sustainable living!!!

Sustainable living has been the chant around here the last few weeks. Today as I spread my mulch/ compost over my rows of crops I said a prayer and felt pride in all that God has provided for us through this little garden. The first  little steps to independence from debt, independence on markets, teaching the next generation to be able to feed themselves.

  

Almost there

I'm now 36 weeks along and in a little more than one week the twins will be healthy enough to be born. I get contractions about every day but they aren't too intense.
After over thinking everything ( do I need 2 baby swings, which double baby stroller is the best, do I really need a breast feeding pillow this big?) I have finally calmed down a little. I have been working on quilts for the twins that will hopefully be done in time.
The midwife vs. Doctor argument took me a long time to get over but after a trip to the hospital where I will be delivering I relaxed some on that too. The staff as pleasant and the doctor was very kind and accommodating to the way I wanted to do things. There a lot of midwives in the area that will deliver me at home but the distance I am away from a hospital makes uncomfortable with that option.
Now I all I have to do is get past the 25th and I will have made it, praying and waiting.

Back to Where I Began

I feel like I have made a full circle since I have posted last. Though there has been so much that has taken place in the past 3 years....... the birth of our first son, the crazy birth of our second son, the rise and fall of our first business, and now pregnant with twins, we seem to be back to where I was 3 years ago.

I am really updating my blog to keep an account of the twins pregnancy and birth. I am frustrated at the lack of information on the web on the birthing process of twins. Both of my pregnancies were natural with a midwife in a birth center, which was a great experance, but now with the twins I am labeled a high risk pregnancy and have to birth in a hospital. I am working with the system to get the birth I want and still have a save birth for my babies.

Changes

Baking and Creating has been put on hold for now. It is beginning to feel like Fall, my favorite season, and once the apples are ripe in my families orchard I'll start posting apple recipes.

Only 4 weeks to go before the baby ETA as if that wasn't exciting enough the hubby and I are starting a new business. Things are a little crazy but it is all coming together. We have been living in the mountains near Idyllwild for about a month and a half now and are enjoying our time here. Some time in the future we will be moving into our home down at the beach but for the time being I'm a mountain girl, picking apples, chasing chickens, and counting down the days.

Luscious Lemon Layer Cake

AHH!! I've been trying to load pictures onto a PC for the last 2 hours and now I give up. I made a great lemon cake and fried chicken from my mom's 1950's Better Homes Cook Book. The illustrations throughout the book are great, all of this great family unit, a house wife, a little boy and girl, the father and a dog. There is the really great section in it on menu's for meals instead of just individual dishes. Well here is the recipe, remember words like saturated fat and heart attack hadn't yet appeared in the America vocabulary when this recipe was written.

Luscious Lemon Layer Cake 350* for 30 min

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp lemon extract (i used 2 tbs lemon juice)
2 eggs
2 cups cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 salt
1 cup butter milk

cream together shortening and sugar.
add eggs 1 at a time
add vanilla and lemon
mix dry ingredients together then slowly mix in with shorting mixture
Cut out wax paper and fit at bottom of pan then place batter in pan.

Lemon Filling (this is what makes this recipe)
Mix
1/2 cup sugar
2 TBS. Cornstarch
1/2 cup cold water
together . Add
2 tsp. grated lemon peel
and cook on low heat till thick and clear. Add
1 beat egg yolk
3 TBS lemon juice
1 TBS butter
Mix for 2 minutes then cool.

I then used a butter frosting over the whole thing and cooked it in 2 square 6 x 6 pans. I looked cute and tasted soo rich.

I'm Home

After driving 2032 miles I am happy to say we have arrived. It took us 4 days and 3 nights to make it but we have now landed in Redondo Beach. I will be resuming my regular post as soon as I find a new card reader or USB cable, mine got left somewhere between Denver and Utah.

Summer Tart

With only 3 days left until the move I have given away almost all of my kitchen stuff but for some reason I couldn't part with my tart pan. I made this Apricot Blueberry Cream Tart as the last thing I bake before we move.

Tarragon Chicken Salad and Pita bread

Cool meal for a warm summer night. I used the recipe from Pink of Perfection blog for Tarragon chicken salad and it turn out great. I use half the sour cream and mayo she called for, and twice the grapes just because and I used this Pita bread recipe and it turned out great.

Oatmeal Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

My friend made these cookies for a picnic we had a few weeks past and I have been wanting to try them ever since. Its a recipe from the smittenkitchen.com, which is a great website if you ever want to look at pretty pictures of food. Since my husband and I are going on vacations for the 4th I thought it would be nice to bring out host a little something.

I'm working on "Y" for this weeks recipe of cooking through the alphabet and hope to have it to you soon but the vacation may slow me up a little, please forgive me.

Chocolate cupcake Meringue frosting

By far the best frosting ever!!! If you have a good chocolate cake recipe use it and send it to me because I lost the one I used for these cupcakes and I'm kicking myself because they were a bite of heaven. I do still have the frosting recipe though.

