Summer Fun!

I'm so excited for summer! It's finally starting to feel like the warm season will actually come this year, and the festivities are already starting. I somewhat gauge when summer has officially started based on the number of fun activities available to me. Each year I look forward to things like local festivals, going on hikes, fishing, farmers markets, and the like.

Tomorrow we're headed out to the local children's festival, which sets up loads of activity booths and performances, all geared towards little ones. The play date group will be headed there and I'm really keen to see what all is there. We've been going to a playground for play date over the last few weeks, but I've also made plans to do some more organized activities, including a nature walk and a water-fun day in our backyard, which will include painting long rolls of paper with dyed water using water guns!
For Gabe I'm going to be working on set up a bit of a 'school' routine with him. He's still a few years out from being enrolled, but I know that whatever I teach him, he'll just absorb, and he loves learning, so I figure why not feed him some knowledge now? About once a week I plan to have a "teaching" day with him, which doesn't necessarily mean he'll be sitting down in a desk for the day, but it will be a day focused on helping him learn new things. One of those days will be a travel day, where we talk about maps, what different countries and languages are, and learn how other cultures add to our lives. Then we'll have a number day, a letter day, nature days, etc. We found very early with Gabe that our teaching methods were actually too slow for him (we'd call a zebra a 'horse' and a pterodactyl a 'dinosaur', and it confused him why so many things were called the same thing - and at 18 months he was more than capable of remembering what a pterodactyl was, and saying it!) So we want to make sure we don't hold him back by not offering up enough information for him.

With the family we always have a list of things we love to do over the summer: vacation in the mountains, fishing, hiking, the local fair... I'm going to make an effort to get the boys out of the house more this summer as well. There's no reason that I can't take them to the beach once a week, or at very least a splash park. We'll also be headed to Calgary ever so often to visit the zoo with my sister and maybe the farmers market with my cousin. I think the boys will have fun with that!

We also have a couple of family reunions coming up this August (on the same weekend, actually) that we're thinking up activities for. For the kiddos, I'm thinking glow in the dark bowling (glow sticks in pop bottles!), and nature scavengers hunts, and for the big people, Matt and I are going to try to make a jumbo lawn-jenga! It was a neat idea I saw on Pinterest and have wanted to do for a while.

For myself, I've got a few projects to do - like refinishing some night stands and painting the fence, that I hope to get to sooner than later! And Matt's biggest goals this summer are to hike, fish and BBQ as much as possible! Admirable goals, if you ask me!

What are you doing this summer??

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Muffin, Muffin?

Care to guess what I made last night? ;)

My husband has this thing... he needs muffins. It's as if he can't function during a normal workday without a muffin. We had bagels and pancake batter in the fridge, breakfast cookies in the freezer, and homemade granola bars on the counter, and he was complaining that there wasn't anything to eat for breakfast. *face palm*

And then I have this thing... I don't like making muffins. It's nothing against muffins as a whole, it's moreso about the recipes. When I worked at a cafe we had the best, fluffiest, most gorgeous muffins in the world, and it seems like I have yet to find a muffin recipe that compares (I hate flat muffins with a passion). So while I occassionally suck it up and make muffins for my beloved, far too often I let him buy them so I don't have to go through the disgrace of making sub-par muffins again. Right now, however, we are keeping funds tight. So when he asked if he could buy muffins last night, and I said no, I felt a little cold-hearted. It wasn't fair to him, who seems to have some sort of a dependancy on the stupid things, to have to go through withdrawl simply because I have high standards for muffin recipes. (As another aside, muffin mixes are banned in my house. Just gross.)

Anyway, I shopped for muffin recipes last night through Pinterest and Google, looking for pictures that recalled all of the wonderful mornings I had of making muffins with ginormous peaks on them. And you know what I found? I found a great start!

