Biscuit Verdict & Yummy Thai (inspired) salad

Okay so yes the biscuits turned out AMA-ZINGGGG(update to yesterday's blog)!  Not sure if it was because the dough was cold or the butter was evenly distributed, but whatever it was they were great.  The biscuits were flaky, buttery, had a crunchy exterior.  If I have the time I will definitely make these the night before for sure.  It made for a very simple lunch as well.

And yes I ate all three of those biscuits!

 

We had a rough day in our house.  Liam was sick so we had all hands on deck to care for him.  Even big sister Aubrey got in on the action.  She's part-parent too so that's not out of character for her.

While the kids were resting I made dinner.  I had my heart set on using the vegetable spring rolls from Costco, with a homemade Asian salad and yummy Thai peanut butter salad dressing/dipping sauce. 

I thinly shaved nappa cabbage, shredded carrots, diced green onion, thinly sliced de-seeded cucumber and sprinkled that with toasted sesame seeds.

I caramelized chunks of sausage and crisped up the springrolls in the toaster oven.

 

For the peanut sauce I used;

peanutbutter

rice vinegar

soya sauce

honey

saracha hot sauce

I shook this up and then thinned it out with water.

 

 

This was a very yummy supper which I ate one handed since this dolly was too sick to sleep in his own bed.

I am so thankful his fever has now broken; hoping he'll be on the mend soon!

Soup and biscuits

Jeff spent the night consoling Liam so I thought I would start our day off with a huge pot of Starbucks coffee and breakfast pitas.

I used leftover sautéed ham, sliced tomato, cheese melted on the lightly toasted pita and then topped that with a perfectly over-easy egg.

Liam enjoyed his deconstructed version! He was quite happy but I guess he did the sleeping while Jeff sat up holding him.

I was thoroughly impressed with myself; this took literally 10 minutes to create!

After Liam's lengthy nap (Praise the Lord!) I met up with Cher and the kids. We had a sweet picnic at a splash pad. It was the perfect way to spend the afternoon.

When I got home with my kids I decided to whip up tomorrow's lunch. It will be Jeff's day off and it's always nice for him

not to cook on his day off. I used farmers sausage, diced onion, celery and carrot (I used grapeseed oil and butter with a generous amount of salt and pepper). After this was nice and sautéed I threw in a handful of spinach. For the stock, I put a ham bone from the freezer in the pot and covered it with water. I added a package of onion soup mix along with a touch of salt and pepper. I put the heat back on high and once it came to a boil I turned it down to simmer.

Once it was simmering I added in two cans of white beans, my kids love beans!

What is soup without biscuits? I decided to run an experiment. I made the biscuit dough tonight and am interested in seeing if the dough bakes evenly after being portioned and refrigerated overnight. If phillsbury can do it why can't I?

I love this trick for incorporating the butter evenly. I used a box grated to shred the cold butter. (I'm pretty sure my foodie friend shared this tip with me!)

My little helper was on his perch!

I wrapped this tightly with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge; we'll see!

Once Liam was in bed Aubrey requested a bowl of soup for bedtime snack. Aubrey then told me that I am the best cooker in the world! Look out Jeff I can make a mean bowl of soup.

Apple Carrot Spiced Muffin

I arrived home from my weekly grocery shop and as I usually do I arrange everything "first in-first out".  I guess its the life of living with a chef! I noticed I had a few older carrots and 6 wrinkly apples.  Apple sauce or muffins? Apple sauce or muffins? Choices!!!!

I thought a hearty, healthier muffin would go perfect in my kids lunches for daycare. 
I found this recipe on Pinterest.  I doubled this recipe and it gave me 32 large muffins.




The only changes that I made to the recipe were, I used coconut brown sugar, I  doubled the spices including the addition of all-spice and I added in Dried Cranberries.  The dried cranberries were very dry and hard so I rehydrated them with a bit of water and they plumped right up.

 

This little man loves helping in the kitchen; he loves to be my taste tester.  He wouldn't stop asking until I gave him a spoonful of the batter to try. 

