes the night before, and then bakes in about 45 minutes the next day.  Perfect for a weeknight.

Leftover Strata

about 6 cups cubed bakery bread (I used about 1/2 loaf of challah)
3 cooked italian sausage, cut into small cubes
2 tbsp butter
1/2 red pepper, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 c. fresh baby spinach, chopped
optional: 1/2 c mushrooms, sliced
1 c. shredded cheese (I used cheddar, you could use gruyere, monterey jack, or swiss)
6 eggs, scrambled

Grease an 8X8 glass dish.

In a large bowl, toss together the bread cubes and the majority of the cheese.

Let's be honest - this could be a meal in and of itself

In a medium pan, melt the butter over medium heat and sauté the pepper and onion (and mushroom, if using) for about 10 minutes, or until soft.  In the last minute or so, add the spinach and cook until wilted.  Add the sausage.  

Toss the vegetables and sausage in with the bread cubes and cheese, and transfer to the baking dish. 

Pour the egg mixture over the bread, and top with the remaining cheese.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Ready and set for tomorrow's dinner!

About 45 minutes before you are ready to cook, remove from the fridge and let come to room temp.  (This isn't 100% necessary, but it makes the cooking much more even.  If you can't do this, figure the cooking time will be slightly longer).  When you are ready to cook, heat the oven to 350 and cook for about 30 minutes, until the edges are browned and the egg is set in the center.  

Again, imagine it cooked.  There was some serious melting down in the Murphy household, and I forgot to take a picture.  Instead have a picture of Lea in her new ballet stuff.
It was very handy to have this dinner to throw in the oven when we got home from dance class.

*really, anything.  You could add fresh tomatoes, leftover asparagus, jarred artichoke hearts, peas, broccoli, whatever floats your boat.  This is a good recipe to play around with.

50th Birthday Beans

We had more plans this weekend than we've had in quite a while.  Friday we had the Auf Ruf for my sister and her fiancee.  For the non-Jews amongst us, that's the community blessing in temple that happens sometime before your wedding.  

The children were extremely well behaved and were rewarded by getting ice cream for dinner.  What?  They ate a carrot after services.

Saturday was a ladies paint-your-own-pottery get together as a pre-wedding thing as well.  

G.G. (Great Grandma) carefully polka-dotting an ice cream dish.

Gail, Lea, and Grandma making works of art.  

Saturday night was my brother in law's 50th birthday party.  That was a good time.  It's always nice to have an excuse to throw a bash with way too much food, and this was an especially good reason.  

Happy Birthday, Dan!

The various brothers and sisters-in-law divided up the menu.  I was responsible for ribs, baked beans, and cupcakes.  The cupcakes were courtesy of my friend Aimee, who's started up her own cupcake business.  We had strawberry margarita cupcakes and salted caramel.  They were quite tasty.

I have to admit, I think that my ribs and beans turned out pretty good too.  If you're thinking about making baked beans from scratch, and you have a slow cooker handy, definitely try these.  I started with this recipe, and then tweaked it a little; I wanted it a little less sweet, a little less bourbony, (don't worry.  Mine were still quite heavy on the liquor) and a little meatier.  Mine delivered.

You should know that you need to start these at least a day before you want to eat them.  If you're doing the overnight soak for the dried beans, you need to start two days in advance.  

Slow Cooker Bourbon Baked Beans
1 lb dried navy or cannelini beans
1 medium onion, medium chop
1 clove garlic
2 c water
3/4 c. your favorite BBQ sauce
3/4 c. loosely packed light brown sugar
1/8 c. ketchup
1/8 c. mustard (I used gouldens)
2 tbsp maple syrup
1/2 c. bourbon
1/4 c. apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1-2 tbsp smoked salt (if you can find it).
6 pork ribs, sliced apart (I used baby back)

Soak the beans, either using the quick soak method or by soaking overnight for about 8 hours.

Once the beans have been through an initial soak, drain the water, and refill the pot with fresh water.  Boil the beans while you do the rest of the cooking steps.

Sauté the onion in a couple tablespoons of whatever fat you prefer (butter, oil, or bacon fat).  When the onion is soft and tender, add the garlic and sauté an extra minute or two.  Remove from heat.

In the slow cooker, mix the rest of the ingredients, excluding the ribs.  Then, drain the beans and add them to the liquid mix.  Stir in the onions and finally put the ribs in the mix.  Cover the slow cooker and cook on low heat for 10 hours.  

After 10 hours, the beans will likely still look quite liquidy.  Remove the lid and let cool for an hour or two.  The ribs should be falling off the bones at this point.  Remove the bones from the mix and shred the meat that needs shredding.  Turn the slow cooker back on, and let cook on low heat again for anywhere for 6-10 more hours.  Serve hot.

Imagine there's a picture right here of the finished beans.  I forgot.

