Bay Scallops with Bacon Vinaigrette

The other week we took Penelope on her first boat ride and it was a huge success.  She is such a little fish.  If there is water near, she is happy.  I swear, it is because she was born in water, but her Papa is fish too.  He is on the cusp of Aries/Pisces and he used to do competitive swimming, teach swim lessons.  He has been surfing and fishing, since he was a kid too. 

We got that hat at REI, mostly she rips it off, but I got her to wear for a little bit. And her shirt is another applique sneak peak, tutorial coming soon, promise!

This is what happened on the way in after a morning of boating and scalloping.  Scalloping is probably the most fun I have had in a really long time.  I will have to do another post on scalloping soon.

When we got home, I cooked up our scallops. It was such an interesting feeling to cook something that I also harvested/gathered myself.  When I was out there, I totally felt in tune with hunter/gather humans that have come before me.  It was also super cool to be eating an animal food that was local and in season.  Veggies are easy to eat local, but meat is a whole other ball game.

Before the recipe, just a note. Please excuse these horrible pictures.  My husband took them.  :)

First, cook up a half package of bacon.  I cut up the bacon and then threw it in the pan.  But I guess you could chop it up after, if you wanted.

While they are cooking, lay out your scallops on a towel to get rid of any excess moisture.

When the bacon is cooked, remove it and set aside.  Then I add minced garlic, apple cider vinegar ( I use Braggs, its raw and really good for you), and lemon juice.  Mix it all up and let the garlic cook for a second.  I used med-high heat.  And a cast-iron skillet.

Then add the scallops.  Just for like a minute and half, then take it off the heat and let it cook for another minute or two.  That is the trick to scallops, don't over cook them! 

Then mix your bacon back in and toss.  You can put this over pasta or a salad.

Inhale.

This Moment: Love My Learning Tower

The Learning Tower we got for Valentine's Day is as awesome as I had hoped and dreamed. No more Penelope standing on a chair with the possibility of her cracking her head open at any moment.

She LOVES to stir and help. I put about a cup of dried lentils in a bowl and she stirred them for a good 15 minutes.

And then she thought it would be a good idea to dump my entire bottle of Paprika onto the floor and counter. Oh well, the mess is so worth it. And yes, that is a Cuisinart food processor circa 1983 that I bought at a garage sale for $10 and works like a charm.

I love having her in the kitchen with me and hope it continues for the rest of her life. I hope that she will never have to go through what I went though/still go through in regards to having to teach myself how to cook. I really believe that part of being a good parent is not only feeding our children healthy foods, but teaching our children how to actually prepare and cook healthy foods for themselves one day.

But that's a topic for another day.  Today just want to say GO GET A LEARNING TOWER!!!

Broccoli Quiche

Broccoli Quiche was one of the first things I really learned how to master.  One of the first recipes I could make without having to study a recipe for 20 minutes while I siked  myself up and mentally prepared to get in the kitchen.

Before I became pregnant with Penelope, I was a hot mess in the kitchen, for some reason I couldn't even follow a simple recipe.

Anything I figured out how to cook, was from someone showing me how.  This is also the first recipe where I started playing and getting creative with the ingredients and experimenting with different things.  I have made this with spinach, arugula, mushrooms, leeks, etc and lots of different cheeses.  I often put a pound of bacon in it too. It's a great way to use up whatever veggies and cheese you have on hand.  Or in my case, what's ready in the garden!

It is such a simple, cheap and nutritious meal. We eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  You just dump everything into a bowl, mix it up, then dump it into the pie crusts and bake.

My recipe calls for more eggs than the average quiche, but when I think about eating a serving of quiche I want to make sure that there are at least two eggs in my serving to meet nutritional needs.

I always make two, one to eat right away and one to freeze for later.

Here is my recipe, it is adapted from a recipe in Willam's and Sonoma breakfast cookbook that Peter's mom got me years ago.

1.5 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
6 whole eggs
5 egg yolks
veggies, sauteed in butter first before adding to the mix.
1 cup of shredded cheese
Salt, pepper, mustard, and tarragon spices.

Cook at 375 for an hour.

Sometimes I make the pie crusts from scratch and use Peter's great, grandmother's recipe or I buy organic whole wheat ready made. You can buy sprouted whole wheat flour from this site if you want to make your own from scratch.

