Who Likes Waffles...?

Mister Cookie Monster does!



Apparently our fun, furry friend really likes organic blueberry waffles? Who would have guessed he's on a health kick these days!

Investing In Us, One #10 Can At A Time

Over the past few years, I’ve felt this inner need that I need to follow not only sound advice for preparing for a rainy day or unforeseen events, but really feeling like I need to follow prophetic counsel I’ve heard my entire life. We live in a world of plenty, but we also live in a world of chaos and unprecedented challenging times. Good, sound financial, temporal and spiritual preparation is something that all of us can benefit from…a provident lifestyle. I’m happier when I’m more spiritually grounded and happier when I know Holly and I both take finances, temporal resources and food storage seriously.



Holly and I have been gradually building up our long term food storage. Should the need ever arise; we have something to fall back on to sustain ourselves. Like a financial nest egg, this temporal nest egg has been built up over time. We have been participating in LDS church sponsored cannery assignments where we’ve been able to purchase food storage items that can last 30+ years with the satisfaction of knowing that we have prepared it ourselves, all while preparing food items to be used for global and regional disaster, food banks and Bishop's storehouses for the needy. Whether the need arises and we need to tap into this due to job losses, natural disasters, or having something to share with family or friends who really are having an extreme challenging time. This is something that has been piece of mind for our family.

I recently found some nice additions through Emergency Essentials and The Ready Store to augment our basic food storage of grains, rice, wheat, beans, flour, sugar and oils. We’re starting to add more dried fruits and veggies, along with freeze dried dairy products that can be used to stretch basic food storage items. Sure this may not suit my everyday culinary palette. But in an emergency or long term grocery shortage, this will be well received. All of this stuff has a 30+ shelf life if stored properly; all sealed in #10 cans for easy stacking.

• Freeze Dried Green Bell Pepper Dices
• Chicken Bouillon Granules
• Freeze Dried Banana Slices
• Yellow Popcorn – you need a treat, even in an emergency
• Freeze Dried Chopped Sweet Onions
• Iodized Salt
• Corn Starch
• Baking Powder
• Baking Soda
• Shortening Powder
• Butter Powder

"Our Heavenly Father created this beautiful earth, with all its abundance, for our benefit and use. His purpose is to provide for our needs as we walk in faith and obedience. He has lovingly commanded us to “prepare every needful thing” (see D&C 109:8) so that, should adversity come, we can care for ourselves and our neighbors and support bishops as they care for others."

"We encourage all people world-wide to prepare for adversity in life by having a basic supply of food and water and some money in savings. We ask that you be wise as you store food and water and build your financial savings. Do not go to extremes; it is not prudent, to go into debt to establish your food storage all at once. With careful planning, you can, over time, establish a home storage supply and a financial reserve."

—The LDS Church First Presidency, Feb. 2007.

Fall Comfort Food Is Among Us

I love good risotto as an accompaniment to grilled chicken or steak. This past Sunday night we had a good friend of ours, Jefferson, over for dinner. Holly and I were in the mood for rice of some sort with chicken. I've followed many risotto recipes and I sort of just throw it together now without using a recipe. That's the beauty of base recipes and constant experimentation. I made this risotto with some citrus marinated chicken breasts, steamed fresh green and purple string beans and a tossed green salad. Holly made an excellent new brown sugar chocolate chip cookie recipe for dessert afterward.

Creamy Leek Risotto

1T butter
1 T olive oil
1 & ½ C rice
½ white wine
4 C chicken stock, heated
3 cloves garlic, diced
1 leek, finely sliced
Fresh black pepper
Sea salt
2 T cream or half & half
½ parmesan cheese, grated
½ C frozen petite peas
¼ C roasted pine nuts

Heat the chicken stock to a simmer in the microwave, or in small saucepan on the stove and reserve. Meanwhile in a larger saucepan over medium heat, heat butter and olive oil and sauté sliced leak and garlic until leek starts to tenderize. Add rice and cook until rice starts to brown. Reduce heat to medium low and add wine. Stir occasionally until wine has almost evaporated. Add heated broth ¼ to ½ cup at a time. Insure that the stock is incorporated before adding additional stock. Once all the stock is incorporated check tenderness of rice. You may need to add some hot water to insure rice is tender. Once rice is at desired tenderness, add salt and pepper to taste, cream, freshly grated cheese, petite peas and pine nuts. Serve warm or at room temperature.