I saw a picture of Blueberry Muffins that looked peaked and pretty, and even though I didn't have any blueberries, I decided that I could make it work for chocolate chip muffins, too. I tweaked here and there, and was a little sceptical when I saw the batter, but when they came out of the oven... *sigh!* My heart fluttered! They were perfect! Now, chocolate chip muffins are actually some of my least favorite, but these? These were magnificent! Here's the actual recipe I used for a dozen chocolate chip muffins (and sorry there are no pictures, they got stacked over night so they aren't pretty anymore!)

The Best Chocolate Chip Muffins:
2 c. flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c. oil
2 eggs
1/2 c. buttermilk
1 c. sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c. chocolate chips

In a large bowl, mix together wet ingredients and sugar. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, salt and baking powder. Add flour mixture to wet ingredients and stir just until combined. Fold in chocolate chips.
Fill 12 greased or lined muffin cups 2/3 - 3/4 of the way full. Sprinkle with raw/coarse sugar. Bake at 375 for 20 - 25 minutes!

If you're looking for a bit more of a refined muffin, substitute almond extract for the vanilla and add in 1/3 c. sliced almonds!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Less-productive Crafty Day

Yesterday was a day of great productivity in our house.
I did laundry, I cleaned bedrooms, I swept 3 times, I got the kitchen perfect, I did all of my other 'work' obligations for the week... it was a good day.
Today... less so. It's rainy, and cold, and yucky outside, and the grey skies are not very inspiring, so for most of the day I've merely sat in my chair and tried to be as productive as possible while I remain cuddled up with a constant supply of hot beverages.
Lucky for me, while grey skies may not be very inspiring, Pinterest is!

Not only have I found a recipe for supper (Tuna Noodle Casserole), recipes to try on our family vacation in a few weeks (Vietnamese Noodle Bowls and Coconut Milk Ice Cream), not to mention a whole load of crafty things to try.

I've got a bit of a policy right now: I'm not allowed to bring anything into the house unless we a) need it to improve our daily lives, or b) get rid of something else from our household to compensate. For instance - I was looking on Pinterest at all the cute DIY jewelry hangers and thinking I'd like one, but if I do, I'll need to get rid of my jewelry box. I think I'm okay with that. In my jewelry box my necklaces get tangled, I never know where a favorite piece is, and I even forget about pieces that I still love the look of but haven't worn in a while. I haven't decided on what style of jewelery holder I'll make yet, but I'm thinking of maybe three frames with lace in them, hung in a line up my wall.

I've also been feeling a bit pressed for new clothes lately. It started a couple of months ago when I wore a racing tank and a cuff bracelet and looked, well, a bit more sporty than I've dressed in the past few years - more like how I dressed in high school. Well, it turns out Matt misses that style, though he didn't say it in so many words. So while I've been stockpiling dressier clothes to kind of keep up with the standard the girls I hang out with set, it turns out Matt's been wishing I'd dress a bit spunkier sometimes. Instead of going shopping, since, well, we don't have money right now, I raided my closet. A couple of years ago I bought two shirts that were identical except for the color. They had girly bunched sleeves, a cute pattern with birds and flowers and were a nice thing to wear then. Well, two years of washing has made them shrink in all the wrong places, so while they still fit, the sleeves and the neckline are no longer flattering on me. Enter Pinterest and its wealth of ideas. I took in the sleeves a bit so it pulled the whole front down, then I made a v-neck (almost a sweetheart neckline actually...) in the front. In the back, I cut a slit above the bra-strap line, bunch all of the fabric above the cut to the collar and wrapped a spare piece of fabric around it. Here was my inspiration for the back.

A couple more things then I've got to jet to eat that yummy Tuna Noodle Casserole! (Seriously, one of my favorite meals)

Over the weekend we had Matt's sister and her husband over for a meal. I've been not buying groceries so instead of running to the store for anything I pulled 4 individual pizza doughs out of my freezer and looked through my fridge, cupboards and deep freeze for random toppings. I set out a selection ranging from italian sausage and ham sausage, goat cheese, jalapenos, peppers, asparagus, barbeque sauce, balsamic vinegar, and lots more. I am convinced that I put together the world's greatest pizza that night. I used my high end olive oil and modena balsamic vinegar, goat cheese, apples, italian sausage, parsley and asparagus. WOW. Here's a picture of my reassembled pizza after Matt tipped it over after I had layered everything perfectly.