Toddler Smoothie Recipe

I started making fruit smoothies for Penelope when she was about 8 months, maybe even a little younger, I can't remember. Note to self for next baby: write shit like that down!!

My love for smoothies has just gotten deeper over time.  They are a powerhouse and workhorse in my arsenal for making sure Penelope gets all her nutritional needs met in a given day. As she gets pickier and pickier, navigating her way through toddlerhood and loving the realization that she can say NO! To EVERYTHING!  She used to eat anything I put in front of her: pickles, salmon, green peppers, whatever. Now, she still eats well, she just eats only certain foods. And it changes every day. One day she is a freak about bananas and peanut butter and the next she acts like its poison and gives me a look of how DARE I offer such a thing to her.

She gets a full mason jar of smoothie per day.   Sometimes a little more, sometimes less. I give it to her throughout the day. As a snack or apart of her meal, depending on her mood. No mater what I put in it she loves it. She has never turned her smoothie down, Thank You Jesus and Knock On Wood.

As for the recipe, it varies from week to week. I play with the combination of fruit to give her variation, or because something was on sale, but I always have a base of strawberries and blueberries, her all time favorite fruit, and then add whatever else I feel like.

I mix a full frozen bag of organic strawberries, a full bag of blueberries, then like half a bag each of two other types of fruit. Then I add a half bag of veggies, like frozen peas and usually a banana or two. One mom I know adds a bottle or two of pureed green veggie baby food. I have another friend who puts whole kale or spinach in hers and another puts spirulina in hers.  You could probably get away with putting a tablespoon or two of a powder veggies supplement.

When I blend it together, I add a tiny bit of fresh juice that I juice myself. Before I had a juicer, I bought the best organic juice I could get. I put in just enough to help with the blending and to give a little sweetness to the smoothie to make sure she eats it. One of  friends puts raw honey to add sweetness.

Then I pour the big batch of smoothie into individual jam sized mason jars. I label the top with the date and put them in the freezer.  As I go through the week I pull them out and defrost it the fridge.


Now comes the really nutritious part of the smoothie!

Once the mason jar has defrosted, I pour half of the smoothie into another clean mason jar. So I have two mason jars half full of the pure fruit smoothie.

Then I add one raw egg yolk, yes I said raw.  When she is older, I will probably start adding two egg yolks.

Then I add fresh, raw yogurt, that I make myself. When I first started making her smoothies, I added coconut milk keifer and then later I used raw cow milk kiefer. And only in the last month, I have been doing yogurt instead of keifer. I think she prefers the taste of yogurt.

Then I add more fresh juice, usually spinach-apple. This juice has very little apple, and mostly spinach.

By the time I add the egg yolk, the yogurt, and spinach juice the mason jar is filled back up again.

Adding the raw egg yolk and the yogurt add lots of protein to balance out the sugar of the fruit, so her blood sugar doesn't spike after drinking it. With the egg yolk and yogurt and spinach, you couldn't ask for a more perfect snack or accompaniment to a meal.  And by not freezing the egg yolk, yogurt and spinach, she is getting tons of raw, fresh ingredients chock full of important enzymes, good bacteria and nutrients.

Now, go make your tot a smoothie!  Oh, and I drink some too!  This is a perfect snack for any mom, especially a trying-to-conceive, pregnant, nursing mom.

Penelope's Birthday Cake

It came out a little lopsided, but as Peter says "it's ok, it just looks homemade!"

And it was, well semi-homemade I guess, to be exact. I used an organic cake mix box and tweaked to make it healthier and tastier.

Again, the credit is due to my friend Tara for the recipe. Thanks Tara!

I made a cream cheese icing, from the Red Velvet cupcakes icing in the cookbook A Thyme to Celebrate.
Then I decorated it with teal blue sprinkles on top and lemon drop candies on the sides.

I made two cakes the night before her birthday, so she had one mini cake on her actual birthday on Thursday, and then she had a piece of the bigger cake at her party. On her birthday, she wasn't a big fan on the icing but really liked the cake. At her party, she wanted nothing to do with either. All her guests gobbled it up and gave me compliments, so who knows why she didn't want it.

Here are the ingredients:

Raw milk
real butter from grassfed cows
real range free eggs 3
Dr. Oetker's organic cake mix
One bag of thawed frozen organic strawberries pureed with 2 tablespoons of Rapadura

I used the recipe on the back, but substituted melted butter for vegetable oil and decreased the milk from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup to balance out the liquid ratio because I added the strawberry puree.

