Baby Food

So since I have a 7 month old - his food intake has become a constant thought throughout my day. Of course, I always think about food.  I read food blogs, I watch Food TV, I plan out weekly menus so I can shop more efficiently, and really, I just love food.

 I've never been an extremist about any type of food, but I do like to make my own meals as much as possible. The whole convenience food movement that started 60 or so years ago in this country is just starting to wane, I think. Those TV dinners are scary looking and unfortunately so cheap that people begin to think they can't afford real food. (off soap box)

I hate canned fruits and veggies - but frozen works pretty well. I am aghast at the sodium content of the meals you can buy - I do my own version of the cheeseburger pasta meal that my family loves...but one thing I didn't stress over a lot was baby food. With my first, I made a few things on my own - like mashing up a banana or when she was self-feeding I gave her frozen peas - but I loved the convenience of Gerber small packages...that way you knew how much they were eating, AND they were so easy to just throw in a diaper bag with a bib and a spoon.  And don't get me wrong, I still buy those little Gerber packs - they are great.  That said, making your own baby food is EASY, and cheaper.

I'm making strained prunes. You can use this process for any baby food you want to make, peas, carrots, apples, green beans, etc. I just happen to need to get my kid some prunes...if you know what I mean. 

You need a food processor, a food sieve, a small sauce pan, some H2O and prunes.

Here I had about 4oz. of prunes and just enough water to cover them. Bring them to a quick boil and then turn off the heat - allow them to cool to room temp.

They will rehydrate a little and look like this:

Now just throw 'em in your work bowl of the food processor along with all the water. You might even need more water as you begin to process. 

Here they are just whirring away. I didn't pulse them, I turned that sucker on and let them whir for about 15 seconds,

Opened them up and looked like they needed more whirring...

15 seconds later (so a total of 30) I felt they reached a good consistency and I spooned some out to push through the sieve. 

It's hard to hold the sieve, push the prunes through, and get a picture, but here ya go.

It should look like this as it strains out.

You'll have a lot of fiber, skin and occasionally a pit left over.

And this is the glossy puree.

And the amazing fiber/skin left over. You could keep this for yourself, mix it into yogurt or a smoothy, on a day you might need to get things moving. *wink wink.

And then I divide it all up into those little Gerber packs...see they are convenient!

Now for about 77 cents worth of prunes I got 5 packages. At the store this amount of baby food would cost $2.73.  

 That is a huge savings, plus, you know how and when your baby's food was made. Win, win.

Decorated Sugar Cookies

It's that time of year to make the cookies for Santa. And Kirah wanted to make decorated shapes. We have several cookie cutters, but decided for decorating purposes the tree, star, candy cane, stocking, and snowflake would give us the best palate to display our creativity. 

Here our the ingredients for the cookies. I've put the recipe here before. My grandmother's sugar cookie recipe is versatile and delicious. Margarine, sugar, egg, vanilla, vinegar, flour, baking soda and a pinch of salt.
Making cookies is pretty straight forward; creaming butter and sugar together - adding rest of wet ingredients. Mixing dry together and adding to wet without over beating. Then roll out on floured surface, cut, cook and enjoy!

Whisking dry ingredients

Creaming butter and sugar

After adding dry to wet

All rolled out to begin cutting

Cookie cutters laid out

Cutting the cookies

Baking at 425 for 8 mins

Cooling on wire wracks

Ready to frost

The finished product

We decided to use Royal Icing which is made of powdered sugar and egg whites. I used meringue powder as it is easier to work with and seems safer to me to leave out of the fridge. Last time we decorated the cookies were moist and awesome. This year somehow the cookies were dry and the frosting got very hard. I assume our house was a lot dryer this year. But if you held the bit of cookie in your mouth for a moment to dissolve the frosting - they ended up tasting pretty good. But I think the final product was more about the beauty! And the time I got to spend with Kirah and her decorating skills. (some how I completely forgot to take pictures of that process...oh well - there's always next year!)