Topping Ingredients

• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup
• 1/2 cup superfine sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• sprinkles to decorate

1. This is a frosting that has a kind of meringue base, by which you whisk egg whites over heat until they're stiff and gleaming. So make a double-boiler with a heatproof bowl that will fit snugly over a saucepan of barely simmering water, and put all of the ingredients for the frosting, except for the vanilla and sprinkles, into the bowl. Whisk everything with an electric beater until the icing becomes thick and holds peaks like a meringue. This will take about 5 minutes, so be patient.
2. Take the bowl off the saucepan and onto a cool surface and keep whisking while you add the vanilla. Then keep whisking until the mixture cools a little. You want a proper peaked and whipped covering here, so spoon some frosting over each bun and then dollop another spoonful over in a swirly fashion. Immediately shake over your choice of sprinkles, as the icing will set very quickly. Indeed, these look rather like stage prop buns or the fake ones that some bakeries used to keep in their windows, so plasticky and gleaming are they.

Summer things I miss

Now that its really summer here I find myself I missing a few thing eating soft cheese with grapes and apples, sushi, sipping down tropical drinks with a little rum, but mostly sleeping on my stomach. On the bright side all those things aren't that great for you regardless if your pregnant of not, so I guess I'm better off.

Z is for Zucchini Ripieni

This is the first of my cooking thru the alphabet series. Like I said that I'll start with the difficult letters and work my way to A. Zucchini Ripieni (stuffed Zucchini) has many variations, it seems like most put meat in theirs but I know I have a vegetarian follower so I though that I'd try to make a few more veggie friendly dishes.

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 lbs zucchini (12 small or 6 large)
• 1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
• 2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
• 2 tablespoons dry breadcrumbs (approx)
• 2/3 cup cheese, grated
• 2 eggs
• salt and pepper
• 5 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 cup milk

Directions

Cut ends off zucchini and trim to same length, wash and drain. Boil in lightly salted water for 10 minutes or until half cooked, drain and cool (you may dip in ice water to help cool). Slice in half lengthwise and scoop pulp into a colander to drain a little. Leave about 1/4 inch thick walls in the zucchini, make them like a boat. In a bowl mix pulp, parsley, basil, breadcrumbs, eggs and all of the parmesan except 2 tablespoons. Add salt and pepper to taste, stir well (I only use about 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg, but use to your taste, or leave out). In a saucepan melt 1/4 C of the butter, stir in the flour, gradually stir in milk and stir over low heat until it has thickened and is bubbly.

Gradually stir sauce into zucchini mixture, add more bread crumbs if mixture is not thick enough to spoon. Using a spoon fill zucchini shells with the mixture and arrange them side by side in a shallow buttered baking dish. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and bake at 350 for 1/2 hour, serve hot.

Baby Booties

I hand stitched theses little felt booties. I made the blue ones a little larger than the red ones just incase. My Editor "watched" the goings on from this new felt fort. I wish I could give you my pattern but I sort of winged it. The inspiration for them came from Martha's little felt booties of corse.

Cooking by ABC's

Cooking through the alphabet is is an idea that I've been toying with for awhile now and I think it might be fun. I have been thinking that I would start a Z and work my way to A, just to get the hard ones out of the way. I'm stumped on X so if anyone has any ideas let me know.

Focaccia bread

As you have probably guessed by now, I'm not on a low carb diet, and I love to make good Mexican food. I'll start posting on stuff other than bread, I promise.

But the focaccia bread went great with the spinach, turkey bacon, and hard boiled egg, salad we had for dinner last night, and it was really fun poking my fingers in the dough so it wouldn't bubble up when it baked.

Easy Cinnamon Muffin Bread

On Friday I was searching around the local thrift store when I found these mini bread pans for a dollar. So of corse now had to think of something to bake in my new little bread pans... humm, muffins! Perfect, I hate trying to grease my muffin tin (no matter what I always miss a sport or two and some of the muffins stick to the pan and turns into a mess). Cinnamon muffin bread seemed like the way to go. Husband said that the bread was one of the best recipes I've come up and insisted that I write down the recipe for future reference.

1 3/4 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt.

(Mix together then add)

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

3 Tbs. butter

dash of Cinnamon

(Pour into bread pans)

(in a small bowl mix)

3 Tbs flour

3 Tbs sugar

1 tsp molasses (or you could just use brown sugar)

2 Tbs Butter (room temp)

2 tsp cinnamon

1 Tbs. Water (or until the consistency of tooth paste)

(spread on top of bread, it should sink to the middle of the bread when the bread bakes. Bake bread at 350)

Corn Tortillas

Last night I thought it was a good time to make corn tortillas out of the Corn Masa mix leftover from the tamales. I have a new found respect from those perfectly round tortillas you can buy at the store, but how much better they taste when they're fresh. It wasn't hard to make as much as it was difficult to get the knack of rolling them out. I just followed the directions on the bag, which said to use a tortilla press, used my rolling pen, placed them in the pan for awhile then flipped them over and cooked the other side and thats it. Other then the odd shapes they where great.

Card Design

I have been trying to challenge myself each week to design and submit my work in a graphic design competition. This week was the Foldees.com Monochrome card design, the rules where to could make a design using black, white and one color (and as many shades and hues of that color you want). I chose Peach, the top image is the front of the card and the lower one is the inside. Designs will be voted for on the website from June 18th- 24th.

Lemon Yogurt Blueberry Cake

So many blueberries and so many things I could make. I really could sit around and eat blueberries all day until I turned into Violet Beauregarde*, thats basically whats going happening now that I'm pregnant anyways, but I figure I should make a nice sweet bread while I have so many berries at my disposal.

I used this recipe and it turned out great. My only issue was fresh blueberries were heavier than the batter so most of the berries sunk to the bottom of the cake.

* Willy Wonka blueberry girl

Milk and Cookies

Steamed milk and the Sugar Cookies with chocolate frosting, that is.