But seriously, I'm making this every time I have pizza, and I'm going to keep italian sausage in the house for just such an occassion! (Which, how did I have italian sausage in my house in the first place?? I found it in the bottom of my freezer and was quite surprised...)

That's all, that's all!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Pancakes and Bread

Have you ever had those days where you were busy from start to finish, and yet, looking back, you feel like you didn't accomplish anything you set out to do? Well then you know exactly how I felt today!

We had our weekly play date in our house today, which meant that the house had to be clean and the kids' rooms ready to receive company in. This morning I had received an email from the guy I'm developing recipes for asking if I could make up a pancake mix recipe, so once our company left I made pancakes for lunch. The recipe worked great, and I nailed it in one try, plus I got lunch out of it, but I hadn't planned on doing that today so it set me back a bit. I whipped up the loaf of soda bread I had intended on making today and just as I threw it in the oven I got a call from a lady asking to check out my wedding dress, which I'm selling. Oh, and she brought her kids over too, so I had to reclean the toys and make sure any smaller ones were picked up since she had a younger little guy. Once that was all done I got to work setting up a blog for my church that I've been asked to start, which took a lot longer than it ought to have (my creativity feels dead this week). By the time I finished that it was getting close to when Matt would be home, so I tried to figure out supper but the kids had other ideas. Poor Gabe has had diarrhea off and on all week and I can't figure out why (I thought chocolate, but he didn't have any today...), and Nathaniel's nap schedule was thrown off by all our company so he was screaming bloody murder and fighting sleep with every ounce of energy he could muster. I finally was ready to give up so I called Matt to ask him to pick something up on his way home... only to find he was a couple of blocks away. SO, once I washed the couch cushions, cleaned up my little boy, washed some poopy clothes and cleaned up myself, I fed the baby (who still is refusing to fall asleep) and threw on some perogies for supper. Win.

While it was a day of reasonable productivity, I still have yet to plan my Sunday School lesson, plants some flowers, make calls for Pampered Chef things that I need to drop off, clean our bedroom and do more laundry.

But hey, at least I made yummy pancakes, right?

Oh, and did I mention that I also whipping up an incredible loaf of Wheat and Honey bread yesterday? Unfortunately, there just wasn't enough gluten to make it rise properly, and I wanted to avoid using white flour or gluten enhancers, so until I get my hands on a Bread Flour, that recipe is on the back burner, but it was so yummy, Matt told me he really liked it 3 times. It will get used eventually, but it might take a couple of months.

well, now I'm off to tackle some of the still-waiting tasks on my To Do list! Tally-ho!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Catching up!

I know, I know, I know... it's been forever since I posted, and I left everyone hanging about that Mac and Cheese I was going to make! I'm a horrible person, I know, but I hope that, in time, you'll forgive me, and we'll be able to move on.

I did get around to making that Mac and Cheese, and it really was epic. I hard to pare down some of the elements of grandeur, but overall, it was a surprisingly elegant meal, considering it was, well, Mac and Cheese.
I used my original Mac and Cheese recipe (you can find in my post "Quarantine") and I stirred in some crab meat that I'd had in the freezer. I reheated the crab in clarified butter first to bring out more of its own distinctive flavor. While I had originally planned on doing a separate cheese sauce of parmesan and goat cheese poured overtop, my parmesan stocks were getting low, so I instead stirred in the goat cheese in place of the sour cream in my recipe. Fantastic results! Actually, I think I might permanently change my recipe to include the goat cheese - the sour cream is a nice touch in a pinch, but the goat cheese is just that much better, you know? Matt was thrilled with the end result and so was I, partly because now I know what to do whenever I have leftover crab in my fridge! (Which happens more often than you might think...)

Besides the Mac and Cheese, I also managed to whip up my first "cake-mix" cake. I experimented in a number of ways (using skim milk powder, fine sugar vs. granulated sugar, etc) and the end result was fine except... I threw in instant coffee to add some flavor to the chocolate cake, and the coffee was so smokey that it made my cake taste burnt. Great. So the cake rose nicely, had a very nice crumb and a deep reddy-brown color, but it tasted like it had smoke in it. Fantastic.