The Pumps Are Finally Out!

If I had my way, I'd probably put up all the Halloween decorations or harvest decorations in late August or early September. But Holly is good in providing balance in that "we don't want to over-do it." Keep it simple, but keep it classy. After running errand on Saturday and spending some time at the Italian Festival downtown with friends, we put out some of our halloween decorations.



My favorite pumpkin sconce and matching pumpkin tea light holder, with some dried chinese lantern twigs for one of our vases.



We like pewter and found this large pewter tureen a few years back. Our black and orange murano glass dish we picked up on vacation in Venice Italy makes a nice accent to the large seasonal gourd.



Terra-cotta pumpkins to light up. We picked these up the first year of our marriage. We both love pumpkins, but hate carving them. It's the slimy pumpkin gut texture that totally creeps me out. Not to mention I get hives all over my arms from pumpkin guts. Terra-cotta does the trick, all lit up!



I found a smaller pewter pumpkin this year, so I picked that up. It looks great with the orange pillar candles.



We can't have a Halloween season without our wrought iron witch, with her orange glass cauldron. An iron haunted house with orange windows, and a iron punched pumpkin tea light holder. Our china hutch is all decked out for the season!



Another personal favorite is the ivory colored porcelain pumpkin bowls. We have a set of these pumpkin bowls and set a few of them out each year. It comes with a very large capacity matching tureen, which we don't put out due to space constraints. However, in our next home, we'll have plenty of room to put everything out.

Who is excited for "Pumps" and the arrival of Autumn? I sure am!

Theo Chocolate

We recently went on the Theo Chocolate Tour. Talk about being in heaven! We walked in and were overwhelmed by the lovely smell of chocolate and delighted to see that they samples out near the displays. I'm pretty sure I sampled every single one while we waited for the tour, they had a lot of great dark chocolate as well as a few milk chocolate gems. My favorite was the Hazelnut Crunch, yum-o!

Of course the tour was that much more fun because my mom was with us, and we got to wear blue hair nets!




They started the tour telling us about their organic, fair trade, bean-to-bar practices which I found fascinating. Check out their site for more info here.

Then we went into a super hot room where they were roasting their cocoa beans. Actually they roast them twice for more flavor.



The beans looked really good in the yellow tubs!



After roasting, the beans are ground and the good stuff comes out of this little gizmo.

Unfortunately they weren't producing any chocolate that day, so we didn't get to see it all in action, but it was still very cool to see and hear the detailed explanations of how the process works.



And of course at the end there was more chocolate! I highly recommend going on the tour. It was really informative and fun and would even be fun for kids.

Sick Day Comfort Food

I had some extra roast from dinner last Sunday, as well as some root veggies. I was home sick Tuesday and comfort food sounded good. I decided to make some beef pot pies. I looked at a few recipes. One in Barefoot Contessa, as well as one in Bon Appetit's Quick Easy Fresh cookbook and finally perused the Lion House cookbook. From there I took the best from all three and came up with my own version for dinner.



Dan's Beef Pot Pie

2 C cooked, diced pot roast or steak
1 small onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 C diced potato
1 C diced carrot
½ C diced celery
½ C red wine
2 & ½ C beef stock
¼ C cream or half & half
2T butter
2T flour
Sea salt
Pepper
2 bay leaves
Fresh herbs
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Puff Pastry, defrosted
1 egg

Preheat oven to 415 degrees.