Here is what the mix looks like. When it cooks the batter looks kinda of brown.
I buttered a glass pie pan and poured it in. For Penelope's personal mini cake I used a little ceramic bowl from my friend.

Don't let her face fool you, its a very moist and tasty cake!

Let me know if you try it. :)

Sausage-Sweet Potato Soup

Ok, so its not exactly the consistency of soup but its really freaking good!

 

4 to 5 sweet potatoes
1 cup of lentils ( I got the French Black Lentils from New Leaf in the bulk section)
1 pd sausage (I bought Thompson Farms Hot Sausage from New Leaf)
1 pd collard greens
1 onion
1 tablespoon garlic
2 cups chicken stock


A woman named Tara gave me the recipe for this meal. It sounded so delicious and nutritious when she told me about it, I went out to New Leaf that day to round up the ingredients. It's a great Fall recipe too, with the sweet potatoes and the warmth of the soup to warm you up on a cold day.


It made a ton of food too! I had enough for dinner plus leftovers and then two other containers made it to the freezer each holding enough for dinner and leftovers.


I served with cous-cous, but you could any kind of rice, both Penelope and Peter inhaled it.


First, I boiled the sweet potatoes and lentils. Wait, back up, first I soaked the lentils over night in water, to make them easier to digest. I just found this article that says you can ferment potatoes in keifer or yogurt to make them easier to digest, so next time I will do that.


While the potatoes where boiling I cooked the sausage. Then I added the onions and garlic and cooked them in the sausage fat drippings. Yum!


Then I added the collard greens and let them sit on top of the onions for a few minutes. When they started to get soft, I started folding them nice and easy.


Once the potatoes and lentils were soft I put them in the food processor and pureed them with the chicken stock. Peter and I both like our soups pretty thick, so mine is pretty thick. I think it would take another cup or two of chicken stock to make it more of a soup consistency. On a side note, you can not puree potatoes and lentils in a blender. Maybe if you have a nicer blender than me, I don't know. Mine's a piece of you know what. My food processor is on the top shelf that I can't reach without standing on a chair and I was trying to save 5 seconds by not getting in down,instead I wasted like 10 minutes attempting in the damn blender and then getting the food processor down and transferring it all in. Not to mention dirtied it up for no reason. Ugh, lesson learned.


Then you just mix it all up and enjoy!

 

 

 

Cornais Spinach Pie

The picture does not do this pie justice. It is SO YUMMY! Its so yummy it makes the ridiculous amount of work involved to make the pie worth it.

Part of the reason it is so time consuming is because I used fresh spinach. 5 pounds of fresh spinach. 5 pounds of washing, steaming, draining and choping takes FOREVER.

Next time, I am going to cheat and use organic frozen spinach and see how the taste compares.  I am all about making things from scratch these days, but good God this really did take forever.

Eating this pie brought back so many memories. This is Peter's mother's recipe and she made some for us while she was visiting when Penelope was just born. I ate Spinach Pie for several days after I gave birth. Actually, the first several days all I wanted was steak then after that I ate Spinach Pie.

Spinach is so good for you! Its high in Vitamin K (which is a great to eat more of in late pregnancy and brand new post partum if you are going to skip the Vitamin K baby shot like we did), Vitamin C, Iron (which helps increase your milk supply), and whole bunch of other vitamins and minerals.

This dish is so tasty, my husband, who HATES vegetables, especially green ones, will gobble this up. Penelope gobbles it up too.  It's got bacon and boiled eggs in it for added protein, so it really is a complete meal.

Ok, enough rambling. Here's the recipe.  FYI, I doubled it and made two pies. I cooked one right away and froze the other (just the pie filling in a freezer bag, and it was perfect when I cooked it later).

-5 bags of pre-washed spinach.
-3 boiled eggs.
-1 onion, chopped.
-half a package of bacon.
-2 whole eggs.

Boil the spinach for 10 to 15 minutes and place in a colander after that to cool and drain. When the spinach is cool, use your hands and press all the water out. Then chop and set aside.

In a pan, cook the bacon, when done, saute the onions in the bacon grease. When the onions are done take the pan off the stove and add the spinach, boiled eggs, add about two beaten whole large eggs (save a little bit of that for later) pepper, nutmeg and pour into a frozen pie shell (cover the bottom of the pie shell with some plain bread crumbs, to absorb excess moisture).