Pumpkin Bread

So ever since we carved our pumpkins and I mentioned to Kirah that we could eat almost everything a pumpkin gives us, I had to make good on my pronouncement. I successfully managed to make Honey Mustard and Buffalo pumpkin seeds and now we were set to make some pumpkin bread.

I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin pie - I usually have a little pie with my whip cream, but I LOVE pumpkin bread - I like the cake consistency of the bread and the milder taste of the spices in the bread application.

I found this recipe on a blog and completely forgot to favorite the page so I could link it here. Then I remembered when you do a google search, it shows you the pages you've been to before. Hah! Big Brother win! So here's the website; 

Kirah took a picture of the ingredients - but blogger flipped it on its side. I'm going to include it because it makes me laugh.

Teaching Kirah how to grease the pan;

I mixed my own pumpkin spice just like the blogger told me to... even grated my own nutmeg.

Kirah mixing the dry ingredients (the sore between her eyes was a run-in with the playground equipment)

The wet ingredients waiting to be mixed

Pouring dry onto wet;

Kirah mixing gently to incorporate;

Dividing into the pans;

Here is the second loaf cut and ready to enjoy;

I didn't get pictures of  the loaves in the oven or when it was cooling or when we ate it because I was preparing for Thanksgiving too - but it was delish. Try it with some orange cream cheese. Let some cream cheese soften and then zest an orange into it, whip that up and let it chill a bit. SO GOOD!

Roasted Seasoned Potatoes

Our farm share this year has given us plenty of potatoes and we love them any which way, but this is our favorite lately and so easy!

3-4 lbs favorite potatoes, cut up in bite size pieces
3 Tbs. Olive Oil
4 Tbs. Butter
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 tsp Thyme
1/2 tsp Rosemarry
1/2 tsp. Marjoram
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Mix the dry seasoning together in small bowl and cut up potatoes. Pour olive oil in 9x 13" baking dish and add potatoes.

Sprinkle herbs over potatoes,

Stir the potatoes and herbs sprinkling in the minced garlic, 

Add cut up butter,

Tightly cover with foil and roast covered for 20 mins, uncover and roast another 20 mins before serving.

We had pork chops and baked beans too...delish!

Chocolate Zucchini Cake or what to do with that crazy veggie from your garden

We have a farm share this year and we've gotten a plethora of zucchini. I specifically didn't plant any this year because we could barely keep up with it last year - but of course our CSA has given us plenty of them. And since I'm already tired of the sauteed version and am too timid to try the fried version (I don't have a good fry thermometer) I thought we could have a cake or bread using the shredded veggie.
So onto the interweb I went and found a recipe on All Recipes DOT com and found several versions of zucchini bread, muffins and cakes.  This is the recipe I found that matched what I had in my cupboard - so we were off!
The ingredients: This picture was taken by Kirah as she expressed her desire to take on more production in this episode.

For this recipe we needed three cups of shredded zucchini - the zucchini pictured gave us over four cups - but it was the smallest one we had on hand (!)

And here is Kirah beating the eggs - she got this really cute whisk from her Oma and wants to use it every chance she gets.

And now I realize in this picture you can't see the whisk at all - so this next picture is from when we made banana bread (I didn't post that episode yet because I totally forgot to take a picture of the finished product)

She really likes the whisk.

While she beat the eggs we had the mixer stir the dry ingredients together;

I'll let Kirah explain the next step;

Here are the last two ingredients to go into the cake;

Unfortunately the next video is too long to load - but I put the last two ingredients in the mixer and then poured the whole thing into a greased and floured 9X13" cake pan. And then;

Here is what the cake looks like fresh out of the oven;

After letting the cake cool completely, we made my favorite frosting for chocolate cake. 

1 8oz brick cream cheese, room temp

1 8oz tub of cool whip, defrosted

1 cup sugar

Whip the cream cheese to a soft consistancy and add sugar creaming to help the sugar dissolve. Fold in thawed whip cream and spread on cake. Store cake in fridge once frosted.

The lighting in my kitchen is horrible and I haven't quite figured out my camera's light settings - but you get the idea. The cake is moist and chocolaty delicious - Enjoy!