After 30 minutes at 350F these were baked and they had a nice crunchy muffin-top.  My favourite part of eating muffins!

 

Since I made enough for the "neighbourhood"; I sent Aubrey on a mission to hand some out to our neighbours.  Warm from the oven these were delicious with a cup of chocolate chai herbal tea.

This is our nightly picture to daddy, he requests a photo before bed so he can see the kids.  Along with their bedtime phone call at the request of the kids; they are sure loved by their dad.

As I cleaned up from the day and headed to bed I checked my instagram and noticed all of the urgent "Please pray for Nice" posts appearing.  My heart is broken for the victims, their families and the attackers.  What torment and darkness must the attackers be in?  Words can't express nor can my mind even comprehend all of the pieces of grief.  So as I usually do, I turned on my playlist and my "go to" song came on.  It reminded me what to pray over chaos. 

 

When You speak darkness has to bow

Confusion has its final hour            

When You speak, mountains rise and fall                        

It tears down every wall, around me                        

When You speak, breathe up on the dust                      

You come alive in us

When You speak, You silence every fear

We feel Your Spirit here, around us

Let there be light, let there be light

Until it fills up every space, come and have Your way

Let there be light, let there be light

Just one word and I am changed

Come and have Your way

 

 

 

I am so thankful that we don't need to live in fear, panic or even self-absorbed ignorance. I can be compassionate, pray purposefully but not live paralyzed by fear.  Lord, let there be light.

Cherry Berry Jam

It's that time of year again!  To be completely honest I felt as though I would let this berry season come and go but my wonderful mother-in-law went and picked a basket of strawberries for me and that gave me the push I needed.  After the fact; I am thrilled! Mid-jam making; not so much!

Another neat thing my in-laws purchased for me was this handy strawberry huller that Aubrey is using.  What a nice surprise.

As we washed and hulled the strawberries, pitted the cherries and picked through the blueberries we measured them and added them directly into my ginormous pot!

16 cups of hulled strawberries

8 cups of blueberries

8 cups of pitted cherries

to the fruit I added

7 packages a no sugar needed pectin

1 cup of red wine (this time I used my inlaws black cherry wine)

zest and juice of 2 oranges and 4 limes

1/4 cup of vanilla

I let this come to a boil on high heat; stirring occasionally.

In the past I have cleaned and hulled my berries and then frozen them until I was ready to make the jam.  This works out perfectly fine other than it does take a long time to boil.  The process went rather quickly since I used fresh room temperature fruit.

 

 

Once this boiled I added in 4 cups of sugar and stirred this constantly until it boiled without breaking for 4 minutes.  I did do a taste test at this point to make sure it was the flavor I like; barely sweet and slightly tart. 

I allowed Aubrey to be in a photo with me and then asked her to move back.  At this point of the process sometimes there is hot splatter and you need to be careful with kids.  My shirt was covered by the end of 4 minutes of rapid boiling and that would of been right at the height of Aubrey's face.

 

Once the 4 minutes of boiling was over I removed the pot from the heat and started filling my sterilized jars.  By 9PM I had 28 jars filled and labeled.  This made about 24 cups of  "Cherry Berry Jam with lime and vanilla"; I used whatever jars I had on hand. I used these cute label stickers I purchased from Dollarama in their stationary section; they fit the tops of the jars perfectly.

Bran muffin fix!

I woke up this morning with the game plan to make bran muffins. So my little man and I got to work. Here's the recipe I used.

I decided to make a double recipe to used up the litre of buttermilk and the box of cereal measured out as perfectly nine cups. I used coconut brown sugar as my sugar. Once I was mixing the batter I realized it was super thick. I tried adding about a cup of Greek yogurt but that didn't even seem to make a huge difference. 

After they were baked And I tasted one  I thought, "yikes I have a lot of this batter to use up and these taste aweful". I used a regular bran cereal not raisin bran but I don't think that was the issue; they tasted of flour and gummy.  People that know me know I hate to waste so I began to think "how can I save this!".