If you have leftovers, you could always use them like I did tonight, as part of a leftover pulled pork, baked bean, zucchini pizza.  Totally delicious.  

Back to Work

So summer was awesome.  We swam at the lake, went to Storyland, played on playgrounds, had a family reunion in Maine, went to the Ecotarium,  had a different family reunion in New York, went to the beach, went on a Duck Tour, mini-golfed, ate enough ice cream to sink a ship, swam in several pools, did some art projects, saw friends, and managed to get in a trip to the dentist.  

And now we're back at work and school and adjusting.  

So I haven't been cooking-cooking as much as I would like.  Tomorrow I'm going out with a friend (horray!), but Pete and the kids are having night-before french toast.  I would tell you the recipe for that one, but then I'd have to kill you, and that would be sad.  

But starting again next week there will be some recipes up here, and a lot of them will be stuff that can be prepped the night before (or even a couple of days before) and then stuck in the oven for dinner.  It's a real lifesaver for the school year.

Good luck to you and yours as we gear up for fall.  

Second Best is TOTALLY Good Enough

The kids at the Lowell Spinners.  It's not Fenway, but at least we got to a game this season!

I was reading an article on women who chose to bottle feed instead of breastfeed (a choice which I fully support, by the way) and one of the snarky comments on Facebook was something along the lines of “well, I guess if second best is good enough for your kid...”  For some reason, in spite of all of the other unsupportive comments attached to the article, this one stuck out for me.  Because, you know what?  Second best IS good enough for my kids.  And I’m willing to bet it’s good enough for yours too.

I mean, think about it.  Parenting is like the Olympics.  Only instead of trying to medal in one event, you’re trying to medal in them all.  I want my kids to be smart (scholarship anyone?).  But I also want them to be happy.  Oh, and healthy.  And I want them to be kind, and do their chores without complaining, and get along with each other, and care for children and animals and the environment, and and and and...If they consistently do these things, they’ve won the golds.  All of them.  

But man, is it a lot of work to realize those Olympic dreams.  The cooking, and cajoling, and reminders about please-and-thank-you, and bickering between themselves and with their friends, and and and and...If they get a silver, I’m going to go ahead and be pleased that they medaled.  And I’m going to feel ok about giving myself a silver in the “My Kids Turned Out Just Fine” competition (there’s always room for improvement).  I don’t hear a lot of Olympic announcers saying “Sure, the floor routine was great, but how can she do on slalom canoeing?”  Turning out well rounded kids in the truest sense means placing in more than one event, and that is no easy feat.

The truth is, we all make choices.  Someone’s second best is someone else’s top score.  I believe when we can embrace second best, we can be a lot happier because we can realize how much we’re doing right.  For example, this morning we woke up in a second best house in a second best town.  We could have scrimped and bought a tiny fixer-upper in a town that has a slightly better school system.  But we wanted a big yard for the kids to play in, and we didn’t want them to always be the poorest kids in their class.  TaDa!  Second best it is.  And we could have bought a house with a nicer kitchen and a spare bedroom, but then we’d be farther away from work.  And again - second best!   

We have so many second bests - dogs from the pound instead of the purebreed, clothes from Target instead of Hanna Andersen, frozen peas instead of fresh, Disney Princesses instead of the Paper Bag variety, Graco carseats instead of the Britax, it’s all been an exercise in compromise.  But they have pets they love, they’re not cold or unshod, they play endless imaginary dress-up games, they are harnessed in according to the law and reasonable standards of safety.  

Of course there are times when gold is the only acceptable standard.  Every single time we get in the car, seat belts are buckled.  Every single time they bike off the driveway, helmets are on.  99% of the time, fresh produce is pesticide free.  But those are my first choices, not yours.  I’m not saying parents should never shoot for the gold, but if you don’t sometimes embrace the silver (or, hell, bronze), I’m pretty sure you’ll go batty.  It’s just not realistic or healthy to only accept the best for our kids, because there simply is no objective perfection.  The only thing we have to do every single time without fail is make sure our kids know we love them and we’re doing our very best by them.  We gold in that, our kids will (silver) medal across the board.  And that second best is more than good enough for me.

A Walk in the Woods

We're nearing the end of summer, and we've managed to cross most stuff off our fun summer to do list. Hiking, however, lingered until yesterday.  There's a great state park about 3 miles from us.  If you haven't been to Callahan State Park and you live in the area, you should absolutely go.  That goes double if you have dogs, since the whole place is very dog friendly.  

There's two entrances, and we normally go to one of them (helpful, huh?  I just can't remember which one.  The North one?  The West one?)  I'll look it up.  Okay, I think that we go to the Millwood Street entrance. That side of the park has some wooded areas, some open fields, and a great little muddy pond that dogs love to swim in.  Not our dogs, mind you, as they don't really like other dogs and I'm not about to bring them someplace where they're going to be stressed out and get in a fight.  That would be bad doggy parenting.  Anyway, this time, we decided to try the other side of the park.  It was okay.  Much more wooded, and the paths weren't marked as well.

