Happy Thanksgiving!

I love Thanksgiving in a major way.

I try to think about and acknowledge everything I'm grateful for each day
but it's so nice to have a holiday dedicated to giving thanks.

I think there's so much power in collective thanksgiving
and I love the thought of us all sending gratitude out into the world on a single day.

I have so much to be thankful for.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday
and that your days are full of warmth and joy.

Love, T.

Sparkling Sunday

I love gingerbread around this time of year.

I love how it smells when it's baking and I love how warming it is to eat.

I especially love it when it sparkles.

Which is why I love this recipe.

I made this with one cup of whole wheat flour and one cup of all-purpose flour.

And only because I didn't have any oranges on hand, I didn't include the orange peel.

It was delicious, but I bet the orange peel would have really knocked it out of the park.

Highly recommended.

Enjoy the rest of your weekends!

Love, T.

Pesto (Yum Yum)

I have literally a million things to post about. Literally a million.

Much of that million involves our awesome trip to Oklahoma. (Remember that? And how it seems like yesterday? And now all of a sudden it's almost mid-August? How does this always happen?)

Before I tell you about part II of our Kansas trip, let me interject with a post about food. One of our many delicious dinners in Oklahoma originated from this lovely lady.

Jill made a delicious pesto, adapted from the Pioneer Woman. She substituted almonds for pine nuts and added a little more of this and that to it as she saw fit. She used wheat pasta and added some chicken. It was delicious.

And would you look at that basil?

And would you look at that face?

Kansas, Part II is next...

Love, T.

Jammin'

When I get home from work, the first thing I do is change into my pajamas.

Casy thinks this is hilarious.

He calls it jammin'.

That's a verb. To (pa)jam(a).

And whenever he gets home, or sees me for the first time after I've changed,

he says uh oh, she's jammin!

But recently, after a particularly large strawberry harvest from a local pick-your-own farm, Casy got home from his baseball game and had another reason to say I was jammin'.

We also have a few jars of strawberry, um...syrup...in our pantry now,

since my second attempt at making jam was my only successful one.

What did I learn? Don't rush cooking your strawberries. The recipe I used said to cook them for 10 minutes, so once I got past that point, I started to worry that I was overcooking them. When I tried the second time, I was a bit more educated and I cooked them for 40-50 minutes before they were ready.

And now I'm ready for raspberry season!

Love, T.

Strawberries in March

Goodness, March is here. And despite the lack of posts, February was filled with wonderful things. I have much to share...recipes, pictures from walks, trips, and the little goings on of our house. It's all a bit overwhelming, so I think I'll just start with yesterday and work backwards until I've caught you up.

Yesterday was inspired by this post from the lovely Maria.

I've been craving strawberries lately, but didn't want to buy them out of season. (They're never the same in winter, are they?) But then they went on sale. And they were a deep red, not that pinky-white color that winter strawberries usually are. And they were perfectly ripe. And if I stood next to them in the produce section of the grocery store, closed my eyes and pictured eating one, I could taste it. I think it was at that moment, day dreaming about eating strawberries...drooling...in public...that I decided to get them.

I have been eating them with Greek yogurt, ground flax seed, and a bit of honey. Pumpkin bread has also been invited to the party, just in time for...well, March. All washed down with a cup of coffee. I can highly recommend the whole thing.

Back tomorrow, I promise.

Love, T.

(Sugarless) Vegan Fudge

This whole no sugar thing has been great in a lot of ways. It has also been not great in a lot of ways. I have craved sugar a lot since I gave it up a few weeks ago, especially after dinner when I usually have a bit of dessert.

Enter CCK with a whole slew of sugarless, healthy dessert recipes. She has other recipes too, which I'm sure are great...but frankly I've been overwhelmed by my new-found dessert options that I haven't paid too much attention to anything else.

The first thing I made was some sugarless, vegan, delicious, almond butter, chocolate fudge. Yes, really.

And you know what? It's pretty good. Find the recipe here.

I doubled the recipe for the peanut butter chocolate fudge, substituting almond butter for peanut and adding a few drops of liquid stevia. I think I'm going to play around with the almond butter/coconut oil ratio a bit and try some of the other flavor options.

Next up? These. This weekend, probably. I'll let you know how they turn out.

Thanks for the blog introduction, C!

Love, T.

Sick Days

Last weekend was all about fighting sickness. Casy is fighting against an upper respiratory infection and I am fighting against getting it. We have both been successful.

We drank fresh ginger lemon honey tea. We gargled with salt water.
We drank orange juice and tons of water.
We ate immuno-booster gummi vitamins.

We broke out the neti pot, hot water bottle, and humidifier.
We put Mentholatum on before bed.

And we ate a simple, homemade chicken soup with brown soda bread for dipping.

There's really nothing like a chicken soup at any time, but especially when you're sick. Even in its simplicity, it gives you everything you need to feel better. It's almost magic that way. And could it be any easier to make?

-:- Simple Chicken Soup -:-

olive oil

1 onion

3 cloves of garlic

3 celery stalks

6 carrots

water

chicken bouillon

some bone-in, skin-on chicken (we used drumsticks since we had them in the freezer)

Chop the onion and garlic and cook in olive oil in your soup pot until translucent. Chop the carrots and celery and add them to your onions for a couple of minutes. Add enough water to fill your pot (leave a few of inches at the top), add the chicken and bouillon, and bring to a boil. Cook until the chicken falls off the bone. Remove the bones and skin from the soup, taking any remaining chicken from the bone and placing it back in the soup.

