Bonbons until you drop

There is a family month long mess at the house starting in December. For years we have made pounds of candy and send out batches to other relatives and friends.  It's time consuming but the easiest stuff once you get a groove.  My sister and I roll out the confection while someone dips them in chocolate,  taking breaks to let the peanut butter chill out again.  We would roll them up while watching movies/ chatting, the whole holiday cheer! The recipe is simple but it will be long in the making. We've also deterred from our traditional set by making almond butter or white chocolate or peppermint variations. They freeze well but we've never seen any make it too terribly long !

Adaptation

Years ago I found a recipe for blueberry muffins that used pecan meal as a flour replacer in some gluten free muffins. They were so soft and moist and used a lot less sugar which was a bonus for my partly diabetic audience. Knowing that it is indeed possible I went searching yesterday for a similar recipe including pumpkin.  Nothing like what I wanted! So I searched up some paleo banana nut muffins and did the Magical substitutions.
2 cups smashed pecans and walnuts (try to make sure some looks like ground nut meal)
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp Baking soda
2 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup almond milk
1 cup pumpkin
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 tblspn molasses

Mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, combine. Bake for 25 minutes on 350. It's a muffin, you know the drill. Stuff your face!

Cornbread and beeeeefy chili

Cornbread is a food group, part vegetable part whole grain, you just can't go wrong. Add some stew beef style chili and it's a match made in heaven. Especially since it is getting to be that chilly time of year where soups and thick stews are oh so necessary.

Southern soul

This is beyond yummy, pecan shortbread cookie bars ! I was skeptical at the limited amount of butter but they turned out crumbly but delicious.

Pecans are a must at Christmas for me, frosted pecans are up later in the week and a batch of pecan/walnut muffins (they turn out super moist as a gluten free muffin which is how I discovered them). Get all the omegas and whatnots? Plus I saw some paleo granola that involved just roasting a bunch of different variety of nuts and binding them together with sunflower oil, which was actually pretty tasty. So there's a trial for that coming up.

Dawn of the First Day

Well I only sort of woke at dawn, I managed to finally drift back off by then. But first day's business has been to get emails of the  ten bazillion variety unsubscribed from. This new exciting life as a stay at home mom means I'm getting things in gear! I hope, I have two months to get a system in place before my new planetoid comes to wobble the whole solar system. Sounds like a working deal, right?

What goes on popcorn?

Nutella and almond butter popcorn?

Yeah.

Absolutely, then sprinkle a little salt and tell yourself you are letting it dry before eating as you stand there with a spoon scooping it into your face because then you can make it stir around the pan and coat easier, right?

I used maybe 3/4 cup of almond butter nutella concoction , stirring them into the last bits of the almond butter jar. Which when I microwaved I discovered that the little bits of aluminum safety seal were indeed still flammable when partnered with said microwave. But since both were already goopy it's all good and I only burned a little bit of the container that I was emptying of contents anyway. Move to microwave safe container next time, then it will spread out more evenly across the popcorn.

Transitions

Sometimes life changes,  big or small.

Best way to engage these changes is with a good yummy start to the day, try it. It's hard to be grumpy after good things have had a one, two punch.

Pumpkins abound

I got the glamour job of pumpkin dismantler yesterday on these two for my mom, came out to about 12 cups of pumpkin for the freezer filling all the muffin desires as well as holiday fixins.

How to bake a pumpkin:
Preheat oven to 400
Cut out top of pumpkin, trust me, way easier, cut in half. Clean out goopies
Place cut side down on baking sheet, for small pumpkins (pie pumpkins) it's about 45 minutes, bigger ones get up to an hour and change
You'll be able to skewer it through the skin and It'll feel like potatoes do. The longer it bakes the less work it'll be so don't be afraid if the edges caramelize a bit
Pull from oven and let cool until you can peel the skin off
Squish with fork or blenderize or squish with fork until it's squish enough to place in bags and then squeeze out the teeny lumps
It smashes just like a sweet potato at this stage so it's honestly super easy even with a fork, just occasionally you get the stray goopy strings. Either pull em out or ignore them 😅

Tadaa, lots of wholesome sort of goodness that can go in muffins/pancakes/soup/curry and most certainly pie!

Fall day by day

Moving to the great Pacific northwest has been a change from Florida. Most days were dressed in layers if you woke up early enough, but would be in relatively reasonable clothes by the afternoon. Maybe pants and t-shirt with a light jacket. Once you roll past the afternoon rains everything is pretty straightforward. Unless hurricanes or cold fronts, but you have warning for those!
Here one day is beautiful, sunny, slight breezes and chilly enough for layers but not being a marshmallow yet.

The next day, is the gray. Gray sky not really cloudy, just overall feels gray. Rainy or drizzly is most common then. These days are never-ending in a row I've heard and saw some from last year, but so far we are flip flopping all over. But there are moments of color since it's still Fall!