In a large sauce pan sauté diced onion and bay leaves in a splash of olive oil until tender. Add chopped potato, celery, carrot and garlic. Sauté for three minutes. Add wine and stock and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 6 to 10 minutes. Make a slurry by mixing the butter and flour together with a fork. Stir that into the vegetable stock mixture until it thickens. You may need to add more to get to desired consistency. If too thick, thin with more stock. Add salt and pepper to taste, fresh herbs and cayenne. I used some rosemary and oregano from our herb garden, and also used some dried marjoram. Add cream and mix in diced cooked roast.

Spoon pot pie mixture into several small pie tins, about six to eight total. Roll out defrosted puff pastry. Cut out circles in puff pastry large enough to cover pie tins. Gently secure to edge of pie tin by pressing down edge of pastry with your finger. Make a quick egg wash by whisking the egg with a splash of cream. Brush the pastry with the egg wash, sprinkle tops of crusts with sea salt and fresh black pepper. Poke three steam vents into each crust.

Bake 20-25 minutes until crust is golden brown, puffed.

Pluot-Raspberry Crisp

I was in a baking mood Sunday, so I whipped out our copy of the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook, and loosely followed her plum crisp recipe. I did not have plums, but had some leftover golden pluots from our produce delivery bin last week. I also had frozen raspberries that I picked earlier this year. I peeled all the pluots and chopped them up, and mixed in the raspberries, spices, sugar, corn starch and fresh lemon juice. The crumb topping consisted of rolled oats, sugar, flower, more spices and chopped chilled butter. This was a nice finish to our Sunday afternoon dinner. Vanilla bean ice cream accompanied the warm dessert.

The Eve of Rosh Hashanah

I’m finding that I’m becoming increasingly interested in the history behind other religious holidays that fall out of scope of Christianity. With the Jewish Calendar year of 5770 fast approaching this sundown on our Gregorian calendar of 2009, what really is the meaning of Rosh Hashanah? Or, the importance of this Jewish holiday? Rosh Hashanah is a day of rest (Leviticus 23:24): with some variations, the activities prohibited on Shabbat are not prohibited on all major Jewish holidays unless that day also falls on Shabbat, excluding Yom Kippur which the Torah refers to as a "Shabbaton" and is always observed with the strictures of Shabbat. Rosh Hashanah is characterized by the blowing of the shofar, a trumpet made from a ram's horn.

In terms of food, Rosh Hashanah meals usually include apples and honey, to symbolize a sweet new year. Various other foods with a symbolic meaning may be served, depending on local minhag ("custom"). Some of the symbolic foods eaten are dates, black-eyed beans, leek, spinach and gourd, all of which are mentioned in the Talmud. Pomegranates are used in many traditions. The use of apples and honey is a late medieval Ashkenazi addition, though it is now almost universally accepted. Typically, round challah bread is served, to symbolize the cycle of the year. Gefilte fish andLekach are commonly served by Ashkenazic Jews on this holiday. On the second night, new fruits are served to warrant inclusion of the shehecheyanu blessing, the saying of which would otherwise be doubtful (as the second day is part of the "long day" mentioned above).

Since no yeast bread is permitted, I think I’m going to try a few food items this upcoming weekend. I found a Buttermilk Honey Wheat Bread recipe as well as a Honey Chicken Kabob recipe. I think both of these Rosh Hashanah inspired recipes will be a fun time in the kitchen with Holly.

Rosh Hashanah Honey Chicken Kabobs


INGREDIENTS:

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
8 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into 1 inch cubes
2 cloves garlic
5 small onions, cut into 2 inch pieces
2 red bell peppers, cut into 2 inch pieces
Soaked skewers

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a large bowl, whisk together oil, honey, soy sauce, and pepper. Before adding chicken, reserve a small amount of marinade to brush onto kabobs while cooking. Place the chicken, garlic, onions and peppers in the bowl, and marinate in the refrigerator at least 2 hours (the longer the better).
2. Preheat the grill for high heat.
3. Drain marinade from the chicken and vegetables, and discard marinade. Thread chicken and vegetables alternately onto the skewers.
4. Lightly oil the grill grate. Place the skewers on the grill. Cook for 12 to 15 minutes, until chicken juices run clear. Turn and brush with reserved marinade frequently.