When I was at work I had the bright idea to look for another recipe and tweak the one I had. I found a recipe with the exact amounts I had used plus the additional ingredients below. So to the above recipe doubled plus 1 cup of Greek yogurt (you can probably omit this) I added the following:

It took me a few minutes to get the batter smooth but once I did I baked off a test batch.They turned out beautifully; the molasses made all the difference so with two dozen muffins already baked off I have still quite a bit of batter left. And now that they taste good I can share!

I baked these at 350F for 30 minutes

The kids approved!

I am so relieved I didn't waste all those ingredients!

Curry Coconut chicken and waffles!

Happy Canada day yesterday!  We woke up to sunshine and blue sky. Jeff and I quickly decided we wanted to get out with the kids before he had to leave for work at noon. We got dressed and headed to the park. We took in the sights and sounds of Canada in Assiniboine park before the crowds got there. That's more my style; crowds tend to give me a rash!We stopped at a little coffee shop for breakfast, stopped by my aunts place for a quick chat and freshly baked cookies and then headed home. 

Jeff left for work, I put Liam down for a nap, Aubrey went for a quiet time and I sat in my window. 

Breathe.

So thankful! 

I made myself a decaf.

After an hour Liam was still sleeping so Aubrey and I cleaned a few windows, picked some weeds outside and then I decided to get dinner prepped.

We were having our neice and nephew coming for a Canada day sleep over so I decided to make my famous curry coconut chicken.

I chop up chicken thighs and in a bowl added:

Unsweetened coconut

Cornmeal

Cornstarch

Sesame oil

Salt

Pepper

Curry powder

Ground Ginger

I mixed that up and layed it on a lined cookie sheet adding a bit of grape seed oil. This went in the fridge. I get my rice cooker ready and with this the fridge it's literally press a button, put the chicken in the oven, open a bag salad, toss and dinner is ready.

Out of a 425F oven on convection for 35 minutes the chicken looked like this.

Boneless skinless Chicken thighs are very difficult to dry out  so that's why I like them; and they're pretty cheap.

Dinner was a hit!

After a bedtime snack and about 30 minutes before bed the kids asked me what would be on the menu for breakfast. I told them I hadnt really gotten that far. So they asked for waffles. I thought sure! So I looked up an easy recipe I could just prep and leave overnight. 

We said our good nights and I headed upstairs to tackle the waffle batter.

Super simple!

Mix dry

Mix wet

Add wet to dry

Mix

Mix

Mix

Cover with lid

Refrigerate

In the morning I took the lid off and found a risen batter; I was excited to see how'd they turn out.

My trusty side-kick had woken at 6:30am so he was definitly ready for the breakfast shift. Their mom was coming at 9am so I got going on breakfast around 7:30.

Coffee? Yes please!

The recipe wasn't quite clear but once the waffles are the colour you'd like them to be you are to lay them on a lined cookie sheet and put them in the oven. This isn't just to keep warm; they need to finish cooking. Glad I figure that out because once they were fully cooked they were delicious. I originally was just putting them in the toaster oven once they were "cooked" to keep warm but they were getting crowded and loosing their crispy exterior so I put them in my oven at  350F convection. This made a huge difference! These waffles are definitly different than your traditional waffle but the yeast batter does have a nice flavour and texture that stands up to lots of toppings.

Our toppings:

Mixed fruit

Butter

Maple syrup

Strawberry purée

Mounds of whipped cream

Mango

Aubrey tried to make it a "chopped" competition; of course!

It was very special to have the cousins together. I'm very thankful to have family close. Sometimes this becomes so normal to me. I don't want to take it for granted. Another thing I can always be thankful for!

Yes he's eating a bowl of whipped cream with waffle sticks lol!

She insisted I take this photo. It's reminiscent of the end of "chopped" when the winner is announced. 

All in all it was a great couple of days.  After I wrote this I didn't have to wonder any longer why I just woke up from a nap. I love long weekends!