While the cake wasn't perfect, it was a fairly good start, and actually, I had intended on it not being perfect. I'm working on learning the actual effects of ingredients in baking, and so I wanted to see first-hand what certain things would do. While my cake rose nicely, it did sink in the middle. Apparently, that indicates too small of a liquid-to-sugar ratio, so that the sugar couldn't all dissolve. I had tweaked the liquid amounts slightly because I was using skim milk powder instead of milk, but the fine sugar I subbed in was too much for the cake. Actually, fine sugar really shouldn't be used in normal sheet cakes, period. Sugar makes your baking crispy, so the top was too hard instead of light and airy, and the liquid ratio was off so it didn't stay up in the center... just stick with granulated. I was happy with the gluten content, that's the real trick to making mix cakes that you can just throw water, oil and eggs into willy-nilly and still get a good cake. Different fats and different mixing techniques either relax or strengthen glutens, making for either fluffy cakes, or tough and dense cakes. I had to do some special add-ins, but I did pretty well I think.
All in all, it was a fine first attempt, and I'm confident that the second will produce even better results.

I also made eclairs last week! It's been such a long time since I made those! I first made them back in high school and really enjoyed making the pate a choux. There's something so satisfying about stirring eggs in one at a time, and each time you drop one in thinking, "What a goopy mess", but as you stir more you can see it, almost miraculously, transforming into a nice, sticky dough. Funny thing, I made the eclairs because I was low on ingredients in my house and they were an 'easy' plan B. Who doesn't always have flour, eggs, butter and water in the house? True, I needed Matt to pick up whipping cream on the way home so I could fill them (I totally copped out there and didn't make a cream, but they were still yummy!) but the puff itself was simple enough to whip up even though I didn't have a lot of ingredients in the house.

This week I will be developing at least one recipe with the stone ground whole wheat, and I'm still playing in my head with what exactly that recipe will look like. I think a good whole wheat bread will be ideal, but I can't decide if I want to make it a rustic loaf or a sandwich loaf, if I should do exclusively whole wheat flour or throw in a bit of white flour, and whether or not I should make it a plain loaf or an herbed or honeyed loaf. I have yet to see the flour itself, and that may determine alot of those questions for me when I finally do, but until then, I suppose I can just keep tinkering with my regular whole wheat flour here at home and hope for the best - although I just had this beautiful picture in my head of rosemary infusing in a pot of warmed milk with butter melting in it, and now I want to eat that... so I think I'm currently leaning towards an herbed sandwich loaf.

Well, this has been fun catching up, but I really must dash. My crazy-busy life has been the reason that I've been unable to post more frequently, and unfortunately, life still hasn't slowed down that much yet, so back to the grind I guess!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Taco Pie

I've said it before, I'll say it again: When making Mac and Cheese - make sure you have the Mac!!!

Anyone care to guess what I didn't make for supper last night?

But it's all okay - I've got macaroni for dinner tonight and last night we had Taco Pie.
I had tortillas kicking around for some time and I was craving something Taco-ish but I had alot of stuff I wanted to use up in my fridge, so if it sounded Mexican, I threw it in this layered casserole!
I started with a bottom layer of tortilla, topped with a thin layer of hot Taco Sauce. On top went a ground beef mix I had cooked up with red onions and taco seasoning, and then some diced tomatoes and red peppers. On went another tortilla, on which I spread some salsa con queso and threw on some jalapenos. Then I added the rest of the ground beef, followed by some homemade enchilada sauce I'd had in my freezer for a while and some sour cream. One more tortilla and then I topped it with the remaining tomatoes and peppers, some cilantro and a thin layer of grated cheddar. Here are the approximate measurements I used:
2 lbs beef
3 tbsp taco seasoning
1/3 c. diced red onion
1 large tomato
1 red pepper
1 c. enchilada sauce
1 1/2 tbsp hot taco sauce
2 tbsp salsa con queso
1 1/2 tbsp jalapenos
1/4 c. cilantro
1/4 c. sour cream
1/4 c. grated cheddar
3 tortillas