Egg and flow

Fifty percent of a good egg drop soup is the broth. I made a whole chicken this week in the crockpot, which lead to fall off the bone meat, which lead to homemade chicken broth from my freezer veggie stash.
Best best idea ever, you wash your veggies before you cut them up right? So put odds and ends of veggies into a freezer bag, label stock to be! Then when you want to make a good broth you have a variety of flavors, can add a few extra pieces or ends. In my case, I never eat onions so I always have whole ones to add to the broth on hand. So this broth had zucchini, mushrooms, onions of a variety of sorts, broccoli stems , carrots, garlic ends plus more as always and probably some other stragglers I missed noticing. Add your favorite spices for a stock and you are good to go, takes no extra effort. I pulled the meat off the bones, left the roast chicken spices that had fallen off in, added a bit extra and added the veggies and walked away for 12 hours, tadaa!
So the other part to egg drop soup is the eggs themselves. Whip them well and they will be the light fluffy bits you get at the restaurants. If you are lackadaisical about this you will get poached egg style clumps. Stir the boiling broth into a whirlpool and very slowly add a steady stream of the eggs. Dont be like me and whip your eggs with a plastic lunchbox fork, this doesn't lead to pretty soups as you can see.

Failbox

For some unknown reason this box was almost entirely ignored for lunch, the teddy grahams and a friend were mentioned for lunch time as well as the paired yogurt ( the guaranteed eaten bit everytime) but she even missed the brownie in the bottom portion with a cheese quesadilla and a sugared tortilla. Whatever was more interesting was obviously so!

Grocery shopping

Have I mentioned lately that I'm expecting? Which leads to impulse decisions in the grocery store. Like marshmallows and chocolate for Smores! But looking at the Graham crackers and apparently not actually picking up a box. I physically remember looking at all the flavors and then I'm not sure what happened. Baby brain, they leech all of yours for their sustenance!
So impromptu raspberries and chocolate and marshmallows instead, microwaved long enough to be slightly empty (maybe 15 seconds) and I feel almost like it's a healthy treat ! Or maybe just not as bad as it could be

This is yummy, whats your Recipe?

I admit I cook by feel and smell and taste. Recipes are like guidelines, which are good for some people and a nice jumping block for others. So my homemade applesauce has been shared with family and friends and this next batch was a little more warming kick than normal, I apparently had no cinnamon! But since I normally use little and just use cardamom for my spiced quota it worked out just as well.
The apples came from my parents new tree and were very small and tart but red so we still haven't identified them! Also, since this is still new ground being in the Pacific northwest, we didn't know to water the tree extra for better stock.

Skills you forgot you had

Skills you didn't know were useful, bento boxes for toddlers preschool when you are a nanny and the child isn't a picky eater but a buffet/precise style eater.
Must pick up all the raisins out of the trail mix before moving on to something else. So food time at home takes 30 to 45 minutes with knowing how to approach "well we can have carrots and dip, but we cant just eat all the dip with one single carrot"
So making sure She can see everything and pick and choose at least means she'll get excited about all her options and move on once she's gotten through the first nibbles.
Still working on the hype in the morning, while trying to get ready she stole her packaged yogurt to have for breakfast instead !

So we have grapes, carrots, blueberries, cashews, Kara sev ( chickpea noms) , some multigrain crackers, and raisins. Bottom tier is a lemon rice from her Mama. Yes the grapes and raisins are redundant but she sometimes picks only one and sometimes both, of course.

2011

I've always been superstitious of more than one 1 gathered...so 2011 becomes starts out with me being terrified of the year, awesome way to start. But since things can go horribly wrong, they've been going amazing. Besides being busy and therefore drowning my vegetable garden. But I'm the type of black thumb gardener anyway, give me a tree to chop down/ weeds to pull up/ things to trim....
I got a new job at a small aquarium, which is amazing. I used to volunteer at a big aquarium which was nice, but you get lost in the enormity of the place and people. Not to mention the guests lose that personal feel of being able to follow someone around and ask questions on a personal level (And me tracking down someone to tell them that nurse sharks live for about 25 years) A place where people from Canada come down every year with their kids and know our fish by name. Well those that have names, it is big enough to have plenty of unnamed fish! So while I'm happily exhausted, I'm still running in a million directions at once.
I also discovered a family deficiency of B vitamins and a little multi-B made me 10 times happier, not to mention discovering my theoretically milk allergy is a lactose intolerance. Which is a lot better than an allergy! Though that was probably the funniest conversation with the allergist: "Well there are lots of possible common allergens, do you react to milk?" I don't like milk and my brother was allergic, I didn't have it for a couple of years. "Wheat?" I'm on a wheat-free diet since I live with a celiac. "Why?" *Stare* Because it's better for her and simpler "Oh, fish?" I don't like fish. "Eggs?" I don't like eggs much "Peanuts or nuts?" I LOVE THOSE! They are fine.
And while it may seem to him like I avoid everything, some things are for a definite reason...I've avoided many of those things for years, though cheese is my killer.

With two jobs, school, my new hubby stressed out by his work and school, and robots things are definately 20 hour days of activity. So I'm stopping being lazy soon to put my chaos back in order.
And I bought a camera cord to talk with my retarded phone:
This is me being the event coordinator at the school for a robot fight, with a poor girl whose teacher requires photographic evidence that they attended an extra credit event! But thank you kindly for coming and watching us beat up the little robots :)