The bread recipe comes from here, except I used 4 cups of whole wheat flour for mine and prepped my baking sheet with olive oil and wheat bran.

Perfectly paired.

Love, T.

Since December Got Here

We have listened to Christmas carols non-stop.

We've had buckets of egg nog.

We've folded paper stars and made an advent wreath.

We've each come up with twelve things to put in our advent calendar.

We've made homemade marshmallows (more on this later...)

We've watered our Christmas tree every day.

We've eaten chicken paprikash and halusky.

(a delicious meal prepared by my wonderful husband)

We've received a Christmas package (thank you, Grandma Shirley!)

We've joined the YMCA.

We've watched It's a Wonderful Life (with a glass of egg nog)

We've been happy. And we wish you and yours the same.

Love, T.

Lately, from our Kitchen

We have been so busy with life lately, enjoying our favorite season, getting out and about in the crisp air and colorful leaves, and spending a whole lot of time in that lovely kitchen of ours, cooking and baking up a storm.

We have a never-ending sink full of dirty dishes, vegetable peels are constantly on the floor, and our noses are regularly dusted with flour…but oh, the food that comes out of that kitchen.

Bread by Casy...gorgeous and delicious!

We’ve been experimenting with some new ingredients and filling our bellies with flavorful, hearty, good for us meals…and at the end of the day, it’s so worth the mess.

Pumpkin Kamut Pancakes from here.

Our new favorite fall grain happens to be barley and I’m honestly surprised that we haven’t already discovered it. Here’s the recipe that clenched our love of barley for us, adapted from Heaven’s Banquet, a wonderful vegetarian cookbook recommended by a wonderful coworker of mine.

2.5 cups veggie broth

¾ c. pearled barley

Various root veggies for roasting. We used carrots and parsnips because that’s what we had, but you can also roast beets, turnips, and potatoes.

3 cloves of garlic

A shallot or two

Onion powder

Ground sage

Olive oil

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Bring the broth to a boil, add any salt that you'd like, and stir in your barley. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for about 45 minutes. I added a bit more broth than the original recipe called for because we tend to enjoy stews and soups and wanted to have that feel with this dish. If you prefer a less soupy dish, reduce your broth by 1/4-1/2 cup.

Meanwhile, peel and prep your veggies (including your garlic and shallots), coat with olive oil and season as you desire. We used onion powder and ground sage, but do whatever strikes your fancy. Roast in oven for around 35 minutes or until veggies are tender.

Remove from the oven, slice the veggies, and add to the barley and broth once the barley is tender.

Love, T.

NYC

Lyric Diner...

...where we ate breakfast.

 Where we ate dessert. We didn't order tentacles. But we could have.

It probably takes her a long time to lock the door when she leaves her apartment. Especially when she's holding an umbrella.

Love, T.

#17. Make Applesauce...

...with the apples from #16 and can it for winter.

Check.

At 8PM, I decided it would be a good time to start making and canning applesauce. My advice to you would be to start canning things earlier than 8PM.

Earlier in the week, I hid a bunch of apples from my apple-eating-monster-head husband. This man has been eating about four apples a day. On average. Sometimes more. So I knew I had to do something before #17 disappeared forever from my list.

When I told him I was going to make applesauce this weekend, he said, "I don't think we have enough apples for that anymore, babe." But I did cause I'm a girl.





So I washed my jars and lids, stuck the jars in the oven and the lids in simmering water, started boiling my huge pot of water, and made my applesauce. Casy helped me core a little over 6 pounds of apples and we tossed them into a big pot with a tablespoon of lemon juice for every pound of apples. We left the skins on...I read somewhere that they give your sauce good color.

(I should say before I go any further that this is all based on the applesauce recipe from Williams-Sonoma The Art of Preserving. I decided to use less sugar and cinnamon, but the basic recipe came from here. I can also highly recommend the book in general...it's a good one to have on hand for all kinds of preserving recipes and instruction. Ours was a library find, but I have a feeling it'll work itself into our collection eventually.)


I added about 6 tsp. of sugar and about a half cup of water to the mix, stirred it all up, and brought everything to a boil. Then I covered it and let simmer for 20 minutes, stirring every now and again.

When I had nothing left but apple mush, I put everything through a ricer, removing the skins, added some cinnamon, and reheated the applesauce on the stovetop. And then I canned, boiling my filled jars for 20 minutes in their huge pot of boiling water.

I heard them pop throughout the night (because I started at 8PM) and it made me smile.

Love, T.

#16. Go Apple Picking

Last week was pure rain. Seriously. Then we had a weekend full of gorgeous sun and we used it well.

So now I feel like Bubba Blue. Apples are the best. You can slice them, peel them, bake them, grill them, sautee them, roast them. There's pork with apples, apple pie, apple butternut squash soup, sliced apples with cheese, caramel apples, applesauce, apple crisp, apple muffins, apple salad, apple betty, apple strudel, apple-stuffed chicken breast. That's...that's about it.

Picture by J

Here's to eating an apple a day...for the next 5 years!

Love, T.

Slovaks. They love each other.

And I love them too. Because they give us good things to eat. And because I am one of them.

A quarter of me, anyway.

See you next year, Slovak Festival! Zbohom!

Love, T.