That filled (quite nicely) my 9x9 stone dish and after about 30 minutes in the oven it was hot and bubbly and gorgeous. I totally thought it would last us for a couple of meals, but my husband had different ideas. He was nice enough to leave me a bit for lunch today, but even Gabe ate more than I expected! Don't worry too much about a recipe if you go to make one of these, just throw in whatever you've got kicking around. My only word of caution, be careful about how much moisture is in it - you don't want your pie to be floating in liquids!

As I said, tonight I made sure I had macaroni, so I will definitely be making my uber-awesome Crab + Goat Cheese topped Mac. And again, I'll let you know how it goes!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Culinary Missions

I'm undertaking a number of culinary missions over the next week, and I'm hoping I'm up to the task!

Mission #1: Crazy Mac and Cheese
I really should stop asking my husband what he wants for supper. The answer is always either "Baked Mac and Cheese" or "Pizza". If you remember, a month or two (or three) ago I posted a recipe for some pretty decent Mac and Cheese that I had whipped up. The secret was in the sour cream for some bite and the panko for a really good crust. Well, Matt apparently thought it was pretty great because I've had to make it a few times since just to appease him. Apparently he still had not satisfied his Mac and Cheese cravings because when we were out for dinner last month he ordered a Blue Cheese and Lobster Mac and Cheese. Truth be told, it was a totally basic Mac and Cheese (velveeta-ish), just with chunks of lobster in it and blue cheese on top. I wasn't thrilled, but I was inspired. So tonight when I asked my dearest-darling what he wanted for supper tomorrow ("Taco Pie, Oven Fried Chicken or Mac and Cheese), and he answered the way he always answers, I secretly started scheming to make him the most kick-butt bowl of gourmet Mac he's ever had. I have a bit of crab in my freezer (because who doesn't keep crab in their freezer? It's somewhere buried behind the elk heart, the homemade chorizo and the duck) that I'm going to toss with clarified butter before I mix it in, and then I'm going to put in a layer of a goat cheese-parmesan cream sauce under the panko crusting and top it off with grilled asparagus. This will by no means be a healthy entree, but it will be a good one! Hopefully Matt agrees!

Mission #2: Whole Wheat Baking
I can't remember how much I already said about this, but I'm going to be doing some recipe development for a friend. I'm very excited about this particular mission since it will be my first real-world assignment that I'll get real credit for (I've developed recipes before, but I didn't even get to retain rights to them after I finished them for the cafe I was working at). And no, developing recipes and posting them on my blog (that has a whopping 4 followers) does not count as a real-world application. Anyway, the product I'll be playing Iron Chef with is Stone Ground Whole Wheat, but to be honest, I don't use whole wheat exclusively in, well, anything. Ergo, a week of whole wheat baking is ahead of me! This won't be so much to develop actual recipes - that will wait until I have access to the actual product - but moreso it will be so that I can get used to the flavors and minutiae of whole wheat baking. Hopefully this will make my recipe developing go more smoothly (I've only got 3 shots - max! - per recipe, so I'd better be ready for it!)

Mission #3: Cake Mix
This one may not even be relevant, I'm not sure, but my darling cousin and I had briefly discussed producing cake mixes that would make her cake-making business easier. I was planning to break down some really great recipes into a dry mix that would require the standard egg/oil/water additions and nothing more. Furthermore, I had hoped to do that with cake flavors ranging from Red Velvet to Aztec Chili Chocolate and Chai Spice Cake. I think I had best start with a basic white cake to make sure that I've got all of the measurements and ingredients right (granulated sugar vs. powdered sugar, cake flour vs. all-purpose flour + xanthan gum, etc) and then branch out, but I have a feeling that my poor family is going to be eating a lot of cake!

I'll keep you posted on my triumphs (and any epic failures I may have) so you can learn (or laugh) with me (or at me)!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)