My Precious!

As Gollum states in Lord of the Rings, I have finally finished "My Precious!" A few hours here and there over the past 18 months has yielded the Cookie Monster Christmas Tree skirt, to debut this upcoming holiday season. A childhood tradition was having Christmas trees in our bedrooms growing up. Little 3' ones on top of a dresser or night stand. Holly and I both share traditions in our families of growing up with hand beaded Christmas Socks that adorned the fireplace mantles during the holiday season. We both have decided to carry on this tradition. Since we are biding time in our adoption wait time, I decided to make the tree skirt. We have a plethora of holiday themed Cookie Monster tree ornaments. We'll enjoy the tree for a few holiday seasons, then it will make its way into our daughters bedroom.



I did hand beading and sequining around the inner and outer circle cutouts.



In between the four cookie faces, there are silver and red circles, a graphic representation of Christmas tree bobbles or ornaments. Holly designed all the templates for me to use on the computer.



A close up of the bead work. This will definitely sparkle under the tree with lots of white twinkle lights.



Another view of the beading etc.



Top down view of the finished product. So help me if our child doesn't like Cookie Monster. I figure if Cookie is forced on her from day one, she'll have to like him. I even jokingly state that she doesn't get to have a bottle or binky, until she plays with her Cookie Monster for a few minutes. Only kidding of course.

Broken U.S. Health Care & Greedy Pharmaceutical Companies, Just Hit Home!

Check this article out.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20090907/ai_n35617944/

My cousin who is a few years older than me, age 36, has been battling cancer and remission for a while. He’s been on a bone marrow transplant waiting list and finally was able to find a match down in Texas last week. Just as he and Tammie [his wife] thought he was in the clear, he’s developed a rare blood cancer that destroys the healthy red blood cells that the bone marrow transplant sought to rectify. The marrow treatments may have indirectly caused the blood cancer, according to his docs at MD Anderson Cancer Center. The Huntsman Cancer Center in Utah was not able to help or figure this out.

This article was in the Deseret News, SLC’s big newspaper. The thing that struck me the most about this was the rallying of the neighborhood where they live, the immediate and extended families, coworkers to Eric and Tammie, and complete strangers to try and help him get though this emotionally and financially.

The reason I’m sharing, is how much of this financial burden is caused by a broken health care system, and a pharmaceutical system in it for profit? He has a second chance of life with this transplant, but out of pocket costs for the medicines are in excess of $4K for only a 30 day supply of meds. Would these types of things have better coverage under a reformed health care initiative? Who knows?

The scary thing is that Eric is a UT state employee, and supposedly has good state health care coverage, UNTIL they recently changed it last year given Utah’s state budget deficit. Given the severity of his situation, the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are now NOT stepping up. They more than likely will be financially ruined over this.

Hopefully something comes out of pending national health care reform. How many peoples lives need to be destroyed over skyrocketing health care costs and pharmaceutical costs?

This is absolutely ridiculous and makes my blood BOIL!

Pancetta Stuffed Shells

I was in the mood to make stuffed shells the other day for dinner. I had a bunch of fresh spinach and herbs from our weekly produce delivery that I needed to use. I cooked the spinach down with some sweet onions, garlic and spices. Once cooled I mixed it all into the ricotta cheese. Some fresh grated parmesan cheese and fresh grated nutmeg rounded out the filling. Once stuffed, I made a creamy tomato sauce with some cooked pancetta. Tossed on a generous portion of fresh basil and oregano. It made an excellent quick pantry dinner.

Baking For A Good Cause

I really enjoy cooking and packaging it all up. It's one thing in our marriage that we love doing. Cooking/Baking and sharing with people. I typically do the cooking, and Holly will make custom designed labels and packaging for the goods. She has such an amazing talent for art, and a keen sense of design and style.