It was as steep as it looks.  

We didn't intentionally color coordinate the lunch bag and the outfit.  Swear it.

Most importantly, I learned that if you can't really read a trail map and have a poor sense of direction, don't go hiking someplace new with your children.  We had to give up and turn around after about 45 minutes of my saying "I'm pretty sure we're headed in the right direction."  But we didn't get hopelessly lost, and we did see some frogs, a snake, and got to pee behind a huge rock.  Everyone wins.

Then we got well earned ice cream at Gerards, which thankfully reopened.  Again, if you live around here, go.  And go early, because they close at 6 and the BBQ is really good.  

So we were hot and tired and I wanted an easy dinner.  Grill!  Possibly the best thing about the grill is that there are almost no dishes to do after cooking.

Given that, we grill a lot in the summer.  But you can only eat so many hamburgers before you want to change things up.  These are a little healthier, easy to throw together, and look nice on a plate.

Greek Turkey Burgers
(There has got to be a bad history teacher joke here about Greece and Turkey, but I'm not making it)

1 lb ground turkey
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup frozen chopped spinach
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
10 black olives, chopped (optional)
1 egg, lightly beaten

rolls, lettuce, tomato, and whatever else you like on a burger for serving.

Place all of the ingredients for the turkey burgers in a large bowl and mix with a fork.  Try to make sure that everything's well incorporated, without making the turkey too mushy.  It's a fine line.

Form the mix into patties.  I made 6 patties, but if you'd like a slightly more substantial burger, make 5.  Make the patties only about 1/2-3/4 inch thick, because you want them to cook all the way through without being charred on the outside.

Preheat the grill to medium, and make sure your grates are well oiled.  When the grill is hot, place the burgers gently on the grates and let cook for about 6 minutes without disturbing them.

Gently flip the burgers and let cook for another 6 minutes.  Check to make sure that the turkey is cooked all the way through.

Place on rolls and top as you like.  I served with orzo and a salad.  

Healthy and yummy.

A perfect marriage.

Not talking about mine, (although my marriage is quite lovely, thank you).  I'm talking about a perfect marriage.  The marriage of "noodle" and "cake," where the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts.  Crispy on the outside, pleasantly squishy on the inside, tasty throughout.  We were all generally in agreement on this point.

I served this with extra tofu, but it would have been better with a vegetable stir fry.  Next time.

Chinese Noodlecake with Tofu
2 packages of fresh Chinese noodles (wheat, not rice)
about 6 oz shredded carrots
1 small onion, finely diced
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger (or that jarred stuff that's amazing)
1 package smoked tofu, finely diced
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp cornstarch
vegetable oil

In a large (12-14 inch) nonstick pan on medium heat, sauté the carrots and onions with the ginger until they are soft, but not mushy.  Set aside.

Ignore the fact that this is a regular pan.  I was trying to multitask.

Turn up the heat to medium-high, put about 1 tbsp oil in the pan, and cook the tofu, turning infrequently, until it is browned and slightly crisped.  

You have to cut it up really small, or it won't mix with the noodles.

As it is cooking, mix the soy and hoisin sauces together.

Mix the vegetables back in with the tofu, and top with the hoisin-soy mix.  Coat well, and remove from heat.

Mix the cornstarch with about a tablespoon of water, and stir well, making sure there are no clumps.  Add more water, a few drops at a time, until you have a mixture that is slightly thinner than maple syrup.

Cook the noodles according to the package directions, making sure not to overcook, and drain well.

In a large bowl, toss the noodles with the tofu-vegetable mixture, and quickly toss to coat with the cornstarch (I used two forks to do this).

Heat the nonstick skillet over medium-high heat again, and coat with a generous tablespoon of vegetable oil.  Place the noodle mixture into the pan and gently press down to make the noodlecake even.

Cook on medium-high heat for about 7 minutes, or until you can easily slide a spatula under the noodlecake and lift it up gently.  

The trick is in flipping the cake over - place a regular dinner plate on top of the pan and flip.  It should be inverted onto the plate.  Put another tablespoon of oil in the pan, swirl around, and then gently slide the noodlecake back into the pan, uncooked side down.  Cook for about 7 minutes.

In an ideal world, one in which I have a gas stove, this wouldn't be so unevenly browned.  Alas, electric it is.

Invert back onto the plate, cut into wedges, and serve.  

Here we are, with extra tofu and more cucumbers for color.  Strongly recommend a quick veggie stir fry instead.  

In case you were wondering, which you probably weren't, which is cool I guess, if we're going to roll that way, the Ecotarium was awesome.  Tomorrow I'll share with you the fantastic not-raw-egg take on pasta carbonara that we had for dinner afterwards.  Bacon and carbs, what could be better?