Craving Something Sweet

I was craving some kind of baked good like crazy the other day, sometimes at 4pm nothing but buttery cabs will wake me up. I happened to have all the makings of oatmeal cookies, which aren't usually a favorite but I wasn't about to turn my nose up at either. This is a pretty standard recipe, but I made it "healthy" and "interesting" by using WW flour and dried apricots.

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 2/3 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped

Preheat oven to 350.
Combine flour, baking soda and powder, salt and spices.
Cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla.
Mix in flour mixture until well incorporated, then add oats and apricots.
Drop tablespoon fulls onto parchment lined baking sheet, flatten slightly.
Bake about 10 min. Let cook on the baking sheet for a min before transferring to cool on a wire rack.
Eat several right away, you've earned it!

Bits and Pieces of June

June was a good month. it was an especially good month for making stuff & feeling empowered because of it. Most of the empowerment came from realizing that I can mend my own jeans and now I'm safe from having to buy new ones for a while! This feeling of self-sufficiency led to my first experiments in fermenting vegetables...


I've always been deeply apprehensive about fermenting, but something switched in my brain this month (possibly from being in daily contact with sourdough starter?) and I felt like I totally could do it! I love kimchi but it's pretty expensive to buy and easy cheap to make. The more I read the more I realized there's not much chance of poisoning myself either. Also, it's not an all day process at all and pretty forgiving as far as ingredients. I used a mixture of this recipe and this one and it took an afternoon of mostly waiting while cabbage salted.


This is my second jar, the first is eaten! I'm going to let this one ferment a few weeks in the fridge though.
Now I'm ready to ferment everything: sauerkraut, gingerbeer, and mead are high on my list. I'm also thinking about pickling? We'll see.


I've still been making bread like crazy. I've got the technique to where it doesn't feel like the main event of the day and I don't have to keep looking at the steps in the book. I feel like I can add more variation now and work on getting a really good loaf. I'd say mine "will do", but they still end up with too tough and done a trust on the bottom & not enough rise in the bake, so I want to work on that.


I made a earl grey & apricot cake last week. I over baked it a bit. Oh well it still tasted alright, even better dipped into a beautiful tea mixed by my friend the tea maker.


I'm finally able to pick flowers from my garden and fill every spare jar and the few small vases I have!

A Few Things I'm Into Right Now

Dandy Blend
This is so tasty! I like to have it in the afternoon when I'm craving something creamy but don't want caffeine. I can't really drink coffee anymore (the acidity) and I don't think this is really a replacement taste-wise, but it tastes delicious and scratches the same itch. Plus dandelion is supposed to be good for your liver and digestion and it's a pretty good source of iron and other vitamins and minerals. Those are only nice extras though, not the main reason I drink it.

Rosewater
Specifically this rosewater, which I avoided for a long time because I got it into my head that it only used rose oil & wasn't a hydrosol and therefor not as good. I actually checked it out recently and it does use rose oil, but it also has rose hydrosol and it's way less expensive and easier to find than any other rosewater! It smells nice, I love spraying it on my face after I wash it.

Pinon Incense
The smell of this is like a warm comforting campfire. I got this box at my new favorite store in town Palace.

Favorite Cookbooks

Even though I use Pinterest for finding and saving a lot of recipes these days, I do own a few cookbooks that I still use regularly. I am pretty picky with cookbooks. My favorites are filled with recipes that use minimal ingredients yet are unexpected. Even though there are a ton of cookbooks out there that look sooo beautiful my eyes water, ultimately I know I'll be happy just getting them from the library. There are only a few cookbooks that I use so much it's worth it for me to buy them. As you can see I like to mark pages I want try or have tried and love.
Anyway, I thought I'd share my favorites here.

Pure Simple Cooking by Diana Henry: I've made a ton of recipes from this multiple times. I love this beccause it uses staples, so at most you might have to buy one special ingredient, usually the main one for a meat or fish dish. They are all simple and fast to throw together, and come out looking like something really special!

5 spices, 50 dishes by Ruta Kahate: The whole premise of the book is that all the recipes contain some of the five spices commonly used in Indian dishes and then just a few other simple ingredients. I've learned so much about how to cook and use spices from this book!

Paletas by Fany Gerson: I went though a real ice pop making phase you can learn so much about a whenever I have fruit I don't know what to do with. Paletas are simple to make with any fruit, and easy to customize.

Please To The Table by Anya Von Bremzen: This book is actually the exception to my cookbook buying rule, all the recipes are complicated and most involve buying special several ingredients. However I love this book for the head notes! I've read it cover to cover and it's a fascinating history lesson, I think my favorite way to learn about other countries is though food. Not all the recipes are complicated of course, I made a feta cheese spread from this book that was delicious simple and unlike anything I've had before.

Recipe: Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie

I get into food ruts where I tend to make the same thing for weeks on end, because I just like it so much and because it makes shopping & cooking so easy! My latest food fixation is with shepard's pie, I realized it's so easy to make and so comforting and filling this dark time of year. Plus Aradan loves it. Plus I can make it on Monday night and it lasts for days.
I'm not a vegetarian but I prefer to save my meat eating for going out and special occasions, so I make my veggie.

I think this is the first time I'm writing out a recipe I've made up myself, so I'm sorry if you try it and amounts aren't quite correct, I usually just wing it and cook to my tastes!



Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie

For the topping:
2 pounds potatoes, pealed and diced
2 tablespoons Butter (or olive oil)
½ cup Milk (or milk substitute or choice)
Salt and pepper to taste

For the filling:
Olive oil
1 large yellow onion
4 garlic cloves
1 package seitan or meat substitute of choice, crumbled
4 carrots, diced
1 Package sliced crimini mushrooms (or one box whole ones that you slice)
1 – 1/2 cups frozen peas
1/2 teaspoon thyme
¼ teaspoon rosemary
1 can cream of mushroom soup
Salt and pepper to taste (personally I think a ton of pepper works well here)

Preheat the oven to 350°

Bring pot of water to a boil and cook potatoes until tender. Drain, return to the pot and mash, adding butter and salt & pepper. Add milk a little at a time until potatoes are creamy.

In a deep skillet or dutch oven heat the olive oil. Add the onion and cook until it starts to soften. Then add the garlic, seitan and carrot. Cook for a few minutes, until the carrot is just starting to be tender. Add the peas and mushrooms. When the mushrooms have cooked down slightly add the can of cream of mushroom soup and stir it up so it's well incorporated. Season with herbs and salt & pepper & give it a taste to make sure it's all to your liking.

Pour the filling in a 9×13 baking dish and spread out evenly. Then spoon your mashed potatoes over the filling and spread out so it even covers all the filling, right up to the edges of the pan. Then to rough up the potatoes, use a fork and rake it across the surface of the potatoes in a zig-zag pattern, this will make lots of nice ridges that will brown in the oven.

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the top is nicely browned and the inside is bubbling (you may want to place a cookie sheet under the baking dish to catch any bubbling over). Remove and let cool for a few minutes before serving.

Serves 6-8 people or two people for 3-4 dinners.

Foods and Garden Harvest

In my opinion there is little more satisfying than harvesting food from your own garden. I've learned the last few years what will and won't do well in my patio garden based on amount of sun and my lack of knowledge/patience. Blueberries do good, tomatoes do not, therefor I've given up on tomatoes entirely and have several blueberry bushes, all of which produced well this year! An unexpected bonus to my fruit harvesting was a wild blackberry vine that has taken over some shrubbery by the side of my building. It was insane this year, so many berries! No one else in the building seems interested in them, so I've been picking a bowl full every few days and freezing them.


Pea pods also do well, though sadly the many 90 degree days we've been having in July didn't do them much good.


This is the lunch I've been eating for the past few months. I've found that sticking to a routine of eating the same thing every day makes me feel much more organized and grounded, and it also makes shopping easier and less expensive. I end up spending less money on random cravings since I buy supplies that will last a full week. When I do get a little tired of whatever I'm having for lunch I change to a new salad or something and do that for a few months. In fact usually I make a grain based salad on Sunday that will last all week, so I spend no time preparing lunch during the week. However lately I've really been enjoying a lettuce salad with fresh tomato and cucumber, it's simple and fresh and cooling, but it does take some time prep in the middle of the day.

Rose et la Fraise

June is prime rose and strawberry time here. I've been plucking the occasional rose from the untended bushes around my apartment, it really does lift my mood to have a rose on my desk and this one was so fragrant it practically filled the room.
We celebrated Aradan's birthday a few weeks ago by taking the day off and eating fancy things. To end the day we went to Pix Patisserie where I fell in love with this strawberry confection. Almost too adorable to eat, but eat it I did and it tasted as good as it looked.
Container gardening is challenging (for me at least), but one of the things that I now does well are strawberry plants, so I now have several pots. I've been able to top my morning oatmeal with a few all month.

Simple Homemade Granola

Making my own granola: I'm into it! It's not something I ever thought I'd bother with really, I enjoyed granola but didn't eat that much of it. Still I eat a lot of yogurt and it's nice to have some to stir into your yogurt along with fruit, so one day when I found a delicious sounding recipe on Pinterest I thought I'd give it a try. I was always a little intimidated by the process as well I think, I couldn't quite see how it would all come together. It turns out it's dead simple* and tastes a million times better than store bought. Plus it's not full of added sugar and who knows what else.
I now make granola pretty regularly. This is my go to recipe:

• 3 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup coconut flakes
• 1/2 cup hazelnuts, roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup almonds, roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup chia seeds
• 1 tablespoon flaxseeds (optional)
• 1/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
• 1/3 cup honey
• 3 tablespoons coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup dried cranberries

Heat oven to 350°.
Mix oats, coconut, nuts, chia seeds, flaxseeds and salt together in a bowl. On the stove warm the coconut oil and honey until melted and combined. Stir in the the vanilla. Pour the oil and honey mixture over the oat mixture and mix until everything is evenly coated.
Spread mixture out in an even layer on a lined baking sheet.
Bake for around 15 minutes, then use a spatula to turn and mix the granola and bake for another 5 minutes or so. It should be slightly browned and fragrant but will still be soft.
Remove from the oven and let cool, than add cranberries. This is when it will harden up and break into nice chunks.

That's it! Of course you can add whatever dried fruit, nuts an seeds you'd like to change it up a bit. Sometimes I like to add toasted buckweat after trying this recipe, and that is really good!




* Though the process is simple I have to admit that I both over salted and slightly burned my granola the first three times I made it.