Friday after work I made a double batch of my sister Shelly's banana bread. I love her recipe the best out of a ton of banana bread recipes. It has sour cream in it, eggs, lemon and vanilla extract, and copious amounts of mashed bananas. It always remains so moist, even days after it's baked if it is stored properly. I wanted to make a bunch of loaves for the Wright family yard sale and bake sale for their pending adoption.



We picked up some ribbon to match the breads, and then Holly used the natural ingredients in the bread to be the inspiration for the brown and yellow color scheme. She tried a few renditions and then finally she felt she got it right.



I took a few shots of the goods, before we finished readying these for delivery. I understand the sale overall went well for the Wrights. Holly and I, both, are very exited for their pending adoption.

Citrus Pear Butter

Last weekend I decided to get up and stew down some pairs into a thick, rich pear butter. I stewed the fruit for nearly an hour, before I even strained and discarded the pulp. My next kitchen purchase is a fine sieve.



After I managed to get rid of all the solids, I mixed in some grated lemon zest and fresh lemon juice to awaken the pear flavor. I also added a few cinnamon sticks while it stewed and thickened, as well as a star anise and some fresh grated nutmeg.



I've had great success with following these base recipes in a cook book I have, and adjusting them to my liking.



Pre water bath, after the jars are prepped. It was soo thick and reduced, my spoon stood upright in the fruit butter.



Post water bath processing. A few more pints of homemade food for our food storage and winter food consumption.

Kiva For Greater Humanity

After hearing a recent radio program about the global non-profit organization, Kiva on NPR, I felt very compelled to look into the details of this agency. The older I’m becoming, the more I realize that I live in a country of plenty. So many people in the world, particularly in developing countries barely make it day by day. The first exposure I had to EXTREME poverty was traveling in Africa in 2007. As a good citizen, not only of this nation, but any good citizen who has resources to help others in need, should check this non-profit out.

The short of it is, that you along with other “donors” across the globe can pool fiscal resources and help a person in need or “entrepreneur” establish a business to help sustain themselves and their family, providing the basic necessities that we often take for granted. The pooled resources are collected and then are used as monetary collateral for local lending institutions to monitor and enforce the payback. You get monthly reports on your “entrepreneur” and their repayment history. Because donors are financing these micro-loans, the monitored lending authorities are supervised in other countries by this non-profit. With this partnership, the individual can be offered an extremely low interest loan, much less than if a bank was just giving them a loan with no collateral. The individual establishes a repayment history, and develops credit, all good tools for helping them to sustain themselves in the future.

You can pool as little as $25 with other donors to support someone. We’ve decided to join the tens of thousands of other donors across the world, doing what we can, and helping to make a difference one life and one small micro-loan at a time. You should check it out at kiva.org.

Sweet & Sour Gingered Plum Sauce

So, Sunday afternoon brought another round of canning in the kitchen. I had a bunch of plums that I wanted to turn into plum sauce for grilled chicken or shrimp, Asian dishes etc. This yielded a six pints for our food storage to again, enjoy during the winter cold months.



I stewed down the purple and yellow plums along with some nectarines. Also stewed are a bunch of shredded onions, smashed garlic, lots and LOTS of fresh ginger, vinegar, cane sugar and a myriad of spices.



After a 45-60 minute stew, I pressed all the stewed veggies and fruit through a strainer. The strainer took longer than a sieve, but Holly and I went to multiple stores and for the life of us CAN NOT FIND A SIEVE! Looks like I need to do an online order for one. The fine meshed strainer worked great, it just took longer.



After the sieved sauce heated up again, I stirred in the few remaining ingredients and prepped my jars and water bath canner for a quick 10 minute water bath. I'm now in the mood to make coconut crusted prawns and serve this spicy plum sauce as the accompaniment. It has a great "kick" with the addition of red pepper flakes I incorporated during the stewing process.