Take the second pie shell and cover the first pie, make some little holes with a fork, and if you want use a little bit of the egg you left aside and brush the top of the pie crust with some.

Bake for 30 minutes at 350 or until it's a nice light brown color.

Enjoy! Let me know if you have any questions.

Cornais Family Pizza

I found this recipe in a magazine several months ago and tweaked it a bit to make it our own.   It has become a family favorite and we make it at least once a month.  And now that Penelope is trying meat, she gets to eat a little bit of everything on the pizza, except for the goats cheese.  Remember the pizza I was talking about on my first post about Once a Month Cooking? Well, this is it.

It is so yummy. And healthy. And substantial. It will fill you up and leave you feeling satisfied.  And it is EASY to make!

This is a picture of all the ingredients:
-pizza dough (I buy the pre-made dough at Publix, they have a white and multi-grain and we use the multi-grain. I have also used the sprouted whole wheat pizza dough from New Leaf, but its not as good as the Publix dough),
-a pound of ground beef. I almost always use organic, grass fed beef.
-mushrooms. I started out using only one container, but they cook down so much and I like lots of veggies on my pizza, that I started using two.
- a can of chopped tomatoes, or one big tomato chopped up.
- one onion, chopped.
- a package of goat cheese. Usually I use goat cheese from Sweet Grass Dairy, but this time I just grabbed a random brand from Publix when I went to get the dough.

First you saute the onions, then add the mushrooms, till they are fully cooked and tender. Then you set the onions and mushrooms aside and brown the meat in the same pan. I flavor the meat with a meat spice mix that we bought in Miami at Norman Brothers. Once the meat is browned, you add the vegetables back in and also add the tomatoes. Mix all together. Then put on top of your pizza dough. Lastly, add the goat cheese. I just drop little spoon fulls all over the pizza. Goat cheese does not spread when cooked, so fill in all the spaces of the pizza with cheese now.  I never put enough on, so be generous!  Bake in the oven, at whatever the directions on the pizza dough say. Usually at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.

And enjoy!

Great-Great Oma's Blueberry Pie

 When Peter's mother was visiting a few weeks ago, we made a blueberry pie with the blueberries Penelope and I picked.  The recipe is from Maria Muller, Penelope's  Great-Great Oma ( that's Grandma in German.)  I hope you all  feel very privileged to have this recipe given to you!  I did not grow up cooking with my mother, nor do I have any recipes from either of my grandmothers, so I absolutely treasure this recipe.  It doesn't hurt that it is super delicious as well.

To start, make the pie crust by combining the following: 1 stick unsalted butter, 2 cups self rising flour, 3/4 cup sugar and 1 whole egg.  Mix all the ingredients by hand in a bowl.  When all the ingredients are mixed and form a smooth ball, take out and roll over a piece of freezer paper until is nice and smooth.

 

Press dough into a buttered pie pan and make sure its pressed in evenly.  I only had a glass pie pan, and it you can't use glass for some reason with this recipe, so we did it this non-stick square pan I had.  Put some bread crumbs on top, just a thing layer that covers all  the dough.  The bread crumbs soak up the moisture from the fruit, so the crust is not soggy.  Savea some of the dough to make the pie crust top.

Pause to take a picture of Penelope and her Omi in her pretty new dress that Omi bought her!  Thanks Omi!

For the filling we used about a pound of blueberries.  I would have used more next time, because I love me some blueberries, but you have to be careful not to use too much or the pie crust will be soggy.  Then just sprinkle sugar on top of the blueberries.  Your call how much, we didn't put too much sugar, since these blueberries were picked at the peak of ripeness and were crazy sweet already.   You can also use green apples. If you use green apples, cut up 4 apples, very thin and cover the whole pie crust, about 1 inch in height, sprinkle with sugar, and cinnamon.

We used the remainder of the pie crust and rolled up strips for the top.  If we had used a normal pie pan, we would have had enough to do a grid pattern.  We did a P for Penelope instead!  Bake in the oven at 350, for about 50 minutes.  Then eat some pie right out of the pan like we did. What you shouldn't do is store the pie in the oven, so your counters are clear when people come over to see your house for sale, and then forget its in there and preheat the oven to cook something and ruin the rest of the pie.   Selling my house is SO fun!

Hope you enjoy!  Please send me an email or leave a comment if you make this recipe!