Sweet and tangy salad...cooking with kids!

Aubrey and I are enjoying a lovely afternoon at home today.  One of our favourite things to do in the afternoon is to check the mailbox.  Today she received her "highlights" magazine; this is a monthly magazine she receives. A dear lady in our church and her now late husband have had this sent to Aubrey since she was one.  It's a very special gift; full of stories, crafts, recipes and activity ideas.  

While reading it together we came across this recipe for a salad:

Since we had all of the ingredients I suggested that we make this for dinner.

I cut up the red pepper and we peeled the cucumber and carrot together.  I sliced the cucumber and shredded the carrot. 

Aubrey helped measure out the dressings ingredients.

We put all these dressing ingredients into a container and I tightened the lid before Aubrey gave it a shake shake shake.

We poured the dressing over the salad, put the lid on the container and then Aubrey gave it a shake as well!  She had a blast helping!

In the fridge it went!  This will be ready by dinner!!!!

Dinner time:

She absolutely loved the salad! This is pretty crazy because she is my "no dressing please" girl.

Got to go; she's requesting seconds!!!!!

Frozen cookie dough!

Last week I made a massive batch of chocolate chip cookie dough.  After baking off two dozen cookies I decided I did not want to wait by the stove anymore so I rolled the remaining dough into logs.

I put the logs in the refrigerator. After two days of still no motivation to bake off the cookies I put the logs in the freezer.  Today was one of those days that my laziness paid off! 

I took a cookie log out of the freezer and an hour later cut the log into 12, quickly rolled and flatten them and within 12 minutes I had a fresh warm delicious cookie.

I honestly wasn't sure how this would work out but I thought if phillisbury could do it why couldn't I?!

Just thought I'd share this great trick to having fresh homemade cookies minutes away!

Asian flavour inspired soup with dumplings

This weeks soup was inspired by these yummy little dumplings I picked up at Costco.  

I'm sure you could find something similar at your local grocer. 

I first sautéed chopped onion, celery and garlic together with olive oil. 

I added in diagonally sliced carrots

I peeled my frozen ginger and once it had thawed slightly I was able to slice it thinly.    I usually keep my ginger in the freezer, this way I always have it on hand!  

Now for the seasoning:  I added a package of onion soup mix, low sodium chicken stock (you could use vegetable stock to keep this vegetarian), 18 cups of water, hoisin sauce, soya sauce, sesame oil and a touch of sambal hot sauce.

All of these flavour ingredients were added to taste and to my specific  preference.  This can seem intimidating but if you taste as you go you can figure out what tastes good to you!

I added in two canned of baby corn, chopped bok choy and Chinese baby greens.  

This pot gave me 8-1litre jars.

This soup could be eaten just like this or you could add a rice noodle or dumpling.  

I decided to put 8 frozen mini dumplings into a bowl and top with soup.  I heated this in the microwave but I think next time this would be better done on the stove top; it would reheat more evenly.

This was really nice; exactly what I wanted.  Sliced chicken would of been nice or even some poached shrimp instead of the chicken dumplings.  Leaving it vegetarian gives you the option of deciding later what to add to it.  You can eat it differently every time!  I'm excited to share this weeks soup. 

Quick pot of soup

Life seems to be getting busier and busier; as a mother of one I can't imagine how you mothers of four keep it together?! In effort to make weekday lunches a little easier; Jeff and I have decided to make a simple pot of soup on Sundays to have on hand for the week

I gathered all the ingredients I wanted to include.

Onions, celery, carrots, white beans, farmers sausage, stock and onion soup mix.  Like I said; simple!

I sautéed the chopped farmers sausage first and then added in all my vegetables. I sautéed them for a few minutes before I added in one pouch of onion soup mix, 3 cups of frozen corn and the box of stock.  

I added 16 cups of water.

I brought this to a boil and then I adjusted the seasoning.

I added salt, pepper, Tabasco and worcheshire sauce.  

Made some cheese toast and this was ready to serve.  Soup always tastes better as it sits.  It was even better today!!!!

I decided I wouldn't attempt to "can" this but I find it keeps so nicely in jars so I portioned it out into 1 litre jars to keep in the fridge.

Some for our lunches this week and some to give away! Perfectly simple!